Where is Microsoft Headed with Ballmer????

What ever people may think of Bill Gates, it is hard to argue against the fact that he was and still is an amazing business man. Taking Microsoft from its humble beginnings, and lets not argue about did he or didn’t he steal the idea. if he did he was not the first and all the others who claim he stole from them are hardly whiter than white them selves. To with out dispute the most well known and dominate OS producer we have yet seen.

Now after leaving Microsoft he has gone on to do more things, and again despite personal feeling you may have about him, he does more to further the causes of people in need than any other past or present director of the major IT industry leaders and not just in terms of money but also applying the skills he developed whilst at Microsoft.

Bill on mosquitos, malaria and education

Bill on energy: Innovating to zero!

I think we can say that Gates left Microsoft with a very firm footing after years of innovation and drive. So what of it’s future??

My personal view is that what Microsoft lost in Gates has not be replaced by Steve Ballmer. Where once they where pushing the boundaries and bringing new and exciting things to the IT world, suddenly they seem to be the ones playing catch up. Now while it is not unusual for a company to appear to slow while ramping up for the next “big thing”, in the case of Microsoft that “big thing” has been an awful long time in coming. Yes we have had windows 7, but that was hardly anything ground breaking, a good OS yes but nothing to write home about. Latley we have had huge publicity around Halo Reach, and again nothing denying its a good game, but still this is the 4th instalment, where is the innovation here?

Maybe even more worrying is Steve’s attitude to the competition. the following are two videos of his response to news of apples I-phone and Google Crome OS.

Laugh at the iphone.

Laugh at Google Crome OS.

Although we can forgive him for laughing at the iphone, as no one new how it was going to take off. However repeating the process with Google seems a little foolish. Neither Google nor indeed Apple are any longer small players in IT any longer, they have the backing, the following and plenty of money to be dipping there fingers in to lots of pies that previously only Microsoft where making.

So where is he taking Microsoft now? Windows 7 is just released, Server 2008 still quite young, and I haven’t heard about any plans for much development of the Xbox. What new and novel product will they launch. What is going to keep them on the map?

VMware have got on with Virtulisation, which seems to be the “next big thing”.

Google are so far ahead in terms of search and web they will be hard to catch,

Apple have the mobile market, (and if they falter Google with android is snapping at there heals)

Net-books and tablets are taken by the apple IPAD, blackberry’s playbook among others.

With only there desktop and server OS going for them, and as I said both a few years away until people will be ready to buy the next instalment. Has Microsoft missed the boat and starting on a slippery path to obsolation in the next 10  to 20 years? Will Steve actuly manage to take a hold of the company and point them back in the right direction? Or will he continue to simply laugh at the opposition in foolish hope. My advice to him would be if you are going to laugh, make dam sure that when it comes to crunch time you have the product to match.

I also noticed that his body language in the last clip, (Google) show him as being very uncomfortable, shifting on his chair and his gaze flicking around. Is this man really the person to lead?

Well just my thoughts, I think we are in a great time with they way things are developing, lots of major players all pushing each other. I think the next 10 year are going to show some great development in IT. I can’t wait to get involved in them.

DevilWAH

PS. I have added some more materials to the CCNP ROUTE course materials and a number of flash cards to the ROUTE pack.

Edit: and it seems I am not the only one seeing the cracks.. Microsoft staff survey.

Playing with the Blog.

I have added in a sub page under the “CCNP Route” page containing all the extra reading materials and media that I come across during my studies, it also includes my ANKI flash cards. However not a huge amount there yet but it will grow along with the post count.

Apart from that not much happening tonight here, been playing with LINUX and webservers again today. Currently looking at setting up an SMTP server, which is something I have not done before on Linux so that should be fun 🙂

I have  had a little bit more of a play with EIGRP so gearing up for the next post for CCNP ROUTE. I also want to lab out some more STP and QoS from the CCNP SWITCH, I am now in two minds if I should go back and retake the SWITCH as looking back over it I have a horrid feeling I made a very silly mistake in how I approached one of the main simulation questions. In so much as the first time I took the exam some thing did not work and the exam crashed, so I assumed that I could not do what I wanted. However from other peoples comments it seems this is not the case. I am still not happy with CISCO approach to this exam but I would really like to pass it. I know I can do it and I would love to get my CCNP by early next year.

However there something to get out of the way before then (talk more about that soon), and work is busy, so will have to see how things turn out.

DevilWAH

A bit of humour.

Just a little bit of light humour borrowed from Futility Closet.

Never Play a gorilla at golf. 😉

This guy takes a gorilla out golfing. At the first tee the gorilla says, “So what am I supposed to do?” The guy says, “You see that green area about 400 yards from here? You’re supposed to hit the ball onto that.” So the gorilla takes a club and whacks the ball and it soars up into the sky and drops down neatly on the green. The guy tees off and makes about 150 yards, so he hits an iron shot and then another iron shot and finally they arrive at the green. The gorilla says, “What do I do now?” The guy says, “Now you hit it into that cup.” The gorilla says, “Why didn’t you tell me that back there?”

DevilWAH

Download PDF Articles

Just a small update of changes to the blog today. Got things to get ready for tomorrow so busy with that, but had a few moments to play with some bits a pieces.

First of I have restructured the Link’s in the menu bar. Now rather than being a page of typed links I am using the WP Render Blogroll Links plug in. A great link that renders the pages for my from the Link Categories in wordpress. Hopefully this should make adding links much quicker in future.

And the second Plug in I have added is PDF24 Article To PDF. You will not find a small button at the bottom of the posts and pages to download as a PDF file. I am hoping that once I have got in to the ROUTE studying fully (I’m actual going through the redistribution part of it now) and I am posting material people will fine being able to save a copy off-line useful. Remember this Blog site runs on an old Dell optiplex desktop so it may take a few seconds to generate the PDF for you.

Now back to Route redistribution for me 😉

DevilWAH

CCNP EXAM

Well you might notice I am not updating and working on this blog much this week. Main reason is I have my CCNP SWITCH Exam coming up in a few days and hard at work revising!

I think I have it sorted just as long as no silly planning questions catch me out. It seems as though Cisco want you to “forget” things you know, and only come to the exam with the exact information in the book. It doesn’t matter if something is actual correct.. If its not in the book then you are not expected to know it.

config wise and technology I think I am fine though. I have been working on LAYER 2 for 5 years now so apart from a few small bits running through the book has been confirming lots of what I have learnt on the job over that time.

Still had time to play with the links in the blog and add a few more quotes.

And later I have a part 2 for trouble shooting with ACCL’s to write up, and a nice layer 3 NAT scenario to lab up soon to show a use for the “NAT enable” and virtual NAT interfaces. Hopefully get one of them at least sorted out this week, but if not I will do it after my celebrations (I’m thinking positive here) at passing.

DEVILWAH

Quotes

Man I seem to be contently adding my quote collection but still no where near the end! In fact not even 20% of the way through! Main trouble is that I have them all over the place with different formats so have to copy each one by hand! Once there all up I shall be tidying up the quote pages.

On a side note added a few more flash cards to Anki, some QoS stuff.

A step up from Minority Report interface.

OK so the real life Minority Report interface did not do it for you?

Well lets try a bit of Brain control!

OK so its not perfect yet, but I have been following these over the years and they are getting better and faster to respond year by year. I remember when the most they could flip the colour of the screen by thinking about a CAT?! To think it can learn an action in 8 seconds, and if its any think like Voice recognition software, I know from experience practice really does make perfect.

I still think there’s a long way to go yet, but we are getting close to being able to sit at our desk and control objects on the screen with our mind.

However I think the use I would most like to see the research go to first if for helping disabled. Controlling wheel chairs is only the beginning, Imagen those people with diseases like Stephen Hawkins, who currently can only communicate by moving his eye lids. Returning some ones ability to move is a great thing to be able to do, but returning some ones ability to communicate would be something truly amazing.

Plus I want one cause they look cool!!! 😉

DevilWAH

Roller coaster of a day out.

Well just back from a very nice day at the theme park near home :), Parents very kindly looked after our lovely baby so wife and I could have our first trip out alone. What a feeling of release to be able to walk around with out having to worry about the baby and knowing she was OK.

My wife has decided that she is not to keen on rides that accelerate from 0 to 80mph in 2 seconds! But apart from that great fun.

But now back to wireless, before adding some more quotes and a new techno blog.

DevilWAH

Edit: updated menu to contain links to the categorise. Now all I need is for WordPress to allow me to put the link categories in the menu to 🙂

A day off.

Well any one who actually comes to this blog would have noticed I was away yesterday.

There was good reason for this, we had a welcome to the world party for my 3 month old daughter. Was a wonderful day, full of friends and family to hold the baby for us, so my wife and I could relax 🙂

But back to business today, got some QoS to revise tonight and have a few other bits I want to discuss.

And it doesn’t matter if no one actual reads this blog.. I was reading today that the more you talk to your self the more intelligence you are (new scientist magazine), and boy do I talk to my self. Maybe its because I am the only one who can put up with listing to me?

Any way of to do the washing up and hang the washing out, back later.

DevilWAH