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Disclaimer: I'm no MS fanboi. In fact, I dislike a lot of what they do. I'm no OO fanboi. In fact, I'm quite disgusted with what they've done with the product.

The delta between Excel and Calc is too large to ignore.

The delta between Powerpoint and Impress is small at the moment and can be tolerated.

The delta between Word and Writer is negligible for _most_ users. For a basic word processor Writer is better but _a lot_ of people I know love the collaboration features of Word. I hate how Word keeps "thinking" for me and screwing with my documents.

The delta between MSO and OO in terms of speed is just a tad smaller than the distance from one end to the other of the Grand Canyon.

Now considering all that, OO is trailing, hugely. Now look at... http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1147 20 and you'll see that OO is 5-6 yrs behind MSO. I've done my best to use OO and even to try and help. I am so disgusted by the developers and their responses to my pleas for improvement in key areas that I've stopped promoting OO to people that need a cheap office suite. If they need a free one then I still show it off. If they have some $$ then I show them where to get MSO dirt cheap. The new MSO 12 looks to blow the socks off of anything out there. If it all works like it is supposed to (huge IF) it will be a remarkable product.

In that case, I thank the OO development team for putting pressure on MS. Like everyone, competition causes one to raise their performance and I think MSO 12 will be a killer app. I just wish OO could have moved quicker.

Yes this is under consideration for the C++ stadard.
Matt Pietrek mentions the addition for C++, from Herb Sutter's talk:

http://blogs.msdn.com/matt_pietrek/archive/2005/09 /16/469213.aspx

C++ syntax (from Matt's blog):
before:
foo::iterator i = myList.begin();
after:
auto i = myList.begin(); // Type of 'i' is inferred from the assignment

• Extension methods - a convenient syntax invoking methods on a different type than what they were explicitly declared on.
• Lambda expressions - those: c => c.Name, snippets above
• Object Initializers - an expression based apprach to instantiating and initializing an object (that goes far beyond the existing "new" call of today).
• Anonymous types - Shown above. the new { ... } expression.
• Expression Trees - My new fav features. Captures a C# expression into a strongly typed object that can then be passed to any consumer. This is how we can pass a C# expression (like the one shown above) to your DB of choice and allow it to generate SQL (or whatever it wants) optimized for their platform that can then run server side!

• Extension methods - a convenient syntax invoking methods on a different type than what they were explicitly declared on.
• Lambda expressions - those: c => c.Name, snippets above
• Object Initializers - an expression based apprach to instantiating and initializing an object (that goes far beyond the existing "new" call of today).
• Anonymous types - Shown above. the new { ... } expression.
• Expression Trees - My new fav features. Captures a C# expression into a strongly typed object that can then be passed to any consumer. This is how we can pass a C# expression (like the one shown above) to your DB of choice and allow it to generate SQL (or whatever it wants) optimized for their platform that can then run server side!

• Extension methods - a convenient syntax invoking methods on a different type than what they were explicitly declared on.
• Lambda expressions - those: c => c.Name, snippets above
• Object Initializers - an expression based apprach to instantiating and initializing an object (that goes far beyond the existing "new" call of today).
• Anonymous types - Shown above. the new { ... } expression.
• Expression Trees - My new fav features. Captures a C# expression into a strongly typed object that can then be passed to any consumer. This is how we can pass a C# expression (like the one shown above) to your DB of choice and allow it to generate SQL (or whatever it wants) optimized for their platform that can then run server side!

I've written a series of posts on the new Linq technologies we've just previewed. My focus has been on the C# aspect of it (as i'm a C# language developer), but i'll also be discussing DLinq and XLinq (XML oriented query and transform). I try to go beyond just discussing the what the new features are, to more of a "why this is a good thing?" approach and "what existing problems do the new features solve?" You can find the blog posts here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/13/46 5390.aspx and
http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/16/46 9953.aspx

                -- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

I've written a series of posts on the new Linq technologies we've just previewed. My focus has been on the C# aspect of it (as i'm a C# language developer), but i'll also be discussing DLinq and XLinq (XML oriented query and transform). I try to go beyond just discussing the what the new features are, to more of a "why this is a good thing?" approach and "what existing problems do the new features solve?" You can find the blog posts here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/13/46 5390.aspx and
http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/16/46 9953.aspx

                -- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

I've written a series of posts on the new Linq technologies we've just previewed. My focus has been on the C# aspect of it (as i'm a C# language developer), but i'll also be discussing DLinq and XLinq (XML oriented query and transform). I try to go beyond just discussing the what the new features are, to more of a "why this is a good thing?" approach and "what existing problems do the new features solve?" You can find the blog posts here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/13/46 5390.aspx and
http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn/archive/2005/09/16/46 9953.aspx

                -- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)

It looks like it would be useful when combined with LINQ type queries as in:

var q =
from c in customers
where c.City == "Seattle"
select new { c.Name, c.Age };

q would result in an implicitly typed collection of objects that contain Name and Age properties only.

Here is a good description of using both

If you've ever developed a GUI app before, watch the Sparkle Demo given by the developers. I mean it. I'm a Linux guy who just bought a Mac (which I love), but goddamnit is Sparkle cool fucking shit. Dangerous as all get-out in terms of UI guidelines, but really cool.

I'm serious - watch the video. This one product is going to change the look of GUI apps for years to come.

Vectors, not Bitmaps
A previous poster pointed out the 3D components of the interface, which is, to me, what makes Vista so truly revolutionary: it's completely vector-based. The goal is to have the entire UI of the OS and all its apps to be vector-based and processed by the GPU. Almost every app out there today uses a bitmapped UI, the downside of which is best seen when using a program like Adobe Premiere where you have tons of palettes that don't fit on your screen unless you're using 1600x1200 or a higher resolution.

The main "wow" feature to me, when watching the Channel9 video about Sparkle was when the dev dragged a "zoom" slider for the entire GUI back and forth to show how the whole tray of palettes could be resized to the user's preference. Not only does this mean that you get more bang for your buck with low-resolution screens, but you've now made it possible for people to use these newer 150dpi LCDs without a magnifying glass by enlarging all the palettes. You know how ugly the "Large Fonts" view in Windows is; it never has worked on bitmapped palette buttons and half the time cheaper programs don't even support it for text. I know I'm sounding like an MS fanboy at this point, but watch the video and I think you'll agree it's an idea with huge potential. It's always a distinct possibility that MS will screw the whole OS up on policies such as the 7 release versions or some inane DRM crap, but the new graphics ideas of Vista really do seem worth some hype.

I took a look at the channel9 video of the Sparkle demo and was quite bowled over. The technology allows designers and developers to draw working interfaces using 2D, 3D and video as easily as one would draw some graphic objects in Illustrator or Flash today, except that the UI elements you draw are the immediately live interface elements. Not even Flash can really compare with this and OSX Cocoa's InterfaceBuilder is not anywhere near as flexible when it comes to custom elements.

Once an element is drawn, it immediately exists as XML (XAML) and can be modified by a coder with C# data bindings. It's like InterfaceBuilder combined with Illustrator.

These animations/UI control sets can then easily either be combined with a real client application or be part of Explorer. It's very radical, with one big Caveat:

Microsoft, for all their failures learned a big lesson with ActiveX and propierty technologies: If they don't run on other platforms, as do Flash and Javascript, almost no web developers will use them as they have to cater to more than just Microsoft's platform. This is the very reason Microsoft made C# and the CLR an ECMA standard. It was an attempt to get their technology accepted as a standard that would be implemented on other platforms.

Of course Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if they didn't try and poison the pill by not opening their .Net frameworks, thereby crippling any other implementation of .Net (Yes, Mono, I'm referring to you) and thereby getting technology chiefs to rather go with a Microsoft platform where the technology is complete and more or less guaranteed to work.

And XAML and this WPF/E is exactly the same thing. Note that only a SUBSET of WPF will be ported to Mac and Linux. The Sparkle/Expresion/XAML technology has the ability to absolutely kill Flash as it is easier to develop for, much more extensible, and includes 3D, which doesn't exist on Flash. But Microsoft, being Microsoft, wants you to use their OS and their browser (and preferably all of their technology if they can get away with it.) The subset of WPF will only be bait to get people to move to Vista and IE where the implementation is complete.

What is even worse is that Microsoft wants XAML to kill html, since a XAML document will run as is in IE. Cringely was right when he said Microsoft wants to kill the web. Microsoft does not give a damn about html standards and XAML is the reason. They want EVERYBODY to use ONLY XAML. That way they would theoretically have absolute control over the internet and the web.

It would scare me silly, but I'm pretty sure that it will only be a partial success, as web developers will carry on using technologies that are cross platform (surprise, that is what the web is for!) such as Flash and html, and client developers are hardly going to use a technology that is only a subset of what is available on Windows.

Sadly, the joke isn't as extreme as the actual answer:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2003/10/ 28/53298.aspx

According to that, the minimum is about 42 people to make any change. A lot of this is because of things like localisation issues. (One translator for each language...)

The thing is, Microsoft isn't just giving standards compliance lip service. They're actually doing it. Again, we won't see this until beta 2 of IE, but they've said on the IE blog that a ton of that work has already been done. Lying about it would just make matters worse, so I see no reason to disbelieve them on this.

Have you read this?

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242 .aspx

Have you read this?

http://webstandards.org/press/releases/archive/200 5/07/05/

I think Microsoft has finally realized just how behind the 8 ball they are, and realize they need to shore up their standards support to compete. So yes, it *IS* in their best interest to be standards compliant these days.

Maybe Microsoft is just pulling some collosal wool over many peoples (including those in the standards industry) eyes, but I don't think so.

Microsoft has turned 180 degrees on a dime before, and while they're much larger today than the last time, they seem to be taking it very seriously.

You can try these, from Channel 9:

Demo of the Sparkle dev tool:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1153 87

Demo of an Avalon app:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1163 27

You can try these, from Channel 9:

Demo of the Sparkle dev tool:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1153 87

Demo of an Avalon app:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1163 27

http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/0 4/27/120944.aspx

Follow the link for some history and yes you will find support for the claim.

>>>> Index a mans fish and...

Hmm... now, where did I hear this?

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1040 73

> from the perspective of most web users, BLOGGERS ARE SPAMMERS

Rubbish. Blogs are often full of excellent content you won't find anyplace else. Daily Kos/Instapundit (take your poison). Tech blogs: Tim Bray, Sam Ruby as well as my current favorite: Derrick Coetzee. Journalists: go see Michael Yon does on his blog and wonder what a sad state journalism has come to today that none of the mainstream media can do what he does.

And oh, if by your so-very-high standards bloggers are /still/ spammers, then Slashdot should close down its comments, because what we seen here is unadulterated dreck compared to the content above. At least we'd get less incoherent idiots like you polluting the intarweb (Google indexes Slashdot comments too, after all).

It wouldn't be hard for a browser to support both directions, but browsers these daya are removing features if they believe the standard specification doesn't call for it.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30811 7
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/29/457667 .aspx

Check out this video which talks about the new Office12 UI:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1147 20

Here is the weblog of the Microsoft developer (Brian Jones) who is in charge of their Office file format. These two entries deserve particular hatred for their complete failure to address the issues about openness brought up (repeatedly) in the comments.

Brian has made it clear that he just won't listen, but if you have time it would be good if you could add your voice to the comments on his blog calling for true openness.

Here is the weblog of the Microsoft developer (Brian Jones) who is in charge of their Office file format. These two entries deserve particular hatred for their complete failure to address the issues about openness brought up (repeatedly) in the comments.

Brian has made it clear that he just won't listen, but if you have time it would be good if you could add your voice to the comments on his blog calling for true openness.

Here is the weblog of the Microsoft developer (Brian Jones) who is in charge of their Office file format. These two entries deserve particular hatred for their complete failure to address the issues about openness brought up (repeatedly) in the comments.

Brian has made it clear that he just won't listen, but if you have time it would be good if you could add your voice to the comments on his blog calling for true openness.

Trolls needed to help destroy Microsoft's Channel Nine forums: http://channel9.msdn.com/ [msdn.com] [msdn.com] [msdn.com] Please help us up the noise-to-signal level! Troll hard, troll fast!

Trolls needed to help destroy Microsoft's Channel Nine forums:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ [msdn.com]

Please help us up the noise-to-signal level! Troll hard, troll fast!

Do you work for Microsoft? You seem to share their opinion, RSS in everything ;-).

Trolls needed to help destroy Microsoft's Channel Nine forums:

http://channel9.msdn.com/

Please help us up the noise-to-signal level!

Yes, there is a double standard about downloading ActiveX controls and XPCOM controls. XPCOM controls are at least as unsafe as ActiveX controls. At least ActiveX supports code signing, which XPCOM doesn't.

Open source has to do with the rights you have to use the code, not just that you can read the source code. It's certainly possible to write a browser extension or anything else in JavaScript that's not open source -- you just say in the comments "Copyright (C) 2005 by . All rights reserved." You don't even need to say that -- it's it copyright by default, but not open source by default.

Even if your point about being able to read XPCOM extension source code was factually correct, only an infintesimally small percentage of people actually even bother to read the code they download before they run it. And even if you can read it, it might be quite obfuscated and contain thousands of lines of code -- in fact the authors themselves might not even know that the code has security holes.

Take a look at the JavaScript source code to google maps, for example. Oh you haven't already read over every line of that code looking for security holes? That's exactly what I mean.

Please don't make the Raymondesque argument that open source code doesn't have security holes because everyone can read it, unless you personally read all the code you download before you run it yourself. Including the configure scripts!

-Don

It seems like it'd be nice if apps like Firefox were routinely (!) run as a user with fewer privs than the actual user sitting at the terminal.

Suggestions? Existing (partial) solutions?

Internet Explorer 7 will have something called "low-rights IE". Another follow-up is on the IE weblog.

It seems like it'd be nice if apps like Firefox were routinely (!) run as a user with fewer privs than the actual user sitting at the terminal.

Suggestions? Existing (partial) solutions?

Internet Explorer 7 will have something called "low-rights IE". Another follow-up is on the IE weblog.

OK, so I'm a huge fan of tech in general, so I've gobbled up every single one of Google's offerings because they were quite simple and technically amazing. I got myself an invite on Gmail when they were going for $10/apiece on eBay, etc. etc.

However, I've noticed what seems to be some young (and new) blood on the MS campus that is definitely very interested in putting up a valiant fight within blogging and maps and other stuff. Virtual Earth, while coming second and with slightly older maps in some area than Google Maps, actually allows click zooming and scroll wheel zooming in FIREFOX! I heard Scoble during an interview specifically mention stuff like that and there is a much greater openness among their developers about the competition and increasing a userbase no matter what. BTW, Google Maps still don't zoom in Firefox using the scroll wheel, a real pain...and printing from Google Maps only seems to work if I use print screen.

Also, MS is saying "bring on the hackers" by offering $1000 in a contest to build the best plugin on top of Virtual Earth. Furthermore, MS is offering the Virtual Earth maps for free for commercial use. Furthermore, the virtual earth is integrated with the MySpace bloggin. Meanwhile, Google has tried to squash some commercial ideas built on their mapping, and there is no integration between their gmail, virtual earth, and blogging capabilities.

However, what I find cool is that there are some devs who are creating a bridge so that plugins can work on Google Maps AND Virtual Earth, which is awesome for increasing compatability between mapping services. Check out the video here (warning...requires WMP). Or you can read up about how to code it up here.

I think its also fair to bring to attention a post made by scoble [http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011] on channel9 publishing an internal ms letter [http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=112 438#112438] which lists some of the efforts of employees into the hurricane relief.

Ah, but MS go to incredible lengths to ensure that all the most popular 3rd party programs still work with each release of Windows. Even if those programs do crazy things:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/ 24/45779.aspx

"Why not just block the apps that rely on undocumented behavior?

Because every app that gets blocked is another reason for people not to upgrade to the next version of Windows"

I think Firefox should take a leaf out of MS's book and ensure that each release is compatible with the most popular extensions.

Sure, WinFS. But you're probably one of those mindless Slashdot reading linux zealots who thinks that Microsoft can never have anything good....

AtomChip(R) Quantum(R)
processor 6,80 Ghz, 1.00 TB of RAM

Brian Jones, is an Office PM at Microsoft. Here's his whining and lame attempt at lying^H^H^Hexplaining why their format is open and even "compatible" with the LGPL (only compatible in the way that a proprietary plugin could work with an LGPL-ed program). The comments on those two posts are pretty interesting though.

Brian Jones, is an Office PM at Microsoft. Here's his whining and lame attempt at lying^H^H^Hexplaining why their format is open and even "compatible" with the LGPL (only compatible in the way that a proprietary plugin could work with an LGPL-ed program). The comments on those two posts are pretty interesting though.

Brian Jones, is an Office PM at Microsoft. Here's his whining and lame attempt at lying^H^H^Hexplaining why their format is open and even "compatible" with the LGPL (only compatible in the way that a proprietary plugin could work with an LGPL-ed program). The comments on those two posts are pretty interesting though.

Yeah, the guy is an idiot. He should really talk to the development team since it does support user-developed schemas.

There's some info by a microsoft developer on it here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/

Why not just fucking retire? You're worth billions... so what personal feeling of satisfaction is to be had by conquering google? Even if you don't conquer google, you'll still be filthy fucking rich.

Perhaps this recent quote will shed some light on your question:

Q: What do you want to be remembered as?
A: Now you're asking deep, profound, questions. Mostly I want to be remembered by my three sons as a great dad and a great husband.

So there you have it.

Microsoft lacks class. It's visible in their products and apparently shows also in personal behavior of their leaders. It's interesting to watch Microsoft's Channel 9 to see this in their corporate culture. No wonder they get mad at Google.

Microsoft is already blowing their bloghorn about this as well:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/08/ 31/458879.aspx

(and that reactions has been resyndicated by the Scobelizer himself already:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/09/01.html#a 11011)

From the post:
"I'm a bit stunned by the overall proposal that was brought forward to the State though as it seems to be a bit short sighted and unnecessarily exclusive."

"unnecessarily exclusive"? Someone at Microsoft is claiming that someone else's decision to use an open alternative is unnecessarily exclusive? That does seem like grasping for the last straw doesn't it...

Check it out...note the comment that points to this EWeek article that says the license for the new formats is incompatible with the GPL...

Perhaps you weren't attempting to address that fact in particular, but it sure read like you were. Hence the ire.

I'd recommend reading Mike Stalls blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/jmstall)... he talks a ton about the debugging aspects in .Net. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some nugget in there somewhere that talks about why they decided to use an in-process debugging model instead of the more traditional debugging model.

My guess is that the reasoning involved is related to having helper threads running in a managed process (JIT compiler + optimizer, garbage collection, finalization, etc) that are hard to deal with out of process (especially when you toss breakpoints into the mix) and needing some sort of mechanism to correlate asmILsource.

Running a 64bit processor on a 32bit OS (forcing 32bit software) is as bad as running 32bit software on a 64bit OS

Yes, but that could be anything from "very bad indeed" to "it actually runs faster" depending on the hardware. On the Alpha trapping unaligned accesses will kill you, but on most RISCs you're usually better off in 32-bit mode if you don't need the larger address space.

The performance difference between running Windows 32bit and Windows 64bit with 64bit applications IS significant

You have no way of knowing that unless you've implemented both a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows using the same instruction set architecture, because Microsoft hasn't done that for you. Heck, they don't even give you the option of really using either 32 and 64 bit models using the AMD64 ISA. The only tests that have been done have been between the AMD64 ISA and the IA32 ISA on the AMD64 hardware, and the larger register file on AMD64 completely swamps any effects the word size might have on performance.

And, in fact, Windows in 64-bit mode is far from a pure 64-bit model. Most of the word sizes are the same as in 32-bit mode, and unless an application has been redesigned to use the new 64-bit types it's still effectively a 32-bit application. It has a larger address space, but I for one would be extremely reluctant to use it without auditing the whole program for pointer/index truncation bugs.

Read the discussion here...

Hello, I am a Troll!

Go and focus on Microsoft, at least they are open about stuff unlike Novell, Sun and RedHat et al:

http://www.channel9.msdn.com/

Or read what really matters when it comes to Flash:

http://www.kaorantin.net/

hippocrates strive on this site, really...

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1063 56 This interview talks about the difference between tagging and the WinFS system. Seems to boil down to a more structured relationship between tags, and the ability for multiple apps to use the same tags and tag relationships.

Take a look at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1063 56
for more information.

Basically, it sounds like the files are stored at the low level as ntfs files, with a relational database wrapping around them, allowing you to treat them as .NET objects.

Perhaps we should all learn Flash and start writing applications in it...

Er, no.

Perhaps we should be looking at real standards such as CSS, E4X and SVG. Furthermore, we need to lobby certain people to implement such standards in their browsers.