microsoft

Paul Allen has written a book, revealing some more candid details of the early life of Microsoft:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/30/microsoft-paul-allen-bi...

These are things people who worked in software always knew, but the world was blinded by the money and the marketing.

There were many years when it was hardly worth publishing software because you knew if you had a hit that Microsoft would stomp into your market and put you out of business - or if you were really lucky, wait for your value to drop and buy you out. It amounts to two decades of lost opportunities.

This is happening less these days. But only because Microsoft don't go after the little people any more - look at Bing, an evolution of MSN search. It's there only to kill Google. Xbox => Sony. They make huge losses but still they persist.

Microsoft: Get the Facts on the London Stock Exchange:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts/lse.mspx

Well, a few months ago the LSE was sending out incorrect data. Trading data was wrong. The graphs on the BBC were showing random static instead of value data.

Now it's completely fell apart, on possibly one of the most important trading days of the year (bye bye another big bank):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7603981.stm

Ah, lovely, somebody has a grab of one of the MS adverts on the LSE:
http://tipotheday.com/2008/09/08/microsofts-foot-in-mouth-london-stock-e...

Microsoft pushing f**king reliability... Jesus... I changed my job recently and a big thing is not being woken at 3am whenever Microsoft deliberately cause a failure on an Server 2003 machine (aka enforced Windows updates reboot).
Or the mornings after a MS update is pushed out to client machines and two dozen of our customers lose their email or file store or whatever MS have f**ked up that time.
Still, it ensures the client is more willing to pay an extra couple of grand for the support contract to keep their machines running (or at least, running most of the time). MS at least cause movement of money.

Now I work with Linux, BSD and Mac. So much happier.