Hey Bill: why not put your money where your mouth is?

Bill Gates made his annual pilgrimage to DC today to ask the federal government to spare him from raising his employees' wages. He says pay isn't the problem. Bill, if you want us to believe that this isn't just about money, why don't you help out the nearest university campus to you? We desperately want to start science and engineering majors, but the State doesn't have the money to build us a building with labs, buy us equipment, etc. You already employ dozens of our graduates, how about helping us help you with some more? Why not do your part?

A brilliant strategic move

Microsoft is making their software development tools free downloads for all students.

"It's a brilliant strategic move on the part of Microsoft," said Chris Swenson, a software industry analyst with NPD Group. "This is one of the core audiences you have to hit if you really want to make a difference in the rich Internet application market going forward."

Hmm. Aren't there many other software development tools available for free to anyone? Like Apple's XCode and Eclipse? And didn't Microsoft already arrange nearly-free licensing agreements with many schools? What are the qualifications one needs to become a software industry analyst? Enough free time to read a range of trade publications?

Get by with a little help from your (non-Windows-using) friends

Seems that a lot of digital picture frames are shipping with a Windows virus pre-installed. This is very convenient; it eliminates all of the hassle of connecting to the net and waiting for infection.

Seriously, and as John Gruber pointed out in Daring Fireball, here is one general approach to avoiding Windows viruses (quoted from the article linked above):

Deborah Hale at SANS suggested that PC users find friends with Macintosh or Linux machines and have them check for malware before plugging any device into a PC.

Tech companies to educators, commuters, the poor: screw you

Washington state is currently ranked 37 in college degree production, though it's in the top 10 in terms of employment of high tech workers. The Seattle area is ranked 3 in traffic congestion. Technology companies in this state complain loudly about the impact of congestion and lack of local college graduates on their companies. Bill Gates started a large foundation dedicated to solving other problems: in public health. But, when you get down to it (as you'll read by following the link above), when push comes to shove, public dollars in these companies pockets is more important to them than anything else. In this case, they're arranging things so they won't have to pay state sales tax on their equipment purchases for their server farms. To put this in perspective, the University of Washington -- a state institution -- pays sales tax on its purchases, even when using money allocated to it from state taxes. It's nice to know for whom this country is really run.

Just you wait, Henry Higgins...

Maybe a little dated, but by this point there's plenty of humorous comments to read. Hilton Locke, who works on Microsoft's tablet PCs, states, "I will say that if you are impressed by the "touch features" in the iPhone, you'll be blown away by what's coming in Windows 7." First of all, I think MS is very smart in going back to serial numbers for their OS releases: they are neutral names and nobody can make a fuss about the year they get released or whether their features or performance match their names. And they don't have to worry about running out of cool cat names.

I'll leave it to the comments on Locke's blog to remark on bragging about how a desktop OS not scheduled to be released for three years will exceed a palmtop UI available right now. Consider instead the following quote from the same blog post:

Now if only we could convince more OEMs that Windows Touch Technology is going to drive their sales.

I've got an idea on how to do that: have that technology actually drive their sales. There's no substitute for delivering on promises.

ZunePhone

In honor of Apple's newly announced iPod lineup, a very funny fake ad. The blinking "12:00" is a nice touch.

"the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft"

Always interesting to read an article that contains such a quote.

Is Microsoft Dead?

I can remember moving to the Seattle area in 1997 and being advised that Sun, Apple, IBM, and the various Linux concerns were all dead; they just didn't know it. Microsoft had won, and that's all there was to it. Is Paul Graham's essay about Microsoft similarly accurate? I would say that you ignore Mr. Graham at your own risk. He has also written a follow-up, Cliff's Notes version in which he emphasizes that what he means is that software startups no longer need worry about Microsoft. And this in turn reminded me of software startup proposals in the early to mid '90s, in which the mere rumor that Microsoft would do something even vaguely similar was enough to eliminate any chance of financial backing. You just couldn't compete with Microsoft. These days, the issue isn't whether one can compete successfully with Microsoft, but rather that Microsoft is no longer a credible source of new ideas. The best they can do (as Mr. Graham says) is buy them. And, sometimes, even that doesn't help.

David Pogue on Windows Vista

Click on the title above for a humorous video in which New York Times columnist David Pogue explains that Windows Vista isn't a copy of Mac OS X.

Ihnatko: the loony Zune

(Yes, it's a snow day here, and I'm working on the tail end of what might be URI #4 of the season.)

The title above links to a Chicago Sun-Times review by Andy Ihnatko of Microsoft's new Zune device. Summary: Zune isn't just not user-friendly; it's user-hostile. Here are some choice quotes:

The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity...
The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players...
And why (for the love of God) doesn't it support podcasts? That's pure insanity...
Oh, and the Zune Marketplace doesn't even take real money, proving that on the Zune Planet there's no operation so simple that it can't be turned into a confusing ordeal...
You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Update: Here's an almost as scathing review from a Windows-dedicated web site.

"79 points actually cost 99 cents"

The title above links to a Wall Street Journal review of Microsoft's new Zune player and music store by Walt Mossberg. What struck me was that store customers must pre-pay, buying points which they then in turn use to purchase songs. And songs cost 79 points, which is equivalent to 99 cents. Exactly why did Microsoft choose an "exchange rate" (99/79) that produces a fraction that doesn't repeat until the 14th decimal place? OK, it's true that 79/99 repeats at the third decimal place. Will Microsoft round the number of points up to the nearest point when customers invariably pre-pay with a whole number of dollars? I assume that this is a mechanism for them to decouple song pricing from their payment system; maybe they think that people will view songs as being cheaper than they are because the number of points is less than the number of cents? I would suggest instead that they use an exchange rate similar to what used to exist between the dollar and the Italian Lira: seeing all those zeros (with, say, 7900 points for a song) will make it seem much more like paying with "play money".

Too bad that they need to get the customer to deposit real money to start.