A Mini-Coup in Microsoft

My weekend wasn't too bad, how was yours? I went to a party for the first time in a long while Friday night, and these white frat guys kept putting on this old 80s music that had some special meaning for them and none of the girls like. So I came to the rescue putting on the Mos Def. And what happened? Why I'll show you *smiles at camera*:

Getting girls to dance on a table was a boost of self-esteem for Elton the DJ, but that's not what you came here to read about, now did you? So what is this coup that I'm talking about? It turns out that there's a faction of Microsoft employees more disgruntled about the delay of Vista and Office than the rest of us. In fact, they're calling for big whigs Jim Allchin, Steve Ballmer, and Brian Valentine to resign. Allchin will be retiring anyway, but the others would be pretty high up. Unless this is just the inflated concerns of a few, which I don't think it is, maybe these guys should be demoted or fired. If a leader doesn't have the faith of his people, then he's not a very good leader. A good leader could tell his followers to jump into a well and they'd have so much trust in him that they'd do it, and I don't see why a project manager would have any less of a position. There's no doubt that a delay is better than a crummy product, but how is it that Apple can come out with these great incremental changes to Mac OS X so regularly and Microsoft can suck so much at it with Service Packs? And then, when the ideas that are already in Mac finally come through the pipe from whence they came (which was probably originated before a guy at Apple thought of it) it's no longer fresh. This really is hurting Microsoft, and now there's a lot of pressure on Vista when you think about it. I mean if it doesn't rock our socks off, then it's going to be quite debilitating for M$, especially with Intel-based Macs and all.

Meanwhile, over at Apple, Steve Jobs dumped 45% of his Apple stock to make a hefty $295 million. Is he hard up for cash? Is Apple going down the drain? Nope. Actually, he has too much money so he was just trying to alleviate some tax problems, which made everyone breath a sigh of relief for the future of Apple. BCS has a pretty good interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and it's always good to hear his views about the evolution of his brainchild, the Internet. What he's pushed as a big issue should be no surprise: security. Increasing security seems more and more like an exercise in brinkmanship though, I'm afraid. Nintendo announced at GDC that it would be launching an iTunes-like service for old school video games from their own consoles in addition the Genesis and TurboGrafx called Virtual Console. I wouldn't be surprised if they added more in the future (like GameBoy and Atari), and I always loved this idea. Sony, conversely, is taking a step forward to stop manufacturing PSOne consoles after 11 years of producing PSX iterations. However, the PS2 can still play the old games, the PSP will soon have an emulator for them, and word on the street is that the PS3 will be able to as well. Lastly, a web design blog put up its picks for the 5 best layouts of all time, and they actually are rather eye-catching. There's so much to appreciate in a web site when you really look at it closely and how much effort was put into it.

The winner of this weekend's box office shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but I really wanted V for Vendetta to stay on top (which did get #2 and has almost made back its production costs). Anyway, it was Spike Lee's Inside Man with an impressive $29.2 million, which did get better reviews that the graphic novel adaptation no doubt but didn't its trailers didn't pull me in as much. Anyway, I'm sure that it's a great flick and I do plan on seeing it (even if not while its in theaters). Larry the Cable Guy was held back to the #7 spot, thankfully, and Stay Alive got the number three spot since it was so bad that it wouldn't screen for critics. An Australian newspaper has produced yet another Brandon Routh interview about the pop culture significance of Superman and what the movie does for the caped crusader. Lastly, some behind-the-scenes footage for Casino Royale has popped up online at a French news site (you have to go to the March 24th news though), and I wouldn't have even mentioned it if there was more news out there but I figured that someone out there would ravish the scoop on 007.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Glass castle::Art


2. Preserved::Safe


3. Jealousy::Envy


4. Territory::Dogs (they pee to mark their territory)


5. Coffee::Beans


6. Stephen::King


7. Slut::Whore


8. Dynamic::Programming


9. Daybreak::Sunrise


10. Dew::Water