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Microsoft Demands Removal Of Longhorn Images
bonch writes "After the previously reported release of the Longhorn beta at this year's WinHEC, Neowin and other Windows sites are reporting that Microsoft is going around sending legal letters demanding removal of Longhorn Build 5048 screenshots. Paul Thurrott discusses it on his site, stating that Microsoft never told anyone beforehand not to post screenshots of the publicly available beta, and links to the new galleries he has up now. 'Enjoy it while it lasts.'"
To me this pretty much looks like Microsoft ran the screenshots up the metaphoric flagpole and didn't like the salutes. Instead of spinning it as beta (which we in the IT community have come to understand, if not respect) and appropriately rough-edged, Microsoft apparently has decided to take the low road and is going to hold its breath until it turns blue (irony). Too bad, the images do suck, but I think Microsoft in its eagerness to prove "me too" for having a cool new OS stumbled mightily this time. Fortunately, having $50B petty cash makes recovery from these inconveniences convenient.
if the reviewers LIKED it, those screen shots could've stayed up...
Sheesh. Microsoft can't even be original in this -- Apple was way ahead of them.
Apple rumors aren't considered confirmed until there's been at least one notice from Apple Legal.
.. Have people been turning to stone?
Starsucks
So, if you do and they then sic the attack-lawyers on you, why are you surprised? Because they didn't do it previously? Guess what? They can pick and choose.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
If not, Microsoft is using it's multimillion dollar legal department to bully people into doing/thinking what they want.
Hold on a minute while I try to not act suprised.
"Powers. I have them."
...give a four year old some marker pens (primary colours) and ask them do draw a UI. There's your screenshots. :)
The screen shots I've seen so far have been UTTERLY unimpressive. Essentially XP with a different color scheme. IE 6, Media Player 10, etc, etc, etc.
It's hard to hype a product when there is so much evidence showing the opposite.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Look at the screen shop showing "My Music".
Now look at the top left explorer bar and see the link that says "Purchase Music".
Could this be why? Where does the link go? Isn't that illegal in the settlement with the justice dept/EU.
Just curious,
Enjoy
It's just the normal noises in here.
Screenshots? Who the hell needs screenshots when you can get the entire operating system yourself?
"Apparently, there is a condition in the EULA preventing people from posting screenshots. Nobody saw anything like that."
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
ajf
So in Longhorn, can I drag documents onto a button on the taskbar to open it, rather than holding the mouse down waiting for the app to appear?
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Interesting, BTW, how all those car magazines get away with pictures of pre-production prototytpes snapped during their road-tests. Somehow, car manufacturers don't see a problem there.
Having said that, if he agreed not to do it he shouldn't. Period.
Did anyone else notice the translucent plastic effect the Start button has now. Now that's innovation!
I guess Microsoft is afraid that Apple would snag that oh-so-yummy Longhorn interface. With a couple days 'til Tiger launches, Apple could put in a serious cram session to update the look. Cram Apple, cram!!!
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
"...did anyone else notice how the Recycle Bin icon's shadow slants left while the text's shadow slants right?"
Is it just me, or is the recycle bin icon also butt ugly? Actually, I think the whole GUI looks terrible. Windows XP/2000 looks nicer than this crap. All these screenshots look like Windows XP SP3 with an ugly skin.
I don't see how Microsoft could have progressed so little since the release of Windows XP in 2001.
In some ways this is like when a movie is about to be released, but the studio will not let the critics screen the film. If a studio knows their $70,000,000 film sucks that bad, they know better than to let critics screen it. It is time to get the PR people over to yahoo and amazon to leave 5 star reviews.
Plus, the screen shots MS gave out, there was nothing special there. Nothing secret. Nothing new. If someone did not tell me it was a new Windows, I would have guessed someone got a new wallpaper for their XP machine.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
this is perhaps the only thing thurrot has ever written that i've liked.
who is she? leave a comment!
Meanwhile telling people to get them off their websites is a guaranteed method of making sure everyone will download them and save them and look them over much more critically, trying to figure out what Ms doesn't want them to see. Pretty effective marketing, really.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"They promised to "wow" us all with a whole new Windows experience"
And they succeeded. I can honestly say their new "Shut Do..." menu option in the Beta truly did make me go "wow".
As in "Wow, WTF are they thinking?"
Seriously, just how much work do they have left on this "Beta"? Getting kind of late in the game to have such glaring UI problems.
1.) Comparing a leaked copy of the OS to screenshots is silly.
2.) Apple didn't sue over the leaked copy of Tiger. They watermarked it and caught the guy through technical means.
3.) I think you seriously need to rethink your definition of "right to know" as it is nothing like what anyone I know uses. See I have a "right to know" MS is dumping toxic waste in my backyard. I don't have a "right to know" anything I want about their unreleased product.
As for harming MS, if you can't see how these screenshots do that you haven't been reading the critical reviews of it. It has been widely panned as actually managing to make XP's interface look positively sleek and elegant.
Because obviously Microsoft has put all their work into the way Longhorn looks, rather than under-the-hood things.
Screenshots tell all. Microsoft is asleep at the wheel.
of course it does. recycling is the domain of left leaning hippies, therefore the left leaning recycling bin. Real Men use a trash can.
Reality has a liberal bias
I liked the classy way the Shut Down button doesn't fit on the menu. "Shut Do..." Do what!!!?
Looks like it was #1 that was the correct answer:
"1:07pm
OK, Microsoft has provided its explanation. What it boils down to is that there may be certain technologies in the Longhorn Developer Preview build for which Microsoft has not filed patent applications, and the confidentiality provisions protect or mitigate the company's filing rights. One of the focus areas of IP protection has been user interface, hence Microsoft cannot permit screenshots of the UI. I was told that Microsoft had left its Media Center user interface unprotected, and that UI has been stolen and replicated in numerous other places. They don't want that to happen to Longhorn."
From the Thurrott link.
Build 5048 is not a beta. It is a stripped down version of Longhorn that contains enough of the system framework for hardware developers to being writing their drivers. This is WinHEC, remember?
Beta is planned for August. The features I work on, and most of the features I've seen in other group's demos, were not merged into this build.
And as the years go by, my wife's Mac looks better and better, until I have finally decided to break down and get one myself. If aint about 'the pretty colors' as you put it, it is about PROGRESS.
The kind of progress that we wanted when we went from Win 3.11 to Win 95. The kind of progress we expected when we went from Visual Basic to C#. Or better put, the kind of PROGRESS that we USED to get from Microsoft. Disclaimer: Yeah, I used to work for Microsoft, so fucking what?
The point is; progress seems to be coming slower and slower, in the exact ways that Lucovski pointed out when he left the company. Personally, I am getting sick of hearing about shit, only to later hear that the one thing that would make me spend money beyond MSDN has just gotten ripped out.
Many of us who make our living on Windows and other Microsoft products would like something more to talk about than just .NET. Unless you have had your wife laugh at you as you search for device drivers while she just FUCKING WORKS, knows exactly what I am talking about.
In short, we are fucking fed up.
You are right, it aint about 'pretty colors', it is about showing us that the company can still produce something BETTER than what we had before. If they cant do it in the GUI, why the fuck should we believe that they can do it in the file system?
First impressions are a bitch, and these aint good ones. We've been looking at the same shit for two years now, and I dont see any progress anywhere, just ugly screens of boring shit.
Apple's shit may not be all that much better, but they at the very least manage to put a nice ribbon on it, and act like the shit is special enough to want it.
XP works; Win2K3 works damn well. But, if you are trying to show me something new, the very least you can do is take the time to make sure it aint similar to what we have already seen or at the very least not fucking ugly?
E.
One of the focus areas of IP protection
Yeah, because the UI was really the highlight of the features shown, what with the truncated titles, execrable icons from the 1990s, and dreary grey tinge. Lots of new ideas in there.
?
This is a damage limitation exercise because of all the bad press. When even your fan sites are calling it a 'train wreck' any publicity is bad publicity.
"The features I work on, and most of the features I've seen in other group's demos, were not merged into this build."
Is your job to add the suck before or after core API's? I assume there are people responsible for both.
He'd probably claim that they were an integrated part of Windows and couldn't be shipped separately.
deus does not exist but if he does
Or, more accurately, simply commented out of the HTML.
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And here is some random text to attempt to satisfy Slashdot's inane content filters. Apparently, it has to be quite a bit of text. I don't know what the average line length is that it requires, but it looks like it's unreasonably high.