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Ballmer Hits 10th Anniversary As Microsoft CEO
bednarz writes "Ten years ago on Jan. 13, 2000, Microsoft's Bill Gates turned over the CEO reins to Steve Ballmer. Back in 2000, Microsoft was still under threat of being broken up by the Department of Justice. Today, Ballmer is trying to meld enterprise and cloud computing. He has spent the past decade working through lawsuits, mergers, acquisitions, competitive battles and, of course, new software including Windows 7, which could become the legacy of his leadership at Microsoft. Not that we'll ever forget Ballmer's 'developers, developers, developers' rant."
That was my first thought. I don't think it will be Win7 as his legacy.
I saw one of those annoying pop up ads saying that Bill Gates would pay you x amount of dollars to do Data Entry for Microsoft from home.
I just kind of sighed and went "Really? REALLY?"
He hasn't been the CEO of Microsoft for a decade now. Ask all of the people you know "Who runs Microsoft" and I am willing to bet a fair share of those not in the computer industry will still say Bill Gates.
"LOL Moron"- says Anonymous random, about man who successfully gained a CEO position at one of the world's biggest companies, and many billions of dollars.
Yeah, what a complete moron.
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Microsoft, like many huge businesses, is much like an oil tanker. They keep running for a long, long time even with the engine off. You don't even notice a change when the engines are turned off, they lose speed so gradually that you only notice it when you concentrate on it. Unless you're standing right next to the engines and see that they're not moving, and in that case, especially if it's your fault that they're off, you better keep your mouth shut about it, do your best to fix it and give the captain a thumbs-up every time he bothers to show up and see if everything is allright.
Ballmer is currently frantically trying to fix those engines and give a thumbs-up to the shareholders, even though he doesn't know jack about the engines and also has no idea what tools to use.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not only gained, but kept, for a full decade, without any media speculation of "who will succeed him?" his CEO job. There's a large number of major corporations that rotate through CEOs every 3-7 years, and even right now, even though he's secured another 3 year contract, the media is already asking who NBC's current CEO will be. Not to mention the big three automakers in the last year, along with many major banks. Balmer's done some pretty dumb, boneheaded stuff in his decade at Microsoft, but nobody in the media has ever honestly questioned his ability to run Microsoft in ten years; a rare feat for such a high profile company.
moox. for a new generation.
Just because he got that job (from hist long-year friend und co-partner), doesn't qualify him to be _not_ a moron.
Bastard? Sociopath? Arsehole? Prick?- maybe.
Moron? I'd say no. A *moron* would have fouled it all up somehow, either not getting the job in the first place or not retaining it for the last 8 years. He didn't.
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A *moron* would have fouled it all up somehow
Have you ever _used_ Vista?
To be a successful CEO, you simply have to be less of a moron than your shareholders (or rather, your board of directors). Given the current crew running most large corporations, that's really not that great of an accomplishment.
From a tech CEO perspective: yes. For everything else; no.
Don't confuse business with technology. The only reason that Microsoft is even in business today is because most people are morons when it comes to anything remotely logical and technical... But that also doesn't mean that most people are morons.
Here be signatures
What it amounts to is the most fortuitous dorm assignment in the history of the world, that's all. The guy is an idiot. That being said, may he stay CEO as long as possible, I'm enjoying watching Microsoft take on water. . . .
Vista and 7 changed the playfield. Apple came along with OS X, and Windows started to compete for home users market share, and somewhere on the line pretty much forgot the business users. The OS is no longer clearly aimed for business users.
Oh yeah, I remember clearly when they threw away Active Directory, File Sharing, Smart-card Authentication, Shadow Copy and all of those other business-class features that were just slowing home users down. Or... maybe you're smoking crack.
You can't just say things, you have to actually justify them. What makes you say that Windows no longer has a business focus? Please cite specific examples.
Vista was a disaster pretty much every way you look at it,
Not my way of looking at it. I call it, "rational human being who doesn't make decisions based on Slashdot or hype." I'm not going to say that Vista is the best product ever, but it's not even close to Microsoft's worst OS.
Part of the problem is the overly simplifying things and forcing old reliable tree-browsing into libraries.
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I suspect you also do not.
Library-like browsing is fine, if you want to watch photographs or browse mp3 collections at home, but it doesn't really work for corporate cases.
What is "library-like browsing?" Why doesn't it work for corporate cases? (You also can't just pull terms out of your ass and use them as if everybody else knows exactly what you mean.)
Fileservers are easier to use if you can logically follow the treeview.
What exactly is Vista or Windows 7 doing to prevent you from logically following the treeview?
Is your entire complaint centered around the fact that you've never bothered to check "Navigation Pane" from the Organize menu in an Explorer window? I hope that's not the case, because you'd end up looking like a real idiot.
(yes 7 has treeview too, but it sucks compared to old xp model)
Sucks how? Again, you have to actually justify statements like this... you can't just spout crap out of your noisehole and expect me to take it seriously.
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