Slashdot Mirror
Is Microsoft Money Crushing Microsoft?
JoshuaDFranklin writes "The latest Seattle Weekly has an article by a former Microsoft project manager titled Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow. It argues that Microsoft, addicted to its Windows and Office revenue, is stifling innovation within the company: 'new, better ideas that would take business away from Windows or Office don't really have a chance at Microsoft.' Apple, in contrast, has embraced Open Source and is delivering a better consumer experience." Update: 06/06 21:24 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe.
Can I get paid to be a Slashdot editor? I'll only dupe half as much as the others and I come cheap!
... and a pretty badly written, incoherent, biased, and decidedly uninformed story too, to be honest.
The guy may well have worked at MS once, but it didn't take long for him to become a Born Again Mac User.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
It's kind of science-fictiony, but I believe when they go to work, the Slashdot editors are put in darkened rooms where they can't see, hear, or talk to anyone about anything. They're not permitted to look at previous stories -- heck, they barely know what Slashdot looks like. It's more of a slavery under a cult than a profession.
I mean, what other way to explain the fact that stories get repeated again and again?
Yes, but will you be smart enough to dupe only the articles that make Microsoft look bad?
It's the bias that pays.
Yeah, but I didn't get around to reading the comments after I read the original article, so thanks slashdot!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
....at least this iteration of the article had a catchier headline. We'll see how next week's will stack up.
I am willing to take the burden of any money they feel is crushing them. $100, $1 million, $1 billion. Whatever amount they need to be free of, I will take it. It will be a struggle, I am sure, but it is the least I can do.
Thats not true. It might not be technically an "innovation," but while Mac's where wasteful with the Trash can on the desktop, Microsoft showed forward thinking an ecological responsibility and used a Recycling bin instead.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"Funny.. deja vu"
"What was that?"
"Nothing, I just saw an article on Slashdot, and then I an article just like it again."
"Was it the same article?"
"Could've been, yeah."
"Deja vu is when something changes in the Matrix."
"Oh no, the way is blocked..."
"...and there are Penguins coming after us!"
-- n
"Apple, in contrast, has embraced Open Source and is delivering a better consumer experience."
Yes, MacOS can even interface with alien technologies and introduce a virus into the alien technologies to save the Earth!
Vote for Pedro
"But in the first five minutes on my new Mac, I was surfing the Internet, sending e-mail, and ripping a CD. OS X has been a breath of badly needed fresh air after Windows."
You rate your entire OS of the 5-minute out of box experience!? You can get the same effect by changing shampoo...
Of course Microsoft innovate! Don't you remember Bob?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Microsoft never innovated BEFORE they had money. They don't innovate NOW.
One word - Bob
Microsoft was not the first to either invent or implement the start menu, the integrated file system / net browser, or the safety-checked bytecode-based API. In fact with all of these they were literally years and years behind other commercially successful implementations.
That might be true, but lately I'm actually starting to see some signs of innovation and creative thinking coming from MS. The new "pop-up blocking" technology in Internet Explorer is a very good example.
I the mid 80s I was working at Microsoft and a certain Gates anecdote sticks in my mind. I was sitting in the company cafeteria eating a PB&J when I was joined by Bill and someone else, already in conversation. If you remember, the Ollie North scandal was big then, and Ronald Reagan had just finished saying "I don't recall" for 3 days straight to Congress.
The other person was saying to Bill, "so, if you woke up one day and discovered you were gay, who would your boyfriend be?" Various hunky idols were tossed out, but Bill was obviously uncomfortable with the topic.
Then I said, "I would go out with Ronald Reagan. Because if I woke up straight the next day, he wouldn't remember a thing !"
I thought of that conversation when I saw Bill's deposition on TV.
with their excess revenue problem. Just send a little over here, I'll give it a good home!
I remember being very confused the first time I used the Recycle Bin. On my Mac, if I wanted to throw something out, I put it in the trash because that's where things I didn't want anymore should go. But the recycle bin? I don't want three old images to be mixed together and then one find a not-quite-as-good image waiting on my computer the next day.
Seriously, there's nothing I want to extract and reuse from my unwanted data. Don't confuse me with different names just because you're trying to be "different". What if GM called the steering wheel the directional input? Crimeny.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Enough is enough. How many dupes of "this story is a dupe" do we really need?
Oh, wait, then we wouldn't be hypocrites. Sorry.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
Only six zillion more /. dupe's to go to catch up to the Microsoft advertising dupe's. We're on track!
---
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
You left out the part where Bill wrote a letter to a computer magazine crying about people passing it around instead of sending him money. I don't think that had ever been done before, so I think we have to concede that some innovation did indeed come from Microsoft.
I suppose the block put on Microsoft purchasing Quicken has been working... One popular little $20 program, yet it is bringing down the entire company.
Some other great Microsoft innovations:
* A bold new method of shutting down a PC--After all, it's completely logical that the first step in the shutdown process should be to click the "Start" button.
* The system registry--because everybody system needs a single point of failure stored in an opaque, obsfucated, hidden file accessible only through special utilities. You have the choice of getting lost in a giant tree of settings of a "friendly" user interface, with no "undo" button and the ability to cause your machine to stop booting. Alternatively, you can export to text, edit the file and re-import the fatal mistakes when you are done. Brilliant!
* Integrating the GUI (and later the web browser) so tightly with the OS that the OS cannot fully function without them. After all, it's very important to sqeeze the best performance possible out of the graphics system so you can have richly animated menu appearance effects and have the contents of the windows adjust as you drag and resize. That's especially important on a server where the administrator can be watching the screen a whole five percent of the time it's on right?