Boy are you out of the loop. This has been in the press for over a year but if you only look at lame sites like windowsdevices.com or the like, you'd surely miss it.
This will remind users how fun Windows is and what it would feel like if they knew what computing was supposed to be like( ie, they don't feel the pain because they know nothing else ).
comfort being part of a crowd and dislike for those in the "other crowd" when that crowd seems to be more popular maybe? I know it can go way beyond that since I've seen people of the jewish faith refuse to purchase any German car because of what went on 60 some odd years ago.
the problem is a whole lot of people are not stupid enough to download an ISO file but are stupid enough to not know how to burn a working CDROM from it. I know a bunch of developers who use Windows( not a *nix ) and I've had to direct them to instructions on burning an ISO in Windows because they just put the file on the disk as a data file.
Don't under estimate the ignorance of the computer using public.
I too have been running across a bunch of people who seem to really dislike google but I'm also finding that they just suck at using the search engine. It reminds me of how neophytes will come up with all kinds of things to put down computers and how they don't need them.
"gClippy", now wouldn't that just piss Bill Gates off.:-)
Maybe they can get BayStar to help fund Icahn's take over and make it look like someone else is behind it. Or maybe help by funding a new SCO company looking to get into search engine technology and advertising.
Microsoft has dozens of techniques to undermine Yahoo but if they drive away yahoo customers, will they want to go to Microsoft or Google? Maybe they've got a No-Go-Google feature planned for a Vista update. One thing is certain, this now shows that Steve Balmer will not rest until Yahoo is no longer a Google partner. IMO
so why do you think Microsoft/Balmer is so hell bent on shutting them down?
And if yahoo is so bad, how bad can Microsoft's MSN be since they are still in a distant 3rd place?
So either Microsoft is a technological failure and can't code a search engine to find an index.html page if it was on their own site, or it is that AND they need to eliminate 2nd place before the 2nd place advertisers move to Google instead of Microsoft. Just like how they grew MS Exchange by purchasing Hotmail and claiming them in marketshare numbers, is this a ploy to purchase an install base because they can't win users over with mediocre Microsoft technology?
it seems that Steve "Monkey Boy" Balmer is still having a fit about killing Google and won't let up until he's purchased every other search company/product out there.
How many more times will we hear Microsoft claim monopoly in Googles position yet they are the ones who have not only been in court many times of illegal monopolistic practices but have been convicted of it? Besides, Microsoft's massive financial failures outside of the leveraged Windows monopoly is legendary so how could Microsoft consuming Yahoo be good for anybody but the already convicted monopolist?
My guess is that Balmer knows he has one year to destroy Yahoo or profits from the Google/Yahoo partnership will end that opportunity for a long long time. So long that Microsofts MSN will probably lose 10's of billions more over another 10 years.
I thought the discussion was related to Microsoft's power and position in the market. THAT was decided in the late 80s and early 90s. That's right, in the 80s. There's a short book called "StartUp" by Jerry Kaplan. He started Go Inc and created pen based computers in the late 80s. Microsoft's power and control of the industry and press pretty much put his company and idea out of business. There's many of these kinds of stories occurring in the DOS years just as there are in the Windows days.
Also, there was a robust CPM market prior to DOS and yes, the hardware was very diverse but since IBM really kicked off the 'open hardware' x86 PC market by publishing their hardware design, I can't see how anyone can say it was Microsoft which lead to the standardized PC market. FYI, I cut my teeth on a built-from-scraps CPM machine. I even used a used ATM 12VDC green CRT and home built cabling for the display. Learned CPM, "C" programming, and WordPerfect, Kermit using a terminal app by Tim Paterson. All on that little box in the 80s and it even ran CPM-86 and DOS on an x86 addon card.
there is no proof of what could have happened but there was enough of a market for software in the 80s to have leveraged the open hardware design IBM created by thinking they could control the market with a proprietary BIOS. Bill Gates and Microsoft went along for the ride IBM opened the door for and used anti-competitive business practices to protect that market since the 80s. They mastered it during their marketing of Windows 95. IMO.
(There is still IBM code in Windows.. it's called OLE.. Object Linking and Embedding.. M$ licenses it from Big Blue... Big Blue's follow-up to OLE, called SOM.. System Object Modeling.. is far superior.. but you don't get to use it because you don't run OS/2, and it was never developed for other platforms.)
IIRC, IBM owned DDE and Wang owned OLE or something like that. Wang took Microsoft to court and got a few million from them before the lights were turned off.
And SOM was ported to both Windows and Mac but Microsoft vaporware, licensing restrictions on OEMs, and Apples need to be tied to the hardware( PPC, PREP / CHRP ) all helped block SOM from getting spread outside of OS/2 on the PC.
He sure as hell doesn't deserve to be praised.
But any good snakeoil salesman is mostly praised at first. It's only through education and understanding of the product that they are then scoffed at. Too bad our society is mostly computer illiterate and their understanding of computer use comes down to knowing what buttons to click. The others who praise him and his company are able to make great wealth constantly repairing the failures of Microsoft's products.
One thing is for sure, this the snakeoil salesman is not retiring is trade and will be pushing Microsoft software for a long time to come. Unfortunate for everyone IMO.
# Ubuntu...and by that I mean "humanity to others" -- actually, a wish of good luck as he concentrates more in philantrophy. As much as I (and c'mon, I can't be alone here) enjoy Microsoft bashing, I think the Gates foundation could (continue to) actually do a lot of good.
One problem here, his foundation does not stick to healthcare issues. That's right, they spread alot of Microsoft software around and from what I've heard, you get those Microsoft software deals as long as you agree to reject open source software. So Bill is not going to be spending more time helping the world, he's just moving to spread Microsoft Windows and MS Office to more children. You know, like a crack dealer looking for future revenue except the crack dealer isn't preventing customers from getting their fix from another dealer.
So you are saying that hardware vendors don't know how to compete on price and therefore it was the operating system which lowered hardware costs? Do you think that CPM-86 was not going to run on cloned IBM compatible computers?
Sorry but you're just dictating history, not giving any credit for something which Microsoft actually did. They rode the position IBM gave them and used that position to block company after company from growing in that market. And Microsoft still limits growth in the industry be blocking Linux with leveraged threats to anyone who wants to play in a mixed market( Windows and Linux ). ie, any existing Windows OEMs get 'talked to' constantly about what it means to Microsoft if they start pushing Linux and/or open source software.
Way to go Bill, and from those who don't worship the ground you walk on, good riddens.
those numbers do seem to point toward enough apps already in the queue at the current approval process since so few have already been approved. But without seeing the graph on the industries growth or the app queue growth, we don't really know if the approvals will be stopped at 20 or even 11.
good point on this being about federal lands.
As a side note, they gutted the hybrid vehicle program in 2000? Do you mean the end of tax breaks for hybrids?
The US Energy Dept had an existing program in the 90s which was promoting fuel efficient vehicle research using gas/electric(hybrid) systems. I think it was a 10 year program and in 2000 was 3 years shy of completion. Bush/Cheney, created a new program, moved the hybrid program under it, created a hydrogen program, then terminated the hybrid program. As a hybrid owner, I saw the US auto industry putting out plenty of press releases in late 1999 stating there would have production hybrids in 3-5 years. But 6 month later, they were all holding up the hydrogen flag and nothing more was said or published on hybrid technology in vehicles. Well, until over 5 years later when they started saying it was bad for the auto industry. I wish I kept PDFs of the web pages the US Energy dept had on the hybrid program.
exactly but there is a short period when some boost to encourage research or the like can be valuable. The problem is that our government has become one of industrial protectionism and less about advancing innovation, game changing innovation.
Remember, Bush/Cheney terminated the existing US Hybrid vehicle program and then paid the US auto industry to concentrate on hydrogen powered fuelcell vehicles. I'm not saying promoting R&D in hydrogen fuelcells is bad but it was/is a very well known field and and old one at that. A viable technology, hybrids, shunned because of federal funding to look the other way and a way which scientists already knew required many scientific break-throughs to even have a chance at being viable in small moving vehicles for consumers.
We might be better off with a federal government which not only did not use public funds/credits to promote one industry or another but also did not provide protections for existing industries. Let industry grow and fail on the merits of their products and their management. Both possible if we remove all lobbyist funding and other "investments" and provide our federal officials with massive salaries( say $1 million annually ). It would cost us less too. IMO.
but stopping this industries growth now and for two years? Is that really necessary or is there a reason for this, ie was some particular industry caught off guard and someone is making sure they have enough time to get into the picture before they are locked out?
We are talking about solar collectors and not strip mining. they use steam generators most of the time with a few sterling setups. Not much to regulate here that's not already done. The collectors are all above ground and environmental impacts mostly would be about fencing out larger animals and the occasional fried lizard which crawls to the wrong spot. There are some harsh chemicals used in some trough based systems but that's been around for over 20 years so two years to figure out regulating protection mechanisms?
I wonder if there are any other examples of a stoppage for this long a period for another industry so important to our economy, environment, and our health? Aren't regulations typically more of a progression anyways?
And if you look at how many of the countries utility companies are allowed to deny paying for excess power generation from home solar systems you might see who is getting protected from some of this "regulation". ie, why a stoppage and what with the delay and regulations do to protect existing industry dinosaurs?
for TWO YEARS? I'm sorry but stopping all new solar projects from getting investment funding for 2 years is not a good move.
What they should be doing is temporarily changing anything in their procedures which would force them to accept or decline an application in a certain period. Then notify all new applicants that there will be a delay and new guidelines are being defined so their application might need to be updated once the guidelines have been determined. Those in the queue will be processed in the order received with any applicant post-action required drops that applicant onto the secondary queue.
stopping the industry's growth is foolish and just what I would expect from a government based on oil industry people. They gutted the hybrid vehicle program as soon as they took office in 2000 so if that isn't a clue to their motives there are probably a dozen more.
remember that there are many versions of what 'using a computer' means. To some, web interfaces to everything is their use and they never install software but what was preloaded. Others might have someone install a couple of apps or have the IT department do it and that's all they do. Others yet will install every and all games they can find and that's how they 'use the computer'.
Bill G probably does not mess with his system much, might have someone else configure it or better yet migrate his data to new hardware over and over again. Oh and he's probably old school and gets all of his software on installation media. What ever it is, from this "memo" and other recent speeches he's made, it sounds like he has not kept up on what's going on at Microsoft. I've heard from others some pretty massive business screwups at Microsoft and witnessed one myself. It's not a surprise what was experienced by Gates in 2003 because the stuff I know of happened in the last couple years.
I really don't think they would exist if Balmer did not run the company as if the Grim Reaper was walking up the sidewalk at One Microsoft Way every day of the week. Without the control they/he has on the market with their monopoly, the house of cards( made of rice paper ) would vanish quickly. IMO.
having heard a few of his recent speeches, I'm coming to the conclusion that Steve Balmer has been running the monopoly far more than Bill Gates. Gates seems out of touch and this letter, if it's real, shows this as such just 5 years ago. Was Microsoft Bob Bill G's last venture into technology at Microsoft and his ego has been what's keeping him going all these years?
he had just come back from telling the world+dog how great Windows XP was now that SP1 was ready. He'd also been telling the world+dog for the 4th or 5th time that this was the greatest Windows release ever and the most secure and reliable OS ever. He sits down in his office and wants to make a movie about his latest world tough and finds everything about Microsoft software sucks. Wouldn't you be just a bit pissed off? Not to mention he's way out of touch. He didn't even realize he had to reboot Windows after running Microsoft Update. That's out of touch. And don't forget how pissed off Bill G. got when IBM's Gerstner said Microsoft was a great marketing company and a poor technology company in the mid 90s. He's a snakeoil salesman who really hates being called on that. Seeing for himself how bad Microsoft developers were/are across the board probably sent him through the roof.
What does surprise me is that the Head Software Architect( or whatever Gates' title is/was) was just finding this stuff out in 2003. His little venture into installing Microsoft software lead him to realize how bad most of Microsoft software really is and he was just learning this in 2003?
This one task, installing MS MovieMaker lead him through much of Microsoft's software stack. He was bashing the Microsoft.com web site developers, Microsoft system update developers, Microsoft OS developers, and Microsoft application developers. Who was running the ship? Oh, that's right, they have OEM's locked in, they have governments locked in, they have fortune 100, 500, 1000, 100000+ locked into Microsoft Windows and Microsoft software. They don't need to be better, faster, cheaper.
IMO, this is a prime example of the fact that they only exist because of how Steve Balmer runs the company and holds a sword over every partners head should they even think of marketing another OS and software stack. Gates has been out playing with his tablets and surface computers and not watching what the company was doing. He didn't know why Windows needed to reboot after running Microsoft Update? MS Reboot Mania was a problem in the 90s and in 2003 he didn't understand this. da! No wonder Apple is looking so good to so many these days. Linux would be an option but with Apple, Windows IT people just plug them in and they mostly just work. Linux requires more initial work and then 'just work'.
Slashdot Mirror
This is great, a thread about McDonalds food within a topic on Microsoft Windows. Mediocrity abounds, how appropriate is that. LoL.
LoB
Boy are you out of the loop. This has been in the press for over a year but if you only look at lame sites like windowsdevices.com or the like, you'd surely miss it.
LoB
This will remind users how fun Windows is and what it would feel like if they knew what computing was supposed to be like( ie, they don't feel the pain because they know nothing else ).
LoB
comfort being part of a crowd and dislike for those in the "other crowd" when that crowd seems to be more popular maybe? I know it can go way beyond that since I've seen people of the jewish faith refuse to purchase any German car because of what went on 60 some odd years ago.
people are strange.LoB
the problem is a whole lot of people are not stupid enough to download an ISO file but are stupid enough to not know how to burn a working CDROM from it. I know a bunch of developers who use Windows( not a *nix ) and I've had to direct them to instructions on burning an ISO in Windows because they just put the file on the disk as a data file.
Don't under estimate the ignorance of the computer using public.
LoB
I too have been running across a bunch of people who seem to really dislike google but I'm also finding that they just suck at using the search engine. It reminds me of how neophytes will come up with all kinds of things to put down computers and how they don't need them.
"gClippy", now wouldn't that just piss Bill Gates off. :-)
LoB
Maybe they can get BayStar to help fund Icahn's take over and make it look like someone else is behind it. Or maybe help by funding a new SCO company looking to get into search engine technology and advertising.
Microsoft has dozens of techniques to undermine Yahoo but if they drive away yahoo customers, will they want to go to Microsoft or Google? Maybe they've got a No-Go-Google feature planned for a Vista update. One thing is certain, this now shows that Steve Balmer will not rest until Yahoo is no longer a Google partner. IMO
LoB
so why do you think Microsoft/Balmer is so hell bent on shutting them down?
And if yahoo is so bad, how bad can Microsoft's MSN be since they are still in a distant 3rd place?
So either Microsoft is a technological failure and can't code a search engine to find an index.html page if it was on their own site, or it is that AND they need to eliminate 2nd place before the 2nd place advertisers move to Google instead of Microsoft. Just like how they grew MS Exchange by purchasing Hotmail and claiming them in marketshare numbers, is this a ploy to purchase an install base because they can't win users over with mediocre Microsoft technology?
LoB
it seems that Steve "Monkey Boy" Balmer is still having a fit about killing Google and won't let up until he's purchased every other search company/product out there.
How many more times will we hear Microsoft claim monopoly in Googles position yet they are the ones who have not only been in court many times of illegal monopolistic practices but have been convicted of it? Besides, Microsoft's massive financial failures outside of the leveraged Windows monopoly is legendary so how could Microsoft consuming Yahoo be good for anybody but the already convicted monopolist?
My guess is that Balmer knows he has one year to destroy Yahoo or profits from the Google/Yahoo partnership will end that opportunity for a long long time. So long that Microsofts MSN will probably lose 10's of billions more over another 10 years.
LoB
enough said.
LoB
oh, THOSE kinds of stars. Never mind.
LoB
I thought the discussion was related to Microsoft's power and position in the market. THAT was decided in the late 80s and early 90s. That's right, in the 80s. There's a short book called "StartUp" by Jerry Kaplan. He started Go Inc and created pen based computers in the late 80s. Microsoft's power and control of the industry and press pretty much put his company and idea out of business. There's many of these kinds of stories occurring in the DOS years just as there are in the Windows days.
Also, there was a robust CPM market prior to DOS and yes, the hardware was very diverse but since IBM really kicked off the 'open hardware' x86 PC market by publishing their hardware design, I can't see how anyone can say it was Microsoft which lead to the standardized PC market. FYI, I cut my teeth on a built-from-scraps CPM machine. I even used a used ATM 12VDC green CRT and home built cabling for the display. Learned CPM, "C" programming, and WordPerfect, Kermit using a terminal app by Tim Paterson. All on that little box in the 80s and it even ran CPM-86 and DOS on an x86 addon card.
there is no proof of what could have happened but there was enough of a market for software in the 80s to have leveraged the open hardware design IBM created by thinking they could control the market with a proprietary BIOS. Bill Gates and Microsoft went along for the ride IBM opened the door for and used anti-competitive business practices to protect that market since the 80s. They mastered it during their marketing of Windows 95. IMO.
LoB
Windows 95? it was all but over by late 1995 when Windows 95 shipped. I guess you somehow missed the 80s and early 90s.
LoB
(There is still IBM code in Windows.. it's called OLE.. Object Linking and Embedding.. M$ licenses it from Big Blue... Big Blue's follow-up to OLE, called SOM .. System Object Modeling.. is far superior.. but you don't get to use it because you don't run OS/2, and it was never developed for other platforms.)
IIRC, IBM owned DDE and Wang owned OLE or something like that. Wang took Microsoft to court and got a few million from them before the lights were turned off.
And SOM was ported to both Windows and Mac but Microsoft vaporware, licensing restrictions on OEMs, and Apples need to be tied to the hardware( PPC, PREP / CHRP ) all helped block SOM from getting spread outside of OS/2 on the PC.
He sure as hell doesn't deserve to be praised.
But any good snakeoil salesman is mostly praised
at first. It's only through education and understanding of the product that they are then scoffed at. Too bad our society is mostly computer illiterate and their understanding of computer use comes down to knowing what buttons to click. The others who praise him and his company are able to make great wealth constantly repairing the failures of Microsoft's products.
One thing is for sure, this the snakeoil salesman is not retiring is trade and will be pushing Microsoft software for a long time to come. Unfortunate for everyone IMO.
LoB
# Ubuntu...and by that I mean "humanity to others" -- actually, a wish of good luck as he concentrates more in philantrophy. As much as I (and c'mon, I can't be alone here) enjoy Microsoft bashing, I think the Gates foundation could (continue to) actually do a lot of good.
One problem here, his foundation does not stick to healthcare issues. That's right, they spread alot of Microsoft software around and from what I've heard, you get those Microsoft software deals as long as you agree to reject open source software. So Bill is not going to be spending more time helping the world, he's just moving to spread Microsoft Windows and MS Office to more children. You know, like a crack dealer looking for future revenue except the crack dealer isn't preventing customers from getting their fix from another dealer.
LoB
and a copy of Microsoft Bob.
LoB
So you are saying that hardware vendors don't know how to compete on price and therefore it was the operating system which lowered hardware costs? Do you think that CPM-86 was not going to run on cloned IBM compatible computers?
Sorry but you're just dictating history, not giving any credit for something which Microsoft actually did. They rode the position IBM gave them and used that position to block company after company from growing in that market. And Microsoft still limits growth in the industry be blocking Linux with leveraged threats to anyone who wants to play in a mixed market( Windows and Linux ). ie, any existing Windows OEMs get 'talked to' constantly about what it means to Microsoft if they start pushing Linux and/or open source software.
Way to go Bill, and from those who don't worship the ground you walk on, good riddens.
LoB
those numbers do seem to point toward enough apps already in the queue at the current approval process since so few have already been approved. But without seeing the graph on the industries growth or the app queue growth, we don't really know if the approvals will be stopped at 20 or even 11.
good point on this being about federal lands.
As a side note, they gutted the hybrid vehicle program in 2000? Do you mean the end of tax breaks for hybrids?
The US Energy Dept had an existing program in the 90s which was promoting fuel efficient vehicle research using gas/electric(hybrid) systems. I think it was a 10 year program and in 2000 was 3 years shy of completion. Bush/Cheney, created a new program, moved the hybrid program under it, created a hydrogen program, then terminated the hybrid program. As a hybrid owner, I saw the US auto industry putting out plenty of press releases in late 1999 stating there would have production hybrids in 3-5 years. But 6 month later, they were all holding up the hydrogen flag and nothing more was said or published on hybrid technology in vehicles. Well, until over 5 years later when they started saying it was bad for the auto industry. I wish I kept PDFs of the web pages the US Energy dept had on the hybrid program.
LoB
exactly but there is a short period when some boost to encourage research or the like can be valuable. The problem is that our government has become one of industrial protectionism and less about advancing innovation, game changing innovation.
Remember, Bush/Cheney terminated the existing US Hybrid vehicle program and then paid the US auto industry to concentrate on hydrogen powered fuelcell vehicles. I'm not saying promoting R&D in hydrogen fuelcells is bad but it was/is a very well known field and and old one at that. A viable technology, hybrids, shunned because of federal funding to look the other way and a way which scientists already knew required many scientific break-throughs to even have a chance at being viable in small moving vehicles for consumers.
We might be better off with a federal government which not only did not use public funds/credits to promote one industry or another but also did not provide protections for existing industries. Let industry grow and fail on the merits of their products and their management. Both possible if we remove all lobbyist funding and other "investments" and provide our federal officials with massive salaries( say $1 million annually ). It would cost us less too. IMO.
LoB
but stopping this industries growth now and for two years? Is that really necessary or is there a reason for this, ie was some particular industry caught off guard and someone is making sure they have enough time to get into the picture before they are locked out?
We are talking about solar collectors and not strip mining. they use steam generators most of the time with a few sterling setups. Not much to regulate here that's not already done. The collectors are all above ground and environmental impacts mostly would be about fencing out larger animals and the occasional fried lizard which crawls to the wrong spot. There are some harsh chemicals used in some trough based systems but that's been around for over 20 years so two years to figure out regulating protection mechanisms?
I wonder if there are any other examples of a stoppage for this long a period for another industry so important to our economy, environment, and our health? Aren't regulations typically more of a progression anyways?
And if you look at how many of the countries utility companies are allowed to deny paying for excess power generation from home solar systems you might see who is getting protected from some of this "regulation". ie, why a stoppage and what with the delay and regulations do to protect existing industry dinosaurs?
LoB
for TWO YEARS? I'm sorry but stopping all new solar projects from getting investment funding for 2 years is not a good move.
What they should be doing is temporarily changing anything in their procedures which would force them to accept or decline an application in a certain period. Then notify all new applicants that there will be a delay and new guidelines are being defined so their application might need to be updated once the guidelines have been determined. Those in the queue will be processed in the order received with any applicant post-action required drops that applicant onto the secondary queue.
stopping the industry's growth is foolish and just what I would expect from a government based on oil industry people. They gutted the hybrid vehicle program as soon as they took office in 2000 so if that isn't a clue to their motives there are probably a dozen more.
LoB
remember that there are many versions of what 'using a computer' means. To some, web interfaces to everything is their use and they never install software but what was preloaded. Others might have someone install a couple of apps or have the IT department do it and that's all they do. Others yet will install every and all games they can find and that's how they 'use the computer'.
Bill G probably does not mess with his system much, might have someone else configure it or better yet migrate his data to new hardware over and over again. Oh and he's probably old school and gets all of his software on installation media. What ever it is, from this "memo" and other recent speeches he's made, it sounds like he has not kept up on what's going on at Microsoft. I've heard from others some pretty massive business screwups at Microsoft and witnessed one myself. It's not a surprise what was experienced by Gates in 2003 because the stuff I know of happened in the last couple years.
I really don't think they would exist if Balmer did not run the company as if the Grim Reaper was walking up the sidewalk at One Microsoft Way every day of the week. Without the control they/he has on the market with their monopoly, the house of cards( made of rice paper ) would vanish quickly. IMO.
LoB
having heard a few of his recent speeches, I'm coming to the conclusion that Steve Balmer has been running the monopoly far more than Bill Gates. Gates seems out of touch and this letter, if it's real, shows this as such just 5 years ago. Was Microsoft Bob Bill G's last venture into technology at Microsoft and his ego has been what's keeping him going all these years?
LoB
he had just come back from telling the world+dog how great Windows XP was now that SP1 was ready. He'd also been telling the world+dog for the 4th or 5th time that this was the greatest Windows release ever and the most secure and reliable OS ever. He sits down in his office and wants to make a movie about his latest world tough and finds everything about Microsoft software sucks. Wouldn't you be just a bit pissed off? Not to mention he's way out of touch. He didn't even realize he had to reboot Windows after running Microsoft Update. That's out of touch. And don't forget how pissed off Bill G. got when IBM's Gerstner said Microsoft was a great marketing company and a poor technology company in the mid 90s. He's a snakeoil salesman who really hates being called on that. Seeing for himself how bad Microsoft developers were/are across the board probably sent him through the roof.
LoB
What does surprise me is that the Head Software Architect( or whatever Gates' title is/was) was just finding this stuff out in 2003. His little venture into installing Microsoft software lead him to realize how bad most of Microsoft software really is and he was just learning this in 2003?
This one task, installing MS MovieMaker lead him through much of Microsoft's software stack. He was bashing the Microsoft.com web site developers, Microsoft system update developers, Microsoft OS developers, and Microsoft application developers. Who was running the ship? Oh, that's right, they have OEM's locked in, they have governments locked in, they have fortune 100, 500, 1000, 100000+ locked into Microsoft Windows and Microsoft software. They don't need to be better, faster, cheaper.
IMO, this is a prime example of the fact that they only exist because of how Steve Balmer runs the company and holds a sword over every partners head should they even think of marketing another OS and software stack. Gates has been out playing with his tablets and surface computers and not watching what the company was doing. He didn't know why Windows needed to reboot after running Microsoft Update? MS Reboot Mania was a problem in the 90s and in 2003 he didn't understand this. da! No wonder Apple is looking so good to so many these days. Linux would be an option but with Apple, Windows IT people just plug them in and they mostly just work. Linux requires more initial work and then 'just work'.
LoB