Ozzie Was No Wizard For Microsoft In Massachusetts - InformationWeek

Chief software architect took over five years ago, but R&D in Bay State never quite meshed with Redmond. By W. David Gardner ,  InformationWeek
October 19, 2010 04:01 PM After Bill Gates and Paul Allen created their first Microsoft software program in Cambridge, Mass., it’s been mostly downhill for the company’s R&D in the Bay State. The latest blow came Monday with the announcement that chief software architect Ray Ozzie would leave Microsoft.

Appointed five years ago to fill the software architecting void left by Gates’ move to chairman, Ozzie, a close friend of Gates’, was named to take Microsoft in new profitable directions and to reinvigorate the R&D facilities in Cambridge. The drive immediately took on a competitive flavor because Google was developing its own R&D operation in Kendall Square, near Microsoft’s offices in the shadow of MIT.

Almost immediately, problems surfaced for Microsoft in Cambridge. There was litigation with database provider InterSystems, which battled Microsoft over office space at One Memorial Drive.

The company’s Startup Labs operation, which had started promisingly, ran into early difficulties when its director, Reed Sturtevant, suddenly left in October 2009.Like Ozzie, Sturtevant had worked at Lotus Development Corp., which rode Ozzie’s Lotus Notes to fame and fortune. Microsoft said the Startup Labs would be combined with its Rich Media Lab, both to be run from Redmond’s MRS Creative Systems.

Lili Cheng was named to head the new operation and report to Ozzie. The bicoastal life led by Ozzie seemed to fly in the face of cohesive management, as Microsoft struggled to coordinate several operations in Massachusetts, and Ozzie reportedly couldn’t properly coordinate with rebellious units in Washington State.

At the same time, the pressure on Microsoft to develop facilities in Massachusetts was mounting. In a controversy over ODF standards precipitated by the Massachusetts state CIO, IBM and Sun Microsystems pointedly noted that Microsoft had relatively few employees and facilities in the Bay State, putting pressure on the software giant to beef up its Massachusetts operations. The controversy has faded, and so has pressure on Microsoft to create more jobs and facilities in Massachusetts.

SEE ALSO:

Ray Ozzie Explains Cloud Computing For The Enterprise

Microsoft Opens Research Center In Cambridge, Mass.

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Coons, O'Donnell debate First Amendment - NECN

(NECN/CNN) - Delaware Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell (R) and Chris Coons (D) clash over the Constitution.

At one point during their debate Tuesday, O'Donnell appeared to question Coon's assertion that the First Amendment calls for the separation of church and state. They'd been discussing whether creationism should be taught in public schools

Coons: The 1st amendment establishes the separation, the fact that the federal government shall not establish any religion, in decisional law by the Supreme Court over many, many decades.

O'Donnell: The 1st amendment does?

Source: WDEL-AM Wilmington

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The Rent Is Too Damn High Party: Jimmy McMillan Shows Dems How It's Done - Death and Taxes

Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party stole the show at last night’s New York gubernatorial debate.

Yesterday we wrote a piece about how ineffective Democrats were this year at fighting back against the conservative Tea Party candidates. Maureen Dowd’s “Mean Girls” article about the Mama Grizzlies only reinforced their perceived strength by calling them mean. If you don’t like the things your opponent is saying, we argued, you have to change the conversation.

Reinforcing the meanness of your successfully mean opponent is not a conversation changer. “The rent is too damn high”—now that’s a conversation changer.

Last night Jimmy McCmillan, head of The Rent Is Too Damn High party, and that party’s candidate for Governor of New York, showed mainstream Democrats how you effectively change a conversation. Gawker has a great report on McMillan, but it suffices to say he’s an eccentric Brooklyn candidate who wears gloves on his because he was exposed to agent orange in Vietnam (but, he says, “it could be psychological”) and who focuses his campaign on a singular issue with brilliant clarity: the rent is too damn high.

Jimmy McMillan will not win the governor’s race. Not by a long shot. But he does stand for progressive Democratic values (“the Rent Is 2 Damn High Party feels if you want to marry a shoe, I’ll marry you”) and he holds a valuable lesson for more mainstream Democratic candidates who actually stand a chance of winning: Political winners set the conversation, and political losers respond to the conversation.

Like them or hate them, the Tea Party has been highly effective in the last two years at setting the conversation. Democrats would do well to take a look at Jimmy McCmillan and learn from what he’s doing. Though they may not want to start the exact conversation he’s choosing to, they should take note of how many people are talking about him this morning. It’s not because he called Carl Paladino “mean.” It’s the oldest trick in the book: if you don’t like the argument on the table, change the conversation.

Below check out a clip of McMillan from last night’s debate. Below that, check out four glorious minutes of McMillan sitting on a stoop, ranting.

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