Posted in Microsoft, Quote at 12:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Quotes from one of the first Microsoft developers, who quit Microsoft in 1980
“I don’t want to work for a toy computer company [Microsoft], I’ve got real iron here at Yale. [...at Microsoft] We don’t have a manager who cares about what we’re doing [...] We don’t really have a clue as to what we’re doing from a strategic standpoint. [...] This is shitty. If you guys want to do something with a windowing package like Vision’s, then you need somebody running the group who knows about it.”
“In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the ’90s.”
–Bill Gates
“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”
–Bill Gates
Summary: A look back at nonsensical predictions and lack of foresight from Microsoft’s Nostradamus
“Since this is from the BBC,” says a reader of ours, “there’s no need for a URL, a better citation can be found instead. It’s another quote for the Bill Gates as Visionary file: “Although Bill Gates announced the tablet concept at Comdex in November 2001, saying that “within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” Instead the format flopped, constituting less than 1% of sales in 2009.”
“It’s right up there with the open letter to computer hobbyists rant and the end of spam prediction,” says our reader. In 2004, Bill Gates said that “spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.” To a large degree, spam is the fault of Microsoft. In 1993, Bill Gates said: “The Internet? We are not interested in it.” And yet, the BBC — with its infinite shamelessness — portrays Gates as though he's among the fathers of the Web. Microsoft is good at lying and getting the press to lie along.
Our reader Marti has just shown us this new tablet that combines Windows and Linux.
X2 Technology has capitalised on Apple’s decision not to call its tablet the iTablet. Its X2 iTablet will run Windows or Linux and support Flash.
It’s not the first Windows-Linux tablet of this kind. iPad is hardly the product to beat not just because it's customer-hostile but also because it’s technically inferior. There’s still doubt about the future of this form factor, which lacks a proper keyboard to begin with. █
What Tool Do You Use To Screw Out a Mora Bolt? Apparently it’s a Microsoft Wrench.
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But what MOST former Microsoft former employees have said is that MS is eaten up with middle-to-upper management cliques. They have Dueling Groupthink run rampant there, all the time. So, Allen puts First & Goal in place as his umbrella organization for the stadium and team. So far, so good.
The comments are interesting too. Worth remembering is the following old story about Paul Allen (written by Robert X. Cringely in 2006). It shows what type of people are running Microsoft today, as the very top of the company is still the same.
There are hundreds of Microsoft millionaires (and even a few Microsoft billionaires) in the suburbs of Seattle. For the most part, these are people who no longer work for Microsoft, but still own company shares. They worked very hard for years and are now reaping the rewards of that work combined with their good luck. Most of them are proud of their careers, but a few are secretly ashamed. Climb high enough in the organization, and it becomes clear that Microsoft’s success has not always been based on legal or ethical behavior. The company is, after all, a convicted monopolist, and the exercise of those monopoly powers wasn’t just through a Gates or a Ballmer, but also through dozens of top managers, at least some of whom had to have known that what they were doing was wrong. These are smart people, but also people trapped by their own success. Some are in denial, some are just quiet. Nobody wants to risk what they have accumulated by talking about it. You would think great wealth would be freeing, but it isn’t always. Sometimes it is a trap.
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During one of those last long nights working to deliver DOS 2.0 in early 1983, I am told that Paul Allen heard Gates and Ballmer discussing his health and talking about how to get his Microsoft shares back if Allen were to die.
Maybe that’s just the sort of fiduciary discussion board members have to have, but it didn?t go over well with Paul Allen, who never returned to Microsoft, and over the next eight years, made huge efforts to secure his wealth from the fate of Microsoft.
Here is a friend of Ballmer and Gates potentially dying and what do they do about it? Discuss who gets his money. The management at Microsoft is very inhumane/sociopath to this date. █
“I’m going to f—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f—ing kill Google.”
“The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it’s simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It’s quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two.”
–Government official
Summary: A look back at an outrageous quote whose authenticity we are trying to confirm
CAN anyone help find the original source where the following statement was made?
Bill Gates is quoted as saying: “The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.”
“By that definition, Microsoft would be a manifestation of fascism.”Is this a legitimate, real quote? In the next post we will show how Microsoft's cronies in the EU Commission are turning the tide.
Is it not funny that the US, along with Asian countries, have filed similar lawsuits and found Microsoft guilty of violating the law? It’s not an “EU” thing and it it not a “passing fad”. Just what is it that makes “fascism”? According to a US president, that’s when business controls the government or is inherently the government (former staff moving back and forth). By that definition, Microsoft would be a manifestation of fascism. How hypocritical a statement from Gates. █
“There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free.”
Microsoft claims that it’s changing, but to what extent is it willing based on its own words?
Almost precisely two years ago (July 26th, 2007) Steve Ballmer said:
“Open source: open source has been the issue that surrounds us. Could a commercial model like Microsoft compete with open source? And we’ve worked very hard on making the value of a commercial company surpass what the open source community can deliver, because frankly, it’s not a business model we can embrace. It’s inconsistent with shareholder value.”
It is worth stressing that Moodle's plug-in from Microsoft was only intended to increase lock-in on ‘the cloud’ and what Microsoft gave to Linux was a tool for marketing Windows [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. These two ‘contributions’ had to be made Free software in order to enter circulation, so they don’t represent change. █
