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.'"

Comments

2001

[DarkOx]

called they want their Halloween documents back!

Re:2001

[ettlz]

"Offtopic"?! It's like that Robot Chicken sketch: Dicks — with mod points!

Re:2001

[uhlume]

2001? Try 1998.

One of my favorites

[lecithin]

http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/011107/PX_2768.pdf

"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language."

Re:One of my favorites

[Cheapy]

Interestingly, that one is written by someone working on Visual J++.

Re:One of my favorites

[diesel66]

I don't mean to nit-pick you, but it wasn't written merely by someone working on Visual J++.

It was written the the Visual J++ Product Manager.

This speaks volumes to the company's strategy.

Re:One of my favorites

[Frizzle Fry]

It's sort of silly to say that the fact that the guy is PM makes him sort of super authority. It's not as if he has a high-ranking position (VP, PUM). For all we know, he was just hired out of college last week; hell, there are PM interns.

Re:One of my favorites

[Mydron]

It's sort of silly to say that the fact that the guy is PM makes him sort of super authority. . . . hell, there are PM interns

You have product and program manager confused.

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.

Re:One of my favorites

[nbritton]

Really? He was also the PM for C#, and worked for Sun prior to joining Microsoft... http://www.ilkeratalay.com/articles/vsnet_en.php

Re:One of my favorites

[julesh]

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.

Re:One of my favorites

[dabraun]

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.

Email

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they had used lycos for their email.

In communist Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

In communist Russia, the Mac would buy Allchin today if it weren't working for Microsoft.

Re:In communist Russia...

[russ1337]

I think I speak for all of us when I say you need to work on your Soviet-Russia jokes....

Re:In communist Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

"you need to work on your Soviet-Russia jokes...."

No. Please don't.

Re:In communist Russia...

[sgt_doom]

Bravo for that most excellently made point, Good Citizen tomhudson!

Besides, they'd probably be forced to use MS Project to rework that joke.......

Re:In communist Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the pejoratives expend energy atop the second person pronoun.

It just goes to say that

[Travoltus]

MicroSoft's worst detractors are their own execs.

Re:It just goes to say that

[EveryNickIsTaken]

You clearly do not read /. often.

Groklaw coverage

[arun_s]

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.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[stsp]

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.

Which is hilarious in itself :)

Quote:

2-and-a-half years later, Windows Vista has turned into a phenomenal product, better than any other OS we've ever built and far, far better than any other software available today, in my opinion. It's going to be available to customers on Jan 30, and I suggest everyone go out and get it as soon as you can. It's that good.

Next thing he says is:

The spirit of being self-critical continues to flourish at Microsoft.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[nacturation]

Anyone have the original video? The URL (http://www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_32C.html ) in the PDF is a 404... Apple should really put it back up.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[Vellmont]

including a clarification from Allchin on that 'I'd buy a Mac' quote.

Where I live we don't call that clarification, we call that spin.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[x-caiver]

2-and-a-half years later, Windows Vista has turned into a phenomenal product, better than any other OS we've ever built and far, far better than any other software available today, in my opinion. It's going to be available to customers on Jan 30, and I suggest everyone go out and get it as soon as you can. It's that good.

Next thing he says is:

The spirit of being self-critical continues to flourish at Microsoft.

Those two sentences may seem to conflict, but you are not seeing the whole picture.

You are not seeing the people who are already working on making their feature 'have more features'. You are not seeing the work that the team is doing in preparation for a Service Pack, which will not add much in the way of new features but will address any late breaking issues or customer-reported features requests/bugs. And most importantly, you aren't seeing the individuals who are extremely passionate about the products that are shipped by Microsoft, the people who write ranting emails to other teams, the people who use the product and file bugs about how something is lame, or the people who go to meetings and sometimes have to get in to shouting matches with other people who just don't get it.

Vista, like it or not, has turned into a 'phenomenal' product, by definition. Is it better than any other OS MS has released? Well, in some places it is, and in some places it isn't. There is a lot of new code that fixes a lot of old issues, but there are new behaviors that are less than pleasant. Is it far better than any other software available today? I don't really know what that even means. 'Better' in usability, stability, feature-bredth, customer-focus, opportunity for 3rd party develops, source code quantity? Who knows, luckily he put 'in my opinion' after it so we don't have to try to figure it out.

But, the point is: The spirit of being self-critical is alive, and though every now and then it suffers a minor setback those events are simply small battles in the larger war.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20041205152641/www.appl e.com/ilife/video/ilife04_320.html

Embarrassing stuff.

Re:Groklaw coverage

[bit01]

... in the larger war.

It's a living, not a war, and the sooner the sociopaths at M$ realize that the better off everybody will be.

Tangential to your point but relevant to the tone of yours and many other M$ missives.

---

Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.

HAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

These confirm that Microsoft so-called critics are just telling it like it is. Vista is a second-rate, user-hostile OSX knock-off, .NET is a java knock-off and MS senior execs are lying through their teeth when they talk about innovation.

Classic stuff.

Re:HAHAHA

[senahj]

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 .NET
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.

Coral Cache

[Baldrson]

Here is the coral cache of the documents.

Thats nothing..

[cybrthng]

If you read what people post here, most sane people wouldn't touch linux and would look at these discussions as childs play.

Losing our way?

[Rolman]

It's interesting for Jim Allchin to state this, because in terms of performance, security and understanding what the most important problems a customer face, I didn't know Microsoft had a "way" they're somehow losing now. To say that Microsoft has always been lazy in these areas is an understatement.

Now this gets me thinking, because we in FLOSS care a lot about security and performance, but not too much about the end users experience and the applications that are important to them. We all know how Apple just Gets It(tm) and we should, too, if we ever want to expand our installed base and market share beyond geeks and tech savvy users.

Re:Losing our way?

[iluvcapra]

Surely you knew that 90% of the world uses Windows. You can't claim a figure like that is only the result of monopolistic practices and be serious

You're right, under 60% or so they're merely "predatory practices!" :D

It fits people's needs by being something that is brain-dead useable across an enormous variety of hardware

It fits people's needs by being on their computer when they bought it; people don't choose OS's, they're considered features of the box you pay for. Thus, Windows is useable for people, but the economic signal that drives Windows quality is the demands of the OEM bundlers, not the users. MS is trying to change this slowly, and maybe they'll just have to start selling their own computers at some point.

But what's the point in trying to expand market share, just for its own sake?

It's an important part of a bunch of positive feedback loop, not least of which is: more users -> more developers -> more software titles -> more users.

Re:Losing our way?

[Lazerf4rt]

It fits people's needs by being on their computer when they bought it; people don't choose OS's, they're considered features of the box you pay for.

This is a totally valid point, and you also cited a legitimate need for the end user. Most people do need something on their computers when they buy them. But you can't claim or even imply this is the secret of Windows' success. I remember when Windows 3.1 came out. Home users willingly bought and installed it on their existing 286/386 machines in droves, which were running DOS up to that point. It was a good product introduced at the right time for the right audience. It spawned a whole family of application software and grew from there, making Microsoft rich. The OEM bundling resulted as a by-product.

more users -> more developers -> more software titles -> more users

This is just another way of saying you want to expand market share for the sake of expanding it.

I'd prefer to use open source whose chief motivation was to offer a good experience. Not whose chief motivation was to expand market share. I know part of Windows' motivation was to grow a large market, but that only stemmed from their desire to make money. They were successful at that, and that's how they made something everyone uses.

Re:Losing our way?

[Lazerf4rt]

Explorer was [not] so much better than Netscape that it deserved a 90% market share.

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.

Excel was not so much better than Quattro Pro. Word was not so much better than WordPerfect.

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.

Re:Losing our way?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

MS-DOS used ^Z for EOF, like VMS. That's also where they got the forward slash for command line arguments.
try:
COPY NUL: C:\COMMAND.COM

Re:Losing our way?

[cowscows]

Whether or not people choose free software is not particularly important to me, but I'm very eager to see the dominance of Windows fade. For a number of reasons.

As other software platforms become more popular, I hope that more of the software specific to my profession will become available on platforms other than windows, so that I don't have to keep a windows box at home on top of my preferred computer. I wish that my mom's job didn't require her to own a windows machine, because I didn't enjoy giving her tech support over the phone for all the stupid problems she had. It'd be nice if there were a few less compromised computers out there sending me lots of spam.

I don't use windows as my primary OS, I don't do tech support for a living, yet I have to deal with windows problems on almost a daily basis.

Re:Losing our way?

[iluvcapra]

But you can't claim or even imply this is the secret of Windows' success. I remember when Windows 3.1 came out. Home users willingly bought and installed it on their existing 286/386 machines in droves, which were running DOS up to that point. It was a good product introduced at the right time for the right audience. [...] The OEM bundling resulted as a by-product.

When Windows 3.1 came out, computers were much more expensive relatively, so getting a better OS with a new machine was a very pricey proposition. When a copy of a full-featured version of the OS costs as much as a low-end computer, however, the decision is different, and the computer is much more of a commodity that simply comes out of the box with everything it needs to be useful; the alternate idea, that you buy a computer and buy an OS to run on it, is simply not economical. OEM bundling is what makes Windows affordable.

Microsoft has made some good plays and makes some good products -- I still think Excel is the best application ever written -- but OEM bundling is what sustains the market share. Computer purchasers are never presented with a genuine, unencumbered decision about which OS to run, with good information and prices which reflected the actual underlying value of products. They don't want to make the decision, anyways, they just want a box that works. Windows 3.1 is a good upgrade from MS-DOS, but computers at the time were expensive, rare (relative to today), and doing things like buying a new OS in a box and installing it wasn't such a tough choice, since people were willing to spend a lot of time and TLC on their boxes (they'd spent so much money on them, after all).

It's like radios -- you, the end-user, used to have to buy the tubes from RCA, and there were ads saying how great the tubes were, and you spent a lot of money on them because you'd spent so much money on your radio set, and replacing a bad triode was cheaper than buying a new radio. But now you just buy the thing as a block, and the radio is so cheap you don't care what transistors are in it, because the radio is taken for granted to always work and has become the foundation of other tech, like cellphones and WiFi.

Some companies, like Apple, and Google, but others too, are trying to build enabling technologies on top of computers like cellphones build on top of radio. They want you to take the computer for granted. Microsoft's Windows platform people are in the position of arguing "Look at all the great things you can do with Microsoft's tubes! Remember, it's the TUBES that make it work."

So my point is that the OEM bundling ... I forget... whatever, it's bad.

This is just another way of saying you want to expand market share for the sake of expanding it.

I guess you're right, but if I like Linux, having more Linux users in the world makes Linux easier to use -- without having to change a line of code. MS OS's have lagged behind Linux's security and server capabilities, and behind OS X in home user features and usability, but that's from the perspective of individual users. On Window's side is ubiquity, and the fact that the guys from Geek Squad know how to fix all your little hard drive issues, and that novel you are writing will open at work, and on and on. If I ran Linux, all of this would be true for me, too, if the 90% were Linux.

I'd settle for 30% desktop penetration, frankly.

Re:Losing our way?

[oohshiny]

Surely you knew that 90% of the world uses Windows. You can't claim a figure like that is only the result of monopolistic practices and be serious.

Why not? It has worked for many other companies before in cases where the products clearly were not superior to those of their competitors.

It fits people's needs by being something that is brain-dead useable across an enormous variety of hardware. That should be obvious from the 90%.

Windows is not "brain-dead usable" on any hardware, and its hardware compatibility is a mixed bag. Overall, Windows is just barely good enough. The technical qualities that keep Windows around are its complexity and its proprietary protocols and formats, which make the cost of switching very high.

but if you're involved in free software, why does it matter how much of the world is using it?

Because computers aren't islands; if I want to read E-mail using free software, open up attachments, conduct on-line business, etc., the protocols and formats to do so need to be open and free.

Since Microsoft has made a 20 year career out of making those protocols and formats proprietary, closed, and non-free, taking away market share from Microsoft is apparently the only way to force them to open up. And it will happen: people are really, really tired of Microsoft's business practices and crappy products.

Very Interesting -- Tux Looms Large! Who Knew?

[bratwiz]

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? :)

Cold and MSHeartless.

[spleen_blender]

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.

Re:broken legal system

[tomhudson]

A legal system who shows so little self respect, letting these leaks happen, not investigating prosectuing and harshly punishing the source of such leaks, cannot expect others to respect it.

These aren't "illegal leaks" - they're evidence that has been made public - and rightfully so - because justice must not only be done, but seen to be done. Don't expect to be able to keep illegal anti-competitive activities secret because of some non-existent "corporate right to privacy."

"losing our way" was referring to WinFS

[jonadab]

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.

Re:Non-PDF?

[JudicatorX]

Most of those email are plain-text. Is it really necessary to pdf them? Why don't they print them out, then take a picture of the printout on a wooden table, and post *that* to the web.

Re:Non-PDF?

[physicsnick]

Why on earth would you ban PDFs?

If it's just a matter of hating Adobe Reader, there are free open-source alternatives out there.

Re:Non-PDF?

[nacturation]

Can anyone find any non-PDF versions of these? I don't allow PDF's in my biz... Yet you apparently allow Slashdot. Excellent policy.

Microsoft brand FUD

[DaveM753]

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. :-)

Re:Microsoft brand FUD

[Technician]

"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.

Re:Very Interesting -- Tux Looms Large! Who Knew?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

"..(what many of us already knew) that Microsoft is scared SHITLESS of Linux."

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.

Re:broken legal system

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

/. bias

[Arathon]

Disclaimer: I like Linux more than I like Windows.

Still, I just don't get why this would be somehow indicative of anything but good things of Microsoft. Everyone knows that 3 years ago, they were floundering in regards to Vista. Whether you like Vista now or not, it's a perfectly reasonable thing for him to have said (i.e. I'd buy a Mac), and most likely an exaggeration anyway. It all makes a lot of sense to me, and we don't do ourselves credit as part of the FOSS community by bashing anything that isn't just because we can. =)

Re:/. bias

[DogDude]

Actually, that comment is indicative of a well run business. They identified problems with their own products, they identified their competitors' strengths, and they moved to address those issues. Realizations like that are part of the reason that they're the #1 software company on the planet.

Re:/. bias

[pla]

Whether you like Vista now or not, it's a perfectly reasonable thing for him to have said (i.e. I'd buy a Mac), and most likely an exaggeration anyway.

Agreed. Whether exaggeration for effect, or just admitting that Apple has a damned fine user interface that MS would do well to "borrow" from, I don't really think we should take comments like that as the proof of internal decay most have made it out as.

For comparison, how many Linux and FOSS-in-general fans run Windows on their primary desktop machine? I, for one, will admit that I do, because Linux quite simply hurts to use as a desktop on a daily basis. I absolutely love it for anything running behind the scenes (NAS, routers, webservers, mailservers, etc), but when it comes to sitting down and getting real work done at a workstation (or even just wasting time playing a game), Windows has Linux beat hands-down.

And I say that as someone who rolls his own distros. I understand how to make any desired functionality work, but that doesn't mean I want to waste that much effort every time I install a sound or video card, or god forbid try to add any USB device other than keyboard/mouse/mass-storage.

I think a lot of the problem comes down to multimedia. For any machine that doesn't need sound or graphics and only rarely changes hardware, Linux kicks serious ass. For the rest, I hope you have the exact same rev of the exact same hardware and run the same version of the same distro as someone who wrote a HowTo article, or get ready for some pain.

Re:/. bias

[ScrewMaster]

when their business revolves around making me-too parodies of competitors innovative products.

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 ... 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.

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 ... 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.

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 ... 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.

Wishful Thinking

[LibertineR]

Microsoft may have been scared of Linux at one time, but that is certainly not true today.

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.

Re:Wishful Thinking

[4e617474]

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.

I remember sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for Linux's world domination, but I don't think that that was ever its promise. The whole concept of the "killer application", IMHO, runs contrary to the Linux way of doing things. In fact, the more obviously useful a "Linux" app tends to be to large numbers of people, the more likely you are to see Windows and OS X ports.

Linux let users run whatever machine they could get their hands on and have a stable, supported (as in patched and secure) system that would run current apps while the Mac and Windows worlds had people running to the store to replace perfectly good machines. Schools in under-funded districts and governments in poor countries slowly discover that proprietary software vendors hold them over a barrel while FLOSS just gives and gives. These aren't strategies that get you ahead by the next fiscal quarter, but they get you ahead of where you were four or five years ago.

MSFT and Apple fight for their share of consumers (and MSFT pretty much takes the business world for granted) while the FLOSS world makes sure to keep doing what they're doing and their share of developers, enterprise users, and savvy home users expands slowly but steadily. Linux isn't out to get people to come on board because it's got something you'll be deprived of if you don't, and it isn't out to attack or exploit how the other guys slip up. Hell, Linux isn't marching lock-step towards any single goal - it's fragmented, huge numbers of disparate groups and individuals working towards different ends, which Linus has said is exactly what he likes to see. Linux developers achieve a means to an end, polish up the rough edges when they've got something that's going to be around for a while and the users demand it, and let you get off the roller coaster of everyone else deciding what latest and greatest features you just have to have. You want Linux? Here it is. You want to wait a few years for it to improve some more? It will, and it will still be yours for the asking. [insert stream vs. boulder or similar Taoist metaphor]

Re:Wishful Thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because the promise of Linux has been wasted by the lack of production of true killer applications

Herein lies the answer to why the kooky predictions of GNU/Linux domination have yielded nothing eight years later. The GNU system /is/ the "killer app".

The promise of the general purpose PC is only realized in a few areas of computing. Desktop computing isn't one of them. After having managed all aspects of a ~600 seat network for seven years, I am convinced that the click-and-drool way has done more to make workers disorganized and unproductive than any other element. There are, of course, people with excellent organizational skills, but even they are foiled. (At least with the dead-tree method, what's put, stays put.)

The kaleidoscope 3D-on-2D interfaces remain confusing to most users. Click-and-tell isn't useful in a work environment, compared to a home environment, where the reprecussions of experimentation are not as important. This scares users into retreat, and they prefer everything to be static; users freeze in panic when something changes. Throughout the years, supposedly experienced IT workers have told me that the solution to this is to threaten my workers with being fired if they don't "learn". Wonderful. First off, I have no authority to do so, second, that's a great way to lower productivity even more. (Especially when you intimidate your co-workers so much that they feel the need to go around you and right up to the boss whenever something breaks.)

In my opinion, so-called "user-friendly computing" ruined the electronic office. Users have been taught, through unintended punishment, to touch only their corner of the electronic real estate. Their productivity remains almost the same as with the old paper filing routine. GNU/Linux can never operate in such a hostile environment. The GNU system is about change and improvement, an environment where the user may get the most of his PC by chaining together "modular" pieces, which have purposely limited functionality, and are therefore simpler in nature.

Re:Wishful Thinking

[Lumpy]

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.

Nice marketing. Because if what you said was actually the truth, they would have problems selling any Vista licenses outside of new computers as users would be satisfied with the "apps".

There are lots of Baying sheep that went out and bought vista. and right now they are calling me and other tech people wanting to know why their apps they bought have stopped working.

Quicken and Quickbooks from a couple of years ago both have trouble under Vista. I also have people calling with corrupt Thumb drives as they simply remove them like normal under XP... Guess what , Vista comes with write delay turned on for USB devices, XP did not.

Honestly the number of people that I have given free Ubuntu CD's to and have asked if I can help them install it are a nice thumb in the eye to Microsoft.

and guess what, Quicken and Quickbooks works great under crossover office.

Because it's all about the apps!

Re:broken legal system

[tomhudson]

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 ...

finally...

[Grinin]

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!

They are the one's laughing....

[LibertineR]

It is so sad that again, no one gets it.

You think its funny? They think it is fucking HILARIOUS.

By yesterday, Microsoft made more money on Vista than OSX has in its entire lifespan.

Sun's handling of Java gave Microsoft enough time to make .NET a killer platform, especially for Web apps.

Even if the only way that Microsoft is innovative is in how they turn other people's ideas into profit centers, I assure you that they are laughing a lot more than Apple or Sun today.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the only way that Microsoft is innovative is in how they turn other people's ideas into profit centers, I assure you that they are laughing a lot more than Apple or Sun today.

Not for much longer pal, MSFT Proprietary lock-in is under attack on all fronts and the vaporware game is played out because other companies (like Apple) are actually delivering.

You do have a point though, if MSFT are going to continue flouting competition law, they may as well enjoy doing it.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[teknopurge]

Is this a joke?

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. .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.

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!

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[stewbacca]

Uh, would you like to cite your claim that Vista has made more money that OS X in its entire lifespan? Did you factor in the average cost of the Mac attached to OS X? What about all the $129 incremental updates? I didn't think so.

I'm not sure where you live, but the biggest line for the Vista launch that I've seen reported was 18 people. Even at $400 for the Ultimate version, that hardly makes a dent in the total OS X revenue thus far.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[archen]

I don't know, considering Vista only came out recently, I wouldn't be surprised to find early adapters who are fascinated by new shiny things going out in droves to buy Vista. I also wouldn't be surprised if Vista cost more to develop than OSX over its entire life so far. For that matter it almost seems like Vista has dropped more major features than OSX added over its life.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[myowntrueself]

By yesterday, Microsoft made more money on Vista than OSX has in its entire lifespan.i>

Considering how much was spent on developing Vista ($billions) it seems very implausible that $billions+n has been recouped by Microsoft at this point in time, for any value of n.

You did say "made more money on Vista"; at this stage, Vista has made a net *loss* not a profit.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[ozmanjusri]

Come on, it's a DVD that can easily be mass produced and shipped.

Then why does it cost so much?

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[pallmall1]

Apple and Microsoft had roughly the same profit last quarter, but Microsoft required 10x the revenue to make as much as Apple, Inc.

That's because Microsoft uses Microsoft software.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[Senzei]

I've made web apps in .NET. It might be the killer app if you're job is server administration, but it's murder on developers.

See, killer app. Hey, at least Microsoft isn't trying to redefine the term "killer" like everyone else seems to want to.

Re:They are the one's laughing....

[julesh]

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?

It doesn't matter, I dare say in all three cases the tech decision was made by the same small group of people. Expand your survey to 5,000 projects in 2,000 businesses in at least 3 different countries spread over a variety of market areas, company ages and structural types and I'll start accepting it as meaningful. .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.

Funny. The Enterprise developers I've talked to will generally tell you that the language you're working with is irrelevant. Only the architecture you build is important. You need access to reliable messaging systems (which .NET gives you) and access to reliable data storage systems (which .NET gives you) and the ability to integrate a wide variety of standard external components for a variety of purposes from reporting to integrating with external communication networks (which .NET gives you). Beyond that, the only important thing is that you have enough programmers who are experienced enough with the platform you're working on. This may be .NET's stumbling point: it hasn't existed for long enough, and as most CS graduates of the last 10 years have acquired extensive Java experience by the time they graduate even, it seems a natural choice. This distinction won't last forever.

DCOM sucks.

You can find people with that opinion about any distributed component system. The most commonly complained-about seems to be CORBA.

The CLR is a performance _joke_ in the automotive and financial industries.

I've got a friend who's a programmer in the automotive industry. Yes, you're right he wouldn't consider using the CLR for any of his work. He works in C, mostly, with hand-crafted assembly language for a large portion of his code. He produces systems that have hard real-time requirements of responding within a few hundred processor cycles of an incoming event. Of course any kind of garbage-collected, just-in-time compiled system is a joke for this kind of application.

As for financial industries, I've worked there myself (admittedly before .NET was an option) and don't expect they'd have a huge amount of trouble with it. But the financial industry is a late adopter of most new technologies. Last financial corp I worked with was still developing their desktop apps in C and Motif in 1998, and was still using an e-mail system that ran on a VAX that you had to access via a serial cable plugged into the back of your PC. So no, I don't expect you'd see a lot of .NET apps springing up in that market, either. This has nothing to do with the quality of the system.

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?

Because the market is changeable. When Java was 5 years old, people were saying exactly the same thing about the likelihood of that taking over from C++ and Corba. It happened in fairly short order, though.

Re:Non-PDF?

[-kertrats-]

When he said...

If it's just a matter of hating Adobe Reader, there are free open-source alternatives out there.

What did you hear?

Re:Non-PDF?

[MysticOne]

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of PDF. It's not just to make text available, but to make documents (including images, and in some cases 3D content) that will look the same on ANY platform. This is absolutely necessary for publishing and other areas where you need a document format that isn't subject to all the inconsistencies of presentation that most word processing formats suffer. To my knowledge, there is no other document format that is intended to work this way. Microsoft was working on a PDF replacement, but I don't know much about it, and I'm sure it'd be bound to Microsoft.

I can agree that the Adobe Reader software sucks. But, there are many, many PDF readers available that work just fine without the Adobe nonsense, but still give you access to one of the nicest document formats available.

Re:Very Interesting -- Tux Looms Large! Who Knew?

[scottv67]

I know you're just trolling but I'll play along. It's too cold to do anything outside today. Why not feed the Slashtrolls...

I knew people who were making a decent living doing computer consulting for home users who went out of business because of how many 15 year old neighbours could do most of what they do for free.

That one line has got to be the best advertisement/endorsement for Linux and open source software that I've seen in a long time. If you are truly not trolling, think of how powerful that statement is: "Linux: even your neighbor's 15-year-old kid can maintain it." We should welcome software that is that easy to use and maintain, not lament it's arrival .

I don't know why

[Omeger]

They would want to buy a Mac. You can do a LOT more things a LOT cheaper on a normal PC.

Microsoft doesn't even believe in what they do

[koan]

Im a big fan of XP, but Vista has left me scratching my head trying to figure out what they were up to, from the emails I gather they don't really know either.

Re:Non-PDF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

That "bad file format" you are knocking is the compsiting and rendering format for the Macintosh OS X Quartz user interface.

See this: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-gui/ma cos-x-gui-4.html

This was the natural extrapolation from DPS - display PostScript - used on the NeXT and original SunOS NeWS.

There is a difference between crappy rendering implementation and crappy model.

FUD is a corporate value. (from 91)

[emptybody]

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

What a bunch of Wing Nuts.

[twitter]

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:

To gain power, IBM's got to take it away from Microsoft, and our power starts with DOS. ... We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the [DR-DOS] bugs.

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:

User story placement - developing and placing MS-DOS related stories in key publications, both trade and vertical, to communicate that corporations have a large investment in MS-DOS and will continue to trust in it. Develop user profiles?

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.

Re:What a bunch of Wing Nuts.

[Haeleth]

Microsoft later killed DR-DOS off by making Win3.1 not work with it

Wow, you have a real talent for rewriting history.

Sadly, in the real world, no such thing happened. What happened was that Microsoft inserted code into a beta version of Win3.1 that displayed a warning. That's right, not only did the evil code not stop Windows working at all (it just displayed a misleading message and waited for a keypress), it was removed after the beta and never existed in any version of Windows that was sold to the public.

Sure, the code in question was indisputably added specifically in order to dissuade people from using DR-DOS, and it's hard to defend the decisions that led to it being added. But the plain and simple truth is that Microsoft did abandon that plan before Win3.1 was actually released, and therefore your assertion is false: they did not make Win3.1 not work with DR-DOS, and therefore that cannot have been what killed DR-DOS.

However unethical Microsoft's actions may have been, spreading FUD against them is not the right thing to do. Leave your lies and FUD to the evildoers, please. Fight Microsoft with the truth - it's bad enough.

M$

I'm not even going to bother with the standard Penny Arcade link. I'm sure we can all quote it from memory. ;)

Instead, they have focused on marketing, "power" and other crap that's ended in DRM and botnet hell.

I'll grant you the botnets, but DRM is hardly Microsoft's fault. Where DRM is concerned, they're just copying Apple as usual.

Re:Non-PDF?

[MysticOne]

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.

Re:broken legal system

[MindStalker]

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.

Re:Non-PDF?

[DaveM753]

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.

context to 'losing our way'

[dioscaido]

Written on January 2004. This was just before the big 'reset' where they realized they were going in the wrong direction, and completely refocused their efforts -- they wen't gun-ho on security, developing XP SP2, and moving 'longhorn' development to the win2k3 codebase instead of the bloated junk they had for the very early previews.

So the statement makes total sense within context. Soon after Jim's statement, the development of 'longhorn' was dramatically altered. You can't use it as a reflection of the RTM'd product. The RTM'd product is a result of these harsh words.

What I don't get

[mrfantasy]

Is Jim Allchin.

I mean, his chin isn't particulary prominent at all.

Re:Non-PDF?

[Phil John]

It may not be the best software, but to call PDF a bad format is just plain ignorant.

It allows document publishers to ensure that their files will look the same on every platform, transcending font issues etc - you can't say that with Word docments, web pages, rtf files etc.

True, for this kind of document it makes little sense to use a PDF vs. images, but that's not the fault of the format, it's the fault of the people who digitized the printouts.

If you're fed up with Adobe PDF reader, try something else like the free Foxit Reader - small, quick to load and fast to browse files, I haven't had the reader installed for a couple of years now.

It is possible to make a fast reader, see the one that ships with Mac OS X, or Evince - they both fly even with large complex documents.

Re:Non-PDF?

[Jim Hall]

If you don't allow PDF into your network, you might try an online converter. I haven't tried it, but I see that Adobe has one.

Allchin...?

[tanveer1979]

Jim Allchin, is that you?! Never knew you hung out here too

Why do I care about 1991

[madshot]

Why do I really care about 1991. Do you think that will actually change the release of Windows Vista or Microsoft domination of the world technology market? How screwed would the world be if Microsoft closed its doors one day because they get tired of being a business that is always fighting legal battles? Imagine a world without Microsoft. 911 tries to dispatch an ambulance but they can't activate their copy of windows to run the dispatch software because Microsoft closed its doors. A automotive company tries to install Quickbooks but it requires the latest Windows .NET updates before it will install, but they can't seem to get them from Microsoft because the website is down. Like it or not, Microsoft is a dominating force in the world. I only wish I had thought of it first :-) So when I read documents from 1990 and 1991 I say "how much money is this costing tax payers?" and "at what point will Microsoft just say screw it and close their doors." Peace

Clarification and Implications.

[Erris]

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.

I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. ... our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are and really understanding what the most important probems are customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.

...

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows applications software ... If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

-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."

Re:Clarification and Implications.

[Chineseyes]

more than the failure of Zune and Xbox..... whoa you had me until the xbox part I don't know where you've been lately but xbox360 has been a HUGE success partly due to Sony shooting themselves in the foot by trying to push a $600 console and having production issues with the PS3 but still calling xbox360 a failure is really pushing it.

Re:Clarification and Implications.

[GrievousMistake]

The 360 is popular, but not that much of a success, assuming Microsoft would also like to actually make money on this console business of theirs.

Re:Uhm, Whatever, Jim

[stewbacca]

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.

Ipod

[TheUni]

I find this one especially funny: http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/8000/PX0863 6.pdf

"I bought the high end creative labs portable player. It was the NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra I have to tell you my experience with our software and this device is really terrible. I expect you already knew this but I had not personally experienced it. Now I spent the time last night really playing with it. My goodness it is terrible. What I don't understand though is that I was told that the new Creative Labs device would be comparible to Apple. This is so not the case" (13 year-old girl emphasis mine)

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.

Re:But corporations are people too!

[tomhudson]

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.

Hold on...

[deesine]

I didn't see where Kevin Bacon figures in?

Clearly Insane according to Jim.

[Erris]

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.

I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. ... our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are and really understanding what the most important probems are customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products.

...

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows applications software ... If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of "scenario, simple, fast" to heart.

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.

WinFS, trip bits, trusted path ...

[Erris]

"We need a simple fast storage system" in this context means "We need to ditch WinFS".

Now that Vista is out, you can see he was talking about much more than that. Had the company quit focusing on trying to become a publishing, music and games monopoly as well as a computing monopoly, Vista would not weigh in at 10GB of trip bits, encrypted binary paths and other in the customer face insult and instability. WinFS was just one of the things that make Vista less than fast, stable, secure or anything else the customer might want. He thought that M$ should spend developer time on making things work for the user, not building better cages.

Re:Uhm, Whatever, Jim

[jjohnson]

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."

Context is important

[BenJeremy]

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.

Re:broken legal system

[caffeinemessiah]

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.

Re:But corporations are people too!

[BandwidthHog]

But they’re not one of us. We are people. They’re a fictional entity, essentially an overgrown contractual agreement. And a public one at that.

FWIW

[inode_buddha]

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.

Re:broken legal system

[MindStalker]

Sorry, typo. Obviously I meant to say Your troll is using your computer.

Like most, you missed the point.

[LibertineR]

Windows itself should remind you that the best technology does not always win.

What .NET did, was give developers a reason not to switch, and enough of them to steal the profitability potential away from Sun. How come so many of you never take a business perspective to your replies?

There are plenty of companies using .NET in the enterprise, and whether .NET is superior doesnt matter at all in that equation. .NET allows apps to be built quickly, without much learning curve, and foot-in-the-door matters more than anything else when it comes to technical adoption. If .NET existed solely for the purpose of limiting Java penetration, then you would have to conclude that on that note alone, .NET is wildly successful.

So, stop with the technical arguments, because it is past time for us to understand that technology alone never wins in the enterprise.

Re:Like most, you missed the point.

[teknopurge]

You missed your own point.

Every project I have been on in the past 6 years had the technology chosen by business people - getting counsel from technical architects. .NET can be kindergarden easy for all I care.

1) .NET is not mature.

2a) .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.

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.

Re:Like most, you missed the point.

[VENONA]

"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.

Confidential email

[Duncan3]

When will these guys figure out all email is public?

If you want to scheme, that's what golf courses are for.

Re:Confidential email

[arthurpaliden]

You must be mad...programmers don't play golf, or any other sport the exposes one to sunshine.

Re:the death of Xbox 360 and what that means.

[The Warlock]

Do you even believe the shit coming out of your mouth?

First of all, let's end the misinformation.
1) The PS3 is not significantly more powerful than the X360.

2) Even if it were, nobody gives a shit. The PS2 was way less powerful than either Gamecube or Xbox, and everyone bought it anyway, because it was cheaper and first to market.

3) The PS3 does not run games through Linux. Indeed, a Linux install on the PS3 can't even use 3D acceleration. They call this a "security measure", I call it "deliberately crippling the hardware". Reminds me of the PSP.

4) Microsoft wants gamers to abandon the PC as a gaming platform and go to the 360. Then they can focus on making the Home version of Windows a purely media-centered OS and the business version essentially a backend for Office-type apps without having to worry about making a 3D rendering library or any of that crap.

BullSh*t

[shis-ka-bob]

This statement is so confused. The Constitution grants individuals all rights not specifically enumerated (Ninth Amendment). So we have the right to use the privy (how our Founding Fathers used 'privacy' - a 'moment of privacy' was time to use the outhouse). We also have the right to have children, eat, sleep, drink and so forth. None of these are specifically enumerated and not of these are applicable to a corporation.

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.

Re:BullSh*t

[Brad Eleven]

"Giving corporations HUMAN rights is completely messed up."

Hear, hear. See also the corporations' claim to their right to lobby, since citizens have same. I'd like to see corporations assume the same--actually more--responsibilities as citizens.

In fact, isn't the concept of a corporation based on *avoiding* responsibility, e.g., individual members aren't liable for actions taken by the corporation?

Re:Non-PDF?

[lastchance_000]

Link directly to the source

Context.

[twitter]

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?

Re:Context.

[makomk]

Your blanket statement is no more valid than mine, with one exception, I've worked in the industry with everything from big movers to mass-produced consumer goods. Please, take it from me, cross-platform is not that important to a consumer.

There is a point of diminishing returns, where MOST consumers simply don't want an all-in-one device, for example, or simply don't care to have a spreadsheet work in Linux and Windows. People just want to turn on a computer and USE it. They want to turn on a DVR and USE it. They want to dial a number and USE it. Inter-operability, multi-functionality, cross-platform code... all results in more complexity, and usually a "Jack of all trades, master of none" device. This is also known as the "lowest common denominator".

Exactly. They just want to be able to buy a DVR and hook it up to their existing television and use it, without worrying about ensuring they're the same brand or dealing with masses of different, subtly incompatible, non-standard products. What's more, most of the time they can. (It's odd how incompatibilty, lack of standardization, and the resulting inconveniences, monocultures and near-monopolies are so widespread in software, when people wouldn't stand for it elsewhere.)

Really?

[codepunk]

Linux is the killer application and it will be even more so in the future. Don't worry MS is scared of Linux and probably even more so today.

1. When you typed this posted at least a few linux boxes where involved in storing, sorting
and displaying your drivel.

2. I bet you probably even do a few google searches per day, there you go again 100,000 linux boxes
faithfully answer your request at lightning speed.

3. Go to work and half the printers there probably have embedded linux.

4. You are probably posting using your wireless router again running linux.

5. Watching your dvr or tivo today, again linux.

6. Go to the movies and watching CG animation again rendered on linux.

7. Request a web page, probably linux dns server answering that request.

8. Check your email, again probably linux or routed through linux boxes somewhere.

9. Wipe your ass, some embedded controller at the paper mill running linux made that happen.

10. Picking your nose... well ok linux probably had nothing to do with that but that is what the
parent had to be doing when authoring that post.

Linux touches your life everyday and does so without
being noticed...now that is the killer app!

Re:Really?

[Jesus_666]

True. Linux doesn't win by competing strongly in one market, it wins by competing in all markets at once, including ones that Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to think about if they were caught in a sea of excruciating boredom. Putting their OS on a USB stick-sized computer with the raw power of a 1996 gaming rig isn't sexy to Microsoft, but there are companies who make money that way (google "gumstix").

Microsoft might own the desktop, but when you build, say, an autonomous blimp for a research project, you're not going to use Windows Mobile as the operating system. When you build your own Cell-based monster audio processor you're not going to use it either. Or when setting up a Playstation 2 cluster. Or when gutting an old CRT monitor, replacing the tube with an LCD screen and putting in everything you need to turn the thing into a combintaion TV/DVD player/PVR.

Linux is everywhere. It doesn't need to win against Microsoft, because it doesn't even need to compete - there are dozens of other playing fields it's already plaing on.

Microsoft Confidential

[tiny69]

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

He can go get a Mac now

[cyberkahn]

"After 17 years with the company, Jim Allchin retired from Microsoft as of Jan. 30, 2007 - the day on which Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers." Here's his bio.

I like the one where they ADMIT pressuring

[Master of Transhuman]

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."

Re:Context is important-crossplatform for Windows

[Locutus]

(big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base)

you know, this makes me think that this "cross platform" stuff should not be pushed as 'cross OS' but instead, it should be talked about in relation to working across Microsofts various OS's and their versions.
Here are two scenarios in this regard:

1:
developer1-"Look, why don't we start these new projects on JBOSS and Java? It's all cross-platform and we can not only run it on our Windows Server 2003 machines, if we could also run it on a Linux server."
developer2-"Who cares about Linux, we're a Microsoft shop so it doesn't matter if the project runs on Linux."

2:
developer1-"Look, why don't we start these new project on JBOSS and JAVA? It's all cross-platform and we can not only run it on our Windows Server 2003 machines, it'll also run it on that Windows Server 2000 machine we have running just a few database translations a week. And, it'll run on and can be developed on the Windows XP machines we all have." developer2-"You mean the app software will run on those without having to upgrade them? That's cool and if it works, we won't have to deal with changing everything again when we have to bring in the Vista Server machines."

You get the idea.
LoB

Linux material

[zCyl]

I tried going through it manually, and then noticed there were countless emails, most of which were boring. A much better approach is to google through the emails for keywords like this.

In doing so, I noticed the first hit is a document outlining their strategy for partially breaking networking compatibility with Linux. "Our Linux Strategy"

Another document from January of '99 describes Linux's greatest strength over NT as its flexibility, and its greatest weakness as its ease of use (although nearly every usage problem specifically mentioned no longer applies in modern Linux distributions). It also describes two of their worst-case scenarios being that IBM and Sun adopt Linux. One quote of interest is, "There is the very real long term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features an [sic] incorporate them into their codebase. The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated."

Re:Linux material

[bigmammoth]

Reading these documents really crystallize Microsoft's most recent efforts to incorporate patent agreement legal language into their deal with Novel. It is the only front on which Microsoft can wage any form of defense against the inevitable commodification of software. Making everyone a participant is simply much more efficient than top down closed development. While It turned out MS approach to appropriate the linux evangelization though transparency was laughed at "shared source" anyone? ...You have to give them credit for clearly identifying the potential week point: "additionally, strong patent procurement is a key enabler which allows us to publish more of our source code to leverage evangelization benefits (the patent application process is, in a manner of speaking, a form of source publication)" This patent approach could theoretically allow microsoft to benefit from the work of everyone that touches their code while still charging any person that distributes the code for profit via licensing patents. And I imagine that is the direction they are going with their novel agreement. We already have that situation with some open source projects that implement patented technology's forced to have free and non-free (patent licensed) versions for corporate customers while giving away the source for non-commercial usage/development. This is un-free hopefully people will generally recognize it as such & hopefully GL3 will also help. Else we could see Microsoft transform from software licenser into a patent licenser.

Re:Uhm, Whatever, Jim

[adrianmonk]

It's an evocative way of saying "right now, Mac is better than what we're offering."

It's an attention-getting way of phrasing things. Sort of like that scene in Men in Black where Will Smith has figured out a critically important piece of information, and he keeps trying to tell everyone but nobody will listen, so eventually he just loudly yells out, "YO, OLD GUYS!".

In case you're wondering, I don't really have anything to contribute. I just really like that scene.