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Hailstorm: Open Web Services Controlled by Microsoft
richard writes: "Clay Shirky has an interesting article on Hailstorm on OpenP2P.com. He looks especially at how MS mixes decentralization with strong control of third party development and user data. Think of it as an authentication-centric, rather than hardware-centric system." A very nice analysis, neatly mapping out Microsoft's plans and how they intend to control the system. Well worth the read.
Does it? No. I don't think so.
The scariest part though, is that it WILL work. And it WILL happen. You can count on it.
People will get used to the idea, and then get used to it once it actually starts being used. They won't think anything of it.
It really is pretty scary how easily people will go for it.
All because it's convenient, and it works.
HTTP is actually a pretty crappy protocol. The only reason it succeeded is because it was dirt simple and was open.
Same old joke (which is largely out of date anyway, rehashed ad infinitum. Youa are not funny You are not relevant STFU
So the Bush kids are just like every other college student in the country. Shock. Horror.
Seems like Microsoft is just begging us to knock that chip off their shoulder... Anyway, here's my favorite quote about Hailstorm so far, from someone who ought to know:
--Anonymous cowards are not sucking up.
As long as you have to use SOAP, you are tied to COM or very COM-like model, so in the end you will have to use COM even if your application's processing model has nothing to do with it. The only platform where people ever bothered to create something large over COM is Windows, so in the end most of things will only work more or less well on Windows, or on some very close "emulation".
But another problem is, SOAP's flaws aren't limited to poor design that it brings with COM -- in itself it's a very limited RPC-ish model that is now tolerated in "web applications" only because most of them are obscenely primitive (yes, including Slashdot posting system). No objects replication between applications. No infrastructure to handle inheritance. No asynchronous transfer of data. So in the end we have a multiplication of two flaws -- and being tied to proprietary platform is merely a cherry on the top of the icing on the top of the cake.
The truth is, the current level of technology isn't high enough to produce an infrastructure to handle network-transparent objects even in half-usable manner. Any attempt to "standardize" them now is just as stupid as if a bunch of people in 17th century managed to get a hold of some pieces of nuclear physics knowledge and tried to make a nuclear power plant by attempting to extract and purify uranium from granite in distilling apparatus in their laboratory, and if anything came out of that, piling the blocks of uranium into a coal mine between rocks and flooding it with water. Sure, one can describe a theory that rocks will slow down neutrons, coal will reflect them back into "reactor", water will get heated and boiled, and steam will be used to power a windmill-like turbine. One can even make a primitive safety system that will dump coal into a mine if reaction will get out of hand, etc. It is however obvious that most likely 17th century laboratory will not produce anything suitable for fission, but if (a very, very big if) by any chance it will, and if they will be presistent to make enough of it, the result would certainly cause not-so-local peasants to develop a very creative folklore that would revolve around some very interesting kinds of witches and demons. And it would be "not-so-local peasants" because local peasants would be evaporated along with "nuclear alchemists".
What brings up a thing that, I think, Microsoft and SOAP/XML/.NET/... "enthusiasts" fail to understand -- the devil is in the details.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Nope. Generation of code in runtime is an unrelated thing, brought under (very wide) .NET umbrella, however regular COM components are supposed to be used in .NET with its interface, and SOAP (and other things included in ".NET") design is specifically made to be tied to COM design. Microsoft can claim that it's a replacement and not extension, however it is merely a play of words. If something will be really replaced, it's DCOM, but DCOM is nothing but an earlier, pretty much unsuccessful, attempt of RPC-ish wrapper to COM.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
But they made the jump from 8 to 16 to 32 relatively easily, and with technically superior competition above them at every step of the way.
They'll make the jump to 64-bit.
Does this mean we're fucked? Hardly, it just means that we actively work to get around them, rather than relying on the architechure change to do it for us.
Biometrics are scary, they make people nervous. No one wants a retial scan to read their email. We just need to make sure that we build and support open components for competing implementations and services. If anything saves us, it'll be that. The open standard almost always wins, because the
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
- because the economics of competition are so powerful.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
And if Microsoft's "business" was burning down houses and breaking kneecaps for the mob, I suppose that would be all right too.
Microsoft is trying to make the biggest land grab in history with it's .Net program, with the eventual goal of making sure that all transactions flow through them. This doesn't make them evil, but it does mean that it puts them at odds with nearly the rest of the industry, and with computer users in general. If the Hailstorm platform was open it would be a huge benefit to computer users. They would have all of the same benefits as a Microsoft controlled Hailstorm, but the competition would guarantee that the service would be price competitive, and that customer service was timely. With Microsoft controlling Hailstorm you are stuck with the level of service that Microsoft provides, and you will pay the price that Microsoft feels is appropriate.
That's an interesting take. Of course, it doesn't account for the fact that Apache is far and away the leading web server, and that Linux runs on more web servers than anything else. It's hard to blame the infrastructure companies for the success of these critical software components. It also doesn't explain why Microsoft's proprietary service never took off.
The difference between the Internet and the hosts of (sometimes superior) proprietary technologies that it has left in the dust is the open nature of the Internet protocols. Anyone could join in the fun without paying a big fee or signing an NDA, and because of this we have a wide array of interoperable software from which to build solutions and a common set of protocols for getting disparate systems to communicate.
Microsoft and most of the commercial software houses were busy building competing networks chuck full of their own proprietary software. But these proprietary works simply couldn't compete with the Internet. They were more expensive, and were limited to smaller audiences. The Internet lowered the requirements for entry (you needed a web browser), and allowed everyone to communicate. Despite differences in hardware and software and service provider everyone was playing on the same field.
Locking out that 10% makes perfect business sense as you reach a point of diminishing returns on the effort required to land them as customers.
Business is a free-for-all grabfest. Consider a child's party with a pinata. When the pinata breaks and the candy lands in a pile (the 90%) and some scatters everywhere (the 10%), the children all dive for the middle where the big pile is. Only after the big pile is nearly all gone (the density of what is left begins to approach the density of the 10%) do the children look up and start to hunt for the remaining 10%. They also don't know how much of the hard-to-get 10% (or 8%) they will have accumulated by the time the other kids begin to compete for it as well.
Any child that tries to divide its attention equally between the 90% and the 10% will end up with less due to the wasted effort involved in traveling between the two areas.
A gambling child might choose to chase the 10% from the beginning (i.e., try to operate in a niche market) hoping that the 10% will be more than the percentage they might have gotten from the big pile while competing head-to-head with everyone else but that is a real risk because the child doesn't know ahead of time if the 10% isn't perhaps really 8%.
There is even more importance in chasing the easy 90% in business because there isn't just one pinata and whoever gets the most of the first pinata will get the most of the second, and third, and so one. By getting there "firstest with the mostest" you become the de facto market leader/standard. Anyone who tries to get into selling books online today will find that the easy 90% is gone (mostly to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders) and that the best they can do is try to pick up the 10% that might be left but now the others can afford to turn their attention to the untapped market and, if any market of significance is left, they will pursue that with their huge resources.
Business people use careful research to study how markets operate and how to best perform in markets. The Boston Consulting Group came up with a widely accepted portfolio matrix which says that if you are on the downhill slope if you are any smaller than your largest competitor. In this case the best you can hope for is that you are in a market that is growing and more than 10% in which case you have a "Problem Child" product. If the market is growing at less than 10% you have a "Dog" product and you should go do something else.
Techies have a tendency to think business people (suits) are morons. I have been guilty of this myself. However, the objective of business is profit and by that measure suits beat techies with ease. While someone like Bill Gates may have some techie in him, his real strength is as a suit.
Assuming a techie wants profits, by considering suits to be morons, he is underestimating his "enemy" which is one of the surest paths to defeat. Business today is a science in that theories are formulated, experiments are done, observations are made, data is collected and analyzed, and then the theories are modified as needed.
There is a discussion of the BCG matrix here .
OpenSourcerers
I think of this as directly analagous to the DNS system. Once upon a time, NSI owned the identity information for all top-level domains under .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc. They
were forced to share the registration privileges
over these domains with other registrars in
a competitive framework. Hailstorm type
services need EXACTLY the same approach, where a user's identity could be a token like <xpp:id ref="jonabbey@burrow.org" reg="soap://microsoft.com/user/registry"> to indicate
a user registered at microsoft, where another,
equally valid identity token could be <xpp:id ref="jonabbey@burrow.org" reg="soap://aol.com/registry">.
The question is, who is going to bell the cat, and create the sort of ambitious web services that Microsoft is proposing, except without the Microsoft lock-in? Where is AOL and Sun and IBM on this?
- jon
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I'm not sure exactly what Hailstorm etc gives to the user?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
This must be the realisation of the Microsoft network as envisioned in The Road Ahead.
.NET is not based on COM - it's a replacement for COM. It has some similarities, but it has major differences - generation of native code at run-time, garbage collection rather than reference counting, the Common Language Runtime, complete type descriptions, etc.
Compare and contrast:
"an Internet user without a Passport will not exist within the system, and will not be able to access or use Passport services. Because users pay to participate in the HailStorm system, in practice this means that Microsoft will control a user's identity, leasing it to them for use within HailStorm for a recurring fee."
with
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."
Hmmmmmm. I think the Gates-as-Borg icon needs replacing with Gates-with-666-tattoo icon. Reckon John meant 'the IP number of his name'?
Baz
My grandmother DOES not pretend to know how to use a PC, whatever OS it is sporting, but she can fire up win98 and get an email off on a M$ system. I am sure if I WAS MORE of a LINUX guy I could make it easy enough for her to do it there also, but the point is I did not have to. Whether it 'pretends' to be easier or not IT IS. That said, I'd love to switch her to a NON-M$ OS, if someone could point me to a email reference site. The machine has to be useable by a 71 year old woman from OK :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
yes it is unless you specify the count :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
yes about 8 pages of CRAP that one would need a lawyer to interpret.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't know if Hailstorm will work. It seems like a longshot to me, but I'm a pauper and Bill Gates has an impressive track record with world domination.
.NET and Hailstorm don't fly, they're screwed. Of course they're so big it would take them decades to waste away. The plan offers vast rewards, potentially, but it has enormous risks, as well.
But this does illustrate one of the big differneces between Linux and MS. MS has a master plan. They're building server software, server farms, development tools, business alliances and strategic partnerships. They have a business plan and a technological plan, and they both seem to fit together. Even though the word is going to come off as a joke after all that's happened, this stuff is innovative, in kind of an Orwellian sense. Especially as a business plan.
They looked at the future and decided it was going to be objects running out in the cloud, talking to each other in complicated ways, and they tried to figure out the best places to build the toll booths.
We don't have a plan. We've yet to come up with a really good business model. We've been making incremental improvements to a 70's operating system. Individuals or small groups have ideas and they make it better in a small way. The result is a lot better than anything they had in the 70's. But it's a gradual process of accumulation. No one comes down from the mountain with the new direction.
The first time I realized that Linux had super powers was when SLS dropped the ball. They were an old distribution. For whatever reason they just stopped doing it. And Slackware stepped up to the plate and took over. If Linux had been commercial, SLS would have killed it in its cradle. But you can't kill Linux. Debian will be moving along long after VA Linux and Red Hat have succomed to financial reality.
MS has a plan. Gates says he's "betting the company" on it. I don't think he's kidding, or that he's wrong. If
This is not a clash between rival technical systems. It's about world views.
I've got to be honest, I love the megalomaniacal scope of MS's plan. They're thinking the way the the guys who built the pyramids thought. Part of me wants to email Bill and say, "God speed, you magnificent bastard!"
But ultimately, I think he's going to fall on his ass.
Why?
The OS monopoly was achieved in an environment when no one understood the dynamics of the business. There's the famous story about Bill trying to sell out to IBM for a relative song, and IBM turning him down. That suggests that neither side knew what MS had.
Translation: the lucky SOB *stumbled* into it. And he was helped along by the fact that no one else understood how big the prize was either, or even that it existed at all.
There's another famous story about Lotus dissing Bill, rudely pointing up the difference in the bottom lines. People didn't understand the dynamics of lock in back then, that the person who controlled the OS had leverage over the application market. These were smart guys, the best and the brightest in the industry.
The article at the top of this thread is first class. People are thinking like chess players when they look at the business now. Which squares on the board do you need to control if you want to win? The word is out, the guard towers are fully manned, and no one is going to be stumbling into anything this time around.
No one is going to create a strategic dependence on MS if they can help it. Especially now, when the XP license server shock waves are about to hit. These guys are lining up their ducks to do the same to thing to their customers that OPEC did to the West in the 70's.
It's going to be an intersting thing to watch, though.
Sand supplies available here.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What's to stop people from sharing accounts? Does passport have Terms of Service?
What happens if someone gets banned from Passport? Would third-party merchants seriously consider refusing to do business with someone who doesn't (or can't get, or refuses to get) a Passport account? It seems unlikely. I'd guess that just as merchants accept multiple forms of payment, Passport will be one way of logging into a site, but not the only one.
I worked for a company that was trying to make Hailstorm back in Jan '99. It's really funny... some of the examples in Microsoft's white paper are exactly the same examples in previous CEO's speeches. Out plan had one important difference... no single datastore. We feel people would be paranoid if only one company had the possibility of seeing all the data. By splitting up the datastores a person could shop around. :)
Have you actually tried this? If you had you'd know that the frog jumps out if the water is too hot. The boiling frog story is an urban legend.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Actually, M$ is writing its own death warrant.
.NET strategy will require that their customers move off of the x86 platform and leave M$ behind.
.NET. And slice M$'s throat while you're at it.
Trust-worthy security is based on biometric authentication. That needs large chunks of processing and 64-bit architectures are barely enough.
M$ exists on x86 (32-bit) platforms ONLY. They are a one-trick OS pony. Unix & Linux are on all larger machines and available at a lower TCO.
Biometric security requirements of M$'s own
God speed
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement.
In my observation of Microsoft, they have the tendancy to say they've done something before it actually has been done (meaning shipped). They have a wonderful ability to talk about their grand product plans as if they were real products.
The point is that they are greedy, and if they could somehow migrate the world over to a software-as-services infrastructure by Tuesday, they would. But the problem is that when you radically change the model of software sales (not to mention the entire technical infrastructure your company has built over the last 12 years), it takes time.
Which is not to say you shouldn't listen to them. In 1995, Bill Gates stood up and made the public announcement that they were going to integrate IE into the Windows shell and steal the market from Netscape. From then on, MS treated IE as an integrated product when it wasn't, but nobody should have been shocked 3 years later when it finally started to happened.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The typical "avrage user" can not tell the diffrence between Linux and Windows..
I'm not saying Linux is easy...
Linux is a powerful and easy command line.. As easy as command line could be anyway. Windows is a slipshot GUI.. It's not very easy at all.
In the end they both daze and confuse new users..
Windows just PRETENDS to be easy...
And Microsoft expects you to know IRQs.. It's more of a PC thing actually and you don't want to understand complex hardware issues don't use complex hardware. The os isn't going to help.
I don't actually exist.
The Microsoft developers might be silly enough to hard code the links to their own private UDDI server, but that would be a relatively easy crack to redirect to an open UDDI server.
Um. Wasn't that the whole point of things like the UCITA and DMCA? They'll put "no redirection" in their EULA. Done. Now, of course, that won't stop me from doing it at home, but it will sure as hell stop my company from doing it. Right? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Everyone pitch in and give Bill the finger...
;)
#1) Install / login to your favourite *nix OS.
#2) type: finger billg@microsoft.com
and give him the finger!
or just ping -f microsoft.com... whatever.
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I agree. You cannot whine without proposing an alternative...
My group has been planning for something quite similar as the HailstormTM thing. We discovered more similarity as we saw more information about Hailstorm released.
Instead of sitting back be cause we discovered we had competition from MS, we decided to continue. There has to be an open alternative that allows a user to choose any server to store his data.
We welcome any open source initiatives that explore the functionality promised by our scheme, and now Hailstorm as wel.
We can't say more at the moment be cause of ongoing negotiations, but expect to hear more in the near future.
-- my 7XL is not yet invented
Nobody can deny that MS has some very savvy managers. After cheery picking the high volume desktop applications (despite adobe/PDF, MP3), they are now seeking other high growth markets. The question is will it justify the risks? Plumbing is safe because it is boring plus you need it for every single house plus you don't have the high labor costs of support/maintenance. Copyright (90 year protection) is much better than patent (20 years) and they've already got the distribution channels in place (OEM + Hotmail). The alternative (Enterprise Java Beans) is supported by its competitors but given that destop sales are slowing and MS are pushing C# and consumer toys, it is debateable whether it will enter consumer mainstream (lockout from XBox + control of cable head). In short, with enough control points, MS is in the position of raining on everyone else's parade. LL
M$ is already a reverse plumber of sorts. See, I usually need to do plumbing work to get shit out of my house. M$ keeps trying to pump it in... (Thank the maker that NeverWinter Nights is supposed to have a Linux client. If only I can finish BGII, BGII add on, and Icewind Dale before then (yeah, I know they've been out forever, but I'm a cheap bastard most of the time))
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
And if you did get your hands on the keys, it would mean the collapse of the entire Passport security scheme.
The fireworks should be really cool when this inevitibly happens.
Its an ancient manipulation trick. Make people believe in something before that something even exists, and eventually the common people will unknowingly make it exist.
And so it becomes a self fullfilling prophecy.
Thats why independant parties never win in the US. The media hammers into the minds of the people that there are only logically two choices, A or B. There is no C, and even if there was, you'd be a fool to pick it because you would have wasted your vote. The few strong minded people that exist would try to make a showing, but are proven wrong my the masses of weakminded "individuals" that listened to the "advice".
So the question is.. How do we make the weak minded strong minded?
Maybe if people stopped putting other people down and hindering them as they try to climb up, and instead gave them a helping hand.. we'd have one hell of a strong poor-middle class society FINALLY kickin the ruling society in the ass. That'd be cool.
-Matthew
Wasn't there something about this in revelations. Go re-read it sometime.
War is necrophilia.
I think part of the purpose of this is to combat the creation of free service clones. Yeah, sure you could make your own set of actalikes for free, but mickeysoft name still controls the authentication infrastructure(M$ will probably establish a great deal of brand name credibility with all the phb's here) so they would actually save money if someone started maintaining the clients for them. It also gives them a lot of room integrate, copyright, patent, etc. the competition out of existance if and when they choose.
A better way to combat this might be to offer higher quality services which are incompatible, at least at the authentication level.
There is the old story about how to boil/cook a frog. For the purposes of this story it is important to remem ber that frogs are amphibians. :)
Now, If you just toss a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, this is not going to to anything but upset the frog and make the frog jump out of the pot. BUT, if you put the frog into the pot when tha water is cool, the frog will like it. If you then very gradually raise the temperature of the water the frog will not notice it. You can eventually raise the temperature of the water until it is boiling, and you now have one cooked frog dinner. NOTE, California bullfrogs, weighing in at about 3 or 4 pounds, have enough meat to make a decent meal.
How does this relate? Simple.
The long term strategy of MS is to slowly increment changes in the way things worked so that in the end, everything works they way they want, and they can dictate how it goes together. If they got greedy and tried to do it all in a year or so, then they would never get agreeement. But by implementing it bit and piece, they can continue to carve a large and larger section of the pie for themselves. All they have to do is think longer term than their opponents.
Actually, I am sure they have on a wall someplace their equivalent of a 5 or 10 year plan to conquer the known (software) world, subject to revision and new discoveries, etc. They likely planned killing off Windows about 3 to 5 years ago when it became obvious that the legal suites were beginning to be a real pain. They are not there yet, but they needed an escape plan. Part of the move to taking over the Internet was part of this escape plan, which is why Gates made sure it was the equivalent of a oceanliner coming to a halt and turning on a dime.
How to we handle this?
We need as far reaching an effort and long range vision as they do. A competitive Argument that resonates. Microsofts's sells to the inherently lazy streak in people, even if the PR is twisted. They sell to "we make it easier for you".
... and start saying "What Microsoft is trying to do is cool, but what we can do is *better*."
/. readers regularly complain about these restrictive laws, but are mostly powerless to do anything about them. Money buys votes, so most western democracies are for sale, which is why large crowds protest in Davos and Seattle and any place else. The protests are getting so costly, the world banque is meeting in cyberspace to avoid physical risks.
... the OSS community was already there.
:-) I'd love to get 24/7/365 support services for free, but then I'd be out of a job. :-(
You are missing the point. micro~1.oft has realised they can't compete with OSS on a technical playing field, because the OSS community will eventually win. So M$ is changing the playing field while they still have a monopoly.
The new playing field is using the law (copyrights and patents) to give them exclusive control over who gets to play with their authentication schema. The open source community can come up with a working alternative, but in doing so will become a criminal group, breaking copyright laws and violating patents. M$, and many of the leading IT/computer/software/networking/services companies have realised that playing in a free and open commodity market spreads the profits too thin. So there has been a major push for the last 5-8 years to craft laws to support the new playing field, where free and open competitors are outlawed.
You've no doubt heard of the american UCITA laws, passed in some states, proposed in all the rest. There are initiatives here in Europe to provide the same protections to large companies, but the progress is slower due to socialist leaning countries. Years ago companies who saw the service model and copyright as a potential new area to limit free and open competition created the WIPO, and neatly folded it under the protection of the UN.
a protocol (http) which was just plain better
For the next 5 to 10 years, M$ and a handful of other companies are going to completely dominate all the greatness the OSS community created. The GPL isn't going to stop them, free and open isn't going to stop them either. Many smart people getting paid large salaries have looked at many ways to continue to earn money when there is a free product running your industry. They know, now, how to defeat the advantages of OSS and free and open. That is what the article is about. The best hope for the Next Great Thing lies where it has always lain, in academia and government assisted research. That is why M$ bought MIT and dozens of other universities in the US and Europe, and why they just bought the UK government.
The OSS community creates free software. I agree with RMS, software should be free. But the big and steady money is in services, always has been, always will be(until the trek universe occurs) There are no free alternatives to services. Maybe there should be an Open Services Alliance
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
What's wrong with HTTP? I thought it was pretty effective. Connect, send request, receive response, end transmission.
------
Microsoft is in the business of building infrastructure. That's their business... They should be booed?
Microsoft is in the business of maximizing profit, as all businesses are and should be. I believe that they should be completely free to use any legal means to accomplish this. On the other hand, I am in favor of a free and open information infrastructure, and will absolutely express my displeasure at attempts to build the opposite.
That's certainly an interesting view of the history of the web. Maybe it took off because infrastructure companies like Microsoft, Sun, and Netscape did their jobs well.
I have a hard time believing you think Microsoft had anything to do with building the internet and web infrastructure before it "took off". Sun certainly did help the internet by promoting open protocols. Netscape and Microsoft helped build the market, but the infrastructure was by and large already defined and decentralized. This allowed many more participants to get involved and experiment with different profit making enterprises than would have been the case if one company controlled everything.
I disagree. I don't think what they are doing is cool at all. Because what they are doing is defining an infrastructure, and making sure that they control it. This is bad, and should be boo'd.
The web took off because no one owned the protocol, any one could create an HTTP server, anyone could write the services behind the server and anyone could write a browser, and any user could jump on a browser and start using it. Now microsoft wants to own the protocol, the server, the services, brand users with their passport branding iron, and heh, the only thing open about this monstrosity is that anyone can build a browser.
On the other hand, I see your point. What _would_ be cool would be an open platform that provided some of the things that hailstorm provides in a decentralized, open way. And hopefully some things that would not appeal to microsoft's executives, but would to users. Like anonymity. Or privacy. Or choice.
Don't think "operating system". Think "platform". .NET is the new platform, and Microsoft is surely going to tie its apps to a single platform. It's just that the platform now is more than just an OS.
- adam
Maybe in the States nobody uses MSN Messenger, but in Europe it is very common. I use both MSN and ICQ because I have friends on both systems. I don't know anyone who uses AIM though.
Many years ago I predicted that all Bill Gates of Borg really wanted was one penny every time someone presses enter.
The Leviathan cometh, seeking only to assimilate.
....the "Hacker Hailstorm" in "Canadian Bacon", which happened to be on Comedy Central on Monday, after "PCU". Basically, the Hailstorm is this device made by some evil corperation called "Hacker", and gives remote control over the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. For convenience, it was installed in the Canadian National Tower (obviously). To make a long story short, I think that Microsoft's control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal is anti-competitive, and limits the opportunities of rabid grad students, the Michigan Militia, the MPAA (Obviously), and various other start up, dot-com style paramilitary organizations, to say nothing about the U.S. Government itself, to activly and viably participate in the multi-fold destruction of the human race.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I agree with you, and I think I've got some precedent for why it won't work: AOL.
/. just go on to prove this fact.
AOL is really all about centralization. The whole family unit can share an account, you use their email system located in their gigantic email/chat/web/IM/news/info/etc program that's really very pretty and friendly. You can centrally do everything you want from AOL itself, much like what Hailstorm is promising, and you never really have to leave it if you don't want.
And AOL is really popular. Fantastically so.
But relatively few people actually use all that centralization. They use AOL for email, web, chat, and IM, and that's mainly it. I've never met anyone (and I've known quite a few AOL users) who's actually used AOL itself to buy anything. People like to chat and build a community, and that's why AOL , and the internet is really successful, not for the ability to buy airline tickets right alongside a crockpot. Sites like
Microsoft isn't looking to build a community at all, they're looking to make things more convenient and ubiquitous. While people do like convenience (and the convenience of having email, web, chat, etc. in one place helps make AOL so popular) I don't think people are really looking for the kind of convenience that Hailstorm will offer. Granted, a lot of people will sign up for it, but I don't think it'll be that critical mass that'll make it ubiquitous. It's the same thing with Microsoft's instant messenger client. No one really uses it, because AOL was there first and everyone uses AIM because their friends use AIM. It'll be the same thing with Hailstorm, no one will use it because AOL was there first with all the convenient, one place info/shop-o-rama system, plus you get to use the chat rooms too!
Aside from AOL, portal sites like excite offer centralized calendar, customized news, portfolio, email accounts, and a thousand other features already. All from a central location. All available through any web browser. And when was the last time you heard someone hyping a portal site?
Not that Hailstorm wouldn't improve on the portal concept at all, but without something really good that takes it above and beyond (and storing your credit card numbers online is not enough of a bonus) it's just not going to go anywhere.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
So Microsoft wants to use open standards like XML, UDDI and WSDL. Presumably, Microsoft will have to open the public interface to calling their services. If they don't open the interface, Palm, Mac, and Linux couldn't invoke these services.
So with an open interface to the service, what is to stop me from creating my own gnuPassport service with the exact same well defined interface? I could then openly authenticate users just as Microsoft authenticates users in their closed service.
Every time Microsoft creates a new service, that they will presumably charge money for, we would create an open interface that is freely available.
The Microsoft developers might be silly enough to hard code the links to their own private UDDI server, but that would be a relatively easy crack to redirect to an open UDDI server.
The article states that the Kerberos authentication might be required to use Microsoft's proprietary extensions, but a simple Samba server would fix this.
So when I read this article, I don't see it as Microsoft moving to dominate the Internet. I see this as Microsoft relinquishing full control of the Windows desktop to services on the Internet. There doesn't seem to me to be any way for Microsoft to stop an open implementation of all of their services.
-- Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
"The open source community can come up with a working alternative, but in doing so will become a criminal group, breaking copyright laws and violating patents. M$,"
Not to forget the DMCA. Well thought out piece. Kudos!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
You'll still have a breakdown, since a data-model is not really patentable (IMHO). Patents are for new inventions, which data-models clearly are not. As the process of data-modelling is a very researched and published area.
However, all is not lost. Copyright only applies to the source and its copies. Reverse-engineering is thereby legal, except that you propbably have to do it outside the US because of the DMCA.
You can still get sued though. Anyone can sue. It's up to the court to rule if it was correct or not. If I were a US citizen, I would sue the politicians for passing such mediocre laws. Surely the sell-outs can afford it!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I was a student at the time, and I said that it was all hype and that it would just be Windows 3.11 on DOS, just forced and even more user-unfriendly and slower. I predicted the nightmare of Plug & Play, because I knew that it was too good to be true. Especially since most hardware at the time wasn't build with P&P in mind at all. So the P&P code in Windows must be insanely hacky. It's not that many people didn't realize, it's that many people wants to believe something so much that they blindly accepts the hype and disregards all reason. It's pretty much like falling in love.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Other problems are distance and trust. European authorities give advice not to do business with U.S. companies via the internet. If some big-shot corporate on the other side of the world is holding my identity, I think that's quite riscy, and you can be sure this will have political attention.
My guess is that the Hailstorm plan wil endevour a lot of resistance, from non-US corporates, from non-US legal departments and from non-US politicians. Still, the world is ever bigger than Microsoft or even the US. I'm not affraid of the concept, we won't buy it.
--
Bizar technology?
Microsoft is in the business of building infrastructure. That's their business... They should be booed?
The web took off because no one owned the protocol, any one could create an HTTP server, anyone could write the services behind the server and anyone could write a browser, and any user could jump on a browser and start using it.
That's certainly an interesting view of the history of the web. Maybe it took off because infrastructure companies like Microsoft, Sun, and Netscape did their jobs well.
How would you like to be unable to read /. or Kur05hin or whatever unless you have a PassPort?
----
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
What the hell is it with calling everything "myFoobar"????
Am I the only one here who anthropomorphises programs on their computer to the extent that if a program creates something called "myFoobar", I take it to mean that it belongs to the program that created it?
If _I_ create a directory called "MyMusic", it's mine. If someone (or something) else creates it, it's _theirs_, and I don't mess with it. If a program wants to create a directory for me to put my stuff in, it should call it "yourFoobar". That makes much more sense IMO. Why do I appear to be the only one that thinks this way. I can't fscking stand "My Sidebar" on mozilla for that reason. The personal toolbar's not called "MyToolbar", the mail folder's not called "myMail". It's just "personal toolbar" and "mail". Why not "sidebar".
Of course it's _my_ toolbar, it's in _my_ profile. Of course it's _my_ music folder, it's in _my_ home (or profile, depending on system) directory.
Why not just call it "Foo" instead of "myFoo" for fscks sake?
*sigh*
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Hailstorm user-licence: 50
:)
Internet connection: 20/month
Skript kiddie tools and software: 5000
The look on Bill Gates face when 10,000,000 credit cards numbers are compromised to the approx credit limit of 20,000 each -- PRICELESS.
There are some things that anyone can cock-up, but for everything else, there's Microsoft
All they would need is tripwire style software to look for any file changes, and if any occur drop the box offline and reinstall, or better yet just network boot all the servers so all that is needed is a reboot. They could all just automatically reboot after 15 mins or so (I mean they are gonna need it anyway right?
How about this for an idea for Linux? The ultimate un[h|cr]ackable web server!
What you need:
- Many servers that can boot over the network
- A server with a CDROM containing the OS, Applications, website data, etc.
Then have the servers reboot every so often (making sure they don't all go down at the same time!!!) and reboot with the data contained on the CD. Even if a machine was broken into, anything the attacker did would be wiped out. Okay so it isn't the greatest of ideas, but if you are Microsoft and your security image is of upmost importance you might consider doing something like this!Even if it is possible to copyright a schema, that doesn't prevent someone else from creating documents that conform to the schema. Heck, if you build your Hailstorm clone using non-validating parsers, you won't even need MS's schemas.
He did'nt say, "lets implement Hailstorm only OSS", he said, "lets implement Hailstorm, only better". What would be better? Well, control over your info would be better, for one.
Should we be spending all this time trying to stop Microsoft? I don't think so. We should treat MS like any thing else, a source of inspiration. Take what is good and leave the rest. I have heard it said that it is importaint to have an enemy (see anals of war: Apple vs. IBM, Netscape vs. MS). Well, again, I'm not so sure. There is a tendency to become more like your enemy during war then most people would like to admit. ( doh! I said, "Most people", but then I also said, "I have heard", but I tried to back that up with lame refs. ).
We are creating a vision for our own future here. Lets take the ideas that are good. Ideas don't come from Microsoft, nor Sun or anybodies head. They are just ideas, thoughts of the possible. The rest is just ego.
Some of the confusion may be that we are also learning ( or not ) to live some of our lives in anarchy. Maybe it's a phase, but I like that.
Cheers
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
The funny part of HailStorm is now I don't see other companies just sitting around not providing competition. At the very least Sun and AOL cronies in the higher regions allready have something in the works as a response.
I personally can't wait to see how they will bend over backwards to get at each others share of the pie.
is apparently, you can copyright an XML schema!
Since schemas are simply data table definitions, that would suggest monopolies of entire industires could be achieved by simply copyrighting the first recordkeeping formats for that industry.
Didn't MS extend the basic Username, Password record format in comming up with the HailStorm schema? How can it in turn prevent others from extending whatever baggage data MS has tied to UIDs and passwords? Just because its an XML definition instead of RDBMS layout or text file???
I also have a huge problem with copyrighting data structures.
Presumably, MS's (pro side) argument might be that there would be no reason to catalog the data were it not for the company's unique and innovative business process.
That would be like RSA saying that no one is allowed to track large primes and their multiplications, because until their business process was created there was no use that they could envisage as useful (There probably were some marginally useful uses).
Because you can create a data model with unique applications depending upon it, does not mean you should have a right to restrain others use of that data model in any way.
Mine is candy coated, but where did your mom get one?
This concept seems to have taken the snide aside of "MSFT tax" to a literal extreme.
Imagine, if you will, the fellow who conceives of paper money first. He sells his peers on the convenience of the exchange ("you don't have to carry the goat to the store anymore! Just hand them the bill!"), on the ubiquity of acceptance ("Even if Store Owner Joe doesn't want a goat, he can turn this 'money' into something that he does want!"), and the security of the medium ("Don't worry about watermarks/forgery! We'll be responsible for guaranteeing the media!")
However, instead of us paying a single individual, or even a single company for these advantages, we are levied a tax by our government on each exchange that takes place. In fact, the analogy more closely resembles a per-check charge: we pay 50c a check for the convenience of not having to carry cash, the guarantee that it will accepted by most institutions, and the security authorization that our check is subjected to.
That 50c is rarely accounted for in the cost of an item; it is a meta-charge, accepted as a necessity, and so ignored.
So, Unca Bill is going to set up his own Internet Banking system, sell us (or developers, who pass the costs on to us) on the convenience, on the universality, on the security of his system, and collect 50c per transaction. How many billions of transactions take place everyday, between the billions of individuals throughout the world? And, even if he doesn't collect a per-transaction fee, how many of us pay a bank a monthly fee for the privilege of using our own money through checks? Why do we pay ATM fees instead of carry all our cash in gold bullion? For the same purpose that Gates envisions HailStorm as succeeding.
PS--The common user (read: my mom) doesn't know that MSFT is really that less secure than Linux. But she has heard that there are "some complicated problems with theft on the Internet" and you better believe that Unca Bill is gonna have her convinced that they only way she can be really secure is to use his system. So what if people break in from time to time--he'll just absorb the occasional loss into the billions of dollars being made everyday, just as the insurance companies take a few hits, but make enough money through monthly premiums to both pay for those costs and still work 10-3. People rob banks, too, but people still put their money in them.
--
$tar -xvf
this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here
God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so. (I don't think the archives go back quite that far.)
That said, Hailstorm is going in the direction of a Microsoft Planet.
This is what they want. They envision a service oriented Internet where they are the toll takers.
And they will take a toll. But they will not nickel and dime us to death. more like a buck fifty, and more.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
From one of those guys who waited all night outside of COMPUSA for a copy of Windows95, I have to say I hope your right.
:-)
:-)
:-)
I was thinking about switching to OS/2 years ago. I kept hearing about windows95 and for months before it came out all the computer stores had the weezer windows95 video clip on all computers screens. Remember Windows3.1 at the time could not display video like that at all. Me and practically almost every computer nerd I knew started drooling over windows95 except for some of my old MAC friends.
For several months before the launch date, Jesse Berst predicating it to be a unix killer due to its stability and after seeing the eye candy and hearing the hype I kind of bought into it sadly enough. I remember him mentioning how he put Windows95 in a file server to see how stable it was.
I was reading about protected memory, macintosh like multimedia and ease of use, cool interface, and all the vendors backing it up as the next big thing since sliced bread. I just was tired of re-configuring my autoexec.bat files just to play a game which used extended and not expanded memory. I wanted to get rid of DOS and windows95 I was hoping would fix it.
I hated dos because of silly inconsitances like the extended vs expanded memory isssue I just mentioned above. I remember talking with my father a week before it came out that I would never have to confifure an IRQ again because plug and play work flawlessly according to Jesse Berst. I was in High School at the time and the lauch date was sooo important that even my goverment teacher talked about it and how everyone's life was gooing to be improved. NO joke! It was in the news like it was a huge story and night a silly press release. Looking back at it I find it absoletely incredible that everyone blindly believed the hype.
Boy, was I in for a supprise. Want to know something?
I am still waiting for those features today.
I am getting windows2000 but I discovered Linux in the process. If it weren't for abusive anti-consumer behaviors and poor quality I would of never tired Linux. Now, when MS makes a statment about XP being the best thing since sliced bread, I and a few million other users will know better. The Windows95 launch was like the emperors new clothes where no one quesitoned anybody. .
What is odd is I remember that Windows95 was only 89 dollars for the msot expensive development effort ever taken by Microsoft. Today Windows98 cost I think 129 and its %95 windows95 code???
This means someone is getting greedy and this and the new OFFICE-XP licensing scheme will turn alot people off hailstorm before it even hits the streets. I know I for sure won't upgrade to XP. They can put ad after ad and article after hype article. I won't buy.
http://saveie6.com/
Seriousely:
- How do you update such webpage? It is on a CD and thus unwritable. You will need to make a new CD each time a single letter is changed. Of course one could postpone all changes until you have some significant changes...
- Live changes: as seen often pages are put down (or up) very fast because of some reason (Incorrect information, important press release...)
- Databases? How many serious websites are not at least partially using databases. How are you going to represent something on a CD-Rom that is as dynamic as a DB? You can't! And I didn't even start about synching updates....
- How about performance? CD-Rom's are not fast at all. I realise of course that every server will have a local mirror of the CD on a fast harddisk that will be copied every time.
- Security: the weak link in the chain is the CD-Rom server! It must have network access to the other machines. This means, you need to crack a server and have let's say 24 hours to crack (15 minutes, reboot? Come-one...not even Windows 3.11 needed that) which is for a good cracker probably not a problem. Once on the server machine, even not being able to write data to the CD-Rom, you can alter the scripts that copy the CD-Rom to the other servers to include defacing messages or so.
I'm sure that my view is not entirely correct because I'm only responsible for a small server with the only restriction is that availability must be very high (but not 24/24 7-7). In my view, the setup you described, would be useful to keep a computerlab synchronized with a standard install, but that really would be it.But then, did I feel a troll?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'm sympathetic to your point, but this is a problem I see in ip arguments a lot: you have asserted the harm without justifying it.
What is wrong exactly with copyrighting a data structure? You seem to imply (but do not state) that even very simple data structures could be copyrighted if moderately complex ones could, and that this would be bad (inefficient?).
The CDDB example is one which provides a pleasantly evil comparison, but it's not perfect- most people's beef isn't so much that they are copyrighting their database structure (although that's a problem), but that they stole community labor for the content of that database.
I propose the following, and perhaps others can add to it: copyrighting data structures is unreasonable both because it creates the possibility of accidentally misusing someone else's data structure if it's too simple (such accidental duplication is vanishingly unlikely with a book or song length work), and because the metadata itself is not original content in the appropriate sense of the term- it is more like an algorithm (it's a rule-based system of organization) and thus more appropriate for patent consideration than for copyright.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Common sense says no, but what does the law say?
Usually companies dont let it come down to that and ensure that there is no way to implement an interface without infringing on a patent instead... but even if that doesnt cover it they can first try to use trade secret (by NDA'ing through shrinkwrap all development information, like 3dfx tried with Glide) and in the end even if it comes down to copyright even if they dont have a real case now who says what a couple of billions worth of lawyers and lobbying can get them.
The problem is that if Microsoft gets enough marketshare then people stop catering to other platforms, which makes the alternatives much less useful. I am thinking of Navigator vs. IE in particular. One day I noticed that many pages stopped working correctly for Navigator and even though I hated the thought of using a Microsoft product I wanted the best possible web experience.
Did anyone else see the irony in this, at the bottom of the article?
How will Hailstorm and Passport change the face of P2P, web services, and the Net itself?
(* You must be a member of the O'Reilly Network to use this feature)
[Most of us use both hands to type usernames and passwords, which we retain in our brains right behind the forehead. Pretty decent description for something written 2K years ago.]
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Never cooperate with abusers. Cooperation encourages abuse.
Once Microsoft delivers a real, working operating system (maybe Windows XP?), most people will never buy another one. To prevent the collapse of its business, Microsoft is trying to enter another business entirely.
But this time, more people know how abusive Microsoft is. This time, there are more users who understand computers. Hopefully, people are smart enough to know that they should not cooperate.
We Slashdot readers can help. If 100,000 of us each tell one non-technical person each day, at the end of a year we will have told 36,500,000 people not to cooperate with Microsoft's plans to dominate. we can make a significant difference in preventing abuse.
Bush's education improvements were
Apperently they don't get golf ball, baseball, and softball sized hail in Redmond. Here in Minnesota we duck and cover when we hear hailstorm.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
may be if we all stop paying for their software that they will eventually run out of money.
evolution ...
----
this is a point i keep bringing up when ever i hear about hailstorm... and i don't mean about nt/win2k being insecure, cause i think it's possible to secure the systems... i mean microsoft as an organization is insecure. last year they were hacked by someone in russia, then later someone broke into a webserver they had (through a known hole that ms issued a patch for but did not install) this year their hotmail got shuut down because some techs messed up a router to their DNS systems and they didn't have any redundancy... 2 days later after everyone learned about it someone hit it with a DoS attack and killed it again... that's just what i remember from semi recent news
this leads me to have a lack of trust of ms' capability to secure my private info... but then again i really don't trust any organization with that much control over my life when i have no control over said organization
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
well that would not be bad if the couple hacks per year were minor exploits or new holes found in the system... but what i was trying to point out (and it was not meant to be a troll) is that one of the hacks happened because they failed to install a patched they already issued... that's not a security vulnerability that's just plain carelessness on their part THAT is what i didn't like about it... and the worst part of that story was, the person reported the hole to ms and then two weeks later came in again using the same hole
as for my "secure linux box" i think one minute is an overestimate since i am not a network admin... and fyi- i don't use llinux... i'm a windows user... i just critisize ms alot because i want them to shape up and give me a better product... i do feel ms has some good products out there but they do need improvement
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
Whaddaya mean how long? I've been selling her coke since she got to college!
good luck to MS. its a smart move. but they better make it secure .. i can just see virtual anarchy when^M^M^M^Mif peoples passports start dissapearing and credid card bills get maxed out. i duno.. i think i see script kiddie heaven. and if anything will force the general public off of MS products/services it will be the feeling of vulnerability.
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
Yeah, the past tense definitely wasn't appropriate. It's not a complete transition yet, but my impression is that it's becoming ever more prevalent. I remember reading recently how Adobe has reworked their software license (the click-wrap during install, at least) to make it obvious that you're not buying their product. You're buying a license to use their product. All you own is a little plastic disc and a chunk of dead tree. This is handy for Adobe since (IIRC) you can't resell the product. Wish I had more facts to back up my case, but I'm sure some people here have more evidence than I could ever come up with.
Steven N. Severinghaus
When we asked them why they wanted to do this, there were some common answers that we kept hearing. "Your priorities are not our priorities", "you don't understand our requirements", "it takes you guys too long to implement changes", "your chargebacks are inconsistent and make it difficult to budget", "your support staff doesn't work on the same schedule we do", and my all time favorite... "we just want local control over our data".
When I read about .NET and Hailstorm, all I see is the central data processing center of the 1970s carried to its illogical extreme. Except now there will only be one "glass house" to serve millions, and it will be in Redmond.
I expect we'll have to repeat history once again, 'cause it looks like nobody learned anything from the last time.
"has shifted", past tense? When did this happen? Have I been blacking out again?
The last time I was awake, this is where Microsoft was trying to take things.
Oh well. Glad I hopped off the MS treadmill 3 years ago.
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Well, I mean HTTP/HTML/etc - the whole "web" thing. Mosiac was just a much more flexible and capable solution for viewing information and communicating with servers (ie. web-like functionality) than its commercial competitors at the time - say, CompuServe.
[That's probably a good point, though, how HTTP is technically a fairly crappy protocol. Nearly ubiquitous despite it's technical flaws... somewhat like Windows. There's something profound in there somewhere...]
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
It's amazing how the overwhelming impression someone would get from all these slashot discussions is that your typical /.er is a technophobe.
This kind of thing is *cool*.
Should Microsoft control it? Of course not. But there should be a lot more enthusiasm on these boards for the capabilities these things represent; it's this sort of universal capability which is the future.
Is there a security risk? Of course... but you could say the same thing about the postal service, the telephone, credit cards, etc etc. It's *going* to happen.
But the OSS has to stop saying "Boo. Stop Microsoft. They're evil." and start saying "What Microsoft is trying to do is cool, but what we can do is *better*."
That's (partly, anyway) why *nix dominates the web... Apache (and its predecessors) used a protocol (http) which was just plain better than all the commercial alternatives for information dissemmination, and when the commercial companies turned around and came to see how great the whole web concept was, the OSS community was already there.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
Microsoft... is trying to make a central repository of personal information... stored in redundant Microsoft controlled datacenters... including credit card numbers...
So all I need to do is SE a domain admin password from *one* microsoft employee, with a *crapload* of them to choose from, and I get *millions and millions* of credit card numbers, addresses, perhaps even bank accounts?
OK. I'm up for that.
-Jade E.
Well, we have to admit that software as service revolution is inevitable. This change will really revolutionize our world. The work *has* already begun since P2P "discovery" by Napster and such. It was then intensified by the invention of Java as "universal" programming language and XML as the "universal" data format. Naturally, if we have world-wide connections, universal programming language and universal data, we'd like to unify the framework, right?
Recall in the OSI network layer we have "presentation layer". You can see that this layer has never emerge as a solid standard eventhough there were some attempts. Thus, this becomes the biggest stumbling block in the unification. However, after *the* invention, this should not be problem any longer.
But, there is another problem: Control. With software as service, the service-provider company will exercise control over your data. Basically, your data is belong to us. Eventhough the provider does respect privacy, it won't let you get away without signing ToS which is basically make you agree to for a "responsible disclosure" from it. Even worse, the company seems to take the privacy pretty lightly
Now, this has a serious implication: Government agents can pin down those service providers and possibly giving them monopoly access to ease them "keeping track of malicious citizens". Is this an indication? If so, then your privacy agreement is "useless" basically. Unless...
If we agree on universal programming language, data, and protocols and decentralized P2P connection like Freenet does. This case, our privacy will remain and we can defend it to our best. Just my 2 cents, though.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
What will MS offer in this new platform that people, businesses included, will actually want enough to pay for? All the MS shops (4) that I worked at in the last two years used Access (almost exclusively) for their databasing. The more advanced features of Office 97 and 2000, i.e. automation, VBA support, macros, mostly went unused. This tells me that people are still getting used to the idea of a relational database server such as SQL Server or even MySQL AND they're having trouble comprehending the inner workings of an integrated office suite. I think these same people, average users, will have an extremely tough time grasping the workings OR advantages of "objects in the clouds," let alone paying for their dubious and penny-draining services (whatever they may be). People have more information and services than they need or know what to do with related to PC's: MP3 / CD playing / burning / copying, DVD playing / burning, file sharing, internet browsing, online shopping, office suites, thousands and thousands of open source programs, computer games, proprietary software for every purpose imagineable, data, web & app servers (many which are free), IRC, on-demand video and radio-streaming, lots and lots of free porn, huge pages of links and documents, and so on (add your favorite apps!). We already HAVE online shopping carts and the ability to buy things over the web, and not that many people use it. Now these same corporations and users, awash in underutilized or even unused software and internet services / sites, are supposed to hand over their data and control of their applications to Microsoft who then charges them for it? Where is the incentive? MS is trying to push this new system without realizing that no one needs or wants it right now. At any rate, Java and XML-based services are already a few years ahead of Microsoft's C++, COM, VB and C# platform (C#, BTW, has 36 of Java's 50 keywords). AFAIK, Sun-1 is in late beta testing. Ever read Java Developer's Journal or XML Journal? Both have literally been discussing the implementation details of distributed web apps for years whilst MS is belatedly proclaiming, "Hey, no more pointers!" to its C++ developer's, most of whom switched to either VB or Java a while ago. In a few years, Java will be relatively mature with many of the current kinks worked out. Either that or it will evolve into something else. MS will just be trying to launch their new "Hailstorm." (BTW, what the hell kind of name is that? Hailstorms are bad; they dent cars and hurt people. Who wants a software platform that causes harm?) I just don't see this thing taking off. Windows 2000 sold substantially fewer copies than expected; XP will likely do even worse. Who the hell is going to be dumb enough to buy into MS's new Master Plan: not the developer's, that's for sure, and not average home or corporate users, either. With the XBox, .NET and Hailstorm initiatives, I think we'll see MS burning through its cash reserves in failing bids to dominate once again. Should be fun to watch!
If you do business with a vendor who uses hailstorm, even if you don't use the hailstorm "service", do other distributed components of the vendor's back-end system funnel your data to a hailstorm server?
Creepy.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
They actually want to copyright a DATA STRUCTURE so that no one else can use it. That's just insane.
I'm going to copyright the following data structure immediately:
If I come across ANYONE using ANYTHING even REMOTELY like this, I'm gonna sue you and you will be owned.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I don't exactly live in the sticks (western suburbs of Sydney), but I think I'm going to be just about the first person in my area to get ADSL. The DSLAM has gone live within the last two weeks. About two thirds of the homes in my suburb have one cable system (from a possible two), and no-one further west has any. The homes that don't have cable won't be getting ADSL for a good few years either. ADSL here is also limited in speed -- 512k is about the most anyone can reasonably afford; 1.5M costs nearly $120/month.
The point is, HailStorm/.NET are not going to work over a modem. I don't see a big threat from them any time soon in Australia! Who the hell wants to pay $120/mth just to be able to type a document!!??
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
Actually, soap is not the best lubricant to enter through a backdoor ;-)
Yes, merchants will indeed set up with a system that excludes customers. In the book trade, I've seen store sites and publisher sites that:
- Require Explorer to visit
- Require the Flash plugin to _shop_
- Require signing up with PayPal for any purchase
A lot of online stores and corporations aren't really tech-smart, and go with whichever pitch bluffed them best. Saying "use our system and you get almost all internet users" sounds good.Heck, some of them accept systems even when told they are blocking out 10% of their potential customers. Their logic, "it would be too expensive/difficult to change everything just for the 10% of people who are using odd systems, and most people using those probably aren't our customers anyway."
Argh! I hate consulting!
A.
*sigh*
These days, you can emulate much of the Win32 APIs without much trouble.
Have you seen the latest WINE? Sure, it's good, but not that good! Same goes for the rest to some degree or another - you don't really think MS will move towards competition, do you?
43rd Law of Computing:
So, Microsoft needs a security blanket in this new world, so they seem to be kicking around several ideas: we could charge for this, we could charge for that. Will it work? I kind of doubt it. If their infrastructure is truly open and well documented, people will offer competing services. If it is closed, it's just the status quo, and users are less and less fooled by it.
As for SOAP and XML that could go both ways. They help a little with interoperability, but Microsoft still has a wide range of options of making things proprietary and non-interoperable while nominally complying with the standards.