robinbloke | Warning, mini-rant

Yes, once again it's time for my marketing rant; have you heard Micro$oft's new 'mission statement'?
"We want to build great software and empower people"
What sort of tosh is that? What software company doesn't want to write great software? Does this imply that all the other companies write cr*p software? That Micro$oft can only strive to write great software (their mission, should they choose to accept it...) but in fact never will.
Dilbert has the right idea about these

Empower
Verb: empower
1. Give or delegate power to
2. Give qualities or abilities to
And 'empower', I hate that word, I really really don't like it at all. It's a marketing word, noone uses it except people who work in marketing, words like proactive, synergistically, innovative, facilitate and utilize. These words aren't used by anyone else, they don't mean anything in any sort of real-life context, it's not a word!
Right, I feel better now... maybe I ought to generate a mission statement to proactively synergise an assertive and innovative paradigm to facilitate empowerment of my intellectual capital.

Yeah right.