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Confidential Microsoft Emails Posted Online
dos4who writes "From the class action 'Comes et al. v. Microsoft' suit, some very enlightening internal Microsoft emails are now made public. Emails to and from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, etc all make for some mind blowing reading. One of my favorites is from Jim Allchin to Bill Gates, entitled 'losing our way,' in which Allchin states 'I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.'"
Here is the coral cache of the documents.
Seastead this.
That's what happened to WinFS: Jim Allchin killed it, or talked someone into killing it. If you read that "losing our way" email carefully, that's what he's talking about. LH means Longhorn, i.e., what they were calling Vista at the time (early 2004). "We need a simple fast storage system" in this context means "We need to ditch WinFS".
The "scenario" stuff is probably related to this topic also, but I don't know enough about the culture inside of Microsoft to say how.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I love this:
:-)
From exhibit PX 851, a memo from bradsi to billg and steveb (among others) regarding alleged "bugs" in DR DOS as found by Microsoft commissioned NSTL:
"We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the bugs. We'll provide info a few bugs at a time to stretch it out."
Ahhhh...Microsoft(r) Time-Released FUD(tm). Gotta love it.
It was originally attorneys-only.
Subsequent litigation .... different case .... documents admitted into evidence .... court ruled they can be made public in this instance.
Its the same as the original AT&T / BSD agreement. It *was* secret, but the world has changed, its no longer secret ...
Not even the rhetoric from a "Women's study" class can prepare the reader for the contents of those letters. All the diabolical "power" talk is like a script from a bad movie. Start anywhere and you get there fast. They really are sick.
The first thing I looked at had this nonsense:
You might recall later evidence from the Novel DR-DOS lawsuit, where Microsoft later killed DR-DOS off by making Win3.1 not work with it and then blaming DR-DOS in BBS postings. Nice.
The next thing seems to indicate witness tampering in the same power struggle.
The next random look has more opinion manipulation trough astroturf:
And it goes on and on. The targets today are the ones that survived, IBM, Novel, and friends but now include the free software that everyone but M$ has agreed to use because it's better. Instead of fudding BBS, they are here and in the newspapers and TV networks they purchased for the purpose. If these dorks spent half the time wasted on improving their product, they might have a product that works. Instead, they have focused on marketing, "power" and other crap that's ended in DRM and botnet hell. No one should trust M$ for anything and everything they touch is suspect.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Your probably a troll, but if not. The plaintifs got the judges permission to post these exibits. http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article ?AID=/20070108/BUSINESS/70108029/1029
No leaks at all.
Many courts across the country require PDF format for exhibits. That way, exhibits can be retrieved from court websites and emailed to and fro by counsel and court.
The "right to privacy" doesn't extend to evidence admitted in open court.
This is necessary to uphold the integrity of the courts. Otherwise, people won't know the basis on which a finding of guilt or innocence was made, leading to all sorts of accusations of favoritism and backroom deals, bribes, etc.
It's not that he wants a Mac, it's that, if he weren't an interested party in the success of Microsoft (and you can imagine the publicity that would result from a photo of Jim Allchin opening a PowerBook), and he were choosing between Mac and an XP based notebook, he'd take the Mac. It's an evocative way of saying "right now, Mac is better than what we're offering."
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
2001? Try 1998.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20041205152641/www.appl e.com/ilife/video/ilife04_320.html
Embarrassing stuff.
From the links:
A program manager "[l]eads the technical side of a product development team, managing and defining the functional specifications and defining how the product will work." These PMs are, as you intimate, a dime a dozen at microsoft.
A product manager "[f]ormulates business and marketing strategy." These PMs have a lot of authority and make decisions at a much higher level.
Just compare the description of a product manager compared to that of a program manager.
There are a 110 product manager job openings at MSFT compared to 365 program manager openings.
Giving corporations HUMAN rights is completely messed up. They should enjoy the same rights as any group of people, but they should never be given human rights. Microsoft is allowed to have internal documents that it can protect. But when these documents are demanded by a court, the court can allow the documents to be made public. The judge has allowed Roxanne Connlin to release all of these documents on the website. Microsoft has petitioned to keep some documents out of the public domain, and these documents are not on the site.
Curiously, this is the first time that Bill Gates testimony to the DOJ is viewable by the public. This case is shining a great deal of light on Microsoft business practices.
Think global, act loco
Link directly to the source
That's BS. Program Managers are usually technical and Product Managers are marketing folks. They work on different things. A Product Manager takes the product when it's done positions it on the market.
That's BS. For example, Jim Allchin is the Windows Product Manager. He had pretty much the final say over what features were and weren't included in Vista during its development.
Jim Allchin is (was) a President of Microsoft, not a Product Manager. He drove Vista to completion - which is something no one with the title of Product Manager would have the power to do. GP is right about what a "product manager" really is. GMs and PUMs are the people who own overall products and the final decisions about them.