Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer on Innovation
prostoalex writes "Robert Scoble interviewed Steve Ballmer on the topics of blogging, innovation at Microsoft, Microsoft's work with developers and other things. Video is available in WMV format." From the interview: "Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff."
That may be all well and even true. But why does Mr. Ballmer remind me so much of glass houses, stones, pots, kettles and the color black?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This interview doesn't shed much light on an already dark and rainy corporation. How could this be anything but intellectual masturbation on Microsoft's part when you have a Microsoft employee slow pitching to the biggest windbag at Microsoft? Especially when the two appear to be patting themselves on the back about the fact that Microsoft really does innovate. Aside from the fact Ballmer is amazingly general in his list of innovations, the interviewer asks questions about other companies and if those companies out-innovated Microsoft. Of course, the response is they didn't.
But the interviewer might have asked some more thoughtful questions in that line like:
Not sure why, but even on slashdot Microsoft manages to get some Puff Pieces.
(open the Troll and Flamebait mod floodgates)
Yes, and with poor software design, a lot of exploits can be written.
you know, i really don't think he knows what that word means:
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Or at least they will be soon when they are the first company to buy a Spyware company and then incorporate that Spyware directly into the OS. Plus the Spyware will be proprietary so you will need to pay them 10k to view some code to make an API for your spyware to talk to its spyware and ....
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
just think about it, how each and every company always claims absolute leadership and innovation, market-leadership and to be the utmost and best of there is out there...
The reason they do that is best explained by the man who formalized that concept. Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels once said: "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".
Corporations (and, gee, governments too) these days use exactly that same technique, whether it's in PR statements, interviews, punditry or advertising. They found it's easier to buy time with VC money and try to let the lies sink in in the general public to get people to buy their products, than putting out actually good products. There are exceptions of course, but that's the rule these days. And don't forget the added benefit of workers buying the lies too and working harder as a result...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so.
IBM invented SQL. IBM invented the hard drive. IBM invented the scanning tunnelling microscope. IBM employees have won the Nobel Prize.
IBM may be evil, but it has always been cool evil.
Microsoft on the other hand introduced...uhm...the animated paperclip? The monkey dance? The BSOD?
Really, Ballmer. You just down like IBM because they gave support to Linux. Which makes them even cooler.
When I read the Ballmer quotes, the first thing I thought was, he is saying that there is no room in the industry for anyone but Microsoft.
All these other companies make products that other people use to be innovative. There relly isn't a lot of innovative room in relational databases for Oracle. They make databases, and very good databases and very popular databases, and they make a lot of money doing just that. THEIR CUSTOMERS are the ones who put those databases to good use.
IBM make a lot of stuff. Most of it is pretty good stuff, and they make a lot of money selling that stuff. It is IBM's CUSTOMERS who make good use of it.
"The open source guys..." Well, they make a lot of stuff too. IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO USE OPEN SOURCE software who put it to good use and who are innovative. Open source allows people a little more room to be innovative. They can aquire it at a lower cost. They can alter it to better meet their specific requirements...
Steve Ballmer believes that computers are a platform for software companies to restrict and dictate what happens there. In that model, customers do not decide what computers do, but software vendors. That's why Microsoft feels the need to compete in every single little corner of the software industry. For Microsoft to (almost literally) control the world, they have to be the sole supplier of software to everyone.
"The open source guys" have a different view.
EMACS doesn't copy Microsoft, it copies vi. Drop it and switch to a decent editor now.
...asking the Osama Bin Laden about the virtues of Catholicism. Okay, maybe not quite, but I don't think MS are a company who do innovation. Rightly or wrongly their approach has been consistently based on developing other peoples innovations into mass-market products. Such as QDOS, VisiCalc, Navigator, GUI OS (from Apple or Xerox, take your pick). So I sincerely doubt the value of Ballmer's comments on this topic.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
and linux does? all linux /oss guys do is copy MS....
You're full of crap. Linux absolutely does not copy Microsoft. They copy BSD.
Funny, he didn't mention Apple?
Simpy
And I can whip up a usable, very functional app in seconds that compiles to 3 platforms using REALbasic. If I want a Cocoa OS X app, I can use Xcode and Interface Builder, both of which are free.
Other platforms have similiar, and some would argue better, IDE solutions.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Well this is annoying. Scoble complained just earlier on his blog that Slashdot hadn't linked to his Ballmer interview.
:-(. Come on editors, even the interviewer semi-admits this as being a troll-piece in a /. context.
The post in question: Interesting that Slashdot hasn't linked to the Ballmer thing yesterday. Maybe they belong to the Andrew Orlowski "we-must-not-link-to-or-acknowledge-Scoble" school of reporting. Heh.
What's fun is that Ballmer, in the interview yesterday, took a swipe at open source and IBM and Oracle. Surely that'd be worth getting the Slashdotters all riled up.
He got a lot of comments pointing out the interview was content-free, a spin job, and otherwise of generally no interest to the discerning crowd here. How pleased I was to see Scoble's shot go amiss.
And then I refresh the front-page here
One innovation that Google came up with is that it learned that it doesn't need a figurehead spokesmodel like Ballmer.
Ballmer does Microsoft a disservice by ranting about innovation but not actually delivering innovation. No wonder why theses Microsoft guys are so uncharismatic - people have a distaste for bullshit-slinging horn tooters.
IBM - the inventor of so many basic industry ideas - is declared a non-innovator.
Apple, who brought so many great ideas from the lab to desktop computing, ideas that Microsoft admittedly embraced after Apple delivered them successfully to market - doesn't get a mention.
And Google, who mostly innovated the idea of not screwing over internet users with ads and pop-ups and cross-marketing crap, is an exciting innovator.
IBM is the innovator of basic technology. Google is the innovator of doing the Internet right. Apple is the PC marketplace innovator.
Microsoft? Um, well they invented something... I just don't know what that is. Truetype? SQL? The mouse? The file system? Does ANYone know?
Joseph Goebbels on Compassion, George Bush on grammar and Count Dracula on the health benefits of a Vegan Diet.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
That's what occured to me just watching.
Shrinkwrap Software only business is over. 50 Billion$ on the bank or not. That's the simple truth. Be it that MS will roll on with XBox 360, 720 or whatever. But their core milkcow is withering.
The CEO of MS having a sweet-little-nothings chinwag with one of his minions and hideously bullshitting 90% of the time won't change that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The Lotus software was particularly horrid
!!!
You should pray to develop such "horrid" software. There were two primary things that put the IBM PC on desks all over corporate America: 1) The TLA logo and 2) Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus invented the first "Killer App".
Microsoft introduced their first spreadsheet product before Lotus 1-2-3 hit the market (1982 for the former, 1983 the latter). It was such a huge scary success compared to that horrid Lotus crap that nobody can remember it's name ("Multiplan", BTW).
Excel (for Windows, it was originally introduced on some silly fruit computer of some sort) came out in 1987, leaving Lotus to pretty much own the spreadsheet market in the interim.
and swiftly abandoned by nearly everyone that wasn't glued to their memorized 1-2-3 key combos.
You mean like F1 = Help? Yeah, what a goof that was!
This message brought to you by Old Farts Inc, keeping history on track for hundreds if not thousands of years
OSS is so un-inovative, that Apple based their OS on it, borrows heavily (but they acknowledge it and contribute back). MS steals all the ideas and then declares it for their own.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Incremental compilation
Incremental linking
Pre-compiled headers
Nope. Lightspeed C on the Macintosh had these first.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Another bitter Netscape refugee shows his face.... By the time that Explorer 4.0 hit the market, it was considered by every single reviewer to be superior to Navigator, and that gap only widened, never narrowed. Everyone is entitled to hate Microsoft, but that does not mean that they did not only kick the shit out of Netscape by bundling, you would be a liar to suggest that Navigator was the superior product by the time Netscape began losing market share. You can sling that 'fanboy' crap as far as you want, but back in those days, you could not find a single tech review calling Navigator 4,5 or 6 superior to its competing Microsoft version. Deal with it.
# Incremental compilation
# Incremental linking
Forth, um, 1972? Lisp, 1965?
# Pre-compiled headers
Manx C on the Amiga in 1986.
# A very strong visual debugger, with useful features like DataTips.
# Integrated source browser
# Integrated class browser
Smalltalk, 1978
Remote debugging over tcp/ip
EVERYONE, as soon as TCP/IP existed.
Intellisense (auto-completion)
GNU Readline?
Microsoft is a company with, what, 30,000 employees? Not a single one of them 'gives a hoot?'
That's right. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing problems such as IE being "integrated" with the OS.
Having worked at MS in 98/99, I can say that "giving a hoot" doesn't amount to much. I was part of several projects where the majority of the team wanted to do something great, but red tape and politics got in the way.
At one point, after months of upper management arguing about how to do it, I rewrote the FastCounter interface over a weekend. I presented it, the team loved it. Yet it sat on the shelf. Too many people wanted to prove they were in control. Eventually I left. But a lot of good people stayed on.
Anyways, corporations are a group, not an individual. There are many great individuals at Microsoft. But as a group, as a corporation, their greatness can get lost.
Cheers.