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Will Ballmer Be Replaced As Microsoft CEO?
Strudelkugel writes "The Beast reports unhappiness with Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft: Sources say the talk around Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters — which has grown increasingly loud ever since Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization — is that the company's stock suffers from a 'Ballmer discount,' and that the CEO is on the clock to significantly move the needle on its share price over the next two or three quarters or face a potential move to oust him. 'Ballmer is on the list of mega-executives under pressure,' says a banker who has negotiated deals for Microsoft. 'If he was asked to leave the building, I suspect there would be more happy than unhappy people.'"
Office:It's way to late, given that OOo doesn't require re-training and Office 2007 (or whichever) does.
And yet, despite OpenOffice's freeness, Office 2007 is still selling like hotcakes. If you figure out why that is, you may understand the zen of Microsoft. (Note: same thing applies to Linux compared to Windows.)
Sure, Office 2007 "requires retraining" (assuming you work at a business that does any office app training at all-- I sure don't), but that's not enough to even begin to turn around Microsoft's dominance in that space. There are entire industries run on Excel and (to a lesser extent) PowerPoint. Entire industries.
Also, to be snarky, OpenOffice might not require retraining, but it's also buggy enough to require a significant amount of time to find work-arounds.
Comment of the year
Just as a dog reflects its owner, a CEO reflects his company. MS is the boring spreadsheet maker. It can't do an iPod or indeed a PS3. Little Big Planet could NEVER have been a MS project.
Wait, what?
First of all, Microsoft can do a PS3. Arguably, it can out-do a PS3. Demonstrably, it can at least create an extremely strong competitor for the PS3.
Secondly, Microsoft isn't the type of company that can make Little Big Planet, but Sony *is!?* Sony's a bigger, slower moving, behemoth than Microsoft is.
And like Microsoft, the only way they can put out titles like Little Big Planet is by acquiring developers qualified to do it. (Which is why Microsoft bought Bungie and Rare for the Xbox division; they knew they didn't have the in-house talent for it.)
And hey, guess what? Little Big Planet wasn't developed by Sony, only published by them. So you can't cite Little Big Planet as a Sony example without citing, for example, Viva Pinata or Gears of War in the Microsoft column. Because Microsoft's relationship with Epic Games (developers of Gears of War) is identical to Sony's relationship with Media Molecule (developers of Little Big Planet.)
All you've shown is your own ignorance of how the games industry works.
If you want sexy, you go to Sun... and yes that Sun has been bought up says a LOT about how well sexy works. If you want a boring reliable server, you go IBM.
Sun? Seriously?
Look, if you think Sun's shitty products are "sexy", you're really beyond hope. There's nothing more I can say about that.
I actually agree with your post, but your examples are really goofy.
Comment of the year
We might just have to agree to disagree about Office 2007. The only place I see it being panned by people before they use it is Slashdot, and Slashdot hates everything Microsoft does, so that's hardly a gauge of anything.
I don't know what you mean by "sensible stylesheet tool", but Word already has excellent styling tools. Before Office 2007, they were pretty buried and hard to find and use. Now they're in the forefront, and much easier to use. Things like this aren't *technically* a new feature in Office, but *practically* they are-- the Office team took a feature they already had and made it usable. So I call that a win.
It's kind of hard to criticize Office for not coming up with new compelling features when you can't think of any, either. Hah. You just rattled off a list of features Office already has, while adding some weasel words like "sensible" or "more powerful" or "compelling."
Comment of the year
Yes, I have. And I disagree with you.
Comment of the year