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High-level people *never* eat with low-level co-workers in an informal setting. It's like some kind of corporate culture rule that extends to academia and the government sector as well.
Oh, and as for Notepad, well, that's probably as far from Writely as Writely is from Word.
It has always been my experience that lunch was the place to connect across disciplines and titles.
I can't imagine an effective manager that would affect that sort of exclusivity. They couldn't possibly be taken seriously. It's too laughably pompous.
In New Orleans, especially, I find that you look down on another person at your own peril. Everyone is connected. A slight towards one person will be felt by many, no matter where you may think they sit in a heirarchy.
But joke apart, I've always wondered why Works didn't take off more: it had integration way back in the late 80's, when the Office components did not really talk to each other, and was fairly easy to use.
Robert, could you qualify this so that it becomes a useful sentence? Microsoft obviously paid for staff attendence, and obviously paid for party food and entertainment, so we know the statement is on its face untrue (or, as I believe, just unconsidered).
There were segments of staffers, speakers, partners, and none-of-the-above attendees. Non-speaking Flash influentials told me directly they were flown across the ocean all-expenses paid. Following up on the prior discussion, what's the real scoop here?
(btw, I feel that all these "i didnt get invited to lunch!" blogstorms are laughingly trivial... I hope I never get into the situation Bill's in where people expect such things of me. I've got empathy for you in dealing with that one.)
j "adobe paid my way" d
Wow.
Robert, you seriously do not understand how existing solutions get disrupted by upstart replacements that are inferior by established measures.
Whether Writely is the product that will do it or not, it is a virtual certainty that whatever new product or service eventually obsoletes Word will *not* in fact match Word feature for feature.
Word, and the rest of Office, will probably become obsolete in the same gradual way that fax machines are. Staples still sells quite a range of fax machines, and people in business almost without exception feel the need to have one, but most people would rather actually communicate by other means. We are still in a generation of people who think that a document "signed" and faxed back represents a secure authenticated proof of another party's intent. We have to wait for a good majority of these people to die off before better forms of authentication take hold, and replace the good old fax machine.
Word will, and to a large extent already HAS gone that route, with fewer and fewer people composing their e-mail messages with the Word editor turned on, communicating internally with CMS (Content Management Systems) that are mostly web-based, blogging out replacements for newspaper articles, and so on. At some point people will look back in an effort to pinpoint when Office died and will have difficulty picking an exact date. But the handwriting is on the wall Oh King, Live Forever.
Now, ajaxWrite I could see you doing that with. But not Writely. Not anytime in the next 2 years. There are just too many "features" that anyone above a grandma uses. You won't realize you're missing them until you try and use them.
Btw, OpenOffice is fantastic. I use it on my lappy while travelling (portable OO even). It's come a long way in the last 5 years. But it's taken it that long to go from a "word processor" to anywhere near a "Word competitor". And, really, it's not even a Word competitor yet in terms of ease of use or many of the features... But it's damned close.
Imagine how long it'll take a pure web-app to get to that point. Even if it takes 2-3 years, which'd be amazing, who says that's what users'll want in that period? Plus, it'll be nearly time for a new version of Office by then. One that'll, apparently, allow for far more portability anyways.
O12 is really an enterprise release. O13'll be a far more mobile-aware release, because that's where the market's heading.
Sorry for the tangent. Late. Must sleep ;)
Somehow I can't see Gates laughing about that. Not after all that getting raked over the coals (wrongly I feel) by the 'make-a-name spotlight-hound' lawyers. IE and DOJ cost your company more than a billion plus, (and more since you went abandonware, allowing spyware to become a cottage industry) shrug off with just a laugh? I dunno, that's the type of thing that would make one eternally bitter. It would me.
Steve wouldn’t have anything interesting or new to say to him.
The world would miss out on a multi-volume book's worth of new meaningless buzzwords. But geesh Steve, cut back your jealous envy. Gates is an automatic micromanage robot anyways, spoken in PR'ese for so long, it's his natural dialect. Understandable under the circumstances, but a robot all the same.
Well half the blame is Netscape itself's, the web as platform bubble talk and the horrid code and then AOL hell. Microsoft has greatly benefited from inept competitors, more than so than stealing the show themselves. Just they are the only ones left when dust settles. But DOJ changed the Microsoft culture, good in some ways, bad in other. And the final end price tag is much much more than just Netscape. Maybe he takes it more lightly, but you forget he went nervous breakdown and took himself off the CEO role. Not something to easily laugh off.
I thought it was quite ironic that I was probably the most MS aligned person at the table -- even though up until very recently, we have never shipped anything on MS tech (we're a Ruby on Rails shop). Esp. when you consider Mike was a WSGR attorney for Netscape (vs. MSFT), and Lynda is a very influential Flash supporter.
I don't know if this was purposely done, if I were looking in from the outside, Robert is setting a great example of how MS's culture is willing to "mix" it up with outsiders -- young and old, "jr." and "sr.," pro-MS or not, etc.
Another great example I thought of this theme I think was seen when we all saw a public, unscripted, Q&A with Tim O'Reilly.
Sure, skeptics can say all they want about the "Master PR strategy" of MSFT to put lipstick on the pig that is Microsoft. But there's no question in anyone's mind that in order for MSFT to survive and thrive in this new world, they will have to open up, and I think Robert and Bill and friends seems to be doing many of the right things towards moving in that direction.
Again, thanks for the opportunity Robert.