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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.
When he does they become standards.
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MS believed that the way to avoid the problem of .COM's going under was to name their product .NET. I mean who's ever heard of a .net going under? Or the .net bubble burst? Clearly by naming their product .net, they would avoid all the problems the .com's had.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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.I am only worried about the goverment making Palladium the LAW. We need to tell the our goverment that.
1. You can not take away our freedoms.
2. we do not gives a rats ass about the Record companies.
3. We do give a rats ass about us.
The software compaines do not want DRM. Get talking to your reps.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Don't we hear this story every few years, but with a different product's name? Before that it was Windows XP, and before that it was "Chicago/Windows 4.0/Win95" and before that it was DOS 6 and before that it was ...
According to MSFT, the 'Promised Land of Computing' has always been waiting for us in their home just over the next ridge.
During the beta I thought this might be just a smoke screen to keep the DOJ from looking at it too closely. After all, proper exploitation of the CLR should allow them to eventually run Windows on other hardware, or maybe even as a full replacement GUI/pseudo-OS layer on other OSes. However, this stupid murky message has persisted, so now I think it's just marketing incompetence.
Recall that MS marketing almost tanked the previous generation of MS technology with that stupid DNA bullshit. I remember YEARS went by before even many developers understood what DNA actually was -- a set of useful discrete but interoperable products which were related but were not "one big thing".
I just hope BillG gets his heads out of the clouds long enough to pinpoint the problem, execute the market droids responsible for the mess, and make a cleaner, more digestible push to the people who really need to understand it -- the development community.
Oh yes, and one other point -- the size of the framework may prove to be a sticking point. It's pretty big, so unless you're selling CD-based traditional software, it'll be a hard sell for quite some time. But even the typical /. anti-MS flame-belching troll should at least recognize that MS is smart enough to have accomodated that in their planning.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
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.
Just say ".NYET!".
"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!
A net, by defition, is full of holes...
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Unfortunatly, this is how the IT industry works (or has worked). I guess all marketing departments do this to an extent, but IT is really the worst.
A. Promise the moon, to be delivered within two years
B. Spend 6 months talking about the Moon, but never really getting into details beyond buzzwords.
B2. If new and interesting technology comes along within those 6 months claim the Moon will contain it as well
C. Come out with alpha software (Moon v.1 Preview) that has little functionality built in but looks nice
D. Slip schedule ('We're adding new and exciting features')
E..Y Wait
Z. Deliver something that could quite possibly be useful and innovative, but deliveres about 1/10th of the orig. promise.
Hmm, I thought he gave them a C#...
One of the people at the White House Office of Cybersecurity told me an interesting story once.
About 2 years ago he was at a briefing of high mucky-mucks where Gates was pitching all of the Good Things (TM) that .NET was going to be.
My friend was in one of the front rows, not twenty feet from Gates. He knew that if he raised his hand, Gates couldn't ignore him. So he waited for a few reporters to ask their usual lame questions and then made his move: "Bill, how in the hell are you going to secure all of this?"
He says that Gates's eyes glassed over and his knuckles, where he'd been gripping the edges of the podium, turned white. He spent the next several minutes rambling about QOS -- yes, QOS was going to secure .NET!
There is more to this story that I wish I could tell. Suffice it to say that the White House cybersecurity people (including Howard Schmidt, who was recently vilified here) are not as stupid as slashdotters think they are. These men will never reveal in public their true opinion of Micro$oft, but they have spoken to me in private about it. They're not as far away from our opinions as you think.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
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.
At a local consumers conference, Microsoft's Bill Gates, apparently growing frustrated over the questions surrounding .NET ("What is it?" "What does it do?" "Why do I need it?") finally said, "Look! You know Java? Same $%#@ thing!" and then stormed out.
.NET. They were looking to brand first and foremost, and it's worked to a certain extent. I know some guys who landed some venture capital who say that they think .NET is great even though they can't quite explain what it is.
.NET and that Microsoft can't answer because they weren't expecting to have to answer them. Consider all those commercials touting One Degree of Separation. Yes, we all know that we could recreate the same systems in any OS/platform, only with .NET you can do it in VB.NET. Perhaps that's a bonus, but only the VB programmers are going to recognize that, and I wonder how many IT departments (the people who'd give the green light on the switch) would be dominated by VB programmers? Or there's the bonus of being able to write ASP+ pages in several different languages. How many different IT departments are dominated by the web programmers? Furthermore, even if the different programmers made a fuss over .NET, I wonder how many IT departments would have said "That's nice, but with a little effort and good design we can incorporate the benefits using our current tech."
You know, to be honest, I think they kept it vague on purpose, so that they could sell a whole bunch of products and tout each one as an essential component of
To be honest, I think if we weren't in the middle of the a Linux revolution right now, nobody would be asking the questions that needed to get asked about
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
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."