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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.'"
http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/011107/PX_2768.pdf
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language."
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
MicroSoft's worst detractors are their own execs.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Is this not the same thing Groklaw covered quite sometime back? There are several updates in the link, including a clarification from Allchin on that 'I'd buy a Mac' quote.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
The Linux Strategy???
Since we now know that Microsoft is willing (nay, obsessed) to go "to the mat", as it were, the Linux strategy should be to exploit this tendancy as often as possible. If it happens often enough, either it will become an un-tenable situation for Microsoft, wherein after Microsoft will no longer be able to make any kind of TCO statements regarding Linux vs. Microsoft; and/or else they will go broke in all these no-profit deals (okay, admittedly, it will take them awhile to go broke... but it could happen!
If nothing else, these documents reveal _very_ publically (what many of us already knew) that Microsoft is scared SHITLESS of Linux.
Why should the market leader (a monopolistic, strong-arming, dirty-tricks, no-holds-barred leader at that!) be scared of a FREE operating system and open-source applications-- unless they can see that their dominant position is deeply threatened?
Maybe Balmer will throw some more chairs at somebody. Better be prepared to duck fast.
I wonder what business Microsoft will get into after computers, software and IT?
I think it is kind of refreshing to see such emails. At least it lets us know that they aren't totally disconnected from reality and at least from the looks of it want to make progress that is not only profitable for their company, but for computing as a whole. Oh yeah, I HATE TEH MICRO$AUFT ZOMG! Sorry, was obligatory.
Given that the youth of America have been brought up on MS products, they're going to have a stronger attachement to them than those of us who were brought up on Commodores, Amigas, and Apples. MS *clearly* knows this. Think about that.
Newbie legal question: Why is that document stamped "attorneys only" yet we're allowed to see it? I thought that stuff stayed in the court's files only? I'm asking because I was in a court case a few years ago and I hope the docs I submitted don't end up for public consumption etc.
This is because the promise of Linux has been wasted by the lack of production of true killer applications, allowing both Microsoft and Apple to further embed their OS's among their faithful.
New systems shipping with Vista are sticking a finger in the Penguin's eye, because when it comes down to it, its all about the apps.
some true insight right out the mouth of the sources. I'm bookmarking these, and I've already printed some for my friends to read. Finally some proof that the evil empire is truly evil. "Screw Sun?" Scre you M$! Their products work!
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
In Soviet Russia, joke works on YOU!
Just as in Microsoft Amerika, Windows breaks YOU!
Seriously, Microsoft wanted a "centrally-planned" soviet-style information economy, with them as the central planning commission and "Gates-keeper." These emails are just one (limited) view into that world.
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
the proof is in the pudding
comment directly in my journal
Umm, if you think DHML and CSS are the same on every platform, you need to use some other platforms. Every browser renders the content differently, even if you follow all the standards to the letter. That's just not acceptable.
Is this a joke?
.NET is a joke. The only people that think .NET is an Enterprise-class answer for anything are the people that don't work in an enterprise.
I work for a company that is just wrapping up 3 in-house software projects totaling 38 million USD. Do you know what technology was used for all of them? Java+Struts+DB2+MQ.
DCOM sucks.
The CLR is a performance _joke_ in the automotive and financial industries.
All my comments aside, how can anyone with a modicum of professional experience think a 5yr old technology(.NET) would be a better choice then a 15yr old technology that is 64% of the market and still under heavy development and support?
Go back to your parents basement and get me that patch for your Yahoo Messenger spam script you tool!
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Nothing could be more clear than the intention of the rant, so I'll type it here for those too lazy to click the link. It deserves the space.
-Jim Allchin, January 07 2004
It's obvious they did not listen to him and that's good for everyone. Vista is 10 GB in size and wastes all sorts of processing power for it's DRM insanity, after they dropped their silly new file system and many other vaporware improvements. While it will be difficult if not impossible to make Vista work under Linux or Mac, it's not going to matter because Vista is going to kill the platform. The failure of Vista, more than the failure of Zune and Xbox shows that M$ is going to have to compete on something other than, "It's M$ and you are going to need them tomorrow no matter how crappy their stuff is."
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/011907/PLEX1025.pd f
This looks like a document about internal testing of Dr DOS, and it looks like they had good reasons to warn people who were about to run windows on Dr DOS (as in - the crashes you will experience are their product, not ours)
I'm a Mac user. If I get a job with Dell this Summer, I'll get a Dell. My loyalty is for sale. But since I don't work for Apple, yet choose to use a Mac...that says something right there.
This was a device already on the market that they endorsed. They knew they were slaughtered from the start and still unleashed playsforsure on us. Funny to see them admit how bad some of their own stuff is.
Netscape was better up until around Netscape 4, when it turned into a clunky, steaming pile, and IE actually became the better, smoother, more enjoyable browser for a while. Today, Firefox is better.
After Corel bought Quattro Pro and WordPerfect, they turned into steaming piles. I know... I worked there. :-) I think around WordPerfect 9, there was a latency in your typing that made it feel like a telnet session. And it crashed a lot. Excel and Word crash too, but generally, they've always been consistently solid, enjoyable products that get the job done.
when their business revolves around making me-too parodies of competitors innovative products.
... they want efficiency and familiarity because computers are no longer expensive gadgets but necessary tools. In a sense, the user base has become more conservative with time and less tolerant of gratuitous changes. That's hurting Microsoft, because those selfsame users aren't really seeing a clear need for the latest-greatest any more.
... very useful and worth the money. Operating systems are no different in that respect: if you want me to invest in something new, make damn sure it's worth my effort, otherwise I'll just be seriously torqued off. Apple has traditionally had a much better (not perfect, but better) grasp of this aspect of the user mentality than Microsoft.
... now you can honestly say you have a bad company. Of course, if you're talking about profit-margin and growth rate, hell, Microsoft is an awesome corporation.
So what? Competition often involves duplicating or emulating a competitor's efforts, particularly when there aren't many ways to solve a particular problem. The entire patent and copyright systems in the U.S. were once geared toward encouraging the creation of new ideas and products, with the intent that they would eventually become the property of everyone. Consumers benefit when good product ideas are promulgated throughout an entire industry. Frankly, I'd like to see Microsoft steal more of the good stuff from other operating systems rather than simply ladling in more DRM and SFX.
The fact that Microsoft isn't innovative is largely irrelevant when deciding if they are a good company or not, if you define innovative as meaning the development of novel products in-house. Many companies acquire technology originally developed outside the confines of their own organization. Is Google a bad company because they bought YouTube? Is Apple a bad company simply because they used some ideas originally developed by PARC? Windows NT (and all derivative OSes) benefited from technology originally developed by DEC and taken to Microsoft by Dave Cutler and his people. This idea that a company is somehow defective because it doesn't do everything on its own is a bit off-base. The fact that Microsoft point-blank steals a lot of technology, denies that fact, and the refuses to pay the originators is more to the point, however.
People spend a lot of time complaining about the unoriginality of Microsoft's products. Who cares? Graphical operating system technology is becoming fairly mature and commoditized at this point, as a matter of fact most users don't particularly want novelty anymore
For example, I don't want my socket set working differently every few months, I want the damn things to do their jobs in a consistent manner. Yet, once I did buy a new set because the handle had some kind of gearing that gave a mechanical advantage
In the end, this has less to do with the originality of the ideas that Microsoft turns into products as it does with the quality of those implementations. By taking the comparatively poor quality of the products that Microsoft has sold over the years in concert with the equally-poor ethical (indeed, outright criminal) standards upon which that company operates
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
they have focused on marketing, "power" and other crap that's ended in DRM and botnet hell.
This is probably what Jim was talking about in 2004. I've posted this twice now, but it deserves every inch of space.
All the FUD in the world won't save them from what Vista has become. The DRM alone could waste the resources of a multi-core super computer but that seems to be what they spent their development time doing. What a quagmire.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Let's not forget that both people discussing "screw Sun" used to work for them. There is probably a whole lot of baggage we'll never know that goes along with two guys switching companies and paradigms.
As an EDSer, I've seen plenty of my former colleagues take a "screw EDS" view in their new companies... they were dissatisfied with aspects of business and how they were managed (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much); until they became just as disafected by their new employers, they were considerably hostile in words and action, at times, to their old employer.
Given that they were involved with J++, discussing a cross-platform mandate (big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base), and the context of the discussion involved co-opting lessons learned and design imperitives (not really the product itself), this discussion was not exactly the smoking gun you guys would like it to be.
"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."
It seems to have bitten them back hard. Whenever there is a major Windows breach, I mention it as the exploit of the week. Most people "get it". Some don't and ask me about it. I tell them that this exploit is this weeks exploit, then pull up Google and find last weeks, the weeks before, the weeks before... Then mention patch Tuesday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday
Very seldom is Patch Tuesday a single patch event. It covers several exploits showing there is a patchable exploit about once a week.
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:
I don't know MS'es release schedule, but I doubt they had enough serious bugs to do a bug of the week for an entire year. MS has had enough bugs to have the bug of the week for a decade.
The truth shall set you free!
This reminds me of the Enron e-mail data that was released, with similarly "shocking" emails. Actually, in the Enron case, they really were illuminating because a lot of e-mails addressed to Ken Lay towards the end of the company's life included the words "you bastard". Also, you didn't have to look very hard to find rampant corporate nepotism (Ken Lay's daughter Elizabeth pimping her friends). The original dataset is at CMU, and a web-browsable version is at enronemail.com, although you have to register for the latter one. The first link lets you download the zipped contents of a bunch of executive's email boxes (sent items, deleted items, inbox, etc.)...it's really nuts.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
FWIW, the folks at GrokLaw have dug out copies of the Bill Gates deposition videos from the anti-trust trial. It's a pretty big download, but funny and sad as hell when you look back at it.
C|N>K
You missed your own point.
.NET can be kindergarden easy for all I care.
.NET is not mature.
.NET has little, if any, value-proposition. Please note, from a business perspective, it matters little that there is MS technology "in the door" already. One of the projects I was on had 120,000 client machines - all running Win2k. The application was J2EE and the app took advantage of the Active Directory metabase like an 18yr old with a pocket full of ruffies on prom night.
Every project I have been on in the past 6 years had the technology chosen by business people - getting counsel from technical architects.
1)
2a)
2b) Java works with every technology I've come across(COBOL, CICS, MS., etc.). Sun doesn't make money from Java implementations, they make money from the tools people use to develop Java apps quickly. I can best any time you have in Visual Studio.NET with Java studio creator, and my app will scale over 1,000,000 users out of the gate.
Sorry for the rant.
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Given that they were involved with J++, discussing a cross-platform mandate (big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base), and the context of the discussion involved co-opting lessons learned and design imperatives (not really the product itself), this discussion was not exactly the smoking gun you guys would like it to be.
The attitude is not so easily dismissed and it shows itself again and again. While the comment might be aimed at Sun, it ultimately harms the customer.
"Cross-platform" is a huge subject that customers deeply care about but one that M$ customers will always be disappointed with. People desperately want their computers and other devices to work together but it's not going to happen with a company like M$ around. People want their PDA, cameras, portable music players and DVRs to work together and share information. Anyone trying to provide that for customers on a M$ platform is doomed to have their work broken when M$ inevitably comes in to steal the market. "Let's steal java," is a perfect example. When he says that, he means "we have the market share and can define what works and what does not." I watched them do the same thing to Palm, when "security" updates screwed over sync on W2K, so that the new Windoze Pocket PCs could gain market share. And, we've seen the same kind of thing in portable music players. The third E of EEE is extinguish. Once the treat to M$ dominance has been removed, the thing stolen will be ignored or removed. The issue is so much larger than Java and one or two employees. When you sum up all the pieces, the picture that emerges is not pretty at all, is it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I bow to no one in my disdain for Microsoft's bad software.
Don't get me started talking about Windows 98 and predecessors,
or Outlook and Exchange, or Word, or Source Safe, unless
you're prepared for an angry rant.
But many of the best programmers I know consider C## and the
runtime to be a distinct improvement on Java; a truly superior
bit of language design and software engineering.
Your mileage may vary. Contents may have settled during shipping.
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
Then why does it cost so much?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site%3Amicrosoft.c om+%22microsoft+confidential%22&btnG=Search
I always enjoy seeing proprietary markings on a company's documents. It makes finding them with a search engine much easier. Other fun search terms:
site:microsoft.com "Microsoft Internal Use Only"
site:microsoft.com "Internal Use Only"
site:microsoft.com NDA
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
"The enterprise." What a sad joke that phrase is. This post is not directed strictly at you, BTW.
I remember when it meant a heterogeneous OS environment, branch offices at a minimum, and multinationality and thousands of employees at least implied. Then I began to see surveys, etc., which ran down through corporation with a presence only in single countries, with perhaps a few hundred employees, to the current SME, which has at least some overlap with SOHO.
Seriously. For the last few *years* I've seen Web forms of various (fill out for our free white paper, etc.) types which presented me with a radio button to describe the size of my 'enterprise' as 1-5 employees. That's just one example, though probably the one I, personally, have seen the most. I've even seen the term (still in shrinkage mode) used in research papers over the years.
Depending upon your line of business (a few neighborhood kids in a lawn mowing group comes to mind), that 1-5 number of employees implies that a Z80 running CP/M and BASIC could be an enterprise-class system. Sigh. Another free service to the community from the marketroids, I guess.
IMHO, any post that uses the word these days is going to spark a lot of disagreement, simply because it's a marketing term which now has little or no meaning beyond a mere 'business' v 'personal' connotation.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
one of the "research" organizations - I think it was IDC - to produce a "comparison" between Linux and Windows that was favorable to Windows, after Gartner told them they wouldn't do it.
Then they argued over whether they should ADMIT that Microsoft sponsored the study because they KNEW that admitting it would blow the game - so they argued for LYING about it.
Here's a quote from the story:
In an email dated 1 November, 2002, Kevin Johnson, now the head of Windows, wrote: "I don't like it to be public on the doc that we sponsored it because I don't think the outcome is as favourable as we had hoped. I just don't like competitors using it as ammo against us. It is easier if it doesn't mention that we sponsored it."
And another:
And the month before, Houston wrote Johnson a message that intimated pressure had been put on IDC to tweak the report so it would put Microsoft in a better light. "I hate to put it like this, but at this point, IDC is done negotiating with us. We have moved them quite a bit already, but they are now holding the line, saying that if we want the names of their 'big' analysts on the report, this is it."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!