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Thread: Microsoft (Decline Of)

Author Image Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger
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Vista Does Not Suck - Vista Rocks! - Experience The Video!


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Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:56:13 +1000

Recently a video surfaced on YouTube, which is supposedly leaked from inside Microsoft.

It is a joke music video featuring a Bruce Springsteen cover band, doing a deeply ironic spoof of "The Boss", singing a song titled "Rocking Our Sales". You can view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU

However I should warn you about the potential dangers of viewing this video. Some viewers have caused themselves serious injury from excessive laughter occasioned while watching this masterpiece. So consider yourself forewarned! Before clicking on the above link, please clear your mind, empty your bladder and compose yourself ... Because this video has been known to induce fits of uncontrolled laughter in the unsuspecting viewer. At worst this could be dangerous or at least embarrassing.

Nevertheless, I believe this video, created internally by some Microsoft employees (presumably in Sales), has it serious side. It clearly demonstrates a few important facts, namely:

  1. It proves, contrary to what has been widely disseminated in the Blogosphere, that (some) Microsoft employees have a well-developed sense of humour. This is probably the best (and most downright amusing) example of gallows' humour that I have seen since John W. Howard's infamous quip:
    You guys would be funny if you picked on someone who was still alive!
    This remark was made during the last Australian election campaign, and directed, as an aside, at the The Chasers team as they continued their relentless pursuit of Howard in order to mock, poke fun at, and generally humiliate him. It left The Chasers crew visibly shaken, open-mouthed and for the first time in the 2007 campaign, speechless. Slowly the realisation sunk in, that with this one little quip, Howard had proved himself more amusing and witty than the collected Chasers' script writing resources during the campaign. Later they and their audience (both in the studio and nation-wide), nearly laughed themselves sick about this fine example of gallows' humour. The only ones in Australia not joining in the merriment were rusted-on Liberal supporters, who (if they were watching Chasers) were mostly weeping with their hands covering their heads. This hilarious video from the Microsoft Sales Team is every bit as defiant and amusing. Especially considering that it is probably only the tip of the iceburg. A lot of the humour is likely to be in-jokes that only makes sense to Microsoft insiders.

  2. Another point that the Vista SP1 video demonstrates is that (some) Microsoft employees have quite a bit of spare time on their hands. It's all there in the production values of the video which, even if it was just a gag, required considerable time and effort to develop inhouse.

  3. And it also shows that Microsoft have lots of internal resources. We already knew that. Once again it is in the production values. Presumably (unless the employees who created it were suicidal) it was composed inhouse. And yet, they have produced a video, merely in jest, with production values that few organisations could rival, in earnest.

Of course there are some Microsoft customers who might lament that any surplus time, money, and effort could have been better spent in research, development and QA. To those poor misguided souls I would have to say that "Microsoft have rarely if ever cared about their customers, and in the past five years have regarded them (the customers) with disdain that borders on contempt". I could cite Vista as "living proof" of this axiom ... But to describe Vista as "living" would be doing a grave injustice to life-forms every where. Vista is as dead as John Howard's political career. It is deader then the rotting corpse of a beached whale, huge, bloated and decomposing untidily on a beach. And whether or not Microsoft make it formal by holding a funeral, the stench will soon be unbearable. The gallant but rather grim attempt at gallows' humour in this video illustrates the widespread unease, possibly even dissent and perhaps even a hint of panic now unfolding in the bowels of Microsoft sales and marketing and soon to spread amongst the ranks of microserfs everywhere.


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