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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."
Did they mention his important work in the field of chairodynamics?
or
How about his charitable donations of 288,000 pints of human sweat?
George Bush already owns the rights to that phrase.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Was it just me who read the headline "Ballmer Hits..." and my mind automatically filled in with " ...XXX With A Chair" ?
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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.
Not that we'll ever forget Ballmer's 'developers, developers, developers' rant."
Or flying chairs.
...NOT. According to him, it's
" a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
It must fly in the face of every business practice he's come up with.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
"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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It seems to me he's just slowly, gently, running Microsoft into the ground. He's not a horrible failure, but there seems to be a complete lack of inspiration and mojo.
Has Microsoft had any major hits since 2000? Like, real killer apps or disruptive new technologies?
I've seen "people I'd like to have a beer with" lists that some people make.
I wouldn't even want to ride an elevator with Steve Ballmer. He seems like a real prick.
My campus office used to be adjacent to the Business School at my institution, before they built a shiny new building for the b-school, and I used to have lunch in the cafeteria that was in their basement. I used to observe a lot of the over-amped business students that had similar grating mannerisms as Ballmer. Smelling of cheap cologne and flop-sweat, they were part obnoxious frat-boy, part desperate grasper, and part arrogant sociopath.
That's what I think of Steve Ballmer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The "ballster" picture is my favourite.
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:MSFT
Even if you take into account that 10 years ago was the height of the tech bubble, it is amazing how much money Microsoft has wasted trying to get into new markets without any appreciation to its stock price.
All that Zune R&D money should have been given out directly to stockholders so they could have done something useful with it.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
During these 10 years, there's been change in the target audience of Windows.
Older versions of windows were designed specifically for office use.
Windows 2000 and XP did not change this line and were still clearly aimed for business users.
So please explain Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME? Those are all HOME OSs. No really separate user directories, no granular file permissions, and really weak security. NOT something for office use, although I have seen them used in offices.
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.
I hate it when you liberals are always so negative. Why can't you rephrase it to make it sound positive. Like, "say what you want about GWB, but you have to give him that: He accomplished a decade of failure in just 8 years."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I always felt Ballmer was the wrong choice for the CEO. In these 10 years the competition has not only come to their doorstep but into it. Under his reins Microsoft scrambled for MBAs and the others got the real geeks. And to top it, the world has started to realize that a computer is not Windows and the internet is not IE.
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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You can be a moron and still be successful. For reference, see politics.
Granted, it's rarer in areas where you are chosen not for your looks or your ability to kiss baby asses but for your (alleged) knowledge and where you're (allegedly) accountable for your blunders, but it works here too!
For reference, see banks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A *moron* would have fouled it all up somehow
Have you ever _used_ Vista?
Have you ever _used_ Vista?
Has anyone?
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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.
That reminds me of the following joke:
A boy goes to his dad and tells him "Dad, when I grow up I want to be a fucking loser".
The father surprised and a bit angry asks his son "Why would you want to be that?"
To what the kid answers: "Well, every time we are on the street, if you see a guy with a great car you say 'what a fucking loser'. When we see a guy with to girls you say 'look at that fucking loser' and last time we went to the supermarket and you fought with the manager you said 'I hope that fucking loser rots in hell' after they kicked you out of the place".
Or something like that...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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
Have you ever _used_ Vista?
Has anyone?
What else should I run my Windows ME emulator on?
because he has gained a ceo position, he cant be a moron ?
Read radical news here
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.
Comment of the year
After all, VB6 couldn't be automatically upgraded to VB.net. .Net. VB.Net is essentially just an alternate syntax of C#, plus optional parameter support.
That's because just about every detail of how VB6 worked was a consequence of either how older MS Basics going back to 1975 had worked (the bizarre boolean rules) or how COM works. The different memory model alone would make it nearly impossible to automatically upgrade projects directly, and is why Office (still COM) Automation still doesn't work well under
Neither C# nor VB.net forms projects can be automatically upgraded to ASP.net
You mean automatically converting WinForms projects? How could that possibly work? WebForms already denies the basic properties of the web way too much.
Yes, we're all enjoying the benefits of that wonderful CIL. It's just provided the folks on the ground *so* many benefits like, um, er...
Real inheritance.
Collections other than arrays and "Collection".
Fewer arbitrary "you can't combine these features because we didn't think of that" restrictions.
Better performance without the COM reference-counting overhead.
Much better string performance if you learn how to use it.
Worthwhile built-in libraries.
Dynamic form controls without invisible "control array" seeds.
Initial values in variable declarations.
Not so much of this kinda thing: "Left(Upper(LTrim(RTrim(txtStuff))), Len(LTrim(RTrim(txtStuff)))-1)".
XCopy installation.
Console app support.
IDE tooltips showing any expression's current value.