Slashdot Mirror
The War Of The Word
atari_kid writes "For who didn't know Microsoft has a internal blogging service, which is becoming popular with their employees. And even some of their high level managers have their own blog like Chris Pratley, a group program manager (GPM) for Word2002 (OfficeXP) project. Mr. Pratley just blogged on his 'personal philosophical' conversion from a Mac geek to a Microsoft devotee & his interesting perspective on the 'Word Processor' wars of the mid-90's and why Microsoft won."
He admired Apple for its elegance and derided MS for its substandard products; he was rejected by Apple, but offered a job at MS.
Ouch.
It should be said that later, he comes to terms with MS not necessarily on the grounds that they make good product, but that they are a good business. Funny, that.
Glog!
One key point left out of the blog regarding WP's success: WP offered unlimited, toll-free technical support at the outset. It was very comforting to know that you could call someone who actually understood the program to answer a question. WP built up a lot of goodwill on that basis.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
I can't blame him. Were I a "Mac geek" who got hired into management level by Microsoft, with all those phat stock options to look forward to, I would claim to be a newly-converted "devotee" as well.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Until printers can print animated printouts, I'll be happy with word processor programs that don't embed movies or music in documents. (in fact, after the fiasco of Clippy, I don't want ANYTHING animated in the presence of my word processor documents!)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...not only do the completely uneducated (like myself, or slashdot) get to spout off incorrect information they heard from a friend of a guy they met somewhere but also the really bad people can blow smoke up each other's arses too...
Next thing you know, Ken Lay and Dick Cheney will have a blog about how their hearts are breaking for the poor unemployed, oppressed everyday Joe... and people will buy it because hey, it's on a blog.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
"In the period 1992-1994, Word wiped the floor with WordPerfect in reviews, winning just about all of them. "
Excuse my tinfoil hat, but wasn't that about the time that Windows finally stopped sucking utterly, and became a tool that everyone, including PHBs, could use? Isn't this the era of PC Magazine, and John Dvorak, and everyone's grandmother getting a PC?
Word was never technically superior, it merely appealed to a broader (and simpler) audience. There is a difference. Word won because it got reviews from trade rags. Word won due to a cultural shift - where document presentation became more important than its content, where a document's formatting is more important than its timely production. Word is the Guardent of word processors.
In answer to the folks who claim WP was a lousy product, I have two words: Reveal Codes.
I only jumped to Word97 from PC Word 5, then only because it was a 32bit app. By then, WP was dead and buried. I made the jump to Word2000 at work, then to OOo, which I use under the radar to publish all of my documents, typically via PDF.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I guess getting OEMs to pre-install Office and not other products can only have helped Microsoft.
I've met Chris a number of times... he's a real stand-up guy with a good head on his shoulders. If Microsoft had more like him they would probably be very successful... no, wait...
I rather like Microsoft's newfound interest in what they call "transparancy." I think that the blogging trend inside MS is a good thing-- it is surprising how little the company curtails the content on their employee's blogs.
--- JRJ
jrjBlog
Yeah, like I do that every day.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm sure more than a few of the bright employees at MS have some stories waiting to be told. OTOH, they're probably still grateful for the stock option wealth of the last 2 decades and feel some loyalty to the company that has done both good and bad.
Maybe Bob Woodward ought to interview some of them....
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Details like great design were not critical to most customers, so that didn't really make it into the products, except where it mattered to the customer. It's hard to fault this logic really - it is pure efficiency from a business perspective
I'm sorry, but try as I may, you completely lost me after that comment.
Short sighted design gives M$ a bad name among developers - and by people who use computers more than the "average consumer", like say: at work.
Microsoft: Bottom line - push product - get money.
There's nothing "pure" what-so-ever about this statement. You may as well be writing about how you learned to appreciate McDonalds.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Microsoft has one the word processor war, yes, there is competition, but it is not at this time a serious threat.
They have also won the browser war, yes, alternatives exist, however the majority of web users still use IE.
Just because a war is over and is won doesn't mean that there is no more room for fighting. Just look at what's still going on in Iraq.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Anyone else getting a flashback to when Microsoft was running Mac-to-Windows "switcher" stories, which turned out to be bogus pieces written by flacks in their PR department?
$5 says this "blog" is another such flake.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I think this, despite what the slashdot techy/programmer crowd may think, is spot on. MS has a reputation for rushing stuff out the door and for selling borken software, but the fact is that most of their stuff was "good enough" where it counted. Then over time they hack away and hack away until they mostly get it right. Other software companies could learn for them on this strategy although perhaps things are a bit different today.
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
How about remember when EULA's didn't prohibit benchmarking under threat of well-funded legal assault?
Yes, I remember when good vendors were proud to show the world what their products could do.
How about it, Chris? We all know you're reading /. today to see how your blog is being received. You're in the inside. How about doing your part to open up benchmarking of all MS products again?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I suppose it's true. Fine.
But I gotta note that Word drives me up the g.d. fscking wall with its habit of altering formats for no apparent reason. Indentions, fonts, everything just changes at random because I press spacebar, enter, backspace or delete. Sometimes half a page of prior paragraphs will change because I pressed a button while editing an entirely different paragraph.
The damn bloody thing does not behave. I could get better cooperation from a two-year-old child. Don't you tell me I must be doing something wrong, or that I must need to get an upgrade. Bah. It's been this way for years.
MacWrite never acted like this. StarOffice neither. This has nothing to do with Linux Zealotry or Open Source Fantacism - I could care less about any of that.
Yes, Microsoft is the winner: When it comes to pure teeth-splintering, hair-shredding frustration, Microsoft, congratulations, you've got 'em all beat, and you probably always will.
Bastards.
If you write a GUI OS and don't give developers from competing companies any info about the OS you get to market first, and win.
Anyone remember Sprint by Borland? Of course you don't.
It's also the reason Access took over and not Paradox.
oh... It had more than a little to do with why no one uses Quattro by Borland also.
Borland's first line of Windows versions of their software had to be developed with VERY little knowledge of the Windows API.
It's funny that he doesn't mention any of the lawsuit wars that went on between MS and Borland when Windows first came out.
They sued Borland over having drop-down menus in their products... and won.
Excellent question. Maybe I've got my tinfoil hat on too tight, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft's management to have a plan akin to this: "Hey, go out and make Microsoft look good. Speak as individuals. Tell the world that we're really NOT the Evil Empire."
Microsoft has tried to manipulate public opinion of them before. Maybe they're just getting more subtle. When the big money doesn't work, go soft-touch.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is a very good article by an insider. It is probably a bit biased but, nevertheless, is well worth reading. One of the main points that one would understand is how strong Microsoft marketing is.
Half of software is marketing; half is engineering. Too bad some people still haven't realized it....
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
And at Version 7 we change the entire file structure to demolish the compeition and force a new upgrade cycle, after seeding the CIO with a free copy.
You'd better bet the whole company will upgrade after said CIO finds out no one else in the company can open his memos saved in the new default format.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I quote the article, as the author describes his... ...fear of being inundated by what are as far as I can tell a gang of "net thugs" who roam the net making outrageous claims about Microsoft and its behavior, motives, etc in every public forum they find (none of which information they are privy to, little of which they have evidence for, and basically all of which I find personally offensive, not to mention incorrect - since they often are implicitly about me and therefore I for one know them to be incorrect). But enough about that - let's just dive in and see what happens. Hopefully the net-dwelling paranoid delusional conspiracy theorists won't descend upon me... :-)
With respect, there are certainly plenty of lower-than-the-common-denominator internet users willing to throw an egg for no particularly good reason, but this writer is strikingly dishonest in his defense of his employer.
Microsoft is a monopolist who has profited tremendously from shipping user-antaganostic code under cover of standards-lock-in. This is hardly an "outrageous" accusation; rather, it's been established in the courts, but far more, it's common knowledge and indeed, a running joke.
The company's story is interesting because, when they see their monopoly threatened, they are capable of rising to the occasion and doing good work. But they are a classic victim of their success, indeed, at many times a classic monopolist, and they often have acted it. When there was no incentive for them to do a good job, they did a terrible one, smirking all the way to the bank.
And they are crystal clear in their mission - not to "provide better products faster" or whatever the PR materials say this week, but to enrich themselves. And if there is a choice between enriching themselves and providing better software faster, they make the "right" choice every time. But should Chris suggest I am a "thug" for saying so, I hope he will include the U.S. Department of Justice - who advanced the same idea, and prevailed in court.
Chris wants to breathlessly paint his company's critics with the straw-man tar brush - as he does so, he is being dishonest.
I did find his writing on his work to be fascinating, and I'd say he expresses himself well, and it's no surprise he's found the success he has within the company. But he curiously glosses over the role that OEM bundling played in the success of the Office franchise.
You see, as Microsoft sat on the backs of the computer manufacturers and twisted arms, it had an excellent position to "entice" bundling deals that would choke off a 3rd party software market like, say, office softawre, by making sure that their own products were conveniently already included on new computers for a reasonable price.
This is hardly as clear cut as what they did to control the browser or media player landscape, but does anyone (outside of a Microsoft manager with a certain proprietary interest in it being more about his own skill) have the audacity to suggest Word won the format war purely on its merits?
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Really? Please please please show me the documentation or press releases or ANTYHING other than the typical slashdot "out of the ass, but since it's anti-ms it MUST be correct fact" where a new release version of windows broke the lastest version of word perfect.
Please.
WordPerfect lost it as much as Word gained it.
WordPerfect Corporation vs Microsoft Corporation
1) WP - promote senior assembly programmers as the new Windows programmers, MS - hire new graduates and put them to work under former assembly programmers.
2) WP - lights out at 5pm, MS - burn the midnight oil.
3) WP - bet the farm on OS/2, MS - bet the farm on Windows while paying lip service to OS/2.
4) WP - try to compete with traditional strengths, MS - Work with IBM to create a CUA, then change the CUA once everyone else adopts it.
5) WP - hated MS so much that they used Borland OWL, MS - made the compiler, made the dlls and APIs, didn't tell anyone about it if they could have an advantage for awhile.
6) WP - had incompetent management promoted from within including rampant nepotism, MS - hired management from outside, promoted from within when it identified talent.
The list goes on and on...
It should be said that later, he comes to terms with MS not necessarily on the grounds that they make good product, but that they are a good business. Funny, that.
Kinda like how we come to terms with OSS not necessarily on the grounds that it makes good product, but that it's an idealistic philosophy. Funny that.
Nope. Support calls didn't eat into thier bottom line in time. What killed them was their refusal to make a Windows version of WP. And when they did finally release the windows version, WP 5.2 for Windows, it was complete shit. Among the many problems with it was their abject refusal to let Windows handle the printer. They had built such a reputation for outstanding printer support in the DOS world that they could not concieve of the idea that Windows could run the printer. Add to that a broken file export system and a horrible user interface and it was all over for WordPerfect.
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS is still the best CUI based word processing program ever made. But they completely fucked themselves over with Windows.
WordPerfect Corp. lived in denial, claiming that their loyal customers would stick with them in the DOS world and not migrate to Windows. They didn't even think about making a Windows version until MS Word was eating their testicles.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Except that you still didn't prove that a new version of Windows broke the latest version of WordPerfect.
We know there were undocumented Windows APIs. That wasn't the question.
Clippy!
Much as I dislike alot of microsoft stuff, this is just over the top. There are two software areas that microsoft does fairly well - Office apps and RAD development (as opposed to high end server development enviroments).
My biggest gripe with microsoft is the abuse of monopoly powers - the fact that you cant for love nor money get office for linux (except via third party stuff like Wine projects). Thats abuse of a monopoly position of operating systems.
Office is, however, a reasonable suite. Its not the best at everything by any means, but you would be an idiot to suggest its the worst. In fact, some of the user interface stuff in office was genuinely innovative - like the background spell check with squiggly lines under misspelt words. Word 95 was the first to do this from memory, and certainly the first major word processor that could.
The killer app that microsoft makes is not windows, its office. And its with a good reason - its actually very good software. The number of people who run it under wine on linux or on OSX is a strong statement of its quality. If its an undocumented standard for file formats, well, thats because storing documents in HTML and then XML came way later than microsoft's office suite. It doesn't mean that its time to move to better standards for document storage, but at the time microsoft developed this software (Ie., in the days of word 3.0 onwards) pretty much nobody stored documents in XML (for space reasons alone - Hard drive capacities of 20-40 Megabytes were common).
Just my 2c worth, will be considered flamebait by some no doubt.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.