I'm much more shocked about how poorly-written Bill's email is. He sounds like he's almost illiterate. Any random post here on HN is far better written and more understandable. How did this guy get where he is now?
Anyway, his account sounds like a typical Windows user experience, especially from that time. I guess that shows the power of having a monopoly: users are forced to put up with it, no matter how awful it is.
No one reads long emails. I similarly noticed that people don't miss things in my email when I format them like texts or discord messages. He wasn't writing up technical requirements for Moviemaker, he was just sharing his experiences. I also suspect that most people that are as busy as him mainly use their phone to access email. I know 90% of the time I've heard back from, who I consider, busy people, there was a "sent from my iphone" signature in the email footer.
This is pretty par for the course and the quality of writing largely makes sense, especially if you’re sending to an internal team of people you work with somewhat regularly.
He just sent a pretty complex and in-depth walk thru of a terrible experience in probably about 15 or minutes or less (not including the time it took to actually go through this process).
There were a few places where the text didn't even parse, probably because of missing words.
Normally, when I see writing that bad (like on a discussion forum like this one), I just dismiss the author and skip the comment. A mistake here or there is understandable, but this was too much.
Well, then today you (I hope) learned that by doing that you may be skipping on the likes of Bill Gates, who is very much a person who can provide really interesting insights in many topics.
Some of the typos and spurious spaces make me wonder if this was originally a printed/scanned/bitmap document (since it comes from court filings) and then was later OCR’d back again for publishing online.
But that said, it’s no more poorly written than some of my emails would be if I’m tapping them out in a state of frustration, as he seems to be!
I felt like the original email had some embedded screenshots, that are now missing. Switching from the website issue to the file system doesn’t make too much sense as written, but if you had a screenshot of the file explorer in—between the text makes some sense.
I have this heuristic I use to determine whether someone is worth listening to, or whether I should ignore them. Look, it rejects Bill Gates! I’m very smart.
Look, everyone uses heuristics to assess the world. Turns out yours is somewhat broken. Might want to update it.
I'm much more shocked about how poorly-thought midoridensha's comment is. He sounds like he's almost illiterate. Any random discussion here on HN is far better written and more considerate. How did this guy get where he is now?
That's what you sound like. They are discussing technical user experience, not engaging in some Oxford debate. His articulation is good enough for the message to pass through.
I think Bill was a lot more aggressive in early Microsoft days. By this point (email dated 2003), Bill had already stepped down as CEO 3 years prior (2000).
> Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
I have recently bought a new PC, without a DVD drive, naturally. And tried to re-install my copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
This copy is a "pre order" DVD set I got off of eBay simply because it was a good price, but it's bound to my "Microsoft Account", the same account used in my Windows 11 install.
I spent a good part of an hour trying to get this to install. The Microsoft store (also slow as **) didn't let me do it; it doesn't know of this edition nor my license. I eventually discovered that there is a web page somewhere deep on Microsoft.com, which has a download button, which (after three time-outs) opens a secret link into Microsoft Store which ONLY THEN lets me reinstall the product from the Microsoft Store.
So I must admit I read that with great joy. Yeah Bill ... Karma!
Somewhat unrelated: The icing on the cake, naturally, is that even a full digital install of the DVD edition of MS Flight Sim "requires" the DVD #1 to be in the drive. But since people don't HAVE physical DVD drives in 2020 and upwards, I use an ISO image. You can in fact make an ISO image with just a few tiny files from DVD #1 without the huge data files, that's sufficient.
You'd think "oh yeah, copy protection" but there is NOTHING about this DVD image that is akin to any copy protection. It just wants these files as part of a drive (or mounted image), which I'm sure they could even detect the difference, as I'm even mounting it with built-in Windows Explorer functionality these days, without special software). I literally don't know why they would force me to present a (virtual) DVD if there is no other checks whatsoever. This makes no sense but to hurt customers.
Somewhat more unrelated: Microsoft still owes me 20 bucks. I once bought a PC with a Windows XP to Vista upgrade coupon. The web site let me select Vista 64 bit, so I gave that a try. Alas, the XP shipped with the PC was 32 bit, so they simply never carried out the order. I called their customer support, where I was nearly chastised in very broken, hard to understand language for selecting the 64 bit version from the drop-down menu. They never carried out the order, and didn't refund my twenty bucks for S&H. Thank God for alternative software distribution methods back then that rhyme with "Pi rate day".
Totally unrelated (really going of on a tangent of story telling now):
Another company that still owes me roughly 20 bucks is Dell. I once ordered a server from them, and discovered that they had a catalog error. Adding the biggest, meanest CPU would not add money to the bill, but subtract several thousand dollars from the total. So using that trick, for some giggles, I configured a server to be around 20 bucks total and ordered it. I pre-paid the total amount. I didn't expect to get the server, of course, but I expected them to contact me and refund my money. Never heard from them.
> I literally don't know why they would force me to present a (virtual) DVD if there is no other checks whatsoever. This makes no sense but to hurt customers.
This was very common back in the day. It’s a form of DRM: it prevents you from playing the game on two computers at once.
It used to be common to make your life easier (even if you weren’t sharing the disc) by downloading an unofficial ‘no-cd’ patch, which was a patched game executable that omitted the ‘disc present’ check.
Man, I used to download so many no-cd patches back in the days, but lumped it all in with "real" copy protection in my mind.
+2 for the trip down memory lane. -1 because now I need to drink before noon to forget about the horrors of fiddling with CD-ROM based games and their silly schemes. So yeah, +1 :)
I feel like exactly none of the people in the replies were able to understand the problem outside of the boundaries of their strictly delineated parcels of Microsoft they "own" :D
soooo he's got a copy of windows that he never updates, and he's surprised when the latest versions of official microsoft software doesn't run on it?
I mean - I'm not saying that's a good experience, or that it's one I am or would be happy about, but... it's not super reassuring to learn that Bill Gates is about as windows-literate as my own mother. :\",
48 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadStep 2) Wait for it to automatically upgrade when you least expect it.
Anyway, his account sounds like a typical Windows user experience, especially from that time. I guess that shows the power of having a monopoly: users are forced to put up with it, no matter how awful it is.
Maybe he was using his iPAQ, though
He just sent a pretty complex and in-depth walk thru of a terrible experience in probably about 15 or minutes or less (not including the time it took to actually go through this process).
Normally, when I see writing that bad (like on a discussion forum like this one), I just dismiss the author and skip the comment. A mistake here or there is understandable, but this was too much.
We're humans and we're.not.9erfect.
I suspect that to be some artifact of the way the email has been stored/archived over the years.
Sorta looks like the email was line wrapped to 100 chars, then line wrapped again to 95, and whatever words fell off a line were deleted.
But that said, it’s no more poorly written than some of my emails would be if I’m tapping them out in a state of frustration, as he seems to be!
Look, everyone uses heuristics to assess the world. Turns out yours is somewhat broken. Might want to update it.
That's what you sound like. They are discussing technical user experience, not engaging in some Oxford debate. His articulation is good enough for the message to pass through.
This made me laugh out loud
This copy is a "pre order" DVD set I got off of eBay simply because it was a good price, but it's bound to my "Microsoft Account", the same account used in my Windows 11 install.
I spent a good part of an hour trying to get this to install. The Microsoft store (also slow as **) didn't let me do it; it doesn't know of this edition nor my license. I eventually discovered that there is a web page somewhere deep on Microsoft.com, which has a download button, which (after three time-outs) opens a secret link into Microsoft Store which ONLY THEN lets me reinstall the product from the Microsoft Store.
So I must admit I read that with great joy. Yeah Bill ... Karma!
Somewhat unrelated: The icing on the cake, naturally, is that even a full digital install of the DVD edition of MS Flight Sim "requires" the DVD #1 to be in the drive. But since people don't HAVE physical DVD drives in 2020 and upwards, I use an ISO image. You can in fact make an ISO image with just a few tiny files from DVD #1 without the huge data files, that's sufficient.
You'd think "oh yeah, copy protection" but there is NOTHING about this DVD image that is akin to any copy protection. It just wants these files as part of a drive (or mounted image), which I'm sure they could even detect the difference, as I'm even mounting it with built-in Windows Explorer functionality these days, without special software). I literally don't know why they would force me to present a (virtual) DVD if there is no other checks whatsoever. This makes no sense but to hurt customers.
Somewhat more unrelated: Microsoft still owes me 20 bucks. I once bought a PC with a Windows XP to Vista upgrade coupon. The web site let me select Vista 64 bit, so I gave that a try. Alas, the XP shipped with the PC was 32 bit, so they simply never carried out the order. I called their customer support, where I was nearly chastised in very broken, hard to understand language for selecting the 64 bit version from the drop-down menu. They never carried out the order, and didn't refund my twenty bucks for S&H. Thank God for alternative software distribution methods back then that rhyme with "Pi rate day".
Totally unrelated (really going of on a tangent of story telling now):
Another company that still owes me roughly 20 bucks is Dell. I once ordered a server from them, and discovered that they had a catalog error. Adding the biggest, meanest CPU would not add money to the bill, but subtract several thousand dollars from the total. So using that trick, for some giggles, I configured a server to be around 20 bucks total and ordered it. I pre-paid the total amount. I didn't expect to get the server, of course, but I expected them to contact me and refund my money. Never heard from them.
It's just tech debt, no particular reason
This was very common back in the day. It’s a form of DRM: it prevents you from playing the game on two computers at once.
It used to be common to make your life easier (even if you weren’t sharing the disc) by downloading an unofficial ‘no-cd’ patch, which was a patched game executable that omitted the ‘disc present’ check.
Man, I used to download so many no-cd patches back in the days, but lumped it all in with "real" copy protection in my mind.
+2 for the trip down memory lane. -1 because now I need to drink before noon to forget about the horrors of fiddling with CD-ROM based games and their silly schemes. So yeah, +1 :)
Almost forgot what paths on Windows look like lol
I am glad they switched to C:\Users\billg\Pictures
> But, if you want nothing revolutionary and want to band-aid (which is fine and understandable) then I agree with your plan to give it to Dave.
I mean - I'm not saying that's a good experience, or that it's one I am or would be happy about, but... it's not super reassuring to learn that Bill Gates is about as windows-literate as my own mother. :\",