I took another contract job at Microsoft; back for the first time in almost 13 years. I started at the beginning of June. I’m excited to work on cutting edge technology with smart people (try to be the dumbest person in the room if you can).
What am I working on? I can’t say.
A long time ago, I noticed that my hard drive was behaving suicidal. so I bought a new one, copied the old one with Ghost and installed the new one. Everything ran fine for awhile (I wasn’t getting updated from Microsoft, but I wasn’t paying attention), so everything was bliss as I continued to use my computer.
Then, behold, I was informed by Windows Activation Technologies that my Windows wasn’t “Genuine”. I figured that my windows license was destroyed with my HD, so I clicked “Resolve online now” and ended up buying a “Get Genuine Online Kit” online. Microsoft gave me a new Product Key on the spot. I entered it and I still got the message. A week later, the software came in the mail; I tried and failed to upgrade couple of times and it failed each time telling me that my computer isn’t compatible with Windows 7.
A couple of days ago I downloaded MGADiag.exe and when I run it, it tells me that my Windows is “Genuine”:
Someone on answers.microsoft.com suggested that I reinstall my Intel Rapid Storage Tech driver and so far so good. Windows Update even works.
For Halloween, I will discuss Windows 8 and Metro. I hear lots of fear and loathing in regard to Microsoft’s strategy regarding Windows 8 and the tablet.
I’ve heard horror stories about how we will be forced to throw away all we’ve learned the last 10 years and learn to write apps in HTML5 and JavaScript. Tales that Silverlight is doomed to the bone yard and so on … In short, the technology world changing and all our skills will be null and void. In our next job, we will need to rehearse the phrase: “Do you want fries with that?”
Come on, part of being a developer is dealing with change and uncertainty. In the mid 1990s, we went from DOS and character based computers to the GUI Land of Windows 95. In the early 2000s it was .NET for everyone in Windows Land. And now there are rumors of doom about what Microsoft is up to with Windows 8.
Part of the bargain of working in this business is change; we get to work on the cool new things and we have to work on the cool new things. We spend more time keeping up, learning things we need to be up to date. By choosing what to learn, we are also placing bets on winners and losers. If I study Window 8, I am betting for Microsoft and against Google and Apple. Of course, I could hedge my bet by studying both Window 8 and Android (that would reduce my potential reward.
Windows 8 (WinRT, Metro, etc.) represents to response to iOS and Android tablets. I don’t know if Windows 8 will preserve the market share that Microsoft has enjoyed with Windows for the past generation. I don’t know if Windows 8 will be a second Vista. It is even possible that this is the beginning of the end of Windows or even Microsoft.
I can’t say that Microsoft is late to the Tablet game. There was the PocketPC that was a small tablet that used a “pen” and there was a tablet version of Windows XP (also used a “pen”). These are pen tablets, the cool new tablets are touch tablets.
Microsoft is taking a different approach than Apple. Apple has two Operating Systems: iOS for tablets and devices and OSX for full blown computers. Microsoft is going with One OS to Rule Them All: Windows 8 will be on desktop and little tablet devices. I suppose WP8 will be Windows 8.
There are as many changes in the other platforms. Change defines our industry. Every change represents risks to all participants. Not changing also represents risks. This is just part of the job.
I just finished listening to Hanselminutes Open Source vs. Making Money vs. Freaking Lasers - Are we all Evil? With Chris Sells and it reminded me of the Open Source in Business session that I attended at Alt.Net Seattle. This post is attempting to tie these two things together.
Should we share our non-core software? Scott and Chris suggest that open sourcing your software is a cost. If you open source a project to increase good will among the programmer community; it is a good thing but not necessarily profitable.
In Alt.Net Seattle’s Open Source in Business, a couple of participants claim that their companies benefited from "free" programming and used the contributor’s list to fill positions.
Scott and Chris talk about the Portland open source culture and how making money isn’t necessarily the biggest thing in Portland. Some of the open source that way to keep more of what they make.
Apple and Google have done evil things in the last few years, but Microsoft is still evil. Scott and Chris suggested that Microsoft isn’t well organized enough to be evil. No company of any size is beloved by everyone.
Is evil associated with making money over customers? In any publicly traded company, stock holder value is king over everything else. Microsoft may feel more evil because they charge us directly. People may like them better if pricing was less complicated (the pricing discussion goes on from there, but I won’t go there in this post).
Since Google and Facebook make money from advertising and don't charge us anything, they feel less evil (Facebook privacy policy makes them feel more evil to me).
At Alt.NET we also discussed the relative lack of originality in the .NET ecosystem. Many of the major open source projects (NHibernate, NUnit, etc.) are copies of Java open source projects. Perhaps many .NET developers are shy about starting ambitious open source project fearing that Microsoft will somehow co-opt it. Perhaps Microsoft is too disorganized to get out of the way of some cool open source project.
This may be the way that Microsoft is evil. It also could be that the companies that use Microsoft software are more conservative and value safety over innovation. I've worked for a few companies that view open source as evil -- to these companies, Microsoft is a crusader fighting against the chaos.
