Microsoft’s Very Good Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#171

Post by 3pt14159 » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

Aldo_MX wrote: post #132

3pt14159 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of their survival is depending on consumer perception of their brand. Microsoft sold us out to the NSA for a big fat cheque. Apple and Google have been fighting doing so every step of the way. Companies that act like uncompetitive dicks should be shunned and regulated, especially when they do things like abuse the patent system. There is a real world outside of the Realism bubble. A real world where people strug…

Do you understand the concept of "national security"? If you were to invent, for example, teleporting, and you rejected selling your invention to the government, the most likely outcome would be that the government would confiscate your invention and recruit you against your will under threats of being jailed for risking "national security". There is no such thing as justice other than "abide by the law". Fine print:…

There are things inside the realism bubble too. Like nukes and teleportation devices.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#172

Post by exelius » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

togusa wrote: post #43

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1, writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me. They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open. Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits and licensing agreemen…

All this is true; but Nadella has driven real change at the company that was long overdue. I had been a frequent critic of Ballmer's management of the company, and I like a lot of the things that Nadella has been doing.

Ballmer had an attitude that Microsoft needed to dominate every industry they participated in or they would take their toys and go home. That mindset doesn't work in today's technology world, where markets overlap and shift rapidly.

Nadella can't change the culture of the company overnight, but he has pushed through a bunch of great changes to their product strategy -- especially in the consumer space. I mean, Office 2016 finally has a consistent interface on OS X, Windows and Android/iOS. And Microsoft has an enterprise sales partnership with Apple! That would never have happened under Ballmer -- Microsoft is essentially letting Apple use its greatest asset (its partner sales channels) to push iPads so that Microsoft can sell Office and Exchange licenses. Nevermind that its channel partners were already selling their clients iPads anyway; Ballmer would have crammed Surface down the pipeline and wondered why sales numbers were sluggish.

I think toward the end of his tenure, Ballmer started to see why the company was so dysfunctional: it was built for the cutthroat tech landscape of 1998, not the highly fractured-but-integrated market of 2015. His last major moves as CEO were to get rid of the most divisive senior executives to pave the way for a guy like Nadella who could be a peacemaker with the rest of the tech world. Ballmer tore down the silos about a year before putting Nadella in charge of rebuilding the company, which in hindsight was a great move.

All this said, you're absolutely right about keeping one eye open: Nadella is pushing change from the top, but there are a lot of middle managers and junior executives who still do things the old way and will probably never change. You can't change the culture of a company overnight, and they will still continue to be evil in lots of small, subversive ways. If the market lets them get away with being shitty to their customers, they will do it.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#173

Post by SCHiM » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

harkyns_castle wrote: post #64

togusa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1, writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me. They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open. Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits and licensing agreemen…

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces. There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways. Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched. They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

I don't think that's a fair position to take, fair to yourself that is. The company then is not the same as it is now. Enough time has passed since then and now that it's safe to assume that all the people in important positions have been partly replaced, and I'm sure the majority of those who remain are now in different situations than they were back then.

I think it's wrong to withhold fair consideration for MS products (specifically) just because they did something you think is wrong years ago.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#174

Post by yread » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:24 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #101

hvidgaard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people attribute a lot of Microsofts success to malice. In reality they have invested heavily in improving development methods, and it shows. One only have to read "I.M Wrights Hard Code", to understand exactly how many resources they allocate to improving the development cycle. And mind you this knowledge was distilled into text more than 10 years ago, but was part of the company for far longer. Re.…

but Netscape did the no. 1 mistake and tried to rewrite everything from scratch - I can not think of any working product where it is better to throw everything out and redo everything "the right way", rather than iteratively improving the code. This emphasizes a restriction technical debt may place on your company if your starting foundation is sufficiently poor. Lotus did a combination of these two fatal mistakes, t…

How did MS screw Verizon with Kin? It's not clear from the article...

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#175

Post by criddell » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

blumkvist wrote: post #69

harkyns_castle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces. There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways. Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched. They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

>Let them die. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Microsoft isn't going to die, but their enormous influence has eroded nicely. They're a mature, profitable, mostly boring company and I'm okay with that. XBox is pretty hip, but the reset of the company is about as interesting to the general public as Oracle, Cisco, or IBM.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#176

Post by baldfat » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #159

baldfat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my ehtical chart Apple (Worst Offender but also helped Open Source at times) Microsoft M$ (Middle of the road with it always depending on who you spoke with at the company) Google (Most powerful of the three in terms of control over people's lives if they wanted it, but I seriously think they stumble ethically not on purpose. I believe they try to follow, "Don't be evil" as a whole)

Why is Apple the worst offender? Many would put them above the rest because of their stance on privacy. > Google... stumble ethically not on purpose. Stumbling? When they ripped off Sun, they did so with deliberately and with awareness at the highest levels. There are emails revealed during the trial that leave no doubt. Also, of all the companies engaged in all the smartphone patents wars ( https://en.wikipedia.org/…

> Why is Apple the worst offender? (Top of my head) Lies and more lies (Power PC more Powerful than Intel X86, No malware, no virus, we are the definition of Innovation), Closed Wall Garden, Over Promising and Under Delivering, Patents, The eBook Price Fixing, the Approval Process on iOS, No Competition Hiring Agreement, Amiga Computer was 7 years ahead of the time and Apple lied about it for YEARS, Promising a Color Mac and it would be a simple card upgrade TOOK YEARS, and perhaps the worst of the lot iTunes GUI!!!!.

> When they ripped off Sun

Than why did Sun's CEO congratulate them? Sun also loves to rip off people look at Oracles' Unbreakable Linux AKA Redhat Linux.

I seriously have 30+ years of Apple hatred from before my Amiga days. Amiga community HATED Apple for their business practices and clear lack of innovation. I went to buy a Mac with my dad when released and my dad say the writing on the wall. Lies and more lies and Lisa wasn't more powerful just more expensive and you still sell those?

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#177

Post by exelius » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

Aldo_MX wrote: post #112

Godwin's Law warning I find more ridiculous the statement "we will never forgive Microsoft" than saying "we will never forgive Germany". They're a company, not a charity, they're in the business of making money, and if making money implies using "dirty tactics" such as saying phone manufacturers "bundle Office in your phones or we will use our patents against you" it will certainly happen regardless of which company…

People like to anthropomorphize companies as having a conscience, but you're right: they're just autonomous control structures with the goal of making as much money as possible. Sometimes their leaders will make bad decisions prioritizing money now over money later, but ultimately such decisions are often just as bad for the long-term health of the company as they are for the market (even though they may provide a short-term benefit).

And for everyone who says Microsoft should have told the NSA to shove it, just consider how quickly a major CEO can be taken down by the government: Jeff Smisek, widely considered one of the two most powerful men in the airline industry, was forced out of his position as CEO of United Airlines as part of a government corruption scandal with no more fanfare than a tersely worded press release. He has yet to be charged with anything, but criminal charges are inevitably coming. Any company that does business with the US government (as Microsoft does) is likely participating in some form of corruption or another. All they have to do is investigate that corruption and long jail sentences for senior executives will follow. It's essentially the NSA's version of "plata o plombo".

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#178

Post by ascagnel_ » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #148

outworlder wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you didn't mean "Oracle"? As far as I know, Microsoft deals with their business partners fairly. They don't try to negotiate a deal directly with a big customer and bypass their partners, for instance.

I'm talking more about "peers" than what I think you're referring to as "partners". E.g. 3Com as I cite elsewhere, Verizon WRT to the Kin, the company they licensed the start of Internet Explorer from (expected royalty payments never materialized when the gave it away for free), the examples go on and on and on. But I suppose with Balmer the salesman in charge in between Gates and Nadella they'd avoid sales channel b…

With regards to the Kin, I think Verizon shafted MS on that one. The device was good for it's time (something with photos and music targeted at teens that didn't have a full web connection), but Verizon forced you to buy a full $30/mo web plan to use those features (this was back when the web options were $30/mo unlimited plans or no web connection at all).

If there was a cheaper connection just for the Kin, it would've done reasonably well as a replacement for the Sidekick.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#179

Post by hga » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

ascagnel_ wrote: post #178

hga wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking more about "peers" than what I think you're referring to as "partners". E.g. 3Com as I cite elsewhere, Verizon WRT to the Kin, the company they licensed the start of Internet Explorer from (expected royalty payments never materialized when the gave it away for free), the examples go on and on and on. But I suppose with Balmer the salesman in charge in between Gates and Nadella they'd avoid sales channel b…

With regards to the Kin, I think Verizon shafted MS on that one. The device was good for it's time (something with photos and music targeted at teens that didn't have a full web connection), but Verizon forced you to buy a full $30/mo web plan to use those features (this was back when the web options were $30/mo unlimited plans or no web connection at all). If there was a cheaper connection just for the Kin, it would…

The lateness of the Kin is supposed to be one of the reasons Verizon did that, the market window had passed. It was also only a fraction of what was promised, heck, what Danger and T-Mobile delivered years earlier (as far as I know you're wrong about what it actually delivered at launch vs. what was promised).

Microsoft's database blunder with the Sidekick less than a year before the Kin's release (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sidekick_data_loss) also contributed, I'm sure, at that time few were willing to trust them with their data. It's a testament to how far Microsoft has come that that's apparently changed with Azure.

In this case, I view Verizon as replying in kind. Which is part of my point, when you treat your peers like s*, there are consequences.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#180

Post by greggman » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

I guess you must think less of most game devs as pretty much all of them are on Windows? I suppose it's possible they feel the same way when they see someone on a platform with 2nd or 3rd class gpu support.