No, True Praise - New comment on Microsoft FY08Q2 Results.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft FY08Q2 Results":

Are you and the extrememakeover guys the same? You give him false praise. Postings on your blogs are syncronized. Both blogs are critical.

([1]. No. [2]. How can it be false praise if it's genuine from me?)

Where the World is Moving - New comment on Raikes and Other Exits.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raikes and Other Exits":

To the guy who was defending Microsoft on DRM issues...

I have a suspicion that you work in the DRM team. But anyway, you are right that Apple does DRM too. But at the same time...

- Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to labels and studios about getting rid of DRM. What did Microsoft do? It is true that content owners are asking for DRM. However, if you truely believe that DRM does not make things easy for the end user, why dont you take a stand on it?

- If taking a stand is too radical for us, at the very least we should stop investing in the newer DRM technologies (which are bound to be broken a week after being released anyway). Why are we still team working on PlayReady (next version of WMDRM)?

You seem to accuse Mr Bee but you yourself dont backup your statements. Also, Mr Bee is not one of those guys anymore - you are. The whole world is moving away from DRM pal, except the recording labels (and perhaps the Microsoft DRM team). Wake up!

(It's all about the money. If non-DRM music makes money, then of course everything will fall in line. If it goes bust, you can be ready for the return of DRM. Apple. Real. Microsoft. Whatever.)

Where the World is Moving - New comment on Raikes and Other Exits.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raikes and Other Exits":

To the guy who was defending Microsoft on DRM issues...

I have a suspicion that you work in the DRM team. But anyway, you are right that Apple does DRM too. But at the same time...

- Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to labels and studios about getting rid of DRM. What did Microsoft do? It is true that content owners are asking for DRM. However, if you truely believe that DRM does not make things easy for the end user, why dont you take a stand on it?

- If taking a stand is too radical for us, at the very least we should stop investing in the newer DRM technologies (which are bound to be broken a week after being released anyway). Why are we still team working on PlayReady (next version of WMDRM)?

You seem to accuse Mr Bee but you yourself dont backup your statements. Also, Mr Bee is not one of those guys anymore - you are. The whole world is moving away from DRM pal, except the recording labels (and perhaps the Microsoft DRM team). Wake up!

(It's all about the money. If non-DRM music makes money, then of course everything will fall in line. If it goes bust, you can be ready for the return of DRM. Apple. Real. Microsoft. Whatever.)

Where the World is Moving - New comment on Raikes and Other Exits.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raikes and Other Exits":

To the guy who was defending Microsoft on DRM issues...

I have a suspicion that you work in the DRM team. But anyway, you are right that Apple does DRM too. But at the same time...

- Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to labels and studios about getting rid of DRM. What did Microsoft do? It is true that content owners are asking for DRM. However, if you truely believe that DRM does not make things easy for the end user, why dont you take a stand on it?

- If taking a stand is too radical for us, at the very least we should stop investing in the newer DRM technologies (which are bound to be broken a week after being released anyway). Why are we still team working on PlayReady (next version of WMDRM)?

You seem to accuse Mr Bee but you yourself dont backup your statements. Also, Mr Bee is not one of those guys anymore - you are. The whole world is moving away from DRM pal, except the recording labels (and perhaps the Microsoft DRM team). Wake up!

(It's all about the money. If non-DRM music makes money, then of course everything will fall in line. If it goes bust, you can be ready for the return of DRM. Apple. Real. Microsoft. Whatever.)

Building 36 - New comment on Raikes and Other Exits.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raikes and Other Exits":

I worked in a Raikes org for 3 years. I never saw him in his office, I never got an e-mail from him, I never heard anything about him.

are you in Bld 36? if not then probably you are not important anyway.

(Oy! So I'm not important, either?)

Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer - New comment on Raikes and Other Exits.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Raikes and Other Exits":

It's just amazing how the RIAA and MPAA demand copy protection and Apple gives it to them... and is lauded... And MSFT gives it to them... and is reviled.

Apple was lauded not for using DRM, but for making it much less restrictive and much more transparent than any previous effort. They went to bat for consumers against the music industry, e.g., for CD burning rights, and won. They also went to bat for consumers when the music industry wanted to charge more than 99 cents/track and won.

I'm not saying that everything about Apple is shiny and good but there is no doubt they've exercised their resources to deliver some good things for consumers.

Could they have gone further? Maybe. But I can't remember a single time when I've thought, "hey, thanks Microsoft, for using your enormous wealth and market position and legal resources to stand up for me and get something done that I actually wanted." Can you?

Now that the RIAA is trying to make it illegal to rip your own CDs to your own computer, who do you want in your corner? Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer? I wonder if Ballmer even keeps on top of tech enough to know that this is going on.

(The only angel I know of here is Jeff Bezos and Amazon. That's where I buy my music.)

About Ben - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Does MS really need press like this: http://www.benpaddon.co.uk/2008/01/09/microsoft-the-all-powerful/

Does it not seem ridiculous that the account cannot be simply moved from the UK to the US? I mean really, how hard is that (some database entry with a few other things?). Can someone from xbox please shed a light on this?

The "amusing" things about this fiasco:
- MS asking the person to move back to the UK.
- MS getting annoyed to the point that they ask this person to be fired? Someone has a major ego problem... Worse comes to worse, just ignore the person. To ask the person to be fired over something like this is just plain childish.

This is not the evil you're looking for - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Not the Bad Guy? It's taken a long time, but I don't believe we are perceived as the Evil Empire anymore. Part of that went out when people decided, at least contextually, to bust apart our empire. Okay, fine, we're playing catch-up now (wink wink).

Mini, when I read this I actually had to do a double-take -- you can't *possibly* be serious! Have you been hitting the crack pipe? Where are you getting your data?

I haven't noticed even a tiny bit of relief on the evil empire rhetoric. It's alive and well all over. Are you perhaps hoping that you can jedi mind trick a better perception of Microsoft into existence by the power of suggestion?

CRF and the CFR - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

:: Can we leave conspiracy theories out of this site

I agree, however, what is reality you will call 'conspiracy'. Lets face the facts - the CFR controls this country, and controls the media. The Council on Foreign relations. Most people don't know this. All the heads of major news outlets are members of this secret organization. Google is as well. Microsoft is not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

In Mini's post, he/she says Microsoft is loosing the evil empire reputation. In my post, I said that they are in fact a company behind freedom, and security. We are a company that believes in protecting its users. Microsoft is not a member of the highly secret CFR. People on this blog could care less about something as important as this. Microsoft is not the evil empire, nor is it part of the evil empire. And I'm proud that its not a member of the CFR.

That's not conspiracy, its fact. I'd love to know why Gates and Ballmer are not 'in' with the elite like Google is.

(.)

Bad Gage Ju-Ju - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

he hit home on the reason this company will ultimately help to save our country and life as we know it. If you think this sounds crazy, you have no idea what's going on in the world and in the US...


Speaking of the power of information, I want to ask Microsoft to host an event, by Richard Gage...I won't mention what Gage's topic is...Does anyone have some kind advice for me, who I would ask, where I would pursue getting Microsoft to host this event?

You liberal wags always think you're so informed on political and world events, yet you're so uninformed you don't even know how the political system works. Unfortunately, this is very pervasive throughout our Microsoft employee environment where people believe everything they read on the web. Go back to your personal dailykos blog and quit bothering us until you have some real political chops and are at least informed on something other than liberal conspiracy theories. 'Nuff said.

(No more Richard Gage during moderation here. Promise. )

Go Megan - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

http://meganwallent.com/

I read the blog of Megan Wallent over the holidays. Megan is an exec at Microsoft and used to be called Michael. She discussed in frank detail her decision to present as a female and what that means for her at work. You might want to do what I did....click on the link called "How to read this blog".

Really brave and fascinating.

(Hurrah for Megan and for Microsoft being such an open-minded workplace, but this doesn't feel terribly on-topic.)

No, No, No - Handwash Hygiene - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

(What's next for Mini-Msft? Complaints about employees not washing hands after using the restroom?
Now that you mention it. Please wash your hands after using the restroom, which is particulary useful if you don't use enough paper to cover your hand when wiping your behind. I've observed people coming out of the WC straight to their offices...Yikes! and these are the "educated" folks...And, on a related topic the facilities group should clean those restrooms more often. Clearly the number of restrooms are not enough for the excessive number of employees in the buildings, and the level of maintance is vey basic. Perhaps, in an effort to reduce spending, they have sacrificed cleanliness and basic sanitary conditions.

(As fun as it is to be horrified over the lack of hygiene in the workforce, I'm just going to skip this for now.)

No, No, No - Handwash Hygiene - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

(What's next for Mini-Msft? Complaints about employees not washing hands after using the restroom?
Now that you mention it. Please wash your hands after using the restroom, which is particulary useful if you don't use enough paper to cover your hand when wiping your behind. I've observed people coming out of the WC straight to their offices...Yikes! and these are the "educated" folks...And, on a related topic the facilities group should clean those restrooms more often. Clearly the number of restrooms are not enough for the excessive number of employees in the buildings, and the level of maintance is vey basic. Perhaps, in an effort to reduce spending, they have sacrificed cleanliness and basic sanitary conditions.

(As fun as it is to be horrified over the lack of hygiene in the workforce, I'm just going to skip this for now.)

Control Panels, Open Office, etc etc - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

macbeach has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Didn't there used to be something in Windows called the "Control Panel"?

Didn't Apple more or less copy the idea from Windows?

You click on an icon and up comes a box full of all things that can be set by the user. Some are easy settings, some get more involved, some are locked unless you have the admin password.

How hard can it be? Someone at Microsoft, for reasons not yet publicly documented decided that the simple Control Panel was "broken" so now they fixed it by hiding parts of it all over the place.

Maybe thats what a bit of transparency would get you. A bit more of a dialog with users might save you a lot of re-do, don't ya think? I've never heard ANYONE complain about the way the Control Panel used to work and finding it (again) is the first thing that gets me cussing when I am called over to someone's house to get them un-stuck.

I make sure that they know before I leave that the problem they were having was not a problem with "the computer" it was a problem with their operating system. To get my help, they have to endure an anti-Microsoft lecture. Maybe I'm not the only one that handles it that way.

What are the people who do design at Microsoft smoking?

PS: I'll be replacing a broken copy of Office with Open Office in the next few days for a poor underpaid minister. He has to read a spreadsheet mailed to him once a month regarding his pension, and using a $400 product that only works when it is in the mood just isn't right.

I may just show him how to load the thing into Google docs while I'm at it. Come to think of it that is probably a better way to go (no telling when his system will become corrupted again).

(Sorry, just veering way too off-topic and into general bashing. Lots of other places for that.)

Control Panels, Open Office, etc etc - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

macbeach has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Didn't there used to be something in Windows called the "Control Panel"?

Didn't Apple more or less copy the idea from Windows?

You click on an icon and up comes a box full of all things that can be set by the user. Some are easy settings, some get more involved, some are locked unless you have the admin password.

How hard can it be? Someone at Microsoft, for reasons not yet publicly documented decided that the simple Control Panel was "broken" so now they fixed it by hiding parts of it all over the place.

Maybe thats what a bit of transparency would get you. A bit more of a dialog with users might save you a lot of re-do, don't ya think? I've never heard ANYONE complain about the way the Control Panel used to work and finding it (again) is the first thing that gets me cussing when I am called over to someone's house to get them un-stuck.

I make sure that they know before I leave that the problem they were having was not a problem with "the computer" it was a problem with their operating system. To get my help, they have to endure an anti-Microsoft lecture. Maybe I'm not the only one that handles it that way.

What are the people who do design at Microsoft smoking?

PS: I'll be replacing a broken copy of Office with Open Office in the next few days for a poor underpaid minister. He has to read a spreadsheet mailed to him once a month regarding his pension, and using a $400 product that only works when it is in the mood just isn't right.

I may just show him how to load the thing into Google docs while I'm at it. Come to think of it that is probably a better way to go (no telling when his system will become corrupted again).

(Sorry, just veering way too off-topic and into general bashing. Lots of other places for that.)

Control Panels, Open Office, etc etc - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

macbeach has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Didn't there used to be something in Windows called the "Control Panel"?

Didn't Apple more or less copy the idea from Windows?

You click on an icon and up comes a box full of all things that can be set by the user. Some are easy settings, some get more involved, some are locked unless you have the admin password.

How hard can it be? Someone at Microsoft, for reasons not yet publicly documented decided that the simple Control Panel was "broken" so now they fixed it by hiding parts of it all over the place.

Maybe thats what a bit of transparency would get you. A bit more of a dialog with users might save you a lot of re-do, don't ya think? I've never heard ANYONE complain about the way the Control Panel used to work and finding it (again) is the first thing that gets me cussing when I am called over to someone's house to get them un-stuck.

I make sure that they know before I leave that the problem they were having was not a problem with "the computer" it was a problem with their operating system. To get my help, they have to endure an anti-Microsoft lecture. Maybe I'm not the only one that handles it that way.

What are the people who do design at Microsoft smoking?

PS: I'll be replacing a broken copy of Office with Open Office in the next few days for a poor underpaid minister. He has to read a spreadsheet mailed to him once a month regarding his pension, and using a $400 product that only works when it is in the mood just isn't right.

I may just show him how to load the thing into Google docs while I'm at it. Come to think of it that is probably a better way to go (no telling when his system will become corrupted again).

(Sorry, just veering way too off-topic and into general bashing. Lots of other places for that.)

RIP Mini-Microsoft! - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Microsoft found who mini is, this is just PR crap created by one of the PR vendors MS uses to spread propaganda.
"RIP mini-msft blog"

(PR crap? Crap I can deal with, but PR crap? Anyway, heavens forbid someone should say something nice about what Microsoft is accomplishing. Oh. Get used to it.)

Control Panels, Open Office, etc etc - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

macbeach has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

Didn't there used to be something in Windows called the "Control Panel"?

Didn't Apple more or less copy the idea from Windows?

You click on an icon and up comes a box full of all things that can be set by the user. Some are easy settings, some get more involved, some are locked unless you have the admin password.

How hard can it be? Someone at Microsoft, for reasons not yet publicly documented decided that the simple Control Panel was "broken" so now they fixed it by hiding parts of it all over the place.

Maybe thats what a bit of transparency would get you. A bit more of a dialog with users might save you a lot of re-do, don't ya think? I've never heard ANYONE complain about the way the Control Panel used to work and finding it (again) is the first thing that gets me cussing when I am called over to someone's house to get them un-stuck.

I make sure that they know before I leave that the problem they were having was not a problem with "the computer" it was a problem with their operating system. To get my help, they have to endure an anti-Microsoft lecture. Maybe I'm not the only one that handles it that way.

What are the people who do design at Microsoft smoking?

PS: I'll be replacing a broken copy of Office with Open Office in the next few days for a poor underpaid minister. He has to read a spreadsheet mailed to him once a month regarding his pension, and using a $400 product that only works when it is in the mood just isn't right.

I may just show him how to load the thing into Google docs while I'm at it. Come to think of it that is probably a better way to go (no telling when his system will become corrupted again).

(Sorry, just veering way too off-topic and into general bashing. Lots of other places for that.)

What About MSPAC - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

I'm not sure if this is the place to discuss this - is there an internal forum we can discuss the following? If you're external to MS, then don't read this post it won't make sense.

I'm happy to have MSPAC, however almost everyone on my team feels that the best canidates don't get anywhere near fair media exposure, and unfortunately are excluded from MSPAC. But by internet, and sites such as Youtube, alternate canidates are getting alot of attention. IMHO MSPAC should support more free thinkers, and I'm with the poster who wants to bring Gage to campus! My entire team (almost) would love to have that.

A democracy should be all colors, not just red and blue, supporting two parties isn't truly democratic, and because of the power of information technology, it can't last for too much longer. I hope that we can support more than the red and blue, because other than Ron Paul...

lets get the conversation focused on Mini's post, there's alot of good points to talk about. and if he/she posts about MSPAC or politics, we probably should save posts like mine till then! Is there a DL for MSPAC?

(At this point, I don't see doing a post on MSPAC. It would make a great internal discussion, though.)

Everyone has forgotten about Microsoft - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

It's not that Microsoft is no longer percieved as the bad guy, it's that Microsoft is no longer percieved. Period. Nobody notices you guys anymore; we just don't care.

So the Zune may eventually turn into a viable iPod also-ran. Big whoop, there's not exactly a shortage of mp3 players out there. Eventually, Vista may become a viable replacement for XP (although SP1 isn't it). XP itself took a while to become a viable replacement for Windows 2000. So what? The OS is infrastructure, nobody gets excited about plumbing anymore. We just expect it to work and stay out of our way. Eventually the next release of your office software may get beaten into shape to work as well as the previous version, yada yada. Is the difference between me and Terry Pratchett that he has a better word processor? Is the difference between Warren Buffet and me that Buffett has better spreadsheet software?

Even the business models you point to, Google and Facebook and such, are old news. They exist. The niche they serve is currently filled. "Maybe we can eventually figure out how to do it as well as they do" is not a rallying cry anybody pays attention to.

Microsoft used to be the big bad putting everybody out of business, and was worth attention as a threat. But the dot-com bust took away half that fear, and the speed of the internet took away the rest. You didn't render Yahoo irrelevant, Google did. You didn't trash Livejournal, Six Apart alienated half its user base before selling the corpse to the Russian mafia. The failure of the PS3 was entirely Sony's fault (they promoted Ken Kutaragi to management rather than just letting him do his thing as an engineer), and CompUSA going under had nothing to do with you either. Microsoft's not even interesting as a bogeyman anymore.

There's also no strong personality behind microsoft anymore. Gates and Ballmer have had retirement pending for so many years I don't even know if they still plan to leave this year, but I don't see what difference it makes if they stay either. At one point Ray Ozzie was going to replace them, then it was going to be some roman Triumvirate, and then I lost track. I can tell you who the person is behind successful movies or television shows (Jos Whedon's done a bunch, Dr. Who wouldn't be back without Russel T. Davies, for House it's both David Shore and Hugh Laurie). They're always somebody who made the success happen. But who is the person behind any modern Microsoft product, successful or not? Who would the current Office iteration not be the same without? Browser? OS? Is there any one person that actually _matters_ to those projects, or are they all faceless interchangeable cogs?

Gaming's all consoles now: my TV has a PS2 hooked up to it (mostly used as a DVD player) and a Wii (mostly used to watch Youtube videos via the built-in browser, which turns out to be opera although the only reason know this is it says so while loading). My wife was going to upgrade to Vista if that was the only way to run Spore, but now she has a Macintosh laptop (she's a webmaster for a paper game publisher). She didn't mean to leave Windows behind but just hasn't bothered to set her desktop back up since we moved over the summer. I bought her VMWare for christmas (discounted at CompUSA's going out of business sale), but she hasn't bothered to set it up yet. (None of the three old XP cds we've managed to dig up will install under it, and there's no way we're buying _another_ copy of an OS we already have a half-dozen licenses to.) My brother's a nontechnical salesbeing who used to sell .NET widgets to people, these days his new day job has him working with Red Hat Enterprise instead. When I visited my grandmother in october she mentioned being so deeply unhappy with the new computer my uncle had recently bought her (which was also the first vista system I'd actually seen in person outside of a computer store, her old one was Windows 2000, and no she couldn't name either OS) that she was actually considering buying a Macintosh. This is a woman who finally stopped sending email in all caps last year. She mentioned this while trying to scan in an old family photo to send me a copy (and having three different things go wrong in the process), but it wasn't _important_ to her. It came up exactly once in a week long visit.

The lack of vitriol aimed at Microsoft is because the general populace has mostly forgotten about the company. Heck, even the Linux geeks have forgotten about you now that SCO's gone bankrupt. (They're happily buying preinstalled Ubuntu systems from Dell or whatever it is Wal-mart sold out of before christmas, probably other places too. At the moment they're squeeing about the One Laptop Per Child thing.)

Microsoft is not as evil as the white house, not as entertainingly self-destructive as paris or britney (or the democrats in congress), and your products are all commodities most people would _prefer_ to use 10 year old versions of rather than the current stuff if it weren't for the security holes. Vista and Office are as "new and improved" as a tube of toothpaste making the same claims.

Heck, PC operating systems are old news to _Apple_. They sucked their engineers off of Leopard (delaying its release for months) to work on the iPhone. That thing was shiny and exciting. The next leopard release? (Or ocelot, or whatever it is now?) Who cares?

(There's some good stuff in there but too much of it is loaded with aspiration for Microsoft to be a forgotten company - what evidence is there of that?)

Everyone has forgotten about Microsoft - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

It's not that Microsoft is no longer percieved as the bad guy, it's that Microsoft is no longer percieved. Period. Nobody notices you guys anymore; we just don't care.

So the Zune may eventually turn into a viable iPod also-ran. Big whoop, there's not exactly a shortage of mp3 players out there. Eventually, Vista may become a viable replacement for XP (although SP1 isn't it). XP itself took a while to become a viable replacement for Windows 2000. So what? The OS is infrastructure, nobody gets excited about plumbing anymore. We just expect it to work and stay out of our way. Eventually the next release of your office software may get beaten into shape to work as well as the previous version, yada yada. Is the difference between me and Terry Pratchett that he has a better word processor? Is the difference between Warren Buffet and me that Buffett has better spreadsheet software?

Even the business models you point to, Google and Facebook and such, are old news. They exist. The niche they serve is currently filled. "Maybe we can eventually figure out how to do it as well as they do" is not a rallying cry anybody pays attention to.

Microsoft used to be the big bad putting everybody out of business, and was worth attention as a threat. But the dot-com bust took away half that fear, and the speed of the internet took away the rest. You didn't render Yahoo irrelevant, Google did. You didn't trash Livejournal, Six Apart alienated half its user base before selling the corpse to the Russian mafia. The failure of the PS3 was entirely Sony's fault (they promoted Ken Kutaragi to management rather than just letting him do his thing as an engineer), and CompUSA going under had nothing to do with you either. Microsoft's not even interesting as a bogeyman anymore.

There's also no strong personality behind microsoft anymore. Gates and Ballmer have had retirement pending for so many years I don't even know if they still plan to leave this year, but I don't see what difference it makes if they stay either. At one point Ray Ozzie was going to replace them, then it was going to be some roman Triumvirate, and then I lost track. I can tell you who the person is behind successful movies or television shows (Jos Whedon's done a bunch, Dr. Who wouldn't be back without Russel T. Davies, for House it's both David Shore and Hugh Laurie). They're always somebody who made the success happen. But who is the person behind any modern Microsoft product, successful or not? Who would the current Office iteration not be the same without? Browser? OS? Is there any one person that actually _matters_ to those projects, or are they all faceless interchangeable cogs?

Gaming's all consoles now: my TV has a PS2 hooked up to it (mostly used as a DVD player) and a Wii (mostly used to watch Youtube videos via the built-in browser, which turns out to be opera although the only reason know this is it says so while loading). My wife was going to upgrade to Vista if that was the only way to run Spore, but now she has a Macintosh laptop (she's a webmaster for a paper game publisher). She didn't mean to leave Windows behind but just hasn't bothered to set her desktop back up since we moved over the summer. I bought her VMWare for christmas (discounted at CompUSA's going out of business sale), but she hasn't bothered to set it up yet. (None of the three old XP cds we've managed to dig up will install under it, and there's no way we're buying _another_ copy of an OS we already have a half-dozen licenses to.) My brother's a nontechnical salesbeing who used to sell .NET widgets to people, these days his new day job has him working with Red Hat Enterprise instead. When I visited my grandmother in october she mentioned being so deeply unhappy with the new computer my uncle had recently bought her (which was also the first vista system I'd actually seen in person outside of a computer store, her old one was Windows 2000, and no she couldn't name either OS) that she was actually considering buying a Macintosh. This is a woman who finally stopped sending email in all caps last year. She mentioned this while trying to scan in an old family photo to send me a copy (and having three different things go wrong in the process), but it wasn't _important_ to her. It came up exactly once in a week long visit.

The lack of vitriol aimed at Microsoft is because the general populace has mostly forgotten about the company. Heck, even the Linux geeks have forgotten about you now that SCO's gone bankrupt. (They're happily buying preinstalled Ubuntu systems from Dell or whatever it is Wal-mart sold out of before christmas, probably other places too. At the moment they're squeeing about the One Laptop Per Child thing.)

Microsoft is not as evil as the white house, not as entertainingly self-destructive as paris or britney (or the democrats in congress), and your products are all commodities most people would _prefer_ to use 10 year old versions of rather than the current stuff if it weren't for the security holes. Vista and Office are as "new and improved" as a tube of toothpaste making the same claims.

Heck, PC operating systems are old news to _Apple_. They sucked their engineers off of Leopard (delaying its release for months) to work on the iPhone. That thing was shiny and exciting. The next leopard release? (Or ocelot, or whatever it is now?) Who cares?

(There's some good stuff in there but too much of it is loaded with aspiration for Microsoft to be a forgotten company - what evidence is there of that?)

Everyone has forgotten about Microsoft - New comment on Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Microsoft's 2008 - What's Going Well?":

It's not that Microsoft is no longer percieved as the bad guy, it's that Microsoft is no longer percieved. Period. Nobody notices you guys anymore; we just don't care.

So the Zune may eventually turn into a viable iPod also-ran. Big whoop, there's not exactly a shortage of mp3 players out there. Eventually, Vista may become a viable replacement for XP (although SP1 isn't it). XP itself took a while to become a viable replacement for Windows 2000. So what? The OS is infrastructure, nobody gets excited about plumbing anymore. We just expect it to work and stay out of our way. Eventually the next release of your office software may get beaten into shape to work as well as the previous version, yada yada. Is the difference between me and Terry Pratchett that he has a better word processor? Is the difference between Warren Buffet and me that Buffett has better spreadsheet software?

Even the business models you point to, Google and Facebook and such, are old news. They exist. The niche they serve is currently filled. "Maybe we can eventually figure out how to do it as well as they do" is not a rallying cry anybody pays attention to.

Microsoft used to be the big bad putting everybody out of business, and was worth attention as a threat. But the dot-com bust took away half that fear, and the speed of the internet took away the rest. You didn't render Yahoo irrelevant, Google did. You didn't trash Livejournal, Six Apart alienated half its user base before selling the corpse to the Russian mafia. The failure of the PS3 was entirely Sony's fault (they promoted Ken Kutaragi to management rather than just letting him do his thing as an engineer), and CompUSA going under had nothing to do with you either. Microsoft's not even interesting as a bogeyman anymore.

There's also no strong personality behind microsoft anymore. Gates and Ballmer have had retirement pending for so many years I don't even know if they still plan to leave this year, but I don't see what difference it makes if they stay either. At one point Ray Ozzie was going to replace them, then it was going to be some roman Triumvirate, and then I lost track. I can tell you who the person is behind successful movies or television shows (Jos Whedon's done a bunch, Dr. Who wouldn't be back without Russel T. Davies, for House it's both David Shore and Hugh Laurie). They're always somebody who made the success happen. But who is the person behind any modern Microsoft product, successful or not? Who would the current Office iteration not be the same without? Browser? OS? Is there any one person that actually _matters_ to those projects, or are they all faceless interchangeable cogs?

Gaming's all consoles now: my TV has a PS2 hooked up to it (mostly used as a DVD player) and a Wii (mostly used to watch Youtube videos via the built-in browser, which turns out to be opera although the only reason know this is it says so while loading). My wife was going to upgrade to Vista if that was the only way to run Spore, but now she has a Macintosh laptop (she's a webmaster for a paper game publisher). She didn't mean to leave Windows behind but just hasn't bothered to set her desktop back up since we moved over the summer. I bought her VMWare for christmas (discounted at CompUSA's going out of business sale), but she hasn't bothered to set it up yet. (None of the three old XP cds we've managed to dig up will install under it, and there's no way we're buying _another_ copy of an OS we already have a half-dozen licenses to.) My brother's a nontechnical salesbeing who used to sell .NET widgets to people, these days his new day job has him working with Red Hat Enterprise instead. When I visited my grandmother in october she mentioned being so deeply unhappy with the new computer my uncle had recently bought her (which was also the first vista system I'd actually seen in person outside of a computer store, her old one was Windows 2000, and no she couldn't name either OS) that she was actually considering buying a Macintosh. This is a woman who finally stopped sending email in all caps last year. She mentioned this while trying to scan in an old family photo to send me a copy (and having three different things go wrong in the process), but it wasn't _important_ to her. It came up exactly once in a week long visit.

The lack of vitriol aimed at Microsoft is because the general populace has mostly forgotten about the company. Heck, even the Linux geeks have forgotten about you now that SCO's gone bankrupt. (They're happily buying preinstalled Ubuntu systems from Dell or whatever it is Wal-mart sold out of before christmas, probably other places too. At the moment they're squeeing about the One Laptop Per Child thing.)

Microsoft is not as evil as the white house, not as entertainingly self-destructive as paris or britney (or the democrats in congress), and your products are all commodities most people would _prefer_ to use 10 year old versions of rather than the current stuff if it weren't for the security holes. Vista and Office are as "new and improved" as a tube of toothpaste making the same claims.

Heck, PC operating systems are old news to _Apple_. They sucked their engineers off of Leopard (delaying its release for months) to work on the iPhone. That thing was shiny and exciting. The next leopard release? (Or ocelot, or whatever it is now?) Who cares?

(There's some good stuff in there but too much of it is loaded with aspiration for Microsoft to be a forgotten company - what evidence is there of that?)