Microsoft/Quotes

"To have a heart-to-heart, you have to have two hearts."

—Novell chairman Ray Noorda about smoothing over relations with Microsoft.

Q: How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They just get Bill Gates to declare darkness the company standard.

Q: How many NT Admins does it take to change a light bulb?
A: If you buy a Microsoft lightbulb it will change itself. Of course, your power will go out at random moments. The bulb will sometimes change even if you don't want it to. And your light usage will automatically be reported to the Microsoft auditors every time you turn it on.

Q: How many Microsoft programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. They just release MS Darkness.

Microsoft's... promised support for open protocols is always leveraged against or bridged to its internally controlled, Windows-centric standards.
Put it this way: If Microsoft invented gasoline and a consortium of vendors found a way to run car engines on Jell-O, Microsoft would support that open standard by building a 1,200-pound attachment that converts Jell-O to gasoline.

—Nicholas Petreley, Infoworld, May 6, 1996

After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with truth, you'd risk a matter/antimatter explosion?"

—Nicholas Petreley, Infoworld, September 16, 1996

When I was one-and-twenty
A wise man told me oft,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not to Microsoft;
Give pearls away, and rubies,
But keep your hard drive free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The software that they market
Is full of hurt and pain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
That pulchritude of vileness
Did my computer rape;
Now that I'm two-and-twenty,
Howe'er should I escape?

The day Microsoft produces something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.

—Ernst Jan Plugge

That's not to imply that Microsoft's marketing hype is always unreliable. Even as a longtime critic of the company, I must admit that Microsoft occasionally flirts with the truth. Well, perhaps "flirt" is too strong a word. Let's just say Microsoft sometimes honks and waves as it drives by her house.

—Nicholas Petreley, Infoworld, June 14, 1999

I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.

—Paul Tomblin, sdm

The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. [But lawyers] often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following: buying a stronger whip; changing riders; saying things like, "This is the way we've always ridden the horse"; appointing a committee to study the horse; ...declaring the horse is better, faster and cheaper dead; and, finally, harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

—Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, during the Microsoft antitrust trial, February 2000, quoted in Wired, November 2000

Asked whether Microsoft could threaten Linux, Torvalds said: "What can they do? What is the Microsoft threat? They certainly can't program around us. The only other thing they can do is marketing, and sure, let them try."

—From the .sig file of Gus Hartmann

There are lies, damned lies, and Microsoft brochures.

—Brief History of Linux (Part 3) by James Baughn

"Microsoft discovered that word processing was a "killer app" and killed off all the competition with it."

—Spotted on Slashdot

Atlanta, Ga. - Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control today confirmed that hoof-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major virus.

Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately, they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming.

—Simon Slavin in asr

"And now for some irony: Microsoft's print ads touting its .Net development tools as the solution for DLL hell -- a bit like a cobra advertising antivenin, don't you think?"

—Bob Lewis, "Survival Guide", Infoworld, 7 March 2003

Doing anything with Microsoft software is like doing brain surgery in the Amazon while being stalked by a leopard. They've built an amazing amount of really cool camping gear that actually makes it doable, but wouldn't it have been smarter to build a hospital first?

—Peter DaSilva

All I know is that I'm being sued for unfair business practices by Microsoft. Hello, pot? It's kettle on line two."

—Michael Robertson, founder, Linspire

If Microsoft is innovative in any area, it is in creating new forms of intimidation.

—Ralph Nader