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Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft
s31523 writes "All of us have one time or another been completely frustrated by certain Windows usability issues, and in many cases our experiences have driven us over to Linux, or kept us there. For anyone that has ever been frustrated, you will be happy to know you aren't the only one. After reading this leaked Microsoft memo from Bill Gates back in 2003, you will surely have more insight into why Vista is a complete disaster due to Microsoft not learning anything from their experiences from XP."
The funny thing is that on XP you still have to install Service Pack 2 to get MovieMaker. You can't just download it separately. Oh, well, you can order it on CD, too, I guess, but who wants to do that?
My blog
Wow! I thought this was a joke until I read this part
When Seattle Pi recently asked Gates about the email, he replied, "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
That is NOT Gate's writing style and there are several mistakes as well that point to someone other than gates wrote the letter.
"I go to microsoft.com they have a download center" HUH? Cince when does the Head executive of the company refer to the company as "they" instead of "we"? I have never seen it even down to the grunt level.
This "secret memo" is bunk. it is in no way Bill Gates' writing.
Except this was entered as evidence in the DoJ trial. It's real and on the books.I didn't think it sounded much like him, either, but googling the subject turned up this (google cache version), which seems to make it more plausible ..
The email is real. It's in the court documents from the Comes vs Microsoft case. You can find it in PX07199.pdf from http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000/
Um, you realise he confirmed it personally as part of an interview, right? RTFA much?
"When Seattle Pi recently asked Gates about the email, he replied, "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail ... like that piece of e-mail. That's my job." There was no mention as to whether or not Gates had time to take names."
Sam ty sig.
The letter is from the antitrust files, so it's certified.
The very interesting thing is that there is no single person at Microsoft who has the final say on how all of there stuff interacts together. Not even Bill has that clout (and if he did, he sucked at his job).
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Don't you feel silly now after that pointless rant that it turns out to be real and part of the released court documents from the Comes vs Microsoft case?
The file he links to is rather older than that blog article, featuring on this website discussing the case Comes vs. Microsoft. It was one of several thousand files submitted as evidence by the plaintiffs, specifically in this batch (file PX07199). This was a case back in 2007. Seeing as the version from 2007 has an evidence stamp, and the blog version doesn't, I suspect they're both copies of some original pdf found on the internet and therefore the veracity is still unclear.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Here's a PDF of the original, together with the replies, as submitted to the trial.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf
Here, Knock yourself out
The specific exhibit (7199) is found near here
And if you doubt me (after all, who is this xtracto guy), the page is linked from groklaw. Maybe they are more thrustworthy than myself?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Depending on you situation, you don't have to search the web. Open Adept Manager in KDE and you can drag and drop key words to narrow down the list. You can search as well. Synaptic is similar. If I recall correctly, SUSE had a nifty hierarchical organization.
Since my degree (Technical Communications) concerns interface design and usability testing, what Red Flayer says is 100% accurate. Any usability tester worth their salt will force themselves to think like their target audience--in this case, a typical "email and word processor" computer user.
As much as it may be against the status quo here, I have to give credit where credit is due. If the email is really from Bill Gates (after reading it, I am not sure...), he seems to know what he is doing in regards to usability testing.
The man is not stupid, just unethical.
$> man woman $> Segmentation fault. (Core dumped)
Lots of people. I don't happen to use Outlook, but I do it all the time.
They even changed the functionality after user observation showed that a lot of people used it to check dates:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Date-and-Time-Settings-in-Vista-38465.shtml
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
or enter "podcast" as a search term in your GUI software installation tool. How hard is this? Certainly easier than strolling through dozens of software shops or dredging the web
In reality it still had to be done because of the technical aspects of changing a .dll in use and no safe way to replace it in flight (why not?), but then again getting that stupid little logo on your box wasn't going to trump usability... but at least there was "some" encouragement for developers to find another way.
More Twoson than Cupertino
That is funny and all, but it still points you to Windows Update, which means you're still going to spend 20 minutes waiting for the pages to load, get prompted to install a bunch of other updates, and probably reboot a few times.
Incidentally, the same search gives you the same link on Microsoft's Live search.
KDE and GNOME are *not* window managers. In fact, the window managing code in GNOME, for example, is very much under 2% of the code.
That's exactly what I said. Finding the product is the same on Windows and Linux, but at least Linux *has* the index and package manager right there, so it's no worse.
Umm, under Linux the software is 99% OSS and downloadable and fully functional - the most you have to go through is agreeing to a EULA. You search under yum, apt-get, emerge, etc... find the description you want, install and use...
Under Windows, you search and sort through *AT LEAST* 50% commercial/shareware packages that are crippled until you purchase it.
The last time I tried this, I went through 1/2 dozen apps, and dozens of websites to just burn a cd image quickly/easily...
People who don't know what CAD is aren't going to be buying AutoCAD (at least, they shouldn't be -- its expensive and they'll be sorely disappointed).
Automatic Computer Aided Design is a hell of a lot more descriptive than Visual Studio to the casual glance. Yes -- a studio where I work visually -- doing what?
I know its an IDE, but I also know that about NetBeans and Eclipse.
At least WinAmp (Windows Amplifier) sounds like it might have something to do with music.
Not only that, but you use the term "window managers", which is just ironic, as only one of the 3 is a window manager.
Actually all of those mentioned are Desktop Environments (DEs). Here's a list of desktop environments and their default window managers:Perfect is the enemy of done.
A cute phrase and an oft-repeated anecdote, but according to people at Lotus, it's completely false.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
It's from the major Seattle paper, by the reporter who is conducting a series of interviews with Gates this week, and links to PDFs of the memos which were released during discovery one of the times someone sued Microsoft. If that's not enough provenance for you, nothing is.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Most of those have been kernel updates. Until the hot-patch system is released, there's not much you can do about that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Yeah, like Amarok, Okular, gmusicbrowser, KDE 4, Compiz...oh wait.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
I've never had to compile anything from source
I can't remember the last time I've "had to" compile anything from source under Linux. That's what apt (or whatever package manager) is for. The only times I compile things from source are when I feel like it because I'm being geeky, or when it's some really esoteric package that, frankly, you wouldn't even have under Windows (hydra comes to mind).
Nor do you "have to" use the command line in Linux these days for 99% of what I'll call "user operations". Things a typical user would do -- check email, use the web, chat online, watch a movie, write a paper, work on a spreadsheet. You know. Gnome and KDE both make it as point and click simple as Windows. The command line is only "necessary" when you're performing certain operations that a typical user would never, ever, ever do -- for example I use it for running network diagnostics and packet captures and so forth.
It seems to me, most Linux distro's only come with the bare necessities (Browser, Productivity Software, Media Player, Etc.). Windows typically has all of these,
You've got it backwards. A fresh install of, say, Ubuntu, has a nice mp3/music player, mail client, web browser, Office suite, multiprotocol IM client, photo manipulation program, and a bunch of other useful stuff already there, out of the box, ready to go. Most of it will serve the average user's needs already, without the need to go hunting around for additional software. If they do need something else, it's a few mouse clicks to get it installed, and you know it'll work. You don't have to search the web, find a boatload of corporate software that makes you register, pay, dance, and swear off your first born, then leaves all kinds of horseshit little icons, shortcuts, systray "helpers", and additional programs you don't want.
A fresh install of Windows has, well, nothing really. Windows Media Player is a freaking joke, but I guess it plays music. Outlook Express is also a joke, but okay, I guess it checks mail, sorta. Other than that, where's the "Office suite" -- Wordpad? Where's the DVD player? Where's the IM client? If you consider IE to be a viable browser, that's your own lookout, but really, Windows on a fresh install is about as bare-bones, minimally usable as can be. Anything you want, you have to go find for yourself, download, install, register, pay, crack, steal, and then clean up the mess each installer leaves behind.
Finally, you say "Installations are pretty intuitive in Windows." I had to laugh. Let me plug myself a moment and explain why Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows, both the OS and the applications. These are side-by-side comparisions I did while installing each, with what I hope are reasonable expectations.
But if you don't believe me, ask yourself this: Why are users always bitching that their computers are "slow" and so forth? Because Windows lets any application install anything it wants, anywhere it wants, screw with the registry however it wants, load whatever memory-hogging additional "features" it wants, and within short order, the user -- not knowing how to clean up -- ends up with a machine bogged down with ungodly amounts of crapware.
Linux distros, on the other hand, do not have this problem and never will. To screw up a modern Linux system in the same way you really, really have to know what you're doing, and go out of your way to do it.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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