Ray Ozzie To Step Down From His Role At Microsoft

denobug writes "Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, is stepping down. He is to remain with Microsoft until he retires, focusing his efforts 'in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments,' based on a memo from Steve Ballmer. Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled."

Comments

End of Azure

[smist08]

Does this mean MS is killing the Azure platform? Or maybe Bill Gates is returning from the hinterland? Or are employees just leaving one by one until only Steve Balmer is left to turn off the lights?

Re:End of Azure

[MrEricSir]

That's ridiculous. We all know that Ballmer would be perfectly happy to dance around a giant empty building while clapping and shouting "Developers, developers, developers, developers."

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

" Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled."

I read that as no "Jobs" here. Let the fragmentation extend!

Re:End of Azure

[Sponge Bath]

I think it is an admission that Chief Software Architect as implemented at Microsoft was just a nice sounding title to hand to one of the old crowd so they could feel they were still contributing.

Re:End of Azure

[MichaelSmith]

You don't think a software company needs a chief software architect?

Re:End of Azure

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Well, what's left that we can yet copy from iTunes, Sony, OS X, Java, VMware and Amazon?

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Software architects" are by far one of the worst things that can happen to a company that develops software products.

Instead of developing useful software products that improve the efficiency of their customers, such companies spins their wheels developing "frameworks" that are rife with "patterns", "inversion of control", "service-oriented architectures", "clouds", and all sorts of other nonsense. Yet somehow these frameworks end up being hugely complex piles of shit. The original software products end up being ignored or remain undeveloped, since so many resources went into developing these cock-awful frameworks.

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

or maybe like Michelle Obama... After her husband was elected to the senate, she was promoted to Chief Pork (or was it Diversity?) Officer. An important job, no doubt. So important that after she left, they didn't need another one.

Re:End of Azure

[drachenstern]

I'm just gonna wait and see what Paul Thurott has to say on WW

Re:End of Azure

[MichaelSmith]

I think its more like having a single technical lead in a powerful position is a bad thing for management because they keep asking hard questions. So lets split the role into smaller project based positions, leaving the strategy to management and marketing.

Re:End of Azure

[MichaelSmith]

I suppose it depends on how these things have worked for you. I would love to see a software architect in my company who would put a stop to just these problems.

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a person couldn't be considered a "software architect" then. The very definition of a "software architect" is one who makes simple things way the fuck too complex, and complex things damn near impossible.

What you're looking for is merely a team of software developers who see "software architecture" for the bullshit that it is. The GCC, LLVM, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux communities, for instance, do a fantastic job of keeping "software architecture" in check, while still developing amazingly complex, practical and very high-quality software.

Re:End of Azure

[MichaelSmith]

The GCC, LLVM, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux communities, for instance, do a fantastic job of keeping "software architecture" in check, while still developing amazingly complex, practical and very high-quality software.

Yeah but at enormous cost (if you count the labour involved) because it is basically a test of strength on the mailing lists and forums with the last man standing getting to make the decision.

Re:End of Azure

[lucm]

> Instead of developing useful software products that improve the efficiency of their customers, such companies spins their wheels developing "frameworks"

To the contrary, most decent software architects will prevent the idle developers from writing YAF.

> that are rife with "patterns", "inversion of control", "service-oriented architectures", "clouds", and all sorts of other nonsense.

I heard that kind of statement a few years ago... where was it... oh yeah I remember, it was the mainframe guy at his retirement party, he was also talking about the good ol' days of CICS and hierarchical databases, and how nobody needs a GUI, textmode 80x25 was optimal.

A good software architect is someone with experience that will define the orientations and overview the selected design patterns; as such he is instrumental in improving the quality and avoiding useless complexity.

Re:End of Azure

[interval1066]

"Well, what's left that we can yet copy from iTunes, Sony, OS X, Java, VMware and Amazon?"

Yeah, that amazon one-click was the killer app of the 90's. Java? Meh. And iTumes... who'd a thought you could set up an on-line store where you could buy songs for .99 per... AND PEOPLE WOULD ACTUALLY PAY IT. (Any sane actuarial accountant or social economist will tell you the real value of digital pop media is much less.)

THAT'S INNOVATION. Oh yeah.

Re:End of Azure

[euphemistic]

If I could mod you +1 "Mental imagery", I totally would.

Re:End of Azure

[lucm]

> Does this mean MS is killing the Azure platform?

It would surprise me. Azure is not that great so far, but recently I had to deploy an application and the money that my client saved by using SQL Azure instead of traditional hosting is huge.

Same goes with BPOS (Exchange online and other stuff, offered by MSFT). It's only about 5$ a month per 25GB inbox to have Exchange, connected to your own Windows Domain. For people who make the decision to go with Exchange this is pretty competitive. No more backups, no more DR, no more administration mistakes or forgotten critical patches. Of course there is always the alternatives, such as Google or Linux hosting, but some business are not ready to let go of Exchange, and with the features that they keep adding (such as voicemail integration) very often the business case to switch is just not there.

Re:End of Azure

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Don't bitch at me. These are all other people's money makers, that MS slavishly copied, without any profitable revenue coming back to them.

When I mentioned Amazon, I was specifically referring to EC2 and S3.

Re:End of Azure

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Step Down From His Role" Does that include no more wiping Ballmer spooge off his chin?

How's that for "imagery"?

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

Lights on, lights off. Lights on, lights off.

Re:End of Azure

[h4rr4r]

Meh on Java? Where do you think .NET came from?

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, that must be SOME BJ...

Re:End of Azure

[Dishevel]

Survival of the fittest.

Re:End of Azure

[Sulphur]

"hugely complex piles of shit."

Can you simulate that with enough computing power at say 17,000 nanoseconds per diem.

Can they model the Big Bing?

The CSA is gone, long live the CSA. Um no. Really. Never mind.

--

The bathroom is upstairs over the driveway.

Re:End of Azure

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Old Crowd"?

Ozzie only joined Microsoft in 2005.

Re:End of Azure

[CAIMLAS]

Don't be silly.

For all his personal faults, Balmer has done for Microsoft what Bill Gates could not. He's made some very prudent decisions (or lack of decisions, maybe) which have had opposite results to what BG did:

* Windows has been steadily improving since Bill Gates left the helm. The last vestige of Gates' impact was seen in Office 2007 and Windows Vista, both of which were horrible.
* Stability, scalability, usability - name it, it's improved since Gates left and Balmer took over.
* Xbox was a huge fail; Xbox 360, on the other hand (while having been released under Gates and not doing that well during that time) has seen steady improvements over it's long life - and is still considered 'premiere' by many after 5 long years (since when, the PS3 and Wii have been released - to limited impact).
* Sharepoint, while it sucks giant donkey cock and is the bane of my existence, has become quite the beast, seemingly being the preferred choice for any sort of corporate extranet deployment/content management system. It is better than most of its competition at substantially lower prices.
* HyperV has become quite the mature, capable product - a far cry from the code it was based on, at this point. Microsoft has helped push virtualization forward through many of its VT-related initiatives - to the benefit of the industry as a whole.

The only thing Balmer seems to have butchered severely is the mobile handset OSes. It had potential 3-4 years ago; today, the MS offerings are has-beens and also-rans not much worth consideration (except for the older WinMo based phones, which have some merit due to Exchange/PIM and decent integration).

Re:End of Azure

[billcopc]

Delphi.

Re:End of Azure

[dkleinsc]

"Software architects" are by far one of the worst things that can happen to a company that develops software products.

Heaven forbid the software that these companies produce has some sort of coherent structure!

Microsoft does have a tendency to come out with major framework releases every few years. But part of that is that the newer frameworks and libraries are significant improvements over their predecessors - try writing software for bare Win32 without any framework layers and you'll see exactly why MFC was a big help. And then after working on MFC for a little while, you'll really appreciate what .NET brought to the table. I've only dabbled in Windows programming, but they really have moved from extremely ridiculously painful to a pretty mild pain.

I should also point out that all the concepts you decry were created to solve real-world problems. SOA sounds like a worthless piece of crap until you realize that it enables you to share logic without sharing internals, hardware, or linkage. Clouds may sound silly the way the marketers talk about them, but efficient and effective use of networked hardware and bandwidth hardly sounds like a bad idea. All this architecture stuff done right means that they can get that nice new feature you really really wanted in done in 3 months instead of 5.

Re:End of Azure

[bonch]

GCC? Stallman didn't even believe in precompiled headers according to a NeXTStep employee, and he refused to add the feature to GCC. His GPL policy regarding linking with GCC is one of the reasons Clang/LLVM has so much support in the first place.

Linus has also done shitty things to hold Linux back, like when he refused and criticized someone's VM scheme...until it was cloned by another kernel developer he was used to working with.

Re:End of Azure

[williamhb]

I think its more like having a single technical lead in a powerful position is a bad thing for management because they keep asking hard questions. So lets split the role into smaller project based positions, leaving the strategy to management and marketing.

Having a single technical lead across a company as diverse as Microsoft possibly is a bad thing -- should SQL Server, Word, XBox Live, and Phone 7 all be managed by the same technical lead? Is that one person really going to have a deep understanding of all the technical, business, and user issues across all the products, or are they inevitably going to skew towards their favourite area, or not have enough time to devote to all the areas to be both effective and timely? I suspect Ozzie just found there wasn't enough time in the day anymore. For Gates, being across everything probably worked better -- the whole company was his baby; for Ozzie, coming in from the outside and trying to be across everything might have been harder.

Re:End of Azure

[bonch]

* Windows has been steadily improving since Bill Gates left the helm. The last vestige of Gates' impact was seen in Office 2007 and Windows Vista, both of which were horrible.

Steadily improving?! The Vista debacle happened under Ballmer. Why do you attribute it to Bill Gates?

* Stability, scalability, usability - name it, it's improved since Gates left and Balmer took over.

Some examples would be nice.

Xbox was a huge fail; Xbox 360, on the other hand (while having been released under Gates and not doing that well during that time) has seen steady improvements over it's long life - and is still considered 'premiere' by many after 5 long years (since when, the PS3 and Wii have been released - to limited impact).

360 has been the same money-loser as the original. Have you forgotten the red ring of death debacle, which happened under Ballmer? You seem to think "steady improvements" is going to keep Microsoft on the edge of technology.

Sharepoint, while it sucks giant donkey cock and is the bane of my existence, has become quite the beast, seemingly being the preferred choice for any sort of corporate extranet deployment/content management system. It is better than most of its competition at substantially lower prices.

"This sucks and I hate it, which means Ballmer is good."

Re:End of Azure

[nonguru]

That's the academic variant of the species. There are SW Architects that actually parse theory into working platforms that have to run on actual hardware in real-time and interface to actual clients within a deadline that isn't on the other side of the decade. This is the sub-species that are otherwise known as Systems Engineers.

Re:End of Azure

[nonguru]

Never met a software architect that went beyond upgrading the server rack or adding yet more virual machines to compensate for bad design decisions (made by the previous sw architects).

Re:End of Azure

[lucm]

> You don't need "software architects". You just need a small number of developers who can actually code

Clearly you do not have a lot of experience in big environments, where people come and go because the workload is not the same all the time. In that type of workplace, where contractors are part of the landscape, design patterns and architecture orientations are a must, otherwise each time you bring in someone new you go again all over the same sterile discussions about PHP Vs Perl, Web Vs Fat client, Plain DAL Vs ORM, and whatnot. Not having a clear set of design patterns will lead to a mess, quick.

Faced with this problem, typical core developers usually come up with overkill rules, such as very detailed naming conventions and flowerbox documentation requirements, and quickly you end up with reams of paper wasted and no improvement. Then someone brings up an idea of using a common library, and from there it's a sure path to Yet Another Framework.

Software architecture is a trade, a specialized one, and maybe small companies can't afford one (usually the same that won't pay for a good DBA) but it does not mean there is no need for this skillset. Being able to establish efficient guidelines and avoiding the pitfalls of frameworks and other common mistakes requires a specific expertise.

> and that are using a sufficiently-expressive language to not need "design patterns".

When you work on relatively complex systems, design patterns are not bound to the programming language, especially since the said system can require more than one language. And even if you are lucky enough to work on a software solution that can be done with a single language, there are usually more than one way to do something - so you still need design patterns.

> I know, I know. You'll claim it's difficult to find developers like that. In reality, it's not. You just have to offer them a good salary. Sure, you could buy 450 shitty Indian developers with the same salary as three or four good developers, but those three or four developers will be tens of thousands of times more productive than your shitty Indian developers.

I don't agree. Remember a few years ago when everything was about code generators and whatnot? I remember being amazed by JBuilder and TogetherJ where all I needed to do was draw a class diagram in UML, and automagically the stubs were created in the java source files.

Well guess what: reality won (again) and the cheapest and more efficient code generator there is Southeast Asia. At some point it is more cost-effective to have a good analyst write specific requirements (even maybe executable requirements) and have the code done somewhere in India or China. Sounds silly, but it beats the shit out of all those scaffolding solutions. Does it mean you can outsource everything? Of course not, but don't underestimate the economics of expandable code monkeying.

It's just like the Y2K madness. With mainframe and proprietary locked code that could not be updated in time, one of my biggest customer had a big team of engineers working around the clock to find a way to move data out of the mainframe before the crash. And the most efficient solution they came up with was "Marge Protocol": bring in shitloads of data-entry clerks to read on one machine and type on the other one. Did the job pretty well. Cheap labor 1, software engineering 0.

Re:End of Azure

[lucm]

> Never met a software architect that went beyond upgrading the server rack or adding yet more virual machines to compensate for bad design decisions (made by the previous sw architects).

Well maybe you met people that did some hardware upgrade or created virtual machines, but those people were not software architect. They would be called "sysadmins" or something like that, perhaps with a "Senior" or "Team Lead of" prefix. So you either misread their business card or you worked in a company where people picked job titles from a box of Cap'N Crunch.

"Confusion will be my epitaph"
    -King Crimson

Re:End of Azure

[b4dc0d3r]

Have you seen some of billg's leaked mails on Windows? He ripped XP to shreds. He was at the helm, and didn't like what they were doing. You think he was any happier with Vista?

http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-out-microsoft-over-xp

He was the head of the company, not the guy who makes every decision. He disagreed with a lot of decisions. He should have replaced more people with any organism that could muster a coherent thought that persisted long enough to compare with the next thought. That was his failure.

Ballmer eats donkey cock all day and shits out specs which are automatically turned into the next GUI design and API. Bill was no saint, but I don't think you realize how little low-level control he had in the last few years. He bitched about things being wrong, sure. But in 2003/4 he was *told* that Vista was shite and would have to be rebooted. He gave in, and Jim Allchin retired out of shame I would assume. Ballmer was busy purchasing used donkeys from seedy mexican bars.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/windows-client/allchin-on-vista-it-s-not-going-to-work-.aspx

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Azure is cleaning house compared to that pile of garbage offered by Google.

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

Delphi

ZOMG, the .NET MSIL bytecode was/is eerily similar to Java bytecode.

Re:End of Azure

[johnhp]

God brought .NET to Bill Gates in a dream, as an apology to him and the world for ever letting MFC exist.

Re:End of Azure

[PinkyGigglebrain]

AAAGGGGHHHH!!

MY EYE'S!!

Wheres my bottle of brain bleach?!?

I must wash this before it sets!

Re:End of Azure

[GumphMaster]

Microsoft's marketing department.

Re:End of Azure

[ozmanjusri]

For people who make the decision to go with Exchange this is pretty competitive. No more backups, no more DR, no more administration mistakes

Um, try Googling "Microsoft Sidekick Fiasco".

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that kind of statement a few years ago ... what was it ... oh yeah I remember, it was a strawman.

Re:End of Azure

[syousef]

I think its more like having a single technical lead in a powerful position is a bad thing for management because they keep asking hard questions. So lets split the role into smaller project based positions, leaving the strategy to management and marketing.

I think it would be cheaper and more effective to leave the strategy to Paul the Octopus. He's probably nicer too.

Re:End of Azure

[syousef]

To the contrary, most decent software architects will prevent the idle developers from writing YAF.

Yet to see this happen in practice. In practice you get a know it all architect who insists on doing things the hard way for future reuse, but that reuse never materialises either because it's too hard to make the code truely reusable and test it for reuse, or because the framework needs to be very specific to the project.

I heard that kind of statement a few years ago... where was it... oh yeah I remember, it was the mainframe guy at his retirement party, he was also talking about the good ol' days of CICS and hierarchical databases, and how nobody needs a GUI, textmode 80x25 was optimal.

CICS and mainframes did the job brilliantly, so much so that they are still used under the hood in a lot of places, with a thin web developed veneer.

A good software architect is someone with experience that will define the orientations and overview the selected design patterns; as such he is instrumental in improving the quality and avoiding useless complexity.

Again, I'm yet to see this in practice. My background? I'm a web developer. I've worked with a whole host of languages. Right now my focus is both Java and C. At various times I've worked with Powerbuilder, Visual Basic, Smalltalk, C++ and C#. When it comes to useless overengineering and unnecessary use of patterns Java absolutely takes the cake. I'd like to propose some alternate names to some of the patterns

Inversion of Control - Inversion of Common Sense with a sprinkling of XML hell
Proxy/Bridge - Useless Fucking Wrapper when I don't know what the fuck I'm building and need to hide it
Singleton - Destroyer of Scalability
MVC - Most Varied Confusion (I've never seen someone put 2 views against a single controller in a real life commercial project, but these days everyone wears that complexity because it is accepted that this is how it's done)

All of the above, used in the right place for the right purpose are fantastic, and in some cases they are absolutely necesary. Unfortunately the almost never are used properly.

Oh and while we're on Java, what the fuck is it with minor revisions hosing backward compatiblity. I'm looking at you Spring and Hibernate.

Don't even get me started on the preaching of various methodologies.

Agile Development - Quick lets run around like headless chooks and redevelop 7 times on the whim of the business user
Test Driven Development - Let's build the fucking bridge top down so we know that the arch looks pretty and works

The most productive I've seen software developed was in the pre-web days in the old Rapid Application Development environments. Delphi and C++ builder, to a lesser extent C# and VB. Yes I said VB. Nothing wrong with VB for screens so long as you hire competent programmers. It took 1 hour to lay out a screen where now the norm seems to be a week to lay out a web page with layer upon layer of MVC and patterns.

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA I'd love to see the company, and its management, who would -listen to- (as opposed to ignore and/or fire outright) the developer(s) who had the courage to say outright that the paradigm de jour is, to put it kindly, bullsh*t.

Re:End of Azure

[tyrione]

Sorry, but the LLVM list is nothing like the GCC list.

Re:End of Azure

[gbjbaanb]

Faced with this problem, typical core developers usually come up with overkill rules, such as very detailed naming conventions and flowerbox documentation requirements, and quickly you end up with reams of paper wasted and no improvement. Then someone brings up an idea of using a common library, and from there it's a sure path to Yet Another Framework.

kinda disagree, as the above description is a Dev manager rols at my current place. Perhaps its terminology and experience we're talkign about here. I know some good architects, but I also know others who love to create over-engineered 'astronautic' schemes that have no place in reality (like above). One architecture group at my current place has come up with a scheme that, last time I looked, required 6 dlls for each web service (yes, it had to be SoA, or is that SaaS they're doing? Oh yes, its the PoS system).

I think it doesn't matter what you call them, some 'senior' chaps don't do real-world code anymore, these are the people we're talking about. They often have titles like 'architect', sometimes with 'chief' in there too. People who look to microsoft's patterns and practices group and think the crud they come up with is good.

Re:End of Azure

[jimicus]

Having a single technical lead across a company as diverse as Microsoft possibly is a bad thing -- should SQL Server, Word, XBox Live, and Phone 7 all be managed by the same technical lead? Is that one person really going to have a deep understanding of all the technical, business, and user issues across all the products, or are they inevitably going to skew towards their favourite area, or not have enough time to devote to all the areas to be both effective and timely? I suspect Ozzie just found there wasn't enough time in the day anymore. For Gates, being across everything probably worked better -- the whole company was his baby; for Ozzie, coming in from the outside and trying to be across everything might have been harder.

Obviously not, that's what delegation was invented for. At the same time, I think you do need someone - very probably just one person - at the top leading the software development.

I don't mean for one minute that they should be cutting code, but they should certainly be looking at the various products and asking "Are we doing this the best way possible? Are there obvious things wrong with that product that we should be fixing? How can we make it better?".

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right on paper; but I do read about organizations with no head in Ozzie's position that have a power vacuum. Business units then silo up and act less friendly to each other since they won't lend a hand to the other departments ('if I run SQL server team and devote a resource to helping XBox then maybe management will see this as my group having too many people and I'll lose power and influence -- so I won't help anyone' kind of fear driven power mongering).

Re:End of Azure

[wintermute000]

It's just like the Y2K madness. With mainframe and proprietary locked code that could not be updated in time, one of my biggest customer had a big team of engineers working around the clock to find a way to move data out of the mainframe before the crash. And the most efficient solution they came up with was "Marge Protocol": bring in shitloads of data-entry clerks to read on one machine and type on the other one. Did the job pretty well. Cheap labor 1, software engineering 0.

Off topic but that is hysterical. I have seen one mainframe migration project fail miserably from afar, and am now up close and personal with a company whose most valuable machines are their Tandems (ok not mainframes but close enough), apparently every couple of hours downtime is a million or something similar. This same company won't pay to upgrade the IP stack so we're stuck with X25, so as network techies we have to improvise this hilarious X25 over IP solution to get them WAN, backup and alarm monitoring capability. I'm now wondering whether your solution could get them over the line LOL

Re:End of Azure

[wintermute000]

Where I am the term sysadmin is almost never used (Australia). They're just server engineers, exchange admins, or whatnot. Funny how on /dot it seems to figure as a term of abuse.
Seems to me there is a big difference between 'creating a virtual machine' and designing, speccing, configuring and implementing an ESX cluster, yet I've seen both functions performed by guys whom I would just call server engineers.

Of course as infrastructure guys (I'm a network engineer) we do yes very often see that kinda behaviour from the apps side of the fence. Also the converse is equally funny, where they start ludicrously over-speccing and blaming minor everyday inconveniences (OMG WAN latency is 40ms and the app is sensitive, guess what, that app is not suited for WAN deployment end of story its not a problem with the WAN itself LOLOLOL) because their app doesn't work properly. Though I must mitigate that angle as usually by 'app doesn't work properly' its usually 'outsourced team has zero idea how the app works'. Sometimes it does seem that to a DBA, where their datastore resides is kinda like where babies come from to a 3 year old, a magic stork brings the data to them and its no concern of theirs which server or DB they parked their data in.

I just realised I went stupid off topic so apologies

Re:End of Azure

[g4b]

if billie would ask this as rhetorical question, i would say, from Uranus.

Re:End of Azure

[weicco]

I think you are right about design patterns and software development models but, well, let's take an example. Let that example be me, which is my favorite subject :)

I've been writing software over 10 years for living and plenty more as hobby. I've been using development models which I don't recall all anymore and design patterns that even didn't know had a name. These days I'm in a lucky position that I don't have anyone above me (in corporate hierarchy) who comes and tells me how to do my job. I can use what ever pattern or model seems to fit and usually it works adequately fine, though sometimes I'm in a hurry and I don't have time to think so I have to rewrite some parts later. Now I wrote adequately because that's what our company needs, software that works and it must works now! We don't have to time to wait that I write my stuff following all the fancy rules of modern software developing. So my code isn't "brilliant" but usually it works.

But if we go back ten years and put me in same kind of position where there's nobody to tell me how to do my stuff. I would be absolutely lost! I would most likely open up Wikipedia, use every goddamn pattern there is and the outcome would be a big mess which is very past deadline. I'm lucky that I had a good software architect to guide me ten years ago. One that knew what to use and when (mostly German beer and all the time but every now and then we did some coding too).

Now so that my comment wouldn't be moderated too high I slip something about my feelings towards software development models here: Waterfall rules! Agile sucks! You just need to plan your projects beforehand! ;)

Re:End of Azure

[syousef]

I think you were lucky to find an architect that actually provided guidance. Probably an ex developer that knew what he was doing. Too often good programmers try to hoard their knowledge.

Now so that my comment wouldn't be moderated too high I slip something about my feelings towards software development models here: Waterfall rules! Agile sucks! You just need to plan your projects beforehand! ;)

The reason Waterfall works is that it can be applied bottom up or top down very well, and the goal posts aren't shifting.

Agile in contrast is a mess. Define your test cases up front, but don't have your actual goals defined. It just doesn't work. It's bullshit. Like trying to make a cake by applying the icing first, then fill in and bake the dough...oh and by the way the cake mix and the pattern and colours for the icing keep changing.

Re:End of Azure

[luis_a_espinal]

You don't think a software company needs a chief software architect?

1. Not if it was Ozzie.

2. The company is split between entertainment and os/office productivity. Different animals that might require different chief architects.

Re:End of Azure

[luis_a_espinal]

Having a single technical lead across a company as diverse as Microsoft possibly is a bad thing -- should SQL Server, Word, XBox Live, and Phone 7 all be managed by the same technical lead? Is that one person really going to have a deep understanding of all the technical, business, and user issues across all the products, or are they inevitably going to skew towards their favourite area, or not have enough time to devote to all the areas to be both effective and timely? I suspect Ozzie just found there wasn't enough time in the day anymore. For Gates, being across everything probably worked better -- the whole company was his baby; for Ozzie, coming in from the outside and trying to be across everything might have been harder.

Obviously not, that's what delegation was invented for. At the same time, I think you do need someone - very probably just one person - at the top leading the software development.

I don't mean for one minute that they should be cutting code, but they should certainly be looking at the various products and asking "Are we doing this the best way possible? Are there obvious things wrong with that product that we should be fixing? How can we make it better?".

In a diverse company like MS, that cannot be a single chief technical architect. A CTO would be more precise.

Re:End of Azure

[grrrgrrr]

It depends on the structure of the organization. The characteristic of a organization like Microsoft that is organized in divisions is that the head-office manages it's divisions mostly on a financial level the software and architectural decisions are left up to the divisions. That is why I do not expect a chief software architect in Microsoft.

Re:End of Azure

[luis_a_espinal]

Such a person couldn't be considered a "software architect" then. The very definition of a "software architect" is one who makes simple things way the fuck too complex, and complex things damn near impossible.

References for that definition please.

What you're looking for is merely a team of software developers who see "software architecture" for the bullshit that it is. The GCC, LLVM, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux communities, for instance, do a fantastic job of keeping "software architecture" in check, while still developing amazingly complex, practical and very high-quality software.

So you take a few collaborative examples and that's your proof that software architecture is hogwash? GCC has a very simple architecture, and so does the Linux Kernel (whose sole architect has been Torvalds.)

Secondly, they rely on a collaborative model with no hard deadlines of financial impact. The whole thing is uncomparable to situations where one needs a software architect. I mean, apples and oranges man.

Seriously, you don't know what you are talking about.

Re:End of Azure

[jimicus]

In which case, it probably would make more sense to the business as a whole to restructure Microsoft as a number of smaller businesses focussed on one core thing each, and if you're that desperate to retain some semblance of control, have them reporting to an umbrella company.

Thing is, that's a fairly radical restructuring. I'm not sure how you'd do it in a publicly-traded company.

Re:End of Azure

[c]

Having a single technical lead across a company as diverse as Microsoft possibly is a bad thing

... unless a major corporate goal is to keep your entire product line tied together, or at least to certain consistent money makers. Having someone responsible for that at a technical level isn't necessarily a bad idea, then.

Re:End of Azure

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just like the Y2K madness. With mainframe and proprietary locked code that could not be updated in time, one of my biggest customer had a big team of engineers working around the clock to find a way to move data out of the mainframe before the crash. And the most efficient solution they came up with was "Marge Protocol": bring in shitloads of data-entry clerks to read on one machine and type on the other one. Did the job pretty well. Cheap labor 1, software engineering 0.

That only happened because no one listened to Bob Bemer, who pointed out this would be a problem back in 1958. Then in mid to late 1999 everyone finally sat up and took notice. At that point of incompetence, sure, it's easy to hire cheap labor to "solve" the problem. But if the problem had been planned for and worked around from the beginning, this could've been completely avoided. By 1980 memory spaces were easily large enough to move away from the 2 digit year standard.

Re:End of Azure

[weicco]

Agile in contrast is a mess. Define your test cases up front, but don't have your actual goals defined.

Well, I think TDD works if you are making something which can be systematically tested. Like some algorithm which you give X as input and you expect Y as output (and you know what Y is supposed to be). When combined with CI you get regression tests. But I've yet to see this in action with anything complex. I've personally used TDD with a very limited part of a project. It worked fine but I'm not sure if the extra hours I put can be justified in such a small case.

I really can't understand how one can run a project where you don't know what the goals are. How an earth can one know a) when the project's finished b) how to test it, if you don't have at least decent requirement specifications! If your customer changes requirements all the time you need make them understand that it's going to cost a lot and it's going to push the deadline back or you have to drop functionalities out. If things get really messy you just have to tell your customer "we are going to do this version production ready new and put all the changes to the next version". Otherwise you ruin your business and customer's business.

And yes, the guy I worked with in the past was/is also a programmer so he had to eat his own dogfoot :)

Re:End of Azure

[GameboyRMH]

...but eventually he'd realize he's all alone, get depressed, and start chucking chairs from one end of the huge empty office out of windows on the other side.

Re:End of Azure

[VGPowerlord]

No, no, no... Apollo brought .NET to Bill Gates in a dream.

Well... Sun did at any rate.

Re:End of Azure

[VGPowerlord]

Xbox was a huge fail; Xbox 360, on the other hand (while having been released under Gates and not doing that well during that time) has seen steady improvements over it's long life - and is still considered 'premiere' by many after 5 long years (since when, the PS3 and Wii have been released - to limited impact).

360 has been the same money-loser as the original. Have you forgotten the red ring of death debacle, which happened under Ballmer? You seem to think "steady improvements" is going to keep Microsoft on the edge of technology.

You mean the red ring of death debacle caused by the hardware decisions made while the 360 was under development... when Gates was still in charge?

Re:End of Azure

[Mongoose Disciple]

(I've never seen someone put 2 views against a single controller in a real life commercial project, but these days everyone wears that complexity because it is accepted that this is how it's done)

I've seen it happen exactly once in my career; that's also the number of times I've seen a commercial project need to switch database platforms, another possibility that has been architected into every Java project forever but almost never comes up in practice.

There's a thin line between designing your solutions in such a way that future changes/surprises are as painless as reasonably possible, and putting way too much time in up-front to future-proof against a lot of situations which aren't likely to actually occur. If your stereotypical Java architect was a civil engineer, every road would have at least ten lanes in each direction, every underpass would be ready to pass the highest truck that exists + 20 more feet, and every bridge would be built to handle semi trucks full of lead bricks gridlocked end to end.

Re:End of Azure

[strokerace]

Either this is an obvious troll or you miss the point of software engineering. The point of design patterns isn't "over engineering" or class reuse. It's about communication and maintenance. Here's a scenario. I'm quitting tomorrow and you have to take over this solution I wrote.

Let's say it's some sort of system that allows users to write some custom rules for some business case. Sound complex?

Here's what I tell you:
I wrote the UI using MVC which pipes into the Builder pattern to create a rules file. The rules file goes through the parser pattern and if that passes it puts it into the database as a valid rule.

There I've just described 2000 hours of development work in 2 sentences.

Try doing that without using known design patterns.

Re:End of Azure

[yyxx]

Mostly they have been copying where Amazon, Sony and Apple have been copying as well: UNIX, Linux, and software built on those platforms.

Re:End of Azure

[CAIMLAS]

Steadily improving?! The Vista debacle happened under Ballmer. Why do you attribute it to Bill Gates?

Gates stepped down in June of 2006. Vista came out in November. Do you really think that Vista was not already a fattened cow by the time Gates left? This is an OS which they'd been working on for well over 5 years at that point; the problems that are there, were already there. It took another 3 years after Vista came out to make the damn platform usable (W7). Arguably, the later releases of Vista were invariably better than the first two major ones, and unlike other Windows releases, it actually has improved in almost every regard with each update (vs. the instability, bloat, etc. of everything prior).

Yes, I realize that 'officially' the mantle was passed some time before that. I'm also aware that Gates was likely heavily involved in decisions until his final, actual departure due to the decision making distrust between the two.

I'm not saying that Ballmer is invariably good, mind you. I'm just saying he's better than Gates. Gates was a meddler; Ballmer seems to be much more of a chubby visionary who's not going to shitcan someone for doing something he disagrees with, as long as it works. Gates, on the other hand, seems like he was a real pleasure to work with.

* Stability, scalability, usability - name it, it's improved since Gates left and Balmer took over.

Some examples would be nice.

Not exactly a difficult list.

* Memory management/precache actually works quite well now, on all lines. This, vs. the crap in Vista and the lack of it in XP.
* CIFS performance isn't nearly the nightmare it used to be (though there's still a lot of protocol overhead)
* Support for more than 2 CPUs, and very, very good multicore/processor scaling (low overhead). Performance improvement is nearly linear in W7 based OSes (W7 and 2k8r2), which, IIRC, rivals even Linux (or at least compares favorably).
* W7 will run on very low end systems (512Mb, 1GHz), with applications, even though it is advertised to 'require' 1GB (IIRC). Under such situations it performs roughly as well, if not better than, an up-to-date XP machine.
* Power management for laptops on W7 is better than pretty much everything else, at this point. Yes, that means Mac and Linux, too.
* I can make W7 look and behave like Maemo 4 (which I love) or like XP if I want. I can make it look fairly similar to OS X, too - albeit with a bit more finessed user interaction. I can properly tile and arrange windows, which was not previously possible. Oh, and I don't have to navigate through inane menus (which I'd personally regard as a step back for those familiar w/ the old arrangement) - I just type what I want and it 'content completes' it for me. (This functionality works much better than it did in Vista.)
* While just an example (on stability), I've yet to see a 2k8r2 or W7 machine crash or reboot where it was not the fault of nvidia or ATI drivers due to fullscreen video bugs. Once those minor issues were fixed w/ updated drivers, I've yet to see it happen.

I suppose it might help if I note that this isn't a fanboy list; I don't even have a Windows system at home (though I do have a couple VMs). I'm just stating observations.

Re:End of Azure

[nonguru]

No, they are not sysadmins - they just behave that way. Software is designed without too much consideration of in-service performance or product-line evolution and the inevitable kludge becomes further virtualization or a faster server.

I'm Ray Ozzie,

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Bailing out from this exploding gas bag, before she burns down to the bare frame.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[Shikaku]

I thought 3 digit UIDs were a myth....

D: It is a miracle.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[DarkKnightRadick]

Nay, for there are even two and one digit UIDs, rare though they may be.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[houghi]

I ran a script to do a calculation and there are about 10 1 digit UIDs and around 90 2 digit UIDs.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah thats what my script found too. Its up to ten million and it hasn't found any more one digit UIDs, just the first ten.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[gringer]

Its up to ten million and it hasn't found any more one digit UIDs, just the first ten.

Have you checked to make sure that there aren't any in the vast space between two whole numbers? That sounds like it could be quite a complicated exercise.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[martin-boundary]

Sadly, you're both wrong. My advanced rocket science degree tells me that there's at least one more one digit UID, but it had too much to drink last night, and it's still lying down.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[MichaelSmith]

Its up to ten million and it hasn't found any more one digit UIDs, just the first ten.

Have you checked to make sure that there aren't any in the vast space between two whole numbers? That sounds like it could be quite a complicated exercise.

Hey you are right. I found more low numbers right after 4294967296.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran a script to do a calculation and there are about 10 1 digit UIDs and around 90 2 digit UIDs

Yeah thats what my script found too. Its up to ten million and it hasn't found any more one digit UIDs, just the first ten.

Oh no... that's two already who discovered the special UID-Zero, where all the ACs lurk...

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[GumphMaster]

I have discovered a truly marvellous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube-UID into two cube-UIDs, or a fourth-UID into two fourth-UIDs, or in general, any UID power higher than the fourth UID into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's a prime!

Re:I'm Ray Ozzie,

[Riktov]

So did I, until I saw Jeremiah Cornelius' post. Wow.

This is /., not FOX News.

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of just asking bullshit leading questions, you should make some statements of fact or opinion, and we can discuss those.

Re:This is /., not FOX News.

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of just asking bullshit leading questions, you should make some statements of fact or opinion, and we can discuss those.

Has Ray Ozzie admitted to killing the Azure Services Platform in 2010? Now, I'm not saying that Ray Ozzie killed the Azure Services Platform in 2010. On the contrary, I believe that Ray Ozzie DID NOT kill the Azure Services Platform in 2010. It is very possible that he did do it, though. Please, give us solid proof that he did NOT kill the Azure Services Platform in 2010. If he didn't, why won't he deny these allegations?

Re:This is /., not FOX News.

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked very legitimate questions. How are they leading when he is asking? Asking can't be leading by definition. His post can lead to several branches of discussion that may or may not be interesting. Your post is just spiteful and flamebait. [Ooops, sorry for the reply folks.] Anyway, I'm still curious about the questions, but instead of retyping them I will simply quote him.

Does this mean MS is killing the Azure platform? Or maybe Bill Gates is returning from the hinterland? Or are employees just leaving one by one until only Steve Balmer is left to turn off the lights?

CAPTACHA: paranoia
P.S. If you think Fox News is leading the public on by asking questions, I think you may have missed the point of journalism. And if asking questions could be leading, then the global warming activists wouldn't need all the pseudo-science. [[/S]Is this post opinion and fact based enough?]

Re:This is /., not FOX News.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is Fox News asks questions like: Did Obama burn the flag or did Obama spit on the flag? Leading questions are not journalism. Leading questions are another form of manipulation, fox news may have missed the point of journalism.

Re:This is /., not FOX News.

[billcopc]

Where are my mod points where I need them ? Sarcasm win!

He stated the reason why

[wandazulu]

He's stepping down to spend more time with his baby, Lotus Notes.

Re:He stated the reason why

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it's not his baby anymore, it's IBM's. Who knows? Maybe he'll show up over there to help with Project Vulcan.

Not filled?

[Pharmboy]

Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled.

This has Balmer sounding like Francisco Franco, who created a monarchy but put in no king, only leaving himself as regent. For decades. Somehow I don't feel that Microsoft's situation isn't going to benefit any more than Spains, for the same reasons.

Re:Not filled?

[Dhalka226]

My mother worked for a doctor's office for decades. This doctor's office was, on and off, owned by McNeal hospital. Suffice it for this story to say "owned by an added layer of bureaucracy."

The doctor's realized that when somebody works for you for that long, it is nice to give them occasional raises -- not only as a retention policy but a thank-you. In her latter years there, they wanted to give her another raise but couldn't. The corporate structure of McNeal said that for her position, she was at the pay ceiling. Ultimately what happened is they invented a new title for her and gave her the raise that way.

Corporations do not always act in what would seem to be a sensible manner. It's entirely possible that this position was invented to give this man more money or (perhaps more likely in this situation) more authority without completely upsetting some corporate structure or policy. If that's the case, there is no reason to fill it because it does not have a specific role within the company nor a specific place in the reporting chain that means it needs to be filled; it was a title given to a guy because you wanted him to have it. Suggesting it is some sort of power grab by Ballmer is rather silly. He is the CEO. Excepting the actual board of directors who technically have considerable power but seldom actually wield it, there is no more power for him to grab, much less a need to be the "regent" to a position like he couldn't simply re-organize things to report to him directly if he actually needed to.

Re:Not filled?

[Pharmboy]

The title was created for Bill Gates, not for Ray. Ray is the 2nd person to have the position.

Re:Not filled?

[605dave]

Does anyone know if Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead?

Re:Not filled?

[Pharmboy]

According to this news report, the answer is yes.

Let me entertain you

[nani popoki]

You mean he didn't find Windows entertaining enough? I sure found it to be a joke.

Re:Let me entertain you

[WillAffleckUW]

actually, Win7 is pretty decent. Not the platforms they're launching it on, but it's fairly stable.

Re:Let me entertain you

[h4rr4r]

And chock full of DRM.

I tried it once on a computer that came with it, the moment it could not play a dvd without setting a region code on the drive I knew it was not for me.

I only even did that since dell refused to refund the OS cost. I ended up installing linux on it like I intended from the beginning. These folks seemed to think my computer belongs to the MPAA.

Re:Let me entertain you

[WillAffleckUW]

Well, you can always do what I'm doing and just install the MacOS on a well-made Win7 machine. Then dual-boot when you have to.

Re:Let me entertain you

[h4rr4r]

Dual boot? No sir, no windows in this house.

That was its once a decade test, and it failed that.

Re:Let me entertain you

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhhhhhhh!!! Do you want Uncle Steve to shut us down?!? Damn, rules 1 and 2 motherfucker!!!!

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

And chock full of DRM.

DRM is irrelevant unless you have DRM-encumbered media.

I tried it once on a computer that came with it, the moment it could not play a dvd without setting a region code on the drive I knew it was not for me.

Every single licensed software DVD player on the planet requires a DVD region code to be set on the drive. This is hardly something unique to Windows 7, or even Windows.

These folks seemed to think my computer belongs to the MPAA.

Again, the DRM does nothing unless the owner of the copyright has DRM-encumbered their media. You're complaining about the wrong people.

Re:Let me entertain you

[DarkProphet]

Why would I pay the dickhead tax twice? I'd rather buy a well made Win7 machine and throw a decent linux distro on it instead.

Re:Let me entertain you

[KiloByte]

DRM is irrelevant unless you have DRM-encumbered media.

To have working DRM, you need to remove system capabilities. That's why the sound card driver model has been crippled in Vista/7, removing all paths that could be used to avoid DRM.

Every single licensed software DVD player on the planet requires a DVD region code to be set on the drive.

And that makes mplayer so superior :p

These folks seemed to think my computer belongs to the MPAA.
Again, the DRM does nothing unless the owner of the copyright has DRM-encumbered their media. You're complaining about the wrong people.

1. Crippling sound cards.
2. Burning lots of processing power for HDCP.
3. Monitors proportions: 4:3 -> 16:10 -> 16:9. Low screens are useless for anything but watching cinema-format movies.
You do suffer from these even if you don't do anything DRM-encumbered.

Re:Let me entertain you

[CowboyBob500]

Every single licensed software DVD player on the planet requires a DVD region code to be set on the drive. This is hardly something unique to Windows 7, or even Windows.

Bullshit

Re:Let me entertain you

[tehcyder]

I tried it once on a computer that came with it, the moment it could not play a dvd without setting a region code on the drive I knew it was not for me.

So you switched to linux and it played DVDs with no problem?

Re:Let me entertain you

[tehcyder]

3. Monitors proportions: 4:3 -> 16:10 -> 16:9. Low screens are useless for anything but watching cinema-format movies.

What has that got to do with DRM?

Re:Let me entertain you

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice reading comprehension there, sparky.

He said software DVD player, not DVD player. Region free DVD players have been around for at least a decade.

Re:Let me entertain you

[KiloByte]

With DRM nothing, but everything with "These folks seemed to think my computer belongs to the MPAA.".

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

To have working DRM, you need to remove system capabilities. hat's why the sound card driver model has been crippled in Vista/7, removing all paths that could be used to avoid DRM.

DRM is only active when DRM-encumbered media is being played. There's no need to remove "functionality" at all to support DRM-encumbered media (unless your idea of "system capabilities" is circumventing DRM - in which case, again, you need to complain to the copyright holder).

And that makes mplayer so superior :p

The point is it has nothing to do with "Windows 7 DRM". MacOS Classic, on a PPC iBook, has the same requirement to choose a DVD region.

1. Crippling sound cards.

How ?

2. Burning lots of processing power for HDCP.

HDCP is done in the hardware between the video card and the display device. It's got nothing to do with your CPU.

3. Monitors proportions: 4:3 -> 16:10 -> 16:9. Low screens are useless for anything but watching cinema-format movies.

Has nothing to do with DRM. Not to mention my 27" 1920x1200 LCD works great for displaying multiple document pages at 100%, or numerous terminal windows. The two 22" widescreen LCDs rotated to portrait beside it are *excellent* for displaying long documents as well.

You do suffer from these even if you don't do anything DRM-encumbered.

You do not. DRM is not active if you're not using DRM-encumbered media. It does nothing.

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

That has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

Re:Let me entertain you

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, mplayer plays dvds just fine.

Re:Let me entertain you

[h4rr4r]

No, I am complaining about the right people. MS could have stood up for their customers. They did not.

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

No, I am complaining about the right people. MS could have stood up for their customers.

How ? Do you seriously think they would have been allowed to sell a system specifically designed to circumvent DRM restrictions put in place by the copyright holder, even if it had made the slightest business sense to do so ?

Re:Let me entertain you

[yyxx]

Every single licensed software DVD player on the planet requires a DVD region code to be set on the drive

Yes, but unlike Microsoft, most of them don't seriously enforce it anymore. You put them into some kind "test mode" by typing a four digit code on the remote and it will never bother you again.

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

Yes, but unlike Microsoft, most of them don't seriously enforce it anymore. You put them into some kind "test mode" by typing a four digit code on the remote and it will never bother you again.

We're not talking about hardware DVD players, we're talking about DVD playing software. Every licensed software DVD player I've ever seen - on multiple platforms - has required the DVD region of the drive be set before they'll play.

Re:Let me entertain you

[KiloByte]

1. Crippling sound cards.
How ?

EAX and similar hardware-accelerated sound processing.

It was working in XP, yet with Vista Microsoft not only removed any relevant APIs, but also refused to certify any drivers which did have support for that.

Re:Let me entertain you

[yyxx]

Every licensed hardware player has the same requirement, and it's a lot easier to implement in a piece of hardware. If Microsoft wanted to make it easy to skirt region restrictions, they could, and they could get away with it. They choose to make it hard.

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

If Microsoft wanted to make it easy to skirt region restrictions, they could, and they could get away with it. They choose to make it hard.

No, they choose not to make it easy. They do exactly what everyone else does.

Re:Let me entertain you

[drsmithy]

EAX and similar hardware-accelerated sound processing.

You mean the functionality provided by "Creative ALchemy" ?

It was working in XP, yet with Vista Microsoft not only removed any relevant APIs, but also refused to certify any drivers which did have support for that.

They reimplemented the whole audio stack. Kinda hard to "recertify" a driver that was built for something that no longer exists.

Now that Ozzie's gone...

[helbent]

...when will Harriet leave?

(Bha-dum-dum)

Re:Now that Ozzie's gone...

[pornserver]

That was hilarious. I wish I can upvote you!

Re:Now that Ozzie's gone...

[NatasRevol]

I 'liked' him.

Re:Now that Ozzie's gone...

[Sulphur]

Who is Ray Harriet?

Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, is stepping down.

When did he step up exactly? He brought in Groove, which was another attempt to recreate notes within office, then fucked up live mesh trying to make it another Groove. He had little to do with Azure, didn't talk much at company meetings, didn't inspire, didn't do anything. Don't let the door slam your ass on the way out Ray

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to keep your mouth shut and look like an idiot---
Than to open it and remove all doubt.

(I know a few manager types that should keep their mouths shut.)

Re:Huh

[PCM2]

He had little to do with Azure, didn't talk much at company meetings, didn't inspire, didn't do anything.

You sure about that? According to Wired , Ozzie had everything to do with Azure, and spent his first two years on the job reorganizing the company to produce a services platform for the Web. He's quite clear about his intentions and the direction he was pushing the company in his original memo to Microsoft senior management, which was sent out under Bill Gates's email address. And longtime Microsoft observer Mary-Jo Foley says:

As I discovered during the course of my Red Dog meetings, Ozzie was anything but uninvolved in Red Dog and Azure. In fact, I heard from team members time and time again, without Ozzie’s oversight and direct intervention, Red Dog and the broader Azure platform wouldn’t have come together as quickly or comprehensively as they did.

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard of Azure, but what the hell is Red Dog?

(heading to Google)

(not Bing)

Re:Huh

[Shemmie]

.... fucked up live mesh

What I count as fucking up Live Mesh is the neutering it received between beta and "Oh Christ, we'll rename Live Sync 'Live Mesh' because people like the name. It's not that they like the product - oh no" - as the outcry when it was announced proves.

Was it Ozzie who did decided to cripple a fantastic product, and turn it into the steaming pile Live Mesh 2011 is? I'm honestly curious - I'd love to know who had the vision to create the original MOE.

Re:Huh

[Shemmie]

Sorry to answer my own post, but I got curious and did some googling. After searching around a bit I came across this blog (opinion piece by the looks, but the quotes seem solid.)

Ozzie is now in charge of setting the future direction for the world’s largest software maker and unlike his predecessor, he has little interest in milking past successes. He is the guy behind Microsoft’s cloud computing efforts and the products and services he’s working on have little do with Windows, Office, or Server. He knows that the world is moving on and he’s trying to move Microsoft with the same pace to this new world. Some people there will go willingly. others will go screaming, while some may simply retire, unable to handle the future Microsoft. Regardless, change is happening and its clearly visible now..

So the result of all this is that you see the birth of Live Mesh. Microsoft’s Software + Services initiative...

Seems like Ozzie was the Pappa of MOE - so some short-sighted pratt ripped anything useful out of it and turned it into a toy sync program. And as that toy was released, I'm guessing they're still at Microsoft while Ozzie leaves.

Re:Huh

[doktor-hladnjak]

Red Dog was basically the code name for what's now called Azure.

Rah-rah Cloud

[PCM2]

According to the story on InfoWorld , Ballmer says: "Ray has played a critical role in helping us to assume the leadership position in the cloud, and [he] positioned us well for future success." So I guess that's a vote of confidence for at least some version of cloud computing for Microsoft, and I suspect whatever form it takes it's likely to keep the Windows Azure branding.

Re:Rah-rah Cloud

[Daniel Phillips]

Indeed, Ray Ozzie did play a pivotal role in helping keep Microsoft's leaders heads in the cloud.

TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[WillAffleckUW]

For anyone who doesn't speak corporate-speak, or the variant they use at Microsoft, this really means the following:

Ray got fired, but at his level they don't fire you. He got fired because Microsoft is a mature business and doesn't really create anything new anymore.

Ballmer refuses to split the company up (tax reasons) so he's been given a grace period of a year to find a replacement for himself.

Here endeth the lesson.

Re:TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[hairyfeet]

Uhhhh...explain please, why exactly would you WANT them to spend all their resources creating "something new"? This is the classic Netscape problem, where they threw the baby out with the bath water and ended up going under. MS Office is nice, Windows 7 is REAL nice, my friends working server says the latest WinServer is nice, all the kids at the local college can't understand how i can get ANYTHING done without a ribbon, so they obviously hit it for the new generation, and the dorms are filled with x360s everywhere.

So what do you want them to do, pull a Tailigent/Apple Pink? WinNT kernel is just fine, and scales quite well. After switching from XP X64 to Windows 7 X64 I just can't imagine having to go back, the interface is just so much nicer and easier to deal with. While I'll give you the guy that allowed the original x360 out of the gate without sufficient fans should have been really really fired, they owned up to it with a billion dollar warranty extension and the new ones run great from what I'm told. The only real fails I've seen is trying to compete with iSteve and the RDF when it comes to mobile/PMPs, which just give it up, that man could sell ice cream to Eskimos!

So what EXACTLY is wrong with going the way they're going?

Re:TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL...

Did you actually just try to use the eight year long seven to eight billion dollar Xbox fiasco as some example of how Microsoft is doing things right?

Boggle...

Re:TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[Zelgadiss]

Create "something new" is called growth.

Something MS has been trying to do this couple of years with Zunes, xboxes, whatever.

Most of them were utter failures - thwarted by Apple nearly every step of the way.

The 360 only has the market share it has now because Sony screwed up big time, major big time with the PS3's launch.

Ballmer just doesn't have the aptitude nor vision to push MS ahead.

Re:TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[hairyfeet]

Hi MR AC, or can I call you cow? I personally think ACs are the cancer that is killing /. and making it more like the chans every day, but I was brought up to answer when spoken to. To answer your question Xbox is a HIT, and it is because it did EXACTLY what they set out to do! Look up the early press releases and interviews, what did they say? "We want to make a MSFT product the center of the living room" and guess what? It is! You got folks watching Netflix, playing games, streaming music (which with Win 7 is REAL nice) and WHO is getting a piece of all that action, as well as having a captive audience to push product? why MSFT of course!

So I'm sorry Mr Cow, but I'm afraid you don't seem to grasp business strategy. MSFT could afford to blow cash on Xbox because its main goal was NOT to be another cash cow (although it has been in the black for nearly 2 years now) but to give them millions of eyeballs and a way to push MSFT products and get a chunk of the entertainment dollar. And if you look at it from that perspective it is a smash! if you don't believe me look up the numbers for what MSFT is getting from Live and the Market place, as well as what they are getting in game royalties. If THAT is a fail, can I PLEASE fail too?

Re:TRANSLATION: Ballmer will resign in 2011

[Cloud K]

Sounds like a big leap, how does one manager getting fired lead to the CEO stepping down? Glad someone understands corporate-speak I guess!

If true though Microsoft would look a lot less ridiculous without him at the top. He's like an embodiment of Microsoft's "boring office guy tries to be fun(ny) and fails" image.

THURSDAY, Oct 18, 2010?

[Godskitchen]

From TFA:

From: Steveb
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2010
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: Ray Ozzie Transition

Huh?

Re:THURSDAY, Oct 18, 2010?

[MichaelSmith]

Thursday, October 18, 2010

Apparently somebody fucked up the Date handling code and Ray has to take the fall.

Re:THURSDAY, Oct 18, 2010?

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2010

Are you implying everyone should use the same calender in the multi-universe?

Re:THURSDAY, Oct 18, 2010?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's something someone either manually changed or their mail reader is broken.

Date header, from address and to address are all not right.

(I'm looking at the memo in my inbox ...)

Groove-y

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to forget that Ozzie was given the CSA spot in conjunction with MS buying his company Groove Networks. I dunno if he deserved that spot or not, but it was part of the deal. Now part of MS Office, Groove was a collaboration suite borne out of lessons learned during Ozzie's Lotus Notes days (Notes went to IBM). I really think the law of averages is just catching up with these guys. Gates, Ballmer, Ozzie, etc are not paragons of wisdom but simply among the lucky folks who applied a little know-how at the right moment of the information revolution. It's natural that Ozzie and his Groove fade into the annals of MS history.

MS could have owned the cloud

[bolivershagnasty]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes. It was like a alien language. They just didn't get it. I experienced this first hand, having worked with both Lotus and Microsoft. When Gates hired Ozzie he hoped that MS would get his vision for the Internet. Even after Ozzie made huge headway with Azure, the Windows 8, 9 , 10 people still didn't get it. They just want to do fat OS's, Office and dabble in media. I though Balmer had Ozzies back, but if he tried, he just didn't get it either. In desperation, Ozzie decided to leave (I am guessing) because MS could have been the leader in the cloud with the only true operating system designed for the cloud. Now MS will just be another cloud player and the legacy OS, et al people will keep driving the company into the ground. Well, they had their chance.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[bkaul01]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes.

Neither did any of the users who were forced to try to use it.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[bolivershagnasty]

Well, I understood it, loved it and still use it. It takes a person who can think like Ozzzie. Not everyone can. i spent 40 years designing software and I find the concepts of Notes (and now Azure) second to none. I guess you don't have a mind for it.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[tautog]

I guess you don't have a mind for it.

That makes me shiver...

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[MichaelSmith]

Notes degrades badly when used with infrastructure which is not up to the task.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've truly spent the last 40 years developing software, then that means you've been too short-sighted to see basically every single innovation that's come up during that time. You missed the rise of the minicomputer, you missed the rise of the PC, you missed the rise of the Internet, and you've missed the rise of mobile devices.

After all, you're only still programming because you never struck it rich.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[amicusNYCL]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes.

What do you mean, are you saying they did or did not understand it?

It was like a alien language.

What do you mean, it was like a language, but not one from this planet, as if no one was able to communicate in it?

They just didn't get it.

Oh, OK. You need to say it three times for me to figure it out. Thanks.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[amicusNYCL]

i spent 40 years designing software and I find the concepts of Notes (and now Azure) second to none. I guess you don't have a mind for it.

Lotus Notes: the new Linux.

*looks at UID*
Wait Mr. 40-year developer.. are you Ray Ozzie? I'm assuming of course that I'm not talking to the Boliver Shagnasty.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Your pedantry is born of obtusery, and you have consequently contributed nothing.

Nobody believes you had a problem understanding that post. You failed to provide a compelling counter-argument.
Stop breathing my air.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[syousef]

That's my problem with the cloud. Someone else owns it...and I have to trust my data to them.

Microsoft want to do fat OS, Office and dabble in media because that is their bread and butter and because these are capabilities that are needed on the desktop under the user's control.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes.

Neither did any of the users who were forced to try to use it.

I think Notes still has the best mail interface I've seen. As one simple example, they've had a tabbed mail interface for years (over a decade?)

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[yyxx]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes. It was like a alien language. They just didn't get it.

Who would have thought... there is something Microsoft employees have in common with the rest of humanity after all.

Re:MS could have owned the cloud

[WuphonsReach]

Microsoft never did understand Lotus Notes.

Neither did a lot of other people. I used it (and developed for it) back in the late-90s and here's my take on Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes is an excellent platform for distributing documents/forms across a wide geographic area, allowing you to work disconnected from the network, with built-in encryption. That's it. It's pretty darned good at letting you work offline and stay in sync with the server.

If you have workers who are constantly disconnected from the network, that need to fill out forms or documents and exchange them with each other. Lotus Notes is a very decent solution, because you get that as part of the base product. So you don't have to spend the time figuring out replication, conflict handling, secure storage and transmission, and an authentication system.

Don't try to treat it as a database, it's not relational and it's not good at that. I've seen that attempted at multiple companies where they try to use it to track inventory, or employees, or attendance, or other weird things and it never works out well. It's document-centric.

As an email client, it was so-so. Good for handling of the actual emails, but not so good for tasks / meetings. Other pure email clients were more standards compliant and much better at handling the PIM features of email / calendar / tasks / addresses.

But with the advent of more widely deployed access to TCP/IP networks (3G, WiFi, ethernet), web server applications are really encroaching on what Lotus Notes was traditionally good at. And the local storage in HTML5 might deal with the disconnected issue (but I'm not certain). So it's a lot harder now then it was 10 years ago to justify a Lotus Notes ecosystem in your company. You can do the same with web server applications or local Java apps or applets for your smart phones that don't require you to pay a per-seat license fee.

microsoft had an architect?

[mevets]

wow. I thought it was just vms-retreaded; I mean I didn't think anybody would do that on purpose. I wonder what his next victim will be...

Re:microsoft had an architect?

[david.emery]

I still rate VMS as the overall best OS I've ever used, including various Unix variants and Mac OS X/OS X Server. From an administrator's perspective, VMS had the same degree of user-facing consistency that Mac OS has, along with a fine-grained protection model that I'm appalled has never been deployed since. This is what Mac OS X Server should evolve to. And there are times when I really miss VMS' file versions.

The single biggest shortfall of VMS was that it was really hard to set up pipe-and-filter kinds of things, although it was doable. A good Unix shell on VMS would have been my idea of Nirvana.

I've never understood how Win NT was so bad when compared to VMS; either Dave Cutler lost it, or he was crippled with Windows compatibility handcuffs.

Re:microsoft had an architect?

[wandazulu]

I like the versioning filesystem, and I like the idea that you have to use sysadmin-level commands to allow a program to listen on a particular port (along with being able to hard-limit how many connections the app will handle). The built-in clustering is also pretty awesome, considering how long it's been available. Having a unified help system is also pretty slick too.

That said, Unix presents the user with a filesystem tree that is entirely directory-based; no need to worry about the underlying disks themselves. Maybe it's just the local admins, but whenever they replace a disk, for some reason it can't be named the same thing as the previous one, so I have to go in and fix my com jobs (luckily not very often).

And this may seem petty, but it bites me far more often than it should, but why does the system allow me to set def ("cd" in Unix/Windows parlance) into a non-existant directory? That is the one huge aspect that I have never ever understood.

Re:microsoft had an architect?

[erikscott]

All you need to do is define logicals in your login.com to refer to the disks - USERNAME$THEDISK for instance. Then always use those names. As far as set def silliness, you're on your own.

I can't believe I remember this crap. It's been a shade over twenty years. So, that gets me wondering - does the NT kernel have logicals? It'd be nice to substitute parts of the filesystem from time to time...

Its not as funny as you think

[voss]

Just because there are 90 2-digit ids doesn't mean there are anywhere near 90 still active slashdot users with 2-digit ids.

Re:Its not as funny as you think

[billcopc]

You're right, we should reap the dead UIDs and auction them off for great justice.

Re:Its not as funny as you think

[tehcyder]

Can I baggsy 666?

Re:Its not as funny as you think

[Shikaku]

No, it's AC.

Ray's Real Job

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Was official "Do Nothing".

He was installed, to keep the board and principal shareholders mollified at the prospect of a Gates departure that left the Corporation in the hands of clueless Sales executives.

"Here, Ray! Stand here, hold this, and grin."

If BillG had gone without a Ray Ozzie in place, everyone would have seen the previous 5 years of Ballmer-led "performance" - then headed for the metaphorical exit. Microsoft, instead of trading in the lackluster mid-twenties, would have been an instant 9-dollar-stock, eventually nosing up to 12 or 16...

Too many multi-millionaire, club members would have bathed on that one - Including Gates, Ballmer and Allen. So. What to do? Get yourself a scarecrow, like Ozzie, and stand him at the end of the field.

God! is there nothing about Microsoft that is not some sad, hollow sham?

Re:Ray's Real Job

[rtb61]

Split the company in two, one the entertainment division based around MSN and XBOX which none of the existing board having much control over and especially which Ballmer can not influence in any way shape or form (medium and long term returns with a real future). The other the OS and Office, which MS stops developing and screw the customers over for as much as possible (maximum short to medium term returns with no real future).

That MSN lost every market to it's competitors and continues to lose money is a criminal shame and a true testament to the incompetence and arrogance of Ballmer and his cronies. Realistically by now MSN should be worth far more than Google but it is dead whilst it remains under it's current uncreative arrogant leadership.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[im_thatoneguy]

God! is there nothing about Microsoft that is not some sad, hollow sham?

Xbox 360/Live/Kinect, Zune, Windows 7, Live Essentials, MS Office, SkyDrive... ? Should I keep going?

Re:Ray's Real Job

[jjohn]

"God! is there nothing about Microsoft that is not some sad, hollow sham?"

I don't know. Notepad and freecell are pretty solid.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[GigaplexNZ]

Notepad still has issues with something as basic as line ending characters.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Eskarel]

That's not actually an issue with notepad.

It has to do with two different methods being equally correct in the standard. Microsoft requires both a carriage return and a linefeed(just like a typewriter), Unix only uses a linefeed. Which one you think is more correct is really a matter of opinion as both are fully correct according to the ISO standard. Historically there were reasons for the combo pair, and the ANSI standard requires it, but it is rather an anachronism in this day and age.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everything can be traced back to the demoralizing effect of the various anti-trust probes and lawsuits. It changed MS from within when the lawyers took over.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[tyrione]

That's not actually an issue with notepad.

It has to do with two different methods being equally correct in the standard. Microsoft requires both a carriage return and a linefeed(just like a typewriter), Unix only uses a linefeed. Which one you think is more correct is really a matter of opinion as both are fully correct according to the ISO standard. Historically there were reasons for the combo pair, and the ANSI standard requires it, but it is rather an anachronism in this day and age.

How many IBM Selectric Typewriters work with MS Word? Notepad, etc? Seriously, trying to reproduce the CR/LF combo for a tool that actually doesn't perform a electromechanical CR is absurd. LF all the way.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

He was installed, to keep the board and principal shareholders mollified at the prospect of a Gates departure that left the Corporation in the hands of clueless Sales executives.

In Ballmer's defence, Apple has done quite well being lead by a clueless sales executive.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[gbjbaanb]

CR/LF is the proper way (unfortunately), LF moves down a line, CR returns the carriage back to the start. It makes sense if you model your computerised stuff on electromechanical devices. it also makes sense when you realise the ctrl-l is 'move down' control key (like ctrl-h is move left).

The fact that 1 line-end character is easier to manipulate obviously didn't factor in the design though, progress sometimes means breaking with the past :)

Re:Ray's Real Job

[jimicus]

That's not actually an issue with notepad.

Really? Every other text editor I can think of deals with linebreaks sensibly, making an educated guess as to whether they're expressed as CRLF or just LF.

Though TBH I don't think notepad is a text editor. I think it's intended as a quick, dirty example to show "this is the kind of thing you can throw together very quickly using nothing but very basic MFC code".

Re:Ray's Real Job

[gmack]

You are forgetting that the old standard printer was dot matrix. You can take a cr/lf document and feed it directly to a dot matrix printer's device and have it print. If you do the same with lf only text format you get a garbled mess as it reprints the next line on the current one.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

Except of course that notepad predates MFC.

It's raw C/Win32 code; the codebase is basically unchanged from windows 95 to 2003 (at least).

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree that linefeed is pretty deprecated by now. Sounds to me like the standard needs some updating.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not actually an issue with notepad.

It has to do with two different methods being equally correct in the standard. Microsoft requires both a carriage return and a linefeed(just like a typewriter), Unix only uses a linefeed. Which one you think is more correct is really a matter of opinion as both are fully correct according to the ISO standard. Historically there were reasons for the combo pair, and the ANSI standard requires it, but it is rather an anachronism in this day and age.

Um, no, that's a nice bit of history, but it's not the problem with Notepad. Every other text editing app on the planet can deal with both line-ending schemes and toggle between them. Notepad can't, because it's a piece of shit.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[WWWWolf]

That's not actually an issue with notepad.

Actually, it is. If the standard is stupid, then applications must implement the stupid standard in a sensible manner. Anything else is passive-aggressive politicking: "it's not our damn fault the program is screwed up, blame the standard guys".

Notepad may implement the letter of the standard. It's not implementing the spirit. It's not implementing a text editor that end users would care to use. The last point is, you know, rather crucial.

If the standard says both line ends are allowed, then the editor should support both. Every other text editor on the planet seems to either gleefully auto-detect the EOL characters used, or at least not completely mess up the editor, like what happens if you open a LF-ended file in Notepad. (For example, some older setups of Emacs fail to detect DOS line endings, but they show "^M" in the line endings and will happily save them as is, resulting in a perfectly functional file.) Also, they tend to offer the choice over which line endings should be used when the file is saved.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because Unix developers are triskaidekaphobic, and strip the byte with the number 13 out of any file they can find.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[GameboyRMH]

Excellent idea. This would also break up the Xbox/PC gaming cannibalism, allowing the platforms to compete with each other - which would probably be good for both, but especially for PC gaming which has been getting the shitty end of the stick since the original Xbox launch.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[psbrogna]

I'm sorry, when did you start?

Re:Ray's Real Job

[weicco]

Those kind of printers are still used somewhere so one actually needs to pass CR if one want to print, for instance, shipping documents right.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Anonymous Coward]

which has been getting the shitty end of the stick

You know, that image doesn't work. If any part of a stick has shit on it, you probably want to stay away from any and all of its ends.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Split in two:

1) Profitable business, that makes DESKTOP WINDOWS and MS OFFICE.

2) Unprofitable business, which makes EVERYTHING else. Watch the game go up on these technologies, or watch them disappear from the market, after Office stops paying their bills.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are illustrating my point, not contesting it - right? :-)

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Jobs has major faults. He's not "a clueless sales executive".

In the limited realm of consumer technology, he falls between the description of "visionary" and "bellwether"

I'm not a fanboi. But Jobs knows how to lead his company, and organise technologists towards a goal that people really like and want to buy/use.

Baller rides on the existing business - pumping out crap that people have to use.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[elashish14]

but it is rather an anachronism in this day and age.

not to mention a pain in the ass. Every time I open a text file and I see those damn ^M's it makes me want to run outside and kick every puppy I can find. Then I just figured out that you can replace them all.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[GameboyRMH]

I agree, both ways are correct. It's just that Notepad doesn't handle the different types of line returns properly while leafpad, gedit, mousepad, scite, and most other popular Linux GUI text editors do.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Eskarel]

Notepad's great strength is that it's mind numbingly stupid.

If you want a slightly more up to date version, you've got wordpad which does all the reformatting and clever stuff you might want. On the other hand, wordpad(and most smarter text editors) won't open a file that's in use by another process. Notepad will, there are other apps which will as well(vi springs to mind), but those show the line characters as well.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[rtb61]

The currently unprofitable businesses are hamstrung by a lack of creative management. There is no reason that MSN and Live Gaming should be very profitable apart from management style, basically an insurance salesman handling a monopoly attempting to bolster their ego with alchohol and arrogance.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Eskarel]

Use Wordpad, it handles them fine. Notepad doesn't, deliberately and by design.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Eskarel]

Notepad is a raw text editor. You open a file in it and it shows you exactly what the text in it is. That's what it's for, wordpad does all that shiny stuff like make things pretty, notepad shows you what is there.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[WWWWolf]

Notepad is a raw text editor. You open a file in it and it shows you exactly what the text in it is. That's what it's for, wordpad does all that shiny stuff like make things pretty, notepad shows you what is there.

I know. Hence the comparison to Emacs, also a raw text editor (according to the legend, anyway =).

Notepad doesn't know how to properly interpret some non-printable characters, non-CRLF-style newlines in particular. If you open up a file that has Unix-style LF newlines, you get a very weird end result with funky display glitches. Heavens willing, you may even get one long line that you can sort of read if you turn on line wrap. (This is the case in XP and earlier; I don't know if they have fixed it since.) As a result, Notepad can't really open these files - not in a manner that would benefit the user, anyway.

What I was trying to say is that almost every other text editor on the planet seems to know that either a) you allow many interpretations of the newline characters or b) don't mess up the characters you can't do anything about. They emphatically don't randomly bug out and mess up the whole display Because The Standard Said So.

Re:Ray's Real Job

[Eskarel]

VIM on windows does the same thing, and I've seen plenty of Linux text editors who can't handle the carriage return and display the block for an unprintable character.

It's not a leap forward if nobody actually leaps

[wandazulu]

I used Lotus Notes for many years, starting with version 3, and I got the impression that there was some sort of philosophy behind it, but I just couldn't figure out what it was; I admit I got tangled up in the interface. A good friend of mine was a Lotus Notes admin, and while I believe he "got it", the hoops the interface made him go through to do various tasks (backing up a database by copy-n-paste because it was the only "reliable" way?) negated whatever deeper benefits the platform provided.

Ultimately it comes down to execution; the web has its shortcomings, but it's simple enough that people "get it" and can use it effectively. Being relatively simple and text-based, it encourages experimentation without needing to worry that the underlying database can somehow can be corrupted or external links permanently invalidated. It doesn't hurt either the the web itself is basically "free", while Notes was (is still?) quite expensive.

I don't want to get all Godwin here, but I think a decent analogy is that Notes is a Tiger tank; sophisticated and extremely powerful, but ultimately done in by the cheap and plentiful Sherman. It doesn't mean that the Tiger wasn't better than the Sherman, it's just that the Sherman won by sheer volume.

Ozzie may be a brilliant guy, with an IQ of 100!, but if he can't execute his ideas in a way that people nowhere near as smart (say, 2!) as him can use, what's the point? History is littered with people who had brilliant ideas but are forgotten because they botched the execution. Having used both Notes and Groove (as I understand it the only other actual piece of software Ozzie actually worked on), he took a serious leap forward, just down the wrong evolutionary path.

Xbox???

[Anonymous Coward]

"* Xbox was a huge fail; Xbox 360, on the other hand (while having been released under Gates and not doing that well during that time) has seen steady improvements over it's long life - and is still considered 'premiere' by many after 5 long years (since when, the PS3 and Wii have been released - to limited impact)."

How can anyone be this delusional?

Microsoft has lost roughly the same amount of money on the Xbox 360 fiasco as the first Xbox marketplace failure. The only thing that has changed this time is they have gotten better at hiding the losses amongst other profitable products. They even dumped the damn Mac software guys in the same division to lessen the visible losses the Xbox guys were generating.

The Xbox 360 was quickly dumped into last place in both Asia and Europe by the Wii and then the PS3 leaving the Xbox 360 only out of last place in North America just like the first Xbox. And even with the PS3 still being priced some 100 to 150 dollars more expensive than the Xbox 360 and having been on sale a year less time(a year and a half in Europe), it is on the verge of dumping the Xbox 360 into last place in worldwide sales.

'premiere'???

The Xbox 360 has been graphically humiliated by the PS3 this gen.

The RRoD/defective hardware design is some two orders of magnitude worse than any other console in history. Along with the often called 'jet engine loud' noise it makes, the disc scratching or destroying DVD drive, and wealth of other hardware problems.

And of course the shit online service. Being forced to pay 50 dollars a year for laggy P2P online gaming is the laughingstock of the gaming world compared to PCs and the PS3 with their standard dedicated servers and free online play for everyone.

Let's not even touch the mind boggling bad motion controls Microsoft is slapping on the old Xbox 360 hardware.

The only thing that remotely comes close to the multi-billion dollar clusterfuck that is Xbox is Microsoft's search disaster.

Re:Xbox???

[Anonymous Coward]

The Xbox 360 has been graphically humiliated by the PS3 this gen.

Your statement is patently false. XBOX 360 wins over PS3 in side-by-side comparisons hands down.

Death metal

[goombah99]

I loved ozzie's music. He should bite the head off balmer like a bat.

Stock and Options

[igadget78]

Damn my luck again.

My Options for Microsoft stock to reach the $26.00 strike price was $.05 from hitting its target when it fluctuated again like it always does. I told myself that I was going to sell and make a nice profit as it was up nice today against its usual standards ... then my freiking gambling mentality kicked in and I said, what the heck ... its gone up almost 5 days in a row now, tomorrow it will go up more. Then almost immediately after the market closed, this news comes out and the stock dropped $.60 in a blink of an eye and I lost all my profits.

I can only hope that the Win 7 phone and Kinect somehow pull it just a bit higher so I can make back my money within the next 60 days.

That's the last time I buy options on Microsoft.

Re:Stock and Options

[IICV]

I can only hope that the Win 7 phone and Kinect somehow pull it just a bit higher so I can make back my money within the next 60 days.

I think this calls for some pithy 4chan meme, but right now I can't stop laughing for long enough to look one up.

Re:Stock and Options

[tehcyder]

That's the last time I buy options on Microsoft.

Last week I bought a lottery ticket. And I didn't win!

It could have been better.

[symbolset]

He could have adopted the responsibility for filling the role himself. Hm. Steve Ballmer: Chief Software Architect. Has a nice ring to it.

You're thinking Dave Cutler

[symbolset]

Dave is the VMS guy that worked on NT. He's still there working on Azure, presumably. We might want to keep an eye on that though.

Innovation Officer for Microsoft = Total Failure

[curmudgeon99]

Anyone who has held the title of Chief Software Architect at Microsoft must also carry shame for the deplorable, innovation-free time at Microsoft over the past 10 years. For all their "brightest of the brightest" employees, the bean counters and the sainted Redmond campus, Microsoft has originated exactly zero new ideas in the past decade. Every single "idea" they came up with was narrowly derivative of some existing project. Microsoft is devoid of innovation.

Balmer Wins ... Microsoft Loses ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Balmer finaly pushed out his last Arch rival to total dominance.

Cloud ... Dead!

Azure ... Dead!

Anything Ray Ozzie ... Dead! ... Dead! ... Dead!!!!!!!!!!!

Nethanderthals still live ... Steve Balmer is their Champion! Long live Steve Balmer!

Re:Innovation Officer for Microsoft = Total Failur

[flyingfsck]

MS hasn't invented anything new in the previous 10 years either. Whatever they got, was always purchased from someone else.

Re:It's not a leap forward if nobody actually leap

[Anonymous Coward]

Notes was a great product for the early 1990's. But like AOL and Compuserve, it was/is a walled-in garden. Once Netscape Navigator hit the scene and introduced the masses to the WWW and its extensible, standards-based architecture, a frenzy of startup activity began which continues to this day. Ozzie might have the skill and imagination of five to ten architects, but that's nothing compared to hundreds of startups and big corporations competing in a space of open standards (or at least the architectural backbone is open).

I imagine Ozzie came to MS and asked himself, what would be the equivalent of Notes for cloud computing and virtualization. It was the wrong question. Bill Gates liked Ozzie and brought him on board because he likes to be around extremely bright, visionary, articulate people. Ballmer didn't have the same investment in him.

Not a single fuck was given.

[aeoo]

No fucks were made available that day.

Notice

[dmiller]

Apology accepted Captain Ozzie.

Re:It's not a leap forward if nobody actually leap

[Anonymous Coward]

Ozzie may be a brilliant guy, with an IQ of 100! ... wrong use of brilliant or iq ...

I LIKE it. Microsoft is officially throwing in

[crovira]

the towel on any further attempts at, ahem, innovation.

They've been flailing around and failing to imitate Apple since the creation of the Macintosh.

Apart from "rousing the giant" long enough to kill Netscape through illegal anti-competitive moves in the nineties, Microsoft has finally realized that they suck at innovation, suck at integration and suck at being anything but exactly what their big (140k+ desktop per) clients want them to be.

Look for Windows to stay on the desktop and stop being an embarrassment on other platforms.

Balmer is now at the head of a moribund company and they have started the downward spiral.

Their cash reserves will give them a soft landing for another 50 years.

But once desktop machines go away, Microsoft goes away too.

I just got an image of Monca Lewinski

[crovira]

wiping her chin on her dress. (Ohhhh My ribs hurt. :-)

Re:It's not a leap forward if nobody actually leap

[dkf]

Ozzie may be a brilliant guy, with an IQ of 100! ... wrong use of brilliant or iq ...

I was reading that "!" as a factorial operator. Like that, it makes some sense, not much though given that even plain old 160 is supposed to be hyper-smart...

Indeed, they are

[KMSelf]

Lord knows who would have one, let alone flaunt it.

breathe

[luis_a_espinal]

"Software architects" are by far one of the worst things that can happen to a company that develops software products.

Instead of developing useful software products that improve the efficiency of their customers, such companies spins their wheels developing "frameworks" that are rife with "patterns", "inversion of control", "service-oriented architectures", "clouds", and all sorts of other nonsense. Yet somehow these frameworks end up being hugely complex piles of shit. The original software products end up being ignored or remain undeveloped, since so many resources went into developing these cock-awful frameworks.

You might have had some sad encounters with architect astronauts. But that does not put a shed of truth in that emotional generalizing barrage you just made. The fact that a lot of people actually voted it insightful sheds a sad light on how little /.ers actually understand what software architecture entails.

Re:It's not a leap forward if nobody actually leap

[tehcyder]

Notes was a great product for the early 1990's. But like AOL and Compuserve, it was/is a walled-in garden. Once Netscape Navigator hit the scene and introduced the masses to the WWW and its extensible, standards-based architecture, a frenzy of startup activity began which continues to this day.

Whenever I've used Lotus Notes, it's been for confidential financial reporting/collaboration, not stuff you would want to be accessible on the internet. The architecture and questions of openness or extensibility are irrelevant to users.

Re:Innovation Officer for Microsoft = Total Failur

[tehcyder]

He joined Microsoft in 2005 according to the BBC. Was he supposed to have invented time travel to go back to the year 2000 and solve all the problems since then?

MOD PARENT TO THE MOON

[Anonymous Coward]

As a reformed Lotus Notes developer, mod parent up. Whatever advantage the Lotus Notes model had has been eclipsed by the cheap, straightforward web.

Death metal?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Neither Ozzy as a solo artist, nor Black Sabbath, were death metal.

Akercocke, Morbid Angel, Terrorizer, Meshuggah, some old Sepultura maybe. If you want a sample that's easy to access, try this Dethklok - "Go Into The Water" Video contains excessive cartoon gore, but no NSFW lyrics. Fairly melodic, but still much heavier than heavy metal.

Re:Innovation Officer for Microsoft = Total Failur

[curmudgeon99]

Forgive me! Correction: he was a total failure for only 5 years! Happy now?

Obligatory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer: Chief Software Architect? We ain't got no Chief Software Architect. We don't need no stinking Chief Software Architect.