molly.com » Who Questions Bill Gates’ Commitment to Web Standards?

BILL: “There’s two things. There’s what we expect we’re trying to do; and the state of implementation of the things we’re trying to do. We’ve done the “mea culpa” …

(It’s like the Macarena, the steps are a little different …)

“ … we should have kept the browser curve to be a more continuous curve. Believe me, we wish that we’d done that differently. Dean’s group is getting more resources, and so you’ll actually see us not only going back to a state of what we were innovating before but actually innovating at faster speeds than we were before. A lot of that has to do with implementing standards.”

MOLLY, LATER: “I’m not arguing with you. I’m asking a question … ”

BILL: “No, no, but eventually a question has to be answerable, what did we do in 1995? What did we do in 1996? What did we do in 1997? … You can skip like three years and say we did nothing. We didn’t do anything proprietary either! That’s criticizing not our intent, our strategy, that’s criticizing our execution and we fully accept that. But every year for thirteen, fourteen years now we’ve not just followed and implemented standards, we’ve contributed. This WS stuff … we contributed more Web Standards than anyone! We have our smartest people who go and work on that stuff … we just did the OpenOffice … Our Office XML formats we contributed to them … We’ve got XML at the core of all our products. Back in 1996 it was us and a few small companies that proposed XML in the first place. At some point you just have to say hey, look at out track record and if somebody’s track records doesn’t prove something to you, then I’ll probably never convince you of something. What is it that we’re not doing?”

(Anyone?)

“You know, if you name some obscure thing and say hey, Microsoft ought to do more on that, I’ll probably just send Dean mail and say hey, she said that such and such a thing we should go and do and we’ll go and do it …”

Brave Molly. I think I’ll go lie down.

MAC GEEKERY “Microsoft needs to become a lean, mean, coding machine.”

Sometimes I think I am here in order to explain what Geek is … to/on/in/at a venue (what, pray, is the internet) … does the term Coals to Newcastle mean anything to you?

Perhaps not. Let me think … Pocket Protectors to SlashDot?

Engineers (oh, yeah, they all over this blog) like to get to the point. My son the engineer (Civil, Senior, so I gave birth at thirteen, what’s it to ya) is, in fact, regularly stretched to the breaking point, as well as waaay beyond, because I talk to him in a manner resembling this post. Tortured yet? Read the rest of this entry »

I, CRINGELY “What’s key here is Microsoft’s innate inability to do something right the first or even the second time. The nature of Internet services is that to be successful, they have to come at little or no cost and JUST PLAIN WORK. What Microsoft products or services would that historically describe?”

Hey, if Microsoft has become the donkey, is it my fault? Is it Cringely’s fault? Hell, no. Where would writers be without fools. Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, I wish I had slowed down a bit before posting the book idea, but then, you know that you’re getting me. Raw. Flawed. Impulsive.

This has been sitting in my Drafts folder since at least March. Oh, it’s well worth writing about. This type of thinking, this type of guy.

I bash ahead. There are pros and cons to this approach. Pros? You get stuff done. Cons? You mess up in public and things are half baked. You look stupid. Uninformed. Unprepared.

It’s simply that . . . well, keep reading . . .

See, in the old world you only got to read the book, you never got to see the mess.

I am quite sure the culture is dead, and I am living in a dream . . .

Life is messy, and my blogging is too. The more I write out in public, the more I realize a good blog lets you see the mess. Lets you see behind the scenes. Gets you involved in building things.

Damn, time’s up—and it’s just as I feared.

Ever had the wind knocked out of you?

If you wanna read perfection, then this isn’t the place for you. Go read Shakespeare.

It’s exactly like that.