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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."

13 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. first anti-M$ post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    umm.. yeah.. i'm a linux geek

    i hate microsoft because they are the largest corporation

    i don't shower

    bye bye now

  2. Lawdy, lawdy, we all is shittin in high cotton! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Thank you, Lawd Jesus.

    Oh Lawdy we is eatin poke chops and 40s !

  3. Re:Worried about .Net? by ttyRazor · · Score: 2, Troll

    Considering that Microsoft doesn't even know exacty what .Net is supposed to be besides the realization of glossy near-scifi software you see in crappy hollywood movies and will practically write itself, its no wonder everyone else is ignorant.

  4. Re:damn bad timing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  5. Re:MS is running outta juice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    No, what you are feeling is a penis tearing open your sphincter as your dirty GNU hippy roommate is getting the only as that he can.

  6. Dumb question for the /. editors.... by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 2, Troll

    As a person worried about the future with .NET, this is a bit of a relief.

    I assume that since this story wasn't rejected, that somehow the editors of Slashdot agree with this sentiment as expressed in the submission.

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

    Just curious.

    --

    --------
    Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...

  7. hotmail is annoying due it's crude BSD orgins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Crappy old BSD is holding back hotmail from being a decent email service. While smart people have moved to Linux for e-mail, Snotmail has remained a hotbed of incompetant BSD morons. No wonder they SUCK so bad/1

  8. A Researched Treatise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    MICROSOFT IS TEH SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    pupkick3bgates

    lowercaseletterslowercaseletterslowercaseletters

  9. Re:This is a first post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    you are SOOOO gay!

  10. Re:nope by BrynM · · Score: 0, Troll
    I have crystal balls... oh no... wait... They're just flesh.

    --
    US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
  11. Re:MS is running outta juice! by sinan · · Score: 2, Troll


    I disagree. First despite all the positive spin MS is trying to put on X-Box sales, they appear to be dismal. Retailers just don't seem to be willing to push it. Which indicates a lack of margin. So another $100 drop and it may pickup. Unfortunately that will also add to another $2,000,000,000 before it may become profitable. But then there is the problem of DVD region protection. Take me as an example. I live in Seattle, and own about 500 to 600 DVDs. a good portion of which are region 2 DVDs ( purchased in Europe.) . I have 14 computers in the house and 23 DVD players and 9 DVD drives. When I wish to watch European DVDs , I simply either change the hard disk drive ( they are removable) to another installation of Windows 2000 ( which thinks I am in Europe) or , anymore these days , to Linux.

    Will I or anyone I know ever buy an X-Box. Not in this lifetime. Will I ever install Windows XP? not in next life either.

    A lot of people I know are switching to network file servers in their homes, and having heard about secure music path, are installing Linux with samba. They don't trust Microsoft. This is the point of the news item. People don't trust their data , and to some extent, their hardware to Microsoft anymore. I am writing this on a dual boot laptop , whic is booted to Win 2k right now. I also am a member of MSDN. So I get Visual Studio and Visual Net. I somehow trust ( but don't like the non-standard compliance of Visual Studio), but I don't trust Visual Net as far as I can throw it. I'd rather develope in Linux and port to Microsoft when the API becomes available on MS, then trust Microsoft and develop on Visual Net, hoping it will be ported to Linux someday. That is a career limiting move.

    Sure they have money. They can try to buy a lot of things. They can pay some registrars parking server to create the illusion of gaining against apache, but eventually, they will have to buy out about 40 million or so at a price of about 10,000 to 20,000 a piece, and that adds up to $400,000,000,000 to $800,000,000,000.

    The dumbest things they have done in the last 7 years:

    1) Accept Java ( make it credible)
    2) Reject Java (Make it not only credible, but acceptable as well)
    3) Secure Music path ( people are not dumb)
    4) UltimateTV ( "Selling beyond our expectations!", sold 6,000?)
    5) X-Box (combined with 4)
    6) Windows XP embedded.
    7) Invent XML only to have the competition embrace and extend it.
    8) Invent Soap only to have competition embrace and extend it.
    9) IIS ( Oh ! Boy!!!)
    10) Charge developers for Back Office stuff, while trying to buy out web sites.

    Too many others not worth mentioning.

    Thing about Open Source Microsoft does not get is that, when you Open Source something, you still hold all the aces. You have the time element on your side. You can develop while others are learning and you are always ahead.

    However there seems to be a problem with with Microsoft corporate thinking is that , they don't seem to be able to hang on to the people that develope the ideas.
    I used tNt ( the NeWS toolkit) in early 90's. Those people are still largely at Sun. And look at Sun. Quietly but surely they are moving Solaris in the direction of Linux. I have 5 SparcStations in the house also,but do I develope in them anymore ? No, since the compiler costs eat me alive. Frankly Linux and dev tools are much superior to anything Microsoft could ever supply me with ( even though they are free now under MSDN) I use Eclipse and NetBeans. Why? Because they are Open Source. I will never ever ( except under contract) will use closed source developement tools again.

    People have limited funds. So you want me to pay for Cable Modem ( which I have) and/or DSL ( which I have also) and DSS , and or Cable TV , and $18 per CD, and $25 per DVD and the phone bill and the movies and the computer and the OS and the office tools, and the websurfing, and games and games net and ... the list goes on. Do you really think people have the money, let alone the time to do all this stuff? Everybody basicall robs Peter to pay Paul. Until last year Microsoft was Paul. It just has become Peter.

    Sinan

  12. Coincidence? by jrumney · · Score: 0, Troll

    Is it just a coincidence that this comes less than a week after MS starts trumpeting about how they've spent the last two and a half months doing security audits of their code?

  13. About MySQL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why do the h4x0r wannabes tout MySQL? It is the biggest POS on the face of the Earth. Why do you think this site is down every 5 minutes?

    I would build an Access back end before a MySQL back end.