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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."
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/
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).
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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
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...
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