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Did Amazon Induce Vista's Premature Birth?
theodp writes "A recent Amazon SEC filing sheds light on the puzzling departure of Microsoft Sr. VP Brian Valentine in Sept. 2006. Valentine is the Gen. George Patton-like figure charged with pushing Vista developers, who dumped the still not-ready-for-prime-time OS into RC1 status as he bolted for a new gig at Amazon. Having repeatedly assured everyone that Valentine was staying with the company post-Vista, Microsoft backpedaled and explained that Valentine decided to leave since the company had shipped a near-final version of Vista. Not so. Although analysts fell for the PR line, it seems Valentine had actually signed an Employment Agreement way back in June calling for him to be on board at Amazon on Sept. 11 if he wanted to pick up a $1.7M signing bonus, $150K base salary, another $500K bonus, and 400K shares of Amazon stock (now worth almost $30M). Who says you have to shell out $999.95 for MS-Project to come up with accurate planned completion dates?"
Can't fault a guy for makin' money.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
There are lies, damn lies, and material misstatements to the investment community.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So the reason it was rushed out prematurely wasn't because it was already 4 years late and falling further and further behind the competition, then?
Valleywag ( the first link in TFA ) says "Valentine surely told his bosses of this fact [ that he had signed with Amazon ]." but offers no evidence to back it up. I don't really want to defend Microsoft, and while they are sure guilty of a multitude of sins, they might be innocent of this one.
Lots of people make future employment agreements without telling their current employers. Indeed, in my experience both as employee and employer, the majority do not tell.
How long until Amazon OS is released?
To make him worth that kind of money?
He didn`t do it for the money - he wanted the users to have a modern, lightweight operating system with great features like Aq...Aero, media controlled internet bandwith, and gazillions of bl...features. The system is very mature and st
And yes, yes you can fault people for making money.
[insert witty comment here]
the Law of Unintended Consequences in action: because he wanted out and extra money, we're supposed to buy the line that Vista's actually a good OS. Valentine wanted to make a little extra dough, but asked us to pay the cost.
If he is willing to push an unfinished product to market at a huge loss to his company just so that he can leave his current post for a higher paying one, what is to say he won't simply rinse and repeat. People like this are more a liability than an asset.
Well, then I would expect RC1 to be stable and have smooth instantly responsive performance like the mac does on lesser hardware.
I've seen this effect before. A manager in a company I worked for was angling for a position in a different business unit in the company. He wanted to show focus, leadership etc so he whitewashed the problems in the project he was directing and pushed for a premature release. He forced design choices that looked OK in the short term (from outside) and ignored the longterm consequences. He got the new job and a big write-up about how he had managed this project so well. Of course the project was flawed, but he did not have to clean up the mess anfd the product got canned a few months later.
Release decisions etc should not be made by exiting managers. They shopuld be made by the new management team that has to keep things going.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
To help optimize how your Web pages are displayed, we are checking to see if a 2007 Microsoft Office program is installed.
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Follow this link if the page is not redirected. So they need to check whether I have Office installed just so I can see the MS Project page? Interesting... (Win XP Pro + Firefox + NoScript, with JavaScript turned off for microsoft.com, produced the above page.)
We leave linux bashing to Forbes, The Yankee Group, Mr Enderle etc. They are much better at it. :)
How to I get down on the action to rush out a release candidate and then leave for a large bonus and some stock options which will make me a millionaire?
:-P
:-P
I'll crank out a dodgy RC1 for tomorrow if you've got a couple of million for me too.
That sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
However, somehow I'm finding myself not actually surprised to know that Vista got prematurely elevated by someone who no longer gave a shit. That has the ring of truthiness about it.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why did they have to rip out WinFS ..and why did they rip it out before he left .. it's not in RC1 even?
If Amazon can do anything to induce Vista's premature death, we'd all be much obliged.
He's made of gold.
[insert witty comment here]
If one person leaving company X for company Y and it causes causes company X's bread and butter product to suck, it's not company Y's fault. Company X should have invested in business continuity. BCP is boring, but what if instead of being hired away, he was hit by a bus or (arguably similar to the deal he got at Amazon) wins the lottery? A company 1/10th the size of Microsoft shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
Its sad how this site has gone down the tubes.
How else would it get to our computers?
As I recall, a lot of companies who'd forked over lots of dollars for multi-year support agreements back around 2001 (there was some marketing phrase, I forget what) were starting to grumble that the promised new releases included in the price hadn't yet been released, and the agreements were about to expire.
This is one of the factors that prompted the early release of the "business" version of Vista in late 2006 instead of it being released along with the home version in early 2007.
Not that any businesses really wanted to touch that, but it let Microsoft say they'd lived up to their part of the agreement (in their own inimitable (innovative?) Microsoft way, of course).
-- Alastair
Sorry about the typo. I did mean SP1.
as chris pointed out
Man, if I'm Microsoft and I'm generally willing to break the law to get my way when push comes to shove, I'm probably sending some guys to bust Valentine's kneecaps at a minimum.
Granted, that wouldn't help them out in the short term, but they'd lose less executives if a savage beating was part of the severance package. Hell, they probably could advertise right here on slashdot for people willing to kick a Microsoft executive in the groin for free!
Vista was in development for five years or so and it's still broken a year later. No one can be faulted for a month or two in that time frame. The problem was more in the process itself and all sorts of other executive characters have left the Soft over it. Non free software development, especially Microsoft style development, is broken.
WinFS has been the "new great feature" promised in every release since the early 1990s (ie for well over ten years now). Talk is cheap, delivering something that works well is hard, which is why WinFS always gets ripped out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"Who says you have to shell out $999.95 for MS-Project to come up with accurate planned completion dates?"
Hey, it's only $854.99 at Amazon!
A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name. -- Evan Esar
Baby Vista Died, but look, They saved the afterbirth
"To make him worth that kind of money?"
It's what he convinced someone to pay him.
What you were expecting someone to give you something objective so you could rant about no one being worth that much? Sorry, but my metric is the one that matters, and it says he's worth what he got.
Vista wasn't really a "premature birth". It's more like putting every other ingredient into a recipe, then trying to fix it by baking it for too long.
Not a typewriter
Even if the manager does not jump ship, he might get killed in a plane crash etc.
The cool thing for a ship-jumping manager is that he gets away clean. Even if he leaves a mess behind he can always twist it: "Now that I've left, everything has fallen apart. Look at how good I am! Hand me another million share options".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Sounds like someone at MS read about how the AS-400 runs it's native file system. It's a DB2 instance, which is about all I know about it. Brings up questions. What does the DB2 engine use for storage. (FAT? Does converting everything to EBCDIC and back slow things down?)
Mod me off Topic please.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think many people on this site make around 2/3rd of that for their salary. $150K is not a huge salary.
Of course we don't get millions in stock and sign on bonuses either. I think the biggest bonus I ever got was 10% of my salary/year and $20K in unvested stock options.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Amazon was just playing catch with a baseball and the ball got away. It hit Microsoft right in the womb. Shortly after Vista said "Calculating File Transfer". Microsoft and doctors thought that Vista might be in trouble so they induced the labor. Then after it was born they found out it was just a "feature". That original file transfer is still "calculating" to this day.
How the hell is a basic lack of reading comprehension "Insightful"? The original poster asked about general Linux news, not Linux bashing.
If he's left behind a mess then all he has to do to spin it his way is this: "Gee it looks like those guys at MS are really struggling since I left. That just shows how good I am."
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What the article doesn't seem to mention, or remember, is all the bad press Microsoft was getting for having the DNF of Operating Systems. They were getting annual vaporware nominations, and basically looking like a bunch of idiots that couldn't get a product out the door.
There was tremendous pressure from all sides to release Vista. Don't think you can really place the blame on Valentine or Amazon for this one.
Find coupons in Greeley
Ok... so does that mean Amazon also stole away someone from Apple, some magical Patton-like figure pushing Leoptard developers?
There's no denying that Leoptard was even less ready for prime time than, say, Vista. At least Vista wasn't blue-screening people performing upgrades.
BTW... how does putting something into RC1 magically mean it's going to be released "too" early? I seriously doubt that dude was entirely responsible for giving a yea/nay on a release.
Blah blah blah, more rabid anti-MS hate from Shitslot.
...it all depends on the situation. If you have access to a income with which you can reasonably support yourself and your kids and, optionally, donate to charities you find worthwhile, then you can't be faulted for making that income. If you make more, you are able to be faulted. Whether or not he can be faulted for the income he has received, I do not know. As I do not know the individual, or what he needs the money for, I can't make that judgment. However, that does not mean that such a judgment could not be rendered.
[insert witty comment here]
and doesn't really have any big plans for him otherwise. He turned traitor against MS for money and now the damage is done. He's already earned his paycheck. I doubt very seriously if Amazon will put this guy in charge of any thing significant. They've already got their return on investment from this guy. They'll just put him in the corner somewhere until he goes somewhere else or his contract runs out. They don't need him anymore.
Brian Valentine was known throughout the company as a guy who could take troubled products that were floundering and he could get them shipped. But leadership in Windows is cursed to two releases.
Moshe Dunie pushed out two major versions of NT and floundered with NT5 (Windows 2000) and couldn't integrate 9x. Valentine came in, got the organization in order, and Windows 2000 was a success. He kept it up to merge the organization and features from Win9x, and miraculously got XP out in less than two years with nearly all the good planned features. Then, Longhorn became his NT5. Everybody in the organization had massive planned super-features that weren't fully baked in the ideas phase. The org got sidetracked by Springboard and Trainyard rollouts for XP. They had a massive brain drain getting rid of FTEs below level 88 and told long term contractors to take a hike. The employees that were left had their institutional knowledge too diluted and strung out trying to teach new H1B and college hires while managing Chinese and Indian outsource firms doing half the work.
So what do you get? Vista. Valentine is no dummie. He pushed aside other execs that were wallowing in development hell projects. Now he was the one in development hell. He arranged his own exit on his terms. Good for him.
Sinofsky will get a Vista replacement out by 2009 and it'll be a clean-up release that makes a lot of people happy. Lots of stuff cut from Vista will get back in, done right. He'll get a big feature release out by 2011. After that you won't see another major Windows release until 2015.
"Obviously you and I wouldn't pay that much to hire the guy"
Well, if it makes Microsoft look as bad as this situation has, I would at least try to take up a collection...
That sounds like a VERY likely reason for Vista to have been released in the state it was! Clearly, they had a LOT more crap to take out of it and a lot of WindowsXP to put back into it before it was ready for consumers.
We all knew Vista was late... late, late, late. But we were all prepared to wait if it meant that Vista would be somehow better than WindowsXP. And the more "Vista-features" were removed from the project, the more we felt a release was close... and even THEN it was very late.
Now the explanation of an early departure by one of the project leaders as a probable cause for Vista to be "released before it's ready"? That just makes me laugh inside.
For all of those people out there who STILL think commercial, proprietary, capitalist-driven, software development is better because the motivation is profit:
IN YOUR FACE!!!
The same greed on an individual level has quite plausibly ruined the Vista project and has done immeasurable damage to Microsoft's reputation and standing. (Some might argue that Microsoft's reputation couldn't possibly be worse, but I argue that it can and has! Even dumb-consumers who buy whatever is put in from of them very much dislike Vista! That has GOT to mean something.)
If Microsoft takes 7 years to bring out another major Windows release, they might as well not bother. Linux will have won comprehensively.
I wonder how big Vista would have gotten if it lasted to term. A premie that big... it must have been a baby giant. ...
*ducks the inevitable rotten fruits and veggies*
Whoa....wait. What are you saying? That a person should only be making enough money to basically...get by...and if you make much more than that...it is a bad thing?????
Geez...who is to say if a person is making 'too much' money..and 'be faulted'?? I don't get it...I always want to make more. I supposed if I was super rich, multi-millionaire...I'd slide and just enjoy it for the rest of my life playing, but, still, I don't get how people can say someone is making too much money.
I can only guess you're one of those that thinks someone that is making MORE than they 'need' should have their excess monies taken away forceably (sp?) by tax for wealth redistribution?
Who exactly is to be the judge of who makes too much money? Who is to say you have too rich a lifestyle?
I don't fault anyone who makes more than I do...nor am I jealous, it does, however, encourage me to get off my ass and work to make more, so I can live the 'easy life', not want for anything, and have fun.
Can you explain your thoughts on this more? Who is to say someone is making too much money, and can be faulted for it? I say you get paid what someone is willing to pay you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Wasn't vista released 2 years later than originally planned? Quit making excuses! Amazon or not, Vista should have been finished long before it was due to Microsoft's more than capable budget for it.
I like how slashdot posts more Microsoft bashing news than Linux news
Why, is Microsoft exactly the same thing as Linux? Who are you anyway to tell somebody else what to post on their private site?
ts sad how this site has gone down the tubes.
Noone's forcing you to be here, DLTDHYITAOTWO *waves*.
"He always kept the team meetings stocked with several kegs of beer and always told the employees that if they drank too much take a cab home and expense it."
That explains VISTA!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The big secret is that Vista and Duke Nukem Forever are actually the same program. The trouble is, people keep trying to get Vista to act like an OS.
This incident has everything: 1) Overpaying executives and underpaying the people who do the work. He got stock options worth $30 million just for coming to work the first day? 2) Corporate lies and sneakiness and manipulation. 3) Absolutely no caring for customers. 4) Behavior that will eventually sink the company. Remember, at one time IBM had 100% of the PC business. Remember, IBM lost $1 billion on OS2, and then lost another $1 billion. Even the biggest company cannot treat customers badly forever.
The whole Vista experience oozes sleaziness. It's the true modern horror story. In comparison, the movie "Aliens" is for schoolchildren. What's a monster compared to Bill Gates in the role as software's "Dr. Death", degrading the quality of life of millions of people by hassling them and costing them more?
One of the biggest and most respected IT magazines is rejecting Windows Vista: Save Windows XP. Quote: "More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched - many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change."
Insightful. That means Linux can east Vista alive. I don't want Vista, seen it, used it and dumped it. Fortunately the PC I had came with XP and I could reload after Vista hell.
Trouble is, I want to buy another PC and I want XP or Linux. And no, I don't want to pay $2000 for it, I want one of those $699 deals at the local store. A commodity PC. I wish the government would enforce bundling laws...
...beer!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I mean, c'mon. The surprise would have been a great product from Microsoft, not a bad one. The damn thing wouldn't be as good as the alternatives even if it "just worked".
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Jeez, you make it seem like bashing Microsoft is a bad thing
Requiem for the American Dream
Lying to employees is one thing. It's routine and expected. But lying to shareholders is another.
1) so lying is acknowledged as being part of corporate culture.
2) What makes the writer think that stockholders are not routinely lied to? Much of the PR spin you see on "Wall Street Week", "Cnn Money", "Wall Street Journal" etc. is for stockholder consumption. Add in creative accounting in the stockholder reports and you get constant barrages of misinformation (lies) and spin (lies) to stock holders.
Such is the corporate culture...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"I don't get how people can say someone is making too much money."
It seems he did a fine job with Vista. In that regard, it's apparent MS did pay him way too much money compared to what he was worth.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
> Whoa....wait. What are you saying? That a person should only be making enough money to basically...
>get by...and if you make much more than that...it is a bad thing?????
Yes, that is exactly what they mean. And by implication they consider themselves such superior beings that THEY should be given the power to make the decision as to exactly how much you should make and to remove the excess to dispose of by their superior, more enlightened you see, wisdom to those who don't have 'enough'.. again defined by their superior wisdom. In other words, a 'shepherd' type Democrat.
Democrats only come in two basic types you see:
Sheep, who know (believe) themselves to be helpless, unable to feed or to cloth themselves in an uncaring world run by wicked greedy Republicans... except for their mighty protectors. They take care of their every need and all they ask in return is them taking a few minutes every year or two to go vote for the Democrat.
Shepherds are the elite (self selected of course) higher beings, deriving their self esteem (and valuing said self esteem above all else) from their certainty that they are the select, elect and chosen leaders, without whose enlightened leadership the poor masses of misfits would resort to cannibalism or simply sit and starve in their own feces.
Of course in any country where the shepherds actually achieve power the result is starvation, poverty and mass graves.
Democrat delenda est
Good on Mr Valentine for getting out before this crapware hit the market and ruined his reputation.
Note to Mr Bezos. I am available for hire.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
(This is one of the things I dislike about fat cat executives. They have the means to shift the financial burden of maintaining the country onto the shoulders of those who already carry the productivity burden. Being rich is fine, being rich but getting someone else to pay your taxes is not.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You're an idiot. Truly. And probably a Democrat.
If, your on alliance, and you can induce a premature pull, often, it will buy enough time for the that final battle to be won by the alliance!
Shard pets FTW!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
/me predicts that in 2015 Microsoft will be selling linux and calling it Windows.
Yes, because we all know that Linux is the consumer desktop success that Vista is not.
Yes, I meant 100% of the PC-compatible business computer market. Tandy and Commodore were not used in businesses, usually.
I concur that certain people can be fantastic all star managers/executives. I can also concede that without the correct non-technical leadership, a project can fall apart (wrong leadership can drive it into the ground, no leadership means the technical pursuit of things may never be pulled into a realisticly usable product, with features always being chased by the technical people who want the challenge.)
However, by the same token, for every project with a clear leader who organized the success, you can probably identify some technical architect/developer with the driving technical vision that was absolutely needed to be the foundation of the project. Someone who didn't *explicitly* manage people in any business sense, but still laid out exactly how it would all play out from the technical standpoint. Though I am aware of a precious few who repeatedly shine in this context, I never hear about those people getting multi-million dollar signing bonuses or golden parachutes. Half the time, they get thoroughly pushed to the background as the executive type has the praise lavished on for the great work they personally did. The only time I see it happen is when they surrender and turn into a business type. Quite frequently I see people start down the path only after proving a lack of technical competence, and quickly out pace their technical seniors just by being on a business track rather than a technical track.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I do not propose that the money be taken way from some one who makes what I consider to much. I do believe I stated I don't even know how much he would need. However, I do think it is wrong to earn more than you need and I define need as what you require to take care of yourself, your dependents, and fulfill your societal and humanitarian moral obligations. The amount of money needed will be different for each individual. I would never say that money should be forcibly seized from someone unless it was ill-gotten (such as if it were stolen or willingly given under false pretenses). I merely believe in only taking what you need. In a similar vein, I think people should recycle, but I would never force them to at gun point. Other examples: I think it is wrong for people to over eat, but I would never pass a law saying someone could not eat more than a certain amount. I think it is wrong for people to over spend (ie spend credit), but I would never pass a law saying someone could not use credit.
[insert witty comment here]
...my comment Moral fault is different than law which is a response listed under my initial thread
[insert witty comment here]
There is no executive no matter how talented who's absence would create a problem this large. The senior suit leaves and all of a sudden the minions of program managers and bit heads running the company's #1 product release all go insane on the same day?
Tell you what - HIS boss, whoever that is, as well as all the direct reports to that now gone suit should be fired w/o hesitation. Whether you like MS or hate them, this is textbook how not to develop and release a product so either someone's lying or, if this is really how MS functions then it speaks volumes for what's profoundly wrong with MS and why all their major releases are screwed up a little bit.
I specifically stated I could not make a judgment in this situation as I do not know the individual... As a political Libertarian I do take offense to being called a Democrat. Believing something is wrong and legislating it are two completely different things. Please read my responce to this message's parent entitled: Moral fault is different than law...
[insert witty comment here]
Well if I was about to be tied to a stinker like Vista, which would stink on ice. (or as George Carlin once said '... could knock a buzzard off a sh#twagon') I would want to salvage some sort of appearance of success as I bailed out of the company and on to millions. As long as the contract is signed at the new job then I don't care how wet the ink is when it all goes to hell. Vista was going to go down so hard it was going to taint everybody who even lived nearby let alone Microsoft. I can't fault the guy for knowing when its about to hit the fan.
Personally I think I will stay out of Management thank you very much.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
... execs at Microsoft have been laboring under a misconception.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Whoa....wait. What are you saying? That a person should only be making enough money to basically...get by...and if you make much more than that...it is a bad thing?????" Yes, however, I recognize different people need different amounts of money to get by. As such, and being that I don't know this man personally, I certainly can't make a decision on his behalf. Some people don't have children and might not need as much. Some people run huge charities; they might need billions. I am merely saying you can have to much money, given certain, very amorphous parameters. Very extreme fictional example: if you have a trillion dollars, are not married, have no children or other dependents, do not run or donate to any charities, and otherwise provide no service to humanity; you just sit in a pool and drink margaritas; then you have too much money and, yes, that is a bad thing. And yes, that person is a bad person. However, I would never advocate forcibly taking the money from that person. I would advocate individuals should not accept his money and should refuse to provide him with goods and services. "Geez...who is to say if a person is making 'too much' money..and 'be faulted'?? I don't get it...I always want to make more. I supposed if I was super rich, multi-millionaire...I'd slide and just enjoy it for the rest of my life playing, but, still, I don't get how people can say someone is making too much money." Everyone judges everyone they come into contact with every day, whether they admit to it or not. Very few people, however, are in a good position to make that assessment. Hence the reason I said as much in my original post. I will say this, I would not approve of what I believe you are espousing: make a ton of cash, keep it all, never work again. I believe not only is that a disservice to the people who you come into contact with, but also a disservice to the people you took the money from as well as yourself. If having multiple millions of dollars would make you do nothing and contribute nothing to society, why do you deserve the money? (again, I do not advocate taking it from you) Just because you can have something, doesn't mean you deserve it. "I can only guess you're one of those that thinks someone that is making MORE than they 'need' should have their excess monies taken away forceably (sp?) by tax for wealth redistribution?" No. "Who exactly is to be the judge of who makes too much money? Who is to say you have too rich a lifestyle?" Everyone judges everyone else all the time; the only difference is who is honest about it and what their decisions are (and I believe undecided or abstention are decisions). Is murder wrong? is cannibalism? Maybe, it all depends on the specifics. If we are both starving on a desert island (or high in the mountains), we have no food, it has been almost two weeks without food; is it ok to kill you (or vice versa) to obtain food? what if you attacked me first? what if you were already dead? I don't know enough information to judge you (though I can speculate about your present ideals) or this man, however, sometimes having and wanting money is wrong. Everything can be wrong, including helping people. Example, sometimes it is good to let children fall, burn themselves, or otherwise experience pain to teach them something, even though, in general, we want to try and keep children safe. (I do not advocate harming children, but, pain is part of life and an excellent teacher.) "I don't fault anyone who makes more than I do...nor am I jealous, it does, however, encourage me to get off my ass and work to make more, so I can live the 'easy life', not want for anything, and have fun." I fault people who I know who have more money then they need to sustain themselves comfortable (and I understand that is very subjective) and fail to take care of their dependents or give back to their community. They are greedy. They are a cancer on society. Please note: I view people who abuse, as opposed to use, social services in the same light as self-cen
[insert witty comment here]
I hit preview and it submitted instead; at least I thought I did...
[insert witty comment here]
I thought Valentine left on 14 February?
"Tandy and Commodore were not used in businesses, usually."
I have a TRS-80 Model 4-P that shows otherwise.
When the TRS line started, it was almost exclusivly for small business and business education. I bought mine used and the guy who sold it to me had nearly everything that was made for it. There wasnt much science or entertainment stuff, but if you needed to do payroll, accounting, inventory, use a database, write a program in any popular language of the day etc.etc, I had (the media is probably corrupt after all this time) the retail software package to do it.
I think the guy said it cost him 3500 bucks new for the hardware. About 1/2- 1/3 the price of a new car. If you wanted a gaming computer, you bought the much cheaper CoCo. The models 1-4, pocket computer and the others were VERY business minded.
I wonder if that old beast will still boot... eh too lazy to dig it out.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
I think that others should be content with the same, but if they're not, and they want to stress themselves working too hard for more than they need, that's their choice.
I think that striving to get more than you need is a bad thing - it's bad for your health, bad for your mind, and altogether unproductive when the alternative is to work just as hard as is necessary for life's essentials plus a bit of pleasure.
Baloo had it about right - the bare necessities should be enough for anyone.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
The employees that were left had their institutional knowledge too diluted and strung out trying to teach new H1B and college hires while managing Chinese and Indian outsource firms doing half the work.
My take exactly. Microsoft did not seem to have enough senior people to effectively pass knowledge to their otherwise very smart new college hires.
I'm kind of joking, but there are strong parallels between Vista and the ill-fated "Copland" OS from Apple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)
The primary difference between the two was that Microsoft never canceled Vista, they just kept removing features until it was just like Windows XP, only slower. And while Vista is not unstable, there are parts of it that are truly horrible, from glitching MP3 playback to slow file copies. And just like Vista, Copland was promised forever, and it was never going to get there. And just like Copland, Microsoft has already announced a replacement OS (http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/02/13/vista-replacement-in-2009-code-named/ ) before the ink has dried on the boxes for Vista.
Seriously, there are strong parallels here.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Screwed up Vista. And fortunately for MS they are both gone.
Internally I think MS has given up on Vista and is concentrating on Windows vNext, which sounds interesting - espeically the stripped down versions.
Although it hurts to get the flagship product wrong, MS still has a pretty damn good track record of getting products spectacularly right. And the competition is so scared, or incapable, that they cannot take real advantage of this current window of weakness in the OS.
"They had a massive brain drain getting rid of FTEs below level 88 and told long term contractors to take a hike."
Is 88 a pay scale? And what was the point of the getting rid of the long time contractors? Was it just a push to lower operating costs? Or were these costs capitalized?
You've implied so much, but haven't explained it!
Besides the catchy headline, I don't think that this guy in particular and Amazon in general had a significant share in the "premature" delivery of Windows Vista.
I saw a web-cast of Steve Ballmer on the Microsoft homepage. I believe that was before the release of Vista. And he declared that the time gap between the previous and current version of Windows is way too large. He even said something like "I personally promise that it will never ever take that long for the next verion to appear than with Vista". So, I guess the pressure to get it out of the door came directly from Steve Ballmer.
And didn't Microsoft fire the predecessor of the Vista project manager because he was talking so long?
I don't think waiting longer would have made Vista better. IMHO, the quality is so poor because it is so bloated, and there is no real incentive to clean it up and make it neat. Hardware vendors want it bloated because they can sell new hardware to go with it. Software developers make a living from working around all the mess that has been created since Windows 3. How will all these Microsoft Partners make a living if the software is cleaned up?
And, the more bloated the software is, the harder it gets to make it interoperable with, say, open source. I think you can see the same effect with OOXML: why do they need 10x as many pages to specify the same functionality? To make it harder for anybody to interface it.
Well, let's just sit back and wait until the Windows franchise collapses under its own weight. Hopefully, the consumers will get the idea how they are ripped off, and will ask for more stuff like eeePC.
I mean, that's such a hilarious waste of resouces: back in the day, 4 MB was little for an office PC. 16 MB was OK, and 64 MB was a lot. With Vista, you have 2 GB, and the memory is full when you boot the OS. You can't bring a laptop into a plane because the battery you need contains enough energy to blow the whole plane into pieces. And what for? For the jumping paper clip? For the indexing server that continously scans your hard drive to deliver taylored advertising? For these bloated web sites that take 1GB to show one single page?
I want Linux on my desktop. Now.
I imagine they don't enforce bundling laws because they either don't apply or don't exist. Really though hoping for the government to save you isn't the most productive of courses, just prove that there's demand. Dell have reasonably-priced Linux-based machines now, and they're pretty much the kings of commodity hardware.
As for this:
Thoroughly doubtful. Most of the things real people dislike about Vista are also problems on Linux and people have no real concept of the "price" of Windows, so they have little incentive to move. Linux should see some uptake soon not because of Vista's poorness (it's really, really not nearly as bad as it's made out to be) but because distributions like Ubuntu make Linux on the desktop not just usable but positively appealing to normal people.
Yes, because we all know that Linux is the consumer desktop success that Vista is not. No, it's not. But MS has the power to make it so.
Before your itchy mod-fingers hit "flamebait" or "overrated"(cowards!), hear me out:
Microsoft has control of all the proprietary stuff that makes lets windows keep it's inertia: primarily The windows APIs and DirectX. If they could make them into userland blobs, then windows users could have their photoshop, quickbooks, and games on linux, and MS could sell this new linux as Lindows(since they own the name now) or Windows LX or something.
Not saying they will... there's a lot of inertia in MS management. But it isn't impossible.
Ugh... I plead guilty to crimes against the english language.
keep its inertia
Primarily, the Windows
If MS could make them...
Forget it, I give up. Blame it on lack of coffee
They were, extensively, until the IBM 5150 started making serious market share inroads. (Of course, it's true that more "serious businesses" ran CP/M systems, and that's the market the IBM system ate up. But there were business TRS-80s as well as "home PC" TRS-80s used in businesses.
And let's face it, it's a bit disingenuous to say had "IBM had 100% of the PC-compatible market" when there was only one system compatible with the 5150 in the world at the time and it was the 5150. That stage lasted only about a year.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
And another question on this sentence: exactly how many employee levels are there?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Why is Microsoft losing people like this? This guy certainly sounds talented. And lets not forget Peter Moore who left MS Gaming division for EA. And yet they want to buy Yahoo for its talent!
> Baloo had it about right - the bare necessities should be enough for anyone.
Of course pretty much the entirety of human progress has come from the restless minority who couldn't settle for doing the minimum, doing things like everyone else. Progress comes from discontent, excessive curiosity, an urge to push harder, go where no man has gone before, etc. From being the kind of arrogant rat bastard who, when his vision differs from everyone else believes everyone else is wrong. All things that tend to get you sent to the camps when the caring compasionate socialists get power.
Democrat delenda est
I would like to say that I don't believe in 'doing the minimum'. However, just because someone does the work does not mean they get the money. In fact, most people I know who are extremely curious, who spend 60+ hours a week working on things they love, make less then most middle managers I know. For a more tangible example, take a look at issues with modern patent (and copyright) law: frequently a few with money who produce nothing are taking profits from those who generated the ideas and stifling innovation by keeping new innovators out of the market.
Why should an individual respect someone who is overly opulent and ostentatious while inhibiting the advancement of society?
At all levels of economic strata, some people have more then they need. At all levels, some people have too little for what they need.
[insert witty comment here]
I cannot make a judgment. I do not know that both parties entered into contract willingly or that either of the parties were eligible to enter into contract.
[insert witty comment here]
My first (summer) job was to write a software carrying out some water pressure calculations (for pipe engineering) running on a commodore 64. (I was 16.)
Basically, the idea is correct. Because of the mismanagement and aggressive, adversarial behavior of IBM at the time, IBM lost a business that it once controlled. The point is that Microsoft's adversarial, abusive management is already causing the company to be less successful, similar to what happened to IBM.
At the time, numerous companies were selling small computers, for example, the CP/M-based Morrow Microdecision. When IBM entered the market, the market for those other computers collapsed.
But the hate for IBM was amazingly intense. Even non-technical people knew about IBM's manipulation of U.S. laws. IBM had the reputation then that Microsoft does now. IBM was successful only when there was no reasonable alternative.
Then the Compaq IBM PC compatible became available, and, even though the Compaq had problems with overheating, buyers began choosing Compaq to avoid IBM.
Very soon, the "IBM compatibles" had most of the market for small computers. The statistics quoted in business magazines were not accurate, because they used numbers provided by only the large suppliers. There were many small suppliers of IBM compatibles, and the percentage of the market they captured was close to 100%.
OS/2 ran on machines I owned, too. But people didn't like it because IBM was never serious about providing drivers. A lot of equipment people wanted couldn't be used with OS/2 because there were no drivers.
More importantly, at the time people were not willing to adopt IBM as a technology partner because of IBM's bad behavior. As soon as there was a livable option, people avoided IBM.
Now IBM has a reputation of being a little more cooperative and friendly. The company stills seems stiff and out of touch to me, sometimes.
I want Vista to do the Duke talk for system events then. When you boot it should say 'Go get some.' Maybe when ever the stupid admin permissions box pops up it should make the sound we hear in Duke games when he takes a piss. I always feel like I'm getting pissed on when Vista keeps popping that stuff up over and over again for every minor thing.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.