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Microsoft Sets Tolls for .Net Developers
matsh writes: "Today Microsoft revealed the cost of signing up as a developer to .Net. Entry level is $1,000. Standard level $10,000. Custom support will cost even more."
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Interesting. What they are doing then is creating a bar to smaller (perhaps hobbyist) developers.
That just means that less cool stuff will be produced then I suppose.
Sounds like a fair game to me...
.NET is strong enough to warrant this -- and if you think it's rubbish, then they're only shooting themself in the foot!
.NET because then every second web site out there would be Passport authenticated etc... Hell, raise the price to $500,000!!!!!
They obviously think
Seriously though -- in a way it's better than giving it away with copies of Visual Studio
... in the war to drive out small-scale developers in favor of well-controlled large corporate entities. People paying that much money for the privilege of developing software are very likely to be quite aggressive in convincing themselves that they're happy. And note that much of the fees here will come from big fat IT budgets for internal application development. CIOs just want an empire like anybody else, and this sort of thing really fuels the fires.
One of the reason that so many people are now using Windows 9x/ME/2000 is that Microsoft bascially gave away their SDK back in the days of Win 3.x, while IBM was looking to their OS/2 SDK as part of their revenue model, and charging accordingly.
I would have thought Microsoft learned a valuable lesson back then.
-josh
Can sombody post a comparison ?
Java Developer Essentials is about 50 USD per year, IIRC.
But what else do you get for 1000 USD ? Or 10000 ?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
They want us to pay at least $250 per .Net service used in an application? Why bother? Nimda installs for free.
This isn't for the SDK/tools, which you can get via the MSDN, if not for free online.
.net services such as passport. If you're developing an in-house app that doesn't touch the microsoft .net website (damn, the terminology is all wrong) then you don't need to pay your 10K USD.
This is to be hosted/linked/use the core
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
my eyes just glaze over when i see microsoft's revenue and restriction plans.
it's something i've come to expect and pass over. pretty soon the whole world should be getting numb to microsoft, and when people get numb to something, that something starts losing any appeal it might ever have had.
can you say ibm?
the article from a couple days ago about microsoft going the ibm way (existing but not cutting edge) is being fulfilled with every developer's rolling eyes.
~A
Linux, Vai, Satch and Guitars.. that is the life ICQ# 7357858
Developing centralized authentications system - 5 mil
Building and connecting the required datacenters - 250 mil
Preventing Hackers from gaining access - unknown (but don't worry, they didn't pay this one)
Having it cracked less than a day after it's release, which will cost million after million to your customers - PRICLESS
Incentive \In*cen"tive\, a. [L. incentivus, from incinere to strike up or set the tune; pref. in- + canere to sing. See Enchant, Chant.]
1. Inciting; encouraging or moving; rousing to action;
stimulative.
It would appear that Microsoft is not seeing the numbers they would like in Office XP sales. They have the audacity to host a media extravaganza including Madonna in New York to hoopla WinXP, despite recent events (they want to "show the world that America is still doing business"... that costs money... they are launching Xbox next month. That will cost money. the economy is bad, and people are keeping both hands on their wallets...
I may be wrong here... but it looks to me like i am seeing a sick company...
Desperation \Des`per*a"tion\, n. [L. desperatio: cf. OF.desperation.]
1. The act of despairing or becoming desperate; a giving up
of hope.
2. A state of despair, or utter hopeless; abandonment of
hope; extreme recklessness; reckless fury.
The last company I was working for was going to authenticate financial transactions. Let me tell you that they were not going to do it for free. How is this any different? Or maybe the phone company charging for setting up your phone lines and billing your company monthly?
MS is charging for a service and you can choose to use it or not.
Perhaps the open source community can get together and create a distributed authentication system to compete with it.
The story mentioned online banking two or three times. I will NEVER use the same password for bank accounts that i would use for hotmail, much less the same authentication service.
Converging things like that is bad, mkay?
--buddy
I suppose that's one way of dealing with the industry downturn in the hope of keeping your shareholders happy. It'll be interesting to see how well it fares in real life of course...
GPL: Free to download, free to upgrade, free to use next year, but you may need to pay for support.
MS: Pay to have delivered, pay to upgrade, pay to use next year, and you will have to pay for support.
Well, my cash-strapped industry-downturn budget's made up it's mind...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I think these prices are fair for what you're getting.. You have to actually look at what it is you're getting, rather than instantly comparing it to other things, like open source.
.NET/Hailstorm/MyServices is a new business idea which is benefiting from the Internet and will offer companies a good service..
.NET - this intergration count will surely go up.
Personally, I believe that if something is good enough, it is worth paying for. Look at Hotmail, the largest free online email service - it's a pretty good deal, it's never down really and you get a lot of features.. Now if you wanted to implement this kind of service into a more corporate environment, surely you'd expect to pay for it?
The extra charges for customized solutions and support - what's the problem with that? Anyone in the market for purchasing bespoke solutions would budget for obtaining a customized product and excellent support services - I know that there are hundreds, probably thousands of companies out there making bespoke solutions that charge an absolute fortune for it, and then totally extortionate the client when it comes to post-sale support..
I think Microsoft are getting their shit together with this and do have a good focus on the future. With the failings of the dotcom model, someone needs to start using the web for just more than a bunch of websites offering resources and to put this emmence network to some practical use..
Yeah, Sun may try and compete. They may try and compete against Passport. True, Passport isn't widely used on 3rd party websites - but with the integration with
And at the end of the day, you're not being forced into using it. You can still go off and use whatever technologies and platform you wish. You may opt to not pay for such services, but if I went to a garage to get my car serviced and was told it was free, i'd be rather dubious about the quality...
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
They did. The lesson was to give it away until the competitors selling theirs went away. When they go away, charge as much as you like.
Alot. MS was built on piracy: DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, Visual [anything], etc. All heavily pirated. How many programmers traded compilers among each other in high school and college? Most, I'm sure. I know I got my pascal, Quickbasic, and several C++ compilers from friends. I also gave copies to other friends. I only bought 1 version of dos, never bought windows until 95. Why do people pirate? Look at the price of software. What'll happen if .NET stuff has workable copy protection? It'll flop. Free (pirated or otherwise) or very cheap is REQUIRED to start a new "standard". You need young geeks to work with it, grow with it, learn it, etc.
Make note that this is a subscription, not just a flat, one-time fee. This looks like the beginning of Microsloth's relationship with everyone's wallet.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I see things like this, and my first reaction is that it confirms my biases that Miguel de Icaza et al. have gone completely off their rocker by thinking that they can work with Microsoft and support .NET using Mono or anything else developed as true free or open source software.
How does this affect Mono anyway? Will somebody have to cough up in order to develop Mono? While, sure, Ximian could pay, what happens when Ximian does an Eazel? Nautilus is still with us; if Mono is open source, it would still be with us too, except then who has to pay? Or does M$ then sue the entire open source community for working on a .NET application without anybody paying the fees? Or do we really believe that somehow Mono is going to have unfettered access to the APIs it needs without having to pay?
Or would it only be the users of Mono who had to pay the fees?
The lesson I personally would take from this is "stay away." The free software community would do much better to come up with its own solution to the need (if there is one) that .NET is addressing, rather than trying to support the .NET platform. Honestly, if we don't want to hand over all final control of all computing and web standards to Microsoft, we need to be doing everything we can right now to (at best) make them irrelevant, or (at worst) keep just enough of a competing presence in there that open standards can't be summarily ignored.
-Rob
How much does it cost to sign up as a Linux developer?
*snicker*
Microsoft will be losing brainshare like crazy. The colleges that still teach microsoft technologies will now get yet another good reason to toss out Microsoft technologies. Mine taught us assembler and some pretty interesting details about NT in OS class. That was about it.
.NET.
And look where it got me. A great job programming a credit card fraud detection system using Linux, Mysql and Perl. A competitor didn't believe his own eyes when he saw the performance on our solution. He implemented using
Anyhow - just say no, kids. And if you mention the $1000 price tag, your manager will be more likely to say go ahead if you propose using open technologies. They are getting pretty fed up with Microsoft licensing.
That wasn't coherent. I hope some parts were slightly informative.
Stop the brainwash
This is about the cost of becoming a corporate partner for use of My Services (that's what they now call HailStorm, if you weren't paying attention).
.NET? That'll be a big fat zero, over and above the cost of your Windows licence (although once the BSD port has happened, that'll wipe out that little overhead.
.NET platform SDK, and you'll find you get the CLR, the framework libraries, the compilers, and all the command line tools you need to play with .NET.
The actual cost of developing for
Download the
And that'll cost you nothing. no-thing.
Yeah, VS.NET will cost you hard earned cash. So will a Windows server licence or two for hosting. But even MS isn't stupid enough to create a barrier for entry so high that nobody jumps over it at all.
I wonder if they'll sell me just the exploitable bits? :{)
Dear o dear, this news item is really going to confuse all you people who like to speak before you have done your homework.
.NET platform itself, nor is it an SDK. People are free to write .NET applications for NOTHING and all the SDK is online at msdn.microsoft.com (fuck the link, you can cut and paste).
.NET service for reserving books or something and charging you to use it.
For starters, this is the ".NET My Services" service, it is NOT the
This is no different from the city library developing a
"I think the numbers are quite reasonable. The applications are putting a load on us," Muglia said. "These numbers are barely covering (our costs)...We're not making money with these numbers. We want to make it as friction-free as possible to adopt this new platform."
Despite some opinions here, $250 is not a lot for a small developer to pay for a year's certification. Look at Sun's licensing scheme. I have no trouble believing MS aren't maknig a penny and may even be losing money on the scheme right now. What did IE development cost them and was it worth it to own the browser market? Lots, and yes. They're very good at this game.
Think about what's going on: MS want to make it easy for developers. They're offering low prices to get a lot of companies to accept and adopt quickly. Consider IE: "Warn if Site Certificate Invalid" and "Notify if certificate has been revoked" are standard options and default on.
Once MS can get to critical mass with .NET and their certiication, your mother-in-law is only going to use MS-certified apps. MS will control the content and the prices will then change to ensure a steady profit stream. This is fairly close to a give-away as it stands, and it meshes with the browser they give away already, and which they have set the way they want it.
Microsoft have added an "E" to their formula: Embrace, Extend, Entrench, Extinguish.
woof.
How am I ever going to beat what's-his-name's "Green Eggs and Hamlet" sig?!
Microsoft says customers who sign up for .Net My Services, expected to debut in full next year, can expect to eventually get one-step access to electronic documents, contact lists and calendars; instant alerts on stock changes, weather forecasts and flight delays; and automated transactions, such as online banking, ticket purchases and stock trades, from Microsoft and its partners.
... My Yahoo! comes to mind. Why does M$ think they can get me to pay for this?
I get all of these things for free from various places around the net. In a lot of cases, there are even places that will give me one stop shopping
Oh, yeah, I use a Mac and Linux. I couldn't pay for them if I wanted to.
MS isn't charging you to develop .NET apps (minus the cost of IDE which you don't need either if you are inclined), they are charging you to use their MyServices stuff (passport, etc) which I think is perfectly reasonable.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
One of the reason that so many people are now using Windows 9x/ME/2000 is that Microsoft bascially gave away their SDK back in the days of Win 3.x, while IBM was looking to their OS/2 SDK as part of their revenue model, and charging accordingly.
.NET My Services which used to be called Hailstorm not the .NET Framework SDK.
The article is about pricing for accessing
Here comes the Sun
:)
Doo doo doo doo
Here Comes the Sun
And I say......
It's the most primitive load of junk I've seen in a long time for £80,000.
We bought a Sun E450 (against my wishes - the decision was taken before I got there so it was too late for serious debate). It had 4 SparcII 500Mhz cpus (this is about a year ago), 280Gb disk and 2Gb ram. It cost 80 thousand UKP. It came with:-
Solaris 8
No compiler.
No development tools such as make, M4, autoconf..
No decent desktop (do they really think anyone can be bothered with that joke desktop they supply, with no drag n drop, no file associations etc etc)
The hardware was out of the Arc - no RAID, no mirroring.
At the time I got a quote from Dell for an equivalent power machine - it came in at about £12,000 - with quad channel RAID controller, and 4 PIII Xeon 733Mhz cpus.
Sun charged us over 4000 a peice for the 18Gb Western Dig disks alone - each! When I quizzed them on this - they replied that they get the "best ones". My arse! My room full of Dell servers has WD disks and not one of them has failed - ever (2 years old now). But then even if one did - the servers are all RAID 5 so it won't bring the system down!
Same deal with the RAM - same stuff you can by on the open market - 10 times the price.
When you buy kit from Dell or Compaq (and probably everyone else too) the racks come with nice rack specific monitors, a proper rack keyboard that has a trackball, and fold away neatly. Except if you by a Sun server for 10 times the price - the damm keyboard was too wide to even fit through the rack door - no special monitor, and none of the doors shut properly.
"What a shoddy pile of old rubbish" was my first and lasting impression of "what Sun can give you for £80,000"
We got shot of it last month. Replaced by one Dell 6450 with RedHat Enterprise.
Sorry - this is completely off-topic - but I felt the need
What I don't understand about Microsoft's .NET strategy is
.NET fit into this?
.NET???
a) Where is the evidence of demand for it?
b) What are the benefits for the customer?
I regularly buy flights on the net, also books. I tend to use the same companies each time. They have my details, I just need to select the product I require and click the accept button. I know that my info. only resides with them, and I trust them not to spread it around.
Where does
I am imagining going to a web site, say Amazon. The site asks me "Can Amazon access your hobby list to make recommendations?" Er, sorry, no it can't. "Can Amazon access your calendar so we can find when your birthday is?". Er, nope. "Can Amazon access your address book so we can tell your friends about our great products?" Absolutely not. "Can Amazon access your job profile so we can suggest some business books?". No, and stop asking the dumb questions. The answer is no.
There are lots of, for instance, on-line calendar services available, which can be accessed from any web enabled device or WAP phone. Do people use them that much? What would Microsoft provide that I can't already get? And would it be worth paying for?
Please, someone tell me, I'm dying to know. What is the benefit to me, Joe Consumer, of
.NET "Entry-Level" subscription
Subscription: $1000 per year.
Cost per application: $250
.NET "Standard" subscription
Subscription: $10,000 per year.
Cost per application: $1500
Linux
Subscription: $0 per life
Cost per application: $0
I don't get it, is this for support on your product you are developing? What about a university or a person making a program on their free time? There's no way some high school kid is going to pay $1250 to hack around on some code while learning C.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
This is actually a much more complex problem: ".net" is a buzzword use for everything and it's opposit on today's MS products: from "application framework" to productr denomination to general startegie to actual technology to services.
It's actually becomming a real problem in the developpement because so many people are confused by this that they think that only "VS.net" can create web service applications and that only ".net server" can be used as a server plateform.
I see things like this, and my first reaction is that it confirms my biases that Miguel de Icaza et al. have gone completely off their rocker by thinking that they can work with Microsoft and support .NET using Mono or anything else developed as true free or open source software.
.NET My Services a.k.a. Hailstorm. Miguel said as much when I interviewed him for Slashdot and the same thing is on the Mono FAQ page.
.NET My Services are web services provided by Microsoft. What exactly makes you thing there is any relationship at all?
Mono has nothing to do with
Mono is a development platform,
.NET and its components represent a shift away from this. A huge shift. Instead of selling code, the company wants to sell services. And when you sell services, a lot of things change about your business model which can be very painful while you're trying to make the move.
Make no mistake - moving from a boxed product model to a services-based model is hard, whether you are a small dealer or Microsoft Corp. And often the two have clashing priorities. At the moment Microsoft spends hundreds of millions making sure its channel works hard at getting product out to the end user. If they ultimately want to move to services-based revenue and electronic upgrades, the channel could well find itself out in the cold eventually.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Until its available to businesses, and all those place that offer free-everything realize they can start charging people for it after paying a $1000 fee to Microsoft. The other scenario is that even if only a minor percentage of people sign up for .NET, the "free" sites lose that advertising revenue.
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Its called Predatory Pricing , and for a monopoly like Microsoft, such a thing is illegal in the USA. Yet Microsoft has done it with Internet Explorer, their SDKs, and many other things.
Maybe you can argue that IE is free now, but oh, you just wait. Microsoft will gouge the money out of you someway or another.
Not only will they be setting tolls for developers, but I'll bet you there will be a charge for every transaction that happens on .net. As Microsoft's stated goal is for every economic transaction that occorus on the Internet to go through .net, this means that there will be an unavoidable Microsoft tax on every internet financial transaction. The Microsoft tax on computers will have become a Microsoft tax on everything. They will have successfully have challenged the government's monopoly role in collecting unavoidable taxes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yes, but your guitar will last you for decades... when do you think the next version of .Net will be released, and how much do you think it will cost? $1000 over 20 years versus $1000 a year is a very different thing. Also, you *can* get a decent guitar for $160 instead of $1200, and would be advised to while you are learning to play, and you'll discover that the two have very different uses. Playing Bach, I'll use the $1200 guitar. Playing Nick Cave, I'll use the $160 guitar. Switch the two around, and it just doesn't sound as nice - in either direction (a bit of buzz on the bottom E and lots of hollow slapping with my palm on the body adds quite a bit to a song like "Kiss Off", but not to "Sweet Baby James"). If both cost $1000, I wouldn't own both.
Look at Basic - half the reason so many people learned it in the early 80s is because it was on a ROM on half the computers out there - Apple ][, IBM PC, etc. And for those that didn't have it, it generally came with the OS (GW Basic, BASICA, etc).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Dear God, what are they? Some kind of proprietary software company??? Next I bet you're going to tell me that the license has restrictions in it!
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Developing one hotfix for a product, testing it, regression testing it and then deploying and tracking that hotfix, then giving free phone support for all hotfixes..... costs LOTS of money.
It's still a LOTS cheaper than not fixing your broken product that you've already sold.
Also, every SDK is online for free plus a shitload of other content.
This is NOT a giveaway! As folks discuss the ability for Linux to take on the desktop it's quite apparent that a lack of key applications keep Windows on corporate machines. Keeping developers actually developing for your platform is not about being a nice company. This is about having lots of other folks keep your platform viable.
So yes, I take it for granted that when a company fixes their broken product they should do so at no cost. Is that really so different than an automobile maker recalling and fixing problems with cars they've already sold? Would you expect to have to pay them too?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
If you have your own server with the .net runtime, you don't need to pay this fee, since you don't use the My Services service. If you want to store your service at their site, or/and you want to use their services, thus build f.e. a shell around the functionality they provide, you have to pay for the usage of these services, like you have to pay for the cable TV services you get.
.NET runtime and VS.net. So stop crying this fee is for building .net applications.
Alternatively, other companies will be providing the same services for perhaps less or free. All you really need is a
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Of course like any thing else, MS will want to take this stuff to the subsctiption model. It will be too tempting other wise.
This contrasts well with Open Source, where many of the tools a much lower priced.
Some people will sneer and say you get what you pay for. This is not alway quite true, as some around here will certaainly attest.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What makes you think they will ask? Clippy, retired from irritating users, will be trying to compile all of those things to give to whoever wants to tap the information. You can bet all of that crap will be stored on your hard drive in some file that will crash the OS if removed. Why build a four terrabyte database on your victims when you can make them do it for you.
The most disgusting thing about this is that it may work. M$ will continue to twist the arms of big vendors to maintain the stupid Windoze only OS sales, and they will break their old OSs. Joe sixpacks will either quit buying computers (like he already has), or he will migrate eventually. Getting my own wife to use anything but windoze was like pulling teeth, though she understood why. If the greedheads see the migration working, they will try to tap it. They are all licking their chops.
If M$ can't collect my information at home, they have me at work. Service packs and "upgrades" have been adding privacy invasion tools on our NT machines for years. Think Outlook, MSIE 5, remote desktops, bleh. Soon the company will be putting up a ton of money for Win2k, which has yet to be tested with more than 150 company applications. XP has been prove to break Word templates, so more costs will be incured there on thousands of broken documents. But it's worth it, right? Gotta keep current.
-Twitter.
Just keep telling yourself that.
The "Microsoft tax" historically referred to the cost of bundling Windows in with a computer. This is due to Microsoft's licensing Windows on a per-CPU basis rather than a per-copy basis, essentially making it more practical to bundle Windows with every machine rather than a competitor's OS. Consumers indirectly paid the price for an OEM copy of Windows, or they didn't use computers at all, whether they wanted to or not. The general exceptions to this rule were Mac users and people savvy enough to build their own machine from parts. These days things have changed but most computers still come with the cost of Windows bundled into the price tag. It's a "tax" because you didn't have a choice: it was a computer with Windows or no computer at all.
.NET takes off, the implication is that in order to do business online, you will have to sign up (and pay) for a Microsoft Hailstorm account because that's what online business will "standardize" on. However, it's not entirely clear that that will happen, especially with this news...
If
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Now I get why Microsoft would be eager to get this into Linux, and every other viable competitor. .Net isn't about just web services. It is about programs. You can be charged $5/month for a backup program after 30 days. Of $2/month for extra calendar features. Or $1/month for an online backup of your config files.
.Net, and the renting of software, they're writing the first chapter in the mainstreaming of Linux. That is, providing, the Linux community doesn't adopt .Net!
If *just* Windows goes into renting software, then the Linux community has a GREAT advantage. Why? People absolutely HATE having the meter running. Any service which has a flat rate, when reasonably priced and sometimes even slightly more expensive, will ALWAYS win the consumer. It is a historical truth.
If only Windows adopts
Seems like it would be a strategic advantage NOT to have software rental on Linux. And this is a plus for the open source community.
I think it is pretty obvious that one of the main purposes of this move is to exclude Open Source development from this platform. Not many contributors to OS software are willing to pay such amounts, and you can bet there is a clause that prevents people from sharing one MyServices license even inside the same project.
In Murphy We Turst
This is unbelievable. It would also seem like good news to other aspects of the distributed object market.
.NET ... but might when free-lance writers that drive various e-zines and smaller publications have to ante up $1000 bucks to get their twinky little demo to work.
... and that the customer will pay exorbitant prices to play.
.NET's own component-warez.
Consider Java/Corba, SOAP and even DCOM if MSFT continues to support it in it's current implementation (I doub it). None of them combined get as much press attention, as
And talk about timing, how many cost-cutting/concious companies will want to add as much as $10,000 to the cost of a project. Even at that price, Government contractors are going to think twice.
It seems to me as of Microsoft is going down the same path of destruction Digital Equipment and IBM traveled when they were kings of their hills. This thought that "nobody gets fired for hiring/using microsoft"
Moreover, it makes the time right for third party companies to begin creating component libraries that will either emulate, compete or obviate
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft is probably one of the richest (ONE of the richest? No way!) corporations in the entire software industry. Every few years (FEW years? Please.), they produce another OS and sell hundreds (HUNDREDS? Oh, c'mon now!) of copies making thousands of dollars ( THOUSANDS!? You stretch the truth, sir.) each time. They produce a word processor and spreadsheet that can only be used on their OS, and charge people for that. They charge a cut for the total cost of almost all PCs that are sold. Isn'rt it time they stopped charging people for everything, and realised that there are more important things than money in the world?
I'm sorry. I just can't stand to see someone exaggerating MS' position in the software industry like this...
--------
Linux is only free if your time is of no value.
Give me a break... You can buy a 'decent' electric guitar for under $300. By decent I mean something with a solid wood body (not plywood or particle board). For that matter you can buy both a decent guitar and amp for well under $1000. You really only need one or two guitars for a whole career if you treat them right. Microsoft's $1000 tax applies to every application you write. Many programmers write several applications a year, so the cost is going to be much higher. And I don't trust Microsoft not to hike the prices way up once they get people locked into this.
If $1,000 is going to be the lowest Microsoft will go, then I'm sad to say that beginning developers in the Windows/.NET arena will be stifled. They'll approad other venues, such as Linux, Qt, etc. for learning how to program.
I guess in the current economy, inexperienced, entry-level programmers are not important to Microsoft, making it that much harder for college graduates to get their foot in the door.
OK,
.Net: closed, immature, unstable, unscalable, expensive ($1,000-$10,000+) licence.
Sun's Java: open, mature, stable, scalable, portable, free licence.
Microsoft
Oh jeez... you kids today. WTF is Rita Pearlman? Do you mean Rhea Perlman (Cheers), married to Danny DeVito (Taxi)? You rememer incorrectly, which means you probably don't remember life under Ma Bell, not necessarily a bad thing.
It weren't SNL, either. It was Lily Tomlin who made the character "Ernestine, the phone operator", and not only did she do it every chance she got[1], people couldn't see it enough. There's even a couple of clips on her site, http://www.lilytomlin.com/.
Your bill was wrong? Not according to their computers. Phone broken? A serviceman can be out to repair it in... ohh... how's two weeks after next Thursday sound? You paid twice for each telephone in your house (they could check using Ringer Equivalence): a pe phone/month charge and a lease charge for the phone itself. You could not use a non-Bell phone and Bell did not sell, they only leased (licensed?) equipment. Are we seeing the similarities with Microsoft yet?
Us[4] old people still like that Ma Bell character she did (still does, maybe). She could get a whole load of new (geek) fans changing only a few things around, starting with just one vowel in "Ma Bell" and saying "Microsoft" instead of "The Bell System". The break-up of AT&T pretty much did that act in, but she managed a couple post break-up sketches.
woof.
[1] Name the lame '70s variety show, she was there, from Glen Campbell's Coury Hour to the Donny & Marie show[2]
[2] The original one, where they sang a few songs, did sketches that make current SNL not look so bad, and where Marie gave Donnie a pie-in-the-face at least once an episode[3]
[3] Except one show, where she pushed Donny *into* a giant "pie".
[4] I know it should be "We old people", but I gave up grammar for the sound of the phrase.
"...perhaps they should have made it more intuitive, dev-freindly, and included better documentation"
I think the costs they were referring to were bandwidth costs, not other costs like documentation and support.
creation science book
Scotty beam me up!
.Net is.
.Net services. You know... the idea of web services? Like this is what it'll cost if you want to utilize Microsoft's services as part of your system.
.Net programming environment, which from everything I have seen thus far indicated will be available free as in beer. Except for a number of value add pieces, such as the IDE, ASP.Net caching, and a performance tuned compiler.
Once again it becomes blazingly obvious that the bulk of Microsoft's detractors haven't a clue which end they use to go to the bathroom, much less what
This is about
Has nothing to do with the
Anyone remember an old game (c. 1989) from Business Week that used to come in boxes of 5.25" floppies? You would run Microsoft for 5 years and see how well you did. The best I could do was to practically give away the software for 3 years, then once I had market share crank up the prices 1000%. Maybe Gates & ape-boy Ballme[r] have been playing that game.
I was afraid that MicroSquish might actually have been bright enough to make this whole ".net" scheme catch on.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A decent guitar, by my definition, is one that sounds good. I completely agree though about getting one for under $300. Here's a little anecdote for you folks that think a "decent guitar" costs $1000+.
This is a shameless plug, but... all of these songs were played on a mass produced Korean Ibanez with a broken neck (fixed with glue and various scrap nails and screws). The thing is also missing buttons on two tuners. I think it sounds pretty damn decent for a guitar that was found broken in two sitting on top of a neighbor's garbage.
Original cost? Probably 200 bucks. If sold, it'd be worth about $20 maximum. To me, it's priceless.
It's not for the costs of the tools (ala msdn).
.Net services -don't- include CA. (which would be a shameful oversight)
.Net services from MS?
It's for the costs of access to their prebuilt -services-. If you have the skill to write and support your own shopping cart, you don't shell out $1000.
I mean, the price bar was set by Verisign. They'll charge you $1400 a year for a certificate and 'payment services' (cybercash).
If you snub Verisign and hit up Thawte ($125) for your certificate, and MS for your 'payment services' ($1000) it looks like you're -saving- $375 to me. And that's if MS
Is everyone so terrified of writing their own web calendar that they feel 'robbed' by 'having' to buy
But I suppose writing a well-thought article/post that points out that MS is -saving- you money (albeit a slight bit), or even just releasing their services at the already established going rate, just doesn't get the hits.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Uh, no.
.NET My Services ($1000) = $2000
With this payment thing, it's like:
10 developers @ $100 + server + bandwidth + support = $1000 + (x)
10 develoeprs @ $100 +
This is not a cost for the development tools, it a subscription for usage of a Microsoft owned server, which would be supported on-site by Microsoft-payed technicians.
Read the freaking article....
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
...was that the C libraries on OS/2 cost so damned much money, and I was in it as a hobbyist. It was NOT worth it for me to pay that kind of money, even though I could have made some pretty nice apps. So instead I made a lot of REXX scripts, since that is what I had on the OS for free (well...included, anyway) and later learned java, as it was a free download.
The article even says that this is for ".net my services" normal SDK models will still apply for everyday use. write all the stock quote and weather apps you want for free. jesus. learn to read an article before spouting off on just how evil and criminally insane microsoft is. anyone who has a copy of beta2 of studio .net also has a copy of the sdk, so charging a thousand for it really does not make much sense...
Yeah... I want a Clapton Strat someday, but the truth is those Fender Squiers are pretty good. (I have a Peavey cheapo Strat clone, but I hate it -- crappy electronics and nonstandard parts...)
.NET in the first place? Plenty of downsides in it -- Hailstorm, Passport, learning a new language (C#), you name it -- but why in the world do we *need* .NET? The closest MS has come to coming out with anything worthwhile is Xbox, and even that's being greeted with a yawn from gaming aficionadoes.
.NET's acceptance, but you never know...
And what does a developer get from getting in on
I work in a bookstore so I have some idea of what people are looking for information on. Office XP has been a bit of a flop with professional shops (most seem to be staying with Office2K or Office97, it would seem), and most all professional users are hanging onto Win98SE for dear life on the desktop. We don't get many questions from people looking for XP books; the books are there, but not many people seem to be looking for them.
For what it's worth, I think this might just price the Average Joe Developer out of the market, not that Microsoft probably cares. I would hope that would derail
/Brian
I remember being told I would be dead in the water unless my code was transportable as a JavaBean...well, I'm still here....and where is that universal repository of JavaBeans everyone is hitting?
The more this stuff is rammed down our throats, the better plain old sockets look.
...Not to mention that you could easily, legally, and without harassment buy a used guitar from pawn shops, consignment stores, garage sales, eBay, etc. for a fraction of the price of a new one. I doubt it would be that easy to get you're hands on a used
It's apparent that there is a serious misunderstanding here. .NET is not "locked" to some subscription model. Rather, .NET's "My Services" is locked to the subscription model.
.NET), or make use of another environment (Codewarrior, GCC, etc.). You can STILL write native code for Windows without a subscription, and you can write managed code (C#, VB, managed C++) without a subscription. You can even write your own web services without a subscription. If you want to plug into the MS My Services model, though, you pay.
.NET is already confused enough with Microsoft's TLA-of-the-week and other marketing-speak. Do a little research, people, before you start spouting off!
My Services is part of Microsoft's drive to make the Web Services - provided by MS in a centralized format - available to the developer community. Clients who need the "stability" of the Microsoft hosting and management will be able to make use of it through their annual subscription.
Developers who want to write Windows code will only have to purchase MS's development tools (Visual Studio
It distresses me to see such poor journalism, particularly when press about
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
On the subject, I recently bought one of those 'coffee table' type books on guitars that was a close-out book at Borders, and it contained a quote to the effect that today was the best time ever when it comes to buying a good sounding guitar for a low price. I believe it, at least for electrics. I'm not so sure about acoustics, as the availability and price of the exotic woods used in really good acoustics is not like it used to be. But electrics sound is mostly from the electronics, and with computerized design and automated mass production, the stuff being built today is about as good as it has ever been and prices are incredibly low.
I agree. I just don't think Linux is "on the verge of driving out Microsoft" anytime soon. It takes a whole lot more than a good product to become a market leader.
And more importantly, if you spend $1000 on a guitar, find you really don't want it, you can probably sell it again for nearly what you paid for it (assuming you weren't ripped off in the first place, it's still in good condition, etc)-- the only way you'll ever get your money out of your .NET investment is to sell software. Good luck, what with Microsoft including anything they can into the OS.
I do not have a signature
Good news! In order to make paying your bill more convenient and to keep our costs low, we have signed up with MS Passport so that you can (and MUST) easily pay your bill on the
This is followed by similar letters from your mortgage bank, phone company, electric utility...
How about "If I can't read it with a non-MS editor then it sucks?"
First of all, any IDE that generates a mountain of horsesh8t and then sends your cursor to the "insert your code here" point is IMHO garbage. One thing I like about Java (compared to, say, MS Visual anything) is the way that the "generated code" is hidden in superclasses. MS sticks it in your face. (Well, Sun does it too in Forte for Java, but that's why nobody uses it.)
Collapsible code regions sounds like a bad idea, like the "design time objects" that MS encourages you to use in Visual Studio. With those, you're basically editing gibberish that's being presented to you as text (with "cool looking" COM-based GUIs embedded within the text). But whooo, you don't have to scroll over that collapsed code now! I've had to migrate an app away from ASP where the code monkeys used design time objects and I believe their sole purpose is to make porting away from NT impossible. Any ASP that was inflicted with these warts had to be completely rewritten from scratch.
In any case, an IDE with cool right-clicks in it seems like a really poor reason to introduce vendor lock-in with such a nasty vendor. How easy is it to maintain these thin clients? Can they be migrated to other platforms or are you essentially editing closed-format object code (being viewed as source) with that IDE? When choosing a technology on which to base a project, you should look at the longer-term strategy, like ease of maintenance, adherence to standards, etc. MS is hoping they can offer you an IDE with some flashy toys in it and fool you into going down their one-way street.
Maybe I'd try it out anyway, but it would mean installing IIS, which I would like to avoid. Which is pointless, because it's probably running on half the computers in the office without anyone knowing anyway. How about "right-click discover patches for latest security holes"? Now THAT would be useful.
What Microsoft is charging for is for developers to hook into the .NET MyServices (formerly Hailstorm). That's because to use them, you'll be using Microsoft's own resources, i.e., Microsoft's bandwidth and servers. I think most people by now realize that the business model of giving this away for free is just about dead.
If you're developing apps that don't use .NET MyServices, there's no charge. You can download the .NET Framework SDK for free and write your programs in Notepad if you want. This includes standalone apps, server apps, and even web services -- just not .NET MyServices.
Unless Slashdot is just interested in shoving FUD down the throat of all its readers -- and I would hope you'd consider it an insult to your intelligence that they would do this -- they really should correct the story submission.
Excuse me while I reserve my judgement on whether Microsoft will not eventually find a way to make these heretofore distinct and independent entities, merged in one ugly ball that is only available through a process which ultimately deposits money one way or another in Microsoft's pockets.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Only a monopoly or seriously vertical market (game consoles for example) can charge the people that it -needs- in order for it to stay popular for development tools necessary to create applications for their platform.
I thought Microsoft was interested in gaining developer support for their new initiative.
I can hardly see where setting trolls for .NET would help gain developer goodwill.
Besides, posters on Slashdot will troll for free - but I doubt they'd pay for the privilege to troll .NOT
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Well, that's the demo. In the real thing they'll switch the default. WIN3.1 let you see your file extentions by default. WIN9x does not.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Since you ask, I argue that the people making Microsoft products are smarter than the people using Microsoft products. A framer building a wooden house might drive nails with a heavy framing hammer (emacs). But a home owner replacing a rotted board on his front steps might use a lighter hammer (IDE), even though it's not 'optimally efficient'. His ego is not linked to driving home the nail in two strokes. He just wants to get the job done, preferrably without smashing his thumb.
Can you imagine an average Windows application programmer developing his own elsip?
Of course, if the home owner advocates using a tack hammer to build a house, he's going to get laughed at.
Many people have pointed out that this is the price of access to Hailstorm, not the price of access to .NET. I don't think the prices are high at all. In fact, they're ridiculously low for entry into the controlled space Microsoft is creating. Why don't you phone up Yahoo and Google and ask what they'd charge to let you put your button on their site? I don't think it will be as cheap as what MS is offering.
.... " or "Programmers won't .... ". These posters don't seem to realize that the software industry is shaped by businesses, not programmers. If you are hired to work on a .NET-related project, you will not know or care what arrangement the company made with Microsoft. The audience that Microsoft is addressing will not balk at the price.
I'm seeing a lot of comments like "Programmers will
Well, okay, you don't *have* to use C# (you could use Java >;-) (J# for the unclued-in)). But the rest still stands. And Hailstorm still scares me.
/Brian
I would mostly agree with you on Ovations. My complaint about them isn't necessarily the plasticy feel, but that the shape isn't comfortable to hold -- the back is too rounded. I've got much the same problem with Flying V electrics. First electric I had was a V copy... Love the look of them, hate playing them sitting...
Why run X on a server at all? Most of what you need to do is command-line stuff. And if you must run a GUI app (like the Oracle installer), wouldn't you rather use your Linux box for the display? That way you can sit in your comfy cube, with your "desktop" set up the way you like instead of standing in a cold, noisy equipment room.
And then the complaint about monitor/keyboard. What you may not realize is that Suns do not favor the Keyboard/video over the serial console. You can do everything from the serial console port. In the largest Sun shop I've seen, there are no keyboards, monitors or KVM hardware connected to the servers. PC hardware has trained us to think that you always need KVM access to get to the BIOS or something, but computers that were designed to be servers don't have this weird limitation.
I don't really understand the point of the E450. As you point out, it can be replaced with a PC. And you have to unrack it to get to the CPU/RAM. But a shop full of 4500's and 6500's is very nice. They take the same CPU/RAM card, which can be installed/removed from the front without surgery. If a machine is running out of either, you can just add another board. Ideally you buy storage from a storage vendor rather than trying Sun's solutions. A datacenter full of 4500's and 6500's is amazingly low maintenance compared to equivalent PC's. Is it worth the cost delta? I don't know.
As numerous people have pointed out, this isn't a bar to small developers working with .NET. However, what is a bar is that the Visual Studio.NET betas require ludicrous system specs to run.
I took the copy home from work to try out, since no-one on my development team was going to risk their work PC and I didn't mind reformatting my HD if it all went wrong. Sadly, I didn't get that far, because my little PII/350 with 192MB and Win98 wasn't even close to good enough to install the beta. That's a machine that was sate-of-the-art about 3 years ago, in case anyone's counting. It's still good enough for Quake III to be playable, but I can't even write "Hello, world" on it?!
The typical development PC at the office isn't much higher spec than that, because normally there's no need to upgrade. The typical expendable development machine certainly isn't. Note in particular that the beta seems to need Win2K (or presumably XP now) installed. Most of our work machines don't have that yet, because our clients (who often specify the systems on which our software must run) are only just starting to contemplate shipping Win2K systems.
So, as a direct result of Microsoft's absurd requirements to install this beast, I haven't tried it. And since I'm one of the few in the office who could be bothered, another Microsoft Certified Partner company is unlikely to upgrade any time soon.
Now that should be worrying Microsoft.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.