Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the submitted-more-times-than-bill-gates-mugshot dept.
Meenky writes: "I heard on NPR that Microsoft announced their newest product, .net. This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer. "
Re:...paving the way to pay-per-use...
by
Reality+Master+101
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· Score: 5
then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened,
I don't know why everyone is so automatically against this. It boils down to economics. It's not going to be a $1/doc. What if it was a penny per doc, and you had access to every application in the entire industry? I think that would be mighty cool.
For example, I don't have a copy of Visio, but there have been times that I would really have liked to have access to it. But it's never been worth going out and buying it [and there is nothing like Visio in the OSS world, but that's another story]. If I could pay a penny on an as-need basis, it would make great economic sense.
Again, it all boils down to the cost. If the cost is low enough, it makes a lot of sense.
--
-- Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Just out of (morbid) curiosity, I watched Gates' presentation about this.net thing... Somewhat amusing. A sampling of Bill Gates' claims:
Here's a good one... "Passwords are the weak link in today's networks." No, I think I'd disagree - the weak link is lousy security on systems such as *cough* Windows.
Unintentional slip? Gates said that information sharing is good. Hmm...
The.net servers will be running Windows 2000, which has apparently set "world-setting benchmarks" for speed and reliability. I was under the impression that benchmarks showed that Win2K is slower than even WinNT.
The "core" of.net is XML. It was not explained why this is good, or how this particular brand of text formatting (or "protocol", as Gates insists on calling it) will be used.
Gates repeatedly alluded to "per-minute charges" for the required broadband access. If this.net thing flies and people actually use it, then MS is set to suck a LOT of money from hapless consumers.
Apparently, the PC "required" a "universal platform" (line Windows) in order for applications to be created. Please. I suppose that Gates is conveniently forgetting the many problems and incompatibilies which his "common platform" has caused.
For those who are interested, technology "highlights" include:
"Smartlinks" - it looks like Microsoft's.net client will automatically scan and highlight stuff for its internal list of keywords, and then place a "customized menu" associated with those keywords. Think MS Word's annoying autocorrect misfeature on steroids.
A command line! It seems the people at MS have discovered that command lines are actually useful! Unfortunately, then they proceeded to butcher the concept by adding "natural language" queries. This utterly reeks of DWIM (Do What I Mean) and we all know the problems with that. Case in point: the demonstrator entered a typo and that screwed up the demonstration script, forcing him to restrat the query demonstration.
MS, partnered with Samsung, is developing what looks like a cross between a cell phone and a PalmPilot, which runs Internet Explorer.
A "tablet PC" (and extra-large PalmPilot style device) which runs WIndows 2000 and is meant to function as an "electronic book" onto which you can download books from the net. Warning! Warning! They advertise one-click buying though the tablet PC and thus the.net sevice; I guess MS expects up to trust it with our credit card numbers too...
A pretty hokey handwriting recognition system. What was not explained is how or why MS expects their system to work better than anything else out there.
Re:XML is <just>tags</just>
by
Spoing
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· Score: 5
"People, XML is just a syntax. Unless the DTDs and schemas they use for.NET are fully documented, only Microsoft's own.NET-enabled products will be able to anything useful with the data."
Yeah, and the XML tags will all end up looking like this;
Whatever. In that case, they've re-implemented either
That stupid little "Briefcase" feature that everyone deletes
Palm HotSync
CVS
on a larger scale. This is not new tech, except that they're possibly making it more popular among the end-user crowd.
Regarding the voice recognition, etc., I'll believe it when you can get it at Best Buy.
Regarding the community envy, I think you've got that backwards on this one. MS ridiculed the NC concept (which is a superset of this "new invention"), and now they're touting it as the Next Great Thing.
-- Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Gee, so I can look forward to the glorious promise of my PIII 1Ghz Screamin' Expensive Super-Charged Tower Of Power From Hell becoming...uhmm..a dumb terminal?
Joy!
Not.
Re:...paving the way to pay-per-use...
by
Masem
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· Score: 3
My impression is that not only will there be a pay per use, but you'll probably have to buy at a flat fee (though highly reduced from the current software price) some license, then get the per use charge on top of that. I can't see them not having some 'barrier' to every app, as those apps that have limited use (visio, for example, I've only used twice ever, and most of what I can do in that can be done in Word art, abet not as easily) will not earn them the same fees as those that are ubiquitious in most places.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Yeah, you would think so. But companies do funny things.
The last place I worked, they were leasing Dell desktops. By the time the machines had reached the end of their useful life, they had been paid for many times over. It would have been far, far cheaper to just buy them up front. And everyone knew it!
But due to "cash flow" and other accounting BS, they were leased anyway.
So there is no _economic_ reason that Microsoft could not successfully lease software. Companies will do it to avoid the budget hit of purchasing 1000 copies of Office 2000 at the same time. Remember, you will have to upgrade everyone at once, or document version incompatibility issues will kill you.
Or... companies will say "fsck this" and switch to free software. Linux should be pretty good for desktop machines by the end of the year, what with Mozilla, the new Gnome, new KDE, new office apps, the 2.4 kernel, and XFree86 4.0.
(And don't bother to tell me it's good now... yes, I run it now, but I wouldn't make my parents use it just yet. This Christmas I will probably switch them over.)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
-- Torrey Hoffman (Azog) "HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Re:XML == Completely OverHyped
by
Anm
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· Score: 3
XML is better than a standard delimited text file for several reasons:
It includes standard markup to reference sub file information that is not line/character dependant through id attributes.
It is character set independent, providing mappings from almost all major character sets to Unicode.
It defines standard ways of spanning documents across files through external entities. This alos allows a degree of reuse.
Internal entities allow blocks of text to be referenced/'instantiated' through the document, not unlike a C #define statement. Good for details tha might change often.
DSSSL and XSLT stylesheets provide a standard means of converting file formats and exposing particular details of the data.
Unfortunately, it fell short of it's biggest potential achievement: to allow the layering of information from multiple sources. While XML Namespace take care of naming conflicts, they provide NO guidelines on how and where to use them. As such, there is no proper way to validate a document under more than one DTD. And because of that, we are now seeing standards that are definitively not validatable under certain DTDs. XML should have stuck with SGML styled architectures, despite how complicated they are to implement.
As for the speed issue, XML should have been written with a parallel binary format in mind.
"It's all about the client, st*pid"
by
Loge
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· Score: 5
Before it can do that, people need to decide on schemas which explain how to structure a given form of data. Yeah, like that'll happen any time soon.
Exactly, and with this announcement, Microsoft is doing just that - stepping up to the bar and stating that it will define a broad set of schemas applying to both web services and clients. Microsoft is essentially trying to impose a defacto standard on how XML information will be passed around the web, using the strength of its desktop position as the lever.
Indeed, the user interface part of this announcement is particularly intriguing. As you say: And they create a special car browser to display the number of cupholders in their cars This is exactly what the Microsoft.NET Universal Canvas is all about. It provides an XML compound information architecture that integrates browsing, communications, and document authoring into a single, unified environment that will be optimized to work with all the new XML-based services Microsoft is defining.
Interestingly, Windows itself winds up playing a peripheral role in this scheme. As Microsoft's white paper points out, the Windows OS will be renamed Windows.NET and offered as a service on a subscription basis, just like MSN. Since Windows will no longer technically be a "product", it makes you wonder whether Microsoft developed this architecture in an effort to work around the potential fall-out from the anti-trust ruling.
After reading the white papers, and all of the marketing materials, I've come to this conculsion..
Apperently, now that Microsoft has been judged a monopoly, they've decided this:
"Welp, they found us out. We might as well go whole hog now".
Everything in this Microsoft.NET platform, which they push as being 'The next generation of the Internet' is so based on Microsoft run service it isn't even funny. They name dropped every service they offer, from extending email off of 'Hotmail', to instant messaging based on MSIM.
In some ways, they're getting better, using open protocols such as SOAP, and using storage, etc, using XML. In other ways, the beast is getting worse..
-- -- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
In addition to voice control -- a staple of Microsoft videos for almost a decade -- the new software would offer users new ways to control use of their personal information and a new ``type-in bar,'' a sort of natural- language command line where users could issue instructions to their machines. If the computer needed clarification or additional information, it would talk back, out loud, in a synthesized human voice.
A command line. Wow. With a screen reader! Funny, a friend of mine (who happens to be blind) had something like this years ago...it's called using a DOS app with a screen reader.
Another feature, called Smart Tags, would enable the PC to recognize specific types of information, such as dates and personal and company names, and give them appropriate special treatment.
News flash: Microsoft invents metadata!
.NET programs would also make it easier for users to combine different types of data, including video, into their documents -- another long-promised capability that Microsoft has now dubbed Universal Canvas.
Anyone here remember Apple's OpenDoc? Remember how well it was received? Embeddable content like graphics files is okay, but who in hell needs to embed movies or sounds in their word processor documents? This will fall flat on its @$$.
Frankly, the only new part of this whole thing is the fact that they'll be cramming all of this into a few XML formats. Can you imagine the complexity required of the DTDs for this? Yikes!
Uh, and you think Microsoft employees can't log into any system and have full access to their own email etc?
I really have to wonder... Do they? Email, possibly, but given the PC-centric setup of every other office I've ever seen running Microsoft's products I really have to wonder whether or not someone in Redmond can sit down and be productive on any system on campus.
My current employer is a Microsoft shop. Most of us who have used more than one machine ended up turning off roaming profiles because they got completely hosed. (Try logging in at a desktop and a laptop simultaneously and watch that profile go south!) Even when you can login to another machine, what good does it do you if all your tools are on the local harddrive on your primary machine? If all the machines in the building are set up with the same set of apps, no problem. Otherwise you're in deep doo-doo. Okay, MS-Office is probably installed everywhere. You can access your email and Word docs. What about anything else? Can I sit down at an ME's desk and compile code? Can an ME sit down at my desk and fire up AutoCAD? No way!
Contrast this to a previous employer which was a Sun shop. Everything was server-centric just an X-Terminal on your desk. It does display only, with all your data stored in a central location. All your data. Not to mention all your apps. Even in the pre-X-Terminal days when we were using Sun3s all the data and major apps were stored centrally. The local machine just held the standard SunOS image, and every machine was set up identically. You really could login on any machine in the building and do everything you could do at your own desk.
And, somehow, the UI was faster even piping the display across the network than Windows is locally. Go figure.
-- Chelloveck I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Re:XML == Completely OverHyped
by
chickenbird
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· Score: 3
People are advocating XML is this great new technology for universal data exchange. Well, it's NOT... no more than a standard text file is. Both parties still have to agree and understand the format and structure of the data before it becomes useful, so that's definitely not a progression over any existing technology.
Of course it is not necessarily a technology for universal data exchange (although, HTML, despite its rather horrible and semantically-devoid implementation of SGML/XML, has to some extent shown that it is), but rather a technology for domain-specific data exchange. There there are many domains in which people HAVE already agreed on a common set of descriptive elements for their given domain. Take DTDs such as the TEI, APA, DocBook, or any of the military's MIL/IETM DTDs, not to mention the DTDs used by the IRS, Sun Microsystems, the DOE, the Library of Congress, and the ATA, etc. etc. etc. Having worked with SGML (XML is merely SGML with a little less clutter) for more than ten years now, I can tell you that it is very useful.
Carole_Mah@brown.edu Senior Programmer/Analyst Brown University Scholarly Technology Group
Re:So, MS is getting a trademark on ".net"
by
kevin+lyda
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· Score: 3
"just like they switched to appending the year to the name of the software after Windows 95 came out."
"...integrates with windows...so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer."
Any computer running Windows, anyway. Oh and you have to install our software.
Prediction #1: We will never hear about this again. Prediction #2 (somewhat related to #1): ASP's are never going to take off in a big way, at least not for "desktop" software. With the possible exception of email service (for small businesses), ASP's are going to be the 2001 equivalent of the 1996-7 "push technology". --
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Gates repeatedly alluded to "per-minute charges" for the required broadband access. If this.net thing flies and people actually use it, then MS is set to suck a LOT of money from hapless consumers.
Yep. Microsoft has been fascinated for years with the idea of a per-use licensing scheme, but they couldn't find a way to make it work technically. Any PC can be hacked.
But what if part of the app is sitting on an server in Redmond? The new Office 2003 will have the GUI and some local editing logic on the PC. Global stuff like find-and-replace get executed on the Redmond server.
This is an incredibly beautiful idea (from Microsoft's standpoint). It provides total control as well as absolute protection from piracy. They don't even need to worry about backward compatibility. Just put up the new version while updating the Word documents in Redmond to the new format.
The only danger is somebody creating their own server farm that is compatible with the PC front-end (basically replacing the Redmond side). That can easily be delt with by using strong asymmetric encryption (a la Authenticode) so the front-end demands the server present the proper Microsoft-signed digital certificate. And if the front-end is hacked around this, there are always the lawyers to fall back on.
This is really beautiful. They can finesse the whole anti-trust case. They can cheerfully publish the Win32 API and the OS source code for us lamers while they shove all of the new technology onto untouchable servers.
Ummm, profiles barely work now...
by
alexhmit01
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· Score: 4
Local profiles become corrupted all the time. Roaming profiles get screwy between different versions (NT 3.51 -> 4.0 -> 5.0/2K; Windows 95 - 98). Over a 10 Megabit connection, they are slow to setup if that machine wasn't the last one you used. Over a DSL connection (a client is using DSLs and a private network to run a cheap Wan...), it is unbearably slow, and thats a dedicated DSL for that computer.
This sounds like a horrible idea. If it is "because we can" that's pretty cool, just for the neato factor (although possible now with LMHOSTS files), but as a real approach to computing... right... Unless they are planning to REALLY strip down what goes in a profile (a good idea) and try to make the concept work... but even then, the point seems dubious.
XML == Completely OverHyped
by
John_Booty
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· Score: 5
This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer. "
I've been working with XML for about six months now. I would have to say it's one of the stupidest bizzword-fads I've ever seen
XML is basically a big ol' delimited text file. The only things separating it from a 30-year old text file is the fact that it's hierarchical and the fact that there are parsers that let you navigate the tree structure easily.
People are advocating XML is this great new technology for universal data exchange. Well, it's NOT... no more than a standard text file is. Both parties still have to agree and understand the format and structure of the data before it becomes useful, so that's definitely not a progression over any existing technology. Also, XML is not fast... nor was it designed to be.
Re:XML == Completely OverHyped
by
TummyX
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· Score: 5
XML is basically a big ol' delimited text file. The only things separating it from a 30-year old text file is the fact that it's hierarchical and the fact that there are parsers that let you navigate the tree structure easily.
C is basically a big ol' delimitated text file. The only things seperating it from a 60-year assembly program is the fact that it's expressive, easier to learn and there are compilers that let you write programs faster.
Re:XML == Completely OverHyped
by
dubl-u
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· Score: 4
XML is basically a big ol' delimited text file. The only things separating it from a 30-year old text file is the fact that it's hierarchical and the fact that there are parsers that let you navigate the tree structure easily.
The fact that it's parseable with a generic parser makes all the difference in the world.
I don't know how many times I've had to implement parsers for weird-ass, half-baked, undocumented file formats apparently written by chimpanzees. (For example, RTF.) And then once I've figured out the features, I have to run about a zillion tests to make sure I'm emulating the right bugs, too. And of course, once somebody gets the idea to change the file format, then I need to do it all over again.
With XML, this problem goes away. I can focus on the data, not the representation. That's a big win!
A good comparision is programming a garbage-collected language versus one where you have to do memory management yourself. Sure, I can write C code that is more hardware-efficient than the same stuff written in Perl (or Java). But writing the Perl is faster (and the Java's more maintainable) because I can focus on higher-level issues than pointer arithmetic. I'm generally willing to burn CPU cycles to free up my cycles. That's what computers are for.
XML gives the same boost to data exchange between loosely coupled systems. It surely uses more disk space and processing time. But so what? Thanks to Moore's law, hardware doubles in capacity every 18 months. Programmers, sadly, don't. Use this fact to your advantage!
Re:XML == Completely OverHyped
by
Andrew+Cady
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· Score: 3
Actually C is a programming language, that can be compiled - transformed into a more useful format for computers.
XML is a markup language that can be parsed - transformed into a more useful format for developers.
Except that XML is *not* a markup language, it's a language for *writing* markup languages (a meta-markup language). I think that was the user's point. XML is not a common data format any more than ASCII is; it is the DTD's for XML document types (and likewise, the ISO C standard for ASCII.c files) that must provide the universal data standards. XML itself does not do this.
Gee, Sun has been able to do this for years! Sun employees can log into any system in any office, and have full access to any of their information. Email, calendaring, files, etc. In fact, I do believe that it where the original name of "iPlanet" came from...
Re:XML is <just>tags</just>
by
ethereal
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· Score: 3
Shouldn't there be a ^M at the end? Also, all the quotes will be replaced with '?'
[grumbles] lousy cross-campus NT development environment...
People, XML is just a syntax. Unless the DTDs and schemas they use for.NET are fully documented, only Microsoft's own.NET-enabled products will be able to anything useful with the data.
I don't know why the XML angle is being pushed so much; this could all be done with any structured data format, be it text or binary.
-- "Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Yes its just a syntax. But its an accessible syntax.
What does this mean? It means developer freedom. It means that even if MS decides that they're going to customise SOAP and make their own proprietary SOAP based format (which they've almost done already with their enveloping format), there's not a damn thing they can do to stop me using Perl's XML::Parser to create an MSSOAP service or client. And it won't be hard like sniffing network packets to try and reverse engineer samba. I'll just look at the structure and bam! Instant reverse engineering.
Why should this matter? Because there are still a lot of Win boxes out there, and if my Unix skills allow me to interoperate with those boxes then all the better.
And XML is slow. Big deal - this is MS talking about integrating it, not Linus. So we get our nice zippy Linux boxes talking away to slow, bogged down in XML parsing, Windows boxes. Sounds pretty good to me actually!
I think MS are way off the mark here, for what its worth. XML is a great interchange format (slashdot.xml is much better than the old ultramode text format, for example), and its pretty darn useful for doing web and other documentation work (content/design separation and all that), but as a low level network service or IIOP replacement? No thanks, Bill.
Don't look now, it is called SOAP
by
tilly
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· Score: 3
Hey! Let us allow any application here talk to any server in the world by tunnelling a protocol on top of http! And if they care about their privacy, make that https!
And so a generation of application designers make mistakes, and firewalls need to learn to deal with SOAP. Except the pesky https encoded ones, which you cannot peek inside. So ban those.
Care to take bets on whether the boys from Redmond will have something critical (like say the verification that your usage period has not expired) that absolutely must go over https?
Cheers, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
...paving the way to pay-per-use...
by
Masem
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· Score: 5
Maybe, maaaaybe sometime in the future, when T1 lines are standard and cheaply available in all homes and businesses, will networked apps be reality. There's also matters of security and convinence (can you get to the networked Word if you are at 32000 ft from LA to Tokyo?)
IMO, the primary reason MS wants to go this way is that with net connections, you *can* count the number of times certain apps have been open, send that info securely back to MS, and MS can then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened, or $10 per Windows restart. Pay-per-use has been in the works for a good year or so by more than just Microsoft (RIAA wants that too), and anything that depends on a net connection to work is going to be frowned upon until realistic pricing models and cheap fast net connections are in place.
--
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Your one-stop law enforcement shop!
by
Archeopteryx
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· Score: 3
Wow! This is a great idea!::sarcasm mode::
If I were in law enforcement this product would make me cum in my drawers! One place where all of the essential data exist for tracking people, money, communications, and associations. Now, all we need is one "easy" federal judge, and the keys to the kingdom are in hand!
This is almost too much like the plot of that really awful film "The Net".
Beware!
-- Dog is my co-pilot.
you've gotta give it to MS...
by
unbrokenlamb
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· Score: 5
They've got a flair for naming things. ".NET" sounds WAAAAAAAY better than "mainframe".
As part of this announcement, M$ also announced that their Office products would be provided on a "subscription" basis. This could be unbelieveably bad - if you fail to pay your subscription fees, you could find yourself locked out of your own documents. No corporation will be willing to put itself in the position of being held hostage to Redmond.
...phil
--
...phil "For a list of the ways which
technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press
3."
"No corporation will be willing to put itself in the position of being held hostage to Redmond."
Have you see the number of places that will fork out thousands for this very pleasure, running MS Exchange and not using backups or any kind of RAID setup? A lot of managers honestly don't have a clue, which is why the marketters from MS can manipulate them so easily. ---
-- -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There's some sense in this...
by
teraflop+user
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· Score: 3
I've had a university account for the last decade, and I use it for exaclty this purpose. Initially it just gave me a constant email address, but I've gradually moved to keeping more and more useful information in a private directory. This includes addresses and phone numbers, any projects I'm working on, data for tax returns and so on.
The benefits are enormous, especially if you are reasonably mobile, and even more so if you live in more than one country.
But I can only do it because I have a university account. I could just about get by using the personal webspace provided on an ISP account, but using encryption, grep,.forward and other tools would be much more difficult.
If Microsoft are looking to offer this service then I think they are making a sensible move. It would make more sense for ISP's to put together an appropriate service, but despite fierce competition non-one seems to be doing so.
Maybe an Apache module would kick some ISPs into action? Maybe Microsoft will catalyse the creation of such a tool.
They don't even need to get cracked. Think dining philosophers and how many ways are there to screw up cooperating asynchronous processes.Think of NT Server with everything loaded on. Now scale it an order of magnitude or so.Think of using MSN to actually do work. This sounds like a bigger pie in the sky than the worst of the claims for Artificial Intelligence.
Security will be an issue
by
anticypher
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· Score: 5
From the people who brought us Outlook, with its multi-billion dollar damages due to lack of security, now bring us a central place to store everyone's files.
Expect the word "hacker" to take another tarnishing when.net gets cracked.
It doesn't matter how many bits of encryption they use, when the average windoze (l)user's password is their first name. So there will be many cracks of this system, and some of them will be embarassing.
And what happens if some (l)user decides to use this at work, so they can take their work home with them. Now a company's secrets are stored on a M$ server, where just about any one can peruse them. M$ will claim somewhere in the fine print they must review all content on a regular basis to prevent illegal material from being stored, and if they just happen to see a competitor's secrets, we can trust them to not take advantage of it.
Now corporate firewalls will have to block access to this site, as with the other new net services offering the same thing. I doubt.net will ever become very successful unless M$ uses its monopoly power to force everyone to use their servers.
the AC
-- Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
.net uses SOAP - basically RPC/DCOM over HTTP! Yuk
by
cowbutt
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· Score: 5
See what Bruce Schneier says in his latest Crypto-Gram.
Just when you wondered 'what could they possible come up with next' you get news like this;) Anyway, I skimmed the site a bit and came up with quite some "remarkable" sections.
For the Web developer, the tools to build, test and deploy engaging Web sites are hopelessly inadequate. Many focus more on building attractive rather than useful Web sites.
Hmz, I think its kinda harsh and very arrogant to call tools like Dreamweaver "inadequate". It focusses on nothing and leaves the user completly open to do -anything- with the site that he or she wants to do. Either write code from the bottom up and look at the results or drag and drop and watch the code being added. Its your choice. So may I conclude here that this man is saying that total freedom is inadequate? Since Dreamweaver is a well known product I think its quite hard to miss it.
The fundamental idea behind Microsoft.NET is that the focus is shifting from individual Web sites or devices connected to the Internet, to constellations of computers, devices and services that work together to deliver broader, richer solutions.
So basicly Microsoft finally managed to grasp the idea behind Unix? I mean; c'mon.. I've been doing this kind of stuff for quite some years now. Allthough I have to admit; in a total different environment. Instead of clicking I'm entering "cd/net.priv/dave/updates" to access the computer of my friend Dave in the US and check out the latest updates he has. This whole thing is kinda silly if you think of it; in the past Windows would warn us if we accidently left netbeui and such linked to a dial up adapter (people can access netbios shares over the internet in this case) and just when we finally learned not to do this it gets re-instated?;)
Microsoft.NET will take computing and communications far beyond the one-way Web to a rich, collaborative, interactive environment. Powered by advanced new software, Microsoft.NET will harness a constellation of applications, services and devices to create a personalized digital experience
And offcourse using.XML to do all this marvelous miracles. Well, by looking at the past I can only think of one thing at this time; they are trying to take over and flood the Net with a complete new standard leaving all other net based products (Unix/BSD/Linux/OS/2) out of the game. We want to use Unix based products? Well, would not surprise me if SCO got upgraded to handle this stuff.
And yes; I know that more products can handle XML. But that would only leave the question if the XML being used will be genuine or, just like kerberos in win2k, some MS mutated new flavor. Basicly the whole idea scares me. If they truly want to set up a functional environment like this the least thing they could have done is making Windows more secure and use this engine into this new product. At this moment Microsoft is not capable of securing Windows, take a look at the vsb scripts in the email, and yet they truly believe that they can build one giant "windows.NETwork" over the Internet and still insure the safety of the locally stored documents? Don't make me laugh.
Re:So, MS is getting a trademark on ".net"
by
generic-man
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· Score: 3
Relax. They're just getting a trademark on _software_ bearing the name ".net". For example: the next version of Office will be Office.net, Visual Studio will be Visual Studio.net, and Windows will be Windows.net.
Stupid as this sounds, just wait until competitors start naming all their software products with names ending in.net, just like they switched to appending the year to the name of the software after Windows 95 came out.
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then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened,
I don't know why everyone is so automatically against this. It boils down to economics. It's not going to be a $1/doc. What if it was a penny per doc, and you had access to every application in the entire industry? I think that would be mighty cool.
For example, I don't have a copy of Visio, but there have been times that I would really have liked to have access to it. But it's never been worth going out and buying it [and there is nothing like Visio in the OSS world, but that's another story]. If I could pay a penny on an as-need basis, it would make great economic sense.
Again, it all boils down to the cost. If the cost is low enough, it makes a lot of sense.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
portable USB hard drive: $300
spare USB cable, hub: $60
bootable CDROM with OS of choice: $15
assorted floppies, zips $30
knowing M$ won't be reading my data: priceless.
semantics are everything!
Knowing the big MS, it probably means *anyone* can use your computer from anywhere in the world!
- Here's a good one... "Passwords are the weak link in today's networks." No, I think I'd disagree - the weak link is lousy security on systems such as *cough* Windows.
- Unintentional slip? Gates said that information sharing is good. Hmm...
- The
.net servers will be running Windows 2000, which has apparently set "world-setting benchmarks" for speed and reliability. I was under the impression that benchmarks showed that Win2K is slower than even WinNT. - The "core" of
.net is XML. It was not explained why this is good, or how this particular brand of text formatting (or "protocol", as Gates insists on calling it) will be used. - Gates repeatedly alluded to "per-minute charges" for the required broadband access. If this
.net thing flies and people actually use it, then MS is set to suck a LOT of money from hapless consumers. - Apparently, the PC "required" a "universal platform" (line Windows) in order for applications to be created. Please. I suppose that Gates is conveniently forgetting the many problems and incompatibilies which his "common platform" has caused.
For those who are interested, technology "highlights" include:"People, XML is just a syntax. Unless the DTDs and schemas they use for .NET are fully documented, only Microsoft's own .NET-enabled products will be able to anything useful with the data."
% !1141234<binary>
Yeah, and the XML tags will all end up looking like this;
<binary>!%!@#!1234@#14%%1551%!!!#$%!$!#%SAF@#!#
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Whatever. In that case, they've re-implemented either
- That stupid little "Briefcase" feature that everyone deletes
- Palm HotSync
- CVS
on a larger scale. This is not new tech, except that they're possibly making it more popular among the end-user crowd.Regarding the voice recognition, etc., I'll believe it when you can get it at Best Buy.
Regarding the community envy, I think you've got that backwards on this one. MS ridiculed the NC concept (which is a superset of this "new invention"), and now they're touting it as the Next Great Thing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Gee, so I can look forward to the glorious promise of my PIII 1Ghz Screamin' Expensive Super-Charged Tower Of Power From Hell becoming...uhmm..a dumb terminal?
Joy!
Not.
My impression is that not only will there be a pay per use, but you'll probably have to buy at a flat fee (though highly reduced from the current software price) some license, then get the per use charge on top of that. I can't see them not having some 'barrier' to every app, as those apps that have limited use (visio, for example, I've only used twice ever, and most of what I can do in that can be done in Word art, abet not as easily) will not earn them the same fees as those that are ubiquitious in most places.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Yeah, you would think so. But companies do funny things.
The last place I worked, they were leasing Dell desktops. By the time the machines had reached the end of their useful life, they had been paid for many times over. It would have been far, far cheaper to just buy them up front. And everyone knew it!
But due to "cash flow" and other accounting BS, they were leased anyway.
So there is no _economic_ reason that Microsoft could not successfully lease software. Companies will do it to avoid the budget hit of purchasing 1000 copies of Office 2000 at the same time. Remember, you will have to upgrade everyone at once, or document version incompatibility issues will kill you.
Or... companies will say "fsck this" and switch to free software. Linux should be pretty good for desktop machines by the end of the year, what with Mozilla, the new Gnome, new KDE, new office apps, the 2.4 kernel, and XFree86 4.0.
(And don't bother to tell me it's good now... yes, I run it now, but I wouldn't make my parents use it just yet. This Christmas I will probably switch them over.)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
XML is better than a standard delimited text file for several reasons:
Unfortunately, it fell short of it's biggest potential achievement: to allow the layering of information from multiple sources. While XML Namespace take care of naming conflicts, they provide NO guidelines on how and where to use them. As such, there is no proper way to validate a document under more than one DTD. And because of that, we are now seeing standards that are definitively not validatable under certain DTDs. XML should have stuck with SGML styled architectures, despite how complicated they are to implement.
As for the speed issue, XML should have been written with a parallel binary format in mind.
Before it can do that, people need to decide on schemas which explain how to structure a given form of data. Yeah, like that'll happen any time soon.
.NET Universal Canvas is all about. It provides an XML compound information architecture that integrates browsing, communications, and document authoring into a single, unified environment that will be optimized to work with all the new XML-based services Microsoft is defining.
.NET and offered as a service on a subscription basis, just like MSN. Since Windows will no longer technically be a "product", it makes you wonder whether Microsoft developed this architecture in an effort to work around the potential fall-out from the anti-trust ruling.
Exactly, and with this announcement, Microsoft is doing just that - stepping up to the bar and stating that it will define a broad set of schemas applying to both web services and clients. Microsoft is essentially trying to impose a defacto standard on how XML information will be passed around the web, using the strength of its desktop position as the lever.
Indeed, the user interface part of this announcement is particularly intriguing. As you say:
And they create a special car browser to display the number of cupholders in their cars
This is exactly what the Microsoft
Interestingly, Windows itself winds up playing a peripheral role in this scheme. As Microsoft's white paper points out, the Windows OS will be renamed Windows
After reading the white papers, and all of the marketing materials, I've come to this conculsion..
Apperently, now that Microsoft has been judged a monopoly, they've decided this:
"Welp, they found us out. We might as well go whole hog now".
Everything in this Microsoft.NET platform, which they push as being 'The next generation of the Internet' is so based on Microsoft run service it isn't even funny. They name dropped every service they offer, from extending email off of 'Hotmail', to instant messaging based on MSIM.
In some ways, they're getting better, using open protocols such as SOAP, and using storage, etc, using XML. In other ways, the beast is getting worse..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, their innovation sounds highly dubious. Some examples:
A command line. Wow. With a screen reader! Funny, a friend of mine (who happens to be blind) had something like this years ago...it's called using a DOS app with a screen reader.
News flash: Microsoft invents metadata!
Anyone here remember Apple's OpenDoc? Remember how well it was received? Embeddable content like graphics files is okay, but who in hell needs to embed movies or sounds in their word processor documents? This will fall flat on its @$$.
Frankly, the only new part of this whole thing is the fact that they'll be cramming all of this into a few XML formats. Can you imagine the complexity required of the DTDs for this? Yikes!
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
I really have to wonder... Do they? Email, possibly, but given the PC-centric setup of every other office I've ever seen running Microsoft's products I really have to wonder whether or not someone in Redmond can sit down and be productive on any system on campus.
My current employer is a Microsoft shop. Most of us who have used more than one machine ended up turning off roaming profiles because they got completely hosed. (Try logging in at a desktop and a laptop simultaneously and watch that profile go south!) Even when you can login to another machine, what good does it do you if all your tools are on the local harddrive on your primary machine? If all the machines in the building are set up with the same set of apps, no problem. Otherwise you're in deep doo-doo. Okay, MS-Office is probably installed everywhere. You can access your email and Word docs. What about anything else? Can I sit down at an ME's desk and compile code? Can an ME sit down at my desk and fire up AutoCAD? No way!
Contrast this to a previous employer which was a Sun shop. Everything was server-centric just an X-Terminal on your desk. It does display only, with all your data stored in a central location. All your data. Not to mention all your apps. Even in the pre-X-Terminal days when we were using Sun3s all the data and major apps were stored centrally. The local machine just held the standard SunOS image, and every machine was set up identically. You really could login on any machine in the building and do everything you could do at your own desk.
And, somehow, the UI was faster even piping the display across the network than Windows is locally. Go figure.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
People are advocating XML is this great new technology for universal data exchange. Well, it's NOT... no more than a standard text file is. Both parties still have to agree and understand the format and structure of the data before it becomes useful, so that's definitely not a progression over any existing technology.
Of course it is not necessarily a technology for universal data exchange (although, HTML, despite its rather horrible and semantically-devoid implementation of SGML/XML, has to some extent shown that it is), but rather a technology for domain-specific data exchange. There there are many domains in which people HAVE already agreed on a common set of descriptive elements for their given domain. Take DTDs such as the TEI, APA, DocBook, or any of the military's MIL/IETM DTDs, not to mention the DTDs used by the IRS, Sun Microsystems, the DOE, the Library of Congress, and the ATA, etc. etc. etc. Having worked with SGML (XML is merely SGML with a little less clutter) for more than ten years now, I can tell you that it is very useful.
Carole_Mah@brown.edu
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Brown University Scholarly Technology Group
"just like they switched to appending the year to the name of the software after Windows 95 came out."
you mean like algol-60 and fortran-77?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Whatever. In that case, they've re-implemented either
-That stupid little "Briefcase" feature that everyone deletes
-Palm HotSync
-CVS
or:
X10
NUMA
JINI
NDS
In any case, you're right. All of this has been done before.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Remember what MS said when Sun advocated the same thing? "That's ridiculous! The computer is the comoputer, and the network is the network!"
I guess that desparation leads to open minds. What will Redmond "invent" next? NIS?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They're just setting up to take over .COM and .ORG, then they are going to get revenge and go after .GOV. :)
.. now THAT'S scary.
www.microsoft.mil
BilldaCat
"...integrates with windows...so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer."
Any computer running Windows, anyway. Oh and you have to install our software.
Prediction #1: We will never hear about this again.
Prediction #2 (somewhat related to #1): ASP's are never going to take off in a big way, at least not for "desktop" software. With the possible exception of email service (for small businesses), ASP's are going to be the 2001 equivalent of the 1996-7 "push technology".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Gates repeatedly alluded to "per-minute charges" for the required broadband access. If this .net thing flies and people actually use it, then MS is set to suck a LOT of money from hapless consumers.
Yep. Microsoft has been fascinated for years with the idea of a per-use licensing scheme, but they couldn't find a way to make it work technically. Any PC can be hacked.
But what if part of the app is sitting on an server in Redmond? The new Office 2003 will have the GUI and some local editing logic on the PC. Global stuff like find-and-replace get executed on the Redmond server.
This is an incredibly beautiful idea (from Microsoft's standpoint). It provides total control as well as absolute protection from piracy. They don't even need to worry about backward compatibility. Just put up the new version while updating the Word documents in Redmond to the new format.
The only danger is somebody creating their own server farm that is compatible with the PC front-end (basically replacing the Redmond side). That can easily be delt with by using strong asymmetric encryption (a la Authenticode) so the front-end demands the server present the proper Microsoft-signed digital certificate. And if the front-end is hacked around this, there are always the lawyers to fall back on.
This is really beautiful. They can finesse the whole anti-trust case. They can cheerfully publish the Win32 API and the OS source code for us lamers while they shove all of the new technology onto untouchable servers.
Local profiles become corrupted all the time. Roaming profiles get screwy between different versions (NT 3.51 -> 4.0 -> 5.0/2K; Windows 95 - 98). Over a 10 Megabit connection, they are slow to setup if that machine wasn't the last one you used. Over a DSL connection (a client is using DSLs and a private network to run a cheap Wan...), it is unbearably slow, and thats a dedicated DSL for that computer.
This sounds like a horrible idea. If it is "because we can" that's pretty cool, just for the neato factor (although possible now with LMHOSTS files), but as a real approach to computing... right... Unless they are planning to REALLY strip down what goes in a profile (a good idea) and try to make the concept work... but even then, the point seems dubious.
This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer. "
I've been working with XML for about six months now. I would have to say it's one of the stupidest bizzword-fads I've ever seen
XML is basically a big ol' delimited text file. The only things separating it from a 30-year old text file is the fact that it's hierarchical and the fact that there are parsers that let you navigate the tree structure easily.
People are advocating XML is this great new technology for universal data exchange. Well, it's NOT... no more than a standard text file is. Both parties still have to agree and understand the format and structure of the data before it becomes useful, so that's definitely not a progression over any existing technology. Also, XML is not fast... nor was it designed to be.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Gee, Sun has been able to do this for years! Sun employees can log into any system in any office, and have full access to any of their information. Email, calendaring, files, etc. In fact, I do believe that it where the original name of "iPlanet" came from ...
Shouldn't there be a ^M at the end? Also, all the quotes will be replaced with '?'
[grumbles] lousy cross-campus NT development environment...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Oooh, more XML.
.NET are fully documented, only Microsoft's own .NET-enabled products will be able to anything useful with the data.
People, XML is just a syntax. Unless the DTDs and schemas they use for
I don't know why the XML angle is being pushed so much; this could all be done with any structured data format, be it text or binary.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Hey! Let us allow any application here talk to any server in the world by tunnelling a protocol on top of http! And if they care about their privacy, make that https!
And so a generation of application designers make mistakes, and firewalls need to learn to deal with SOAP. Except the pesky https encoded ones, which you cannot peek inside. So ban those.
Care to take bets on whether the boys from Redmond will have something critical (like say the verification that your usage period has not expired) that absolutely must go over https?
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
IMO, the primary reason MS wants to go this way is that with net connections, you *can* count the number of times certain apps have been open, send that info securely back to MS, and MS can then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened, or $10 per Windows restart. Pay-per-use has been in the works for a good year or so by more than just Microsoft (RIAA wants that too), and anything that depends on a net connection to work is going to be frowned upon until realistic pricing models and cheap fast net connections are in place.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Wow! This is a great idea! ::sarcasm mode::
If I were in law enforcement this product would make me cum in my drawers! One place where all of the essential data exist for tracking people, money, communications, and associations. Now, all we need is one "easy" federal judge, and the keys to the kingdom are in hand!
This is almost too much like the plot of that really awful film "The Net".
Beware!
Dog is my co-pilot.
They've got a flair for naming things. ".NET" sounds WAAAAAAAY better than "mainframe".
As part of this announcement, M$ also announced that their Office products would be provided on a "subscription" basis. This could be unbelieveably bad - if you fail to pay your subscription fees, you could find yourself locked out of your own documents. No corporation will be willing to put itself in the position of being held hostage to Redmond.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I've had a university account for the last decade, and I use it for exaclty this purpose. Initially it just gave me a constant email address, but I've gradually moved to keeping more and more useful information in a private directory. This includes addresses and phone numbers, any projects I'm working on, data for tax returns and so on.
.forward and other tools would be much more difficult.
The benefits are enormous, especially if you are reasonably mobile, and even more so if you live in more than one country.
But I can only do it because I have a university account. I could just about get by using the personal webspace provided on an ISP account, but using encryption, grep,
If Microsoft are looking to offer this service then I think they are making a sensible move. It would make more sense for ISP's to put together an appropriate service, but despite fierce competition non-one seems to be doing so.
Maybe an Apache module would kick some ISPs into action? Maybe Microsoft will catalyse the creation of such a tool.
They don't even need to get cracked. Think dining philosophers and how many ways are there to screw up cooperating asynchronous processes.Think of NT Server with everything loaded on. Now scale it an order of magnitude or so.Think of using MSN to actually do work. This sounds like a bigger pie in the sky than the worst of the claims for Artificial Intelligence.
From the people who brought us Outlook, with its multi-billion dollar damages due to lack of security, now bring us a central place to store everyone's files.
.net gets cracked.
.net will ever become very successful unless M$ uses its monopoly power to force everyone to use their servers.
Expect the word "hacker" to take another tarnishing when
It doesn't matter how many bits of encryption they use, when the average windoze (l)user's password is their first name. So there will be many cracks of this system, and some of them will be embarassing.
And what happens if some (l)user decides to use this at work, so they can take their work home with them. Now a company's secrets are stored on a M$ server, where just about any one can peruse them. M$ will claim somewhere in the fine print they must review all content on a regular basis to prevent illegal material from being stored, and if they just happen to see a competitor's secrets, we can trust them to not take advantage of it.
Now corporate firewalls will have to block access to this site, as with the other new net services offering the same thing. I doubt
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Hint: he doesn't like it. And neither do I.
For the Web developer, the tools to build, test and deploy engaging Web sites are hopelessly inadequate. Many focus more on building attractive rather than useful Web sites.
Hmz, I think its kinda harsh and very arrogant to call tools like Dreamweaver "inadequate". It focusses on nothing and leaves the user completly open to do -anything- with the site that he or she wants to do. Either write code from the bottom up and look at the results or drag and drop and watch the code being added. Its your choice. So may I conclude here that this man is saying that total freedom is inadequate? Since Dreamweaver is a well known product I think its quite hard to miss it.
The fundamental idea behind Microsoft .NET is that the focus is shifting from individual Web sites or devices connected to the Internet, to constellations of computers, devices and services that work together to deliver broader, richer solutions.
So basicly Microsoft finally managed to grasp the idea behind Unix? I mean; c'mon.. I've been doing this kind of stuff for quite some years now. Allthough I have to admit; in a total different environment. Instead of clicking I'm entering "cd /net.priv/dave/updates" to access the computer of my friend Dave in the US and check out the latest updates he has. This whole thing is kinda silly if you think of it; in the past Windows would warn us if we accidently left netbeui and such linked to a dial up adapter (people can access netbios shares over the internet in this case) and just when we finally learned not to do this it gets re-instated? ;)
Microsoft .NET will take computing and communications far beyond the one-way Web to a rich, collaborative, interactive environment. Powered by advanced new software, Microsoft .NET will harness a constellation of applications, services and devices to create a personalized digital experience
And offcourse using .XML to do all this marvelous miracles. Well, by looking at the past I can only think of one thing at this time; they are trying to take over and flood the Net with a complete new standard leaving all other net based products (Unix/BSD/Linux/OS/2) out of the game. We want to use Unix based products? Well, would not surprise me if SCO got upgraded to handle this stuff.
And yes; I know that more products can handle XML. But that would only leave the question if the XML being used will be genuine or, just like kerberos in win2k, some MS mutated new flavor. Basicly the whole idea scares me. If they truly want to set up a functional environment like this the least thing they could have done is making Windows more secure and use this engine into this new product. At this moment Microsoft is not capable of securing Windows, take a look at the vsb scripts in the email, and yet they truly believe that they can build one giant "windows .NETwork" over the Internet and still insure the safety of the locally stored documents? Don't make me laugh.
Relax. They're just getting a trademark on _software_ bearing the name ".net". For example: the next version of Office will be Office.net, Visual Studio will be Visual Studio.net, and Windows will be Windows.net.
.net, just like they switched to appending the year to the name of the software after Windows 95 came out.
Stupid as this sounds, just wait until competitors start naming all their software products with names ending in
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