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

.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: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.