Ballmer on Innovation 745
prostoalex writes "Robert Scoble interviewed Steve Ballmer on the topics of blogging, innovation at Microsoft, Microsoft's work with developers and other things. Video is available in WMV format." From the interview: "Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff."
The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be all well and even true. But why does Mr. Ballmer remind me so much of glass houses, stones, pots, kettles and the color black?
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
> business model is interesting but we haven't
> seen much in the way of technical innovation."
You have to understand this about Microsoft:
1) They are __not__ a technology company trying
to sell their products. They are a __marketing__
driven company whose products __happen__ to be
technological products.
2) Microsoft doesn't lead. Because they are a
marketing company, they __watch__ marketing __trends__ to see which way the wind blows.
When they think they know which way the market is going, then they will
either:
a) Buy the start up if they can.
b) Make their own (inferior) version if they can't buy the competition.
You have to wrap your head around those 2 points
until you grok the implications.
What are some of the implications?
1) They don't understand the motivation behind
open source and more specifically, free (GPL) software. As a marketing firm trying to sell product where's the money to be made here?
Answer: None. If there is no money to be made
from selling product, then why would you
waste time on it? (You have __got__ to see this
in market droid mode. This question doesn't make sense to ask from a technology point
of view, but Microsoft doesn't live in technology mode, they just visit and harvest from the technology world.)
2. You can't buy out open source software. You
can buy out a start up company or an individual
(like the creator of Gentoo), but that doesn't
stop the competition from using and improving
the software nevertheless.
You can't rip off the software either, in particular, you can't rip off GPL software
and be a leech about it.
So, from a __marketing__ point of view,
there is no "interesting" or "innovative"
software in the open source world, since
like MC Hammer sang it, they "can't touch this!".
I would have said in the past that Ballmer
is just an outright liar, but if you read
the above and grok it, you can see that
to use another a cliche, Baller "just doesn't get it."
--Johnny
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:2)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't speak for their marketers or upper-management, but I've met with and interfaced with a couple hundred employees from Microsoft over the past decade and I'd say 90% of them have been more passionate, smarter, and more 'innovative' than the average employee I've met at any other computer software-related business.*
Furthermore, it's amazing how passionate many are about their particular product line. Shit, just read some of their blogs and you'll see how much many care about the products they work on, the user experience, and so on. So saying 'the literally don't care' is about as far from reality as I can imagine. So either you are psychotic or ignorant or the people at Microsoft you've interfaced with personally happen to be vastly different from those that I've met/socialized with/worked with. (And I'm sure you have had the interactions and experience to make such claims as you did in your post, no? Or are you just saying this based on the fact that your Win98 box blue screens once a day? Yeah....)
* - the majority of people I've met/worked with at Microsoft have been either in the Office team or ASP.NET team, so my observations may be skewed if just cool people work there.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, engineers don't always make the best technical decisions however, which might explain why Intel used the Netburst and Itanium architectures... But economically speaking, Intel is more successful than all those other companies.
Who drives them? (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who make the decisions that the techs must implement.
That's right. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing problems such as IE being "integrated" with the OS.
Re:Who drives them? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's right. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing problems such as IE being "integrated" with the OS.
Having worked at MS in 98/99, I can say that "giving a hoot" doesn't amount to much. I was part of several projects where the majority of the team wanted to do something great, but red tape and politics got in the way.
At one point, after months of upper management arguing about how to do it, I rewrote the FastCounter interface over a weekend. I presented it, the team loved it. Yet it sat on the shelf. Too many people wanted to prove they were in control. Eventually I left. But a lot of good people stayed on.
Anyways, corporations are a group, not an individual. There are many great individuals at Microsoft. But as a group, as a corporation, their greatness can get lost.
Cheers.
Re:Who drives them? (Score:3, Insightful)
The sort of windows users who keep getting infected by viruses are those who will launch email attachments (and even supply the necessary passwords to the encrypted zipfiles!) and not update their O/S or apps. I see nothing in Linux that prevents such users from getting infected, other than they aren't using Linux at the moment.
Mozilla/Firefox really isn't much more secure than IE.
If users run their browsers and email apps as root/admin whether it's Windows or Linux
That's the best you can do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying that there are other people doing it does NOT justify Microsoft doing it.
Again, you are wrong. Linux and the various *BSD's manage to fix existing problems, yet they can still run most apps from y
Re:Who drives them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, it's amazing how passionate many are about their particular product line. Shit, just read some of their blogs and you'll see how much many care about the products they work on, the user experience, and so on. So saying 'the literally don't care' is about as far from reality as I can imagine. So either you are psychotic or ignorant or the people at Microsoft you've interfaced with personally happen to be vastly different from those that I've met/socialized with/worked with.
I'm afraid to say t
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
No bureaucracy does. Much less a marketing-driven one.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Name 5 innovations from Microsoft. (Score:3, Interesting)
Success with an "innovation" usually comes from the second or third company down the line that's able to market it to the public at large.
Xerox Park may have innovated with the windows, mouse, and the gui, and Apple may have planted the seed, but MS is the one who brought the concept to the masses. Which one "deserves" the credit?
Re:I N N O V A T I O N (Score:3, Informative)
VisiCalc
#2. The first use of a mouse.
Xerox
#3. The first GUI.
Xerox
#4. The first web browser/web server.
Netscape
#5. The first relational database app.
IBM
Re:I N N O V A T I O N (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
If you seriously think that Microsoft doesn't "understand" Open Source, you're an idiot. They understand it but they cannot ever show any support for it because doing so would concede ground and that territory is profit, shareprice and morale (all things that matter to a company). If there was a way to make equivalent money out of GPLed software, you can bet they'd do it. There isn't (they make more doing what they already do), so they don't. It's that simple.
Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'd say it's pretty much typical. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on conversation and confrontation. Most people seem to argue from implicit assumptions that:
1- my point of view is correct, therefore yours is wrong.
2- since my point of view is obviously correct, anyone who doesn't agree with me probably lacks information.
3- once the information has been provided too them, if they still don't agree with me, they have a problem with comprehension; they just "don't get it."
I've been guilty of that one a lot, myself.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Informative)
It's kind of ludicrous for Microsoft to claim that IBM hasn't been an innovator. Just about everything in modern computing was developed and commercialized by IBM, including but not limited to:
1. Virtual memory
2. Virtual machines
3. Relational Databases, SQL (ya, I know, but it is an IBM thing)
4. Protected memory
5. Multiuser Operating Systems
6. Multitasking Operating systems
7. Markup (SGML, the parent of HTML and XML)
8. Source code management
9. Spinning disk storage
10. Network terminals, graphics terminals
11. RISC architectures
and so many other basic ideas that most people (including myself & Steve B.) have no concept.
Microsoft brought a half-baked MacOS clone to Intel. That's all. I wouldn't call that innovation.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
But wait a moment, how many of those things came out during Microsoft's lifetime?
I was at a conference this past week, and one presenter said that the information technology industry is mature, and the smart money is moving onto to biotech. Your list of 25-year-old+ computer innovations seems to lend support to his assertion. Then I read that SGI is dying and think about how many more comp
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't call the current bloaded "everything and the kitchen sink" MS Office apps "innovative".
WinCE shoehorned a bloated Windows OS into a small form factor. The success they have had has been due to their market monopoly rather than any technical excellence.
Yes, competition has faded in the face of monopoly market power.
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer means "marketshare" not "innovation" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The monkey man screeches (Score:5, Funny)
free Puff Piece for Microsoft? Here? (Score:4, Insightful)
This interview doesn't shed much light on an already dark and rainy corporation. How could this be anything but intellectual masturbation on Microsoft's part when you have a Microsoft employee slow pitching to the biggest windbag at Microsoft? Especially when the two appear to be patting themselves on the back about the fact that Microsoft really does innovate. Aside from the fact Ballmer is amazingly general in his list of innovations, the interviewer asks questions about other companies and if those companies out-innovated Microsoft. Of course, the response is they didn't.
But the interviewer might have asked some more thoughtful questions in that line like:
Not sure why, but even on slashdot Microsoft manages to get some Puff Pieces.
(open the Troll and Flamebait mod floodgates)
Show me one example (Score:2, Informative)
Also, you are certainly wrong in one example you gave. Microsoft did out-innovate Netscape. They mat not have been the first on the scene with a browser, but they were certainly the first to produce one that was a pleasure to use (by the standards at the time) and innovation doesn't always mean precedence, it can mean implementation of existing technology in innovative ways.
Much the same app
Re:Show me one example (Score:2, Informative)
If we're talking about spreadsheets, I think you'll find that Lotus 123 was once the killer app for business computing. (Lotus 123 was the name given to VisiCalc when IBM bought it.) Excel only achived dominance when Windows became popular. 123 for Windows was late in
Oh come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, it's the microsoft groupies who've been saying for years that anything MS do is the de-facto standard. You can't complain if we occasionally try to be standards-compliant in our adulation.
Even so, MS remain the clear leaders in marketing innovation, and for good reason. Consider this [civiblog.org] interview with Eben Moglen. If you read that, you'll find a debate where the inte
Re:Show me one example (Score:4, Interesting)
Duh. But I guess you're just a Microsoft fanboy.. *shudder*.
Re:Show me one example (Score:5, Insightful)
WordPro the first word processor? (Score:2)
Re:free Puff Piece for Microsoft? Here? (Score:5, Insightful)
!!!
You should pray to develop such "horrid" software. There were two primary things that put the IBM PC on desks all over corporate America: 1) The TLA logo and 2) Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus invented the first "Killer App".
Microsoft introduced their first spreadsheet product before Lotus 1-2-3 hit the market (1982 for the former, 1983 the latter). It was such a huge scary success compared to that horrid Lotus crap that nobody can remember it's name ("Multiplan", BTW).
Excel (for Windows, it was originally introduced on some silly fruit computer of some sort) came out in 1987, leaving Lotus to pretty much own the spreadsheet market in the interim.
and swiftly abandoned by nearly everyone that wasn't glued to their memorized 1-2-3 key combos.
You mean like F1 = Help? Yeah, what a goof that was!
This message brought to you by Old Farts Inc, keeping history on track for hundreds if not thousands of years
Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:2, Insightful)
Or perhaps you're purposedly ignoring some tools 9or maybe you don't know about them), like Visual Web Developper 2005 - which is much like Visual Studio (with some of the advanced features stripped off), that will sell for like 50$. While it's not like having the real/full VS.Net 2005, it's far be
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:2)
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:2)
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:5, Funny)
You're full of crap. Linux absolutely does not copy Microsoft. They copy BSD.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
And I can whip up a usable, very functional app in seconds that compiles to 3 platforms using REALbasic. [realbasic.com] If I want a Cocoa OS X app, I can use Xcode [apple.com] and Interface Builder, [apple.com] both of which are free.
Other platforms have similiar, and some would argue better, IDE solutions.
(tig)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Go look up "HyperCard" and CORBA. Specifically the timelines. Microsoft haven't innovated anything, ever. All they ever do is look to see what other people are doing, make a barely functional, pale imitation and eventually kludge it into something which is only just usable with huge amounts of pain.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Funny)
Clippy? <gd&r>
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft didn't create COM, they bought the technology from IIRC a company called Wang (Technologies? can't remember the details).
Although Visual Studio is actually a fairly decent product (at least, it was from about version 5), it has never been "innovative" in any sense - there is nothing new or original in it, they just added features that were equivalent to what you could already do with competitors' products.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
These "innovations" are up to 40 years old. (Score:5, Informative)
# Incremental linking
Forth, um, 1972? Lisp, 1965?
# Pre-compiled headers
Manx C on the Amiga in 1986.
# A very strong visual debugger, with useful features like DataTips.
# Integrated source browser
# Integrated class browser
Smalltalk, 1978
Remote debugging over tcp/ip
EVERYONE, as soon as TCP/IP existed.
Intellisense (auto-completion)
GNU Readline?
Re:These "innovations" are up to 40 years old. (Score:3, Insightful)
some wacko obscure package
Smalltalk is "some whacko obscure package" in the same way that Newton was "some whacko obscure philosopher".
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Asking *MS* about innovation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Put it this way, Microsoft wants to convince the end-users (who know and care nothing about how software works or is written) that they can fly like that little bird. Why one would wish to do this is left up to the viewer's imagination, I guess. But the real message is that whatever you want to do with your computer, Windows will take you there. You may or may not be using a Microsoft application, depending upon your needs, but outside of Office, Microsoft could care less about that so long as it is a Windows application.
Microsoft wants Windows to be seen as the be-all and end-all of operating systems to the bulk of the user base. This takes applications, and lots of them, so that no matter what someone wants to do with their computer they can find someone with a program to do it. In reality, you can probably find several competing products, and pick the one that best suits your needs. Ballmer is clearly aware that there is no way any single company, even Microsoft, can possibly provide that much variety.
That's why Microsoft focuses so heavily on developer tools
Heck, I'm an example of what I'm talking about. I have a substantial home network (like a lot of
take advantage and exploit that (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, and with poor software design, a lot of exploits can be written.
Re:take advantage and exploit that (Score:3, Funny)
And Balmer really knows all about that [ntk.net] doesn't he?
innovation. (Score:5, Interesting)
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
Re:innovation. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:innovation. (Score:2)
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but the Tablet PC is really neat.
Re:innovation. (Score:2)
Re:innovation. (Score:4, Funny)
There you go... that's how Microsoft can, with a straight face, call whatever they do "innovation"...
Re:innovation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like someone who doesn't actually know the history of OpenGL or anything about it at all, and only got into 3D programming once D3D was established. I suggest you learn some history, if only to balance your views.
Direct3D is innovative. It revs regularly, and it keeps up with technology. It provides a unified API to deal directly with multiple types of underlying hardware and architecture. It incorporates new hardware functionality directly into that API. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
As a Direct3D programmer, I have to say there are two major problems with your argument: firstly, Microsoft didn't create Direct3D, they BOUGHT IT. OK, sure, they've changed it a lot, but mainly to just bring it in line (read "follow" or "catch up") with new hardware innovations by the graphics card vendors like NVIDIA (i.e. shaders, which MS did not invent), and to clean up some of the really braindead aspects of the original design of the API. Secondly, Direct3D never did anything new or original, it only cloned and in fact caught up to either (a) what could already be done in OpenGL or (b) what the hardware vendors invented. MS may sit on advisory boards that steer the development of these technologies now, but they aren't driving the process, that's for sure.
As an example to my point, find a PC game developer who uses Open/GL. Got one? Good. Now, if that developer is iD, go ahead and drop that and find another. Got another? Good. If that's Blizzard (for WoW), go ahead and drop that and find another. Got one? No?
Well, if your definition of "innovative" is "the product that most people use", then we're using very different definitions of "innovative". Most developers use Direct3D due to (extremely obvious) market forces, not because it was more "innovative". In fact (and I know many) most developers that already had experience with OpenGL were dragged kicking and screaming to Direct3D, because it really was an incredibly sh*t API compared to D3D, especially in the beginning.
Oh, please name one thing that can be done in Direct3D that cannot be done in OpenGL. Can't? That's because there isn't anything - with OpenGL's extension mechanism, you can do anything in GL that you can in D3D.
Re:innovation. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is irrelevant. The fact that MS bought D3D is irrelevant to whether or not D3D now is innovative. Innovation is not the same thing as invention (or patentability). Prior art does not negate innovation. The fact that someone did something before you doesn't mean that you cannot be innovative. Google hasn't done anything that hasn't been
Re:innovation. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been to interviews for entertainment software companies and 3D chip vendors. There are two demands that Microsoft makes on each type of company.
For entertainment software companies:
1. That the most qualified staff are assigned to DirectX projec
Innovation! (Score:2, Interesting)
The kind of innovation we see from MS nowadays is generally of a kind not needed, like what they did with RSS. (it's a standard for a bloody reason!).
Also, MS has spread themselves too thin by st
Microsoft Is Innovative (Score:5, Funny)
At least one innovation... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:At least one innovation... (Score:3, Informative)
I think you will find that all economically viable computers had BASIC long before MS existed. (Most compputers that were not economically viable also had BASIC, too). A lot of Mainframes offered a choise of two or three different compilers or BASIC interpreters.
You might want to Google Dartmouth College, or even BASIC. In those days, every man and dog programmer team had written a BASIC interpreter, if not two.
Does IBM innovate more than Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
IBM invented SQL. IBM invented the hard drive. IBM invented the scanning tunnelling microscope. IBM employees have won the Nobel Prize.
IBM may be evil, but it has always been cool evil.
Microsoft on the other hand introduced...uhm...the animated paperclip? The monkey dance? The BSOD?
Really, Ballmer. You just down like IBM because they gave support to Linux. Which makes them even cooler.
Developers Developers .. gasp .. developers! (Score:2, Insightful)
What a weird world that must be.
Microsoft may do cool stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
The one legitimate criticism of open source development though, is that you'd not have thinks like Apache Jakarta were it not for Sun creating Java. Open source and commercial closed source development should have the same relationship that name brand and generic drugs have. Software patents, IMO, would work if 2 things happened:
1) We had a patent office with people who knew what they were doing and could safely reject bad patents.
2) Software patents lasted for 2-3 years so that way the businesses could get a reward for doing stuff like creating
The problem is that just as Microsoft takes Apples ideas, so do some projects like Mono and OpenOffice take Microsoft's ideas.
He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe it can work in every situation, but the idea is good.
The most damning thing about Linux (for example) is that it has zero innovation. I want to see something new for the desktop, not rehashed ideas that Apple or Microsoft or Unix implemented years earlier.
I don't believe Linux is innovative, and I see that pervading the entire open source movement.
Look at Open Office. Great idea, lousy implementation. Apart from the cost, what benefit does it have over Microsoft Office? There's nothing new in it, nothing innovative.
I'd even go so far as to say that the amount of sameness cripples it. Apple did more with Pages than the Open Office has with its word 'wannabe', and it shows. They're trying something new, something innovative.
Ballmer is right when he says open source software is not innovative. I disagree with the man on almost everything he says and is, but he's right in that.
And goddamn it, I wish he weren't
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
You say this because you expect innovation from Linux. However, the truth is, Linux started out as a brilliant student's pet project, and is now a commodity Unix kernel clone. Linux won't bring much innovation, a
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:2, Interesting)
What you are forgetting is that the whole internet thing became possible thorugh open source. What kind of software has made DNS and email possible?
The first web browsers like Mosaic were all open source. Apache the webserver that nearly everybody uses is open source as well.
I'm using OSX right now. What has apple copied from linux/open source? Well its copied a lot. From its scripting languages (python, perl, ruby), to it
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
As I stated.
Open Source has done a great deal.
It's just not innovative on the application front, or the OS front. And that's the area that matters to users. Python is great, but does it matter to a word processor user, or someone who wants to get to their foiles in a new way because the desktop metaphor just doesn't cut it for them?
And unless I'm wrong, Apple hasn't *copied* Open Source, but has in fact used it in exactly the way the authors (of the Open Source softw
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:2)
I assume from your comment that you have either:
Try using a less commercial distribution and see where the real innovation comes from. Of course it takes some time between a new idea be
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:2)
The innovations are in the tiny corners. Formatting options in the context menu. I really like that. Now they only should display the hotkeys next to the items so you can learn them 'by accident'.
Another smallish thing: Double click on the 'paste special' button (OOo2.x) and it will paste the formatting every time you select something u
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:4, Informative)
You talk about lack of inovation and give openoffice as only example- an ex-commercial sad-and-sorry MS Office rippoff.
I'll give you some innovation in OSS:
Enlightenment
Konqueror (and it's extensions)
ogg
flac
Rox
zshell
Zope (you can hardly get any more innovative than that)
Python
Ruby
blender (ok, so it wasn't OSS from the start, but it was free (beer) and the people who drove blender back then are the same that do it now, that's why I dare name it - and before you ask: It's Blenders Workspace Management that is to date unmatched by any application in existance. It's actually the successor to desktop-metaphor workspace.)
verse, loqairou et al ( OK, so these are the rare things that are more innovative than Zope, they are the future of interface design and computer interaction and usage. I'd say ten years ahead. Go check if you don't believe me: www.quelsolaar.com/, http://www.uni-verse.org/Blender_Foundation.8.0.h
Bottom line:
What you said is wrong in so many ways. The truth is, a lot or real high-end avantgarde innovation takes place in the OSS world. You just need to open your eyes and look around.
But if your looking for innovation in openoffice your going to have a hard time, I'll promise you that.
Re:He's Not 100% Wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and that new graphics library (the one Apple beat to the punch with Core Image in Tiger) in Longhorn? "Avalon" is basically a copy of an open source window system called "Berlin" that never caught on because it was a bit early... good OpenGL video cards weren't cheap enough soon enough.
bad maths (Score:2, Funny)
Children! (Score:2)
No room for anyone but us (Score:5, Insightful)
All these other companies make products that other people use to be innovative. There relly isn't a lot of innovative room in relational databases for Oracle. They make databases, and very good databases and very popular databases, and they make a lot of money doing just that. THEIR CUSTOMERS are the ones who put those databases to good use.
IBM make a lot of stuff. Most of it is pretty good stuff, and they make a lot of money selling that stuff. It is IBM's CUSTOMERS who make good use of it.
"The open source guys..." Well, they make a lot of stuff too. IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO USE OPEN SOURCE software who put it to good use and who are innovative. Open source allows people a little more room to be innovative. They can aquire it at a lower cost. They can alter it to better meet their specific requirements...
Steve Ballmer believes that computers are a platform for software companies to restrict and dictate what happens there. In that model, customers do not decide what computers do, but software vendors. That's why Microsoft feels the need to compete in every single little corner of the software industry. For Microsoft to (almost literally) control the world, they have to be the sole supplier of software to everyone.
"The open source guys" have a different view.
It's a bit like... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like someone who doesn't actually use OS X and has absolutely no idea of what features it has.
what has apple innovated lately?
Wait six years and see what appears in the next version of Windows after Longhorn, and you'll have the answer to your question.
Ballmer's right (Score:2, Insightful)
MS innovative, not inventive (Score:3, Insightful)
From the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary :
innovative - using new methods or ideas [cambridge.org]
Notice there is nothing in that definition that indicates the origin of those ideas ? Microsoft are an innovative company, because they take ideas and use them. They aren't an inventive company, because they very often don't come up with any new ideas themselves.
IBM and Oracle are innovative companies too.
As for being inventive, I'm not sure about Oracle, however, IBM are, based on the fundamental intention
Technical innovation from opensource (Score:4, Informative)
GUIs:
Development tools:
Emulation:
All in all, I may have misattributed a few innovations, but most of these are from Open Source. Also, there are many others I can't remember or simply don't know. Microsoft has done less innovation than Open Source, that much is obvious.
I would appriciate information fillers on innovations from other projects I'm less familiar with, such as Apache, the Kernel.
I am pretty sure Ballmer really believes what he says, because most people, surely Microsoft employees, are quite ignorant of Opensource offerrings and their innovations.
a few more? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it real Microsoft face, after all? (Score:3, Informative)
There's a Word for That (Score:3, Funny)
I think they've also patented the idea of innovation....
and trademarked the word.
Scoble complains, Slashdot obeys? (Score:5, Informative)
The post in question: Interesting that Slashdot hasn't linked to the Ballmer thing yesterday. Maybe they belong to the Andrew Orlowski "we-must-not-link-to-or-acknowledge-Scoble" school of reporting. Heh.
What's fun is that Ballmer, in the interview yesterday, took a swipe at open source and IBM and Oracle. Surely that'd be worth getting the Slashdotters all riled up.
He got a lot of comments pointing out the interview was content-free, a spin job, and otherwise of generally no interest to the discerning crowd here. How pleased I was to see Scoble's shot go amiss.
And then I refresh the front-page here
Microsoft Innovates like Enron did - with BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer does Microsoft a disservice by ranting about innovation but not actually delivering innovation. No wonder why theses Microsoft guys are so uncharismatic - people have a distaste for bullshit-slinging horn tooters.
IBM - the inventor of so many basic industry ideas - is declared a non-innovator.
Apple, who brought so many great ideas from the lab to desktop computing, ideas that Microsoft admittedly embraced after Apple delivered them successfully to market - doesn't get a mention.
And Google, who mostly innovated the idea of not screwing over internet users with ads and pop-ups and cross-marketing crap, is an exciting innovator.
IBM is the innovator of basic technology. Google is the innovator of doing the Internet right. Apple is the PC marketplace innovator.
Microsoft? Um, well they invented something... I just don't know what that is. Truetype? SQL? The mouse? The file system? Does ANYone know?
And next week.... (Score:5, Funny)
MS is on the downslope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shrinkwrap Software only business is over. 50 Billion$ on the bank or not. That's the simple truth. Be it that MS will roll on with XBox 360, 720 or whatever. But their core milkcow is withering.
The CEO of MS having a sweet-little-nothings chinwag with one of his minions and hideously bullshitting 90% of the time won't change that.
OSS Not Inovative? (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS is so un-inovative, that Apple based their OS on it, borrows heavily (but they acknowledge it and contribute back). MS steals all the ideas and then declares it for their own.
blah blah blah says the Microsoft marketing maven (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess they've gotta keep trying to find SOMETHING that can produce money outside of their desktop OS monopoly. But 15 years of this stuff is getting pretty old. IMO.
Another thing that cracks me up is when Microsoft talks about how WindowsCE costs less than GNU/Linux on embedded devices. This, from the company that consistantly loses ~$1 Billion annually on that productline. Talk about Cost of Ownership.
LoB
Throwing stones. (Score:3, Interesting)
What have Microsoft actually innovated? I would seriously like to know. All I ever see from them is new functionality in the form of defensive answers to the innovation of others. They copy, modify or buy innovation. But what have they genuinely innovated?
I love using OpenBSD servers and firewalls, OSX desktops and begrudgingly use Windows XP Pro on my laptop (along with FreeSBD, which I love too). I just bought a very nice new Sony VAIO VGN-A49GP notebook with a 1920x1200 17" LCD display. The display is spectacular to say the least, but text is difficult to read at the default dpi setting within Windows XP of 96dpi. This displays true resolution is about 133dpi so I have tried various settings within XP including the "Large Size (120dpi)" setting which I figured would be catered for well. All settings larger than 96dpi, even the 120dpi option, cause font problems within system dialogs and web sites including Microsofts own from within IE. Often text within a SYSTEM dialog renders beyond the window it is within and is thus unreadable. I can't imagine such a problem occuring within OSX. Even Windows XP is still a dogs breakfast in these sorts of regards and shows that Microsoft products are still completely covered in bandages, instead of being fixed at fundamental levels. Do they even bother testing these perhaps fringe settings? 120dpi is their "Large Size" setting, so you would think at least it was tested. Could this come down to the driver? If so I would have to say that that indicates a fundamental design flaw if a driver is able to cause such havoc.
OpenBSD has deployed (I realise they may not have innovated the fundamentals) active memory protection security measures which Microsoft attempted much later and only came half way to what OpenBSD deployed.
Microsoft is not leading innovation in usability or security and I personally would say they are also not leading in stability (although I agree they have come a very long way). Performance is an area where there is a lot of overlap, but for a company with so much money and so many paid developers, I have to wonder why they don't have it all?
Oh no, wait a second, no I don't... that's right, they trumpet features and all those other things in prime time slots, etc and sell product based more on the trumpetting than the actual quality they deliver. I guess this is to be expected though, just like from the rest of the big capitalist corps like Cisco, Sony, Apple... wait, then how is it that Apple can keep reinventing themselves and their products, while keeping viable AND delivering quality products?
I live for the day when Microsoft dies. Thank heavens FreeBSD runs on my $5,000 AU notebook. ; )
Ballmer: learn some history (Score:3, Informative)
Ballmer's ignorance and arrogance are astounding. Let's just take a simple example: Longhorn. IBM was shipping Longhorn technologies already years ago: database file system, vector graphics (DPS), managed code (Smalltalk, among many others), handwriting and speech recognition, and system wide object model (SOM). Some of these, IBM already shipped decades ago. Some of these technologies, Microsoft is only shipping because they cloned existing products and even hired away IBM employees.
The notion that Microsoft is even in the same league in terms of innovation as IBM is laughable. Microsoft has yet to prove that they can deliver any kind of innovation beyond Clippy and Bob in their products at all.
Re:same old same old.... everybody is leader but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:same old same old.... everybody is leader but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason they do that is best explained by the man who formalized that concept. Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels once said: "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".
Corporations (and, gee, governments too) these days use exactly that same technique, whether it's in PR statements, interviews, punditry or advertising. They found it's easier to buy time with VC money and try to let the lies sink in in the general public to get people to buy their products, than putting out actually good products. There are exceptions of course, but that's the rule these days. And don't forget the added benefit of workers buying the lies too and working harder as a result...
Re:Look at Microsoft's misdeeds (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of them, and I'm quite sure they all know how to read.
Additionally, please do not respond when you are being flamed. Flame wars bring nothing constructive to the community, they consume a lot of bandwidth, and they will almost always contribute to lower your karma.