Followup to yesterday

A few quick followups to yesterday's rant:

• Beth noted in the comments that the PR company running this has as their tag line, "Helping Hollywood Reach People of Faith." Whaaaa?
  
  Okay, I can't help it, I had to add this:

  Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics… doesn't make sense.

  
  
  
• Al writes over at his blog in a piece titled It only takes one asshat to ruin it for everybody. Okay, for me. that what these folks are asking for in return for a ticket or two is even more ridiculous than I first thought.
  
  
• The Serenity site I pointed to yesterday appears to be down today. No, I'm not insane enough to think that yesterday's mention had anything to do with that.

Followups to this:

• Al: As much integrity as I can afford
• Shelley: Serenitygate

I gotta ask

Okay, here's something that's been puzzling me since yesterday: you've got Joss Whedon, who's a well-known Hollywood liberal type and John Kerry supporter. He's got a new movie coming out next week, name of Serenity.

So why on earth is Whedon, or the studio, or the PR folks, only working with rightwingers to plug the movie?

Maybe it's 'cause there aren't any progressive bloggers who are long-time fans of the show?

You can still get the widget here or here, btw.

Top off your tank now

Hurricane Rita is (at the moment) a Category 5 hurricane that's headed towards the Texas coast, which has plenty of oil refineries (ones that weren't taken out by Katrina). We suggest that you consider topping off your gas tanks today. Because if Rita ends up bring as bad as forecasts say, gas prices are going up again next week.

Google Talk for Mac working again

iChat for Google Talk wasn't working for a bit, but it appears to be back up again now. You might have to fiddle with your settings a little (I did). The directions are at that link, and they worked for me, with one exception: if you set the port to 5223, and then click "Connect using SSL," the port will change itself to 5222. Change it back to 5223 manually, and you'll be fine.

If you're checking it out, I'm (as usual) DoriSmith. That name should work for Skype also, btw.

Professional College Essay Editing

I don't know if I'm pointing to this because it could be useful for Sean, or because after helping Sean with the process, I could imagine doing it as my next career: College Application Essay Services from EssayEdge.com. I'd be very curious to know how they manage to do a good job editing while simultaneously keeping the essay in the applicant's voice and style.

Tom's got me pegged

It's a little scary that Tom's got me this well pegged, but yeah, I didn't get to blog today until I turned in my chapter, and yeah, that did motivate me to finish it. Finally.

OTOH, Tom hasn't finished his yet, so nyah nyah, I can blog and you can't, blah, blah, blah.

And just to rub it in that last little bit, and because at the same time we're on the book death march we're also starting a home remodeling project (why yes, we are insane), I give you this link: the Gothic Commode Seat.

Honey, would it fit in the new decor?

A short hiatus

Namespace collisions

Is it just me, or is anyone else confused with all the buzz lately about both Sparkle and SPARQL? No, they're not the same thing at all — not even close.

MS: same old, same old (with charts!)

BusinessWeek came out with a few recent articles on Microsoft:

Troubling Exits At Microsoft
Steve Ballmer Shrugs Off The Critics
A Rendezvous With Microsoft's Deep Throat
Awaiting Microsoft's Growth Spurt
College tech recruiting surprise

Unsurprisingly, they've caused some small ruckus online:

No Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft Will Not Win the Web
SteveB, the Web isn't something you can own

I got a private request to take a position on this, so here's what we think: anyone who's surprised just hasn't been paying attention.

Here's what Steve Ballmer said that caused the commotion:

We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.

Look, this is the way MS thinks. It's deeply ingrained into the company's DNA. They're sharks, they always have been sharks, they always will be sharks. If they weren't trying to kill off the competition, they'd be a company other than Microsoft. MS plays to win, and winning, for them, means having 90+% of a market. This is the way they've been for over 25 years, and nothing's different today.

This is not to say that every MS employee is out to win by killing the competition, just that that's the overall company approach. Always has been, and you'll never go wrong by assuming that that's their goal if they're working with you. If you are working with them now, assume that they will turn on you and try to put you out of business the moment they see an advantage to doing so.

Note that this isn't a judgment against them, or a condemnation of their actions. Speaking from a market viewpoint, their strategy and tactics have been extremely successful. There aren't a lot of tech companies where you can refer back to what they were like 25 years ago. Of course, that's because MS has put a lot of those companies out of business, but that's what I'm talking about.

Now, as to what is interesting in that article:

Ballmer maintains that the company is in terrific shape... He says internal surveys show that 85% of the company's employees are satisfied with their jobs, about the same level as in past years. "We have as excited and engaged a team of folks at Microsoft as I can possibly imagine," says Ballmer. "[Employees] love their work. They're passionate about the impact they're having on customers and society. [The 85% number] is a real, real powerful statement about where our people are."

Now, look at this chart:

That's Microsoft's two year stock price compared to (respectively) S&P, NASDAQ, and the Dow.

Microsoft has a tradition of underpaying their staff but making it up via stock options. If you read those articles, one of the things you find out is that they've cut back on the stock options. But that's not such a big deal, because it's not like they're worth anything, anyway. However, they're also implementing a new incentive plan that rewards top managers but not the people in the trenches. That's a big danger signal; there is already a lot of stratification amongst MS's workforce, and this will just make it worse.

What does matter, when you think about it is: what kind of employee is satisfied with what MS has done over the last two years? If you're satisfied, that means that a flat/dropping stock is okay. Not shipping major apps is okay. Repeatedly missing major deadlines is okay.

What Ballmer ought to do is fire every single person at Microsoft who answered that survey and said that they were satisfied. Starting with himself. Nobody, but nobody, ought to be happy with what they've accomplished. Or more precisely, what they haven't accomplished.

What matters is what you ship. Demos don't matter. Promises of future coolness don't matter. If it ain't shipping, it doesn't count, and MS ain't shipping anything that anyone cares about. Their revision cycles are way too long, and the innovations they introduce with each revision don't excite their customers. When they're having to mount advertising campaigns calling their own customers dinosaurs because they can't even get people to upgrade to the currently shipping apps, those same customers are unlikely to upgrade now and upgrade again to Vista and Vista-compatible apps. Whenever those ship, of course.

And if you've made it this far, here's the added bonus chart:

Now that's what a stock chart looks like when you're shipping products, and when those products are what the market wants. But that chart really is apples versus oranges.

Nowadays, MS is sounding more and more like an old pit bull that still growls and shows its teeth, and might bite occasionally just out of habit, but that given a choice would rather sleep by the fire.

No, they're not going to win the Web. And it's debatable whether or not they've won the server (Which server? If it's Web servers, they lost to Apache long ago. Enterprise servers? They have a better story there.). In my opinion, they used years of predatory actions to take the desktop, but they're in the process of losing it. We've said this before: next time you go to a tech conference, notice what the ubergeeks and influencers are using. Are they Windows laptops, or PowerBooks or Linux machines?

Simply, Microsoft's problems are because they are satisfied with their current situation, and their current situation sucks. As I've said before, Microsoft is boring. If/when they'll break something, they'll be interesting. Until then, it's just more of the same, and they're digging their own grave, and well… that's just fine by me.

[with thanks to Tom, who doesn't agree with all of what's here, but contributed towards it anyway]