Yet another slip in the Vista release is high profile sure, but it's not unique nor even out of the ordinary. It's merely a symptom of the failure of the highest levels of strategy and management execution that begins with, but won't be resolved until Ballmer and Gates are removed and replaced with people with higher moral standards that are better in touch with reality. These two aggressive monopolists have managed to galvanize their competitors into extraordinary levels of collaboration around products like Java, J2EE, Eclipse, Linux, OpenOffice: the likes of which have never been seen in our industry, if in any other industry before.
By time and time again fulfilling the fears of worse-case scenarios when exercising those monopolies they have alerted governments at all levels around the world to the dangers of "entrusting" the information strategies, (in fact the electronic heritage of a nation) to proprietary formats.
Over a consistent period Ballmer and Gates' Microsoft have managed to alienate its customers on an almost daily basis, leading to the existence of the "ABM" fraternity. The "Anything But Microsoft" decision goes way beyond normal levels of technical standards and consumer preference. Fraternity members are in all levels of organizations and consumer markets. It's not that an ABM decision disregards all technical facts, it's that it places a higher value on the values of openness, respect and professional standards that are so often lacking in the MS of Ballmer and Gates. As such, they exhibit a level of distain for this Microsoft that can be described as nothing less than hatred.
Finally, by exercising their absolute power, Ballmer and Gates have created a company culture in their own image. One that is renowned for its delusionary arrogance: its self-serving adoration and its reactive petulance. They treat their partners with absolute disdain: encouraging them to invest on their platform to in the attempt to create successful markets, where substantial success will be crushed by a Microsoft imitation that is both cross subsidized from monopoly revenues and often pushed on customers via the OS distribution channel.
How does this affect Vista? The above illustrates why there are so many things in the operating system that shouldn't be there: the inability for scores of successive managers to effect change and why the situation has persisted for so long and across so many MS products.
Didn't you read the press release? Doesn't say anything about a slip, delay, or any culpability or responsibility on MS's part.
First of all Microsoft is ON TARGET and ON TRACK: "[Vista]is ON TARGET to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006. Microsoft is ON TRACK to complete the product this year..."
So they're on target, and the biggest computer buying season of the year simply wasn't part of the target.
Allchin also says in the release that he's ON TRACK to deliver stability and great out-of-the-box features. What kind of target do you want from the guy? A ship date? Sheesh.
Microsoft did this for the OEMs. "the industry requires greater lead time to deliver Windows Vista on new PCs during holiday." As we all know, OEMs need at least six years to shift to a new OS. Microsoft only gave them five years to get ready for Vista. Slow down, guys.
Business customers also asked for a delay: "Because of the way businesses test and deploy software, it makes sense for Microsoft volume licensing customers to receive windows Windows Vista starting in November of this year."
As all of you business IT people know, November and December are the months that every business IT department prefers for testing and debugging new software. That's prime time for working late nights, weekends, through the holidays, etc. to get big upgrades ready for Jan. 1. MS is simply accommodating those desires.
"There are many great people in the systems division working on Windows but the management is poor. The quality of software is determined by management first and culture second. Microsoft suffers on both. Windows management insists on a monolithic approach where Windows is considered one big program. The development culture favors the cowboy over the professional.
Contrast this with Office where, by design, it consists of a suite of relatively independent programs. As the development progresses management enforces rules so that common components are more difficult to change.
To enforce Steven Sinofsky style management will be nearly impossible in the systems group. During the "Cairo years" the "object model" changed almost weekly. It was clear to me that management knew neither what an object model was nor what the implications of one design decision over another would be. They certainly did not know what the consequences of changing it so frequently were. These same managers and the cowboy "architects" they nurture remain in the group today.
Another key failure of Windows management is the focus on bundling. Not only must things be not-modular, they must have system dependencies. The root of this is fear. In the face of falling operating system kernel prices (open software) management seeks to expand the size of the operating system.
Microsoft systems division, it's so, well, IBM like isn't it? Yet IBM has moved on. Perhaps Vista will ship and perhaps it will be the last great giant monolithic operating system. Or maybe Windows XP was the last...
(2) It could also be that the size of the projects Microsoft undertakes have increased beyond the ability of Microsoft's processes to manage them. Allchin already admitted this in several press stories about Vista. The process choke you see now is Microsoft management struggling to come up with something that works for software projects that are much larger than were undertaken by Microsoft in the past. Your rant suggests that they are not going to solve the problem any time soon.
You can remove the subjunctivity from your post and it would be more accurate: Microsoft CANNOT manage a project the size of Vista. The fact that devs spend virtually no time writing code is a pretty solid indicator. Between the checkin system and the RIs between depots almost all time is spent on process. Maintaining a Longhorn test machine can take two days a week by itself, and managers' only response to complaints about the frustration of the process is to issue silkily-worded threats about "performance expectations."
In DMD we'd have dozens of checkins getting rejected due to autosmoke failures having nothing to do with the checkins, every subnmission being rejected on the same two (or two dozen) failures. Network problems, indiv server problems, whatever.. and nobody ever got around to doing anything about this.
Should we be running AppVerifier right now? Walk to the other side of the building and ask someone who isn't in his office. Why are checkins failing? Ditto. What version of LH should we be running on our test boxes? Ditto.
Nobody has ever gotten around to addressing these regular and systemic problems in any way, there is no web page anyone can go to and determine the State of Things Today, and managers take the attitude (1) that as long as some people are functioning then the others must be slackers and (2) this tedium and frustration is separating the men from the boys. That's a totally lousy Randroid attitude and managers like that should be farmed away.
Nobody seemed interested in making the process any easier, and there was talk of more quality gates, such as a (*shudder*) threat-modeling code analysis tool.
And this guy confirms what I've been saying, too - that Microsoft has been steadily making their products LESS AND LESS "intuitive" and more complex than the user can deal with AND the "featuritis" has NOTHING to do with customer demand!
"It works beautifully and it's got a nice 80-85% of Photoshop functionality. [Reference to a.NET paint program similar to Adobe PhotoShop.]
Sure the last 20% is where most of the work is, but still, the original poster **may** be a bit off the mark. Perhaps he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about."
Not sure where to start on this one...
Being the original poster, and a professional photographer, I suspect I know more about the complexity of Photoshop than most. Being a professional developer for 20+ years, I suspect I know more about what is complex and what isn't than most.
Being a 5-year vet of Microsoft as a partner (no longer there), I know a bit more about how the Microsoft machine works than most. That's why I left.
Yes, it is true that if you are willing to live with 'good enough', you never have to do the final 20% that contains 80% of the complexity. It is that last 20% in Photoshop that makes it dramatically different from the rest of the photo manipulation software out there, and that adds to the complexity that I speak of.
Ever use the LAB space in Photoshop? How about paths? I don't even have to ask about the channels.
The fact is, software is created to solve a problem. The balance is that the easier it is for the user to accomplish a complex task, the more complex the underlying software has to be. The original Windows was a great example of this. It took on the task of managing the resources in the system and presented the user with an easy-to-use interface that removed the complexity of the underlying computer.
Windows today, as with most Microsoft software, has gone back to surfacing the complexity for the user to deal with, making the underlying software easier to write and test. CRM 3.0 has been mentioned here as an example. It would have taken longer and more complex code to make that product something usable out of the box. Instead, Microsoft took the path of surfacing the complexity and making it the users problem, which made the software easier to write and test.
I use Photoshop here as an example of a company that is able to go the other way and still ship solid software on a very reasonable schedule. Photoshop hides the underlying complexity of dealing with color space translation, leaving the user to focus on the image. This requires very complex technology under the hood, and is the reason Photoshop stands alone. Yes, there are a lot of 80% solutions out there for a fraction of the price. None will ever be as successful as Photoshop because Adobe is willing to go the extra mile. The customer is king in their eyes.
Adobe's products are not designed by inbred PMs that have never seen a customer. They are designed by Adobe customers. Photoshop and the rest of the CS suite are designed by professional illustrators and professional photographers, the ultimate users of the final product. Adobe creates very significant user teams as part of the design and development process. Compare this to the Microsoft process.
Imagine if Vista (Longhorn, Longerhorn...) had actually been designed from the start by sitting down with real users of XP in different segments (home, professional, enterprise) and really exploring what they wanted out of their OS, then kept those very professional in the process to make priority decisions as the development cycle unfolded. You wouldn't have half the features because they have no value to the customer. It would have shipped by now. It would actually solve problems.
WinFS is a great example of a file system designed by lunatic engineers and inbred GPM teams (led by a totally lunatic DirPM) without a clue as to what a real customer even looks like. Complexity in the design for complexity sake is the kiss of death. Complexit
While Microsoft claims 600 million Office users analysts estimate 30% are still running Office 1997, having skipped Office 2000 and Office XP.
The prime reason is Office 97 is "good enough" for these users' needs.
That's a worrying fact for Microsoft which is now working on the successor to Office 2003, codenamed Office 12, which is due in the second half of 2006.
But with Office 2000 supported by Microsoft into 2009, most companies don't need to be in a hurry to migrate to anything, if their primary goal is to remain in a supported state.
You want to know what Windows has so many "features"? Well, here ya go!
Here's a freebie from a former softie about reasons for schedule delays: What I saw in MS was PM's pushing hard for features: * even if it meant that the test combinations would be very large, so the product couldn't not be tested properly. * even if it couldn't be done properly in the time allocated. After all an estimate of time was made, now all of those features mus go in the product evne if things are taking longer than expected. * even if the product was falling apart at the seems b/c every other pm was doing the same thing. In fact, people often played schedule chicken. It didn't matter if you were running late by the metric of the day as long as another group was running later. (Apply this to any metric at almost any level. For example: metric = bugs, group = single dev, or dev lead with a few reports, or dev mgr or GM comparing against other dev mgrs or GM).
There is lip service to work/life balance in teams, but it is quickly counter acted with how we need to push harder and how we need to do more (get features done faster, fix more bugs, etc. than before).
Dev leads with easier areas would look good as their dev could fix bug more quickly and then bargain to make their devs look good at review tiem by graciously taking on other simple bugs from more loaded groups. It was always begruding and always made to seem like this huge thing -- no team spirit or comradery.
When I hear the folks above talk about buckling down and working hard, they sound like suckers. In a few months (maybe even 8 months), they will look back and realize that they got hoodwinked. Why? Well, what did it accomplish. At best, they got promoted and got 10K more/year. Not that much considering the many 80 (or more) hr weeks that they put in. Not that much considering the fellow down the hall who managed to isolate himself better and still within a few percent on all awards and who still gets to revel in shipping the product. Not that much considering the vp's and partners who got huger stock awards for getting for poor person to work so hard for so little, dangling some small carrot in front of them. So sad. So true.
Now get back to work. Vista and Office have to ship asap. I sitll have some msft stock that I would like to make some profit on one day.
If you want to get some insight into Sinofsky, just read his blog (google for tech talk), to let his record speak for him. Don't bother leaving a comment there that refers to this blog. It won't be left there. He will not allow any comments that somehow refer to this blog -- even comments that refer to blogs which refer to this blog! He blames it on the anonymous nature of the blog (google "ad hominem").
There are a number of other MS employees blogging who recognize that Apple has simply ripped Microsoft a new one... He also points out what I've been saying - that Windows is now such a mess that only a total rewrite can save it.
hi there, nice blog. Today's announcement is of course no surprise to anyone inside MS. The only surprise is that it was such a short delay announced.
Basically we do not believe Vista will make January 2007 or even March 2007. Anyone with any access knows what a frankenstein's monster NT is on the inside. At some point there is a law of diminishing returns trying to do anything to it at all, it seems like that limit is being reached today. The release is pushed back because of bugs but fixing those bugs will create more bugs. It is just godawful to be honest. And the process gets in the way at every step.
At some point we will have to do something and i know at least some in my team privately agree with me. We will have to throw out everything and start again. This is what Apple did with OSX, and sure it was painful, but it worked and now they're kicking our asses. We should have done that in 2000. Now it is even more obvious we should do it. Start again and just run a compatibility layer on top. Apple did it with classic why can't we???
IF we manage to ship vista at ALL then it is a miracle and the absolute last rev we can possible do working like this. It is insane the manhours wasted rearranging a house of cards. We need to START AGAIN PEOPLE.
After vista if we don't do this i am outta here. For every step forward there is a step back. After 5 years who can be proud of the actual distance forward they have come??
I didn't sign up for this BS. And you know the rumors that apple has a full DBFS for 10.5. I want to be working on that, i need to feel like i'm creating something good, not fighting 10 years old cruft every step of the way. I know i am not the only person who feels this way!!
And BTW mini PLEASE enable https on your comments page. You would have to be nuts to post here from inside the network via plain http. Anyone else wants to do it, do what i do, email the comment (encrypted) to a friend and get him to post it. Anyone who thinks SMG doesn't have a filter looking at anything to or from minimsft is kidding themselves.
OH and "PM61" give me a break. No-one is personally criticising you or saying you are a bad person. I don't hate my colleagues and we are all in the same boat. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture after 5 years but just try to zoom out and look at the outcome, no-one should be proud of this. Just imagine what we all could have done if we were truly free to code our hearts out and create the next generation. Just imagine what you would have achieved in five years working for Apple. I don't hate MS but everything is so tangled up now. We need to change because eventually we will be so tangled up we can't do anything at all, and that's the end of that. I honestly do not believe we can ship another OS in this way. Either we do an OSX or Vista is the end of the line, YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!!!
Want to know how fucked up Vista is? This post will tell you! Read on!
After three weeks of 9-to-9 plus an occasional weekend, today I've been informed it was too late for me to catch the would-be-last RI for B2. It was gut-wrenching, unbelievably frustrating and I felt dejected.
Not an hour later, Brian V sent his email and I found out there would be slippage and more RIs.
You know what? That felt right. It's just not ready - just as my stuff isn't ready, shell isn't ready, the drivers, the perf.. The screw up did not occur now, not one year ago but way before that. Making Xmas with what we have now would be disastruous, moreso than being late. If you're late, you miss a few hundred millions in sales - maybe. [LOOK AT THIS!]If the crap that I self-host now, which blinks my screen with such ferocity that my head aches, can't find audio/nic drivers, loses windows messages and sends emails without me wanting to - if this would ship, it would cost a lot more to fix, besides showing the world we're incompetent.{LOOK AT THAT!]
We can get it right, and believe you me the management team isn't as casual on the inside as they appear to be in the press.
Why, you ask, wasn't my stuff ready on time? Because everybody works the same way, only intensifying their efforts around milestones. Tests weren't run, bugs were laying dormant, people were allocated to side, pet projects and vendors only pay attention to pri 0 bugs older than 2 weeks (if not longer). It all shows up now, and it's all important. Yes, it's my fault for not screaming earlier, but there must be at least two of us, 'cause I didn't write Vista by me onesy. It's also the manager's fault, for he didn't take steps to streamline my work. It's his manager's fault, too, 'cause he didn't infer from the greater picture that things are not moving progressively. See where I'm going? It's all of us, and the higher the rung we're clinging to, the greater the responsibility.
Punt bugs to Wien, punt to RC1 but at some point you're punting stuff that needs to be fixed. So the delay was necessary.
Firing a number of people now won't do the least bit of good. As far as I see, everyone is serious, concerned and focused. They might have made mistakes in the past, but now we don't have time for this. Now we fix the crap, ship it and only then behead those who slept on the job. A massive re-org would create even more unease in the audience (press, schmanalysts), would introduce more distractions in the ranks and is downright risky. Where do you find the "good" leader? He might come with different ideas, processes, he might have a hidden agenda or he might be just as (or more) incompetent than those before him. We know what we have to do, and we're pretty much in fire drill mode now - we don't need new management to tell us that. What we need is time, and unfortunately for our reputation, we got it today.
When Vista is done, by all means, find those behind alphaLH and fire them in the worst way possible. Publicly ridicule them. Never mention whatever good they've done in the past, it's all negated by their ulterior screw-ups. Regardless of how rich they might be, they'll still have to look in the mirror and see a persona non grata for the rest of their lives. Can't see more appropriate punishment.
My naive wish is that we don't let up the rhythm, now that we've got an extension. I hope we get angry, finish the job and beat the new RTM date. That'll be a first and who knows, maybe one of the haters will say "not bad, MS.." Doesn't that motivate you?
You want to work for Microsoft? Here's who actually makes the money!
You guys had me worried about the slip for a minute or two. Just checked my spreadsheet and things are looking good!
All us partners were awarded our humungous SPSA grants 8/2003. They vest this August. For some reason I thought they were going to vest a little later, closer to the november original date.
For me, I collect 68,000 shares on 8/29 so I hope the slip hype blows over quickly. I'll take my $1.8m this August, then get pumped and help push this bad boy out the door!
November would have been pushing it for me anyway cause my house in tuscany is supposed to be done late october and we were planning on spending a month there once its ready.
-a distinguished partner
p.s. - go ask your vp if you think I am being a bs/troll. this is real. the spsa program is huge awards tied to company performance, BUT does anyone honestly think that bill/steve have the balls to say that since our performance has been shit that the multiplier is 0? See ya in tuscany!
Why? It emphasizes my points that ninety percent of Windows "featuritis" is a complete fucking waste of time.
#
We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product.
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM #
This slippage is flat out appalling. It's only March and these weasels are pushing back. Next, it'll be the fabled Q1!
Frankly, I'd like to hear a lot less of the "innovating" buzzword being bandied about and a lot more of the word "delivering." Yes, we will deliver on what we say. Yes, we will deliver on our commitments. This is outrageous!
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM #
"We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product"
EXACTLY... It's about time we face the fact that the OS is nothing more than a hosting platform for REAL apps. Just like IE is for cool websites. We don't need apps on there done by us...calc and notepad are it. Let someone else "skin" Windows, let someone else write the stupid solitaire and let's do the security, kernel and move on. You honestly think anyone sits there wondering at the marvel that is Windows Explorer? No, they go in long enough to open an app or a file. Who gives a f--k what the folders look like, stop pretending that is important and requires a date slip.
Oh, and how about we mitigate our plummeting stock price tomorrow with some VERY PUBLIC firings of some execs to show that the market cap our partners are losing MATTERS TO US....This slip and lack of accountability is a clear violation of the company values.
Why? It has SPECIFIC REASONS FOR THEIR PROBLEMS FROM THE GUY TESTING IT! Read on:
Ok let's take a look back at the great mgmt decisions in one Windows test org: Not an important group; just appcompat. (It's not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers' 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don't work that well on this new fustercluck.
In the last 18 months this org: 1) Cut the number of testers (several times) from approx 50 to now much less than a dozen. Of course, many top performers also left MS entirely because of middle mgmt in this org. 2) Hired more PMs 3) Cut the scope of testing (anyone done any real code coverage testing lately?) 4) Cut the number of promotions in the test orgs - nothing like a little 'de-incentivization' to increase 'bad attrition' 5) Dictate that everything can and should be automated. (Ignore that eyeballs catch more in less time...) way to go Darren. Of course, you were probably lied to by your underlings, so it's not entirely your fault. Uhh, yes it is - you made the call. 6) Hire only a small handful of devs to write automation code. Oh, and don't forget to swamp them with added process and have embittered leads review their code... 7) Hire more PMs 8) Outsource all testing to non-accountable and barely trained CSG firms overseas (Ever try to translate/clarify a bug written not by a tester, but by their lead based on notes? ) 9) Limit the number of heads the abovementioned overseas firms can use. > Fewer testers, less experienced, with little training, a much (ahem) 'slower' approach to testing.
Results: Client appcompat % hovering at 75%. No, wait, did I say 75? I meant 85. At RTM it will be 95.6, or whatever other arbitrary happy-happy number they came up with like last time. In reality, last go-around, the appcompat % was quite high, despite the PM lies, just not as high as they claimed.
What? You're going to dispute the numbers that some lower functionaries spun up through the labyrinthine PM food chain? At each 'filter' point one gets to improve his own rep by making his ownership area look better. What's a few % points between bureaucrats?
While I'm in rant mode, why exactly IS MCE so bad? Didn't anyone test this puppy before kicking it out the door and having another PM party? A brand new Dell with full OEM installed load and almost nothing works in the expected 'just plug it in Dad and it works'. Sure is great he has a son who works at MS. Oh, no he doesn't. His son left.
Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs...
Hey, I dual boot and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...Since I want the Windows side to be able to access the same info as my Linux side, most of my data is sitting on FAT32 partitions.
If anybody at/. could read, you would see that this is a long running series and that there is no requirement that there be ten tools specified. If they publish your list, you get $100.
I've learned about quite a few interesting tools from this series. Some of the authors cite the old standbys - grep, and the like. But some of them have discovered some interesting tools I've never seen referenced before.
Lyons is a known MS shill. He hates Linux and OSS.
For him to write this about MS means either someone at MS screwed him over and he's getting payback, or MS has really screwed up with Vista and he's decided to blow the whistle for some reason.
What amazes me about this article is that it comes from DANIEL LYONS!
This guy HATES LINUX and ANYTHING to do with OSS! He's written a ton of hatchet jobs on OSS and Linux in Forbes for years. Yet he actually says in this article that he doesn't understand why more people aren't using Linux on the desktop compared to waiting for Microsoft's flood of complicated crap!
And he hits the nail on the head every time - pointing out the absurd complexity of current Windows menus and dialogs, the pointlessness of the "featuritis", the meaninglessness of the slogans, the crass hucksterism - and worse, the fact that they would do this just before announcing yet another delay in an OS that was supposed to be out THREE YEARS AGO!
I was floored! Was somebody using Lyons name but it's actually ghostwritten by somebody else - like Linus, maybe?
If this is what a Microsoft shill like Daniel Lyons thinks about Vista, Microsoft is in DEEP SHIT!
This is very simply evidence of what we have all long suspected - that the Windows codebase is SO SCREWED UP that it is now IMPOSSIBLE for Microsoft to fix it without major rewrites.
Jim Allchin said as much last year, if I remember correctly. This will be the SECOND TIME that Vista has had to be rewritten.
While later reports indicate that it is only part of Vista that needs to be rewritten - specifically the media related code - this still indicates that Microsoft is finding it extremely hard to put new functionality into the Windows codebase without major surgery.
Why this is a surprise to anyone is the only surprise. Microsoft's sole contribution to the OS industry is "featuritis" - crap that nobody asked for and which muddles and complicates the entire system.
What worries me more is that Linux - or at least the desktops - seem to be going the same direction.
Read my lips. STOP PUTTING IN "FEATURES". Start thinking about how the whole thing SHOULD work from the point of view of reliability, security, speed, and, last but not least, functionality. Start thinking about FUNCTIONS, not FEATURES.
The only "intellectual property" is a secret that I know and you don't. Once I reveal it to you, it's no longer property, no matter what contractual restraints I try to impose on you as a condition of my revealing it.
Intellectual property is merely an attempt to impose contract law over property law. It's an attempt to restrict and control other people's behavior for personal gain, nothing more. It is by definition restrictive and slows the progress of the species; contrary to the notion that it is intended to speed up innovation, it's actual intent is to slow innovation for the benefit of a few.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet another slip in the Vista release is high profile sure, but it's not unique nor even out of the ordinary. It's merely a symptom of the failure of the highest levels of strategy and management execution that begins with, but won't be resolved until Ballmer and Gates are removed and replaced with people with higher moral standards that are better in touch with reality. These two aggressive monopolists have managed to galvanize their competitors into extraordinary levels of collaboration around products like Java, J2EE, Eclipse, Linux, OpenOffice: the likes of which have never been seen in our industry, if in any other industry before.
By time and time again fulfilling the fears of worse-case scenarios when exercising those monopolies they have alerted governments at all levels around the world to the dangers of "entrusting" the information strategies, (in fact the electronic heritage of a nation) to proprietary formats.
Over a consistent period Ballmer and Gates' Microsoft have managed to alienate its customers on an almost daily basis, leading to the existence of the "ABM" fraternity. The "Anything But Microsoft" decision goes way beyond normal levels of technical standards and consumer preference. Fraternity members are in all levels of organizations and consumer markets. It's not that an ABM decision disregards all technical facts, it's that it places a higher value on the values of openness, respect and professional standards that are so often lacking in the MS of Ballmer and Gates. As such, they exhibit a level of distain for this Microsoft that can be described as nothing less than hatred.
Finally, by exercising their absolute power, Ballmer and Gates have created a company culture in their own image. One that is renowned for its delusionary arrogance: its self-serving adoration and its reactive petulance. They treat their partners with absolute disdain: encouraging them to invest on their platform to in the attempt to create successful markets, where substantial success will be crushed by a Microsoft imitation that is both cross subsidized from monopoly revenues and often pushed on customers via the OS distribution channel.
How does this affect Vista? The above illustrates why there are so many things in the operating system that shouldn't be there: the inability for scores of successive managers to effect change and why the situation has persisted for so long and across so many MS products.
For the record: "The emperor has no clothes"
By NoMonkeyBoy, at 5:06 PM
Didn't you read the press release? Doesn't say anything about a slip, delay, or any culpability or responsibility on MS's part.
First of all Microsoft is ON TARGET and ON TRACK:
"[Vista]is ON TARGET to go into broad consumer beta to approximately 2 million users in the second quarter of 2006. Microsoft is ON TRACK to complete the product this year..."
So they're on target, and the biggest computer buying season of the year simply wasn't part of the target.
Allchin also says in the release that he's ON TRACK to deliver stability and great out-of-the-box features. What kind of target do you want from the guy? A ship date? Sheesh.
Microsoft did this for the OEMs.
"the industry requires greater lead time to deliver Windows Vista on new PCs during holiday."
As we all know, OEMs need at least six years to shift to a new OS. Microsoft only gave them five years to get ready for Vista. Slow down, guys.
Business customers also asked for a delay:
"Because of the way businesses test and deploy software, it makes sense for Microsoft volume licensing customers to receive windows Windows Vista starting in November of this year."
As all of you business IT people know, November and December are the months that every business IT department prefers for testing and debugging new software. That's prime time for working late nights, weekends, through the holidays, etc. to get big upgrades ready for Jan. 1. MS is simply accommodating those desires.
By Anonymous, at 5:01 PM
Proves again what I've said - Windows is ONE BIG MESS THAT IS UNFIXABLE!
s -vista-delayed/#comments
Here is a comment that was made to the scoble post
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/window
"There are many great people in the systems division working on Windows but the management is poor. The quality of software is determined by management first and culture second. Microsoft suffers on both. Windows management insists on a monolithic approach where Windows is considered one big program. The development culture favors the cowboy over the professional.
Contrast this with Office where, by design, it consists of a suite of relatively independent programs. As the development progresses management enforces rules so that common components are more difficult to change.
To enforce Steven Sinofsky style management will be nearly impossible in the systems group. During the "Cairo years" the "object model" changed almost weekly. It was clear to me that management knew neither what an object model was nor what the implications of one design decision over another would be. They certainly did not know what the consequences of changing it so frequently were. These same managers and the cowboy "architects" they nurture remain in the group today.
Another key failure of Windows management is the focus on bundling. Not only must things be not-modular, they must have system dependencies. The root of this is fear. In the face of falling operating system kernel prices (open software) management seeks to expand the size of the operating system.
Microsoft systems division, it's so, well, IBM like isn't it? Yet IBM has moved on. Perhaps Vista will ship and perhaps it will be the last great giant monolithic operating system. Or maybe Windows XP was the last...
Comment by Henry -- March 22, 2006 @ 8:32 pm "
By Anonymous, at 3:16 PM
(2) It could also be that the size of the projects Microsoft undertakes have increased beyond the ability of Microsoft's processes to manage them. Allchin already admitted this in several press stories about Vista. The process choke you see now is Microsoft management struggling to come up with something that works for software projects that are much larger than were undertaken by Microsoft in the past. Your rant suggests that they are not going to solve the problem any time soon.
You can remove the subjunctivity from your post and it would be more accurate: Microsoft CANNOT manage a project the size of Vista. The fact that devs spend virtually no time writing code is a pretty solid indicator. Between the checkin system and the RIs between depots almost all time is spent on process. Maintaining a Longhorn test machine can take two days a week by itself, and managers' only response to complaints about the frustration of the process is to issue silkily-worded threats about "performance expectations."
In DMD we'd have dozens of checkins getting rejected due to autosmoke failures having nothing to do with the checkins, every subnmission being rejected on the same two (or two dozen) failures. Network problems, indiv server problems, whatever
Should we be running AppVerifier right now? Walk to the other side of the building and ask someone who isn't in his office. Why are checkins failing? Ditto. What version of LH should we be running on our test boxes? Ditto.
Nobody has ever gotten around to addressing these regular and systemic problems in any way, there is no web page anyone can go to and determine the State of Things Today, and managers take the attitude (1) that as long as some people are functioning then the others must be slackers and (2) this tedium and frustration is separating the men from the boys. That's a totally lousy Randroid attitude and managers like that should be farmed away.
Nobody seemed interested in making the process any easier, and there was talk of more quality gates, such as a (*shudder*) threat-modeling code analysis tool.
I'm a lot happier on a non-Vista project.
By Cheopys, at 12:43 PM
And this guy confirms what I've been saying, too - that Microsoft has been steadily making their products LESS AND LESS "intuitive" and more complex than the user can deal with AND the "featuritis" has NOTHING to do with customer demand!
.NET paint program similar to Adobe PhotoShop.]
"It works beautifully and it's got a nice 80-85% of Photoshop functionality. [Reference to a
Sure the last 20% is where most of the work is, but still, the original poster **may** be a bit off the mark. Perhaps he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about."
Not sure where to start on this one...
Being the original poster, and a professional photographer, I suspect I know more about the complexity of Photoshop than most. Being a professional developer for 20+ years, I suspect I know more about what is complex and what isn't than most.
Being a 5-year vet of Microsoft as a partner (no longer there), I know a bit more about how the Microsoft machine works than most. That's why I left.
Yes, it is true that if you are willing to live with 'good enough', you never have to do the final 20% that contains 80% of the complexity. It is that last 20% in Photoshop that makes it dramatically different from the rest of the photo manipulation software out there, and that adds to the complexity that I speak of.
Ever use the LAB space in Photoshop? How about paths? I don't even have to ask about the channels.
The fact is, software is created to solve a problem. The balance is that the easier it is for the user to accomplish a complex task, the more complex the underlying software has to be. The original Windows was a great example of this. It took on the task of managing the resources in the system and presented the user with an easy-to-use interface that removed the complexity of the underlying computer.
Windows today, as with most Microsoft software, has gone back to surfacing the complexity for the user to deal with, making the underlying software easier to write and test. CRM 3.0 has been mentioned here as an example. It would have taken longer and more complex code to make that product something usable out of the box. Instead, Microsoft took the path of surfacing the complexity and making it the users problem, which made the software easier to write and test.
I use Photoshop here as an example of a company that is able to go the other way and still ship solid software on a very reasonable schedule. Photoshop hides the underlying complexity of dealing with color space translation, leaving the user to focus on the image. This requires very complex technology under the hood, and is the reason Photoshop stands alone. Yes, there are a lot of 80% solutions out there for a fraction of the price. None will ever be as successful as Photoshop because Adobe is willing to go the extra mile. The customer is king in their eyes.
Adobe's products are not designed by inbred PMs that have never seen a customer. They are designed by Adobe customers. Photoshop and the rest of the CS suite are designed by professional illustrators and professional photographers, the ultimate users of the final product. Adobe creates very significant user teams as part of the design and development process. Compare this to the Microsoft process.
Imagine if Vista (Longhorn, Longerhorn...) had actually been designed from the start by sitting down with real users of XP in different segments (home, professional, enterprise) and really exploring what they wanted out of their OS, then kept those very professional in the process to make priority decisions as the development cycle unfolded. You wouldn't have half the features because they have no value to the customer. It would have shipped by now. It would actually solve problems.
WinFS is a great example of a file system designed by lunatic engineers and inbred GPM teams (led by a totally lunatic DirPM) without a clue as to what a real customer even looks like. Complexity in the design for complexity sake is the kiss of death. Complexit
I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass.
Office 12 adoption is also more likely to happen when hardware turns over.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/07/08/_offi
While Microsoft claims 600 million Office users analysts estimate 30% are still running Office 1997, having skipped Office 2000 and Office XP.
The prime reason is Office 97 is "good enough" for these users' needs.
That's a worrying fact for Microsoft which is now working on the successor to Office 2003, codenamed Office 12, which is due in the second half of 2006.
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/gc/webletter/mic
But with Office 2000 supported by Microsoft into 2009, most companies don't need to be in a hurry to migrate to anything, if their primary goal is to remain in a supported state.
By Anonymous, at 2:50 AM
You want to know what Windows has so many "features"? Well, here ya go!
Here's a freebie from a former softie about reasons for schedule delays:
What I saw in MS was PM's pushing hard for features:
* even if it meant that the test combinations would be very large, so the product couldn't not be tested properly.
* even if it couldn't be done properly in the time allocated. After all an estimate of time was made, now all of those features mus go in the product evne if things are taking longer than expected.
* even if the product was falling apart at the seems b/c every other pm was doing the same thing.
In fact, people often played schedule chicken. It didn't matter if you were running late by the metric of the day as long as another group was running later. (Apply this to any metric at almost any level. For example: metric = bugs, group = single dev, or dev lead with a few reports, or dev mgr or GM comparing against other dev mgrs or GM).
There is lip service to work/life balance in teams, but it is quickly counter acted with how we need to push harder and how we need to do more (get features done faster, fix more bugs, etc. than before).
Dev leads with easier areas would look good as their dev could fix bug more quickly and then bargain to make their devs look good at review tiem by graciously taking on other simple bugs from more loaded groups. It was always begruding and always made to seem like this huge thing -- no team spirit or comradery.
When I hear the folks above talk about buckling down and working hard, they sound like suckers. In a few months (maybe even 8 months), they will look back and realize that they got hoodwinked. Why? Well, what did it accomplish. At best, they got promoted and got 10K more/year. Not that much considering the many 80 (or more) hr weeks that they put in. Not that much considering the fellow down the hall who managed to isolate himself better and still within a few percent on all awards and who still gets to revel in shipping the product. Not that much considering the vp's and partners who got huger stock awards for getting for poor person to work so hard for so little, dangling some small carrot in front of them. So sad. So true.
Now get back to work. Vista and Office have to ship asap. I sitll have some msft stock that I would like to make some profit on one day.
If you want to get some insight into Sinofsky, just read his blog (google for tech talk), to let his record speak for him. Don't bother leaving a comment there that refers to this blog. It won't be left there. He will not allow any comments that somehow refer to this blog -- even comments that refer to blogs which refer to this blog! He blames it on the anonymous nature of the blog (google "ad hominem").
By Anonymous, at 1:11 AM
There are a number of other MS employees blogging who recognize that Apple has simply ripped Microsoft a new one... He also points out what I've been saying - that Windows is now such a mess that only a total rewrite can save it.
hi there, nice blog. Today's announcement is of course no surprise to anyone inside MS. The only surprise is that it was such a short delay announced.
Basically we do not believe Vista will make January 2007 or even March 2007. Anyone with any access knows what a frankenstein's monster NT is on the inside. At some point there is a law of diminishing returns trying to do anything to it at all, it seems like that limit is being reached today. The release is pushed back because of bugs but fixing those bugs will create more bugs. It is just godawful to be honest. And the process gets in the way at every step.
At some point we will have to do something and i know at least some in my team privately agree with me. We will have to throw out everything and start again. This is what Apple did with OSX, and sure it was painful, but it worked and now they're kicking our asses. We should have done that in 2000. Now it is even more obvious we should do it. Start again and just run a compatibility layer on top. Apple did it with classic why can't we???
IF we manage to ship vista at ALL then it is a miracle and the absolute last rev we can possible do working like this. It is insane the manhours wasted rearranging a house of cards. We need to START AGAIN PEOPLE.
After vista if we don't do this i am outta here. For every step forward there is a step back. After 5 years who can be proud of the actual distance forward they have come??
I didn't sign up for this BS. And you know the rumors that apple has a full DBFS for 10.5. I want to be working on that, i need to feel like i'm creating something good, not fighting 10 years old cruft every step of the way. I know i am not the only person who feels this way!!
And BTW mini PLEASE enable https on your comments page. You would have to be nuts to post here from inside the network via plain http. Anyone else wants to do it, do what i do, email the comment (encrypted) to a friend and get him to post it. Anyone who thinks SMG doesn't have a filter looking at anything to or from minimsft is kidding themselves.
OH and "PM61" give me a break. No-one is personally criticising you or saying you are a bad person. I don't hate my colleagues and we are all in the same boat. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture after 5 years but just try to zoom out and look at the outcome, no-one should be proud of this. Just imagine what we all could have done if we were truly free to code our hearts out and create the next generation. Just imagine what you would have achieved in five years working for Apple. I don't hate MS but everything is so tangled up now. We need to change because eventually we will be so tangled up we can't do anything at all, and that's the end of that. I honestly do not believe we can ship another OS in this way. Either we do an OSX or Vista is the end of the line, YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE!!!
By Anonymous, at 12:58 AM
Want to know how fucked up Vista is? This post will tell you! Read on!
After three weeks of 9-to-9 plus an occasional weekend, today I've been informed it was too late for me to catch the would-be-last RI for B2. It was gut-wrenching, unbelievably frustrating and I felt dejected.
Not an hour later, Brian V sent his email and I found out there would be slippage and more RIs.
You know what? That felt right. It's just not ready - just as my stuff isn't ready, shell isn't ready, the drivers, the perf.. The screw up did not occur now, not one year ago but way before that. Making Xmas with what we have now would be disastruous, moreso than being late. If you're late, you miss a few hundred millions in sales - maybe. [LOOK AT THIS!]If the crap that I self-host now, which blinks my screen with such ferocity that my head aches, can't find audio/nic drivers, loses windows messages and sends emails without me wanting to - if this would ship, it would cost a lot more to fix, besides showing the world we're incompetent.{LOOK AT THAT!]
We can get it right, and believe you me the management team isn't as casual on the inside as they appear to be in the press.
Why, you ask, wasn't my stuff ready on time? Because everybody works the same way, only intensifying their efforts around milestones. Tests weren't run, bugs were laying dormant, people were allocated to side, pet projects and vendors only pay attention to pri 0 bugs older than 2 weeks (if not longer). It all shows up now, and it's all important. Yes, it's my fault for not screaming earlier, but there must be at least two of us, 'cause I didn't write Vista by me onesy. It's also the manager's fault, for he didn't take steps to streamline my work. It's his manager's fault, too, 'cause he didn't infer from the greater picture that things are not moving progressively. See where I'm going? It's all of us, and the higher the rung we're clinging to, the greater the responsibility.
Punt bugs to Wien, punt to RC1 but at some point you're punting stuff that needs to be fixed. So the delay was necessary.
Firing a number of people now won't do the least bit of good. As far as I see, everyone is serious, concerned and focused. They might have made mistakes in the past, but now we don't have time for this. Now we fix the crap, ship it and only then behead those who slept on the job. A massive re-org would create even more unease in the audience (press, schmanalysts), would introduce more distractions in the ranks and is downright risky. Where do you find the "good" leader? He might come with different ideas, processes, he might have a hidden agenda or he might be just as (or more) incompetent than those before him. We know what we have to do, and we're pretty much in fire drill mode now - we don't need new management to tell us that. What we need is time, and unfortunately for our reputation, we got it today.
When Vista is done, by all means, find those behind alphaLH and fire them in the worst way possible. Publicly ridicule them. Never mention whatever good they've done in the past, it's all negated by their ulterior screw-ups. Regardless of how rich they might be, they'll still have to look in the mirror and see a persona non grata for the rest of their lives. Can't see more appropriate punishment.
My naive wish is that we don't let up the rhythm, now that we've got an extension. I hope we get angry, finish the job and beat the new RTM date. That'll be a first and who knows, maybe one of the haters will say "not bad, MS.." Doesn't that motivate you?
By Anonymous, at 11:52 PM
You want to work for Microsoft? Here's who actually makes the money!
You guys had me worried about the slip for a minute or two. Just checked my spreadsheet and things are looking good!
All us partners were awarded our humungous SPSA grants 8/2003. They vest this August. For some reason I thought they were going to vest a little later, closer to the november original date.
For me, I collect 68,000 shares on 8/29 so I hope the slip hype blows over quickly. I'll take my $1.8m this August, then get pumped and help push this bad boy out the door!
November would have been pushing it for me anyway cause my house in tuscany is supposed to be done late october and we were planning on spending a month there once its ready.
-a distinguished partner
p.s. - go ask your vp if you think I am being a bs/troll. this is real. the spsa program is huge awards tied to company performance, BUT does anyone honestly think that bill/steve have the balls to say that since our performance has been shit that the multiplier is 0? See ya in tuscany!
By Anonymous, at 11:46 PM
Why? It emphasizes my points that ninety percent of Windows "featuritis" is a complete fucking waste of time.
#
We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product.
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM
#
This slippage is flat out appalling. It's only March and these weasels are pushing back. Next, it'll be the fabled Q1!
Frankly, I'd like to hear a lot less of the "innovating" buzzword being bandied about and a lot more of the word "delivering." Yes, we will deliver on what we say. Yes, we will deliver on our commitments. This is outrageous!
By Anonymous, at 10:31 PM
#
"We could and should have shipped sooner with 20% of the current feature set. Seriously, what makes people think that anyone cares about all of these other features beyond the bullet points that will sell the product"
EXACTLY... It's about time we face the fact that the OS is nothing more than a hosting platform for REAL apps. Just like IE is for cool websites. We don't need apps on there done by us...calc and notepad are it. Let someone else "skin" Windows, let someone else write the stupid solitaire and let's do the security, kernel and move on. You honestly think anyone sits there wondering at the marvel that is Windows Explorer? No, they go in long enough to open an app or a file. Who gives a f--k what the folders look like, stop pretending that is important and requires a date slip.
Oh, and how about we mitigate our plummeting stock price tomorrow with some VERY PUBLIC firings of some execs to show that the market cap our partners are losing MATTERS TO US....This slip and lack of accountability is a clear violation of the company values.
By Anonymous, at 10:43 PM
Why? It has SPECIFIC REASONS FOR THEIR PROBLEMS FROM THE GUY TESTING IT! Read on:
Ok let's take a look back at the great mgmt decisions in one Windows test org: Not an important group; just appcompat. (It's not like anyone really cares about appcompat - who cares if customers' 3rd party apps (and especially MS apps) really don't work that well on this new fustercluck.
In the last 18 months this org:
1) Cut the number of testers (several times) from approx 50 to now much less than a dozen. Of course, many top performers also left MS entirely because of middle mgmt in this org.
2) Hired more PMs
3) Cut the scope of testing (anyone done any real code coverage testing lately?)
4) Cut the number of promotions in the test orgs - nothing like a little 'de-incentivization' to increase 'bad attrition'
5) Dictate that everything can and should be automated. (Ignore that eyeballs catch more in less time...) way to go Darren. Of course, you were probably lied to by your underlings, so it's not entirely your fault. Uhh, yes it is - you made the call.
6) Hire only a small handful of devs to write automation code. Oh, and don't forget to swamp them with added process and have embittered leads review their code...
7) Hire more PMs
8) Outsource all testing to non-accountable and barely trained CSG firms overseas (Ever try to translate/clarify a bug written not by a tester, but by their lead based on notes? )
9) Limit the number of heads the abovementioned overseas firms can use. > Fewer testers, less experienced, with little training, a much (ahem) 'slower' approach to testing.
Results: Client appcompat % hovering at 75%. No, wait, did I say 75? I meant 85. At RTM it will be 95.6, or whatever other arbitrary happy-happy number they came up with like last time. In reality, last go-around, the appcompat % was quite high, despite the PM lies, just not as high as they claimed.
What? You're going to dispute the numbers that some lower functionaries spun up through the labyrinthine PM food chain? At each 'filter' point one gets to improve his own rep by making his ownership area look better. What's a few % points between bureaucrats?
While I'm in rant mode, why exactly IS MCE so bad? Didn't anyone test this puppy before kicking it out the door and having another PM party?
A brand new Dell with full OEM installed load and almost nothing works in the expected 'just plug it in Dad and it works'.
Sure is great he has a son who works at MS. Oh, no he doesn't. His son left.
Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again What do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs...
By Anonymous, at 9:51 PM
whenever it wasn't vacationing at the ranch in Texas.
Clearing brush is a job the missing link can handle.
If we had more missing links clearing brush, we wouldn't need all those immigrants the missing links want to make felons for being here.
He's still waiting for the results...
Because he's on a Windows machine?
Heh, heh...
Hey, I dual boot and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...Since I want the Windows side to be able to access the same info as my Linux side, most of my data is sitting on FAT32 partitions.
If anybody at
I've learned about quite a few interesting tools from this series. Some of the authors cite the old standbys - grep, and the like. But some of them have discovered some interesting tools I've never seen referenced before.
"2) Accidentally ran some cheesy flying dinosaur game"
Well, that explains you - it's called "operator error."
There's NO operating system so good that some moron can't destroy it by writing absolutely braindead code.
Here's a clue. Don't run software that you haven't heard of someone else running it successfully on your system first.
Let someone else be the moron who gets a fried machine.
Windows Vista - It Just Works (in the next service pack, trust us!)
Windows Vista - It's Secure (Only the NSA has the key! You trust Bush, don't you?)
Windows Vista - Are You People Ready (for the ass-raping we're going to give you?)
Windows Vista - The Road Ahead (Where Linux will make us road-kill!)
"I can hate Microsoft as much as the next guy."
No, you can't.
You're a Windows shill pretending not to be.
Doesn't fly here.
Fuck off, Windows fanboy.
Exactly what I've been pointing out here.
Lyons is a known MS shill. He hates Linux and OSS.
For him to write this about MS means either someone at MS screwed him over and he's getting payback, or MS has really screwed up with Vista and he's decided to blow the whistle for some reason.
This is exactly my point. Daniel Lyons is a known MS shill - he HATES Linux and OSS.
For him to write this piece means either someone at MS screwed him over and he's getting payback, or MS has really screwed up big time with Vista.
"This dude hides nothing about being anti-MS"
You're an idiot.
This is DANIEL LYONS! He has written more hate pieces against Linux and OSS than Rob Enderle.
He is a KNOWN MICROSOFT SHILL! If HE hates Vista, Microsoft is fucked.
What amazes me about this article is that it comes from DANIEL LYONS!
This guy HATES LINUX and ANYTHING to do with OSS! He's written a ton of hatchet jobs on OSS and Linux in Forbes for years. Yet he actually says in this article that he doesn't understand why more people aren't using Linux on the desktop compared to waiting for Microsoft's flood of complicated crap!
And he hits the nail on the head every time - pointing out the absurd complexity of current Windows menus and dialogs, the pointlessness of the "featuritis", the meaninglessness of the slogans, the crass hucksterism - and worse, the fact that they would do this just before announcing yet another delay in an OS that was supposed to be out THREE YEARS AGO!
I was floored! Was somebody using Lyons name but it's actually ghostwritten by somebody else - like Linus, maybe?
If this is what a Microsoft shill like Daniel Lyons thinks about Vista, Microsoft is in DEEP SHIT!
This is very simply evidence of what we have all long suspected - that the Windows codebase is SO SCREWED UP that it is now IMPOSSIBLE for Microsoft to fix it without major rewrites.
Jim Allchin said as much last year, if I remember correctly. This will be the SECOND TIME that Vista has had to be rewritten.
While later reports indicate that it is only part of Vista that needs to be rewritten - specifically the media related code - this still indicates that Microsoft is finding it extremely hard to put new functionality into the Windows codebase without major surgery.
Why this is a surprise to anyone is the only surprise. Microsoft's sole contribution to the OS industry is "featuritis" - crap that nobody asked for and which muddles and complicates the entire system.
What worries me more is that Linux - or at least the desktops - seem to be going the same direction.
Read my lips. STOP PUTTING IN "FEATURES". Start thinking about how the whole thing SHOULD work from the point of view of reliability, security, speed, and, last but not least, functionality. Start thinking about FUNCTIONS, not FEATURES.
"Eye candy" is NOT functionality.
And only morons believe in it.
The only "intellectual property" is a secret that I know and you don't. Once I reveal it to you, it's no longer property, no matter what contractual restraints I try to impose on you as a condition of my revealing it.
Intellectual property is merely an attempt to impose contract law over property law. It's an attempt to restrict and control other people's behavior for personal gain, nothing more. It is by definition restrictive and slows the progress of the species; contrary to the notion that it is intended to speed up innovation, it's actual intent is to slow innovation for the benefit of a few.