Disclaimer, I have not shown this post to anyone, particularly my employer, er Microsoft. The ideas it contains are not vetted, and probably won't agree with anyone else's ideas.
OK, maybe you haven't heard about Mini-Microsoft yet, but if you care even a little bit about what Microsoft is, you've probably read his blog (he was featured on the cover of Business Week a while back). In my tours around Microsoft it's a rare employee who tells me he or she doesn't read Mini.
Sometimes an employee asks "don't you think they would try to shut Mini down?" (Mini is an anonymous blogger, who generally talks about things that Microsoft is doing wrong, and/or that he wants to see improved. His motto is to, by slimming down Microsoft, make Microsoft a more lean profit-making machine).
I say, no, cause I think he's doing a lot of good for the company and even if you don't agree with that point of view if Mini were fired I'd quit on the spot. I don't think the way you deal with dirty laundry is to get rid of the person hanging the laundry in the public square that way. Deal with the folks who are dirtying up the linen!
But, I'm going to use Mini as a metaphor for the angst that surrounds Microsoft, both internally with its employees, and externally with its customers and shareholders. I'm not talking about physically shutting down his blog or silencing him via censorship. No, I'm talking about taking away his reason for being. His karmic power.
Now, admittedly, I'm going on a small, but decent sized sample. I've interviewed more than 500 employees over two years (and talked with hundreds, maybe even thousands, more) and I've met thousands of our customers and shareholders on trips to conferences, VC firms, camps, private parties, and corporate meetings.
In my travels around Bill Gates' empire I do my usual Channel 9 stuff, but off camera lately I've been asking "how can we make Microsoft better?"
See, I've decided to stick around and make Microsoft better. I own a very very very small slice of Microsoft and so as an employee owner I figure I gotta do my part.
And, generally, what I'm finding on my tours is angst. Angst over stock price (it's gone up about $3 since I've joined three years ago). Angst over marketing issues (why do we make cool names like "Sparkle" lame by changing that to "Expression Interactive Designer?") Angst over vision and direction. Angst over leadership. Angst over advertising like our "dinosaur" ads (which are loudly derided by customers whenever I go to conferences and talk about how we're being perceived).
Yet, on the other hand, our angst is tempered by great products and marketing in other places. Everyone who owns a 360 praises it when I meet with them face-to-face (and I love their advertising and marketing, except that they can't ship enough to fill demand). Good feelings are still flowing over the Mix06 conference (several people remarked on that to me today at Makers Faire). Visual Studio's launch events were mostly overflowing. In Ireland, when I was there, people told me that the events there were standing room only. Our Atlas project is getting kudos. Our Live.com gadgets are seeing sizeable community adoption. MSN Messenger has 170 million active users every month. Hotmail, 200 million. MSN Spaces, tens of millions of active spaces. Whew, what is there to complain about? 
I had a huge surge of pride in Microsoft today when I saw a very cool booth that we had at Makers Faire. Robots. People teaching kids to program computers. Xboxes. Media Centers. UMPCs (another lame name for "Origami's" — one fun thing was I was in the booth when someone was holding a UMPC and then asked "can I see the Origamis?" Um, you're holding one, was the answer.)
But, that's off topic here. Back on topic. There are legitimate things to work on improving. If there weren't, Mini's blog wouldn't exist, or at least, no one would pay any attention to it. So, my thoughts over the past two weeks led to this rant:
How Microsoft can take away Mini-Microsoft's karmic power.
Apologies to Martin Luther King.
I have a dream.
I dream of a Microsoft that no longer has anything for Mini, or his commenters to complain about. I dream of a day where every Microsoft employee feels like they are part of a mission, a positive mission for the improvement of all humankind. Where they feel like they are being compensated fairly, and if they don't feel it's fair, that they at least see what behaviors will bring better compensation. Where Microsoft customers and shareholders feel excited by our vision, marketing, and service execution again and will go on blogs and in BusinessWeek and say "they turned a corner."
See, employees tell me they hit too many policies. Bureacracy. Politics. Committeeisms. And too much centralization of power and decision making authority. They also tell me they don't feel like we're on a mission to improve the world, like Gates led in the 1980s with his cry "a computer should be on every desktop." That they don't feel pride in our advertising and marketing and naming. That they feel we aren't making the kind of "bet the company" bets that Microsoft had in the past, like when a strategic decision had been made to go with Windows over OS/2.
So, I've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. How do we tune up Microsoft's economic engine and get ready for the 2010's?
In September a new generation will enter high school. I call it the "Second Life" generation. They live in a world of always connected high-speed broadband. In a world that has computers that have more graphical power than our most powerful ones just 10 years ago. Where ubiquitous computing isn't a far-off-dream, but something pushed in their face every minute of every day as they see digital displays in classrooms, in shopping malls, in airports, and at movie theaters. They expect their cell phones to do a lot more than just phone their parents. They carry around laptops or Tablet PCs or, maybe soon, ultra mobile PCs that are hooked up through increasingly uniquitous wireless networks. I saw a guy yesterday who was building wifi networks for poor areas in Africa. By 2014 I can't imagine many places in the world without wireless access.
It is a world where they want to make their own experiences. MySpace looks passe to this new generation. Second Life, with its 3D world that can not just be controlled, but produced factory style from pre-built components, along with easy customizations, is where it's at.
It's also a world where the competition has changed. Now you can run Windows in a virtual area on OSX. Windows could be controlled by Apple. Or, by Linux. Once Windows users try OSX, why would they want to use Windows anymore? What's the value proposition? What will bring scarcity or differentiation to the Windows world? Our shareholders are worried, maybe not shortterm, but I notice the stock price isn't going up, even though the Xbox is doing tremendously well (and, actually, most of our product lines are seeing sizeable revenue and profit growth).
What will this generation expect as they move from high school, in the year 2010, to college? What will they expect as they move from college, in the year 2014, to the workforce?
I dream of that world tonight and see that Microsoft must change to be relevant to the Second Life Generation's world.
First, we need a big dream. A moonshot. The kind of challenge that'll keep our newly-hired rock stars minds engaged. That'll give everyone in the company pride when it's accomplished. The kind of goal that'll take four, or maybe even eight years to accomplish. For the Second Life Generation. But, don't stop there. It should be for everyone. It's just that this next generation is going to expect something a lot bigger than just a few gigs of email space.
What's the moonshot? A guaranteed Terabyte of Internet-based storage space for EVERYTHING and for EVERYONE running Windows in the world.
A simple vision. Yes, Mr. Gates, it'll cost billions. We'll need dozens, maybe even hundreds, of data centers around the world. All with state-of-the-art connections. All with state-of-the-art 64-bit servers. All with state-of-the-art backup systems. All with state-of-the-art power and cooling systems. All with state-of-the-art load balancing and data serving technologies. That stuff isn't cheap. But I hear we have a few bucks we can use in such a "bet the company" effort.
In this terabyte, integrate all of the new Live services into one data store. A sort of "WinFS" for our server farms. Why shouldn't Live Mail share the same data store as Live Local or Live Expo? Think about the searching, and data presenting, features our developers could build quickly if we had a common data store with a common framework and a common set of APIs!
"But, Robert, almost every 'big bet' that Microsoft tries doesn't work out," you might say. That isn't true. Just study the history of SQL Server. Of Windows. Of Xbox. We make big bets and stick with most of them, even as they don't look like they'll work out in the marketplace. Yeah, I know we have put a few back on the shelf, but for the most part when the company decides on something big, it sticks with it.
It's time to do that again. Give us all a mission we would get excited by.
"But, Robert, you don't have smart enough employees to do this," you might say. Sorry, as I walk around Microsoft Research, as I walk around the .NET team, as I walk around Ray Ozzie's new team, as I walk around the Live.com team, I realize that we not only have enough smart employees, more are coming every day (welcome Niall and Steve Berkowitz).
But, we do need to make some changes to ensure that every employee is engaged in their work here at Microsoft to make this kind of "big bet" not just a possibility, but an eventuality.
That leads me to the second way of how Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft: buy every employee a top-of-the-line Dell machine with dual monitors running Windows Vista. And do it now.
I've seen the productivity benefits that dual monitors can bring. Every employee who has them says having two monitors is transformational. Especially coders who can have one screen for typing code and another for designing UIs. Or, even if they are just an algorithm kind of person, the second one keeps their email showing so they don't need to switch over when a new email shows up.
Heck, I'd go further. If we want to reach the Second Life generation we need three screens. One to run Second Life (and other kinds of social apps), one to run Visual Studio, and one to run Outlook. Or something like this. Go and watch the researchers at Microsoft Research who are working on multiple screen interfaces. They told me that industry researchers are seeing somewhere between a five to 15% productivity gain when someone goes from one monitor to two.
And, I, and my coworkers in the Evangelism team are now running Windows Vista and finding we're more productive, even WITH the burps that come from using pre-production code. I can't stand using XP anymore after using Vista for a few weeks.
But, as I go around Microsoft there are way too many employees who aren't running Vista and who don't have two monitors.
Want a morale boost? How about buying a new high-end computer, with dual monitors, running Vista for every employee? This would cost around $240 million, if my math is good. But wouldn't that be a great recruiting tool? Wouldn't it help us ship better products faster? Wouldn't it help us see the areas where Vista needs improvement (and, as good as it is, it does need improvements).
Think about the statement that would make to the industry. "We believe in Windows Vista." That's what that would say. And, as customers came onto campus to visit us, as the Chinese President did a week ago, they would see the benefits of having fast computers, with two monitors, running Windows Vista.
And, because we retooled our entire infrastructure, we'd be ready to build the next version of Windows after Vista and would have a ready base of computers to test it on. In fact, we could increase our stress program to use 60,000 new high-speed desktops around the world all running the same OS. Think about the data THAT would generate. No other company in the world would be willing, or able, to make such a bet on the future of operating systems.
That leads me to the third way we could transform Microsoft, er, shut down Mini-Microsoft:
Change employee behavior through public compensation change logs.
This will be the most controversial item. But, how do you change my behavior? Don't like it? Decrease my pay. Nothing tells me better that my behavior isn't what the company wants. Mini wants to go further and wants to see mass firings. That would throw our local economy into chaos and would get rid of potentially good people (I come at it another way, the worst person I've dealt with here at Microsoft is far better than many employees I've dealt with in past jobs, so all we'd be doing by mass firings is helping our competition out and removing brains we'll need to get some big jobs done). I'd rather take a four-year-approach. Remember, this is the Second Life generation. Let's make a Microsoft that's rocking and rolling for 2010 when they get out of high school.
Let's have compensation changes put into public. Say I get a four percent raise. Tell everyone. Let's say my managers don't believe I'm adding value here. They could leave my compensation where it is. After four years of public embarrassment (yes, we'd explain that 0%'ers aren't good, that 2%'ers are OK, that 6%'ers are above average, and that anything above that is way above average).
This would require a major change to our culture. To one that's more transparent. But, over time, it would cause me to change my behavior. "Hey, why does Charles always get 10% raises?" Think about the conversations that would start inside the company.
"But, what if I think your treatment by the company is unfair?" Say I got a 20% raise and you don't think I'm worth that. Well, now you can complain and rally your co-workers and go and sit down with my management so you can see why they think I'm worth that. Or, on the other side of the coin, let's say I got a 0% raise and you think I got screwed. Well, now you'd be able to see my management and find out their side of the story as well as maybe work on my behalf to get me a raise.
OK, this is such a major change that I doubt we could implement that all at once. How about internally only? How about you can only see anonymous names in your group? So you can see how you measured up against other people in your group and you can ask your manager something like "I see that three people in our group got bigger raises than I did, why is that and what can I do to get a raise next time around?"
By doing at least part of this in an open way management would be able to reward those who were taking risks, updating their skills, and learning new, and more productive behaviors. I talked with a developer manager last week who told me about his group's use of Scrum, for instance. I asked "why did you change to a scrum model?" (His group had just won and award for increasing productivity). He said it was due to his belief that every employee should continually educate him/herself about the best practices in the industry and one of his employees had been to a scrum training and found that it could be useful to the team. They tried it and it was hugely useful. Why isn't that team rewarded for trying something new that paid off? For changing their behavior?
And why aren't they rewarded in public, which would encourage other employees to change their behavior and look for better ways to do things?
Speaking of better ways to do things. How about number four?
Get rid of corporate speed bumps. All around Microsoft you hear about the speed bumps. Some of which are there for very good reasons. (Er, corporate pain in the past). But, some of which are just there cause "they've always been done that way." Some of the good ones? Policies to ensure that security reviews have been done on code before checking that code in. But, we've all met a rule that just seems past its due date.
So, can we build a culture that removes rules on a regular basis, or at least looks at updating them for efficiency's sake?
Can we give a little bonus to managers who kill rules? Remove bureacracy? Slash through politics? Exceed expectations?
Of course we can. Make a little game. Imagine if Steve Ballmer posted on an internal blog "here's a rule I killed today." And did that every week. Or every day.
OK, it's 1:30 a.m. Time to rap this little ditty up with #5 on my list of ways Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft.
Force marketers to explain their decisions — in public on their blogs.
Say a marketer names something. Like, say, changes the name "Sparkle" to "Expression Interactive Designer." That person should have to explain their changes in public and sign their names to those changes. If it's a group, the group must sign their names. And must leave comments open so they can take the public scorn if names aren't good.
Heck, I wish this were true of every team. Come up with a new UI for your product? Explain it in public. Come up with a new product that you plan to sell? Explain it to us in clear english and have a conversation with us. Come up with a new logo? Explain why that logo matters. In public. Come up with a way to spend $500 million in advertising? Explain it to us.
Personally, the biggest drag on our morale internally is our advertising and the face we put out to the public. Having a bunch of different RSS icons out there is just an artifact of the problem — one that we aren't solving. We aren't putting a good face to the public. We aren't picking names that have any chance of being popular.
Here's a hint. In the top 100 brand names, as rated by BusinessWeek (PDF), NONE have more than two words in them.
We should make it publicly embarrassing for any employee, or group of employees, to come up with ANY name that has more than two words in it.
So, five things that Microsoft can do to get ready for the Second Life generation.
What do you think? Even if you think I'm on some good drugs, why don't you put forward your ideas instead of just tearing mine down. It's easy to tear down other people's ideas. It's hard to come up with interesting ideas to push things forward.
Hate Microsoft? Well, replace your company's name in whereever I said Microsoft. Every company I've worked for has similar problems to what Microsoft is facing. Even the small companies I worked for didn't make most efficient use of employees possible. Even "hot" companies like Google or Apple are looking for ways to make sure its employees are happy and well engaged in the problems ahead of them.
I figured that complaining about the problems wasn't anywhere near as interesting as proposing some solutions. Anyway, that's the kinds of dreams I've had the past two weeks. Hope they lead to productive conversations in your workplace and mine.
Great article! I had a chance to use a dual display system once, and I was impressed by how helpful it was in my work. I tried to interest my management, but they won’t listen if I can’t quantify the increase in productivity. Can you point me to a study which documents dual-display productivity improvements?
Thanks!
Great article! I had a chance to use a dual display system once, and I was impressed by how helpful it was in my work. I tried to interest my management, but they won’t listen if I can’t quantify the increase in productivity. Can you point me to a study which documents dual-display productivity improvements?
Thanks!
Microsoft needs another Windows 95. That was a “I NEED TO GET THIS THING” kind of product. Ask yourself this: Is Vista like that? NO it’s not. Screw copying goog. Focus on the important stuff : SOFTWARE.
Microsoft needs another Windows 95. That was a “I NEED TO GET THIS THING” kind of product. Ask yourself this: Is Vista like that? NO it’s not. Screw copying goog. Focus on the important stuff : SOFTWARE.
“Let’s have compensation changes put into public. Say I get a four percent raise. Tell everyone. Let’s say my managers don’t believe I’m adding value here. They could leave my compensation where it is. After four years of public embarrassment (yes, we’d explain that 0%’ers aren’t good, that 2%’ers are OK, that 6%’ers are above average, and that anything above that is way above average).”
This wouldn’t solve anything – the review process is not broken because it’s not public, it’s broken because it’s a popularity contest. Making it public would just give the people who spend their whole day shaking hands and kissing babies for a good review something else to waste time on – arguments with other groups as to why they’re so much better and deserve to be compensated more richly.
Until the words “managing perception” disappear off the face of the Microsoft campus map, the review process will stay busted, busted, busted. Hey, here’s a thought – how about reviewing and compensating people based on their actual on-the-job performance?
“Let’s have compensation changes put into public. Say I get a four percent raise. Tell everyone. Let’s say my managers don’t believe I’m adding value here. They could leave my compensation where it is. After four years of public embarrassment (yes, we’d explain that 0%’ers aren’t good, that 2%’ers are OK, that 6%’ers are above average, and that anything above that is way above average).”
This wouldn’t solve anything – the review process is not broken because it’s not public, it’s broken because it’s a popularity contest. Making it public would just give the people who spend their whole day shaking hands and kissing babies for a good review something else to waste time on – arguments with other groups as to why they’re so much better and deserve to be compensated more richly.
Until the words “managing perception” disappear off the face of the Microsoft campus map, the review process will stay busted, busted, busted. Hey, here’s a thought – how about reviewing and compensating people based on their actual on-the-job performance?
… just thinking aloud on the [marketing and the] product name thing: How much of that is driven by marketing’s wishes around product naming vs. how much of that is driven by (1) existing patented name conflicts, (2) global friendly name considertions, (3)etc.
I totally agree on the need for cool product names, but it seems there are some limitations. (and also wonder about how “fake” the public may perceive the attempts to sound/act cool: Like Gramps putting on some hip-hop bling, oversized jersey with cap backwards, making gangsta hand-signs and tring to act young.)
… just thinking aloud on the [marketing and the] product name thing: How much of that is driven by marketing’s wishes around product naming vs. how much of that is driven by (1) existing patented name conflicts, (2) global friendly name considertions, (3)etc.
I totally agree on the need for cool product names, but it seems there are some limitations. (and also wonder about how “fake” the public may perceive the attempts to sound/act cool: Like Gramps putting on some hip-hop bling, oversized jersey with cap backwards, making gangsta hand-signs and tring to act young.)
“And, I, and my coworkers in the Evangelism team are now running Windows Vista and finding we’re more productive, even WITH the burps that come from using pre-production code. ”
I HATE to start off on a negative note, but there’s no other way to say this: Mr. Scoble, you are a liar.
The OS is not up to snuff right now for daily use, though it is rapidly getting there are they approach beta 2. But this claim is complete and utter crap.
I generally support your suggestion for public compensation change logs. I think just publishing the percentages is a great way to add some transparency to the review process.
“the worst person I’ve dealt with here at Microsoft is far better than many employees I’ve dealt with in past jobs ”
But I also support Mini’s suggestion that mass firings are needed. The statement above about the worst person you’ve met @ MSFT just tells me that you’re only talking to the smartest folks. There are PLENTY of people throughout the company who aren’t cutting it anymore (or maybe never were; many people snuck in around the time of the perma-temp lawsuit, many others were probably just hired because a team needed a warm body in a hurry…hey, it happens). Maybe we’re responsible for burning them up. That’s one of the many management problems we have. But that doesn’t mean we need to keep the dead weight here.
As for the multi-mon suggestion, I can’t remember the last time I walked into someone’s office and didn’t see at least 2 monitors already. So there’s probably a good chunk of that $240 million that we won’t even need to spend
I believe most LCD’s also use much less standby power than your typical CRT, so this could also have cost savings to Microsoft as well as making us much more eco-friendly.
Here’s an idea that’s no more crazy than the ones you proposed: Hold LisaB accountable for at least some of the promises that she made in her listening series discussions. For starters, get her to update her website with the list of common themes. It hasn’t been *touched* in over 3 months!!! She’s supposed to be fixing morale problems. Instead, she’s now causing them.
“And, I, and my coworkers in the Evangelism team are now running Windows Vista and finding we’re more productive, even WITH the burps that come from using pre-production code. ”
I HATE to start off on a negative note, but there’s no other way to say this: Mr. Scoble, you are a liar.
The OS is not up to snuff right now for daily use, though it is rapidly getting there are they approach beta 2. But this claim is complete and utter crap.
I generally support your suggestion for public compensation change logs. I think just publishing the percentages is a great way to add some transparency to the review process.
“the worst person I’ve dealt with here at Microsoft is far better than many employees I’ve dealt with in past jobs ”
But I also support Mini’s suggestion that mass firings are needed. The statement above about the worst person you’ve met @ MSFT just tells me that you’re only talking to the smartest folks. There are PLENTY of people throughout the company who aren’t cutting it anymore (or maybe never were; many people snuck in around the time of the perma-temp lawsuit, many others were probably just hired because a team needed a warm body in a hurry…hey, it happens). Maybe we’re responsible for burning them up. That’s one of the many management problems we have. But that doesn’t mean we need to keep the dead weight here.
As for the multi-mon suggestion, I can’t remember the last time I walked into someone’s office and didn’t see at least 2 monitors already. So there’s probably a good chunk of that $240 million that we won’t even need to spend
I believe most LCD’s also use much less standby power than your typical CRT, so this could also have cost savings to Microsoft as well as making us much more eco-friendly.
Here’s an idea that’s no more crazy than the ones you proposed: Hold LisaB accountable for at least some of the promises that she made in her listening series discussions. For starters, get her to update her website with the list of common themes. It hasn’t been *touched* in over 3 months!!! She’s supposed to be fixing morale problems. Instead, she’s now causing them.
[...] Well, the title is not quite accurate, but the easier and cheaper way to go about what Microsoft Corp’s most audible voice on the internet, Robert Scoble, said is for the company to buy Google and save quite a few bucks and a whole lot of sweat in the process. Robert, in a recent blog post, says that the company requires a moonshot, one that would give “A guaranteed Terabyte of Internet-based storage space for EVERYTHING and for EVERYONE running Windows in the world”. [...]
[...] Robert , the Microsoft Geek explores the ways of Improving Microsoft . Apr 28 2006 06:05 pm | Finance | [...]
the decline of illegal music downloads
By the time the RIAA, CRIA, and all of the other recording industry associations figure out which 71 year old grandparents and 12 year old kids they want to sue next, it may not be worth their trouble even by
Scoble– what are you smoking man? And where did you get it? -3 today and falling!! Is there any hope for us?
Scoble– what are you smoking man? And where did you get it? -3 today and falling!! Is there any hope for us?
Hmmmmm…If managers are payed for pruning rules, I see scope for “rule-farming”…managers making sure that lots of new ones are created so they can get paid for killing them later (and they don’t have to create the rules themselves – all you need to do is appraise someone with the appropriate responsibility of a “problem”, and the rule will suggest itself.
But then I have a twisty mind.
And as people in our profession are so fond of saying: “Surely Nobody Would Ever Do That”.
Hmmmmm…If managers are payed for pruning rules, I see scope for “rule-farming”…managers making sure that lots of new ones are created so they can get paid for killing them later (and they don’t have to create the rules themselves – all you need to do is appraise someone with the appropriate responsibility of a “problem”, and the rule will suggest itself.
But then I have a twisty mind.
And as people in our profession are so fond of saying: “Surely Nobody Would Ever Do That”.
Branding seems to be Microsoft’s downfall. “Windows” was the branding effort that has lasted the longest. It seems to come and go, though – we had the Windows [release number] thing for a while. Then we got to the Windows [year of possible release], which ended with Windows 2k3. Then we had the Windows [Random Initials] sequence, which pretty much describes XP.
Office has been through the same trauma.
But I couldn’t believe the absurdity when a friend explained he had a Vista Beta. I repeated quizzically to myself “Sex Sells”? – after we parted. After the Microsoft Windows CE/ME/NT hilarity, Microsoft could have made a better job of branding.
To put it crudely, I can’t take Microsoft’s Windows Vista Beta at all seriously. Can you?
Branding seems to be Microsoft’s downfall. “Windows” was the branding effort that has lasted the longest. It seems to come and go, though – we had the Windows [release number] thing for a while. Then we got to the Windows [year of possible release], which ended with Windows 2k3. Then we had the Windows [Random Initials] sequence, which pretty much describes XP.
Office has been through the same trauma.
But I couldn’t believe the absurdity when a friend explained he had a Vista Beta. I repeated quizzically to myself “Sex Sells”? – after we parted. After the Microsoft Windows CE/ME/NT hilarity, Microsoft could have made a better job of branding.
To put it crudely, I can’t take Microsoft’s Windows Vista Beta at all seriously. Can you?
[...] Well, the title is not quite accurate, but the easier and cheaper way to go about what Microsoft Corp’s most audible voice on the internet, Robert Scoble, said is for the company to buy Google and save quite a few bucks and a whole lot of sweat in the process. Robert, in a recent blog post, says that the company requires a moonshot, one that would give “A guaranteed Terabyte of Internet-based storage space for EVERYTHING and for EVERYONE running Windows in the world”. To understand what this is all about, a quick refresher course in the history of the company is required. Once it comprehensively won the Big Browser Battle I sometime in early 2002, by bashing Netscape to a pulp with its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft took its eyes off the ball and allowed the horse, the barn and the entire farm to bolt by leaving its most potent weapon, its browser, to languish in doing oddball jobs like taking out the trash, while it could have comfortably taken over the world. Yes, it did dominate the world in terms of presence, but in terms of innovation and usefulness, Internet Explorer had frozen in time sometime in 2002. [...]
Robert: I salute you for this call to action, which is never easy in a big company, and even less so when done publicly. I firmly believe that those who are not part of the solution are part of the problem; complaining without suggestions is pointless.
To me, the obvious moonshot is one that was routinely announced every year in the 1990s: speech recognition. This is the true killer app, and requires participation from every coding group imaginable, since it is indeed much more complicated than anyone ever suspected; so much so that today, it no longer even rates a mention, being considered simply unattainable. For my part, I don’t think Microsoft will ever bring that innovation to the world, because efficient, modular code is not in your genes, but never mind me: while equipping staff with dual monitors (100% guaranteed to boost productivity, and easy/cheap now with TFTs), equip them with VOIP handsets set up for sound input. Ask for their help: once a week, have everyone read the same text into their handset/PC, so Research will instantly have massive samples for variance studies. Everyone in the company, from overworked coders to middle-management speedbump slackers, can contribute. Get the XBox people to come up with a small, robust music player/VOIP handset… set up for voice input to ANY computer on ANY OS running a Microsoft client app (a tried and tested business model, known to music lovers). And forget about patents and blackbox voodoo firmware: open up the source as Microsoft’s contribution to Earth, and work on developing profitable business models providing vertical applications, everywhere connectivity, and 7/24/365 reliable (absolutely SLA) data availability.
As a concrete suggestion, Microsoft could start supporting industry standards instead of fighting, subverting, or ignoring them. Microsoft has always penetrated new markets by supporting existing formats, conveniently dropping support as competition heats up. Examples: The OpenDocument file format, which is very clearly what the world needs for long-term document archival – yet today, Microsoft has nothing better to do than push an encumbered alternative and refuse to add a filter to the 73 (I counted them) filters currently in Office. Or how about the MPEG-4 Chapter 10 (AVC, H.264) video standard, enthusiastically supported by every audiovisual industry player except Microsoft; no codec for Windows Media Player in the forseeable future – native on Macs for months now already, supported on a multitude of platforms including GNU/Linux by VLC and others. The list is long – PDF write support at OS level, W3C browser compliance, SMB/CIFS, the RTF and CSV pseudoformats which wander aimlessly with every version of Office, etc. Building to industry standards would be win/win/win for everyone – developers who could be more productive, integrators and administrators who could spend less time solving silly problems, users who could discover a system that just works. After all, dropping NetBEUI for TCP/IP never did Microsoft any harm. Why not show true commitment to customers and open the proprietary binary formats of previous Office versions, so we could all be assured of accessing our data in 10 years should we want to? In that vein, why not open the source code to your legacy apps? I fondly remember Excel 3, which ran well on my little 386 with 12 Mb of RAM… and had enough functionality to model the mortgage loans I’m still paying. Microsoft has always spared no expense wooing developers; you are losing a generation of engineers to the superior Free Open Source Software model.
Too, you didn’t mention virtualization, which is about to eat Microsoft for lunch: The future of Windows is an image running in a sealed container over a serious OS (and by that I mean stable and secure and multiprocessor optimized) such as GNU/Linux or *BSD. Malware will be as eaily handled as flushing a contaminated image. Banking data will run in a separate image from gaming, or surfing. Users will become accustomed to using alternative (secure, ergonomic, standards-based) main desktops, keeping a virtual Windows around for legacy apps and data. In this context, insisting on licenses per image, rather than per CPU, will simply hasten the departure of fed-up users.
I’m afraid Microsoft is destined to be seen as an accident of history: IBM gives away the store, savage business practice of browbeating OEMs into exclusively preinstalling DOS and later Windows quashes OS competitors, OS dominance makes conditions ripe for Office monopoly, stagnation rots bloated empire from within. The traditional strengths which justified this monoculture – rock-solid DOS under floopy Windows, robust installers with outstanding hardware support, localization in numerous languages – have been surpassed by FOSS. I moved to a new office recently and was dismayed to discover my first day that I had forgotten the new password on my XP Professional-equipped laptop. Fortunately, I had a recent Knoppix with me, booted with that, and was able to access all of my supposedly encrypted files, which of course meant i had to later encrypt my sensitive business data with third-party software (a FOSS project, naturally). Since Windows 3.0, I have not seen Microsoft as a tech company, but as a profit-making venture – the poverty of the DOS CLI compared to Unix was a dead giveaway. That’s been fine until now for the founders of the company and for shareholders, but rotten for the industry and for end users. Today, Microsoft consistently reminds me of a country I had the privilege to visit in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – born with passion and vision, capable of great strides in the early days despite the warning signs, finally extinguished as the fire went out and today judged harshly for its catastrophic failures. Microsoft’s paralysis even as revenue streams in from Windows and Office (and doesn’t from other products) is ghastly to watch – Microsoft can’t hold those monopolies for long, for a number of reasons (growing irrelevance of PC-centric computing, stronger and stronger offerings from standards-based FOSS). I suspect that Microsoft’s tumble, when it comes, will come more quickly than anyone suspects… when your OEMs rebel and start offering choice to buyers. Don’t alienate your OEMs by going all-Dell; although they are fine machines, Microsoft would do much better to buy from ALL its OEMs, ideally in proportions related to marketshare. Any biologist will confirm the advantages of diversity, and for once you could properly debug an OS before shipping it. I don’t agree that you need to convince any partners about driver development, given your marketshare, but not shutting out any of your OEMs could do wonders for the way you are perceived by your partners.
Your marketers, unfortunately, have to deal with senior managers who have only a passing interest in the arts and culture, the enabler of taste in what’s cool. It was said that the USSR could have bloomed if Lenin appreciated fine wine and modern art more. I am one of those personally offended by the ads which describe me as a dinosaur because I won’t shell out for buggy new Office software (which I know is buggy since my employer has already shelled out). Savvy buyers feel locked in; unsavvy buyers just assume it’s normal for a company to be so greedy. Today, most of the 20-odd basic users of Windows I support (for free – family, friends, neighbors) assume that all personal computer operating systems are as crappy as Windows. They feel cheated when they have to buy additional software to secure their computers, in particular when they are surprised to learn that less or none is necessary for the alternatives. They wonder why GNU/Linux or the Mac was never talked about at the store, feeling like they have been rooked. Finally, they ask if their data – documents, photos – would be readable on another platform. By the way, without exception, they are incapable of backing up their data, aside from the occasional CD burn.
Sadly, Microsoft has stunted innovation in the IT industry for years; the industry’s response is to move to collaborative development, which is fundamentally incompatible with Microsoft’s sell-licenses-forget-support-laugh-to-bank business model. FOSS is coming after you, and you can’t compete on quality and you can’t compete on price. I personally believe it is too late to change; I think the future can only hold a diminished Microsoft, or maybe a group of companies – each focused on services and products meeting customer needs. The golden boom years are ending, and a huge number of current Microsoft employees won’t make it through. But there is still a long-term possibility that Microsoft’s successor startup companies, or a reduced and focused core, could thrive. Should you continue to decide to stay with Microsoft, I wish you luck – you shall need it.
Sean DALY.
Robert: I salute you for this call to action, which is never easy in a big company, and even less so when done publicly. I firmly believe that those who are not part of the solution are part of the problem; complaining without suggestions is pointless.
To me, the obvious moonshot is one that was routinely announced every year in the 1990s: speech recognition. This is the true killer app, and requires participation from every coding group imaginable, since it is indeed much more complicated than anyone ever suspected; so much so that today, it no longer even rates a mention, being considered simply unattainable. For my part, I don’t think Microsoft will ever bring that innovation to the world, because efficient, modular code is not in your genes, but never mind me: while equipping staff with dual monitors (100% guaranteed to boost productivity, and easy/cheap now with TFTs), equip them with VOIP handsets set up for sound input. Ask for their help: once a week, have everyone read the same text into their handset/PC, so Research will instantly have massive samples for variance studies. Everyone in the company, from overworked coders to middle-management speedbump slackers, can contribute. Get the XBox people to come up with a small, robust music player/VOIP handset… set up for voice input to ANY computer on ANY OS running a Microsoft client app (a tried and tested business model, known to music lovers). And forget about patents and blackbox voodoo firmware: open up the source as Microsoft’s contribution to Earth, and work on developing profitable business models providing vertical applications, everywhere connectivity, and 7/24/365 reliable (absolutely SLA) data availability.
As a concrete suggestion, Microsoft could start supporting industry standards instead of fighting, subverting, or ignoring them. Microsoft has always penetrated new markets by supporting existing formats, conveniently dropping support as competition heats up. Examples: The OpenDocument file format, which is very clearly what the world needs for long-term document archival – yet today, Microsoft has nothing better to do than push an encumbered alternative and refuse to add a filter to the 73 (I counted them) filters currently in Office. Or how about the MPEG-4 Chapter 10 (AVC, H.264) video standard, enthusiastically supported by every audiovisual industry player except Microsoft; no codec for Windows Media Player in the forseeable future – native on Macs for months now already, supported on a multitude of platforms including GNU/Linux by VLC and others. The list is long – PDF write support at OS level, W3C browser compliance, SMB/CIFS, the RTF and CSV pseudoformats which wander aimlessly with every version of Office, etc. Building to industry standards would be win/win/win for everyone – developers who could be more productive, integrators and administrators who could spend less time solving silly problems, users who could discover a system that just works. After all, dropping NetBEUI for TCP/IP never did Microsoft any harm. Why not show true commitment to customers and open the proprietary binary formats of previous Office versions, so we could all be assured of accessing our data in 10 years should we want to? In that vein, why not open the source code to your legacy apps? I fondly remember Excel 3, which ran well on my little 386 with 12 Mb of RAM… and had enough functionality to model the mortgage loans I’m still paying. Microsoft has always spared no expense wooing developers; you are losing a generation of engineers to the superior Free Open Source Software model.
Too, you didn’t mention virtualization, which is about to eat Microsoft for lunch: The future of Windows is an image running in a sealed container over a serious OS (and by that I mean stable and secure and multiprocessor optimized) such as GNU/Linux or *BSD. Malware will be as eaily handled as flushing a contaminated image. Banking data will run in a separate image from gaming, or surfing. Users will become accustomed to using alternative (secure, ergonomic, standards-based) main desktops, keeping a virtual Windows around for legacy apps and data. In this context, insisting on licenses per image, rather than per CPU, will simply hasten the departure of fed-up users.
I’m afraid Microsoft is destined to be seen as an accident of history: IBM gives away the store, savage business practice of browbeating OEMs into exclusively preinstalling DOS and later Windows quashes OS competitors, OS dominance makes conditions ripe for Office monopoly, stagnation rots bloated empire from within. The traditional strengths which justified this monoculture – rock-solid DOS under floopy Windows, robust installers with outstanding hardware support, localization in numerous languages – have been surpassed by FOSS. I moved to a new office recently and was dismayed to discover my first day that I had forgotten the new password on my XP Professional-equipped laptop. Fortunately, I had a recent Knoppix with me, booted with that, and was able to access all of my supposedly encrypted files, which of course meant i had to later encrypt my sensitive business data with third-party software (a FOSS project, naturally). Since Windows 3.0, I have not seen Microsoft as a tech company, but as a profit-making venture – the poverty of the DOS CLI compared to Unix was a dead giveaway. That’s been fine until now for the founders of the company and for shareholders, but rotten for the industry and for end users. Today, Microsoft consistently reminds me of a country I had the privilege to visit in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – born with passion and vision, capable of great strides in the early days despite the warning signs, finally extinguished as the fire went out and today judged harshly for its catastrophic failures. Microsoft’s paralysis even as revenue streams in from Windows and Office (and doesn’t from other products) is ghastly to watch – Microsoft can’t hold those monopolies for long, for a number of reasons (growing irrelevance of PC-centric computing, stronger and stronger offerings from standards-based FOSS). I suspect that Microsoft’s tumble, when it comes, will come more quickly than anyone suspects… when your OEMs rebel and start offering choice to buyers. Don’t alienate your OEMs by going all-Dell; although they are fine machines, Microsoft would do much better to buy from ALL its OEMs, ideally in proportions related to marketshare. Any biologist will confirm the advantages of diversity, and for once you could properly debug an OS before shipping it. I don’t agree that you need to convince any partners about driver development, given your marketshare, but not shutting out any of your OEMs could do wonders for the way you are perceived by your partners.
Your marketers, unfortunately, have to deal with senior managers who have only a passing interest in the arts and culture, the enabler of taste in what’s cool. It was said that the USSR could have bloomed if Lenin appreciated fine wine and modern art more. I am one of those personally offended by the ads which describe me as a dinosaur because I won’t shell out for buggy new Office software (which I know is buggy since my employer has already shelled out). Savvy buyers feel locked in; unsavvy buyers just assume it’s normal for a company to be so greedy. Today, most of the 20-odd basic users of Windows I support (for free – family, friends, neighbors) assume that all personal computer operating systems are as crappy as Windows. They feel cheated when they have to buy additional software to secure their computers, in particular when they are surprised to learn that less or none is necessary for the alternatives. They wonder why GNU/Linux or the Mac was never talked about at the store, feeling like they have been rooked. Finally, they ask if their data – documents, photos – would be readable on another platform. By the way, without exception, they are incapable of backing up their data, aside from the occasional CD burn.
Sadly, Microsoft has stunted innovation in the IT industry for years; the industry’s response is to move to collaborative development, which is fundamentally incompatible with Microsoft’s sell-licenses-forget-support-laugh-to-bank business model. FOSS is coming after you, and you can’t compete on quality and you can’t compete on price. I personally believe it is too late to change; I think the future can only hold a diminished Microsoft, or maybe a group of companies – each focused on services and products meeting customer needs. The golden boom years are ending, and a huge number of current Microsoft employees won’t make it through. But there is still a long-term possibility that Microsoft’s successor startup companies, or a reduced and focused core, could thrive. Should you continue to decide to stay with Microsoft, I wish you luck – you shall need it.
Sean DALY.
Mini is no more with Microsoft. He is being fed by his old MS disgruntled colleagues.
Mini is no more with Microsoft. He is being fed by his old MS disgruntled colleagues.
Giving everyone a TB of storage is similar to googles desktop beta three. The problem then arises that the data stored on a corporate network, even e-mail like hotmail, yahoo mail and gmail are discoverable. that would then entail that all my data on the corporate shared drive is also discoverable under the same circumstances.
What would stop RIAA or MPAA from subpeonaing the entire system to see what MP3′s and movie files were on those drives to see what was legal and what was not. We have yet to learn what the impacts of google’s shared drive is going to be, but the major security companies are against it, and many have labeled it malware because of that issue, and advocate not using it.
Is anyone going to pass up a file named “US Senate Master Misstress list.xls”? We would have to have better trust in the corporation (even google has problems with this right now), and we would have to seriously stregthen privacy laws before I would ever use something other than my own drives for storgage of my data.
Nice idea, too many risks for me to adopt it.
Giving everyone a TB of storage is similar to googles desktop beta three. The problem then arises that the data stored on a corporate network, even e-mail like hotmail, yahoo mail and gmail are discoverable. that would then entail that all my data on the corporate shared drive is also discoverable under the same circumstances.
What would stop RIAA or MPAA from subpeonaing the entire system to see what MP3′s and movie files were on those drives to see what was legal and what was not. We have yet to learn what the impacts of google’s shared drive is going to be, but the major security companies are against it, and many have labeled it malware because of that issue, and advocate not using it.
Is anyone going to pass up a file named “US Senate Master Misstress list.xls”? We would have to have better trust in the corporation (even google has problems with this right now), and we would have to seriously stregthen privacy laws before I would ever use something other than my own drives for storgage of my data.
Nice idea, too many risks for me to adopt it.
[...] Specifically, he’s talking about Microsoft, the voice blogs can give employees, and the response of Microsoft paid mouthpiece Robert Scoble: This past weekend, after taking a self-imposed two-week-long break from blogging, Scoble has attempted to shift his fellow employees’ attentions from problems to solutions with How Microsoft can shut down Mini-Microsoft. [...]
[...] Of course I’m going to argue that my job provides value to Intel’s bottom line. And I truly believe it does. In the coming years, technologies like blogging, wikis, and podcasting are going to become more important, not to Intel as a corporate entity, but to the people that work there, and that make up the company. As Scoble put it, the “Second Life” generation will be taking over. People are increasingly going to be dissatisfied working at a company that shuns things like blogs and podcasting that they, the people, know are useful. Not to mention the fact that customers are getting more and more used to dealing with companies that blog, where they know the human beings that work at the company from reading their human voices on their blogs. [...]
[...] Scoble said “But, Robert, almost every ‘big bet’ that Microsoft tries doesn’t work out,” you might say. That isn’t true. Just study the history of SQL Server.” [...]
A product which was bought, not ‘innovated’. FoxPro probably doesn’t count as a ‘big bet’, but can certainly be counted as another victim of “embrace … extinguish”, without, unfortunately, the intervening ‘extend’.
[...] Scoble said “But, Robert, almost every ‘big bet’ that Microsoft tries doesn’t work out,” you might say. That isn’t true. Just study the history of SQL Server.” [...]
A product which was bought, not ‘innovated’. FoxPro probably doesn’t count as a ‘big bet’, but can certainly be counted as another victim of “embrace … extinguish”, without, unfortunately, the intervening ‘extend’.
[...] I *Love* Maker Faire Kudos to Dale Dougherty, Phil Torrone, Dan Woods, Sherri Huss, Katie Dougherty, Louise Glasgow, Bre Pettis and the rest of the O’Reilly team for a “phenomenal” Maker Faire. The total attendance was a whopping 20,000+!! That’s huge! The thing that really struck out at me was the sheer diversity of the attendees and their projects, from basket weaving to clothing-refashioning (Daryl Hannah) to robotics, to electronics to music and robo-art. To paraphrase Dale’s words, “all of these different activities are tied together by the inherent human need to create”. Simple, yet deep, I like it
I also want to give a big thank you to Jacqueline Russell, Wendy Harrison, and all the folks who worked the Microsoft pavilion. Special shout out to Ed Kaim and team for showing off some very cool creations, including my favorite, the homemade DDR machine. We had a big Microsoft presence, quarterbacked by Jacqueline and Wendy that included Visual Studio Express, Coding4Fun, Media Center, Windows Mobile, UMPC (read: Origami), Channel9, On10, and more. My highlights: Mythbusters playing Segway polo Having Tim O’Reilly bust a move on the DDR machine Two words: bug bots! 100 MPG Toyota Prius (Miami-DC on one tank of gas!) A grease-powered Linux super-computer PocketPC powered creations like the Finalizer Battlebot or a PPC Robot Skype Home Automation (hardware and UI) The wearable clothes fashion show Playing with Lego Mindstorms NXT Scoble shows us some double love in his posts on How to shut down Mini-Microsoft I had a huge surge of pride in Microsoft today when I saw a very cool booth that we had at Makers Faire. Robots. People teaching kids to program computers. Xboxes. Media Centers. UMPCs (another lame name for “Origami’s” — one fun thing was I was in the booth when someone was holding a UMPC and then asked “can I see the Origamis?” Um, you’re holding one, was the answer.) and on his “An abundance of great events lately” post …But, the high water mark in my mind was the Maker Faire. This is a different kind of event from MindCamp. Sort of a “Burning Man Lite.” Michael Lehman and Charles Torre from Channel9 as well as Laura Foy and Duncan Mackenzie from on10.net will have some good videos up soon with cool demos. In fact Laura’s first video from Maker Faire is now up where she interviews Dale Dougherty from Make Magazine. Duncan even has a blog post with pictures of Laura with a flamethrower that of course has been Photoshopped to make on10.net wallpaper (courtesy of Maxwell). Alas Scott Hanselman, our trusty Coding4Fun hardware guru couldn’t make it…he would’ve had a blast! Maker Faire is by far the best and coolest conference I’ve ever gone to. Hands down. My only complaint is having to work the booth and not being able to walk around and play as much as I would’ve wanted to. Filed Under: Announcements, Personal [...]
You are all looking in a wrong direction, guys… Sorry to say that. Have you EVER read ANY MS End-User Aggreement? preferably the one for ANY on-line services and especially a VOLUMINOUS “Indemnification” clause…
MS ALWAYS disclaims ANY liability for whatever happens with it’s customer as a consequence of using… whatever it’s offering.
It came to the point when this is a ‘no go’… Enough is enough. Think about this for a moment. You have to take responsibility FOR SOMETHING, otherwise – MS will become history.
Regards.
You are all looking in a wrong direction, guys… Sorry to say that. Have you EVER read ANY MS End-User Aggreement? preferably the one for ANY on-line services and especially a VOLUMINOUS “Indemnification” clause…
MS ALWAYS disclaims ANY liability for whatever happens with it’s customer as a consequence of using… whatever it’s offering.
It came to the point when this is a ‘no go’… Enough is enough. Think about this for a moment. You have to take responsibility FOR SOMETHING, otherwise – MS will become history.
Regards.
[...] Scoble talks on how MS could be revamped to resolve the issues that the renowned Mini-Microsoft blog continually raises. How amazing it is that someone with the visibility of Scoble could address such a subject in public about MS – I hope that Intel will continue to see the value in transparency and communication and allow us to improve in this area (we have a long way to go). [...]
Datecenters and storage investments are the most capital intensive and least profitable.
Microsoft’s “big bets” have always been in innovative software, not hardware infrastructure.
Think bigger… if “the network is the computer” then MSN should be managed as the new computer.
Create “Web OS” software that let’s any hosting partner or VAR participate in the MSN cluster and reap some rewards for being part of MSN.
Even Google will eventually need to decide whether their core competency is in innovative datacenter operations or software development. They’ll likely outsource or contract the hardware in the future.
Datecenters and storage investments are the most capital intensive and least profitable.
Microsoft’s “big bets” have always been in innovative software, not hardware infrastructure.
Think bigger… if “the network is the computer” then MSN should be managed as the new computer.
Create “Web OS” software that let’s any hosting partner or VAR participate in the MSN cluster and reap some rewards for being part of MSN.
Even Google will eventually need to decide whether their core competency is in innovative datacenter operations or software development. They’ll likely outsource or contract the hardware in the future.
Lets see – Microsoft is facing STIFF competition from Google (Gmail), Apple (iTunes/iPod, and increasingly Macs – I am a college student, and you see Macbooks and iMacs mushrooming in libraries and dorm rooms like nobody’s business) and Mozilla (Firefox). The digital music battle seems all but lost, Gmail is far and away better than any free email service out there and IE 7 is,um, late (as Media Player 11 is, and Vista will be).
I think Steve Ballmer should be fired. Plain and simple.
Lets see – Microsoft is facing STIFF competition from Google (Gmail), Apple (iTunes/iPod, and increasingly Macs – I am a college student, and you see Macbooks and iMacs mushrooming in libraries and dorm rooms like nobody’s business) and Mozilla (Firefox). The digital music battle seems all but lost, Gmail is far and away better than any free email service out there and IE 7 is,um, late (as Media Player 11 is, and Vista will be).
I think Steve Ballmer should be fired. Plain and simple.
[...] How Microsoft can shut down Mini-MicrosoftOK, maybe you haven’t heard about Mini-Microsoft yet, but if you care … How Microsoft can take away Mini-Microsoft’s karmic power. … I dream of a Microsoft that no longer has anything for Mini, or his commenters to complain about. … [...]
your blog is a gold mine of info, thx
your blog is a gold mine of info, thx
[...] Robert Scobble était de son côté un « évangéliste » de la Division Developer and Platform Evangelism de Microsoft Corp, blogger bien connu de Microsoft et à visage découvert. Cette Division est l’analogue de la Division que j’animais en France avant mai 2005. Elle est dédiée au prosélytisme des technologies Microsoft auprès des développeurs du marché, et pas du développement des logiciels de Microsoft. C’est l’un des endroits les plus intéressants de Microsoft : on y touche aux nouvelles technologies, on les fait découvrir aux « early adopters », on travaille avec des entreprises innovantes (éditeurs de logiciels, startups), et le ton d’ensemble ne se prête pas trop à la langue de bois marketing classique. Robert a créé également des interviews pour Channel 9, une chaine TV permettant de découvrir Microsoft de l’intérieur. Sur son blog, Scobble faisait évidemment la promotion des technologies Microsoft, dialoguait avec ses lecteurs, mais avec une ouverture certaine. Il parlait volontiers de technologies concurrentes, et pas forcément pour en dire du mal, ce qui est plutôt exceptionnel comme comportement. Et bien, mini-Microsoft l’embêtait quelque peu. S’il souhaitait que mini-Microsoft s’éclipse un jour, c’est par la disparition des maux qu’il décrivait. Il indiquait d’ailleurs qu’il démissionnerait si le gars qui édite mini-Microsoft était identifié et viré ! Et confirme le malaise qui sévit dans la société : “I’ve interviewed more than 500 employees over two years (and talked with hundreds, maybe even thousands, more) and I’ve met thousands of our customers and shareholders on trips to conferences, VC firms, camps, private parties, and corporate meetings. […] And, generally, what I’m finding on my tours is angst. Angst over stock price (it’s gone up about $3 since I’ve joined three years ago). Angst over marketing issues (why do we make cool names like “Sparkle” lame by changing that to “Expression Interactive Designer?”) Angst over vision and direction. Angst over leadership. Angst over advertising like our “dinosaur” ads (which are loudly derided by customers whenever I go to conferences and talk about how we’re being perceived)”. Bref, Scobble participait activement au débat généré par Mini-Microsoft. Début juin 2006, il annonçait son départ de Microsoft pour une startup, et semble-t-il sans aucune animosité par rapport à Microsoft. Dommage pour MS! Il y a heureusement plein de bloggers non anonymes chez Microsoft, mais leur objectif est souvent de parler de la technologie dont ils ont la charge. [...]
[...] Scoble lists five ways to save Microsoft. My thoughts on each: [...]
[...] No wait, Robert Scoble has a dream. This is the best response to blogging I have read. more… [...]
As a person in the storage business, I applaud your suggestion #1 re 1T of storage for every person. However, I also recommend that be RAID1 (that’s 2T of disk space), and include some kind of remote snapshot facility in case the home site is lost (that’s 4T… 2 on each end). And really, is 1T enough? Think about the pr0n.
As a person in the storage business, I applaud your suggestion #1 re 1T of storage for every person. However, I also recommend that be RAID1 (that’s 2T of disk space), and include some kind of remote snapshot facility in case the home site is lost (that’s 4T… 2 on each end). And really, is 1T enough? Think about the pr0n.
A site putting insight in sight. After years of working with Microsoft Windows and suffering a simply evelasting stream of trouble I finally switched the business/home system over to Linux. To say I didn’t strike trouble would be lying. I had to wrestle for three months with hardware incompatibilities, new software, finding suitable software and with the numerous glitches that catch up with anybody changing over. After that three months and now for a further couple of years down the track, I have seen a dream come true. I have all the software I need and it is completely cost free, I have no more everlastingly repeated maintenance worries, I have no security concerns whatsoever. Yes, things occasionally go wrong as they do with any system that is worked hard. I have screwed up the odd desktop and found the odd thing I just cannot manage to untangle but by and large I have massive control over what I am doing, I enjoy simplicity and clarity and the change I made was the best move I have ever made since I began working with computers decades ago. I am not arbitrarily anti-Micrososft but I have a serious question. Why does Microsoft, deliberately promote absolute lies in the name of providing facts about Linux? If a firm lies to me, either partially, directly, indirectly or in some other subtle and slanted way, how can I trust that firm?
A site putting insight in sight. After years of working with Microsoft Windows and suffering a simply evelasting stream of trouble I finally switched the business/home system over to Linux. To say I didn’t strike trouble would be lying. I had to wrestle for three months with hardware incompatibilities, new software, finding suitable software and with the numerous glitches that catch up with anybody changing over. After that three months and now for a further couple of years down the track, I have seen a dream come true. I have all the software I need and it is completely cost free, I have no more everlastingly repeated maintenance worries, I have no security concerns whatsoever. Yes, things occasionally go wrong as they do with any system that is worked hard. I have screwed up the odd desktop and found the odd thing I just cannot manage to untangle but by and large I have massive control over what I am doing, I enjoy simplicity and clarity and the change I made was the best move I have ever made since I began working with computers decades ago. I am not arbitrarily anti-Micrososft but I have a serious question. Why does Microsoft, deliberately promote absolute lies in the name of providing facts about Linux? If a firm lies to me, either partially, directly, indirectly or in some other subtle and slanted way, how can I trust that firm?
It has amazed me from the early days 3.1. That every roll-out. from day one, created such problems as to cause the consumer hours of grief and frustration trying to find a solution totally foreign to them.
It does not matter to the consumer that a driver or dll is needed from an hardware vendor that is compatible with the current os version. Or that Microsoft has trained the general public into purchasing a product that will not have full functionality until the arrival of the first service pack.
What continues to befuddle me, any other business sector that sells a product that does not work off the show room floor as advertised is bound by consumer law that recalls that product at no cost to the consumer until repaired or replaced. Otherwise the consumer is refunded their money.
When Microsoft advertises that a particular flavor os will work with specific hardware and then it doesn’t. The consumer should be refunded.
When a consumer buys an off the shelf box that is preloaded with an Microsoft os, and the os prompts them to install patches to fix a broken preloaded os, and the patch crashes the consumers off the shelf box, the consumer should be refunded.
If someone would take the time to do the statistical analysis of lost productivity from unrecoverable data, or data that is recoverable, the cost to the consumer to retrieve said data. Microsoft would be getting off cheap refunding just the initial cost to the consumer. It would in no way cover the actual loss the consumer experiences.
If consumer protection laws were changed to reflect real life consumer experience with software and hardware vendors across the board, impose real time fines and sanctions to said companies. It would have an impact that would not only get their attention, it would enforce b2b to change their policy to get the lead out of whats dragging the industry down and deflating consumer confidence, in the so called vision of the future.
I realize on the surface this may appear as off thread, then again it used to be the most important person in a corporation was the consumer. No consumer, no Microsoft, go figure.
Mo Better to point, so now that Microsoft Employees are no longer treated like upper class citizens and find themselves downgraded to the consumer level, how’s that working for ya? Because it sure has not been working out for those of us that keep praying the next version is really going to work as advertised.
So let’s try and keep it real, the consumer either owns or works for a company that supports Microsoft Employees. If they come up short on their offerings they do not implore their company to offer them incentives to be better employees. Nor expect their employers to give them a voice in how the company is run or change company offerings. They either put their nose to the grind stone or they find another job. Welcome to the lobby….
It has amazed me from the early days 3.1. That every roll-out. from day one, created such problems as to cause the consumer hours of grief and frustration trying to find a solution totally foreign to them.
It does not matter to the consumer that a driver or dll is needed from an hardware vendor that is compatible with the current os version. Or that Microsoft has trained the general public into purchasing a product that will not have full functionality until the arrival of the first service pack.
What continues to befuddle me, any other business sector that sells a product that does not work off the show room floor as advertised is bound by consumer law that recalls that product at no cost to the consumer until repaired or replaced. Otherwise the consumer is refunded their money.
When Microsoft advertises that a particular flavor os will work with specific hardware and then it doesn’t. The consumer should be refunded.
When a consumer buys an off the shelf box that is preloaded with an Microsoft os, and the os prompts them to install patches to fix a broken preloaded os, and the patch crashes the consumers off the shelf box, the consumer should be refunded.
If someone would take the time to do the statistical analysis of lost productivity from unrecoverable data, or data that is recoverable, the cost to the consumer to retrieve said data. Microsoft would be getting off cheap refunding just the initial cost to the consumer. It would in no way cover the actual loss the consumer experiences.
If consumer protection laws were changed to reflect real life consumer experience with software and hardware vendors across the board, impose real time fines and sanctions to said companies. It would have an impact that would not only get their attention, it would enforce b2b to change their policy to get the lead out of whats dragging the industry down and deflating consumer confidence, in the so called vision of the future.
I realize on the surface this may appear as off thread, then again it used to be the most important person in a corporation was the consumer. No consumer, no Microsoft, go figure.
Mo Better to point, so now that Microsoft Employees are no longer treated like upper class citizens and find themselves downgraded to the consumer level, how’s that working for ya? Because it sure has not been working out for those of us that keep praying the next version is really going to work as advertised.
So let’s try and keep it real, the consumer either owns or works for a company that supports Microsoft Employees. If they come up short on their offerings they do not implore their company to offer them incentives to be better employees. Nor expect their employers to give them a voice in how the company is run or change company offerings. They either put their nose to the grind stone or they find another job. Welcome to the lobby….