Monday, January 07, 2008

"Insightful" Comments

Just recently I came across a rather comprehensive paper, a Cost Analysis, rather, of Windows Vista content protection. I didn't have time to read the entire paper, but noticed some comments from high ranking Microsoft systems architects, research scientists, and engineers on the bottom:

“No amount of coordination will be successful unless it's designed with the needs of the customer in mind. Microsoft believes that a good user experience is a requirement for adoption” — Microsoft.

“The PC industry is committed to providing content protection on the PC, but nothing comes for free. These costs are passed on to the consumer” — ATI.

“How do I put all these companies in a position where, regardless of what they see is in their best interest, they have to adopt your technology? […] I realized that a major part of my job was to figure out how to use technology control to create economic force, or leverage, such that money and business flowed in Microsoft's direction” — Alex St.John, father of DirectX.

“I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are” — Jim Allchin, Platform Products and Services Group, Microsoft.