Business

Microsoft

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The Economist recently featured a cover photo of Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, since he is stepping down from his post and leaving Microsoft. Bill Gates is a larger-than-life figure because of his large foundation and his charitable works. However, while I am far from an expert on his non-work efforts, I do consider myself somewhat of an expert on Microsoft, and that is the focus of this post.

Microsoft has several business segments, as follows (per their most recent earnings release as found on their web site), along with quarterly revenues as follows:

– Client revenues (operating systems, Vista) – $4B
– Servers and tool revenues (Windows server, SQL Server) – $3B
– Online business revenues (MSN, others) – $1B
– Business system revenues (Office, Sharepoint) – $5B
– Entertainment (Xbox, mobile phones) – $2B

Thus the majority of their revenues and vast majority of their profits are from 1) operating systems (Vista), servers & tools (Windows server, SQL Server), and business systems (MS Office).

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The right to a job

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There has been a certain amount of fuss recently over the case of the sued hairdresser. The story is readily available in the MSM so I shall sum it up very quickly indeed. Ms Sarah Desrosiers runs a hairdressing salon in King’s Cross, North London, which specializes, as she puts it, in “funky urban hairstyles”. I am not sure I know what it means but whatever it is the business has been successful. As it happens I know two young women whose hair is always beautifully cut, who had followed Ms Desrosiers when she left the big salon she had worked for and set up her own business.

In other words, we are talking about a talented, hard-working, entrepreneurial young woman of the kind this country needs many more of. Whether we are going to have them after this particular episode remains questionable.

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NFL Economic Bizarro World

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Carl and I have pounded practically everyone we know with the total economic sense shown by Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland Athletics mapped out in the outstanding book Moneyball. If you haven’t read it, you should. The book is a very easy read and quite entertaining even if you are not into baseball. Perfect summer reading.

I don’t want to ruin any of the book for those planning on reading it, but past this point will reveal a few spoilers to help me make a larger point.

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Random Thought

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Why is it that software developers, in the GUIs of common software, particularly blogging tools, put rarely used and dangerous functions (“Delete this [post/database/blog]”) immediately next to frequently used functions (“Save this [post/database/whatever]”)? This is stupid, yet one sees it not infrequently, and not only in version 1.0.

Not-so early versions of Movable Type actually had a “delete this blog” button. What was the purpose of such a function? Was it to let you destroy the evidence if the blog police were at your door? I don’t get it. It’s easy enough to delete your blog inadvertently using an FTP program; the developers shouldn’t do anything to make inadvertent deletion even easier. I always edited the MT scripts to remove that stupid button and the function it triggered.

WordPress, supposedly the latest and greatest, has a “Delete post” link next to the “Save” and “Publish” buttons. Why couldn’t they put the delete button somewhere else — say, at the bottom of the page? For every post that I’ve deleted intentionally I have come close to deleting several more posts accidentally, merely because the delete link is in a dumb place. For all of its brilliance, WordPress has the feel of a vanity project managed by a few clever developers who ignore the marketing guy who suggests that maybe it’s not such a great idea to put the delete button next to the save button.

But of course there is no marketing guy, because WordPress is an open-source project managed by a few clever developers. Maybe that’s the problem. If WP were being sold for real money, the developers might have no choice but to put more care into GUI design. And they might be able to afford to hire specialists to do it. But since it’s open-source, and users are members of a “community” rather than paying customers, what’s the incentive to spiff up the GUI? OTOH, given the competition from other (free) blogging packages, it might not be possible to sell WP.

It’s interesting that some basic GUI issues are not given much weight in the race to add software features. I don’t know if there’s a remedy for this situation.

Stupidity Kills

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The headline reads….

NYC issues warning after aphrodisiac kills man

Why in the world would anyone need to be warned that taking the product was a bad idea? Or that they would think that sucking down something made from toad venom will get you in the mood for a romantic romp? The very last thing I would do to get all hot and bothered is to ingest something with the word “Venom” in the list of ingredients.

I think we’ll have to chalk this one up to evolution in action.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)