Steve Ballmer - Quick chat with Microsoft's CEO
- Posted: Jul 07, 2005 at 4:24PM
- 176 comments
We just had a short chat with Steve Ballmer in his office (we filmed the interview today, July 7, at 1:30 p.m.)
Questions?
Why does Microsoft care about developers?
01:11 Why does Microsoft have an evangelism team?
01:48 What is your call to action for developers right now?
02:44 Microsoft is a leader in transparency and blogging. Why did you allow blogging?
03:38 Time for some tough questions. On the blogs there are those that say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, can you give us some examples of where Microsoft is innovating?
05:42 Coming up with tough questions for you is hard. If you were in my position what tough questions would you ask Microsoft's CEO?
07:22 Since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world?
08:48 What do you want to be remembered as?
Because this video is so short, the download is available in a high-resolution format.
Questions?
Why does Microsoft care about developers?
01:11 Why does Microsoft have an evangelism team?
01:48 What is your call to action for developers right now?
02:44 Microsoft is a leader in transparency and blogging. Why did you allow blogging?
03:38 Time for some tough questions. On the blogs there are those that say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, can you give us some examples of where Microsoft is innovating?
05:42 Coming up with tough questions for you is hard. If you were in my position what tough questions would you ask Microsoft's CEO?
07:22 Since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world?
08:48 What do you want to be remembered as?
Because this video is so short, the download is available in a high-resolution format.
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He is not only the head of a $300 billion organization, but is personally worth >$10 billion. Yet he really looks very passionate about what he's doing and the company. Maybe it's just his personality, but I'm astounded. He sits down and talks to the video camera just like any other guy.
http://ironyuppie.com
Congrats on the scoop though!
hes pretty funny ill say that
you always read about the banging of fists and clapping of hands etc - but you never really see it (except for the famous dance routine)
good work steve - thanks for talking to scoble and channel 9
get a blog - or maybe Vloging would be better for you - so people can feel slightly uncomfortable wondering if your a brilliant ceo - or a raving lunatic haha
How long will Longhorn take to go mainstream?
MS seems to be moving towards stadards more these days, has MS given up on the "platform that wins" (obviously on the server side) and going with platform that co-exists?
Some comments on this interview:
Good to see a CEO who trusts his employees!
What's with the whole "winning" thing? As a developer I am not so much interested in a battle between competing vendors as I am in evolving future-proofed standards. If I can write HTML I could care less if the browser is Microsoft or Mozilla or Mac. I don't want to worry about Microsoft-HTML vs. Mozilla-HTML vs. Mac-HTML.
Some suggestions for future videos:
Harder questions? You said the interview got cut short. What questions didn't you get to ask?
Transcripts will solve the long-interview problem - especially if they have timestamps associated with them. Make it a volunteer project if you don't want to assign staff.
I got to ask most of them. I had another softball question about what his day was like.
I don't usually prepare a whole lot of questions in advance. Usually I come up with them in response to what's going on.
If I had more time, I'd ask him more about some of the famous software industry stories.
Like being told he was wrong by Larry Osterman and still hiring him anyway.
Steve Ballmer! Steve Ballmer! Steve Ballmer!
Steve Veselinovic!
Steve.
Steve.
By the way, I wore my London Underground T-shirt to the Interview that I got a couple of weeks ago. Thought that would be appropriate because of this morning's events.
I love the "Who are You?" you ask in the beginning Scoble
Lol.
Great work.
Lol, what happend when you asked him about blogs. He gets this energy kick and then starts talking normal agian?
Anyway, great interview. But who is this guy? =)
Best video yet. I haven't seen much of Steve and after seeing him on the video I can see why he is CEO.
On the subject of video length, recently I have been snoozing through the videos. I used to like the wondering nature of the content and I still love the human factor that brings, but a lot of the time now I wish some of the guys had prepared a little better before you arrived with the camera. And that questions had more direct answers. I know you guys have a no editing policy, but maybe it is time to review that.
P.s I bet Bill feels leftout now that you have interviewed Steve. You don't want him to feel leftout do you!?
I'll take that to heart that you liked this style.
Keep in mind that Steve is also an awesome communicator. Not very many people I've met can get so much into a 10-minute interview. The last few questions were made up on the spot by me too.
I think Steve Ballmer should do Microsoft keynotes at CES and other events instead of Bill. He has great enthusiasm which surpasses that of Steve Jobs and would help give Microsoft a much hipper look.
Scoble is the best
Loadsgood.
Keep up the good work Robert.
Balmer said during the interview talked about being big and bold.
While stating that, I look back at the decisions made to cut back Longhorn. Moving WinFS to a later release.
Although never confirmed but highly rumored that Office 12 was going to be a LH only office release that took advanatage of the LH platform.
While I do see Innovation coming out of MS. It has become a big ship. innovation is hard to put into the system when that Innovation must support 20 years to 30 years of legacy. Although that support is what has brought the system this far.
Sometimes I wonder what would LH would Look like from an OS point of view if it could fully innovate. If it could truely come out and say that from an OS point of view. Legacy support is not guarenteed. Dos 1.0 to 6.22 will not run in the platform except in a virtual machine.
If MS was in the position to alienate all of its past customers to bring a new system forward. (which is what apple basically did with OS/x)
It will be an interesting 10 years. but it will take most of that 10 years to get to the vision that MS has for the new platform built on .net. It will be at least Office 13 before we see more than just Infospace built in avalon technolgies. It will be blackcomb before we see the full implementation of a platform described as Cairo in 1995, although there have been a few technologies changes that is basically what blackcomb will be the fullfillment of the cairo vision.
Looking forward to seeing what MS brings forward. Monad is very interesting. Avalon brings a fairly simple windowing ui platform to the platform. Indigo brings int eh communication platform that allows apps to work with each other.
My only regret was that when MS went to windows in 1.0 and further that I didn't learn to program that module while I could fully program in DOS. with the .net framework and avalon and indigo and finally winfs when it shows up. I find that I can understand the platform again and work with it.It has made my interest in programming again much stronger but I find that I have alot to relearn.
Douglas
(Sorry for the username - which is via BugMeNot...I was too lazy to register to make a single post)
I don't look at it that way.
Microsoft works like an anthill. We go toward food sources (money). Or, look at it as customers asking for more features. If we add features to our products that customers want they'll buy more.
I see it as chasing the money. It's good business.
Look at the auto industry. General Motors had an awesome month due to a "buy your car at employee pricing" promotion. Now everyone else is doing it.
It happens the other way too. Why do many distributions of Linux look just like Windows? Why is Apple working on an Office Suite?
I would agree with robert that MS getting involved in these areas is a good thing. I do not think that they will kill off these other apps and techs; I think they will make them better. I happen to know that companies like Adobe base there application model around companies like MS. They say to themselves okay there is an App out there. How can we make the experience that much better for the user and I think Steve hit it on the button we have to innovate and we have to have developers out there that write good code and take it the level and make that experience that much better.
I think that if MS makes one developer go out and say hey look at what MS did I can do the same thing and make the user Experience that much better for that developers users then Microsoft has done more then make a great Application; It has allowed the next generation of application to be that much better and thats why I think MS getting involved into these areas is a great thing.
Steve is utterly, unambiguously amazing.
I'm name dropping here, but every time he sees me, he says "Hi Larry" and we talk a bit about our kids (his eldest is one week younger than my eldest, his second is a couple of weeks off from my second).
Think about that - he runs a 60,000 person company and he will still talk to a random IC (individual contributor) whenever he runs into him.
That man is special.
"I think developers want to know: Are you gonna win?"
Exactly!
Edit: I do have to say, though. He kept it to 10 minutes.
I'd hate to see how packed his schedule is
Umm You haven't been paying attention to Adam's blog, have you...
Monad's a totally different paradigm for a shell than anyone's ever seen - yeah, it's vaguely like the various *nix shells but its ability to composite complex structures is totally new.
If someone built a shell out of mock-lisp, it might be similar...
passion Passion, PASSION!!!
Since Steve (or even Bill) may in fact read this thread, I'll try not to:
a) help it turn into to a flame war
b) keep it veering wildly off tangent
c) bring up obscure articles for no good reason
d) insert picture jokes
e) mention recursion
f) bash Scoble's blog
g) bring up my meddlings with Linux
h) mention how this will surely get slashdotted
i) feed the Slashdot trolls when they show up
j) help this thread break all posting records
In short, I'll be an all-around nice guy.
Having played with Monad since way before beta1. MONAD is in no way like any existing shell.
Here is a secret though. LH will include most of the Unix based shells. which are all text based by the way and cannot work with objects.
Monad is a new beast built on top of a Object based platform not the text based platform of Unix.
douglas
I wish he would go fully bold though, that Mr Burns hair cut isn't doing him any good. "Halo 3" eh? Pretty sweet. Too bad you couldn't show us the view out the Windows, maybe a Buzzcast would be better next time
"Who's Bill Gates?" - Steve Ballmer.
Loadsgood.
Does Steve alude to a more requent Windows release schedule in the future?
Perhaps a bit more like Apples system of a major release like OSX - but then frequent major updates like Tiger, Panther etc every 18 months where new features are introduced to enhance the platform?
I didn't like the Apple system at first - I thought they were ripping off their customers by asking for $129 every 18 months. But looking at all of the improvements and new features that have been added to a 4-5 year old OS.
Unfortunately Win XP still looks like it did when it first came out. Only real improvement has been to include better security.
Perhaps this is the future for Longhorn? A major release followed by regular updates that are more than just patches and bug fixes?
LarryO: deep agreement as to the intense coolness of SteveB. Not only will he stop to chat with a LarryO --- he'll take a moment to respond to an every-now-and-then random email from a guy who worked at Microsoft for brief periods way back when.
SteveB: the thought of your kids possessing the same energy is smile-inductive.
-- stan
We have to get Longhorn out first. Then we'll talk about what we'll do in the future.
This is definitely the best yet. Next stop, Bill!!
I wrote my first ever email ever to Bill. Back in about 93/94: It was about the future
And Bob, you DO have that much energy etc
For this video I only used Windows Media Encoder (it's a free tool available at www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia ).
I didn't do any editing. Just started the camcorder and stopped it at the end.
On other videos, if I need to do any editing, I use Windows Movie Maker.
The camcorder I used is a Panasonic PV-150. It costs about $750 at Best Buy (probably less now).
George, MSDN Webcasts
http://msdn.microsoft.com/webcasts
I would like to know what his definition of "innovative" is.
Thanks Scob. That sounds very good!
I'm waiting...
examples:
---------
* Being a VB3 developer, MS promise me to get rid of the ridiculous menu control (not happen until vb.net)
* You promise that VB will be real OO in VB5 (not happen until vb.net)
* You promise that ActiveX will be the solutions to all the problems with components (we are getting rid of DLL Hell with LH)
* You promise that .Net will have an Application Server (not happened, you have to use the ooold COM+)
I don't really believe you.
Blackcomb is the future. LH was always a stepping stone to it when it was announced.
LH just kept getting more and more of the blackcomb features.
There will be some interesting announcements at PDC.
Whistler combined the consumer and business code base.
LH starts the transistion based on that code base. (almost had v1 of most of the tech. WinFS was delayed for good reason again PDC)
Blackcomb will be the first version that fully implements the vision. layed out in a platform called cairo in 1995 although it has greatly expanded from that time.
Not to belittle LH, it is like the middle film in a trilogy:) It has alot to keep people interested enough to make it to the third movie. And will be compelling. Even more so when the WinFS api is added to it. but it is still a lead in to a more complete platform known code name blackcomb.
douglas
Very nice! Now that's service.
XP is a much much better OS than 95. Then there's the Tablet PC. Windows Media Center. If you haven't had your hands on those you aren't really qualified to talk about what major OS innovations have been done in the past decade.
My point is that there is plenty of innovation in Open source. This isn't to say that there isn't any at Microsoft. I agree that the Tablet is incredibly innovative and so is the likes of OneNote. I don't want to start flamewars because I make use of the benefits of both open and closed source.
Another thing that I have to comment on (like others have) is how passionate about his work he is. It's great to see an executive who isn't just another boring man in a suit. I honestly think that he would still be as passionate about the company if he wasn't earning as much money.
Since english isn't my native language, I needed to read the transcript to see what he said 'if I wanted to allow blogging to happen or not.' was not what I was hearing. Now I understand what happend =)
A lof of copying, and improving. Improving security and stability of things that MS and other non-OS companies do.
Developers...Developers...Developers...Developers...
Developers...Developers...Developers...Developers...
Developers...Developers...Developers...Developers...
Developers...
I'm surprised you think that. Microsoft wasn't the first company to employ a WIMP interface in it's OS, so surely MS is the one doing the copying.
Linux was in no useable desktop state at that time, hell it's still got a long way to go before it becomes good for the masses.
It has been doing rounds in the India MVP mailing list
Steve Balmer talks like any other CEO
And that part about inovations wasn't very informative. He mentioned only products but not the inovations... He didn't persuade me that Microsoft is very inovating company and IBM or Oracle haven't had any new things to show...
So, when we are going to see the video with Bill Gates?
Orbit86, the NT kernel exists since 1989. Nice try spreading FUD.
95, 98, ME
NT kernel:
NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000 (NT 5), XP/2003 (NT 5.1)
Apple doesn't want the heck of doing drivers for the thousands of different configurations of PC hardware out there. They will only support their own machines, according to my brother-in-law who works on the Mac team.
That said I imagine that Windows will run great on Apple machines. Apple could, if they play their cards right, become the biggest Windows OEM overnight.
Robert
When is Billgs interview coming Robert?
Great interview!
The best part about the Channel 9 executive interviews is their unscripted nature. Otherwise we are seeing the professional press or well-rehearsed demo keynotes. So this really gives us a more personal view of the folks at the top of Microsoft.
I'd like to see more focus on what drives Microsoft executives. What about their business innovations? We know about product plans thanks to corporate transparency, but a lot less about those people and how they like to run the firm.
For example, the press are talking about the excruciating Microsoft interview process of the past and how that might change. What would Steve like to do with that situation?
Steve touched on a vision of Microsoft success for the next ten years. What does he think is important for that success, business-wise? How does the partner program expansion mesh with the traditional developer support? And so on.
Channel 9 just keeps getting better and better.
P.S. Reading the comments has shown me the error of my ways. Someone else is wearing the Tuxedo! Damn, now I have to upload another avatar!
Sometimes with the grin Steve has on his face he can be a bit creepy to look at.... is it just me or what...
He wants to do one but getting on his schedule is harder than getting on Ballmer's. Hopefully soon.
10 minutes of Steves time is worth a lot of money.
What you should have asked him was "What will Longhorn be called?" because I bet Steve, Bill and a very small few others know exactly what it will be named.
I'm sure they have a handfull of names to choose from, from Windows 2007 to eXPedition but I bet theyre already set on one of them.
How far between the beta or Release candidates and the RTM of XP was there for the code name change of Whistler to XP title? Will we first hear of it during PDC? or early next year during the RC stages? As the marketing team and graphic designers all need time to start designing logos and branding to be ready for this time next year. Let alone the guy who needs to run a name check through the code to change any longhorn references to the new title. Does the M in Project M give something away? I'm sure longhorn server will be called Windows Server 2007. Im sure Internet explorer in Longhorn will be called Internet Explorer 7 Enhanced, but what about Windows?
Can anyone guess What words begin with M that would fit the bill?
If I had more time with Steve, that's actually what I'd like to go into. What makes a great leader, that kind of stuff as well. Good questions! I'll definitely come back to this thread next time we get some time with Steve.
I liked your questions on the fly - they encouraged Steve to share his enthusiasm for the future. I especially liked his answer to your question "Why do you allow blogging?"
10 minutes is a short amount of time to share his vision of the company with developers, employees, customers and the world at large. Yet his hopes for the future and how he wants to be remembered - both in business and a father - come through loud and clear.
Gee, I was unaware that the Internet was even a "competition". Actually, I had always thought of it more nearly as a "cooperation", but obviously that attitude is alien to MS.
I do not want MS to "win" the Internet. I have been using the Net since way before MS even existed, and not only does it not need MS (or anyone else, for that matter, including Sun) to "win" it and control it, but in fact it's better if no one does so. To a certain extent, Hailstorm was MS's attempt to "win" the Internet, by coming between the end users and the content providers and other commerical businesses (no doubt with the ambition that eventually the users would regard the MS middleman as their single point of contact, thereby enabling MS to assume the back-end role themselves and then take over whatever business area they intended to "win"), but that failed, and I'm glad it did. Paladium / DRM is another approach to MS's "winning" the traffic between the end users and the content providers / retail businesses, and I hope that initiative fails too, for the same reason.
So Mr. Ballmer is mistaken in his belief that developers want, most of all, MS to "win". Perhaps developers **really** want MS to conform to agreed-upon standards, so then the developers' apps will succeed, regardless of which platform provider "wins"!
Ah, so Blackcomb will be "The Godfather Part III". Now, that will really be worth waiting for!
I think instead I'll peak in and see what's playing on the next screen over, here at the multiplex. Pass the popcorn, Mr. Jobs!
I'd love to get him on my PodTech.net show
Keep this going... this is what users want...real interviews
An interview with Bill G will only be useful if it can be somewhere between then length of the Steve Balmer interview and the Alchin interview.
I like the longer ones, Alchin was fascinating, almost as interesting as Bill Hill (who a admire quite allot).
Q: Hey, where are we?
A: Heyyyyy, how are you guys doing?
Q: Who are you?
A: Steve Ballmer. Who are you?
Q: I'm Robert Scoble.
A: I know that. You're in my office at Microsoft Corporation.
Q: We're in your office? I heard there's an Xbox up here, is that true?
A: There's no Xbox. There are some suggestions, from my son, on Halo 2 and 3 on the board.
Q: You're famous for the "developers, developers, developers" speech. Why are developers so important for Microsoft?
A: At the end of the day the innovation in the software business and the IT business comes because someone writes a great piece of code. Even in the hardware frankly most of the innovation comes because someone writes a great piece of code. An important piece of code. A great piece of code.
All the solutions, whether we create them ourselves, whether they are created by our partners, or our ISVs, it all starts with developers, developers, developers.
Q: I’m on the evangelism team here, why do we have an evangelism team?
A: Well, really helping developers understand what we got available for them to use, not just frankly in Windows, but in Office and our Server products, what they can take advantage of, exploit that. How they can save their time. Save their energy. How they can do in some senses better applications. Applications that integrate better with other people’s applications. You know you’ve gotta communicate. Some of that has to happen on the Web site. Some of that has to happen in face-to-face meetings. People here have to be listening and creating code samples.
All of that we call “evangelism.”
Q: What is your call to action for developers?
A: Well, I think that one of the key things that people have to understand is that the PC is an important part of the overall ecosystem that people are using. It’s intelligence at the edge of the Internet. And I think that people got very excited, appropriately, about Internet and HTML and browsers, but I think there’s gonna be two places of innovation for developers over the next few years.
One is gonna be taking advantage of intelligence at the edge of the network. The PC and other intelligent edge (mobile phones) devices and the other is going to be using Web services and XML to glue things together: applications, services, across the Internet, inside the datacenter, inside a developer’s applications. Between those two phenomenon I think there’s plenty for developers to think about.
Q: Microsoft has been a leader in transparency, blogging, and Channel 9. Why did you allow blogging to happen?
A: In the world of developers I don’t think it would have mattered if I wanted to allow blogging to happen or not. But I think it’s been a great way for us to communicate to our customers and for our customers, more importantly, to communicate with us. We trust our people to represent our company. That’s what they are paid to do. If they don’t want to be here they wouldn’t be here. So in a sense you don’t run any more risk letting someone express themselves on a blog than you do letting them go out and see a customer on their own anyway. It just touches more people. Hey, if people need to be trained or understand better we can do that but I find that it’s just a great way to have customer communications.
Q: Now time for some tough questions.
A: OK. End of the softballs.
Q: On the blogs there are those who say that Microsoft doesn’t innovate anymore. Can you give us some examples of where you see innovation?
A: I think we’re doing a ton of innovative work. If you take a look at the stuff we’re doing with interactive television I think it is super innovative. I think the Tablet stuff has been a little slower to take off than we had hoped, but I think it’s super innovative stuff. If you take a look at what we’re doing right now in the Office world with our next generation, with this generation, and the next generation of Office products. The stuff we’re doing with Live Communicator and the real-time stuff I think it’s very good and innovative work.
Take a look at what we’re doing in Visual Studio and Systems Center and the DSI, the management issue, I think it’s very innovative work. If you take a look at MSN Messenger, I think it’s very innovative work.
We have other things coming to the fore. Longhorn and a bunch of important -- the Xbox 360 – even before that. Very innovative stuff.
I do think that people miss. There was a big gap between the last major release of Windows and this one and people kind of miss that. They want more frequent releases. We got that message. That’s important.
But, I look out at the world and I say ‘who is doing the innovative stuff over the last few years?’ Did IBM out innovate us? I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ve done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don’t think they’ve done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven’t seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff. We’ve done some interesting stuff. Peace. There are going to be some other companies that do some innovative work. And our job is to go out and do what we’re gonna do which is to out-innovate them going forward. Which is what we will do, even in their prime domain of search.
Q: Coming up with tough questions for you is pretty hard, if you were in my position, what tough questions would you be asking the CEO of Microsoft?
A: I think developers have to ask the following basic questions. Number one are you guys going to create opportunities, not just for me to write programs more simply, but are you gonna create opportunities where my program somehow works with another guy’s programs and one plus one equal three. Windows has been that. You get to use multiple applications at the same time with some level of data interchange.
I think the work we’re doing in Longhorn. The work we’re doing with the file system in Longhorn. The work we’re doing with Avalon in Longhorn. All falls into that category and I feel very very good about that.
I think you have to ask us are you gonna give us a way to have one plus one be three with other applications in terms of the way they communicate and work out on the Internet. We’re working hard on strategies to facilitate that. With MSN and some of the other things we’re doing. I think that’s an important area.
I think at the end of the day developers, though, more than almost anything wanna know “are you guys gonna win?” Because the technical stuff is interesting, very interesting, very important, but people want to bet on platforms that are going to win because platforms that win get more support. Get more management tools. They get more of everything. I think our track record has shown a consistent track record of winning and even in areas, like the Internet, where people we weren’t gonna win we came back to win. So, I’d say to us “are you guys still committed to winning?” Of which the obvious answer is “absolutely we are” and that success of our platforms benefits our developers.
Q: To end it up, since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9 too, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world who work at Microsoft?
A: I’d say the same thing to our developer customers as I would say to our employees. There has never been a better opportunity than today to make a real difference in the world. The next 10 years are going to be as exciting in computing and information technology as the last 10.
Don’t be confused. Even though more than 10 years ago most people didn’t have PCs. They didn’t have cell phones. They didn’t know what the Internet was. The next 10 are gonna be every bit as good. Whether it is Web Services. Whether it is intelligence at the end. Whether it is service based applications. Whether it is next generation user interfaces. Whether it is mobility. The next 10 years are going to be very exciting. The key is to set big bold goals for yourself. Whether it is the skills that you develop individually. It is the projects that you work on with others and seek to go after. I think we have got to be able to be big and bold. I tell our people let’s be big and bold in our ambitions. I tell developers who use our platforms and tools to be big. Be bold. Be ambitious and count on it – the future is so bright you gotta wear shades.
Q: I wore jeans right into the CEO’s office.
Q: What do you want to be remembered as?
A: Now you’re asking deep, profound, questions. Mostly I want to be remembered by my three sons as a great dad and a great husband. But when you get past that I wanna be, you know, kind of remembered as a guy who helped build a company that did great innovative work that was able to continue to do great and innovative work long after its founding. The company is 30 years old. We started out as the beginner in this industry. We’re about the only company that has not only survived, but thrived through the whole period and 30 years from now when I’m long gone I want this company to be still knocking out the innovative hits.
Q: Thanks very much Steve.
That was a very pleasant interview. I rather enjoyed it. I work for your company, and I'm very proud to do so.
Also, if you could make me the boss of the entire Windows divison, I'd appreciate it.
Otherwise, it was very cool of you to spend a few minutes chatting on video.
Sincerely,
- Rory
- http://www.neopoleon.com
Exactly, that's why somewhere around 30 minutes is good.
That's why I said somewhere between Balmer an Alchin.
The Alchin interview was VERY long if I remember correctly. (maybe it wasn't, hmmm..)
I wish you got to ask about MSN Search - I remember that developer speech, and I've heard him speak about getting more relevant search results than google, but I don't understand why on earth Microsoft doesn't rally the developer community around search. .Search is already 100 times more powerful than Google Mini and it might even proove better than Google Applications, but the MSN search team is attempting to brute force their way past google, when all we have to do is leave it to developers to do it by allowing 3rd parties to create better ranking modules, add-ins, to make it super easy to search any application. Or the internet if you have enough servers or cheap pcs.
I did it, why can't Microsoft?
I'd give any thing for 5 minutes with Balmer to ask him why Microsoft isn't putting part of the search game in the hands of developers, and how he could do it with almost no effort. So if you get a second interview someday, in a couple of years, ask him if Microsoft will ever take a revolutionary innitiative and give the .Net community some tools and products that would blow google out of the water, and how come he hasn't hired me yet
Paul from Nata1
Although the whole "intelligence at the edges" of the net thing got me thinking back to when AOL chatrooms were just starting out...lots of "edges" but not a lot of ...
There was that namespace that disappeared, System.Search - whatever happened to that?
Well search is not something that you would ever want to be in the framework, it would have to be an outside api. There should be a single API where you can spider a couple million pages if you have 10 gigs free sql space - and if you want to override text extraction, the developer can write their own module to plug in, want to implement your own ranking algorithm, plug in a module, want to use your own stemmer? plug a module in.
Personally, I'm going with Community Server by Telligents 100%, even from winform apps - because of the module architecture, and dataprovider architecture
Like if I ship a product and include my help files, I can use the html generator, or I could use a much more powerful system that uses an embedded web server running on the cd-rom - and I could ask full text questions, and when I'm authoring this help, I could quickly alter the default ranking, sticky certain pages so they always come up first, etc. and I could keep my entire corpus in xml.
In order to beat Google at relevancy, it's going to take getting developers on their side, to develop solutions as they arise. Whoever heard of tagging a year ago? I didn't - or Social Search? Or the next cool blog feature of tommorrow that allows relevancy to take off. Yes, relevancy is about a bunch of algorithms, Googles got em and Microsoft is throwing dozens of C++ programmers at the problem (and hiring some awesome Gurus, some of my personal heros like Selberg) but their missing the point that its not about how many C++ developers you throw at the problem, its the tools that you give to the .Net community, and let them innovate as new 'things' arrise. Google and MSN relevancy right now is all about SEO and changing some constants in the ranking algorithms rather than going after the real problem
The REAL problem is that we do have the capability to handle relevancy. You and I. But we're not given the chance. It shouldn't be Google vs MSN Search. It should be Google vs MSN Search solutions - where MSN just takes care of the hefty work of basic spidering and indexing of the entire internet and serving up search results, but where WE have control over our own ranking if we want, where we can use that huge corpus in our own apps in different ways than your typical web search - where dozens of smaller companies start popping up that would use the MSN Search service, pull a thousasand pre-ranked hits (with basic ranking control), and then WE rank ourselfs - so tommorrow when some new Social Search innovation comes out of nowhere, new companies can use MSN Search and implement their own ranking solution.
I've already proven that its possible, and Selsberg works for Microsoft now - he created the Meta Crawler which is very similar in concept back in 96.
So there's alot that Microsoft could be doing that its not doing and that it probably won't be doing, but we can hope
Sorry for the Rant!
Great interview Robert. channel 9 videos are great, Keep up the good work
Ian
The Windows Media Center Show
Of course I got here from a Slashdot posting.
In about 2 weeks I will be purchasing a Power Mac. My first ever Apple. I have Visual Studio on every computer I use and around 3 months ago I got my company to start using C# for an application I am the lead developer on. So I'm not anti-Microsoft.
However, I think Microsoft is really missing the "average user" need on the desktop.
If Apple can find a strategy that allows them to get in more homes (the Intel switch could help) then I say Microsoft is in real trouble in the home-user market.
Backwards compatability is great, but in the home it's only useful for 3-5 years (IMHO). So, instead we get the same bloated OSes that power business computers. The home OS needs to be A LOT more nible and forward thinking. Unfortunately I'm not sure the monolith that is M$ can actually recognize this need and effectively deal with it.
I think a new strategy is needed in the home. What about a site license for the home as well? A big factor for me was when I looked at upgrades from one version of an Apple OS for 3-5 computers (which is what I normally have at home) compared to an upgrade for those same 3-5 computers from one version of Windows to the next, the cost is like a difference of a factor of 3-4. Of course there's a lot of factors there, Apple has a more frequent release schedule, but that means I can deal with the cost yearly instead of every three years. Helps the financial impact seem smaller.
Wow, this turned in to quite a ramble. I guess that's what happens at 7:28 A.M. when hurricane Dennis is threatening to take you out.
Hi guys how are you? My name is Vincenzo and I am Italian. I write from Sheffield (UK) where I study marketing. I was watching Steve Ballmer interview. He positively impressed me. He didn’t look like a CEO, it was like I knew him since a long time.
Actually, at first Steve Ballmer looked like my uncle Nicola in Italy and I said “UNCLE NICOLA IS MICROSOFT CEO AND I DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?! He can probably help me with my dissertation!” But then I realised that it wasn’t my uncle. I will have to cope with this sorrow for the rest of my life, eh eh eh J
Joking aside I enjoyed the interview. As marketing student I have to appreciate Ballmer natural communication skills to promote his company. Also, I think it is great when a CEO finds the time to listen to his employees especially in a big company like Microsoft. I would like to add something to what Ballmer said about innovation. I think that innovation is not only interactive television, messenger, live communicator and the real-time stuff. Don’t get me wrong guys, these things are important. But they cannot be the only form of innovation we value. I make an example. During the master in marketing that I am currently attending I have participated to a project with IBM UK. We have studied the technology that IBM has developed to help people with disabilities (blind, hearing impaired, with a low vision and so on) use IT applications that we can all use today. I think that this technology doesn’t have a great impact on IBM revenue but still is “technology that matters”…to society. It is still great innovation. Ballmer said about IBM "I don’t think they’ve done much interesting at all”. Mr Ballmer let me disagree with you. I think that technology that helps people with disabilities is very interesting. I don’t work for IBM and, believe or not, I have no interest to promote this company; yes I am studying this company for my dissertation but I consider myself a free thinker like you guys.
By the way, I like your blog. Keep it up guys and hope to participate more to the discussions on channel 9 eh eh eh eh eh J
Vincenzo Graziano
What a cool guy, a ball of energy with a passion his company.
*sniff*
I could cry, I love Microsoft! Go Steve!
They built that monopoly by building great software, it's a common side-effect of being very succesful.
Slashdot has a lot of nerve linking to a video stream. It seems like the only purpose of Slashdot is to conduct distributed DoS attacks and then belittle the content.
>what tough questions would you be asking the CEO of Microsoft?
Apart from that question, nice interview.
IMHO, tough questions are:
- How can I make sustainable business on your platform over the next 3 - 5 years?
- What are models for me to collaborate and compete with your 50,000+ workforce?
BTW:
Maybe in the future, could you post some of those hilarious BillG and SteveB videos they show at the company meetings?
Remember last week when Balmer was talking about how they were going to overtake Google in Relevancy in 6 months? I have to unfortunately work right next to Mac heads (small company) and listen to that hype on a daily basis - they get a kick out of watching slashdot threads after anything Microsoft (sorry M$) related gets posted!
Well the slashdot posting really gets dull after a while, in fact I think I can write a little chatbot that can produce the same output.
Like the whole 20,000 replies to the Balmer / google speach (you know the one where he was in Australia talking to partners) were the same old junk! Nothing new! And no one even Once brought up the fact that MSN Search Won't overtake Google relevancy because they don't take social search seriously.
I should seriously release a anti-Microsoft chat bot and see if anyone could tell it was a bot. Slashdot posters are a bore
I hear this quite a bit about Tablets, but rarely is it ever backed up with a concrete example. I'll grant that some of the hardware is pretty cool -- *love* this, for instance -- but Microsoft doesn't make the hardware, so they can't take any credit for that.
As far as Window XP Tablet PC Edition, there are precious few things that make it any different than standard XP, and I'm not sure they qualify as innovative in most cases anyway. Handwriting recognition is certainly nothing new. The Ink input system is OK, but Apple's Inkwell is similar, just to name one example (yes, I realize Apple doesn't make a Tablet). OneNote is a very good application, and MS should be justifiably proud of it, but that isn't even Tablet-specific. So what are all these great things going on the the Tablet world?
Borland? Haven't they been squeezed out of the market yet? What was the last thing they created? Turbo Pascal?!?
'Architect, Architect, Architect, Architect'----------L.S
you as boss can fire all developers , only a few Architect remain, put all architect to do what developers did, your company is still works.
Ok, so why would he do that?
what is *your* vision for the windows platform?
Shaun McDonnell
As for you...platform zealot? What's wrong with you people? If people like Microsoft and they like what they do, why do always take the time to come on boards like this and cry about it?
What's wrong with appreciating the strengths? I love Apple, I have Debian on my laptop, but I also like what MS are doing with Longhorn and the newer technologies.
All the negativity and anti-MS BS is getting tiresome. You have a picture of Jobs in your avatar, he's never given anything away for free so I'm missing your point about free software their.
If free software does continue to grow and it destroys our software industry, what then? They'll be no programmers willing to take up a career that pays nothing. Your vision of freedom doesn't work well in the society we live in, people need paying.
That part made me laugh
1. You manage your data
2. They manage their data
3. Data is easily communicated between the two of you
Three "applications of use" for two codebases.
I'll ask around here and see if there are any other ideas on the equation.
Right On.
That was just an example of the "1 + 1 = 3" concept, not exactly what Steve was talking about.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking, though. Here's an article on J2EE and .NET Web Services integration, demonstrating what I meant in my example.
Seriously though he looks like a nice guy, and about all the FUD going around here, MS will always get attacked because there are everywhere, if Apple was dominating the market they would get all the attention. I'm not saying MS does everything right, it's a multi billion dollar corporation which happens to make software, but it's a corporation nevertheless.
If you do not like what they are doing, use something else... there are alternatives you know.
Great job scoble!
Question - Did you prime Steve for the "If you were in my position what tough questions would you ask Microsoft's CEO" question
What's amazing is you can't tell where we switched from the prepared questions to the unprepared ones. He answers them all with the same speed and confidence. It's an amazing skill.
It's also why I asked that question that way. I had been told by others that even if I asked a really probing, really embarrassing question he'd answer it his own way without even skipping a beat. So, I didn't try.
The Slashdotters gave me some heck about that, though. So next time I'll have to ask some go-for-the-throat type of questions just to show I can ask those. But, I bet the answers would turn out the same.
It's sorta like when you ask a politician a debate question and they say "that's an interesting question, but the real issue is..." and they switch into what they wanted to talk about anyway.
Steve gets asked the world's toughest questions by the world's best journalists, so there wasn't much of a chance that I was gonna get him to reveal anything new in my 10-minute interview with him.
Great job.
I concur with the others, Steve should get a blog.
Microsot unofficially answered this question months ago but I forget where I read it, but it was straight from the MS OS teams. MS has already said they WILL release Longhorn in late 2006 and they will remove (more) features if neccesary in order to make this timeframe. Balmer does not have some magic date just sittng on his desk that the public doesn't know about. If you have ever worked (or watched) developement on a large project you will see how difficlt it can be to forecast a magic date. MS is hoping on sooner than later, and if they can finish Longhorn in August 2006, then they will be wasting everybody's time if they told everybody Nov 30th. It's better to just answer the question in quarters and let the project decide when it will be done.
As far as your "platform that wins" question, I think you are looking at Windows Server frm a very narrow view. The only reason 2003 Server is a "platform that co-exists" now more so than previous OSs is because MS finally has the time to add more bells and whistles to their NT5 kernel, becuase MS spent all their time developing NT4 and 2000 Server just to do everything it needed to do, and not enough time to add "what would be nice". I'd also like to point out that NT4 had support for Unix compatibility (something with printing) and 2000 added even more support with better integraton with a Novell network (which 2000 has quickly replaced anyways).
I could spend a lot more detailing my points but I think you should read up on your 2000 and 2003 white papers along with taking into consideration what it takes to write an entire OS from scratch before you make blanket statements like these. MS has spend the past 8-9 years adding all the features every other server OS has had (for the most part) and now MS is spending their time adding bells & whistles and adding more innovative things (ex: Longhorn server). Nothing has changed in MS's goals of their server OSs, it's business as usual. If you have some specific points you'd likd to discuss on how 2003 appears to have different goals or business model, please post them, as I'd welcome the discussion.
Did you even read this article, it mentions 2 features in longhorn.
1. The bootup can now detect if a critical hardware cange will cause your system to lockup.
As mentioned one that I've seen mylsef is a otherboard change. If you make a drastic change in motherboards Windows will BSOD durng bootup and you HAVE to re-install the entire OS to get windows to work again. This is a life saving feature to upgraders.
2. Windows has a built in benchmark tool along with the abltiy to enable/disable features (ex: services, runtime applications) on the fly. So a game will run and it can disable anything you wouldnt' want running anyways such as the File Indexer.
I mean do you really want an optional service running in the background chewing up memory and network speed while you are playing a game? Obviously this implies all your settings are returned to normal when the game quits. Although by the sound of it it's up to the game to trigger this optimize event but I sure hope Windows does this by default when a full screen DirectX or OpenGL game runs.
.....
So what part of this article claims that Longhorn is stealing my PC or screwing it up? It sounds like to me Windows it just getting smarter and flipping settings a smart gamer would (and should) flip anyways before running a game.
Let's see, I seem to recall MS launching an OS that was so user friendly that it was the sole reason that PCs became as populate as owning a TV. Ironically that same OS also made the internet just as popular.
MS offered the first server OS with a graphical UI that was also so admin friendly it took over 50% of all servers in less than 10 years, and this number is still growing.
And despite the myths, MS did many innovative things as far as web app developing went. They were ahead of Sun Java on many fronts and here's a timeline to back this up.
1) 1996 Microsoft releases ASP; in 1998 Sun releases JSP
2) 1997 Microsoft releases ADSI; in 1998 Sun releases JNDI
3) 1997 Microsoft releases MSMQ; in 1998 Sun releases JMS
4) 1997 Microsoft releases Microsoft Transaction Server; in 1998 Sun releases EJB
5) 1998 Microsoft releases MSXML; in 2001 Sun releases JAXP
6) 2000 Microsoft releases Queued Components; in 2001 Sun releases Message Driven Beans
7) 2000 Microsoft releases XML Web Services; in 2001 Sun releases Java Web Services Developer Pack
But if you want to focus in on just the past couple years, you are correct, MS did not invent internet searching, satellite maps or IM, I'm sorry you're so dissapointed, but I'll take a 2003 SP1 server anyday over the newest solutions Oracle/IBM/Sun is selling.
Your questions were really good, this was actually the one of the best videos I've seen on Channel in a long time, I love the "short and to the point" of it. I rarely have time to watch 30 or 45 min videos where there's too much giggling and tagent discussions.
I wouldn't be so quick to feed the ./ crew, they are very inflamatory in nature and many being slightly on the egotistical side, would never be satisfied even if you did ask the questions they want. I think I explained this in a previous post just 2 posts up, asking release dates is silly, if a date is available it will be told at a conference or leaked, but don't probe management for dates of projects, because they don't exist. Even if you try to put him on the spot expect a "when it's ready answer". I mean really, if Ballmer gave a hard date and MS release early or late, any /.'er can twist it to say MS doesn't know what they are doing.
PS: I'm an avid ./ user
No, he's CEO because he knows how to talk to people. He met Bill Gates in Harvard, big deal. If he shuffled through his sentences slowly, looked at his feet, mumbled, yet had incredible business sense, do you really think he'd have been given media-intensive position of CEO? Not on your life. You want your most charismatic and passionate person at the head of your company.
In fact, you'll find that CEO's of a lot of big corps are very suave and energetic people. How else are you going to promote your business, woo investors and generally make more money? Someone has to be in the media spotlight. It should damn well be the person who can handle it best.
Stop looking at things so black-and-white (read: being a blind fanboy). Business is not like that.
Oh, and on the argument about "open source eventually winning" - whilst OSS is completely uncoordinated, without a central body of leadership and with no public promotion, it's going nowhere. Period. And that's not FUD, it's FACT.
[Edit: Slight edit 'cause I can't spell]
There is something in that but please don't go MTV about this, keeping it short for shortness'sake. Don't script if it's not absolutely necessary and don't overedit, leave in the spontaneous that makes C9. So if it takes an hour, it takes an hour. If you can do it in less than a minute, do that.
But in th end, take in the comments and trust your gut feeling. It created and sustained C9 and it will continue doing that.
Last year I went to a Technet session where Steve was interviewed as part of the keynote. Because of him being there, the parking garage under the congress center was closed, everyone was (supposed to be) checked upon entry and you couldn't carry keep bags etc with you.
Closing the parking garage was a bit silly, in my opinion, and impractical. The few streets with free parking spaces in the neighborhood were packed with cars. What did they expect? Someone driving in a car full of explosives in it because of Steve? Unlikely.
But that is just me. If you want to inspire me, you don't go all excited, you take an hour or so, explaining, in detail, the logic and rationale about whatever the subject is. There would need to be a lot of 'hmmm', 'yes, I see' and 'how does that work, exactly' going on with me.
The first time I saw Steve he was part of the keynote of a Technet day. He was nice and all but it wasn't my thing. You'd expect that any moment he'd go like 'stand up and applaud for yourself, yes, yes, yes, go on, stand up'. The thoughtfull parts in that video (and 90% of it was) were for me.
The "take home" message of the Steve Ballmer video is that the next 10 years, for developers, will be as good as or better than the last 10 years. It is left to the viewer to decide what "better" means. Perhaps it means more interesting work. Perhaps it means higher volume of work in general. Perhaps it means increased gross receipts for developers. What Mr. Ballmer thinks when he thinks "developer" remains a mystery. What aids to developers Microsoft plans to offer over the next 10 years is unspecified. I come away from his brief comments with the same confused, "what was THAT all about?" that I used to experience at half-time when coach would give us a pep talk.
Nevertheless, it is extremely good to have the big cheeses honor us with a few comments. I don't think this qualifies as a contribution to the still missing dialogue between Microsoft management and developers, but it is a start. (I know, management believes there is an ongoing, long-term, in-depth dialogue that makes the world safe for innovation. In my neck of the woods, the means to advise Microsoft management is non-existent.) Good show!
Market share is less important to Linux cs than it is to Microsoft. Linux can and has survived and grown with nearly 0% market share. You paint the picture of Microsoft with, say, 10% market share.
They operate on slighty different markets but more importantly, from different angles. They dance around each other and that is good. If they come a bit closer they might see the other isn't as bad as they thought it was.
The FUD comes from both sides (and Steve has done and is doing his share of that and is often not much different from, say, your average ./er) but I find that if you get one-on-one and face-to-face with any of them, you'll find them quite reasonable. That's what I saw with Steve when I looked over the wall of 'Go go Microsoft, the competition is silly and doesn't amount to much' (I was to use a one-word expletive but thought the better of it
Customers...Customers...Customers...Customers...
Customers...Customers...Customers...Customers...
or users, if you like.
In the end, it is the person using the software, even if it is someone writing software that only that one person uses, that makes it worthwile.
Your comments are unfairly sarcastic. Laugh? If you're such a *nix zealot then you should embrace MS's adoption of *nix.
If MS does change their mind one day that's a good thing, not a bad thing nor a sign that they don't know what they're doing. It would just prove they realize they need to adopt to meet the market's demands (which they have done MANY times in the past).
If you're going to take the time to post, at least make it intellectually stimulating. Call me a stickler but posts like these are borderline flaming imho, nothing productive comes out of them.
Did you know it's a fireable offense for anyone working on Windows at Microsoft to look at GPL code? So, I doubt it.
I agree, It's nice to see top-level management in-tune with what's really going on as well as actively interested in it. I met with a couple of PGs a few months ago out in Redmond and I was amazed at how willing everyone was to sit down with you and ask "what do you think of this", or "how can we improve..." It was very interesting.
Does this clause apply to the SFU/SUA teams as well?
Since GPL code such as Linux is regarded as being that "cancerous", I suppose MS people wanting to recycle *NIX code will have to dig into their 16-bit archives and pull out a listing for one of MS's first products, namely XENIX. MS still owns some of the rights to that, don't they, or is the source code now owned by SCO (present or previous incarnation thereof)? XENIX incorporated some BSD features into the ATT code base, so Linux fans might find a few worthwhile tidbits in it, albeit it ones that you could easier write from scratch than extract. (I'm assuming it would be of very limited use, unless MS has plans to release Longhorn for the 8086 or 80286, that is!)
Everyone needs a hobby
I think he means to say that Linux isn't cancerous, per se, the GPL is. A lot of OSS devs tend to just release their code under the GPL without thinking what it means for other developers. If you really want your program to be used in any application (closed source or not), then don't release it under GPL.
For the record, I've had XP installed for a few years now, and I've never had a BSOD. Ever (although my memory could be faulty, but I doubt it). I've had those god-forsaken "Foo Program has encountered an error and needs to close" crap, but I would argue that's the program developer's fault, not Windows'. Then again, I could be wrong
At the same time I don't leave my machine on 24/7 since I do most of my work on a laptop. I also run Gentoo on my desktop at home - go figure
I'm looking forward to trying out OS X on an Intel. I have a lot of respect for Mac and the only thing stopping me buying one in the past was the price. If the price comes down, I'm willing to part with a grand or two!
One last thing: why is it that when people think "innovation" it always has to be something totally new? Why can't you take an old idea/technology and improve upon it in ways people hadn't thought of - is that not innovative also? I would argue that it is.
The reputation for BSODs comes from the 9x line. It's dead, stop harping on about it. NT based OSes have never suffered frequent BSODs and on XP in particular they are a very rare thing.
As for disk defragmentation, WTF? You're aware that all file systems suffer from fragmentation, right? It's an inherent problem which is impossible to solve.
You can get defragmentation tools for the Mac but with Linux you're out of luck. Of course you can choose to believe the "you don't need to do it" rhetoric but then Microsoft were saying that about NTFS when it first came out...
Norton Antivirus, McAfee Virex, Sophos Antivirus ...
But hey, why let facts spoil a good argument, eh?
I'm fairly sure that Stave Jobs has already made it very clear the Mac OS X will still require Mac hardware to run, you won't just be able to stick it on any old PC.
You will be able to run Windows on a Mac. You won't be able to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple PC. Simple as that.
3 years I made the mistake of hiring about 6 guys like you to do the graphic arts and video editing at my shop. They're Mac, Linux guys, I'm open minded, they said they didn't mind .Net in their interviews.
For the last 3 years my work has been ridiculed, crapped on, all the Nights, Days, and Weekends I spent trying to make a name for my company by working on the most involved open source search engine framework to ever exist, that wasn't good enough for your type.
Getting made fun of almost every other day because it's written in .Net and just isn't going to ever be 'cool' because it just isn't this or that.
Well that stuff used to get to me. And then there came a point in my life where I realized that you guys are just full of it. Not to listen to anything you guys say because its always a bunch of Hogwash.
Now I'm laughing inside because some day soon I'll be in Redmond, if things go right, and I'll never have to listen to guys like you ever again, because I don't have to read your sensless and stupid posts, I don't have to read slashdot posts, and someday soon I'll be working with real people who are rational and whos work is based on Merit not on the stupidity that your type of people spew out that at one point in time I used to take seriously. Someday when I work for Microsoft I won't have to wear headphones all day to drown out the Linux/Mac drivel.
Just reading your slashdotish posts, man that drivel, after all these years, now all sounds the same. Your not out to make a point, your just out to be cool, to put other people down if they're not like you. Its a redneck mentality and I've come to realize that it is in fact mental illness.
There are linux and mac gurus who are merit based and then there are others who are all talk
I have to second this, while he seems like a reasonably smart guy, he's spending as much time as all of us posters put together to make half arsed attempts to bash MS. While I may not be happy with everything MS has done in the past/present/future, you seem to obsess only on the (small amount) of negative ones.
If they're such a crappy company why waste your time commenting on them. Go write a better IDE for Linux, or improve the interface or help get XML based display to the UI (ala Avalon or what MasOS10 offers).
Any fool can stand by the side of the road watching everybody pass and poke fun of "those silly enough to keep driving".
Personal attacks are weak, people resort to them because they can't control their temper or have simply ran out of sensible points to make against something.
..............
But despite my agreement with you Orbit86, your posts are pretentious and have, so far, lacked any factual point behind them, the exception being the most recent post you made just before this one. Instead you keep displaying a "I can't wait till MS gets in" attitude that is often associated with the linux/mac zealots, making you guilty of the same crime you are accusing others of.
If you want to blame somebody for a language not being .Net-a-fied then blame that language's team, community, and if your a coder in that language, yourself
UPDATE: Python is available for Visual Studio http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_Python/?mp=1 although I can't tell if it compiles Python to .Net code or if this just lets you use VS as an IDE for normal Python code.
Well this post has had a more than normal amount of users because it's actually been one of the best video's we've seen for a long time and people were hoping for some decent stimulating conversation on the topic. Obviously people can't help but read your posts. The worst part is that it appears your posts have thread capped this discussion. Perhaps you should add a disclaimer on the top of your post that says...
DISCLAIMER: I'm about to poke fun of MS just for the sake of it, if you don't want to engage in flames and pointless abuse, please skip this message.
You can't expect everybody to know what what they're getting into by reading some of the garbage you typed. Heck if you had that disclamer on your posts, I would spend more time defending you against the other posters than attacking you myself because at least they knew what they were getting into and you were man enough to admit your biaseness against MS.
The fact you use their products don't mean you're not biased, I mean I am biased against ASP.Net 1.1 because I feel 1.1 wasn't ready for mainstream use until 2.0, but that's a whole different subject. I don't sit here and randomly interject something like "What innovation, ASP.Net 1.1 sux!!!"
I shouldn't comment on this thread any further, I think we've all flushed it down the toilet pretty far by now.
Back on topic now - I was thrilled to see he likes MSoft employees blogging, because it helps the customer relationship, however he said it.
Ask me a year ago if I would ever work with Microsoft, I would have said "probably not"
But all the blogs I read from MSofter like Schobel, for me moreso from the MSN Search team, that's huge - now I'm glued to every post I read from MSofties, and I've learned that MSoft is just a company, there's nothing magical, nothing scary, its a real company - with people like me. What sets it aside is the people who work there, for one, the structure for another.
I used to work for IBM, and I have to say that I do think that Microsoft is an innovator - without any previous product knowledge, based on the structure of the company, at IBM we were squashed into tiny compartmentalized boxes, and if we stepped outside the box, well you just didn't do that - at Microsoft, you can step outside of the box, to the perfect degree (like there are still rules, still a box), but to the right degree where inovation happens. Heck - MSofters can blog even, that's a sign to me that there is the freedom to innovate. At IBM, you could have had the greatest idea in the world, but you had to keep it to yourself. And that worked great. But it isn't the way you innovate.
Now can we get this thread back OT? The only way to do that is not to respond to sensless /. arguments. If a babies crying and nothing is wrong with it, every good parent knows that if you reinforce the bad behavior you just get more bad behavior. So for me, that's the last time I'll make a reference to the you know what.
I can't remember if he talked about that in the video or if that was an article I read. Trying to track down more info on what he was saying about business AI
there's a transcript of this one floating around there somewhere right?
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/default.asp
Dang that makes me want to get a PhD so I can get in there someday
I remember at the 2001 PDC in LA, the Research guy (when are they gonna get an interview with him, that guy is rad) - showed off this thing that was way cooler than a search engine - he typed in "where is Osama Bin Laden" and the result he got back was "in a cave in afghanastan".
Now that was pretty frickin cool, combine a search engine with AI like that, god knows what they're working on now, but it sucks that thing never made it into the product groups (yet)
Anyone read B Gates books? he talks alot about MSoft research, about how much it costs, but how its worth it, or infact, necessary for MSoft to survive.
I didn't know that about Xerox! Its good to listen to videos like this to know that innovation is one of the primary (the?) goals of the company.
Where's that MSoft research site again? Amazing that some of that stuff is public, but it gives us an idea what to prepare for.
Speaking of which - Balmer doesn't do this, but Gates does - he kinda does this thing you see in baseball, where you call out where the ball is going to go and it goes there, like in the book before business at the speed of thought Bill was saying "in ten years, computers are going to be the size of a notebook, and you'll be able to write on them like a notebook" and then they make it happen. I didn't take it too seriously at the time - "yeah right that's going to happen", but now... if only B Gates said "In 5 years, hailstorm is going to take off" ROFL - I was banking my retirement on that one
Then on top of that an empolyee at Xerox tried to create the worlds first true digital document (as word processor files are specific to their not-for-free app and HTML wasn't very feature rich and too easy to alter) so he created the PDF. Although I don't know if he left Xerox to make a business out of PDF because it was a good idea or beacuse Xerox had no interest in non paper documents. Somehow I think it was a little of both.
I give a lot of credit to MS for embracing R&D as some really neat things have been floating around their R&D that will be required for upcoming technology. Once in awhile Channel9 posts a video of some group in the R&D showing off new technology concepts, such as the big screen interface that appeared here a few months ago.
"For example, "information overload" is becoming a serious drag on productivity"
I was about to ask why my channel9 email notifications don't go through - but on second though
Unfortunetly the Osama question isn't fact, it's speculation but conceptually, the example you mentioned has existed for at least 4 months now as far as I've known.
it did ok - I was asking it who the president of the united states is, (answered correctly), what the president of the united states was (said george bush), and where ... was (said born in texas)
From that link you gave, the BGates link, he was saying that in the future search will be able to tell what repository your looking to search - I think we're just seeing the beginning of free text queries
I can't believe I didn't even know that answer engine existed! Man I'm out of it. Thanks Travis!
When I get out of the loop, stop going to PDCs, etc. I start forgetting how cool the future is.
Another neat feature most people don't know about is Google's book search trick (this is different from Google Print, a project I'm also really hyped about).
When in Google type "books about keyword" and you will get a special list (top 3) of books on that item and the keyword does not have to be in the title or category of the book. If you search for "books about textbox" you will get .Net books (and some java).
Sorry MSN, you're still falling short here.
(Love the Google Print btw - it still seems like the same thing you get when you search for "books about textbox" though)
When google started taking different corpuses other than the Web, and if there was enough relevance, showing the little cluster of that corpuses search results at the top of the web search results, that was pretty frickin cool. So google is doing Maps, Books, and that sponsored search results thing goes way back.
Whoever thought that one, I'd love to shake that guys hand - like the guy who invented the paperclip - in my lifetime if I came up with a 'paperclip' ...
Surely you're not talking about clippy, right?
mVPstar
ROFL - I just copied this from some website, searched for "who invented the paperclip" - whoever made clippy, that was Not innovation !
--- Temple Robert<The Genius of China 3000 years of Science, discovery, and invention>
I'd say. Although you might want to widen it somewhat to include the rest of Asia, espicially when it comes to philosophy.
Anyway, we (Europe/the Western world) did it to ourselves. Not wanting to start a social-theological debate, let me put it this way:
the lid was closed on science, philosophy, spirituality and art, the achievements of the Greeks denounced
and it took some time until renaissance freed Europe from the chains the clergy put it.
They showed the Greeks were way ahead of us, even after 1500 years because of stagnation in the 4 fields I mentioned.
Had that not happened, flying to Alpha Centauri would be considered a daily commuters routine.
yes,absolutely you(Europe/the Western world) did it to yourselves,but we(China/the East world) affect what you did.(search "who invented the paper and printing").the communication is a way to affect the Western world,the Silk Road.
Today,you(Europe/the Western world) affect us(China/the East world) in many fields include you meationed.
The idea of having "something" there to aid you is a good idea, but there's something annoying about a bouncy little paperclip that aggressively suggests what you want to do.
You could say that Office 2003's "Task Pane" is partially similar as instead of animating and suggesting, it merely has lists of things you probably want to do, and they are also categorized into many pages within the pane.
I might be stretching this too much, but I just felt like it was a point worth exploring.
Enough complaining from me though. Great vid!
Ballmer actually came out with something really intelligent and an insight into what I really agree with and am actually basing my business on. Namely: Integration hooking up applications with other 3rd party applications. How can I connect this to this... How can I interface with that...
That really made sense to me. Sure Windows has granted a level of interoperability which puts technologies like X to shame but it's not nearly what I want.
We work in web design and are dealing with a website with over 600 articles, what's the one thing that we're working on that we feel should be a lot easier? Integration. We're dealing with documents that are still in HTML 4.2 Transitional that contain content and layout with no seperation, Databases which use different packages, a huge Media database and an Outlook powered calendar system. We're charged with the task of putting these together and forming a web solution which will be easy to edit.
If Microsoft are seriously looking at making Windows applications more interoperable with each other, it's the first step to making our job easier, that way the left hand can know more about what the right hand's doing. Ballmer's clearly picked up on this, Microsoft has too, Longhorn is going to look like a serious investment for our clients when the time comes but we're getting excited about it.
You might have understood me saying that Europe did a lot original inventions (although I might have misunderstood etcetcetc
Anyway, what I meant is that Europeans could have been original inventors but we kept ourselves backward. So what happened is that whatever was invented, the Asians and especially the Chinese were first 9 out of 10. The printing press is a good example. In school we learned a Dutchman invented it, then I found out Gutenberg beat us to it and much later found that the Chinese were first.
Only after the renaissance started to undo the shackles of religion Europe was starting to get somewhere. Europe from about 500 to 1500 AD was not a great place to be for anyone with original thoughts.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sellswindows.php
An all-time classic! Who can resist the temptations of the Cardfile and Reversi?
Still want to know if he really has an X-Box hidden somewhere in that office. <grin>.
That was funny
http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=947
There have almost always been people amongst developers that have considered Microsoft to be secret about their development. (Like the preMicrosoft time, IBM where to developers)
I think that Steve have realized that openness is the best proven practice to stick with.
To belong to a group fulfills a very basic human need.
That is vital for any successful longtime biz.
All major companies have enthusiasm and innovation drive in the beginning, and as the company gets bigger the communications get more and more restricted. Historically that will always lead to a downturn and in the end… The End.
When I look at a successful company I almost always see a CEO that recognize the end customer, and understand that communication, both internally and externally should be as open as possible.
When the leaders of a company stop communicate because of focusing on the top tier customers, the company won’t hear the day to day facts presented from the lower tier customers. And when that happens the days are numbered for that company.
It seams that Steve have understand that and acknowledges both his own developers and the external community developers.
The way Microsoft does this is historically unique.
Historically it was impossible to communicate with lower tiers customers as the company grew.
Now Microsoft uses blogging, Web seminars, Video presentation, FAQ, Third party vendors and Cannel9 etc.
I really believe that Microsoft can continue to be THE major Software Company for a very long time to come.
I’m usually not that pro Microsoft but I can’t help acknowledge their passion and striving in the right directions.
Go Steve!!
Regards
TheSWELinker
Wowza, I've never seen or heard Steve Ballmer in real life, and was taken a bit back by his energy.
Talk about contrast to Bill Gates eh!
cheers
tom
I think with the advantages in Virtual machine technology, Microsoft can/should/might quite likely cut more and more legacy support in the OS and move forward, and indeed I believe they should. I also quite believe they consider this very heavily.
Already you see how Vista Enterprise is bundled with Virtual PC Express (although its a bit funny that Vista enterprise has VPCe as a selling point when you can easily use virtual PC full version for free and run in all Vista versions...) as a way to be able to run legacy business applications.
I think MS will be able to drop legacy support in the OS sooner than we think, at least I hope so.
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