Gates Tries to Explain .Net

AdamBa writes "Speaking to financial analysts and reporters, Bill Gates admitted that .NET hadn't caught on as quickly as he had hoped. The headline ('Gates admits .NET a "misstep"') is a bit misleading; he doesn't think all of .NET was a misstep, just the My Services part (aka Hailstorm). He also said that labelling the current generation of enterprise products as .NET might have been 'premature.' Summary: Microsoft got too excited about locking in users via Hailstorm and botched the overall .NET message." There's also a Reuters report and a NYTimes story on the same subject, which includes the interesting line: "Microsoft also warned today that the era of "open computing," the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry, is ending." It isn't clear if Microsoft is talking about something happening beyond their control, or if they're boasting about ending it.

Comments

Re:CNN has a story

[javilon]

I guess he would give it an 'A' after the Xbox breaks US sales records.

They are very persistent and have lots of money. Do not understimate them.

.NET as a Data Utility

[Johnny Mnemonic]

My understanding of .Net is this: MSFT wants to be a data utility as much as your power company is a power utility. Said again, MSFT wants your data to flow from you to any other service that you can connect to the data pipe, be it your cellphone, your fridge, your car. MSFT intends to provide the mechanisms for making this flow possible, mostly be enabling data forms that are useful anywhere, and by abstracting the application that interprets the data.

I believe that the vision is that computing devices would mostly allow you to dip into that data stream, and lose almost all of the autonomy that they now possess--while historically useful, it means that I can't have my fridge interoperate with the grocery store and compare my cupboards with what's on special today, and then alert me with a pop-up ad while I'm watching TV. All of these devices would be manufactured independantly, but MSFT would provide the means and the infrastructure to connect their data streams.

If said data was regulated by an open protocol, you could probably achieve much the same kind of thing; however, MSFT is a demonstrated monopoly, and as such can dictate a data-transfer protocol and make it a defacto standard. MSFT then gains the ability to charge on the basis of each transaction, or rent your data transmission method to you or to the device manufacturers.

Will it work? I dunno. I suppose anyone can install solar panels and resume their autonomy from the infrastructure. However, there's lots of good reasons to still be connected to the grid, even though it costs you more in the long run. Took a long time for this infrastructure to be implemented, though, and I'm not sure MSFT has the patience.

This is really all just speculation and conjecture--I would love to hear what others think of these assumptions. Am I right?

Why SEC should look at Microsoft

[dpilot]

Two reasons to begin with:

1: They're manipulating their balance sheets. Under-reporting is as bad as over-reporting, neither is "transparent". (the new accounting buzzword) Besides, last I heard, and I admit I can't currently substantiate this, they were "revenue smoothing", under-reporting on very good quarters, and holding that around to over-report on lean quarters. The net effect was to always meet/beat projections, which helps the stock keep going up. And isn't this where it all started, with "opaque" accounting practices being used to inflate stock value.

2: Stock options counted as a business expense for tax purposes, but not counted against revenue. Though recently S&P and TIAA-CREF have called for this to change market-wide.

Re:Marketing to blame

[tshak]

I'm in the same boat as you. .NET is stupid. Hailstorm that is. Windows .NET server makes a little bit of sense, but the concept of naming it .NET is kind of stupid as well. .NET as a technology is great. It's not perfect, but for a 1.0 (and an MS 1.0 at that!) it's incredible.

What's interesting is that it's not just PHB's that don't understand this issue, many developers don't either - especially those in the Java camp. They see headlines like this and say, "MS's java copy failed LOL!".

Re:CNN has a story

[bryanbrunton]

The real story for the XBox will be can it be the only console in gaming history to be sucessful and survive as a respected gaming platform in only 1 of the major 3 gaming markets.

-- US --

XBox has managed to take to number 2 slot in this market, although closely followed by the GameCube.

-- Europe --

Recent figures show XBox has only managed to sell 500,000 units throughout the entire EU.

GameCube has managed 800,000 in a much shorter time period.

-- Japan --

In the most recent weekly sales period, XBox sold 2,400 units, PS2 90,000, GC 27,000.

With the Japanese developers quickly jumping ship on the XBox, its future is bleak at best.

Re:Dumb question

[erasmus_]

Not a dumb question if you're unfamiliar with the technology. All of the improvements in .NET for developers are essentially manifested server-side, where ASP.NET intercepts calls for .aspx pages and processes them. The result is javascript that is supposed to be browser-independent, and allows developers to write a heck of a lot less code. So the short answer to your question is that users would see no difference, whereas developers see great improvements.

Of course, there are some browser-specific features, but the code for those is not written to the client if the browser doesn't support it. The best example is something called Smart Navigation, which reduces flicker on pages between trips to the server. If you're not running IE, or older IE, you get the flicker, but it doesn't prevent you from working with the page. HTH.

Re:Dumb question

[ClosedSource]

"The result is javascript that is supposed to be browser-independent, and allows developers to write a heck of a lot less code."

If what you mean by "the result is javascript" is that javascript runs on the client, then that's incorrect. ASP.NET returns html. On the server side the logic can be written in any .NET language including jscript (javascript), VB.NET, C++ or C#.

Re:There's a large adoption issue surrounding .NET

[Vicegrip]

You're welcome to your speculations as well-- we'll see in a couple years or so.

I *have* researched .NET for my company's needs and I've taken the time to go to Microsoft presentations as well.

In essence, the major conclusion I drew is that much of our existing code and designs were not useable in .NET-- ADO.NET, for example, can only be used by managed code applications.

It is apparent to me that .NET is largely just a new version of COM with all the old guts hidden under a new application management layer and runtime. It has advantages that only present themselves if you totally embrace the new paradigm-- a major pain if you use anything other than Windows in your enterprise.

More details: Existing code written as a COM object interacts through essentially yet another marshalling layer to talk to managed code. Plain win32 native code does this too, even though the visual studio IDE hides much of this. The only native code I've seen that works well when ported to managed environments are Microsoft code samples.

You mention VB programmers; this is appropriate. This is because they are the only ones who have an advantage to switching right now as VB in it's current state is a waste land of OCX controls of exponential flavors and versions that seem to only ever be good at leaking memory.

So your company is going to toss away all its PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP/COM code... interesting setup they must have .... and find that magic bullet to fix its problems. To be honest, judging by that little list, I'd say your company has a need for consistency more than anything else. .NET will evolve and change-- do you want to bet your job on Microsoft not forgetting its early adopters?