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Why Ballmer Should Leave Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the announcement of Bill Gates' departure from the top spot at Microsoft, CNN Money is carrying an article arguing that Steve Ballmer should step down as well." From the article: "Since Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 in favor of Ballmer, the company has floundered technically and strategically. As the company's chairman, chief software architect and supposed visionary, Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo. But Ballmer has made gaffes of his own in his longtime role as head of the company's business side. They include an undistinguished push into business applications to compete with Oracle, financial maneuvers that have failed to stir the stock - which has slumped 16 percent so far this year - and continuing antitrust problems in the United States and Europe."
He should become the chairman.
Afterall, he is qualified.
Thank you, I'll be here all night.
liqbase
Indeed, the MS anti-trust case is going well for us.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
The entire linux community (and probably Mac as well) is strongly in favor of him remaining!
Right, why don't they bring a bunch of new MBA students in to replace them. The fresh new non-tech oriented ideas will surely revitalize the company. /sarcasm meter explodes
If Ballmer and Microsoft had been wildly successful over the past few years most everyone here would be crying for the Microsoft juggernaut to be sunk or TOTALLY disbanded via political / legal means.
But many say they haven't been wildly successful over the past few years.
Either way the result is the same: people who don't like Microsoft are going to take pot-shots at them.
Cogito Ergo Sum
ballmer's big problem is he is inflicted with IP disease... he thinks MS owns all of its code, PLUS all of the data and programs folks put on their computers.
and he needs a cure or he needs to leave, cash in his options, and disappear to a tropical island someplace under a volcano. like seeks like.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
He said he would stop working there. Now you turn that into a should as fast as possible to turn it into a demand of M$ haters?
How incredibly pathetic. I'll use GeoIP to burn your place down and switch to FreeBSD afterwards!
# Comments are for wusses
chant()
for {Microsoft.Employees}
do
print "Why %borg should step down." (Microsoft.Employees)
rejoice()
for a = 1 to 1000000000
# This comment does nothing, like comments are good for anything anyways.
print "REJOICE! The evil Empire is dead! Long live the mighty penguin!"
main()
while Microsoft.Exists=1
chant()
rejoice()
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
I mean, he did discover that Spyware+Malware=Bad. Give credit where credit is due!
Jeez, CNN! Don't tell them why Ballmer should leave!! It's much more fun for us spectators to watch him flail around inneffectually while his empire crumbles.
What's next, sending CNN field reporters to the kids' library to point out where Waldo is? Maybe that guy who shouts Harry Potter spoilers at children works for CNN as well.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
My stock in a chair making company is way up.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Putting aside Rob Enderle's other failures as an analyst, I see him as simply trying to get back up on the wave of punditry that he completely missed with the revelation of Bill Gates leaving. If Ballmer doesn't leave, no one will care. If he does, then Enderle looks like he has an inside connection or excellent prognostication ability.
In reality, I don't see Mr. Ballmer leaving any time soon. The revolt wasn't due to the shareholders as much as Bill Gates just (apparently) getting sick of the day to day. Steve doesn't seem to share that boredom and he certainly doesn't have the hubris to realize that his leaving would be more beneficial to the stock price than any policy he enacts while in the driver seat.
is like zoo without monkey.5 04066962
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=170460540
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
"Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo"
Google and Yahoo's entire business model is web-based and advertisement based. One could just as easily argue that they deserve blame for having such a fragile model. It's not clear if building these web-based applications will be profitable or sustainable. Google in particular seems to be enjoying the same kind of unquestioning support that many dead dot-comms enjoyed.
Ballmer decided to compete with Oracle and potentially SAP. I don't think M$ can't win against Oracle and SAP, however, looking at growth of Google and Yahoo in same time frame. What he had to do as CEO was so obvious. It was wiser decision to enhance search/web based business to compete Google, Yahoo or anything else than pursuing Oracle with SQL Server and acquiring business software marker like Navision.
If they were wildly successful in recent years geeks would complain.
When they're not successful media and economic pundits plus stock holders complain.
They'd rather anger the geeks than their investors.
Developers: We can use your help.
er....Step Down! Step Down! Step Down!
He's broken all the chairs and had to start throwing interns.
Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, a recent hire from Wal-Mart Stores where he ran the Sam's Club division and previously served as the retailer's chief information officer, is the most likely replacement for Ballmer.
He has one big strike against him: his short tenure at Microsoft, which translates into a lack of familiarity with the company's culture. He's believed to be behind a recent cost-cutting move to force the company's substantial contractor workforce to take an unpaid week off. Since contractors at Microsoft contribute to important projects and are often hired on as full-time employees, the move hurt morale.
But as Wal-Mart's CIO, he bought a lot of software from Microsoft, giving him a valuable perspective as a customer that most executives who rose through the ranks at Microsoft lack.
Microsoft run by a WalMart Exec. The mind boggles ....
heck, the parodies practically write themselves
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Isn't it better for the Linux community for CNN to say this? I mean, is flailing leadership more or less likely to step down when other people say it should?
I think less likely.
i love this company
Who's gonna be the "chair"man, and who will fscking kill Google if Ballmer's to quit MSFT and join Google. OMG! Chairs!!
Two words:
Crazy
lunatic
Ludwig Wittgenstein
My position is coming from a biased perspective as I'm a CEO of a technology company however I do believe that Ballmer should step down and bring some fresh blood in if Microsoft wants to survive.
Microsoft seems to be operating in the mode of a 1990's company and has yet to realize that that the thick-GUI based apps are pretty much history and more over, the OS is a commodity and the whole idea of licenses for OS instances and that being a primary product is effectively dead IMHO.
Office Apps are pretty much commoditized now as well with the advent of OO2.X and now Google jumping into the affrey. Granted Googles product is pretty much a Proof of Concept but it does show where they're headed.
Just some thoughts....
Nick
I'm sorry but,
Que \Que\, n. [Cf. 3d Cue.]
A half farthing. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
I think you mean "cue." 'c' is no where near 'q' on a QWERTY keyboard, are you on Dvorak or something or did you just not know how to spell cue?
Armed with pitchforks and torches, the angry mob of investors and users converged upon the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Chairman Bill had long left the area for the safety of other countries. Although his travels were charitable in name, The Chairman's main intent was to place large moats between him and the beligerent American mobs. And now, the evil president created by the chairman was left to his own devices. President Ballmer was trapped. And there were only a few chairs left in the room. He began to panic; what could he throw to show his might?
No one can defeat the MonkeyBoy!
developers developers developers
my ass, developers
sweaty bald idiot
sweaty bald idiot
sweaty bald idiot
Take the total revenue made by the company over it's entire life and then subtract all the money invested in the company since it was created. In the case of Google, the result is a negative number.
Now that would be a story...
Why should Microsoft have been in such a good position for web based software? It's a completely different chunk of the industry from software sales.
Steve Ballmer was heard saying: "I'll fucking kill CNN!" before a chair was thrown out of his office window.
MSFT sales figures are skyrocketing..
Xbox 360 Sales figures by Peter Moore at E306
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnufsctQnpU
Full 1 hour Microsoft E3 press conference (May 10th 2006)
main speech comes after the "Gears of War" showdown, its worth the wait..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnufsctQnpU
I think he had made a mix of English and French. In French a phrase started with que means something like let in English as in "Let the game begin". In French it would be "Que le jeu commence".
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not Microsoft's #1 fan - I find thier business practices less than satisfying, and their software usually doesn't light my fires, but I have to give them a lot of credit for their business sense, so I'd like to see them do better.
Whether Ballmer leaves or not, there needs to be a shake up in the direction of the company, because in my mind, they've lost sight. Right now, they remind me of Sony: floundering about, trying to do several things at once, and not really winning either user love or support. They throw money at problems in the hope of winning something, but it doesn't seem like they really know what they are going to do when they get there except have another potential monopoly - and I think that's where they are failing. They're trying to recreate the Windows dominance, instead of just competing.
In a sense, it seems like what they keep trying to pursue is power, not money. And it keeps costing them user loyalty and potential revenue.
Take the Xbox: a $4 billion dollar loss. People can get up and shout "But they're number 2 in console sales", but they have lost $4 billion dollars, and it doesn't seem like they're going to do any better this time. Already the 360 in Japan has been a flop (even interesting looking games like "99 Nights" hasn't helped, through perhaps "Lost Planet" and "Blue Dragon" (if I got the name right) might help), their Xbox lead made users irritated by claiing that "nobody cares about backwards compatibility", a stance that he had to back pedal from as fast as possible. Then again, Sony's trying to figure out how to shoot their foot while sticking it in their mouth at the same time, so maybe they have a chance unless the Wii is as cool as people expect it to. But the Xbox division seems intent on "dominating" the gaming industry. As a counterpoint, look at Nintendo: 3rd place (whenever you take out the handhelds, which I never understand why people ignore), but profitable - and they don't care about being "first", just in making money on every sale.
Cable TV chasing, application server in big iron areas that hasn't panned out - it just seems like Microsoft's just throwing darts at a board, from what seems like an infinite supply of darts supplied by the Office and Windows monopoly. But if Google chips a little bit there, Apple a little bit there, all of the sudden bleeding money doesn't seem like a good idea.
My recommendation: they focus on what will make them money, not what will get them power. My father once made a comment that Bill Gates is intent on keeping Larry Ellison the 2nd richest man in the world (or in that area) by not porting MS SQL Server to Linux, Solaris, OS X, and everything else that they can. What if MS Office was *truly* ported to OS X (including true Outlook support instead of the "almost but close" version), with MS Project and Visio, and on Linux?
Instead of trying to make the world "support our monopoly", new leadership at Microsoft could focus on "what makes money?" Yes, there is a danger in making, say, SQL and Office for OS X and Linux, because that would potentially decrease the Windows desktop sales. But at the same time, it could ensure that if Windows ever goes away, they still have a steady source of income in the future - and it could make them a lot of money now.
It's a hard change to go from "We dominate the PCs, leverage that dominance and protect it" to "What do our customers want, and how can we fill that gap". Windows dominance has worked so well for so long, that I don't think MS can chance until that dominance is truly challenged. If Apple gets some sort of DarWine system working, if Vista keeps getting delayed, if Google actually makes the OS not matter - MS could be in trouble.
Granted, the odds are, nothing's going to happen to MS. People have predicted their demise for years, and I don't see things changing for them for 10 years. On the other hand, you never know when that "next big thing" that blows away the cu
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Whose to say Gates made a mistake letting google and yahoo create web based software? It's MS modus operandi to let others pioneer a field then they take it over. We all know the PC story and how IBM and apple and others pioneered it. Same with Wordprocessing and office software. And what about Programming IDEs?.
Now look at what is happening in the field of PDAs and telephones. And of course there's the Xbox which came lat to the party as well. And one might even speculate MS will make a bigger move on the Server side of computing soon.
MS is always late the to party. Pioneers get the arrows. Settlers get the land.
One can hardly say that google's web apps are either the wave of the future or that in the End it won't be MS that controls them. There was nothing defective about Gates strategy, it has worked in the past quite well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://blog.wired.com/fightclub/index.album?i=0
Unproven? Let's look at revenue numbers, shall we?
4Q 2004: $1.03B gross, $204MM net
1Q 2005: $1.26B gross, $369.2MM net
2Q 2005: $1.384B gross, $342.8MM net
3Q 2005: $1.578B gross, $381.2MM net
4Q 2005: $1.92B gross, $372.2MM net
1Q 2006: $2.25B gross, $592.3MM net
Looks like web-based and advertising based business models are as far from "fragile" as one can be.
Although I HATE giving advice to MS..here it goes.
1. Get out of the OS biz!
2. License the Windows API's and other protocols that have practically become de-facto standards to ANY os vendor that wants to use it in their OS. Charge a per/seat license that is similar to the cost of windows now.
In one fell swoop windows apps would still be what people use/develop (for the most part) and they would not have to worry about all the security headaches the OS has given them. They can make the same amount of money by charging the OS vendors. Linux vendors would give users the option of buying windows application compatibility and I'm sure Apple would as well.
Before Redmond runs out of chairs.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Today's WSJ noted that Microsoft backdated its monthly stock option issues from 1992 to 1999 to coincide with its stock's monthly lows. While not strictly illegal, depending on how it was accounted for, the practice was quietly discontinued in 1999 and it's stinky in the current regulatory climate. This should come as no more of a shock than Jeff Skilling's abrupt retirement from Enron. Not saying the two are even remotely related in substance or gravity, but such departures usually happen for a reason that isn't good. Also, given the company's current malaise, it might be a good idea for the current leadership to step aside and let some fresh faces take a crack at running the company.
"Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo."
Yes, instead they concentrated on making software people actually pay good money for. Google and Yahoo have revenue based for the most part on ads. MS is not in the ad business, though I am sure they sell a few on MSN, it's not really what they are good at.
MS didn't 'miss the wave', they just continued to make their spectacularly successful products even better, and made a lot of money in the process.
I am certainly glad that the google's and the yahoo's of the world exert competitive pressure on MS, which helps it overcome its monopolistic inertial. But this impetus is best directed towards adopting and innovating in its core business however. Leave search to google, but if Google Office has some interesting ideas, by all means, MS should use them, improve on them, and hopefully come up with innovative new ideas in an effort to best Google.
I do windows for a living!
(hey, that story is from the "insert-cheap-chair-throwing-joke-here" department, remember?...)
are saddenned by the loss of their favourite customer
Why Jobs should take the helm at Microsoft
Now that would be a story...
I'm not sure I'd call one of Dvorak's columns a story as much as a meaningless pile of steaming crap.
This sig rocks the casbah.
If all your friends struggle with a complex math problem for 10+ hours and you step up and solve it in less than five minutes, which of the following is more likely:
A) You are vastly smarter than all of your friends.
B) You know something they don't.
C) They know something you don't.
D) You simply overlooked the hard part of the problem and did it wrong.
It is easy to criticize. It is a bit harder to invest real money in a product while extracting a real profit from its release. Following yahoo may satisfy onlookers like you, but who cares. It's all about the money.
Improving SQL Server was a great move by Microsoft. The fact that you see it as a mistake tells me all I need to know about your analytical skills.
Tags : Chair (tagging beta)
;)
Now we need to mod tags as well
He's a remarkably bad cheer leader. In addition to the fact that he'd look plain awful in a short skirt (and he probably can't do the splits), it sure looks like that crowd is clapping primarily out of fear.
I wouldn't say he's a car salesman. He's a used car salesman.
As Steve has gotten older and fatter, so has the company. As Ballmer's temper and desire to kick has been moderated by exposure, so has the company lost its edge. When I worked at Microsoft, the company was all about beating the snot out of the competition. Now, winning doesnt seem to be the goal anymore. Its all about growth, benefits, process and PR. Ballmer used to stock the halls screaming, "Oh, you WILL ship, or you wont be here!" Now, from what I hear, its more like "Oh, please ship on time, okay guys?" Mark L. got it right, they cant ship anymore. Vista is a fucking disaster, whether it ships or not. Today is the first day in 20 years that I dont own a share of Microsoft stock. If Microsoft is going to change, they should put J. Allard in charge.
I'm sure the chairs would breath a sigh of relief
After 6 years of Ballmer, Gates has been looking like a pretty nice guy. Gates had vision. Ballmer just spread a lot of crap about Linux being a cancer and such. And most of Microsoft's products have seen no significant improvement since 2000, just constant retheming, buggy product activation, increased requirements, reduced features to sell higher end editions, and decreased performance (server software aside). The anticompetitive tactics we criticized them for before have grown to become their sole strategy. Making a better (for consumers) product isn't even on the map, because they have faith that they have more to gain than lose by these non-productive short-sighted anti-customer get-richer-quick schemes.
Young FrankenSteve
amen brother
Microsoft products, especially their infrastructure products, would be better served by some transparency and interoperability. While they probably gained short term market share by forcing the "microsoft way" it's unsustainable because their bread and butter, the big enterprises, simply can't go all microsoft, and the longer you try to implement the "microsoft way" in one section of your enterprise the more you realize that it doesn't play well with the rest of your infrastructure and eventually you start looking for solutions that do.
Anyways, yes, microsoft would be great if they just tried to make great products, but they're too busy trying to kill competition to concentrate on evolving. I suspect they'll go through something like IBM did in the 90s, and 15 years from now will probably be generally respected by the tech community.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=microsoft
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
Waking up this morning and seeing this story tagged with "chairs" has made my Friday.
I want to see Ballmer's face when Clippy, uninvited, prompts him to begin his resume....
Is it Ballmer's fault that Windows is such a piece that it takes forever and a day to maintain backward compatibility with every new release?
Actually, Wall Street would love to do the standard rise-the-stock-value-so-we-can-sell-even-if-it-kil ls-the-company dance:
- bring in a new CEO who promises radical cost-saving changes all over the place (watch stock value invariably rise)
- have him fire half the workforce, accompanied by giving interviews all over the place about trimming the fat and returning to good ol' capitalism values (ditto)
- make it an official policy to only hire re-trained ex-burger-flippers and transfer half the remaining jobs to Elbonia and East Bumfuckistan in the next years (look at all those money we were wasting on paying highly-qualified people. Stock price rises some more.)
- "motivate" the remaining employees with mottos like "your job could be the next one that goes to India", and unrealistic productivity demands. Accompany it with some speeches showing that you see them as a bunch of slackers, just to be sure they have no illusions left that their contribution is appreciated in any form or shape. (Hell, yeah, high productivity here we come. Watch everyone buy MS stock, driving the share value even higher.)
- drop half the products, on account that they weren't directly making that much money. Never mind that they help form the interlocking whole that makes MS almost impossible to displace in the market. (Ditto.)
- sell the relevant IP and know-how to competitors for some quick cash (yeehaw, MS income was above estimates this quarter. Let's all rush to buy their shares.)
- spin off and sell half the acquisitions that MS ever made. Preferrably for less than half the price originally paid for those companies. (Ditto.)
- reshuffle departments and internal policies for no good reason, just to seem like you're doing something new and radical (ok, by this point it only adds a few more cents per share, but it's better than nothing, you know?)
- announce some hare-brained new products, but miss the mark or the market by a mile because of having no fucking clue about the technology involved
- rape the brand recognition, as much as MS does have of it, for some quick buck for the next quarter, at the expense of annoying and losing existing customers
- take some more flashy measures that'll get lots of press like suddenly rebranding to a new name (and losing most of the brand recognition the old name had), moving to another town, "reinventing oneself" by moving completely into a new market, or whatever
At this point the big Wall Street names sell their own stock, making a quick profit. The company starts a long and painful downward spiral, a la SGI, except MS has cash reserves to last much longer. The CEO soon moves to another company, with Wall Street's full backing, to do the same again. A few years down the line, MS is as relevant to the OS market as SGI now is to the computer graphics market, but Wall Street have gotten their quick buck already.
Think I'm exaggerating? Look at what happened to SGI, for example, and then tell me I'm exaggerating. It only took one bright new CEO to do more than half of what I wrote above, and set SGI on a downwards spiral from which it never recovered. Where SGI is now, you already know.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay = a bridge foursome at Folsom Prison.
Already done: here
and here
and for good measure
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Ballmer, yet another Bill Gates crony billionaire thinks that just sitting on his fat ass waiting for Google to wither up and die is the best strategy for Microsoft. But it won't work because Google is actually doing things that MS can't or won't or doesn't want to.
And the best thing they can come up with in Redmond is to create a turn of the Operating System crank with an unquenchable lust for hardware which will make everyone go out and buy a new PC, which will need OS and upgrades which will need a new PC and so.
Ballmer must go! Ballmer must go! My stock is where it was in 1998 god damnit.
Seriously, if Balmer were to step down too, the door would be open for some substantial change at Microsoft. Just like the palace revolution Steve Jobs staged on his return to Apple which saw, among other things, the Copeland project dropped in favor of what became the BSD based (essentially) MacOS X, a big change at the top of Microsoft could open the door to MS Linux. The fact is that it is really Office that keeps companies in Microsoft's corner more than Windows itself. Most don't care about the OS, as long as it runs Microsoft Office. MS could still make gobs of money and even cut costs by not having to use so many resources on OS development. They could focus more energy on a great user experience. And being able to offer a great OS at a much lower price, the piracy problem would not be such a big deal anymore. And we all know that the major PC makers would continue to bundle the MS OS along with all of the other stuff they do. Third party software publishers might complain at first, but they would quickly get on board too, to stay in business.
I know there are plenty of obstacles to this, but the biggest by far is probably the pride of the current leadership.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I'll tell you a legend that (I promise) bears on this.
In 1980, Alberto Salazar ran his first NYC marathon and won it with the second fastest US marathon time ever. He won two successive NYC marathons, breaking a twelve year old world record in 1981. He was on his way to being the greatest long distance runner ever. Then came Boston in 1982, and the Duel in the Sun with Dick Beardsley. Beardsley was a great runner of course, but he didn't have Salazar's physical gifts. Salazar had intense pride and incredible mental toughness, but Beardsley was smart and used Salazar's pride as a weapon against him. He did his best to make it look like taking on the world record holder was a walk in the park, which irked Salazar. It was almost disrespectful.
The day was warm and sunny but there was a cooling headwind. On a day like that, drinking was critical, and Beardsley drank quite a bit, and when he noticed this seemed to bother Salazar, he made a big production out of it. Salazar in his annoyance began to refuse water, doggedly stalked Beardsley mile after mile. At the final mile mark Beardsley looked back and saw that after running over 133 thousand feet, Salazar was only fifteen feet behind him. With delicate brutality, Salazar began to put on speed. Not too much, because in the past dueling lead pairs had broken down and dropped into second and third place.
With a mere 1800 feet to go out of the total 138,435 ft, Beardsley was bumped by a press vehicle. It wasn't much, but Salazar used this to make his move. He crossed the finish line eleven steps ahead of Beardsley, with a finish time of 2:08:52 to Beardley's 2:08:54 -- a quarter of a tenth of percent difference.
Salazar was champion and record holder. He was also a broken man.
Salazar would never run like that again. He went into a physical decline, so that a few years later he could barely jog a mile. In part this was due to the development of asthma, in part it may have been that that final brutal mile, in which Salzar was running six liters low on water, did something to his brain. A decade later, Salazar began to run again with the aid of Prozac.
The relevance of this story is this: running a marathon is different from running a sprint. And Microsoft is a sprinter. When the new technology land office opens up new vistas, you want to get out there fast and stake your claim. People remark on how agile Microsoft was when it decided to adapt to the Internet. But that kind of reaction is what Microsoft does. They look for an opportunity which they pour resources into so they can quickly pull ahead of the competition so they can establish an unassailable position.
Running a mature business is different. It's not about running the race for two hours and some change. It's about running forever; it's about the tortoises beginning to overtake the hare. That's when giving it your all isn't enough, you have to husband your resources wisely. Eefficiency steps up and takes an equal place with determination.
Unless Microsoft can get in on the starting line of something big and new, Microsoft is going to find itself playing hare to an army of tortoises. That means a huge cultural change. Almost certainly, it means new blood in the leadership.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
would that make him their "Suicide-Ballmer"?
Yanno what? From now on, if you find yourself writing a sentence that contains the words 'Microsoft' and any form of 'innovate', just scrub it and start over. Your IQ in the eyes of your readers takes a dip every time you write a sentence like that. This needs to be added to English textbooks, right under double negatives.
Unpleasantries.
The demise of MS since 2000 is not due to Ballmer. It is coincidental. The demise is due to the onslaught of worms starting with the love bug on 5 May 2000. It is instructive that Gates picked then to step to the side. As if he knew what was coming and would rather his fat buddy took the rap for it instead.
Unfortunately, the same "cancer" (to use an MS "Linux" term) that has affected MS has spread across the entire IT & service industry - namely, a complete redifinition (for the worse) of what is good customer service and what are good products.
It's because of hype, over-advertising & the gullibilities of the general populace that MS and its ilk can utilise the user community for "live testing" their software after that same community has already paid for it, that Hollywood can make profits from poor quality sequel movies, & that talentless plastic "musicians" (I use the term loosely) can be catapulted to chart success on the basis of a formulaic, manufactured ballad.
Added to this, customer service used to be about just *asking* your customers whether they were happy with what you did for them and listening to them when they weren't happy - now it's about graphs showing that "95% of all customer calls were answered within 10 seconds" with no mention of the fact that the caller and the agent probably do not share the same native language. But because *EVERYBODY* has done this (banks, utility companies, corporations, etc), everybody now offers lower quality statistical-dependent customer service and the poor customer suffers as a result.
I'd like to think that the reason for MS's worse fortunes over the past few years was due to we customers becoming more discerning - but then I look at the hideous amount of advertising and hype I'm pumped with every day and realise that if advertising didn't do its job, companies would *decrease* spending on it rather than increasing it...
No, it's nothing more than the capitalist bubble getting near to popping - Microsoft and all the others have to get greedier & greedier to consume larger and larger profits each year by creating products so fast that they have no time to test them properly before releasing them. In other words, their greed for money, not for serving the customer, is destroying themselves.
I like living in a capitalist society but capitalism only works when the customer-base exhibits self-control and intelligence before handing money over for any goods or service - unfortunately, 95% of the populace are brainless cattle...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Tough crowd...
Everytime MS has tried to be a pioneer, they ended up like Custer at Little Big Horn. Look at Bob....
Executives! Executives! Executives! Executives! Executives! Executives! Executives! Executives! There...nice pit stains!
Have you looked at the new version of MS Office? I am no MS fan boy. I've been dealing with their bulky office products for most of my career - their saving grace is that they usually are better, or no worse, than all of the other product out there.
But the new version of MS Office has some extremely innovative user interface and workflow components. It's unlike anything else out there. And no, it's not just copying OS X.
I propose a new rule, if you find yourself penning a knee-jerk response to any positive commentary about Microsoft, just scrub it and start over. Intelligence is marked by the ability to perceive shades of gray, not just black and white. I can recognize that though there are many negative aspects of Microsoft's business practices and products, there are also many positive aspects. And indeed, though MS has grown mostly throw acquisition and mimicry of innovators, it is still very much capable of innovating on its own every once in awhile.
He also wrote another article about his first BillG review. I can't help but think that Ballmer would ask the same question as Jim Manzi.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Enderle appears to be ignorant of Microsoft history, despite his claimed 20-year record. The other Microsoft founder left many years ago (long before Gates).
Ballmer was just an employee. Gates supposedly promoted him because he was buying stock while other insiders were selling it, demonstrating his faith in the company (and making him very rich, as this was back when MS was much smaller).
check this one outm &q=l&c=msft
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=2y&s=GOOG&l=on&z=
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Very true and insightful. I had forgotten about that one. Thanks for your contribution.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The article disclosed a 16% deflation in MS stock.
That might be still profitable, but it's a sign of what's happening... they are moving in the WRONG direction.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Armed with pitchforks and torches, the angry mob of investors and users converged upon the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Chairman Bill had long left the area for the safety of other countries. Although his travels were charitable in name, The Chairman's main intent was to place large moats between him and the beligerent American mobs. And now, the evil president created by the chairman was left to his own devices. President Ballmer was trapped. And there were only a few chairs left in the room. He began to panic; what could he throw to show his might?
7
"Very clever video of Young Frankenstein video clips with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft spliced in."
http://www.videosift.com/siftoff/story.php?id=257
Now with special effects!
being smart is exausting
We need him so we can tease him of his monkey dances, f**king killings, chair throwings, etc. Bill Gates didn't have anything funny like that! Steve had characters. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Dear Ballmer,
You should pick up a copy of my book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround. It might shed some light on your situation and get you back on track. So far the mainframes are still running strong.
Sincerely yours,
Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
You can blame Melinda Gates for Bob. She was the one in charge of that project. In fact, it was, I believe, the only thing she was ever in charge of there.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
They might turn into a viable company that we might like. I'd rather watch MSFT fail. Seems like more fun.
-A
"in which Salzar was running six liters low on water,"
Considering that he probably started with less than 5 liters of blood in his body, if he were 6 liters low on water, he would be dead, very dead, on his way to mumification.
" He's believed to be behind a recent cost-cutting move to force the company's substantial contractor workforce to take an unpaid week off. Since contractors at Microsoft contribute to important projects and are often hired on as full-time employees, the move hurt morale."
/. about how some people at the top are really psychopaths, in the medical sense of the word. Still, technically that only has to mean not caring about others. But the more time goes by, the more it seems that some people at the top aren't just psychopathic, but also the sadistic kind. And some just seem to have a sort of hatred for those they're supposed to manage.
Ah, so he knows the magic words ("cost-cutting move") and likes to kick the workers in the teeth. I can see how Wall Street would love him.
*sigh* There's been a recent article linked to by
I mean, look at his cost-cutting move:
1. There are 52 weeks in a year, even if _everyone_ at MS was a contractor, and if salaries were the _only_ expenses MS ever has, it still would have saved less than 5% of the costs. But when you factor in that not everyone is, and also that execs salaries aren't the same as those of the peons thus shafted, and all the other costs, I'll take a wild guess and say that maybe he's saved 1% for the whole year. But wait, it gets better:
2. It's not like those people were sitting around idle. MS has enough coding going on at any given time, and taking enough flak over, say, Vista delays. So here's the more important part: that "cost saving" is more than offset by the fact that it was a week of them not producing stuff for MS. We're not talking a factory who's over-produced taking a week off, but forcing it onto people who were actually producing value for the company during that time. It's as idiotic a decision as, say, closing a bunch of Wal-Mart shops for a week: sure, you've saved the money for running them for a week, _but_ you've made a bigger loss by not selling anything in that time. So far from being a "cost-cutting measure", it was more like a profit-losing measure.
3. It was done purely for greed sake. It's not like MS was making heavy losses and needed that kind of penny-pinching to stay afloat. Forcing people to take unpaid time off when the company is making a healthy profit is... just pure unhealthy greed. Nothing more, nothing less.
4. It was accompanied by a drop in morale. Partially also because we're talking about people smart enough to understand points 1 to 3, and recognize a _stupid_ penny-pincher when they see one. Being shafted when the company is in dire straits is one thing, but being shafted for such a completely idiotic reason tends to leave a very bad aftertaste. Even if number 2 hadn't already done more harm than good, we're talking a loss of morale that'll span many months and for some people it will even stay around for ever. And it won't even affect only those shafted, but also the people who got to see their co-workers shafted by a dumb PHB. This alone is more than enough to cause more harm than any cost-savings he might have made.
So basically we're not even talking about a regular penny-pincher, we're talking about the dumbest kind of a PHB. The kind that makes the original PHB from Dilbert actually seem smart and competent by comparison. And the dumbest kind of decision one can do at a company.
And yet Wall Street loves him for it and likes the idea of him as a CEO...
I don't know... I really don't know... Are these people even focused on profit, or share value, or whatever, or are they just getting their jollies from shafting the workers and using profit as just an excuse?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
MS is always late the to party. Pioneers get the arrows. Settlers get the land.
You make it sound like some grand strategy; in fact, MS simply was lucky that being late to the party has worked for them in the past, mainly because they have been able to leverage their monopoly. That will stop working at some point.
Perhaps, but I like to think it was more a sly amalgamation of both those words as well as "queue", meaning "line up" and the Spanish "que?" or "why?" into an existential analysis of many of the world's malaises.
Clearly he is asking why the lineup of flying chair jokes is allowed or LET be started now. It is plaintive query about the values of a community which would reward those who would mock as august a personage as monkey-boy. An intellectual and insightful comment on the fragility of a society which fails to respect the sweaty and impulsive dancers on the stage of life.
There's a lesson here for us all..
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It means that it's no longer popular amongst investors. Investors depend on stock analysts and we know how bright they are. MS can continually make obscene profit margins in their core and they'll still be unpopular for things like the xbox.
Hmmm... Pie...
If they were wildly successful in recent years geeks would complain.
With the kind of market power Microsoft wields comes responsibility, and they aren't living up to it yet. What kind of responsibility? Setting and documenting open standards, creating opportunities for competitors, making the entire market grow. Instead, Microsoft still operates like a small, aggressive start-up, out to kill anybody and everybody in their way.
Both IBM and Google are examples of successful, large companies that are behaving more responsibly. Microsoft is actually moving in that direction, but they still have a long way to go.
They'd rather anger the geeks than their investors.
That's a dangerous approach in the long term, because it's the geeks, not the investors, that ultimately support their business.
What makes you think the only water in a person is in their blood? When you dehydrate you loose fluid from all your organs not just your blood.
Realistically, this guy weiged what? 120 lbs fresh.
6 liters is 13 lbs. Do you really believe he lost over 10% of body weight in water in a little over 2 hours and still won the race??
Generally a 2% loss causes weakness and performance loss.
Read that link, seriously. It's an eye opener. Here's my favourite paragraph:
I took the liberty of highlighting what I find partially funny, partially sad there. Sorta like a tragic clown. Wall Street loved him for some massive firing waves and plant closing that didn't even make any fucking sense economically. And he continued doing those even knowing full well that they don't make sense, reflected in the fact that he cooked the books to make it seem like they actually helped in any way. Yet he kept on doing it.
This wasn't a manager taking tough measures for tough times, it was just a psychopath finding personal entertainment in screwing the company that hired him.
So, alas, much as I'd love to take my place on the executive golf courses, a cruel fate has decided I shouldn't be born in that 1% of the population that Wall Street loves. I have too much empathy for that. I couldn't look myself in the mirror after even thinking about doing something like that. So, alas, I've been condemned to a life of honest work instead. Fate can be cruel like that, you know.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ballmer would actually not be good in that position. Isn't he, well, a little unstable? I mean after all, isn't he the one who threw a chare and "wants to fucking kill Google?"
I think that if Ballmer gets any more power at Microsoft, it would be bad for the company. I suspect that they would become even more hostile toward paying customers and their competitors alike, and would end up the target of more FTC and SEC investigations.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Not all CEOs have this disorder, but the job of CEO requires aggressivenes and hard driving. What looks like good leadership is really just a common sign, pushing people constantly.
It's likely that Ballmer never really earned his way to the top. Instead he cheated people. He took credit for other people, he backstabbed, he lied. There are probably a wake of torn, short-term relationshipos. Psychopaths are clever and know how to charm. A guy like Ballmer would easily make his way to the top.
While I really don't have the information to really be sure, I do have reason to suspect he's a psychopath, and I do think he is. Since he's a psychopath, he's not fit for society. He should step down from his chair. He should be perminately locked up so no one else will get hurt by him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE&search= ballmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s&search= ballmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3FOHc-fgA&search= ballmer
I believe this to be irrefutable evidence that he is a nutjob. It also passes scientific community standards because his behavior is both predictable and subsequent experiments are repeatable. That behavior is nutjobby.
You can blame Melinda Gates for Bob. She was the one in charge of that project. In fact, it was, I believe, the only thing she was ever in charge of there.
In normal circumstances, she would have been summarily shown the door very shortly thereafter. But she married the CEO and kept her job on her back, so to speak.
Ballmer yells - I'm going to f@#^ing kill CNN!!
I want Ballmer to stay, so I can watch MS crash and burn because of him. Ballmer, what an idiot!
He hasn't Fucking Kill(TM)ed everybody on his Fucking Kill(TM) list yet!
It's not Steves fault Windows can't stop the competition. In all previous attacks on innovation, Microsoft was able to extend Windows in such a way as to prevent those who originated the innovation from profiting from it. It helped that they were/are able to force various products down OEMs throats and therefore, on the public but times they are a changing.
Open source and Open Standards have opened the eyes of corporate users around the world and Microsoft has never had to work like that. It leaves them no place to control the platform.
There is a place where Microsoft is heading and there are big businesses behind it too. That's with Digital Restrictions Management. Teaming up with Microsoft was probably one of the last things the RIAA, Hollywood, etc want to do but they are afraid everyone will steal there product. And it is taking them, both Microsoft and the DRMers, a long time to get to the point where the complete 'pipe' is controlled and the market is moving faster. Heck, I'm surprised they've not come up with a completely separate transport over TCP which only Windows can do and allows for DRM firewalls at every/any point in the chain.
So, it's not Steves fault that Windows is getting no respect these days. The markets are moving beyond the importance of a box on the desktop and without that, Microsoft is clueless on how to use FUD and Embrace,Extend,Extinguish marketing techniques to keep Windows on the pedestal.
IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You identified a problem correctly, but the fact nevertheless is: it wasn't screwed yet. Nvidia at least infringed on a ton of SGI's texturing patents, so SGI could easily either (A) make them stop competing, or (B) ask for license payments.
/. and we like to rant against patents, but please bear with me. I'm talking from the POV of a company making money here, not from the POV of which patents are good and which are bad. That's an entirely different discussion for a different time.
Ok, I know we're on
And from the POV of making money for the company, most analysts saw that situation as looking great for SGI.
What that particular idiot did instead was sell everything to Nvidia at garage sale prices. I don't just mean the patents, but the whole damn R&D department.
_That's_ when SGI finally was screwed in the graphics arena.
And again, that wasn't even his only mistake. As I was saying, the guy did more than half the idiocies I listed there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
so the conclusion is... that microsoft is not doing well as company? right....
If Steve Ballmer leaves, what will we do for entertainment?
To be fair, the writing was on the wall by the time Ballmer stepped up as CEO. Although he hasn't done much that has improved the situation, I don't think it's fair to put the blame entirely on him for Microsoft's stagnation.
http://outcampaign.org/
If you look at the traits of sociopathy, and the traits which make up a "good CEO", you will find that both share the majority of similar traits. The fact is, "good" CEOs tend to be sociopathic. By "good", I don't mean "for all of mankind", I mean for the sake of the business (and shareholders, if there are any). Whether Ballmer is APD, psychopathic, or sociopathic, I don't know - I am not a psychologist. But he, like many other CEOs, likely falls on the spectrum somewhere...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The article must be totally unjust, insulting, with no basis to Mr. Ballmer's performance.
It is virtually impossible, that the market-oriented economy would allow to reward such a poor business manager with about 13 billion dollars total earnings at his job, which makes him the 6th most wealthy man on the entire world.
Mr. Ballmer's financial compensation at Microsoft must make it obvious that he is doing enormous good for the world.
I doubt here Bob "OS" project was what got her married...
More like the 'bob' her head did when she.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This use of the "Jedi Mind Trick" reminds me of the old Eddie Murphy skit which, coincidentally, also mentioned Mr. T. IIRC it's along the lines of:
Mr. T: Eddie, what's this I hear of you talking shit about me?
Eddie Murphy: Naw, T. I haven't been talking shit about you.
Mr. T: Hmmm, well, I guess you haven't.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
The same thing also applies to democracy (if you still believe America actually has democracy) - when the majority of the voters believe and support lies because they are (deliberately) misinformed its not an effective way to manage a country.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
6 liters is 13 lbs. Do you really believe he lost over 10% of body weight in water in a little over 2 hours and still won the race??
Why not? Indy car drivers routinely lose 10 lbs in a race.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I think Ballmer is doing a superb job. Please don't get rid of him.
The sooner he runs that two-bit company into the ground the sooner us IT professionals can get on with our lives.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This place is scaring me. Because you know somebody has won when their opponents are spending a lot of time making vulgar jokes about them. And I don't really want Microsoft to win.
Okay, Microsoft can wait to lose until after Vista obsoletes another generation of hardware for me to buy cheap at auction (to run NetBSD on.)
My opinion may be incorrect. After all, I formed it only after reading some of Enderle's quotes and writings here and there. But he made enough of a negative impression that I remember him by name.
Anyway, I decided to glance around on the internet for a few anti-Enderle web pages. See here, here, here, and here. Here's a good quote from the second to last link:
Yeah, except he bought that uid on ebay.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
... face up to it and Bill Loves him more than Milendia! Bill hates Milendia and the "kid;" he's tried to hire killers for them many times, not successful. Since Billy is homo and Stevie is homo, it only stands to reason that Bill will pitition the Vatican, since the currnet Pope is Homo, to allow Billy and Stevie to consumate their long standing love, with the sanction of the Roman Catholic Church, which is Homo at it's roots (the Nuns hate Girls and want to 'get it on' with the Boys, who are actually Girls. Oh the shock of it all). Toodles (from the Red Light district of Vatican City)