Scoble Bites The Hand That Fed Him

An anonymous reader writes "The Times Online points out a post that Robert Scoble, former Microsoft blogger, put up on his site recently. In essence, Scoble has moved 180 degrees from his former blogging tone, saying that 'Microsoft Sucks'. More specifically, he is highly critical of Microsoft's online policy. In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that's in it to win then I don't get it. ... Microsoft isn't going away. Don't get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn't winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That's how you win.'"

Comments

It's a trap!

[pinky99]

...former MS blogger... How obviuos must it be?

Re:It's a trap!

[TapeCutter]

1. Ex-blogger says MSSucks(TM).

2. MS upgrades from "failing stragegy" to "doomed stragey II".

3. Ex-blogger says "doomed stragey II" has "put Google on notice".

4. Profit!!!

I'm not sure if it's completely obvious, after all - step three is normally expressed as "???".

Re:It's a trap!

[marcello_dl]

In fact it happened something just like that with Paul Thurrott and WGA
Besides, is anybody gonna trust one guy whose name begins with "SCO" anymore? :)

And Ballmer's response?

[jkrise]

It appears you are angry and agitated. Here, take this chair!

Re:And Ballmer's response?

[armomurha]

Did you mean: Chairman Ballmer

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

[adnonsense]

No doubt it was Microsoft who sponsored this particular piece of research.

MS Profits on Ignorance

[PO1FL]

Frankly, I think the average consumer is intimidated by a perceived need for serious technical know-how to be able use just about anything other than MS (with the exception of Mac). Others probably aren't even aware of anything other than Microsoft and Mac.

Re:MS Profits on Ignorance

[vertinox]

Frankly, I think the average consumer is intimidated by a perceived need for serious technical know-how to be able use just about anything other than MS

Actually, I would argue the average consumer is intimidated by any software regardless of who makes it. Secondly, they most likely really don't know how to use Windows/Office as enough to get by to what they specifically want to do (surf, email, write printed letters).

The only reason most consumers use what software they use is because either:

A.) It came with the computer
B.) It was on the shelf at Best Buy/Stapes/Target/Walmart.
C.) Their relative/friend gave them a "copy"

Seeing that Windows and MS Office apply to all 3 rather easily it is a no brainier to why it is successful. It isn't that people are too familiar with MS products so much that they are unwilling to move on, but rather there is really no need.

Of these three reasons... Only C provides the opportunity for Linux and Open Office if they happen to have a relative/friend who is in the "know".

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

[Savage-Rabbit]

When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?

Monkeys on typewriters? Traditionally Microsoft hasn't asked anybody when their products weren't doing well. They simply set about either making life so difficult for any competitor and users of his products that the competitor's market share dwindled down to almost nothing or they simply eliminated the competition altogether which forced the consumers to buy Microsoft products. Whenever they couldn't do either of those two things their products often fail. Microsoft products comparatively rarely seem to enjoy huge success on their own merits. I'll admit that despite all the hullablaloo about the demise of Netscape IE was a better browser than Netscape 4.x. Not that IE was anything to cheer over, somewhere between versions 3 and 4 it simply began to suck less than Netscape did. Of course nowadays IE is pretty much beaten by Firefox and Safari (at least IMHO). The MS Office pack is also a fairly good product, after c.a. Office 97 or so it actually became usable for something more than writing letters and short essays!! Their OS and Server products, however, have generally either sucked or been uninspiring at best and their databases are nothing special. It remains to be seen how they do on the Mobile Phone market with their Windows Mobile where they compete against Mobile Phone OS products like Symbian and Linux, and the digital Music/Media market where they are up against the iPod. MS seems to be doing fairly well on the game console market although they haven't exactly succeeded in assimilating it completely into their collective.

Best said from the outside

[MichaelSmith]

Its the kind of thing people promise themselves and their co-workers they are going to say after they leave. Its good for the people still there, and its good in the long term for any stock you own in your previous employer.

Yes, he is bad mouthing them, but its not like he is posting their private bug database on bittorrent. And Microsoft might be better for it.

I don't think they can

[jimicus]

I know this is absolutely begging to be modded Troll, but let's get real for a minute.

The web's been around a few years now. While they were late in recognising it, Microsoft have been taking the Internet seriously since before Google left Stanford University.

IMO, if Microsoft were able to develop "better search than Google.... better hosting than Amazon..." - they'd have done so long ago. As it stands, they can't even implement searching in their own OS (certainly not in XP - even with the Search addon, it's trivially easy to dig out something which returns zero results when it patently shouldn't) - and they've got far more control over that than Google has over the Internet.

Fact is, Microsoft's business plan has never been "build a better OS/office suite/mousetrap". It's been "build one that's good enough and market it as being better". But such marketing doesn't work so well in the Internet age because it's much easier to find out how much truth there is behind it, and AFAICT Microsoft still haven't worked that one out.

Re:I don't think they can

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft have been taking the Internet seriously since before Google left Stanford University.

Have they? I havn't seen much fabled "innovation" coming from Microsoft on the internet. They only take it seriously where it could threaten their traditional revenue streams, not because they have any interesting or innovative ideas that could make the internet a better place. The internet threatened to be an open network that anyone could play on, Microsoft tried to get people to use MSN instead. Netscape threatened to make the web, a killer application, platform-neutral: Microsoft made sure they killed it with Internet Explorer and ActiveX. Standard compliant email servers threatened to make email platform neutral; Microsoft push Exchange and Outlook with gratuitous incompatibilities and a lack of open standards. When Google were just a search engine Microsoft let them be; when Google started to become an on-line application provider, Microsoft suddenly begin to roll out technology to counter the threat to their Office and Windows revenue. Let's not forget the whole early ".NET will revolutionise the entire internet once we work out what it is!" marketing circus that amounted to nothing.

Microsoft talk big, deliver little and focus all their energy on crushing any threat to their income streams.

Re:I don't think they can

[clickclickdrone]

Have they? I havn't seen much fabled "innovation" coming from Microsoft on the internet

Oh, I don't know. They really did turn on a dime and go all out Internet around the time of Win95. In a space of 6 months they went from no Internet to Internet enabling just about every product they had. Taking it seriously wasn't their problem.

What was their problem was 'getting it'. They added 'Internet' but didn't understand what or why so most of it was of no real use to anyone. The fact that they seriously thought they could puish MSN as a better and quite seperate Internet shows how wide of reality they were. I remember trying it out when it first went live - tons of unique content, online magazines, software etc but all quite seperate to the rest of the world. Sort of AOL without access to the Internet. Quite crazy.

Re:I don't think they can

[kripkenstein]

Fact is, Microsoft's business plan has never been "build a better OS/office suite/mousetrap". It's been "build one that's good enough and market it as being better".

More recently, they added the "do everything to maintain the Windows monopoly" strategy. This is in fact why Microsoft cannot "Ship [...] a better cross-platform web development ecosystem than Adobe", as Scoble would suggest they do. Cross-platform? Never.

Cross-platform tools are always created by Microsoft's competitors, not Microsoft. Java is cross-platform, .Net isn't (despite even Mono). Firefox is cross-platform, IE isn't. And so on and so forth.

Scoble suggesting Microsoft do something 'cross-platform' is a sign of ignorance, I would say.

Re:I don't think they can

[rbochan]

...In a space of 6 months they went from no Internet to Internet enabling just about every product they had. Taking it seriously wasn't their problem...

Which partially, if not totally, explains their godawful security track record. "Security" isn't something you can download or bolt-on.

Re:I don't think they can

[thejynxed]

As it stands, they can't even implement searching in their own OS (certainly not in XP - even with the Search addon, it's trivially easy to dig out something which returns zero results when it patently shouldn't) There are a few reasons for this:

Their XP search tool (and the search tool add-on), rely heavily on the Indexing Service to be run before the search tool is used (and continuously thereafter).

Another reason is that (in particular) the case with system files and other files deemed "important" by MS, they were attributed with an extra "Secret" flag, that the search tools and indexing service were programmed to skip over/ignore. The same thing happens when you use the Find function in the Registry editor, certain key types won't be found because of the way the searching function was programmed. It also happens from a "Command Line Window" to the "DOS" subsystem. Even if you use the DIR command, it will refuse to show you certain files, even if you remove the hidden flag from every file on the disk.

This was all done intentionally, to supposedly "protect" the end-user from themselves. Heck, if you want something really frustrating, just try removing all of the attribute flags (especially the read-only) flags from the files in the C:\Windows and its subfolders once...always fun to use attrib or even by doing it from the GUI, only to find the OS has automagically reset them back to what they were before you changed them :)

Dunno about trap

[Moraelin]

Dunno about trap, or it's just that MS no longer pays him to do PR.

It's funny how a lot of people previously were taking it as the truth, _whole_ truth, and nothing but the truth, just because he's such a hip blogger. I even remember getting modded down and getting some annoyed responses before, when I pointed out that it was his paid job to show the good parts only. "Noo, it must be all spontaneous and 100% the complete uncensored, unbiased picture, because he says so! He's so hip and irreverent that he even bravely told Ballmer to write a memo that's good for PR! He said that MS lets him write whatever he wants, good or bad, so if he doesn't show anything bad, surely nothing bad exists at MS." Not an exact quote, because I'm too lazy to search for the thread right now, but that was the general gist of it.

Now it turns out that when his paycheck no longer depends on MS, he suddenly discovers some bad things about MS too. Who would have imagined that?

So let me just say again, to everoyne: Look folks, do exercise some healthy skepticism when a conflict of interest is _that_ blatant. When people's paychecks depend on the King (or CEO, or whatever) liking what they write, there's rarely even a need to put an explicit "thou shalt present me as the Messiah" clause in their contract. Either they figure it out on their own (like this guy seems to), or natural selection takes care of it.

You can see that from ancient times to the present day. From the Pharaoh's scribes in the Old Kingdom to Pravda (or Faux News) journalists in the 20'th century to paid corporate PR/astroturfing/whatever, the same theme is there: the Pharaoh/Emperor/King/Beloved President/CEO/whatever is nothing short of perfect, and the enemy/competition/etc are a bunch of vampires or sloped-forehead orcs. And that those who didn't figure out that that's what's expected from them, found themselves "restructured" out. (Though, depending on the time and place, that could mean more fun HR personnel management methods, like beaheading, feeding someone to the crocodiles, or putting them at the top of a sharp stake. How's that for upwards mobility in the organization?;)

And that when you're interviewed by the CEO's/president's/etc personal pet PR guy, you put on your best smiling face and proclaim yourself happier than a dog in a cat show. When the guys from Pravda came to Ivan Ivanovich's door, what do you think Ivan said? "Oh, I'm so unhappy under the communist party's rule"? Heh. Most of those interviews weren't scripted either, just everyone knew that it's not like it would even make it to print if they don't say what's expected of them. So what makes anyone think that when Ballmer's personal blogger entered someone's office anything fundamentally different happened?

Briefly, take your infos from less biased sources.

Re:Dunno about trap

[pinky99]

Sure, you're completely right. No doubt. I just wanted to grab some "funny" karma points, but, as i got modded as insightful, this tactics clearly didn't work out...

Re:Dunno about trap

[clickclickdrone]

Maybe I've just had my fill of spindoctoring - especially as I live in the UK and have Blair et al to content with but these days I tend to warm to and give my business to firms who admit they make errors.

If something goes wrong, I don't want it spun to the nth degree to make it look like a good thing or to cover a CEO's back so they can be sure of their bonus. I want it to say what happened and what they're doing to fix it.

While we're at it, most CEO's bonus's are based around them being able to lie and mislead as much as possible - they're petrified of admitting to any sort of failure or error. That is a crazy situation. They should earn it for doing a good job, not their ability to hide a bad one.

Re:Dunno about trap

[blowdart]

Briefly, take your infos from less biased sources.

You're new to slashdot then?

Re:Dunno about trap

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I think the part...."no longer pays him to do PR." kind of makes this a non story. I mean YE FLIPPIN GODS.....he's NOT biting the had that feeds (that fed....FED him). He no longer works for Microsoft. So who gives a rats ass that he says something bad about Microsoft. It's also not the first time! He's been making comments about Vista since it came out (which he still wasn't working for Microsoft then) and the comments have not all been good. So what I want to kno eis why the hell did this story get posted? Because it's going to generate page views on Slashdot. That's it. Hell it got me to post and all of you too.

Re:Dunno about trap

[mgblst]

This sort of thing has been going on for many years. A lot of people to place more trust in an organisation who will admit their errors, but the majority perfer to live blind. That is, they will trust a company that doesn't admit any error, in the blind faith belief that they must have never committed any errors. To think overwise is to admit that companies are human (or at least made of humans), and most people would prefer to not admit that. So it can backfire.

Also, as a pessimist, you end up with companies admitting some small errors, but not the major ones.

Hah!

[ilovegeorgebush]

Well done Mr, you've just said what the rest of the IT industry has been saying for years!

Re:Aw poor Scoble

[Timesprout]

Even for the dominant player, it does not make sense to try and compete with everyone. And many large corporations in other areas don't (do you see Daimler-Chrysler making extremely cheap cars? or Boeing making little sports planes?). I think this is a case of Microsoft hubris rather than necessity.

You picked a bad example there, Daimler are the luxury arm of Chrysler who are a major brand who feel compelled to compete in several car markets as with Ford, owners of Jaguar and Aston Martin (which they have just sold). While they both produce sports cars to compete in NASCAR and rallying etc, they are not racing companies but their presence on the start line boosts the brand image as a whole. And as for Boeing, they do a lot of subcontracting for the military and NASA. Again not their primary business but a good selling point for the multi billion dollar deals.

In there to 'win'?

[WaZiX]

That's the problem with Microsoft, they are so obsessed with winning that they forgot that in the end, they are a service company, and in a service company you serve your customers, not yourself! Stop wanting to take over existing markets on the Internet and start creating yourselves new Internet markets. About any Internet company I think of that has been successful has brought a new experience to it's customers: eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Youtube, ... they all had a compelling reason for customers to use their service.

On Internet you need 2 things to be successful, and Idea and money for development/marketing. They definitely have the money, all they need is NEW ideas to use their money on.

Re:No one can describe it

[linuxci]

Yeah, I remember everything at one time was going to be branded .NET. Didn't MSN Messenger become .NET Messenger for a while and now is Windows Live Messenger (but most people still call it MSN). Eventually if Windows Live is a failure you can see that name quietly disappear too.

Microsoft seem king of the pick a lame name and promote it strategy. I think they'd have been better sticking with the established MSN and improving it beyond recognition.

That's never been their plan

[Bert64]

Release better products? Compete on product quality? That's not the Microsoft way...
Do you really think they will spend all that money and effort to produce better products than google/yahoo/etc ?
No, they will leverage their desktop monopoly to push their search. Their search engine may be crap, just like IE is crap, but when 95% of desktop computers sold comes with their search engine as the default, very few people will ever bother looking for anything better.
Aside from that, how will they find something better when the search engine they use is designed to lock customers in?

Re:Aw poor Scoble

[pionzypher]

Are you sure about that?

Seriously, MS still envies google in that area. For all the hot air Ballmer spews about googles' "cute" apps, and how their hire rate is "insane".... MS has lost this round of the search match, they're not able to compete. Look at the emphasis they've put on it. Why pay people to use windows live if you don't care? Microsoft is becoming the one thing that Bill Gates hoped he'd never see.... a lumbering behemoth not dissimilar to the old IBM. They are having diffifulty keeping up with the present, just look at vista for connfirmation. (Disclaimer: I don't mind vista).

But vista brings forth features that I've had in linux for years. gkrellm does a great job as a sidebar, without the resource usage. The latter part of... scratch that.... MOST OF XP's cycle was spent chasing holes and vulnerabilities.

I like vista, and see it being fairly well adoped in a few years time. But it's not a forward looking technology, just as Live Search isn't forward looking. They care, but there isn't much they can do about it besides pay people to use it.

All you need to know is

[giafly]

"If you have a technical issue with Microsoft, it's faster to search their database with Google rather than their own search engine" Times Online. Get your act together guys!

Re:All you need to know is

[outcast36]

MSDN too. If you are a MS developer, just add "site:msdn.microsoft.com" to your google search. Hurray!!!

Re:Its too late

[ixnaay]

Its nice to see that the 'hooked on phonics' kids are growing up and posting on slashdot

Re:No one can describe it

[WaZiX]

Yeah, they should set for one name and develop that, I guess they wanted to tie their web apps more to their desktop apps to give a sense of familiarity... But the worse part is even when they try to completely change their services, they still can't do it right.

Just look at their email. I have windows vista on another partition (for specialized programs that don't run on linux), well, it comes with Windows Mail. They changed their MSN/Hotmail service and you can download your mails on your desktop, great! So it's simple right, just use their new mail product to connect to the hotmail server... well NO! See their new Mail program is not 'Live' branded, so you need to download another Windows Mail, namely Windows Live Mail Desktop to use your hotmail on your desktop. And that new program logs in _before_ you can see your programs. How many mail apps do I need? And why do I have to sign in on MSN to read my other mail accounts?

And once you have installed Windows Live Mail Desktop, well it sets itself as the default program for reading your mails through windows live messenger. Worse part, it doesn't even work well with windows live messenger, since you usually have to delete mails in order for the number of mail notifications to be updated correctly!

All this money invested in locking customers into their live branded parts, such a waste! Instead of pouring money in 2 different programs, pour twice as much money in 1 and just set hotmail to work with pop/imap. Right now Microsoft has 3 completely independent email clients, 3! And none have actually been developed together, how stupid is this?

Re:There is not bad PR...?

[bateleur]

You'd better give us some more about how much better Ubuntu is comparing to SuSe

That's an interesting thing about Microsoft and Google, though, isn't it? After years of Microsoft-vs-Linux and occasional Microsoft-vs-Apple a lot of the geek tribal mindshare now seems to have shifted across to cheering for Google.

I consider myself a Linux fanboi in general, but the more time passes the more I find myself losing interest in OS wars and caring more about applications. Quite frequently I boot my desktop machine into Windows XP and spend the day mostly running Firefox, emacs and Cygwin because it's easier that way than trying to run the occasional Windows-only app on Debian (via Wine or whatever).

So if it's all about applications now it becomes clearer why Google are so popular. Search, mail, maps, documents... a lot of their stuff seems well designed and easy to use. Oh, plus it's cleverly funded so I don't pay anything. Compare with MS Office which is expensive, bloated and often hard to use.

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

[Technician]

When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?

I have heard some read Slashdot. If they do, I can toss out a suggestion.. Don't sell the boxed version at an order of magnitude more than the OEM version. My older hardware has been getting upgrades to Linux because the upgrade cycle does not make sense for the software. A $650 PC should not need a Multi-Hundred dollar copy of XP Pro and $400 copy of Office.

After being given a Power Point presentation to show for a guest speaker, the Office 2000 on the Windows 2000 laptop presented the text a page at a time instead of a bullet at a time. Instead of spending lots of money for a software upgrade, I tried the same presentation on the same laptop running Ubuntu with Open Office. It worked like a charm. If MS Office was a $40 upgrade, I may have considered it. Due to the many versions, Professional, Small Office, Standard, & Home and Student, I figured a full upgrade was too expensive when an alternative works fine.

Wake up and smell the coffee. You have new neighbors and they are setting up shop in your back yard. Monopoly pricing and high priced retail versions are on their way to a dead end.

Just for the record, 3 of my older PC's now have Ubuntu. I only get a new version of a MS OS on new hardware. There is no reason to spend big bucks on a software upgrade.

You should write for Cobert

[HangingChad]

...business model spanks of a rigidity...

I'm not sure what that means, but I like it anyway. That's right up there with Cobert's "flaccid with anger". Can't wait to be in the middle of a really important high-level meeting and announce some part of the plan "spanks of rigidity."

They'll still be wondering what it means on the plane home. Adding that to my quote tiddler. ---->

Re:Are you implying something?

[Technician]

If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....

Are you implying somehow that Windows isn't broken?

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

I agree, just one comment to add

[someone1234]

Just because his paycheck is no longer coming from M$ he didn't become significantly more reliable. Who knows, he might get paid from elsewhere. Or just writes the crap out of spite. Once compromised, ever compromised.

Re:I agree, just one comment to add

[PinkPanther]

Just because his paycheck is no longer coming from M$ he didn't become significantly more reliable.

You aren't paying attention. He's slamming Microsoft now; this makes him 100% reliable...almost saintly in fact (and if you still disagree...please take a moment to look at which site you are currently reading).

Re:I agree, just one comment to add

[Windowser]

You cannot find ANYTHING on their website, and its dirt slow. I remmeber one time I wanted to download media player 11, went to the site, and had to spend literally three minutes finding the download page.

You just have to know how to use the tool : http://www.google.com/search?q=download+media+play er+11
See ? first answer right there

Had to...and it's actually relevant...

[ari wins]

Look folks, do exercise some healthy skepticism when a conflict of interest is _that_ blatant. When people's paychecks depend on the King (or CEO, or whatever) liking what they write, there's rarely even a need to put an explicit "thou shalt present me as the Messiah" clause in their contract. Either they figure it out on their own (like this guy seems to), or natural selection takes care of it. In Soviet Russia, Putin takes care of you!

criticism != biting

[nanosquid]

While some marketing departments may believe that the only good publicity is good publicity, I don't think that's the case. Microsoft's biggest risk is becoming irrelevant, and even being criticized is better than being ignored. Besides, if the criticism is something fairly obvious, it's not like it's going to be news to people who have actually tried the product.

MS should focus on core

[halliburton]

MS should focus on its core competency, which is hardware.
Drop all these other side projects like the search engine, the news site, the OS..
Go back to making great mice, keyboards and joysticks.
They used to be the best, and now that they are sidetracked with all these other projects they are losing focus, and it's starting to show.

Re:MS should focus on core

[nuzak]

> Go back to making great mice, keyboards and joysticks.

That's like saying Lucas should direct more movies like The Empire Strikes Back.

(go look it up on IMDB)

Train Wreck

[jrentona]

The truth is that M$ has pretty muched sucked since 2000. It took them a whopping 5 years for them to get XP working properly.

And Vista/Visual Studio 2005 is pretty much a train wreck for C developers. We used to be able to rely on the development environment. In fact, that area was always a significant innovation for these guys. No more. Fire Steve Embalmer before it is too late.

And the evidence just keeps rolling in:
http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2005/11/05/problems -with-visual-studio-2005/

Hah

[Greg_D]

Microsoft didn't make all that money by innovating or being better than their competitors. They made that money by doing a better job of selling their products to their customers.

They still do.

About time

[MrCopilot]

You are coming to a sad realization.
Cancel or Allow

Allow

Crisis, hunger, and denial

[UnknowingFool]

John Kennedy once said:

When written in Chinese the word, "crisis" is composed to two characters. One represents "danger", and the other represents "opportunity".

Microsoft is in crisis, but they are not willing to acknowledge it. It seems to me that they would rather spin everything so that no one notices it. The last time they had a crisis (being late to the Internet and world wide web) they responded admirably.

But that was a different world. These days their monopolistic practices have been exposed. Competitors are not afraid of them. Microsoft is defending too many fronts, many of which they created (Xbox, Windows CE/Mobile, etc.)

More importantly, Microsoft isn't as lean and hungry as they used to be. They are living off the the wealth of Office and Windows income. However in other areas, they have not produced. Windows and Office are their crutches but if those products start to fail, MS has nothing to fall back upon anymore. As with the release of Vista, it is apparent that they have lost focus of their core products. With Office, Microsoft's problem is that older versions of Office are good enough.

A decade ago, Apple faced a similar situation. Except Apple didn't have reserves MS has today. That forced them to get lean. Whole product lines were cut while the company refocused. They scraped their old OS and developed a new one. Some credit Jobs with getting the company's comeback as he was the driving force behind it. Right now, there is no one at MS that seems is doing that. If the recent relevations from Allchin are true, his managers (Ballmer, Gates) are not focused.

Re:Wanna trade?

[intangible]

You'd take a guy who follows a crazed lunatic over the lunatic? I wonder which is crazier.

Re:Who does microsoft execs listen to?

[QRDeNameland]

I don't think those monkeys did nearly as bad as the article suggests. As the article notes:

But after a month, the [six] Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter "s".

The hypothesis is that a million monkeys typing randomly for a million years will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare. After one month with six monkeys, they produced no less than a first draft of "Snakes on a Plane."

Further research is clearly needed.