Slashdot Mirror

Probably in Windows, which has had full screen apps for the past 17 years or so, if you just start at Win95, or do you mean the Windows app store http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/ which has been around since 2003?

I love my iPhone and Mac, but neither of these two things did Apple invent, Microsoft has been doing BOTH of them before Apple even considered thinking about it.

Microsoft would disagree with your assessment. The lack of a single place to find/buy/install apps was a huge failure in the Microsoft ecosystem. One they've identified and attempted to remedy. If you think Microsoft gained a dominate market position on the desktop because of the ease of finding and installing apps you might want to brush up on your history.

And the Win 7 Marketplace is where ?

Here.

Yes, that is a Microsoft site. No, it doesn't sell anything other than Microsoft products.

It looks like Palm seriously needs to find some old timer from the Days of IIIc and give him a blank cheque just to tell them what they have forgotten about the business of making a platform popular.

All this nonsense about a central app store (which was IIRC started by no other than Apple) needs to stop and stop soon because it's an unprecedented level of lock-in. Imagine if Microsoft announced every Application, every .EXE file running on Windows 7 needs to be downloaded from Microsoft Store? (which, by the way, they look like they've already preparing to do something like that soon). At least Google had the decency to say that while they would prefer the apps go through their store, they won't go medieval on the developers and users who bypass it.

Seriously, when in the history of computing (except in game consoles - which is just another reason to avoid them) has a vendor of generic computers said that you absolutely must not install any software but the ones blessed by the said vendor? See IBM, 1981. and what came from the PC.

Lindows Marketplace?

Well let's see:
You could program your own...nothing is stopping you. If people really wanted this they would build it, just like Linux.
Oh wait, they did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_manager#Microsoft_Windows
Also, are you familiar with this? http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/
Sure it takes a few clicks to get a program, but it supports programmers getting paid for their work, which is a feature I have never heard of getting included in any Linux package manager.
Also, we have Steam for games...quite a nice package manager.

Well, you can buy an upgrade from MS Office to WordPerfect Office on Microsoft's store... so what's your point again?

We can't quite go so far as to actually get OpenOffice from them, but as you can see they don't necessarily feel they need to squash competition.

It's true.

Even the most expensive retail version of Windows for PCs (Vista Ultimate) at non-upgrade pricing is at most $320 (directly from Microsoft) and available for as low as $220. The retail version of Vista Home Premium (non-upgrade) is $200-$260. Upgrade and OEM versions are even cheaper.

Microsoft Word 2007 is at most $230 (retail, non-upgrade) or $110 (upgrade) for non-volume business users ($193 and $90 at Amazon). Home users (up to three per household) can get Office 2007 Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) for at most $150 ($95 at Amazon).

I agree that many people will be just fine with cheaper (or free) alternatives for their OS and word processor, but exaggerating and bullshitting like O'Reilly or Michael Moore doesn't help make the point.

It's true.

Even the most expensive retail version of Windows for PCs (Vista Ultimate) at non-upgrade pricing is at most $320 (directly from Microsoft) and available for as low as $220. The retail version of Vista Home Premium (non-upgrade) is $200-$260. Upgrade and OEM versions are even cheaper.

Microsoft Word 2007 is at most $230 (retail, non-upgrade) or $110 (upgrade) for non-volume business users ($193 and $90 at Amazon). Home users (up to three per household) can get Office 2007 Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) for at most $150 ($95 at Amazon).

I agree that many people will be just fine with cheaper (or free) alternatives for their OS and word processor, but exaggerating and bullshitting like O'Reilly or Michael Moore doesn't help make the point.

It's true.

Even the most expensive retail version of Windows for PCs (Vista Ultimate) at non-upgrade pricing is at most $320 (directly from Microsoft) and available for as low as $220. The retail version of Vista Home Premium (non-upgrade) is $200-$260. Upgrade and OEM versions are even cheaper.

Microsoft Word 2007 is at most $230 (retail, non-upgrade) or $110 (upgrade) for non-volume business users ($193 and $90 at Amazon). Home users (up to three per household) can get Office 2007 Home & Student (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) for at most $150 ($95 at Amazon).

I agree that many people will be just fine with cheaper (or free) alternatives for their OS and word processor, but exaggerating and bullshitting like O'Reilly or Michael Moore doesn't help make the point.

Why is it that a "standards-based" browser that passes the Acid2 (like IE8) still doesn't render certain pages correctly, and others (like Opera, Firefox 3 Beta, etc.) do?

try opening this link in IE8, then in another standards complaint browser. notice that IE8 doesn't display it right.
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/content.aspx?ctId=391

weird, huh?

Microsoft argues that the multiple versions will help it sell more upgrade copies of Vista, rather than relying quite so heavily on bundling with new PC sales. Details differ between markets, but the main targets for discounts are Home Premium (which could be read as a tacit admission that Home Basic is now a dead duck at retail) and Ultimate (the one Microsoft can't be bothered producing Ultimate Extras for).

And how many folks looked at this vague chart and thought well, I need to view photos which the chart says I can't with Home Basic and I want to protect hardware which I need the "Ultimate". I don't have the money for it so screw it.

I thought the same thing. That the home basic can't burn CDs, DVDs or view movies and pictures. But hey, I guess I'm stupid for not assuming that Windows can't do those things on all releases. (Like a few of you did when Vista first came out and I brought up this point. I wrote it off to Microsoft employees trolling this site.)

"If not for MS, somebody else would be making cheap, consumer-grade software "

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=3268636&WT.mc_id=0107_54

In my world, $260 for an operating system is not cheap. In the Macintosh world, for $130 you get the same thing, and for $200 you can install it on every computer in your family (within reason). In the Linux world, that's pretty expensive.

At one time, MS software was cheap, but once they wiped out all the competition, the price rose dramatically. I used to be able to get upgrades to MS Office for $130. I used to be able to get Windows for $79. Microsoft software is now expensive, and now I find out that the damned thing will upgrade itself even when I tell it not to. What else is MS not telling me?

Microsoft will no longer get money from me. Maybe from some other person is not well informed, but I can't see how anybody would voluntarily submit to this behavior.

Here's how it could work: Each package contains a list of patents and expiry dates, one list for each country. When the user tries to install a patented package from a repository, the package manager geolocates the user's IP address to find a country and places the the package on a queue to install. The PC synchronizes with an NTP server once a week. After each synchronization, the package manager wakes up, checks the queue, and installs those packages whose PatentExpiry date for your country is before the current date. At any point, the user can open the package manager and see the patent numbers that are blocking installation of any given package. Sure, this would take several years to install packages that rely on recently invented process, but it's the only way to circumvent royalty requirements in a free software distribution.

Or you could just use Linspire's CNR and pay for your proprietary software.

why mask an IE7? I have IE7 w/ IE7 pro, Firefox 2.0.0.6 w/ABP, Opera 9.23 w/url filter turn off gif, frames and iframes and viola most of the ads are gone.

Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending

Ok, let's assume for a second that this is true. I know, I know, it's likely very much false, but let's humor them on this point for a second. So there are relatively very few FireFox users. This means that they can't be using that much of the site's bandwidth. (Unless there's some Bandwidth Stealer extension I'm not aware of.) Since those of us with FireFox are few in number and using little bandwidth compared to those vast arrays of IE users, we represent a small cost to them. Right?

therefore blocking FireFox seems to have only minimal financial drawbacks

Ok, I'll accept this. This flows from the above assumptions. If you're not getting many orders from a source, then blocking that source won't result in much of a financial loss. Still, with the small number of FireFox users out there, FireFox user must equate to a small bandwidth cost.

whereas ending resource theft has tremendous financial rewards for honest, hard-working website owners and developers

Wait. So FireFox users both are small in number, yet large in bandwidth hit. Apparently, all we do all day is find sites like his and load them over and over to steal his bandwidth.

Someone should tell him that there are Ad Blocking tools that are available for IE also ( http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/results.aspx?tex t=ad%20blocker&bcatid=834&&order=A ). Maybe he should block IE as well.

But this thing doesn't feel safe.

Or, more simply, some third-party vendor thought it would be funny to list it. I doubt it was a Microsoft employee.

From the Windows Marketplace FAQs:

"How does Windows Marketplace determine product and reseller selection?

Products and reseller data are provided by reputable third-party suppliers. Windows Marketplace does not favor products or reseller selection in any way. Windows Marketplace lists -- but doesn't provide preferential treatment - to Microsoft products."

Compare the current page with the cache.
Looks like they took the entire "Driver Downloads" category, the one that Ubuntu was in, down.
Also, Notice what category Download.com has Ubuntu under. BIOS & System Updates, same as the Microsoft page. So I'd wager that Microsoft was using a script to aggregate download links rather than do them by hand.
So, no joke by a Microsoft employee or anything like that.

There's still a ton of Linux and Linux-related products on Windows Marketplace:

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/results.aspx?tex t=linux&tabid=1

This site is just Microsoft aggregating listings from other web sites, such as CNET. A typical brand exploitation exercise, which has essentially nothing to do with the product the product the brand ("Windows" in this case) originally applied to. Ironic, but no relevance to the climate of Hell.

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/showcase.aspx?ct Id=17 So, perhaps story should be that a *ux fan got past the products posting filter.

Have you seen Windows Marketplace ? There are some old games on there ...

Windows does have a central repository of software and hardware that is availble for it. It's not 100% inclusive of course because the sheer volume would be astounding. It does however list a fairly large portion of the more mainstream software that people might want to get their hands on.

It's called the Windows Catalog and there is a link to it in the Start Menu under All Programs right there next to the link to Windows Update.

If memory serves correctly it has been there since the first version of Windows XP.

the download page at microsoft indicates that, while the license type is "free", it as a limitation of 45 days!

Miscellaneous
Number of Downloads 89,052
Uninstaller Included? Yes
License Type Free
Limitations 45-day trial

What REALLY needs to happen is that third-party developers who write these steaming pile of shit programs need to be forced to use limited user mode.

My first thought was that they need to add it to their program, like Apple's Logo Program -- if your app doesn't run without admin rights, you don't get to show the Apple/Windows logo.

Turns out, this is already part of the Windows program. If something has a Designed for Windows XP logo, it can be run without admin rights. If you find a webpage that cares about such things, you'll note that this logo is absent from ItsDeductible.

I guess the "Designed for Windows XP" logo just isn't that valuable to people. Well, I actually knew that years ago, when I tried to install a wifi card and had to skip through dialogs saying Microsoft didn't approve of me using hardware that's too new. Yeah, like I'm going to go without wifi for 6 months while they go through the approval process.

Did I have a point? Uh ... only buy Windows software that was "Designed for Windows XP". Unless the program you want isn't. Whatever.

What REALLY needs to happen is that third-party developers who write these steaming pile of shit programs need to be forced to use limited user mode.

My first thought was that they need to add it to their program, like Apple's Logo Program -- if your app doesn't run without admin rights, you don't get to show the Apple/Windows logo.

Turns out, this is already part of the Windows program. If something has a Designed for Windows XP logo, it can be run without admin rights. If you find a webpage that cares about such things, you'll note that this logo is absent from ItsDeductible.

I guess the "Designed for Windows XP" logo just isn't that valuable to people. Well, I actually knew that years ago, when I tried to install a wifi card and had to skip through dialogs saying Microsoft didn't approve of me using hardware that's too new. Yeah, like I'm going to go without wifi for 6 months while they go through the approval process.

Did I have a point? Uh ... only buy Windows software that was "Designed for Windows XP". Unless the program you want isn't. Whatever.

Like you, I couldn't care less as to the choice of someone's operating system, but the argument about the price of OSX does bother me. Directly from Apple, OSX Tiger is $129 USD. Directly from MS, XP Pro w/SP2 is $204 USD, XP Home is $141 USD.

Sources for each:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/results.aspx?tex t=windows&av=&clickedsearch=1&=Go

There's tons of addons for IE. Go here. Hell with addons, there's been tab browsing in IE since 97.

http://windowsmarketplace.com/content.aspx?ctId=63

Actually, this is the one condition that they "should" already be compliant with. Windows XP has always included a link in the Start Menu to "Windows Marketplace" where competitors list their products. I can go there and find WinAmp, Real Player, iTunes, QuickTime, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo, Trillian, Jabber clients, GAIM, the Sun JRE, OpenOffice.org and AbiWord, all with links directly to a download site.

Check it: http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/prices.aspx?item Id=1108779&stext=openoffice

Honestly, I think the only way Microsoft could really take this further is to install a Windows client to search Windows Marketplace. They really cannot bundle those applications without becoming liable for them, and that's really the function of the OEMs. Why aren't Korean OEMs installing alternatives? MS is trying to build a platform of expected features so that people don't have to reinvent 800 different wheels. Media services and messenging services are expected now.

Learn a little bit about MCE machines before running them down. There are a wide range of component shaped computers available.

I got an easier fix for you and 100% reliable.

Fast maximum security against rootkits/malware/spam!

give it a try, You will se it is quite useful!
(oh! and on top of that it tends to increase your productivity!)

Most of the comments are on favour of FireFox...

regards

The Windows Market Place even has an article on Firefox. If IE was a woman, she'd be calling Firefox a slut for sure.