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Microsoft's Future
cyberkine writes: "The Economist has an interesting article on Microsoft's technology strategies that ends with a very astute comparison with IBM's downfall and resurrection in the wake of its own antitrust battles. 'Microsoft's biggest underlying fear is that it will become like IBM - --a company that still has a strong business but no longer sets computing standards.'"
Obviously, neither have you. While it's nice to bash MS for crashing, I've actually had decent uptime from it - 3 weeks and counting so far, amazing for a MS product.
I thought that Micro$oft's fear was not being able to take over the internet in the next 5 years? I guess he'll have to arm wrestle AOL's Steve Case for the title. My 2 cents.
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
OSS ranked along side AOL in the battle against Microsoft. Interesting, if not frightening.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Hey, they still set the standards for server exploits...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
... no company has ever managed to set standards forever... while microsoft sets standards in userfriendlyness (maybe they do), they still lack standards in securtiy.
".Sig Stealer" was here
There's a difference between the two, though. IBM knew when to give up trying to be the center of the universe. I don't think Gates and company are capable of suppressing their egos to the degree necessary.
Society is full of people who want to have their legacy, and want to be "men of destiny." These are people who want to be the kinds of cultural icons that live on forever. IBM thankfully didn't have too many of them at the helm. That meant that they didn't have individual egos looking for their places in the sun at the expense of the rest of the company and the world at large. In plain English, that meant that when the world changed and IBM ceased to be the alpha male, they made that transition.
Microsoft isn't in quite the same positon. They don't control any major hardware that the rest of the world needs. While they have a number of products of varying quality, they don't control anything completely indispensable. The reason for their control is their position.
Problem: The value of a position changes with time. Microsoft can learn when they've picked the wrong fight, maybe. That kind of perception means they can back away and stay alive.
Not with Gates, etc. at the helm. Even the most ardent MS/Gates-supporter would have to agree: whatever virtues Gates has, humility is not one of them. Gates really wants his legacy and his place in the history books, and Microsoft is a means to that end. Just like Bill Clinton spending his last year desperately seeking a legacy, just like RMS who wants the entire English language prefaced with GNU/, Gates wants to be a man of destiny.
That means that he sees Microsoft as being a vehicle, and not much more. I doubt that he even cares about the profits. And that means that he'll take the company into some really bad fights to support his own self-image. Even if the company's survival depended on his walking away.
(Yes, I bash MS and Gates a lot. That being said, if they released an open-source Word for KDE, I'd buy it. Possibly even at retail.)
There are boxes in my shop with uptimes of years.
Mainframe admins strive for DECADES of uptime.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Has Microsoft ever actually set any computing standards? IBM did: the punched card, half-inch magnetic tape, and the entire PC architecture, among others. It was a self-confident company that wasn't afraid of competitors building products that implemented standards it had set. (I'm not suggesting it competed fairly, ethically or even legally, BTW.)
.net into standards. But I can't think of any accepted standard of which you can say, "Microsoft created that standard and gave it to the community".
But Microsoft? It's contributed to standards initiated by others. It's tried to detract from standards initiated by others (Java). It's currently trying to make C# and
That is why Microsoft has always sold its operating system cheaply and has done everything to make life easy for programmers.
Obviously not someone who is familiar with the joys of COM - especially pre-ATL. Also, not someone who ever spent weeks trying to get that new shiny feature of NT4, DCOM, working only to find out that it never worked at all (RPC layer broken) until SP3. Not someone who has ever tried to produce a system which runs perfectly on all Win32s. If he means "made life easy for VB programmers", then maybe - but I wouldn't dignify them with the name "programmer".
I could rant for hours about specific instances, but I wont.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Microsoft is not exactly like IBM. IBM's market was in business whereas Microsoft's market combines both business and consumer. IBM sold hardware as well as software. Microsoft sells only software (unless you count those stupid mice and keyboards). IBM sold huge mainframes for huge price that requires months of sales work to get the dotted line signed. Microsoft products can be grabbed in retail stores. That doesn't necessarily mean Microsoft won't run out of steam with its flattening markets, but the mechanisms and potentials will certainly be different than they were with IBM. IBM didn't have a lot of options it could so easily move into. Microsoft has some more, and is more diverse than IBM ever was in a market that can buy things on a whim. So don't count on what happened to IBM necessarily happening to Microsoft. Maybe it will, or maybe it won't.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Although microsoft is "giving" away software and "adopting open standards" they are also as tried to point out before, harvesting user information. I believe that that is the key to their (upcoming) success. As soon as Microsoft has a base in user-authenication (their passport system) that's when it doesn't matter anymore that they use XML, SOAP, .NET whatever. .NET functionality but I'll bet your life that there's not going to be a way to get around passport, and in that way microsoft has secured it's position again. And this time in the worst possible way, it holds your personal information hostage in your personal passport.
It might be possible for other OSses to use most of the
Isn't it true, that when installing windows XP you are promted to create a passport? I wonder why nobody sued for that, my guess is that (once again) microsoft is pulling a stunt that nobody will see coming until it's too late... frozen
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
I am not quite sure when Microsoft ever "innovated". As far as I remember, every consecutive release of Windows is ALWAYS 30-35% faster than the previous release, and 70-75% faster than the one before that. Windows ALWAYS has better multitasking than the previous version. Did you know your computing experience is also more "fun" every time you upgrade. Same goes for Office. When's the last time they introduced a truly useful new feature? Aside from introducing a useless feature then killing it (him) before the general public to raise hype.
My point is, I just don't get Microsoft. They don't DO ANYTHING. They are a multi-billion dollar corporation that adds bells an whistles to a leaky boat, then resells it for $300 a pop. If you want to talk about the progress Microsoft has been making, I would not call it "innovation". All Microsoft innovation has ever been is gradually making something work better than previous releases when it should have worked right before it hit store shelves. The improvements to their flag ship products are somewhat analagous to improvements on yearly versions of Encarta!
Are they headed the way of the dinosaur? I think I'd get a resounding 'yes' from the Slashdot community, but is this thinking right? After five years of "innovation", people still get suckered into their marketing hoopla and nonsense, thinking that every new version of Windows is a revolution in the making. No, I don't think MS is doomed to the fate we all hope it will fall into. So long as they keep using pictures of people filled with joy because they use Windows, they'll convince the general population.
*ugh* Sorry, just needed to rant a bit here. MS are just ridiculous, and it's pitiful how millions of people worldwide can follow them like sheep. I can't stand it anymore
Why bother.
Some of IBM's basic research (eg. superconductivity and nanotechnology) may produce enormous returns, and have already made the world a better place , but won't be pulling in the money for that immediately. Their earlier research helped make them the big company that they've been for decades. Xerox gave us the PC and workstation desktop environment as research, and not a product in development.
If MS dedicates some effort towards published research (remember, product development is only called "research" if it makes the tax man happy, and real reseach can be done outside a university) that will add to the global knowledge base and may mean that the "next big thing" is owned by them. After all, flouride was added to toothpaste after a company that had a waste disposal problem with it funded a lot of research to find out what it could be used for, and some of it paid off spectacularly. You never know what can be done until you try.
(Customer walks into bank)
LOAN OFFICER: "So, Mr. Customer, what's your business plan?"
CUSTOMER: "Well, see, I'm going to compete with a multi-billion dollar Japanese company by building a product that will lose $2 billion over the next three years, then break even, hopefully."
LOAN OFFICER: "Sounds great! We'll finance whatever you need."
(Customer walks into bank in the real world)
LOAN OFFICER: "So, Mr. Customer, what's your business plan?"
CUSTOMER: "Well, see, we need a small loan to help expand our business. We saved our nickels and dimes, ate soup and drove 15-year old cars for three years and built this product and generated some sales, but now we want to make the product better with more features and perhaps get some part-time employees."
LOAN OFFICER: "Sounds great! Naturally, you'll need cash exceeding the value of the loan as collateral deposited here at our bank in our lowest-interest account, platinum-lined credit that rings softly in a light breeze, 12 references, a 50-page annotated business plan, three years of financials audited by a big-six accounting firm, an autobiography, two full-time sources of secondary income, oh, and real estate, LOTS of real estate... financial projections for five years showing sustainable 20% weekly growth with full supporting documentation, a large portfolio of blue-chip equity holdings and nice fat juicy municipal bonds, three co-signers and a silver partridge in a golden pear tree, and please fill out this 40 page application. Your loan will be reviewed by the committee at the next meeting in... four months."
CUSTOMER: "But we'll be out of business by then!"
LOAN OFFICER: "Have a nice day!"
Writers must meet deadlines. The often are not given the time to learn everything they need to know. So, they string together some nice-sounding phrases. Sometimes, for a few sentences in a row, they sound like they understand the subject. Then they say something that shows they don't really:
That is why Microsoft has always sold its operating system cheaply and has done everything to make life easy for programmers.
"Make life easy" as in artificial limits on resources in Windows 95, 98, and ME. Later this,
Microsoft will continue to be a kinder giant, predicts Rick Sherlund of Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, if only because "the whole world is watching".
He called Microsoft kind. Oh yeah. They probably both have Microsoft stock they would like to sell at less of a loss.
Then this:
It does not help Microsoft's credibility that its new-found faith in openness does not seem to apply to Windows itself.
Whoops, not kind. More "kindness":
Microsoft's concept of openness is reminiscent of a funnel: easy to get into, but hard to get out of. Visual Studio
Sometimes writers just use their imagination:
To convince the world that it will henceforth compete on the quality of its products alone, Microsoft must do something more radical. One possibility would be to accept the kind of antitrust settlement that would clearly signal a shift.
What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
I was actually at a dinner party the other night here in Seattle and was able to chat with a high level IT manager for Microsoft...It was pretty interesting to talk to him about where Microsoft is headed from the business perspective: He said basically that Windows XP should be on every computer in the world, no exceptions. When I asked him about the implications of NSA backdoors for other countries governments, he didn't even give an inch. (but said that other OS's can take a small part of the percentage, so long as it remains "very small").
.NET services in the pretty near future...They live in a reality where they believe everybody has a buttload of money to spend on "web services" and software liscenses, and as soon as they open the floodgates its just gonna come pouring in!
Anyway, the wierd thing I learned from this guy was that the upper management at Microsoft actually plans to be collecting revenue from basically every computer user in the world through liscenses and
anyway, I'm not religious, I use Microsoft stuff all the time. More power to them. But its just not gonna happen...Microsoft has had its glory days, and now I am starting to see the seeds of the computer world "moving on". People simply don't have the cash or interest now that the Internet boom is gone to pretend that they are gonna get rich by installing XP server for their company. Those days are gone, now people want the basic functionality they need at the lowest possible prices.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
to the United Subsidieries of the United Coportation of Microsoft. And to the rules of the EULA, for which I agree to never pirate or copy any intellectual property, I Company, under Corporation, for which privacy fails, and laws abound, for lawyers.
-Daily morning speech for employees
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Everything Microsoft ever did since the very beginning was steal ideas from other people and companies and market them as their own. Ask Tim Paterson, Gary Kildall, Apple, Stac Electronics, or Spyglass. They very nearly got away with this with Java, but Sun was watchful, and now, what they're doing with C# and .NET is basically a reinvention of what Java already is. It makes me wonder if the bigwigs inside Microsoft ever had an original thought in their own heads.
Difference here is, IBM actually did set computing standards in its time. They actually did innovate a lot of things in a big way. And they had the humility to accept that while they could remain powerful and influential, they could not remain the force that drove the computing revolution.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
This is actually true journalism. Reporting the facts as they see them without taking a position per se. As such it paints a grim but realistic picture of the future of computing.
It shows two roads ahead instead of just the one BG sees through his (obviously worn out) glasses.
One road is that where Microsoft gets new leadership because BG steps down in time. Down that road lies an IBM-like future for Microsoft with plenty of opportunities and a more 'normal' growth pattern for the company.
The other road is the one where BG isn't willing or capable of stepping down and Microsoft will go on with it's current practices. The writer doesn't really predict what might happen but has a swing at it by saying (between the lines) that revenue-growth may not be able to keep up it's march forward.
The bottom line is that if your PHB isn't _real_ dimwitted _and_ has an idea of economics (I know it might be too much to ask but still) he may get this. The fact that it reads "The Economist" on top should at least help a bit.
Karma? What's that again?
Karma? What's that again?
I was amused by the notion that for Microsoft to follow in the footsteps of IBM, as a company that no longer sets standards, would somehow be the bad scenario. Well, things could have been worse for IBM. They had a near-death experience in about 1993. Sure, they had inertia, it could have taken them decades to finally fade away (a la Control Data, Unisaurus, DEC, and many others), but that they revitalized themselves rather than fade away is thanks to having reinvented the company (including their first-ever layoffs, just to pick one example). The best reference I could quickly find was an article from Business Week, which seems to capture the essential points.
The significance for Microsoft? Well it is pretty early to start pondering a post-Microsoft era and I'm not sure I see any signs of collapse in the various cracks which appear around the sides of the empire. But if a collapse does come, it could be more catastrophic than you'd think.
For now? no microsft will NOT go the way of the dinosaur and as long as things keep on going the way they are going now, they won't for a long time.
One of the mayor problems is that, a LOT of people still think that computers and windows is one and the same thing, they think that reading your email consists of using outlook/outlook express, that writing a letter is done in Word etc. They don't know there are alternatives, this is (luckily) beginning to change, because even main stream computer magazines are beginning to show some interest in alternatives.
Still, on the internet terms like "Computer virusses" or "Macro virusses" and the like are still pretty deceptive they should (ofcourse) be called "Windows virusses" and "Microsoft Office virusses" as long as those differences are not clear to the main public... the problem persists
so, for now, no... I think Microsoft will stay exactly where it is...
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
From Xerox of course, apple got the GUI from them.
True Apple has turned it in to a piece of art (wheras M$ has turned it into a piece of S$@*).
Unfortunately M$ has set standards.. file extensions. because their programmers seem to think filename extensions are an effective way of determining file types. (yeah renaming a
when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
Being a recent convert to Linux I have to see that for front end desktops windows has the edge for now.
The problem is that Linux has reached the 90% syndrome, that is Linux has 90% of the features required for it to be a front end desktop. As we all know it takes 90% of the development time for these final 10% of features. KDE and GNOME are almost ready, Star Office 6.0 will be a competitor for Microsoft office in a few months. Microsoft have always taken existing technology and made it easy to use (legal and moral issues aside). Would you teach your mother Linux or Windows.
Linux is a tool that now can be used in specific requirements in a back office role and for obtaining a cheap UNIX environment where required. It is not ready for the desktop yet (for technical people yes, for ordinary computer phobic users no). The problem is with the Open Source and most Linux companies cannot make money from their products (just look at what can be achieved with Star Office when a large company does get behind Linux).
With Windows 2000 and XP we have finally got rid of that huge mess the 9X product line gave us, and I am considering upgrading (but only to the PRO version and not until XP SP1).
Issues such as Microsoft FUD and support issues for Linux have now been resolved. Based simply on the products Windows has the edge in a few areas for now. Give it another year and I feel Linux will be able to compete (when things like Star Office, Mozilla, and many other projects finally hit a 1.0 release).
I use Linux and Solaris at work and I want to see Linux succeed.
The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head
Would you mind putting this in perspective and telling us what you've done with your life and what your qualifications are? Got a job?
.NET will remove ownership and possession of data and software from the users. These technologies will become the defacto standard simply because Microsoft has 90% of the world's computers under their control. What if someone else or another group of people have a viable idea or set of ideas that might actually be better than the MS way? They don't stand a chance. What you call success I call tyrrany. Hitler was very successful too. Is your name on the facist ballot (of course, that's your choice) by chance? Put things into perspective yet?
I can't resist feeding this troll. I am still in school, attending college as a computer science major. I write open source software, but probably nothing that matters to you. I believe in freedom of choice, regardless of the forum. Microsoft doesn't like freedom, they want everyone to be locked into their way of doing things. They are the opposite of democracy, and even if the US isn't perfect, it's still better than what Microsoft offers. Clarify on the comparison? With Microsoft's power over the Internet, information, and how people use computers, they have a tight grip on how they can control our society. This grip is getting stronger. Passport will require users in large groups to authenticate through them.
I know it's hard, but try to consider the big picture in the long run for a change. Not just that your icons get cool shadows or your menus fade in when you click them. Consider that Microsoft are an entity that really does present the possibility of a "Big Brother" (not to be confused with the misunderstood Orwellian sense) insofar as they can and will control (as well as grant control to other monied interests... RIAA, MPAA, etc.) the information that is the lifeblood of our information driven society.
I guess the only thing I can really say about people who don't understand the danger of absolute power in the hands of a few is this: Get out of my country, you swine. Blood has been shed to acquire the freedom we all take for granted today, and anyone who thinks we should just ignore the right to choices and let whatever great ruling entity exists tell us what to do doesn't deserve what we've got in America.
(There goes my karma for speaking my mind.)
Why bother.
MS is worried that it won't be setting computing standards ? But it _never_ _ever_ has. Its forte has been ignoring standards and setting out on its own. Its problem now with the concept of the pervasive web and pervasive computing is that its #1 reason for this succeeding, its OS is not longer going to be ubiquidous.
IBM failed because they didn't see the PC revolution, MS have seen the pervasive web, and are trying to get onto it, but their problem is that by its very nature its a non-MS world. Where IBM missed the bandwagon the issue here is that MS want to get onto the one that it has previously tried to blow off the rails. Will Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, IBM, HP, Sun allow MS to join their tea party.
Hopefully not. But there is no accounting for CEO stupidity. MS have to undergo a culture change, their adoption of XML and SOAP looked good, until they haven't implemented the SOAP stuff to the SOAP standard yet (and they are on the bloody standards body!). That underlying aim of embrace, extend, extinguish was fine while they controlled the OS, but with internet aware consumer devices the bar of quality, reliability and interoperability has been raised.
To quote my wife "So people accept that Microsoft write crap code, and even blame themselves for problems, thats the reason I gave up using the PC"
Its true my wife uses the PC very rarely for a bit of browsing and email... but there is no way she would put up with a mobile phone that hangs.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
At first glance, the graph titled 'Redmond Blues' looks like it's showing a decline in Microsoft's earnings. However, the real numbers are quite the opposite - the graph shows how many percent increase the earnings have had since last year, and it is of cours natural for the curve to fall (since an $2.5 billion increase from $25b is only 10%, while an $2.5 billion increase from $6 is almost 60%).
But somehow they have warped the statistics (intentionally?) to make the curves more grim.
To their defense, it is stated clearly in the text of the article, but the subtle difference between text and graphics might be hard to spot.(Especially since it's easier to think up a conclusion from a curve than a paragraph of text)
Our network switch says it has been up for 49566 days.
You can say a lot of bad things about old hardware, but then, back in 1865, they knew how to make strong and reliable equipment.
But Microsoft? It's contributed to standards initiated by others. It's tried to detract from standards initiated by others (Java).
Java is not a standard unless your criteria for being a standard is simply that it is used by a lot of people. If that's the case then Microsoft has created lots of standards from COM to the Word file format to UDDI to their XML schema proposal that was rejected by the W3C but was embraced by most of industry.
If you're talking about standards in the strict sense of the Word then I can think of SOAP and C# and the CLI (in progress) but then again I haven't paid much attention to what Microsoft does until quite recently.
By the time you get to this post, you know all about IBM's near death experience of the early 90s. .. It was far lest costly for them to just toss out a few options and let users go along with them.
.. which is why, in the recent slump, they've managed to stay relatively strong despite losses.
.. IBM's a company that services everything... not just AIX running on RS/6000s or Aptivas or Thinkpads. IBM is huge on supporting and partnering with its competition as well. Global Services has a larger NT support team than microsofts! They support sun too.
.. they seem very pigheaded about continuing on the same route.
Its true, IBM set standards.. and a lot of them. But did you know that IBM still puts out more patents than any other corporation in the world (per year)?
They're still a company that innovates.
What they realized was that instead of innovating and then trying to force that upon users
The moved from the manufacturing industry to a service industry
The thing is
Anyway.. what's the point of all of this?
IBM changed its philosophy to diversify.
I don't see microsoft going down that road. Even though they're strategy is failing (or is at leasted doomed to)
If they stay on the track they're on, they'll spiral down just like IBM almost did.
Imran Ahmed, Linux Inthuziast
-----------
"I like to dissect women. Did you know I'm totally insane?"
I think people have a basic misunderstanding about Microsoft. They think:
Microsoft makes lots of money. Therefore it must be a good, strong company.
However, I believe if you ignore the profits, Microsoft is actually a very weak company. Crazy point of view? My logic:
Ignore for a moment the size of Microsoft's profits, and look at where they come from. A hugely disproportionate amount come from Microsoft Office. It's worth thinking about this a moment - despite Microsoft's multiheaded and complex strategy at the moment, a significant proportion of its profits come from a product the functionality of which isn't that difficult to copy. A bunch of people in their spare time have put together software that has much of the same functionality. Sun has a nearly equivalent product that they are giving away for free. Is MS Office really a sound basis for a strong company? Similarly with its operating systems - Linux is an increasingly tough competitor, and it's free. Much of it was originally developed by a bunch of students and enthusiasts (absolutely no disrespect intendended).
Now look at IBM. Increasingly its profits come from providing complex bespoke services at enterprise level to global companies. It also creates hardware, from breakthough advances at the molecular level to the worlds fastest supercomputers. Try copying that.
Bill Gates says he doesn't want Microsoft to become another IBM. I say, Microsoft is a pathetic company in comparision.
It is still in very early development, so I wouldn't suggest you go out and run it (except for purposes of testing and debugging), but if you are looking for a worthy project to contribute to, consider this one.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Even granted the fact that Microsoft is gaining ground in technical side of the aspect(less crashing) , they are loosing it more rapidly in the feedom and privacy arena, which until a month ago was becoming ever increasingly important to the average Joe.
:)) A project I was working on for windows involving TAPI and Mail Merging in particular was twice as hard as it should have been. At one point I contemplated merging manually into HTML or postscript. Did you know that office quietly truncates SQL queries from the COM interface of mail merge to 512 bytes over 2 seperate 256 byte fields?? Also take a look at TAPI sometime; in order to fully use it properly, you must convelude your code such that you are ashamed to have written it.
Microsoft is not friendly to developers as the artical suggests. There will always be people like Adobe that have to rewrite their applications for other operating systems, and they will suffer from Microsoft's unwillingness to cooperate. The things 3rd party developers must worry about are sometimes as menial as how windows doesn't handle fonts the same as a Mac, to the enevitability that the X-Box won't support OpenGL out of the box. (NVidia's version aside, also, I'm sure someone will play XBill on it in a week
On the other side of things:
OSS can't compete:
The one thing that I notice about all of open source software is the complete lack of good documentation. I don't know about many people on here, but if you've worked with MSDN, then you know that something is definately missing from OSS documentation. No, man doesn't count. There is a lot of documentation on how to use various tools, but its very hard to even find out how to create a window in X without using SDL or GGI. You can't expect a relatively new programmer to grep 1G of source to understand all the API calls to create a graphical version of FTP that takes all of a day to write in VB or Borland Builder/Delphi for windows. The OSS community could make things much more enticing for new developers by giving them a standard that if the software follows it is gauranteed to run on any distrabution without a headache (Quake3 is an excellent example, ID doesn't want to make another version of their software for linux due to tech support issues) Sun does the same for Java and the numbers speak for them, not by users choice, but the convenience to developers. Linux is also prohibitive in the fact that it almost certainly requires hardware manufacturers to release more to the community than windows does, or pay developers to maintain the drivers functionality with every OS change (NVidia chooses to do their own driver, and I can tell they struggle... Promise tries as well, but the SCSI driver code base changes with almost every revisionof the kernel). The result is very poor hardware support, even with IBM's help.
But, then again, OSS software maight get a bit of a kick from the commercial entities:
Microsoft's success or failure might lie in the hands of Apple. Apple's ability to make a stable, secure, OSS underlying OS that is easy for the average person to use, easy for the average programmer to make inexpensive or free software for, and easy for coorperations to adopt without loosing functionality or money, is a variable that still gives me hope that I won't have to run XP on anything but a test bed. Macs are more expensive because of the proprietary nature of the hardware, but if they release a X86 version of the GUI, then they would have much more market. Most of the software I have to use Windows for has a Mac counterpart. Mac OS's reign in compatibility with itself. Also many companies have a few macs and are open to experimentation with them.
The bottom line is: With Bush as president, MS is pretty much given free reign to be as monopolistic and anti-privacy as they wish. Votes tallied with MS Election.NET next term?
Karma Clown
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Given Microsoft's propensity to dictate to the rest of the industry, it seems peculiar to bash Microsoft for their lack of standard setting. So, I'll assume your question meant to exclude Microsoft's de facto "standards" (such as the ever popular MS Word file format).
Well, surprisingly enough, the answer is, Yes, Microsoft has set good (that is, open) standards.
Off the top of my head I can think of RTF (Rich Text Format), SMB, and DHCP. That last one's a pretty good example, since even in pure UNIX shops it's all but eradicated bootp.
--b9
From what I remember, IBM invented SMB, though MS contributed a lot to it shortly thereafter (would have been 1987). Also, the "goodness" of this standard is debatable. ;-)
As for RTF -- ugly!!!
That leaves DHCP
>>When a cartoon Bill Gates got shot and everyone in the theater laughed, I knew Microsoft's days were numbered.
A lot of that is just "Anti-Rich Guy" syndrome, like the sentiment against the rich rail tycoons in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These were the richest men in the country and were villified soundly by the populace.
Of course, just because they were villified didn't mean they WEREN'T on the way out...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Yes, the Windows API is a de facto standard controlled by Microsoft and not a "de jure" standard controlled by a "benevolent" organization, but it is a standard.
When 95% of the world's for-profit makers of end-user software want to write code, it is code for the Windows API. To me, that's a standard.
Has anyone disected the Xbox far enough to determine if and how it could be used to run a Linux OS?
:) at $299, it could make a nice Xterminal/thin client too. The possibilities are all out there waiting. Just 'cause MS is on the label is no reason to poo-pooh the hardware is it? I happen to like the MS Elite keyboard... the stupid internet keyboards can go the way of the fecal matter though.
I think hacking Xbox into a Linux box in iOpenner fashion might make a few MS executives blink!
Anyway... just a thought... anyone doing this already? Is there any web site to show?
There is a big difference, though: on Linux, you get the source. That means that, unlike Windows, you never get stuck on a project. With the source, you can usually code a workaround, recompile the library and link statically, or fix the bug. You aren't dependent on anyone's release cycle and you don't have to pay for the privilege of having a bug fixed that you yourself reported. Microsoft has actually attempted to help out developers in similar ways with partial source releases, but it just doesn't work out the same way in practice.
What that all amounts to in practice is that Windows does end up being a lot more expensive to buy, a lot more expensive to maintain, and a lot less reliable in practice than open source systems. And the fact that Windows is a kitchen sink of functionality, with much more interdependency than other systems, only compounds the problem.
How so? Well, look at their taxes. They don't pay any tax on profit because they report no profit.
How? They claim the value of stock options used to pay employees as expense. Between that and cash outlays, they are losing money, and have been for years.
When they claim profit to their shareholders, and for the stock markets in general, they don't count the stock options they give out as anything. IOW, they would report the exact same profits if their employees' pay was cut to only their cash salaries. IOW, if they paid their employees entirely in stock options, they would report no spending on employees, exactly as if it was all-volunteer labor.
MS does have (or has had) a positive cash inflow, but only because they are constantly creating new stock and selling it, diluting existing shares to create the illusion of profit.
The stock market is not a source of investment for them, but primary revenue.
It works exactly like a Ponzi scheme: early investors are paid off with later investments. Unsurprisingly, like any cash pyramid, it showed exponential growth, roughly doubling in value every year.
This has broken down, though. Forget technical competition, they are on the edge of a financial collapse. They are being supported by the wishful thinking of their employees, who still think the stock will resume its growth, and so are willing to accept stock options as pay. Once they insist on payment in cash, MS will not be able to show even a fraudulent profit, and the company will come crashing down.
The question is what will come crashing down with them...
but is .doc a MS standard? I seem to remember several years ago opening .doc files in notepad (or any other text editor) as they were
.pdf, .gif, .html, .mp3 or .jpg has, they did it by forcing their product down peoples throats, or hijacking someone elses standard and twisting it to their own definition ([strong], [small],[marquee] in .html is a good example)
(.doc)uments
but ms has set standards, but not in the way
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
On your comment about he hardware companys and the device drivers... Companies not releasing hardware specs to the community is the #1 reason that device support in linux is lacking. I honestly have never seen the huge deal most hardware companies have with exposing the interfaces with their products? Surely if they have some "top secret" IP, that for some unknown reason they didn't patent, it wouldn't be exposed by simply knowing he calls to interface with the operating system???
Am I totally off track here? Why do companies try so hard to protect IP that they should already have legal protection over? If NVidia has patents on its 3D accellerator design (which I am sure they do), then why do they have to continue to obfuscate it by not releasing hardware specs so poeple can write OSS drivers?
The problem for Microsoft is it is too heavy handed on owning the OS.
With Linux we all own it, provided we respect it and others.
Microsoft is a phenomenon of the consumer society, it is adequate enough, like a popular brand of hamburgers, but is it cuisine?
Some good comes from the process, but this goodness is a reaction to it, not caused by it.
This company still wants to own everything, can it reform? can it work with others and play fairly?
It is in Microsoft's hands. The courts may set heavy controls, but they won't breathe life into the company. Consumerism is passive, the company is dominant. Linux requires involvement, and to me that is the difference.
IBM was the computer company from the end of WW II until the late seventies. They got a good racket^H^H^H^H^Hbussiness going with punch cards and card machines and then early computers.
The IBM anti-trust trouble started in the sixties and the goverment finally dropped its suit in '82. Read the story of IBM and Ahmdal to see how IBM did not play nice.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Slow down...it's not about a legacy for Gates.
It's about software.
Gates has a vision for how he sees the future of computing and not suprisingly in involves lots of Microsoft software. It's not about his legacy or increasing his fortune...I really don't think he cares. He loves his company and he wants it to be profitable and succesful and he'll make decisions that (he thinks) will make that happen.
Gates knows that he'll be remembered, but frankly he doesn't care.
Let the flame begin.
A speech...
The DHCP protocol specification, and the first implementation were not written by microsoft, or in cooperation with microsoft.
As for SMB, i think that DEC Pathworks, and IBM LanManager both predate microsoft's SMB implementation.
In other words, Microsoft fears becoming what it has done to others. Microsoft fears KARMA, the cosmic "get back", Justice, poetic or otherwise....
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
Is there a computer that I could buy that doesn't need an OS?
Actually, MS is not making much money from Office. What they ARE making from are the Office format standards - .doc, .xls, .ppt, and so on. This is what the original article was trying to say.
.net in it) down the throats of its immense user base at any time it chooses to do so. Linux has no such user base, and, therefore, Linux is powerless to set standards which control the information.
.NET strategy is not as assured as you might think - they've failed many times before with less ambitious projects.
That's just a different way at looking at the same thing. To say MS don't make much money from Office is not true.
Microsoft can force XP (with
I would disagree strongly with this. When MS first woke up to the web, they tried hard to get people to use standards that would lock web sites to IE. They tried as hard as they could (I even had a guy from Microsoft visit promising free software licences if I put special IE-only tags on the popular web site I was maintaining at the time.) But they failed and gave up on that strategy.
Whilst there is a small proportion of people accessing web pages from non-MS platforms (that includes stuff such as handhelds which includes embedded OSes) Microsoft will have a hard time persuading people to lock themselves in. When you have a web site, ten percent of visitors is a lot if your business depends on it. Microsoft's
"You said Windows 98 would be faster, more efficient, and give us better access to the Internet."
"It does."...BLAM!!
It wasn't just "rich guy syndrome". Everyone laughed because almost everybody who has to use a computer at work has had to tolerate Window's idiosyncracies.
'Microsoft's biggest underlying fear is that it will become like IBM - --a company that still has a strong business but no longer sets computing standards.'"
Good. I like MS much better in that sense. Leave the standards to committees such as IETF, IEEE, ITU, ANSI, and other similar bodies.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
If the truth be known, Windows will never be a completely bug-free and stable OS. Sure, it may come close, but it's never going to be perfect. And this isn't because of the natural human nature of programmers, either. I'm not talking about minor/very small bugs - but rather bugs that are at least rather annoying.
Why? It makes perfect sense as a corporation to release a product that is perpetually "almost there" as far as QA is concerned (especially if they charge for upgrades.) Simply put, if Microsoft can create an image of, "Dangit, we ALMOST had all the bugs out... maybe next time!" to its customers, then those customers are probably going to purchase the next release of Windows in hopes that those bugs are fixed. Of course, fix those bugs, but make sure to add some sort of new stuff (features, eye candy, etc.) that have a few bugs, so that the same cycle repeats itself.
Why woulod they do this? Think about it this way... If WinXP turned out to be a completely stable, bug-free version, and taking into consideration their track record of being rather buggy at times, would you upgrade past WinXP? If you're like a lot of people, probably not. I know several people who have told me already that they are 95% happy with their Win98, and will NOT ugprade past Win98 for fear that the new versions may be buggier. I am sure a lot of people have that same general feeling, and if they ever got their hands on a "good" version, they'd stick with it.
I will give them this much - creating the "Bother, we THOUGHT we had all the bugs out!!! But, we'll get it next time around!" look to all its customers has seemed to keep them on the upgrade track rather well. :) Question is, how long before the customers catch on?
Microsoft may not be quite as important in the future, but they're in no danger of crashing. How many other companies do you know that could lay off 99% of their employees (they still need the guys running the CD press and the shrinkwrap machine) without feeling a revenue drop for a year? They've got enough unearned revenue in the form of CDs waiting to be pressed and sold at "discount prices" to cushion any fall they take.
Also, the nice thing about ditching all those stock options to employees is that it spreads out the impact of the fall. If Microsoft stock takes a plunge, Bill Gates feels it and Joe Cubicle feels it, but the company accountants just realize they can't issue any new stock for a while, and that's the end of it for them.
Just remember one thing - Microsoft considers VB their most important development platform, to quote them "The Cobol of the 90s"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Power is generational. It will be a while before we have a repeat the 80's. In '83 everyone my age disliked IBM, while those my fathers age were IBM heads. I disliked IBM beacuse they were bullies (or so my dad said). Thus, for me everything IBM was tainted. Microsoft, a small little company was on the other hand, very cool. They made DOS, had a Basic interpreter, etc. Another kickn' company was Borland, who made SideKick a very nifty personal organizer and a Pascal compiler.
Anyway, I don't have children, but people younger than me think that Microsofties are a bunch of bullies (or so I tell them). And rather than investing our attention in another company, I think we may have collectively learned our lesson. We are investing our time in open source software that is publically owned.
It took over two decades for Microsoft to catch up to IBM ('75-'95). I think it is fair to give open source a fair shake ('85-'2005). Sometime soon the pendilum will swing away from Microsoft and towards the next monopoly. Guided not by technology decisions, but by personal choice not to support the bullies. This time the monopoly holders will be the public, through licenses like the GPL.
Any large corporation based on the sales of intellectual property is bound to have a rough time of the next ten years. Widespread pirating of music, software, and now even pharmaceuticals occurs all over the world, in some cases with the support of governments in power. It can't be stopped, and it won't be stopped.
IBM has this thought out. Their revenues going forward are more and more service-based. That's something you just can't steal.
Microsoft shouldn't be afraid of becoming IBM. They should be afraid of not becoming IBM.
Was just thinking Msft might like to have a monopoly like AT&T had on phones - you never did actually 'own' the phone, you had to LEASE it (just like you don't OWN Word etc, just buy licenses to use) and while they were good, rugged, tough handsets that were automatically maintained by the telco, they did make a great cash flow out of those monthy lease payments.
My folks have had the same phone on the wall for about 40 years now, and they've probably paid for it 10 times over by now.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
IBM are pretty clued up these days. They had a rocky patch, but they're now on their way out. They offer services these days; they're good at it, they're good team players on all manner of community-based projects (many are OpenSourced) and they're making good profits.
They're not the market share they were, they're not as influential as they were, but they're heading slowly upwards. Rather a contrast to DEC (who?), Compaq, and (It saddens me to say it) HP.
This is a yes and no issue. Yes M$ might end up with a strangle hold on alot of businesses and individuals, however, what you must understand is that by creating bottlenecks innovation and creativity are held back, therefore those that choose an M$ "solution" will start to fall behind and might even die off in the face of competitors who do not have the same restrictions. I hope M$ keeps doing as it always does, and those who choose to go that route might be up for the Darwin Award in a decade or so. To sum up in the words of one of the characters in Jurassic Park "Life will always find a way".
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
this doesn't mean OSS is a direct threat to MS as a whole. MS' biggest issue with OSS is not that OSS is, or has the potential to be, a creator of vast and large quantities of the top shelf software, but rather that OSS threatens their growth in the server software arena. By creating software that "just" gets the job done, with a minimum of hassle, software like Linux and Apache can take a huge bite out of NT and ISS's profitability. Put simply, MS is realizing that the same economics and influences that lead from mainframes to Unix (proprietary) to NT, can also lead from NT to Linux (or rather Unix to Linux).
OSS isn't going to be fighting a line-by-line feature war with MS. If it does, it'll probably lose, MS has far more resources to throw at it. OSS's best chance to take a bite out of Microsoft is to go the other route: make software that can be purchased, deployed, and supported for far less. This means Linux should focus on things like bullet proof installation processes, automated installations, etc. Then it needs someone like Redhat or SuSe to effectively market it.
Which OS company will create the most used operating system by 2020?
>
> Linux
Yeah and that "Linux company"... who are they again?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
When tracking the sincerity of a corporation, watch the flow of money.
Patents are not free, especially once you start involving corporate lawyers. The mere fact that IBM is getting patents says that they are willing to spend money on them, and therefore that they are a priority.
One of the biggest problems in a big corporation is making measurments. They tend to do well at the things they can effectively measure, and often poorly at the things they can't. Patents are being used as a measure of innovation, and to that extent IBM is shown as valuing innovation.
Your point that patents do not necessarily represent innovation is certainly valid. But can you think of a better measurment that can be implemented across a multinational corportation. Plus, at the very least, there is some linkage between patents and innovation. Even if there are some stupid ones in there, there are good ones, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What matters is that no one can create a .doc file without Microsoft's say-so - and if someone manages to do it, all Microsoft has to do is twiddle a bit somewhere and make the new .doc XP (tm) incompatible with the old one.
.doc of a particular version, MS can't stop them.
This is just completely wrong. What version of Word/Excel/MS Whatever didn't support the older version's file format? Changing a bit can make it so people can't read the format, but once someone can make a
It's a great tool for what it's meant for: rapid application development for small businesses where the software will be run on a windows pc and used by someone who wants to do all their work in windows forms. It's very very quick, and there are a lot of developers who know it. It's a good choice for internal company apps.
Some people have such glorified ideas of what a 'programmer' is. You give detailed instructions to a machine. If you spend a week writing beautiful code you cost your company 5x. If you spend a day writing ugly code you cost your company 1x. If both programs meet the functional requirements, the company that encourages spending one day will survive better. I have nothing against beautiful code, but I have nothing against utilitarian functional code either.
...And probably cast by it as well.
Professional programmers must meet the needs of their clients. Am I going to tell the marketing guys that I want to write the app they need to run only on *nix boxes? When they don't know what that is? Or am I going to give them VB forms and pop-up dialogues and a self-installing package?
Programmer-friendly doesn't really matter does it? Unless you're coding for fun.
this obviously needs to be factored into any discussion of 'expense'.
training is very expensive.
training our marketing people on linux would probably exceed the GNP by a fair margin.
give them their windows forms, it is honestly cheaper.
linux or any *nix is only cheaper if your client is trained in how to use it. if your app will be used by data entry clerks, spending a lot of time training them in how to use a *nix is not cost justified.
Actually, you are quite right. If the tables were turned and it was Sony trying to enter the market with this tactic, it would be called 'dumping'.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
And the Xbox is probably only the beginning: a sort of Trojan horse to establish a platform for digital entertainment, in the words of Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering Group, a market-research firm. (quote from article.)
;)
Finally some recognition of the security potential of Microsoft products
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Economically if not technically. When they came into business, the software market was dominated by hardware manufacturers, who were content to sell a few small copies of their software at high prices (this is still the way proprietary UNIX works, BTW). Microsoft's innovation centered around the idea that a vendor-inspecific software manufacturer could lower prices and still make higher profits for everyone. They were very successful in this way. Of course this is not to condone their actions at maintaining their monopoly once they had attained it, but they gained it fair and square.
I tend to think that this economic innovation by Microsoft has made the PC as ubiquitous as it is today. Not because of homogeneity in OS, but rather because of falling costs (don't believe me? price out an RS/6000 workstation). So open source software really would not be where it is if it was not for Microsoft's economic innovation. So, unlike many open source advocates, I do not hate Microsoft, but rather too think it is time to move on...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This is very true, and it's getting worse for M$, a recession looks set to help and bizarely the normal cost reduction should be good for the Open Source/Free Software.
m ic rosoft
:)
:)
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/011022/06/earns-
This problem is going to cause M$ sever problems; The M$ share price will fall, they will cut investment, the share price will fall more, they will lose their 'famous names' the shares will fall further, it is a vicious feed back loop, before long the Microsoft Empire will be shadow of it's former self, like IBM in the 80's. We'll probably be really proud of our selves, "I defeated M$" we'll say, but it will have a hollow ring. We'll know in our hearts and minds that they where defeated by their own greed, lies and stupidity and not by Open Source/Free Software.
However there is another way. I've been thinking about an idea for some time, waiting for the right moment, I happen to think that the time is soon, very soon. We'll be able to say "I [we] defeated M$" and it will be true. We take the Open Source approach, we help, help the share price fall that is. A little short here, a little put there, however we approach it on an open source scale, on the grounds that many bucks will make short work of M$
We short M$ on global scale.
http://www.fool.com/FoolFAQ/FoolFAQ0033.htm
Not only will we get to engineer the fall of Microsoft, we'll prove that open source community can make money, the delious irony of it
Which brings me to one final question, is it ethical for an Open Source/Free Software advocate to make money from M$ stock?
£$%^& ethics this is [Capitalism|Justice|Victory].
The master paused for a moment, held up his hand and said
"Natalie Portman"
At this moment, the zen student was enlightened.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
That is why Microsoft has always sold its operating system cheaply and has done everything to make life easy for programmers.
It's been a long number of years since I've attempted to develop
any sort of software with MS tools/APIs, because every experience
I had was miserable compared to alternatives. The only positive
experiences I've ever had developing for DOS or Windows were because of Borland.
I'm a programmer and part of my beef with Microsoft is that if they
have their way, I'll have little choice but to use their tools and do things their way. Of course, that might be good... it'd provide suffecient incentive for me to become a subsistence farmer or luthier or anti-trust economist and lead a simpler life.
And the OS is cheap? Hardly.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
What are you talking about? Please locate any occurence of "Microsoft" in Section 5 of the below document:
RFC1541
I'm talking about internal apps.
If you're already an employee, there are probably 100 ways you can steal from the company, crash machines, give out passwords etc.
VB is not for making programs to distribute outside of a company. I think it's not well suited for that at all, though I know some people do use it for that. It is a rapid application development tool for little custom jobs.
'Leveraging' seems to many of us to be clear abuse of monopoly power. It isn't established in case law however. This is a big issue in their cases.
Imagine what if, in the future, IBM patents block some area that Microsoft is interested in. Since Microsoft has less patents, Gates could lobby against software patents, knowing that others have more to lose.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Ha ha ha!
I believe that Microsoft is already worse than IBM when Big Blue was at the height of its power and arrogance. If Microsoft needs to worry about anything, it's ``How can we get ourselves out of the mess we're in?''. I can't see how they're going to fix their situation any time soon. Partly because they are run by a group of people who seem to be megalomaniacs and their company's size prevents them from seeing their actions as having any downside. And, unfortunately for them, they've gotten so big that it'll be pretty difficult to change directions quickly (corporate inertia?). IBM's direction took a heck of a long time to change and so will Microsoft's. Normal folks as well as most businesses will probably find it far easier to change than will MS. I think we're just beginning to see a backlash against Microsoft that is similar to that seen by IBM back in the mid-80s and, IMHO, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch. Wonder how long it'll take them to react.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Microsoft does do Research, as a matter of fact I worked their for a while. MS Research uses about two buildings filled with people that handle about 30 projects at a time. It's a rather large effort, however I have yet to have seen much use from it.
Some things get in commercial apps that you don't see, like a programming language/concept called 'IP' or intentional programming was used in Outlook, but unless you we're a developer on the team you wouldn't know about it. Allegiance a online space combat RTS was a pet project of MS Research's lead man Rick Rashid, developed entirely at MS Research and went commercial, Allegiance was actually a very good game, but got little to no commercial success.
-Jon
this is my sig.
I was watching TechTV during the Backstreet Boys segment of the Concert for New York and they were doing a special on MS's "House of the Future". I'm sure we've all heard Bill Gates rather (or is that downright?) stupid idea of networking a TV to a Clothes Dryer so that the TV will tell you when your clothes are done. I suppose it's too much to hear the big loud buzzer or just go back after the amount of time you set the timer for, but they now have what could be the most annoying idea ever. Apparently they want to have a microwave that has a barcode reader. You have to scan all your products and the microwave connect to the internet and automatically sets the time to cook the item. Is it just me or is that the stupidest idea ever?! Is it really that difficult to read the label and type a three digit number? Are we not supposed to eat if the network goes down?
I for one hope MS dies long before it sets our living standards, or I might just have to move out of my house into a wigwam.
There's also a post at slashcode.com.
My interface uses a proprietary, but "free as in beer" resource. spellchecker.net. I hear that the new beta version of slash uses ispell - but with a considerably less friendly UI. Joseph Elwell.
This poll is an obvious fraud. Where's choice #4:
Cowboy Neal?
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Think about it. The SSSCA outlaws ALL SOFTWARE which processes or displays data absent of a government approved security system. So the following program would be illegal to sell, import, etc.
#include
int main (){
printf ("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}
So think about it. Would Microsoft would have to also pay to train all their programmers from scratch because offering source code for "Hello World" applications would then be banned... I say that "Hello World" certainly is the data that the printf is sending to stdout...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The thread started about vb, and people dissing vb as a programming language. vb means vb. if you want to talk about vb script, say vb script. clear enough?
Again, I feel that strongly typed object oriented programming leads to the problems you describe above. So does highly 'optimized' code. Basic, clear syntax works best, even when it's not the most efficient. Take Moore's law into account when you worry about efficiency or speed, the hardware guys will continue cranking up the numbers.
VB is quick to write, and quick to re-write. Same with perl, python, and tcl. Scripting builds on powerful components. Similarly, VB uses the powerful windows api functions that Microsoft exposes. Toss in an instance of IE. Toss in menu bars for file operations. Toss in a button to print. Powerful functions that are easily implemented by the coder.
What is doing it 'the right way'? Defining classes and inheritance? Overloading functions? No. The right way is to write simple code, well commented and documented that any schlub of a programmer can read and modify. Don't compactify 10 lines of code into one 'just because you can'. Optimize for maintainability first, not cleanliness or even speed. PCs are disposable, and after 20 - 30 months of use whatever box is running your code will be replaced with one that's twice as fast. Do you think you can make such a big speed difference in your code? Would the expense of making the effort be worth it to your company? I didn't used to think like this. But my co-worker and I have spent so much time reverse engineering the code of the crazy genius russian coder who used to work here that any advantages he thought he was getting in his ever further 'optimizing' the code were far outweighed by the costs. He did it 'right' the first time, and his code was highly optimized for the exact situation we faced at the time. Detangling the lists of arrays afterwards to make slight changes took soooo long.
I don't think short-term gains have to have long-term costs. A lot of apps are almost disposable. Again, this is from a very business oriented point of view. If I were doing advanced cryptography research I would not have this point of view. But business apps?
The war on abstract nouns
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
If you're writing an app that will be used mainly on one type of computer, say a pc, write it for that first. And VB is very easy to use for pc apps.
If you NEED to write an app that's usable by any system, you need to write a web app. That's actually mainly what I do, but web apps are slow in comparison to any kind of compiled code, and are unsuitable for many business applications. But they use accepted standards, have a really long useful life, and can be accessed from Macs, Linux boxes, PCs, etc.
You say not to try to predict the future. Yet that's what you're knocking yourself for not doing. Oftentimes the stuff I write ends up not used, or being quickly abandoned because of changing business relationships. Or someone decides to rearchitect a whole department and the entire way of doing business changes. In those cases, programs are dropped or have to be re-written from scratch. Although if you have good stored procs and some good useful functions you can re-use those pieces. If your department has changed the way it does business, then yes the app needs to be rewritten. If you haven't changed the way you do business, why can't you make minor modifications?
What was your primary market? A technology department using it for complicated stuff? You say it's a large and involved program. VB is best suited for quick business apps, though it can extend somewhat. Did you make much use of ActiveX controls? To encapsulate functionality so you can use those pieces later? Or is it all in one giant main()? Writing 'components' in any language encourages code re-use. Writing monolithic blocks always discourages code re-use. I don't think the use of VB really affects that much.
VB isn't VBScript. VBScript is a subset of Visual Basic for Applications.
.exe files :)
They're two separate issues, VBScripts are risky because of the way they're attached to emails, and there mainly because of Microsoft's default settings in Outlook.
What are you using VBScript for? You could probably port the code to a VB program. I think the only things VBScript has that aren't available in VB are the Execute and Eval functions. And you must add a reference to VBScript regular expressions if you want to use the RegExp object. Otherwise it would be a straight copy.
I think you're safe in assuming your IT department won't decide to universally block
No way.
If you want universal interoperability write a web app.
Java never lived up to this claim.
why spend time coding for 3 platforms if it's only going to run on one? if your program is only going to run on a pc, there is no easier way to include a lot of windows functionality than to write in VB.
now of course it sucks that microsoft doesn't expose all those functions easily to outside languages, but c'est la microsoft.
My company was 'locked into' microsoft technology from the very beginning. Like most are. Yes there are some Sun boxes for the web servers and databases, but people have PCs at their desks. That is NOT going to change. The only alternative to being locked into Microsoft technology for my company would be for my company to cease to exist as it does today.
You say they work flawlessly when you copy them? Tell me, are the boxes both running the Sun JVM? Would it work so flawlessly if one were using the Microsoft JVM? The same code won't run the same on different JVM's. So if you want the same code to work the same you need to do minor re-writes to accomodate the different JVM's. Or the alternative is only supporting one JVM, which it sounds like you do if this works flawlessly for you. Java is not the solution to the world's problems. It's C++ the way C++ should have been structured - but minus its speed.
Microsoft has a future that includes more than massive lawsuits?
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