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This is a bribe because Microsoft EULA for Vista, Office 2007, SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 all have EULA terms that do not allow reporting test and benchmarking results and other restrictions on what you can say about the programs including review by Microsoft. So bloggers who use the machines, even if they give them back, and subject to these EULA restrictions. Hence if they need to support their arguments that Vista or Office 2007 does not measure up - they are precluded from doing so.

  So what message can the bloggers possibly legally write about - yep, nonsense or fairy tales. For more details on Eula restrictions see the note here:http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.p hp

This article should also have the following one linked.

http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php?p= 387

There is a cheeky review by Micosoft product manager Stefanie Kugelsee of OReilly's Running Linux at . It uses the bash script on both Linux and Windoze.

I've never understood why this is technically a difficult or impractical solution.

This is not a technical issue. I'll repeat that - it is not a technical issue.

Microsoft could indeed do that, but then, say, when you upgraded to XP, half your hardware would stop working*. Add-on hardware/peripherals are highly commoditised, which means they don't spend a whole bunch of time achieving quality bars for drivers. If it runs, they ship it (and sometimes if it doesn't).

Compatibility is one of the reasons Windows is so successful - just read a few of Raymond Chen's posts on the subject, for example. I mean, here's one where he's talking about supporting undocumented behaviour, and gives reasons why MS does this. And you want them to drop documented, correct behaviour? The Microsoft conspiracists would go mad, for starters.

Here's a choice quote from Raymond from that post:

"I recall a survey taken a few years ago by our Setup/Upgrade team of corporations using Windows. Pretty much every single one has at least one "deal-breaker" program, a program which Windows absolutely must support or they won't upgrade."

Of course, there are other people who believe that this pursuit of compatibility is wholly wrong. I'm not totally in either camp, but I do like it when I upgrade Windows and most stuff still works, so I'm more closely aligned with Raymond's views.

In lieue of a technical explanation, I've assumed that this could be considered good for microsoft: making hardware compatiability an expensive task is good for the market giant, I guess (as the present discussion indicates).

Given that MS want as much hardware as possible to work with their OS, why would this be a good thing? Are you saying they engineered this situation purely so that Apple wouldn't be able to enter the commodity PC OS market?

Like Napoleon, I prefer the explanation of incompetence. Most driver writers suck at their jobs (this is a generalisation of the fact that most people suck at their jobs). They have people shouting at them to finish the software so their employer can ship the hardware, and if they're one of the few who do bring up the subject of quality people look at them funny.

Why do we need a hundred modem drivers? Is there really no other way?

Modem drivers are possibly a bad example, because most modem drivers use the Windows 'Unimodem' driver, which is a standard modem driver that can be tweaked by a text/setup file to indicate which features they support, and where they deviate from the norm. So a lot of modem 'drivers' are really just a short text file. (That doesn't mean modem drivers can't be a pain - I once spent about a day trying to find a driver for the Diamond USB modem I wanted to give someone in my family to use for dial-up internet access - unfortunately, Diamond had sold their modem business off to someone else, who didn't care if you could get the drivers for old modems or not. It was quicker to throw the POS away in the end.)

* Leave it.

Jacques Surveyor summarizes Doug Bagley's benchmark opus to shed light on this important comparison:

"What emerges from examining the Bagley Benchmarks is that programming languages are breaking out into 3 speed tiers for raw computing power:"

1. Compiled native code languages C, C++, GNAT Ada95, OCaml are the fastest. No surprise there.

2. Byte code engines such as Java, Mono C# and Python average 7-12 times slower than the first tier...

3. Interpreters such as Ruby, JavaScript, PHP and Rexx average 100-200 times slower....

Yeah. These implementations speak:

XForms in Mozilla (with SVG integration)

WHATWG demos

And Jacques Surveyor speaks.

Where I work, we design our sites to work with IE; Not my decision

You see, if you actaully follow some _very_ simple standards, you will get sites that work in the major browsers. Don't do stupid things like use document.all, use document.getElementById instead. When you refer to a forms "controls" such as textarea and inputs, don't just use FormName.inputName, use docuemnt.FormName.inputName. It only takes one second to look at a site your building in IE and Firefox.

If I am doing a web app, I only use Firefox to test with. Firefox has tons of great extenstion to make it much easier to do web development. Once everything is working. I then go through the app with IE to make sure it works. If I find a problem with IE, I make changes as needed. However, 99.99% of the time if you follow the simple rules above, your web sites/apps will work in the major browsers.

I do GUI, server and web based apps. I put the same level of effort into web apps as my C/C#/Java GUI/Server apps. If I need some DHMTL type functionality, I spend an extra 5 minutes to write or find something that works with the major browser. For example, I wanted a popup calendar. There are tons of crappy IE only popup calendars on the web. However, I spent an extra 2 minutes on Google and found this one, Calendar Components III. I wanted a JavaScript based table sorter and found this one, SortTable. You just drop SortTable into a page and it does the rest and makes all your tables sortable in IE _and_ Firefox/Mozilla. The point of all of this is that it takes no extra time to do things right and not have silly IE only requirements. The only things that should be IE only is if you are for some reason using an ActiveX control.

I recommend giving this a try.

And since it's now open source, one can have it spit out XUL instead of SWF.

Or we could modify a more powerful web framework to use XUL.

His rant sounds like the cry of the luddite. "I don't want to use these fancy schmancy typewriters."

Well even everyone's fav from way back is trying. I've been looking at RIA's from Macromedia's FLEX to Laszlo's PLS and everything inbetween[1]. Things are a changing and Mr Luddite better change with it, or his job will be going to an Indian who isn't afraid of the new fangled technology.

[1] Some of my hardware's a bit behind, but some of the RIA's could be speeded up.

His rant sounds like the cry of the luddite. "I don't want to use these fancy schmancy typewriters."

Well even everyone's fav from way back is trying. I've been looking at RIA's from Macromedia's FLEX to Laszlo's PLS and everything inbetween[1]. Things are a changing and Mr Luddite better change with it, or his job will be going to an Indian who isn't afraid of the new fangled technology.

[1] Some of my hardware's a bit behind, but some of the RIA's could be speeded up.

Note it takes an AC to point out the obvious. The other thing about MS's RIA's is that they can share amoungst themselves. D&D from word to excel to exchange. Some of the other RIA's out there can do it but not all. There are new paradigms afoot, and the "/." crowd would do well to lose the "it's all been done before" blinders, and ask themselves what is different between now and then, and NO it's not just marketing (you cynics you), for that's what your replacement in India's going to be working on.

Nevertheless they are coming, and they do work. I've been trying them for the past two weeks. HTTP+JS+DOM do work, and properly implimented work well.

"Their OS is just not going to be ready before 2006, so it cannot stimulate a recovery. What they need is something to make it worth the wait. .Net is that, as it has very much promise and says something about how much total change will come with their next OS release. Also, .Net can compete with Java somewhat, helping them in a buzzword cattle."

Not everyone is of the opinion that one should go ahead with .NET development. Also there are other, developments happening as well that'll give MS a run for it's money, even with .NET.

"Their OS is just not going to be ready before 2006, so it cannot stimulate a recovery. What they need is something to make it worth the wait. .Net is that, as it has very much promise and says something about how much total change will come with their next OS release. Also, .Net can compete with Java somewhat, helping them in a buzzword cattle."

Not everyone is of the opinion that one should go ahead with .NET development. Also there are other, developments happening as well that'll give MS a run for it's money, even with .NET.

"Their OS is just not going to be ready before 2006, so it cannot stimulate a recovery. What they need is something to make it worth the wait. .Net is that, as it has very much promise and says something about how much total change will come with their next OS release. Also, .Net can compete with Java somewhat, helping them in a buzzword cattle."

Not everyone is of the opinion that one should go ahead with .NET development. Also there are other, developments happening as well that'll give MS a run for it's money, even with .NET.

I've posted elsewere about this, but RIA's is what it's about. Macromedia's FLEX is one implimentation. There are others. Even Adobe is putting in their two cents. Interoperability is the one capability RIA's need. The ability for Excel and Word to communicate is important. Will these RIA's talk to each other, or be islands into themselves?

Well the author did say a stand alone calendar app. So why not get a PDA?

Or I guess he could write his own. There's certainly enough tech out there.