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Anodyne

From design guidelines for Microsoft Aero, on how to present messages about security:

Incorporate a reassuring tone that leads with a description of how the user's data is being protected. For example, list your third-party certifications and endorsements.

"As used by Tiger Woods!"

Somehow I am not reassured.

posted Wed 21 Apr 2004 in /issues/microsoft | link

benighted

Telegraph

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and the world's wealthiest man, is to receive an honorary knighthood for “services to global enterprise”.

Economist

Big donors to political parties get peerages not for “services to industry” or “services to culture” but for services to keeping the prime minister's or the opposition leader's flunkeys in a job.

posted Mon 26 Jan 2004 in /issues/microsoft | link

Microsoft ships GPL'd software

I've just seen what may be the first case of Microsoft publicly distributing GPL'd software. Their Computational Clustering Technical Preview Toolkit includes the PLAPACK Parallel Linear Algebra Package, which is released under the GPL.

Microsoft also ship some GPL'd GNU utilities in their Services for Unix package.

There's nothing wrong with this; in fact it's great to see Microsoft finally becoming part of the free software community. (Welcome to the 90s.) I suppose if they're giving it to their customers it means they think it's a good thing, and the GPL is not a "cancer", "virus", "communism", "intellectual-property destroying", mean to kittens, etc.

(Does anyone have an archive of stupid/embarassing things Microsoft have said about free software?)

I have a little image of the Berlin Wall falling...

posted Thu 8 Jan 2004 in /issues/microsoft | link

Freedom to Innovate: Swag review

From politechbot

A couple of weeks ago you mentioned Microsoft's FreedomToInnovate.com and the availability of T-Shirts. Intrigued, I had to check them out. The shirts say "Microsoft" over the front left breast and on the back is a rather uninspired logo of an American flag with the union portion of the flag replaced with a lame sub-PowerPoint-clipart-grade computer terminal graphic....

I would like to thank Bill Gates, Bruce Kratz, and anonymous Haitian slaves, for making all this possible.

posted Thu 17 Jul 2003 in /issues/microsoft | link

LNUX = Linux???

Dion writes:

The news stated this morning that Steve Ballmer reported the future at MSFT is uncertain. They are having trouble luring programmers away from Linux.

And the Business news casters follow this by saying Linux is up 60% already.

Even the Business idiots who cover the stock market still think LNUX = Linux.

MORONS!!!

The part of this that is most true and that makes me most happy is that Microsoft are having trouble getting programmers away from Linux. Having plenty of independent software developers (ISVs) has always been their strength, but Linux scales up better, for a few reasons. (Heh, considering the degree of lock in they have, "dependent software vendors" would be a more accurate term. :-)

Being strong in Universities gets lots of bright programmers used to working on Linux. I'm sure MS will try (even harder) to counter by getting educational discounts and partial source access out into unis, but really they can't beat free and they can't beat full access.

Getting an ego blowjob from a Microsoft recruiter at a career fair is pretty powerful, but being at uni and getting your patches accepted by Linus (or httpd-dev, or core-team, or whatever) is a greater boost.

I remember realizing when I was in final year that if they achieved their 100% marketshare goal then the only place to do interesting work would be at Microsoft. Everybody else would just be building hokey Access databases and rebooting Exchange servers; heaps of no fun. Perhaps if they could afford to hire every good programmer then this would be alright, but they just can't. There will be people left over who want to program cool stuff but can't do it on MS's terms; Linux is now the most interesting place for those people to work.

Up until a few years ago the Microsoft platform was perhaps a better bet for people who wanted to make heaps of money, but I think that too is switching the other way. With Delphi/Kylix on Linux and good web development tools there are comfortable migration paths for proprietary or in-house developers. And ISVs are (finally!) starting to realize that Microsoft is your best friend only long enough to fatten you up for the slaughter. The best outcome is you sell out: good for your pocket, but perhaps not so satisfying. The worst, and more likely, is bitterness and death as channel partners lock you out, APIs are closed off, and your product is shipped for free in Windows.

posted Fri 6 Jun 2003 in /issues/microsoft | link

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