Through The Steve Ballmer Looking Glass 470
Class Act Dynamo writes "I was browsing for a video clip I saw the other day, and I came across this clip from 15 years ago of Steve Ballmer pitching windows 1.0 in a television commercial. All I can say is WOW. Apparently, there was a big demand for integrating "LOTUS 1-2-3 with Miami Vice." You'll understand when you see the clip." Let it not be said that Microsoft has no sense of humor.
It all fits... (Score:3, Interesting)
"That explains SO much."
"All I can say is WOW." very...apt statment.
"Apparently, there was a big demand for integrating 'LOTUS 1-2-3 with Miami Vice.'" no crap? I mean....whoa!
"$500 dollars? $1000 dollars?" . .
You're right. I can no longer say that MS has no sense of humor.
Oh how I wish that was a false statment...I mean, it even goes along with the new goatse [monkeymethods.org].
Re:It all fits... (Score:5, Informative)
First, for the people too terrified to follow that link, it is safe for work and will not burn your retinas like the original goatse. Second, those pictures aren't actually for Teen Beat, as claimed, but were promotional [snopes.com], in some weird alternate reality where that kind of thing could help promote your product.
Re:It all fits... (Score:2)
That was disgusting! Shame on you for posting a link to that picture!
I'm going to have to wash my eyes out with soap. Ewww. I'm gonna puke.
Re:It all fits... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It all fits... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It all fits... (Score:3, Funny)
Uh huh, and Monkey Boy [ntk.net] was just a bad dream too right?
Re:It all fits... (Score:5, Informative)
These images are actually publicity photos taken of the then 30-year-old Bill Gates coincident with the initial release of Microsoft Windows in 1985. The Corbis photo archive identifies their depiction thusly: "Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, reclines on his desk in his office soon after the release of Windows 1.0. 1985 Bellevue, Washington, USA."
But WAIT there's MORE! (Score:2)
Re:But WAIT there's MORE! (Score:3, Funny)
The best part is when he mentions that it has a clock.
Re:Yes there is... (Score:2, Informative)
No, not all of them run on Windows, but most of them.
Re:Yes there is... (Score:3, Informative)
the normal viruses of that day spread through boot sectors and piggybacking on dos programs - and were plentiful enough. there's no 'MAYBE' about it.
ambulance...
and are we talking about viruses or worms anyhow?
And now for a limited time offer! (Score:4, Funny)
Funny? (Score:4, Funny)
But that's not funny!
-Aaron
Re:Funny? (Score:2)
Re:Funny? (Score:5, Funny)
Old (Score:4, Funny)
Is this real?? (Score:2)
/. will teach the eBaums webmaster not to post microsoft stuff.
Re:Is this real?? (Score:3, Informative)
1.0? (Score:4, Funny)
Judging from the way my XP machine behaves, they still have yet to reach that 1.0 milestone... :)
Re:1.0? (Score:4, Funny)
A) This is slashdot, aka linuxfest.
B) You just suggested that they have yet to hit their 1.0 milestone
Then..
C) You say, and I quote, "from the way my XP machine"
*blink*
So. Is there any reason that you're using the pre-1.0 milestone?
Re:1.0? (Score:2)
Re:1.0? (Score:2, Insightful)
I know, it has a reputation of being one of the most difficult to install and administer, because of the "guru" factor. I don't think that's accurate. If you're inexperienced when it comes to computers, I would suggest something with a stronger grounding in point and click. If you're well-experienced, then you might be more comfortable with Debian.
I grew up on DOS (except for my first experience, which was with a VIC-20 in 1984). I bar
Re:1.0? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1.0? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:1.0? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:1.0? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems like it got modded funny because it is negative towards microsoft and windows xp.
XP? (Score:2)
$99 then, $200+ now for Windows 1.0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank god for wireless (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god for wireless (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god for wireless (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thank god for wireless (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thank god for wireless (Score:3, Funny)
Where's the audio? (Score:2)
Re:Where's the audio? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where's the audio? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Download the latest Xine-lib (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and Totem and xine use the same back end (xine-lib) so if one can't play it, the other won't (unless you've got something screwy going on where they're using different library paths). Just a heads up....
This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a job where they just had to do a "Weakest Link" takeoff at all company meetings, just because they happened to have a female marketeer with a British accent. Made me dread the meetings. She was a lot more attractive than Anne Robinson, but her impersonation sucked.
Re:What does a "British accent" sound like? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is plainly not the case that these accents are "completely different". They are after all all speaking the same language. Even if your well trained ear finds the comparison ludicrous, an untrained ear won't pick up on those differences.
For example. To a trained apple eater a Red Delicious is "completely different" from a Granny Smith. One's sweet, the other's tart. One's mealy, the other is firm. Yet any 5 year old can tell they're both apples.
So yes, the OP was ignorant when he said "british accent", but there's nothing wrong with that. There's so much information in the world that everyone is ignorant about almost everything. Have you ever complained about a help-desker with an indian accent? Did it ever occur to you that in a country as big and as old as india there will be many different dialects and accents? Can you distinguish between a Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Colombian, and Chilean accents? Can you tell which borough a New Yorker is from just from his accent? No? Well, that's ignorance.
But it's not stupidity. Stupidity is an inability to understand things. Like the fact that distinct things can have similarities.
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:5, Insightful)
I laughed. At first I laughed because I wasn't at the company meeting, so I thought the commercial was real and quite ridiculous. After I found out the truth, I laughed because it was clever -- and hey, how many CEOs are willing to make fun of themselves like that. Now, I laugh because slashdot fell for it, like I did.
Then again, being on the inside of a company that fulfills me intellectually with a dizzying variety of possible projects to work for, almost daily seminars on one topic or another, and the knowledge that my code will be run by millions of people, might make me a little more ready to have a good time and laugh.
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but how does it feel to be on the inside of a company that is considered untrustworthy by IT experts the world over, that is reknowned for producing second-rate low quality software, that is famous for undermining competitors through illegal deals and threats rather than technical proficiency, and is without doubt the laughing stock of the industry?
You know, for all the brains and money that Microsoft has at its command, it amazes me that you guys continue to produce such crap.
Amateur.
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:5, Insightful)
That is only one more reason not to work for Microsoft. Do they expect their employees to laugh? Like the post just after this one, I felt sorry for him. It's embarassing.
rbanffy, a while back you made the following statement. Have your forgotten?
Spoof videos are a tradition at Microsoft, both company-wide and within individual teams. Some are better than others, and they're all somewhat cheesy, but they're usually a good icebreaker and it's refreshing to see executives, management, and fellow employees willing to poke a little bit of fun at themselves. Quite often they involve inside jokes, and a better understanding of the personalities of the people in the video, so I guess it's not that surprising when they occasionally leak and people outside Microsoft don't get the joke.
Regardless, it helps keep employees from taking themselves too seriously.
Judging by a lot of /. comments, people here would be well advised to take your original advice. The religious ferocity that they defend open source and bash Microsoft and other entities that don't adhere to their world view -- even over silly things like spoof videos -- is rather... unhealthy.
Re:This wasn't a TV commercial (Score:3, Insightful)
You are not the first to have found this (Score:2)
Hooray for Gasbag!
Microsoft has always had a sense of humor... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Microsoft has always had a sense of humor... (Score:5, Funny)
This is old news ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is old news ... (Score:4, Funny)
How much do you think its worth? (Score:5, Funny)
All this for... (Score:3, Funny)
Which also still has Reversi.
Re:All this for... (Score:2, Funny)
Yes. but... (Score:2)
Re:Yes. but... (Score:5, Funny)
Only old Koreans use Windows 1.0
Except in Nebraska.Mirror Here (Score:2)
Although, this really looks like a fake... I'm not sure why, but something doesn't sit right about the info at the end and the product ordering. Or maybe it's just me.
-Steve
Wow. (Score:2)
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
My Eyes! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My Eyes! (Score:3, Funny)
Well that was interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well that was interesting (Score:5, Funny)
That's only because Windows 1.0 was incapable of displaying a blue screen.
What the... no slashdot effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot posts a story with a link that goes (almost) directly to the file. And then it's 5 minutes later and the server happily crunches over a hundred kilobytes per second.
Now either eBausmworld knows how to put up a content server, or slashdot just lost its edge.
Re:What the... no slashdot effect? (Score:5, Informative)
I've spent several hours perusing their collection of funny/shocking videos. Once you start, you find it hard to stop. Also a few of their celebrity prank calls are hilarious. Be sure to use Firefox, though. It's a rather shady site, and you're guaranteed to at least get millions of popups in IE, if not several spyware installations. If you use Firefox, you won't have problems.
It's a FAKE (Score:2)
Re:It's a FAKE (Score:2, Funny)
Simple question. (Score:2)
Many years (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Many years (Score:3, Informative)
That's what you think. You forgot "allegedly".
Clip shown on TOTN (Score:5, Interesting)
Chip H.
Triumph of the Nerds (Score:4, Informative)
What really makes it a great documentary is that it's as entertaining as it is interesting. Not an easy thing at all to do given the subject matter but Cringely pulls it off in spades.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Triumph of the Nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
The only bad thing about is that there, IMHO, should be a chapter about "home computing", maybe alongside part 2 or as an additional notice. Now it only touches Apple I and II - but it really does not take note of the mad rush when *everyone* and his dog had their own home computer. Survivors were Commodore Vic-20 and C64, A
Newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I really fail to see how this is News for Nerds or Stuff that Matters. It's just as bad as Bill Gates in 1983 Teen Beat Magazine [slashdot.org].
Editors, can we have a Childish Microsoft Bashing section so I can filter this crap from my frontpage?
Re:Newsworthy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Browser Racism (Score:2)
If you happen to be using a browser that doesn't suck, you may need to right click and "save link as".
Why does it always have to be about Microsoft?
If you really want an unintentional laugh... (Score:2)
Microsoft ads always stink (Score:2)
Still, I suppose it *could* be worse. Imagine if every time you logged into slashdot you risked having a bug-eyed Steve Ballmer shouting at you (shudder). I think I'll keep the silent flash ads.
Re:Microsoft ads always stink (Score:3, Insightful)
If Steve didthe monkey dance... (Score:2)
Someone was taking notes. (Score:2)
Windows 2.0, not 1.0 (Score:2)
Yes, believe it or not, Lotus ruled at one time (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, Microsoft's software lineup was incredibly diverse since it was a young company trying to put its hand into every market to shore the perception that they had a hand in anything and everything. Sort of like today except back then companies constituted real competition vs. today where you're practically assured of being roadkill if Microsoft sets its sites on you. There was "Microsoft LISP" (no, I'm not kidding; it was actually another company's product repackaged) and Microsoft even had software that worked on the Commodore 64 home computer. I mentioned Multiplan earlier, Microsoft's spreadsheet, well not only could you buy it for the IBM PC, check out this screenshot of their Commodore 64 version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C64_Multipla
Am I rueful? A little bit. Do I miss those days? Not a chance. What you can do today with a home computer vs. back then is night and day. In retrospect it is slightly surprising that things held my attention as they did. The Net, tons of free software (open source and otherwise), powerful desktop computers all were quite some time off. If you thought dialup today is bad, try operating on the common standard of the day, 1200 baud modems, as in 120 characters per second, as in, yes it took several seconds to fill an 80x25 text screen which most people had in the form of MS-DOS (forget GUI desktops, they weren't common place for quite some time to come).
What I so miss however is the the sense that there were lots of great things happening. They're happening today, but the attitude back then was different. For example, you could realistically expect a company to try something "way out there." For example, I was aware of one Chicago trading company (again, commodities markets) had purchased LISP machines to see if it could come up with AI strategies to improve their trading systems:
http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/~r.f.moeller/symbo
While open source is prevalent today in some circles, companies have moved to a situation where vendor support is an end all, be all when it comes to decision making. They can be risk averse to the point of self-detriment resulting in very staid environments at times. One example of this is the IT department for the state of Texas. A friend who works there told me once that unless some set of software came on the HP-UX CD, forget about using it. For him, this meant forgetting about PERL since it was not shipped on the HP-UX CDs (this was a few years ago). Even my situation today reflects this to a degree. I work at a very large financial institution and Apache is non-existent in our production systems. While internal Apache sites can readily be deployed to share infromation with coworkers Apache on customer facing servers is a no go.
There just seemed to be more variety in what companies might try because the IT market hadn't settled down. While open source is great (something that I personally have great faith in), back then we did not have today's situation where IT like the automotive industry had just a handful of companies owning respective markets, a.k.a., consolidation. As a frame of reference around the turn of the 20th century there were 30+ automotive companies in the USA. By the 30's things had settled down to the "Big Three" that we've known internalized for quite some time. Today Lotus' 1-2-3 is just a memory as are Symbolics machine, the Commodore 64 and many, MANY other things.
-M
PS: Having said that, I have a pretty sweet desktop these days - a 64 bith Athlon system. The things I do today are pretty amazing in and of themselves... thanks to Moore's Law.
Re:Yes, believe it or not, Lotus ruled at one time (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, technology must have been really boring for you back then.
I remember thinking "HOLY CRAP a whole page a text sent across the country in less time than it takes to read it??? This is going to change everything!!!" and "wow it can draw stuff on the screen" and "wow it can make sounds" and "wow I can hook up a relay here and control the lights!".
I'm glad you're finally content with the state of things.
The rest of us are just as thrilled as ever and we're going to keep pushing ahead.
Re:Yes, believe it or not, Lotus ruled at one time (Score:5, Informative)
This is all hard to appreciate today given how powerful computers have become. Virtual machines? Not on your life, e.g., the UCSD P-Code system never caught on (the notion of virtual machines was pioneered at the U of California, San Diego):
http://www.threedee.com/jcm/psystem/
Why didn't it catch on? Simple, speed. The IBM PC had a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor and hand written/tuned assembly code creamed practically any program written in a high level language. In fact for years "PC Magazine" (which is still very much alive) would publish the assembly language listings to many of the MS-DOS utilities featured in its covers. Needless to say the idea of that magazine publishing assembly language listings today is quite laughable.
-M
Re:Yes, believe it or not, Lotus ruled at one time (Score:3, Interesting)
This was also complicated as some of the original PC's would show noise on the screen if the video memory was updated while being converted to an image. Careful programming was needed to ensure that video me
Re:Yes, believe it or not, Lotus ruled at one time (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Funny)
The scary thing is that there are ads of the same quality on late night television that are flogging off refurbished PC's with "Pentium 2 power" for only $599. And they even include Windows 95 and a modem. (So you too can be part of a bot net).
I recently picked up 5 Pentium 2 computers headed for the dump. I am thinking on upgrading my Pentium 166 gateway and servers. If anyone wants one I'll sell it for only $598.
Some interesting tidbits (Score:3, Informative)
Anywho, I'm not surprised how the first feature they pimped was Lotus 1-2-3 support, as Lotus 1-2-3 was the "killer app" of the day. In fact, there are bugs in Excel that were put their purposely [asp.net] to allow for true Lotus 1-2-3 integration.
Re:Our prices are _INSANE_ (Score:2)
Re:I'm slightly untrusting. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the point. It wasn't a joke then but it sure as hell is one now.... Now all we need to complete this whole trollish article is for someone to find the Windows XP with reboot Chimp pic and the troll will be complete.
Fucking Hell... Is it such a slow weekend that this drivel is making it on? WTF. People used to call me a slashbot and I think I'm slowly realizing wtf they're talking about. I'm sure
Re:I'm slightly untrusting. (Score:3, Funny)
Someone start a goddamn poll on which editors need to be fired.
What, so we can complain about the lack of a Cowboy Neil option?
Re:I'm slightly untrusting. (Score:2)
Re:Except in Nebraska? (Score:2)
Re:Actually, yes, thanks /. (Score:2)
People don't go around thinking that Steve B and Bill were the stars of the 'original' Matrix, do they? But just like the Microsoft-Matrix video, this was done for the pure amusement of Microsoft.
Re:still the same (Score:2)
Re:Windows is the same as the begining (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Windows is the same as the begining (Score:4, Informative)
The number of appcompat hacks, workarounds, et al is really very staggering. Linus has the benefit of just changing something and telling everyone to fuck off when their stuff breaks. Microsoft has paying customers that don't take kindly to the same sort of treatment.
Re:Windows is the same as the begining (Score:3, Informative)