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Bill Gates's Last Speech
Ian Lamont writes "Bill Gates, in an address to the TechEd Developers conference, talked about Microsoft's plans for hosted services, and revealed that the company is planning data centers on 'a scale that we haven't thought of before' that will apparently enable the company to offer all of its server-based products over the Internet. The talk did not include details in terms of capacity or scale. This was Gates's final publicly scheduled speech as a full-time Microsoft employee, and he acknowledged that Microsoft's success is 'due to our relationship with developers.' On July 1, he will start spending most of his time at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." After that date he will be devoting his "20% time" to Microsoft.
You are a true American Hero
they haven't thought of?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From now on, Microsoft's success will be due to their relationship with developers, developers, developers, developers.
Five eights availability!
Has MS done anything innovative in the past few years? Since windows.. it just seems all they try to do is copy other products, pump millions into marketing and watch it fail. I don't think they've had a profitable product since XP. And the choice before that was ME so who wouldn't purchase it.
Even though we all flame MS.. why do we still use the products.. in our home, our office and on our phones. Only within the past 2 years have better alternatives come out.. iPhone and Firefox..
Flame away!
Are you sure that that isn't just what he says he will be doing and he is really trying to become the Debian project leader?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Title seems a bit misleading. I thought he committed seppuku or something after he finished at first.
I can see it now. 'Well, sorry about Vista, hey, check this out!' SLICE!
Version 2)Let's pump up MSFT. I'm selling some.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'll be back
Ummm... actually Gates made MS a decent company, it wasn't until he let the chair-thrower Steve Ballmer take over the company that MS started to become really "evil". Now before they were just a software company that made crappy software, now we have MS as a software company that produces crappy software with DRM/Trusted Computing and just about everything else to make your computer become MS's and the government's computer (with a bit of it devoted to the *AA).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So on leap years, does he round up to 20.01%?
for right or for wrong
...and revealed that the company is planning data centers on 'a scale that we haven't thought of before' that will apparently enable the company to offer all of its server-based products over the Internet.
So THAT's where the MSN Music Store servers went! Way to recycle, Microsoft. Go green!
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers.
till one of these giant datacenters has an electrical fault like the one last weekend, and instead of 9,000 servers, it's 90,000 servers gone at once...
I disagree. I noticed MS being evil with the introduction of Windows 95, when the then-standard Word Perfect oddly didn't seem to run properly under Windows. Shortly thereafter came MSN and the introduction of the free Internet Explorer and the beginnings of Netscape's death. That was several years before Ballmer entered the picture.
I hope the 80/20 principle doesn't apply here.
Indeed, IIRC they even had an internal slogan -- "it's not done til Lotus won't run", or something like that.
Caveat Utilitor
This can only reinforce my belief that the people at Microsoft have no ideas and no vision (whether they lost them or never had them to begin with, I'll leave to you) whatsoever. It almost makes me feel sorry for them to see them try so very hard to innovate. But ultimately they're just like the Chinese knock-off game console manufacturers, they see new products that are commercial successes and emulate them in every way but the one that counts. I liked Windows 2000, and I like Windows XP. Microsoft should stick to what they do best, not try to create the "next big thing".
So when is Slashdot going to change the Bill Gates/Borg image?
And why does this spell check not recognize the word Slashdot?
And with any non-utility or non-profit type public company that success is measured by stock growth.
Ballmer took over in 2001. MSFT's stock has been effectively dead in the water since that time:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT#chart1:symbol=msft;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
Ballmer has been a complete disaster:
* The 7 billion dollar Xbox fiasco
* The Zune/digital music failure
* The inability to change the Microsoft culture to deal with the new realities of the EU business climate
* The total failure to handle the Vista release competently
* Search/MSN floundering
If Microsoft gets a competent and visionary leader it could rapidly turn things around and dominate markets like crazy once Ballmer gets dumped.
"Developers, developers, developers, developers," the robot, developed using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio product, repeated over and over, in an homage to Ballmer's famous rant. The robot also raised his arm, showing how he has the ability to "throw eggs," according to the MIT student controlling his movements. Throw eggs. Heh. Throw chairs is more like it.
is that they have old people in charge. Gates and Ozzie in particular, know in great detail what the big technical and business challenges were in the '80s and '90s, and earlier in this decade. But that's where we came from, not where we're headed.
When Gates wrote his first "visionary" best seller back in 1995, the Internet was exploding around him and he didn't even notice. Neither did the team developing Windows 95, as it turns out. They had to scramble and buy rights to a graphical browser from Spyglass to compete. And they got rights to the Mosaic source from UIUC, I think (that was a consequence the famous IP feud between the university and their former CS stars).
Back in the early- to mid-90s, IIRC the PC pundits were talking up the wonderful future of content on CD-ROMs, and streaming video delivered from a LAN server. And analog TV signals delivered to the desktop via expansion boards on the VESA or PCI bus.
Now, of course, Gates knows all about the Internet, probably more than most of us here, but I don't have any confidence in his ability to spot the next New New Thing.
I'm reminded of Ken Olsen's quote around the time the Macintosh first came out: "There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home." At least not in his experience!
What changed with Ballmer coming in as CEO was that they became more brash about it. Have you heard of the "frog in boiling water" experiment? Gates was like that - slowly turning up the heat, then before you realize it, you're cooked. Ballmer is more like, first boil the pot of water while cackling maniacally and pointing at you, then pour it directly on your head.
5468652047616D65
Ah... microsoft's mentality, you gotta love it. When he says "we havent thought about that size before", he wants to convey "we, humanity".
Doesnt that kind of show what kind of reality distortion field this guy lives in?
Amazon thought about it, Google thought about it. Ah, they are not "we, humanity"... i see.
NO SIG
...but us slashdotters have been imagining these beowulf clusters from quite some time!
So we are returning to the very thing Microsoft fought to eliminate in the first place. Big data centers where you lease CPU time and have nothing but a terminal at your desk. ( ok, so its slightly different in actual practice, but same basic principles )
Anyone else find it as ironic as i?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> Five eights availability!
It's not so impressive when you realize that they actually mean 8.8888%
i heard Microsoft signed a lease with the oil companies to build these new datacenters on the icecaps to accelerate global warming . . .
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
Microsoft was evil under Dos.
"DOS ain't done, til Lotus won't Run" was *well* known back in the 80's in my user group.
Windows 95 did it all over again by certifying Word which cheated and used invalid API's.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Didn't we hear about datacenters already? Ah, yeah... Google, right? Looks like MS is innovating again.
No, no, no!
If you're going to play devil's advocate than you have to play up Microsoft's strengths. Say what you will about Office, but it dominates for reasons aside of lock-in.
And what about Surface? I'd like to see the folks at apple come up with something as cool as that. There is a *nix variant, but it's not nearly as cool. And no, the puny widdle scween on the iPhone dosen't count! Sure, the cost of a Surface unit would be prohibitive to average Joe User but people may re-respect Microsoft if they get to play with a Surface coffee-table at their local Starbucks.
Disclaimer: I'm OS agnostic as long as all o' them are contribute to the idea pool.
fixed that for ya.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
...with their OOXML standard.
Who modded that flamebait... and what are you smoking while you mod?
This is exactly how MS built the company into it megalithic existence. Lets see if we can name some software/companies that they killed off?
Digital Research, Word Perfect, Netscape, GEM, Paradox, oh screw it, we are all aware that the embrace and extend was MS speak for extinguish. There are products that never even made it to market thanks to MS (can you say tablet pc)
The point is that this is not flamebait. It counts as truthful comment.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Bill Gates has contributed more to modern computing than any other ten people together. Most people in IT owe a debt of gratitude because without his contribution most of you wouldn't have jobs. The open source community should consider that without Microsoft and it's dominant position created by Bill Gates incredible business savy there would be no open source movement as there would have been nothing to unite against. For those who would argue that he is not a great business man you would need to consider that he is one of the richest men in the world and you don't get there with luck alone. I have read these forums for several years and today is the last day I will bother. I have finally come to the conclusion that 80% of the MS bashers who write these comments are low level techy's who will never achieve a leadership role in any capacity. I jumped on the Windows band wagon in the early days. I rode the wave, made a million, sold the business, and started another. Everything I have done in IT has been based on Windows and MS products. My family has prospered because of this great man and his vision. So bash away you junior IT wannabe's, I'm going to miss Bill Gates. You will simply find someone else to blame for your lack of skill and influence.
What, are they gonna kill him or something?
/chair
Ballmer: "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!"
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Indeed, IIRC they even had an internal slogan -- "it's not done til Lotus won't run", or something like that.
:)
If you've used Lotus, you'd know that's not evil.
does this mean he's gonna shut up now?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I'm still waiting for the day when a sexy, white haired Bill gets up on his desk and poses for the camera again.
Looks like Bill G has run out of vision, and is now moving back to the good old mainframe days.
That's innovation?
So we've come this far so that Microsoft can go back to building mainframes, after they made billions on the idea of every person and their dog having reams of processor power and storage space sitting under their desk just so they can get email and spreadsheets from application servers.
How in bloody Hell was this putz ever considered a visionary? Salesman yes. Idea man no. Unless you like bad ideas.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
For those who couldn't sit through the 80-minute video (or don't have Silverlight), Gates said that in the future Microsoft's mega data centers will have many millions of servers". It currently has "hundreds of thousands" of servers, but expects to pack up to 300,000 into its new Chicago container farm. Gates also predicted that only a select number of companies (presumably including Microsoft and Google) will be able to compete on this scale.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
The "rock star" developers get Bill's last speech. And what are the tech guys going to get next week during TechEd IT Professionals? Probably another lame Back to the Future skit with Christopher Lloyd cashing a paycheck. Yeah, it's all puppies and roses when you developers are compiling, and it's cute when you do "compatibility testing" with a VM load. But then someone tries to actually run it on a real computer and a real network, and who do you call? That's right, the old neck-beards.
One way to pump up the stock, is for it to purchase licenses for its own OSs. Some poor smuck has to go around and then type in all the product keys ;-)
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. - HGTTG
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
A: Only 8270.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Please let it be a flying chair
Microsoft's success is 'due to our relationship with developers.' and Linux's failure to do so is exactly what Jonathan Birge wrote in his essay on February 26, 2008.
http://scripts.mit.edu/~birge/blog/why-linux-may-fail-on-the-desktop/
Maybe his speech is related to Windows 7. Microsoft already told about how the user should save his data and recover it in another computer.
I disagree. I noticed MS being evil with the introduction of Windows 95, when the then-standard Word Perfect oddly didn't seem to run properly under Windows.
Which wouldn't have had anything at all to do with the abominable implementations on Windows at all, right ?
Not to mention, when 1995 rolled around, Word Perfect was well on its way out (and with good reason). The aforementioned almost incomprehensibly bad Windows implementations had sealed its fate. By the time the first semi-decent version of Wordperfect for Windows was released in mid-1997, the game was well and truly over.
Shortly thereafter came MSN and the introduction of the free Internet Explorer and the beginnings of Netscape's death. That was several years before Ballmer entered the picture.
Indeed. Providing a free web browser - just like every other major platform of the day did - was the very embodiment of "evil".
Wordperfect and Navigator are textbook examples of bad products being displaced in the market by better ones (although the first few Wordperfect for Windows iterations were orders of magnitude worse than even Navigator 4.0).
The 20% mentioned is actually for the availability and reliability of the data center.
Indeed, IIRC they even had an internal slogan -- "it's not done til Lotus won't run", or something like that.
Which - even ignoring the utter lack of even the slightest actual evidence of this ever being true - would have sounded even dumber when it first surfaced back in the mid-80s than it does today. What sane OS vendor would lock out 90% of its potential customers by not running their primary application ?
"DOS ain't done, til Lotus won't Run" was *well* known back in the 80's in my user group.
Then you shouldn't have any trouble at all coming up with some documented examples of incompatibilities between 1-2-3 and DOS. Or even any evidence at all, really, that would support such an idiotic idea.
Windows 95 did it all over again by certifying Word which cheated and used invalid API's.
Evidence ? Even if it were true, what exactly is it "cheating" at ?
I guess this is being announced because after said speech, Gates will lose his voice. ;)
Shouldn't that be *~~~~~ ?
Kids these days...
And to stay on topic - Microsoft plays catch up in a lot of areas, but from what I hear their research divisions still put out some pretty neat stuff, some of which actually making it into their future products. Unfortunately (for the really neat stuff) most of their products are still encumbered by these giant backwards-compatibility or easy marketability things, or at the very least the illusion of them. These are also coincidently a large part of why so many people and companies still buy and use their products - compatibility with the status quo plus incremental upgrades.
Their developer tools tend to be less encumbered by this don't-disturb-the-status-quo thing, which is why they tend to rock - but these have another downside - then you generally end up tied to Microsoft platforms, which allows them to preserve keep selling their software and your software to continue to run in backwards-compatible mode on everyone's desktop without as much as being recompiled for a decade or so. Funny, huh?
So when is Slashdot going to change the Bill Gates/Borg image?
And replace it with what, a winged chair?
That works. I'd totally make that logo myself but the GIMP's sleeping, and I don't want to have to wake him up.
Sane? If the decision makers at MS were sane, chairs wouldn't get thrown, the ISO would not have tampered with, and there wouldn't be millions (or is it billions now?) of dollars worth of fines on them.
Caveat Utilitor
A brand new i-touch and card signed by 79000 people.
WordPerfect was the word processor of choice for lawyers. The "Reveal Codes" function was very well-liked for formatting legal documents. In some shops it is still the preferred word processor.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
It wasn't about the abomination called Lotus Notes, but about the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet.
Everybody loves to trot out that phrase, but it's a complete myth.. Let me quote the relevant part of that link:
I first asked Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, and his quote was "I've heard the stories over the years, but I don't have any specific recollection that there was a devious silent break of the kind you mentioned. I also have a bad memory." Kapor was kind enough to put me in touch with some old Lotus people he knew. And they all corroborated the story: "It's an interesting myth, and one I've heard about in general terms, although I've never heard the specific quote before. However, I have no recollection of any instance of its actually happening with 1-2-3 or with any other product I've worked on." And, "My memory of the early days (1984-85) is that we would get early betas of DOS to test with 1-2-3 and any errors that we found were 'bugs' in DOS and fixed by Microsoft.
Developers, developers, developers, developers," the robot, developed using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio product, repeated over and over, in an homage to Ballmer's famous rant. The robot also raised his arm, showing how he has the ability to "Chairs" according to the MIT student controlling his movements.
WordPerfect was the word processor of choice for lawyers. The "Reveal Codes" function was very well-liked for formatting legal documents. In some shops it is still the preferred word processor.
Indeed. But there are a lot more people out there than lawyers using word processors.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Indeed, IIRC they even had an internal slogan -- "it's not done til Lotus won't run", or something like that.
Which - even ignoring the utter lack of even the slightest actual evidence of this ever being true - would have sounded even dumber when it first surfaced back in the mid-80s than it does today. What sane OS vendor would lock out 90% of its potential customers by not running their primary application ?
A: An OS Vendor who's also trying to sell a competing software to said 90% of their potential customers.Man, we're never gonna get anywhere if you keep bottling your feelings like this...
You were late to the party then!
I noticed MS being evil when they wrote BASIC interpreters that most of the major 8-bit manufacturers shipped with their machines; buggy, over-featured and bloated.
I'm sure someone else here will be able to truthfully claim that they knew MS were evil around about the time that Bill Gatus posted his now infamous letter to the Homebrew Computer Club; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
appropriate captcha: colons
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
If Microsoft is moving into the hosted application space, that must mean the rest of the technology world is already there and will be ready to move on by the time Microsoft can field any online services...that will still require IE and Office to be installed on the client.
The Zune of hosted applications.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Well, if you're willing to believe what you read on Slashdot:
My video compression blog
Welcome to the real world. Poorly thought out, unstable APIs and legacy finally caught up to Microsoft, now the 20 layers of API are biting Microsoft in the ass. But now that someone has left, it is now all Bill's fault. Always blame those that have left, the corporate way. Long live corporate America.
Hmm. URL didn't work. Trying again.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/02/2219208
Which is supposed to come out as: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/02/2219208
My video compression blog
Yes they were. MS Word and IE aren't exactly the pinnacle of software achievement, but they were still better than either of those were.
Who comes out of this if MSFT does fall whats the next operating system so to speak??
The way I see it, he basically feels that he wants to do something else with the rest of his life. The 20% part is probably the loyalty he feels to Steve and others.
If you have been in the tech field long enough you realize that there is always something "newer and better" around the corner and whatever language/environment/OS version you are working in now, people will look back in 10 years and say boy didn't that language/environment/OS version suck, lets rewrite whatever was written in it. Doesn't matter if what you produced is good or not, it will be "outdated" in the minds of many. This isn't a Microsoft software specific observation, think Firefox for example. It is different than it was 5 years ago. It probably will be alot different 10 years from now. Doesn't mean the current version sucks, just means no one will be using version 3.0 in 2018. Sometimes people compare software to construction, but the analogy I think is weak. The Brooklyn Bridge was built in 1885? It will be interesting to see if any software written in 1960 is being run in 2080. Well interesting for my grandkids to find out I guess.
So if you had a choice between working on software and its short half-life or doing the work he is going to do, which could impact millions of lives for the better, and leave a lasting legacy on this planet, which would you choose? I'd take the latter, if I thought I had the managerial talent to do so. Or you could work on Quarterdeck DeskView, Turbo Pascal 3 or Norton Utilities. They don't seem so cool 20 years later do they.
I think Bill Gates is a brilliant man. Seriously, Slashbotters, listen:
Bill Gates, when he first started MS, had passion for software and coding. I *wish* I could program the stuff him and his buddies did way back then. I *wish* I had the left hemisphere brain activity he did. But you can only GET that activity if the passion to do it drives you.
For that, I applaud Bill Gates, as he is like many of us - he's passionate about technology.
Business is a completely different arena, and we all know that big business eventually corrupts - that isn't most directly Bill's fault - he's just a bad business man, in that sense.
I use Linux every day. I absolutely HATE Windows (and most other Microsoft) products. I hate them with a passion. I avidly try to get as many people using Linux as I can - my grandma, my wife's friends, you name it. That doesn't mean Bill Gates wasn't revolutionary and awesome because his drive was to create software. If it were all him coding Windows, 100%, you'd have to admit it'd probably be a lot better than it is today. Too many chefs in the kitchen just burns things when the ultimate goal is profit.
I dunno, I just thought I'd throw that into a whole ocean full of flames toward someone that probably respects OSS programmers a lot more than he'd be able to admit before July 1st.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Please read this article: DOS Ain't Done Till Lotus Won't Run. It does a good job of debunking this myth. So does common sense. Why would Microsoft make an OS where a product used by the lion's share of users won't run anymore?
In fact, until the Vista release, Microsoft has had an insane commitment toward backwards compatibility. Read some of the horror stories from Raymond Chen's blog. You'll hear about how the core Windows 95 code was modified so that a bug in SimCity could be side-stepped. You'll read about how Excel developers purposefully added buggy behavior to Excel so that it would make the same mistakes as Lotus 1-2-3!
Granted, today Microsoft appears to be less in tune with this mantra of backwards compatibility. Joel Spolsky has a passionate diatribe on this matter: How Microsoft Lost the API War. Personally, I think that Microsoft is going to be just fine long term. They make great developer products, have a huge install base, tons of cash in the bank, and some very smart people at key positions in the company.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
>>Just with the interest they could make without any strategic investing, they could pay each employee at the company $30,000 a year.
Sounds like a pretty good salary for Delhi or Mumbai...
Huh?
What about Windows 3.1 refusing to run specifically under DR DOS? That is a bit more documented, you will have to erase half of internet to cover that.
Sounds lovely. Of course, the 'relationship' could be that they bully, intimidate, and beat them with whips.
FAQs are evil.
In fact, it started earlier with DR-DOS and Windows 3.1 (as The Register says): 'David Cole and Phil Barrett exchanged emails on 30 September 1991: "It's pretty clear we need to make sure Windows 3.1 only runs on top of MS DOS or an OEM version of it,"'
Windows Server Edition 2003, and the new Server edition 2008 (though I love how 2003 flys on my Windows partition of my Macbook Pro)
Really, these are by far the most usable operating systems they have churned out. If I was not a complete Mac/Linux user, I could see myself using them daily. As it is now, I keep my Windows partition for some school software and games I cannot get working well under WINE.
But I admit Microsoft has made a decent product with the NT kernel, and it does seem to be getting better. The only thing is they keep piling on the bloat and other crap for us, the consumer... If they would just offer the server edition as an entry level release I could see the vista complaints go down significantly... Maybe make something even less then server edition...
Now while I hate what is happening to the OLPC fiasco, we might see just that... Something with all the power and crap-free (well, crap-light) nature of WSE2K3, but cut down even more to run on basic hardware with a decent clip of speed... With hope Microsoft might decide to release it to the rest of the world and help end the bloat-fest...
I understand there are some bugs in the TRS-80 Model 100 ROM Code that Bill put together. Perhaps with time away from Microsoft he might be able to track them down and patch them?
End of Line
They weren't bad products.
It sort of depends on the version.
Wordperfect for DOS was the shit. Wordperfect for Windows was just shit.
Probably you can lay some of the blame for that at Microsoft's door, but most of it has to go to the folks managing Wordperfect at the time.
Personally, I just kept running DOS Wordperfect for a goodly long while and resisted Word for years, but most people didn't.
Navigator, same thing. I laughed at the first few versions of IE and avoided using them whenever possible. Then IE got way ass better. (Then, after it eliminated the competition, it stagnated and became terrible -- but for a while, it was the best thing going.)
What is wrong, even from a shareholder's point of view, to split off into MSFT-OS, MSFT-OSX-KILLER, MSFT-CONSUMERHW, MSFT-APPS, MSFT-???.
As totally separate companies, you can have your cake and eat it too, by competing with those-who-are-no-longer yourself.
Let's say on the day of the split, an owner of 1000 shares of MSFT worth $30,000 gets:
200 MSFT-a = $6000
100 MSFT-b = $3000
300 MSFT-c = $9000
200 MSFT-d = $6000
200 MSFT-e = $6000
Also worth $30,000.
Then, a year later:
200 MSFT-a = $2000
100 MSFT-b = $6000
300 MSFT-c = $8000
200 MSFT-d = $7000
200 MSFT-e = $8000
Now worth $31,000 - you win some, you lose some, but a net gain.
God damn, enough with the Bill bashing, jealous geeks.
>without Microsoft the IT world would be a vastly >different and poorer place.
If Microsoft didnt exist, some other company would have taken its place (and I dont believe that IBM would have been much better, no matter how much we love them now).
They didnt invent any new earth shaking technologies, their OS and word processor werent new paradigms. You could say that they killed a lot of promising technologies.
It would have been a different place but no necessarily poorer.
don't think of it as a vast new web server farm. Think of it as a weapons dump for Chinese crackers to take posession of.
Under no circumstances will I ever use hosted apps and data for any business purposes. Our data stays on our systems in our facility - period.
I have this great speech to talk about...
Unfortunately, the margin of this paper only allows 2 minutes of talk time...
Now if MS would enhance foldershare to have a Microsoft "apps group", you could get all your software and updates through a P2P subscription model. Cool.
Doubt it will happen though.
Buy yourself a basic interpreter, and then resell it.
He never was as much of a coder as a shrewd businessman.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Goodbye billy...
It's amazing how well they are papering over this-- they even say it is a slashdot thing when it was in fact said DURING Dos 3.0 period historically.
...
Good discussion here.
http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
As far as the Certification cheating API thing... a google link turns up this...
Slashdot | RTF Vs. OOXML
In fact, look up how it went down for Word95 and Windows 98. Word violated the api standards but was given the "approved" mark anyway.
slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/03/1347236 - 119k - Cached - Similar pages
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
One can't, ofcourse, refute a myth with documentation. Thats pretty hard. On the other hand, I, personally, HAVE NEVER NEEDED more than 740kB of memory ... Except to run m$ware...
Oddly enough, this 'rumor' has been investigated by a surprising source... Slashdot
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
Your signature is "LAME!"
base64_decode(base64_decode(base64_decode(base64_decode(base64_decode(base64_decode('Vm0xMFYxWXhTWGhWYms1VVlrWktWRlpyVWtKUFVUMDk='))))));
In other news:
Cancel or allow?
The problem with this "rumor" is that everyone in my user's group was saying this over 20 years ago.
They can convince those who were not alive or who were not there but it was viewed no differently than the Win3.11 failure for DR.Dos back then. It wasn't even refuted back then. It was just accepted that Excel would work and Lotus would not for a while when a new version of DOS came out.
It is really weird to see how effectively they are papering over history.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
... because apparently my patience for bullshit is even shorter than yours.
Props to Bill Gates and his company Microsoft, and his business strategies, which served to DRIVE software and hardware innovation for so many years, literally making the computing world what it is today.
Smelly farts (actually, big piles of shit) to Bill Gates and Microsoft, and his business strategies, for what they have done to the computing world and the market(s) AFTER they reached the top -- about the last 10 or 12 years -- and helping far too much to make the computing world what it is today.
I am referring to the underhanded monopolistic practices, the illegal deals, the stifling of innovation in the name of profits, and more... I could go on for a while. Hell, even just within the last year they were caught buying votes on an international standards question, and that is hardly the tip of their list of recent misdeeds.
So, yeah. Bill Gates has done these industries (computing in general: hardware, software, and even theory) some tremendous good. (Not favors... his motives were completely selfish... but good.) And then, when he was in a position to do even more good, to drive the industry farther... he took the selfish route instead and did the opposite.
20 years ago, I would have called Bill Gates a hero. And he deserved the title. Today, I would call Bill Gates a villain, and he has well earned the title. I can't wait to see him leave.
I see your study of base64 encoded strings has finally paid off. I have been bested. I honestly never expected anyone to ever figure my incredibly complex cipher.
Your masterful code cracking skills will one day prove instrumental in the continued survival of the human species... srsly
5468652047616D65
My job relies on Microsoft's developer tools at present (Visual Studio), however after discussing it with my direct manager, he's said that everything I write (which is all C#) must also be tested under Mono just to be sure we're not stuck with massive re-writes should MS fall in to a lesser position in times to come.
I prefer Visual Studio to any other IDE that I've tried using, but if all of a sudden, 90% of our customers switched to Mac or Linux (not saying it'll happen suddenly, if ever, just "if it did"), then it wouldn't affect our business much at all, and very little indeed from my side as a developer.
When the decision was made, I found my current applications are all completely fine, and only had to do very minor tweaks to old applications (things like replacing hardcoded backslashes with "System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar" (from back in the days that I didn't know better))
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Forgive me my ignorance (I'm a developer which necessarily equates to a crappy admin), but when you say that it takes a long time to get everything back up and running, you mean that you have to stagger the cold boots, right? I just lost a power supply on my SATA RAID box last week. OK, so I admin by proxy when I need a box for my source code... I had bought what I thought was a reasonably sized power supply, with what I knew about power supplies from a few years ago when I did LAN party thing in high school, and went about 20% above what I thought the box would need.
It only lasted a year, give or take a month. The RAIDbox has four SATA drives and two IDEs. I found out that, apparently, spinning up a bunch of disks from a cold boot requires a huge surge of current.
I can only imagine what a 48U rack of servers packing two 15,000 RPM SCSI (or one of those Sun RAID boxes... ok, I also have a thing for esoteric hardware and expensive toys) must do to a power distribution system when an entire rack goes online at the same time. And then the AC kicks it in to high gear (I'd assume... I've got two desktops, my RAID box and two servers in my apartment... my heat was broken this winter and I didn't notice.) about ten minutes later.
Or am I completely off base and that's not why it takes so long to reboot a data center?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I hereby hand over my chair to Mr. Ballmer.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Personally I'm under the impression that for a lot of companies, there is one damn good reason to lease their computing power: they lost control of their own IT department.
Let's face it, monopolies tend to not be great for their customers. (Their monopoly is one reason we're pissed off at MS.) And in a lot of corporations, their own IT department is, essentially, granted a monopoly for life on all things IT. You have to get your service from them, largely on their terms, and at their prices, or not use a computer at all.
Think about it. Some corporations have a bigger income than some countries' GDP. Granting someone a monopoly on IT isn't much different from granting someone a monopoly on a small country's IT.
The result is often:
- prices run out of control. It's not entirely unusual to have such prices per MB, for example, that it would be cheaper to burn a file on a CD and send it by taxi to the office in the next city, than use "their" network and servers.
- toxic personality types making it their duty to avoid doing any work. Or worse yet, to stroke their ego by being the ones who can prevent _you_ from doing any work. Just to show everyone else who's boss.
- bad service, including having to go through a baroque bureaucracy to get any service at all.
- incompetence, nepotism, corruption, etc.
- security theatre. Stuff that's largely insecure, but make you go through loops just to _seem_ secure.
Etc.
Sure, it's an upper management failure, but it happens. In a lot of places.
So when I see some companies where they have to deal with an incompetent, hostile _and_ overpriced bureaucracy just to get one mis-configured server, while they could get the same server and bandwidth and better service for 1% of the cost from a nearby ISP... I just have to wonder why don't they.
And again, the only difference I can see is that the ISP doesn't have a perpetual monopoly granted. They actually have to work to keep you as a customer, and can even be sued if they leave your data wide open to the world while just pretending to do something about it.
Well, nor does it have its hands tied by the whims and bad strategic decisions of upper management, but then that's also an argument to just go that route.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's fairly simple to scale Linux to 200,000 machines. It can boot and run from the network. No local storage and crucially NO LOCAL STATE required. You can boot a ramdisk over the LAN and run from that if you want. What this means is you only need a few people to run thousands of machines. It's a log increase. That is, Linux isn't your big problem when running 200,000 machines. Your big problem is space, racking, networking, AC, power etc.
On the other hand, Windows pretty much has to be installed onto a hard disk. This means there are thousands of configuration settings, hundreds of libraries of specific versions which all have to be kept synchronized on tens or hundreds of thousands of hard disks. This is a fucking nightmare once you get past a few dozens of machines never mind 200,000. There is at least a linear increase in admin effort with increasing numbers of machines, and with that increase goes cost. Active Directory and Ghost are pretty much de rigueur but don't really fix the problem. Notice that Ghost isn't even an MS product, but a bandaid to fix something the OS can't do (Yes, I'm aware of the MS deployment add ons).
The problem is location of state; on 200,000 hard disks or 1 boot server. Simple maths. Basically, Windows will have to be redesigned so that it can boot and run over the LAN or from a ramdisk or whatever. That's the point when it really becomes "Enterprise ready" rather than being a pretender.
Deleted
I think Vista did differ too radically and the barrier has in fact been lowered.
Not as dramatically as you picture, but enough to shift some marketshare balance.
Recently on /. : Google spotlights data center inner workings ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9955184-7.html ) and now this from MS: "the company is planning data centers on 'a scale that we haven't thought of before'".
Surprising? I think not.
They weren't bad products.
Since you obviously weren't there to experience them, let me assure you that both Wordperfect for Windows (especially until the late '90s) and Netscape Navigator 4.0 were, in fact, bad products.
One that would have such market domination that it could get away with it.
In 1985, Microsoft didn't have anything remotely close to the "market domination" necessary to force a mass switch of application. Heck, it's quite arguable whether or not they've ever had it.
There's a lot of documentation (with the legal spat from Novell) about why WP for windows was shit.
MS gave API documentation to WP for their windows client. This API wasn't used by MS Word for windows (at the time MS fanbois said there were no secret API's, but these people didn't appear when MS opened up a lot of secret API documentation. go figure) and the API's given to WP were discontinued when the product moved to RC, requiring WP rewrite WPfW when it was released (because MS didn't tell WP the API they used was broken).
A: An OS Vendor who's also trying to sell a competing software to said 90% of their potential customers.
Except no remotely intelligent businessman would expect that many people to spend the money to just up and switch platforms - and if there's one thing Bill Gates was, it was a good businessman.
What's particularly stupid about the whole "... 'til Lotus won't run" myth, is that - just plain common sense aside - historical behaviour demonstrates the exact opposite is true. Microsoft works very, very hard to maintain backwards compatibility, arguably to a fault. The idea they'd be deliberately breaking such a high profile and important application as Lotus 1-2-3 - *especially* back in the '80s when they were far from the only option - is just laughable.
What about Windows 3.1 refusing to run specifically under DR DOS? That is a bit more documented, you will have to erase half of internet to cover that.
Windows 3.1 ran fine under DR-DOS. Even the much ballyhooed warning message during the Windows 3.1 beta - presumably what you were referring to - didn't actually stop it running.
(The weird part about that situation was not the warning message itself - perfectly reasonable for something that relied on specific implementation details of DOS as much as Windows 3.x did - but more the code obfuscating the check. Regardless, it didn't actually stop Windows running on DR-DOS.)
You lost me there, what other "major platform" provided a free browser in 1995?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
basicaly he said "so long and thanks for all the fish"
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
You lost me there, what other "major platform" provided a free browser in 1995?
Windows didn't actually come with IE until 1996, with OSR1.
OS/2 had Web Explorer in 1994 (and from memory Warp came with Navigator, or had a direct link to download it on the desktop).
MacOS had Cyberdog in 1996.
Hell, even if Microsoft were the first to include a web browser, why would that be a bad thing ? Aren't people always complaining they never do anything except copy everyone else ?
It's sad to see a technical company handed to a used car salesman (Ballmer). Soon M$ will implode from the overwelming ratio of sales people to developers.
They are just getting ready to move forward with this 1990's style massive centralize server model of services that Google and Yahoo now dominate.
But there is a small problem with this. It's already obsolete. Yes, Distributed "GRID" , P2P style will ultimately be the next generation and it's the place where Microsoft could easily upend Google at this point.
M$ will never catch up with Google by following them in the older game, Google is really driving a lot of new research in Parallel processing and threads in C++, Linux, computing platforms and in the community as a whole and so it not just competing against Google but the whole FOSS community at once.
They need to create something that will add value to the whole computer community and not just come in and try to take over and mess up something that is already working well.
I want a P2P OS where ever PC in my office and house add to each others ability seamlessly. forget backups, and having to manage files, everything should be a cache unless I am creating it. I am sure they would already love that. But a system that is a hybrid part way between google apps / VNC / X windows / Java and Current OS's.
My desktop session should be remembered between logins like VNC, but tied to a specific computer's running environment, Google Apps does this a little.
A PC should boot off a P2P system, based on a Micro Kernel. It's OS components should come in over P2P as needed and most of the Hardware will act as a Cache and part of the P2P network and computing node and 1/2 community property and 1/2 graphics terminal for it's user. In return us a user are given access to 1/2 of millions of other computers out there as a resource too.
At your disposal are CPU/Storage/Data.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The stock buyback was to make them less vulnerable to the stockholders. That has been mentioned by others.
Nations produce value.
Any time a company stops producing value (or at least producing the illusion of value), the rules change.
Remember, they have been one of the sources of income for the money market accounts that you suggest putting their assets in. If they quit making (the illusion of) money, that's one major input to the money market accounts that quits performing.
Now, go to your bank and ask why they wouldn't allow you to invest more than a few million in a money market account with them.
If you get your mind wrapped around the realities of that much, just to really take the wind out of your imaginative sails, go find out how much a salary of 30,000 a year costs a company in support and infrastructure.
Then go back and do the math.
There is no magic in having lots of money.
Microsoft has to start performing for real, or they will end up on the block for real. And with no buyers, because it becomes more and more clear that they have never had or sold anything of value. Illusions, all.
Illusions can only make so much money before they start disintegrating under their own weight, and Microsoft has hit that limit.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Ok, I didn't equate provided with bundled, but it was still free in 1995, and included in Microsoft Plus.
Just for your information, OS/2 didn't include Web Explorer until 1995, and was replaced by Netscape in 1996. But it was "major platform" that I was querying, personally I would have said "alternative platform". But as I don't know how to define a "major platform" you may well be right.
If they had simply provided a browser I don't think it would have been a problem, it was what they did after they provided it, i.e. trying to subvert standards so the web wouldn't work correctly without their browser that upsets people.
I find it hilarious that their answer to competing with Google is to out "google" Google by doing the BIG infrastructure cloud thing.
I hate to break it to MS, but Google is SO far ahead of them at this point that by the time they get anything in place that's even HALF the size of what Google has already deployed it will be far too late.
Ok, I didn't equate provided with bundled, but it was still free in 1995, and included in Microsoft Plus.
Well, there's little difference that I can see between "provided" and "bundled"...
Just for your information, OS/2 didn't include Web Explorer until 1995, and was replaced by Netscape in 1996. But it was "major platform" that I was querying, personally I would have said "alternative platform". But as I don't know how to define a "major platform" you may well be right.
I was just thinking of the two primary competitors to Windows. Despite low market share in absolute numbers, I would consider it reasonable to call the three of them "major" platforms (in the context of the PC).
The fundamental point remains, however, that "everyone" was doing the same thing at the same time. Singling out Microsoft as somehow being "evil" for responding to customer demands and competitive pressure seems a bit... hypocritical. (Especially since the same people will then usually turn around and talk about how Microsoft is a monopoly who never listens to their customers.)
If they had simply provided a browser I don't think it would have been a problem, it was what they did after they provided it, i.e. trying to subvert standards so the web wouldn't work correctly without their browser that upsets people.
People making this judgement seem to forget some rather important aspects of that timeframe:
* The WWW was exploding. A time of rapid advancement. Why on Earth would anyone expect software vendors in that sort of situation to sit on their hands and wait for a "standards committee" to tell them what functionality their customers were clamouring for that they could and could not give provide ? Remember that whole "competition is good" meme ?
* Netscape were doing *exactly* the same thing. How soon we forget who came up with <blink> and HTML email. Their primary business plan was to leverage being in control of both the server and client.
"20%" of someone like Bill Gates' time is probably equivalent to a European's full time job.
"Give.me.yor.chair.bill,,GIVE.ME.YOR.CHAIR" said the robot, developed using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio product, repeated over and over, as it headed towards Mr Gates. The robot also raised his arm, and attempted to inject Mr Gates rescuers with nano-probes showing how he has the ability to "throw tantrums" like a true monkey boy according to the MIT student attempting to control his movements.
"I guess we still have some bugs to work out," Mr Gates said, smiling. "That must be why we're not shipping Balmer-bots yet."
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They generally copy other people's ideas - BASIC, DOS, MacWindows, google-size data-centers, Apple multi-touch ... The list is as long as MS products.
"Oh no we have to write new drivers for this hardware!"
"Oh no they're going to introduce another proprietary file format!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I seem to have a vague recollection that Lotus had to release updates every time a new version of DOS appeared. I don't know if it was Lotus' reliance on undocumented APIs which constantly shifted with new OS releases, or MS intentionally shooting down Lotus' products, but it sure was annoying.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Linux gives you some twigs and a map to the nearby stream and tells you to make your own boiling water, but you don't have to pour it on your head. You could use it to cook with, instead.
MS provided IE in 1995, but you had to download Microsoft Plus to get it (or install it off of the CD). They now provide IE but it is bundled with the OS.
Well, I really doubt anyone was "clamouring" for anything, but if they have some useful additions to the spec then by all means implement them, but let everyone else implement them as well. The competition is in the efficacy of the browser, not who can lock competitors out of the most functionality.
I fail to see that pointing the finger at another company and saying they did it too is an adequate defense. (And no-one who was around at the time can forget the crime against humanity that was the "blink" tag!)
COLON
:
Does this mean that slashdot will be getting rid of their petty and immature Microsoft Bill Gates as the Borg icon?
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
The phrase is "good riddance".
They can convince those who were not alive or who were not there but it was viewed no differently than the Win3.11 failure for DR.Dos back then.
Windows 3.1 worked fine on DR-DOS.
It wasn't even refuted back then.
Of course not. That's because the computer-using world was, on average, more intelligent and such a stupid idea was just laughed about.
It was just accepted that Excel would work and Lotus would not for a while when a new version of DOS came out.
Excel never existed for DOS.
It is really weird to see how effectively they are papering over history.
I bet you can't find a single reliable piece of evidence supporting your claims. Given how easy it is to find old versions of things like DOS floating, you shouldn't have any trouble at all finding some combination of DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 that doesn't work.
has anything he's said in the last 10+ years mattered? And it is not likely he's going to shut up and somehow become skilled at really figuring out what the next big thing is.
And if anything, the news that he's going to be spending more time making sure anyone who accepts the Bill And Melinda Gates money is locked into Microsoft Windows is the only thing he does which has my attention since it is blocking customer choice. Oh, and his "humanitarian" efforts in places like Egypt will probably lock them into becoming addicted to Windows for a very very long time.
Mark my word, Bill "the snake" Gates will still be doing Microsoft's bidding for a long time to come. He's not going to be quiet about it and it does not matter if he's wearing a Microsoft badge or not. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
MS provided IE in 1995, but you had to download Microsoft Plus to get it (or install it off of the CD). They now provide IE but it is bundled with the OS.
Plus! wasn't free. You had to buy it. I can't remember if IE 1.0 was freely available for download (probably not), but 2.0 was (not that anyone sane would have used either of them to do more than download Navigator).
Well, I really doubt anyone was "clamouring" for anything, but if they have some useful additions to the spec then by all means implement them, but let everyone else implement them as well. The competition is in the efficacy of the browser, not who can lock competitors out of the most functionality.
The competition is in who can give the users what they want, the fastest.
I fail to see that pointing the finger at another company and saying they did it too is an adequate defense. (And no-one who was around at the time can forget the crime against humanity that was the "blink" tag!)
The assumption here is that it *needs* defending. The point I'm trying to make is that the industry was proceeding in exactly the same way it (and numerous others) had previously. Competitively.
What I was trying to get across is that you can provide without bundling, but you can't bundle without providing.
However, according to wikipedia (for what it's worth) "Microsoft originally released Internet Explorer 1.0 in August 1995 in two packages: at retail in Microsoft Plus! add-on for Windows 95 and via the simultaneous OEM release of Windows 95"
Within the framework that the competition is held.
And the point I was trying to get across was that they actually proceeded anti-competitively. I believe there are court cases that add a certain amount of weight to my position.
http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html
...
which includes in part...
What about Microsoft Excel and Bill Gates?
The next milestone was the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Excel was originally written for the 512K Apple Macintosh in 1984-1985. Excel was one of the first spreadsheets to use a graphical interface with pull down menus and a point and click capability using a mouse pointing device. The Excel spreadsheet with a graphical user interface was easier for most people to use than the command line interface of PC-DOS spreadsheet products. Many people bought Apple Macintoshes so that they could use Bill Gates' Excel spreadsheet program. There is some controversy about whether a graphical version of Microsoft Excel was released in a DOS version. Microsoft documents show the launch of Excel 2.0 for MS-DOS version 3.0 on 10/31/87.
When Microsoft launched the Windows operating system in 1987, Excel was one of the first application products released for it. When Windows finally gained wide acceptance with Version 3.0 in late 1989 Excel was Microsoft's flagship product. For nearly 3 years, Excel remained the only Windows spreadsheet program and it has only received competition from other spreadsheet products since the summer of 1992.
By the late 1980s many companies had introduced spreadsheet products. Spreadsheet products and the spreadsheet software industry were maturing. Microsoft and Bill Gates had joined the fray with the innovative Excel spreadsheet. Lotus had acquired Software Arts and the rights to VisiCalc. Jim Manzi had become CEO at Lotus in April 1986 and in July 1986 Mitch Kapor resigned as Chairman of the Board. The spreadsheet entrepreneurs were moving on
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Regardless, these memories of "dos isn't done until lotus doesn't run" go back to the 80's when I was in my 20's. It is not from slashdot period and it was widely known that Microsoft played dirty back then.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And WTF are you smoking?
WordPerfect was the de facto standard in college at the time you mention. Netscape was always superior to IE. Always. IE and Word were (and still are) a POS. I'll give credit to MS on Excel though, as that is the one part of Office they did get right.
There is some controversy about whether a graphical version of Microsoft Excel was released in a DOS version. Microsoft documents show the launch of Excel 2.0 for MS-DOS version 3.0 on 10/31/87.
Well, I'd never heard of a version of Excel for DOS (and mentions of it outside of that one document are, well, pretty much nonexistant), but I'm willing to concede it might have existed. It *certainly* wasn't common, if it did, however, as that quote shows.
Regardless, these memories of "dos isn't done until lotus doesn't run" go back to the 80's when I was in my 20's. It is not from slashdot period and it was widely known that Microsoft played dirty back then.
And, still, I await even the slightest shred of actual evidence that it was ever true.
Heck, I'd nearly be satisfied with even a rational argument as to why it would be true (arguments that rely on alienating ~90% of the potential customer base are not rational).
Since, given the prominence of DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 in the 1980s PC world (probably for a majority, the only reason they had a PC at all), if new releases of DOS were frequently (or even infrequently) breaking 1-2-3, then it would be a well known, well documented and trivially demonstratable fact, not a vague rumor that employees from both Microsoft and Lotus at the time consider to be rubbish (indeed, the very opposite of reality) and people parroting it can never back up.
As you can see from emails released into evidence they set out to kill DR-DOS in 1991, by detecting it and then faking errors in Windows if it noticed DR-DOS beneath it.
Sounds pretty evil to me.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
In fact, until the Vista release, Microsoft has had an insane commitment toward backwards compatibility.
What do you mean "until" ? There's boatloads of stuff in Vista (large chunks of UAC, virtualised file and registry access, etc) that exist for no other reason than to allow old, broken applications to continue working.
I didn't mean to imply that Microsoft disregarded backwards compatibility with Vista altogether, but rather that their commitment to backwards compatibility went from "insane" to just "sane." :-)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Very true. Hopefully there are still some law offices that won't touch anything other word processor than WordPerfect; I personally use WordPerfect regularly. And it's not just the awesome functionality of Reveal Codes that gives WordPerfect its power; there are many other things like Center on Margin, Right Flush, Indent (single and double), the multitude of indexing and table features, the actual tables functionality, etc. There are also all of the simple keyboard shortcuts for doing practically anything useful.
Let me spell it out for you. Decline != Income steadily increasing. (How can you not understand this?)
Check out this chart of IBM's net income
It's gone up consistently since 80s with the exception of the early 90s disaster years.
Honestly. *shakes head*. The stupidity of kids today never ceases to amaze me.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.