A Real Bill Gates Rant 293
lou ibmix XI submitted an
email written by Bill Gates a few years ago and turned over to the feds as part of the government's antitrust case. Great quotes like 'Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?' and 'The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.' We like to think of him as an abstract, but I think this is interesting stuff. Also, this might seem familiar. Oops.
Massive Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Massive Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been 6 years, and he still can't install it? Maybe he should install Wubi, and try apt-get, that usually works.
Re:Massive Dupe (Score:4, Funny)
Connecting to the SMTP port directly and writing ASCII in base 13 is better than Outlook.
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Low bar to cross (Score:3, Funny)
Git is a better source code control system than Visual Source Safe. cp is a better source code control system than Visual Source Safe. Heck, rm is a better source code control system than Visual Source Safe.
Re:Massive Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
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Hmm...well, this year for lent, I'm either going to stop giving up things...
Or...I'm going to quit not drinking.
Will worry about that later, tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, and NOLA is a wonderful place to live this time of year!! I feel so sorry for all my friends around the country, that not only will they not have a cold drink in their hand by 6am...but, will be actually going to work?!?!
Hmm, now, what to drink for
I know it's a dupe, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's a dupe, but I still love to see Gates say: "But that is just the start of the crap..."
It says it all right there. At least Microsoft knows about the problems with Windows. It is said that realizing there is an issue is the first step to resolving it :)
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I know it's a dupe, but I still love to see Gates say: "But that is just the start of the crap..."
It says it all right there. At least Microsoft knows about the problems with Windows. It is said that realizing there is an issue is the first step to resolving it :)
I don't think Bill Gates is really responsible for the problems with Windows. In fact, I think it's probably one reason why he left when he did. The company just got too big for him to manage day-to-day - he wasn't the one making relatively minor decisions like where Windows Movie Maker sits on the Microsoft web site or how to install it, somebody else was making those decisions. And little decisions like that, all added up together, are 95% of what makes Windows as maddening to use as it is. And he was
Re:I know it's a dupe, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates realizing and complaining about something that could work better in Windows isn't a huge "discovery". It is his job.
Re:I know it's a dupe, but... (Score:5, Funny)
It is said that realizing there is an issue is the first step to resolving it :)
It is also the first step to ignoring it.
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Firstly, "m" and "c" should be lower-cased in the famous Special Relativity equation.
Secondly, "m" is the inertial mass, which follows from a Lorentz transformation. It is not the rest mass, which is intrinsic to the object in question. "Rest mass" in Special Relativity is the intrinsic energy of an object in an inertial frame in which it is at rest with respect to a stationary observer at infinity, in a slice of spacetime with a set of coordinates that makes it locally flat (Minkowski spacetime).
A phot
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill. Unless if this e-mail was nothing more than a publicity stunt to make him look less evil, it shows that he wasn't happy with the way things were going. He clearly saw the direction the ship was going and he couldn't turn it in time.
Despite what you say about Microsoft now, Ballmer will always be funny to read about and watch on youtube.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
Stay off my lawn.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
Bill's the guy that's responsible for creating this monster. Obviously he didn't do it all by himself, but he's ultimately the captain of the ship.
He clearly saw the direction the ship was going and he couldn't turn it in time.
I actually don't really hate Bill (though I understand why some do). Even though I saw this email about a year ago I'm still greatly amused by it. It shows that even Bill Gates can't control the monster he's created. It's very interesting and amusing that Bill Gates, largest owner of Microsoft and (then) the person with the greatest control over it, reboots his computer nightly. That explains so much.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the law of unintended consequences. The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity. Whenever there has been a tradeoff between control and simplicity, Microsoft has chosen simplicity. Unfortunately some things are inherently complex, and as you try to wrap them behind simplistic abstractions there comes a point where you simply can achieve what you want. Suddenly you, and your current task is one of the things that the designers abstracted away. The quote about "we didn't realise people would try and download it from the downloads page" is a classic example.
Which of course was exactly the point that Neal Stephenson made in the essay In the beginning was the command line [cryptonomicon.com].
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>>The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
If this was true, then what's more onerous is that they failed, and did so in repeated, dramatically awful ways. The competing divisions, the lack of inter-disciplinary leadership, confused market views, the lie of 'customer-focused' decision making are all what were embodied in Microsoft's decided failure. Add in the mix of tawdry business practices, lack of belief in criticism, and an insular greed-based nature, and it's not a wo
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Counting their failure, they are still, by many measures, the most successful software company on the planet.
For instance, more desktop users have complained about how bad Vista is than have used Linux.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
Surely you jest.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
Surely you jest.
I am quite serious, and stop calling me Shirley.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's the law of unintended consequences. The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity. Whenever there has been a tradeoff between control and simplicity.
Have you ever actually compared Windows to MacOS? Microsoft most definitely did NOT choose simplicity, rather they have always chosen flexibility - the ability to configure and reconfigure the system to run on different hardware and to do different things.
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Unfortunately some things are inherently complex, and as you try to wrap them behind simplistic abstractions...
Does anyone else see the irony in a poster reducing a company like Microsoft's approach to one of "simplicity", while he himself reduces the complex discussion down to a "simplistic abstraction"?
--
even worse, he's dead wrong.
Rather, the poster porkchop's argument that Microsoft chose flexibility is bang on.
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Well, when you point it out...
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
The vision at Microsoft has always been to try and reduce complexity.
Alas, their hallucination has morphed into a very bad trip indeed.
The quote about "we didn't realise people would try and download it from the downloads page" is a classic example.
Who the hell mixed PCP into their acid?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm keeping a copy of this and some other beauties. Anytime anyone wants to know why I think they should switch to Linux of OSX, I just show them the emails. Even Bill G is tired of Windows and how it works, why shouldn't joe the pc user be?
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What you say is true, no matter what you suggest they switch to. I most often get into the conversation because I verbally trash MS products. ooops
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It's very interesting and amusing that Bill Gates, largest owner of Microsoft and (then) the person with the greatest control over it, reboots his computer nightly. That explains so much.
I turn my computer off when I go home in the evening, too. What's so amusing about that?
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
From the perspective of developers once it builds and there aren't any showstopper bugs, everything is fine.
Usability is likely one of the hardest things to get right because it forces (anyone really) to look outside of their own perspective. I don't see this as a disease of just software developers, but everyone. Different users want different things out of the software, and sometimes those ends are at cross purposes. I won't defend developers as a whole class here, because I've seen some (and worse) of what you're describing. I will point out that it's a grand generalization though.
The problems Bill describes seem pretty inexcusable. It seems more a systemic problem than a particular one.
The point of Bill's email is that he tries new products and tries to make these 'dumb user' type critiques of it.
Heh. Dumb is an odd description for it. We've all experienced these same frustrations with using Microsoft software. Go to the horrible MS website, spend a lot of time looking for the DL, hopefully find it, wait wait wait while it DLs, machine locks up to being un-usable, finally install it.. but wait.. reboot! (assuming you survive the reboot).. now hope it works. No? Go to step 1.
If I had to identify the single biggest underlying problem here.. it'd be that the user doesn't have a single place to go to install new software that just handles it all for you (and doesn't make you reboot) like say..... a package manager under Linux ;).
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
You may hand in your geek card at the door.
If BillG's actions as the head of Microsoft we're enough for you, then surely his new mission of spreading IP law across the third world should get your attention? The Gates foundation makes for-profit investments that are killing people they claim to be trying to save [latimes.com]. Bill is personally heavily invested in big pharma [theregister.co.uk] and Gates supports strong IP law [newmediaexplorer.org] in order to protect his profits.
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(And, despite what many people think, pharmaceutical companies are not as evil as everybody wants them to be - I know firsthand.)
Heh heh heh. You almost had me. Nice one! I think this is where you blew it:
Whether you like or don't like Bill Gates and Microsoft has nothing to do with your "geek card." I would say you need to work on your jealousy issues a bit.
That made it too clear that you were trying to manipulate me.
If you really want to get me hot under the collar these days, you're going to have to log in :)
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That made it too clear that you were trying to manipulate me.
I don't think anyone was trying to manipulate you. But it does seem that your zeal to hate the great "evil" makes you look like you have a chip on your shoulder.
Of course Microsoft has made decisions people disagree with politically. The thing is, businesses are profit-making machines and not elected political leaders. That's what governments are for. If a government and market allows a business to convince them of certain policies to implement, then we should be blaming those elected to the deci
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I don't think anyone was trying to manipulate you. But it does seem that your zeal to hate the great "evil" makes you look like you have a chip on your shoulder.
The question there has to be whether it's implied or just (incorrectly) inferred. I don't only despise Microsoft and I don't believe that they are inherently immensely worse than their competitors, or J. Random Corporation. What I believe is that they are in a unique position to do damage, and they take advantage. And they must be stopped. I do believe that the rise of the corporation signalled the end of personal rights, and if we want them back we're going to have to do certain things to limit the rights,
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When you have billions of dollars, it's hard to be sure that all of it is doing good, and not doing evil.
Ah yes, the "saving the world is hard" argument. That's what the Gates foundation said in a press release explaining why they would not be examining their investments for ethical acceptability. Of course, this immediately followed a press release claiming that they would review their investments for same.
This argument is of course pure horseshit. You have a responsibility to invest your money ethically. To do otherwise is to simply abstract away all your bad behavior on to a proxy. If you invest in genocide
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Gates is the one who, with Steve Balmer, created a Microsoft where it is more important to win by leveraging Windows than competing on quality. He's also overseen them target one software technology after another which were cross platform and therefore threats and had to be eliminated.
What was once a tiny software company who made a Basic interpreter became a monster threatening anyone and everyone if they did not do things One Microsoft Way. This is Bill Gates' fault as much as it is Steve Balmer. Just look at the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation for more proof. From what I've heard, if any school or library takes funds from them, they are not allowed to use open source software. They just constantly limit choice and that has been Microsoft's business method for over 20 years. IMO
LoB
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
I worked for a couple places that were funded by M$ or accepted donations. I suggested a FOSS solution for something, and was told quite explicitly, "We can't, its in the contract."
Now, it's certainly possible the man was lying to me, or mistaken, or if you want to get cute, there was no actual legal obligation to eschew Open Source but M$ reps *implied* that there was, and the folks in charge assumed, were cowed, or simply too slow of mind or weak of will to look at it closer, resulting in this gawdawful run-on sentence i can't seem to fix.
But why wouldn't they add an exclusivity clause to such agreements, and why wouldn't most FOSS-ignorant public school and library administrators agree to it, thinking "who needs crappy free weird software written by teenage hackers, when i have professional polished shiny software for free?" They have never heard the drug-pusher analogy, i suppose, which is weird considering they're in at-risk public schools. Ahem.
Now, you asked for proof. I obviously cannot (and would not) provide a copy of any documentation from former employers, but you DID ask. I am not posting anonymously. Therefore, if you discount my account, as it were, then *you* are now the conspiracy theorist.
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"capitalism" didn't kill communism, corruption did.
The Soviet union was very much a crony-ism. Everyone that could,
robbed the state blind. This went all the way from the factory
floor up to the politburo. After awhile, the system just couldn't
take it any more.
Capitalism needs a little reigning in so it doesn't devolve into
cronyism. At that point, the positive incentives to do well start
to evaporate and the system loses it's ability to sustain itself.
Considering where Russia started at the start of the 20th c
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I don't understand all the hate for Bill.
In my view he is the responsible for some of the unethical beaviour of Microsoft. I'm thinking of the famous 'if DRDos then crash' in Windows 95, among others.
Markus
its easy (Score:5, Informative)
In some of those published emails, you can see Bill Gates:
-Asking to add Windows-specific quirks to the ACPI "standard" [slated.org], just to make Linux more dificult. "It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work [...] Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this
-Asking their teams to add IE-specific crap in the HTML code generated by Office [slated.org], just to make harder for other browsers to display things: One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered well by others people browser is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPIETARY IE capabilities" (emphasis by gates, not mine)
-Lobbying Intel to get them to do all their design work in Windows desktops, not in Linux.
-A lot of other "fun" stuff.
And you wonder why people hates Gates? ;)
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What cave are you living in??? How about Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [slashdot.org]? That's just EVIL.
I don't hate Gates, but I sure as hell don't like Microsoft. How can anyone who'se ever used IE or written a web site NOT dislike Bill Gates?
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What cave are you living in??? How about Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [slashdot.org]? That's just EVIL.
How is that evil, let alone EVIL? To err is human. If a company or individual or bank or governmental body makes a mistake and overpays a person or company or bank or government body, the entity that was overpaid has a moral and legal responsibility to paying back the overage.
Abstract (Score:4, Insightful)
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Like Big Brother. We tend to know little of his personal actions and convictions; we think of him primarily as "the head of Microsoft". In a way, he's synonymous with the company, so it's strange to see him doing something so personal as complaining about a product he downloaded (although as he says, it's part of his job).
That's what I got out of it anyway.
Re:Abstract (Score:5, Funny)
You know, composed of a lot of straight lines and sharp angles, both eyes on the same side of his head, lots of colors everywhere, that sort of thing.
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From Microsoft's website:
Since CEO performance is in the news... (Score:5, Insightful)
"'This is a shocking e-mail. Shocking!' And I said, 'What do you think I do all day? Sending an e-mail like that, that is my job. That's what it's all about. We're here to make things better.""
Apparently he either really sucked at his job, or it was the job of the people who worked for him to completely ignore what he said.
it's actually a fantasy game! (Score:5, Funny)
FTA: "In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations."
Finally, someone at Microsoft admits that you have to use magic to make Windows work right... I would comment more, but I am on my way to my daily Ballmer goat and bull sacrifice.
Re:it's actually a fantasy game! (Score:5, Funny)
FTA: I would comment more, but I am on my way to my daily Ballmer goat and bull sacrifice.
Ah yes, where you let a live goat or bull into the Ballmer enclosure at feeding time.
Because Ballmer doesn't want to be fed... he wants to hunt!
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Though Ballmer could take a few pointers from Kempin about hunting :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/04/ms_execs_hunting_trip_illegally/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:it's actually a fantasy game! (Score:4, Funny)
Hey BILL! (Score:2)
I know how to make site and downloads more responsive. Just use Apache on Linux. ..... You're Welcome.
Carter Pewterschmidt (Score:5, Funny)
Let me 'Summarize'... (Score:2)
Bill Gates has become a Luser - one that requires the application of a LART.
So it's not just us that think their shit is whack... like printing a test page for a printer...
why after all these fucking years is it not a right-click context option for printers or at the very least in the left hand side of the 'Printers' folder 'Info' section. And let's not talk about the mouse focus that KDE has had for years now...
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I was about to say the same thing, and don't have mod points today. A test page isn't something used frequently enough to have a context menu item for. How broken are your print drivers? I haven't printed a test page since the day I set my laserjet up 3 years ago.
Nice rant! (Score:2)
It's rather cool that Bill himself sent such rants internally. I know I've sent rants and/or filed numerous bugs on our own products at work from the standpoint of usability and usefulness.
I'm not the greatest at designing a UI, but I can certainly highlight what doesn't work. What's least likely to work is stuff that crosses organizational boundaries, and it looks like Bill's experience here is one of those: The integration just isn't there.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft or its tactics over the years, b
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How can you admire him?
Northing changed.
Is it really that broke? If they are trying to maintain a monopoly, yes it is. They have to maintain lock in at all costs. Any broad range fix to usability is likely to damage lock-in. If there goal is to make simpler and better working products. Then no, it is not so badly broke that it can be fixed
The fast that nothing has changed is illuminating of what kind of company Microsoft currently is.
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I admire, or at least complement this aspect of him. I'm no fan of Microsoft as a whole nor am I an adoring fan of Bill, but Microsoft is not Bill Gates.
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I imagine he's putting himself in his customer's shoes, trying to think of how Aunt Tillie might interpret the dialog boxes he's seeing, mixed with what he knows about Windows from being inside Microsoft. I've seen a few doozies go by in the Windows Update. (That is, while I still had that enabled. These days corporate IT insists on rolling out patches manually on their own schedule, so I don't see these any more.)
His download experience was pretty horrific, and I think he was right to call folks on it.
Usability and the Bottom Line are Incongruent (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's also Bill's "fault" that Windows enjoyed a 95% market share for a decade.
That's more IBM's fault than anyone else. Bill just happened to be in the right place at the right time (like not out flying an airplane when they called).
Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's also Bill's "fault" that Windows enjoyed a 95% market share for a decade.
I must disagree. It was not Bill who made a shoddily written excuse for an OS the dominant player in the market, but rather the boggling level of ignorance on the part of the overwhelming majority of said market as to what an acceptable OS should be, and Microsoft's exploitation of that fact.
There has always been a grim joke among IT personnel that while the sales personnel from IBM, Novell, Sun, etc., are talking to the IT manager, the Microsoft salesman is playing a round of golf with the CEO. A grim jok
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Now let's turn the conversation the other way...to KDE and GNOME. Bill Gates here, is just being a typical newbie if he is anyway. No offence to him here. But if he were to send such a "rant" to the GNOME folks, you all know what kind of answers he'd get.
This is not to say the KDE folks get it either. But for Linux to succeed even in the minutest way, it must meet Joe Public's expectations...and this can be done while at the same time meeting expectations of whoever it is at present.
I guess I will be labelled a troll but what I am saying is the truth...so go right ahead and mod me down.
Re:That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? It's a tool. The majority of "Joe Public" don't have specialized tools to work on bikes/cars/woodworking/electrical/floors/whatever. Does that mean that professional tools for those tasks should be re-designed for those "joe publics" to use without skill?
I don't want my tools to be n00bified, they work great as they are, and appreciate them going in a direction that doesn't ape a broken paradigm. Thanks.
Re:That's one way KDE/GNOME should emulate Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that different software suits different people is lost on those with this mentality.
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But for Linux to succeed even in the minutest way, it must meet Joe Public's expectations...and this can be done while at the same time meeting expectations of whoever it is at present.
Define "success", then prove meeting "Joe Public"'s expectations is a requirement for such, and *then* prove that meeting them can be done doing only changes that don't alienate any of the current users. Good luck with that, you're gonna need it.
As it stands, your post is just unsubstantiated opinion, off-topic as it pertains to Linux instead of Windows, and very likely a troll since you're using a CEO's letter to his employees to imply that the Gnome and KDE developers react badly to any criticism from 'ne
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Generally never. I haven't done any GUI in about 4 years, but I always had a very good reputation with users and enjoyed working with them. I also tried very hard to see things from their point of view, which I think helped me create GUIs that facilitated productivity and were reasonably easy to understand. The biggest problem Microsoft has with trying to make things simple is that usually succeed, but only for an extremely narrow domain of problems, and the moment you try to do something outside of that
Oops (Score:2)
So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
Classic.
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Interesting look back (Score:2)
I find it interesting to look back at the trouble that even the great architect Bill Gates as with his own child. Submitting this as evidence for the prosecution in an antitrust case might prove to be a problem. Submitting this as evidence for the defense, however, might be a great step toward acquittal. Why? Ever hear the saying "never attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity" or something like that? That's all a jury needs to hear to realize that Microsoft is not a singular conspi
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(Is Windows 7 a Borg designation?)
As in Windows 7 of 9?
even more ironic, he praises add/remove (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny that he praises the add/remove programs control panel. Try opening it up when you have a file system mounted that contains a whole lot of files. Apparently this control panel, even though it has a cache of installed programs in some subdirectory, plus roughly the same info in a registry subtree, this sterling piece of software goes off and looks at every file on every device. That's the only explanation I can think of why the disks whir for like two hours before this control panel lists anything.
And even then all that work was for naught, because the items listed have not been even slightly vetted for correctness. You click on some of them and get an immediate "no uninstaller found" or even more cryptic messages, and no way to remove these useless entries. This control panel is a classic fail, with it doing slow and useless work several times over and still missing the whole point of what it should be doing.
Bill, you got real problems when you think this really crapalicious control panel is a shining star.
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It's funny that he praises the add/remove programs control panel. Try opening it up when you have a file system mounted that contains a whole lot of files. Apparently this control panel, even though it has a cache of installed programs in some subdirectory, plus roughly the same info in a registry subtree, this sterling piece of software goes off and looks at every file on every device. That's the only explanation I can think of why the disks whir for like two hours before this control panel lists anything.
Defragment your Registry [microsoft.com]. It's always going to be slow but I almost guarantee you that this is part of your problem. If you use that particular control panel much then I bet your registry is fragmented like crazy. The registry is the biggest problem with Windows, it is horribly inefficient. Why Microsoft hasn't replaced* it with some more capable database engine by now I have no idea.
* By replaced I really mean augmented. Boot on the file-based registry, then once you get MSDE or whatever started replicate
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It has nothing to do with a fragmented Registry. My Registry is not fragmented and the time goes from two hours to 20 seconds when I unmount the disk with all the files.
And the installed programs list in the registry is only 15 entries, that should not take two hours to load.
It's just poor design. You should never have to scan the universe when you already have the info in at least two places, the Registry and the installer directory. And of course it's a bad idea to have the info in two places.
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This control panel is a classic fail,
This operating system is a classic fail
fix'd
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Problems opening the control panel can often be due to poorly written 3rd party control panel applets (.cpl files). My control panel would frequently lock up or open very slowly....
Well that sounds like a very poor design decision, synchronously calling into 3rd party code to see if it's okay to remove such code. IMHO an uninstaller should have more confidence and authority. What's the point of an uninstaller that is subordinate to its minions?
If you are talking about the time taken to list installed programs, this was sped up considerably with Vista, which begins to show installed programs instantly...
No thanks, I tried Vista for an hour and then returned the laptop. Plus this is a pointless hack. I do not care if the items start showing up as they're found. I need to see all of them.
...and populates the list in a fraction of the time XP uses for the same task.
A fraction of two hours is still too long to wait for
Actually, some of the comments... (Score:2)
Why couldn't he just do this????? (Score:2)
Bill feels the same way I do (Score:2)
I don't think its a rant (Score:2)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
I don't imagine ballmer doing this. (Score:2)
I can't imagine Ballmer sending an email like that, or even caring enough to directly test usability. Ballmer has a salesman mentality, he doens't care about the product itself, just the amount of sales. He probably can't even see any connection between usability and sales.
I dont think its any coincidence that the usability of Microsoft products, whic hwas never good, is noticably worse since Gate's departure. Vista is waay worse than XP for usability, and that from early accounts Windows 7 is even worse ag
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You're right, it should be four. An ellipses followed by a period.
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"Grammer" is not an English word I have ever encountered.
She's married to Gramper.
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Like a complete moron who has not even the slightest clue what a computer is never mind how to use it for even the most basic functions.
So, you've never even heard of usability testing? Note that almost every question he asked was rhetorical. He was putting himself in the position of a non-technical user who wanted to do something that should be simple but who was getting thwarted at every turn.
But hes a business man not a nerd he gust acts like one so as not to make the employees uncomfortable.
OK, I like Gates about as much as the next person who doesn't like him, but he's definitely geekier than 90% of Slashdotters. The fact that he can step back and look at things from an outsider's perspective is actually a good thing and something y
Re:thanks but I need more than a lower case j (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, great. So you're reproducing.
Thanks.
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According to the linked article, Gates was shown this email and went on to mock the media's supposed shock that he sent it, and others like it.
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No, this is MS in a nutshell:
"Help help, I'm trapped in a giant nutshell. What kind of a nut has a shell like this?!"