Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft Gives Up on Hailstorm

Dephex Twin writes "According to a NYTimes article: due to lack of 3rd-party support for Microsoft's "Persona" (originally codenamed "Hailstorm"), the company has been forced to dump the project. It seems the companies didn't like having a middleman between them and the consumers. As a person worried about the future with .NET, this is a bit of a relief."

20 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. MS is running outta juice! by bpd1069 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just me or can you just feel that MS's trajectory has passed its apex and is on its way back to earth??

    --
    --
    1. Re:MS is running outta juice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      The Xbox "technology" isn't half-assed. But the adoption due to the price has been.

      ASP.Net Web Forms is really (really) dumb. The datagrid is nice, I guess, but there are (read: were) already scripts that do the same for Perl/PHP. .Net Windows Forms is interesting only because it's a clean version of Win32. The CLR isn't special, and was more of a statement that all programming languages are the same (strip out the syntactic sugar and 9 times out of 10 you'll have the same ideas). The strong type-casting is unlike anything I've seen. The Visual Studio IDE is really nice - perhaps that might keep some developers.

      What's most interesting to me is where they're going to take Office. They're trying to make things like initiating SOAP requests from an excel field - that's pretty neat.

      On the whole though I don't see them being able to go anywhere. They're not rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, but they're not going anywhere fast.

  2. "Oh Really? by 1010011010 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Just like "Bob" became "Clippy," I'm sure this thing will re-surface.

    It's like when a dead guy is dumped in the river... he'll float to the surface eventually.

    --
    Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  3. Questions the article doesn't answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    • What happens to passport?

      Microsoft was going to open up passport authentication to third-party ID servers via passport, right? Or am i just confused about that? Is that not happening anymore?

      Is microsoft abandoning their drive to make Passport the authentication mechanism for *everything*, Starbucks and such, or are they just going to drop the pretense of making it an open system?

    • The way i understood it, Hailstorm was a relatively decentralized technology as designed and didn't really DEPEND on microsoft being there to hold it all together. Right? Is it possible for people to take the hailstorm protocol, if they so desire, and set up an independent, decentralized hailstorm network that just happens to not be affiliated at all with microsoft?
    • Was GNOME MONO planning on implementing hailstorm as part of their .net workalike? Are they still going to?
  4. For once, perhaps marketing was a good thing? by ShaunC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >It seems the companies didn't like having a middleman between them and the consumers

    Gee, who'd have guessed. Microsoft, the company who's trying to incorporate every possible end-user application into their OS (thus killing the middleware, shareware, and even some commercial software industries) didn't see this coming? They couldn't imagine that other companies might have the same interests in mind? Aside from the obvious consumer objections, it should have been obvious to Microsoft from the get-go that other companies aren't going to trust them to keep track of userdata.

    CBDTPA universally rejected and Hailstorm bites the dust. I have to say, today was a good day.

    -s

    --
    Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
  5. Re:.Net != "Hailstorm" by The+Raven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft has pretty consistently touted the networked XML web services part of the .NET framework as the 'best part'. Which I think is complete bullshit. The 'best part' about .NET is the fact that it is compiled, managed, sandboxed code with a truly awesome set of tools to play with. Improved data management, almost every object in it is serializable (you can save it to the HD in text or binary format, and reload it later, built in, no extra coding).

    There are a lot of reasons to like .NET... in fact, the only reason I know of NOT to like .NET is the usual 'Windows Only' bullshit. But it's a MS product... that's a given.

    --
    "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
  6. Re:.Net != "Hailstorm" by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There are a lot of reasons to like .NET... in fact, the only reason I know of NOT to like .NET is the usual 'Windows Only' bullshit. But it's a MS product... that's a given.

    Well, as a Mac user for over 10 years, I'd rather not have .NET overtaking the market., and having to deal with another Windows-only situation.

    (I submitted the article, BTW.)

    Maybe that clarifies a bit...

    mark
    --

    If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
  7. Re:.Net != "Hailstorm" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Microsoft has a habit of porting their major applications (IE/Office) to the Mac platform and considering Microsoft released a shared source version of .NET for BSD (which OSX is based on to some degree) I wouldn't be shocked to hear about a .NET implementation for OSX in the future.

  8. .NET is actually pretty sweet by VFVTHUNTER · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had used Linux and FreeBSD excusively for about two years - I even once posted a (rejected) Ask Slashdot question entitled "Why Windows," arguing that with the multimedia (mplayer) and browser (pick konq/galeon) support available in Linux, that no one needed Windows.

    My viewpoint has changed radically. I have an XP box now - it's actually a pretty stable OS. And .NET delivers on all the promises that Sun had made of Java. (M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere," .NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")

    I still use Linux/Apache/MySQL for all of my servers - and with SQL 2000 at $20,000 per processor that won't change anytime soon - but Windows has gotten more stable. Linus once said that he started Linux because he wanted software that didn't stink...win3.1, win95, and win98 all stink, but 2K and XP are actually pretty nice.

    I will probably switch back over to an all OSS setup when Miguel et al finish Mono. That's gonna be sweet, too - imagine the day when you can compile an executable (not java bytecode) on a {Windows, Linux} box and then run that executable on a {Linux, Windows} box.

    That's the nice thing about .NET - M$ has actually embraced industry standards. ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection. That's the only requirement. I sitll support the paranoid people, because there is always the chance that M$ will extend and extinguish what it has embraced, but with them having submitted everything to ECMA, that's really an outside worry.

  9. Wither the Liberty Alliance? by MagikSlinger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So now that their competition has gone away, what happens to the Liberty Alliance? Will they stick together, or each go their separate ways creating their own separate identity database schemes?

    --
    The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
  10. Question(s) from a Java developer by jwambach · · Score: 2, Interesting

    DISCLAIMER: I'm a Java developer.

    Ok, I've read a few comments both for and against the .NET platform. I've read (briefly) the article on ars describing the .NET platform as language and platform agnostic.

    My questions are these:

    Where is the Java support? If this is truly language agnostic, why is Java not listed in the languages supported by .NET? If it's a question of licensing from SUN , fine, where's the bridge? If I have have 1000 EJBs out there, how do I justify adopting a platform with no integration strategy, J# has been brought up before, but without support for J2SE (or J2EE) what's the point?

    What exactly is standardized? The CLR or the APIs? How tied am I to the Win32 API for real development. How is mono addressing these issues?

    Exactly how many languages have been integrated into the .NET platform? under what conditions? (platform, usage, etc)

    Obviosly I am biased towards the Java platform. This post is not intended to incite a flame war, I'm just looking for honest answers from developers who have experience in this area.

  11. This alternative may be worse by yardbird · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft is now considering selling My Services to corporations in a traditional package form, rather than as a service. The companies would maintain the data for their own users.

    "Frankly selling this stuff to people who build large data centers with our software is not a bad model," Mr. Fitzgerald said.

    IOW, a common code base with the typical MS attention to security, but maintained by thousands of clueless sysadmins rather than by a single company who at least might see fit to install updates. So instead of a single point of failure, you suddenly have hundreds. Fun!

    --
    Free, legal music for iTunes users.
  12. Re:Cheers! They realized it was doomed from start. by MsGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I can say though... EVERYONE that I know with an MCSE and/or works at a MCSP (MS Cert Solutions Provider) was in support of the Hailstorm idea.

    Uh...not every MCSE out there.

    I was, to be frank, worried about its implications for security. Having Microsoft guard the keys to my bank account is like having the fox guard the hen house.

    Nice to see it go. Now .NET can stand or fall on its own merits, not on privacy concerns.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  13. Re:Dumb question for the /. editors.... by gilroy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Blockquoth the poster:

    My question is this: if Slashdot editors really feel this way, then why is Slashdot advertizing Visual Studio .NET in its banner ads?


    Um, because -- as with most news sources -- advertising is kept separate from editorial content?
  14. Re:nope by FaithAndReason · · Score: 3, Interesting

    drfrank is correct - the base pay was increased to 65% of the (local prevailing) industry wage, partly to compensate for the huge loss in value of the options. There was also a 25% additional bonus paid to their employees in Silicon Valley, but that has since been scaled back (now that they're not losing their Bay Area employees to dot-coms.)

  15. Remember MSN? by Benjim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Remember when Microsoft wanted MSN to be used instead of the Internet? But open solutions and a free market won, albeit with some dominant forces.

    I feel somewhat confident that the hackers, developers, vendors, service providers and customers will pick a model that doesn't favor one particular technology or architecture.

    I dont think anyone really wants to be locked into "Microsoft World"TM.

  16. Re:XP and 2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Back in 1999 they were saying "Windows 2000 Home Edition will ship 3-6 months after GA", but then they caught a glimpse of what was up at Apple. The result is that they shipped ME (the worst received version of Windows since 1.0!) and stalled to doll up the GUI.

    After all that they told corporate customers essentially to take a pass and stick with 2K. And then XP/NET Server was being betaed, but now is essentially in a holding pattern -- probably waiting for Fat Ballmer to make the call about dropping NT 4.0 support.

    Meanwhile most people are still running 98. I'm glad we're on NT, but the product planning has been frankly terrible.

  17. Re:Microsoft and the future by JabberWokky · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I'm not so sure about this. If there's one thing that we can be sure about, it's that MS is persistant to levels no other business can finance. They've launched programs and fallen on their face more times than most companies could ever hope to afford. Many would say that they've finally gotten Windows right, and it only took them 15 years.

    I'm sure MS will get the X-Box right, even if it takes another 15 years, because when they do get it right, they'll have it all. Why bother with Windows on PC's when they can put everything; game console, DVD player, PC, all in one box that they get the revenues from?

    It's interesting because it's that sort of slow persistance that makes open source work. Amid dozens of half assed and abortive projects rises one or a few really good solutions. The surprising thing is not that it works, but that it works so fast. Microsoft has a phenominally large but bounded budget. Open source has a budget bounded only by the time and people willing to give a hand. And since there's always a new class of college students thinking they can revolutionise the world, that's a very renewable resource. Now that companies like IBM are contributing, aware that this is about the only way to see MS dethroned, it's starting to polarize the IT world.

    Who has a larger budget - Microsoft, or the rest of the industry, including volunteers working for the experience?

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  18. Re:nope by delong · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And MS profits aren't what they are touted. The first half of 2000 was a disaster for them - the only reason they made a profit was the selling of investments. I haven't bothered to keep up on the story. But there have been others that have noted that MS has become more an investment banker than a company making its profits from working production.

  19. So what? by sethadam1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Hailstorm, or whatever you want to call it, was just the intermediate step to get us to Blackcomb, the full implementation of .NET.

    I'm sorry, but I read this headline as is: Microsoft is going to swallow the world into .NET in one less step.