Blah, blah, blah, the share price is still stuck around $30, I give Ballmer another quarter before he gets the boot.

While we are mentioning the MS stock price, Google is at $432.70.

I can see MS becoming a bankrupt 'Xerox' in a few years and breaking up into several smaller companies.

Joe , you wrote : " She saw Ballmer's shamelessness as a good character trait"

Frankly , I don't really grap the intention of this entry .

Firstly : We are not tabloid reader, we really don't bother how Ballmer acts

Secondly : We are enterprise users , we are talking about Microsoft Technolgy Roadmap. We are not petty

Thirdly : Your wife's feeling is nothing to do with IT business

Fourthly " You are doing personal attack which I can understand as your background is non-technical . You can only write "soft" stuff

Fifthly : You write like PerezHilton (www.perezhilton.com) .

Finally : You should register www.itgossip.com

May I make a complaint here :

By the way , Joe, who wrote the following article :

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/A-Better-Way-To-Cut-your-IT-Budget/3/

The author seems to be know nothing on enterprise IT . The content is bordering to fairy tale which is written inside an air-con office

But one thing I do agree, most of the Eweek writers are crap

A quick lesson on stock valuation for Ed T. and JM.

Microsoft's shares have split over seven times. If you compute the real valuation per share - it would be almost $1000 a share today.

Share valuation isn't just the price per share - it's the number of shares in play as well. Remember, Microsoft doesn't get anything for those shares once they're sold the first time. So high or low, it's not really important to Microsoft (other than their legal obligations to their shareholders) unless they need money - and in case you missed the news - they just tried to drop $44 BILLION on buying a second tier web company.

It's always hilarious when someone is disappointed with Microsoft (or any other large company) and then concludes that their issue is SO important that the company in question is doomed.

Microsoft will be with us for a LONG time.

Thank you Jeff Lewis. People really dont understand the market. MSFT will be here for a very long time. They have the highest market cap than ANY tech company (google, yahoo, apple). So your looking at the stock as a representation of the comapines financial health and it doesnt work that way, sorry.

Joe;

As I was reading this article, I was waiting to get to the beef and potatoes of the article, what technology news, direction or something substantial to comment on. Perhaps this article should of been some sort of byline or something.

Mr. Lewis trots out that old saw about valuing MSFT shares as though they were all purchased at the IPO 20+ years ago. They weren't, and many of those shares were used as incentives to lure thousands of employees who now own "submarine" options. The past five years have seen little movement in the share price -- a period that coincides with a fellow named Ballmer as CEO. The primary duty of a CEO is to maximize shareholder value, and yes, the time horizon for judging results should be longer than a quarter or two. But five years with flat share prices and a pitiful dividend? Incompetence is difficult to hide in the long run.

Sorry Mr. Lewis, you aren't a candidate for the Warren Buffett award this year.

@chips:
Today, March 7, is the day that (a) we learn that Microsoft has formally announced that they are shutting down their business, or (b) we learn that I-Man really is a pompous brain-dead lying wind-bag. Gee, I wonder which it is.

@Steve Ballmer:
A huge majority of the electonically delivered help for problems and thorny questions on Windows and Windows-based applications comes freely from Google newsgroup searches. Can you tell me why Google is such an indispensable on-line help facility for Windows? Do you hate Google because they compete with your MSN/portal offerings, or do you hate Google because they put a serious dent in your phone support price-gouging racket?

How come no asked Ballmer about those 23,000 computers in the Philippines all going to Linux despite MS offer of selling Windows XP for $20 per machine? Why didn't they offer Vista? How come I can't get Windows XP for $20?

"How come I can't get Windows XP for $20?"

I guess the cost of congress critters is very expensive these days, even to a convicted monopolist. So somebody has to cover the cost of buying enough congress critters to permit the offering cut-rate prices in markets with stiff competition.

And those someones are those of us in markets in which the competition is already driven out or severely curtailed.

From: Monopolies 302: Advanced Price Fixing

I don't care what anybody else says. I think Steve Ballmer is funny. I think he could be in a sitcom.

"Philosopher :

@chips:
Today, March 7, is the day that (a) we learn that Microsoft has formally announced that they are shutting down their business, or (b) we learn that I-Man really is a pompous brain-dead lying wind-bag. Gee, I wonder which it is."

I-Man/portuno/etc. has gone into hiding, since not a thing has been said about today. Guess MSFT wasn't quaking in their boots at Niro Scavone Heller & Niro. Must mean MSFT thinks as Al does, the patents are unenforceable & will let the judge use the full weight of KSR v. Teleflex to render a decision.

sorry Joe, deviated just a bit from my promise not to engage the penny stock crooks. Just had to rub in the fact they came up empty as usual.

Today was a day when Microsoft's efforts at negotiating a situation under which a discovery phase is in play.

Given Microsoft's past habits in keeping electronic records, I would suspect today was a momentous day... and one Steve Ballmer will remember for a long time to come.

Al believes the patent in question has prior art in a number of software packages from the 90's. Unfortunately for Al, the courts aren't in the habit of taking a clueless hack's word over a patent examiner, the alternate examiner and the USPTO management.

The simplistic "unenforceable" proclamation is typical of those who are uninformed on the claim issues and are in denial because the situation threatens their own kingdom. Al is going to be doing more drinking than he's already known for.

One day when a judge receives material and begins studying that material is just the beginning. There are days ahead.

Malware hits Yahoo and Microsoft Instant Message services

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/03/08/malware-hits-yahoo-and-microsoft-instant-message-services/

Quotes from the link;

"Reports have come in across the internet that a new malware program has been released into the Yahoo and Microsoft instant message services. This new malware is completely automated. This means that a user does not have to take any action for the malware to install itself onto their machine - it does it automatically.

So far the malware has been traveling under the radar of many of the top spyware and anti virus programs. It is so new it isn’t being caught and quarantined or deleted yet. What’s worse is that some users, when removing the malware after detecting it on their own, have said that it changes the registry in Windows, causing a blue screen of death on reboot.

So far, Microsoft and Yahoo have not addressed the issue."

@Al
Portadumbfudge and I-Menst were counting the days. Just counting the days for March 7. The world was going to come to an end for MS. We were getting daily countdowns. Now of course they will blow it off and say, "oh, it's coming... in due time". And the worthless penny stock is now down below a penny and a half! Yeah, MS was SOOOO scared.

As always, people like Tom Berber distort what has been written to achieve their own end. March 7 was the delivery date for a report from a court ordered negotiator in a case Microsoft is facing due to infringement.

Microsoft is facing some serious questions.

Mono is facing infringement charges on the patent Microsoft is currently being sued on. Moonlight faces infringement charges if it steps beyond what is happening with Silverlight 2.0 today, SL2.0 being severely limited compared with what the kernel could do.

Tom wants it all to go away. It won't. It's going to continue onward. There are a number of longs who have access to information and a desire to show the public just what Microsoft has done to collapse a small company that had the goods long before all the companies today touting RIA and WebOS.

This is from one of those longs:

Friday March 7 was not a courtroom event. It was the deadline for early mediation at the Parties request. March 12th, All parties meet and confer to discuss list of Proposed Terms and Claim Elements for Construction. March 21st, All Parties make exchange of Preliminary Claim Constructions and Extrinsic Evidence. April 2nd, All Parties jointly file Joint Claim Construction and Prehearing Statement.

-----------

So, if you understand why Microsoft is unable to produce these kinds of next-generation tools that the company suing them was able to project years ago, please tell us what it is.

Absent some reasonable answer, the questions piling up about how Microsoft has acted since at least November/December 2004 and November/December 2005 are beginning to outline very well the number of deficiencies Microsoft has in interoperability, virtualization and code arbitration.

I don't care how long it takes. I don't care what Microsoft thinks they can do. The public forum is what it is... and at least it exists. Otherwise, Microsoft would have been able to silence that targeted company and all their shareholders long ago.

@Tom Berber:
Direct from the rat's mouth: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/office_2007_one_hit_wonder.html#comment-259328

"48 days left till March 7th..."

"48 days to the report by the court ordered mediator on the attempts to get MSFT and VCSY into a negotiating position."

And the following gem:
"If no settlement, then the judge will examine the discovery phase material and hear VCSY's arguments as to what happened when they tried to market their 6826744 derived products... the products crispy_al and hawcreek aka vcsy_stock_scam claim do not exist."

I have e-mailed VCSY twice to inquire about their Emily XML product. I haven't heard a peep out of VCSY, so I am left to conclude that they don't have any products they want to sell. The IBM web site, supposedly from a company that uses and loves Emily, has no mention of it that I can find. The I-Rat chastised me for asking about Emily instead of some other VCSY product. And the only sites I can find that even mention VCSY's so-called "products" are the Yahoo finance message boards and some den of iniquity called, appropriately enough, Raging BullS*** (or something like that).

These all lend further credence to the theory that Emily XML does not exist, and that VCSY is nothing more than a product-less patent troll.

All in all, you have to admit, Tom, that the rants of I-Rat and his aliases have been rather entertaining.

Hey, Philosopher, think of this:

It's interesting Joe is allowing the "VCSY" posts to stay on his comments pages now.

Do you think Joe finally got fed up with being spoonfed BS from Microsoft handlers and assorted liars? Do you think maybe he might have gotten an enlightenment from somewhere as to the VCSY/MSFT situation and now looks at it in a different eye?

Your "theories" about Emily (an XML native dynamic language applied for patent in 1999), the MLE kernel (an XML native runtime kernel capable of running on server, browser, client desktop or device) was applied for patent in 1999.

How is it these patents describe the things all the major players are touting as "revolutionary" and "killer" eight years ago... just as I said beginning in 2000? How is it this technology took so long for everyone else to try to develope? I thought it was all so "obvious". Not very.

Moonlight and Mono. Sounds like a prescription for some sick open-sourcers. And here's your close friend Microsoft promising to hold you folks harmless for infringement.

Heh heh heh. If that was all there was to it, you could all dance naked in the skreets. Do you think the court is going to dismiss the charges against you when you say "But Microsoft said they would take care of it!"?

You fell for that one again, right?

Those who are going to miss all this deserve to miss most.

@portuno:
I thought of what you wrote. Paragraph by paragraph:

1. Joe has always allowed the VCSY posts to stay on his comment pages. This hasn't changed from the time I first stumbled across Microsoft Watch. And while I don't always agree with Joe, I find him interesting, open-minded, and quite willing to tolerate very differing opinions.

2. No, Joe just calls them as he sees them. See 1.

3. This sentence makes no sense. My theories were never applied for patent in 1999, as your hideous grammar suggests.

4. The USPTO granted patent 6,368,227 in 2002 for swinging sideways on swing. So any patents from anyone (including Microsoft, IBM, VCSY, and the rest) that are granted by the same USPTO don't impress me much at all. What lawyers can do with them scares me, in the same way that what drug dealers do with machine guns scares me.

5. Microsoft isn't my close friend, and everyone I know who uses, or tries to use, Mono has come away unimpressed.

6. What are skreets?

7. Fell for what? Dancing naked wearing nothing but skreets? Or being charged for using Mono when I never have used it and never plan on even installing it?

8. No, we aren't missing anything. Your entertainment value is very high!