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Mini-Microsoft Shakes Things Up
Henry V .009 writes "BusinessWeek calls him Microsoft's Deep Throat. Although Steve Ballmer denies reading the blog, there are plenty at Microsoft who do. Mini-Microsoft says he wants to "slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." The user comment section of the site is the real gold: thousands of comments from Microsoft employees who tend to have a dim view about the company's recent evolution. And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."
Microsoft ... Deep Throat ... customer pleasing
Is this what it has to "come" to for Microsoft?
I'm agneglectic, too lazy to care if there is a God.
Wow. This guy is nuts. I'm stunned that anyone could have such a love/hate relationship from the inside of a monster corporation to go to these lengths to fix it.
His employment agreement surely makes him liable for incalculable damages, not to mention inciting other employees to violate their contracts (which is punishable for contracts in general).
Maybe they won't know who it is until they find this guy still bailing out the hull after the last rat has left the sinking ship. I think they'll find him sooner, especially now that he's talking to the press.
The end of the evil empire!
In other words the employee(s) are no different than everyone else? Shocking!
This is clearly an inside tale, but I can't help but wonder if it's some new form of marketing.
Pretend you're a badguy insider, develop a following, and then you can mitigate rumours/leaked info/etc.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Press: Have you heard of someone they call 'deep throat' Steve Ballmer: WHAT?! NO never, that was 20 years ago, I was young and needed money and...
Try the Google cache
Posted AC to avoid accusations of karma whoring..
here
may be a bit old... it's not up on mirrordot yet
It amazes me (well not really, this is /. after all) that slashbots will take anything at face value as long as it proves their assertions. Where's the proof this guy is a Microsoft employee? Where's the proof the reader comments are from Microsoft employees? If either of these are true, would they make similar comments if they worked at some other large corporation? I'm not trying to defend Microsoft, I'm just pointing out a character flaw in the community.
http://rhfootball.blogspot.com/
(Now that blogs are searchable, we're finding all sorts of things!)
Most of the guy's complaints could come straight from a Dilbert cartoon. Seems to me like someone hasn't worked for a large bureaucratic organisation before.
On the other hand, the computer business is not an environment in which bureaucracies survive for very long. At least, not without radical change.
Perhaps this is the chink in MS armour that it's competitors have been waiting for.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
this still makes some great publicity!
Steve Balmer will wear a frickin' laser on his forehead now. I'd watch out if I was you.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
They have fallen into the that old joke of Lily Tomlin, Included for perspective and for those of you who thought (rightly) that SNL was not worth watching. (once they were worth watching)
..just lost Peoria.
The Phone Company
Ernestine.....Lily Tomlin
Ernestine: We handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make.
We don't care.
Watch this.. [ she hits buttons maniacally ]
You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string?
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
--
At the end of it all they want to make it all work, it's just they are fumbling in the dark. Get too big and your quality goes to hell.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
That blog is hosted by Google's Blogger, that's why Balmer do not read it, his host file redirect all Google-related site to the loopback address, his doctor order that, in order to avoid a high blood pressure accident !
1) Get your thorn's blog posted on slashdot.
2) Have them annihilate one of blogspot's servers.
3) Hope blogspot cancels his account out of frustration.
4) ???
5) Profit!
It would be a new twist on the old idea of selective leaks. It certainly would be an effective way to convince the public (and the market?) that microsoft is sensitive to and accomadating of internel disagreements. This might also be just the "rallying cry" that Gates and Ballmer need to cut loose thousands of employees too.
If you see any new concrete bridges going up near the Redmond campus, a discontinued blog and a mysterious cavity showing up when using GPR, we will know how seriously Microsoft takes criticism.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...That the site the blog is on is run by Microsoft's current enemy Google.
http://minimsft.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/
Many Microsoft employees have never worked anywhere else. They were plucked out of college and have worked for MS ever since. So it would be reasonable to think that their view of corporate life would be a little bit skewed.
As for your signature, Windows can't use UNC paths as a path to be 'cd'd to. You can copy from a UNC path, but not 'cd' to it. To navigate a network drive, you need to "net use * (UNC)" it. It will give you a valid drive (like x:) to which you can cd to. Not the most painless approach, but it works, for some definitions of "works".
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Couldn't Microsoft sue Google for hosting inside info and allowing their employees to post such info?
It is inevitable that this guy is screwing up.
They will find him, and when they go, I expect he will have a meeting with Ballmer. It will not be pretty.
It won't be like Deep Throat, who, even though suspected, managed to not get found out until recently. Even with him, folks had their suspicions.
Especially now that this guy attracts attention. All Ballmer has to do is tell his team of mini-Ballmers, "find him!" and it won't be long.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
"At the end of it all they want to make it all work, it's just they are fumbling in the dark. Get too big and your quality goes to hell."
Better hope F/OSS stays small then.
I discovered this blog recently thanks to a comment by a poster a short while ago. I worry that as people focus on this and try to figure out the person's identity, they will just disappear, much as "As Seen On TV" did from Slashdot shortly after becoming famous as an Apple insider.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'd begin to buy your theory if the guy had ever posted anything positive about Microsoft beyond not being actually derisive/negative like anyone else who has a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind with the company. He posts because he has unflattering things to say.
Gotta go. The black helicopters come...
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
just individual actors. Likewise, a corporation cannot have "rights", just privileges extended by individuals, or their government, however representative.
Adjust your vocabulary accordingly, then apologize.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
That was quick.
....and start hunting for the person behind the blog (not to mention everyone who comments on it) and start firing people to send a message.
(If they can't or won't do that, I hope they've got the chairs bolted down!)
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
My worst nightmare -- that someone sane starts fixing the problems at MicroSoft. How would there be any room left to compete?
Joke.
The only way to really fix Microsoft is to split it into two corporations each for every product line, and open all APIs with no anti-GPL license restrictions. And use the ill-gotten gains Gates, Balmer, et. al. have accumulated to fund start-ups to company with the baby-Softs. And open the evolution of the APIs under the control of a joint committee of the EFF and representatives of the several Linux and BSD distributions.
It ain't gonna happen.
Here's something. Go check your friends and foes list. I just did, and I got a freak and a fan - both of which I never knew before cause I usually don't check shit like that out. Check it out for yourself - you might be surprised.
:)
Postin' AC to spare karma gains, losses etc - this was simply a friendly public service message
and after that we can sue the phone company because people make prank calls.
Common carriers have no liability, dumbass.
His first Mini-Microsoft article:r -mini-microsoft.html
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2004/07/blast-off-fo
I wonder if he was at PDC?
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
calm down bill.
It's amazing how otherwise well-informed people didn't pick up years ago on the fact that it is easy to identify a writer based on the statistical properties of their writing. This guy is providing plenty of material for the analysis. Do a cross check against the email for all employees, and game over.
Also very few people actually print out corporate memos like the Ballmer memo he mentions (yes, strikingly many do, but as a percentage, it's small). So that narrows down the field right there, and I haven't even got beyond the top post on the blog. Sure, he could have printed it at home, but did he? Naaahhhh.
If he hasn't been fired by now, it's not because they can't find out who he is. They are just waiting for the right moment.
Not all, but many co-workers were damn good. The spirit there is energetic and encouraging. I regret not making more of my opportunity there.
The travel really sucked tho
perhaps the stagnant stock price MSFT jolted upper stiffs into executing "plan B".
I dunno....they treat u like cattle, well fed (information/code) cattle. Moo.
microsoft is trimming down...
is that why, just a few posts ago, we talked about the 3 new divisions (complete with 4 new presidents) were created? Because they're trimming down?
Yeah.
Is mini-microsoft really shaking things up? Sure, there's a lot of people talking about it, but that doesn't mean it's actually making a difference.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Yes and more...Mini Microsoft is "looking for some dates!".
Now does he want someone to go out with, or is he actually after the chocolate starfish?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
"Cripes... how paranoid can you get?"
When we're talking Microsoft viral marketing, the sky is the limit.
Think about this. Is it possible that someone *outside* Microsoft can save Microsoft?
.NET platform, AND WinXP, and that's no easy task). The thing is to stop hindering the workers and letting them do their work.
No way. It has to be someone inside to do it. THAT's what makes this whole business so interesting.
Microsoft has an incredible potential (after all it has all those programmers, who btw, designed the
He better not be blogging from work
I'd expect them to be sniffing for him to login to his blog
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just look at blogs that dissappeared at the time that minimsft appeared and youll figure it out!
If vista comes out with all this CGMS-A and AACS compliance, then it will be too late to "please customers". They won't be able to roll it back under pain of DMCA conviction for manufacturing "circumvention devices".
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The "perfect or perish" mentality just doesn't work. It doesn't work for factory workers, athletes, students, or politicians. When applied, all you get are a whole new crop of PhD's in CYA, each pointing the finger of blame at the next Doctor of Posterior Osculation.
The MM blogger seems very down on paying attention to "process", which tells me that A) the PHBs at Microsoft are all into process and B) this guy is a frustrated, unpromoted newbie, probably hired after XP was released.
Firing all the dead wood sounds nice, until you realize that means firing the people who wrote the cash cow.
The It they don't get is that Open Source Software is the future. They don't want to give up the golden dream, which means hiding their source, which means using a hierarchical development model, which means bureaucracy and inferior products.
Oh well, caveat regnum.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Have you even read some of the entries and comments? You might want to try reading them before commenting.
These people are probably the loudest critics of Microsoft, and because he and most people who comment have an internal perspective, their strikes are direct and to the point too, not like the drivel that gets reiterated here.
Marketing? How can exposing things like the company's recent trend in hiring MBA middle managers be good PR? How can saying things like the company's growth going to the single digits in the last 5 years be a marketing ploy? How can complaints about delays in projects like Longhorn, Office, etc. due to the internal bureaucracy be good in any way? There's even a mention of Office for Linux in one of the comments (though it's presented as an extreme example to drive a point home). How does this serve MSFT? Will investors go "yea, let's keep jacking up the share prices because insiders say Ballmer is a poor leader and Gates a poor software architect?"
This guy isn't around to deal with rumors. In fact, some rumors are being upheld (or confirmed for the optimist) by what the entries and comments hit at. This guy is exposing the problems that are in the way M$ works internally. If he was going on about how everything's fine and dandy inside, and everyone's full of love and bliss, then maybe it's a marketing ploy. But I, stretching my imagination to its limits, would not able to show how exposing and ranting about problems will drive stock prices up.
So no, sorry, the blog does not appear to have anything to do with marketing.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
What happens when a bluescreen is encountered during the customer pleasing process?!?!?!
Crackwhore seizures increase the unic population dramatically! And we know MS doesn't like unics!
Yeah, what happened to him? Do you think that he succumbed to his own inane statements or that the TripMaster Anime Smile (TM) turned aganist its master and chomped off the Monkey's banana? I mean ... seriously ... we haven't had any good "Captain Obvious" summaries followed by barely-insightful commentary lately!
:(
And we haven't recently had a flood of dupe articles either!
*sniff* It's just not the same Slashdot lately.
get it while it's hot
7 &os=win&lang=en-US
e ases/1.0.7/win32/en-US/
http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-1.0.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel
Corporate entities do have characters, be they corporations or states. New Englanders are very different from southerners in the US, and from Californians, too. The English, French, Russians, etc have different national characters. Sears has a different personality from K-Mart (or used to), and for that matter a different personality from Sears 10 years ago, at which time customers were treated as a nuisance. That is a corporate character flaw in my book. (YMMV) I took my money elsewhere till it changed.
MS's character flaw is hubris, the "We know it all, we know what's best for everyone,.. we are above the law... we are can do no wrong... etc." attitude that they swagger around with and sneer at everyone else. (Pride goes before a fall.) I've taken my money elsewhere, not that they would notice, or care. It matters to me, though.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Loose one of them anyway. Look out MiniM$.
PR: Bob, I want you to write a memo pretending to be a bad guy blogger.
Bob: Sure, I can do that.
time marches on, nothing changes.
PR: Bob? You are fired.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." I didn't know George Foreman works for MS now.
Microsoft delenda est.
This guy deserves *some* Karma for not being hit by the "too few charcters per line" lameness filter!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Could it be that M$ is just like a Dilbert cartoon? Except they sue their customers and public school systems. Not even Dilbert's company is that dumb.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... 3 was less than 7. So yes, trim.
The proof! There is no stupid "classic mode" in Office XII!
you had me at #!
TripMaster Monkey? Is that you? Is that really you? Did the complaints about your incessant karma whoring finally get through? C'mon! Give us one of those stupid anime smiles for old time's sake!
We don't have to wait for Woodward or Bernstein to die, or anything.
you had me at #!
1) save up
2) introspect your motives well, take a deep breath and then
3) find the balls to jump ship
I feel so repressed at my current job that I am starting to get weird stress-related medical problems (diverticulitis? trench mouth? wtf?)
One tends to get into a position in a company where the things you would like to be doing and the things they can find for you to do are just too far apart.
I'm just a grand from my savings goal and then it's sayonara, whether I find another employer or not (I'm interviewing, but part of me wants to freelance/contract for a bit)... my employer owns all my intellectual output and I have so many ideas I've been waiting to build...
... like Borg Bill Gates!!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I am sure this is one of the unintended consequences of the Internet and particularly the Web. It could turn out to be positive in that it may well make companies better.
I suspect it will be both good and bad depending on the company and the blogger. I hope for the best.
Your comments and your shitty web site show that it is you who are a "newbie" as you say, I'm sure you couldn't make it through a first interview at MS.
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/09/microsoft-com pany-meeting-im-looking.html
i ts-at-microsoft-business.html
s ofts-midlife-crisis.html
t hings-jobs-dynamics.html
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/09/troubling-ex
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/09/forbes-micro
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/09/three-quick-
if you use google/ig for your homepage then just add the rss feed.
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Ive talked to a couple people that have expressed the very same ideas that were outlined in the article, its probably just the way stuff is out there but you never know if its somone you know.
http://www.uwarfare.com the Best Seattle Counterstirke Community
He's an anti-tripartite!
They're catering to the sex-deprived demographic.
In a few days this guy will be in a 10 foot cube of lucite in Steve Balmer's office.
Say hello to my little sig.
Wow!!! reading the blog was amusing... people actually are looking at scenarios in which Gates could be thrown out.... never gonna happen.
It could just be Steve and Bill, smoking out unhappy employees. I'm sure the Microsoft heads are paranoid and convinced that they've been infiltrated by bad seeds, stirring up discontent, and if they could just purge those bad folks, they'd be a nice happy company again.
It's not like Microsoft hasn't (ab)used online forums before.
the one thing in mini-ms's stuff that revolted me the most was the apparent morbid fixation on ranking and eval scores at MS. The blog says that raises are hard to come by at MS and that there is a lot of backstabbing and infighting to up one's rank so as to get a percent or two. That sounds like a very unpleasant work environment to me.
"And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."
:P
Well I'd hope so. If they don't respond, they would most certainly go down in a jiffy. As once a company doesn't respond to internal complaints, those internal complaints will no longer get voiced, and MS will have nothing but speculation on which to evolve their company's structure. If it has already reached a point that employees only voice complaints through external sources, that indicates a problem has surfaced. What they need to do is employ an employee feedback program, with responses to employee suggestions and criticisms (not simply receiving recommendations). Employees want to feel valued, and empowered as if they are impacting the organization, not taken as a pure source of statistics.
Yes, I did just finish reading 2 chapters on organizational behaviour. So sue me.
This guy just describes what happens when an innovative idea (or even a paradigm shift in thinking) has to fit in a Business model. Anyone who has been in a real startup can relate this his ideology. But what he asks from fellow M$ofties is a lot of work.
And as scooged McDuck used to say:
"Work smart. NOT HARD". He should realize it's time to move on.
This reorg was laid out a month ago almost exactly as it happened:
If I Were Steve Ballmer
That lady is either very smart, psychic or someone at MS read her article. I'm guessing the later.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
You really cannot have Deep Throat & Steve Ballmer in the same sentence, What's next anal and Bill Gates! -Opps or is Winblows the starting point for Penetration, they could just be the same thing!
If "fuck you i'm fully vested" didn't tell you all about microsoft's competitive stance, you're a total blithering idiot. Y'all remember that one in Wired? You read Wired right? I'll tell you, if you don't see what this signals, you're completely friggen blind. It's not just Microsoft that is hiding behind a puffed-up image. Competition is now global. And it's about brilliant individuals even now. This is asymmetrical and it really makes the entire corporate position suspect. I could go on and talk about patents and crazy inflated stock prices and the unbalanced buying power of a corporation. Doesn't it all seem a bit fishy?
i lol'd.
This seems like a set up, planned by Microsoft. Microsoft has the image of being too "big and bloated", you float a fake blog, and then Microsoft is "forced to respond", and they "turn their oganization into a lean profit-making machine" (Remember the story on the Microsoft re-organization?).
Maybe it's Ballmer.
Reading the first post on the blog, this guy is exhuberant, talks agressively and confidently. Definitely a marketing person, maybe high level. Or hangs out with them enough to be able to ape the attitude. The user id "Who d'Punk" fits a bemused high level exec who is untouchable, and wants a forum where the rules of political correctness are relaxed.
There are some signature turns of phrase that really stand out. I bet it's already an open secret at MS who this is, and they are probably chuckling now at how slashdot gets excited over a mystery they already know the answer to.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or Mepis or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that
you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than
twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't
just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check this post out. This is an article about email disclaimers. The parent of the post is complaining about the ads in the linked page and so on, and twitter actually goes off on a rant to blame it on Microsoft and recommend Lynx, because "is teh free".
Here's another. In this post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
Here's that drive-by advocacy and FUD in motion: twitter goes on about some topic and then drops the usual "oh and M$ is teh evil" because "WMP phones home" or some such. Called on his FUD, he then claims that WMP stores every song and movie you've ever played in a file, somewhere. Pressed further, he just sort of slithers out of sight, his FUD-spreading complete. This is not about some Microsoft technology that nobody likes anyway; it's about lying for the sake of lying. Way too many of his posts are exactly like this one.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own. Or these two. Or this one. Or this one.
Still not convinced? This is what twitter considers "humour" while going about his daily "M$" routine.
M
I like the fact that he is hosting this on blogspot, which as we all know is owned by google. It's really sorta brilliant when you think about it.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
The First Amendment applies in the first instance to the federal government ("Congress shall make no law...") and by virtue of the 14th Amendment, to the states. It does not apply to private parties. Its only relevance to private parties is that contracts contrary to public policy are not enforceable, and the First Amendment is one piece of evidence bearing on public policy regarding freedom of speech. In fairly extreme cases, you can expect a court to void a contract on public policy freedom of speech grounds, but it has to be something really extreme, such as an employment contract forbidding the employee to speak about topics having nothing whatever to do with the company. It is very clear that contractual restrictions on speech, such as NDAs, are considered valid by the courts.
In the Network Associates case, the Attorney General of New York (Eliot Spitzer, running for Governor), sued Network Associates for fraud and deception. He argued that the specific wording of the restriction on reviews could falsely lead the consumer to believe that the restriction was not imposed by Network Associates but by state or federal law. He also argued that because the clause was in some documents and not others (see the opinion if you want the details), it was not endorceable as a matter of contract law, and that for Network Associates to represent that it was constituted a deceptive practice. The court accepted these arguments. The First Amendment was not the basis for the ruling.
You can read Judge Shafer's opinion here.
He's done it before, and he'll do it now, he'll fucking bury the guy!
Ballmer is a mean motherfucker, shut yo mouth.
"customer pleasing profit making machine."
Everybody knows those two are mutally exclusive! You can't turn a profit unless you're raping somebody.
Hope that helps to fulfill your prediction.
Ideas are bulletproof!
Funny how Google et al were able to accomplish what the U.S. government couldn't...
Cripes... how paranoid can you get?
You have the common "default believe" attitude which makes astroturfing and guerilla marketing work so well. If you had the "default distrust" attitude this article would have bells ringing all over your head.
Consider what he is writing, what kind of NDAs he must have signed when being hired and how easy it would be to track him down (anonymity in internet really does not exist).
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
SteveyB replies:
Where does that 85% number come from, and how does that relate to previous years?
We have various sources of information. We do a regular analysis of where we stand with our employees. It's something I could say very objectively. That number is, frankly, about as high as it has ever been.
Dear Hordes-Willing-to-do-my-bidding^H^H^H^H^H...^H
Dear Microsoft Employee,
It is that time of year again - bonuses! If you are thinking of jumping ship like those judases Mark Lucovsky and Lee Kai-Fu, think again! We have successfully mired our own name so that nobody will hire a weasely scrotum like yourself!
Back to bonuses, we have hired Diebolds windows XP based poll machines to take a poll on how much you seminars on motivational dance at 6pm, with cognac in my office afterwards.
Yours truly^H^H^H^H friendly^H^H^H^H...
Get back to work!
SteveB - bestest friend of billG (or bilge as I call him!)
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: seminars
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"Queen Amadala is young and naive." Not so Mini, whatever the game really is. The anti-microsofties should just continue to snipe and troll on his blog. If we make enough noise, the microsofties won't be able to fix themselves.
Software freedom...I love it!
And suddenly, an amendment passed to protect the rights of african americans was hijacked into giving corperations an overwhelming amount of power.
... niggardly!
What mini-mirco-soft ? Is it like nanosoft ?
I bet you need a magifying glass to see that software !
Someone just started Anti-Microsoft parody http://antimsft.blogspot.com/ Looks the same and stuff...
Software freedom...I love it!
As if those are some big secrets or something. He doesn't tell anything that couldn't be figured out anyway from other sources. Nothing of real value there, he's too good writer to be believable and possibility of that good writer being the one to leak something truly secret is low. It's the stupid ones with poor writing skills who leak something important usually.
Wake me up when he posts torrents for source codes of w2k3 or something. Until then... that blog uselessly make us waste our time reading something about microsoft without giving out anything really valuable.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
"A house divided upon itself cannot stand."
Given the amount of competitive progress that Linux has been making recently, it's more than understandable that Microsoft are experiencing some dissention in the ranks. Ballmer isn't anywhere near lucid or flexible enough to genuinely fix the company's problems, either; his tactics can be expected to consist of reassuring the press that everything is fine on the one hand, and then playing business as usual on the other.
Microsoft's most pressing problem is that it desperately needs to get rid of the old guard. Jim Allchin being put out to pasture at the end of 2006 is a step in the right direction; it just needs to be done to a few more people there, Ballmer included.
If at least the majority of the senior management can be persuaded to take their stock nest eggs and ride off into the proverbial sunset, then there might be some hope for the company. They are stuck in their thinking, and more than anything else, Microsoft needs a fundamental paradigm shift in virtually every area if it is going to survive. People need to realise that a very large portion of Microsoft's success has come from marketing. Technically speaking, their software has never been more than barely adequate, and that has been due to some chronic problems with their design philosophy. That design philosophy will not change while the current senior management are still at the helm.
If it's going to happen, however, it needs to happen soon. Microsoft's release cycle is getting longer, and I suspect that if nothing has changed by around 2008-9, the company will reach a tipping point after which, long term, nothing will save it.
Under the National Labor Relations Act: "It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in [Section 7]."
Section 7 says: "Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3)."
Unfortunately, the NLRB is headed by a rabidly anti-worker board right now and Microsoft could hire the best lawyers to win their case. But if the system worked like it should, this guy would have nothing to worry about.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
...before we see mini-* sites popping up about other megacorps? hell, a lot of his posts sound very familiar to anybody working in a big company.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
It's part of their annual management revolution exercise. They all do it, they hire a bunch of consultants who pretend to interview people with anonymity and those people pretend to answer honestly. Then they collect all their surveys and determine that
a) everything is fine and management had it right all along
b) there is little that management is prepared to change let alone pay for
c) people need to figure out how to motivate themselves better
d) there was another 5-7% of the workforce that needs to get cut quietly
e) 3 or 4 key executives will collect larger fiefdoms as a result of this reorg
f) mean employee tenure will drop another 6 months and management will spin turnover as 'recharging the organization.
Microsoft is clearly in a funk, a funk that appeared since Ballmer was at the helm. Since throwing chairs and dancing around on a stage are not usually in the job requirements of a corporate leader, Ballmer is not what is considered to be a corporate leader. He may be a friend of Gates, but as we are seeing, that will only carry you so far.
OK commie-watchers, maybe best to leave the guy alone. He's ploughing a lonely furrow. The pressures of leading a double life get to them before very long, at which point their thinking becomes screwy and they give themselves away - although what they actually have to say ceased to be interesting a while before the scrips for prozac start to be issued.
Anyways, if you were Chairman Bi er er Mao you'd probably figure that it's best to let the occasional canary sing. You can send it down the mines any time you choose. The point with canaries being that they never know they are already inside the cage. So let the world hang on every detail of what the Politburo really had for breakfast. Meanwhile, the important stuff continues behind the arras.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Enough said.
I love what the US could be, but hate what the majority of people want to make of it.
Blar.
Posted AC to avoid accusations of karma whoring..
You're still a Karma Whore - you just work for free.
How much must the company be profitable to don't try to minimize costs (sack people)? Do they have a cashflow problems? What is the business ethics? Is there any?
:-)
Are the people just numbers in financial analysis? From the history we know that treating people as numbers is not good for mankind. I don't want to have tatoo with my personal number (cost) on my forearm.
Sorry.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Yes it can be worse. Ten years ago Halliburton bought(*) the arguably the best software company in the oil industry called Landmark Graphics and turned it into a dogpile. The Business Week article about MicroSoft reads like a carbon copy of this situation: massive benefits cuts, off-shoring, mass defections ... The oil industry is making trillions while Landmark Graphics is facing another round of layoffs. No one at Halliburton which is basically a wellhole engineering company understands the least about software.
(*) The business logic was to be a full spectrum provider of services to the oil industry, including software.
MiniMsft is taking the easy way out. Complain, find similar-minded people, acquire a following, and repeat. It's basically a form of passive aggression.
:)
A better approach is to discuss these issues with the direct manager and, if necessary, the manager's manager. Take a rational approach: state the problems, describe why they're problems for you, describe what would make you happy, and go the extra mile by describing how you'd approach the problem if you were your own manager.
If you do this all at once you'll come across as pushy; however, approach it relatively slowly giving your manager time to respond.
Employment is a partnership, so treat it like one. If employees complain about their employers before giving them a chance to respond, then the employees get what they deserve (reprimanded).
MiniMsft sounds like a relatively young person, or someone with little business experience. While the blog is interesting, to a degree, it is by no means definitive...more like, "for novelty use only"
Perhaps this blogger is more then one person. That would make it harder to track/solve.
Wow, is microsoft receiving that bad of approval ratings? They must be getting desperate.. I mean seriously, taking information from a third party blog on how to run their business?! Wow..
I wonder how many people will get that joke.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Why would they want to fire someone so passionate about the company? Doesn't make any sense to me, unless its a revenge tactic because someone big got egg on their face.
I'm impressed with how many very passionate people there are at Microsoft, and this is just another one who wants to see Microsoft succeed, compete, and innovate once again (We haven't seen those days in a long time).
In hindsight, it seems the decision not to break apart Microsoft was the best choice. It left Microsoft as a huge corporate bureaucracy to wallow in meetings and eventually fade away. If the government had broken Microsoft apart into a set of smaller, more nimble companies, "Vista" might be on store shelves right now, and we might be reading about Office 13 instead of Office 12.
Had to be said: I'm Sparticus!
Seriously. It is hard to effect change in large slow-moving environments. Kudos to those who fight for the right thing, even in the face of pure evil.
Me? I'm still trying not to speak up so much, so that I stay employed for a little while. I can't alow stupid people to run my life, it just doesn't make sense to me.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
One can only hope his quest is a failure.
MSFT had to earn its rep a the "incarnate evil"
and I see no reason to help anyone who wants to save them from disaster.
It is nice to see some balance.
Why should open source groups be the only ones airing their dirty laundry on blogs?
how to kill a tech company
put businessmen in charge.
I don't know what it is about some business men but they sure know how to stuff an software development company.
The guy who has made a small fortune in charge of the company I currently sometimes work for - first thing he does is cut the product design time. Next thing he does is stop testing - not important he says. There's no product control or code reviews or quality control or user documentation etc etc - only coding - mad spurious features and brokeness across the entire product - and that doesn't even go into the mess he and his accounting cronies made of the PC sales and assembly group or the network services group. Hey - computer stuff is specialised knowledge - customer relations is specialised - customers like to talk to the same guy each time and feel like they are listened to and are getting special deals - especially if the deal is thousands of PCs and years of network service...
But no - our staff turnover was close to 60% every three months. And it wasn't surprising given that the staff were treated like disposable nappies. I can't even compare the way we get treated to machines because even machines need maintenance. Not that our office machines get any - certainly don't get upgraded or anything.
you're all bitching over this guy's right to blog about Microsoft - but not his ideas for solving the problems.
Tech people need the business men to ensure the company is profit focussed mostly - but not at the expense of the product viability. Microsoft is already suffering from businessmen who insist on marketing before the product can be built/conceived, shipping before the product is ready, and not doing important stuff - like building some system security and robustness.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
how easy it would be to track him down (anonymity in internet really does not exist).
No, but if you're blogging criticism about Microsoft on the blog network of one of their biggest competitors (Google), I'm guessing it will last longer than you think, assuming he's not dumb enough to post or visit his blog from within the MS LAN.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Ok, I'm not sure if you wanted people to figure it out, but if you did, I cannot figure out which firm to which you are referring. I must be dumb; enlighten me :-)
Clearly, the current situation is bad.
Whistleblowers are not protected, therefore they must remain anonymous, which damages their credibility, and allows for abusive situations to develop where a competitor poses as a whistleblower.
A better situation would be if we had strong legislation to protect whistleblowers. (We have legislation, it's clearly insufficient). Then, whistleblowers could come forward out of anonymity, and speak truth without risk of reprisals. Then the truth of the claims can be fairly and openly assessed, and fake-whistleblowers will be rooted out.
Then that situation would create an environment where someone who was a poor worker, could claim to have dirt on his or her employee, to prevent them from being fired, because they'd be protected under whistleblower laws. The only recourse a company would have is to show documentation or witnesses that the person really was a poor worker, and to fire them with a just cause (which they would have done anyway, had the person abused whistleblower protection laws to keep from getting fired). Any whistleblower protection laws need to be fair, to protect employers from abuse as well.
The problem with the current political environment, is that it's so charged with ideology, and frustration with nuance-induced loopholes, that such a compromise will never be reached. Either you've got pro-business Republicans and Moderate Democrats pushing for elimination of all worker protections, or you've got extremist Democrats pushing for elimination of all employer protections - the result being a broken system. This government no longer functions. That much is clear.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
*** SparTacus has joined #santcuary
* SparTacus is now known as Betty_Guns
*** wacko Jacko has joined #santcuary
<wacko_Jacko> ok spartacus just came n here i know it. which one of you is that loser?
<hunney> I am spartacus
<ji_pper> no im spartacus
<Betty_Guns> I am spartacus
<mistr andersn> I'm spartacus
<wacko_Jacko> ur all freaks thats what u r
http://www.bash.org/?328464
If you make a statement publicly that has grave consequences for others, should you be able to hide behind anonymity?