The blog is very useful.

” All this “innovation” by Microsoft scientists may impress an average CompUsa visitor but means nothing for the enterprise that requires high availability” That is an odd quote. The average CompUSA visitor neither knows nor cares about the scientists just like Bell telephone customer could hardly be expected to have known or cared about Bell Labs (or substitute Xerox PARC or probably many others). But it became one of the great research institutions. I doubt that the builders of high capacity telephone switches knew or cared about Bell Labs just as you seem to have little regard for the scientists at Microsoft Research. I think the point Mr Saffo was making is that despite the wealth of talent Microsoft Research has not yielded the landmark developments like the transistor or later the discovery of the cosmic background radiation at Bell Labs. I don’t see how high availability enterprise computing would have anything to do with it.

Presidentpicker –

No chip on the shoulder here! Happy where I am.

Remind me again why should I bust my ass so my boss can make payments on his samurai village in Woodside/mega-yacht/Gulfstream V/da Vinci manuscript?

95% desktops – may be. But your data is processed and stored on the servers. With apps moving to the web a desktop is just a little more advanced than a dumb terminal. Why have chip on the shoulder, considering that half of those 95% is broken and crashes and the other half has to be babysitted and patched against endless security holes?

Back to the dogs at the office argument: I got a yellow lab+beagle mutt that has a gas problem, if I take him to the office I will either be fired within the week or he will cause the dog-friendly policy to be withdrawn.

While doing time at those particular institutions (MIT 89-93, MSR 93-00) I crossed paths with really boring people at each, in just about equal proportions. I also met fascinating, intelligent, multi-disciplined friends in both places. In neither place was anyone on the “downslope of the IQ curve” unless you mean the right side of the bell.

But you’re right: you won’t find many biologists or geologists at Microsoft, nor is Microsoft Research attempting to assemble a world-class collection of cocktail party guests. Perhaps when big minds choose to enter the “roach motel” they decide based on criteria similar to those listed by Scott and Pedro, rather than whether they can bring their dogs to work?

(Interestingly, if you do a web search you’ll see that Paul Saffo has been repeating this particular witicism since at least early ‘98. Maybe he should innovate a new catch phrase? Until he’s found something else to talk about, I sure wouldn’t want to get stuck next to him at a cocktail party…)

Er, in what sense is Microsoft — with, what is it, a 95% share of desktops? — not a big boy?

Disclosure — Mac user.

If they are non-mission critical, and no one really cares if they are down, why bother keeping them running?

I work in a huge unix shop with hundreds and hundreds enterprise class machines. We do have a few windows servers that many people here refer to as “little toy boxes”. They run some non-mission critical apps and no one really cares if they are down. All this “innovation” by Microsoft scientists may impress an average CompUsa visitor but means nothing for the enterprise that requires high availability. It’s going to be a while before MS will be able to play even with the big boys.