Comments on: “if microsoft wishes to change the world, then changing themselves is also, most definitely, a big part of the equation”

By: John

John — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:39:18 +0000

Oh, I forgot to add, (also from http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows_1.html)
”…while it may have started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary formats…not just Hollywood, but also peripheral hardware vendors. Vista’s DRM will require driver developers to comply with all kinds of rules and be certified; otherwise, they won’t work. And Microsoft talks about expanding this to independent software vendors as well. It’s another war for control of the computer market.”

By: John

John — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:33:35 +0000

James O'Neill, "What's this bollocks about 'Controlling what hardware you can attach'?" Hey, I admit I'm no computer expert. All I know is what I read: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9005047 "...If the system detects a high-resolution output path on a user's PC (i.e., a system capable of moving high-res content all the way to a user's display), it will check to make sure that every component that touches a protected content stream adheres to the specification. If it finds a noncompliant device, it can downgrade the content stream to deliver a lower-quality picture -- or it can even refuse to play the content at all, depending on the rights holder's preferences." Or: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows_1.html "...The details are pretty geeky, but basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output paths -- audio and video -- are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you're doing something that it thinks you shouldn't. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem..." Bullocks? I guess it depends on your definition of bullocks.

By: david

david — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:16:24 +0000

” I don’t just dislike Microsoft. I want to see the company as dead, dead, dead, as cold in the ground as my late wife, and the sooner, the better. “
Actually typical of the ms basher. This level of hate is a) quite typical and b) more about dad than it is about MS.
I meet a lot of this (btw I first booted linux in 1993 and can program in every significant language, on every platform worth booting including MITS so f–k you too). The anti ms hate is scary bad stuff because at root it’s irrational crazy stuff, not critique. There IS a critique but the “Bill is bad, I want to kill, kill, kill Bill” stuff is looney. And widespread.

By: Dave Armstrong

Dave Armstrong — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:28:28 +0000

Paul,
You need a new business plan, a new wife (if she can take the abuse and anger) and a new outlook. Or …
Best Wishes,
Dave

By: Paul Ding

Paul Ding — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:36:19 +0000

“People who hate Microsoft are either clueless or naive about what running a business was actually like, before they were around.“
Baloney.
Originally, Microsoft licensed Lattice C. Eventually, they wrote their own compiler. When they did that, however, they changed the return value of int86() and int86x().
There’s no reason to change the definition of a function. No reason at all. If you don’t like what the old function does, you write a new function, and give it a new name.
The only reason why a company would deliberately do something like that is to fuck up every company that was using their compiler. The smaller the company, the higher the cost, in relative terms, to find this little bit of vandalism, the higher the cost, relatively speaking, to develop a new function to do what the old function did, and the higher the cost, relatively speaking, to replace calls to the old function in your body of code to calls to the new function.
Microsoft doesn’t consider it sufficient to make a lot of software, and sell the tools that are used by companies that may one day become their competitor. They want to be the ONLY company in the industry, period.
At the time Microsoft pulled this shit, I was in deep financial waters because my wife was dying of a terminal disease, and this crap cost me almost two weeks of labor. I couldn’t afford it, I couldn’t afford the medical care that my wife needed, and Microsoft hastened my wife’s death because of this crap.
A one-time event? No. In the decades since, I’ve seen them do the same thing over and over and over again. What’s Microsoft’s is Microsoft’s, and everything else is subject to negotiation.
I don’t just dislike Microsoft. I want to see the company as dead, dead, dead, as cold in the ground as my late wife, and the sooner, the better.
I was running a business before Bill Gates was. The customer isn’t always right, but the customer is always the customer, by George.

By: tomdog

tomdog — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:21:04 +0000

If MSFT can’t/won’t fairly compete in the marketplace, the marketplace owes them nothing — much less nostalgia about what business was like before MSFT. Look at MSFT’s gross revenue, they get enough worldly tribute whether they deserve it or not.

By: Maggie Leber

Maggie Leber — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:11:35 +0000

@john-- Hugh may be safe from harassment as long as the owner of that "intellectual property" likes what he's saying. After all, it's "fair use"...isn't it? But then you never know...some folk's default style is FUD: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071008205138925 You know what they say: "You're not a bad person, not really, but telling the truth at your current company tends to get people fired..."

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:00:49 +0000

Hugh, I notice your "Blue Monster" drawing doesn't include a note advising that the "Microsoft" name is a trademark. Aren't you afraid Gates & Co will sue you for trademark infringement? Wouldn't you like someone to put a program on your computer to keep you from ever typing the word "Microsoft" just to make sure you never violate Microsoft's trademark?

By: anna

anna — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:12:08 +0000

I really think Microsoft biggest Problem is that they don’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel so before starting and buying innovations like facebook for example they have to change otherwise the will ruin the innovations anyway!

By: peter wilson

peter wilson — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:28:43 +0000

In the early days Microsoft was the cute upstart overthrowing the establishment (PCs for the masses). Now it in turn has become a monopolist and the establishment. For a techie working for a technology monopolist is a huge embarrassment, it’s not what you are meant to do — your peers will laugh at you. Nowadays no company thinks Microsoft is going to out-innovate them (Microsoft was always better at marketing than technology) but they do think that Microsoft will use it’s financial muscle to crush them and the Blue Monster image reinforces that.
Ultimately the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft would have been to be split up into baby-softs. It would have stripped them of their monopoly power, got rid of the dead wood, and forced them to start to compete again. Now though they will fade to the point down the line where, like IBM were, they are forced to reinvent themselves. However that revolution is a long way.

By: microsoft bob

microsoft bob — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:11:41 +0000

“if microsoft wishes to change the world, then changing themselves is also, most definitely, a big part of the equation“
I’ve worked with MS products for about 13 years. Most of the products work and work well.
However, a common trait that I’ve notice among 85% of the MS folks I’ve worked with and met, is that they have ATTITUDES in spades. They’re the biggest and have the most market share and they don’t have to listen to anybody. They’ll set the “standard” and everybody else will follow.
Just try giving the average MS evangelist or development manager or program manager or TAG/TAM/etc a simple suggestion for why you would like a feature added or explain how your customers want to do business and see how much pushback you get before they’re willing to LISTEN to ANYTHING or even contemplate that they don’t already have all the answers.
If it won’t help them sell another copy of their current products like Office 2007 or Sharepoint or MSDN unlimited, they’re not interested.

By: Maggie Leber

Maggie Leber — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:09:22 +0000

Um...all the "untested theory" examples I cited are real-world things that are functioning today. And try telling Google or IBM or Sun or Red Hat how lucky they are to not have to please shareholders. Yet every one of those four enterprises has a better grip on how to survive in the world of future tech than MSFT's current behavior suggests it does. I think maybe you've been listening to your marketing friends just a little too much...and I think I've heard that kind of patronising "you kids are just playing and don't understand the Real Business World" attitude before. It was coming from an IBM SE guy in the mid-1980's who was telling me how the Micro Channel Architecture were going to regain control of the PC hardware market for Big Blue. Remember MCA? If you don't, you're not alone... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2#Micro_Channel_Architecture

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:32:02 +0000

Maggie, I would disagree that you have DONE much that differently– besides the aforementioned idealism and untested theory thing [No shareholders to please, or payroll to meet– Hurrah!].
But good luck to you anyway…

By: Maggie Leber

Maggie Leber — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:08:35 +0000

Hugh–
I *have* answered “what I’m doing/going to do differently”. (Bear in mind you get clearer answers if you ask clearer questions…and preferably one at a time. )
But here it is again: I’m going to minimize my dependence on and exposure to technology from sources that insist on too much control over what I do with it. Especially when that control appears to be designed to operate against my interests.
This would include things like “copy protection” in all it’s guises. Packaging designed to impede reverse engineering. (We’re already past the point where “funny fasteners” like Torx wrenches have any real effect.) Stuff that “phones home” in ways the user does not control, especially if when the “phoning home” fails, the stuff stops working. Things deliberately built from proprietary parts that are single-sourced. X-Box and Zune and Vista may be pinnacles of this sort of thing in the MSFT world.
On the Apple side, iPod and iTunes have some similar problems albeit not in such severe forms. If you want to form an extreme contrast, compare an iPhone to a Palm Treo sometime. They do the same kinds of things, but from very different points of view designwise.
I’m half convinced this kind of “phone-home” engineering is a result of too much marketing influence over engineering.
This used to be justified by claiming that “engineers don’t care enough about the user”, and posing marketing folks as a kind of ombudsman to protect the poor user from the nasty geek people. There once was a lot of truth to that. But over time I think some marketers have lost track of “what the user wants” and replaced it with “what we we force the user to buy”…and dictated product requirements to that end.
That approach may appear to work over a short term, producing a nice pulse in quarterly sales, but longer-term, people begin to realize that the company they’ve been buying from–despite piles of soothing “we care about you” words from its public mouth–actually holds them in contempt. The attitude is reflected in the carnival workers slang term for a customer: “a mark”. It shares some of the feel of “trick” when used by a hooker or a pimp.
It causes products like “Bob” and “Clippy”. And schemes like “Windows Activation” and DVD region coding.
But I disagree with your thought that “we’re no closer to an answer”. In fact we *are* closer to answers; we’re beginning to invent new ways of dealing with near-zero-unit-cost information goods that actually make sense.
But unless you’re tapped into the right information streams today, you may not be aware of what those new answers are and how they operate. One set of them is found in the various open source software movements. Another is efforts around the Creative Commons forms of IP licensing.
For some examples, look at the writing of Cory Doctorow (I frequently find his politics distasteful in the extreme, but he’s a bright and talented writer nonetheless). Look at the music of Jonathan Coulton. Look at the piles of useful open-source-licensed Java software (do try to overlook the somewhat bigger pile of not-so-useful abandonware; the real cost of using Open Source code is not plopping down for a licence fee and ongoing maintenance charges, it’s figuring out what’s worthwhile to you and what’s dreck…or having somebody you trust to do that for you. Linux distros are an example of this; you are trusting the builder of the distro to figure out what is worthwhile having in the core of the distro, and what’s worth having easily available in a package repository.)
We are evolving reputation based schemes to assist us with this winnowing in other areas; for example: you don’t have to look through millions of crappy videos on YouTube; your chances of finding something really funny or interesting are greatly enhanced when someone you trust to not waste your time refers you to it.
So I can’t tell you chapter-and-verse what the final solutions will be; I suspect they will continue to evolve and be invented at accelerating speed long after I’m dead and gone.
And if MSFT comes to understand and internalize these ideas, they won’t have to figure out how “tell a different story”. Their story will *be* different, no matter who’s telling it.
I can’t write a prescription for how to do that, that’s their job to do, or to fail at. They have some very addictive, nasty habits ingrained in their culture that are undoubtedly extremely difficult to break. But they could do worse than starting by admitting that it needs to be done, and look at how IBM reinvented itself for some valuable lessons.

By: steve claytonht

steve claytonht — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:31:59 +0000

@john — just want to reiterate I’m not advocating that everyone builds a clean PC but trust me, with a *cleaner* PC Vista can be a very different OS. Michael Neel has seen this and I’ve just kicked off my own thread on “cleaning your Vista machine” on my blog. Getting some good additional tips myself…