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Microsoft's Not So Happy Family
D.A. Zollinger writes "Reports from Redmond are that Microsoft Employees are not happy with the double delay of Windows and Office being pushed back into 2007. EETimes is reporting that some Microsoft employees are calling for the termination of several top managers Including Brian Valentine, Jim Allchin, and Steve Ballmer for the delay debacle. The report references a blog by Who da'Punk, an anonymous Microsoft employee who asks, where's the accountability for failure? So far the blog entry has generated over 350 comments from Microsoft insiders and outsiders."
Not a good day to be a fly on the wall in Ballmers office.
"I'm going to fucking kill Microsoft!"
HURL!
THUD!
SPLAT!
Actually though, chopping the head off the chicken might seem like a good idea at the time until you realise its the arsehole that becomes the new leader.
liqbase
Any chance they are just doing this to please shareholders?
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
Here's the thing. It's not like setting a schedule is going to magically make something happen. Programs are written by programmers, they aren't willed into existence by Gantt charts, no matter what PMs think.
The only problem here is not that the release was pushed back, it's that someone's Gantt chart wasn't updated with good information. So when the real numbers went in, the "realistic shipdate" suddenly met reality.
Should someone get fired? Yeah. Probably the managers who didn't do their job and keep upper management up to date with correct project status. Anyone else? Yeah. Those managers who took a ship or die attitude and will end up burning their teams out in the next year. And finally those managers who knew reality but continued to live in their fairyland (not the Mac one) where products are developed by sheer management willpower alone.
Lots of blame to go around, but the bottom line is that the product was never going to make its shipdate. The question now is whether the revised date is realistic and how much is Microsoft willing to trim back features in order to meet it if further delays are encountered.
"I've done it before and I'll do it again," he said. "Anonymity has no place at Microsoft."
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Yes, that rumbling noise in the background, faint at first, but growing louder with each passing moment... yes, soon enough you can tell that it is a crowd of people... they are chanting... what are they saying.... I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO
Joking aside, this shouldn't even be news (sorta) its as unexpected as a suicide bomber in the middle east somewhere. Lets see, the EU, Mass., other entire countries dumping MS, Korea, and the response from MS has been FUD and 'smoke and mirrors' for several years now. I think its time for MS to put up or shut up. They have promised to fix all the woes of Internet users for several years now... time they did some of that, or simply hide in their cubes eating humble pie, reading the news about their stock with FF.
No, not a case of Linux fanboi, just observation. I'm rather tired of hearing how MS is going to fix this or that, and all they've fixed is prices in the past. On that issue, I'm rather happy with the way Open Source software is handling these issues, rather more up front about it, and trying to cobble together associations and software to battle the problems instead of promising the panacea of software at the mere cost of one arm and one leg per user.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Who da'Punk is in fact the real enemy. He wants to end the bloat at Microsoft and convert it into a lean and mean machine of productivity. Imagine what options open source would have if people in Microsoft where devoted to create great software for the users, instead of pursuing their own petty concerns in the corporate ladder. If Who da'Punk and others like him had their way, Microsoft would be user-centric, but keeping the users always within the Microsoft universe. He's planning a world of happy slaves of Microsoft. Now we are all slaves, but at least not happy. In the unsatisfaction of slaves the seeds of change lay. If everybody was contented, the chances of breaking the Microsoft monopoly would be nil (on the other side, we'd be happier and have great software, but still slaves).
So help him not. Cheer Balmer instead. He's our real ally in this fight.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
... people will buy Vista anyway because they will see Microsoft ads on TV 4 times a day. Microsoft as a company may be rotten, Vista as a project may have failed, but still.
...that their stock options aren't going to be worth as much. The truth is that Microsoft has very good reasons to delay Vista, only some of which they control. Anyone who has installed the beta can see that it has a long way to go before it reaches release quality. Vista is a fairly big update to the Windows code base, and the fact that it is not stable or speedy enough yet for day-to-day use at this late stage must be a factor in their decision to put it back.
Externally, Vista changes the driver model, and the hardware manufacturers seem to be lagging behind. There is no point releasing an OS if no one can use their graphics cards.
Microsoft has a lot riding on Vista, the first desktop OS release since 2001. They will not have decided to slip lightly.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
Wow, the dude on the Mini-Microsoft blog, which is notoriously anti-Microsoft, posts something anti-Microsoft?
That's about as earth-shattering as Slashdot posting this recent string of "Microsoft Sucks, Vista Sucks" articles.
you suggest that people should value the politics of their software higher than the quality of it? So why has all Linux advertising/PR/etc concentrated on the quality of the code produced by the OSS model?
If the OSS movement is right, Who da'punk is an irrelevance. If you're right, OSS is already doomed to failure.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Microsoft is filling some recently vacated positions. The time to send your resume is now.
There is one thing that will get Microsoft's employee's moral back up, a Chair-Throwing-Monkey-Dance! I'm sure they'll be able to find someone who can supply.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
That he says that sales will come from people buying PC's with the OS pre-installed, not people buying the vista OS in a box off the shelf. Even MS employees know they can't sell their crap, they have to force it down peoples throats or it won't sell.
A couple of days back, I read a very good article here on slashdot about how a couple of OS companies were taking the users on a ride by compelling them to upgrade their hardware to meet the minimum OS requirements.
Now we see that many in Microsoft are also feeling the same way though for an entirely different reason. Is it that microsoft is slowly losing its focus by trying to put their fingers in each and every pie out there rather than concentrating on their strengths ?
In many developers and users mind, Google is considered to be a better company both for its fairplay as well as how it treats its employees...
After five years and more than a hundred billion dollars revenue from computer users, Microsoft will revamp Vista at the 11th hour to turn it into a little more than a skin on XP, which was little more than a skin on 2K.
Almost all recent innovations in computing have come from organisations with orders of magnitude less revenue than MS. We are simply not getting value for money. This monopoly must be broken so competition and progress can resume. Formats, APIs, and communication protocols MUST be documented and opened to allow competitors a level playing field.
Anything else will just perpetuate the current stagnant, inbred computing environment.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the OS market, these management problems probably would have crippled the company and product by now.
On the other hand, if they didn't have a monopoly, perhaps everyone would be focused on competing and improving their OS, and these problems would not come up.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
From the linked blog entry: "Vista's deployment is going to come from people buying CPUs with the OS pre-installed". If MSFT's employees can't tell the difference between a CPU and a hard disk, it's no wonder Vista is so overdue!
Even MS employees know they can't sell their crap, they have to force it down peoples throats or it won't sell.
Nonsense, people want Windows. If Dell went 100% Linux tomorrow their sales would drop to near zero and people would buy Gateways, Compaqs, etc.
Also, Apple's Mac OS X has been a far better alternative for regular users than Linux for several years now yet nearly everyone sticks with Windows.
I own a Mac, my PC dual boots Windows and Linux, but I realize I am part of a very small minority. Most people don't want Mac OS X or Linux. That is reality, it may change over time but that it the state of things at the moment.
I thought the announcer at the Xbox 360 event called him the "Sultan of security, the prince of productivity". Are you saying that was all for show?! I'm offended.
Another 5-10 years or so and we'll be able to compare & contrast with OSS- ie. letting developers and user community determine where a product goes...
Don't get me wrong, I give MS lots of credit. I don't think PC's would be where they are today without them. It's gratifying to me though that the "good of the whole" can win over a 10yr lead and billions of dollars in "R&D" & marketing.
There's something rather strange about people clammering for responsibility, but who remain anonymous not taking responsibility for their own opinions ....
George Broussard, you're fired!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I remember a few years back, when I was in my mid-teens, I was lamenting about how crap MS are/were. My parents said "It'll have it's time". If some of the comments in the linked blog are anything to go by, this time may have come - but are programmers the best people to judge a companies' future? Since many of these comments were anonymous, we have no way to gauge their reliability, and it's entirely possible someone has a proverbial axe to grind.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
Yes, but he was only saying that as an off-the-cuff comment while getting to know his new Linux desktop. Who can blame him for letting the windows stuff fall by the wayside? ;)
Do we have more "perspective"? I still think Reagan was the antichrist. Bush is a total and absolute dick too, of course.
I find it hard to believe the guy who wrote this actually works on windows, MS has very solid reasons for the delay and anyone working on it would know this. The guy probably wanted some publicity for his site or just wanted to bad mouth MS. Personally, I welcome the delays - I don't have the chance to waste my money on the software for another few months.
From the article:
"But even as some on the Mini-Microsoft blog wished for Maria Antoinette-style retribution, other employees defended the decision, if not the people who made it.
"Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's embarrassing," wrote Robert Scoble, a company technical evangelist, on his Scobelizer blog. "But I'd rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.""
It would have been nice if they had this philosophy a couple of decades ago, rather than trying to transition to a "first in quality rather than first in marketplace" maxim now after all the messes they have institutionalized and all the good, innovative companies that followed the above maxim they have dispatched.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Let's be honest here...as long as windows maintains it's current market share it does not matter.
If you work in a windows shop, and run into your CIO or IT head cheese ask this simple question "What would have to happen for you to SERIOUSLY consider dumping windows for some other desktop OS platform"
Chances are they will just give you a blank stare. That alone should tell you that ANY delay in the next version of windows will have ZERO effect on Microsoft's market.
MiniMSFT has been publicly trashing his own company for years now, yet doesn't have the guts to do one of the following:
A. QUIT
B. Reveal who he is, what his job is, etc. We know that he doesn't work for Windows or Office, since when he trashes those groups' efforts he does it in a way to exclude himself from the criticism. So just who the hell is he? Are his insights worth a damn?
C. Try to change the company from the inside rather than anonymously trashing it from the outside. Doing the former would require that he attach his name to his complaints (not publicly, but internally), but he clearly lacks the guts to do it.
The guy is an ass, pure and simple.
Oh, and it's well known that many of the posts to his blog aren't MS employees but are anti-MS haters posing as such.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Is that why Ballmer has been reported to have said that Microsoft will "sue Linux?"
Take a look over here: http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-muelle r-blog/ballmer-linux/
Reagan helped a number of terrorist organisations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua and the Mujaheddeen in Afghanistan, on the sole premises that they were "anti-communist". Reagan was elected in 1980, if my memory serves me. 21 years later, guess what one of those former mujaheddeens did in New York?
Did it really take a genius to fathom that giving guns to nutty fundamentalists is not a smart move? Islamic fundies killed more Americans than Soviets and communists ever did, mind you.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
There is no accountability needed on the part of the top mgrs.
If things fail it clearly isn't their fault. That's why their pay is so high, their jobs are SO risky....
If they can keep from committing one of 5 or 6 major crimes, they have zero problems. Trouble is, many of the guys at the top get there by being so greedy and egocentric that they keep on going and commit those crimes.
Look, kicking Ballmer and a few other people just below him upstairs, sideways or out couldn't cause any more turmoil in these critically wounded projects. And the projects that are working fine would no doubt continue fine.
The big problem is that this would be tantamount to an admission of weakness. It would cause a short term dip in the stock price, and more seriously create the impression of a chink in the armor.
Unless... They appointed somebody in Ballmer's place who would immediately wipe away the memory of all that. And boy, do I have a candidate for them. Wait for it... It's...
Jean-Louis Gasee.
Why?
(1) He's soave. He'd be a palate cleansing draught of Perrier to Ballmer's greasy bag of deep fried pork rinds and Gates's Technicolor Pop Rocks persona.
(2) He has the respect of engineers. He's cool. The proof? One word: BeOS. It would help recruiting of talent. The Linux snobs wouldn't have anybody in the MS corner office who was a convenient joke.
(3) He's European. French (duh). I mean, put yourself in the EU's shoes. An American monopoly is throwing it's weight around, and you've seen the frightening videos of its leader's nearly indescribable antics rallying the troops. How could this not evoke the nightmare of torchlit nighttime rallies and different supreme leader's rants?
Of course, his actual track record as a businessman is, uh, mixed. He had trouble getting product out as the head of the Mac development. He missed his opportunity to sell an 80 million dollar company to Apple for 200 million, and ended up selling it to Palm for 11 million . But he could credibly show up for work in jeans, a turtleneck and gold ear stud -- who could put a price on that? Sandwiching him between the board on one hand and carefully senior managers on the other, this could be a major win.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The thing that makes this even wierder is that the betas of XP made it actually look like they might have been getting somewhere, but this time around even the betas are apparently off putting.
I'm relying here on reports from otherwise bright people who actually try to use the stuff, as the weekend provided almost the only excuse I've had to curse M$ software to its face in years. Normally I can just stick with the line which has done almost everything I've asked of it since 1984, but now I guess I might have to revert to evangelising with that client before I'm forced to walk away.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
(4) The "I'm manager because I can everybody's job better than they could" manager. Hardly bears description. On the flip side, if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that as an engineer, deep in your heart of hearts, this is you. The obviously awesome weapons of the engineering paradigm can slay any dragon.
Okay, you knew someone was gonna stick up for engineers around here, so here I am. I'm going to pick up on your previous Star Trek analogy too, for maximum geek-factor.
There will of course be engineers like this, just like there are managers that think they are engineers. A good crew however, doesn't work like this.
Geordi LaForge doesn't WANT to be Captain. In fact, aside from some minor rank bumps early in the shows career when he moved from helmsman to Chief Engineer, Geordi showed no signs of wanting to move up at all. He was already EXACTLY where he belonged, in the engine room of the fleet flagship, under a great Captain.
Good engineers don't want to be out fighting Klingons and worrying about Ferengi ripping them off and Romulans stealing their toys. That's what good CAPTAINS are for. Picard gave Geordi engineering problems, and listened to him when Geordi said he design a way to tie the holodeck to the warp core and fix the particle of the week. There were also plenty of times they went to that meeting room, and Geordi sat there with his hands in his lap because it wasn't an engineering problem, and the best he could offer was to carry a tricorder on the away team.
This is like a good engineer wet dream -- all the best toys to play with, with a gung ho first officer and an angry klingon between you and everything else that can get in your way, from Cardassians to Starfleet Brass.
~Rebecca
"Islamic fundies killed more Americans than Soviets and communists ever did, mind you."
The irrelevance of your comment aside (it could easily be argued that this is _because_ Reagan took steps to hinder the communist dictatorships) I think you're probably just plain wrong, unless the combined casualties of the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars we involved ourselves in were a lot smaller than I thought they were.
Or maybe you meant american _civillians_, in which case you'll get hit with the irrelevance thing again, as the soviets and communists weren't targeting our civillians at all.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
We Europeans didn't and don't hate anybody. We may dislike some people, but we don't hate anybody.
Also, we don't consider anybody either the Christ nor the anti-Christ.
For most of us Europeans, believing is a personal matter and Bush is just another mortal who made some bad choices. For that we don't hate Bush or Americans. Bush was arguably the American's own choice and we have to live with it. We just try to avoid being dragged into some of the Americans matters which are bad or inappropriate for us Europeans, like the Iraq war, software patents, predatory business practices, draconian DRM laws etc. What you do in your own country is entirely your own matter.
The development cycle usually consists of sitting in meetings while the architects and project managers hmmm and hah over what features to scope and de-scope for this particular release. This usually achieves nothing, at the very last minute they'll tell us to design something which has a set of features that don't interact well and require others that have been de-scoped. We now have exactly one week to code and module test the thing.
After many late nights the code is finished and the next few weeks are frought with Integration nightmares that the managers failed to take account of in their initial high level design. This isn't usually as bad as it should be as those of us doing the actual coding can often identify issues at the implementation stage and fix them there. When we tell the managers about this it usually offends them.
Integration complete, there is now about 5% of the work left to do in tidying up loose ends and streamlining code. The powers that be deem this to be un-necessary and my name appears on the Gantt chart of another project. Because I didn't get a chance to complete this final 5% of the work I will probably face a Bugzilla email deluge in the next month.
The answer, short development cycles, Extreme programming, unified process etc.>
Design, code, test and integrate in 3 -4 week cycles. Design decisions can't be drawn out and must be made quickly, coding and testing is done in manageable amounts and integration no longer presents a nightmare. Code is good the first time around for the small number of features implemented in that cycle, and far less buggy.
Unfortunately people are too stuck in their ways to change.
Doesn't that qualify as a death threat?
And your name is actually Rebecca? Wow, I'm in love... oh.
Maybe the Halloween memos were also an invention.
Perferring to be an engineer doesn't preclude suspecting you could manage better than the boss.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There have been huge numbers of rather fatuous comments of the "GANTT chart meets reality" type. My feeling is that these must have been written by people who simply have no understanding of the issues involved in updating a huge existing codebase so that it works to a commercial level of quality and retains backward compatibility with most of what is out there.
It's almost unheard of to find a large mature codebase which is particularly clean. What would have started out as a clean architecture gets pulled out of shape with bug fixes, new features, support for new architectures and so on over time. In particular, many fixes are done in a 'quick and dirty' fashion because there's a need to correct a critical security flaw now, so a quick fix is preferred to a considered refactoring of the relevant code.
Now, the GANTT chart bit isn't so bad: PM asks the developers, who (usually, anyway!) know their codebases well, to say how long it will take to develop a particular feature, and what the dependencies will be. Most people actually get this part somewhere about right. They write their code, unit test it and put it into an integration build. Everything seems fine.
Where things start to go wrong is where you introduce the next level of testing: beta testing out with customers. The messy codebase starts to bite you hard, with obscure bugs which turn out to be due to the presence of some fix which is essential to another area. Fixing the fix turns out to have ramifications elsewhere, and the whole thing can slide out of control quickly.
My guess is that this is where Microsoft is with Vista: they have 99.9% of everything working very well,but there's 0.1% which is a mess, but which is essential to having the stability needed to launch. Problem is that getting the 0.1% right is actually a huge effort, with unknown impacts across the whole codebase.
You can't even really blame the managers for letting the codebase get into such a mess. The issue is an accumulation of short-term fixes, none of which is, in and of itself, a problem, but when you have thousands of these hacks, maintenance becmes a nightmare. trouble is that the managers and developers who allowed this to happen were merely responding to direction from on high (e.g. "fixing security issues is now our highest priority - I want to see our response time down as low as possible"), which makes considered refactoring impossible.
When did Microsoft's corporate structure become a democracy? The employees are calling for managment to be let go??? Right or wrong, it sounds like some "employees" are going to be getting their walking papers soon.
People who follow ATI closely should remember that ATI has been promising a new OpenGL driver to people for years now. This has mostly just been mentioned to ATI forum fans and a few game developers.
...). This was way back in January 2005 and was supposed to offering significant performance increases for these games. Today we have a new OpenGL driver that has never been seen outside ATI, is buggy, is lacking features, is about 30% slower than the old driver in newer games like Doom 3, and about 5 times slower in older games like Quake 3.
This project has been going on for over 3 years now and so far it has missed every single milestone. For instance the first shipping milestone was supposed to be a driver that would ship for the top 5 OpenGL games at the time (Doom 3, Quake 3, Serious Sam SE
Management's biggest mistake has been their tendency to flail between different milestones. The goals of this project have jumped around about five times forcing the driver developers to frequently abandon half finished code and in general resulted in extremely inefficient use of the developers' times. The milestones have changed between things like workstation certification, back to consumer performance, to new hardware support, to Linux support. The current milestone is back to shipping for the top few OpenGL games for the R580 in a few months, but every OpenGL driver developer who doesn't blindly listen to management knows there's no fucking way that's going to happen. The next milestone after that fails will be to full R600 (our next generation of hardware) support. That is where the proverbial shit will hit the fan because there is no backup plan at that point. On every previous missed milestone there was always the backup plan that we just continue shipping the old driver. Management decided instead of allocating the resources to have the R600 work on both the old driver and the new driver it would only work on the new driver. Now it's too late to start support for R600 on the old driver. With this new driver the most that has been accomplished on the R600 emulator is to render a simple test case with a single a textured triangle, which is so far behind D3D at this point it's ridiculous. I'm not even going to touch the other issues this new OpenGL driver has created for things like supporting the Vista driver model or new extensions.
Compounding the problem, many of the veteran and most talented OpenGL driver developers have requested and received internal transfers off the OpenGL driver team out of frustration over this project. In addition many of the people left on the driver team have lost their enthusiasm for work. Before this new driver project it was not uncommon to see people staying late to fix that last bug or add a new feature, but now many developers just treat it as a 9-5 job.
There is little question that most of the blame for this debacle can be blamed on Joe Chien with a little blame to be spread to others like Joe's boss Rick Bergman. So what's happened to Joe during this cluster fuck of failures? He was promoted from manager to director...
What is the last totally new, heretofore hinted at only within impenetrable academic papers, architecture in the field of Information Technology?
Friend of mine thought that might be packet-switched networks.
While I never have seriously coded against Win32s, I have looked at the APIs across MS Office. Not a lot of core change there, across the various versions.
Solomon's observation about "nothing new under the sun" was never truer.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think MSFT management is just afraid cuz of all the build up for Vista that if it goes out the door and is borked then they'll seriously loose mindshare.
:-)
I'm hoping [as an individual fed up with windows] that Vista is a flop. I'd love to hear about 0-day exploits and the like. Frankly I'm tired of rampant vendor lockin, bloaty OSes and inferior technology.
Like just recently I had to buy a copy of Word for a publishing deal. Cost me $286 CDN. What does that give me? A word processor that only runs in Windows and only edits Word files. The latter bit doesn't sound so bad until you realize the format is not properly documented anywhere and essentially requires me to keep using Windows and Word to work with the files.
Whereas, in the "real world", I can build my own Linux distro [e.g. gentoo] for free, install OpenOffice for free and be editting documents in no time flat. Then I can move those documents to my BSD or Windows machines if I want. Heck, I can even hack the document [ala unzip and sed] if I want to do something not natively supported by OO directly [e.g. substituting all fonts in the document instantly].
So on Vista launch-eve I'll drink a pint in hopes that their initial release is a total flop.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
And your name is actually Rebecca? Wow, I'm in love...
It's a trick!
I guess today is a passable day to die.
I remember a lot of computer books for newbies from the 80s and early 90s that had diagrams of computer systems in the first chapter. For some reason, perhaps simplicity as well as the lack of computer sophistication, those books almost always labelled the case as the "CPU (central processing unit)". I think the practice may even go back to books from the Commodore and 64 generation.
Nowadays, with cases that can be opened by users, and with everything from your video card to your processor swappable, it makes little sense to call the whole thing a CPU. Back then, it made more sense, and the label has stuck to some extent.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I think for many years, many Microsoft employees have assumed that they are walking on water because, after all, how could they not be, given the financial success of the company.
But I think reality is catching up with the company: Microsoft doesn't walk on water technically, they are producing roughly the same kind of software today as other big software vendors (and that's actually an improvement over where they were a few years ago).
Microsoft is turning more and more into the IBM of 20 years ago, and that means that they are getting technically better than they used to be, and financially less successful. Welcome to reality.
This was a very interesting comment on the blog site:
"
The migration to Vista will be a passive one, as someone else previously mentioned; appearing on new computers bought by companies.
The same for home users; a lot of people do not know enough to figure out what hardware upgrades they need ; so again, it will appear on new computers.
Is this what Windows has become? An upgrade no one wants, forced upon them because the new hardware they're buying doesn't support anything less?
Compare this to OS X, where people fall all over themselves trying to get the newest version running on their old hardware because there's actual value in the new features.
So Vista has its guts ripped out, slips, and we wait another 5 years for a potentially insipring version of Windows, meanwhile Apple ships another 3 updates to OS X.
I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass. "
hey all! no matter how long it takes MS to come out with Vista, they will still screw it up. It's the MS way. save your money and buy a mac.
Uh, any chance this has to do with the fact that Microsoft began expensing stock options - http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+award+stock,+nix+ options/2100-1014_3-1023840.html
? ID_Content=5041?
- or that employees are pissed about the review system or lack of pay increases over the last 3 years - http://www.washtech.org/news/industry/display.php
Until the late 90's, an engineer could work at Microsoft for 10-15 years and retire. That made them a lot more willing to tolerate constant death marches and ridiculously unrealistic product schedules. I suspect the current crop of engineers realized that weren't going to become billionaires anytime soon and weren't willing to make the same sacrifices. This is probably not the last we'll see of this sort of thing from Microsoft.
Upper management is certainly hard at work trying to figure out how to get Indian and Chinese developers working on Vienna.
So...the execs want to push a product back to 'get it right', but the employees themselves now wish to just throw it into production, quality be damned (not that there ever really is much quality in m$ crap). Microsoft truly is a marketing company and not a technology company.
Hate Reagan, Kennedy rocks(rocked)! That apart, nice quote: "...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~" HAHA, lol
"We Europeans didn't and don't hate anybody."
Oh, really? What about Hitler?
And lest anyone think that LaForge was an exception to the engineering rule... Chief O'Brien was also mainly interested in fixing things, rather being captain. He was always tinkering with tech. And boy did he get to tinker with the coolest stuff! Even fixed the Defiant.
Microsoft has a bad reputation with regard to the quality of their code. But they have a really good reputation for shipping products.
This is news to me. Maybe you mean eventually shipping product, but their general reputation is for always being years late and always dropping features to make even the late dates.
Infuriate left and right
How dare you ask for that! It's like asking Bush to impeach himself. I mean, would you fire yourself? Kidding, or what?
The decisions of the upper management are akin to the will of an absolute monarch in the 18th century. And since staging a revolution to overthrow the monarch doesn't work in corporations (buy-outs require the old management, after all, to agree to being bought-out), we won't see such a thing.
The only ones who could stage such a coup d'etat is the Nobility, the shareholders. And as long as they got their benefices, i.e. their shareholder value being upheld, they'll never do such a thing.
Peasants don't play a role in corporations.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Little known fact:
There actually is no one at Microsoft named Allchin. That's just a nickname for Jabba the Hutt, All Chin. Mr. J. the H. is in charge of designing Microsoft's relationship with customers. To Mr. Hutt, customers are just another kind of cute squeaky animal.
Ok, maybe that's not exactly a fact.
Seriously, it seems to me that what's happening at Microsoft is a general social breakdown. The comments to Who da'Punk's blog seem to me to show a widespread dislike of Microsoft, and a lack of positive feelings.
It's entirely predictable that any company that abuses customers like Microsoft does (by releasing sloppy, unfinished code, and tricking customers in other ways), will sooner or later suffer a social breakdown.
Microsoft's business model has largely depended on taking advantage of the ignorance of customers. Now that the customers are becoming more technically knowledgeable, Microsoft is finding it difficult to continue.
There are many other social breakdowns in the United States. They may seem unrelated, but they are connected by a fundamental theme: Abusiveness toward people.
The U.S. government is undergoing a social breakdown. Yes, killing Iraqis is abusing them. No, Iraqis are not proud to be killed by such superior people as the leaders of the U.S. government.
The bankruptcy of Enron was a social breakdown.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
EETimes is reporting that some Microsoft employees are calling for the termination of several top managers Including Brian Valentine, Jim Allchin, and Steve Ballmer for the delay debacle.
On the other hand:
Robert Scoble, a company technical evangelist, on his Scobelizer blog. "But I'd rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."
So, basically, it is a conflict between the traditionalists and the reformationalists?
When I was a kid I used to read through my comics looking for the CAPITAL WORDS for EMPHASIS. I found out sometimes if you just read the capital words you find secret messages.
Anyway, if you read just the capital words in the parent's post, we'll see none of us will ever have a chance with Rebecca unless your a frenchman with an english accent. Go figure.
"where's the accountability for failure?"
They're a monopoly, there isn't any!
What do expect when your chief software architect is actually the worlds best marketing manager.
Got Code?
Part of the problem is that they don't innovate. We've heard this all before and it is a tired horse but as a successful company, they copy what works from other innovative ideas that the public takes to.
Their GUI in Vista is nothing innovative and has been copied from OSX and the Sun 3D project Looking Glass.
Monad is the answer to the Bash shell and it isn't even going to be included last I checked.
Any security touted as new is a "Well Duh!" and should've been there from the start.
It would be nice to install a Microsoft OS without the need for 3rd party software to make it secure.
Defragging is still a requirement as WinFS has been delayed and I'm not sure if defragging will be required on it as well.
When they do innovate, it's something like Microsoft Bob.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I spent 2 hours reading that thread, and the one thing that dropped my jaw was the post claiming that MS has been unable to stave off six 6-digit corporate desktop migrations.
*blink*
The only one I've heard about is IBM: that's 330,000 desktops. It's more than likely one of the six. This sounds to me like the Fortune 500 is getting really tired of the lack of security, empty promises, endless delays, absurd licensing costs... and has gotten wise to the FUD.
They know that if Apple can put OSX 10.5 on shelves in November, that will start the snowball rolling, and the avalanche is coming.
Sure, when Vista does ship (too late), there will be a huge marketing campaign for it. It seems though that they don't even know how to make a compelling pitch to customers, business or retail. Even with a January launch (I'm not holding my breath), the advertising will start in November, and those campaigns will need to be conceptualized in the next few weeks, if that hasn't started already.
MS has a disaster on its hands that no one seems to want, and they don't know how to sell it. Meanwhile, their enemies (aka the rest of the industry) are circling the bloated prey, waiting for MS to collapse under its own weight before they move in for the kill.
OK children, we need to prepare for the celebration! The sooner,the better. Here goes... 1... 2... 3...
Ding dong, the witch is dead, which witch? The wicked witch, ding dong, the witch is dead!
"So far the blog entry has generated over 350 comments"
oh, my. now, whatever with ms management, but this is going to change.
Rich
You have confused cause and effect. People at Microsoft are unhappy because the non free software way is failing. There is no way it can be otherwise. The anger and backstabbing you see is typical of any failing company. Tiny mistakes, which make no difference in the long run, become sources of contention. Productivity will fall off geometrically now, but even a perfect effort would not save them from the overwhelming superiority of free software.
It has been said hundreds of times and I'll say it again, the non free way of making software is obsolete. The GNU debugger has more than 87 authors. Not even Microsoft can afford to lavish that kind of effort on a single program regardless of it's importance. The "unimportant" programs are the ones that give free software systems a polished finish Microsoft can't touch. Their best five years of effort to graft together terabytes of purchased code are producing the equivalent of one modest productivity package and a window manager on top of a decidedly second rate GUI and a disaster of an OS. The free software approach, in the mean time, has produced many better equivalents on top of a unified system that fits onto a single, live running and self installing CD, which is offered by hundreds of different groups.
They can't catch up. Missing Christmas sales will hurt them. It won't hurt them near as much as the embarrassment and loss of face. The game is over. Only hardware DRM can save them and that is unlikely without IBM and other cooperation. 2007 will be the year free software takes majority market share and the Microsoft monopoly will be history.
Good riddance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here goes the furniture. Lets dump the Microsoft stock and buy Steelcase stock. I am assuming the the furniture in Ballmer's office is that from Steelcase!
While you are at it, you might as well buy the stock for the upholstery fabric mills. They will also get a piece of this action!
Cleara
So is Microsoft first going to hire Donald trump to fire the accountable managers ;-)
The time to send your resume is now.
I know you're saying this as a joke, but if you realize, many of those Microsoft workers are already sending their resumes ELSEWHERE. They f***ing want to leave. Microsoft is becoming another EA, specially when new workers get paid more than existing workers. So it's more convenient if you leave MS, get another job, and later (IF later) you decide to go back.
IMHO, I'd rejoice the day Mini-MSFT became the Microsoft CEO. Of course, it will never happen.
Have you realized that he CAN'T change the company from inside?
He says it, he LIKES working there, but he needs to point out the problems. If he tries to do something for a change in a draconian environment, he might as well be fired. IMHO you haven't read EVEN ONE of his blog entries. He LOVES Microsoft, and he WANTS to change it.
Do you think you REALLY can change a WHOLE WORK STRUCTURE in a company just by going to your boss and saying "we need to get rid of these problems"? Oh wait, this one's better. "Boss, we need you to get fired".
The real problem is that Ballmer is F**KING BLIND, he WON'T ACCEPT that there are problems in his company. Microsoft is a time bomb. You should be glad that we have Mini-MSFT to alert the shareholders about the precarious condition of the company.
It's interesting to watch the comments as they unfold in the blog entry. Some of them are very frantic. "The company is going down! Abort! Abort! Abandon ship now!!" -- This from a company which has no real competition.
To be honest, I don't see what they're so upset about. It's done when it's done.
It's been a long time.
Belanna Torres was also an engineer's engineer. All she wanted to do was take care of "MY engine room", engage in dangerous holodeck programs and snuggle with Tom Paris.
if we don't take some radical decisions, the company is over.
Did he say "the company is over"? Oh, please let it be true! Is it too early to plan the "Microsoft is dead" party?
Lest we forget, CAPTAIN Scott was always an engineer in his heart of hearts -- and showed the young pup Geordi a thing or two when they were stuck on the Dyson's Sphere. As I recall it was Mr. Scott's know-how along with Geordi's youth that allowed them to patch up the Genolan enough to rescue the Enterprise... We miss you Scotty!
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
What is a good scenario, but is destroyed when you put money on the equation. On the reality, engeneers get underpaid, management get lots of money. So, many engeneers want to go into management.
That is also a reason to companies should pay the engeneers well.
Rethinking email
Moving on, it's depressing that this was posted here. What started as a discussion among professionals about the state of their company has started to devolve into a disgusting ms bashing party.
Seeing the real thoughts and worries and pride of MS employees is infinitely more interesting than seeing some 12 year old blast Microsoft.
It's been a long time.
One chicken was able to live without a head. I say let Ballmer and Gates go and let the inmates run the asylum.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
You mean...
It's a trap!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
You've got more than what you've bargained for!
Oh BTW, just read the upper third of the comments on mini's blog.
The rest are a bunch of mouthbreathing anti-M$$$ losers.
Fire the leadership after Vista ships. Please.
In the Star Trek universe, they've moved beyond money.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
There is a very interesting aspect of delay, that is working to Microsoft's favor in this case.
In another field, note the most recently finished highway project in your local area. You might (if you were paying attention) remember the years of political turmoil before it started, the endless planning meetings, the politician promises. Then, you saw the signs go up, saying things like "This exit will be closed from Nov 11 2003 to Jun 1 2005" or something, and it seemed like forever. A date that far in the future is just a hell of a long time away.
But, note how you feel about the project today? The inconvenience of waiting are just completely gone. You've got a nice new freeway, and you get from here to there without much problem. In a couple of months it seems like it has always been there. All the hair-pulling and outrage that you felt when the finish date was first posted just seems so trivial now.
Anyway, that's the way it works for me.
Vista will be the same in a lot of ways. Microsoft, for better or for worse (mostly worse) is just as much of a monopoly as the Department of Public Works. They'll finish the goddamn highway on their own schedule, and they'll do an adequate job of it, and people will just live with it. And the very sad thing is, they'll like it.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
News flash: No one really lives in the Star Trek universe.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Okay, I'm going to pull unrank here and officially ban the use of ".Net" unless you offset it with quotes like I just did. I just got a headache trying to process the above post. Am I the only one who sees a period and immediately thinks "end of sentance" and doesn't notice it's being tacked in front of the word "Net"?
Call it dotNet, please. Or ".Net" works. I find it completely microsoft (adj, to make decisions based on marketing factors instead of technical ones, and then still end up with unmarketable garbage anyway) that they make the name ".Net" the new campaign slogan, yet you can't have any filename starting with ".Net" in any of their operating systems! (Well, not through Explorer anyway.)
So no more sentences about. Net that confuse people, because even though the period in. Net is not where I just put it, mentally I think everyone ends up processing it that way and it's just plain irritating.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Couldn't agree more. That people who lack the intelligence to understand what this blog is for ruins it with mindless zealotry is just sad.
I found the following post (on the MS Blog comments) by someone who is probably a MS employee.
----snip-------
Talk around the vending machines in legal is that the delay has nothing to do with coding, slipped schedules or anything else. That's why very few heads will actually roll and most will simply shuffle positions. Actual reasons have to do with no product, NONE, shipping until after the mess with the EU is cleaned up. From what I've heard so far, if there are further major delays with EU that can't be solved by set-asides and scholarships, then expect another major delay beyond what has already been announced. At 25-40% annual compounded growth rates for Linux servers, the last thing that's going to happen is for the EU to be able to do what US-Justice failed to do, which is force disclosure of MS server protocols so competitors can copy MS's IP and gain market share in the market segment on MS's dime. Samba has never been 100% compatible and that's the way its going to stay, come hell or high water. Regardless of how much time/delay it takes, Samba and Vista will never be as interoperable as Samba is with PDC, AD, AS currently. If it takes another 6 month delay, another 9 months, whatever. Eventually EU will capitulate whether Commerce and the WTO has to step in or not. Server space market share has either reached a tipping point, or already passed a tipping point depending on which internal study you read. Whichever study you read/believe, make sure its one of the ones that takes into account free installs of their versions of AS/ES, such as Cent/OS. According to those studies, the server space has already passed the tipping point, that's why we're seeing what's happening with Mass/ODF/XML, and some of the large desktop migrations that have been documented internally. And remember, any large migrations you get a whiff of, you know where to report them, get details and do it. A single 6 digit desktop migration has repercussions far and wide on many other customers and partners (and media), and we are staring at over a dozen of them and have been unsuccessful in turning any of them around so far.
So unless anything settles with the EU in the coming months, expect further delays regardless of what they are blamed on.
--------snip--------------
From the article:
With the convergence of high-tech media, this holiday season would have been an explosive nodal point to get Vista out for a compounded effect.
This is why MS can't seem to get it done. They have people working there who ACTUALLY talk like this! I mean, seriously, can anyone translate that sentence into English, please?
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Remeber that MS hired primarly from outside (Digital) to build windows NT. Makes you wonder what happened to those folks, mostly Dave Cutler who left Digital to oversee building NT for MS.
Maybe MS should make Linus a tender offer.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Why do they care about this? Is it their own bonus in jeopardy because the product didn't ship by a certain drop-dead date?
Whether Microsoft continues to sell old Office, or new Office, people are still buying Office. Whether they're selling XP or Vista, they're still selling a Microsoft OS onto the same number of computers.
WHY DO THEY CARE? THEY'RE STILL GETTING PAID THE SAME AS BEFORE!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From [a reply to] TFA:
"Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs..."
Oy.
To expand on the other AC post, you are a complete fucking idiot. Breaking backwards compatibility is ALWAYS A BAD THING. It's NEVER A GOOD THING.
Breaking backwards compatibility is the primary reason people avoid open source in enterprise environments. Want to know why everyone's still using Apache 1.3, and absolutely NO ONE uses Apache 2? Because they broke backwards compatibility with 1.3.
Want to know why a huge portion of Firefox users never upgraded past 1.0? Because they broke backwards compatibility in 1.5, breaking extensions. And while YOU might be able to fix them, NORMAL people can't. So normal people look at Firefox 1.5, see that it offers them NOTHING except broken extensions, and keep using 1.0.
It is NEVER OK to break backwards compatibility. Projects that do that in the open source world usually slowly die since the people using them CAN'T continue using them, and instead have to switch to something that WON'T randomly break compatibility.
In short, you're a complete fucking idiot, and if you're really using unstable code at your job, I hope your manager reads Slashdot and you're out a job come Monday.
("To confirm you're not a script, please type the word in this image: incest" - um, what are you trying to tell me, Slashdot?)
It's spelled "engineer", champ. Why should companies pay engineers well? Universities pump you guys out like muffins at a factory. You're cheap because you're common.
O RLY?
o_O
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
So what you're saying... is that Ballmer is an angry Klingon? Thanks, that makes his actions make so much more sense.
It strikes me, just now, that this is because everyone in the Federation is (effectively) super-affluent and rich.
"Oh, hole in the wall of my lavish one-bedroom luxury apartment with a starside view and no discernable toilet, make me a perfect filet mignon dinner with a cup of tea."
"Oh ship's psychologist with attractive boobies, listen to my problems for a couple of hours."
"What ever did people do before they had machines that would wash, press, and delint their uniforms, and make the as impervious to wrinkles as duranium? They had servents and slaves! Hahaha!"
"Dr. Crusher, can I have a hypospray for my chronic fatigue syndrome?" (universal health insurance)
etc, etc, etc
So how does one tell whether this is real or just a fabrication? I doubt the bloggers lest DNA samples.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yay. Microsoft has a couple delayed product releases. Isn't this what we've come to expect from Microsoft, and, in fact, from the entire software industry? Why all the uproar? Maybe a little more caffeine will help me understand.
-Rich
First, I can tell you exactly what the "process" the blog post is referring to -- it's not an issue of cowboy coders vs. reasonable process and management. Ask anyone who has worked on longhorn questions like: "how many VBLs are there anyway?" and "do you think quality gates have improved the codebase or not?" and (if they have anything to do with test) "what do you think of WTT?". Work spent to satisfy this process consumes way too much of the average developer's time and contributes little or nothing to the overall stability of the codebase.
Next, I know several MS engineers who are on the fence about leaving after the longhorn deathmarch fisaco and the FY06 compensation package. All I have to say on this front is, again, leaving was one of the best moves I ever made. Not to drag Microsoft through the mud (though that's what slashdot is all about, right?) but I agree 100% with mini about the axe needing to fall on some very senior people. Senior management at MS is compensated extraordinarily well (GMs, VPs all make well over $500k/year total compensation). There are way too many of these people and not only do they not write code or contribute meaningfully to the product, they make the lives of the rank and file harder with their bullshit process ideas and beurocracy. Here's a crazy recipe for shipping longhorn: fire some of the windows leadership, give the rest of the windows management 0 bonus and use the money you saved to give real out-of-band raises to the best engineers in the company. When you give them the raises say something like: "We fucked up, we paid management way too much and have been neglecting our real #1 resource which is smart engineers". The brightest people I know work at Microsoft but if things don't change I suspect I won't be saying this for long.
"That's just a lie. If someone at the activation place told you that, call back. They were misinformed."
OEM windows is not activated, but it is tied to the machine you bought it on. In fact, it's microsoft's view that you cannot legally put it on another machine, even if you junk the existing one. They now force OEM's to essentially do something like BIOS locking that Windows XP disks. If you take a Windows XP disk that comes with an HP computer and try to install it on a homebuilt, it won't install. It will tell you that it's not an HP computer.
Try it if you don't believe it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Adjusted for splits, MSFT hasnt risen since 1999. Thats making employees unhappy too.
I suppose that you have become accustomed to thinking that you are God. If you can't find it on a map, it is none of your business.
More Iraqis die now that the U.S. is in charge than died when Saddam was in charge. Who is the greater destructive force?
But they have a really good reputation for shipping products
I think you need to go back and check your facts on this one. MS regularly misses ship dates, especially on large projects like OS's.
"We know that he doesn't work for Windows or Office, since when he trashes those groups' efforts he does it in a way to exclude himself from the criticism."
Uh right. And he/she would be too dumb to make it seem that way in a blog. Particularly an anonymous blog where he/she is trying to keep their job.
I take it you work at Microsoft. Probably in the Windows division. Which explains much about the current death spiral over there. I'll bet you think you're the best and brightest.
All that bullshit aside, why is it this guy's job to change the company. Show up, do your job, and get paid. If it's his/her job to change the company, then he would be considered "management". You see, if you're a coder, you are judged on your ability to do a good job developing. When I buy a car, I don't judge the mechanic based on how well the president of GM does his or her job. By the same token, if the mechanic fcks up my car fixing it, I don't blame it on the president of GM.
I hope you're at least smart enough to *get* that much.
Nokia like IBM would also be a candidate for migrating.
They have an internal Linux distro that is fully supported by the internal IT services people, and is considered by many to be an acceptable alternative to windows, both in the server room and on the desktop (and laptop).
I am not sure how big they are compared with IBM, especially considering that they have a relatively small presence in the US, but it would not surprise me if they are of comparable size.
"He's soave"
I assure you he is French, not Italian.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That was sixty years ago.
Even Hitler probably didn't hate anybody. He just thought that the Germans were the superior race and that the world should belong to them. According to them, other races were inferior, specifically the Jews, which he then proceeded to try to remove from Europe. Hitler saw the war effort and the removal of the Jews as a solution to Germany's problems at the time. According to him, the Jews had a stranglehold on Germany's business. He didn't set up the holocaust and start the second world war out of hate.
ian
No, in the inner core of the Federation they've moved beyond money. Everywhere else, such as the borderlands or where resources are scarse, they still very much do use money (see: Deep Space Nine).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, Klingons have honor.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes really. It's just a TV show.
From microsoft-watch.com
"January has emerged as almost a second Christmas, with gift cards, sales, etc. It's a new trend," Goldberg said.
A second christmas?!?!?
Does Santa know about this? Will he have toy's left over or made up in time?
How come nobody said anything about this? We really should be informed about these things, Their should have been a memo!
God think of the bill's! Won't somebody think about the poor poor bill's!
So i guess Vista will ship in time for christmas afterall they just left out which one, The real one or Goldbergs.
Looks like it was Goldbergs.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
Before you go dissing someone else, you might want to take a look at your own self, and see how silly your words make you seem.
Or, to put it simply, what we've got is one, tiny insignifcant person badmouthing someone who actually has done something noteworthy. Guess how that makes you look?
If you want some respect, you've got to earn it. MiniMSFT is doing so, in the opinion of many. You, on the other hand, seem unable to make a positive contribution to anything.
I guess Microsoft Shareholders, Employees and Insiders are concerned about the delay of a new Office and Windows, but I, for one, really don't care. Why is it necessary to have a new opersting system and office suite every year or two?? Is Windows XP that inadequate?? My favorite machines at home are happily running WIndows 2000 Pro or Fedora 9.0... Office 2000 or Open Office 1.0 does everything I need an office suite and it's difficult for me to imagine that more than a small minority of consumers need much more than what they are already using.
Most intriguing post I've read yet. It's hard to reconcile that with the shakeups.
The bottom line for me is: I don't care when Vista or Office ship. Next week, next year, next decade; next century. I've been tying real hard since the delay announcements to give a crap, but it's not working for me. Linux and FreeBSD have made MS and its products irrelevant to me at home. While (sort of) on the subject, I'd like to thank the MS developers of XP and XP SP 1 for making me desperate enough to try something completely different: Thanks!
At work I use what I'm told to use, but interestingly enough I was allowed to put Linux on my old box for a statistical app I wanted to use, when I was given a new box. My employer does not trust MS.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I agree fully with the other "mod parent down" reply to this post. Extra negative mod points for giving a bad name to a good opera.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Keep thinking that way, asshole American. Not all countries are as stupid as you are. Do you realize that all of China's top leaders were trained as engineers?
The simple reason that I hate Gantt charts as the be-all and end-all of a project schedule is that even on the most carefully controlled project, there are always speed-ups and slow-downs that can throw the most enlightened of schedules into a cocked hat ...and then sit on it. Not to say it shouldn't be attempted, but advertising release dates based on them should be a punishable offense (and in this case, it might well be).
A-frickin'-men.
Although I'd have to say I don't hate Gantt charts, they can be a useful tool when used properly. Which generally, they aren't. They let you see which bits of a project can harmlessly slip, and which bits will cause problems if they are delayed. In theory you need to make sure that you have resources on hand to back up those tasks that lie on the critical path or are close to it, so that when things go wrong- which they always do- you are prepared to lift the failing critical task out of the gutter in which it finds itself without major impact on the projected completion date.
Unfortunately, all too often an incompetent manager will put one together, see the end date on the critical path as being day X, and say "Woo-hoo! We're shipping on day X!".
Great example there, sparky.
NO WAI!!!
(I suppose, at this point, it behooves me to link to the O RLY page.)
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Shouldn't that be
~Idarubicin
Hundreds of comments from Microsoft employees AND unaffiliated outsiders. Most of them anonymous. And Microsoft has what, about 64000 employees these days?
Why? It has SPECIFIC REASONS FOR THEIR PROBLEMS FROM THE GUY TESTING IT! Read on:
Ok let's take a look back at the great mgmt decisions in one Windows test org: Not an important group; just appcompat. (It's not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers' 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don't work that well on this new fustercluck.
In the last 18 months this org:
1) Cut the number of testers (several times) from approx 50 to now much less than a dozen. Of course, many top performers also left MS entirely because of middle mgmt in this org.
2) Hired more PMs
3) Cut the scope of testing (anyone done any real code coverage testing lately?)
4) Cut the number of promotions in the test orgs - nothing like a little 'de-incentivization' to increase 'bad attrition'
5) Dictate that everything can and should be automated. (Ignore that eyeballs catch more in less time...) way to go Darren. Of course, you were probably lied to by your underlings, so it's not entirely your fault. Uhh, yes it is - you made the call.
6) Hire only a small handful of devs to write automation code. Oh, and don't forget to swamp them with added process and have embittered leads review their code...
7) Hire more PMs
8) Outsource all testing to non-accountable and barely trained CSG firms overseas (Ever try to translate/clarify a bug written not by a tester, but by their lead based on notes? )
9) Limit the number of heads the abovementioned overseas firms can use. > Fewer testers, less experienced, with little training, a much (ahem) 'slower' approach to testing.
Results: Client appcompat % hovering at 75%. No, wait, did I say 75? I meant 85. At RTM it will be 95.6, or whatever other arbitrary happy-happy number they came up with like last time. In reality, last go-around, the appcompat % was quite high, despite the PM lies, just not as high as they claimed.
What? You're going to dispute the numbers that some lower functionaries spun up through the labyrinthine PM food chain? At each 'filter' point one gets to improve his own rep by making his ownership area look better. What's a few % points between bureaucrats?
While I'm in rant mode, why exactly IS MCE so bad? Didn't anyone test this puppy before kicking it out the door and having another PM party?
A brand new Dell with full OEM installed load and almost nothing works in the expected 'just plug it in Dad and it works'.
Sure is great he has a son who works at MS. Oh, no he doesn't. His son left.
Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs...
By Anonymous, at 9:51 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Why? It emphasizes my points that ninety percent of Windows "featuritis" is a complete fucking waste of time.
#
We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product.
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM
#
This slippage is flat out appalling. It's only March and these weasels are pushing back. Next, it'll be the fabled Q1!
Frankly, I'd like to hear a lot less of the "innovating" buzzword being bandied about and a lot more of the word "delivering." Yes, we will deliver on what we say. Yes, we will deliver on our commitments. This is outrageous!
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM
#
"We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product"
EXACTLY... It's about time we face the fact that the OS is nothing more than a hosting platform for REAL apps. Just like IE is for cool websites. We don't need apps on there done by us...calc and notepad are it. Let someone else "skin" Windows, let someone else write the stupid solitaire and let's do the security, kernel and move on. You honestly think anyone sits there wondering at the marvel that is Windows Explorer? No, they go in long enough to open an app or a file. Who gives a f--k what the folders look like, stop pretending that is important and requires a date slip.
Oh, and how about we mitigate our plummeting stock price tomorrow with some VERY PUBLIC firings of some execs to show that the market cap our partners are losing MATTERS TO US....This slip and lack of accountability is a clear violation of the company values.
By Anonymous, at 10:43 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You want to work for Microsoft? Here's who actually makes the money!
You guys had me worried about the slip for a minute or two. Just checked my spreadsheet and things are looking good!
All us partners were awarded our humungous SPSA grants 8/2003. They vest this August. For some reason I thought they were going to vest a little later, closer to the november original date.
For me, I collect 68,000 shares on 8/29 so I hope the slip hype blows over quickly. I'll take my $1.8m this August, then get pumped and help push this bad boy out the door!
November would have been pushing it for me anyway cause my house in tuscany is supposed to be done late october and we were planning on spending a month there once its ready.
-a distinguished partner
p.s. - go ask your vp if you think I am being a bs/troll. this is real. the spsa program is huge awards tied to company performance, BUT does anyone honestly think that bill/steve have the balls to say that since our performance has been shit that the multiplier is 0? See ya in tuscany!
By Anonymous, at 11:46 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Want to know how fucked up Vista is? This post will tell you! Read on!
After three weeks of 9-to-9 plus an occasional weekend, today I've been informed it was too late for me to catch the would-be-last RI for B2. It was gut-wrenching, unbelievably frustrating and I felt dejected.
Not an hour later, Brian V sent his email and I found out there would be slippage and more RIs.
You know what? That felt right. It's just not ready - just as my stuff isn't ready, shell isn't ready, the drivers, the perf.. The screw up did not occur now, not one year ago but way before that. Making Xmas with what we have now would be disastruous, moreso than being late. If you're late, you miss a few hundred millions in sales - maybe. [LOOK AT THIS!]If the crap that I self-host now, which blinks my screen with such ferocity that my head aches, can't find audio/nic drivers, loses windows messages and sends emails without me wanting to - if this would ship, it would cost a lot more to fix, besides showing the world we're incompetent.{LOOK AT THAT!]
We can get it right, and believe you me the management team isn't as casual on the inside as they appear to be in the press.
Why, you ask, wasn't my stuff ready on time? Because everybody works the same way, only intensifying their efforts around milestones. Tests weren't run, bugs were laying dormant, people were allocated to side, pet projects and vendors only pay attention to pri 0 bugs older than 2 weeks (if not longer). It all shows up now, and it's all important. Yes, it's my fault for not screaming earlier, but there must be at least two of us, 'cause I didn't write Vista by me onesy. It's also the manager's fault, for he didn't take steps to streamline my work. It's his manager's fault, too, 'cause he didn't infer from the greater picture that things are not moving progressively. See where I'm going? It's all of us, and the higher the rung we're clinging to, the greater the responsibility.
Punt bugs to Wien, punt to RC1 but at some point you're punting stuff that needs to be fixed. So the delay was necessary.
Firing a number of people now won't do the least bit of good. As far as I see, everyone is serious, concerned and focused. They might have made mistakes in the past, but now we don't have time for this. Now we fix the crap, ship it and only then behead those who slept on the job. A massive re-org would create even more unease in the audience (press, schmanalysts), would introduce more distractions in the ranks and is downright risky. Where do you find the "good" leader? He might come with different ideas, processes, he might have a hidden agenda or he might be just as (or more) incompetent than those before him. We know what we have to do, and we're pretty much in fire drill mode now - we don't need new management to tell us that. What we need is time, and unfortunately for our reputation, we got it today.
When Vista is done, by all means, find those behind alphaLH and fire them in the worst way possible. Publicly ridicule them. Never mention whatever good they've done in the past, it's all negated by their ulterior screw-ups. Regardless of how rich they might be, they'll still have to look in the mirror and see a persona non grata for the rest of their lives. Can't see more appropriate punishment.
My naive wish is that we don't let up the rhythm, now that we've got an extension. I hope we get angry, finish the job and beat the new RTM date. That'll be a first and who knows, maybe one of the haters will say "not bad, MS.." Doesn't that motivate you?
By Anonymous, at 11:52 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There are a number of other MS employees blogging who recognize that Apple has simply ripped Microsoft a new one... He also points out what I've been saying - that Windows is now such a mess that only a total rewrite can save it.
hi there, nice blog. Today's announcement is of course no surprise to anyone inside MS. The only surprise is that it was such a short delay announced.
Basically we do not believe Vista will make January 2007 or even March 2007. Anyone with any access knows what a frankenstein's monster NT is on the inside. At some point there is a law of diminishing returns trying to do anything to it at all, it seems like that limit is being reached today. The release is pushed back because of bugs but fixing those bugs will create more bugs. It is just godawful to be honest. And the process gets in the way at every step.
At some point we will have to do something and i know at least some in my team privately agree with me. We will have to throw out everything and start again. This is what Apple did with OSX, and sure it was painful, but it worked and now they're kicking our asses. We should have done that in 2000. Now it is even more obvious we should do it. Start again and just run a compatibility layer on top. Apple did it with classic why can't we???
IF we manage to ship vista at ALL then it is a miracle and the absolute last rev we can possible do working like this. It is insane the manhours wasted rearranging a house of cards. We need to START AGAIN PEOPLE.
After vista if we don't do this i am outta here. For every step forward there is a step back. After 5 years who can be proud of the actual distance forward they have come??
I didn't sign up for this BS. And you know the rumors that apple has a full DBFS for 10.5. I want to be working on that, i need to feel like i'm creating something good, not fighting 10 years old cruft every step of the way. I know i am not the only person who feels this way!!
And BTW mini PLEASE enable https on your comments page. You would have to be nuts to post here from inside the network via plain http. Anyone else wants to do it, do what i do, email the comment (encrypted) to a friend and get him to post it. Anyone who thinks SMG doesn't have a filter looking at anything to or from minimsft is kidding themselves.
OH and "PM61" give me a break. No-one is personally criticising you or saying you are a bad person. I don't hate my colleagues and we are all in the same boat. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture after 5 years but just try to zoom out and look at the outcome, no-one should be proud of this. Just imagine what we all could have done if we were truly free to code our hearts out and create the next generation. Just imagine what you would have achieved in five years working for Apple. I don't hate MS but everything is so tangled up now. We need to change because eventually we will be so tangled up we can't do anything at all, and that's the end of that. I honestly do not believe we can ship another OS in this way. Either we do an OSX or Vista is the end of the line, YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!!!
By Anonymous, at 12:58 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
They have promised to fix all the woes of Internet users for several years now... time they did some of that, or simply hide in their cubes eating humble pie, reading the news about their stock with FF.
In no way, shape or form am I an M$ fan/apologist, but to be fair SP 2 did fix quite a few internet-related problems, especially those that relate to user stupidity/laziness. The (admittedly halfassed, but much better than nothing) firewall and automatic updates are on by default now, and automatic updates now include periodic virus removal of mass-propagating worms. I (and many others here) would argue that shitstorms like Mydoom or Sasser should have never happened in the first place, but it is still true that Microsoft has taken the steps necessary to ensure such widespread infections will (most likely) not happen again. Also, IE 7 included a popup blocker, which was another major problem people had with the web. It wasn't the first or best popup blocker, not by a long shot, but it was nonetheless a welcome solution for the hordes of people oblivious to all non-M$ solutions.
My point is that M$ is indeed answering the woes of internet users, though they're definitely taking their time about it. Seems like they wait until the last possible minute, when the viruses are becoming insane (I myself was infected within 20 minutes of a fresh XP install because I had the audacity to leave my network cable plugged in before installing a firewall) and users are flocking to Firefox (or at the very least, installing third-party popup blockers) en-masse and THEN they go, "Woah! Shit! This isn't going away on its own! Maybe we'd better do something."
This really shouldn't be acceptable, but most users don't know any better. It's up to us to inform the masses--Microsoft solutions are slow coming, and usually the least effective.
You want to know what Windows has so many "features"? Well, here ya go!
Here's a freebie from a former softie about reasons for schedule delays:
What I saw in MS was PM's pushing hard for features:
* even if it meant that the test combinations would be very large, so the product couldn't not be tested properly.
* even if it couldn't be done properly in the time allocated. After all an estimate of time was made, now all of those features mus go in the product evne if things are taking longer than expected.
* even if the product was falling apart at the seems b/c every other pm was doing the same thing.
In fact, people often played schedule chicken. It didn't matter if you were running late by the metric of the day as long as another group was running later. (Apply this to any metric at almost any level. For example: metric = bugs, group = single dev, or dev lead with a few reports, or dev mgr or GM comparing against other dev mgrs or GM).
There is lip service to work/life balance in teams, but it is quickly counter acted with how we need to push harder and how we need to do more (get features done faster, fix more bugs, etc. than before).
Dev leads with easier areas would look good as their dev could fix bug more quickly and then bargain to make their devs look good at review tiem by graciously taking on other simple bugs from more loaded groups. It was always begruding and always made to seem like this huge thing -- no team spirit or comradery.
When I hear the folks above talk about buckling down and working hard, they sound like suckers. In a few months (maybe even 8 months), they will look back and realize that they got hoodwinked. Why? Well, what did it accomplish. At best, they got promoted and got 10K more/year. Not that much considering the many 80 (or more) hr weeks that they put in. Not that much considering the fellow down the hall who managed to isolate himself better and still within a few percent on all awards and who still gets to revel in shipping the product. Not that much considering the vp's and partners who got huger stock awards for getting for poor person to work so hard for so little, dangling some small carrot in front of them. So sad. So true.
Now get back to work. Vista and Office have to ship asap. I sitll have some msft stock that I would like to make some profit on one day.
If you want to get some insight into Sinofsky, just read his blog (google for tech talk), to let his record speak for him. Don't bother leaving a comment there that refers to this blog. It won't be left there. He will not allow any comments that somehow refer to this blog -- even comments that refer to blogs which refer to this blog! He blames it on the anonymous nature of the blog (google "ad hominem").
By Anonymous, at 1:11 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass.
Office 12 adoption is also more likely to happen when hardware turns over.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/07/08/_offi
While Microsoft claims 600 million Office users analysts estimate 30% are still running Office 1997, having skipped Office 2000 and Office XP.
The prime reason is Office 97 is "good enough" for these users' needs.
That's a worrying fact for Microsoft which is now working on the successor to Office 2003, codenamed Office 12, which is due in the second half of 2006.
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/gc/webletter/mic
But with Office 2000 supported by Microsoft into 2009, most companies don't need to be in a hurry to migrate to anything, if their primary goal is to remain in a supported state.
By Anonymous, at 2:50 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
And this guy confirms what I've been saying, too - that Microsoft has been steadily making their products LESS AND LESS "intuitive" and more complex than the user can deal with AND the "featuritis" has NOTHING to do with customer demand!
.NET paint program similar to Adobe PhotoShop.]
"It works beautifully and it's got a nice 80-85% of Photoshop functionality. [Reference to a
Sure the last 20% is where most of the work is, but still, the original poster **may** be a bit off the mark. Perhaps he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about."
Not sure where to start on this one...
Being the original poster, and a professional photographer, I suspect I know more about the complexity of Photoshop than most. Being a professional developer for 20+ years, I suspect I know more about what is complex and what isn't than most.
Being a 5-year vet of Microsoft as a partner (no longer there), I know a bit more about how the Microsoft machine works than most. That's why I left.
Yes, it is true that if you are willing to live with 'good enough', you never have to do the final 20% that contains 80% of the complexity. It is that last 20% in Photoshop that makes it dramatically different from the rest of the photo manipulation software out there, and that adds to the complexity that I speak of.
Ever use the LAB space in Photoshop? How about paths? I don't even have to ask about the channels.
The fact is, software is created to solve a problem. The balance is that the easier it is for the user to accomplish a complex task, the more complex the underlying software has to be. The original Windows was a great example of this. It took on the task of managing the resources in the system and presented the user with an easy-to-use interface that removed the complexity of the underlying computer.
Windows today, as with most Microsoft software, has gone back to surfacing the complexity for the user to deal with, making the underlying software easier to write and test. CRM 3.0 has been mentioned here as an example. It would have taken longer and more complex code to make that product something usable out of the box. Instead, Microsoft took the path of surfacing the complexity and making it the users problem, which made the software easier to write and test.
I use Photoshop here as an example of a company that is able to go the other way and still ship solid software on a very reasonable schedule. Photoshop hides the underlying complexity of dealing with color space translation, leaving the user to focus on the image. This requires very complex technology under the hood, and is the reason Photoshop stands alone. Yes, there are a lot of 80% solutions out there for a fraction of the price. None will ever be as successful as Photoshop because Adobe is willing to go the extra mile. The customer is king in their eyes.
Adobe's products are not designed by inbred PMs that have never seen a customer. They are designed by Adobe customers. Photoshop and the rest of the CS suite are designed by professional illustrators and professional photographers, the ultimate users of the final product. Adobe creates very significant user teams as part of the design and development process. Compare this to the Microsoft process.
Imagine if Vista (Longhorn, Longerhorn...) had actually been designed from the start by sitting down with real users of XP in different segments (home, professional, enterprise) and really exploring what they wanted out of their OS, then kept those very professional in the process to make priority decisions as the development cycle unfolded. You wouldn't have half the features because they have no value to the customer. It would have shipped by now. It would actually solve problems.
WinFS is a great example of a file system designed by lunatic engineers and inbred GPM teams (led by a totally lunatic DirPM) without a clue as to what a real customer even looks like. Complexity in the design for complexity sake is the kiss of death. Complexit
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Programs are written by programmers, they aren't willed into existence by Gantt charts, no matter what PMs think.
Contrary to what you may think, what managers do actually matters for the quality and timeliness of a project; bad management results in much longer development times and much lower quality than good management. Of course, even if the management was perfect, the managers still estimated the wrong release dates, which is also their fault. Vista has an additional problem in that it's not only delayed again and again, it also keeps losing features compared to what was announced.
And there is little excuse for any of that at Microsoft; both OS X and Linux already ship right now pretty much all the features that were originally announced for Vista (and then some!), those features were developed in less time than Microsoft had and with far less resources.
(2) It could also be that the size of the projects Microsoft undertakes have increased beyond the ability of Microsoft's processes to manage them. Allchin already admitted this in several press stories about Vista. The process choke you see now is Microsoft management struggling to come up with something that works for software projects that are much larger than were undertaken by Microsoft in the past. Your rant suggests that they are not going to solve the problem any time soon.
You can remove the subjunctivity from your post and it would be more accurate: Microsoft CANNOT manage a project the size of Vista. The fact that devs spend virtually no time writing code is a pretty solid indicator. Between the checkin system and the RIs between depots almost all time is spent on process. Maintaining a Longhorn test machine can take two days a week by itself, and managers' only response to complaints about the frustration of the process is to issue silkily-worded threats about "performance expectations."
In DMD we'd have dozens of checkins getting rejected due to autosmoke failures having nothing to do with the checkins, every subnmission being rejected on the same two (or two dozen) failures. Network problems, indiv server problems, whatever
Should we be running AppVerifier right now? Walk to the other side of the building and ask someone who isn't in his office. Why are checkins failing? Ditto. What version of LH should we be running on our test boxes? Ditto.
Nobody has ever gotten around to addressing these regular and systemic problems in any way, there is no web page anyone can go to and determine the State of Things Today, and managers take the attitude (1) that as long as some people are functioning then the others must be slackers and (2) this tedium and frustration is separating the men from the boys. That's a totally lousy Randroid attitude and managers like that should be farmed away.
Nobody seemed interested in making the process any easier, and there was talk of more quality gates, such as a (*shudder*) threat-modeling code analysis tool.
I'm a lot happier on a non-Vista project.
By Cheopys, at 12:43 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yes, and that's why Linux kernel release dates keep slipping, while Linux distributions just keep shipping new releases and improvements like a Swiss watch.
Turns out, while modularity in the kernel would be nice, it is nowhere near as important as modularity in user-land.
Proves again what I've said - Windows is ONE BIG MESS THAT IS UNFIXABLE!
s -vista-delayed/#comments
Here is a comment that was made to the scoble post
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/window
"There are many great people in the systems division working on Windows but the management is poor. The quality of software is determined by management first and culture second. Microsoft suffers on both. Windows management insists on a monolithic approach where Windows is considered one big program. The development culture favors the cowboy over the professional.
Contrast this with Office where, by design, it consists of a suite of relatively independent programs. As the development progresses management enforces rules so that common components are more difficult to change.
To enforce Steven Sinofsky style management will be nearly impossible in the systems group. During the "Cairo years" the "object model" changed almost weekly. It was clear to me that management knew neither what an object model was nor what the implications of one design decision over another would be. They certainly did not know what the consequences of changing it so frequently were. These same managers and the cowboy "architects" they nurture remain in the group today.
Another key failure of Windows management is the focus on bundling. Not only must things be not-modular, they must have system dependencies. The root of this is fear. In the face of falling operating system kernel prices (open software) management seeks to expand the size of the operating system.
Microsoft systems division, it's so, well, IBM like isn't it? Yet IBM has moved on. Perhaps Vista will ship and perhaps it will be the last great giant monolithic operating system. Or maybe Windows XP was the last...
Comment by Henry -- March 22, 2006 @ 8:32 pm "
By Anonymous, at 3:16 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Didn't you read the press release? Doesn't say anything about a slip, delay, or any culpability or responsibility on MS's part.
First of all Microsoft is ON TARGET and ON TRACK:
"[Vista]is ON TARGET to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006. Microsoft is ON TRACK to complete the product this year..."
So they're on target, and the biggest computer buying season of the year simply wasn't part of the target.
Allchin also says in the release that he's ON TRACK to deliver stability and great out-of-the-box features. What kind of target do you want from the guy? A ship date? Sheesh.
Microsoft did this for the OEMs.
"the industry requires greater lead time to deliver Windows Vista on new PCs during holiday."
As we all know, OEMs need at least six years to shift to a new OS. Microsoft only gave them five years to get ready for Vista. Slow down, guys.
Business customers also asked for a delay:
"Because of the way businesses test and deploy software, it makes sense for Microsoft volume licensing customers to receive windows Windows Vista starting in November of this year."
As all of you business IT people know, November and December are the months that every business IT department prefers for testing and debugging new software. That's prime time for working late nights, weekends, through the holidays, etc. to get big upgrades ready for Jan. 1. MS is simply accommodating those desires.
By Anonymous, at 5:01 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If only Jean Louis was as suave as Rico...
Yet another slip in the Vista release is high profile sure, but it's not unique nor even out of the ordinary. It's merely a symptom of the failure of the highest levels of strategy and management execution that begins with, but won't be resolved until Ballmer and Gates are removed and replaced with people with higher moral standards that are better in touch with reality. These two aggressive monopolists have managed to galvanize their competitors into extraordinary levels of collaboration around products like Java, J2EE, Eclipse, Linux, OpenOffice: the likes of which have never been seen in our industry, if in any other industry before.
By time and time again fulfilling the fears of worse-case scenarios when exercising those monopolies they have alerted governments at all levels around the world to the dangers of "entrusting" the information strategies, (in fact the electronic heritage of a nation) to proprietary formats.
Over a consistent period Ballmer and Gates' Microsoft have managed to alienate its customers on an almost daily basis, leading to the existence of the "ABM" fraternity. The "Anything But Microsoft" decision goes way beyond normal levels of technical standards and consumer preference. Fraternity members are in all levels of organizations and consumer markets. It's not that an ABM decision disregards all technical facts, it's that it places a higher value on the values of openness, respect and professional standards that are so often lacking in the MS of Ballmer and Gates. As such, they exhibit a level of distain for this Microsoft that can be described as nothing less than hatred.
Finally, by exercising their absolute power, Ballmer and Gates have created a company culture in their own image. One that is renowned for its delusionary arrogance: its self-serving adoration and its reactive petulance. They treat their partners with absolute disdain: encouraging them to invest on their platform to in the attempt to create successful markets, where substantial success will be crushed by a Microsoft imitation that is both cross subsidized from monopoly revenues and often pushed on customers via the OS distribution channel.
How does this affect Vista? The above illustrates why there are so many things in the operating system that shouldn't be there: the inability for scores of successive managers to effect change and why the situation has persisted for so long and across so many MS products.
For the record: "The emperor has no clothes"
By NoMonkeyBoy, at 5:06 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Would have been good timing to release Vista"
Meh.
Enderle sums it up nicely:
"Consumer Market for Consumer PCs Takes Major Hit
03/21/2006 by Rob Enderle
Few things could have done more damage to the 2006 PC market then the slip of Windows Vista. This will have an adverse impact on a broad cross section of components and platform PC suppliers who depend on the 4th quarter to make their numbers. The big issue is consumers typically do not wait to buy, and will chose to buy something else and now wait until later in 2007 to purchase their computers.
Now all eyes turn to Apple with what now is an unprecedented opportunity to take major market share in the critical 4th quarter. If their expected Media Center competitive product can make it to market as expected, they could gain significant share in a market looking to buy new product but now only seeing it from Apple. I personally can not recall Apple ever getting an opportunity like this.
Overall this is showcasing what may be significant execution problems at Microsoft which has already slipped Windows Vista several years and had been cutting features to make its 2006 ship date yet still was unable to make even that ship date. Execution problems of this level do not bode well for any company, and this level of problem for a company as critical as Microsoft is to the industry could easily drive Microsoft partners to alternative platforms to better assure their own financial performance.
In short, this reminded a lot of folks critical to Microsoft's long term success how dangerous it is to be tied to any one vendor which is never wise for any dominant vendor to do because it increases, dramatically, the need for a secondary vendor."
By Anonymous, at 10:18 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Typical management sins listed - no surprises here - trust me, it's ALWAYS management's fault!
.Net / Managed Code Fiasco, Longhorn Reset, Longhorn Basics Unfunded Mandates - Fire him and revoke his options before he retires.
A Rogue's Gallary at Microsoft
Here is a short list of the chief villians and idiots and their sins. They've made MS a much less successful company in the last 10 years.
[1] Steve Balmer - Prancing Public Buffon Antics, Customer Defocus, No Technology Depth - Fire him and get a real President with vision.
[2] Jim Allchin -
[3] Brian Valentine - Ugly WAR Team Tyranny, COSD techno Luditism, Physical Violence & random Furniture tossing - Fire him immediately before he assaults someone.
[4] Will Poole - Open MPAA/RIIA Bedfellow & DRM Moron, Windows Client Lack of Vision, wasteful DMD Codec Wars - Fire him immediately before he dorks something else.
[5] Craig Munde - Billions wasted on WebTV, Tigre Media Servers, UPNP Community Alienation and ineffectual Politicking in WA DC. - Fire him retroactively and get back the BILLIONS he's wasted.
[6] Chris Jones - Semi-talented Wunderkid VP wannabe, an example of good old boy insider promo, Mr. Cut-Cut-Cut if it's not done by 8/05, Oh wait - we're slipping again! - Should be made an IC Program Manager somewhere useless like MSN or RedWest.
[7] Jawad Khaki - Perennial GM/PUM humiliation & Burnout, Random High Priority Demands, Warring with BrianV, Entire Org underleveled and underappreciated - Fire him and get a decent people manager
[8] Longhorn Basics Teams - Random Unfunded Mandates, Arbitrary and last minute Decisions on Quality and Security requirements, destroyed the ability of the product teams to deliver on their planned commitments - Put them in stocks in the village square for and let all the product teams beat them like dogs.
[9] WinSE - Minimial actual development, chronic pushback on produc teams, weekly security cluster fucks, nastiest possible working environment at WAR teams. - Fire them all and outsource Sustaining Engineering to actual engineers (in India or wherever).
I'm sure you can add to this list of rogue and also add to their voluminous sins. The real problem is that "partner" class players at Microsoft are "made men" and are not launched when they do major damage. Instead, they are just moved so they can do more of the same.
By Shuttle 999 to oblivion, at 3:43 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"What do you think is the best group to be in for a new hire?
A startup company would be a good choice.
In a smaller company, you know what your contribution is worth."
I can't echo that enough. Five years within the Windows group immediately after college was devastating! I came away doubting my self-worth, doubting my technical skills and wondering if I should go work for McDonalds or just slip into a suicidal depression.
I threw an amazingly crappy resume around for a couple weeks and was awakened by the amazed reactions on the faces of interviewers at startups when I demonstrated that I really knew my stuff.
I quickly found a great job at a startup with co-workers who are very cooperative, friendly, and encouraging. The money is better, the environment is better, the hours are better...why the hell did I ever work at Microsoft?
(Oh, and I know a few hiring managers who find it refreshing to see a resume that does not contain MSFT experience. In Seattle, it seems that everyone has done a stint there.)
By Anonymous, at 8:22 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
This guy is right about trying to reform management - it's a losing battle, er, a LOST battle...
...
This thread may have jumped the shark some time ago, but I'll just add one or two more horse flogs myself, just because.
Summary of threads thus far:
-Vista's not ready
-much of middle and upper Mgmt at MS sucks
-Vista sucks resources
-Working for a large bureaucratic monolithic company sucks.
-Mini's premise of the lean and mean applies directly to this fustercluck. Talk about vindication. OOOeeee Jethro. Let's boot some overpaid,underperforming exec dead-weight out the door.
Did I miss anything?
Lots, but enough of the kvetching already. Get out or get fired up to make changes in your sphere of influence.
Don't complain (like we all do) about stupid boss tricks; you cannot change the 'ineffectual middle mgmt suck-ups' (tribute to 'Almost Live') who will end up in the upper echelons of a large corp food-chain. You can only compete with them - and to do so, you must dive into the manure pit they own.
Don't complain about some loud-mouth sales hack who's now in charge of the company. He got there because he's a friend of Mr Rich. He'll stay because Mr Rich has been out of touch with reality for yrs (to be fair, you would be too, if you had a phalanx of minions who lied to you about what was really going on)
Don't complain, it only makes you sound like a Monty Python sketch and no one will listen to you anyway. Nothing's wrong. Just keep moving. Don't look at the camera. Just keep going, like you're fighting...
Until real leaders ascend to positions of influence, the slow inexorable wheel will continue to grind. Don't get in its way without a backup plan, or you'll get a career owiee.
My backup plan is working well, thank you.
Do I miss not working at MS anymore?
Uhm, yeah, I miss it like I'd miss barbed-wire boxer shorts.
Should I feel bad for leaving when it got tough?
Oh yeah, real bad. Ohh the guilt.
Lessee how life stacks up post MS 1) I make more money now.(More than enough to compensate for the difference in benefits, and I don't think I'll need that gender-bender benefit anyway)
2) I work far fewer hours. (Still not 40hrs/wk, but does that even exist anymore outside of union ruined shops?)
3) My kids actually don't have to be re-introduced to me each wknd.
4) I don't look like something out of a George Romero movie anymore.
5) I remembered how to smile again. (My wife was the first to notice that. )
6) Did I mention I make more money? ( For shame, I'm such a materialist. I should be back there in the trenches making life better for
Uhh, help me out here...C'mon guys, there's someone out there who's life will be better when Vista-to-be-repackaged-or-renamed eventually gets pushed out the door...C'mon, someone? Buehhler?
Oh yeah, that's right, I DO make life better for some people; they're called patients. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the healthcare industry is happy with Unix, and other working, stable Windows platforms and has no plans whatsoever to ever bother with Longwait/Vista/4th-and-long.
Would I ever come back? Uhm yeah. In a minute.
Hey! What are you doing with that net? Hey! That's not my jacket!! These sleeves are way too long. No, thanks, but I've had my shots. Gee that's a big needle......
Nightie-night.
By Anonymous, at 9:52 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
OK things that matter to uses in software in the last 15 years (I'll assume PC users only). And I'm assuming you mean average users:
.NET has been a goal on compiler design / operating system design for 3 decades (do a search on pcode). I don't know what you mean by nobody wants it. I'm not surprised on OS needs to use lower level stuff.
1) integrated office suites so skills translate across multiple products
2) drag and drop
3) cut and past working for complex objects
4) Object linking and embedding
5) multitasking really working
6) virtual memory
7) 3D desktop (I'll answer)
8) complex automatic association between programs and data types
As for your objections:
As for 3D, 3D expands the size of the virtual screen. The effects allow "more stuff" in the same amount of screen real estate. Apple's dock is a great example of this.
As for my OS feel free to talk about any of them. I know all the big consumer OSes.
I have to disagree: you don't have a problem. There's no need to fire anyone. It may be frustrating; it may take another five years, but the people at the very top know this simple truth: In financial terms, it doesn't matter. That it won't be more secure? Doesn't matter. That it will be slow? Bloated? Will crash at the slightest hiccup? Doesn't matter.
What matters is this: your customers, the ones at home or the ones buying for a corporation - not your fellow MS, Linux or Mac geeks, but normal people - don't have a clue. They've been left behind, they can barely turn the computer on and check their e-mail. What does WINFS mean to them? Nothing. Less than zero.
People will keep buying your products because they still have no choice and don't know any better: Linux is for hard-core no-life slashdot-reading geeks only; Macs are for people willing to pay thousands of dollars for the trhill of turning their computer on, who bleat on and on about their "fabulous design" while working with their illegally downloaded MS Office...
So shouldn't you relax, comrade? Shouldn't you just let the Socialist Republic of Micro Soft keep on rolling god awful products at exhorbitant profits? Can't you see your politburo has it all under control?
If what's left of your spine itches, here's a sure way of relieving the pain: just rub it with your big fat paycheck.
-S
By Anonymous, at 2:54 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It's all about the EU and breaking the Linux server market...
"The ship is heavy, hard to steer and will keep going, when it stops it will turn around or may be it will go down, maybe it will be for the better, who knows.
Be the rats to jump off the ship, except that ship ain't sinking, because it's too big."
At over 100 feet longer than the Mauritania, this ship truly is unsinkable. All these unnecessary lifeboats taking up space on the decks...
Talk around the vending machines in legal is that the delay has nothing to do with coding, slipped schedules or anything else. That's why very few heads will actually roll and most will simply shuffle positions. Actual reasons have to do with no product, NONE, shipping until after the mess with the EU is cleaned up. From what I've heard so far, if there are further major delays with EU that can't be solved by set-asides and scholarships, then expect another major delay beyond what has already been announced. At 25-40% annual compounded growth rates for Linux servers, the last thing that's going to happen is for the EU to be able to do what US-Justice failed to do, which is force disclosure of MS server protocols so competitors can copy MS's IP and gain market share in the market segment on MS's dime. Samba has never been 100% compatible and that's the way its going to stay, come hell or high water. Regardless of how much time/delay it takes, Samba and Vista will never be as interoperable as Samba is with PDC, AD, AS currently. If it takes another 6 month delay, another 9 months, whatever. Eventually EU will capitulate whether Commerce and the WTO has to step in or not. Server space market share has either reached a tipping point, or already passed a tipping point depending on which internal study you read. Whichever study you read/believe, make sure its one of the ones that takes into account free installs of their versions of AS/ES, such as Cent/OS. According to those studies, the server space has already passed the tipping point, that's why we're seeing what's happening with Mass/ODF/XML, and some of the large desktop migrations that have been documented internally. And remember, any large migrations you get a whiff of, you know where to report them, get details and do it. A single 6 digit desktop migration has repercussions far and wide on many other customers and partners (and media), and we are staring at over a dozen of them and have been unsuccessful in turning any of them around so far.
So unless anything settles with the EU in the coming months, expect further delays regardless of what they are blamed on.
By Turk, at 10:08 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I am one of those lame testers that were "removed" approximately a month ago to pave the way for the full transition of BVT/FVT to IDC.
While I was employed for the past 11 months testing the code produced by Windows Core, I came across a staggering discovery, and that was that the majority of our tests when they failed spectacularly were deemed "Approved by Component Developer".
This was just shocking to me at first to pass packages and updates for GDR that were incapable of being removed or broke compatability with such things as Winlogon if the machine had not yet been activated. Now that was a fun issue that was thankfully repaired after a major complaint that I filed.
So, this really does not surprise me that everything started to slip. I have seen what Vista and Longhorn Server (as of the last build I tested) have been so am confident that I will not be upgrading my personal computers to it any time soon.
It is just scarry to see things like the ability to access the "Help Viewer" through the Login screen to gain full control over the system (Yes, it was still there as of 5283).
As a hint, it involves a URL and EXPLORER.EXE and you can gain Admin Rights.
By Anonymous, at 11:58 AM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Insurance company considering switching to SUSE because they was robbed by Microsoft...
As an IT Manager that was basically blackmailed by MS into purchasing their upgrade strategy licensing. We were promised upgrades over 2 years ago. We were promised XP migration support too. It never happened but, we've been forced to keep paying. Paying for what? Vaporware!
We have over 250 Windows 2000 systems because XP wouldn't run our in-house apps and MS wouldn't help even though they promised us assistance in migration. We spent tens of thousands of dollars to MS for basically nothing!
We have 20% of the divisional departments running on Suse now. If this test works for 1 year, our division will be a no MS house in 2 years. We just can't afford MS anymore. If our division can do it, then the entire corporation is considering the transition as well.
Yes, we are paying for Suse support agreements. We're not a "free" user. As a big insurance company, we do need to cover our bases but we cannot afford to waste money for another year or two.
By Anonymous, at 12:59 PM
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Actually Hitler once said to an associate that he actually knew the Jews weren't responsible for all the evils in the world - but he had to have somebody to unite everybody else against, and the Jews were the easiest target.
Personally I think he was entirely anti-Semitic, but that would be no surprise as Germany was a major Catholic country and Catholicism has been pushing anti-Semitism for hundreds of years up until the last Pope decided to "apologize". So it would be no more unlikely for Hitler to be anti-Semitic than it would be for some white person from the America South to be anti-black. It's simply part of the culture.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It sounds like he/she doesn't really care about the product except they missed the Big Kill.
qz
I know this probably self-evident to the slashdot crowd, but I have to wonder if Microsoft is increasingly having trouble hiring the so-called "best and brightest" that they used to. I'm 25, a year out of grad school with a masters in CS, and have been contacted by Microsoft recruiters on several occasions on the basis of my online resume alone. I have turned them down immediately, because I just don't like the company very much. Their reputation as a great place to work has suffered. A friend of mine (admittedly a longtime Apple fanboy) once told me that he thought if I went to work for Microsoft, that would be far more "evil" than my current job in defense contracting!
With Linux having become a mainstream choice among college students in CS, surely the next generation developer pool that Microsoft will hire from is being diminished, and indeed, the best future developers are most likely the ones who would get into Linux/GNU/open source/free software early on. If they can no longer hire the best and brightest, their engineering capability is will suffer, and perhaps we are starting to see some of that.
All I need is the Holodeck for all my needs. I will program in a virtual fantasy where the ships psychologist (with attractive boobies) is giving a blowjob while the virtual Doc is hitting me up with a hypospray of extasy!
Ehh, but most of the time I would just hang out in the holideck going for the record fuck-fest burnout. The longer I last (and conquest) the more points I earn. And all the millions of women would bow before me like a GOD.
After all, this is MY virtual universe. Want your own? Step into the holodeck!
Life is not for the lazy.
"I just tried it with my Dell disk. It worked just fucking fine. "
He probably meant to try it on a different computer than your dell.
Ok, flamebait, but here goes. I by no means advocate the use of M$ products in any way. However, I have to say that M$ actually delaying the release has impressed me in a way. It looks as if they might actually be learning something after all.
Rather than push out a product that is simply not ready they decided to get their shit together and wait until they're convinced the products are good enough for the market. That is very atypical M$ for sure.
Of course the products may still not be what consumers are expecting even if they do wait. This is a very big rollout for the M$ crowd. They need to get this right or face even more market share loss to other OS's. They will probably continue to lose popularity anyway but overall, IMHO, I think it's a good move.
I hate to break it to these punks with Microsoft business cards, but they really aren't in the position to call for heads to roll. Either the market will go elsewhere or the board of directors will make a decision if things come to that. Programmers live in a vacuum and think they know it all.. but guess what folks, you don't know everything. Management in whatever company you work for will make what you think to be bad decisions. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. They face decisions that have many factors that the workerbees don't know or have to worry about. If you are as good as you think you are and move up the food chain, then you can bitch.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Sure, the multi-billionaire co-founder and CEO of the company will be fired because some of the 'hired help' think it should be that way. Right.
If the products were on time and stellar, the same employees would want the credit. Late and behind schedule, fire the CEO. Right.
If this attitude is commonplace, it would mean there is something wrong at Microsoft however, some kind of attitudinal or culture type problem
First you have to explain the "Vision" of Vista, that's the easy part.
Windows Vista: It's Mac OS X with out the annoying "You have to buy our shiny cool hardware" attitude.
But then you have to explain why its so late, that is a bit more difficult.
You see inside Vista there is this big pot full of spaghetti called the kernel. Inside this pot full of spaghetti is this really buff hamster trying to keep it's wheel spinning while the spaghetti clings to the wheel and tries to keep it from spinning. The Microsoft beta testers sit around slowly moving around the spaghetti until its all pulling on the wheel. If the hamster can't handle keeping the wheel spinning with all that spaghetti slowing down the wheel, well the poor thing has a heart attack and dies. Then the Microsoft developers have to start over and train a new and better hamster. Only its starting to look like there isn't a hamster alive buff enough to keep that wheel spinning inside all of that spaghetti.
He asks for no money and does a so so job. Do you bad mouth him or make him dinner?
Now what if a professional plumber does a so so job and charges you more than you think it's worth?
Different situation right?
FOSS is your uncle Bob. He ain't asking for anything and he's contributing his time and effort so you're either greatful regardless of the result (particularly if he does manage even a mediocre fix) or you need to be slapped into the real world and told the world owes you nothing.
MS/Apple is the professional plumber. You call in MS Office when you want the job done professionally and properly and you expect to pay for it. If it's not done right you're not happy.
Key point here for most users is that FOSS is free as in beer. Most users couldn't fix the source code worth a damn and don't want to know how.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I read through the bunch of them and saw a couple I liked, but here's my favorite:
>The migration to Vista will be a passive one, as someone else previously mentioned; appearing on new computers bought by companies.
>The same for home users; a lot of people do not know enough to figure out what hardware upgrades they need ; so again, it will appear on new computers.
Is this what Windows has become? An upgrade no one wants, forced upon them because the new hardware they're buying doesn't support anything less?
Compare this to OS X, where people fall all over themselves trying to get the newest version running on their old hardware because there's actual value in the new features.
So Vista has its guts ripped out, slips, and we wait another 5 years for a potentially insipring version of Windows, meanwhile Apple ships another 3 updates to OS X.
I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass.
By the way, do you have any references for that "internal linux distro"?
...if you can stand the annual random 9-11% layoffs and My Little Pony's incoherent public outbursts.
Yeah, I'm in love, too.
I'm wondering if she's already married. You know, female geeks have a much higher chance of getting married to non-geeks than male geeks have of getting married to non-geeks, because they have, um, wel, for lack of a better word, vaginas.
Don't get me wrong. Having a vagina doesn't make or break you as an engineer. But it simply greatly increases the odds of attracting a male.
Rebecca - none of this is meant to be offensive to you; it's (possibly poor) comedy. I've run across your posts from time to time and find you to be intelligent, witty and insightful. I'm already married. Yes, I'm male and yes, I'm a geek. I should get my wife one of those "I 3 MY GEEK" T-shirts from ThinkGeek, perhaps...
Cheers!
The Empire is dangerous even in decline...
Microsoft looks more vulnerable since anytime since Netscape took the world by storm, only to have Microsoft take it back.
Bill Gates is the Ghengis Khan of the software world. Undefeated in war. Now Steve Ballmer, he's a guy you can compete with. Just as mediocre as any other typical tech CEO caretaker. Microsoft without Bill Gates 100% committed and engaged in controlling the company is not the same fearsome force which came to totally dominate the industry.
It's like Apple without Steve Jobs. Before Jobs returned to resurrect the company, Apple was among the walking dead. The difference is that Jobs is a positive force for change, where Bill Gates is the Grim Reaper of innovative software companies.
I'd just as soon Ballmer stayed on.
Exactly, the manufacturers choose Windows, but that's because everyone wants it. The larger picture is that Windows DOESN'T NEED a new consumer release. Everyone's excited about x360, ps3, and their RAZR. After we got online with Win95, no consumer really cares much what they're running. If they don't need to purchse antivirus with Vista (ha) great. Other than that, no one cares. They could probably sell XP 5 years from now.
The delay is bad because for MS because it kills their manufacturing partners and their fanboys with the gaming rigs. But they honestly should make their own OSX, because of their monopoly in business, they really DO have the time.
We fire people for missing a deadline? It's obvious the deadlines was unrealistic. Fire the person responsible for SETTING this unrealistic deadline. Leave the rest to finish the job.
Their competition is the fast times of the tech industry itself. Microsoft or not, in 10 years everyone will be using all-new computers. Microsoft has two products, MS Windows and MS Office, both from 1985, both showing their years. What are they going to do to force those products onto tomorrow's computers?
Not to excuse MS in ay way, shape, or form for Vista (AKA Microsoft DRMOS 2006), but didn't such a rewrite as seems to be proposed go a long way towards killing Lotus Notes and Netscape Navigator?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
But concentrating on software politics is likely to ensure better software tomorrow. And the day after. And the one after that.
Which do you consider more important?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
The China example was perfect for demonstrating why you are such an asshole and a moron. But because you are what you are -- callous and utterly stupid -- you will never understand why. And I am under absolutely no obligation to enlighten you, as my original message was aimed primarly at the intelligent Slashdot readers, not at you.
And it could easily be argued that the moon is made of cheese. Facts are facts.
Duh, you noticed America was not invaded in those wars? America freely decided to interfere with other nations' business. It's not like America can legitimately complain if they shot back. And, those were only military casualties, it was only soldiers being killed (on the American side at least).
Yeah right, they wanted to hit bunkers with ICBMs. Helloooo, when were you born? The whole concept of MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction) is based upon total mutual annihilation of the opposing nations. Do you think you or anyone in the US or USSR would have made it out alive of a World War III?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y