Venting One's Spleen Tastefully
Mood:
smelly
Now Playing: 'Burnin' Down the Love Shack' Lil' Darlin' Darnette & BoBo Bucky Bovine (nasal twang is the thang)
Topic: The Sneaky Runarounds
I go on a mad tear sometimes because there are so many small yet solid indications as we get closer and closer to the deadline for Microsoft to show something for the past five years of atrophy and denial.
BUT this blog will soon get to look like a Daffy Duck comic book with so many things popping up so I've decided to dedicate one post to something that really gets my goat... sheep... whatever.
So it will pop up from time to time and (hopefully - there's a size limit) will hold the items of irritation so we can track the path Microsoft bile makes through our own digestive system. Disgusting thought I know, but it really is that vile to use power, influence and money to buy time and favor... tsk tsk tsk.
Oh, well, the truth will out. It does always. It will also now.
So if you see this post pop up from time to time you can use it to watch your path from the back seat of the station wagon, as it were.
Tonight's travesty will map Microsoft's statements (just as they've been made with Mary Jo) with various experts and incidencts so we can see where they are headed and where they've always been.
There may be no analysis or opinion from me. Just an information osmosis therapy to feed the little potted plant of anger and righteous indignation. Sorry... I should collect my wits, such as they are, and sit quietly in the corner over here whilst you peruse and amuse and abuse and lose shoes and get blues. I get the feeling 'getting blued' is not going to have the same happy connotation it used to for some of you folks. We're just all going to read carefully and let them tell us where they're going. That way we can be there right with them when they finally arrive.
It's all good.
April 26th, 2007
Posted by Dan Farber @ 11:07 am Categories:
General,
Software Infrastructure,
Web Technology,
Office 2.0,
MicrosoftWhile I was at the SAP Sapphire 2007 conference this week I ran into Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business Division. He was at the event to promote the extended roadmap of Duet, the collaboration between the two companies that integrates Microsoft Office and SAP business processes.
I asked Raikes about the likelihood of a browser-based Microsoft Office, given the move to cloud-based computing and all the noise around Google Docs and Spreadsheets and the forthcoming presentation component, as well as upstarts like Zoho, ThinkFree and Zimbra. Microsoft has a Microsoft Office Live, but it's a set of service designed for small businesses, not a browser-based productivity application suite.
Raikes said the browser-based application space is extremely important to watch, but there is not a lot of demand now for Microsoft Office in the cloud. He added that cloud/browser-based applications are inadequate in many scenarios, such as for students who need footnotes in a document. "The key point is what are the scenarios, how services can extend the user experience," Raikes said, which is the standard Microsoft line and a wholly legitimate point of view. You want to be able to work seamlessly online and offline as is appropriate for the specific task and setting.
Clearly, Google's emerging Office and the other cloud-based suites aren't materially affecting Microsoft's bottom line. But, you would think that among the 500 million Microsoft Office users and the rest of the digital universe that a desire, a demand for supply, exists to have a cloud-based Microsoft Works (not even the full blown MS Office, which would choke in some aspects if it were purely cloud-based). Microsoft Outlook has 200 million users, and Outlook Web Access has 100 million users. Zoho has a plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets users work offline with Microsoft Word or Excel and save changes in their cloud-based Zoho applications.
Charles Fitzgerald, general manager of platform strategy at Microsoft, talks about the company having a multi-headed platform strategy–software + services. OK, then where is the head with Microsoft Word and Excel Live, which integrate with the desktop Office and SharePoint?
I also talked to Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie earlier this month about talks about creating scenarios where it makes sense to have browser-based software.
In the docs and spreadsheets realm, I believe there are certain uses of spreadsheets in particular, where the sharing model [enabled by] using it up on a service could be really useful. I think that there are other scenarios where you want it on your laptop. As a company, Microsoft views this as an opportunity — to deliver the aggregate productivity value in all places.
Microsoft's MIX 07 conference, focused on the consumer Web, takes place this week in Las Vegas, and Ozzie will be giving a major keynote. Perhaps he will have more to say about Microsoft's plan for Office cloud services, but given Raikes' statement that there is no demand, don't count on it.
See also: David Berlind's Google gradually assembling Office secret weapons
Well, heck, what am I twitching about? That makes sense to me, don't it make sense to you, Walter? Yessir. That all makes a whole $#!@load of sense. But HEY, I ain't the Intergalactic Manager of Fried Viebelfrut Sales on Beta Centauri (right next to the famous place).. Nope. I'm just a beat up rodeo clown that hasn't got a cellprocessor left in the old clicker. Just a rounded place to keep my ears and a place to rest my hat. I don't even know if my lips move anymore cause they've been in a perpetual pucker for so long I think I got... hey, Walter, what they call that thang where you do it too often with your wrist? Tarpolian? Wet a tarpolian? What the hell you drinking Walter? Hey! Shut that tractor off we's conversatin'. Yeah. Metacarpal tunnel. That's it. Where the information from your fingers get pinched before they gets to the brain and it causes some kind of fierce pain and spasmodics, you know?
So I got metacarpull tunneling in my puckerstrings... yep, both barrels. Seized up so tight reading a Mary Jo one night I had to run my face under cold water to keep the swelling down. As I didn't have one of them fancy buddays as you ritzy people do, I was in the predicament of choosing appearance over function just like our bud at the mikerphone is doing. I just ate nothing but ritz cracker crumbs for three, four days and the swelling went down and I could take the bubble wrap out of the shorts. Know what I mean? Chowda.
Try riding a bucker with your puckerstring in a knot and your cheeks hotted up wit da redass so bad you want to kiss the Pope's or ANYBODY's ring if they can just get that monkey out of the cleft, as it were.
So, as I wuz saying... hell no I ain't upset. I get bucked off ever oncet in a while. But if I catch your girlfriend giving my bull snorts of paprika again, I'm gonna twist your fuzzies so far they'll have to get a airplane ticket just to get back around. OK sweety?.
........
He just ain't getting it, is he? I go and tell him about McAuley working with Adobe and Motorola back in the 90's and here he is freaking out about something that equates to what the XML Enabler Agent does. I wonder when he's going to come around to the Kumbaya ceremony?
Hello. Read the patent "Web-based collaborative data collection system." patent 7,076,521 Wow, this is huge. Bigger threat than Java eva' waz. They are only opensourcing a portion but this is huge, and it's an acknowledgement I think that Adobe respects the real threat that Silverlight could become over the next 10 years. Robert has some great videos talking to the folks at Adobe's Flex team. By outsourcing, they sure are "Flexing" the format. The official press release is here.
The definition and evolution of Flex has been influenced by our incredibly talented developer community from day one,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe. “The decision to open source Flex was a completely natural next step. I am incredibly excited to deeply collaborate with the developer community on Flex, and further fuel its momentum and innovation.”
Ryan Steward has his take here:
As part of the initiative, Adobe will be releasing the source to the following parts:
- The Flex Compilers (mxmlc, compc, asc) - the command line tools that compile flex code
- Flex command line debugger
- View source utilities
- Automated Testing Framework
- Flex core component library - this includes Apollo components
- Build Scripts
- Web tier compilers
- Flex-Ajax Bridge - already open source, but moving from MIT license to MPL License
'respects the real threat that Silverlight could become over the next 10 years...'
Uhhhh 10 years? Now we see how a groomed for breeding pre-Microsofty adopts the 'long term' vision insisted upon by Microsoft executives. Never something soon. Always 'one day'. Never tell what's real. Always give an 'expression'. Fits and fugglements. Figs and fingers.
Geez my knees. What a sad state the critical thinking of the developers of this country has assumed.
10 years, dude are you really serious? Because I would have used that to pepper up the irony, you know? You say it as though that's how the software business needs to be done.
Wow. I lived through a few significant technology disruptions in the old portuno-as-a-meatsack-butt-cut processing cycle and THIS one (disruption) I'm glued to like Mickey Mouse in a cheatoz bag. And BOY does it hurt when you realize you've devoted a whole lot of learning to a subject matter and then have it suddenly reversed or worst: irrelaventitus.
You laugh about it, yet, you're marveling at a part of the machine that will increasingly make your labors transparent and pointless in the scheme of things. How many applications does it take to make one really good one? I don't know. But somebody will extend SiteFlash or environments described by the SiteFlash Patent, using XML processing agents or processors that work like the XML Agent Patent says to virtualize, granularize, commoditize, distribute, manage, govern... exeterra exeterra exeterra. Can ya hear them little internet aware satellites singing in the heavens, brethren and sisterns? Holy loo y'all.
Brother Analyst. Sister Coder. I'm not here to bus nobody's ballsa wood. I'm here to proselytize and transactionize. I'm here for the public to see and reason. 'Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Because if we don't you and Me's got a turrble day of wreckining ahead. One in which you will see what you missed and then have to face what you kissed.' Ya see, it's kind of like The Price is White with pearly ticket booths and rocking chair loungers and no drink holders. Mmmm. Unpleasant. Like sitting through a screening of 'Give Me Back My Name' with what's his name that always hosted that show...
click
The reason programmers will be in decline to extinction has more to do with the business of programming than the programming art. Your business would rather not have you around, bless your heart. They need you because without you their software won't get built and the way they want it to work, according to what they told you, won't happen. So you're important, cheeze. You're just not wanted.
If your CEO could find an easy way for his managers to put the software together the way they know it's supposed to work, beliebe the porto, your can will be out faster than you can dump a recycle receptacle. And speaking of receptacle, your cubicle will make way for admins who can put things together as easily as a word document and automated with any kind of functionality the bosses want. All they have to do is tell the admin how they want it done.
Think I'm silly? Think this is bunk? A few days ago you thought Microsoft was on the losing end of the billy goat's troll under the bridge trick. Now you're not so sure. Maybe something will happen in the near future to enlighten and edify.
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FUD. We all been there, home. You and me, we gonna team up somewheres and smite the heathen with emerods and the rod of the Lord. We's going to teach them the good book says, "Burn your own house down before the city takes your soul." or something like that. Whatever.
Anywho, we got nothing to lose, us VCSY longs, so we play guerillas and chimps. You got chimped and it's the MSFT Media Machine that pumps that bilge into your swimming pool and you know the old saying 'Fish gotta swim. Bird gotta fly. Man gotta drink it or get it in the eye.' If you get it in the eye, that's one thing. If you drink it, they's plenty tooty frooty koolaid to wash that taste of ballsmasa vinegar out.
Less than THREE cent a share, home boy! For fitty cent you can have 16.6 shares of the next mikerstoff. Fitty dollas you got 1666.6 shares. No antichrist stuff here (not yet) it's just a bunch of sixes and all. We cool...
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Think it over. We got time. Well, I got time. RR2, he got time. Baveman, sirius and morrie and a couple hundred others, they got time. But if you don't know those names... you ain't got time I think. Maybe. Who knows? I'm wrong about everything usually. It's just that when I get right, I gets righteous.
And I sings...
Homeboy don't know 'bout a broken heart.
Don't know what it mean to try to crap but fart.
Don't know what it mean to be a body down
waiting for the garbage man to drive the truck around.
wooooo woooooooo woo woo wooooo woo woo dooby doo...
While the Hunter's Point HomeFolk Choir and Land Holdings Association sings softly in the background... what about it friend? Wanna read a couple patent claims? Chew a few dry posts and down a little razberry pootypop koolaid and it's blissful ignorance of shareprice morass. All you know is night time comes and that's what chaps your...
Young lady I said turn that tv off and get your baby brother some malt-o-meal. Mash it up real good in that bowl... not the dog's bowl Jilly... not Bobby Joe. I want you to feed Baby Joe. We's got a wedding to go to and they don't even know if the groom is gonna show. It's likely to be like last time... never seen me a man cry quite like that. Disturbin'.
Anyways, mash up the bananas and keep the berries out of the plate. Them seeds mess up his little bm track.
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Posted by Portuno Diamo
at 2:58 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, 27 April 2007 3:08 AM EDT
