Peace Out from Juan - New comment on Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine":

>>"The problem is that we don't seem to have ANYONE with any special, unique spark of insight at the partner level."

Ho'k man, Juan heere, I am ready now to werk at Microsoft. Meesterr bill, he come to Mexico Ceety and he say 'seend us your wurkers.' Ho'kay, heeere I am, I want to be partner at Microsoft eh. I am that guuuy weeeth special uniq insite at thee partner level man. My first theeng i wood do to take a peecture of me flaoting so peeple theenking I amm reel smart to lift my body above theengs. Yaah. Theen I will maak new zun to bee quality mariachi music box, so all my freends at Walmart can buy one.

And, I weel make a special gift to the states of Californa, Oragun, and Wushinton man to feex the rest stops because so many honchos from all ovr the werld can't seem to hit the urenal and you have to walk on the pee of the werld just to take a leek man.

H'kay mini I theenk you are meesing the stooory here. Eets about the werld man, cooming to America to bee reech, to werk for Meester Bill, reel cheep.

deed you ever notice man, that peece and piiss sound the same when you are from Mehico?

(I had been throwing all of Juan's comments into the bit bucket. Here's to surfacing one on the Cutting Room Floor.)

This Blog has Failed - New comment on Extreme Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Extreme Results":

This blog has failed. There was a period where it seemed to be on the verge of creating a genuine difference, around the time of the businessweek exposure. Then there was the lisa tour which delayed things because people naively thought things might get better. They didn't realize top management was using it to distract people from the issues this blog was focusing on. Now people are starting to realize nothing has really changed, the company is on its way to irrelevance, no one knows what to do, no on cares about employees opinions. But somehow people seem resigned to it, like Jews in Germany a couple years before the holocaust.

(I was fine with it until the whole Germany bit. Edit / repost is welcomed.)

One Problem with DRM - New comment on Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine":

One problem with DRM is that, unlike other computer innovations, it removes pre-existing functionality that users value, rather than increasing it.

(hmm.)

Fine, That's Bruce Schneier - New comment on Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine":

Tell Schneier not to give up his day job.
Oh, dear. Where do I begin?

Dude ... this is his day job! Just to quote a bit from one recent source, ITsecurity's Top 59 Influencers in IT Security (Bruce is #5 in the list):

Bruce Schneier is the founder and CTO of the pioneering security firm BT Counterpane. The author of eight books on security, Schneier has testified before Congress on national network security issues. His first bestseller, "Applied Cryptography," was described by Wired magazine as "the book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published." He blogs about business security solutions, personal computer protection, and IT security in the era of terrorism, with a penchant for catching all the instances when police departments blow things up that they think are bombs, but really aren't.

I hope and pray that your day job has nothing at all to do with security, if you don't even know who this guy is.

(Isn't Applied Cryptography the book we advise everyone to stay away from due to quality?)

A Braniac here, a Braniac there... New comment on Extreme Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Extreme Results":

"BTW, I'm guessing you must be the braniac who called me an imbecile in your response despite knowing I have comment approval authority?"

Actually, that was me. I expected you wouldn't have the testicular fortitude to actually post any reasoned response to my off the cuff demonstration of how poorly reasoned your post was so I figured I might as well be "open and honest" in the conclusion.

I'm greatly amused to see you actually confirm your lack in public though. Guess we're both braniacs, eh?

(No way this is going to end well.)

World's Safest OS - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

OT—

Apple just angered QuickTime/web developers by completely removing QuickTime's ability to trigger scripts on pages.

I've read debates on Mac programmer threads wherein the same complaint is voiced multiple times: this breaks the core functionality of many web assets that must now be re-coded, thanks to Apple.

But the prevailing sentiment is that Apple did absolutely the right thing; it inconveniences programmers but it's an overdue security measure.

What if Microsoft took a page out of the same book and released an OS build (or even just a browser) that omitted all vb, ActiveX and .net functionality.

Yes, a lot of stuff would have to be rewritten. (A lot of stuff!) But then the OS/browser stack would be ACTUALLY SECURE. Wouldn't it be worth it?

I know I'm probably overlooking something technical here, and I'm ready to be scolded by programmers who can't wait to tell me how unfeasible this is.

But isn't there something to be said for the core idea? I mean, in the 90s microsoft permanently welded the browser functionality into the foundations of the OS in order to "prove" that forcing one browser over another was somehow necessary and unavoidable. My understanding is that this is why a popup ad can get into my registry and my .dll library and lay "lice eggs" that are extremely difficult to find and remove and which present a moving target to any filtering system.

Rip all that out, and you've still got a CGI capable, JavaScript capable, world-class browser.

My PC stays clean until I open Internet Explorer; then it's only a matter of time before I'm infected. Is ActiveX so indispensable that it's worth all this?

If I'm completely wrong about this, I would greatly appreciate it if somebody would explain why.

Cold War Hiring - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

Maybe our hiring binge is our way of cutting off Google's air supply? Nothing else seems to work, so Steve probably thought "lets suck out the oxygen from the atmosphere and hope they die".

We used a similar tactic after the old Soviet Union broke up. We paid their nuclear scientists a decent salary by soviet standards to stay at home and work on some meaningless tasks rather than having them go and work for Iran or Libya for a much higher salary. Most of the scientist would have left since the only choice was starvation in the early 90s in Russia. It was much cheaper for the US to pay their salaries or to bribe a dictator than the cost of fighting a war.

MacBU refuge - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

"The MacBU is a happen'n place to work"

And EVERY OTHER Mac development shop is considerably better, except for Quark. I know whereof I speak, I was at Apple working with outside developers for years, and I could easily gauge the quality of life for any Mac developer in the business by the way they asked me about openings at Apple.

The MacBU is mostly a refuge for the old Mac Toolbox die-hards who didn't want to get with the program and develop OS X skills.

What's news about this - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

Microsoft is now paying companies to use Windows Live Search?!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070316-microsoft-paying-businesses-to-use-live-search.html

If you have to pay people to use your product, maybe it's time to reevaluate your offering.

Griefer - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

??????

>"You want an example of awesome places to work within MS? Microsoft Game Studios . . . Why? Because MS leaves them alone and they manage themselves."

Dude; I guess thats why Microsoft
is the kill steal griefer king among gamers (i.e., pc gamers). I can see a few uber doobs at MGS
don't sell games on PCs until they have been out on XBOX for a few years, and only this week announced XBOX Live for PCs after years of restriction. Just more frags to the field to console the restless.

My evaluation tells me that what you wrote is FUD. Don't want to rain on your lag, but if you want to play, you have to RTFM and learn the difference tween PK and PvP. The DoT difference is significant to the whole industry of which I doubt you are a part.

Bungie Smungie - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

RE: the comment about Bungie being a good place to work:

They're talented, but they're primadonnas who regularly forget where their paychecks come from and look down on all non-Bungie 'softies. We all work for the same company. Get over it.

If it's that much of a problem for you, you should've stayed in Chicago where you could now be working on Marathon 9 for the Mac and making chump change.

Although, I like their royalty plan. Imagine what kind of money folks on the Office, Exchange, or Windows team could make if there were royalties.

Bret Clark - Holy Smokes! - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

One of the best teams to work for is Bret Clark's Solutions Accelerators team.

Few benefits:

1. Work one week per year = gets you your paycheck

2. Working hours are 10am - 3pm with 2 hours for lunch, rest of the time in needless meetings where the whole world is invited

3. Wear fancy watch, show it off to the boss = you are now part of the boy's club and in line for promotion or 15% bonus every year

4. Close your office door, hang a big sign saying DO NOT DISTURB, and take a nap or watch stocks in real time (isn't technology kwoool!)

5. Come in from the field (MCS/Consulting), pretend everyone is clueless about customers, become the boss's best friend = get the Group Program Manager job with one direct report. Then chew your direct reports ass throughout the year and make his life miserable

6. Leave Microsoft at level 62, become a vendor with Volt, come back to the team, hang out with the boss (make sure to wear good 'perfume'), have blonde hair = get hired back in one year as Group Program Manager at 65 (now that you are buddies with the General Manager!) = have three direct reports and give them hell for not doing their job

7. Get pissed off, take the boss for lunch and beers = get in line for promotion

8. If you happen to come in early, say 9am = call the boss and meet him for coffee at the Overlake Starbucks. Chat, hang out and watch the ladies until 10:30am = come back and walk the corridors with the boss pretending you just came out of an early morning meeting on 'Setting Team Strategy'

9. You are buddies with the boss and the boss moves to a new team = you better move out fast

10. Do a few worthless presentations every month = you have enough visibility = get in line for promotion

11. Setup a meeting, invite 'stakeholders' in a room that can accomodate 10 = soon the whole team shows up for the meeting since everyone invited everyone else

12. Boss has a drink with his 15 year old kid and asks his kid "Whaddya think about my idea boy?", kid says "You cool pops" = boss comes in and proudly relates the story to the team and makes his idea the strategic direction based on feedback from a 'key' non-member of the team

13. Boss knows this great gal in another team = boss hires her = gives her level jump outside review cycle = boss gives sign-on bonus = gal stays for one year, gal gets 4.5 review, gal leaves for greener pastures with another level jump = gal just got two level jumps in 1.5 years = gal still best buddies with boss

Tomorrow is my last day at Microsoft and everything written above is true.

(Goodness.)

WEX Morale - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

"Lots of awesome teams in WEX!..."

I agree - there are great teams in WEX, but anything they accomplish will be in spite of its leadership, who have managed in just a few months to demoralize many people into leaving...

(Trying to keep the tempo UP people.)

Sadness for you - [Mini-Microsoft] New comment on Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!":

Windows in all its form and splendor is a failure. Not just vista. As a computer tech, I see windows machines in all the time. It makes me so sad that there are people in the world who use windows. Personally, I use Kubuntu. The fact that windows even exists saddens me.

(Well, prepare to be sad for a very long time.)

Perf and Paulsc - New comment on Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Wee...":

Mini - See, we DID learn a few important things about the performance team. A) They don't like customer feedback B) Some of them are VERY angry (he resorted to personal attacks since he didn't care to address the user feedback).

Hi paul, it's me again! :) Since I choose not to respond with my name, I'm sure as hell not going to contact you internally. I've found that most managers aren't really as open to feedback as they'd like you to believe. I don't need senior management on your side putting the brakes on my career just because they didn't like what I said.

I choose to remain anonymous, but that doesn't mean that my feedback isn't honest. My posts are not based off my emotion. They are based off actual customer feedback that I have reviewed. You're wrong if you think I'm just flaming you or the technologies that you work on. If you aren't open to customer feedback, I'll keep that in mind the next time your team tries to push some new initiative down my throat.

Regarding features from the performance team hurting the sales of Vista:

"Says you. This is just wrong on its face. We are supposed to accept this unsubstantiated
statement from some anonymous guy on a blog? "

You can read almost any review and see a mention of the *huge* amount of RAM used. Check out the
blogs/newsgroups/web forums where early adopters and tech purchase influencers hang out. It's
mentioned in all of those places. A LOT. And it's starting to turn from "on my machine, Vista
uses ALL OF MY RAM!!! OMG!!!!1111" to "a friend of my buddy said he tried vista but it needed
too much ram and stuff". These are the people that obviously DO tell two friends (and so on...).

I'm sure if you took a poll internally and asked people what where the top 5 most common
complaints that they had heard/read about Vista, the RAM "requirements" will be on a large percentage of those lists.

To clarify, it's not me saying the Vista is a pig. It is some of our customers.

regarding WEI being used by salespeople to sell new machines:

"Hmmm...so it does move more machines after all. Doesn't this contradict what you just said in the paragraph above? "

No, it doesn't. The salespeople are using the WEI numbers to fool a small number of uneducated customers. There are still a substantial number of people who are staying away from Vista because of the bad things they
are hearing/reading about it (with the big blocker being the RAM "requirement").

"Why don't you try typing "Windows Experience Index" into a search engine and read about it for yourself? "

Sounds like you can't answer this question then. Ok, thanks.

I hope we'll start seeing it on games later this year.

"People should have achievable goals, and there is always room for growth. We can update the scale anytime we want."

So what you're suggesting is to aim low with your goals. I guess that's the problem with Microsoft in a nutshell. I'll keep this in mind for my MYCD, and hope that my boss thinks like you do.

This would be like our sales staff having a goal to sell 100,000 copies of Vista. Sure, that's an
achievable goal. But it's one that was met prior to RTM. That's not really much of a stretch.

If you can update it whenever you want, what are you waiting for? You don't see a need to allow
for higher end machines to have some differentiation?

regarding readyboost and Vista performance with 512MB of RAM:

"Because you say so? I don't think so. We have plenty of hard data that says otherwise. Rants on
a blog by anonymous posters are cheap."

Geez, now I need to feed the troll. You go search now: "Readyboost benchmarks" for one search and "Vista and 512MB of RAM" for the other.

(Even I have had enough of the back and forth now.)

Your Dense Little - New comment on There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.":

>>Come on, think. Use your head. Vista took five years because it had to work with legacy APIs, a legacy file system (since WinFS was cancelled), legacy driver issues, etc.

You two guys can banter all you want, but I, the customer cannot use a lot of Microsoft OS and office created data, such as avi films etc.

Never forget. Being able to read, write and edit legacy data is the single most important mission in software development. Period. Never forget.

We are talking about millions of terrabytes of data for all mankind idiot. History used to be written in books. No more. It is on a cd or hard drive or whatever digital format. It must be forever or nothing. Get that through your dense little brain.

(And .mov? Anyway, just a bit too rude even though there is a point in there.)

Your Dense Little - New comment on There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.":

>>Come on, think. Use your head. Vista took five years because it had to work with legacy APIs, a legacy file system (since WinFS was cancelled), legacy driver issues, etc.

You two guys can banter all you want, but I, the customer cannot use a lot of Microsoft OS and office created data, such as avi films etc.

Never forget. Being able to read, write and edit legacy data is the single most important mission in software development. Period. Never forget.

We are talking about millions of terrabytes of data for all mankind idiot. History used to be written in books. No more. It is on a cd or hard drive or whatever digital format. It must be forever or nothing. Get that through your dense little brain.

(And .mov? Anyway, just a bit too rude even though there is a point in there.)

POS - New comment on There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.":

"I am so god damn tired of reading these USELESS posts where people claim that Vista is a POS. In many of the posts, the people run the OS for a day or two and don't even bother following up on *any* issues they may have. Yet they somehow think that magic will happen, and 6 months from now a
service pack will be crapped out that will somehow fix all of these issues. Idiots."

Yeah, we human beings are a strange lot, aren't we! We get crapped on every step of the way by the big 'ol Softie...with unkept promises, backwards-looking OS's, WGA, force-fed features and more and just when we start to realize you REALLY DON'T give a shit about us...you want us to cut you some slack!

That's right, not only do you want us to feel all "warm and fuzzy" about YOU when you bend us over our keyboards for some "Good Time Softie Sodomy" but you want us to enjoy the experience! "C'mon, tell me you like it!"

No, I don't like it! (Well, maybe that one time, in college) Ahem... but, I digress.

This cavalier, boorish and abusive behavior must anecdotally come from years of "havin' it your way" with force-fed software built upon half-measured features. You can't feel good about this crap, your job, yourself and so, a long, long time ago you made up your mind to feel good about being a monopolistic "King Turd on Shit Island" whose motto is, "Hey, if you don't like it...tough shit! We're doin' it anyway!"

You've had a true "bully pulpit" for years and, quite honestly, the only one's respecting you for it... nowadays... are your own scared little partner-esque butt buddies.

Now, as you can see lately, it's not going your way, is it? No, we've all HAD ENOUGH! Even slow-to-react John Q. Public is looking at Mac, Unbuntu and Google Apps.

Dude, if you fall as far as you've elevated yourself, there's going to be a lot of "Kerrrrrr-Splats" on the Sidewalk of Justice just outside 1 Microsoft Way. Maybe we can have Scoble come by and video it.

P.S. - And, no, Vista is NOT a Point of Sale OS, it's a Piece of Shit...OS!

Billy-G... Testify! - New comment on There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.":

Excerpt from Forbes.com concerning Billy-G's testimony to congress:

Gates said the nation's economy depends on keeping the country's borders open to highly skilled workers, especially those with a science or engineering background. Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas for scientists, engineers, computer programmers and other professionals every budget year. High-tech and other employers say that's not enough.

"Even though it may not be realistic, I don't think there should be any limit," Gates said, adding that Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) hasn't been able to fill approximately 3,000 technical jobs in the United States because of a shortage of skilled workers.

For full article:
http://www.forbes.com/topstories/home/feeds/ap/2007/03/07/ap3495074.html

See folks, Billy-G is trying to F*** all of you out of a job. According to him MS has not been able to fill 3000 technical positions b/c shortage of skilled workers. Translation: MS will not pay market rates to "U.S. workers" b/c they are like every freaking corporation who would rather F*** the very same people who are buying there crap then make a couple less million at the end of the year. Face it the average U.S. worker is being F*** and we do not even realize it b/c these corporations are smart enough to throw out catch phrases like "global competitiveness", "global resource relocation" and the like. Honestly, ask yourself do you REALLY think Billy-G and Steve-B gives a Sh** about you goof balls working and slaving away hard for them, what do they care... They have there BILLIONS.

Side note, is it me or in every public forum Billy-G looks like a troll you want to root against.

FUNNY Excerpt I found:

"Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign that lets any student at an Australian university buy the Ultimate edition of Office 2007, usual price $1,150, for only $75 — a discount of about 93%. But when students go to the promotion site, Microsoft Live OneCare pops up a warning that the site may be a phishing scam. The warning reads: 'Phishing filter has determined this might be a phishing website. We recommend that you do not give any of your information to such websites. Phishing websites impersonate trustworthy websites for the purpose of obtaining your personal or financial information.'"

MS get your shit together... That is just so freaking sad. Your own freaking security software is flagging your own site. SAD....

(There is some good stuff in there, but it is wrapped up with such displeasure.)