Why Vista Took So Long 761
twofish writes, "Following on from Joel Spolsky's blog on the Windows Vista shutdown menu, Moishe Lettvin, a former member of the Windows Vista team (now at Google) who spent a year working on the menu, gives an insight into the process, and some indication as to what the approximately 24 people who worked on the shutdown menu actually did. Joel has responded in typically forthright fashion." From the last posting: "Every piece of evidence I've heard from developers inside Microsoft supports my theory that the company has become completely tangled up in bureaucracy, layers of management, meetings ad infinitum, and overstaffing. The only way Microsoft has managed to hire so many people has been by lowering their hiring standards significantly. In the early nineties Microsoft looked at IBM, especially the bloated OS/2 team, as a case study of what not to do; somehow in the fifteen year period from 1991–2006 they became the bloated monster that takes five years to ship an incoherent upgrade to their flagship product."
Linux development model? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux development model? (Score:2, Funny)
Close. If they did that completely, then they would have a new OS release every 4 weeks, with each previous one being "supported" only if you can afford to hire a full time staff of programmers.
Wait for it, wait for it (Score:5, Funny)
What if the "Bye" button... (Score:5, Funny)
RE: Why Vista Took So Long (Score:2, Funny)
Re:15 ways to turn off a cumputer (Score:5, Funny)
I bet I know what you use your PC for.
Re: Why Vista Took So Long (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Funny)
You run Windows Vista on your kid?! Not even Linux users would do that!
You think that's bad (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux development model? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's because they used 5-bit ids in their database.
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:5, Funny)
MOD DOWN PARENT (Score:4, Funny)
a model for continued success... (Score:2, Funny)
Incidentally, the Catholic Church also provided the model for Microsoft's DRM marketing:
It's not buggery, it's a feature!
Re:MOD DOWN PARENT (Score:1, Funny)
By insulting Linux, he has insulted a whole community of grossly unattractive buttseckshaving faggots, and this cannot be accepted.
wrong Steve (Score:5, Funny)
They're stuck with the other one
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:5, Funny)
Not really. They're near-impossible to housetrain!
(A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. No it sodding didn't.)
Does /. have a rant option (Score:3, Funny)
Does Slashdot have an option for submitting a rant and getting comments?
You're already using it. Go right ahead...
Only on slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hopefully (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Sleep vs Hibernate (Score:3, Funny)
Bwahahahahaha
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:2, Funny)
(Well, it doesn't, but someone had to make the obvious joke.)
Re:Linux development model? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sleep vs Hibernate (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hopefully (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badge r.shtml [strangehorizons.com]
Re:MOD DOWN PARENT (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:5, Funny)
* France: never was communist
* It seems you recognize only 5 democracies in the world, one of which is Chile
* You seem to think it was possible to do cool things in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy
* You lump Nazi Germany and fascist Italy together with Holland or Sweden, totally ignoring the huge differences in favor of superficial similarities
* You ignore that that Holland and Sweden are democracies
* If you believe France is communist, why not Sweden?
* You ignore that Nazi Germany had a huge bureaucracy
* You ignore that many democracies in Europe actually have cut bureaucracies over the last 3 decades. Not enough for some tastes, but nevertheless.
I am tired of this.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
And I'm sure your systems would appreciate it if you would start cleaning up after yourself.
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:1, Funny)
* Actually, France is socialist/communist [wikipedia.org].
* You asked for examples, not a list of every country in the world
* We were talking about bureaucracy
* Holland and Sweden are Monarchies. We were talking about dictatorships and monarchies, remember?
* That's neither here nor there. They're also Monarchies
* France is a Republic. It has no Monarch to step in and fix any problems brought about by too much communism
* Income tax was only 5%, according to Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
* Most, if not all, European democracies have much greater taxes than they did years ago (albeit often a smaller percentage of the GDP.)
All in all, you're batting zero for seven. Not a great score. That means I win, I believe.
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:3, Funny)
Is that some new kind of quirky keyboard?
There's a blog on the shutdown menu? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:3, Funny)
* France: 1.) Wikipedia is not a source. 2.) You didn't even read that
* You pick 5 democracies from one third of the world's countries that britannica.com lists as democracies. Why shouldn't I question that?
* Yes, we were talking about bureaucracies, so 1) why do you bring up the ability to do cool things (can and has been done in bureaucratic countries)? 2) if you were right it would just proof that being unbureaucratic buys you nothing (I'd rather live in France than Nazi Germany)
* Holland and Sweden are monarchies just in name, in reality they are democratic countries and have nothing to do with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy
* You don't get it do you? The monarchs are figureheads, these are democracies; removing the monarchs would have NO effect except less sales for yellow press. You should maybe take up traveling
* You know, communism is an economic set of rules.
* We didn't talk about tax but bureaucracy. Of youres they had low tax since they simply stole what they needed from the Jews, communists, gays, anarchists, and half of Europe. You are a fucking idiot
* This is simply not true, most European nations have less taxes than ten years ago. They also have fewer state-owned businesses if any, and they have fewer state employees.
I end the discussion now.
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:1, Funny)
2. I only listed two monarchies. Why not question that too? I gave a handful of examples in each category. If you have counter examples, list them, or shut up.
3. I fail to see your point.
4. So you admit they're monarchies
5. Ditto.
6. Sure, right.
7. Tax revenue is a perfectly good measure of bureaucracy. A huge government made up of many millions of bureaucrats requires far more than a small government. If you disagree, I suggest you come up with another, more reliable, objective metric. Oh, but you can't, so you just chose to pretend you don't understand the point.
8. No, my statement stands. I could understand your confusion if I'd not mentioned that taxes were almost certainly a lower percentage of GDP, but I made it specifically clear I was talking about specific, numeric, amounts. Almost every democratic country in Europe, if not all of them, have much higher taxes than, say, ten years ago, even disregarding inflation.
Of course you're "ending the discussion now", you know I'm right and you're wrong. Like I said, I'm the winner.
Re:Welcome to inevitability (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty impressive when you consider that for all that time their ONLY product has been vapourware.
Open source daughter (Score:2, Funny)
Nope, you misused the ® (Score:3, Funny)
it has changed to duke nukem never® according to british law
Re:wrong Steve (Score:3, Funny)
He could call managers into his office one at a time and throw chairs at them. Those that can't get out of the way quickly enough get made redundant on medical grounds.
Guaranteed to produce a more agile company...
Or is there? (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmmm. I wonder. [novell.com]
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
That's one of the previous Unix admins I worked with.
He was so clueless about his boxes that every week he'd say "I just wish I had windows servers instead."