04.28.09

When did the carrot become a stick?

Posted in rant at 1:53 pm by Nate Smith

Those of us that remember the old days in the 1990’s when Microsoft could do no wrong (much like the Google of 2006) remember the days of easy licensing and the brilliant aura each new product had as it was introduced.  Microsoft was on fire and each new announcement meant the end of some drudgery or a more expediant way from point A to point B.  Windows 95 was hot and each version of Office got easier to use because the esoteric features in the prior version no longer crashed. 

You wanted to upgrade, upgrade was good.  Upgrade was better.   Upgrade = carrot.

Sometime in the early 2000’s (or was it the late 90’s?) when market saturation was beginning to set in and Novell and Borland were both put in their place,  Microsoft realized they could not keep the market growing and the revenue climbing forever.  They needed to attack their customers and their own products in order to continue selling.  Things started changing and have been more burdensome ever since.

CALs or Client Access Licenses were required to access NT servers, software assurance hit and upgrade pricing disapeared.  It became necessary to pay for support on some products.  Then all these old products that shone like beacons as they were introduced were cut off from support.  If you want support, you need to be on a recent version.  Then things like Office were well established and probably all but the most esoteric 10% of features worked as they should and things didn’t crash nearly as much as they used to.  That was good.

But the upgrades became more incremental and stopped being the dramatic improvements they once were.  This is probably momentum coupled with mass.  The upgrade track Microsoft would have us on now would probably do great things for the their t bottom line if we all complied.

Upgrades cost money for not much improvement.    Upgrade= stick.

Beware of the geek who does not complain.

Posted in Geek Culture, miscellany at 9:51 am by Nate Smith

Some people think geeks complain a lot. I believe some geeks complain because they can always see a better way of doing something or can imagine doing it optimally.   Sometimes that means complaining because it wasn’t done their way.   Even a solution that everyone agrees is good-enough is still probably sub-optimal.  In the case of software this may because of sub-optimal tools on hand used to create it.   And sometimes, even a really clever hack is still a hack. 

Many geeks see the world as it could be,  instead of how it is - which may explain why so many geeks like science fiction.   Maybe a little too much.  Doing what geeks do and approaching things as they do is our way of changing the little bit of a sub-optimal world we can have an effect on. The geeks who are working hard and are not complaining are busy taking over the world.