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Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide
nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months.
Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."
Given that having a job at an overbearing company like Microsoft is aiding and abetting the "extend, embrace, extinguish" attitude, how "smart" can they be? And aren't they accessories to the illegal business tactics?
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah. NO THEY WON'T you Linux loser! They will go to the soup line at Salvation Army like all the ones laid off from Sun, GM, Citi, Ford, Amsbuch, Hell, and all the others. This is a DEPRESSION, worse than the one in the 1929, the worldwide economy is failing, and your FOSS will disappear, because the time for dreamers and cute-boys ended at the big companies. To survive they need the old-guard people, and the old-guard is exactly that guy with gray hair that shivers with hate every time he sees a Penguin. The old guard in corporate America, Europe, China, Russia, wherever, has no time for gay kids, playing with gay Linux toys that always break at 3 AM in the morning because the cron job failed to start. FOSS is going to disappear, there is no time for jokes and cute-toys anymore, it is time for serious software able to make money fast.
Well.
They lost.
The original Xbox was outsold by the Playstation 5 to 1. Okay no big deal, but now the Xbox 360 is being outsold by Nintendo 2 to 1. Microsoft was willing to lose the first round, but losing the second round was definitely NOT part of the plan.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
they keep the poor code the other engineers write from making it into the shipping version.
Have you used a Microsoft product? It took Microsoft 16 years to create an operating system that doesn't constantly crash. SIXTEEN YEARS!
Vista, zune, xbox, M$TV. They've even bunged up Hotmail and Office. They have been caught lying about making money before and recently hushed an employee. They depend on massive tax evasion as well as government purchasing that's drying up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
M$ has already begged for and been helped by bailouts as documented here. Still, a direct cash infusion would be a nice parting gift from an administration that started by neutering the anti-trust judgment.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Such a view is indeed common in the United States. The United States is falling behind in industry, has massively slipping standards on the technical front, and has innovated very little (stepwise refinements are not innovations). The United States is also the origin of the notion that software need not meet any standard of merchandile fitness, rather than simply adapting the existing definition to suit what can be known about software. In short, it is a superb recipe for medicrity and that is indeed exactly what it has produced. It is impossible to produce quality goods by means of a mediocre monoculture of neurotypical Joe Averages. You want some, yes, but you cannot hope to genuinely prosper with a monoculture of them. You NEED a good scattering of eccentrics, mad geniuses, weirdos, freaks and the just plain nuts. But again, you should never have a monoculture of them, either.
Only fools and horses work, if we define work as unpleasent drudgery. Rich biodiverse cultures produce enthusiasts, extreme fans of their occupation, obsessives on details. Rich biodiverse cultures do not exist where "everyone must get along", or where "everyone must be Average". Indy cars are not made in the US but in the UK - not because it's cheaper but because you don't have the washed-out grey mindlessness of Normalicy. At least, not to the same degree. Eccentricity, although not encouraged as it once was, is still not a dirty word there. At one point, it was actively encouraged, and it is in those times you see some of the greatest progress in history. It is since they started to stifle it that you see the country failing. The United States has always detested those who were brilliantly mad, and that is reflected in the lack of really new work, really new directions. There is even a strong suspicion (with justification) that inventions from the US were actually from elsewhere and then stolen. The kind of classical mind (yes, the Greeks loved the brilliantly mad) that is capable of true creativity is almost impossible here.
This is not a complaint, per se. Too many chefs don't add anuthing, so having too many countries encouraging eccentrics is a bad idea. We need countries that are happy with drudgery. What is a complaint is the assumption that drudgery is the only way to be. Without nations of Chefs, there would be nothing for the slaves of drudgery to do. The rest of the world needs people who will sacrifice their mind in exchange for money, as the Chefs alone can produce almost nothing and make nothing.
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)