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Ballmer Leaves Microsoft Board
jones_supa writes: After leaving his position as CEO of Microsoft a year ago, Steve Ballmer has still held a position as a member of the board of directors for the company. Now, he is leaving the board, explaining why in a letter to fresh Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "I have become very busy," Ballmer explains. "I see a combination of Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking up a lot of time." Despite his departure, the former-CEO is still invested in the company's success, and he spent most of the letter encouraging Nadella and giving advice. Nadella shot back a supportive, equally optimistic response, promising that Microsoft will thrive in "the mobile-first, cloud-first world."
. . . customer last.
Burma Shave.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
""Nadella shot back a supportive, equally optimistic response, promising that Microsoft will thrive in "the mobile-first, cloud-first world."""
I'd be pretty surprised if Microsoft was able to worm its way into mobile on anything like the scale it had/has with desktops. Cloud stuff? Perhaps...
WTF! Then why did he lay off me and all of my friends that work on mobile? No. They gave-up on mobile when they laid-off most of the mobile employees.
I sure will miss him. Naawt! How many chips will he have to cash in on to buy the Clippers? Only enough to keep the price of MS stock from tumbling, like Bill does.
Players, Players, Players, Players!!!!
.... Ya, if I was Ballmer I would be distancing myself and selling stock as fast as I could.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
M$ never dominated the mobile market with WinCe or PPC
They were highly unpopular compared with the Black Berry and Palm Pilots.
it's basketball. REBOUND, REBOUND, REBOUND!! (tosses chair. another chair. water jug. wig. money. case full of Surface II tablets, one at a time. tosses T-shirt cannon ....)
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
they nailed the chairs down.
His ability to cause maximum damage and employee discomfort will be somewhat curtailed. Too bad about that. Hopefully Nadella can fill his clown shoes.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
To keep those windfall profits rolling in, Microsoft only ever knew two tricks: 1) turn on your partners 2) do not respect the law.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yeah, because Bill would never give money to charity.
will find--fill his chair?
well, nerds often have delusions of becoming billionaires.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Requirements: Can use a standing desk.
Microsoft doesn't have many fans on Slashdot but even the most die-hard of fans must now see that they're in a real bad position.
The used to be invincible in the consumer space but now the computing device of choice is either the tablet or the smart phone. Precious few of these are Windows based.
The used to be invincible in the business user space but the move to mobile computing means business people are using iPhone and iPads, not Windows Phones and Surface.
Then there's Bing, who's only claim to fame is being the world's greatest search engine. For. Porn.
Then there's Azure. We actually looked at Azure and discovered that the same hardware in EC2 was half the price. If you going to twice as much you might as well give up and go home.
Then there was the own goal of the latest generation XBox. They managed to piss everyone off for no discernible gain.
The only area their grip is still strong is PC gaming. For how long, who knows?
Microsoft is a spent force. They're out of ideas. In a few short years they've gone from being the 800lb gorilla to just struggling just to remain relevant.
It reminds me of Brazil versus Germany at this year's world cup. I'm not celebrating any more; it's just sad at this point.
Chairs or it didn't happen.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
So people that shit on others, circumvent and break the law, and basically shit on people at every possible opportunity to make personal gains are to be looked up to when they toss a crumb to a crowd. Got it.
Grats on being a completely brainwashed idiot, instead of just an average idiot.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Dear Satya,
I sincerely feel that microsoft stock is very high and is unsustainable over a long period. I cannot sell my stock while still on microsoft board. By leaving the board, I will be able to sell the stock before it crashes. Why do you think, I made you CEO in the first place?
Your former boss.
It should be pretty obvious that this point that mobile isn't all that it's cracked up to be, even if executives need to at least pretend in public that it's still relevant, to save face.
Smartphones haven't moved much beyond text messaging (or apps that offer similar functionality), email, games, and basic web browsing. Many corporate users just use them for email and occasional phone calls. There's really nothing to be monetized there.
Netbooks have proven to be an abysmal failure. Customers just don't want the bad experience that they provide, when it comes to both software and hardware. We haven't seen any real adoption of Chromebook-style devices, either, for the same reason.
Tablets have also failed in the market. Apple is the only vendor to have seen some success, but that was built more upon hype and the quasi-religious attitude that many people hold toward Apple devices, rather than out of any real need or use for such devices. Outside of a small number of niche use cases, people in general have found tablets to be useless. They sound good in theory, but then they're found to be too locked down or inconvenient to use, and end up collecting dust.
People want desktops. People want real laptops. People don't want yet another shitty mobile device. I'm sorry to say this, but you and your friends were in the wrong field. You followed fads rather than providing real value, and paid for it with your jobs. Resources need to go where they'll be best used, and mobile just isn't the best use for them.
I'm sorry but you're incorrect. In 2007 Windows Mobile had the largest market share of any OS for mobile devices, with 42% of the market:
http://bgr.com/2011/12/13/appl...
They had tied Blackberry the year before, and edged them out in 2007 which was when iPhone was released. Then the next year iPhone took over.
Going back pre-smartphone, when the only real players in the PDA arena were Palm and Microsoft, Microsoft surpassed Palm in 2004, and from then on it was all downhill for Palm as they tried to update an archaic OS to utilize advances in hardware.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/65...
Microsoft soundly won the PDA war, but then were totally decimated soon after the PDA market transitioned into the Smart Phone market. In turn, Palm, then Blackberry, then Microsoft all owned the market and then stagnated, failed to innovate, and were superseded by new OSes that didn't have legacy issues (or trying to maintain backwards compatibility, etc).
Better known as 318230.
a slim chance, to be sure. they have lost a lot of ground.
---
message sent from surface pro 3
Title says it all
I'm not sure if "I bleed Microsoft" was a painful or positive experience.
Dear Mr. Nadella, IBM still makes mainframes. Please don't forget that. Sincerely, "Legacy".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
SB: Don. I want to buy a basketball team.
DS: That's not going to help sell more Zunes, Steve.
SB: Uh, yeah well it's time for new challenges, if you know what I mean. But between steering Microsoft
into an iceberg and my well known temper tantrums, I'm afraid the NBA won't let me buy a team.
DS: I'll put in a good word for you.
SB: That's not going to cut it, Don. What I need is for you to create a distraction. A train wreck caliber
disturbance so profound the NBA will be glad to have me.
DS: Oh my God.
Sorry Balmer, that still isn't far enough.
Nuke him from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
said Ballmer "how much skull-peeling screaming can I do?"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Going back pre-smartphone, when the only real players in the PDA arena were Palm and Microsoft, Microsoft surpassed Palm in 2004, and from then on it was all downhill for Palm as they tried to update an archaic OS to utilize advances in hardware.
So you're saying that, during the past few years, Microsoft has basically been slogging through the same experience Palm went through a decade ago.
#DeleteChrome
he spent most of the letter encouraging Nadella and giving advice
I would be cautious with advices from the guy that has just been fired. Just saying I heard them may cause MS quotation to drop.
No that was US only, the world and overall were Symbian by a large margin.
What you're saying is that Microsoft dominated the US carrier market for a few years, in the same way that Sony dominated the Japanese domestic market.
There is no 'winner' in a technology war, the war is never ending and Microsoft were never top dog except in one market.
Going back pre-smartphone, when the only real players in the PDA arena were Palm and Microsoft, Microsoft surpassed Palm in 2004, and from then on it was all downhill for Palm as they tried to update an archaic OS to utilize advances in hardware.
So you're saying that, during the past few years, Microsoft has basically been slogging through the same experience Palm went through a decade ago.
Lets hope they meet the same end up. Bought up by HP killed by corporate mismanagement and open sourced at a later date.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
BTW Robin Williams died. Many stories were submitted but /. failed to approve any for FP. Instead, we hear about Microsoft news again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
That would be because we are a tech and geek news site not a celebrity gossip rag, while he was admittedly an excellent actor and comedian that does not make it geek or tech news as such it did not make it on here. Where Microsoft is a software/tech company which makes it tech news thus get posted.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I bet u he left @ micro$oft !
What will he throw @ the basketball players?
he is past throwing chairs he is on to bigger and better things like throwing bleachers...
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Frankly, they can keep the source. Burn it with fire.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Office is their last line of defence. But the walls will not hold. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"the mobile-first, cloud-first world."
This sums up the core MS issue better than anything else I've ever read. MS has never been innovative, but worse: It has never been a company that likes change. Their world-view is static and stationary. While they acknowledge the world is changing (reality can be quite persuasive), they don't see movement, they see a succession of stationary status quos.
They will now throw everything at becoming the perfect company for the picture of the world they have. And in five years look out the window and see that the world has changed - again.
It's also the reason we all hate MS - due to their still existing stranglehold on computing, they keep much of the rest of the world static with them. The damage done by preventing innovation and progress is easily ten times MS net worth.
All because some people don't understand that life is dynamic.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
GOODBYE
I don't blame the guy, why stay on a sinking ship?
Especially when you're the one who blasted the holes in the hull.
Bring out yer dead