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Tales From Behind Microsoft's Firewall
lizzyben writes "CIOinsight.com is hosting an interview with Robert Scoble on life after Microsoft. 'By blogging for the world's largest software company, Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world and became an industry celebrity in the process.' He talks about MS culture, senior management and the benefits of blogging from inside the belly of the software beast." More from the article: "We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, 'What's going on?' And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."
If I was behind a Microsoft firewall, I'd just feel insecure ;)
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
"We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it"
That's sure to be a short list
What are "CIO" and "Insight" doing in the same word anyway? Are they leveraging an optimized something or another?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If MS would spend a % of their cash reserves on developing a *real* os instead of the load of junk they ship (no, this is not a troll, this is an observation) we'd have a one-shot amazing piece of software that would set a new standard for useability and reliability.
unfortunately they spend that cash on marketing....
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Robert,
You may have responded to some rants on how Microsoft products work (or don't), and that is all fine and dandy, as it was appreciated. However, the problems are *still* there. I still get the little hardware wizard that wants to help me when I plug in a new mouse, or Windows will still notify me that there is either a new network found or that my computer is at a security risk because of virus subscription expiration in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation!
It's stuff like that (and much more) that are driving people to alternatives
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
...that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."
Which must have driven the bloggers nuts, so they stop posting in protest. Talk about sneaky!
Why didn't he just read Slashdot? Faster, cheaper, and probably holds the core user/developer base that would have the most to say on the subject of Microsoft software. Face it: even the most virulent criticism of MS here would contain enough useful information that if Gates & Co. actually paid attention, they'd find innumerable ideas for improving their wares. And all for free.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Actually, I beg to differ on the characterization that the world's blog is being considered like a big focus group. When a real focus group pans a product idea, the maker doesn't try to rationalize the current design, the maker drops it or improves it and starts over. Blog writers are howling into the wind, and it doesn't matter if they are heard or not: Microsoft will just go on doing what Microsoft wants to do, because they're big enough and the market is big enough that they feel they can ignore the whiners.
[
But I feel my hate might diminish in inverse proportion to the number of free activation keys I might be sent by somebody from somewhere.
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." ~A. Einstein
I have one of the "I hate Microsoft" web sites he linked to. I used to read Scoble's blog and comment on it occasionally before he become famous. As soon as his blog started to get any traction he stopped posting anything intelligent. He became a pure evangelist who claimed Microsoft should listen to the haters, then bashed anything critical of Microsoft. And in the end, not much if anything changed. Microsoft used him to try to improve their image. And having this fake power Scoble became full of himself. He's a tool. Microsoft still ignores critics.
Developers: We can use your help.
...I never quite understood Scoble's impact or why so many people considered his tenure at Microsoft so important. I can't think of a single Microsoft product that has significantly changed as a result of his interceding on some poor user's behalf. It was more like a grand, and public, experiment in listening to the users. Considering they let him leave and especially since they haven't replaced him, it says they've heard enough.
There are so many different ways of handling system messages.
#1. An icon on the task bar that changes appearance to indicate you have system messages.
#2. A list of messages pops up when you log on.
#3. A list of messages pops up when you come out of a period of inactivity.
Your "check engine" light does not take over the windshield of your car, does it? Why should a less important message on your computer take over the monitor?
Micrsoft does ship a real OS. It's called Windows and millions of people run it without serious problems or they wouldn't stay with it.
Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world...
Scoble, um something what???? I haven't seen any change over here. And to think, I didn't know he even blogged.
Just spell it Micro$oft, M$ Windoze, or /\/\1Cr0$oF7 5\/XXo|Rz.
No rant is complete without a gross deformation of Miyoursoft's name.
I think your observation is flawed. Throwing money at problems almost never efficiently solves them. The fact that MS has been so successful indicates they've made very good use of their money, really. If they were able to spend their "marketing" cash on OS development instead, they'd (in an ideal world) end up with a teriffic OS, but one that most people weren't aware of or convinced to switch to.
Wow, a guy used blogs and suggest that other people should.
But that's just too radical for Microsoft so he's out.
Step 1: Buy Apple.
Step 2: Don't change anything at Apple, except to tell them to license their OS to other manufacturers.
Step 3: Plan the transition from XP to OS X.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It's hardly a surprise to learn that deliberately publicised information is being found and read - that's the whole point, surely? I remember reading a comment from the BBC News web team a while ago saying pretty much the same thing - people were saying it was scary when the Beeb team replied to them. Er...why?
Cheers,
Ian
More like, they search all the blogs like /. and mod down anyone who critizes Microsoft or calls their products proprietary pieces of shit.
Give me a fucking break;
Microsoft did hold back the industry for about three decades, but they finally dropped the DOS based line of operating systems with XP.
We can still complain about their illegal and unethical business practises, and of course specific software glitches. But today, their OSes are as real as any other provider.
They have a vast collection of tremendously bright people. I think they've just reached the limits of how massive a monolithic system can be maintained, even given effectively infinite coding muscle. The UNIX model, on the other hand, doesn't run into this issue; the layers provide well-defined interfaces, and apart from that, remain blissfuly ignorant of each other. This design bothers a lot of people, but it does having the overwhelming advantage of scaling much better than the MS approach.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Perception is all that matters to Microsoft. They don't have to fix their product, they just have to fix people's perception of it. If someone rants about their problems on a blog and out of the blue someone from MS makes a conciliatory comment, probably the first damn comment they ever got on their blog, now Windows has gone from "That piece of shit OS written by that greedy callous company" to "that loveable, quirky OS written by that friendly company that cares enough about me to post on my blog!" Problem solved, from Microsoft's point of view, anyway.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
an anonymous coward that calls on moderators to moderate away a 20+ post discussion, interesting
I wonder how much time mr. AC spent in OS architecture class to get this far in life.
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I hate Microsoft!
(please pay attention to me)
The same as every other computer engineering major at RPI.
a class on that specifically, only one class.
on the various pieces of OS design..... Too many hours to be working in this dead end job...
Is anyone else thinking 'gee, maybe contacting people who are writing that they hate Microsoft aren't exactly feeling BETTER that they got contacted about it too?' Just remember, Big Brother IS watching and is scouring the net for you - whew, I'm glad they cleared that up to make me feel better!
If only they would confine their bullshit to their own blogs. They are famous for astroturfing other sites too. One of the earliest recorded attacks is Steve Barkto against OS/2. A famous and court proved case is the attack on DRDOS, where they made sure Win3.1 would not run on DRDOS and then spammed compuserve message groups with posts that blamed DRDOS. The pattern is repeated again and again with various permutations. Hiring a firm to fake letters to Congress, the Apple Switcher, and so on and so forth.
Of course their apologists swarm here too. There's always someone out there promoting M$ junk as "teh best evar" and we can be sure they are using every available trick to game Slashdot's moderation system. While I can't be sure some M$ PR firm is behind it, I am sure that there's at least one person dedicating a significant amount of their life harassing me personally. Here are just a few of the accounts they have set up or purchased:
Thier effort goes beyond the usual fanboy stuff. For about a year the attacks have been personal and nasty, as all Microsoft's name calling generally is. They even took the attack to my local LUG, which promptly dismissed their efforts. All this over a Slashdot user? Clearly, Microsoft is running scared.
Bruce Perens warned us the attack would come. As they noted in their 1998 Halloween document, free software is not a company they can destroy, it's a community they must destroy. How else can they do that but massively spam every free software group in existence?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
so, go solo. If you're any good you should not have a problem to contract.
:)
worked for me
fwiw if I compare the guts of XP with the elegance of unix, plan9 or qnx I still stand by that it plain sucks. API's all over the place, layer upon layer of different ways of doing the same things, every hardware device it's own way of being talked to, security tacked on as an afterthought, applications reaching all the way in to the core os.
Not very pretty to put it mildly.
If you feel like qualitatively defending your flamebait call then go ahead, I'm all ears, explain in less than say 500 words the true beauty and elegance of MS windows, any version will do.
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Why not give the configuration options, with the defaults set to "show" for the lamen, but the more seasoned can go ahead and turn that crap off?
I mean really, as a developer I know how truly simple this kind of stuff is to implement, how hard can it be for a company the size of Microsoft to make these changes?
Generally I agree. The current incarnation of XP and Server 2003 are quite stable.
HOWEVER - there is a fundamental problem with the way XP deals with non-responsive network (SMB) shares. I have wasted too much time waiting for Windows to figure out that the share isn't accessable and have crashed explorer.exe on many occasions due to this problem. In extreme cases explorer.exe doesn't come back and refuses to start, requiring a reboot.
I have read in a few blogs that MS is addressing this issue in Vista. I do not understand why it hasn't been fixed in XP, unless there is some fundamental flaw in the XP kernel.
twitter fails to understand that this is a public forum, and expressing one's opinions will eventually result in one's opinions being questioned in one way or another. Most of the people who "troll" twitter are simply requesting that he qualify his remarks, which more often than not are simply hysterical FUD and misguided attempts at "evangelism", which in his head are somehow good for the free software community.
twitter acuses anyone who does not toe his line of being "M$ PR astroturfers", tries to spread outrageous FUD left and right and then links to things that happened seven years ago to try to prove that Microsoft is out to get him. This kind of behavior should not be rewarded.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Microsoft has followed "Know your enemy, even if they don't know it yet" fo the last 20 years. Anyone who has ever been on a technology edge knows that. In '95 the OLE evangelists got a hold of me because I was making OpenDoc demos. "Here's a bunch of free stuff, why not come over to the other side?" Not the first time it happened to me either. Or others. Apple had a long history of mentoring budding Microsoft employees - and technologies. Anyone remember "Brand X" from WWDC '95? Quickdraw3D? Pippin? Naw. ATG? Anyone? How about... VBA/Script embedded everywhere? Direct3D? XBox? You know those don't ya.
This conversation never happened.
"Hey, what do you think of this Apple Pippin? They figure put a stripped down Mac in a console; tuned for games and multi-media. Re-use existing development tools. Partner with Bandi for distribution."
"Wow, that gimped. Expensive and underpowered. But in a couple years; we can put a stripped down PC in a console; tuned for games and multi-media. Re-use existing development tools. Use our own distribution network; and buy a flagship Mac/Windows game developer like Bungie."
"The fanboys will love it! By the way, give Apple a bag of cash and tell them to kill CyberDog."
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
If you don't think MS has changed then you simply haven't followed them. Vista as a release, product and beta program is vastly different and superior to any other Microsoft OS. I mean public builds, public scrutiny, nearly a quarter million beta testers and release and release of consistent updates. You can't really beat that and that is lessons learned from listening and observing.
Same goes for the Xbox side of the house. THey listen, they get on blogs and they deliver. Checkout Majornelson.com for some great 360 evangelism and see how he does what he can to pass along everything to MS to deliver.
Your blind if you don't think microsoft has changed.
HAHA! Twitter, you never cease to amaze me.
Twitter, do you really want me to prove you wrong?
Right; here we go: my MySpace. Note where I say I'm 17 and I work for a supermarket. And that the picture is me, in a Waitrose uniform.
Now, surely an "M$ astroturfer" wouldn't be working in a fucking supermarket?
I expect you to retaliate with ad hominem shit, rather than what would be most decent; an admission that I'm NOT paid by Microsoft. I don't know why I should try and prove anything to you, except to make you look like a moron.
By the way, people attacking you for your endless rants about M$ and Windoze doesn't equate with "apologists" "swarming". And I see you posted your charming deconstruction of my posting history, which turned out to be shite in which you deliberately misrepresented things I had said.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
so, go solo. If you're any good you should not have a problem to contract.
Can't, the wife and kid wants an income and health benefits they can count on, ALso, the dead end jab was just a jab, I actually enjoy my job.
I am on my way home so no long defense of MS other then to say it is what it is. It works as well as can be expected and has contributed to the computig world in numerous ways, to think otherwise is ignorant.
Really now. Is the mod in marketing or advertising or something?
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I've seen a lot of attention from you too, dedazo and expect more now after outing your other sock puppet accounts. Eight of your last eleven posts have been dedicated to harassing twitter. Don't you have anything better to do?
All with the same talking points and language as the other troll accounts. Fuck off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've noticed that you haven't addressed any of the points in the previous post by twitter. What do you have to say in relation to the Barkto incident and dead people signing petitions? Else I would suspect you of distraction trolling.
.. Steve Barkto .. DRDOS.. spammed compuserve .. Hiring a firm to fake letters to Congress .. the Apple Switcher .. trick to game Slashdot's moderation system" wrote twitter
"astroturfing
was Re:Karma phishing
davecb5620@gmail.com
Why didn't he just read Slashdot? Faster, cheaper, and probably holds the core user/developer base that would have the most to say on the subject of Microsoft software. Face it: even the most virulent criticism of MS here would contain enough useful information that if Gates & Co. actually paid attention, they'd find innumerable ideas for improving their wares. And all for free.
Slashdot is useless to them because people here realize that there is no way M$ can fix itself. Their strategy of buying "mature" software, marketing it loudly and destroying all "competition" ran out of steam ten years ago. Before it, the NDA, non free way ran out of steam back in the 80s, as explained here. If M$ did not represent a significant public harm, it would all be comical. Instead, a court proved monopoly that sues public schools has the advocacy of your federal government.
We can be sure they are following their 1998 Halloween document plan to disrupt the free software community by astroturfing Slashdot. Their goals would be to bury useful information in garbage and make reading and posting an consistently unpleasant experience.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I frequently hear that "Microsoft pays attention to the user." There is a lot of evidence, including this article, to support it. Microsoft products are constantly trying to give the users what they want.
The problem is, Microsoft has always tried to appease users instead of trying to help them.
The difference is expertise. Users know what they need to do, but they're mostly not software engineers or UI designers, so they aren't able to say exactly how their needs should be met. Even if they have some idea of what they want, they're very unlikely to be informed of the implications of what they're asking for.
A good UI designer has that expertise. He knows how to meet the user's needs. He doesn't just do whatever the user wants; he examines their complaint, realizes what the real need is, and programs an intelligent, usable solution. Then that solution is rigorously tested to ensure it is actually better than the situation it was aiming to solve.
Microsoft doesn't have this expertise. For all their supposedly brilliant minds, I see no evidence of their recognizing any principles of good software design. Instead, they just appease users by doing exactly what the user tells them to do, regardless of the consequences. Even if the addition makes things worse. They don't help the user; they pander to the user.
The user says, "There are too many items in these menus." Microsoft responds with "personalized menus." They addressed the complaint but they didn't help the situation at all. The real solution would be to better organize the menus. Any programmer can look at the menus of, say, Word, and intuit a better arrangement.
The user says, "There are too many icons in my system tray." Microsoft responds with a button that collapses the tray. This is a band-aid solution, which doesn't address the real problem: too many programs staying resident for no reason. The real solution would have been implementing a software certification program (they already have one for drivers, supposedly) that frowns on or utterly fails software which employs undesirable practices like cluttering up the system tray.
The user says, "There are too many things in the Programs menu." Microsoft responds by telling vendors to install programs under submenus which bear the vendor name. It's a horrendous solution. It's the last way anyone would choose to organize anything. No one organizes their books by publisher. Hardly anyone remembers the publisher of most of their books. And indeed, few people remember the publisher of their software.
The user says, "It takes too long to log in." Microsoft responds by showing the desktop before it is "ready"; you can move the mouse, and you can bring up some menus, but they will be forcibly unposted in a few seconds, and attempts to start applications are no faster than they would be if you waited for all the startup items to finish.
The user says, "Windows isn't intuitive, I should be able to know right away how to do things." Microsoft responds with Bob.
There are dozens more examples. The point is that I see Microsoft listening to users, but it is as if Microsoft has no experience with designing usable software, even after all these years. It could well be a case of management paralysis. I don't know the cause, but the symptoms are pretty consistent.
The Internet is full. Go away.
You can't have it both ways. If you put up a blog, on the Internet, for the public to read, and submit your blog to a blog-search site....you expect the public to read it. And Microsoft is part of the public.
So either you say something about Microsoft to the world, and allow anyone (including Microsoft) to reply....or you don't say it to the world.
It's where all the apps are.
There, I have described the true beauty and elegance of MS Windows.
What do I win?
I've noticed that trying to do so is useless - questioning anything he says is an "insult" and automatically categorizes me as a "troll" and "astroturfer". You haven't noticed this, I take it? Instead I asked him to clarify why he was trying to tie in whatever misdeeds he accuses Microsoft of doing to his own alleged "plight".
What do you have to say in relation to the Barkto incident
I'd say twitter has come up with some new links (the Bartko thing happened in 1994, surely if that's a pattern he can get better proof?), but overall I have no problem with criticizing Microsoft as you seem to be implying. I would have gone mad a long time ago hanging around here. There are lots of things to criticize them about, but "OMFG M$ Windoze crashes every FIVE minutes LOLOLOLOL!!!1" for example is not one of them. If you're going to do it, at least do it intelligently.
FUD, misinformation and hysterical rants are another thing.
Now, what do you think about twitter's "help help I'm being opressed" whining? I noticed you didn't address my points either.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Um. If I was a manager (I am), I would have set my e-mail client to filter my employee's e-mails into a different mailbox (I do know who they are, right?). Who uses only one inbox these days?
Wow, more social-experiment than a tech one but wow.W all.htm
http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-
This is right up there with such urban legends as "Microsoft products crash all the time".
Really. I've spoken to many hard-core developers. I invariably have asked what they think of Linux and their reply is invariably: "I use what gets the job done. Microsoft works and has the tools. But I don't care what the platform is, I just need to get my coding finished and working stably."
I know I have a choice, and I choose Windows XP. I do so because it runs the applications which I need to do my job, and it *doesn't* crash. I have a school full of Windows machines, and they *don't* crash. And believe you me, if they crashed I'd never hear the end of it as it's my responsibility to keep them crash-free.
Oy.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
Would be sweeet to see their USENET taskforce on comp.os.windows.advocacy
Hope their firewall doesn't block 119/tcp.
Once again MS is trying to claim things have changed without actually changing anything. How long will this go on until people finally get fed up?