WTF!
"And while Redmond hauls plenty of cash through the door it has not created a major new technology market for decades."
Has it ever really "created" major technologies in the past?
Even Windows wasn't original.
Rupert Murdoch has issued another in his occasional series of tweets about technology companies. This time the target is Microsoft. Here's the tweet: Microsoft moves and options for future fascinate. Need for big clean out of bureaucracy and focus on next big tech wave. Metadata? — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) April 10, …
Very few successful companies 'create' the technologies that drive the market with which they're associated. Google didn't 'create' the search engine; Amazon didn't 'create' mail order; IBM didn't 'create' the computer; Ford didn't 'create' the motor car. Can you give us an example of a company that has become successful through creating from scratch a new technology sector? Please don't say Apple.
They may not have invented Windows or even DOS, but they certainly were key to the creation of the relevant technology market. Yes, they leverage IBM's clout to do so, but if it had been solely IBM I don't think we'd have the IT market that we do today. Remember, this whole market is the result of one very important accident: IBM didn't think PCs would ever rival mainframes or minicomputers, so their original PC was done on a shoe string budget that meant no patents and lots of off the shelf tech from other vendors. But if IBM had written and owned the OS? Not so much.
But a Microsoft in partnership with News, providing a nicely-curated content distribution system that lines both companies' pockets, perhaps using metadata about users' online behaviour to target content and advertising, sounds interesting.
Interesting to whom?
Maybe some fat-ass prospective 'shareholders' like Carl Ichan-fuck-up-any-company-on-the-face-of-the-planet, or even Rupert himself. But here, in what remains of the middle class, the concept of Rupert's spew, with Microsoft's reach, is a chilling (and rather depressing) prospect, indeed.
Can I vote 'no', yet?
That's bloody obvious, for the consumer market. It's already started. They want a tablet for kitchen table to sofa, to Skype and surf. For heavier stuff, they'll grab the wireless keyboard with trackpad from wherever they laid it. They want to see it bigger, like with a show or movie, they'll throw the image on the TV with a Google Chromecast-type thingie. It'll still be showing on the tablet, as that'll be the touch-enabled controller, a fancy remote.
But people don't want a large lump of a PC occupying floor or table space. And users can barely be arsed to reach all the way up to a function key and use a trackpad or mouse for a command instead. Why would anyone think they'd want to lift their arms and reach over the keyboard to touch a monitor?
Thus MS bureaucracy can't see the obvious and still expects users to follow MS blindly. Users didn't follow them across the XP to Vista divide, yet MS didn't get the message. With Win 8 and Surface 1 (RT!), we saw management sit back and wait for the world to follow their piper's tune.
Good clean out urgently needed, indeed.
To use the name of a TV show where RM gets lampooned regularly
"Have I got OLD News for You".
Once upon a time newspapers were as close to the boundary of NEW and OLD as you could get.
Now unless you are showing the event live (no 3hr delays for the US West cost please) in the background then it is already OLD NEWS.
A tweet posted 2 minutes ago about something happening? Old news.
There is a still a place for dead tree news distribution.
Anyway, Rupert (Bear) Murdock is hardly speaking something we here don't already know.
Namely that MS is a management cesspit and needs urgent action before it overflows and comtaminates the rest of the company. It may alredy be too late.
The sad fact is that Google/Apple/etc need MS to be around. Those who wish for its demise are really short term thinkers (IMHO)
"There is a still a place for dead tree news distribution"
Yes you can look at an 18 year olds tits without being frowned on to much.
Being semi-serious, pull up a picture of a 18 year old topless and put it full screen on your tablet and look at it in a public place. Odd how it's "acceptable" in print, but not on a tablet.
What a odd world we live in....yes officer I'll turn it off now.
"But a Microsoft in partnership with News, providing a nicely-curated content distribution system that lines both companies' pockets, perhaps using metadata about users' online behaviour to target content and advertising, sounds interesting."
http://urlquery.net/report.php?id=1392866689348
http://urlquery.net/domain_graph.php?id=1392866689348
Ptreklam and Gezinti are Phorm in Turkey. Not that Mr Murdoch has form when it comes to interception of communications.. cough.
That pretty much overrates a simple markup language. And incidentally MS's early implementations of XML (MSXML) were non-conforming (e.g. did not normalise whitespace in attributes & more). That was no accident.
I remember a most entertaining conversation (prob still on the web somewhere) between some MS rep and one of the creators of the XML spec (might have been Tim Bray himself), where the rep just insistently bleated 'our implementation is conforming' only to be slapped down by the spec writer - again and again. Such fun!
To put it more simply for the author of this article, MS tried to break XML because it wasn't theirs, like they try to break everything.
And Murdoch, if you're reading this, I hope the coppas sniff their way up the chain of corruption right to the top. There's a noose waitin' for you, dog.
@BlueGreen
I was working with MSXML on one of our products early in its life. MSFT did have their own version of XML because in the early days the standard was not useful. Their 'extensions' made it so and we were able to develop our products using it. We constantly tried to use other browsers and change the specs of our programs to make them browser agnostic. It was impossible.
Further more one of our very smart guys was on a ww3c committee looking at the XML spec trying to get it extended so it would carry more information. Eventually it did, we changed our software and we could use FF etc.
We had Redmond people working with us and I do not remember any sense they were trying break XML, they just wanted push on.
MS did not follow the spec on whitespace normalisation. Whitespace normalisation was given from v 1.0 of the spec. That's a fact. I don't believe it was an accident it was borked either. I recall there were other problems but don't remember the details.
> MSFT did have their own version of XML because in the early days the standard was not useful
erm, in what way 'not useful' (except for being a bit opaque perhaps)
> Their 'extensions'
Curious, what extensions are these?
> We constantly tried to use other browsers
Ah, my point has zilch to do with browsers, just using MSXML for parsing. Browser irrelevant.
> XML spec trying to get it extended so it would carry more information
Eh, now I am interested. Except for binary data, where did xml fail originally? Note: am not trying to defend xml, just intrigued.
So the destroyer of mySpace and the inventor of the worst paywall in history wants to give advice to a technical company
Accepting advice from Rupert on technology is a bit like getting the wright brothers to give you design hints on your next passenger jet or Robert Stephenson on how to develop F1 cars.
OK, I am no great fan of Murdoch (on the contrary, I think he is the worst thing to happen to the media), but he is a man that, in a little over 60 years, went from being the owner of one small, Adelaide based local paper to owning one of the largest media conglomerates on the planet. He has taken over many failing companies, cleaned out the deadwood and restored them to profit.
OK, so he may not have technical knowledge, but the technical side of Microsoft isn't the side that's struggling (IMO). Like them or loathe them, they are still turning out products and updates much as they always were.
Where Microsoft is buggering up is that the company itself continues to misjudge the various markets it is competing in. This is a business problem, not a technical one. This is also an area that Murdoch apparently excels at sorting out.
Microsoft would be well served to listen to him.
Cheer up It's a Soaraway Life - YouTube link. Try to avoid the Dirty Digger's organs. Can anybody think of anything that he has made better for the rest of us?