Talk:Microsoft

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To-do list for Microsoft: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
  • Medium
  1. Make business culture references more specific
  2. Move Criticism Section to Criticism of Microsoft (see Talk:Microsoft#Criticism_Section)
  • Low
  1. Merge anything useful from here and redirect or create a new history article (probably a better idea as history is getting beefy here...).
  2. SCO/Xenix (see Talk:Microsoft#SCO_Xenix)
  3. Mac business unit largest? (see Talk:Microsoft#comments_about_mac_business_unit)
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When editing and wikifying please remember to Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context

Archive 1
Archive 2
Archive 3
Archive 4
Archive 5
Archive 6

Contents

[edit] Flag this entry

This entry needs a clean-up. It's very disjointed.

[edit] Technical Critcism Section Changes

"(although it can also be argued that most of these "third-party driver" bugs...." This uses passive voice. This needs a reference or should be ommitted Evanreiser 21:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

this addition today is also obviously not written from a NPOV, i'm going to revert the additon unless there are objections for rewordingEvanreiser 00:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Ehhhh...someone wants to make that point. I actually think there's some basis for making that point. It's just poorly worded (POV), and needs a "fact" tag and someone has to substantiate it if it's going to stay in.
--Jason C.K. 04:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Agreed --Evanreiser 15:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible sources for additional information to emend article (from old external links)

Cka3n 23:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism Section

Does it really make sense to have a criticism section on the Microsoft page? I dont think you'll find many other articles that contain a criticism section in any encyclopedia. I think this section should be moved to Criticism of Microsoft and replaced with a link there.

I feel like the Criticism section of this page has degenerated into a 'Complaints disguised as Criticism' and fail to represent a NPOV.

For Example "it make people wonder if the only fact of Windows having more users really explain it having 99,99% incidence of all known viruses (see comparison table of viruses incidence in OS)." The reference here is from a transcript of a conversation from 18months ago. This should not be on the Microsoft Article Page.

I'd like to remove this latest addition [1]

Please discuss this here:

--Evanreiser 20:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • On wiki there seems to be a number of articles where having an "appropriate" length criticism section is seen as ok (with link to other article covering in more detail). Wiki is developing some guidelines about this. If you feel something is POV, either tag it with {{fact}} or somesuch, or find your own citation, or re-word it to be NPOV, or start a talk topic about the issue, or some combination of the above. I'm not in favor of removing that info. Re-wording it would be fine. If you can get consensus that the citation is insufficient, you could then tag it as requiring additional citation.
--Jason C.K. 20:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I think you will find criticism sections in many other articles at least here on Wikipedia. I will admit, however, that they tend to be very controvercial and a source of POV edits and are incredibly difficult to gain a concensus, much less remove any POV tendancies. Two articles in particular I've been involved with that are incredibly controvercial because of the criticism sections are First Vision and People to People Student Ambassador Program.
There are two good reasons why I think a critcism section perhaps ought to be moved to a whole other page:
  1. Article length
  2. Sidetracking from the main article. Especially if the criticism section is overwhelming the main article due to length.
Even with all of this, it is still useful to have a criticism section in the main article, but perhaps cleaned up quite a bit more and it should only be a short summary of just a paragraph or two. In this case, I think the current criticism section could be shortened somewhat because the seperate article is availble to go into depth about the topic. I don't see a reason to completely eliminate this section, however. --Robert Horning 21:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, looking at it more, that edit seems like too much detail for the main page. Perhaps you should move it to the Criticisms Talk page and let it get put in there whenever if anyone is interested in doing so.
--Jason C.K. 00:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to plan on removing the criticism section from this page and merging adding it to the Criticism of Microsoft page. If anyone would like to help do this or seriously objects please note it here in the near future. --Evanreiser 23:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Someone should edit this

As i am not a member of Wikipedia.org i cant fix this. But go to the ms page, search for "Bill gates is a fucking tosser" and delete it. Its written in the "2000–2005: Legal issues, XP, and .NET" section —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.89.16.183 (talk) 21:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

Somone shuld add the year to the date of the release of windows 1.0. "1985–1995: OS/2 and the rise of Windows /n On November 20 Microsoft released" to "1985–1995: OS/2 and the rise of Windows /n On November 20 1985 Microsoft released"--Sjefen6 08:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, you could add it too; you don't need to ask for it. · AO Talk 10:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled.

And sadly I have just registerd. --Sjefen6 09:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Wait four days, then you will be able to edit it. ffm yes? 16:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)rep

[edit] "the head-fake" reference should be removed

It’s stated that MS’s decision to drop work on OS/2 was ‘frequently referred to in the industry as "the head-fake"’

I recommend removing this. The reference cited is from a lawsuit filed against Microsoft by Novell, hardly an impartial source. And the link justifying this in the Wikipedia article is to a web page whose author states things like this: “How can we possibly be so foolish as to let Microsoft control everything?”

The question is not whether it was fair to refer to Microsoft's action as a "head-fake," nor whether the people referring to it was such were impartial. The question is whether it is true that the action was frequently referred to in the industry as "the head-fake," and it was.
And I have to say that, having personally been in an audience of several hundred developers at a Fortune 500 company, and personally heard Microsoft representatives specifically advising us to give OS/2 priority because it was the future, while Windows was just a little stopgap toy thing aimed at the home market, that I and my colleagues all certainly felt at the time that Microsoft had been deliberately misleading. This was just months before Windows 3.0 came out, and it had a degree of fit and finish that showed that Microsoft had to have been working on it for a while.
Now, Microsoft is a big company, and the people touting OS/2 may have been out of touch with the reality at Microsoft, or working for managers whose personal careers were tied to OS/2. They may even have believed that the bad advice they were giving was good advice. But it was, nevertheless, bad advice and it did real damage to the companies to took it.
The people I feel sorriest for were some of the small and midsized companies that really put all their resources on OS/2. What was the name of the company that thought it was going to be in the catbird seat because it had the first real word processor for OS/2? They tried desperately to port it to Windows, but it was too late... by the time they got there, Amí (remember Amî?!) and Microsoft Word had beaten them to it. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

(A more balanced view can be found in the book “In Search of Stupidity” by Merrill Chapman: “In the early 1990's IBM was frantically working on its nascent OS/2 operating system, working alongside Microsoft as a trusted partner. IBM had the cash and talent to ensure that OS/2 would own the desktop. So why did OS/2 miserably fail? It was primarily IBM's own ineptitude in marketing OS/2 which led to Windows 95 taking over the desktop. The desktop was IBM's to lose and that is precisely what it did.”) 71.212.26.33 21:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I think this was pretty well-known opinion in the industry. I easily found another ref, I'll add it to the article. The existing ref has the actual complaint text there, in text and as a PDF, and I think Groklaw is considered a decent source for filed legal documents.
--Jason C.K. 05:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

One second, i see lots of info. Another, it says nothing but Buy a Mac. Wat the hell? someone fix please.68.21.6.210 00:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction length?

The intro seems very large, I think some of the detail should be merged into the rest of the article. Hmm? Stormx2 22:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of Microsoft

It appears there already exists a subpage containing the history of Microsoft (though not sure which is the latest version - the sub-article or the main article). As this main article has become way too long, I propose all the history content is removed from here and replaced with a summary. I would do this myself but this is a featured article so I'm being careful. Also I am a bit confused about the status of the History of Microsoft page and whether there are significant differences.--Konstable 07:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I have merged the two versions, there weren't too many differences. I have now removed the history content from the main article, it would be good if someone more familiar with the history would write a summary. (I made my own attempt, but it didn't look too well)--Konstable 04:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I reverted your removal of this section. Don't break WP:SUMMARY form with the expectation that someone else will fix it for you. Do it yourself, or don't do it at all. The article can lose it's featured status with this kind of sloppiness. -/- Warren 04:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh no, don't improve Wikipedia, just keep articles featured - that is way more important. Who cares about readability, quality, progress, etc.--Konstable 12:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Rather than complaining and reverting, feel free to think of a way to do this, or try helping write a summary yourself. It is not my, or anyone else's, duty as you infer - this is a wiki where the whole beauty is collaboration. The sub-page has existed since March 2006 and this article still maintains the full text (which itself makes a long artilce). If you are concerned about it losing FA status, well, it is already violating criteria 4 of FA and is probably twice as long as it should be. I will consider nominating it for FA Review.--Konstable 13:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Not to sound combative, but this has been attempting many times before; and it has never been done properly. It really is a herculean task; the best for now is probably to just clean it a bit and cut a little neccesary. Of course, another thought would be to keep the full history there and trim about 50% here as suggested somehow. RN 04:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I've three points to make:
  1. I saw the split tag and had a quick look here for the discussion. Obviously too quick, because this didn't catch me eye. Under the spirit of Being Bold I went ahead and tried to cut the section down to a summary. Warrens suggested I was being discourteous, that was not my intention. It was an honest mistake.
  2. Now that I have found the discussion, I still find it hard to understand what the problem is. The section is 100% duplicated on the main article. I invite all involved in this discussion to view my edit which was an attempt at summary style: [2]. I am pretty knowledgeable on corporate issues but admit to having little knowledge of in-depth computing issues. Still I think my edit cut it down to bare important facts.
  3. I stumbled onto this issue because of the FAR. If this section cannot be condensed to summary style by some degree count me in as a support vote for de-featuring; The section is totally against policy. Mark83 23:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some edits

[edit] Removed unsourced info

[edit] Ownership

04:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Accounting Ratios" table

This article is already fairly large, and really don't see the point in adding this statistical data that probably would never appear in an encyclopedia... if anyone really wants it they can add it back :D. For example, who comes to article to read "Gross Property, Plant & Equipment Turnover" of Microsoft? If someone does, then perhaps we seperate corporate article... RN 04:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accounting Ratios

Microsoft Corporation Accounting Ratios
Fiscal Year[1] 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
Fiscal Year End Date 6/30/06 6/30/05 6/30/04 6/30/03 6/30/02
Receivables Turnover 4.8 5.5 6.3 6.2 5.5
Receivables - Number of Days 67.1 59.1 54.2 57.7 55.8
Inventory Turnover 6.8 11.7 11.1 7.0 12.4
Inventory - Number of Days 53.2 30.9 32.4 51.4 29.0
Gross Property, Plant & Equipment Turnover 6.1 6.2 5.7 5.3 4.8
Net Property, Plant & Equipment Turnover 14.5 17.0 15.8 14.5 12.5
Depreciation, Depletion & Amortization -
% of Gross Property, Plant & Equipment 13.7% 13.9% 12.6% 17.9% 17.2%
Depreciation, Depletion & Amortization -
Year to Year Change (Millions $US) 10.6 6.7 -27.3 7.6 -25.2
Depreciation, Depletion & Amortization -
Year to Year % Change 12.0% 8.2% -25.0% 7.5% -19.9%

[edit] "Microsoft in fiction"

Removed as it seems like a trivia section in disquise, also currently doesn't seem to have much to do actually do with the company RN 05:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Microsoft in fiction

  • In William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, a microsoft is a small wedgelike piece of software that a human can access via insertion in an implant in their nervous system.

[edit] Criticism retouch

I did a retouch - I also removed a sentence that seems that maybe it was refuting something from another version of the article or something (at the end of the edit) RN 05:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion points for FARC

There are some "drastic" things one could do if they were desperate to cut this article down:

  • remove the part on Logos and slogans... actually i wrote most of that but looking back on it months later may be mostly trivia
  • just remove the criticism section and make it a see also - that would cut 7k of prose right there but I'm not sure who would think that is a good idea

Just those two things would bring it back to the original prose size... and

  • About the only way I can think of to shorten the lead to is to compact the part about the founding and move a tiny bit to history
  • Remove the microsoft.com and maybe put a quick mention about the first site in 1993 from http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_flshbk.htm
  • Cut even the remotely important stuff from history - this is a tough one...
  • Try to cut down the product divisions, the most you could probably do is about two sentences...

Just some ideas... feel free to come up with your own :D RN 06:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Could this possibly be split out into individual articles and linked? I know that's the lame way to do it, but it might be worth considering. //BankingBum 07:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC) $$
I yanked about 4k from the history section. Yeah, it's definitely tough. I'm going to keep working on this in the next day or two. The trick here is to find the right balance between software releases, business expansions, legal issues, and leadership shuffles. Diversity makes for good reading! We can probably de-emphasise the details of OS releases because the main articles themselves can explain that stuff... -/- Warren 08:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I yanked another k this morning and we are down to 44k - half way there to the original 39k. One thing we could do is yank the founding and other mentions in the second intro paragraph up to the IPO point and put about two words in history about it. RN 17:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Microsoft Portal

Please help out with the new Microsoft portal at Microsoft portal. --Wiki Fanatic | Talk 06:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The great FAR rework

As one sees I yanked a bunch and move a bunch to History to Microsoft and tried to summarize that - article down to 32k prose size. Did I mess anything up? Anyone got any comments? Post here please :D:D:D RN 07:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SALES

Should it be said that the Xbox 360 has sold over 20 million units, worldwide!?!!

I thought Wikipedia had a policy of deleting advertisements that masquerade as articles.

[edit] this page reads like an advertisement

Am I the only one who is of the opinion that the article on Microsoft Corp reads too much like an advertisement? It seems to be heavily biased as being pro microsoft, and seems to minimize the flaws and criticisms.

Climie.ca 15:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC) Cam

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia and the objective is provide information. We aren't any type of press or polytical party we should provide information as possible if are veriafiable. If you want improve the article to turn it more neutral just do it and come back here to discuss your changes. --Ciao 90 21:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outsourcing

The section on outsourcing (in "Criticism") is not sourced. It is somewhat true, but limited in scope, and why would it be a criticism? Billg has recently testified to Congress to allow for the immigration of more highly-skilled foreign workers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ClarkLewis (talk • contribs) 04:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Windows Vista screenshot comment

"Windows Vista had majors changes, mostly within its interface."
A look at Features new to Windows Vista confirm this is false. Interface is not mostly major changes in Vista and yes in their various core parts. I think who wrote this is pushing a superficial user user/press perpeception about Vista. And this is pretty biased. --Ciao 90 21:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Update to Board of Directors

Update the Microsoft Board of Directors to include Reed Hastings: Microsoft Board of Directors Adds New Member and Declares Quarterly Dividend Dax Eckenberg 04:49, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Current members of the board of directors are: Steve Ballmer, James Cash, Jr., Dina Dublon, Bill Gates, Raymond Gilmartin, Reed Hastings, David Marquardt, Charles Noski, Helmut Panke, and Jon Shirley.[2]

All done. Thanks. -/- Warren 04:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ongoing problems with sources

I am compiling the list at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Microsoft/archive1; it took me an hour and a half to get through the lead only. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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