Is Vista merely uncontrolled? Or is it fundamentally uncontrollable? There is a critical difference.

Internally, MS is really really messed up, there's a reason Bill Gates announced his retirement in july 2008.

MS would make a good study on how not to run a company. If you look at a lot of the worlds biggests companies and their demise they all follow the same pattern. Monopolistic control of their market, lack of inivitive ideas and products, closed mind thinking ,although the sales management bullshit could make you think different, increasingly disengaged workforce and poor management structure. Gates stepping down could be the best thing for MS's future. If they are brave enough to change direction they could still be a competitive force in the future there is no doubt they have the talent. I somehow think though they are a bit like a supertanker and take a bit of stopping or turning even if they are heading the wrong way.

Ian

Hmm..........we can start at .................

Microsoft the Company: The House Monopoly Built

Kind of hard with a corporate monopoly

If you read through most of those links, you'll find that MS does in fact deeply care about their big customers, the problem is that you aren't a big customer, and neither is any other home user.

I read some vista reviews, and that was one thing that stuck in my mind, features that will affect home users negatively but that are primarily designed for large scale networks of windows machines.

MS has consistently not innovated very much, they have either bought technology from someone else, or they have copied/stolen it.

And when they have tried to innovate the outcome has been questionable.

What MS, or any other large scale corporation, is about, by LAW, is maximizing shareholder value. That's it, period, end of story. Everything else is just babble and happy talk. This means generate the highest profits possible using whatever means necessary, including the calculation of potential fine/penalty versus potential profit from some action. If the scales tip in favor of profit, they do what's required. And always have.

What was really interesting about these articles was the view into the large scale corporate programming world. I've seen some of that indirectly, and it's always completely repulsed me.

The expected lines programmed per year output per programmer was also very interesting, it's radically less than you would expect.

But the numbers are what will kill MS 50 million lines of code is just too much to every get a grip on.

Again, it wasn't MS innovation that changed the world, it was MS business practices, primarily crushing any potential opposition on every step of their way. The personal computer was going to spread no matter what, but it could have spread differently, with open standards between platforms leading the way, and the platform itself, which is MS main emphasis, becoming far less relevant. That's where we are heading anyway, that's what companies like ebay, google, yahoo, etc, are all about.

What MS, or any other large scale corporation, is about, by LAW, is maximizing shareholder value. That's it, period, end of story. Everything else is just babble and happy talk. This means generate the highest profits possible using whatever means necessary, including the calculation of potential fine/penalty versus potential profit from some action. If the scales tip in favor of profit, they do what's required. And always have.