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Could .NET Render An MS Breakup Verdict Irrelevant?
AntiFreeze writes: "The Economist has a very interesting article about Microsoft's plans for .NET and how it would effectively remove most damage caused by a government orderred breakup. The article is written towards the layman, but is very clear and sort of scary." He cites this excerpt from the article, as well: "Even so, it is remarkable how effectively .NET could insulate the firm in the event of its being divided into an operating-system company (which would own Windows) and an applications company (owning Office)."
Companies are/were heavily dependant on old DOS and Win3.1 internal applications that they either built or bought. *Most* of this stuff went out the door with Y2K, but I'm sure there's quite a bit still around.
The day MS finally really kills DOS/Win3.1 compatibility is the day Windows stops being the business standard.
"because their software is centered around saving you time and making your job easier. " Yeah, right, nice myth. That's probably why several dozen people in my company, all typical lusers, that is whose who allegedly love MS stuff, tried win2k, and every single one of them removed in within 2 weeks. Their general impression: "same shit, only moved some stuff around so it's harder to find, slower, and takes several times more space. And still crashes from time to time". Same for Office2k. Based on these win2k experiences, when I installed whistler on one machine, only a dozen of lusers took a look and again, their impression was "same shit, just worse. now let's go to lunch". So as of now, 2 generations of MS products did'n appeal to their target customers. Can we say "out of business soon"?
No, that was not annus horribilis, this is annus horribilius.
You've obviously never looked under the hood of Windows (the dos prompt). If you had dug in a bit, you would have seen it plainly stated:
Windows 95 = 4.0, 4.0a, 4.0b
Windows 98 = 4.1
Windows 98 SE = 4.2 (or possibly 4.11?)
Windows ME = 4.9
Windows 2000 = NT 5.0
Anyway, getting back to the article, the author is delusional. The Windows platform will continue to be important for the forseeable future. The effort to move back to terminal computing is going slower than molasses and I don't think it's going to pick up all of a sudden now that you can type in MS Word from your browser. If I'm missing something, please fill me in.
Yeah, I agree with you. My first Unixlike OS was Linux (dating myself as a newcomer, that). I since worked with several commercial Unices (Solaris and HPUX, mostly) and when I first tried OpenBSD one of the things that surprised me was the man pages -- covering much more than I had previously learned to expect.
However, I still think info has its place. OpenBSD's man pages on such topics as, say, VPN setup have no parallel (except HOWTOs and other 3rd-party documentation) in the linux world; info pages certainly don't compete with them. On the other hand, many of the features provided by info (the whole hypertext thing) really are quite nifty.
frankly, I'm surprised (shocked?) at recieving any moderation other than 'offtopic' or any response other than chastisement for troll-feeding... but if I've given anyone some good food for thought (or arguments in a debate), why, I'm more than glad to have been of help.
By the same logic, wouldn't they hate giving up win32 API-based software and moving to .net, thus giving *nix and friends a chance?
Yup -- .NET's base in open standards a big part of why I think it's technically a Good Thing. However, .NET itself is still basically vendor-controlled, and I've seen no reason to believe this will ever end.
.NET -- and frankly, it ain't about to happen. (Needless to say, I'm not "truly comfortable" with Java, either).
Understand that when I speak of a non-vendor-controlled project, I'm speaking of something like... ohh, say [picking one out of the air] Python. Development is done by an organization formed specifically for the purpose of making their one product, without any motivation to try to tie it to another (for-cash) item. Development may be supported by commercial interests, but said interests don't have the final say, either in theory or in practice.
That's what it'd take for me to be truly comfortable with
Hmm... well.
If I see a functional, stable (GNU-style) Free Software implementation of the runtime, I'll seriously consider using it; it does indeed seem attractive.
True. I was thinking that the folks doing the noticing would be more along the lines of developers (who've already learned win32... if they've got to change APIs to use new features, might as well consider GTK+, wxWindows, &c in the process, no?).
Not that I really believe this. I was merely pointing out that the argument raised works both ways.
After thinking it over, I'm inclined to agree that the model you propose is indeed a better way to Build Good Stuff. Thanks for bringing it up.
That's an utter bull. .NET has much more inside that just a DCOM/RPC. First of all, common binary platform (bytecode) for some 20 languages, including C++, C#, Eiffel, Perl and what not. Second, open (and I mean that - everything is documented) COM protocol, based on open SOAP standard. Third, class library that can be used via the above by programmer on any language (and any platform as soon as someone writes .NET interface for that platform - which is certainly not Microsoft's fault if someone does not). Fourth, real programmable COM classes, not the aboimination they had before with 200 definitions and methods before you have a thing working. Last, but not least - common IDE for all the above with extensibility potential (you have your own language? write bytecode compiler and a copule of hooks and you're in).
This is not really a "technology" - more a toolkit. And though I'm not a great fan of Microsoft, I must accept it being pretty worthy toolkit. They seem to have learned on all their mistakes with COM/OLE (closed protocols, one-platformness, royal pain in the ass to program) and improved seriously.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Wow, what an interesting life you must have.
From info available, it seems .Net revolves around 2 things: 1) implementing a data storage "cloud" that can be accessed via any sort of device speaking XML, and 2) removing the language barrier to coding projects, so you can code in Eiffel or C# or others as you see fit. From the way .Net was presented, it had the aura of some diabolical master stroke, Microsoft's V-2 missile that was going to demolish everything. But...the more one ponders .Net, the less useful it seems. For the "data cloud", is there any vendor (or Open Source project) that *doesn't* already plot out universal access, and the use of XML? And if MS is indeed embracing standards--and to some extent this appears true--then they may be embarking on the equivalent of America's War on Drugs, a venture into an unknown battleground where they cannot win..."Any XML your Win2K server can do, my Linux box can serve cheaper". As for the language-neutrality of .Net, it's an interesting feature...but realistically, how often can one imagine development efforts being written in (all of the following) C++, C#, Eiffel, Visual Basic? I reckon we'll continue to see the current model, where development is done in one language (usually Java for new stuff), for the usual reasons: senior gurus can help the new guys through the tough parts, coders can work in pairs (part of the highly successful "extreme programming" movement), and peer review (where it's done) or bug fixes and maintenance are only possible when your developers can read each others' code. So Java will continue to take over...and .Net will make some splash now, but in 5 years I doubt we'll hear much about it.
Now here's where the REAL fun begins: Microsoft has to not only convince consumers to use .NET software, but it's got to convince programmers to write .NET software - which has its own programming language.
That isn't entirely true. Yes, they have developed a new programming language (C#) for their .NET thingy, but you can use any language that their compiler supports to generate .NET components.
Note that I said their compiler - instead of doing something simple, like using the framework of C++ to adapt it to .NET (i.e. Every .NET compatible object is derived from the DotNET class, or something like that), they have introduced new keywords (__gc comes to mind) which triggers some internal magic in the compiler that produces .NET compatible objects. This guarantees that code written in C++ for .NET will not be easily ported to other compilers without heavy modification (either to the compiler or to the program).
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The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
services. Most mainframe software is licensed by the year.
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>NET based apps (services) will be totally
.NET apps that don't need a network connection (and download and run them just like any other Windows app). That's probably what most use of the .NET technology will look like.
>dependent on your connection to the network
>(internet). You think your company is effected
>now when you can't get email or surf the web?
>Imagine all the sales, accounting, etc, depts.
>sitting around without any apps because the
>DSL/FRAME/etc is down.
That's BS. You might want to actually look at the technology before writing about it. You can easily write
- Steve
This richly deserves an elaborate point-by-point breakdown and ridiculing, but I'm afraid I haven't the time to administer it myself. :-p
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.NET is built on top of SOAP, UDDI and XML.
.NET common runtime has gone to ECMA, as has C#.
SOAP is a W3C standard, as is UDDI. The
If that's not open standards, then I don't know what is...
S.
Except XML is hierarchical and has syntax, a comma-separated list does not. How do you identify what each value in a comma-separated list is? Use keys in front of the values? Congratulations, you're halfway to an unreadable replacement for XML.
URL? whatis.com's list does not know what HDF is.
But it doesn't have the redundancy of XML since it doesn't give the same item name again to close it (just a closing brace).
The people responsible for XML probably had a reason to not allow SGML's "shortcut" end tag, which allows <conf:destination-file>autoexec.bat</>
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Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org will!
The point of the breakup isn't to punish, it's to more evenly level the playing field. That's why the gov't isn't asking for a $20 billion fine. So if Microsoft so drastically alters their business that the old penalties are no longer valid or reasonable, so be it.
.NET is a huge gamble for Microsoft... It's by no means a sure fire way for them to escape punishment and still retain their strangle hold on the desktop market...
My opinion.
"despite comments from the zealots here at /. MS is actually moving towards using standards and open APIs. .NET is that direction" ???
Moving TWARDS standards? moving towards the new MS standard would be more the truth. The examples of how they have tried screwing with samba and kerberos and java are exactly what they are trying to do to every other standard. Take their MS Chat cleint for eg which msged "extensions" which pretty much spammed any user not using MS Chat. The hihg degree of interoperability of Exchange?? Like when you get to choose "Internet" or "Corperate" levels in Outlook? One means you can use imap, which of course doesa all sorts of crap you dont want it to and makes sure when they click on the parent imap folder it looks completely ugly as hell, which you can evenb use any more if your comapny/network decides its time to put in an exchange server for your mail and you have to change to corperate mode. Were you trying to past troll crap or was it by shear accident due to your own lack of insight, or maybe you see another dollar to be made through upgrades?
meridian at tha.net
Monster Truck Rally? Come on, that predates Microsoft. For as long as I can remember, (1970's), I can remeber hearing Monster Truck Rally commercials on TV and radio. I knew what Bigfoot was well before I turned 5 (1978).
You have to pay for the whole seat, but you'll only need te edge!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
MS don't innovate (except by their own twisted definition of the word, which apparently doesn't coincide with either the american or english one...). They (you?) redefine "innovate" to mean something else.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
This is exactly why the company needs to be broken up into many more smaller companies, not just 2. M$ can still capitalize on the situation and still be a monopoly by operating "behind the scenes" as it were. If M$ were broken up into 5 companies, this problem is minimized.
-- DuckWing
> MS has always bet on the future and made smart moves to be in the right place at the right time.
Yeah, that's why Bill spent so much time talking up the internet in the first edition of The Road Ahead.
The internet was blindsiding him even as he wrote. MS still doesn't completely "get" the internet.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Micrsoft has rolled out many other bold and world-changing innovations.
Name three.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
My ideal world is that standards bodies define the specifications, and then open source projects (with support from large corporations) build the reference implementations/compliance checkers (a la Apache, Xerces, Xalan...). For-profit companies can build optimized / value-added implementations (e.g. websphere, IIS...) of the standards to suit a specific need. This way:
- no one company can direct the standard to their advantage
- basic (yet feature complete, and standards compliant) implementations of the standards are freely available.
This gets the technology into developers hands', and can spur the grassroots development of an entire industry behind a technology. Just look at what the Java or the XML grassroots movement did for these technologies? Once developers start playing with something, all it takes is for one person to start a newsgroup / mailing list / FAQ to get the snowball started.it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
I wouldn't worry - it looks like the ".net initiative" will render itself irrelevant soon enough.
It's about time courts stopped interfering with things they don't understand.
-jfedor
Want to play Slashdot competitively? Learn from the masters. I just wish gamefaqs.com would post a slashdot strategy guide, if not a walkthrough....
MS Bob, the Sidewinder, and Monster Truck Rally
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
This article is so close, but really misses the mark on what I believe the real MS strategy is...
What is interesting is how there seem to be different industries that really don't pay attention to each other: the game industry and everything else in the tech industry. If you put the two together, you have a very interesting picture. MS bought WebTV, has investments in several broadband companies, developing Xbox, developing
Joe Consumer (that doesn't have a PC yet--and even if they do, they probably aren't in the tech industries) wants games, Internet access, a DVD player and potentially office software (whether they know it now or not). They buy an Xbox (games and dvd) that can hook to MS's proprietary broadband connection that uses
It is no secret that they are working on the equivalent of Sun's StarPortal--MS Office over the web. This gives them the necessary application software.
Now, put your self in the place of someone like PepsiCo and you want to reach this market. You have to pay MS to put your content on MSN in a manner that is reachable, since this consumer market isn't really on the Internet... but
One person I talked to about my theory mentioned that MS can't pull it off because they don't have the necessary skills to build a decent UI--that's where the game company comes in. Most game companies (including Bungie) know that UI's on games _must_ be simple. There is also the issue of lead time (MS is well known for missing the deadlines they set...)--well, why do you think they are working on this in parts at a time.? WebTV probably taught them a lot about how this consumer works as well as giving them a blueprint on how to do this type of service in the future.
In essence, you have MS getting into the homes that don't have PCs via the game and DVD market.... and since they own the whole pipe from client to server, they can control exactly what the consumer can grab. Plus, they have access to (more importantly) what the consumer actually wants to consume by keeping track of all of that generated data.
Problems with this theory? Well, privacy groups would probably step in.... although, it could be pointed out that this is sort of like opt-in spam. You, joe consumer, bought and paid for the license that allows MS to do this, so....
If the monopoly were to get broken up, I'm not sure if the "OS" running on Xbox would be allowed to be based on Windows or not. [I'm fairly certain that xbox runs a variant of Windows CE, but I don't remember.]
Just a thought. I have no real evidence, so maybe I'm just seeing things. =)
think about it... .NET is really just a common framework for applications to run on, without them having to be rewritten for every machine, which is exactly the point of an os... so all youre really doing is running an os on a lot of separate machines that are networked together, sorta like a cluster, except without the advantage of being able to distribute the processes amongst machines and have them run faster, but with the network overhead still in place, which sounds like a shitty idea to me, but hey, its M$
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Because you are Corel and M$ bought your nads for $150M and you don't have a choice. Tell me you saw this one coming the minute they announced that "partnership" with all the missing info on what M$ was getting for their kind gesture.
Cris E
St Paul, MN
Hey People,
There's been plenty of comment that MS is failing to 'innovate' at the moment because the PTB at Redmond have their heads in a little law suit that's going on. I'm sure they are right.
So, let's stop being distracted by their lawsuit and get back to doing what we do best - making great software.
This case is irrelevant. By the time the courts decide one way or the other (could the US legal system be any more inadequate for this type of case), it's not going to matter. So let's stop taking the time to read about it and get back to hacking!
Do you know if DCOM is actually usable under those platforms? It's one thing to port it it's another to fully support it. As with most things Microsoft DCOM and .NET are fast moving loosely defined standards that change at the whim of MS. DO you know if DCOM for *nix has kep up with DCOM for windows?
War is necrophilia.
The real question is why would anybody port .net over to linux in the first place. As soon as you do the port MS will change the spec and there you are playing the catch up game forever.
It's better to concentrate on competing technologies that are cross platform and not under the control of MS.
War is necrophilia.
Bash who ever you want whenever you want. This is the essence of freedom. Ms bashes it's competition in advertisements, interviews with management, in court, and whenever and however they feel is required.
Why be nice to evil people, why be kind to MS. Bash them every chance you get, lie about them just like they lie about you and linux.
Coerce people not to use their products if you can. Convince people not to use them if can. Tell everybody you know how they are an unethical company, how Bill Gates ought to be tried for perjury for lying under oath. There is never any reason to cut MS any slack. Point out every evil thing they have ever done.
All you have to do is to tell the truth. The truth about MS is enough to make people not like them and not trust them. They have a horrible track record for screwing people and companies just point this out to anybody who is thinking about partnering with them.
It's not enough to just not use them spread the word about every unethical thing they have ever done, about every company that partnered with them and got the shaft, every time you spent time and money investing in something MS and got the rug pulled out from under you.
Just tell the truth. The truth is that MS is the most unethical company on the planet and dealing with them will in most likelyhood get you screwed over royally.
War is necrophilia.
The way I read his post was: now that it was for sale, MS would buy its delivery from justice.
Recommends: give an overview with the link, please. Thanks.
So, with .Net, Microsoft is at once, avoiding going down with the DOJ verdict by jumping ship from the business of selling software as manufactured-product, to selling software as a service, which is the increasing trend anyway.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Ok. Both a business executive and a drug lord are sucessful --- they have huge amounts of money, make deals, etc. etc.
Is punishing the drug lord punishing him because he is successful?
Don't you think that at least Microsoft is trying to push new things around and innovate (instead of mimicking some 'other' operating system like Linux does) is great? And hey, don't blame them if they ever want to keep the code to themselves, face it, they are a company and they have stockholders to please. I'd be surprised if some Open-Source movement tried and succedded at implementing what Microsoft is trying to establish. It's not just a simple browser (okay not so simple, but still, browser and making a new platform for future technologies is somehow different), it's maybe the future of computing.
But they're not going to notice. .NET will be an integral part of Whistler or some other future Windows version (like Internet Explorer is now ;-), so .NET-Software will install like any other software. And if it can't find .NET on your machine, I am sure they can provide a little program that will tell you and do the download of the .NET stuff for you (or it even comes on the same CD). So sorry, but I am not as optimistic as you are ...
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
"My eyes are open. And from what they can see, the folks at Microsft are as responsible for "inventing" the spreadsheet as they are for "creating" DOS, or Al Gore forming the internet..."
.NET framework has nothing to do with this.
.NET is. It's not a language. It's a framework. C# is a language that has the ability to compile to the .NET framework, but it's separate from the .NET framework. Many other languages also compile to it.
Nobody claimed MS invented the spreadsheet; he clamied the *person* who invented the SS is now working with MS.
"Do you seriously plan on renting software?"
.NET has absolutely nothing to do with renting software. Nothing. MS does want to rent software, but the
"Essentially another language with the same power as C/C++ but more nuisances."
When I got here, I realized you have absolutely no idea what
I suggest you read up on the subject more before writing it off. It's really incredible, from a developers point of view. If you don't believe me, just look around at the world in 5 years and ask yourself whether you were right.
- adam
It's important to recall that the reason that Microsoft benefits from owning both the most popular applications AND the most popular OS is that it sells both. Both are huge cash cows.
.NET. It isn't clear how they make money from the ".NET" part of the equation? Will they sell the .NET framework? Sell the development tools? It's hard to see how either option could be near as profitable as selling an operating system.
Let's imagine that Microsoft moves its apps to
Ahem,
It is great you put an effor into this paper. But don't spread misinformation. The JVM has an assembly-like language at its lowest level. Every compiled Java program gets down to the corresponding bytecode for each and every instruction. It doesn't matter which language it came from. And there is JPython and probably lots more languages than can be compiled to JVM bytecode.
.NET, in my opinion, will make all languages the same. WinForms+type restriction+who knows what else will make them all one and only language with different syntactic sugar here and there. Not bad actually, I just don't like VB. Probably it will get the job done for some though.
No doubt he is.
On the punishment note, the anti-trust laws are designed primarily to protect the people, punishments and justice bedamned. The interests of the consumers come FIRST in anti-trust. That's the whole basis for anti-trust. How is wrecking or punishing Microsoft helping the consumer ? If they screw up Windows and Office that sure as shit doesn't help me as an administrator, my workstation users, or myself at home. Where am I being protected ? By letting the government regulate the software on my computer like they regulate everything else ? Fuck a bunch of that.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't .NET based on W3C standard WSDL services and SOAP? Wouldn't that just make it and C# just another development tool for creating and using Web Services? If so, i'd assume that the reason it would excel would be because of it's ease of development using Microsoft tools. Of course, I don't know too much about .NET to be honest.
If XML is a waste, then why are so many companies using XML as the basis for their B2B marketplaces? What about the fact that large numbers of existing EDI systems are performing a gradual transition to XML-compatible syntax? (SWIFT being an important example).
But WFC and other J++ things were for Java, not MSIL. The question is whether/when (maybe it's happened already; I haven't been following closely) there will be the WFC equivalent for .NET...
Bush is very pro-big business and Microsoft is a very big business. It is a pretty general belief that anti-trust activity will slow down considerably in the Bush administration. Ashcroft who is up for appointment to Attn. General is very conservative and pro-business as well, more so than Bush.
Because there might be a bug in the program or the specification of the program might be incompatible with the standard? The XML file could also have been edited by a person. However, the main use of DTDs is to limit the ways you can express an XML-format and in that way you can make assumptions on what structure is expressed and not. For example, it is possible to make a DTD to make XML into HTML and check for correctness. Having a standard way of doing this is always beneficial, because it's something everyone agrees on. If not, you need to extend or create new and better standards. I know too little about XML and DTD to know how universal they are though.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I fail to see you giving any valid reasons for your arguments though. Hence, quite sadly, your opinion also goes to waste.
IMHO, XML is a step forward. With the DTD you can prove for correctness in the format, which is a plus. It supports recursive blocks, which is a plus. Unicode, which may also be a plus (not sure how it's implemented). Basically, it supports a whole lot of what you would've expected from a general-purpose text-format. No, I don't think it's human readable either (depends), but it's alot easier and more open than binary or comma-separated list.
As with all standards, XML needs to be implemented following its standards. Where XML fails, is that there are no meta-info dictating what the data is that you put in. So XML is a skeleton we must fill with flesh, and not be fooled it'll solve all our data problems automagically.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
<Click>
ERROR: Windows has caused a General Protection Fault in module BLUEPILL.DLL.
"Oops. I forgot to mention that we haven't gotten the blue pill working yet. I guess you'll just have to come with me..."
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Well it is an obvious strategy. .NET to catch him if he falls/fails.
Micrsoft walks a tightrope of litigation vs. DeBoies and the Justice Deparment. But just in case, there is always
Now for some sleep
Reality is just a clever Hack, and the Planck constant is the refresh rate.
Eric W. Sarjeant
ericsarjeant[@]mediaone.net
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
There's nothing at all insightful about that post. He's full of shite.
Yes. It is a distributed OS. In Laymans terms: the app is what you use to do work and the OS is what lets you run the app on the machine.
.NET initiative onto the OS side but also need to force the .NET applications onto the other side of the divide.
I was thinking this too. And to be even more sure the break up is successfull. They need to force the
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
The article sounds like the .NET initiative is a way to get arround the court's corrective messure and rendering it ineffective. .NET doesn't correct the problem, it continues it.
Also, when someone willfully defies the US court, they ususaly are punished (it's called contempt of court.) And I think that's exactly what MS is doing, showing contempt for the Federal court system by trying to weasel arround the verdict.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
yeah, right.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
This post kind of makes me think.
Microsoft runs around shouting "hurrah, hurrah Windows Technologies blah, blah blah..."
And slashdot responds "Microsoft $ucks!"
And someone responds "I won't partake in this flamewar, stop mindlessly kissing linux ass. You suck!"
And someone else responds "I won't partake in this righteous, anti-bashing bashing! Linux really is phat! You suck!"
And in the end, no one really sucks. It's a paradox of suckage.
-Erik
Wrong, Java can be used with any other intep. lang. look at JPython for example.
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Be is trying to charge people to use a *nix system when there are several more available that are better.
As a BeOS user, I'll take issue with you here.
What's the most common use of a Unix OS? a network server. Be's networking has sucked royally for years; most Be users will readily admit this and give you first hand accounts. How could Be compete with Unix when it had such sorry networking? The simple answer is that it didn't -- and never did.
Be failed, I'll admit, but not for that. The BeOS started out as a desktop OS -- it was supposed to replace the MacOS, remember? -- then tried to morph into a multimedia powerhouse, which wasn't too successful either. I think the simple reason why Be wasn't successful was that people didn't want to be bothered with another OS, no matter how technically superior or nipple-exciting it may be. All alternative OS's face the same problem I would say, the sole difference being that Free operating systems usually don't have to worry about being profitable or running out of venture capital.
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Oh yeah, the moral of my story (to bring it back on topic) was that while there are reasons why things happen in this industry, they're generally pretty stupid ones.
.NET to be decided by its box design.
In short, expect the future of
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So I've been reading the posts and I am impressed with the slashdot level of knowledge about Micrsoft. After what I've read it seems that this could be something very useful to everyone who supports alternative OS's. If Micrsoft does end up being split, and .NET is supposed to render operating systems irrelevant by becoming a standard (a real standard submitted to a committee not a standard like windows) then it would be a big push for alternative OS's. My biggest support would probably have to go to java because its easy and somewhat standard although I understand why some people don't like Sun as a company. I don't want to use windows, but the reason I do is because of the GUI and software. The GUI isn't really relevant to this, but if all software was truly portable I would have no problem switching to linux and making due with the gui.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I played doom yesterday network style. On windows ME. It was awsome. I was glad for the backwards compatibility.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
It must be a slow news day..
I don't expect Windows to be split, but in the event that it does happen, I don't expect it to slow the company - er companies - down any. However, we might actually see better software, as two companies could then become somewhat competitive. They may say they won't, but with some guys going to the Windows branch and others to the Office branch, who's to say that someone won't start trying to show off their knowledge of the other side for their own gain? A little competition is always good, and better software as a result is welcome by me. I'm not for the destruction of Microsoft, but if it means better software, I have nothing against breaking the company down.
Okay, you're getting boring, but I'll bite:
Apache vs. IIS
I'm goinh to bed now...
COM (including DCOM, Service Control Manager, Structured Storage, Monikers and Automation), MS-RPC, Registry, and the Windows NT® Distributed Security provider
I was investigating using it to do a pure Java implementation of DCOM, but the licensing conditions were such that it didn't look like I'd be able to deliver my stuff on Windows -- gee... all I wanted to do was "embrace and extend"I think I have read at least 3 comments of yours, probably more in this thread, and I'm browsing at +1. How do you avoid the moderators?
By the way, I'm no Linux zealot, but this post is flamebait. Some of your others had merit, but think for a second. Just because you don't have much use for it doesn't mean that there aren't an awful lot of people out there who are a lot more productive with their free software product of choice than MS's comparable product, if it even exists.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
More like they want to destroy the `net with MS tech, keep open the one viable part left -based on their software, with their ticketbooths and machinegun towers- and meter access to the rest of the world.
Bring me the head of Gill Bates!
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
I want whatever it is that you're smoking... The Appellate level (Raygun appointed) and the Supreme Court (Satan-spawned) need only the slightest indications of acquiescence from Ashcroft -or whoever AttyGen. turns out to be.
Expect a reversal on appeal and no follow-on appeal to the SCOTUS. You're deep in pleasant dreams if you imagine that that case could still be alive.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
The majority of posts here have dismissed .NET as:
(a) Technically ugly and unreliable, and
(b) An obvious rip-off, compared to free ("speech" or "beer") software.
Therefore nobody in their right minds will buy into it; not developers, and not users. The problem is, there's a third customer here: businesses.
Why are people using Windows and MS Office at home? Because it's stable, based on open standards ("interoperable"), inexpensive, and easy to use? Or because that's what everybody uses at work?
Why are there a hundred VBScript kiddies for every genuine hacker? Because the timeless allure of BASIC is so irresistable? Or because that's about the ratio of Visual-Active-whatever developer jobs to jobs for programmers.
Some people are asking who in their right mind would pay over and over again for the same software, and be at the mercy of one company for service delivery. Show me a company that doesn't. Large corporations don't have in-house IT departments any more; smaller corporations never had them. They sign "just make it work, ok?" contracts with outsource companies, and pay through the nose to not worry about how technically efficient, interoperable, and so on, their software is. A business is going to look at .NET and ask "why are we operating a server farm with an army of contractors when all we need is a firewall and we can suck all this stuff down the wire from Microsoft?".
Microsoft doesn't have to convince developers or users to adopt .NET, just corporate managers. Promise the world, throw in enough buzzwords and acronyms, let the technical problems work themselves out once the sale's been made. Get to the people who run the world, and the world will follow.
Will MS Apps still be available as local programs? It sounds like .NET will make 'net access a requirement for the programs. Not a problem for most of us, but it essentially raises the base TCO by requiring 'net access and probably a second telephone line or some kind of broadband. Won't this widen the supposed "digital divide" or am I misunderstanding the whole thing?
- Operating systems - Windows 9x, WinNT and CE (or whatever they call it now)
- Applications - Office, SQL Server, Exchange, Games Division, etc.
- Internet Division - IIS, Hotmail, MSN, etc
The Break-up as it was proposed by the justice department never made sense. That's why Judge Jackson sent the initial proposal back to the Justice department hoping that it would be a three way plan like he suggested.- subsolar
He who fights and runs away,
There won't need to be benefits to MS's next OS. If it comes bundled with Joe's new computer, that's what he'll use. Because Joe now uses it, if Jane wants to read Joe's documents, SHE'll now have to use the next MS OS. It's an endless upgrade cycle.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
What people seem to be failing to grasp is that this whole .NET thing is only what MS would LIKE to see happen. Look at how many times in the past they've come out with some new product that they truly, honestly believed would change the face of computing, and due to price or performance or conplexity or any other number of things, has just completely flopped ... Remember MS BOB??? Look at WebTV... look at how they kept trying to "steal" the internet by co-opting standards with their own proprietary extensions and "enhancements" and failing (Visual J++ Early MS Internet Explorer, Front Page extensions)
Two words: Paper Tiger
Maybe big businesses (the main profit center for M$) will go for this subscription based stuff if it can be shown to bring down TCO, but honestly, I think those that go for it will just be trading one set of problems (keeping lots of users up to date and functioning) for another set (maintaining a big enough and reliable enough bandwidth pipeline to handle hundreds or thousands of users doing all their work over the net).
Besides, with the Microsoft record of poor security, would any sane company want to risk having all their corporate info (accounting, documents, spreadsheets, email, etc...) and mission-critical files at the mercy of the internet?(especially MS's concept of the internet) I mean, yeah, everything can be set up to run on VPNs or run SSL or something, but it juse seems risky to me.
On the other end of things, I bet John Q. WindowsUser who didn't get off Win3.1 until 1999 will just figure that their Works Suite2000 and Windows98 will do just fine for quite some time.
On the topic of John Q. WindowsUser, I bet I know why adoption of Office 2000 is so slow - LOOK AT THE EFFING PRICE!!! I mean, at something like $650 a copy($350 for the UPGRADE), I think MS has invented possibly the best incentive for software stagnation and/or piracy that has ever existed. If I hadn't been able to get my employer to upgrade mine, I would NEVER have bothered.
6 more words: Screw you guys, I'm installing Linux
+++++++++++++++++++++
The Digital Sorceress
At the end of the article that this article links to, it mentions that Microsoft(Office) having been split from Microsoft(Windows) would move to support .NET on other OSes in order to remain competitive! Although the fact that Office.NET is a crappy and obvious way for them to rob you blind, the $ALTERNATIVE_OS support would at leas make many people look at $ALTERNATIVE_OS that would not if they couldn't use Clippy on them.
This
Besides VStudio .NET, the rest it's still vapourware, or promises in the best case.
Nevertheless, according to recent stories such as Netscape/IE, RVideo/MSMedia, Citrix/Terminal Server, sure it will occur. We will call you the Sun Java/.NET story.
--ricardo
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
Compaq Unix (Tru64) has DCOM support... see http://www.digital.com/info/SP7070/SP7070HM.HTM
Oh, Please! I would easily pay several hundred dollars per month if I COULD GET 56k> access where I live.
"Furthermore, Microsoft will ensure that .NET services work best when used on PCs running Windows."
.NET only works on Windows. Yes, I would consider that to make it cause the split to be useless.
In other words,
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is busy, hung, or dead.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Summary of your post: the ends justify the means.
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
A host is a host from coast to coast / but no one uses a host that's close / unless the host that isn't close
hey, what's the rest of your sig?
---
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Actually, the "guy" (actually guy*s*) who developed the spreadsheet released the idea into the public domain. None of them would be collecting roylaties for patents etc. Now while they persona they have employed may well have been one of the people who developed the spreadsheet, and also may well be a millionaire, the two are not tied together as closely as you imply.
---
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Oh, actually, Bill has always liked standards, as long as he may dictate them and maintain a reasonable level of control of who is using them... At least that was the message of his recent bizniz book.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The point of DCOM on other pltforms was not that a COM binary would run anywhere, but that code could use DCOM to interact with a COM object on a across platforms. You would still have to write the Unix code to expose the DCOM interface.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
First their was MS Dos, then Windows 95, then .NET
.NET is an important transition and not a minor one, it's as important as the DOS / Win95 transition. the OS won't matter much anymore, maybe the browser but not the OS. Applications will be on the NET and you will be able to access your data from anywhere. .NET will fail, a lot of companies try to bring applications and interactivity to the web, it started by CGI's then Java then PHP. I think that .NET is more of a vision than a product, MS is producing the platform (Visual Studio.Net) that will allow us to easily develop applications for the Internet and make them available on a whole lot of devices. MS are using their marketing skills to push companies on developping their products for the Internet, it's a good thing.
I don't think that
"Or are they simply dumb enough to think that people whose only option is still dialup with local phone charges will actually bother using applications served over the net, instead of software installed on their own hard-disk?"
No they're not so dumb, you'll be able to choose to install the software locally.
I'd like to know what kind of backward compatibility you're talking about. Supporting another company's format isn't backward compatibility. I'm sure that MS will make its new software support formats from the old, but I don't expect to see any sort of support for other vendors stuff.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
My eyes are open. And from what they can see, the folks at Microsft are as responsible for "inventing" the spreadsheet as they are for "creating" DOS, or Al Gore forming the internet...
I'll stop short of hedging my bets on when .ORG will appear, but I can't see any sign of .NET being a good idea. You call me a fool, and say that Microsoft is great, but you don't back it up. Do you seriously plan on renting software? And as for .NET being a great programming language, it's a controlled version of C with a proprietary controller. Essentially another language with the same power as C/C++ but more nuisances. Focus your eyes, you may see things more clearly.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
MS is going to try to do the same thing to C# as they tried to do to Java. C# (the W3C standard) may be just fine, but a rift will follow it.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
> and XML is a "technology" in the same way as comma-separated list is a "technology".
ROTFL... sigh..
Thank-you for that fabulous quote! If I were a moderator I would have given you a +1 funny.
If you did you would probably have to make both systems communicate. (By the way, isn't Linux just another Solaris clone?)
SOAP ties together Bonobo, CORBA, DCOM, and any other object type you want.
Remote procedure calls (RPC is not a protocol) have never been easy. Object retrieval has also aways been convoluted. SOAP is a rosetta stone for object access. Clearly you are having trouble with any server based objects. I am afraid you are going to have to get used to the idea. Remote Objects aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
despite what the article says about this move helping to preserve Microsoft in the face of a breakup, I doubt it. If the person heading up the application side of the newly broken empire is business-minded, they won't restrict the .NET system to the Windows OS, thus shooting the whole plan to sell the Win 2K OS for .NET server software in the heart.
I think you missed what the article was saying here. The point was, .NET preserves MS by making Windows irrelevant.. In the split-into-two scenario, BillG, SteveB, and most other "importants" would head to the applications company, push .NET as the "Platform", and have Windows (and Linux or ???) be merely the underlying "DOS" -- sounds strangely like '95 again, but without forcing DRDos to be incompatible...
Nowadays almost everybody is using some illegal copy of Windows/Office at home. What will happen with this .NET thing? Can you still do that? If not, what does this mean for the M$ market share?
Like science? Comics? Wicked...
Funny By Nature
As soon as Attorney General Ashcroft is in charge, there will be a sweet settlement with a light slap on MS's wrist (see Salon article -- they have a good point).
I don't know what to think of this guy. Okay, right-winger puritan, but for privacy and reduced government interference, pro free speech but believes in severe restrictions when the speech is against his puritanical bent.
Ah, forget it, can't be any worse than Reno.
OOPS! I dont know how I will feel about any comments you make from now on. This quotation should be credited to "Deep Throat". Fox Mulder merely repeated it. :)
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
...Maybe everyone is just afraid Microsoft will succeeded in what Sun has promised us for years with Java?
...Maybe developers will not develop products for .Net if they don't buy it? (no pun intended)
If I understood correctly, the "jettison of Windows platform" when using .NET would essentially mean that there could be Office.NET for Linux some day, and that cannot be all bad, right? And in any case, this would mean that Microsoft would be going in a more open direction, which would be quite nice.
-- And there was much rejoicing
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
The article (correctly) points out that Windows-based products cold be optimized to work with the netcentric paradigm, but ignores both the maturity of other players in the game (Larry Ellison isn't going to stand still for this) and the fact that such a change would be a perfect opportunity for companies to consider other applications. Corporate IT directors, already smarting from the exorbitent M$ licensing fees for W2K, might revolt at a subscription based structure for desktops as well.
After a breezy piece on how M$ will shift its application software to a subscription-based network model (without a word about the massive network infrastructure growth that would be needed to support such a change) the Economist takes a vicious swipe at Linux:
This has "censored by the Sales Department" written all over it: even while talking about profit warnings, the writer takes care to paint a picture of a future where M$ is the only possibility, where Linux is for hobbyists, and where Gates wins again.Bellhead
Thank you for pointing out the "deep throat" quote.
--
.net is not limited to MS's apps at all. they just released the beta of the .net Visual Studio, so I guess other companies will be able to program for it though. I personally hate the idea of .NET because java was supposed to do this, and it didn't, and I doubt MS will be able to pull this off at all. I just see this whole thing as MS trying to beat piracy.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Yes. .Net is used to develope both clients and servers. .Net is not a language, it's an almost undefinable concept. Basically, under the .Net movement, applications will migrate to a language called C# which is simmilar to C++ and Java (only not carrying over the shitty parts or slowness of java). C# will make writing code a hell of a lot easier and to answer your question, yes, you can still write conventional non-internet-centric apps.
Scott
Long live Microsoft!
MS.NET is pretty similar to what the Windows common controls was for Win95. U see. After a while applications needed a standard way to Open Dialoge, Save as Dialoge. So Common controls were created. .NET Goes way further. Apart from changing the subtle look & feel. Meaning everything is similar to browsing.. but with predominent usage on Internet. Like previously we developed apps using VB. How do u port it to the internet. Almost imposible. Now u write em in VB.. just publishem ur good to go..
All the app servers are users of the .NET Framework or they understand the Framework.
The Windows.NET is a joke. Its nothing but windows 2000 with .NET Framework in it.. so that any windows client will have a common Framework & any app complient to that framework will. look the same & work this same.
only problem is, m-soft has 90% market share. People (and companies) hate giving up their current stuff and moving to other stuff, so don't expect companies to run like mad at open source.
-
That would be the logical choice.
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as in the new OS will still run win32 programs, just like win9x will still run win3.1 software...
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.NET as I am aware is an open standard's api for providing subscription or, just plain services by connection (who said it had to be used for a pay service people it's an open standard there are non profitable uses of this technology) useing C# & there XML GUI there building for Whistler & more prodomitely BlackComb, .NET will be ported to Linux by Corel that is why MS invested in Corel. Lets take the time to name a few services I think .NET is perfectly suited too we'll there's Napster, ShoutCast, Real Player, WMP, TV Turner Cards W/ Internet Capabilitys, Certianly All Online Based Games, All Stock Software (Datek, AmeraTrade) All Open Source Software (A Language that can compile on any machine and run instantly? Oh jesus that's such a bad thing ;).....
- charles
"I am intelligent therefor I am elite, you on the other hand our dumb, so your are obsolete, die"
You mean that .NET doesn't do away with COM, yet, because it's impossible for them to rebuild and replace 10 years worth of COM components and interfaces in a blink of the eye. But, when you see the MS hype that "Lookie - we did (COM-like stuff) without COM!", it's clear that the future is .NET and not COM.
.NET being 'middleware' and COM being 'operating system' perhaps in the DOJ breakup plan.)
.NET and COM and like it. Not that COM will ever really go unsupported, but MS does have it's tendancies to forget about APIs that are no longer officially blessed.
Which is a very strange shift in position for such a core group of technologies and a huge gamble. They must have really believed that there was no way to sell (D)COM to the 'enterprise' to take such a gamble, or the article premise is true (which it probably is,
Not to mention the current awkward period when they need to tell people to essentially use both
The point was, .NET preserves MS by making Windows irrelevant..
Which is actually a smart move. Operating Systems are a commodity product, and with Windows 2000, Microsoft has basically finished the substantial work making them. From here on in, it's tuning and bugfixes.
The only reason MS is opposing the breakup is because the $50/tax on PC purchases is a nice business to be in, and so is selling NOS seats. But they know where the real profits come from - control of the platform, and could live just fine without "collection of poorly debugged device drivers" itself. Once Windows.NET gets out the door, they will be more than happy acceed the government and let the OS division hang out to dry.
Wrong. .NET is a completely different architecture than (D)COM. So, if you've made an investement in COM (most Windows shops have), you're probably screwed by this new tactic.
For the last 4 years, it's been COM, COM, COM from Microsoft (after they decided what to call it). Now they'll change their tune, and the softies will pretend that that 'legacy' shit never existed.
In ver 5 they added some dumb feature that allowed you to inherit just a portion of a screen, instead of the whole thing. Nifty I suppose but I'd rather just have a help file that doesn't suck.
I hated the non-data bound controls. They were weak and slow. The free vcl controls on the net were even slower. Don't even get me started on the BDE.
Delphi had problems but none of the major ones had anything at all to do with Microsoft. Sometimes companies make mistakes all on their own. Stop laying blame at Microsoft's feel. I really believe that if Delphi had VB3-like help the sales would have doubled (to a still insignificant level)
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
Well... where do you start with this?...
The first problem is you don't rent word every time you use it. That's just an outright lie. The other issue is that star office is fucking embarrassment. Advantage word.
This shouldn't be too hard since vs.net is fantastic. It has all the nice things from Delphi from a company powerful enough to get it done. Delphi always had a "not quite finished" feel to it. Its version of intelisense made me cringe.VS.net truly gives developers capabilities they didn't have before on any platform. With web forms you can now separate the code from the crummy html in a very elegant way. Who else has this?
duh. fuckhead. Yes. The point here is to sell windows. duh. duh. duh. What part do you not understand about a commerical enterprise? Build stuff..sell it... collect money. Easy, no?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
Honnestly, what the hell do Microsoft and SUN think they are up to with their everything served through a web portal instead of installed localy approach? Are they trying to compete with the Entertainment industry in the pay-per-use scheme of things? Or are they simply dumb enough to think that people whose only option is still dialup with local phone charges will actually bother using applications served over the net, instead of software installed on their own hard-disk?
Honestly, I really cannot be bothered with either company's laughable attempts at controlling this planet's software. Freedom of choice and rock-solid software rules; this is a war neither company can win, even if they opensource their products. Both BSD and Linux have a proven track record that will kill any commercial attempt at world domination, including attempts at commercializing Linux such as Red Hat's self-declared domination of the Linux universe.
Here is a more realistic sample of smart shopping: my workstations run either MiNT, OpenBSD or Debian, on hardware ranging from 68k-based Atari TT030 to your average free second-hand PC hardware. The whole thing is fast, efficient and, in the case of MiNT, runs both vintage GEM software and X applications. It works without any Microsoftism, as it relies entirely on open standards and simply rocks, because the software itself is well-coded and efficient, not because of bloated 1GHz overclocked CPU architecture.
Given this, why should I even bother reading about what William Gates the 3rd or Scott McNealy have in mind for the future of consumer computing?
Bill, Scott, I already have everything I need. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
The same is true pretty much all over Europe.
While cable-net has started to appear in a few cities, which is helping bring the overall access costs down, I still know an awfull lot of people who cannot afford more than a couple of hours of surfing per day, because the only option in their town is dialup connection plus phone charges on top.
Honestly, even Canada is nowhere near Yankee standards, in terms of cost and variety of options. While most Canadian towns indeed don't charge for local calls, they also only offer (at best) 56K dialup access thru the phone company's indecently priced 100 hours/month package.
Basically, for anyone but Yankees, phone charges do apply and high-speed access is often simply unavailable, therefore completely nullify any master plans for portal-driven software.
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Why is .NET "scary", AntiFreeze? Are you afraid of change, or afraid that it will be successful and make GNU/Linux even more irrelevant to the enterprise? Do you really know what you're talking about? Please, draw upon your six months of programming experience ("JavaScript is l337, man!") and explain exactly how .NET will affect you, a high-school sophomore in Aberdeen, Kentucky. I'd also like you to explain how you could interpret such a story, posted on Slashdot next to the "Borg" icon, as anything but pathetically blantant flamebait.
I have several accounts here, two with capped karma. I've been around a while. But it's getting more and more difficult to come here expecting anything intelligent, when there are so many more mature, interesting webboards out there. Bojay was right to bugger off when he did.
I would like to encourage Microsoft stories on Slashdot, but can be please be a little more grown-up? "No, of course not, we must be feverent Microsoft bashers, because it's trendy, just like Linux!" Poor Andover, and poor VA... this is what happens when you invest millions of dollars in a dead messageboard run by crappy Perl programmer kids who encourage flamewars.
Cut the crap, already. You know that both yourselves and the majority of your readers are scrappy Linux-hacker wannabes. Why not post stories about things they can have intellgent discussions? Here are a few suggesstions:
- "Ask Slashdot: What is the l337est GNOME skin?"
- "Interview: A Non-virgin"
- "The coolest TI-83 games to play during English class"
- "Science: Stealth masturbation"
- "BSD: Not as l337 as LUN1X!!"
- "Book review: O'Reilly's Acne Prevention in a Nutshell"
Fucking amateurs...See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
(This post is ©2001 Microsoft(TM) Corporation.)
``I hope, though, that whatever settlement is done it won't ruin this company because this company has been a very interesting innovator. I hope the judge would keep in mind that this company is an important part of the technological revolution taking place in America.''
Even so, Sun is way ahead with Java and net based applications, with the promise of openning it [java] to the world, something MS has never said they would do with .NET
Actually this is not true. While Sun has made most of Java's source code viewable (if not Open), they still retain sole ownership of the standard. Sun has talked and talked in the past about how they would open Java up as an ISO or ECMA standard, but always wound up pulling out and retaining sole control of the future direction of Java. Microsoft, on the other hand, while certainly not a champion of true open standards in the past, has submitted the core technology behind .Net to ECMA for standardization.
Companies will NOT pay for subscription based applications. There is no way that if most of the world would not pay to upgrade to Office 97, that they are going to decide that monthly charges are better. I know accountants, they will NEVER buy into this idea.
This is not an absolute. In fact, many companies are turning a profit even in these 'terrible times for tech' supplying subscription-based software to companies. Its more the consumer space that is going to freak out (ala DIVX) when this model is hoisted upon them. Many businesses already spend ridiculous sums on support contracts, and many will see subscription based software as a way to save on labor costs in IT, and will try it out..Whether or not it works on a grand scale depends on the pricing schemes and the support the software companies are able to provide.
OpenBSD man pages are very complete and informative. Info isn't necessary, but people think it is because many systems have crappy man pages. I am not going to post this anonymously. If I can't say it under my username, it isn't worth saying.
That was the democrat way. It's over now!
The driving force behind Microsoft .NET is a shift in focus from
individual Web sites or devices to new constellations of computers,
devices, and services that work together to deliver broader, richer
solutions. People will have control over how, when, and what
information is delivered to them. Computers, devices, and services
will be able to collaborate directly with each other, and businesses
will be able to offer their products and services in a way that lets
customers embed them in their own electronic fabric.
Java sucks. Microsoft .NET will enable
developers to create programs that
transcend device boundaries and fully
harness the connectivity of the
Internet.
With .NET Enterprise Servers, IT
professionals can take advantage of
the same technologies on which the .NET platform is being built.
The .NET platform will
fundamentally change the way
that companies interact with their
customers and partners over the
Internet.
Today IT professionals can take advantage of the same technologies on which the .NET platform is being built. The .NET Enterprise Servers and the Windows® 2000 operating systems provide a solid foundation for creating highly manageable applications that can be brought to market quickly. Because they take advantage of Extensible Markup Language (XML), applications created on this platform will continue to have value as the infrastructure of the Web evolves.
The .NET platform has, at its core, unprecedented levels of scale based on a significantly different approach to building applications. The Web services model on which it is based means that while the central business elements of corporate applications will still generally be managed locally, the services to support them--user authentication, file storage, user preference management, calendaring, mail, and the like--can be subscribed to seamlessly instead of locally managed. IT professionals will be able to focus more on delivering value to their businesses, and less on the details of installing new redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID arrays) for servers storing user files and mail.
The Web services model will also enable dynamic deployment of new software releases and updates. Since users will be working in extremely connected ways, management can be made simpler by taking advantage of this connectivity. Easier management will also enable IT professionals to be more responsive to changes in business needs.
The .NET Web services model for developing applications will open up a new way of creating enterprise applications. Federation of internal and external services will enable simplified creation of applications that bring together corporate data with associated data from vendors and partners, resulting in an unprecedented depth of functionality for the benefit of end users. A company's employee benefits application, for example, will be able to simply subscribe to information from its HR database, to the Web service from its benefits management company, and to the Web service from its payroll management company. The end users will be able to interact with a single, intuitive interface displaying how much vacation time they have accrued, what benefits they personally receive, and how much their last paycheck was.
It wrong to assume that everyone needs or wants the technical experience of an average /.er They want their computer to be an appliance. Theoretically(cough, cough), the .net concept should do just, though no one actually has proven implementation yet. Pity that MS will be the first to sell this idea to the public. No suprise, though. MS has always managed to boost sales by slapping Vaporware is big gold letters on the box.
Yeah this Jav...(cough cough, I mean) .NET stuff is really cool and innovative.
Let us take a look at the context of the Economist' article;
MS is fixing to be broken.
MS is looking for a way to hold onto market share (and their price per share).
It will take years for the court to break MS.
In the mean-time MS is going to change things i.e. the court judgment will not matter.
The .net program will work for some companies, and MS is sure to come up with several other programs .
And for those of you that think that an MS strategy will not work, just think back to BOB for confirmation HI.
-- Wherever you go, there you are. BB
Can we safely assume that in the breakup billg is going with the applications (rather than OS) side? Will Linux lose him as an enemy?
Yes, there is a new language in .NET, called C# (C-Sharp). But, if you examine it, it's just a hybrid of C++ with .NET technologies (such as a new foreach keyword for enumeration)
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Sorry- I don't think you're aware of political realities. Neither is Microsoft, for that matter. How many times do people have to say 'FoF cannot be so easily overturned' before it is heard?
Cross platform support to Microsoft means Win[9.|ME] and [nt|2k]. I'd like to say the M$ does not care in the slightest about any other platform but that would be dead wrong. They fear all other platforms and .NET will be yet another weapon that they are designing to lock all other platforms out.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It has about as much chance of success. Take a good look at Microsofts attempts to do anything different or branch out in new directions. Anything they have tried (msn, windows ce, event nt) have only survived and verly slowly been accepted because Microsoft has the deep pockets to keep trying and pushing and using their existing monopolies to slowly force their products into the main stream. Sure .NET will probably be accepted but it's going to take them 5-10 years to force it onto most peoples computers. Microsoft is the IBM of the new decade they are more strongly shackled by their legacy software than any company has ever been, it will not be easy for them to make any changes, and they may just find that once they get people to move off the windows platform, those people may decide that it is time to find a better solution altogether.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I can only say, if MS is always successful at what they put their minds to, then they must have been putting their minds towards creating extremely lousy software designed with the single purpose of pissing me off.
Yes, sometimes they do attract bright people... but they appear to not really do anything with them. They have the guy who made the Newton, but they have yet to make anything like the Newton. They're too constricted by their own concepts of backwards compatibility to really innovate.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
The following is one of their sample C++ applications:
OK, there was going to be a bastard-variant-of-C++ code excerpt here, but... (Dammit Taco, the lameness filter sucks...)
Anyway, the example I linked to above uses three proprietary extensions that Microsoft has introduced to the C++ language.
Programmers can now directly include .NET DLL's into their program. (God forbid they have to run some external tool that generates a C++ header file from an DLL or IDL description and then include that, I mean, think of all the extra typing they would have to do...)
So you want to declare a .NET managed (created and garbage collected by the runtime) class. As everyone knows, you have to introduce a new keyword to do this. There is absolutely no way you can make this class be derived from the NetManagedObject base class, that would (once again) require way too much typing if you were to require that the developers do it that way...
Once again, a new keyword was absolutely necessary to allow developers to declare properties in their classes. An external file that says that StringComponent::get_Count() is the get method for a read-only property called Count would be an incredible burden on the developers. (As would a /* %NET property Count(get_Count,NULL)% */ comment next the the declaration of get_Count(), and then running the source file through a preprocessor..)
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The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
Software AG ported DCOM to Linux and, IIRC, several other Unixen some years ago. I haven't heard anything else about this, so I don't think it took off (why use DCOM when you can use CORBA?).
DCOM wasn't that hard for them to port, however not much would actually work using it because many COM interfaces use Windows APIs internally to do graphics or networking or whatever. So, yes, DCOM runs on other platforms, but it is basically useless because almost none of the COM components run on other platforms or ever will be able to run on other platforms without some one porting the entire Win32 API to those platforms. (Which is what Wine is doing, but it isn't finished yet...)
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The Hotmail addres is my decoy account. I read it approximately once per year.
No, 19.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Scanning through Gregory Pomerantzs' paper just makes me wonder why 'we', the general computer using population, would need .NET.
It sounds to me like .NET is an MS 'replacement' of the Internet.
What I mean is that currently what we call the net is made up of many things, and MS is looking to replace them all.
Hence .NET is about languages, scripting, search engines, protocols, services, customer data, servers, clients etc. Hence .NET is really MS replacing all net related technologies with .NET versions.
So my question is, if .NET is mostly a huge technology swap (net for .NET), and only marginally a functionality provision (unless you call digital copy prevention a function 'enhancement'), why do we need it? Why would we want it? Is the net really in need of a retooling for the sake of rebranding?
Is MS so peeved that the net was built on *nix that they want to rebuild it on MS tech??
There's a dozen states involved here, so the federal government can only drop THEIR part of the suit. The states still individually have the ability to keep it going...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
If XML is being produced according to standard by a program, why is testing it for correctness needed?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
WOW!
I've occaisionally seen posts I'd love to give all 5 moderation points at once, but this one is also worth clipping and saving!, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Obviously, XML is more than just a comma-separated list. It also includes additional redundancies to make it even harder for humans to read under the guise of being able to verify correctness of data generated by another program. XML is a waste!
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If they weren't using it, I'd call XML as irrelevant and pointless. Since they are using it, I call it a waste. The only reason they are using it is because it is the format du jour. Since a lot of development has gone on around XML, as opposed to anything better, it's not their fault they have to choose something that's a waste.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
An unreadable replacement for XML? That would be just like ... XML
HDF is hierarchical and has syntax. But it doesn't have the redundancy of XML since it doesn't give the same item name again to close it (just a closing brace). It's more readable by humans than XML. It can be parsed faster by computers than XML. It can be typed in by humans in a shorter time (should a human ever need to, which should be rare for either).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Well, genius, all programming languages have exactly the same power; they are all Turing-complete.
C# has some nice syntactic sugar, actually. I don't know if it offers enough of a difference from Java to make it worthwhile to switch for non-Win32 programmers, but we'll see. Win32 C++ programmers will probably jump on the C# bandwagon relatively quickly.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
I'm glad you realized that.
Have you considered a TWR.com where we could all benefit from your genius? Oh wait, that was last year. never mind.
Well, I'm hoping that my acolytes, such as yourself, will fund such a site as a tribute to me. You can also sit in airports, tell people about my genius, sell flowers and turn over the proceeds to me.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
What is .NET exactly (in laymans terms heh)? Is it limited to Microsofts Office style applications?
Windows 95 = 4.00.950, 4.00.950a
Windows 95 OSR2 = 4.00.950 B (4.00.1111, 4.00.1212), 4.00.950 C (4.00.1214)
Windows 98 = 4.10.1998
Windows 98 SE = 4.10.2222
Windows ME = 4.90.3000
* don't ask why the Windows 95 OSR2 releases have two version numbers (one in Control Panel|System, one in ver on the command line). I think there was a 1212b release too, but who cares. I'm rambling.
Windows NT 4 = NT 4.00.1381
Windows 2000 = NT 5.00.2195
Hands in my pocket
Do you think with .NET coming up that more and more people would be telecommuting? If so, i won't have to drive through snow to get to my QA work!
Which they couldn't do if they wren't broken up without very obviously being an anti-competitive cartel. The Economist article is just plain wrong: breaking up Microsoft cripples its `Embrace and Extend' strategy, with or without .NET.
byte-code like language), C# and some other technologies are being
submitted to the ECMA standards organization (Note: This is more than
Sun ever did with Java).
The submission of c# to a standards body is old news: I hadn't
heard about MSIL. Which are the other technologies? Any APIs?
The aim of justice is not merely to be corrective (i.e. stop MS from doing any further damage). Indeed, that would mean that they can get off scott-free with what they already did to the economy, to their competitors and to the consumer. Letting them off this way would send the wrong message to future, would-be monopolists: "it's ok to do predatory trade practices, until the anti-trust division wakes up. And when they finally wake up, you only have to stop doing further harm, you won't be made accountable for what you will already have done". This is not the goal of justice. Justice should also be a deterrent. Microsoft is neither the first monopolist nor probably the last. In this case we must think as much about what signals we send to future would-be monopolists than about merely "corrective" action.
Say no to software patents.
MS has always bet on the future and made smart moves to be in the right place at the right time. I think however, this time they are shooting themselves in the foot.
.NET the new "standard" platform to write software for they are going to kill themselves. Here is why:
.NET is just an updated set of dictated rules to programmers. No programmer is going to wilfully move to a new platform that has no market share, just so they can be dictated in how to write their software. Even so, Sun is way ahead with Java and net based applications, with the promise of openning it [java] to the world, something MS has never said they would do with .NET
IF they try to make
-Everyone is tired of programming for them, and
-Companies will NOT pay for subscription based applications. There is no way that if most of the world would not pay to upgrade to Office 97, that they are going to decide that monthly charges are better. I know accountants, they will NEVER buy into this idea.
-.NET based apps (services) will be totally dependent on your connection to the network (internet). You think your company is effected now when you can't get email or surf the web? Imagine all the sales, accounting, etc, depts. sitting around without any apps because the DSL/FRAME/etc is down.
So what does this all mean...
Open source software will still be based on applications, on computers. The software will continue to get better and will become the only software availble that is not a "service"
Someone will right a replacement for X windows, throwing away all the compatibilty of past Unix to make a new PC platform. In fact if Apple were smart (and they are not) they would open Mac OS X to PC hardware and watch the world move to them, as open source software will run freely on it, as well as commercial apps.
IHMO, this is the future...
Microsoft just jumped off a cliff.
VANBO
Microsoft was a very very very late player in the net software. In fact it almost sunk them in late 80s/early 90s. Gates originaly thought the WWW was an interesting side technology. It took a bunch from NCSA making truck loads of money to change his tune. I hate to sound trite but Microsoft's past actions don't sound very enlightened.
You are correct: Pushing repackaged technology every few years is super expensive for consumers and people might have to stopped buying at the outragous rate Microsoft wants them too. Why upgrade to Windows ME when my Win98 works great? Why upgrade to Office 2K when Office 97 works great except that it doesn't open Office 2K files? Why write new code for a platform that is only supported on one hardware configuration which could be accomplished by other cheaper and more flexible hardware and software?
The adage goes, "the net sees censorship as damage, and routes around it." Is this Microsoft's scheme to route around it? The .net project was started when the courts told Microsoft to quit messing with someone else's standards on JVMs.
Microsoft's putting C# in front of standards committees strikes me to be similar to their attempt to standardize NT. It's not Microsoft who made NT/Alpha and NT/MIPS fail, it's the Alpha and Mips people who licensed, ported, and gave up on those platforms. At least, that's how Microsoft sees it.
Similarly, if Linux makes a half-hearted implementation of .NET or C#, and it doesn't take off, it's still not Microsoft's fault: they can focus on the Wintel hegemony in comfort.
[
If that was the case they'd document their extensions and try to get as many third parties as possible to use their extensions.
Generally they modify and extend without documenting, or in a way that is not "better" but incompatible. An extended set of options is always nice, but trying to cause a rift between standard Kerberos and Win2k Kerberos, there's just no excuse.
You can innovate and still play nice with standards, or at least try to make your innovations into standards.
How many of you seriously think the Micro$oft suit will continue past Shrub's inauguration? The Justice Department, under the corporatist John Ashcroft's direction, will most likely quietly drop the case. Some states may choose to continue their cases, but any breakup remedy will be dead in the water.
If ever there were a case for a corporate death penalty, this is it. We all know they've murdered enough innocent technologies and companies...
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
.NET is the name for Microsoft's next range of projects. First there was '95, then '98, then 2000, and now .NET:
Visual Studio 7 = Visual Studio.NET
Windows 7 = Windows.NET
Office 11 = Office.NET
etc, etc..
I don't know enough about the law to really comment on this, but if the federal lawsuit is killed by either the court of appeals or the supreme court (which after their election ruling would be unsurprising; unfortunately the court seems to have become totally politicized), the states' chances would probably be weakened.
This is a different issue. If the courts destroy the case it is no longer an issue of Bush affecting it.
But still, the states will press onward. Bush's best bet if he wants the case dropped is to do a poor job in court (it will be tough to do worse than Microsoft though based on the first trial), and try to lose or convince the states to back off.
In all likelihood he will let the case run its course, since he doesn't have a strong hand in guiding it anyway.
Render a MS-Breakup irrelevant? Is there anybody out there who thinks that the prosecution of MS is going to continue under Bush?
It is really simple.
Orrin Hatch (R) is head of the Senate Judiciary committee. Caldera is from his home state of Utah, and they just won a lawsuit about DrDOS, and view themselves as competitors in software with Microsoft. Orrin Hatch is one of the most outspoken persons in the nation against Microsoft as a monopolist.
Now, what are the odds that a Senate Judiciary Committee can block ANY appointment Bush tries to make if it is 50% Democrat and the Chairman takes an anti-Bush stance because of his actions against Microsoft ??
Also, the other party in the antitrust action is the states, and they will continue anyway. Really, Bush has nothing to do with it. Microsoft is going to have to fight their own fight in court.
No, the point was deeper than that.
First, Bush would risk looking like a complete idiot. The justice department scored a resounding victory. How does it look if he stops the prosecution when he is three touchdowns ahead at halftime ?? He looks the fool.
Second, there is the Orrin Hatch factor. Don't forget the judiciary committee's power in judicial appointments. Jesse Helms has blocked appointments of black justices on racial grounds over and over again, not to be overridden during Clinton's tenure. It is a farce. Bush cannot risk losing a Republican on the Judicary Committee, especially the chair. Come to think of it, Bush cannot risk losing any Senate Republicans for two years (until the Democrats take over).
Third, even if Ashcroft (another racist, BTW) offers a deal after the appeal, the states do not have to agree. The federal government has only the power of suggestion to the state's attorney generals, and many of them are pursuing the case as is their duty - to win, and to win as big as possible, and then to consider whatever punishment/settlement is in the public's (and in this case the consumer's) best interests.
For all these reasons the case will ride unperturbed through the appeal. At that point expect Ashcroft to try to soften the settlement. In doing so he HAS to keep the states on board, so he cannot go too far.
Bush as President means almost nothing to the Microsoft case.
While the author makes a good point about MS's .NET strategy, he seems to be so caught up with the idea that ".NET becomes the center of Microsoft" and this is not the case. .NET is the way that Microsoft wants user to deploy so that people will buy WIndows. From the lack of Microsoft Office 2000 upgrade to disappointing rate of adoption of Windows 2000, I think it's clear that people think they don't need all that stuff and now Microsoft wants people to buy Windows again. And I think the author hints that Microsoft doesn't tie itself to Windows. I think he's plain WRONG in that regard: Microsoft==Windows. Period. Listen to what Steve Ballmer, BG, and other people at MS said and believe in what they said. The last thing Microsoft will do is writing a Linux version of .NET Visual Studio. Furthermore, the author really doesn't understand why Microsoft needs to develop .NET: It's a way of making money. All they want is to use the subscription services and selling of powerful W2k data center edition to generate new revenue. And .NET provides the incentives. .NET is basically Visual Basic for Internet. So you can build highly intereactive and communicate with clients easily without writing Winsock, or DCOM that drive people nuts. But really the question becomes will .NET services talk a common protocol. My answer is a definite no because .NET drives revenue for Win2K, and Win2K is the bread and butter of M$. If Joe and Jane can run a .NET services on a linux box, then BillG is helping everyone making money but himself. Really the point for .NET is to provides services that only "Windows" server can provide so Microsoft can again lock everyone in their wonderful M$ land. .NET's stuff might be open-standard, but M$ can treak their services to make it non-openstandard. There's nothing stop them from doing that. Finally, the author seems so ignorant about Microsoft's direction. He thinks that legal battle accerlate Microsoft's determination to develop the .NET platform and this is just WRONG. Microsoft develops .NET platform because of the lack of developer commit to M$ tools and the declining revenue. Nowadays you are lucky to make half of what a java programmer makes if you are writing Visual Basic (I am a Java programmer ;-) the deal is that Microsoft understands if their platform is not the platform for Internet, like Solaris or Linux, then basically people really won't care about what kind of friggin ActiveX control you are making. Again, declining revenue comes from the fact that no serious web site runs on Win2k platform (our company tried and nothing but shit happens, we switched back to Sun in 3 days after spending millions of dollars in writing a bunch of useless DCOM services). And Microsoft needs to whip something out so that people will use easy ways to create Internet App.
This is my 2 cents and my latest IE 5.5 128-bit browser is going to crash in a minute. FYI I am running Win2k and I got so many problems it's just scary.
He has very cogent definitions in his findings of fact of OS, middleware, and application.
.net infrastructure AND the applications software.
I can't imagien him lettign one peice walk away with ownership of both the
As long as the infrastructure group is forced to deal with other development groups in exactly the same way that they must deal with the ex-MS applciatiosn groups, the split up will have doen its job by fully opening up the platform in an equal way to other developers.
Yet another thing to consider - since Microsoft is providing the software over a digital link for a subscription of whatever kind (which means you REALLY don't own your software anymore), what does that let them do? Especially in light of the DMCA and the (now seemingly mostly dead) UCITA. At the very least, it gives them most of the powers they were pushing for in the UCITA with little or no overhead.
-RickHunter
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
There are many things you can call Microsoft: cocky, criminal, ruthless. But there are a few things Microsoft isn't: They're not stupid, and they're not a company that's going to release products that aren't attractive to conusumers. Yes, there will be Microsoft Bobs, but the fact is MS got where they are by offering people what they want, not by shoving things down people's throats.
Not that they haven't tried. They tried to shove IE and WindowsMedia down people's throats, but they didn't catch on until they were truly better than their competitors. Look at AOL IM, Quicken, and Apache. It's not like Microsoft isn't trying to compete with these pieces of software, and they still have their big ol' operating system to tie things to. But they're not gaining ground because their software can't really compete.
So accuse Microsoft of breaking the law, but Microsoft knows people won't buy something they don't want--they know that *very* well.
-Erik
I've heard statements like this quite frequently (Bush will stop the MS trial), but I haven't heard any reason why. I'm not saying that he will leave it alone, but I haven't heard anything to say that he will do anything one way or another. Has he or his campaign spoken out against the trial? Are his appointees "pro-Microsoft" or "anti-antitrust?"
I dunno really, and I don't want to turn this into a political thing, I just haven't heard anything about this.
--
There is a long-term harm to customers, both in higher costs associated with using products with poor interoperatibility (conformance with open standards). Consider the sorry state of affairs that web page authors must deal with, as one small example.
Because MS is in a monopoly position, there is also a clear harm to consumers when intentional interoperability crosses the line into anti-competitive practice. They have been found guilty, you know. The FTC and DoJ overlook much and usually just warn (witness the recent "just don't do it again" to the RIAA over nearly 10 years of price fixing). If the findings of fact in this case don't spell out the harm to you, probably nothing will.
If you can't see the harm that MS has done, you certainly haven't looked... or perhaps you have a value system, saddly, which leads you to believe that nearly any behaviour is acceptable in persuit of the almighty dollar.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
That's probably the case.
If they in fact has a massive stockpile of cash as a result of monopoly overcharging (windows/office price remaining fixed when everything else about a new PC because 1/5th the price), morally, it's similar to having stolen property. The ill-gotten money should be returned and they should be prevented from doing it again. The other extreme should certainly be prevented.... allowing them to leverage their very strong position and massive cahce of cash to overtake other industrties and extract even more monopoly power and excessing monopoly overcharges.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The problem is I don't think Orrin Hatch would oppose judicial appointments (such as Ashcroft) simply because they're pro-Microsoft; he has substantial clout in the Republican party, and I don't think he'd risk it in a fight like that, especially considering there are a fair number of Democrats who seem to support MS. On the other hand, I doubt Bush would end the prosecution, but he'd definitely have them ease up on it I think.
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How does it look if he stops the prosecution when he is three touchdowns ahead at halftime ?? He looks the fool.
The question is just how far to the right the Bush administration will go. The Reagan administration was sufficiently reactionary that they didn't even seem to care how their actions looked.
Second, there is the Orrin Hatch factor. Don't forget the judiciary committee's power in judicial appointments. Jesse Helms has blocked appointments of black justices on racial grounds over and over again, not to be overridden during Clinton's tenure. It is a farce.
Normally I would agree, but the new power sharing rules they've worked out might mean an end to this; tie votes in committee now apparently bring the matter to the Senate floor, so it should be much harder to block. Which in a lot of ways is a good thing, especially in the case of Helms, who (in addition to the blocking of judicial/diplomatic appointments) has been allowed to set U.S. foreign policy this way.
Third, even if Ashcroft (another racist, BTW) offers a deal after the appeal, the states do not have to agree. The federal government has only the power of suggestion to the state's attorney generals, and many of them are pursuing the case as is their duty - to win, and to win as big as possible, and then to consider whatever punishment/settlement is in the public's (and in this case the consumer's) best interests.
I don't know enough about the law to really comment on this, but if the federal lawsuit is killed by either the court of appeals or the supreme court (which after their election ruling would be unsurprising; unfortunately the court seems to have become totally politicized), the states' chances would probably be weakened. Bush cannot risk losing a Republican on the Judicary Committee, especially the chair. Come to think of it, Bush cannot risk losing any Senate Republicans for two years
On the other hand, Hatch can't risk losing influence in the new administration, so I don't know how far his loyalty to Caldera will stretch...
(until the Democrats take over).
Amen.
--
It should be noted that K5 is mostly a discussion site. Slashdot & K5 are not in direct competition with each other, and I browse both sites regularly. Those who just want the news (and additional facts that are usually supplied by the readers) should go to Slashdot.
Whether the discussions on K5 are of any value, everyone must decide for themselves. They are certainly not for close-minded people.
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Readmond, WA, 02.02.02;Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has announced to the World that his firm has won their suit heard by the World Trade Organization & World Intellectual Property Organization to trademark and copywrite the term ".NET". This recent move by Microsoft would see the Redmonton giant gain control of over 12312312 domain names presently on the internet.
.COM -- after all we did put the 'dot' in the 'dot' COM you know - what the @#*&@*# do you think that meant biatch? Move aside asshole, that shits is ours!" added giddy Mr. McNally.
"We are clearly the rightfull owners of the ".NET" trademark -- all current users of the ".NET" TLD are obviously infringing on our rightfull property." said Mr. Gates in a recent interview. "At Microsoft, our IP is our most valuable asset. This is the reason we have seen a shift from sales revenue to licenses occur so dramatically in the last few years. No longer will our company sell products, we now find our innovative ".NET" infrastructure to be much more suited to the 'service' type model." he continued.
Free Software advocates, the communist, anarchistsic, anti-American users of the GNU/Linux software were heard speaking various grumbles at one of their recent Cult-Gatherings; known as "LUGS". Some of the self proclaimed "Hackers" (Ed. A hacker is someone who uses his mastery of computer skills to devestate American infrastructure.) interviewed for comment.
"You cant trademark a TLD -- their are 123123123 sites displaying prior art. This is absurd." said one Hacker. "VV1N|>0WW$ suX0R$ d00d - |_1NuX i$ 31337" added another Hacker. (Ed. We are not sure what drugs these cultists take -- we only hope that man finds help.)
The legal world made comment at the decision. Law Professor from a local University added "This is not necessarily a precendent. It is the first of its kind in the Auto-Matic Tabulating (Computer Ed.) industry. We find it interesting that they have succesfully made a trademark of commonly used terms and general language. It is not surprising though; the recent victories by McDonalds to tradmark the word "Food" and "Meal" and Ford Motor Company to trademark the word "Car" and "Travel" show the direction of IP law. It is an exciting prospect for my profession - it will surely gaurantee great amounts of spending as industry leaders claim their rightfull IP. As none of these terms were previously Trademarked there is no reason they should not be, belonging to the 'Public Domain' is a death sentance because this 'Public' does not have any lawyers.. maybe they should hire some. Id be willing to represent their 'best interests' also for the proper fee."
In related news; Sun Microsystems sent shockwaves through the internet as they filed there own suit to claim ".COM" as their Intellectual Property. "We obviously own
.. put every MSFT employee under house arrest, and block Internet access. That would really put these evil devils in their place!
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Where in my post does it say anything about people "flocking to open source stuff"? Now given, I'm a Linux user, and I think that Linux rocks, but that doesn't meant people will go running to Linux to save them. Same goes for Apple, FreeBSD, and anything else you want to throw in. The point is not that people will go running to a certain area, the point is that people will have to find something else to use when (and if) MS shoots itself in the foot with this strategy. What they'll find, however, I won't venture to say...
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
Now, I'll most certainly agree with your second paragraph. People, sadly enough, need Windows - it will become hard to move away from and take much time so it might as well stay because it suits the purpose it fills. It'd be much better to let MS continue as-is, but have to come up with their own future ideas. They'll phase themselves out that way without the catastrophe associated with a split.
CAP THAT KARMA!
Moderators: -1, nested, oldest first!
SIG: HUP
puh-LEASE yourself, Mr. Devil's advocate. Having a different opinion from the majority of slashdot folks doesn't make you erudite.
:|
If you have to ask why people are afraid of Microsoft, you simply haven't been paying attention. MS would attract about the same level of animosity as Apple, except for one thing: when Microsoft sets its sights on a market, there's a strong chance that they'll try to destroy everything else in it. Consumer choice goes down. Choice about what we get to use to do our jobs disappears. This isn't alarmism -- this was the world that I worked in for a couple of years.
I'm really happy to say that Microsoft products and technology hardly matter at all to me right now. I work with technologies of MY choice right now, and the people I work for actually listen to me instead of MS marketeering. This is largely because I work in the Web App development world and I choose employers who don't list Visual Basic as a required skill.
But I have no illusions about Microsoft being in their death throes -- the amount of market power they have is incredible, and the amount of money they can just throw at things is equally incredible, and they've demonstrated they're not shy about using it to stomp out alternatives. So when I see them trying to "embrace and extend" the internet, I'm a little afraid, yes. And you think we're overreacting?
Cut the crap, already. You know that both yourselves and the majority of your readers are scrappy Linux-hacker wannabes. Why not post stories about things they can have intellgent discussions? Here are a few suggesstions:
* "Ask Slashdot: What is the l337est GNOME skin?"
* "Interview: A Non-virgin"
* "The coolest TI-83 games to play during English class"
* "Science: Stealth masturbation"
* "BSD: Not as l337 as LUN1X!!"
* "Book review: O'Reilly's Acne Prevention in a Nutshell"
Oh, boy, NOW you've really raised the level of dialogue on slashdot. Good work.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It's a refreshing feeling knowing that I can do a search of my hard disk and know that the string "Microsoft" will not appear in any of my files. It's also a refreshing feeling knowing that Microsoft can huff and puff all they want about .NET or Win2K but it has no relevance to my life or chance of ever showing up on a machine I own.
'Subscribe to Office.NET? No thanks, no need for the stuff.'
Microsoft -- Just Say No.
________________
________________
Private Essayist
Of course, you as a vendor, you will want to add additional functionality that you think will differentiate you from your competitors and increase sales. People here seem to forget that it is business that drive technology, not vice-versa. As a public traded company, they have the fudicial responsibility to generate returns on shareholders investment. Modifying standards and adding their own extensions is one way of doing it. As long as they don't go and rewrite the standards, I don't see any harm in it.
Why have so many distros of Linux. Why can't all the distro companies come together and work towards 1 standard way of distributing Linux?
People, there is a choice. You don't want to use Windows, install Linux/BSD/SolarisX86. Use apache. Use XPCOM. Use CORBA. Use LaTeX/StarOffice. Use Netscape instead of IE. Make your choice and stop bashing Microsoft.
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Microsofts idea of cross platform is win9x/win2k/NT/ME... so they arent lying.. its just marketing..
Attempt to access an instance method via a Java reference which has not been initialized (or for C++ programmers, a pointer which has not been allocated memory). The result is a run-time NullPointerException. The "Java has not pointers" complaint is bunk. Usually what is meant is, "Java doesn't let me access memory direclty", which in a garbage-collected environment such as Java's, is an exceedingly stupid thing to do. So bitch about garbage collection, but not about pointers.
The unpleasant side effect is that programmers whose first language is Java never learn proper memory management, and when they start working on large projects, write leaky code (it's harder in Java, but is possible) because of a fundamental misunderstanding about how Java works. I disagree with Java being used as a teaching language because of this. I feel it should be seen more as a "power tool" for those of us who know what we're doing but work in rapid-development environments where C++ work really is too slow. It's a happy coincidence that Java is especially well-suited for server-side WWW work, which is often extremely rapidly developed.
I am upset with Sun for not supporting a Java standard, but if you do any WWW work on UNIX, you know that the industry Java infrastructure is pervasive. C# will not change this, and I predict it will remain a language used by Microsofties. Why? Well, even though IBM competes with Sun in the high-end UNIX server market, they would be more likely to support Java than C#, because C# is being seen as a .NET language, and AIX of course will not support .NET as well as NT. Sun (obviously), IBM, HP, Oracle, and countless other industry giants have a lot invested in Java, and aren't going to switch to a new C++-Lite language just because Redmond says so.
All of you ranting about how much Java "sucks" should open your eyes. Java has become the language for enterprise-level UNIX Internet work, because of its excellent design, enhanced programmer productivity, portability, countless "real world" features, et cetera. Anyone doubting Java's power obviously knows nothing about is RMI, database interfaces, or networking API. You may think that Java "sucks" because Java applets are slow and crash your crappy Netscape browser, but for the e-commerce backends on our RS/6000 farms, nothing else is really an option.
While I do yearn for a standardized Java, I understand that Sun's complete control is what has allowed Java to evolve so quickly. Standardization, sadly, stagnates language development, and Java is not yet mature enough to be hinered so.
Two more points about standardization, then I'm done... first, look at how long it took C and C++ to obtain ISO standards; Java is still very young... secondly, is there a Perl ISO standard? How come I never hear Perl usage discouraged because its controlled soley by Larry Wall?
Perhaps I'm posting out of character. Er, I agree, C# rocks.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
(This post is ©2001 Microsoft(TM) Corporation.)
Well, the problem is that as of right now nobody is sure of how Microsoft is going to make this move. It is clear that Microsoft plans to get into the 'ASP' application business in a big way, and that they are also creating a set of standards for others to get into this space along-side them, but its not clear what their exact plans for, say, Office .Net are and what kind of upgrade path their might be, etc, etc.
Its not just Microsoft who is salivating at this subscription-based software model, just about every other big software company is chomping at the bit for this as well...And most industry analysts (for whatever their opinion is worth...) agree that this will be the model for software in the future...
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, especially in light of other subscription-type service plays (like DIVX -- the DVD-based format, not the MPEG4 beta codec) which consumers totally rejected.
With .NET, what Microsoft means is that their MSIL (their Java byte-code like language), C# and some other technologies are being submitted to the ECMA standards organization (Note: This is more than Sun ever did with Java).
It is very unlikely that Microsoft will release a Linux version of the .Net platform in the future..But, since it will be standardized, nothing is stopping another company or Open Source developers from doing it.
Oh, this is cute. Show me anything that doesn't have some kind of predecessors that old.
Bush needs to woo tech people (who can be gullible) by _talking_ big, but there is no chance he is going to blow vital political capital interceding for Microsoft. It's ridiculous to expect that- he stands to benefit more by interceding for AOL/Time Warner, or Texas oil billionaires etc. Interceding for Microsoft would be political suicide.
He can, and will, _talk_ all he likes- expect to see the word 'tragic'. "This tragic and senseless destruction of America's great technological resource." Here's the deal: Microsoft is worth more to Bush dead than alive. If they are seriously damaged by the court's actions started _before_ Bush was 'running the show' (note: riiiight. Dubya? Figurehead), then it is a very effective example. It's a way to marshal public opinion and soften them up for _other_ big-business friendly moves, and it's a way to put a big scare into the businesses and make them willing to bribe Bush's government hugely so they don't suffer the same fate. Win/win situation for the Bush camp. No-brainer.
In fact it could be tougher for MS with Bush than if Gore had won. Ever heard the saying, "Only Nixon could go to China"? Only Gore could intercede for MS without _seriously_ blowing political capital in the process. Bush just has way too much to gain from making sure Microsoft ends up being the bad example of what happens when those commie socialist antitrust weenies get their way. Watch for the backstab. Bush will say many things supportive of Microsoft, but watch for the backstab. He'll quietly make sure Microsoft go _down_. They're worth more dead.
Render a MS-Breakup irrelevant? Is there anybody out there who thinks that the prosecution of MS is going to continue under Bush?
Of course they're hedging their bets, but as of inauguration day, I doubt they have much to worry about.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
It's like Java - when you critize Java, what are you critizing? The bytecode? The language? The virtual machine?
.NET is basically the sequel to Win32).
.NET name.
.NET is a lot of things. It's a bytecode interpreter as well, and a a language, and a class library, and a bunch of other stuff. It's a replacement for Win32 (Microsoft makes that statement in one of their MSDN articles - that
It's not about renting software online - it makes renting software easier, but hey so does Java. I wish they'd given each piece a name and not chosen to wrap the whole bundle with the
DirectX is an example of where a bunch of technologies are living under one name fairly happily... but ActiveX is another Microsoft example of a name that, well, nobody really knows what it means (COM? OCX? OLE? JavaScript? They're all part of ActiveX).
- Steve
The article seems to focus and dwindle on summing up whats been happening in a more digestable format. I would have liked to see more about how Microsoft will convert shrink-wrap into on-tap delivery and how, since it controls the tap, buisness could be crippled if Microsoft decides that they should be (rasing the level of entry bar).
;)
What I don't like is the attitude of Microsoft of embracing and extending the _standard_ internet protocols into their own proprietary formats. This is already happening with IE, Kerbos, and Java and soon they will ensure that the "Internet" only works with Windows clients.
I think it is a good summation about what the current situation is but I would like a bit more of an editorial from this person. Especially with that hint at the end about it helping projects like Linux (how? why? etc).
Oh well.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
One, MSFT has been tooting the standards horn for a LONG time. It's been at least two years since I heard them use the carefully-constructed, meaningless term "open, standards-based". Open means that you don't unnecessarily constrain data semantics, and standards-based could imply any number of closed standards.
Two, the term "open API's" does not imply that MSFT will not, as is "standard" operating procedure, attempt to gain control of the platform by using secret, undocumented API's in its own code and by "tumbling" wire protocols as frequently as they can get away with (see Samba and Windows NT service packs).
Chirped like a professional marketer who apparently can't look at a system and recognize a "core", unless they're talking about "core products". I'll save the design discussions for another day."High degree of interoperability" is another meaningless statement, at least without context. To a manager type, this might mean that people can use JavaStations to read their email. To a coder type, this might mean that I could write once and run anywhere. To a user type, this could mean that I can send email to virtually anyone. Without defining "high degree" and "interoperability", this says nothing.
Once again, what's more interesting is what's left unsaid. It's almost a certainty that the barriers against duplication or reimplementation of the .NET infrastructure are high (some or all of: patents, trade secrets, cryptography, binding EULA's, obfuscated code). One should not expect to run Office.NET on a free reimplementation of the .NET foundation, even if the intellectual property censors didn't find it first.
"Better experience" is crodocile tears, a standard trick of besieged organizations. Being a besieged organization, MSFT's motives are nowhere near so pristine. The basic idea really is to control ("standardize") distributed IPC and ensure that the largest possible part of that infrastructure is MSFT intellectual property, in order to create a better experience for MSFT shareholders.XML and its predecessors has been around for double-digit years
So, buried in this handwaving is much feeble misdirection that Microsoft is interested in providing anything at all to the computing community besides another epoxy-potted, magnesium-encased "solution" to a problem already solved.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
The end result is probably something like:
- AOL Quality with Microsoft ethics
- MS Quality with MS Ethics
Waitaminute. We have the second one already.The only counter I can imagine to this right now comes out of those occasional rumors of AOL developing their own OS. I am sure everyone is just thrilled by that prospect.
We seem to be walking in a directions where the internet is being divided into large areas of fenced in territory owned by large corporations and other entities, with small time operators getting the left overs.
What makes this all the more believable are little details like this AP news story about mainland China's announcement that they are building their own information superhighway. To quote from the story:
We are walking in the direction of fragmented segmented internet. The glacial slow destruction of the internet as we know it for profit.The .net as proposed by Microsoft is selling this to us. But maybe it is still only one fence on the wild frontier. Or maybe Microsoft is the fence company, selling us the barbed wire.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
There is NO room for reason in how one looks at the Microsoft probelm. WIth that said, I would do what Larry Ellison reccomends. Don't split up Microsoft and instead not allow them to EVER purchase a SINGLE piece of technology, company, patent, software code, from anyone else and force them to develop it in house. Let them have their "right to innovate" and watch them fall on their face.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Is the court's action meant to be a 'corrective action' to even the playing field, or a 'punishment'?
.NET initiative corrects the things the court is pursuing to the point where it nullifies the court's action, haven't they taken the 'corrective action' themselves?
If Microsoft's
Or are we hellbent on 'punishing' Microsoft?
Hay thar.
*disclaimer: I apologise for what was without doubt the crappest attempt of humour ever ventured on /. *
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
Really, all that ".NET" is a marketing campaign for DCOM, with protocol changed from whatever bullshit it used before to SOAP. What basically is yet another RPC. So far all technologies incorporated into .NET except COM and XML, are complete failures - RPC in all of its incarnations is most hated protocol ever, DCOM is a bitch to write for, and ActiveX never took off (except as calling anything that uses COM "ActiveX"). COM wasn't a complete failure because Microsoft was pushing it for more than a decade, and XML is a "technology" in the same way as comma-separated list is a "technology".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Microsoft likes to bundle mostly unrelated technologies under a single banner in order to "simplify the message."
.NET bytecodes are not tied to any particular hardware so in a few years shrinkwrapped software may not be specific to Intel or Alpha.
.NET framework and the JVM is that .NET is supposed to be multi-language whereas Sun unashamedly promotes Java as the "One True Programming Language." Multi-language applications written for .NET can be a lot more integrated than COM or CORBA. There is a single exception architecture, a well-defined debugging architecture etc.
.NET that points to "a future where people rent rather than buy applications." Obviously applications have been moving to the desktop to the Web for years and .NET has additional features that will allow developers to take that a few steps farther. But the new .NET features are useful in traditional applications also.
The ".NET Framework" is a virtual machine and standard library similar to the JVM.
The primary difference between the
ASP.NET is Microsoft's Web development platform. It has a concept of "web services" which is basically distributed computing re-invented based on Web-ish technologies.
The win32 GUI APIs have been replaced with "Windows Forms".
There isn't really a lot in
"Rent" versus "buy" is basically a marketing and distribution decision. You could do the same thing with Java bytecodes or even Active-X controls.
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The Web is the Ultimate Copy Protection
Even with a proprietary closed-source program, you at least still have the distribution media so you can still reinstall your application if the original publisher stops selling the program.But with a web-based application, the publisher keeps the executable binary, and even with copylefted code, the GPL's source code distribution requirement does not come into play because the binary is never distributed.
This will ultimately lead to disaster for ordinary users as web applications make the move from news, shopping and entertainment to functions that people depend on in their daily lives or businesses.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
It is ported to other platforms (Unix, GNU/Linux).
Software AG did it, IIRC.
It's just a multi-megabyte download
I don't know if many people acutally use it... cheers, Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
There certainly are plusses to .NET -- indeed, I honestly wish it were developed and controlled by an open project or standards body (or a vendor with more of an interest in cross-platform support). It standardizes calling conventions and data types (removing issues such as the binary compatibility problems between G++ 2.95 and 3.0), permits debugging tools to work with support only for the platform in general rather than the specific language (a great thing for those who happen to like coding in Eiffel or something else off the wall but are interested in using our other debugging tools). And no, it doesn't require its own language.
.net has a future of some sort. Whether it becomes the new win32 API that everyone else is incompatible with (except for via some rather dodgy ports/reimplimentations), a competitor for Java bytecode or even universally ubiquitous I don't know, though.
I really think
Howdy. As a software developer (professionally) and sysadmin (on the side) with both win32 and *nix experience, I've got to dispute what you're saying. (Note that my win32 experience is getting increasingly dated; I'd be happy to know if any of my statements are outdated -- for instance, if Windows actually has logical volume management or online filesystem resizing support now).
Command line OSes are harder to learn than GUI-based administrative systems -- I'll agree with you there. The thing is that us Unix folks distinguish between "hard to learn" and "hard to use". If after scaling that steep learning curve we can then get our work done faster -- and we can -- then by our definition Unix is easier to use. Furthermore, because we've mastered all that (hard to learn) control, we can do our jobs better.
The current effort is on getting the best of both worlds by putting together GUI-based administrative tools, so that folks can use whatever they choose. For those of us who've already finished the learning curve thing, though, there's no more need; we're there.
Let me rephrase one of your earlier sentences. MS software is centered around making learning my job easier and saving training time. I'll agree that it does both of those. However, once I'm done with the learning, I can do a better job on a Unix-based system than on Windows. Why? The same reason it's hard to learn -- I've got more control. Can *you* add another hard drive with your machine still running and resize your filesystem online, with all your software still running? As long as my box has hardware and BIOS support (thanks 3ware!), I can. Furthermore, because more of the 'guts' of a Unix system are available for inspection, debugging and postmortem analysis is much easier. Trust me, when you're trying to figure out why your VPN isn't working, it sure helps if you can add a few lines of code to dump the keys on each side out to the syslog for comparison. We also have better filesystems -- ever seen reiserfs and NTFS side-by-side trying to access lots of small files? It's lots of fun.
While a Windows-based system was initially designed to be controlled by an individual at the console clicking with a mouse, *nix-based systems are controlled in manners more condusive to automation. A skilled sysadmin can automate nearly every task he needs to do with greater ease than on Windows (yes, I know automation support is available there, but it sucks -- I've ported perl scripts for Apache user administration to work on IIS; they got a whoole lot more complicated and slower in the meantime).
Finally, the documentation depends on what you're trying to do. Frequently the man pages aren't the best source -- that's why there are info pages, HOWTOs, mailing lists and (of course) the actual code. Having to go to the source sucks, of course (it's happened to me very rarely), but it's better than not having any source to go to at all, no?
"Where is the standardization in their IDE"? Since when were Windows IDEs standardized? As for the windowing API, X is about as much a standard as one can get. The widget sets on top of it are admittedly quite varied, but many of them are much (much!) more fun to code for than either MFC or the win32 API.
Anyhow, if you want to continue ranting, just email me. The address given is real.
The article talks about the possibility of cross-platform support for .NET. Didn't Microsoft also say that DCOM was a cross-platform standard? It was supposed to be ported to other operating systems. I've never seen it running on anything other than Windows.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
---
gmp
Now, I am treating the software like something physical (a typewriter), but it's essentially physical anyway (or at least tangible - you've got it or you don't). Tell me, do you want to have to rent a typewriter everytime you want to make a letter? I'm pretty sure your don't. I think that you can figure out the rest from here...
Now here's where the REAL fun begins: Microsoft has to not only convince consumers to use .NET software, but it's got to convince programmers to write .NET software - which has its own programming language.
The article that this story is in reference to also states that Microsoft is planning to use the .NET server software to boost Win 2K sales. The infers that .NET server software will only be made for the Win 2K platform. That leaves some people on the other side of the wall.
Frankly, I can't find any real pluses to this strategy, either for Microsoft or consumers. And despite what the article says about this move helping to preserve Microsoft in the face of a breakup, I doubt it. If the person heading up the application side of the newly broken empire is business-minded, they won't restrict the .NET system to the Windows OS, thus shooting the whole plan to sell the Win 2K OS for .NET server software in the heart. And of course, .NET won't work out for the reason's mentioned above. I guess the question now is what will be the next dominant Desktop OS? Will it be Linux, a BSD, or perhaps Mac OS X? We'll see...
CAP THAT KARMA!
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