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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.
Wouldn't that truly be one of the travisties of humanity? Ending the Information Revolution by returning to where we were before it... Let us just hope and act in such a way that this does not come to pass.
I think the main problem with .NET is the marketing. .NET means somethind different to just about everyone.. To me as a developer it means the new development tools (ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#, Web Services). I definitely don't think that was a misstep- it is 100x better than its predecessor (COM). However, I think branding hailstorm and all the new version of the enterprise servers as .NET was a mistake. MS was trying to put everything under the .NET umbrella, but since some of those products/concepts have failed (ie hailstorm) it is now going to paint all things .NET in a negative light especially to people who aren't totally familiar with it. I hope they learn the lesson. I can remember visiting the web site several times that talks about what .NET is, and seeing it change about every month :)
I think when developers talk about .NET, we're talking about the .NET framework. Which does have many wonderful features and improvements to the languages (C#, VB.NET is a big improvement over VB 6.0), the ease of making web services. It's much easier to manipulate XML than in previous versions. In the developer community (at least the ones that make money by programming on the Windows platform) it is slowly gaining popularity and many web sites have converted over to ASP.NET.
.NET, I think they are referring to the nebulous cloud of "web services" that Microsoft has alluded to, "Hailstorm", ".NET My Services", etc... Those still seem to be up in the air and not many people see the need for them.
When the general public thinks about
I don't think I'd pay Microsoft for a subscription to Word.NET when I can just keep using MS Word 2000 or OpenOffice 1.0, or AbiWord. I don't want to store my credit card info in my Passport (or liberty alliance or any other online identity service) account. Heck, I want the people in the checkout lane to ASK to see my ID when I hand them a credit card, I certainly don't want to hand over all the info that a thief needs to charge things to my credit card.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
- Gates also acknowledged that confusion still reigns about
.NET's very definition.
Good -- they understand one problem. People can perhaps point to the CLR and assoicated libraries, but- On Wednesday, he hammered home a new definition: "software to connect information, people, systems and services."
Unfortunately, this definition doesn't help at all. Pretty much all internet-based software does this.Wherever "open computing" survives will become the dominant cultural force of the next century.
The United States is in a position to maintain cultural hegemony over the whole world - if we don't kill the free exchange of culture in order to make a quick buck.
If we do, I predict, within a couple of generations, that other parts of the world will have outpaced us. Killing open computing will destroy our best way-out of the recent doldrums in popular movies and music.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
There are two main potential .NET targets: .NET .NET application.
.NET environment to their PCs... Microsoft is most likely going to have to force people-- which may not be popular.
.NET language, chances are you aren't very motivated to switch paradigms. .NET the fact is java has been here for quite a while and has a good following. I have yet to meet a serious java developer who has any interest in .NET .NET has to earn the industry's trust-- not an easy hill to climb these days. .NET is in convincing CEOs that they aren't further limiting their licensing choices and options in order to adopt something they just don't need-- at least not yet. The wait-and-see approach is a tried and true paradigm with respect to version 1.0 software from Microsoft.
1. Companies who have not yet started to deploy solutions using J2EE or Java and are trying to decide which to use: Java or
2. Companies who have a need for some software that is only as a
I won't address issues involving getting companies to deploy the
a1. If you already have a substantial investment in software written in anything but a
a1. Regardless of how you view
a1. Regardless of all the claims Microsoft makes about C#/.NET maturity, nobody in their right mind is going to bet the company on a new MS platform just because the pay-for-plundits say it's sexy.
a2. There is little imperative to adopt something for which there are no major none-Microsoft commercial offerings.
a2. Either way, I suspect difficult part of the sell for
Personally, I find it hard to get excited about something from a company whose major call to fame these days is the latest way it is reaming its customers.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
"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."
It seems clear enough to me. Microsoft and the entertainment industry are in bed together. Both have something to gain from DRM.
The entertainment industry can stop music and movie pirating, take away our fair use rights and set the stage for a future market. That market being the sale of digital video and music which will be streamed directly to hardware. It is important to the entertainment industry that we are not allowed to record the digital data because once recorded we, as individuals, could illegally swap the files with others. Obviously, that would greatly reduce the incentive to pay again and again for the privilege of having the entertainment industry stream it to us. So say good-by to your fair use rights.
Microsoft has a lot to gain here also, on an entirely different front. They are fighting for their Corporate lives against a foe unlike any they have had to deal with before. Linux can not be made to go bankrupt, it cannot be sued into oblivion and it is steadily gaining popularity. How can Microsoft deal with this specter of doom? They must use any weapon available to them.
1. FUD. Yep, good ol' fear, uncertainty and doubt has always helped Microsoft in the past. It hasn't worked very well against Linux because their FUD has been too transparent. People just weren't buying it. They need a more complex strategy.
2. The Law. Make open source illegal. Hmmm... I'm sure they thought about that one... but how?
How about using FUD, a grain of truth to paint open source users as pirates, thieves and other assorted forms of lower life. Then join together with the entertainment industry to buy a senator like say.... SENATOR HOLLINGS FROM SC. And have him draft legislation that will ram DRM down our throats.
One all hardware is DRM enabled, only the entertainment industries bed partner will be allowed to receive digital data that will be streamed by this industry. Microsoft will do it's part to ensure that as few applications as possible will be allowed to run on Linux and have access to this new market. Definitely not open source. Thus they prevent competition. Typical strategy for Microsoft. Being afraid of competition they don't go head to head unless they can ensure themselves an advantage.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Shouldn't the company care about its customers' vision?
.NET, by announcing iCal and iSync last week at MacWorld. Those two programs allow users of Mac OS X Jaguar to connect their PDAs, cell phones and desktop PIM software to a single database and publish them on the Internet, connect with the calendars of others, and resolve conflicts between the two.
Some columnist recently pointed out that Apple achieved in one stroke everything MS is trying to achieve with
In other words, while Microsoft spent two years talking about Web services and technologies, Apple quietly went about actually building them into a program its users will want to use. MS has been announcing and releasing software for other people to build these Web applications, but Apple decided to lead by example instead.
No doubt the next release of Windows will include similar features, and of course they'll be more widely used than Apple's. But just think what might be happening right now if Microsoft had spent as much time creating Web applications for Windows XP as they did promoting them.
If a person could synchronize their PocketPC to their MSN account and Outlook at the same time, then reconcile with all their coworkers' calendars and documents, without having to do anything more than press a button, Microsoft wouldn't need subscriptions to sell the next version of Office or Windows. Instead they settled for getting halfway there so that they could sell more copies of Exchange Server and keep PocketPCs as expensive as humanly possible.
".NET Signals an Industry Shift"
also referenced as the article about "Moore's Triple Crisis".
The author of the article (David Bau, who made the popular "Dave's Google Quicksearch Bar") writes about a three-way Moore's law crisis: crisis in systems, apps and development.
Systems: "the exponentially rising power of PC technology has started to overshoot the needs of the ordinary customer. This means people are starting to shop for cheaper computers instead of more powerful ones."
Development: "Moore's law crisis affects development costs just as dramatically as it affects hardware costs. As computing power gets cheaper and software becomes more ephemeral, it makes sense to save software development hours by wasting CPU cycles." The Garbage collectors and Intermediate Languages of
Applications: "Microsoft is facing the problem of saturation. The widely recognied issue here is that almost everybody who wants to do something with their computer software can already do it. Why would you buy a new version of Microsoft Word or Excel?" "Microsoft is facing competitors like America Online that are using a new model for software applications."
That's why Microsoft introduced his
--
ACid
There are successes in that business, but Microsoft isn't one of them. PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP, EDS, and Automatic Data Processing are the successful players. They're big, vertically integrated companies that build and service what they sell. They're not value-added resellers, and they don't usually work through value-added resellers.
Microsoft's model, that you download something, pay for it forever, and don't bother them much, isn't how it's done. The big service providers provide real service; they are in the business of outsourcing corporate support functions, not pushing software.
"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.
Nothing new. Bill Redux: I remember hearing of an episode from back when GEM and Windows were still battling it out - at a conference panel where Bill and Gary Kildall were members, and Gary was going on about OSs, and how there'd be plenty of ways to run your computer. Bill grabbed a microphone and interrupted, with a clarification to the effect that "No, there will be one way to operate your computers. One. (uncomforatble silence) You may continue."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."