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MSN's Slate Recommends Firefox over IE
brightertimes writes "That's right folks, Slate (Microsoft's on-line magazine) recently printed an article enitled "Are the Browser Wars Back?
How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.""
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I switched the other day (yeah, I'm going to get my geek card revoked), and firefox kicks some serious ass. I didn't switch in the past because I need some of the features of IE for our app at work, but now I only use IE for that. Anyone using IE should just switch, no questions asked.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Microsoft is just looking for a way to convince courts they're not a monopoply.
Ignore this thread. It was probably started up by an MS buff to use reverse psychology to ttrick ppl to read it. If you read the article it concludes by slating Firefox because it does not have suffient users and is therefore not applicable as a target by virus writers. This assumption is in fact false. There are many underlying attibuted shared by all browsers, many of them which are vulnerable in IE, and guess what - they are not vulnerable in Firefox. In other words, the same problems are likely to occur in both browsers if thety are equals. They do not. They only occur in IE becase though IE has always been a fast browser in my oppionion, it ultimatlely sucks as it is so insecure.
Thankyou
When your own people give in and recommend a rival browser, it seems they are admitting the security issues in IE are basically unfixable. This does raise an interesting query - does this mean MS will be less likely to attempt repairing the flaws, ceding some interim revenue to a free competitor that right now is no threat at all, and devote more resources to Longhorn's IE version/replacement?
MSIE is incredibly far behind, in standards compliance, features, usability, and security. Basically, MSIE hasn't improved much since 4.0, which I think is more than 7 years old. Continuing to use MSIE means a serious degradation of the user experience. Apparently, it's so bad that even Microsoft's subsidiaries are jumping ship. I wonder why Microsoft has let it come this far.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I half expected that MS would dump IE, but I think this article somewhat validates my thoughts.
The very fact that this was published on MSN must hit at deep rumbling in the MS camp. IE users are, quite frankly, sick of IE. The recent warning from the US government must have been the last nail in IE's PR coffin. People now know other browsers are out there, and have begun to download them. MS issued a hasty patch after Homelland security recommendations for another browser, but it seems they won't upgrade IE functionality until Longhorn, 3 years away! That will mean IE will have spent 6 years in development limbo.
Or then again this could be a lone cowboy at MSN, eager to leave for the fresh pastures of The Register.
I reckon MS will soon dump IE in favour of a new browsers, or maybe a new 'kind' of browser(.NEt based, XAML interface anyone?). Maybe MSN client?
Tellingly IE still runs off version numbers IE5, IE6, whereas most MS apps run off the 98,2000,XP versioning scheme. These are my crackpot prediction for a rumour hungry world.
May the Maths Be with you!
I switched both my parents over to firefox and it took them over a month to notice. They wanted to know why IE had a funny embryoish logo in the top left heh. I had switched the firefox icon over to the IE one and set up an IE theme on it. Really I havn't seen a single example of somthing IE does better than fire fox. The only limitations I've noticed are on web sites designed ONLY to work with IE like the mcafee web site.
You're laughing, but someone at Slate is going to lose their job over this article. It's reminiscent of nothing in my short term memory, related to Microsoft.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
if microsoft is TRULY interested in improving the security of their OS (as they say they are), then they will infact look into other options...
Well, yes, they could do that.
In fact, it would be a great idea for Microsoft: actively supporting The Mozilla Foundation would give them some fantastic leverage in their different legal problems.
Something like: "Your honor, Microsoft has donated X thousand dollars to the Mozilla Foundation! How can we be accused of anti-competitive behaviour after such a generous gesture?".
Such a donation would greatly help both Microsoft (see argument above +use of a superior technology) and the Mozilla Foundation... heck, it may even alllow it to accelerate the pace of the Firefox development.
But, alas, this is certainly not going to happen, since Microsoft knows that Mozilla means, in the end, independence from Windows, its APIs, and assorted Microsoft Cash cows, such as Office.
Case in point: this previous article on Slashdot.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I hate to say this, but if you try downloading exe's with both IE and Firefox, IE does a better job of telling you that it may be dangerous to open it. In addition, Firefox lets you automatically save the file to disk, so in the future no dialog box will show up. It doesn't let you run it without first saving it, though, and the author saw that as a security feature. IE, on the other hand, pops up a window warning that you are downloading an application, shows you the file name, and shows you the server that is hosting the application. Then it tells you the file might be harmful to your computer if it comes from an untrusted source. You can't stop this dialog box from popping up with any option on the box.
What would be really great is if the Firefox team could build ActiveX wrappers mapping the integration of IE into third-party apps (like QuickBooks and FranklinCovey). This would allow companies to obliterate IE from their organizations.
I've installed Firefox as the main browser for all my clients and I've set up a shotcut to it with the IE Logo icon and deleted the originals, I renamed iexplorer.exe so they have 2 shortcuts but wherever they click, they use Firefox. It's not that I'm not giving my client "the right to choose" but I'm tired of calls because of spyware, worms and when-I-open-the-broswer-millon-pop-ups calls.
Even here, a note is made about ActiveX:
:).
;): they don't have the possibility to use ActiveX.
ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs.
Now, we all know that ActiveX, a technology that has been around for years and years, is perfectly insecure. Moreover, now there are other ways to do most things that ActiveX achieves: Java apps, server side scripting (with, let's say, PHP) and many more. Secure ones.
So what? We have better alternatives. Microsoft obviously won't drop ActiveX support from IE until someone still asks for it. Then, the problem is with companies and sites that make use of them.
It's strange that someone would still be using something that's not portable, and an increasing audience won't be able to benefit from (if they follow CERT raccomandations, at least
At last, I think that sooner or later ActiveX will disappear (given Microsoft doesn't try some horrible marketing move), because no-one wise will use it. Many users have been educated to click "NO" to those popups requiring you to install a BHO... so new site will have an hard battle against users' suspicion. The problem here is: will Microsoft let this happen, or has it some interest in keeping a buggy technology alive?
I remember it were just for one reason I switched to Mozilla Suite (no, Firefox just doesn't suits me
PS: also the pop-up blocking thingie has been useful, but I am a Mozilla user since before it was introduced.
42.
At this point Microsoft needs FireFox. Without a browser alternative the ONLY safe recomendation would be to remove Windows. At least with FireFox as an alternative to IE (and ThunderBird for Outlook) Microsoft can remain as the desktop operating system.
Without FireFox the safe solution is to get rid of Windows and that is Microsofts worst nightmare. So for now Microsoft will be happy that FireFox exists and that Windows remains as the desktop platform.
They will get everyone on board with Firefox, then release the exploit to the script kiddie masses. They will make sure the same exploit isn't available to IE. They will wait until peoples' machines start getting infected with [whatever] and say "Those using Microsoft IE are not affected by the vulnerability."
There's no other marketable reason.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My web site gets about 1200 visitors/day and I track the stats on browsers used... although it's only 4 days of data, my stats are showing that 25.5% of my visitors use Mozilla. This is a huge increase over the norm, which is around 16% Mozilla.
"Firefox development and testing are mostly done by about a dozen Mozilla employees, plus a few dozen others at companies like IBM, Sun, and Red Hat."
I can name six more people that are involved in testing and development of Firefox and they don't work for Mozilla, IBM, Sun, or Redhat. The author clearly doesn't understand what he is talking about on this point. The testing and development is not mostly done by a group of twelve people as their are hundreds, most likely thousands that test and have contributed code.
Their reputation is so bad right now that without a clear admission of how bad it is nobody will believe them when they announce SP2 "fixes everything".
I notice the timing is really close to SP2 coming out ...
Or, maybe I've been reading /. too long ...
I disagree. Whenever you make changes to something, you run the risk of introducing a security hole. Security holes don't simply develop of their own accord in old code.
If the only development Microsoft is doing on Internet Explorer is patching security holes, then it is getting more and more secure. If Firefox developers are adding feature after feature, security holes are bound to be introduced at some point.
Stable, mature code is generally more secure than code that is under active development. That is one of the very few things that Internet Explorer has on its side.
Some interactive features designed exclusively for Internet Explorer won't appear, such as the pop-up menus on Slate's table of contents.
I get this statement as an attempt to slightly discredit Firefox. The article conveniently fails to emphasize that this lack of interoperability is the site designer's fault, and instead presents the Internet Explorer exclusive feature in an innocent manner. Bleh, what can you expect from Microsoft?
Audioscrobbler
I'm sure Microsoft will suddenly start supporting the standards that Mozilla and Opera have supported for years in IE7, meaning that developers will start using those standards. Because IE6 won't recognize those standards, newly designed sites will look like sh*t in that old browser, and users will be forced to upgrade to IE7.
It looks like Microsoft found how to make its IE monopoly pay off for them after all!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I was looking at my website's logs today. Here's what I found for June:
MSIE: 52.0%
Mozilla: 27.4%
Now for this month, July: MSIE: 48.1%
Mozilla: 32.9%
Yes, it's only the first five days of July. But still, it looks like a pattern to me. (btw: OS stats are 68% Windows, 18.5% Linux)
My Systems
I wouldn't be surprised if they at least a few developers working on this as a backup plan. The problem is that MS has been a master at leveraging product X to force/encourage users to use product Y. I don't think they'd want to give up the control that IE gives them. Also anything that makes it easier or more transparent for users to switch to another OS is almost guaranteed to lose them some Windows market share. That's really the only problem with being a monopoly, you really don't have anywhere to go but down.
It has...pop-up and ActiveX blocking. That's about it. It lacks tabbed browsing, themes, configurable extensions...
LOAD "SIG",8,1
There, also, lies a benefit of the current community process. No-one in their right mind will attempt to completely master the Linux kernel in its current magnitude; rather, people concentrate on small subsystems of it -say, the filesystem or modem drivers- and thus have much less to comb through.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
It's not like his eZine was dissing Windows XP or MS Office. The article still derides Free Software advocates by calling them "propeller headed geeks" and so on, and does suggest Firefox is somewhat less capable than IE because the fancy menus on Slate do not work (even though there are definitely platform-agnostic methods to achieve the exact same effect). Despite that, the article is very favourable to Mozilla's stable of products which is nice.
Anyways I don't think anyone will lose their jobs over this:
* IE doesn't make MS any money--it has been bundled into Windows XP so there is no lost revenue (at least for the short and medium term) if users switch en masse to another browser.
* MS has integrated IE into Windows so tightly that you cannot avoid it. You need IE to run Windows update, and a lot of software uses IE DLLs to function (even a lot of third party Windows-based software). Using Firefox to browse web pages doesn't completely obsolete IE
* Microsoft is doing enough on its own to obsolete IE--in fact they seem to encourage anything that will obsolete it. IE development has basically been abandoned since Windows XP was released (and even before 2002 there was little improvement). The Slate article just helps things along a bit.
* Anything that makes a Microsoft property look like it isn't part of a big machine bent on world domination is welcome--especially if it doesn't have a meaningful impact on the bottome line.
So that leaves one thought: Why does MS seem to be abandoning IE?
I think it has already been touched on by some here. Web browsing and other internet-related tasks are being integrated even further into future versions of Windows. Longhorn is supposed to be re-worked top to bottom to incorporate XML-based protocols, better support distributed computing technology (web services and so on). What is your machine and what is the internet is supposed to become almost seamless.
In achieving that goal IE has to disappear in BillG's eyes. Not only that, (X)HTML has to recede into the background as well--it is a document markup language at its roots and is poorly suited to development of highly interactive applications. Never mind that there are vendor-neutral/open standards emerging (XForms, XUL, SVG, etc)--they are not yet as established as HTML. MS sees this as a new opportunity to use Longhorn to establish an MS-controlled platform again using XAML and Avalon.
I think that BillG himself actually despises IE. The design is antiquated and insecure at its heart. The code probably gets more and more unmanageable with time judging by how often one patch sometimes creates other bugs. First and formost, however, by throwing resources as IE microsoft would prolong what it sees as "yesterday's Internet". Ideally, Longhorn would be released without any visible indication of a separate browser and enough HTML support to make existing sites function. As Longhorn grows in market share, MS hopes that sites start incorporating MS-specific protocols like XAML to transform websites into really interactive, whiz-bang internet applications that break completely in IE or Mozilla or any other mere browser on a competing or obsolete platform.
No, there will be no firings at Slate over this editorial stance. Far from it--it is probably quite compatible with the Chief Architect's long-term vision.
A bunch of other slashdot folk have pointed out bits and pieces of this puzzle, but let's see what happens when we put it all together:
1. The new standards, XML, etc, are going to be controlled as much outside the browser, by the productivity suite, as they will be within it. The standards for basic browsers have more or less solidified at this point. There's no more control to be taken here.
2. The browser market has been driven into the ground. There's no money to be made here anymore, as decent free alternatives are available, and the market has gotten used to not paying for their browser. There won't be another Netscape threat.
3. The whole "browser as your desktop" idea has faded away. MS is no longer in danger of losing its OS or productivity-suite sales to a browser company.
Put all of this together and you've got the reason why MS doesn't really give a crap if people use IE or not anymore. But why go the extra step of taking it down?
1. Even in its recommendation, the article is a backhanded compliment at best. Very much in the league of "If you have to switch, this one will work." Which leads to a setup for the future version of IE.. "All the features of Firefox, plus..." which of course will only be able to run properly on the new Longhorn system.
2. IE's security problems have really started to hit the mainstream. The article isn't telling folks anything that wasn't known already, but lets MSN Slate look like a wonderfully independant publication while doing so.
Most importantly:
3. IE doesn't make them money anyway. At this point, the various holes are costing them more than IE provides them both in actual dollars in support and programmer hours that have to be devoted to containing the mess, and in PR.
So it's really to Microsoft's interest at this point to get people *off* of IE, especially to something simple that they'll be able to easily port settings from for the new version. The only thing that might keep them there is stubborn pride. If cooler heads have prevailed in the boardroom, expect to see more on these lines from Microsoft sources.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Bullshit. I've got a mate who fucking swapped Windows for SuSE on his girlfriend's PC and she didn't notice.
The Average User (note: this is the person who calls their Slashdork friend to install Kazaa for them) has no problems switching at all, and in my experience generally appreciates being switched. There really aren't that many people in the "picky enough to stick to IE" camp when it comes down to it, it's just that they hang around in roughly the same areas online as the Enlightened.
As for the theme, only the most anal of the anally retentive care. I hated Qute but the energy required to complain about it dwarfs the energy required to switch themes. The mythical Average User is lucky if they've changed their Winamp skin since they got the computer and have no problems dealing with its UI.
- Chris
Yeah, I was listening to Bob Brinker's MoneyTalk this weekend on the radio, and he kept bashing on IE between taking investement advice calls.
He'd take a couple of calls, then go on the attack on M$. He also lauded Firefox, and must have said the word "MOZILLA" a couple dozen times. I listen to this guy each weekend, and I've never heard him go so far off topic. He was going into importing your "Favorites", talked about extensions, themes. Blew me away, this has really P.O'ed a lot of average users.
When financial advisors like Brinker are telling their non-tech audiences about going to Firefox, you know the dam has broke. I wonder now what Mozilla is going to do with this opportunity.......
The "average user" who can't be made to understand that "no dammit, the blue e is not the Internet!" is a favorite Slashdot bugaboo. Like everyone else here, I've run into a few of them. I used to try to educate those people, but you know what? Fuck 'em. I will happily give anyone who asks for it advice on what browser to use, and will help them set it up -- but that's it. I don't go around preaching, and after I answer questions in a way that any reasonably intelligent, literate (not necessarily computer-literate, just literate) person should be able to understand, I'm done.
... and trying ... and trying to teach those people how to drive. But most people, with a certain amount of patience and a genuine desire to learn, can be made to understand what the accelerator and brake pedal and steering wheel are for, and why road signs exist and why paying attention to them is a good idea. The hopeless cases? Let 'em walk.
In a strange way, this is an expression of my faith that the "average user" actually isn't a moron. I don't believe that people who simply cannot understand the concepts of hardware, software, applications, operating systems, and networks, and the distinctions between them -- no matter how carefully and reasonably you explain them -- are "average users." I believe they're the bottom of the user barrel. They're hopeless cases. They have mental blocks which ensure that they will never, ever, ever learn how to use a computer with a modicum of sense, and the only thing the rest of us can do is tune out their complaints when their systems are buggy and virus-ridden and crash ten times a day.
There are people who will never be able to learn to drive a car without crashing it ten feet down the road, too, and it's not worth your time to keep trying
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What about all those links that used to be preinstalled on IE ?
Am i wrong ?
Reminds me of the media player model. Lots of links to websites. Maybe some kickbacks for hits on websites?
The reason IE is so insecure is the fact that Microsoft was levraging it's monopoly. IE, is so inscure because of the way Microsoft leveraged their monopoly to try an take over the internet. The PC industry was growing fast enough, that if only some users of Netscape switched, AND all new PC's were sold with IE on them, they would be able to win the browser war. That was a given for Microsoft. They would win. So the question was, what to do with the win? Perpetuate the monopoly and hijack the internet. ActiveX will only run on windows. Let's make a world where all websites that matter, use ActiveX. Let's break standards so that websites that work in IE, won't work well in other browsers. We have enough programmers, that we cna hijack the standards and everone else will play catchup. So by adding ActiveX, making the user experience easy and good looking, with security as a side note, Mircosoft created IE, which by the way had to be intergrated into the OS as a pretence so that the Department of Justice could not ask them to remove it for a default windows install. The browser is really a few dll's that anyone can use to manipulate html. So it's strenghts are your strenghts, and it's weaknesses are your weaknesses. The file explorer, Internet Explorer, Outlook Epxress, are all built on an intregrated together via these DLL's. You can use a secuirty weakness in any one component aganist the others. Time has proven that ActiveX and breaking web standards was a bad idea that is only now starting not to pay off for Microsoft.
vi +
There are no technical reasons, nor even financial ones (I.E. loss of development costs spent on IE) but only political ones (they would look like the horses' asses we all know they are.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is auto-install of plug-ins, there is auto-install of skins - i kind of have a hard time believing that all of these were written by people wrecking their brains about possible exploits. [if you know different, let me know]
I know better. I've been involved with the Mozilla and Firefox development process for years and I can tell you with great confidence that we've considered security at every step of the way, from design, to implementation, to testing. We've got some of the top minds in the business constantly trying to find holes in our security story. They find 'em and we fix 'em.
If you don't believe me, then ask Bugzilla about it, or take a look at the code. Maybe then you won't have such a hard time believing it.
With IE, we know it's broken beyond fixing. With FireFox, we don't know. It has not been tested
Um, hasn't been tested? We've got tens of thousands of people who have tested and reported bugs (including security bugs) on Firefox and the rest of the Mozilla code base. We've got millions of users using it. We've been the target of malware writers and we are beating them with a strong security ethos that defines almost everything we do.
Imagine - unlikely as it may be - FireFox wins the new browser war. Will it still be safe? IMHO, only a real security model like the one built into Java can really protect users.
You're suggesting that Firefox and the Mozilla codebase don't have "a real security model"? I'm guessing you really haven't even looked.
Do yourself a bit of a favor and actually look at the code, the bugs, the process, etc. before you start talking about security.
--Asa
Ah, but they DO CARE. It's all about selling another version. One better than the last. After all, isn't THAT their one consistant pitch, "It's better or more secure, or more feature rich, or more X than the previous version"?
;-)
They design their OS so well, they can't( won't really ) add USB support to it. Thinking Windows 95 and Windows NT here.
If you remember ANYTHING about Microsoft, remember that they are a marketing company first. The black magic they deliver is secondary and only important to the fact that it solves SOME of the customers needs. Now this isn't a bad thing if your only interest is $$$$. But, if you are a company or person attempting to use Microsoft products to solve a problem or simplify your live, it won't. It'll just change your current problem domain for the time being and you'll be back with bills in hand to get out of another mess they led you into( or you followed them into..
Microsofts security game is just that, their game and only yours when you follow them. I really think that's why GNU/Linux is really picking up steam now. Companies are starting to figure out that they have no control on the Microsoft threadmill. GNU/Linux gives them some control back. But, with some different issues though still without the lack of control Microsoft solutions/problems bring with it. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
To be fair, UNIX, and the rest of the Internet world, also went through this phase. SMTP being the prime example (still unsolved. Grr..). Everyone online are friends, so you only need enough security to keep out curious friends. The Morris Worm was the kick in the balls to get people thinking about security. The assumption changed from "everyone is friends who play nice" to "attacks will happen by determened (and smart) people." The "bug of the month club" that Sendmail admins were members of is quite similar to todays with MS.
This is no excuse for Microsoft programmers, or 3rd party app for Windows programmers. The evolution of internet security is well documented. And even if no MS programmer ever was at a university in around 1985-1995 durring this transition on the Internet (computer nerds at a Uni assumably having (some, limited) 'net access) there is enough foklore floating around that they should know better.
So what are they to do? Well, taking Sendmail as an example, many users gave up and wrote better mailers. And the Sendmail folks did fix many of its problems. Writing a mailer from scratch was probabaly less effort then "fixing" Sendmail, esp given the stupid design of Sendmail. (compared to modern mailer designs, anyway). I dont realy know enough about the internals of Windows (NT), but I do know that it was desigined by more-or-less the same team as that that desigined VMS. VMS is paticularly anal about security. So lets say that WNT is at its core, "secure". It is all the user level OS apps, add on packages, and 3rd party packages that suck. So it should be, line for line, easier to "fix" the windows problems then it was to "fix" Sendmail. (Because at its core Windows should be OK).
I fail to see why being knowledgeable about MS's plans would be viewed with suspicion. Perhaps I should clarify my background.
.NET really is faster and better (as our developers have found out). Whether or not there are bugs to work out and regardless of how MS has executed the solutions, they have developed and/or embraced some very good concepts. Longhorn shows real promise, and for a 1.0 product MS Reporting Services is astonishingly well executed.
I've used Linux since 1995 or so but actually became an "open source affecionado" around mid-1997 on a student work term. My employer was well into migrating from old AT&T UNIX boxes to COMPAQs running Slakware Linux tuned to meet their needs (data collection/logging and web-based reporting). Actually seeing Linux used in a production environment run as rock solid as the old AT&T boxes (and much better than the Windows NT server) without any licensing costs sold me easily. In the years since then things have only gotten dramatically better for Linux.
However, in my field of work Linux is still very much the exception (unfortunately). Things run on either Windows NT or 2000 or in special cases QNX or a proprietary RTOS or UNIX. My present employer works in very close conjunction with Microsoft to develop drivers and application software. It is an important part of my job to stay current on Microsoft's direction as well as that of our own developers. As I am an applications specialist and not a developer/programmer at this point I cannot issue a decree that we shall adopt Linux as a platform of choice for our products--indeed no one can without reprocussions.
Because of my background with both sides I can see the strengths and weaknesses of both Linux and Windows (or Free vs proprietary systems in general). For example, Linux and BSD are unmatched for stability and security. Regardless of any studies that say otherwise, Linux is most often much cheaper to maintain than Windows. Free Software applications are also thr real kings of the enterprise. The Internet wouldn't survive without Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, BIND, mySQL, PostgreSQL and so on.
On the other hand, vendors reluctance to develop open drivers (or disclose enough information to the community to do so) ie frustrating. There is still too much crap to contend with for the everyday user to get their Centrino chipset to work, or to make their flashy new NVidia or ATI video cards work properly.
Microsoft/proprietary software has its own list of goods and bads. Microsoft developmer tools totally kick butt on the competition. Developing with
However, with Microsoft I have very real and grave concerns as well. While Windows has come a long way in stability and usability, Microsoft neglected security for too long. I think that poor security has been the most serious issue MS has ever had to face. Licensing schemes have been a royal pain to deal with for a long time too. I'm next to fed up with complicated licensing schemes, license key codes, dongles, product activation and other administrative nightmares, all of which add no function to the end solution at all and only serve as mechanisms to grant the user the priviledge of running an application. And as promising as Longhorn looks, MS is re-inventing the wheel in a blatant attempt to lock the industry into it's own solutions. Really, what is the point of creating XAML when open standards were already there? Longhorn also looks set to break a lot of compatibility and be even more resource hungry than ever.
I think _every_ professional should know as much about MS's plans as possible. Likewise they should all know as much as possible about development in Linux and Free Software in general (you know damn well many in MS are studying up on the "enemy"). How else can anybody be competitive? It is only wise to bet on both horses here in particular. With Longhorn so far from release and the potential for a disconnect in terms of hardware and software compatibility with previous versions of Windows, Linux is poised to make a breakthrough. Hopefully Those in the Linux camp can "steal" the best ideas from Longhorn and execute them with characteristically more elegant, interoperable design.