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MS Hires The Salesman Who Won Munich For SUSE
ron_ivi writes "In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits, Microsoft has hired the SUSE sales guy who won Munich for SUSE.
So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job and Microsoft will come recruit you. (Another interesting Microsoft hire is the chair of the ISO C++ standards body as their VisualC++.NET architect.) Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
Yes, it's war, and microsoft is not above recruiting the enemy's best lieutenants.
MP3 Search Engine
Don't be successful.
Of $0, but he opted to go with Microsoft anyway.
Anyone know if they're happy with Linux in Munich?
-- jaf
they hire Linus as head Longhorn coder?
Microsoft is well known for their great hiring practices. I know quite a few of thier employees and they all are some of the best in the fields they specialise in. MS is pretty good at weeding out the chaff.
In God we trust, all others require data.
In sales it's all about making the money. I bet M$ will pay him better then anyone else has the ability to. Not a bad deal for him.
Evolution or ID?
I wonder how many good job offers MS has floated by Linus?
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Get Munich back on Windows!
His boss: OK, you're on probation until you get this first sale. There's this council in Munich...
Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well.
Or did they hire him to make him less of a threat?
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Are you kidding?
Am I the only one that sees this as buying out the competition? Let's see, some guy successfully beat us at selling a competitive O/S. Let's hire him so that never happens again. And some guy is making the world better by furthering a standard. Let's hire him so that our C++ becomes the only stardard the world must follow.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Bill Gates: "Buy him out, boys."
My other processor is big-endian.
So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job...
Thanks for turning the obvious into yet another anti-MS rant. Perhaps you should go into the inspirational poster business.
Why not hire those you think are best if you can afford them? And I'm not seeing these people being conscripted.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Can I expect an appointment letter ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
If its Herb Sutter you are talking about, he's been with microsoft for awhile now. He's posted a few articles on msdn about C++ on things like conformance and feature improvements to VS.net
So people trusted this guy to switch 10k machines to linux. Now, how will people look at his face when he is promoting windows OVER linux? Seems there isn't such thing as integrity.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
That's just a bit speculative, isn't it? Who says they're having any difficulties? I think Microsoft was the one who had the difficulties here, having lost the contract and all.
This is classic Microsoft. Can't beat 'em? Buy 'em!
Microsoft actually does have a pretty good hiring process, if a little brutal. But a lot of people are saying things like "well, at least somebody recognizes that exceptional people are worth it" -- I don't think that these examples are exactly displaying that. Microsoft has been hiring relatively exceptional people for a long time now; the only difference is that these people already have multinational acclaim in their profession.
Just thought I'd point that out -- this is a good move and everything, but hiring people that are already well-known in their field is neither A) necessarily good news for those of you stumping for MS jobs, or B) particularly cost-effective for Microsoft.
On a side note, the REAL message that this is sending to professionals around the world is this: Hurt Microsoft And Get Hired. Whether a lawyer, programmer, politician or standards' body member -- I encourage all exceptional individuals to put all of their skill towards the destruction of Microsoft. They like it! Really!
Of how Microsoft plays the "divide and conquer" to win. If Microsoft can't win, it will just buy the comptetition.
1.Get a job that takes money away from X Corp.
2.Do a good job at it.
3.????
4.Get hired by X Corp.
5.Profit
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
"Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
Oh yeah, that's going to go great around here...
isn't that he won't eventually give it all away or do some good, I believe him when he says that he will. However, people like Gates and those that run Microsoft have very little faith in people. Their arrogance is hard to beat. Even for such wildly successful people as those new hires, I wouldn't doubt for a second that they are getting a mere fraction of what Microsoft makes off them. Why would a proposed philanthropist such as Gates withhold all that cash, even from their "wildly successful" new hires? I think the answer is simple, he doesn't have faith in people to do the right thing with that money. This is of course if we take Gates at his word when he says he wants to help people with that money. While Bill Gates may eventually give talented people a chance, the damage he has done to the system by hoarding all that cash and unfairly eliminating competition far outweighs the benefits that will happen when he does give it away.
Or else Msoft will get their sh!# together and there will be no reason to ever switch.
why is this news? He quit SuSE in 2003 and he got a new job.
slightly OT, but there's so much grumbling on slashdot about not enough jobs for IT people...
I remember reading somewhere that there was a high demand for IT guys in the automotive industry... lemme google...
ah, there it is
New Cars getting too expensive to fix
The interesting paragraphs are near the bottom:
"There's no shortage of general technicians, but there is a big shortage of qualified people to work on drivability and emissions issues," says Robert Rodriguez of Automotive Service Excellence. The Leesburg, Va., organization certifies repair shops and technicians.
These specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills, he says. "The best people to find are those who have worked in the IT [information technology] industry," he says.
I think it would be amusing if this same salesmen, KarlAigner, can go back to the City of Munich and win them back to Microsoft products. That would be salesmanship!! :P
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
He began his new role April 1, Microsoft said Tuesday.
Say no to software patents.
well this shows that money can buy anything.
too bad we cant "keep" all these people that do extremely well to beef up Linux more or any opposing M$ OS. Imagine the rivalry if M$ didnt use money to buy anything.
-- The box said Windows 2000 or better... so I installed Linux
From the C|Net article, dateline May 7, 1997:
Yocam maintains that Microsoft is luring personnel away with huge signing bonuses, some in excess of $1 million. "They have the audacity to send limos to Borland's headquarters to take Borland employees out to lunch. I mean, this has got to stop."
Ah, the good old days. Million-dollar signing bonuses. Limos for job prospects. Corvettes for hot programmers fresh out of college. Penthouse suites with the company logo in genuine Italian marble.
Why did it ever have to end?
Oh, wait, don't answer that...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
...next time that guy shows up in Munich on a sales call.
"Okay, you know all that stuff I told you? Nevermind. I've got something better, now... hey! Put down the pitchforks! Aiiiiieeee!"
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
What hasn't Microsoft bought?
"Competitors", "regulators", "reviewers", EU fines, settlements with Sun, Minnesota, AOL-Netscape, Apple bailout, etc. It's all just the cost of doing business as a monopoly.The marketplace is still working, just not in the way we might have hoped or imagined.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Sales is about selling... it has precious little to do with making the world a better place.
Yeah, It's just like when Darth Vader tried to get Luke to join him. After Luke had destroyed the first Death Star, Vader and Palpatine realized what a great asset he could be. They offered him the chance of a lifetime, just wanted to reward him for his good work, and what did the whiny brat do? Goes and kills them both and destroys the empire's last change of survival. He ruined the livelyhoods of millions of innocent emperial employees, not to mention the thousands he murdered, just for some hippy idealism. If only he had been more grateful like these two guys, maybe the world could have been a better place.
Herb Sutter mentions planned C++/.Net CLR extensions being discussed for later inclusion in the C++ standard in last months C/C++ Journal. (Sorry, there is no link on their site yet.) I thought it odd that the chairman of such a standards board would mention M$ proprietary software so favorably. Then I saw that he works for M$ and understood perfectly. No conflicts of interest here. Enough to make you sick. I wonder what Stroustoup thinks of this. What next? A Microsoftie on Sun's Java steering committee perhaps?
an ill wind that blows no good
He must have aced all the manhole size and obscure pointer deallocation questions!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Did you ever see the movie "The Devil's Advocate"? Same principle in operation here.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
"In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits..."
This is *nothing* like the Borland lawsuit. Your own link says that's about hiring a large number of key staff thus draining the business.
This is about hiring one key person. Apart from hiring from a competitor (standard practice) there is no resemblance at all.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Someone is good at his job and gets hired by someone. So that's the key!
Not once, but TWICE you wrote micro$oft... You can't tell me that you didn't feel like a boob while you were typing that. When are people going to learn that it's not funny and it's not cool. Yes, Microsoft has a lot of money, we get it.
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
MS seems to assume that they lost the sale because the Linux side had superior marketing instead of a superior product.
If you are losing business because of a competitor's skill, BUT you are very, very rich, you don't "compete" with them , you bribe them. In this case, pay some guy 200K a year to do nothing in your firm and prevent him selling your opponent's products that steal sales from you worth millions/year. Fra cheaper than trying to improve your own products.
This is how business (sometimes) works: if you cannot beat the opposition because your products are better, bribe them out of your way.
Actually the US hired the german engineer (and not him alone) Wernher von Braun to build their rockets after WW2. The winner takes it all! ;-)
Munich decided that Linux was cheap, extendable, powerful and usable enough to suit their purpose...so Microsoft hired the guy who told them all this?
/
If I write a database engine that even an idiot can administer, will Microsoft then hire the idiot?
Ade_
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
There's a very simple term for this kind of hiring. It's called "smart business". If somone proves that they can do something great for your competitors, like pull off a massive sales coup, then that's the kind of guy you want on your staff. The same applies to engineering, politics, and a host of other enterprises.
For example, the guy who designed the S2000 for Honda designed the 300ZX turbo for Nissan. (Both are benchmark designs for the auto industry.) David Gergen worked for both the Nixon and the Clinton administrations. (He may have worked for Reagan, but I'll need to check to be sure.) Hilary Clinton was president of her college's chapter of the Young Republicans, and technology companies exchange employees regularly.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
"...Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
Yeeeaaa... that's been the M$ employee experience. NOT!
Maybe this guy was successful because SUSE is an actual solution to business technology?
It's not uncommon to buy (and sink) a competing company. After shifting the customers and assimilating some of the employees, you bury the corpse. If they're "up and coming", it's not too expensive.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...just be wildly successful at your current job and Microsoft will come recruit you
That is an excellent Human Resources strategy for any company.
If, as you say, they are so grand at "weeding out the chaff," then how come with all these talented super-geniuses do their products tend to be so flawed? That would indicate a desire to make some really bad shit.
Now, don't get me wrong -- while i primarily use my iBook G4 12" (800Mhz, 256MB of RAM), I actually rather like Windows 2000 Professional. It was more or less "done right" for what Windows is intended for. All the DRM ramblings aside in their new products, why does XP suck so much? Seriously. And why were Windows 95, 98, and as I hear (i never used it myself), ME such abismal failures (unless you count success in $billions, which as a product is true; as software is not true)?
According to that Bob Cringly documentary from a few years back, Gates had intended to surround himself with only the best and brightest who were most capible. Reading Slashdot you would think they are all morons or evil. I doubt either is true. Bugs or not, no code is perfect. Windows is incredbily complex and is bound to have even a few hundred bugs in so many millions of lines of code. That is to be expected. But many of the "bugs" are such gapeing holes and bad design decisions that one must conculde that either they are in fact idiots, or are involved in some sort of evil master plan. I am sure that Slashdot readers will be more than willing to select "evil master plan" as their most popular choice, but i am not so sure. I suspect it to be a mystery that we cannot solve from such distance. Maybe if we were to infiltrate Redmond and discover who, in fact, these people really are...
Read the following article, and laugh: One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) ...
Say no to software patents.
Sales guy:
"All that stuff I told you when I was working for SuSE was BULLSHIT. But now, you can believe everything I say. We ... ah going to pump ... YOU up!"
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
This sounds similar to the argument "customers LIKE Microsoft and feel they are getting a good deal", which of course, is not the point. The point is Microsoft CAN DO these things largely because of their monopoly position and their abuse of that position. If my company had $50B in the petty cash fund (it doesn't) we could equally afford to go after all of the world talent.
When I was taking AI in college, the prof told our class that of approximately 900 Computer Science PhD graduates in the previous year, M$ hired 600 of them. This is a huge reason why it's hard to go up against them, and it makes me wonder why they haven't taken over the whole world. But they have taken over our dollar.
Steve Jobs talked to Linus Torvalds about hiring him. He mentioned it in an interview. It's no big deal, and not a "PR nightmare"--well, on Slashdot everyone would suddenly claim it's a PR nightmare, but outside this little niche nobody else would care!
Of course, as a geek, what motivates people (partiticularly marketing people) is a foreign concept to me. Money, I suppose. Duh.
I read somewhere that Karl Aigner is going to be one of the first contestants on the new Fox TV show, Who Wants To Kill Their Parents For A Million Dollars?
And the show will feature Bill Gates doing a new MasterCard commercial. "There are some things that money can't buy... but I can't even imagine what they might be."
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
Yes, that is great. There is also nothing wrong with taking such an offer.
But the effect is still anti-competitive. Microsoft has the money to buy up just about any talent around the world they like to. Where would the computer industry go if everybody who knows how to do anything gets hired by Microsoft? Because that's where this is going.
The people to do something about this are not Microsoft or the individuals involved, but government regulators.
It's called having a job. If you're a salesperson, guess what? You sell what you're HIRED TO SELL!
Only on Slashdot, made up mostly of college students and unemployed, would it be considered a bad thing and a "lack of integrity" to sell things for one company and then go over and sell things for another.
It's not like the rest of the world views everything as "Windows vs. Linux" like you do. It's just another product the guy's gonna be selling. More power to him! The anti-capitalism mindset that permeates around here is so silly sometimes.
A very brief peek of Microsoft's career website shows that that's probably not Microsoft's standard practice. For one, do a job search on their page. A LOT ot bachelor's degrees there. Second, have a peek at their tuition reimbursement page.
Work for an Opensource Project, Company ...
- earn the respect of the community
- get a job & money from M$
M$ rewards this guy for a good job he has done or are the paying this guy for not competting for other big contracts?
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
But for the 95+% of the market, there already isn't a need to switch...or else they would have!
they've hired a guy who knows all the weaknesses of Linux
That's a pretty remarkable salesman they've got there then. No wonder Microsoft have hired him -- he'd be totally unlike any other salesman I've ever met.
"Weaknesses? They aren't weaknesses, they're *features*. My other customers can't live without those features.
Now sign here..."
This story is one of the best uses for the GatesBorg icon ever.
The person was not forced to work for Microsoft. As a person who possesses an ability that someone else wants, it is MY choice to whom I work for. Usually, it's a huge variety of factors (benefits, location, environment). In other times, it comes down to the bottom dollar.
Microsoft has great talent because it has a great reputation for helping their employees become better people. Microsoft provides a huge benefits package, better than adequate pay, and a stable environment to work for. Although people may question their business tactics, as I do, the fact of the matter is - when you're an employee of Microsoft, you're generally a happy person.
Since Microsoft cannot force people to work for them, it is not logical to assume that all the world's talent is going to work for Microsoft. Look at the open-source community. Look at the developers for the Linux kernel. Do you not think these people have the capability of applying their knowledge and talent by working for Microsoft? I believe Microsoft would be highly interested in talking with some of the best skilled developers in the open-source community about hiring them. Those people, however, are either not interested in working for Microsoft or have not asked to work at Microsoft. They have chosen their path to continue working on their current projects.
Does anyone question whether or not Microsoft would be a great company to work for? Think now - think as a software developer. If you're a potential CEO wanting to work for Microsoft, you might want to help them have a better relationship with their customers and quit trampling smaller companies.
Ayup
"In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits, Microsoft has hired the SUSE sales guy who won Munich for SUSE."
How's this any different than SCO hiring David Boise to serve as their legal counsel considering Boise beat Microsoft in court for the Justice Department; yet we all know Microsoft is the financial puppet master behind SCO's motivations?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
If you can't beat 'em, poach 'em
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Microsoft has hired one of its worst enemies, the SuSE Linux salesman whose efforts led the city of Munich to adopt Linux and open-source software instead of Microsoft's products.
Does Microsoft think that this will really help?
SCO hired Boise, the lawyer that came through for Microsoft. Some ignorant people believed in SCO because of this.
After a while you find people coming to their senses (like the day after that smooth talking salesman cons you into buying something you didn't want, or like the day Baystar realized it didn't get the full story).
You can get the greatest salesman in the world, but there's no way that any smart guy will buy dog turd from him if he's promoting it as a snack.
Microsoft is a "learning organization, and one of the ways of learning is bringing in different ways of thinking,"
Learning? Isn't this a nicer sounding word for 'copying'?
What happened to 'Microsoft the innovator'?
Such moves can trigger lawsuits, however. Siebel Systems sued SalesForce.com in 2003 after Brett Queener moved to the rival company. Borland sued Microsoft in 1997 for hiring away dozens of employees. And SANgate systems lost a legal battle with EMC in 2001 to keep Chief Executive Doron Kempel, who came from the storage giant.
Yes, Microsoft loves to consider itself an 'innovator', but when it comes down to 'competing' with others, it would rather resort to buying out its competition or killing it off.
It's nice to see that Microsoft is still just as anti-competitive as ever. The leopard can cover itself in white paint, but the spots are still there underneath.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
MS hires the core kernel development team behind Linux!
Today Microsoft hired the entire core development team of the Linux kernel including Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton to head up Microsofts OS development department. Each will recieve a starting salary of 100 million dollars a year plus stock options. Overnight the core team became billionaires.
When asked about the future of the Linux kernel, the team laughed all the way to the bank to deposit their new cash.
Now, don't tell me this hasn't crossed Microsoft's collective minds from time to time...not that Linus and the rest would ever do this.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Why do you care so much? Honestly. Do you get this upset if people make fun of maytag or toshiba? How come MS holds such a special place in your heart that you deeply care about somebody desacrating their name with dollar signs?
evil is as evil does
Seriously, after the major press outlets all covered this non-story, I'm beginning to think that RMS, ESR, Bruce, and the rest of the Linux Headline Team might not have a chance against these guys. Redmond spin control is nearing gravitational proportions.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
It's always good to step back and look at all the sides in a purchase or decision. throw out the highs and lows (or positives or negatives, etc) and concentrate on the middle, that's probably where the truth and practicality (mostly) is.
This situation though IS embarrassing to SuSe though. You have to wonder why they chose the guy in the first place, seems like they might have found someone who honestly believed in his product enough from data nalaysis to serve as their salesman, not someone who can just act and follow some sort of sales spiel script. but, oh well. I've had a few sales jobs before (long time ago), and I turned down more, because on inspection, what they wanted me to sell wasn't a good deal for the consumer.
Not only have they recruited these individuals, but I'm willing to wager the various agreements they had to sign ensure that any intelligent ideas they have become MS property before they've even finished thinking them and that, should they leave or be fired in the future, they will not work in any competing industry for many years to come. Hope they don't mind being garbage collectors.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
one of those sales books and make even more money!
Maybe a goofy book title mini-thread?
"Selling your soul and loving it"
"How to sell what you have, make what you want and work for the best" -- That one is probably not bad, if you are into sales.
"How to turn your underdog success into a profitable business"
(ducks..)
Blogging because I can...
For years everyone's been saying that using FOSS software gives you reliability, quality, no vendor lock-in, at much lower cost.
Yeah, yeah. Fine. Great.
Practically, though, there are two interesting side developments:
These are two winning strategies.
The losing strategy (for customers) is just to throw tons of money to buy MS products without asking any questions.
Even though the "nobody got fired for buying $LONGSTANDING_BIG_VENDOR..." mentality has seemed like a safe fallback in IT purchasing, everyone should look at all their options fresh each purchasing cycle for both hardware and software and ask what they've been getting for their money, is what I have reasonably adequate for my actual business needs, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It's not the salesman, or the current sales staff.
Could it be the product?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Microsoft voted him onto the island.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
not realising it was the old product there was something wrong with, not the old salesman.
bring it on! --- JFK
I remember laughing at Microsoft's posters at school. The company wanted to hire some inters for the summer, then, as the poster promised, the good ones would be offered full-time positions. At that point of time I said, "Bullshit, I am never going to work for them. I am a Linux geek. I hate that company!"
I have been out of college for almost a year. I wish I had applied to Microsoft and interned there instead of different small companies around New England. Why? Well, first of all, they offered a good paycheck, secondly, the company did not have major layoffs compared to some other IT giants. Finally, with $50K in loans, I could use a job that paid well.
Do not get me wrong, I still like Open Source and none of my home (and work) computers run Windows. However, paycheck is a paycheck. I am sure that sales guy felt the same way too. It is nice to do what is right, but sometimes you have to do what you must in order to survive. Good for him, I hope he does a good job and then gets out when shit hits the fan.
... from the Fellowship where Gollum is gently questioned by Sauron's orcs in the cellars of Baraduhr. ... or Ballmer offerring to "wipe the slate clean" like Agent Smith in Matrix...
Can you imagine the poor chap sitting at some corporate meeting roomgoing thru long questioning sessions?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Isn't that is one of the lowest lifeforms on earth, right next to marketdroids?
I hope that they pay this guy al very big lot, all money that MS has to spend is a good cause.
BTW I remain convinced we should on bomb redmont.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
1) Become a professional salesperson
2) Hone your skills by selling OS software
3) Get hired by Microsoft
4) Profit!
Seriously though, I think this shows that Microsoft seeks talanted people from everywhere regardless of your background. Sure, it's probably quite a score in their eyes to get someone who was so successful selling OS software but it's great that he's being rewarded for being good at his profession.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Not once, but TWICE you wrote micro$oft
That's because he's twice as 3l33t as other people. These are the kind of braniacs that think referring to the president as "shrub" and IE as "Internet exploder" is clever and/or insightful.
th3y R 3l33t m@n, you just don't get it!
--> Fight tyranny and repression.... read
So Microsoft wont just take malleable people to fit in the Microsoft culture.
That means these people will take their ideas to Microsoft too. Hey boss, I think we should do more testing. Hey boss, I found some Linux code in win2003 should I remove it? Hey boss, these classes are implemented crap, should I try again, hey boss, get new glasses. Please.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Microsoft still doesn't seem to get that it may not be the way they are selling their product or who is selling it, but WHAT THEY ARE SELLING.
They seem to simply ignore that SUSE Linux may have been the better product in this case, that intelligent people actually made the purchase decision, and that Microsoft would not have been purchased no matter what the cost.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Duuh, anybody who wants to know all the weaknesses of Linux can just read it.
... in dealing with union representatives. They hired all the best shop stewards into management, ensuring that only fools and lazy a$$holes represented the rank and file.
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
$u$e has a lot of money too. Just not as much as Micro$soft, but a hell of a lot more then me.
you forgot to mention that these practices all though fair and legal are just the more clean actions Bill takes with regards to monopolizing the software market.
.asp files for a living but if you wanted to know just in case,
monopolizes the software market.
If you didn't here, don't know if anybody here actually programs more than
that MONOPOLIZING THE SOFTWARE MARKET:
is bad for developers (outsourced to india or not) and is bad for the software market (oh maybe things like the Interent Explorer virus thing, etc...)
Just imagine what would happen if people failed to fight Bill and Microsoft and stopped making competing software products that didn't leave your computer vulnerable.
Everyone would be making documents with word, using ASP to make non-sensical scripts written in "human language" and later if we all used Internet Explorer exclusively we might have things like POPUP BLOCKERS or we wouldn't have a way to access websites without the threat of VIRUS / HACKING of our computers.
: )
German Linux proponents should do their best to discredit this salesman, by making his history widely known to as many German companies as possible. Wie sagt man "flip-flop" auf Deutsch? Why should anyone believe a word out of this guy's mouth? He'll now be telling customers the exact opposite of what he told them before, just because someone is paying him more?
My prediction:
....
We'll run Windows in VMWare until we can port our 150 Windows applications to Linux!
Three Years Later
We've finished porting 60 applications, but somehow we now have 200 Windows apps deployed. ?
Just an observation about IT -- if you give the users a tool (Windows on VMWare), they'll find a way to use it. And I don't blame them either -- if there is a strong business need, they aren't going to wait around while IT tries to convince some vendor to port their maintenance mode VB/Access vertical app to Linux.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Put your bullshit back where it came from. You don't know anything about his experience, and microsoft isn't big on 'standards' anyway. They may not do the same thing to everyone, but they certainly could have done this to him.
Of what use is the opinion of someone who is paid to think a certain way?
being anti-capitalism doesn't have anything to do with it.
Then you've not been paying attention.
Actually, yes, I have been.
The Free Software community is lucky to have g++.
Frankly, everyone is lucky to have gcc/g++ -- it's an excellent compiler that does a great job of implementing standards. It's not the best, but it's better than a lot (cough - VisualAge - cough).
My statement was simply that -- it's not the best, and that MS VC++ does a better job now. Which it does. If you use boost as a benchmark (and while I'm a fan of boost, and we use it in our codebase, it's simply not a real STL or C++ benchmark) then MSVC++ 7.1 does a better job. From what I understand, it does better on the Plum Hall tests than g++ as well.
I do wish gcc 3.4.0 would be finalized. I'm very interested in running it in our environment (AIX 5.1), particularly since shared libraries don't work properly w/ 3.3.2 (throw an exception in a shared library and watch the program crash), not to mention the precompiled headers and other speed ups. And, no, upgrading to a non-final 3.4.0 is not an option. Frankly, I'm leary about 3.4.0 and may just wait for 3.4.1, since there's inevitably a lot of bugfixes in the first revision -- particularly when talking about less used platforms like AIX (God I hate AIX, but that's not my decision to make...)
"Prepare to be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. You will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
My guess is that hiring the SuSE guy is only the beginning of bills they'll have to pay to close the deals this guy arranges. Unlike Borland, this lone sales guy will probably not crater the Linux/OpenSource/Free Software movement, no more than Benedict Arnold won the war for England.
I feel like a boob right now, but my wife isn't home, so I'll have to wait.
Either that, or I can go find some pr0n, but it's just not the same....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Bill Gates also respects the work of many politicians as well
It will give Microsoft a better handle on things and by hireing the ISO C++ Standards guy will help them make their development tools more standards compliant. Like Microsoft or dislike them, they know what they are doing
"Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."]
:
....
... but every time I read about how good MS is, that just happens ... I pour out my hurt soul :)
And I personally think of the faces of all standard-following programmers/even marketers when they are told to
"please mess up everything (or at least the handshake part) in the protokoll so you can only connect with outlook/"
- Every time someone comes with an M$ client to use something, I know I have to hack into applications to make it work with their non standard crap, and I am sick of it -
try to get mail from a SASL-sendmail with outlook with CRAM auth, try to set up ppp with IPAQ (pocketpc/CE) to a decent *NIX system, or try to do -anything- and you will puke of what they do to everything they touch
-dunno what's wrong today with me
With free software they are trying the same thing. While they can't really buy out free software, they can create the impression. It's all part of their "What if Linux gets hit by a bus" FUD. They will make as much use of their new hires as they made of Fastback and all the other nice things they have bought and buried. The free software world is much too large to be bought and these moves have no real effect.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Keep your friends close ... and your enemies closer"
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
This sales guy who "won Munich", how much did he get in comission for it? For all we know his benefits package was weak, or maybe Novell changed his package when they bought SUSE and he decided to quit. If he's good at what he does then it's up to his company to keep him. If they can't or if he's really not the guy who won the deal (I expect it would have been a team including techs) then that's too bad. He moves on and life goes on.
What kind of credibility can this salseman hope to have if he hocks windows after making such a high profile sale to Munich?
Marketing generally matters more than product quality in getting sales, depressing as it is to say.
Look at all the successful companies out there that depend heavily on marketing.
* Soda companies sell a little bit of sugar in water with a drop of flavoring -- and in the last few years, *water* -- for exorbant prices. They do well.
* Nike sells a line of shoes. It's not that their shoes are bad, but they aren't three times as nice as the competition.
* Apple sells the iPod line. Not that the iPod is a bad MP3 player, mind you, but there are devices that cost less with more space. Who comes out on top? Apple, with the well-designed marketing campaigns.
* Many car manufacturers provide the same car with different bodies, charge wildly different amounts and sell to different demographics based just on what the body looks like.
* I'm sure everyone here can name masses of games that, while well-designed, did poorly in the marketplace compared to competitors because of poor marketing. My favorite pet peeve is Starcraft and Total Annihilation. TA is technically a much more sophisticated game, but Blizzard has a *very* good and experienced set of marketers, and got much better sales. Just having the developers create a good game isn't enough -- you need to have a good set of marketers make the game a blockbuster.
* A fair amount of pop music. I think Slashdotters are too harsh on pop stars -- I suspect that even Britney Spears has something worth listening to, but pop stars certainly get more attention than their products demand.
* Oracle's DBMS -- their product is hardly the only one that can reliably and securely hold data, but people will pay a lot extra for the impression of reliability given by the Oracle sales rep.
* Creative Labs. (I always thought that "Creative Labs" was a great misnomer, since Creative is not exactly a groundbreaker.) They charge premium prices for their products, but provide little by way of outstanding engineering. They also were the first technology company that I was aware of that sells almost completely different products under the same brand name for marketing purpose. the "Soundblaster Live! Value", for instance describes a huge array of actual products, all sold as "Soundblaster Live! Value".
* Movies. I'm sure everyone here can name some pretty bad movies that did pretty well at the box office.
* AOL. AOL provides minimal actual value for the cost -- their differentiating features have gradually gone away as the Internet's gotten bigger and bigger. Their primary product is a perception of ease-of-use, which is generated by marketing.
As a finishing word -- I'm not intending to bash people that use these products. Not only is everyone affected by marketing -- Western culture is *good* at marketing -- but there are real, legitimate reasons to buy each product. I drink soda, have a Creative sound card, and enjoy Starcraft. It's just that people frequently fail to recognize how important marketing is.
May we never see th
This guy is probably a very good salesmen.
Why would Munich trust a guy to buy a no name os(this is back in 97)?
Also he has contacts. A good salesmen never leaves a client after a sale. He/she makes sure the customer is happy, works with the vendor, and establishes trust relationships for future products and upgrades. In other words customers buy things on trust.
In other words Munich knows who this guy is and trust him for all their software purchases.
Now, as part of the redmond empire he can give MS all the contacts and also actively persue his past customers to upgrade to Windows.
MS wants Munich to run Windows and fears a domino effect in europe. They need lock in. This is a perfect sweet deal that could put a dent in trust from any future government wanting a non ms solution.
"You mean the only government to ever use Linux, switched back to Windows??" This fud may work.
http://saveie6.com/
Just thought I'd point that out -- this is a good move and everything, but hiring people that are already well-known in their field is neither A) necessarily good news for those of you stumping for MS jobs, or B) particularly cost-effective for Microsoft.
Mm. It's good from a PR standpoint. It's also important from an informational standpoint. Lots of big companies hire people and expect them (whether it's an ethical expectation or not) to use the information that they have from their old employer. Munich was a big strategic win for SuSE. Presumably, this guy, at the core of SuSE's marketing effort, has a pretty good idea what markets SuSE is aiming at, what strategies they think they've found in Microsoft's marketing strategies, and what techniques they want to use. That data can be worth quite a bit of money.
It's a fair bet that SuSE has hired a couple of ex-Microsoft people, so it's not as if this is a one-way game.
May we never see th
About 10 years ago in Italian football championship, "Milan FC" used to buy all strongest players, leaving many at simply watching matches all season along.
Milan won the championship.
Nowadays Berlusconi is Italian premier.
Maybe money can buy everything.
Gossling, Jobs, Berness-lee, Maddona, and Martha Stewart were hired by M$ in order to build the coolest looking (yet functionally useful in the household) Java(TM) compiler hand held device - With a tinge of sluttiness, provided by Maddona - Just enough to appeal to all geeks alike - And also going with a mini-mini-iPod UI and a great assortment of colors...It's a mini-mini, since the mini-iPod is such a success for Jobs...
I say, relax people, the dude was probably made a good offer and in a free enterprise economy, everything goes...I say good for him...
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
I would say that it's a bit doubtful, for a couple reasons.
First, Linus is first and foremost a kernel developer. As far as I can tell, Microsoft does not go in for particularly heavy development on their kernel.
Second, they know that it's unlikely that Linus would take it. Linus could make a lot more money by working at Red Hat or similar, but has chosen not to do so to avoid biasing Linux. He really likes doing the open source Linux, and it's unlikely that he'd stop doing something that he really likes doing (for Chrissake, he has a world-famous software product named after him) for something that he doesn't like doing as much but gets more money for.
Third, Linus is a nice, highly visible person. He'd be great for a tech company that wants to say "Linus Torvalds works here", but normally big software companies are going to want to keep their kernel developers a bit more under wraps -- they don't want people and media constantly prodding them and increasing the chance that information about new features will leak.
Fourth, while Linus is a skilled hacker, his most extensive experience is with the Linux kernel. Honestly, there are certainly going to be people out there more familiar with Microsoft's work.
If MS eventally loses enough of the market -- and I think that this will happen, though probably later than sooner -- they will probably quite happily operate selling an "MS Linux" distribution, just like companies that pushed formats competing with CD-R eventually fell into line. There are lots of ways to establish monopolies with a Linux distribution -- Microsoft's favorite tools, closed formats and protocols, are still available. *Then* having Linus onboard might be useful. But, I think, not in the current environment.
May we never see th
I've read that most of the Apache core devs work for IBM. Seems like no one is above taking a paycheck anymore...
Hasn't this guy heard of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish? Let's hope his sake they skip the last one.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Log in to the machine as an administrator and turn on system auditing! Then use regedt32 to setup auditing on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, logging only failures. It won't be long before you will be able to use the event viewer to see EXACTLY what registry keys the app is attempting to access.
The thing that gives me the shits is that people like you think that you have the skills to do my job and because the PHBs don't know any better, I get paid SFA for my time and knowledge!
And he's gonna find out the specific registry keys the application accesses how, exactly?
By RTFM!
.... sales people are down ther in the moral scale with lawyers ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If SUSE didn't have a clause in their contract with him to not engage in employment with a direct competitor after a certain amount of time, then it really serves them right to be so careless.
In any case however, SUSE would be better off hiring people who actually believe in their products and why they are superior to Microsoft's ones.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
MARGE: Homer quiet. You'll queer the deal.
Not very PC but aquire doens't sound right.
"Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well" Microsoft rewards self-promoters; I know no fewer then a gross of talented, hard working, money making machines that Microsoft allowed to be ass-fucked by bad managers and inept coworkers. Case in point: Alex StJohn single handedly (ok, three people...but who's counting) created DirectX in his spare time. DirectX made, and continues to make, MSFT a mountain of money. Alex was handed his head for being wildly succesful.
Not once, but TWICE you wrote micro$oft... You can't tell me that you didn't feel like a boob while you were typing that. When are people going to learn that it's not funny and it's not cool. Yes, Microsoft has a lot of money, we get it.
Why should he feel like a boob? Did he say it was supposed to be funny or cool? Perhaps it was just recognition of the facts. I'll let the OP speak for himself, but symbols like that don't just connote that "Microsoft has a lot of money," or that Microsoft has 80% profit margins, but that Microsoft is all about money - not software.
It seems pretty obvious that MS is all about marketing when you see their television commercials: A group of people, in slow-motion, sliding down a hallway in a joyous cluster-f^Hhug because they use Microsoft Office. (And speaking of boobs, if you look closely, it seems the first guy has a handful of female anatomy as they go down in a heap - is that good marketing or what?) Microsoft is about making money. Get used to seeing it.
Yes, MS did its recruitment at a golf course for an undergrad student while playing golf. yeah...right. If we were talking executive recruitment maybe, but for a junior!?!
Of course it must be true...after all M$ hates standards blah blah blah. Pull your head out.
I do know people who have been interviewed for MS positions. And its certainly no happy lunch at a golf course. After the phone interview, the candidates turn up for the in-person interview process. This consists of hours of interview after interview, with candidates getting weeded out after each round. The questions are very focussed, for instance for a marketing candidate he was asked things like "Explain to us where Apple went wrong".
Yes MS may have dubious business practices, but Ive certainly been noticing a very similar level of FUD coming out of the FOSS community lately.
They are just hiring the chair of the ISO C++ standards comittee and not
.NET than the
the guy that sits on it, so all is good...
But then again come to think of it, in my humble opinion an old wodden
rickety chair could have done a much better job of creating VS
people who are currently working on it now!
Arash
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
All I can think of when I read this is Darth Vader breathing, and saying the words "Welcome to the Dark Side."
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
These recent hires look like more of the same, but slightly more desperate given the direction their products are (not) heading. We've known for years that Microsoft can not compete on merits, so they are trying to make it technically and legally imposible for others to do anything. Furthermore, about the only positive outcome from the most recent MS anti-trust trial in the U.S. is that it is now common knowledge how during the 1990's, MS took a healthy, competitive market that was good for users and crushed it with OEM lock-in, bundled apps, and secret API's.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I agree, I wouldn't even attempt to run Windows with anything other that full adminstration rights,
although Linux isn't perfect either when it comes to handling what needs administor rights to run. For instance, Firestarter needs you to login as root to run.
From this day forward we should all refer to Karl Aigner as "Faust."
Best, what? Codegen? Features? Standards compliance?
The discussion was in regards to standards, so for the purpose of the discussion standards compliance is the "best". Certainly it's not the only benchmark, but that wasn't the discussion.
What do you like so much about VC++?
Nothing. I was merely pointing out that the clueless twit that started the thread was wrong and that VC++ has become very standards compliant (as opposed to attempting to change the ISO C++ standard to fit VC++ 6.0's deeply broken model).
Like I've said several times now, we use g++ for our builds. It's a lot better than the other option we have (VisualAge) for our platform, at least as far as standards go (VA might be usable except that v5 didn't handle templates worth a crap; haven't had the time to test v6. Compile time difference wasn't very significant, and we never tested execution time since our boxes are too damn slow to actually build with optimization enabled. So glad management purchased hardware without getting developer input...).