Mini-Microsoft Shakes Things Up 374
Henry V .009 writes "BusinessWeek calls him Microsoft's Deep Throat. Although Steve Ballmer denies reading the blog, there are plenty at Microsoft who do. Mini-Microsoft says he wants to "slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." The user comment section of the site is the real gold: thousands of comments from Microsoft employees who tend to have a dim view about the company's recent evolution. And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."
Innuendo (Score:5, Funny)
Is this what it has to "come" to for Microsoft?
Re:Innuendo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Innuendo (Score:5, Funny)
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.
insane (Score:5, Interesting)
His employment agreement surely makes him liable for incalculable damages, not to mention inciting other employees to violate their contracts (which is punishable for contracts in general).
Maybe they won't know who it is until they find this guy still bailing out the hull after the last rat has left the sinking ship. I think they'll find him sooner, especially now that he's talking to the press.
Re:insane (Score:5, Insightful)
You've probably never worked in an environment where you know something could be great but everyday you see incompetence and pride as the norm. This drives some of us to the breaking point. Either we give up or we fight for greater things.
The sad thing is this is in every organisation that is sub-par. There are guys and girls who fall by the wayside everyday because fighting a bureaucracy is a form of attrition-style warfare. You have to keep on battering it and battering it and usually the organisation wins and the dissenters go home with their professional careers and private lives in ruin.
I hope this guy stay anonymous. No good can come from him publicly outing himself, no matter how great his ideas. This is the nature of power.
Re:insane (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:insane (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe not, but he obviously spends time on slashdot.
Re:insane (Score:5, Insightful)
As a man, he can be fired, he can be sued for breach of contract. But as a symbol, he can be everlasting.
*cue viscerally resonant cinematic soundtrack*
I smell a montage coming on.
Re:insane (Score:4, Funny)
For fucks sake! He's just some guy who works at a corporation. He's not Spartacus or Ghandi or whatever.
Re:insane (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. But wasnt Spartacus or Ghandi also just some guy? They became symbols through their actions
Re:insane (Score:4, Funny)
That's right, because I'm Spartacus.
Re:insane (Score:3, Funny)
(Cue epic music. Fade to black. Open to wide shot of a man typing in a computer).
Re:insane (Score:3, Interesting)
That is the nature of modern corporate business. Naturally management feels none of the pain, infact they are well rewarded for it (they are in a position to make sure that happens). Regular staff of course
It should be interesting. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:insane (Score:5, Interesting)
The workings of any publicly traded company ought to be public knowledge. We should have the right to know about companies, and not just their PR spin, before investing or when contemplating whether to sell stock. It is not good for the economy to let publicly traded firms operate in secrecy, and snooker investors
Even if a company is not publicly traded, prospective customers deserve to know what is going on.
Re:insane (Score:3, Insightful)
The workings of any publicly traded company ought to be public knowledge. We should have the right to know about companies, and not just their PR spin, before investing or when contemplatin
Re:insane (Score:2)
If we're talking about highly-educated upper-middle class programmers, then fine. But contracts have their limits. I think most people (maybe not you) agree that it should be illegal to enter into a contract where you get paid less than minimum wage.
The employer-employee dynamic is never (well, almost never) one of two equal parties. It's silly to pretend otherwise.
Re:insane (Score:4, Informative)
Network associates, the makers of McAfee Viruscan, put a line in their EULA that essentially said you couldn't publish a review of the software without their permission. [arstechnica.com] It didn't hold up in court because it violated the first amendment. Network Associates are not the government, and could not force anyone to give up their first amendment rights through contract. That provision was unenforceable, and many things in contracts are unenforceable. A lot of the crap in employment agreements is legalese nonsense that it would take a team of lawyers to interpret, and then they wouldn't all agree what it means. No one can give informed consent to something they do not understand. All they really understand is that if you don't sign, you don't have a job so enjoy living under a bridge when you lose your house! That is not far from holding a gun to your head, and saying, "sign this". An agreement under duress is no agreement at all.
Re:insane (Score:5, Informative)
Signing an NDA is binding. If you go and post confidential information to your blog or someone else's blog and the NDA you signed specifically prohibits that, your employer not only has grounds to fire you but also sue you. If your signature is on a document that says "I won't talk about x, y, and z" and then a blog posting or e-mail is presented showing you talked about x, y, or z the judge is likely to rule in your employers favor. If your NDA says you will cut off your right ear if you talk about x, y, or z that clause of the NDA will likely be found unenforceable and you'll be able to keep your ear.
This differs entirely from situations where talking about x, y, or z benefits the public interest. If product X was made out of dolphin skin by child slaves in San Diego there's a public interest in that information. If you were sued by your employer over releasing that information it probably wouldn't be difficult to show that your whistleblowing served the public interest. Whistleblowing is protected when there is a viable public interest in the disclosed information. Clauses in an NDA or any other contract which require you to break the law (manage slave lavorers in San Diego) are unenforceable. Your employment contract can't require you to be a heroin mule for instance.
What you don't seem to understand is the first amendment only applies to government. It does not extend to private organizations or property. The government can't tell you that you can't post specs on as yet unreleased product Y but a contract can. You don't have a right to any particular job, if an employment contract is required to work there and you're unwilling to sign it you're not going to have that job.
Re:insane (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention product Y, made out of child skin by dolphin slaves. And I won't even get into the details of product Z.
What you don't seem to understand is the first amendment only applies to government. It does not extend to private organizations or property. The government can't tell you that you can't post specs on as yet unreleased product Y but a contract can.
Actually, the government ca
Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
The First Amendment applies in the first instance to the federal government ("Congress shall make no law...") and by virtue of the 14th Amendment, to the states. It does not apply to private parties. Its only relevance to private parties is that contracts contrary to public policy are not enforceable, and the First Amendment is one piece of evidence bearing on public policy regarding freedom of speech. In fairly extreme cases, you can expect a court to void a contract on public policy freedom of speech gro
Re:insane (Score:3, Informative)
You got this all wrong. It is the government who can't make you give up your free speech. Anyone else can, as long as you agreed to the contract.
In other words, if you signed an NDA, YOU gave up your rights. No use complaining about that.
Re:insane (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, you're so close but have got it dead wrong.
Network Associates is not the government, and therefore, the 1st amendment doesn't apply to them! The 1st amendment tells THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT they can't abridge those freedoms. This is because you can't escape the federal government if you want to live in America.
All they really understand is that if you don't sign, you don't have a job so enjoy livi
Re:insane (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that reading legal documents is hard work speaks volumes as to the amounts of ill faith inherent in them. If the contract is drawn up in good faith, there is simply no need to make it abstruse (hard to understand). A contract that does not seek to rip a person off in any way should be easy to understand even to someone with just 3 years of school.
It is sad that we have an entire profession devoted to actually understanding correctly what the fsc*k the legal documents say. I say it's high time to say "f u" to the legal language and make it a requirement that all contracts be brief, to the point and in plain language. Maybe then people will take time to read them and sign them in good faith.
As it stands, a person gets a 30 page packet and thinks, "Ah, this is some cr*p I have to sign if I want this job.. How bad can it be? They're not going to rip me off. I trust them and I want this job. I will sign it." It's obvious to me where the abuse is happening.
Re:insane (Score:2)
I say it's high time to say "f u" to the legal language and make it a requirement that all contracts be brief, to the point and in plain language
The problem with plain language is that it's vague - that's why contracts are long-winded. I could see requiring a definition of all terms that are used in a way that differs substantially from normal parlance. Outside of weird usage, most contracts are just boring.
Re:insane (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me give you an example that borders on absurd theatre: do you know why software is licensed, not sold? You may notice that when you buy a Ford car or book, you just own the car or book, you don't get "a non-tranferrable license to use it". What's different with software?
Because while common sense would say "I bought 1 copy, I own it, I execute that 1 copy I own, same as with a book", technically it's copied to RAM to be executed. So you'd be breaking copyright law if you copied it (even to RAM) without a license to do so. That's the loophole through which the whole "license" thing was wiggled through. And which in turn opened the door to having whatever restrictions imposed upon you that the copyright owner wishes to impose.
"Copying" in the sense that you intentionally produce a duplicate of a book or record, was extended to something which is more of a side-effect of how computers work than wilfully duplicating someone else's work. And also taken from a context where you could actually sell or distribute the copy in direct competition with the copyright holder, to something where... let's just say it's just stupid to think that you'd pull your RAM sticks out and give them to someone as a copy of Doom 3. So it misses the whole spirit and intention of copyright law (whether you aggree or disaggree with it.)
That's the problem with things that aren't clearly defined. If it's possible to get an advantage via a verbal fallacy or mis-construing something, some interested party _will_ do it.
E.g., let's say we signed a brief contract that just says "Moraelin aggrees to sell his old 22" colour monitor to aeoo for one hundred dollars." Simple, clear and to the point, right?
Well, at what date? I didn't say anywhere I'd give it to you right now, or for that matter even this year.
Does it have to work when you receive it, or can I just give you the pieces of one that I dropped while moving? If we put in the contract that it should work, by what definition of "work"? What's your recourse if it doesn't?
Is that US dollars, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, or board-game dollars? Where should the money be delivered? (I'll probably want them deposited in my bank, and not, say, requiring me to go withdraw them personally from Elbonia's only bank;)
And are you sure what kind of monitor you're getting? Now you may be thinking "bah, even if it's an old CRT, a 22 inch never was too bad". I might however point you at the dictionary and the fact that a monitor was also a kind of military ship. So by that contract I could send you a painted toy ship.
And so on and so forth. And the whole legalese and those 30 page contracts are there just to leave as little room as possible for such creative interpretations.
Re:insane (Score:2)
One of you wants free speech even if that violates company secrets etc. and the other wants you to be able to sign your life away as punishment for not thoroughly reading a contract.
As screwed up as the current laws are, they're more moderate than either of you are suggesting. How about a little common sense in this huh? Oh wait this is
Re:insane (Score:3, Insightful)
For many people, loss of a job (the penalty a corporation can inflict) can be as serious and life-altering as being sentenced to jail (the penalty the government can inflict). Free speech rights are meaningless unless you protect them.
On a related note, if a corporation expects you to obey its rules 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it owes you compensation for one hundred and sixty-eight hours, per week, plus overtime of course. Otherwise, when you punch the clock, you're done. Why should your employer have
Re:insane (Score:2)
If you don't think you have enough information about the company to have faith in the stock, don't buy it.
Re:insane (Score:5, Insightful)
That's insane.
Why is it that the damages to the company are important anyway? A company is a fictitious entity. Damages to people matter more than damges to companies, and in this case employees are important people, and they are the ones being damaged and not the other way around.
Re:insane (Score:2, Flamebait)
That's insane.
First of all F U for mis-quoting me and even using the misquote in the context of something else I didn't say. If I knew specifically all the things in his employment contract that he was violating, I'd have listed them, but merely criticizing his employer was not my point.
This guy is writing about confidential internal processes and problems, and soliciting others to do s
Re:insane (Score:2)
The confidentiality of some internal process is not as important to me as how each individual person is treated. If people are abused even a little bit, then to me that trumps enourmous amounts of confidentiality expectations.
Pay attention -- if you treat people well, things naturally remain quiet. But treat people poorly, and then even a cont
Re:insane (Score:2)
Re:insane (Score:2)
Eventually he will step over some line and annoy SteveB. At that point, MS will sue and subpoena logs from blogspot. IP address and personal details will quickly be revealed.
Kinda makes you wish for true anonymity in blogging that a tool like freenet could provide (if it weren't such a dog slow pile of dung).
they already know who it is (Score:4, Informative)
We don't have to wait for Woodward or Bernstein to die, or anything.
Re:insane (Score:2)
Re:insane (Score:5, Informative)
Re:insane (Score:2, Interesting)
My company was on a witch hunt for someone internally recently. We had an internal email that was forwarded to a blog that pertains to our line of work. There was absolutely no company related content and the original sender address was masked (but our compnay name was visible) but it
Re:insane (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone else here thing they could be shilling (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretend you're a badguy insider, develop a following, and then you can mitigate rumours/leaked info/etc.
Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill (Score:2)
I'd begin to buy your theory if the guy had ever posted anything positive about Microsoft beyond not being actually derisive/negative like anyone else who has a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind with the company. He posts because he has unflattering things to say.
Gotta go. The black helicopters come...
Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill (Score:5, Interesting)
Cripes... how paranoid can you get?
You have the common "default believe" attitude which makes astroturfing and guerilla marketing work so well. If you had the "default distrust" attitude this article would have bells ringing all over your head.
Consider what he is writing, what kind of NDAs he must have signed when being hired and how easy it would be to track him down (anonymity in internet really does not exist).
Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill (Score:3, Insightful)
These people are probably the loudest critics of Microsoft, and because he and most people who comment have an internal perspective, their strikes are direct and to the point too, not like the drivel that gets reiterated here.
Marketing? How can exposing things like the company's recent trend in hiring MBA middle managers be good PR? How can saying things like the company's growth going to the single dig
Blog is down.. (Score:3, Informative)
Try the Google cache [216.239.59.104]
Posted AC to avoid accusations of karma whoring..
Re:Blog is down.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Blog is down.. (Score:3, Funny)
There's a BETTER blogspot blog (Score:2, Funny)
(Now that blogs are searchable, we're finding all sorts of things!)
Disillusioned or delusional? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the computer business is not an environment in which bureaucracies survive for very long. At least, not without radical change.
Perhaps this is the chink in MS armour that it's competitors have been waiting for.
Probably true, actually (Score:2, Informative)
As for your signature, Windows can't use UNC paths as a path to be 'cd'd to. You can copy from a UNC path, but not 'cd' to it. To navigate a network drive, you need to "net use * (UNC)" it. It will give you a valid drive (like x:) to which you can cd to. Not the most painless appro
Re:Probably true, actually (Score:2)
works too.
Re:Probably true, actually (Score:2)
Mine has just developed an allergy to batch files.. you can run any batch *once* then you have to shut down the command line and start a new one.
Damnedest thing I've ever seen.. this is on a nearly new install too.
D:\>echo @echo batch test >batch_test.bat
D:\>batch_test
batch test
D:\>batch_test
D:\>
Second time it ignores it.
It's a real git when I'm trying to run my test scripts...
Re:Disillusioned or delusional? (Score:2)
You've hit the nail on the head here.
MS brought in the stifling management-types who the "Deep Throat" lambasts in order to preserve market cap (stock price) -- they wanted to bring in some visible measure of stability in order to shore up investor confidence.
The problem with this approach is that stability does not serve well in an industry that changes
Re:Disillusioned or delusional? (Score:2)
You seem to be implying that these companies have not undergone a (or many) radical change to their culture since their inception. I can't speak for SAP or CA, but I would say that your implication is dead wrong for both IBM and Apple.
Do you have a tale to the contrary, or was your post just a quip?
mini-microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Steve Balmer will wear a frickin' laser on his forehead now. I'd watch out if I was you.
Re:mini-microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
Re:mini-microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
Re:mini-microsoft (Score:2)
Re:mini-microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
No, it would be over his eye... (Score:2)
Re:mini-microsoft (Score:2)
Boil it down, M$ is just too bloated (Score:5, Funny)
The Phone Company
Ernestine.....Lily Tomlin
Ernestine: We handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make.
We don't care.
Watch this.. [ she hits buttons maniacally ]
You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string?
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
--
At the end of it all they want to make it all work, it's just they are fumbling in the dark. Get too big and your quality goes to hell.
Re:Boiling down OSS. Fat makes good soup. (Score:2)
Non-sequiter. F/OSS isn't a monolith. Individual projects can and do get too big for their britches. The nice thing is that nobody has to live with the products of such if they really don't want to.
Re:Boiling down OSS. Fat makes good soup. (Score:2)
Re:Boil it down, M$ is just too bloated (Score:3, Funny)
*checks ID number*
There's some correlation between the two, but I just can't put my finger on what it is.
Re:Boil it down, M$ is just too bloated (Score:3, Funny)
Kids these days.
Balmer's health is at stake ! (Score:5, Funny)
The plan: (Score:3, Funny)
2) Have them annihilate one of blogspot's servers.
3) Hope blogspot cancels his account out of frustration.
4) ???
5) Profit!
They will Figure Out Who This Guys Is (Score:3, Interesting)
They will find him, and when they go, I expect he will have a meeting with Ballmer. It will not be pretty.
It won't be like Deep Throat, who, even though suspected, managed to not get found out until recently. Even with him, folks had their suspicions.
Especially now that this guy attracts attention. All Ballmer has to do is tell his team of mini-Ballmers, "find him!" and it won't be long.
Re:They will Figure Out Who This Guys Is (Score:2)
Ballmer will probably shove an Aeron up his ass. Sideways. "I LOVE this COMPANY!"
You're right. This could get seriously ugly.
He better not be blogging from work (Score:2)
I'd expect them to be sniffing for him to login to his blog
Re:They will Figure Out Who This Guys Is (Score:2)
Actually, if you read up on Deep Throat, you'll see that various numbers of people suspected Felt for years.
One of his relatives was even bragging about it to the kids at his university. That's what I meant about being "found out" -- lots of folks had fingered him. They couldn't prove it -- but that didn't matter; that was enough reason not to trust him (or to lionize him, depending on what side of the fence you were on).
When I wrote, "now that
As Seen On TV Again? (Score:2)
Hope Microsoft Doesn't Pull An Apple.... (Score:2)
(If they can't or won't do that, I hope they've got the chairs bolted down!)
Shut that guy up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Joke.
The only way to really fix Microsoft is to split it into two corporations each for every product line, and open all APIs with no anti-GPL license restrictions. And use the ill-gotten gains Gates, Balmer, et. al. have accumulated to fund start-ups to company with the baby-Softs. And open the evolution of the APIs under the control of a joint committee of the EFF and representatives of the several Linux and BSD distributions.
It ain't gonna happen.
His first article (Score:2)
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2004/07/blast-off-fo
I wonder if he was at PDC?
Easy to ID this guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Also very few people actually print out corporate memos like the Ballmer memo he mentions (yes, strikingly many do, but as a percentage, it's small). So that narrows down the field right there, and I haven't even got beyond the top post on the blog. Sure, he could have printed it at home, but did he? Naaahhhh.
If he hasn't been fired by now, it's not because they can't find out who he is. They are just waiting for the right moment.
Re:Easy to ID this guy (Score:2)
Gee, there are too many easier ways to get him/her, if it's necessary. You just have to subponea the ISP to trace down the connection to the home address (or work address). If the guy/gal is stupid enough to p
Re:Easy to ID this guy (Score:2)
This overlooks the possibility that people can experience moral growth. It's possible that when the same person would have fired his/her critic, now they see otherwise and will not fire them.
Let's not
Re:Easy to ID this guy (Score:3, Funny)
The email frequency-analysis software has been delayed until 2007, as an optional install to the already-delayed WinFS. In desperation, MS has sent a purchase order to Apple to license Mail.app's junk mail filtering algorithm.
Re:Easy to ID this guy (Score:3, Interesting)
The article _did_ say, after all, that he had deliberately supplied some misinformation here and there (with regards to himself, in particular) to divert suspicion.
Really? (Score:2)
A prophet in his homeland... (Score:2)
No way. It has to be someone inside to do it. THAT's what makes this whole business so interesting.
Microsoft has an incredible potential (after all it has all those programmers, who btw, designed the
If vista comes out it will be too late. (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The MM blogger seems very down on paying attention to "process", which tells me that A) the PHBs at Microsoft are all into process and B) this guy is a frustrated, unpromoted newbie, probably hired after XP was released.
Firing all the dead wood sounds nice, until you realize that means firing the people who wrote the cash cow.
The It they don't get is that Open Source Software is the future. They don't want to give up the golden dream, which means hiding their source, which means using a hierarchical development model, which means bureaucracy and inferior products.
Oh well, caveat regnum.
Re:They don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lean Mean.... (Score:2, Funny)
It's true! M$ has reinvented itself! (Score:2)
there is but one solution to growth suffocation (Score:2)
2) introspect your motives well, take a deep breath and then
3) find the balls to jump ship
I feel so repressed at my current job that I am starting to get weird stress-related medical problems (diverticulitis? trench mouth? wtf?)
One tends to get into a position in a company where the things you would like to be doing and the things they can find for you to do are just too far apart.
I'm just a grand from my savings goal and then it's sayonara, whether I find another employer or not (I'm interviewing
Jesus summed it up effectively (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the amount of competitive progress that Linux has been making recently, it's more than understandable that Microsoft are experiencing some dissention in the ranks. Ballmer isn't anywhere near lucid or flexible enough to genuinely fix the company's problems, either; his tactics can be expected to consist of reassuring the press that everything is fine on the one hand, and then playing business as usual on the other.
Microsoft's most pressing problem is that it desperately needs to get rid of the old guard. Jim Allchin being put out to pasture at the end of 2006 is a step in the right direction; it just needs to be done to a few more people there, Ballmer included.
If at least the majority of the senior management can be persuaded to take their stock nest eggs and ride off into the proverbial sunset, then there might be some hope for the company. They are stuck in their thinking, and more than anything else, Microsoft needs a fundamental paradigm shift in virtually every area if it is going to survive. People need to realise that a very large portion of Microsoft's success has come from marketing. Technically speaking, their software has never been more than barely adequate, and that has been due to some chronic problems with their design philosophy. That design philosophy will not change while the current senior management are still at the helm.
If it's going to happen, however, it needs to happen soon. Microsoft's release cycle is getting longer, and I suspect that if nothing has changed by around 2008-9, the company will reach a tipping point after which, long term, nothing will save it.
All large companies pretend to do this (Score:3, Insightful)
a) everything is fine and management had it right all along
b) there is little that management is prepared to change let alone pay for
c) people need to figure out how to motivate themselves better
d) there was another 5-7% of the workforce that needs to get cut quietly
e) 3 or 4 key executives will collect larger fiefdoms as a result of this reorg
f) mean employee tenure will drop another 6 months and management will spin turnover as 'recharging the organization.
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:2, Informative)
1) seen the man's credentials
2) been able to spot a fake
when meeting the blogger in person.
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's your proof. He's got a blue badge and the reporter saw it.
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been theorized he's (yes, he) is a mid-level guy in PSS. A few of his posts bear this out, but a few others don't. Like I said, he's very careful with what he gives away.
Having said that... yes, this is another opportunity for the slashbots to come out of the woodwork to post their ever-hilarious "M$ is teh suxx" jokes.
Anyway... must get some sleep.
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many Microsoft employees have disputed it? Mini has stated a lot of inside information that real employees of Microsoft could easily confirm or deny, and I have never heard a viable claim that Mini isn't real. It's pretty much considered a given that Mini is real, and their comments have been validated by known insiders quite a few times.
would they make similar comments if they worked at some other large corporation?
Most large corporations suck, and tha
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:2)
Re:Where's the proof? (Score:2)
Are you sure? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:pali (Score:2)
Last time I checked... (Score:2)