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A Microsoft-Speak Timeline - From Altair to Zune
netbuzz writes "No company has had more to say about software over the past 30 years than Microsoft (for better or worse). How they've said it — the actual language used — reveals a lot about the company's evolution and is the focus of a new timeline. There's a look back at a 'tag cloud' provided by the Seattle P-I. In addition to analyzing the linguistics of about 90 documents, there are also links to such gems as Bill Gates' Playboy interview and his famous 'Open Letters to Hobbyists.' From the article: 'We're talking all the way from Altair to Zune, with stops along the way for every technology the company developed, bought or borrowed, right on through to current entanglements with Vista, Linux and Google. The tool allows for an at-a-glance view of company priorities as they evolve and shift.'"
D) pretend the non-mainstream message is a lie.
(somewhat related to B : if you say something loud enough it becomes the truth...)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Even in their marketing material, "programmers" and related terms are often more prominent than "users." Bill & co realized early on that the way to get users is to get software that users want/need. They've been courting developers since the beginning and I've never seen (historically speaking - since I was born about the time Altair came out) that they deviated from that plan. Apple didn't start this model until OS X came out and even Linux is only just starting to lower the barrier to entry for developers of *desktop software*. (that's not entirely true, actually, but we in the Linux community have generally treated trolltech/QT like redheaded step children so if you don't count them the previous statement is passable)
It's interesting that the word "users" features much more prominently in some of the earlier texts than it does in the later ones.
I find the absence of the word 'security' very interesting. I wasn't expect to see a word like 'quality' of course.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Try embedding an Excel spreadsheet into your non-MS calendar, or pasting a MS Word doc into a non-MS email app. It doesn't work so well, does it? The incredible inter-operability and compatibility that you're describing exists because MS has direct control over all the specifications and interfaces for pretty much all the apps most people use today.
MS didn't "innovate" the idea of getting everyone to use only MS apps for everything. If any company held such a powerful monopoly, they could do something similar. MS enjoys a greater degree of compatibility and interoperability in their software because they control the whole game - the OS, the browser, the word processor, the spreadsheet, etc. are all totally under the control of MS. If a small company has a truly innovative idea, they have to fit it within the existing inflexible MS specs and APIs, or they're out of luck. Meanwhile, if MS has even the slightest idea for a new feature, they can just re-mold the entire OS and application architecture to implement it.
What if you could get better gas mileage in a Ford, but you could only use Ford gas and drive on Ford roads? Would that be considered "innovative"? Requiring people to commit themselves to a restricted proprietary environment in order to get the benefits of interoperability is a sign of lazy development at best and anti-competitive profiteering at worst - but if that's what they call "innovation" these days, who am I to argue?
It seems to me that they live under the presumption that
The first West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer once said: "I don't care about my silly babble from yesterday." (The original german statement was: "Was interessiert mich mein dummes Geschwätz von gestern!")
Sometimes I guess this attitude would be healthy to some in the U.S..
I hate the sensational/soundbyte news system that we have today. Stewart does a great job of pointing out the absurdity of CNN/FOX/MSNBC/etc (when it suits him at least), but in many ways he is part of that very same system now. Politics has become a game whereby the winners win by making the shortest and simplest statements designed to appeal to their constituency such that they cannot be cut up and taken out of context. The middle and well argued ground has been all but cut out of the media (and I do not think BLOGs particularly help with this either--as they usually target one extreme or the other). Anything controversial is strictly verbotten. It does not pay to try to express a complex-thought to the media or to make meaningful off the cuff remarks because any small mistatement will be thrown back in your face and your actual statements and any nuance in them will not remain intact for the listeners to hear (especially shows like TDS). Sure, many Democratic-leaning* voters may find it less-noticable and less-objectionable, but I suspect that if and when Fox or whomever comes out with the equivalent conservative leaning show there will be increased scrutiny... even if the humor is the same.
* Yes, I recognize he has taken jabs at Kerry and other Democrats, but these usually aren't aimed at policy and certainly not usually at mainstream Democratic policy itself (the fringe stuff, perhaps).
Keep saying something enough and it will become true. Gates just lies and lies in the Playboy interview:
What was the first microcomputer software company? Microsoft.
WRONG Digital Research was found the year before, it was also the company Microsoft stole DOS from....
And who were we imitating when we did Microsoft Word? When we did Excel?
WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3......
As you move the slider forward through time you start to see less "computer" words (like Altair, cassette, floppy etc) and more "business" words (agreement, indemnification, patented etc). That's very telling all by itself.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Who were we imitating..
Oh, DEC BASIC, Wordstar and Lotus 123.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I don't think his principle was wrong. I think it was true enough when he said it, but the Internet has changed the world. It is a rare hobbyist who can put in three years of full-time, uncompensated work on a project, but there are plenty of people who can and will put in 10-20 hours per week on a project. With the power of the Internet to enable their collaboration, a half-dozen part-time developers can easily exceed the output of a full-time developer.
Anyone who's used free software knows that the quality exceeds Mr. Gate's wished for 3 many years and the quality of most non free software projects.I have to disagree here as well. I use F/LOSS almost exclusively, and I'll be the first to say that Free Software isn't uniformly good. There is a lot of very good Free stuff, but there's also plenty that needs a great deal of work. The same goes for commercial software, actually. If I had to pick some overall themes, I'd say that commercial software tends to be a little less reliable but a little more polished, and Free software tends to be more solid but more "fiddly".
For those, like me, who don't much care about polish and actually enjoy fiddling a bit (and the control that implies), F/LOSS is unquestionably better. For others, commercial software may make more sense, as long as the costs are acceptable. By "costs" I mean all of the limitations that come with non-Freeness, not just the dollars paid to purchase the software.
F/LOSS is here to stay, and matches up quite well against commercial offerings in many spaces. There's no need to try to recast the proprietary software world as an evil edifice of lies. Let Gates and company play that game. We don't need to.
Because if you add one medical word, you have to add bunches and bunches, bloating up the spelling dictionary. It would make more sense to sell medical terms separately.
Table-ized A.I.