Vista - MSFT Adjusting Slowly to Playing Google Game

Yes Chad,
It's me.
hadda issue with an O&O shredder-well it didn't have an issue, it worked
impeccably.
lol
I should HEED WARNINGS-like "Are you sure you want to shred this?"
Anyhow-shredded Winmail-but good.
And subsequently, along with other "operator error" issues, decided a
reformat was quickest.
And picked a new addy, but it's lil' ole me-
Still can't get WMP icon figured out satisfactorily;works sometimes;
sometimes-poof!!!

Jeff

"Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
news:ODF%23ksKHHHA.1240@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Jeff--
>
> Duh edu is a great institution and I owe everything to it.
>
> If you're the same Jeff that had a problem with the WMP icon but changed
> to a new very 007esque, Jennifer Garneresque email address there I wasn't
> paying attention to that awful icon until you got me focused on it, so I
> decided I had to change it and did change it and then for some reason I
> have no good explanation for WMP would not open. I went to the WMP folder
> and tried every way to run the executable to open it, and no go. I
> rebooted and then it opened again.
>
> You know this undead stuff reminds me of all the airhead stuff I'm seeing
> on TV by people like Wolf the Reindeerhead Blitzer lol in his Sitchiation
> Room --on Comet and Cupid and Rudolph too with this "winning" and "not
> winning" stuff in Iraq.
>
> I'd like to force every talking head and news anchor to read Frank Rich's
> column in this morning's New York Times every day for a month so the duh
> oriented public gets it. Talk about ll undead.
>
> We're not 'not winning' in Iraq --we have unwon or done lost our ass and
> a lot of people tragically. The Iraq Study Group shows me that Yes,
> Virginia the Swing Justice Sandy Day O'Conner was on the bench while she
> was terribly delusional.
>
> The Iraq Study group visited Iraq once. Only one member dared venture out
> of the Green Zone--Chuck Robb. Bush was so afraid to go, that he had a
> meeting in the Four Seasons at Aman. Brave stuff there.
>
> This should be read non-stop on all TV stations US and abroad until it
> sinks in. It beautifully captures what's going on. Talk about undead.
>
>
>
> Sunday, December 10, 2006
> New York Times
>
> FRANK RICH: The Sunshine Boys Can't Save Iraq
>
>
> IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were
> the high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it
> delivered.
>
>
> The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming
> Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, "The Way Forward,"
> unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan
> to stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating
> sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour
> on opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning
> television and building to a "Sunshine Boys" curtain call by James Baker
> and Lee Hamilton on "Larry King Live."
>
>
> The wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has
> lately been recruited by Wal-Mart to put down the populist insurgency
> threatening its bottom line. Edelman's vice chairman is Michael Deaver,
> the imagineer extraordinaire of the Reagan presidency, and "The Way
> Forward" had a nostalgic dash of that old Morning-in-America vibe. In The
> Washington Post, David Broder gushingly quoted one member of the group,
> Alan Simpson, musing that "immigration, Social Security and all those
> other things that have been hung up for so long" might benefit from
> similar ex-officio bipartisanship. Only in Washington could an unelected
> panel of retirees pass for public-policy Viagra.
>
>
> Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is
> Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously
> coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of
> civic standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our
> governmental ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its
> apotheosis.
>
> This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run
> from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly
> unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a
> paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his
> Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a
> step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late
> October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality
> is that we have lost in Iraq.
>
>
> That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines,
> as he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing
> passage in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his
> suggestion that public expectations for success be downsized so we would
> "therefore not 'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld
> revealed his hand: the administration must not utter that L word even
> though lose is exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be
> preserved no matter what the price in blood.
>
>
> The Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of
> how the country Mr. Bush called a "grave and gathering danger" in
> September 2002 has devolved into a "grave and deteriorating" catastrophe
> today is unsparing and accurate. But everyone except the president knew
> this already, and that patina of realism evaporates once the report moves
> from diagnosis to prescription.
>
>
> Its recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are
> completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional
> Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American
> military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring
> ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White
> House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to "influence events"
> for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the
> bank in Vegas.
>
>
> The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters,
> equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is
> averse to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To
> take just one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly
> create thousands more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at
> that), there's no reason to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army
> and police force where all those who came before have failed. As the
> report points out, the loyalties and capabilities of the existing units
> are suspect as it is.
>
>
> By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way
> forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to
> enact a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits,
> no doubt in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to
> the cynical game can be found in a single sentence: "We agree with the
> goal of U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: 'an Iraq that can
> govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.' " This studious group
> knows that even that modest goal, a radical devaluation of the
> administration's ambition to spread democracy throughout the Middle East,
> has long been proven a mirage. The Iraqi government's ability to defend
> anything is so inoperative that the group's members visited the country
> but once, with just one (Chuck Robb) daring to leave the Green Zone. The
> Bush-Maliki rendezvous 10 days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.
>
> The only recommendations that might alter that reality, however
> evanescently, come not from "The Way Forward" but from its critics on the
> right who want significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables
> whatsoever. But a Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three
> weeks ago estimates that a true counterinsurgency campaign would "require
> several hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as
> heavily armed Iraqi police," not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a
> short-term booster shot by John McCain.
>
>
> Since these troops don't exist and there is no public support in either
> America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can't satisfy the hawks
> even if he chooses to do so. Since he's also dead set against a prompt
> withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be, no matter how many
> "reviews" he conducts. He will stay the course, with various fake-outs
> along the way to keep us from thinking we've "lost," until the whole mess
> is deposited in the lap of the next president.
>
>
> But as Chuck Hagel said last week, "The impending disaster in Iraq is
> unwinding at a rate that we can't quite calibrate." It is yet another,
> even more reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will
> stand still while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging
> out its deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic
> politics mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile
> the violence metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the
> day the group finally put on its show. The antagonists in Iraq are not
> about to take a recess while we celebrate Christmas. The mass exodus of
> Iraqis, some 100,000 per month, was labeled "the fastest-growing refugee
> crisis in the world" by Refugees International last week and might soon
> rival Darfur's.
>
>
> THE Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968,
> L.B.J. replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara,
> with a practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war's violence
> boiled over soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public
> opinion. Allies in our coalition of the willing - Thailand, the
> Philippines, Australia - had balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford
> commissioned a re-evaluation of American policy that churned up such ideas
> as a troop pullback, increased training of South Vietnamese forces and a
> warning to the South Vietnamese government that American assistance would
> depend on its performance. In March, a bipartisan group of wise men (from
> Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley) was summoned to the White House, where it
> seconded the notion of disengagement.
>
>
> But there the stories of Vietnam and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike
> the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan
> president, unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He
> abruptly announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing
> and entertain the idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in
> "Vietnam: A History," it was already too late, after some 20,000
> casualties and three years of all-out war, for an easy escape: "The
> frustrating talks were to drag on for another five years. More Americans
> would be killed in Vietnam than had died there previously. And the United
> States itself would be torn apart by the worst internal upheavals in a
> century."
>
> The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now,
> they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend
> that we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still
> may salvage, starting with Afghanistan.
>
>
> The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven
> service to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls
> reality and promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this
> fiasco, it will be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the
> tragedy of our age.
>
> CH
>
>
> "Jeff" <dontshred@duh.edu> wrote in message
> news:OC%23pOPJHHHA.1064@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> lol
>> well
>> I use one "undead" service,
>> messenger- and that's it-no "Undead" search for me.
>> It's not "LIVE'; so it's gotta be UNDEAD
>> Windows "Undead" Messenger
>> ROFLMAO
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
>> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> December 9, 2006
>>> New York Times
>>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>>
>>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>>
>>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business
>>> that Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting
>>> such a behemoth is slow going.
>>>
>>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>>
>>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>>
>>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>>> Microsoft's turf.
>>>
>>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>>
>>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>>> It is the best experience."
>>>
>>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and
>>> why the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>>
>>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft
>>> is also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>>
>>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system -
>>> a platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>>
>>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and
>>> Web search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the
>>> venerable if musty MSN.
>>>
>>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>>> well as the online unit.
>>>
>>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>>> services."
>>>
>>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>>
>>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>>> is Windows Live."
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>>
>>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>>
>>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales,
>>> to oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>>
>>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people
>>> from leaking."
>>>
>>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>>
>>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit
>>> has been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of
>>> operating systems.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala,
>>> chief executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while
>>> its archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>>
>>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>>
>>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google,
>>> the staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>>> directions changed again.
>>>
>>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the
>>> gate," said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined
>>> Microsoft last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in
>>> August. After the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody
>>> for my group."
>>>
>>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he
>>> said. "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed,
>>> Google has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>>
>>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail
>>> service, built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo.
>>> Its instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the
>>> United States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog
>>> service, born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is
>>> growing rapidly.
>>>
>>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according
>>> to comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the
>>> engagement of their users.
>>>
>>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less
>>> promotion from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent
>>> years, computer makers have started changing the default settings on
>>> their browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>>
>>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>>> search engine - in two years.
>>>
>>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>>> narrowed some.
>>>
>>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they
>>> are still a little behind."
>>>
>>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>>> Google.
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>>
>>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>>
>>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like
>>> the 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>>
>>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game,"
>>> he said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think
>>> that's the last 10 percent."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

You need a decent refraction from an opthalmologist and think about
it --your mommy raised you to be a coward who wants only his point of view
heard but can't engage in a debate?

CH


"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%236tRnGLHHHA.3540@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> <grin>
>
> I see another one of Chad's posts has gone missing!
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article,
>> word for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Richard Urban
>> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
>> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>>
>> Quote from George Ankner:
>> If you knew as much as you think you know,
>> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>>
>>
>>
>> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
>> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> December 9, 2006
>>> New York Times
>>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>>
>>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>>
>>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business
>>> that Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting
>>> such a behemoth is slow going.
>>>
>>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>>
>>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>>
>>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>>> Microsoft's turf.
>>>
>>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>>
>>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>>> It is the best experience."
>>>
>>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and
>>> why the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>>
>>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft
>>> is also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>>
>>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system -
>>> a platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>>
>>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and
>>> Web search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the
>>> venerable if musty MSN.
>>>
>>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>>> well as the online unit.
>>>
>>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>>> services."
>>>
>>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>>
>>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>>> is Windows Live."
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>>
>>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>>
>>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales,
>>> to oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>>
>>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people
>>> from leaking."
>>>
>>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>>
>>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit
>>> has been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of
>>> operating systems.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala,
>>> chief executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while
>>> its archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>>
>>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>>
>>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google,
>>> the staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>>> directions changed again.
>>>
>>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the
>>> gate," said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined
>>> Microsoft last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in
>>> August. After the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody
>>> for my group."
>>>
>>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he
>>> said. "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed,
>>> Google has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>>
>>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail
>>> service, built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo.
>>> Its instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the
>>> United States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog
>>> service, born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is
>>> growing rapidly.
>>>
>>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according
>>> to comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the
>>> engagement of their users.
>>>
>>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less
>>> promotion from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent
>>> years, computer makers have started changing the default settings on
>>> their browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>>
>>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>>> search engine - in two years.
>>>
>>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>>> narrowed some.
>>>
>>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they
>>> are still a little behind."
>>>
>>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>>> Google.
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>>
>>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>>
>>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like
>>> the 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>>
>>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game,"
>>> he said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think
>>> that's the last 10 percent."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

That crooked Representative from Louisiana is not new-
he's been there since 1991, and now on his ninth term.
Not only his he a corrupt scoundrel, he also diverted
National Guard troops shortly after Hurricane Katrina so
he could get stuff out of his home before the FBI could
come calling.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/Hurrica...1123495&page=1

By JAKE TAPPER

Sept. 13, 2005 - Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his
personal belongings - even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from
rooftops, ABC News has learned.
On Sept. 2 - five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast - Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who
represents New Orleans and is a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was
allowed through the military blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where
thousands of evacuees had been taken.

Military sources tells ABC News that Jefferson, an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the
National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional
district. A five-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched.

Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour,
Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown
neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of
Jefferson's initial request.

continued......



-Michael

"Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
news:uBRHKALHHHA.1276@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> LOL do you think I've heard of Copyright law? Whatcha think Urban.? You've read my legal
> refs before. Yep. It's the law that has forced MSFT to pay nearly a billion in setllements
> after they stole software from small companies over the past ten years after their crack
> legal team litigated it--the same clowns who are hemorrhaging stockholder money to the
> European Union in fines for being arrogant and slow.
>
>
> That's a very sarcastic and insulting question Richard. You knew the answer before you asked
> it. We have had tons of articles reprinted in this newsgroup. How about MSFT's web site?
>
> How about material from tons of web sites? They're all copyrighted. I'm not charging for
> the material and what I reprinted is available all over the web. But this is the most
> important point vis a vis the onpont copywright law you invoked: The NYTimes is on the web
> although Frank Rich is Time Select.
>
>
> 1)He is reprinted on Saturday night and he submits his columns to other sites for their
> posting. How about that he of the sarcastic questions who knows the answer but not the
> particulars of this column. Gotcha there didn't I Mr. Urban? His choice. He's the author
> and it's in his contract. LOL
>
> Here's so more in the continuing education course for Richard the Urban. It's also on the web
> free posted by NYT:
>
> And NYT could care less that Frank Rich has been reprinted. Psssst it's to educate people
> like you so you know what's really happening that's important in Iraq. I want you to get up
> off your butt and tell them to pull out now. There are only 23% of troops there that are
> combat, and hundreds of thousands of guns we gave the Iraqi army were immediately sold on the
> black market and are killing Americans and other soldiers as well as 3500 Iraqis a month.
>
> I'd like to congratulate Louisana's new representative to Congress who has become the first
> Congressman to be elected after the FBI obtained a search warrant and found $90.000 in cold
> cash in his freezer. He has said for 6 moths he has a solid explanation--ice is solid--but
> hasn't offered it--I think it's that he wanted to live the dream of "cold cash."
>
> His indictment and trial during the spring will make for some fun reading as he both makes
> the laws and defends himself from prison. But hey he's a democratic vote in a democratically
> controlled House until they take him away.
>
> Despite a federal corruption investigation, Representative William J. Jefferson was
> re-elected with a decisive runoff victory.
> http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/index.html
> ____________________________
> December 10, 2006
> Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos
> By C. J. CHIVERS
> SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec. 8 - The Kurdish security contractor placed the black plastic box on
> the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9-millimeter pistols that the United States
> issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi Army and police.
>
> This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi Army or police. It had been stolen or
> sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that does a lively black-market
> business in police and infantry arms. The contractor bought it there.
>
> He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault rifle with a
> collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or fire from a car. "I bought
> this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle. "Now it costs $650. The prices keep going
> up."
>
> The market for this American-issued pistol and the ubiquitous assault rifle illustrated how
> fear, mismanagement and malfeasance are shaping the small-arms market in Iraq.
>
> Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more buyers push prices
> several times higher than those that existed at the time of the American-led invasion nearly
> four years ago. Rising prices, in turn, have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi
> corruption - the migration of army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to
> black-market sales.
>
> All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to weathered and dented
> Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.
>
> But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops and bazaars here
> as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from
> post-Soviet Eastern European countries. These are three of the principal types of the 370,000
> weapons purchased by the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was
> criticized by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to
> properly account for the arms.
>
> The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street markets here,
> where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of grocery kiosks, cosmetics stores and
> rug shops, or from the trunks of cars. Proprietors show samples for immediate purchase and
> offer to take orders - 10 guns can be had in two hours, they say, and 100 or more the next
> day.
>
> "Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig. Hassan Nouri,
> chief of the political investigations bureau for the Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the
> U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the
> terrorists bought."
>
> The forces propelling the trade can be seen in the price fluctuations of the country's most
> abundant firearm, the Kalashnikov.
>
> In early 2003, a Kalashnikov in northern Iraq typically cost from $75 to $150, depending on
> its condition, origin and style. Immediately after the invasion, as fleeing soldiers
> abandoned their rifles and armories were looted, prices fell, pushed down by a glut and a
> brief sense of optimism.
>
> Today, the same weapons typically cost $210 to $650, according to interviews with seven arms
> dealers, two senior Kurdish security officials and several customers. In other areas of Iraq,
> prices have climbed as high as $800, according to Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has
> been assembling data on Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a
> Geneva-based organization.
>
> The price ranges reflect not only a weapon's condition but its model. A Kalashnikov made in a
> former Soviet-bloc factory costs more than a Kalashnikov made in China, North Korea or Iraq.
> Collapsible-stock models have become disproportionately expensive. The price ranges do not
> include the most compact Kalashnikovs, like those Osama bin Laden has been photographed with,
> which now have a collector's value in Iraq and can cost as much as $2,000.
>
> In many ways, weapon prices provide a condensed history of Iraq's slide into chaos.
>
> Prices began moving upward in the summer of 2003 as several classes of customers entered the
> market together, Iraqi security officials and the arms dealers said. Western security
> contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite paramilitary units and criminals who were
> released from prison by Saddam Hussein before the war all sought the same weapons at once.
>
> Kalashnikov prices quickly reached $200, they said. Since late last year, prices have been
> moving up again, as sectarian war has spread. Militias have been growing at the same time
> that more civilians have been seeking weapons for self-defense - twin demand pressures that
> pushed prices to new heights this fall.
>
> "Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia want the weapons
> because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan Jalal, the chief of security in the
> Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."
>
> Mr. Killicoat put it another way. "When households start entering the market, that's a
> free-for-all," he said.
>
> The surge is evident across a spectrum of arms. Pistol prices have nearly tripled since 2003.
> Western 9-millimeter pistols now sell for $1,100 to $1,800 in the bazaars of this city.
> Sniper rifles cost $1,100 to $2,000, the dealers said. In the West, similar pistols sell for
> $400 to $600.
>
> Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering from state armories,
> including the widespread theft of weapons the United States had issued to Iraq's police
> officers and soldiers.
>
> "In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you can buy them here,"
> said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his kiosk and offered weapons in the
> back. "The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police - they all sell them right away."
>
> No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the owner and a friend
> swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and three Kalashnikovs
> from a car and another room.
>
> The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped two of the rifles
> out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside and out, and appeared never to have
> been used. They had folding stocks and were priced at $560 each.
>
> The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost all of the weapons
> come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are our best suppliers."
>
> One pistol was a new Walther P99, a 9-millimeter pistol that the dealer said had been issued
> by the Americans to the Iraqi police. It was still in its box.
>
> Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa, showed a Glock 19
> he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900. Five of his friends have bought
> identical models, he said.
>
> When asked if he was surprised that the Iraqi police and soldiers sold their own guns, he
> scoffed.
>
> "Everything goes to the bazaar," he said.
>
> He added: "It is not only pistols. A lot of police cars are being sold. The smugglers brought
> us three cars and asked if we wanted to buy them. Their doors were still blue, and police
> labels were on them. The lights were still on top."
>
> Although the scale of weapons sales is unmistakably large, it is impossible to measure
> precisely. Sales are almost always hidden and unrecorded.
>
> Tracing American-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is especially difficult
> because the United States did not register serial numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small
> arms purchased for Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector
> General for Iraq Reconstruction.
>
> The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.
> Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault
> rifles that had not previously been used, according to the report.
>
> Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq,
> agreed that weapons provided by the United States had slipped from custody.
>
> "I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and misappropriated,"
> General Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector general had estimated that 4 percent, or
> about 14,000 weapons, were lost between arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi
> forces. Most of the weapons were pistols.
>
> The general said that he thought the estimate was high and that accountability was improving.
> A weapons registry was being created, he said. "Serial numbers are being registered," he
> said.
>
> But the estimate of a 4 percent loss did not include weapons that were lost or stolen after
> being issued to Iraqi units. The arms dealers said this was the main source of their goods.
>
> The arms dealers described several factors that kept weapons flowing from state custody.
>
> Some have been taken by insurgents in ambushes or raids. Defections and resignations have
> also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they said, and often departing soldiers and
> officers leave with their weapons, which are worth more than several months of pay.
>
> Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq resembled African
> countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the police selling off their guns.
> "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in the household," he said.
>
> "If anything happens to a police officer's family and he needs money, he walks into work the
> next day and says, 'Hey, my gun got stolen.' "
>
> Another weapons dealer, who Kurdish officials said had been providing them with weapons since
> 1991, said the latest black-market sales followed an old pattern precisely.
>
> Throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, Iraqi Army officers were in the arms trade, he said, selling
> weapons to smugglers. This was how the Kurdish guerrillas kept themselves supplied.
>
> Now, he said, the smugglers remain in business, and their trade is made easier because the
> units often do not have inventories. "I am surprised sometimes by the numbers," he said.
> "Sometimes they come by the hundreds."
>
> James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.
>
>
>
> "Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word for word. Ever
>> hear of copy rights?
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Richard Urban
>> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
>> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>>
>> Quote from George Ankner:
>> If you knew as much as you think you know,
>> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>>
>>
>>
>> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
>> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> December 9, 2006
>>> New York Times
>>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>>
>>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>>
>>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that Steve Berkowitz
>>> wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such a behemoth is slow going.
>>>
>>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar in the water to
>>> change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft
>>> hired him away in April to run its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I
>>> have to call down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice. "Sometimes
>>> the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>>
>>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's online unit, which by
>>> most measures has drifted dangerously off course. Over the last year, its online properties
>>> have lost users in the United States. The billions of dollars the company has spent
>>> building its own search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>>
>>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto Microsoft's turf.
>>>
>>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored with software
>>> wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and failed to make a search engine
>>> people liked to use.
>>>
>>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the consumer," he
>>> said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins. It is the best experience."
>>>
>>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast, be as popular and
>>> make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo announced this week that its chief
>>> operating officer was leaving, and why the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>>
>>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is also counting on
>>> its Internet operations to breathe new life into its gargantuan but aging Windows and
>>> Office franchises.
>>>
>>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill Gates as the company's
>>> chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to create online services that are the
>>> equivalent of an operating system - a platform that other companies can use to develop
>>> their own Web sites using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own software and video
>>> games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to use its online services to freshen up
>>> its own software.
>>>
>>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to incorporate the online
>>> extensions of Word, Excel and other business services. And it repackaged its e-mail,
>>> instant message, blogging and Web search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting
>>> the venerable if musty MSN.
>>>
>>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC users are running
>>> Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the 20,000-employee division responsible
>>> for the Windows operating system as well as the online unit.
>>>
>>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online, he said, "it's a
>>> pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've got Windows and here's a set of
>>> Windows Live things that extend those services."
>>>
>>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most of the advertising
>>> and search industry.
>>>
>>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said neither MSN nor Windows
>>> Live would appeal to consumers in a market where Google has become a synonym for Web
>>> search. "People don't see Microsoft as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a
>>> verb, and neither is Windows Live."
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>>
>>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not decided what to do
>>> about it. But before he gets around to deciding whether to change the brand, he wants to
>>> make Microsoft's search engine itself more appealing to consumers.
>>>
>>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well known and its
>>> various services have 430 million users around the world. He promoted Joanne K. Bradford,
>>> Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>>
>>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them use our search," he
>>> said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from leaking."
>>>
>>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least two Internet
>>> services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a conventional portal with links to
>>> programming on various topics that competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses
>>> the Live.com site, is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>>
>>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has been slowed by
>>> the same sort of organizational drag that caused the latest upgrade of Windows to fall
>>> years behind schedule. And of course, the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster
>>> than that of operating systems.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of
>>> Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its archrival Google moves much more
>>> quickly.
>>>
>>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products, like multiple ways
>>> to share photos, listen to music or search computer files, as well as multiple toolbars for
>>> Internet browsers.
>>>
>>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing," said Gary Flake,
>>> the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research unit. "If I have a hard time
>>> articulating to a friend of mine which one they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>>
>>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the staff was
>>> hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping organizations, employees said. Moreover,
>>> last summer, when Microsoft's stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research
>>> spending, directions changed again.
>>>
>>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate," said Niall
>>> Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft last spring but quickly
>>> became disillusioned and quit in August. After the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to
>>> hire anybody for my group."
>>>
>>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>>
>>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said. "If there is a
>>> superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google has set up shop in Kirkland,
>>> Wash., six miles from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome
>>> Microsoft refugees.)
>>>
>>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service, built on its
>>> Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its instant-messaging service, while well
>>> behind AOL and Yahoo in the United States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And
>>> its blog service, born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>>> rapidly.
>>>
>>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends less time on
>>> Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to comScore MediaMetrix, even as
>>> Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of their users.
>>>
>>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion from its Internet
>>> Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years, computer makers have started changing
>>> the default settings on their browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for
>>> the traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are promoting toolbars
>>> and other software that help attract traffic.
>>>
>>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but under pressure from
>>> antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista will hardly promote Windows Live at all.
>>> The new version of Internet Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search
>>> engines, with Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business, the biggest
>>> challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that people will choose over Google
>>> and Yahoo.
>>>
>>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog, building its own
>>> search engine from scratch. It thought it could match Google in the relevancy of search
>>> results - the crucial measure of a search engine - in two years.
>>>
>>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search experts. Danny Sullivan,
>>> a longtime search expert who writes the blog SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of
>>> results, Microsoft ranks behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>>> narrowed some.
>>>
>>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search engine," Mr. Sullivan
>>> said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are still a little behind."
>>>
>>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, found that even people
>>> who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search engine actually found what they were
>>> looking for faster when they used Google.
>>>
>>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is getting the basics
>>> right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>>
>>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has forgotten is how to
>>> take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>>
>>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the 3-D maps and more
>>> about changes to the way basic search results are presented. This strategy helped him build
>>> a small but loyal audience at Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the
>>> ability to see a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>>
>>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he said. "What
>>> matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's the last 10 percent."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

I'm not going to get into all the legalese, but I think the unspoken
rule is- as long as you provide a direct link to where the article
originated from, the authors name, and it's not reprinted on a
for profit site- not too many give a rat's arse about it.



-Michael

"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word for word. Ever
> hear of copy rights?
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that Steve Berkowitz
>> wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar in the water to
>> change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft
>> hired him away in April to run its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I
>> have to call down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice. "Sometimes the
>> connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's online unit, which by
>> most measures has drifted dangerously off course. Over the last year, its online properties
>> have lost users in the United States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building
>> its own search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market, Microsoft's
>> online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored with software
>> wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and failed to make a search engine
>> people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the consumer," he
>> said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins. It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast, be as popular and
>> make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo announced this week that its chief
>> operating officer was leaving, and why the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is also counting on
>> its Internet operations to breathe new life into its gargantuan but aging Windows and Office
>> franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill Gates as the company's
>> chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to create online services that are the
>> equivalent of an operating system - a platform that other companies can use to develop their
>> own Web sites using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising that
>> will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own software and video games,
>> as well as its own Web site. And it wants to use its online services to freshen up its own
>> software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to incorporate the online
>> extensions of Word, Excel and other business services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant
>> message, blogging and Web search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the
>> venerable if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC users are running
>> Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the 20,000-employee division responsible
>> for the Windows operating system as well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online, he said, "it's a
>> pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've got Windows and here's a set of
>> Windows Live things that extend those services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most of the advertising
>> and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said neither MSN nor Windows
>> Live would appeal to consumers in a market where Google has become a synonym for Web search.
>> "People don't see Microsoft as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and
>> neither is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not decided what to do
>> about it. But before he gets around to deciding whether to change the brand, he wants to
>> make Microsoft's search engine itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well known and its various
>> services have 430 million users around the world. He promoted Joanne K. Bradford,
>> Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them use our search," he
>> said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least two Internet
>> services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a conventional portal with links to
>> programming on various topics that competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the
>> Live.com site, is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has been slowed by the
>> same sort of organizational drag that caused the latest upgrade of Windows to fall years
>> behind schedule. And of course, the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that
>> of operating systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of
>> Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its archrival Google moves much more
>> quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products, like multiple ways
>> to share photos, listen to music or search computer files, as well as multiple toolbars for
>> Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing," said Gary Flake,
>> the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research unit. "If I have a hard time
>> articulating to a friend of mine which one they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the staff was hampered
>> by conflicting priorities and overlapping organizations, employees said. Moreover, last
>> summer, when Microsoft's stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research
>> spending, directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate," said Niall
>> Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft last spring but quickly
>> became disillusioned and quit in August. After the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to
>> hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said. "If there is a
>> superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google has set up shop in Kirkland,
>> Wash., six miles from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft
>> refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service, built on its
>> Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its instant-messaging service, while well
>> behind AOL and Yahoo in the United States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And
>> its blog service, born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends less time on
>> Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to comScore MediaMetrix, even as
>> Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion from its Internet
>> Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years, computer makers have started changing
>> the default settings on their browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for
>> the traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are promoting toolbars
>> and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but under pressure from
>> antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista will hardly promote Windows Live at all.
>> The new version of Internet Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search
>> engines, with Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business, the biggest
>> challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that people will choose over Google
>> and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog, building its own
>> search engine from scratch. It thought it could match Google in the relevancy of search
>> results - the crucial measure of a search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search experts. Danny Sullivan,
>> a longtime search expert who writes the blog SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of
>> results, Microsoft ranks behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search engine," Mr. Sullivan
>> said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, found that even people
>> who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search engine actually found what they were
>> looking for faster when they used Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is getting the basics
>> right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has forgotten is how to
>> take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the 3-D maps and more
>> about changes to the way basic search results are presented. This strategy helped him build
>> a small but loyal audience at Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the
>> ability to see a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he said. "What
>> matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Michael;
Then there are 2 problems
There is no link, much less a direct link in his post.
Also, it is poor netiquette to post an entire article.
It is more appropriate to post a summary or a few lines as examples.
With a link, there is no need to post an entire article.
Many pay for each byte and the added cost is unnecessary.
Then you add others that are on dialup and the added data slows the
downloads with the excessive volume of data.

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
http://www.dts-l.org


"MICHAEL" <u158627_emr@dslr.net> wrote in message
news:%23xQBHgSHHHA.816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> I'm not going to get into all the legalese, but I think the unspoken
> rule is- as long as you provide a direct link to where the article
> originated from, the authors name, and it's not reprinted on a
> for profit site- not too many give a rat's arse about it.
>
>
>
> -Michael
>
> "Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article,
>> word for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Richard Urban
>> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
>> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>>
>> Quote from George Ankner:
>> If you knew as much as you think you know,
>> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

I wasn't arguing whether it was polite or not.

-Michael

"Jupiter Jones [MVP]" <jones_jupiter@hotnomail.com> wrote in message
news:ecQpUzZHHHA.1264@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Michael;
> Then there are 2 problems
> There is no link, much less a direct link in his post.
> Also, it is poor netiquette to post an entire article.
> It is more appropriate to post a summary or a few lines as examples.
> With a link, there is no need to post an entire article.
> Many pay for each byte and the added cost is unnecessary.
> Then you add others that are on dialup and the added data slows the downloads with the
> excessive volume of data.
>
> --
> Jupiter Jones [MVP]
> http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
> http://www.dts-l.org
>
>
> "MICHAEL" <u158627_emr@dslr.net> wrote in message
> news:%23xQBHgSHHHA.816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> I'm not going to get into all the legalese, but I think the unspoken
>> rule is- as long as you provide a direct link to where the article
>> originated from, the authors name, and it's not reprinted on a
>> for profit site- not too many give a rat's arse about it.
>>
>>
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>> "Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word for word. Ever
>>> hear of copy rights?
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Richard Urban
>>> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
>>> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>>>
>>> Quote from George Ankner:
>>> If you knew as much as you think you know,
>>> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>

Michael;
I know.
I was just pointing out there were at least two problems with his post one
of which was no link.

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
http://www.dts-l.org


"MICHAEL" <u158627_emr@dslr.net> wrote in message
news:Ojvkh6aHHHA.5000@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>I wasn't arguing whether it was polite or not.
>
> -Michael

It was obvious where the articles were from. The NYT has no problem with
it. It's a newspaper you should get in the habit of reading.

What kind of sententious tight ass worries about a link to an article that
is clearly labled from a source instead of why he has lost the ability to
give any substantive answer to a question for a Windows problem.

It seems in many cases MSFT is awarding that MVP for sycophantic brain
washed behavior very much like the children and students exhibited on Diane
Sawyers North Korea special instead of for the hard work and help that used
to be the focus of the MVP.

Matt Kimball (Jupiter Jones) is the poster child for the Sycophantic
population of MVPs in contrast to the MVPs that provide high quality help.

CH



Jupiter Jones is Matt Kimball with the delusion of a comic book name.
"Jupiter Jones [MVP]" <jones_jupiter@hotnomail.com> wrote in message
news:OYW6J$aHHHA.2112@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Michael;
> I know.
> I was just pointing out there were at least two problems with his post one
> of which was no link.
>
> --
> Jupiter Jones [MVP]
> http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
> http://www.dts-l.org
>
>
> "MICHAEL" <u158627_emr@dslr.net> wrote in message
> news:Ojvkh6aHHHA.5000@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>>I wasn't arguing whether it was polite or not.
>>
>> -Michael
>