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Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

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Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#231

Having read Nadella's book Hit Refresh as soon as it went on sale, Microsoft performance since then doesn't look surprising at all. Having listed what's wrong (with their product focus, company culture etc), and where they plan to head, its' almost like the book informs the reader where puck is going to be (from Satya's POV). It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other…

> It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other way! Or 15 years before that, pro-MS and anti-IBM. IBM is still huge, but they've found a steady revenue stream doing enterprise stuff, so they're not creating (much) fresh evil. MS could have made steady profits writing decent desktop software (I'm not so sure now). They're both powerful but comfortable. Google is huge, an…

> Companies are a bit like religions. When they're small, they can't have much impact. When they're big and young, they can wreak havoc. If they make it to comfortable old age, they're peaceful and stable. The Catholic Church is huge, benign, and stable now, but 1000 years ago they were a bit more conquest-focused and violent, and 2000 years ago they were just a few harmless militants.

That's a really bad analogy and detracts a lot from your point. Big religions that reach old age are merely stable, but that doesn't necessarily make them peaceful or benign. My guess is that you're probably looking at it through the lens of living in United States.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#232
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the cloud perspective Azure has a better privacy pitch than AWS has. Amazon is currently expanding into markets at such a rate everyone is afraid their market will be next. Microsoft currently is staying in their lane. If someone is going to be invading my privacy I'd rather it not be a direct competitor.

What does expanding its product portfolio have to do with privacy?

I don't want my data in the hands of my competitors. Amazon is either competing with or threatening to compete with a wide range of organizations.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux seems to be doing just fine keeping software maintained without ads or harvesting data. This mindset is toxic and needs to die.

[disclosure, MS employee] With the absence of telemetry, how do you know Linux is doing just fine? (specifically in the desktop world, not server world). Microsoft has an interest in knowing how well Windows is doing, and Windows has lived in a world both with and without telemetry. It was way, way harder to gauge success prior to telemetry, and it was also much more frustrating for the user to communicate their prob…

Windows became the world's top desktop OS without telemetry. Please stop this "we harvest your data to make our product better for you" excuse because it is offensive for us customers. Don't put it on us users. We did not ask for that. Just say that it's because everyone is doing, or to better profit or whatever unethical reasons you have.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the range of human error is rarely smaller than that of malice, so again I'm not sure there will be much apparent difference between an exhaustive verification of either sort.

Is that true in your interactions with other people? I have not seen that be the case. The distribution is very different.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#237
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does expanding its product portfolio have to do with privacy?

I don't want my data in the hands of my competitors. Amazon is either competing with or threatening to compete with a wide range of organizations.

Whether you are using Azure or AWS, if you’re concerned about your data, you should be encrypting it with customer managed keys.

Netflix is AWS’s largest customer, even though it competes with Amazon Prime Video.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#238
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is verifying everything because you don't trust people not to make a mistake operationally different from verifying everything because you suspect bad faith? To the supposed trusted party, the result is the same: you not taking them at their word and instead checking whatever they do. Even if you're being honest about only verifying to avoid mistakes, you can never prove it. This definition of "trust but verify"…

@stupidcar we've reached the depth-limit, so I'm responding here. > In the case of "trust but verify", how does this trust manifest in a provable way? Good point. "provable" is the problem here since we don't know eachother, and frankly I can't prove you're trustworthy initially; that's why the question this addresses (namely "trust-or-misstrust?") arises in the first place. Assuming we don't have dossiers on everyon…

> we've reached the depth-limit, so I'm responding here.

There isn't a depth limit.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where humans are involved, mistakes will happen. Trusting someone but verifying their work is a safe and sane pairing.

But the whole point of trusting is that you get to skip verifying. What's the difference between trusting and not trusting if you still have to put in the work of verification anyway?

The difference is in when you begin cooperating. You can work much faster by immediately acting on agreements and later making sure the other party is attempting to hold up their end than you can by waiting until you can prove something about the other party and only then starting whatever it is you were supposed to do.

Consider these different hiring schemes:

1. Hire whoever applies, and keep them forever, no matter what. ("Trust, don't verify.")

2. Hire whoever applies, and fire them later if they don't seem to be working out. ("Trust, but verify.")

3. Full background check and extensive additional vetting before an offer is made. ("Don't trust, do verify.")

4. Never hire anyone. ("Don't trust, don't verify.")

Aside from the obvious pacing differences, note that what's verified (or not) in options 1/2 is different from what is verified in option 3. That's not a coincidence -- before you start working with someone, you can't assess whether they're doing a good job. You have to rely on more general (and therefore less reliable) markers of trustworthiness.

(You may think option 4 sounds ridiculous. It isn't -- that is the historical norm for cooperation outside of very well-defined groups like your family or your tribe.)

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#240
The new Microsoft is good and Nadella is awesome.

The one product that really sucks from this Microsoft is Azure. I commented in a thread before Azure is the absolute worst cloud provider amongst the big three after we thoroughly evaluated all three. AWS is the best and GCP is next.

But due to management pressure we had to go with Azure.

Unfortunately the best product does not always win in the enterprise. (That is why Steve Jobs never wanted to sell directly to enterprises).

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