Bonum Certa Men Certa

Eye on Microsoft: Being Booted from Land of the Lobby

We have lost pace and also lost track of this series of posts which readers have requested, so here is a fast catchup.

Bye Bye, Miss American Pie



One of the headlines that stood out was about Microsoft losing the very same place it's manipulating like no other technology company. Yes, Washington has decided to say farewell to Microsoft Office and shortly we will do another post about OpenOffice.org.

Washington D.C. has joined 500,000+ businesses and organizations in moving its communication and productivity tools into the cloud. Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District, signed an agreement with Google to migrate the organization's 38,000 employees to Google Apps, the search giant's web-based offering of communication and productivity tools. Washington D.C. is a not-insignificant win for Google, and yet another blow to Microsoft's incumbent Office suite, as a surge of web apps steadily replaces their desktop counterparts.


Realty Check



The sub-heading at the very top is a bit of a stretch, but amid these troubling economic times, the following among 20 quotes is still fascinating:

19. "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category." Ballmer comments on the dot-com bubble, back in 1999. It burst not long after, proving him right.


At least Microsoft's CEO is being honest. Sometimes. And with very heavy buybacks approved to be issued, Microsoft may fall into debt pretty soon. Bill Gates expressed deep concerns for the economy a day or so ago, so he must know something (inside information) about Microsoft, which Steve Ballmer openly insisted is not immune to the financial crisis. That was over a week ago, just before the most horrendous week or trading.

Super VIsta is Still Just a Vista



Colleagues of mine had the 'pleasure' of working with Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Back in 2006 I sat down and wrote my thoughts about it. It went like this:

"...Been in a meeting just a moment ago. It was comical.

"Some folks have decided to experiment with Microsoft's latest ultimate super ultra high-processor/computing offer. Guess what?

"The computational server can -- for whatever reason -- accept only two connections at the time. To make matters worse, one has to log off, so being idle is out of the question. Even then, there are bugs that leave sessions hanging, IIRC.

"It gets worse.

"40 nodes are available but sometimes only one is actually used. With two users logged on, one would sometimes keep 39 nodes occupied while the other gets just one.

"I am told it's buggy. I am told it's unstable (even from people who favour the use of Windows on the desktop). People who wanted to take this gamble with Microsoft on the server are complaining and probably have regrets. "We have informed Microsoft", they say, but what do they expect? Microsoft holds the code and it's too arrogant to take care of bugs upon the customers' demands (just look at Internet Explorer). Bill Gates, who is the mastermind that insisted on releasing the product, will soon retire. The product was released half-based after long delays.

"Problems only on the server? You bet it ain't the case. A colleague of mine is spending weeks (if not months) trying to run experiments on a Windows XP laptop. Hibernation fails, jobs are crashing after long runtimes, and certain movements of the laptop (e.g. the jerking in a car) lead to crashes as well.

"Thank you, Microsoft, for reminding people why software you produce is going down the dustbin. It's better to produce a reliable desktop before deciding to take entire clusters down."

That's what I wrote back then. Now comes SJVN with some testimonials from customers.

Microsoft, after spending decades paying no real attention to high-performance computing, wants to be an HPC player with the release of HPC Server 2008. Can you believe it? Yes, there was Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. After a long search, I found one user. He told me, "Updates that require reboots are far too frequent for production-use systems," "Jobs randomly crash," and "Few HPC applications actually support Windows compute nodes."


It does not sound as though much progress has been made since then. There are more urgent issues to address, mainly using vapourware techniques.

Taking Another Company to Court



Microsoft, having amassed so many cases against it, has just sued DHL.

Microsoft Sues DHL After Train Dumps 21,600 Xboxes

Microsoft is suing U.S.-based cargo-delivery service DHL Express for allegedly losing 21,600 Xbox game consoles because of a train derailment in Texas, according to court documents.


The XBox business has already accumulated billions of dollars in losses. Where will it end and why it Microsoft hiding the truth?

"If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good."

--Bill Gates, Microsoft

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 06/09/2025: Infinite Scrolling and Posting from Emacs
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2025: GitHub Meltdown Over Slop, "U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit"
Links for the day
Despite Its Severe Financial Problems Gnome Foundation Inc Paid Rosanna Yuen Over 100,000 Dollars Last Year
maybe relocation should be considered
The "Left" and the Right"
It poisons everything
Mozilla and Rust Are Not Leftists
they're part of the mass consumerism machine
Disposable to Microsoft
There is an extensive set of people who got used by Microsoft, only to be thrown away a month later or a year later or a decade later
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VII - This Coming Week Many PCs Will Refuse to Boot "Linux" (Because of Microsoft's Expired Certificate)
The real solution is, disable "secure boot" or "SecureBoot" while it's still possible. [...] Just like submarine patents, a lot of this problem was "hibernating" for a while
The Thing Nobody in Red Hat Wants to Talk About Openly
There is a real sentiment or worry among Red Hatters, Europeans and Americans in particulars (because of higher salary expectations)
Slopwatch: Small Parade of Fake News About "Linux" and Scams Borrowing the Name (or Word) "Linux"
In practice, LLMs are a risk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 05, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 05, 2025
Genini Links 05/09/2025: Community, ROOPHLOCH, and PITkit
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Vaccine Sceptics Poison the Well, Two Exploited Vulnerabilities Patched in Android
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News