Hail Ants
I, for one, welcome our new Chief Executive Overlord
Microsoft’s new CEO is the executive running its $20bn server, tools and cloud computing businesses: Satya Nadella. Forty-six-year-old Nadella will, as earlier reports had suggested, assume the role immediately, Microsoft said on Tuesday. Also, as reported, Bill Gates is stepping down as Microsoft chairman. Gates will stay …
People actually use Windows as a *server*? Well I never. Gosh, next you'll be telling me they have a ... hey, hang on, you're right. Let's not harp on about you know what anymore, but instead see if you for once have the balls to comment on the topic all microsoft shills conveniently ignore - the extortion racket they are running with Android, by which of course I mean their only meaningful contribution to mobile being the $5 per handset they fleece from the OEMs.
Has Microsoft said what patents Android violates? Have they been challenged in court?
Or has their just been a letter to Samsung/Sony/Lenovo etc saying "call it $5 per tablet and you won't suddenly find your OEM licence to sell copies of Windows on your PCs and Laptops cut off. And this time it's not abuse of a monopoly because you are actually paying for patents."
"Has Microsoft said what patents Android violates? Have they been challenged in court?"
Maybe not, but the fact that not just one but quite a few very large companies that could easily afford to fight the patents have chosen to pay the fee rather than go to court suggests that MS probably have a rather strong patent claim that will stand up in court.
>>"Has Microsoft said what patents Android violates? Have they been challenged in court?"
They've said it to the companies involved which are the relevant parties. They've not been challenged in court which gives you a pretty clear idea of how slim the paying organizations think their chances of victory are.
>>"Or has their just been a letter to Samsung/Sony/Lenovo etc saying "call it $5 per tablet and you won't suddenly find your OEM licence to sell copies of Windows on your PCs and Laptops cut off."
Microsoft couldn't legally do that. It would be shot down easily in court under anti-trust laws. Which shows how very little you actually know what you're talking about. As to a court case over the patents themselves (the more plausible scenario), we're talking Samsung here. Not a company known to be shy of lawsuits. And Sony. And Lenovo. Do you have the remotest idea how big these players are? Or do you just have a mental map in which Microsoft is this giant evil colossus that dwarfs all others? Hell, Google has a higher market-cap than Microsoft! Do you really think that between all these huge companies, they wouldn't turn over MS's patents if they weren't valid?
TL;DR: You're a partisan idiot.
Netware was bloody reliable, quick and gave us little issue.
But customers insisted on their Windows servers despite the performance drop when they downgraded.
18 month uptimes were commonplace.
The rot was also forced by MS breaking Netware clients, and the insistance of Novell to add a GUI to the server,
Final death was due to lack of support from our customers hardware support teams.
Our sites with 4.x or 5.x ran reliably for years.
"Big Ears Gates is stepping down...."
Only to a degree. He's still got an official status within the firm, and so his presence will linger on like a foul guff in a warm lift. You know the ones, hot, silent messengers of death, capable of turning the silvering of mirrors black, and guaranteeing that the lift will stop at the next floor for an attractive young colleague to get in the lift, and instantly give you the evil eye for crimes against humanity, before escaping to tell everybody what a beast you are (gentlemen, you've all been here).
And that's bad news for the new guy. Not only does he have a new chairman breathing down his collar, but he's got Gates hanging around, responsible for nothing, but telling him what he should do. I suppose it depends what shareholders want. If they want Microsoft to reinvent itself, Gates should go, Nadella shouldn't have been appointed, nor any other insider. If the shareholders just want MS to remain a cash generating cow hoping that nobody will take away the enterprise software market, then he should stay. But expecting not just one, but a gang of insiders to be revolutionaries is daft - all these people were complicit in the failure of Microsoft to evolve. And Nadella's got the toxic Elop hanging around, spurned for the top job, hoping Nadella will mess up, and that Elop can squeeze his backside into the sweat-stained leather throne. That's no recipe for success. A question then: Will Elop last long enough to watch Nadella crash and burn, or will Elop be pushed out, or even flounce off in a strop because he didn't get to be big cheese?
This doesn't sound like a recipe for success to me, but maybe the people who made the appointment are right - taking a view Microsoft will never evolve to put customers first, so why take the risk, when you can just sit and count the gold for the next five to ten years.
It would appear to me that on the contrary, there's been a large cultural shift in MS's engineering since BG took his hand off the tiller. Whereas BG famously argued against code modularity:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ams_goes_windows_for_warships/
by the time of IIS 7, MS were trumpeting that very same modularity and replace-ability that Gates had argued against:
http://www.iis.net/overview/choice/modularandextensiblewebserver
Similarly you just have to look at the download size of the browser testing VMs that MS have made available to realise that they have put a lot of effort into modularising the OS.
Gates's point of course is that there's no *commercial* value in allowing other companies to release components that can replace your software - quite the opposite in fact.
You can argue that the Linux kernel isn't modular either. It's certainly monolithic in nature.
When you start splitting things up you do start to create issues of compatibility and blame. Web server crashes due to bad module, web server gets the blame when its the fault of a bad module.
This is why Microsoft stopped letting 3rd party drivers be automatically usable. Windows crashed and Microsoft got the flak for some vendors bad driver. It's the same reason Linus keeps having fits at people for committing bad unfinished code to the kernel.
"Gates's point of course is that there's no *commercial* value in allowing other companies to release components that can replace your software - quite the opposite in fact."
Gates has since witnessed how it is possible to be open and yet still have subtle soft control over the market. Look at Google. Technically open, and dozens of tiny little barriers to going against the way they do it. Watch for MS to follow Google's lead with a lot more 'soft' control in the future. Gates wasn't wrong about stopping people being able to leave. He just didn't realize you could do it without overt force.
BillG has been firmly in charge all along.
During the Ballmer era, BillG had found the day-to-day CEO-ship tiresome and handed that over to Ballmer. He never really relinquished control though.
Ballmer might have been CEO, but BillG was charirman. Ballmer was only there due to being BFFs with BillG. BillG just operated Ballmer like a glove puppet.
Now we have a new puppet. BillG has also found the chairmanship tiresome, but still keeps his technical control hat on.
So expect some changes in business models etc, but all the ribbons, TIFKAMs and other technical geegaws will continue.
BillG has been firmly in charge all along
I politely disagree (I have to). If you put MS bias aside, it wasn't until BillG stepped down from the day-to-day responsibilities of managing Microsoft that the company started losing it's grip on what their customer base wanted. It was BillG that decided to integrate IE into Windows because after he abandoned his initial skepticism with the internet, he realized that the browser was the most important app in any computer.
he realized that the browser was the most important app in any computer
He realized that monopolizing access to "The Interwebs" via a proprietary and "enhanced" portal application fused to the underlying OS like a facehugger would make sure that Microsoft would stay a factor in the age of interchangeable commodity browsers and standards as people would need to have Windows to get the "enhanced" Internet.
Hope this helps, you can go back to erasing Stalin's ex-colleagues out of photographs.
Nothing is more disgusting than Gates and his proprietary shit sandwiches.
>>He realized that monopolizing access to "The Interwebs" via a proprietary and "enhanced" portal application fused to the underlying OS like a facehugger would make sure that Microsoft would stay a factor in the age of interchangeable commodity browsers and standards as people would need to have Windows to get the "enhanced" Internet.
You realize that the "portal application fused to the underlying OS like a facehugger" was simply ahead of its time? What do you think ChromeOS, is? What about Firefox OS or the latest Ubuntu desktops or how tablets and phones now integrate HTML / CSS rendering and JavaScript directly into the OS for performance reasons? MS was its usual victim of coming in too early. But the Active Desktop was actually an early ancestor of what we see today.
>>"And the rest is used for astroturfing Windows 8 in the comment section."
You know what would be the first and most effective tactic at undermining those saying positive things about Microsoft if I were a shill hired by one of their competitors? To immediately start making statements about how other people were shills.
So, guilty conscience or just paranoia. Heaven forbid that some people should actually like what one of the leading software companies in the world produces. Clearly they are in that position because everyone hates their products!
You are permitted to buy computers with Windows 7 pre-installed.
OEMs dare to manufacture chromebooks.
Windows Phone market share was 12%, now 3% - and mobile phones are a far bigger market that desktops and laptops.
The first two would not have been tolerated a decade ago. Mobile phones were a vital strategic target that now belongs to Samsung and Apple. The best Microsoft can say is 'We are aiming for third place'.
YoY growth is a useless statistic when comparing to other manufactures. For example, I sold 1 unit last year and 3 this year, I have over 100% YoY growth. My competitor sold 10 last year and 5 this year, 50% compared to last year.
By this statistic, my competitor did worse than I despite selling more products and earning more profit.
>>"YoY growth is a useless statistic when comparing to other manufactures."
But not a useless statistic. It shows that a product is establishing itself and not going anywhere. And given all the crap people kept talking about WP in its first couple of years about how it was a dead end, would die off, lack of support, could never become a real contender, Year on Year growth is a counter argument to all that hate. Because so long as it keeps growing in a market that is slowing (there is less and less low-hanging fruit of people who don't have a smartphone every year), then it is establishing itself and it is doing well.
People do not read the adverts beside articles on the internet any more. These days the article is the advert. WP articles adverts are easy to recognise. They will show year on year growth without mentioning the tiny market share. They will mention units sold without multiplying by average selling price or mentioning installed base. I am sure you can provide citations of these adverts.
WP installed base is fifth, behind Symbian and Blackberry.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/11/bloodbath-year-four-smartphones-galore-q3-results-all-market-shares.html
Despite heavy discounting and subsidies, WP is in decline:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2014/01/23/just-how-much-brand-damage-is-microsoft-doing-to-nokia/
Nokia gets hefty subsidies, sells its head office (and counts the sale as a smart phone) and still makes a thundering loss on each phone. No-one else wants to 'compete' with that.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/04/nokia-sells-head-office-building-for-222-million-should-keep-company-afloat-for-another-few-months/
Even if there weren't 101 reasons not to buy a Windows Phone, the carriers will not let Microsoft in the door. Microsoft own Skype, which the carriers loathe with a fiery passion. Elop complained about lack of support from the carriers caused by the doubly indirect connection with Skype. I do not see the carriers lining up to sell Windows phones now that Microsoft has bought Nokia's handset division.
http://www.mobot.net/101-reasons-buy-windows-phone-7-5-device-ouch/3
By comparison, Google is selling Motorola, so will no longer be competing directly against its own manufacturing partners. Microsoft maintain their high profits despite falling market share by increasing prices. If things carry on as they are now, this will take them out of the phone market, the home computer market and the small business market. Only multinationals and governments will be able to afford lock-in prices. The other choice is to compete on price (free) which trashes their traditional (enormous) revenue stream. Anyone trying to give Microsoft as mass market future will be fired for slaughtering the cash cow.
I am sure Nadella will be stretched in opposite directions just like Ballmer was. If he follows the contradictory requirements, I expect more adverts telling us how Microsoft is selling more WP9 than any other manufacturer, that profit margins are up and that they are successfully skimming more and more profit from their surviving business partners.
..., he is just another corporate beancounter like Ballmer with similarly zero relevant experience, he never had a chance against Nadella - nor did any outsider as long as Gates & Ballmer stayed on, no big CEO would come over from their cushy jobs and try to perform a full makeover with these two watching over their shoulder, no way.
The selection of the former head of the Server & Tools unit was the most obvious choice, I always said it, among his peers (business division chiefs) he and his team were the most solid yet most innovative performers he has a drama-free, no-nonsense, low-key style, with no grandstanding while delivering junk that forces the entire company to go along with stupid decisions product after product (a' la Sinofsky & Office, Windows etc) and he is an ENGINEER, fergadsakes - enough of this onslaught of *&^%$ stupid, loudmouthed yet clueless, arrogant, fat@ss MBA-types, sales clowns, beancounters and their ilks!
“He has a remarkable ability to see what's going on in the market, to sense opportunity, and to really understand how we come together at Microsoft to execute against those opportunities in a collaborative way, err... in a similar way that I totally haven't done since during my days in tenure. I mean the market told us it really didn't want Kinect v1 - but they know nothing so we told them that they had to have it and pony up another $100 for the privilege, err... it's great... no, it really is... honestly."
I just need Microsoft to come up with a decent replacement for XP, really. Can you get that done please?
I want:
A good file manager
Classic Start Menu
Ability to opt out of all "cloud integration".
Use, flexible, logical search function.
'Kay?
Here, this guy has some good ideas; hire him: http://xpwasmyidea.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately for you if anything this spells deeper integration into the cloud. Only way for them to keep up with the pack chasing the hipster kids... If he has any sense he'd split windows in two. A 7 fork for enterprise and a Metro or whatever they call it these days for everyone else
The problem MS has with XP is not simple:
Most end users want a Win9 to offer the improvements to security and performance that underlies Win8, but without the abomination of TIFKAM (my apologies to the few who genuinely like it), and to run the stuff they already have.
But XP supported a lot of dumb legacy features that are needed to allow a lot of software to run properly, and it is simply not possible to support them and also to improve underlying security. In addition there are a lot of legacy features that MS has decided to drop because it is not in their interests to spend the time & money to do properly (e.g. supporting 16-bit applications).
So there is a hope that Win9 might roll back the dumb aspects of the TIFKAM interface, but the push towards phone/fondle-slab/desktop integration may still be too strong, and it is very unlikely that legacy software will really work as hoped.
Time to make your XP VMs and make sure they have little or no internet access...
His email hit all the right notes - people, enable, empower, for a better world.
Now can he live it? We will see.
The bit about Microsoft being the only one positioned to deliver that should be a surprise to Apple and Google, and spur some closed door meetings at Microsoft's hardware partners.
My standard Windows , "sand boxed" and sort of cloud orientated by their nature, TIFKAM "app's" have all, in the last week, stopped working on my Windows 8.1 install. I know this is a trivial problem because nobody actually uses these, but if you could point some minions in the general direction of a solution which works and doesn't require a complete install, it would probably be appreciated.
Ta in advance,
Me...
ps
Desktop applications of varying work related capability still function to the standard level of peachy.
This is a good move.
Server 2012 aka "The Cloud OS" delivers some great features both for Azure and Private data centers but you get all the goodies even if you are just running one or two servers in your company, and it doesn't force you in to using any of them if you don't want to. This is what Windows 8 should have done, innovate but don't force people in to it.
Get it right and they will come. Satya is perfectly capable of getting it right when left to get on with it, he has proved that.
The only big question now is whether or not he will be left to manage Microsoft how he wants to and how Microsoft needs him to, or if Gates and Ballmer will be controlling him from behind the curtain, stopping him from making real progress.
At this point, I am cautiously optimistic.
I really like Windows 8. Both 8.0 and 8.1 as well as it happens.
What I *don't* like is the inability to plonk down £50 (or whatever) and get a simple, boxed, installable DVD version of it.
Even though I only paid £14 last year for 8.0, then got a free 8.1 update, I'd still rather pay a small fee to have a single install disk (I regularly re-install - don't question/ask, just assume there is a reason) rather than having to wipe, install 7, upgrade to 8.0 then upgrade to 8.1. [I've actually got a little trick that avoids the need for 7 first, but that's not really the point.]
All those Windows 7 boxes out there may stand more chance of getting upgraded if you could just pop onto the Microsoft site and buy a simple DVD.
What if the AC's machine has hardware swaps in between installs?
Last time I tried moving a Windows HDD between machines it threw a major wobbly as half-way through booting it decided it could no longer read the boot device.
The point is, it should be possible/easy to have a bootable DVD or USB stick to test/install/fix Windows just like Linux supports, and that should be the normal approach. WTF is the whole activation key for if not to make the install image worthless (and therefore should be a simple download or torrent, with SAH-1 hashes of course)?
Nadella, well, there is a perhaps a limit to how mean I am, and perhaps an even deeper lack of knowledge and understanding but in the name of logic, good by Elop. And I do have some problems here, best left to my own. Still you have this large Bill!. Bill had his go at inventing something new, for many years, without any success. As far as I remember he used to sit quiet, eyes closed, asleep regarding anything new. Good luck Nadella, I hope the psychological price for you is bearable and not too high. Apart from that , in previous comments, there is this funny problem with Indian names. What the hell, there are no "American" names except, funny, funny, Indian (the read ones) names. Oh dear, the more you read about US companies the more Indian, Japanese and Chinese names you find, and never mind Universities. Just feel lucky (and do something about education, (starting with kids)).
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