Microsoft said it made an account­ing error last week when it laid off 1400 peo­ple, and is now ask­ing for the inflated sev­er­ance pack­ages to be paid back. Accord­ing to news.com, “The soft­ware giant, which recently laid off 1,400 employ­ees, sent let­ters this week to some of those for­mer work­ers let­ting them know that their sev­er­ance pay­outs were a bit too “gen­er­ous” and respect­fully requested that the for­mer employ­ees pay back that money, accord­ing to a report Sat­ur­day on TechCrunch. ”

Per­haps some­one in the pay­roll depart­ment was trained to always click “Allow”.

I won­der if I can send them a let­ter request­ing the money back from all the time I’ve wasted try­ing to get their crappy soft­ware to do what it is meant to?

Over the years I have been a staunch critic of Microsoft and their soft­ware, often say­ing that their OS is bloated, buggy, their soft­ware ter­ri­ble, and the com­pany itself is irrel­e­vant, and merely play­ing catch up to the likes of google.

I am a big enough man to admit when I am wrong. Microsoft have turned the cor­ner, and cre­ated a piece of the most cut­ting edge soft­ware I have ever seen. Song­smith has arrived. Genius.

From the web site:
“Song­smith gen­er­ates musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musi­cal style, sing into your PC’s micro­phone, and Song­smith will cre­ate back­ing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and fam­ily, post your songs online, or cre­ate your own music videos.”

The thing that got me really excited about it was watch­ing Billy Idols’ “White wed­ding” as per­formed by Song­smith. Classic.

I’m exhaust­ing all my band­width from replay­ing the video over and over again.

Thank you Microsoft.