seattlepi.nwsource.com — A Microsoft Corp. executive who led Windows Vista's development is leaving for Amazon.com, with the clock ticking down to the scheduled release of the delayed operating system. Brian Valentine, a Microsoft veteran known for rallying the troops to finish big projects, is due to start work at Amazon as a senior vice president in mid-September.
Sep 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
zacmccormickSep 6, 2006
@ucg1You started off ok, then you fell off and started hating... I know digg has more linux users than msn, that's obvious from the articles posted on it. But intentionally leaving out a Windows category isn't "catering" to their users, I'm sorry. I think elites hatred of MS has more to do with the type of personality that technical people tend to have about the economics of it, and they see MS as an evil machine, when in fact Microsoft is made up of hackers just like the linux community. The only difference is Microsoft hackers want a paycheck, and I certainly find that admirable. What is a "virtual monopoly"? Is that one that only exists in the mind of haters?"The problem is that they aren't good to their end users"haha!!! What the hell are you talking about? If they didn't care about end users, IE would have all of the parts of the css3 draft implemented and live in ie7, and break compatiblity on a whim (see Apple OSX). I think you are massively overstating the facts here. Backwards compatibility, probably the single most important "we care about our users" feature any OS vendor can provide, has been at the forefront of Windows success. Now how could you possibly say with conviction that MS doens't care about its end users? because you don't like the fact that they are successful? ding ding ding!"Microsoft doesn't play well with and is disruptive to the rest of the tech industry"Microsoft invented most of the tech industry. Microsoft has entire committees and departments dedicated to IHV and ISV support and spends millions "playing fair" with 3rd parties and the rest of the tech industry. What are you basing this on? Windows not supporting ext3 or something crazy that you know damn well would never in a million years be in the best interest of the company, and consequently the users?The fact that you write off Microsoft software as "s**tty" makes me lose some respect for your opinion. How could you discredit the work of Microsoft hackers like that? They have some of the most brilliant people working for them. You definitely are right about some of that stuff, but lets get real, software like Microsoft Office and Exchange are head and shoulders above anything else offered by the rest of the tech industry, both on a technical and a practical level.I don't love the fact that Microsoft is basically the one-and-only in the industry, but I'm not going to discredit their work because of that. I would love to see another entity make a killing, but it's going to take more than a good piece of code to do that now.
nofxjunkeeSep 6, 2006
If he was completely satisfied he probably would have not talked to Amazon, but let's be honest who's completely satisfied with their job? I mean _really_ satisfied.
obkenobiSep 6, 2006
"Use whatever OS you want"Do you have a job? For the majority of employees, there is no choice but Windows. It's Outlook, Office, Explorer or nothing. Many office won't even let employees use Firefox!There is also the MSCE IT mafia. All they know is Windows, they don't want to deal with OS X and Linux, even if in some cases they may be better alternatives for a particular application, or simply if an employee wants to use them.
ucg1Sep 7, 2006
[wrong reply]
zacmccormickSep 8, 2006
@ucg1"Apple (and Sun I might add) hackers want a paycheck, too. But you don't see me hating on them"Fair enough..."I didn't say "cares" for its end users, I said "they are not good to their users"."These are nearly one and the same for the sake of my argument, "caring" implies taking action to better the user experience. Whether or not the result is "good" by your standards or mine is highly subjective depending on your needs, I for one am pretty pleased with their products. I don't think you can speak for 700 million users on this issue.I have been around computers for a while, though I never used older versions of unix that you mentioned. My point was that Microsoft has made gigantic contributions to the tech industry. Do you honestly think MS has had an overall negative contribution to the tech industry? That is WAY far fetched."... but purely due to the fact that such a technically inferior product(s) was supplanting products that were technical sound"This happens in every single industry, EVERY SINGLE ONE. It's not always about what's the most technically sound, it's about who has the right product or service at the right time when someone needs it. It's business. Although I don't really know which products you are referring to that have technically superior alternatives (I can think of a few but none of them are their core products). Maybe in 1990 that might have made sense..."My dislike for Microsoft had nothing to do with finances"Well you mentioned monopoly, how does that not have "nothing" to do with finances?"Microsoft won the business game, but lost on the technical side of things"Again we are living in 1990 here. You hate MS in 2006 because they had bad technology in 1990."but my basic gripe is that Microsoft's puts out a number of s**tty products and they are everywhere"I do agree with that, though we probably don't agree with which products those are :)
ucg1Sep 11, 2006
MS has one objective: to deliver a product which meets the customers requirements as quickly as possible. Quality of the product is not part of that objective. That's evident in many of their products including their flagship product -- Windows.The reason I talk about MS and Windows in the 90's is because some things haven't changed. A lot of bad design decisions remain as part of the Windows we have today. This may be done in the name of backwards compatibility, but that doesn't change anything, the problems still remain.As for the monopoly thing, its not the finance of it, it's the fact that they have such a huge amount of control over the industry. They are so huge that its easy for them to eliminate competition, even when the competition has a better product (that is why I think overall MS has stifled innovation in the tech industry by crushing/buying out competitors and backstabbing their partners). If you want to consider that finances, then I take what I said back, maybe it does have to do with finances, but more the end result of those finances than the money itself.You may say this happens in every industry and its just business, and that may be true, there are plenty of business reasons why MS's products have succeeded while better products have failed. But its a sad state compared to what the industry could have been had their remained actual competition in the desktop market and other areas where currently Microsoft dominates.You may not agree with me, but maybe you might be able to understand why people dislike Microsoft? Maybe people like me are too emotionally invested in computers, and we've seen something we love get ruined by a giant corporation taking it over and s**tting all over it in the name of profit. Maybe that happens all the time with other things, but it shouldn't be too hard to understand.It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few decades. It will be severely depressing if nothing changes and Windows is still around in essentially its same form (with all the crappy design decisions remaining intact) and still dominant.