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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.
A new head of Microsoft would have a monumental amount of work to fix the company.
Step 1 - Kill off the Ballmer turds like Zune, Xbox, and maybe even search
Step 2 - Mass firings of everyone involved in those stinkers
Step 3 - A complete overhaul of the marketing, branding, and UI people
Step 4 - Wrap up everything DOS/Win32 into a virtual machine and move forward with a clean slate while still supporting the gargantuan DOS/Win32 legacy code out there
Step 5 - Start coming to terms with open source and open standards and figure out how Microsoft will fit in that type of world
Hell, why not go all the way and grab some BSD source and build on top of that with the DOS/Win32 stuff running in a VM on top of it.
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 ----
MS has started their decline, just like IBM did before them. Even if they recruit the greatest CEO in the world, all he can do is stabilize them and maybe get 3-5% annual growth.
The question is though, is there a Lou Gerstner-level of executive talent out there who can turn Microsoft into an effective development organization? I don't think there is.
All that Ballmer is going to do is continue to piss away shareholders' money on his ego trip of the month club. He's desperate to show that MS's dominance isn't just from the sheer luck of catching IBM's fumble.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
... 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.