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Platform Evangelism
An anonymous submitter writes "James Plamondon, a former Microsoft employee is writing a book on Technological Evangelism at Microsoft. He's posted the first chapter, "Evangelism is War."
Robert Scoble, a current Microsoft Evangelist doesn't like the metaphor, but Micah Alpern is concerned Microsoft could use similar strategies against Macromedia Flash."
What if tonight, the evangelism war could be over? Isn't that work coding for? Isn't...that...worth...debugging for?
Vonal Declosion
use whatever suits u the best. ;)
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
We're going to have an evangalism on terror
Wow where to begin?
Well, for a start, they're not SCO...
Consider, then, the 'Technical Architect,' and his grand scheme. Yikes. Probably closer to the mark than one would like.
Hate...MS....hate...Flash....must tolerate Flash.....must....*smoke drifts from ears*
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone be surprised?
MS has destroyed company after company that tried to work with them or cooperate with them. Adding MacroMedia to the list would be no surprise. In fact, if you can name a company that depends on MS to any significant extent, then I would add them to my list of "endangered companies". It takes them longer to get around to some than to others is all.
MS only thinks of technical evangelism as war if you idea of war is scorched earth that nobody can live on.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Pray to Poll: Rei or Asuka?
;)
Uh...Shinji: Misato
Macromedia's days are numbered once MS targets flash.
It's probably only a matter of time before MS decides to start targeting Adobe markets as well.
It seems that more and more, competition is breeding brand awareness and evangelism. It's an inherent part of doing business.
Browse the Information Directory
Wow.. now that is pretty scary.
:|
UK never gets particularly powerful quakes, and any even noticable ones I have always slept through because they always seem to occur at night.
Don't think i'd be liking that kinda quake though!!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
There have been Macintosh evangelists for years, so don't worry, Microsoft isn't innovating.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
Excuse me, I think he means the Second Avenue Deli.
And you go to Junior's for cheesecake, preferably after a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. And Broadway is for tourists.
Sorry, Microsoft what?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I recall reading that somewhere, probably Infoworld. Bah, it was probably Cringly that said it.
-phish
Oh man, is that a 25th anniversary Mac in the background?
Hell, people are always telling me I go for the details not the obvious, aanyways... earthquake you say?
So...Microsoft is about to champion for the little guy in the war on spam. Check out this link at CNN.com.
Where are you, justice system of America? Why aren't you protecting us, and the smaller companies, from the big bad troll?
"Microsoft is the true company!! Use it or you will be punished in hell for eternity! Repent your sinful ways! Disband O ye geeks of linux and mac and unix lore!"
Consider for a moment that Wired article on the downfall of SUN Microsystems. One recurring theme in the personality of McNealy, SUN's CEO, is his inability to cooperate with the competition and instead his insistence on turning competitors into enemies and market competition into war.
If MS does this (and they may indeed), this is merely business as usual among many of these corporations. Corporate America is not a day-care facility; companies can and do play hardball. The question is not "does MS want to help or hurt the competition" but rather "did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.
Wal-Mart destroyed the competition. And, yes, some say Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?
I think there is also a BSOD back there too.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
When did MS get into hard core porn?
Few things are more damaging than the words from the enemy camp. In this case, though, I'm a little confused. Plamondon is supposedly a former MS employee, but he writes in the present tense. Is he just confused about his loyalties, or is he actually an MS plant? (Yeah, I know that MS employees are vegetables
That material is volatile, to say the least. He basically admits to what everyone knows: MS wants to achieve nothing less than total domination of everything with a CPU - They probably even want to run your wristwatch. Obviously the DoJ suit meant nothing (we already knew this, but it's nice to get confirmation), and it was business-as-usual in the FUD capital of the world.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Actually, Macromedia is a big enough (and incredibly well established) company that their destruction by Microsoft actually would be a big surprise. Macromedia already produces most of their products for Macintosh, as well as some of their product (barely functional ColdFusion server) for Linux. Microsoft would have to fight pretty hard to take Macromedia down.
The probability that someone is watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
"If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone be surprised?"
It's funny hearing this from the same place that thinks BSOD jokes are always +5, Funny. The Slashdot Community is nauseatingly evangelistic about Linux to the point of modding down people who don't join in with their pitchforks.
"Derp de derp."
But did you notice how none of the computers rebooted? That ought to silence people who say Windows isn't fault-tolerant!
Rimshot!
What OS defines me as a person?
You would think Microsoft could get someone better than Robert Scoble. He sounds like a self-important pretenious asshole.
Who are we?
"SCO!!!!!"
What are we?
"Lawyers!!!!"
What are we gonna do?
"Sue people's asses off!!!"
When are we gonna do it?
"Now!!!!"
Are we gonna win?
"No!!!!!"
(shit, do you think they'll still pay us?)
this is moderated off topic because the moderators are clueless... it's funny, trust me
Mozilla Firebird (Phoenix) has a "Flash click to play" extension. I used to not install the Flash plugin in a Mozilla browser and just switch to IE when I actually wanted flash, but now I get a blank box that says "flash click to play...". Sweet.
Does CrazyBrowser or Opera do something similar?
The difference here is the Evangelions in question are NOT good things fighting to save humanity, but crush it in global metacorporationalism.
I remember during the Team OS/2 vs. ClubWin wars on USENET there was a drive within Microsoft to rename the position to "Technical Advocate". It failed because some product managers (not project managers) argued that "advocate" wasn't an agressive enough term. Sigh.
By and large though, Microsoft evangelists tend to be nice people (like Scoble, who used to organize the Fawcette industry conferences for a long time). Much different from sales drones and even most enterprise support reps.
Even Linux Zealot switched to using macs,w f
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allencastro/switch.s
There is no god
Mods need to find out what they're modding down. That was good stuff!
Or so this evangelist hopes... In favor of SVG, an open XML W3C spec that doesn't require expensive tools to create. Mozilla sorta supports it now and should have much better support in the future. Even though SVG isn't terribly popular yet, I already see far far more database-driven content than I do with flash since XML is pretty easy to manipulate and generate.
I wonder if Microsoft understands how motivating it is when people to learn it regards them as pawns? In the last couple years Microsoft has succeeded in motivating me to develop software for the Palm OS, and now for OS X...
It is moderated off topic because the vast, vast majority of readers will have no clue what this means, and this includes myself. This is Slashdot, an English language site. I don't care how funny a post is, if I can't understand it, or have any other reason not to want to see it, I want it moderated so it doesn't show up. When I'm feeling couragous, then I'll adjust the threshold.
Way to go mods!
P.S.: If the post is in fact funny, someone could get some quick karma by translating it for us non-enlightened linguists.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I worked as an evangelist for Novell, and, while I think Mr. Plamondon makes some good points, I agree with Micah Alpern that war analogies aren't necessarily the right ones. Also, I would think Mr. Plamondon would be more marketing-savvy than to refer to people that are helping him as "pawns". Chess analogy or not, it's not exactly a postitive signal to be sending out to people doing your work for you. :)
One very good point he makes is the idea of empowering other people to create materials about the technology you are evangelizing. It was amazing to me that I could get a lot of high quality help out of people for just a little public recognition, or some free software, or a nice gadget. People like to feel like they are helping with things that they feel passionately about. Heck, that's one of the reasons why the Linux movement has done so well, since just about anyone can dive in and start contributing in some way.
The problem I always experienced was from internal groups who were afraid of losing control of the corporate image. For example, we talked a lot about providing open forums and community sites for end users and consultants to share their solutions. This ended up being a series of communities we called CoolSolutions. But the actual code and solutions that people wrote went through a gauntlet of legal and marketing people, and it really wasn't an "open" community, it was all carefully screened.
The book "The Cluetrain Manifesto" talks a lot about these issues with large companies afraid to give up control. I think the right thing to do is for companies to loosly try to encourage an "ecosystem" around their technologies that then becomes self supporting. In this sense, they are practicing biomimicry in the form of crop diversity. You could think of internal PR and marketing departments as monocrops that are very susceptible to a single bad link, such as a sucky chief marketing officer. Diversity is good, and a product evangelism is one role that can encourage corporate "crop" diversity.
As an aside, I'm currently looking for a job. So if anyone in management read this and said, "product evangelists? I've gotta get me one of those!", then you can get to my resume here. or e-mail me at twid @ projectjellybean.com. I don't smell, I brush my teeth several times a day, I have no open oozing wounds, and I'm great fun at parties.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
when you point out the illiteracy of an article? This guy is a purported author, but he can't seem to grasp simple grammar. His concepts are sound for what could be an entertaining book, if his proofreaders don't shoot him first.
everyone is saying that this is really funny, can someone please explain it to me? thanx
--clueless guy
I think of platforms not as competing against each other, but competing to be a solution. More often than not, that means a solution with multiple answers that can include Microsoft, OSS, and proprietary Unix is the same breath.
Iâ(TM)m too old for evangelism. I gave up the ghost when I sold my A4000 and bought a P100.
Right, because we all know this type of thing is never done by companies like Apple, Borland, IBM, Sun, Cisco, etc. Or (heavens forbid) people who advocate open source software. At least company wars are fought in level fields - the "good vs. evil" mentality that permeates most open source zealots is downright cynical and pathetic at best.
(btw, spare me the "m$ is a monopoly so teh [sic] rules are difrereent [sic] with them" line)
Well, specifically: the modern concept of Robin Hood is evil.
Supposedly, Robin Hood took money taken from the citizens in compulsory taxes, & returned it to the taxpayers. This is a perfectly moral act.
However, in modern parlance, Robin Hood 'stole from the rich, and gave to the poor'. This is immoral, & is no different to stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
Well I suppose this was written by an ex-Microsoft employee so is understandable, but it ignores the negative aspects for the consumer of what you must do to win the competing platform wars.
For example compare these two quotes:
"Why Evangelise Technologies?
To make money â" lots of money. Establishing its proprietary technologies as industry standards has been the basis of Microsoftâ(TM)s success from its first day. How the control of industry standards can result in phenomenal wealth, will be addressed later in this book."
"We Win if They Win
No one likes being thought of as a pawn in someone elseâ(TM)s struggle â" and theyâ(TM)re right. The may be pawns, but they are really important pawns, and our future rests on their decisions. We win their allegiance by really, truly, seriously doing our very best to help them succeed.
Does anybody else see the mutual inconsistancy of these two postitions? That the software that would "help them suceed" should be based on open standards (so that many people could develop backward compatible solutions and the best be chosen with no lock in) would not be the ones that "made money, lots of money".
Can anyone say doublethink?
is to open up your client software. That way you get your code ported to more platforms than you can count... for free.
It's difficult for a company that only really supports one platform to compete against s/w that's in widespread use everywhere.
Opening up netscape five years earlier would have killed IE before it even got started. Real may understand this now, I wonder if Macromedia does yet.
insightful
It's the opening song to the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I wouldn't consider this too offtopic, since a number of the philosophical threads addressed in NGE can be applied to Microsoft's monopolistic business practices.
Do a Google for Neon Genesis Evangelion for a synopsis.
Adding MacroMedia to the list would be no surprise
The suprise is that Macromedia added themselves to Microsoft's list.
Everyone installed Flash because it was a neat-o animation tool. Nobody expected it to become a dev platform like VB and Java. Macromedia has been working very quiety to translate their 98% install rate into a position of strategic control, and now we get to worry about viruses, security holes, corporate deployment and so on from a completely unexpected vector.
1. "This is another part of the evil plan by an evil company to use its evil monopoly for world domination."
2. "This is not new. Apple/BSD/ has done this for years. Another example of M$ just copying others and having no innovation."
3. "This is the end. As soon as customers hear about this, they will en masse migrate away and Bill will be a pauper by next year."
4. "(-1, Troll) Look, this is another example of how the great lord Bill is making things better for all of us!"
Mmmm.. Donuts
??? Its the theme song for Neo Genesis Evangelion. I don't get it. My Nippon-go is a little rusty though so maybe I'm missing something.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
for a second i thought we where going to have a non-Microsoft bashing day, thank goodness this story came up, i was beginning to worry about our reputation.
if(story.indexOf("microsoft")!=-1){cursingMsCom
really, what "technologies" have they developed, other than the animated paper clip. they buy, beg, borrow, or hell, just steal whatever they need. and never in their technological evangelism, is there any notion of the BETTER technology winning. in fact, most of theirs that won, isn't even close.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
But you will be surprised by how many sites have Flash on their homepage, and then give no way to bypass that *cursed* page. I don't have flash, use Opera w/o Java, and many times I see NOTHING on the homepage. No links to get into the site for some info - try http:///www.wilddivine.com (only if you have no flash and use Opera !!) There aren't ANY links on the page, and many times even Google cannot give you a direct link. What terrible site designs ....
What gets me is the Flashy flash just for the sake of flashing Flash ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I don't get it. The sole reason Macromedia is the size it is, is simply because Windows has no option to permanently refuse a web download.
In the old days, when you hit a site that has flash content, and you don't have it installed, it would try to install Flash. The dialog box has no option to permanently refuse Flash, so sooner or later everybody just gives in.
This policy allowed Macr to reach critical mass. Now brosers ship with Flash. Now you're telling me Microsoft is against Macr?
From the article: An unconscious decision is ideal, from the platform vendorâ(TM)s perspective. When ISVs support a Microsoft platform without even realizing that they have made a decision, and rejected any alternatives, then we have truly won that platform battle.
The truth - the almost sinister truth - of that statement grips me at my soul.
The trick is that folks think they're making a choice to purchase a merely single item, be it a CD, and DVD, a software package, a computer, a vehicle, or a politician (with a vote or literally with a breifcase of money). The reson this is a trick is that by making that choice, the purchaser endorses the entire chain of policies and events that bring that product to the shelf. You're literally saying, "whatever happened to get this product in my hot little hands, it's okay by me because the price is right.
Until I read that line above, I hadn't thought of the entire hegemony that lurked behind a price sticker with the kind of laser precision that the author used to word it. And I always thought I was a reasonably self-aware guy. HOLY SHIT. His side won, and I didn't even realize I was in a battle.
I'm making that line my sig. Nothing woke me up with quite the same jolt that it did. Maybe I'm just dumber than I thought I am. Is it just me?
GMFTatsujin
This is what happens when Ballmer gets down with his bad self!
I have to admit that I learned a lot from this chapter. I have always wondered about the fact that in university the marketing class I took as some enrichment for my comp sci degree was by far the most useful class I took. Now I know that there was even more basic knowledge missing. Expect to see my name in headlines in a few years :-)
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Why not just get a supported replacement?
It would cost no more than a large pizza.
It would cost much less than your next series of Microsoft upgrades.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So's the old IBM - it's just that the results are dissimilar...
SWF is an open file format; while the Flash application itself may not be open source, its ultimate product can be read and produced by open source applications.
This gives Flash, or at least the SWF format, some serious leverage.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Replying to known M$ shill, but anyway:
Open Source => shared knowledge => scientific method.
Proprietary Source => secret knowledge => sacred priesthood.
I know which I prefer, and it ain't the wierdos in Hubbardian robes over at M$.
When you say that they "produce most of their products for the Macintosh" do you mean that they sell most copies on the Macintosh? Or that they get most of their profit from the Macintosh?
If so, then I admit not only surprise, but more than a tinge of incredulity. If, OTOH, what you meant was that they also produce a version for the Macintosh of most of the software that they produce for the PC, then yes, that's no surprise.
The thing is...
When the MS OS was first starting up, MS had all it could do to build an OS. Once that was largely done, they turned their attention to Word Processors. Then to spreadsheets. During this period they did their level best to build the highest quality software on the market. I didn't think that they always succeeded, but they sure tried. During this period they put most of their effort into high margin software for the Mac, getting the hang of guis, etc.
Then they came out with Win95. Shortly after that they ported Excel from the Mac to Windows (maybe this was during the WFG or the W3.1 days...it sure wasn't DOS!). At this point there were a lot of well established companies running programs on the MS OS. MS took them one by one. It took advantage of undocumented features in the OS, it changed the OS so competitors programs crashed. Etc. Finally it had marginalized all the competing word processors and spreadsheets. (I'm sure it was Win95 or Win98 by this time.) At this point it started to swallow the utility companies, and the tool builders. This proved more difficult, but it wasn't as important because most of the profit was in the office suites...at least after MS had acquired it's effective monopoly.
This is only good business is cartel capitalism is good business. Many people call it being an abusive monopoly.
Now the MS system is on over 80% of the desktops. That means that if you build a program, you can ammortize it over 5 times as many users on the MS side as on the Mac side. And THAT means that almost all the profit is on the MS side. So if MS shoves you out of that market...you are not only marginalized, you also have your main sources of profit removed.
I'm not sure at all that Macromedia is invulnerable to this attack.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Are you fucking outta your mind?! You're a troll and supposed to hate anime!
You ass are giving us real trolls a bad image!
-- Let's go nucular!
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
To paraphrase the Dixie Chicks, I'm ashamed to be from the same country as these folks. In the kind of country I'd wish to live in, people would have PERSONAL HONOR and would INSTANTLY RESIGN when they first become aware their company was pursuing a policy like this. They'd quickly get a reputation as assholes and crooks, and people wouldn't want to deal with them. It even says -- explicitly -- that the motivation for this behavior is not just money, but very large amounts of money. They are not just greedy; they are deliberately making the decision to sacrifice the common good for their own selfish ends.
What makes me really sad is not that there are a few evil people in the world. What makes me sad is that this is socially acceptable here in the U.S. Enough people have bought into the capitalistic bullshit lie of winning at any cost that these people may have a relatively low level of awareness that what they are doing is morally wrong. Worse, two people that I can think of who I otherwise respect as honorable men -- my dad and the pastor of my church -- both think that Microsoft has a bold vision that is to be emulated and/or has done lots of good for the country overall. I can't help but conclude, since these are genuinely good men otherwise, that their culture has fed them a lie.
Apparently deliberately-antisocial corporate greed is OK and it's OK to use anti-competitive practices to crush your enemies instead of competing fairly by making a good product. And apparently I'm the only one in the US who thinks otherwise.
OK, I know I've said nothing new here. I'm done venting. For now.
GO!!!!!!
From the footnotes: ...
*snip*
[2] Recently, our competitors have added âoepoliticalâ to this list. Political actions result in law, which is backed up by force. They may come to regret educating us of the power of political means. */snip*
I guess this means that MS has decided to start playing the political game wich it's own panache now. I believe the recent settlement with the government is only outcome #1 we'll see from this new activity. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some legislation brewing that would grant them some type of legalized monopoly. After all, if he who pays the piper calls the tune MS is in a position to control the Congressional Playlist for many years to come
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
Your history is a bit off. Microsoft Office really became the office leader when Windows 95 shipped - this was mainly because WordPerfect (the leading non-MS word processor before then) was very slow to ship a Windows 95 version. Had PerfectOffice for Win 95 come out on August 24 (it's pathetic that I remember that date), it might well have been a different story.
sulli
RTFJ.
Nice of you to focus on the vitriol and totally ignore the true point of that post -- stop wasting energy running wherever mr bill points, let OSS set its own path.
I suppose that makes you an unknown Lunix shill, ya?
If?
I can't see any "If" in this.
Flash is (for most people) a browser plug in. It is totally at the mercy of the browser.
Somewhere on the Microsoft campus near sub-level 27 the "Steering Committee for Things We Need to Crush under our Boots" is meeting.
Hundreds of megabytes of PowerPoint presentations will be displayed, doughnuts and espresso will disappear like wild leaves that before the wild hurricane fly. And in the end, the fate of MacroMedia will be decided by one Excel spreadsheet, displayed with the new MakeEmotionallyComfortingHolographicImage Wizard.
That graph will show the convergence of three metrics:
1) The value of owning Macromedia flash.
2) The perceived cost of implementing an inferior equivalent as IE's new default âoeplayer.â
3) The damage to Bill's feelings of omniscience by not owning Flash [measured in billions].
I've seen hundreds of database driven Flash sites. It's fairly simple to do.
I agree that Flash is evil, but that doesn't justify skewing facts.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
"cooperate with the competition"
What kind of socialist doublethink is that?
If they are the COMPETITION they goal is to make sales at your expense. There is no "peaceful co-existence" in this situation. You either combat them headon, combat them in a more subtle manner, or simply just file for bankruptcy.
NT has been marketed as a Unix killer for longer than you've likely been computing.
Any other OS vendor is right to treat Microsoft as the enemy. The customer is either going to buy your product or theirs. There is no middle ground.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
- If someone assume user has software X for their business then software X is a platform.
- If software X is a platform, then it is a competitor.
- Defeating a competitor is making sure it gets no share of the business.
The rest is a brief overview of how they proceed. Basically they don't do the job themselves. They convince others, especially software developpers, to do it for them. This works best when the others are not aware of the alternatives and consequences of their choices. When they get enough people working their way, a critical mass is achieved and Microsoft's platform becomes an unavoidable standard.This is extremely efficient because of the number of people they can get working for their goal without having them on the payroll.
The power of this article is not in the novelty of the story, it is in illuminating how the whole thing works.
yes, windows outshines Linux in that it supports more commercial hardware and that most companies only make drivers for windows.
By commercial hardware, I assume you mean components and peripherals which are compatible with what we know as the "IBM PC". In terms of platforms supported, I think you will find that Linux runs on a far greater variety than does Microsoft Windows. Think SPARC, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Note that the previous poster pointed out that they have crushed companies that tried to *cooperate* with them, not just competitors (Wal-Mart generally doesn't do that). Also note the difficulties MS has had with their smart-phone producer of the week and EA. I assume the executives of those companies aren't dirty linux hippies.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
After reading Micah's page, I wonder, "why did Microsoft come along and have to fuck things up for the rest of us?"
Bastards.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Evangelion == Worlds best troll.
It's true, people who whatched this can have their minds warped beyond belief. Ive just recovered from my "experiance" of it 6 months ago.
Unless you LIKE seeing a 14 yo kid getting mentally raped then you shold stop feeding the trolls immediatley.
Lesse... Microsoft started out by blackmailing it's first customer and then using the blackmail money to fund product development for that customer's competition.
Then it went on to defraud IBM.
When you can come up with nice anecdotes like that for Apple, Borland, Sun & Cisco then you won't be just another raving moron and microsoft corporate toadie.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The SWF specification.
I'm fairly sure there's an open source viewer and some open source creation tools. I've read about some on-the-fly generated SWF like for charts and graphs. The links should on the site somewhere.
This is one of those things I'll figure I'll get around to playing with someday.
Using the war analogy is a way of avoiding critique. How can you argue with war?
"This is war! You just don't understand. We'll talk when you understand that this is war. Never mind that I'm a pompous ass."
The available options and opportunity for real dialog are diminished when you use the war analogy. All positions but yours are ludicrous.
(I only know 'cause I use this technique all the time. But I refrain from war and nazi comparisons. Too gauche!)
Saturday Night, Redmond Washington. Microsoft Exec: Yes!! Amen! I feel his spirit in me!! You know who I'm talking about. Who'm I talking about?? Microsoft employees: Bill! Exec: Say it again!! MS Drones: BILL!! Exec: Amen, Brothers and Sisters, Amen. Tonight I'm gonna preach from the book of Market Strategies. Chapter 6, Verse 12 Exec: And I saw, and behold a white Aeron chair and he that sat on him had the code; and a laywers was given unto him: and he went forth to conquer. Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, ye Leviathian of blue, shall use my code no longer, for have violated the oath set upon thee, and shall hence forth give unto repentance of 3 billion coins of silver...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
A better analogy would be a chain reaction, such as nuclear fission where a single neutron can cause fission which creates two neutrons etc. So find the right person/website (Uranium 235 vs 238) and fire a neutron at it (marketing, free stuff) and watch it do you job for you. However talking about nuclear reactions may put off some of the readers.
uhm- riiiiight
I don't like the term "evangelism" either-
It's just marketing, everyone does it; of course everyone wants to be on top; yadda yadda yadda
"tactics"- whatever-
Witness Steve Jobs
And the Linux community at large is full of the most "evangelists" I've *ever* seen.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
haha get a grip man, SVG has had as much impact on the developer community as VRML or MTS
oh and SWF is an Open format, sure it isnt W3C but then neither is this site, or CNN or Google or CNET or ZDnet or BBC.....
standards hahah
The tone of the "first chapter" linked is astonishingly rude. It seems like the thinking were from a mindscape of cubic boulders splatted murky red with blood, not unlike the ending levels of original Doom. If this speaks of mentality inside Microsoft, that company definitely is the temple (and on this millennia, the memorial) of the idea of self-justificating greed of the 1980's. And in the networked (in social and organizational sense) world of today, it is quite alone waving that ugly flag.
Microsoft will be truly lost, not by getting bankrupt or marginalized or anything, but by simply being left as one of the group of players on the software field. That is the loss of its central philosophy, that there could "only be one". Is it not so?
--
On totally other news, it is imminent now that free software will prevail, and must start to prepare to deliver its promise. A lot of infrastructure must be invented in order to best utilize the power of shared development. Just think of all of those organizations from Münich and Turku to the enlightened countries of South America, asking for preparation, development and upkeep of their systems... It can be left to happen, or it can be planned for.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.
They have been convicted of doing just that. Everybody knows that.
Just off the top off my head. I'd Google some more, but I really don't have the time to enlighten you further.
then you won't be just another raving moron and microsoft corporate toadie
"Raving moron"? Well now, that hurts. I guess I'll have to call you... let's see... hmmm... a brain-dead zealot. Or maybe a slobbering fanboy? I wonder what rhymes with "subject has head up his ass"... hmmm...
i think spyware and verisigns digital signing has everything to thank Microsoft.com for too
We had ESR who fits in the same sentences gun and zen and assimilates Gandhi sayings and Dod escalation plans.
Now this nuts confuses war, marketting and evangelism. Sigh!
is pointless and incredibly gay.
What they and others do is far beyond competition, much less 'healthy' or 'normal.'
They're coasting on the fact that once you achieve a certain critical mass, you get god-mode in the system. For individuals that condition tends not to last, as they either get booted from their company once things get big, or the novelty wears off and they decide to try it all over again. But for corporations, that's a sustainable state, which turns them into fiscal black holes that swallow everything visible to them.
I've always thought that communism looked good on paper, but just doesn't scale well beyond a few thousand people. So are we seeing a similar limitation with capitalism? Or is Wally World really just so clearly superior to anything else with a cash register?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Things are changing quite a lot in the Mac community. With Mac OS X, there are a lot of fairly new Mac users who aren't necessarily wedded to every dot and comma of the old OS. I'm one, for example. (I hope you wouldn't find me pompous, elitist, or arrogant, but that's not for me to judge :) I've fairly broad experience of platforms before 'going Mac' a couple of year ago; there's a lot I love about current Macs (and just a few things I hate). I'm happy to talk about the good stuff, because I find that a lot of PC users simply don't know that things can be different. (That probably doesn't apply to many Slashdotters, of course.) But I try to be honest rather than rabid about it.
I don't know how representative I am of current Mac users, but I suspect that the closed-minded arrogant ones are a smaller proportion than they were 2 or 3 years ago.
(Oh, and what's wrong with being elitist, anyway? When you know just how good things can be, doesn't having to use crap give you pain, whether it's Windows software, web sites, browsers, closed-source software, proprietary data formats, low-quality audio, or whatever? We can all get rabid about something...)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
follow the links
t p://www.microsoft.com/resources/spot/default.ms px
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8956
&
ht
"None of this shit works" W.Shatner
If your answer to my question is "zero", then the answer to your question is "no." Pimple cream doesn't grow on trees, after all.
No, by saying they "produce most of their products for the Macintosh," he meant that Macromedia produces a version of most of their products for the Macintosh.
Mod point free since 2001
evangelism indeed...I can practically see all the microsoft employees chanting and kneeling at bill's feet while Ballmer sacrifices a machine running WinXP...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Top tip of the day: Don't start of your tract by mis-quoting influential thinkers. Quoting it correctly doesn't prove you've understood it, but mis-quoting it removes all doubt. Clausewitz was commenting on 'politics' not 'policy' and his point was that war was an extension of politics where politics by other means had failed, and that war has no inherent purpose beyond it.
insightful
Or it could be a Troll, in which case it should be modded down. But of course, that would either prove the point that SlashDotters mod down those who disagree with them, or prove the point that Trolls use the fact that they get modded down to justify more trolling.
I've seen Macromedia presentations touting the amazing compression qualities of Flash, using uncompressed AVI file sizes as a comparison instead of comparing to other modern codecs.
Not long after Flash 6 (MX) came out, there were issues with video and audio sync for files over 3MB, preventing me from using long clips at higher qualities. Have these been solved?
Bleh!
"Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?"
no.
Absolutly not. They did it by firing unionized people, defing a work week to 28 hours, except for insurance purposes, they did it by red penciling companies, and demanding they use cheaper manufacturers(read, 2 cent an hour workers).
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First: Remember that the best defence is a good offense..
.net stuff - it's still m$ 0wned)
Developer-specific:
Open Source should make sure to set de-facto standards - release early, release often.
Define your data formats in something well-known like csv, sexp or xml so other open source programs can make use of them. Better yet, use a relational database backend with a public schema of views. It'll make most development easier, and all MS's best products do that, anyway. It's great (very convenient) for business use, and easy given the existence of postgres,mysql, sapdb sqllite, etc, etc.
At the same time, don't get too hung up on data format standards - MS has shown that so long as your next version reads them, that's good enough, your next version doesn't have to use the same data format as its native format, so long as it can read the old format.
MS has shown that what matters is to get a product out there, capturing mindshare - once a user has psychologically committed to your product, they'll probably stick with it, even if your next version is a ground-up rewrite so that it actually works. And if you release for windows, code to libSDL+OpenGL for games, and use cygwin, qt or gtk for utilities. NEVER use the Win32/.net directly API for new applications, even via WINE or Mono - that's one of the "proprietary standards" the chapter excerpt talks about (don't beleive the ECMA-standardisation
For general evangelism to non-technical audiences
Make sure that your desktop runs a window manager with a really snazzy theme and some flashy applications (xmms...) when anyone drops by. Current Linux WMs can outclass WinXP in flashiness stakes. Contrary to popular opinions, consistency doesn't seem to matter a great deal - if the program is flashy enough, it might be a consistency nightmare, but will impress the yokels (don't call them yokels). It doesn't hurt to have a speech synthesis program e.g. festival going to read the subject lines of incoming mails, or some other geek-gimmick. Appearance is everything to the non-geek (and geekiness is domain-specific, a DIY geek who sees straight through gimmicky power tools won't necessarily see through flashy computer GUI gimmicks)
Try not to get all philisophical on I.P. issues. Stick to "you have the right to change it or ask/pay someone other than the original manufacturer to change it for you. Like taking your car to a garage.". Anything more complex doesn't work for MS, it won't work for you. Yes, you may think I.P. is an absurdity. But most people are keyword-scanners. The message they'll get is that you're "anti-property". Yes, information is non-scarce and therefore you should't mindlessly apply scarcity-based property laws to it, yes, the very idea of information as property runs counter to the scientific method, but boring them by droning on about it won't help (I just droned on about it, and you damn-near switched-off, didn't you?)
Choice of masters is not freedom.
give me a break. you've chosen to use a browser config that's in a very small minority, chosen to not use a plugin that's extremely common, and yet you complain that you can't view certain sites? that's like running your system in 640x480 at 256 colors and complaining that sites are "too big". the problem is not in the links on that site. the problem is that your box is not up to spec.
And by "conviction", that means it's obviously true? Kind of like when KKK members went free because the courts were going with popular opinion at the time. Idiot.
"cooperate with the competition"
What kind of socialist doublethink is that?
If they are the COMPETITION they goal is to make sales at your expense. There is no "peaceful co-existence" in this situation. You either combat them headon, combat them in a more subtle manner, or simply just file for bankruptcy.
A large company can "cooperate" with a smaller one in such a way as to destroy them (e.g. licensing a technology, then "embrace and extend"-ing). Two competitors can work together against a third (e.g. airline marketing agreements). A dominant company may prop up a small competitor to avoid being considered a monopoly. Competing companies may work together on mutually beneficial projects, each thinking that they're getting the lion's share of the benefits. And so on.
"Socialist doublethink"? Ha! Grow up, kid.
The question here may seem simple, but it is not. The point of competition is ultimately to provide the best services to the consumer (this is not some sort of silly morality tale; Ayn Rand is an idiot). So if the really big Super-Mega-Lo-Marts provide better serivces to the consumer, but choke out competition, which is really better? On the one hand, competition creates Mega-Lo-Marts, but on the other, those choke out competitors.
Capitalist competition is like evolution. Humans, for that matter, are a lot like Wal-Marts; we became who we are by competition, but now we have a vested interest in staying on top by eliminating healthy competition. Were some species to be about to reach a competitive level of intelligence (or, for that matter, carnivorous predation like wolves, lions, tigers, and other animals we've largely wiped out) we would devote ourselves to utterly eliminating that threat.
So evolution, and capitalism, is to some degree self-defeating; once a competitor reaches the point where he can eliminate the game that led to his success, he can, in essence, kick away the ladders and burn the bridges to his success so that no others can approach his position.
Is this healthy? Not for the competition, and probably not for the leader, either. Faced without competition, Wal-Mart, and, according to many science fiction writers and philosophers, human civilization, will stagnate, devoid of any incentive for self-improvement, risk, or adventure .
Unfortunately, I don't really see an answer to this; socialism and communism both tend to eliminate the competition from the get-go, and any system that limits the whole-hearted competition between the leader and the species or businesses attempting to overtake him limits the value of the competition that does take place.
I'll have to sleep on it.
thats why the pacific is called the ring of fire, and not the atlantic.
I've bee through worse, the funny thing about that clip, it looks like they did the wrong thing. I'm not sure where they where all going, bit I bet it was a doorway, which is usually a mistake.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What seems to annoy people is the way they don't innovate. They see something popular and then think "we'll have you", they make an alternative and try to find a way of slipping it into the OS by default.
a world in progress...
Scummy, but as long as people keep shopping there, this is normal competition. Cut costs as much as you can, drive out competitors, do whatever has to be done...as long as the customers don't care, the owners won't either.
Sick Sad World. But that's just the way it is.
* Independent software vendors (ISVs[4]) assume the presence of Windows on the consumerâ(TM)s PC.
vs.An electric toaster supports the American electricity standard if
* Its plug can fit into the American-standard electrical outlet, and...
How can anybody seriously compare this kind of free-to-implement, non-trade-secret, properly documented standard with what MS does?
Standards organisations define standards, companies implement them. That way you get this thing called competition that's quite popular with economists.
this is slashdot you insenseteve clod
we dont read the artical and we dont need grammer. just bashing micro$oft is all this is about
I would argue that Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy put things in "good vs. evil" terms as well, not just the open source people.
And I believe it was Microsoft that officially called Linux "un-American", which I think was meant to connote evil, though many probably considered it an unintended compliment.
I guess everyone does whatever they can to win.
Check out how many cars are available today. That's not even counting trucks and motorcycles.
It is only MS that believes that THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.
MS was given a monopoly when IBM licensed MS-DOS for their PC.
MS has managed to leverage that monopoly into the empire it controls now.
MS knows that if they ever lose that monopoly, they lose their profit margins. There will be no more stock option millionaires.
So MS fights any other possible competition using any legal (and many illegal) means possible.
Evangelism isn't war.
The computer industry isn't a war.
MS only sees things in this fashion because MS feels the need to maintain its monopoly.
And that belief is hammered into their employee's minds over and over and over.
When you talk about "competition", you are talking about taking away their retirement.
Or their house.
Or their car.
And so forth.
Of course they do. The problem is that they're not good, and Microsoft is not evil.
You don't think Microsoft shipping the flash plugin with windows (95 and 98 had it by default, not sure about later versions) had anything to do with it?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Only on slashdot would this be considered insightful. We cannot hide behind the idea that american corporations always play rough. There is playing rough, and then there is dirty pool. There is a distinction. If the big three automakers make exclusive deals with steelmakers so no one else making cars can buy steel, that is dirty pool. If Standard Oil buys all the barrels so no one else can, it is dirty pool. If Coca Cola says you can't sell Pepsi if you sell Coke, it is dirty pool. If Microsoft tells computer makers they can only ship their product, it is dirty pool.
In Microsoft's case, they are a declared monopoly which means that even stricter rules than usual apply to them. They have blatantly broken their agreements with the US DOJ, required computer makers to pay them a tax on all computers made, disallowed any customization of those computers at the software level by said manufacturers, and tied (to date) a web browser, a media player and a chat client so deeply into the innards of their operating system that they cannot be extracted without severe hacking. These are the documenteed facts in evidence. They are not even in dispute, not even by Microsoft, and to me, to much of the world, and to several judges represent a business practice of tampering with the competition. They have been trying for the past several years to come up with a replacement for the internet which they will solely control, computers which only run Windows, and to take over the music, movie and entertainment industries. What is normal about that?
Normal competition is trying to come up with better products, services, and prices which make customers want to use your products. Microsoft has instead been going the route of forcing consumers to buy their product and trying to make it impossible for anyone to market anything else. They even try to pressure companies into not supporting competing operating systems with drivers, and recently have been trying to convince executives to fire people for installing Linux.
If MS does this (and they may indeed), this is merely business as usual among many of these corporations. Corporate America is not a day-care facility; companies can and do play hardball. The question is not "does MS want to help or hurt the competition" but rather "did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.
I will answer that question with a resounding yes. The integration of IE and the scripting host are the number one cause of security problems and viruses in Windows. Their decision to release patches which deliberately break major applications (like Lotus Notes and Domino, and RealPlayer) damages consumers. Their non-published APIs lead to sloppy coding of applications which again leads to instability. The way they "market" their products, by forcing them down people's throats, hurts healthy competition, and when you hurt competition you create a scenario in which there is less pressure to create a decent product which will truly benefit people. Products you have to buy tend to suck very much. That is why the process of doing your taxes gets worse every year and not better.
There is a big difference between putting the hurt on your competitors (in a sporting way) and stifling competition altogether. Microsoft is incapable of doing the former so they focus on the latter. Rather than compete in the marketplace, they make it practically impossible to compete with them. As for this other...
Wal-Mart destroyed the competition. And, yes, some say Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?
I like Wal-Mart. I shop there because it is cheap and it is open when I am awake. I can also usually buy everything I need at Wal-Mart and Fry's respectively. If something breaks (or does not work) from Wal-Mart or Fry's I can take it right back to the store and get my money back or something that d
Here is a quick gude, to disableing Flash in IE.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Indeed you should also be modded up as well.
There are ways to escape monopolies in evolution and in business and those are paradigm shifts, where something very new and different comes along and breaks your business or evolutionary niche. Not competing for your niche, but making the niche obsolete.
For Microsoft one of those things could be true artificial intelligence, which IMHO requires a different way of thinking about computers, considering an intelligent machine will have ways of understanding and changing its own source code to the users desires, what need for Windows Upgrades then?
With regards to human life I think that there are a few disruptive technologies coming along such as germ line genetic engineering, that will be desored to make our kids happier or prettier, that may be eventually used for other purposes that disrupt our stagnant humanity.
So my answer fund more blue sky projects by the government and try to break the business niches!
I use the big 2 browsers, and Flash does more than anything else to make web browsing difficult. There is no reason for it except for uses like online games.
The problem is not in our state of the art boxes, it is in the web masters who are dumb enough to "Flashlock" their site: they are basically hanging a sign on the front of the site "This sucks, stay out". Sort of like a grocery store that is proud that it has turds on the entry mat.
I know which I prefer, and it ain't the wierdos in Hubbardian robes over at M$.
Too right. I have been wondering about the possible links between the Church of Scientology and Microsoft. True Executive Software made the best candidate for inclusion in Win2k (Diskkeeper) and it was something MS needed anyway. BUt their tactics are very much right out of the CoS playbook...
Uh, no. The guys with the pitchforks are from BSD. We're the ones in the tux with the those cool sun glasses and funny accents who say thinks like "I am going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson" before we mod them down...
I would like to add a corollary. Although I'm clearly biased--my
Because, ladies and gentlemen, if your development and sales occur only on Windows while you flock and jeer at Apple, you are, in fact, an excellent choice for Microsoft to produce a competing product of their own, with the advantages of pre-install and seamless integration. Whereas, if you have support for more than one platform, even if Microsoft kills you on Windows, you still have a market on the Mac. If you are exclusively on Windows, and Microsoft kills you on Windows, you have nothing. Maybe they purchased your IP; or maybe they developed it on their own. Listening, AutoCAD?
And really, for Microsoft to keep growing, which any good corporation should desire to do, they will expand to every area of software sales that they can--now they are targeting the software markets with the highest margins, but that's only because they offer the best return on investment. Once those areas have been dominated, Microsoft is sure to go after even the more obscure, boutique markets; they will become the GE of software, selling in all markets from lightbulbs to jet engines.
--
$tar -xvf
The web is about content, not design. The web should be available to all browsers, including Opera, Links, Mozilla, w3m, Internet Explorer, netrik, Konqueror and so on.
It's not the box that should meet sepcs, it's the webpage. It's about seperating content from presentation.
Flash is a great medium, but has nothing to do on the web.
Micah Alpern raises some good points about MS's attention to vector based ui's. I think though that he's completely offbase when saying that Macromedia's announcement of Royal will ilicit any response from Redmond.
Flash won't be a threat to Microsoft as a "full platform". The primary reason is that Macromedia is great at marketing their products - but architecutally their product line lacks consistancy of vision and execution. Flash for example has, over the past three versions proved time and time again that it lacks a reliable, and easy to use programming environment, an absolute necessity for building truly sophisticated ui's and functionality.
Don't get me wrong - there is some amazing flash work out there. Kudo's to the design/developers that were able to produce such things. The road to such accomplishments however is frought with errors, head scratching and mysteries.
This is primarily because Macromedia seems to think that it's OK to produce API level functions that don't behave as expected so long as they are documented. See Macromedia 'Technotes' for further ammo er info. I think somewhere along the way someone at Macromedia misread "Test and Deploy" as "Deploy and Test". Most have to do with I/O such as load movie, getUrl, and loadVariables. Solid multi source I/O is an absolute necessity for building fully featured "rich client" applications. JavaScript is also not an acceptable language for building real applications. Especailly Macromedia's implementation which has a very loose object based approach to dealing with items in the movie. Flash is also slow. On machines who are not as "swift" as their high speed grand children - high complexity movies are sluggish and don't respond well.
What this all comes down to is the fact that from a technology perspective, Macromedia lacks a coherent architecture for accomplishing complex tasks that will be required to build "Royale" and there is a good chance that developers first taste of Royale will be a bitter one.
Don't worry about it, you're not missing much. They're mildly amusing, but that's about it.
I thought WalMart destroyed company after company....
I'd have to say Mozilla is more against Macromedia, for whatever reason. They also don't seem to like Java. At least now it is a little easier to install the plugins than it used to be, but that could be a simple matter of practice.
And the same justice system acquitted OJ Simpson of murdering his ex-wife.
If MS does this (and they may indeed), this is merely business as usual among many of these corporations. Corporate America is not a day-care facility; companies can and do play hardball
I don't consider making your competitors product appear to be broken to the customer (ala DR-DOS, OS/2, and more recently Opera) "playing hardball". (In polite company) I call that dirty underhanded tricks.
And exclusive licenses with the hardware manufacturers, such that they are not allowed to sell computers with any competitors product (ala BeOS) lest they not be able to sell MS products, goes well beyond hardball IMHO.
If Microsoft had gotten where they are by honestly selling a better product and treating their customers right, I wouldn't feel nearly as bad about their having a monopoly. Instead they sold a crappy product (they even admitted that Windows 95 had over 3000 bugs in it) and ran all of their competition out of business using any devious means possible. And now that they have that monopoly "leverage" it to extract every dime possible out of their customers. If I had sold a product that had 3000 bugs in it, I would have been so embarrased that I would have sent all of my customers an upgrade for free. As opposed to MS raping them a $100 for the upgrade.
Gee, that sure is wonderful evangelism for Microsoft.
This used to be called "sticking your foot in your mouth" when I was a kid....
Well, I would like to elaborate on a particular comment:
So evolution, and capitalism, is to some degree self-defeating; once a competitor reaches the point where he can eliminate the game that led to his success, he can, in essence, kick away the ladders and burn the bridges to his success so that no others can approach his position.
The problem of capitalism is that it is based on tracking money. Money is the only metric. But it is not the one that evaluates the status of humanity very well. It seems that a lot of people think that capitalism is 'natural' to humanity, since it has been very successful in developing our capabilities. However, it seems the world is heading towards rule by corporation. And I really don't think that is better for everyone.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
It hasn't been that for years. The web is anything a person with server space wants it to be.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Capitalism has an inherent flaw, in that the accumulation of capital is only an approximation of success. I define success here both as the financial success of the companies in question, as well as the success of their customers, employees, and neighbors.
That is, under pure capitalism, it's a good thing to cut down all the trees in a forest to sell it, or to pollute the river if that's the cheapest way of getting rid of waste, or to force employees to work as much as possible for as little pay as possible. It's plainly obvious that if unchecked, pure capitalism will destroy so much that it eventually implodes.
Which is why all capitalist countries today exercise a modified form, where corporations are subject to regulation. There are financial regulations (to protect the shareholder), environmental regulations (to protect the neighbors), labor regulations (to protect the employees), and so on. A corporation is not permitted to pursue profits past the limitations of these regulations. In fact, many countries have pro-competition laws that restrict the business actions of monopolies.
The problem with this is that corporations are not willingly limited. Because they are founded on and driven by boundless greed, they are naturally in conflict with any regulation against their practices. You will therefore see company after company trying to cross the lines from time to time, or even try to influence lawmakers in outrageous ways. What you are seeing is, IMHO, a lapse in the counteracting regulations that expose this inherent weakness of the capitalist system.
... you just got modded up for that...
explain?
-pyrrho
You seem to conflate pro-Linux with anti-Microsoft.
(It is quite rare to find anyone who is not anti-
Microsoft who hasn't recieved payments from
Microsoft, I think.)
I don't need to be a Marxist evangelist in order
to militate against Fascism, or a Coke afficionado
to say that Pepsi is gut-rotting sugar swill.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
"It is quite rare to find anyone who is not anti-Microsoft who hasn't recieved payments from Microsoft, I think."
If people are being paid to not be "anti-MS", then there are also people being paid to say "Linux is a great desktop OS."
"Derp de derp."
The field of battle is the computer industry and its neighbouring vertical markets. Every person, company, product, etc., on this battlefield that is not a competing platform vendor, is a pawn in the struggle between such vendors
This definatly lends credence to the theory that SCO is a pawn in Microsoft's attempt to destory Linux.
Did you notice that this issue of MSDN Magazine has an article (an excellent one, by the way. Very good read) about utilizing SVG?
If I were more of a conspiracy nut I might be more suspicious about it...
And there appears to be a push (I linked it in another post as well. Awesome article and I know from following the links that to his site that the author reads Slashdot) at Microsoft for it. Of course the Slashdot community should be falling over itself to support SVG, a true bonafide standard with wide support, over Flash.
First off, to call this a war is an insult to all the people that have fought and died in a real war; but I will humor the analogy.
.Net
Microsoft is starting to loose a lot of key battles. The can't compete with Linux simply because of the price. People are cheap and if they can get something for free and it works ok, they will live with it. I honestly believe that this is part of the reason that the Macintosh isn't nearly as competitive as WinTel.
First will be governments switching over to it, then schools,charitable organizations and point of sale type businesses. After that is done then you will see surrounding businesses that work with those HUGE clients being forced to switch. Once that is done and Linux/Open Source has a 25-30% desktop market share the war is over. No development company will want to exclude 25-30% of the market and then ROME falls quickly.
Some of the key battles that I see now that Microsoft isn't winning.
1. Handhelds
2. Phones
3. Java v.s.
4. Getting current user base to upgrade past NT 4.0
5. PS2 vs Xbox.
6. Databases, Oracle, IBM, SQL Server, MySQL, PostGreSQL
In my opinion Microsoft seems a lot like IBM of the early 80's. The are doing a lot of things, and flat out own one key marketplace, but they don't do anything well.
Now there are some things that could dramatically slow this down.
1. Death of Linus.
2. IBM to offer it's own Linux and try and seize control of the kernel.
3. For some reason Java flounders.
Anyway, the way I see it the next 10 years will actually be fun!
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Don't confuse negative moderation with disagreement. Many pro-MS comments get modded down not because they are pro-MS, but because they are poorly founded and/or lack basic logic.
I'm a Linux user myself, and I've modded down my share of pro-MS comments, but on the basis that they either 1) have no clue what they're talking about, or 2) are highly logic impaired. I'm talking about basic logic, not judgements on opinions.
There are many pro-MS comments that I agree with. Unlike some of the zealots (most who will get over it, eventually), I understand that Windows has its place and advocate Windows to anyone who doesn't:
1) Dislike Microsoft solutions
2) Want to explore their computer
3) Want to configure everything in detail
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I was responding to your pointed attack on open source proponents - everyone, Microsoft, Sun, etc. puts things in terms of good and evil. I wasn't making any sort of assertion about whether they are right or wrong to do so. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.
I think it's a Windows NT setup screen, you can tell by the white strip at the bottom.
Last time M$ did something like this they killed Netscape... and we got Mozilla!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
"cooperate with the competition"
What kind of socialist doublethink is that?
Try thinking about it as if you have thousands of products across hundreds of industries.
That's the kind of thinking that huge companies have to have. TI competes with Motorola in DSP products, but also sells semiconductor products to the Motorola cell phone division.
Similar examples are legion. What do you think the relationship between IBM and GE is? Both are huge multinationals with dozens of markets. They directly compete in several markets, are part of the market for the other in other markets, and in still other markets, are cooperating through various means.
In each situation, both IBM and GE are acting in their own best interest, but in many cases, they are cooperating with the competition...
Any time you have more than one product, this becomes a possibility. As the number of products grows, the chance that it will be in your best interest to cooperate with a company you also compete with will approach unity.
Regards,
Ross
If socialists are often accused of blind naivete, it's just as naive to think that capitalism would play by the rules it sets down for itself. One of the rules is this "rule" of the competitive evolution of companies, which supposedly results in an ideal market for the consumer. However, it doesn't take much empirical evidence and observing of the real world to notice that this just does not happen.
It seems like a common point of view to see evolution as a big field of all-against-all competition, and to extend the same view to social and corporate fields as an extension of that premise. However, if the premise is false the whole argument is worthless, and to pull that premise from the nature is like pulling the argument down in steaming, crumbling pieces. Ask any biologist, and he'll tell you that the best way to survive in nature is not hostile competition, but a mutually beneficial coexistance - humans have all sorts of built-in 'caring' mechanisms to support that very end, and even our cells are composed of the remains of ancient organisms now seamlessly working together. Hostile competition can be described as the behaviour of a parasite organism which grows and prospers purely at the expense of others. It adapts and it changes, and several parasites competing together might even result in "better" organisms, but in the end it benefits no-one but the parasites themselves.
Back to the corporate world: more often than not, a company with superior product or service quality has been pushed off the market by a dirty player with a more active marketing department. Microsoft is a prime example - it has had several technologically and ergonomically superior competitors over the years, but they've managed to shrug them off as mere items of curiosity or geek fodder. Some of the competitors have just been bought off and never heard from again, some have been driven away by the force of a powerful vendor lock-in.
In other words, MS works very much like your average parasite. What it has managed to gain by playing is not quality, just sheer size and a mean attitude covered in brightly coloured PR confetti. If socialism can indeed provide an option for this, I'd gladly see it implemented. Sadly, the state-ownership capitalism called USSR doesn't count.
Zankoku na tenshi no TEEZE (Thesis of a Cruel Angel)
...through the window of your soul
Lyrics: Neko Oikawa
Melody: Hidetoshi Sato
Arrangement: Toshiyuki Ohmori
Vocalist: Yoko Takahashi
--
Like an angel that has no sense of mercy...
Rise, young boy, to the heavens like a legend...
Cold winds, as blue as the sea.
Tear open the door to your heart, I see...
But unknowing you seem, just staring at me...
Standing there smiling serenely.
Desperate, for something to touch...
A moment of kindness like that in a dream...
Your innocent eyes, have yet no idea...
Of the path your destiny will follow...
But someday you'll become aware of...
Everything that you've got behind you...
Your wings are for seeking out a new...
Future that only you can search for.
The cruel angel's thesis bleeds through a portal like your pulsing blood.
If you should betray the chapel of your memories
Cruel angel's thesis enters...
So, boy, stand tall and embrace the fire of the legend.
Embracing the universe like a blazing star!
--
Translation by A.D. Vision, Inc.
Be careful here. There is an inherent bias in centralized organizations to drive out all competition. Monopolies are just better at it. And one can be a monopoly in a small area as well as in a large. E.g.:
Apple has an effective monopoly on the OS used by their hardware. Linux can be made to run, but it's still an effective monopoly. So it's not too surprising if one can find examples where they used their muscle. Check into the history of Claris. Check out what happened to the Mac Clones...which were originally encouraged by Apple before there was a change of management.
Centralizations of power have an inherrent tendency toward being abused. Look through history. Just because MS is currently a major abuser, don't assume that it's the only one, or even the worst. (Computers, after all, are still on the periphery of life. Food is more basic, and food depends on seeds... so check out the activities of, e.g., Monsanto.)
But that doesn't make MS any better.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'd like to note that there's also the question of "do you use your computer for work or as a game console?" I just personally like to do away with surprise crashes, reboots and generally unexplained bitrot.
Yes, I use Linux as a desktop machine, yes, I very much prefer it over Windows and no, I'm not paid by anyone to say so. If this makes me seem uncredible, too bad.
... Micah Alpern is concerned Microsoft could use similar strategies against Macromedia Flash."
Does this mean allyourbase.swf could become allyourbase.mswf and require a computer upgrade in order to view it?
All your base are belong to Microsoft! *SIGH* Not again!
Windows has no option to permanently refuse a web download
What does Windows have to do with this? This isn't the job of the OS; it's the job of the browser, be it Mozilla, IE, Opera, Netscape, lynx, links, etc.
If IE (the application) doesn't have such an option, does that also apply to IE for Macintosh? At any rate, it's up to the application, and there are many good reasons to not use the IE application.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
IS A HAMMERFALL NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!?!?!?!
HOW ABOUT AN ENVY24, ICE1xxx, or CS4236?!?!??!?!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
what the fuck is that about? If you have sound card driver problems, then your sound card must be ass. (This goes for Windows too, btw; try finding a decent Maestro3 driver, oh wait! IT DOESNT EXIST!!!!!)
Honest to god. Just say what you meant to say, instead of setting up an anecdotal straw man.
And the parent posts are jokes, so lighten up.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
OK who's the moron that modded this drivel insightful?
This is the web, not .pdf. What he's expecting is exactly the design specs for the web, and thus he has every right to expect it. If your webpage isn't usable at 640x480x256 then it's your fault, and there's no excuse. Assuming your webpage isn't a picture-diary or something, there's no reason he should have to have a screen at all to access it!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Using Mozilla with flash on Mac, so I can see what the 'designer' intended on that page. You aren't missing anything. It's really annoying.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"I worked as an evangelist for Novell"
<sarcasm>Who is Novell? I haven't heard of them.</sarcasm>
You obviously didn't do a good job because everything is going Windows 2003 Server or Linux now. Sad, Novell use to be a great OS, however, do to an inept marketing department, it will one day be on the chopping block.
"I'm currently looking for a job."
Hiring a product evangelist from Novell is like hiring a burger flipper to carve sculptures.
Wal-Mart destroyed the competition. And, yes, some say Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?
You cannot use the words healthy and normal to describe Wal-Mart's competitive practices. Those words do not fit. Here is one that does: destroy.
Wal-Mart is the destroyer of the supply chain. When they move into a community, it's over for most of the small businesses still surviving on Main Street. It's seems innocuous at first. In fact, most of the community flock to Wally World because the prices are low. But as more and more of the small businesses fail, Wal-Mart becomes the only choice. That's how they destroy the top of the supply chain, by driving under all of the small businesses in the community which sell the same products they do: lawn and garden stores, small electronic stores, jewelry stores, small automotive and tire stores.
Then, they work their way back down the supply chain. Because of the dwindling number of viable small businesses, suppliers have fewer and fewer customers to sell their wares to, and because of this, they lose the ability to set their own price for their goods. In essence, Wal-Mart is in a position to set the price for both the customer and the supplier.
It gets nasty when Wal-Mart demands a price that the supplier simply cannot meet. Then, Wal-Mart sometimes absorbs the supplier into their "Sam's Choice" brand. And that's the best case scenario.
What usually happens, is that the supplier goes under, and Wal-Mart moves on to another supplier, and the process starts again until that supplier is either gone or absorbed.
Does that sound healthy or normal?
You don't... recognize... You mean you don't know who I am?
Surely then you would have gotten the joke. Despite TrollKore members' reputations (esp. Dessimator), they are not completely devoid of humor.
The post is, in fact, the opening lyrics to "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which I can attest is Rob Limo's favorite Anime as he jacks off to me all the time.
I CAN SEE YOU ROB! EVEN WHEN YOU COVER YOURSELF WITH A BLANKET
The title of this article is "Platform Evangelism", for which Evangelion is a close derivative word from German.
It means Gospel, roughly. Evangelism means to preach Gospel, IE, the "Microsoft Way". The Gospel in the Japanese anime Shin Seiiki Evangelion is used to provide a Judeo/Chrsitian mysticism to the whole thing which I think makes it seem more artsy than it's worth, but that's a personal opinion.
Not too much correlation there, but it's a (bad, predicatable) pun to be suggested. I hope I don't get mod-banned for this swipe at the Creators.
I hope this clears it all up. If you are still confused, look up my name or Evangelion in google, and you will learn more than you want just from the link descriptions.
Toodles!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Developers!!
Developers!
Developers!
Developers
(ad infinitum...)
I've always wanted to say that, but I could never get close enough at the US Open.
^_^
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
An excellent tag-line. If I used tag-lines, I'd steal that one.
I win the contest. Any questions?
Also, I am SELinux.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
nano is smaller than pico. Hah!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
from the article: [2] Recently, our competitors have added âoepoliticalâ to this list. Political actions result in law, which is backed up by force. They may come to regret educating us of the power of political means.
I think that Microsoft is about to add Ng Security Industries to their list of technology aquisition targets.
Brings a whole new meaning to "Microsoft Action Pack Subscriber."
"This book focuses on technical evangelism as it was practiced at Microsoft from 1990 through 2000. In this decade, we may have lost a few skirmishes, but we won every battle. As a direct result, Microsoft built its annual profits from an impressive XXX to an astounding XXX. Microsoft stock made its founders, investors, and employees rich. In its many platform battles along the way, we crushed competing platforms consistently, ruthlessly, and systematically."
Proof that if you are a self centered A-hole and want to start a company you should surround yourself with other self centered a-holes too.
Evangelism is a great word for the Microsoft phenomena. They ask you to believe without any proof, in fact in spite of proof to the contrary, that they advanced technology during the 80's and 90's.
The PC phenomena, in spite of a good start has set computing back at least 10 years. Almost all of the innovations brought to us via the PC have come in spite of Microsoft not because of it. Even so, there is so much re-invention of wheels going on. From protected memory spaces, multitasking, asynchronous I/O devices, it all had to be re-invented for the PC and more specifically, for Windows, when all of the concepts had been invented, and refined on mainframes years earlier.
We've turned into a society of publishers with no time to read. We can't get customer support for our flaked out computing infrastructure because everyone is too busy working on their blog to man the help-desk.
If Microsoft doesn't change, the combination of true Enterprise computing, Open Source, and Internationalism is going to cause Microsoft to lose skirmish, battle and war. What Microsoft needs not is not evangelists, bit strategists. And this time, rather than strategizing only on how to "crush the competition", maybe they should try strategizing on how to do something good for the world or at least a value-add for their customers. In the process they may allow their company to continue to survive.
By the way, this doesn't look like a very good book. Sounds like the kid in the bubble trying to tell you how the world works, excpcept he hasn't even bothered to look up what the XXX number are yet. Astonding!
Although overall I do agree with you, there are a couple of points I'd like to bring up:
1) Assuming the Opera reference is regarding the Hotmail fiasco, I believe the outcome was that there was a bug in Opera that was being accounted for by Hotmail in a specific CSS file. Opera was patched to fix the problem, and so there was a lag between the release and Hotmail being changed to not send the CSS file to the updated browser. If this is the case, and if anyone is to blame, why not look towards the Opera team? I'd have thought that somewhere in a small beta release of the update the issue would have been discovered.
2) You comment that you would have been embarrassed to sell a product with 3000 bugs in it. Maybe if you were selling a normal application that has a standard interface to the computer (eg. the Windows API), I would agree. Windows itself does not have the luxury of a standard interface. Its the bit that provides the interface to begin with.
Remember that we're talking about working with thousands of different pieces of hardware, in countless combinations, all with slightly different takes on their own standards, no doubt. If you were selling your own operating system, then I apologise and will accept your comment with respect. However, you have to remember that it is Windows that removes the ambiguities of all of the pieces of hardware that are out there, along with the fact that people will be adding hardware that at the time didn't exist, and expecting them to work with generic drivers.
As an experiment, can I suggest that for the next application you write, you access all of the hardware directly (from the motherboard up), and let us know how any bugs you end up with?
Oh, and I need to be able to write my own applications to run within yours, so be ready for some of my dodgy coding practices, too. Thanks.
In the old days, when you hit a site that has flash content, and you don't have it installed, it would try to install Flash.
No, in the old days, Navigator would throw in a box with a "missing plugin" icon in it.
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. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
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
On the flip side... this also highlights that all platforms has its own fans, its evangelists... and its zealots. Slashdot can be a focal point for Linux zealotry. But it also attracts a fair amount of Windows fanaticism.
What I find amusing is when Windows zealots cry of Linux zealotry.
That's not to say Linux enthusaists shouldn't worry about cleaning their own house. Negative moderation in lieu of expressing disagreement is one symptom. Linux has had to face that kind of attitude from Windows zealots for years. Behaving in the same manner provides little value.
Having said that, expressing a pro-Windows opinion in a Linux-friendly forum does not make such opinions automatically insightfull. Nor does it make the poster a martyr. Such posts can be uninformed and pretentious as often as any other (sometimes more often). Even if the poster doesn't realize it.
The trick, of course, is picking out dissenting opinion from the usual uninformed banter and trolling. Discussion seems to offer a better way to handle these situations. And, shocking as it may seem, it may provide some interesting conversation. Trouble is - its easier to go clicky-clicky and mod down than reply.
One side thought - a part of this issue seems to have always involved trolling and conversation-jamming. It would seem that pro-Windows trolls tend to focus on specific themes if not direct cut-and-paste. Perhapse a shared library of standard responces would be a fitting responce. But then, it just provides another game for trolls. And its much more difficult than modding down.
Based on the strange things that went on when Gateway owned Amiga and Bill Gates attending the Commodore liquidation it would seem so.
"Rise of the machines". What runs those machines ... software (How many times did the Terminator reboot across both existing movies movies?)....who "creates" (and using the term losely) a lot of software .... Microsoft.
The day that Arnie becomes a "Strategic Partner" with M$ is the day I punch my own ticket.
Oh, please. This is just unthinking anti-MS drivel.
Ever heard of Spyglass?
MS has indeed ruined many companies that thought they'd made a sweetheart deal with the Dark Side.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
(btw, spare me the "m$ is a monopoly so teh [sic] rules are difrereent [sic] with them" line)
Would you prefer "MS is an organization convicted of criminal antitrust violations"?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Also, it's funny how this book on Evangelism is written in such a way as to convince you that what it is saying is true. Almost self-evangelizing? If the author wasn't a former M$ employee, I'd almost think he wrote the book to make MS look bad. Or perhaps he did?
OT: WHY in the hell did I just see ads for SCO Unix on
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Browsers should be designed to properly and accurately display the contents they receive.
Content should be generic and should not have to accomodate for idiosyncracies of each and every browser.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
That's so typical of MS employees. They can say the most astonishing things, and somehow link it all back to "doing what's best for the customer", Kevin Bacon style. They collectively tell themselves, and therefore believe, that they are there to serve the customer, and that they are the best because they do what the customer needs and wants.
The reality is far, far different of course. It's rare (but not unheard of) for one of their employees to make the mental leap between the hordes of people who hate them, and the idea that maybe they are actually working exclusively for the profit of their shareholders and executives as opposed to "making the world a better place through technology".
Flash is a great medium, but has nothing to do on the web
It does, but everybody is abuseing the ease of use to create Flash content.
If it's well designed and actually usable I don't have a problem with it.
This does count out 99 % of the current flash sites
Depends on what soundcard you have. None of the Philip's cards can be supported because Philips will not release technical specifications and they won't write drivers themselves.
Aureal cards are sort of supported, but Aureal went bust and left us with a binary driver we can't patch. Speak to Creative about that; they're the ones who bought Aureal and then refuse to support the hardware.
So go on, what soundcard do you have that isn't supported?
Exactly. You do realise that Flash is not a W3C standard? Like you say, content should be generic.
Tell that to the blind person trying to use a screen reader. "Yeah, well its your fault for being blind. That Flash can be seen perfectly well by the majority of the population. Get better eyes!"
Schmuk. Get off of our internet and take your acursed "content" with you.
The web is about HTTP requests and responses. If I send a GET request to a particular box, and get a piece of content back, it's up to the owner of that box to choose what that content is. It is their right, for example, to send you a stream of plain text. It is their right to send you properly formatted netscape-specific HTML 2.0 complete with tags. It is their right to send you an MP3 file, or a JPEG, or an HTML 4.0 page containing a link to an embedded Flash movie. Provided their server tells you the MIME type of the data it's sending, gives you a properly formatted HTTP response, and conforms to the relevant RFCs, they've done their job.
At the same time, in choosing to do any of these things, they have to take account of the fact that the source of the HTTP request could be anything - a mobile phone, a search engine robot, any kind of web browser. They don't have to do anything particularly to deal with this if they don't wish - they just take the risk that the client won't understand their response.
That's what's so beautiful about the web - HTTP requests just say 'I want this resource'. It's that simple. HTTP servers return the resource, and leave it up to the client to interpret it. If the client can't interpret it, well, then the resource wasn't intended for that client, and it shouldn't have asked for it in the first place.
The web isn't about content - it's about resources at locations.
No, in the old days, Navigator would throw in a box with a "missing plugin" icon in it.
After popping up a dialog with a link to Netscape's plugin download page.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
What does Windows have to do with this? This isn't the job of the OS; it's the job of the browser,
Didn't Microsoft testify in court that the OS and the browser are the same piece of software?
Wait, what's that you say? They were lying through their teeth? Ohhh.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The hurdle to making so called rich clients (my God, that word "rich" is starting to get fucking irritating) is higher than either Macromedia or Microsoft realises. Macromedia at least has some idea of how difficult this is, in that they are not exactly winning over huge numbers of developers to their cause. If that wasn't the case they would not be in the financial difficulties that they now are: They bet the house on the internet, neglecting those products which made them rich in the first place i.e. Director, Authorware and Freehand. Make no mistake Flash is a brilliant technology, as are ColdFusion and Dreamweaver, but for SECURE internet applications no one trusts Flash, which is why Java Applets and applications are still used by banks for online banking.
On top of this times are very rough and not many companies see any advantage in making expensive Flash sites with little visible ROI.
But Macromedia at least knows this. MS I'm not so sure. MS has the weight to push a technology into high visibility but MS makes it bread and butter from tools, OS's and Office software, definitely not from high-expenditure loss leaders like the X-Box or other lickable items. MS might well invest in making fancy vector graphics applications and tools but 1.) who is going to trust them on security, and 2.) who is going to spend money on those things that they wouldn't have on Flash?
I think MS will eventually simply abandon the effort or buy out Macromedia.
DidnÂt they try to do this by inventing MS-Channels and Active-Desktop back in the 1998?
Evangelism is WAR
And war it is â" but a war of words, not bullets
Which is odd because the first chapter is basically a set of bullet points; The guy can't string more than two sentences together so I don't think he's going to win the "war of words".
%! why do I get a "you can't post to this page" when I post as me?
Unfortunately there are too many programmers out there who feel the same way you do. You have to realize that good code/content is only one half of what makes an application/webpage good. The other half is presentation.
If you ask me, there are way too many coders out there who seriously underestimate UI. We need more designers in our field and a lot less l337 h4x0rz. You can see it in most of the websites out there. Either some liberal arts joker creates an uber-fancy Flash site that's impossible to navigate, or an engineer throws together a disgusting, utterly boring white-text-on-black-background POS.
Every once in a while, though, someone surprises me and gives me hope for the future of IT.
Kudos to you, my good man.
is definitely a Microsoft conspiracy. Blah blah fucking blah.
This has been a Microsoft Conspiracy Update.
I'll never understand why people have this unmitigated hatred of the company. The fact of the matter is Microsoft doesn't do anything different from any other leading company, except maybe from a PR standpoint.
"I have several friends at Microsoft and while I respect them immensely and believe they have the end user in mind, but they're filled with a 'killer instinct'."
That's business. That's how it works. If you don't have a killer instinct, somebody else who does will slit your throat. There isn't a business worth its salt today that isn't out there to drive the competition into the ground and take their market share. Microsoft just hasn't done a very good job at covering up their intentions.
MS is the Ford of the modern age. Ford didn't invent the car. Ford didn't produce the best cars. Ford found a new way to produce and distribute the car.
It just seems to me that people have decided to hate Microsoft because of a general "hate the rich" attitude.
I do not like their products, I run Linux myself, but you really can not fault their 'Killer Instinct' That's how money is made my friends.
Wal-Mart typically does do things like this, however. If they have a store in a set up center, they are the only store that will be granted the ability to be open 24 hours in that shopping center, for example.
They also have used their own pseudo-monopoly status (in many parts of the US, they are the ONLY place to shop for just about everything from clothes to groceries to electronics) to force suppliers to give them insane discounts that smaller local based stores cannot hope to get. This allows Wal-Mart to have prices much lower than the local buisnesses can even think of offering.
Add in their horrendous treatment of employees (a 28 hour work week is considered full time, but no benefits unless you make 40...which they try and ensure the regular employees never get), low salaries, etc. and Wal-Mart is just as evil as Microsoft, jut in a different market.
That's what's so beautiful about the web - HTTP requests just say 'I want this resource'. It's that simple. HTTP servers return the resource, and leave it up to the client to interpret it.
If only it was that simple. Quite often the server gives you a different page, depending on what broawser you are (pretending to be) using.
A possible, and plausible thing to do, if not for one thing: Microsoft is known for purposefully attempting to destroy interoperability between their products and products that do similar or the same things as Microsoft's products.
Examples being: Windows 3.X being programmed to crash if it detected any other OS underneath it besides MS DOS; Micorsoft's attempting to hijack HTML and use .chm as an IE-only readable web script; WMP 8 and 9 files not opening in Mozilla/Netscape (and possibly other browsers as well), instead showing up as text files of unreadable ASCII; the fact that Office 2003 will read XML files, but will never save as them to prevent them from working in other office suite programs (holding onto and attempting to increase their monopoly); and the blocking of some of their own Microsoft.com pages from opening under other browsers besides IE; as well as many others.
2) You comment that you would have been embarrassed to sell a product with 3000 bugs in it. Maybe if you were selling a normal application that has a standard interface to the computer (eg. the Windows API), I would agree. Windows itself does not have the luxury of a standard interface. Its the bit that provides the interface to begin with.
However, each version of Windows since 95 has shipped with more and more known bugs. Windows 2000 shipped with around 60,000 *known* bugs by Microsoft, and around 27,000 of those bugs were described as 'potential security threats'. Yet, they still shipped the product.
It's become quite evident that Microsoft does not care about stability or security in their products. In fact, Ballmer even admitted that security wasn't a focus because they didn't think it was profitable. All they care about is maintaining and expanding their monopoly, and if this means shipping prducts with known bugs, tens of thousands of known bugs, then so be it.
The art of the non sequitur - saying "it's better" when at best it's just different
Words mean what I say they mean - saying "non-standard" when you mean "compatible with the published standard, but not our extensions"
Exaggeration for fun and profit - saying "we ship next quarter" when you mean "next year" "or maybe never"
Of particular interest will be the conclusion in which he shows how this is all ultimately for the customer's benefit...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Unfortunatley, most government employees are extremely resistant to change. That and they like to whine.
For example, in our agency we run WordPerfect. Why? Because it's better than MS Word. If a user has a problem I can usually fix it in a few seconds using reveal codes. Problems in Word can literally take hours to work out, and often it's just easier to re-type. In addition, we're budget strapped and can't run the latest greates OS requiring the latest greatest MS office suite. The problem is, other agencies we share documents with use MS Word because it came packaged on their new computer. Not a day goes by when a user complains that they can't send or receive Word documents, and they can't "do their job" because some other agency they communicate with uses Word.
It's B.S. They're just lazy and don't want to have to remember to click "Save As" and choose a format. They'll also spend 10 minutes arguing with you that it won't import Word documents rather than just trying to open it up... which 95% of the time works. The times it doesn't work is because M$ has modified their format on the latest greatest office suite so that it won't play nicely with previous versions... thus forcing an upgrade.
So, IMHO, you can educate, educate, but as long as MS uses their monopoly leverage to unload copies of MS Office on government machines, you will be constantly battling. I will not give in to the Borg however, and I will not give up the fight.
"Silence of the tomb" was the wrong way to put it, and I wish I could undo that comment. What I truly imagine isn't silence, but this: the slow rhythmic sucking and chomping sound of a bloated beast mindlessly feeding.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, sorry to say, but PDF is part of the web too. Just as Flash is. HTML is not (any more than, say, GIF and JPEG, or PDF for that matter) a privileged part of the web infrastructure - it is simply a file format that is well suited to the web - but it's also used in any number of other scenarios (offline documentation, such as JavaDocs spring to mind). The web is agnostic about what format the documents transmitted across it take, which is why it is able to support such diverse technologies as WML applications, Flash games, and web services.
If you want to fill a web server full of word DOC files, you can - and the HTTP infrastructure will happily support you in your endeavours. The fact that you aren't providing content in a format suited to web browser clients is neither here nor there - it's your prerogative to do as you will on your web server.
The mistake a lot of people make is thinking that 'The Web' is an interconnected collection of HTML documents distributed across a number of servers. In some ways, 'The Web' is much more than that, and in some ways much less. 'The Web' is no more than an infrastructure based on HTTP that allows client programs to request resources from servers statelessly. HTML is a technology that exploits the web infrastructure to interconnect resources using hypertext principles. In other words, the infrastructure of 'The Web' enables the development of hypertext browsers and hypertext content providers, giving us the experience of browsing that we have all got used to. But at the same time, 'The web' can be used for much much more. You have to get away from thinking about the web as consisting of 'pages' and see it instead as a universal addressing mechanism for electronic resources. Every URL identifies a particular resource. Nobody said those resources had to be web pages, though.
The assumption that the resource at the end of every HTTP URL should be renderable in a basic unmodified web browser is really pretty outdated. Yes, for a helluvalot of URLs (perhaps most), it makes sense to present the resource you return in a format renderable in everything from Lynx up. But that doesn't prevent parts of the web (that is to say, a selection of HTTP addressable resources) being designed to be viewed using specific browsers, or even non-browser clients (look at Apple's iTunes store, for example - there's a powerful HTTP user-agent that accesses resources a web browser wouldn't know what to do with).
So, if somebody chooses to return Flash from a particular URL, you've no more right to complain about their decision in doing so than you have about their returning you a 404 error code from another URL, or a GIF from another one. It's not you that gets to choose what resources are returned from each URL in their address space.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
1) Assuming the Opera reference is regarding the Hotmail fiasco, I believe the outcome was that there was a bug in Opera that was being accounted for by Hotmail in a specific CSS file. Opera was patched to fix the problem, and so there was a lag between the release and Hotmail being changed to not send the CSS file to the updated browser. If this is the case, and if anyone is to blame, why not look towards the Opera team? I'd have thought that somewhere in a small beta release of the update the issue would have been discovered.
Last I had heard Opera was still pointing the finger at Microsoft. My appologies for not checking for up to date information. Microsoft has a proven track record in this department so it was easy to believe that this was just another in a long list.
2) You comment that you would have been embarrassed to sell a product with 3000 bugs in it. Maybe if you were selling a normal application that has a standard interface to the computer (eg. the Windows API), I would agree. Windows itself does not have the luxury of a standard interface. Its the bit that provides the interface to begin with.
I have actually written a couple of operating systems myself (admittedly smaller than Windows). Most of my career has been spent programming down on bare metal ;-) So I am aware that it is more difficult. I still say that if I had sold Windows 95 and it was that buggy, I would have at minimum sold the upgrade for a minimal fee and not full price.
I firmly believe that if Linux hadn't starting competing with Microsoft that the current generation of Windows XP wouldn't be as bug free as it is (at least that's what everybody claims). That's one of the worst things about a monopoly: there is no incentive to provide a quality product. In fact there is a strong incentive to NOT provide a quality product, then all the "pawns" have to spend more money to buy the next version.
This guy's book is just more evidence of what a bad thing it is that Microsoft has a monopoly. It just made me sick reading it. I don't know how these guys can even look at themselves in the mirror every morning.
I agree that WalMart has done evil things to employees. I was glad to hear that the CEO has recently publicly said that any employees being forced to work overtime without pay (reportedly a common Wal-Mart practice) can report dircetly to him. We will see if this is for real soon enough I expect.
Likewise there are many areas where Wal-Mart is the only place to buy music, electronics, etc. I have lived in places where WalMart is pretty much the only store, period. However, I think in those places we might never have certain merchandise available (like computers) without Wal-Mart. I think one of the worst things they do in this case besides being a historically nasty employer is their censorship of music and books. In some cases, the "Wal-Mart Version" of an album becomes the only version of that album which hides this fact. In cases where there is an uncut version as well people in areas where walmart is the only game in town won't see it. Thankfully the internet is here to change that, albeit slowly.
Natural is a good choice of words. North Americans are the most propagandized people in the world [5000+ words of advertising/day supported by extensive psych research, vast array of rhetorical images, plus exposure to corporate media] and we don't even like hearing the word capitalist, for the most part, it has a faint whiff of taboo. There has been a couple of hundred years of development in the 'naturalization' of capitalism, using everything from some pretty crank science to curriculum to the active squashing of real alternatives. In order to naturalize an idea/practise you have to make it 'like water to a fish'--inevitable and nigh unnoticeable. Once that is done, contradictions and paradigmatic problems are obscured fairly easily. This is the foundation of any ideology (in the political sense).
You are also mostly right about its success in developing capabilities... well, a narrow set of capabilities, I would argue, but it develops them well. In particular, entrepeneurialism ('the french don't even have a word for that' -- G.W.Bush) has been exalted into a near-saintly quality, and I see great emotional and infrastructural support for entrepeneurs, something that monopoly capitalism (read: soviet russia, china, and other so called communist states) doesn't. But the entrepeneurial spirit doesn't necessarily lead to healthy communities and families, or pure research, or amazing art, for instance.
I would also suggest that capitalism is about much more than money/capital as an end. The conglomeration of power and control with the willing participation of its subjects is always the intended end product of ideologies. Which brings us back to the richest man in the world, and by extension, the Bilderbergers. No mistake: in this context, Evangelism IS war.
Damn those pesky terrorists
So you're too poor for a pizza?
Then, what the f*ck are you doing dabbling with luxury items like electronics?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Much of what you said would right, if only your facts weren't backwards.
.NET losing to Java? I really don't see a lot of new Java based web services being rolled out. But I see *tons* of .NET ones.
MS losing in Handhelds? Versus what? Palm (with an ever shrinking user base and no new interesting features in years)? Or do you mean all of those Linux PDAs (I wish).
MS SQL Server is growing faster than it's competitors. Claiming that MySQL and PostgreSQL are gaining over SQL Server is just wishful thinking.
I think that your idea that MS is losing ground is wishful thinking. The reality is that MS is doing just fine, thanks to a continued lack of decent competition on the above.
I'm surprised you didn't mention web servers and file servers, where Linux has the clear edge over MS.
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
Serial monopoly seems to have been the norm in high tech thus far -- you have it all until you lose it all. Moore's Law keeps upping the ante, providing new paradigms the opportunity to displace the old. This seems unlikely to stop anytime soon. Microsoft is likely to collapse under its own weight, undercut by a nimble new player backing a new paradigm. That player would have to know how to manage network effects, of course -- preferably without looking like it's managing network effects. :-)
First. The PDA market is about dead, Palm was fortunate enough to get in it at the right time. They still own a lions share of that market. The loss to Microsoft was the HUGE investment in that market that is all but dead now, and the fact that their set top box failed AND nobody appears interested in their phone OS. Understand that Palm + Sony + Handspring still sells over 50% of the PDA's in the world. Also understand that sales today are no where near what they were two years ago.
.Net... The ONLY places that I see doing .Net development is Microsoft shops. Granted in todays market I don't see the development that was going on 2-5 years ago, but .Net appears to be winning little converts other than the typical Microsoft followers. Now there were a LOT of VB and ASP shops that were would NEVER switch to another platform, but wanted to do Java, they appear to be the ones doing a lot of .Net stuff.
:-) And speaking of being paid to use a product, a few governments have mandated the use of open source code. Now how long do you think it will be before they "mandate" that their colleges teach development on that platform?
SQL server IS growing fast, it isn't hard to grow from nothing to something, BUT that growth appears to be mostly in all Microsoft shops. DB2 and Oracle still hold the lions share of the market. The problem here is that Microsoft can't compete with Oracle and IBM on the high end, so that leaves them with the mid market. Ahhh but the mid market is STARTING to look at other systems like MySQL and PostGreSQL. Again, all Microsoft shops will choose it, and some people will be forced to use it because their "needed" app will only run on it, BUT those "Needed" apps are starting to show up on other platforms. At the end of the day, most people would have thought that Microsoft would have crushed out Oracle and IBM the way they did Novell and others. They have not done so, nor does it look like they are going to. In fact the closer they get to doing that the closer open source databases come to replacing them.
Java v.s.
All in all your arguments are somewhat valid, but they are the exact same that people used with IBM in the early 80's. By the mid 90's IBM was almost dead. If it wasn't for an awesome former CEO they would be dead.
Good point on file server and Web servers, but that battle is all but over. I also didn't mention Tivo.
My overall point is that people are cheap, if they can get something for free they will put up with a lot. It is impossible to compete with free, unless they want to pay us to use their product
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Um, no. Wal-Mart bullies its employees into a lot of uncompensated labor, which helps it undercut its competitor's prices. One reason I won't shop at Wal-Mart is because it's equivalent to stealing.
Going off my crude understanding of the thrust behind C#, and the emphasis by Microsoft on things like asp.net and vbscript, I get the feeling that the foundations are already in place.
I realise that C# is intended as a Java replacement, but all you'd need to do is make a Visual C# for web apps studio, a few specialised graphic classes and your already on your way to a Flash look-a-like.
Personally though, this is one case where I don't think I'd be sorry to see Microsoft smiting someone out of existance.
Dude. who would pay for Lunix? Okay, maybe I would. But I am a lunatic.
Yep, when I see a flash-only web site, it's like a flag telling me, "There is no good content here, this web site was designed by an idiot, move along..."
Flash MX can easily convert all its content into readable/usable html content and/or it can be used to read the content or the navigation out loud to a blind person. The only reason Flash is so hard on blind people is not because of the tool, it's because the human designer wanted it that way.
You can kiss their ColdFusion and their J2EE Server good bye. But I'll agree with your general point, Macromedia is established enough and smart enough to maintain their lead the areas they're willing to fight for.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I always find it amusing when one person feels he can talk with such an air of confidence about the ideals of a company with as many people as Microsoft.
;)
Organizations as social bodies seem quite weird. I tend to wonder, based on my own experience, why people can't manage better their natural need to align their views with those they assume their group's views to be.
Also, is it just me, or did that first chapter read more like a high school physics book rather than a 101 to blind platform faith?
Reality can have no flaws - please adjust your view
Wouldn't it figure that a person with such a world view would try to drive his points through with references to atomic and newtonian powers rather than use sociopsychological terminology? He needs his "war" to see a fit place for his own emotions in the world; thus, all the world is about war to him. Not quite an unique attitude.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.