Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer on Innovation
prostoalex writes "Robert Scoble interviewed Steve Ballmer on the topics of blogging, innovation at Microsoft, Microsoft's work with developers and other things. Video is available in WMV format." From the interview: "Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff."
That may be all well and even true. But why does Mr. Ballmer remind me so much of glass houses, stones, pots, kettles and the color black?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This interview doesn't shed much light on an already dark and rainy corporation. How could this be anything but intellectual masturbation on Microsoft's part when you have a Microsoft employee slow pitching to the biggest windbag at Microsoft? Especially when the two appear to be patting themselves on the back about the fact that Microsoft really does innovate. Aside from the fact Ballmer is amazingly general in his list of innovations, the interviewer asks questions about other companies and if those companies out-innovated Microsoft. Of course, the response is they didn't.
But the interviewer might have asked some more thoughtful questions in that line like:
Not sure why, but even on slashdot Microsoft manages to get some Puff Pieces.
(open the Troll and Flamebait mod floodgates)
I'm glad people are still holding onto their machines, programs and technology for so called 'innovative' ideas. We live in an information age your industrial age model is gone and dead. Ideas are the stuff of innovation not machinery and technology.
You've got to be kidding. They really don't have any idea what technical innovation is. Microsoft is really a marketing company who do software as a sideline. They've certainly had some innovative marketing strategies but nothing on the technical side.
Deleted
Yes, and with poor software design, a lot of exploits can be written.
you know, i really don't think he knows what that word means:
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Microsoft has a very good research team in place,but that does not ensure innovation. I think they are having problems with translating research into products. Previously, their research was market oriented...say UI design for the common man etc. which did well for their prodcuts initially.That has now saturated.
The kind of innovation we see from MS nowadays is generally of a kind not needed, like what they did with RSS. (it's a standard for a bloody reason!).
Also, MS has spread themselves too thin by stepping into too many areas...OS'es, Search Engines, Spyware, etc. Well, maybe it's time to let go and focus on what they are...an OS company.
BTW, does anyone know how many MS innovations were by acquiring companies. Does that count?
From Scoble's Blog
That's what happens when you have an economic system that magnifies mans already flawed greedy nature. Case in point was the guy who said "I mean, my first thought when I heard (about the London bombings) -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, "Hmmm, time to buy."
Also, you are certainly wrong in one example you gave. Microsoft did out-innovate Netscape. They mat not have been the first on the scene with a browser, but they were certainly the first to produce one that was a pleasure to use (by the standards at the time) and innovation doesn't always mean precedence, it can mean implementation of existing technology in innovative ways.
Much the same applies to the VisiCalc example. Microsoft took that poorly implemented idea - and I used the original VisiCalc, it was extremely painful to use day to day - and made it into something that most businesses can't do without now.
Why? Because Slashdot is owned by a major media corporation, so it's no sheep either.
What would that matter? Well, when you consider that virtually all major US corporations are linked up into a large cartel via what's called "interlocking directorships" (see http://theyrule.net/ in a real sense Slashdot is just a friendly face put on the corporate monolith that is the US power structure.
But that power structure and its vassals are wolves, not sheep.
Or at least they will be soon when they are the first company to buy a Spyware company and then incorporate that Spyware directly into the OS. Plus the Spyware will be proprietary so you will need to pay them 10k to view some code to make an API for your spyware to talk to its spyware and ....
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
Then why bother posting on the topic of MS inervation?
Scoble should stop eating his scoble snacks and hanging out with those Microjuana smoking hippies Freddie, Daphne, Velma, and Bill "Shaggy" Gates.
Looking at your posting history, it appears that your account is for the sole purpose of promoting your thinly-disguised litigation advertising site.
Moderators: Mod this down.
Hey, come on. If these guys weren't so innovative I'd never have been able to program my Altair in BASIC. That's gotta count for somethin.
You'd get a better answer - and he's dead.
just think about it, how each and every company always claims absolute leadership and innovation, market-leadership and to be the utmost and best of there is out there...
The reason they do that is best explained by the man who formalized that concept. Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels once said: "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth".
Corporations (and, gee, governments too) these days use exactly that same technique, whether it's in PR statements, interviews, punditry or advertising. They found it's easier to buy time with VC money and try to let the lies sink in in the general public to get people to buy their products, than putting out actually good products. There are exceptions of course, but that's the rule these days. And don't forget the added benefit of workers buying the lies too and working harder as a result...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Not exactly the Open Source business model, but the business model revolving around GPL'ed programs in particular is very interesting. Most other licenses' business models largely rely on donations and secondary sales. But one particular reason why companies are so keen on buying support for GPL'ed programs from other companies might be in part because of the viral nature of the GPL and the possible legalities surrounding any tools developed in-house to be used with the GPL'ed program.
Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so.
IBM invented SQL. IBM invented the hard drive. IBM invented the scanning tunnelling microscope. IBM employees have won the Nobel Prize.
IBM may be evil, but it has always been cool evil.
Microsoft on the other hand introduced...uhm...the animated paperclip? The monkey dance? The BSOD?
Really, Ballmer. You just down like IBM because they gave support to Linux. Which makes them even cooler.
What a weird world that must be.
But they aren't genuinely "innovative" most of the time. Anyone who wants to see real innovation should look at Sun, Apple and Be before Be went belly up. Look at how small Be's development team was, yet somehow they managed to create a 64bit file system with many of WinFS' features back in what? 1998-1999?
.NET, Java, Windows Media, etc.
The one legitimate criticism of open source development though, is that you'd not have thinks like Apache Jakarta were it not for Sun creating Java. Open source and commercial closed source development should have the same relationship that name brand and generic drugs have. Software patents, IMO, would work if 2 things happened:
1) We had a patent office with people who knew what they were doing and could safely reject bad patents.
2) Software patents lasted for 2-3 years so that way the businesses could get a reward for doing stuff like creating
The problem is that just as Microsoft takes Apples ideas, so do some projects like Mono and OpenOffice take Microsoft's ideas.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Also, Ballmer seems to need a refresher in basic math... last I checked, 1 + 1 != 3
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to mak
I am a big fan of the concept of open source, and free software.
I don't believe it can work in every situation, but the idea is good.
The most damning thing about Linux (for example) is that it has zero innovation. I want to see something new for the desktop, not rehashed ideas that Apple or Microsoft or Unix implemented years earlier.
I don't believe Linux is innovative, and I see that pervading the entire open source movement.
Look at Open Office. Great idea, lousy implementation. Apart from the cost, what benefit does it have over Microsoft Office? There's nothing new in it, nothing innovative.
I'd even go so far as to say that the amount of sameness cripples it. Apple did more with Pages than the Open Office has with its word 'wannabe', and it shows. They're trying something new, something innovative.
Ballmer is right when he says open source software is not innovative. I disagree with the man on almost everything he says and is, but he's right in that.
And goddamn it, I wish he weren't
It looks more like they are just lining their sights. They see Google as actually innovating but this probably has more to do with the fact that Google is king in an area of technology that M$ has failed at. So they will ignore others for the moment and fire on Google. Slamming IBM, OSS, and the like is really to insult the intelligence of the audience; esp. with OSS. Let's see, Linux is able to offer mail, web, file sysetems, and application services with considerably less overhead but no innovation? M$ has conceded the moderate growth of Linux for now. They are likely counting on an adoption surge for Longhorn. We shall see.
Innovation = creating something new..... that's straight from the dictionary. Technicially I innovate every morning when I go to the bathroom. Of course other companies innovate. What a joke, next thing you know other companies innovations will be in their last throws.
Steve mentions his son in the video. Kids are usually shame of thair parents, now image if Steve Balmer was your father... (pointles reply to a pointles thread)
When I read the Ballmer quotes, the first thing I thought was, he is saying that there is no room in the industry for anyone but Microsoft.
All these other companies make products that other people use to be innovative. There relly isn't a lot of innovative room in relational databases for Oracle. They make databases, and very good databases and very popular databases, and they make a lot of money doing just that. THEIR CUSTOMERS are the ones who put those databases to good use.
IBM make a lot of stuff. Most of it is pretty good stuff, and they make a lot of money selling that stuff. It is IBM's CUSTOMERS who make good use of it.
"The open source guys..." Well, they make a lot of stuff too. IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO USE OPEN SOURCE software who put it to good use and who are innovative. Open source allows people a little more room to be innovative. They can aquire it at a lower cost. They can alter it to better meet their specific requirements...
Steve Ballmer believes that computers are a platform for software companies to restrict and dictate what happens there. In that model, customers do not decide what computers do, but software vendors. That's why Microsoft feels the need to compete in every single little corner of the software industry. For Microsoft to (almost literally) control the world, they have to be the sole supplier of software to everyone.
"The open source guys" have a different view.
Dear Spammer/Troll,
You have linked to that same site on 3 out of the 4 articles you have posted on. You have even linked to it on that post. And you have recently started blatently karma-whoring so that more people will read your spam.
Your site (and we all know it's yours), repeatedly links to https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/ for example:
"There is a forming class action lawsuit against AT&T Wireless alleging securities fraud. Affected? Go here."
Which surprise, surprise, has a referrer on the link. Take your spam elsewhere.
Embracing, I can see. CP/M, WordPerfect, Bittorrent, Google, et al can attest to that. Extending, of course, just take a look at Explorer. Extinguishing, without a doubt, with dozens of companies that tried fight Microsoft's deep pockets.
The closest they even come to "innovating" is in their marketing and FUD departments, with the occasional scientific paper thrown in or smaller company they gobble up.
...asking the Osama Bin Laden about the virtues of Catholicism. Okay, maybe not quite, but I don't think MS are a company who do innovation. Rightly or wrongly their approach has been consistently based on developing other peoples innovations into mass-market products. Such as QDOS, VisiCalc, Navigator, GUI OS (from Apple or Xerox, take your pick). So I sincerely doubt the value of Ballmer's comments on this topic.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
... really expect Monkey Boy Ballmer to actually admit that other companies might be more innovative than MS? Didn't think so.
Hey, it's the microsoft groupies who've been saying for years that anything MS do is the de-facto standard. You can't complain if we occasionally try to be standards-compliant in our adulation.
Even so, MS remain the clear leaders in marketing innovation, and for good reason. Consider this interview with Eben Moglen. If you read that, you'll find a debate where the interviewer holds a different opinion to the interviewee on a number of counts. If the FSF were serious about competing with Microsoft, they'd have created an arse-licking department and had them ask the questions. Then Moglen too could have been asked "Think of a really hard question for yourself, and then answer it. If that's all right. Sir."
The open source community just doesn't have the infrastructure for that sort of thing. Thus, the world has to wait for MS to show us the way once again. And the rosy pink cleanliness of Balmer's behind stands as eloquent testimony to the one field where microsoft's dominance remains unchallenged.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Funny, he didn't mention Apple?
Simpy
The beautiful irony of the situation is that there's no evidence he ever actually said that. It is itself likely just a lie that gets repeated over and over.
IBM and ORACLE are not innovative. They are big unninnovative businesses just like Microsoft. They thrive on the continuation of their existence, not the creation of something new. As for open source not being innovative, it hasn't been lately, but it used to be. I suspect that open source's obsession with standards and standardization has something to do with its lack of innovation these days, because, folks, innovation by its very nature is not standards-based.
Maybe not from a end-user standpoint, but from a developer standpoint, I can tell you making ASP.Net 2.0 (still beta2 - due for November 7th) is VERY innovative (or doing anything in VS.Net 2005 for that matter).
/., and it's cool to hate M$, and one gets modded up for it - and this post won't. How surprising?
Or perhaps you're purposedly ignoring some tools 9or maybe you don't know about them), like Visual Web Developper 2005 - which is much like Visual Studio (with some of the advanced features stripped off), that will sell for like 50$. While it's not like having the real/full VS.Net 2005, it's far better than being stuck with say, Dreamweaver and most other editors. Very innovative. An cheap, powerful IDE for the masses/hobbyists/those that code for fun/as a hobby.
Live Communications Server 2005 has quite a few nice and useful features too.
Indeed, they don't completely redefine the way we use computers everyday, but it's not like most people here like to claim (i.e. no innovation/new features whatsoever - they're just cloning apple, etc).
But hey, this is
GUIs:
Development tools:
Emulation:
All in all, I may have misattributed a few innovations, but most of these are from Open Source. Also, there are many others I can't remember or simply don't know. Microsoft has done less innovation than Open Source, that much is obvious.
I would appriciate information fillers on innovations from other projects I'm less familiar with, such as Apache, the Kernel.
I am pretty sure Ballmer really believes what he says, because most people, surely Microsoft employees, are quite ignorant of Opensource offerrings and their innovations.
WordPro didn't show up on the scene until 1997 IIRC. It was Xoom's rereleased version of the WordStar suite. I think you are referring to WordStar. However I believe Electric Pencil predated WordStar
What do you know I wrote a novel
And I can whip up a usable, very functional app in seconds that compiles to 3 platforms using REALbasic. If I want a Cocoa OS X app, I can use Xcode and Interface Builder, both of which are free.
Other platforms have similiar, and some would argue better, IDE solutions.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either yourself or the Grandparent post, just honestly curious.
I'm trying to think of some, but I'm not very well versed in all of the stuff that is out there. I guess BitTorrent comes to mind... does that count?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Speaking about innovation, MS probably meant her .NET technology, for example. Then should we forget who actually did it? The Borland guy!
We can continue the list of innovations.
The new filesystem? But look at Apple, she already implemented this database-like I/O concept and it really works today.
We could continue further, etc.
Honestly, do Balmer remind you a car salesman a bit? As for me, this face isn't even much in real Microsoft spirit and corporate culter. Some descrepancies... There are a lot of very thoughtful ppl over there, and they are not exposed. For example, the already mentioned big ex-Borland guy, big ex-Linux Guy, etc etc.
Probably, money is all that counts at the end :-(
I would like to add to your software installation management section:
Zero install which allows you to run programs without having to go the install procedure, and with no need to specify the root password.
It might not be everyone's ideal way to manage software, but it's still a huge innovation from the Open Source community.
There are tons more I can add, but this is one I found out about quite recently and I think it will become more popular in the future.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I already talked about this in this comment.
Innovation at Microsoft is an oxymoron.
I think they've also patented the idea of innovation....
and trademarked the word.
This guy's got a kool-aid drip.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Oh, please. What're you, twelve years old?
Go look up "HyperCard" and CORBA. Specifically the timelines. Microsoft haven't innovated anything, ever. All they ever do is look to see what other people are doing, make a barely functional, pale imitation and eventually kludge it into something which is only just usable with huge amounts of pain.
Deleted
I am completely through with Slashdot. I can put up with reposts, I can put up with stories only marginally related to tech. Microsoft PR crap as a news item is, IMHO, the absolute bottom. Looking for true proof that the editors don't give a crap about what is posted here? This is it.
Don't use the Troll mod just because you disagree with me.
They opened the market for cheap computers made of interchangeable parts that can exchange software because of software compatibility.
Without this standarized hardware approach we wouldn't have desktop Unix or Linux.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Well this is annoying. Scoble complained just earlier on his blog that Slashdot hadn't linked to his Ballmer interview.
:-(. Come on editors, even the interviewer semi-admits this as being a troll-piece in a /. context.
The post in question: Interesting that Slashdot hasn't linked to the Ballmer thing yesterday. Maybe they belong to the Andrew Orlowski "we-must-not-link-to-or-acknowledge-Scoble" school of reporting. Heh.
What's fun is that Ballmer, in the interview yesterday, took a swipe at open source and IBM and Oracle. Surely that'd be worth getting the Slashdotters all riled up.
He got a lot of comments pointing out the interview was content-free, a spin job, and otherwise of generally no interest to the discerning crowd here. How pleased I was to see Scoble's shot go amiss.
And then I refresh the front-page here
slashdot is making progress in the field of Advanced Irony © TM
You forget the important questions though (not an MS fan but still):
One innovation that Google came up with is that it learned that it doesn't need a figurehead spokesmodel like Ballmer.
Ballmer does Microsoft a disservice by ranting about innovation but not actually delivering innovation. No wonder why theses Microsoft guys are so uncharismatic - people have a distaste for bullshit-slinging horn tooters.
IBM - the inventor of so many basic industry ideas - is declared a non-innovator.
Apple, who brought so many great ideas from the lab to desktop computing, ideas that Microsoft admittedly embraced after Apple delivered them successfully to market - doesn't get a mention.
And Google, who mostly innovated the idea of not screwing over internet users with ads and pop-ups and cross-marketing crap, is an exciting innovator.
IBM is the innovator of basic technology. Google is the innovator of doing the Internet right. Apple is the PC marketplace innovator.
Microsoft? Um, well they invented something... I just don't know what that is. Truetype? SQL? The mouse? The file system? Does ANYone know?
TCP/IP Stack (MS 'borrowed' one)
Apache (not an insignificant number)
Squid
Cloning (Ghost)
AV Nortons et al
Antispam (Spam Assassin)
AutoUpdate (Debian AptGet etc)
Tripwire
Firewalls (PF)
No Execute and antistack smashing (IBM)
Crypto and RNG (OpenBSD)
ICMP made safe (OpenBSD)
NSA Linux addon's, grsecurity
File system Reiser
P2P (MP3/Kazza/Bittorrent)
Photoshop
As for Google, copped a black eye as big as Netscape, plus MSN did not dominate.
The truth is MS have the best marketing machine/Advertising campaign.
Joseph Goebbels on Compassion, George Bush on grammar and Count Dracula on the health benefits of a Vegan Diet.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
When I attempt to define "innovation" I think of things like "making cool new stuff" or "coming up with something new and inventive." The Microsoft definition of "innovation" is unknown but I'm guessing it means something connected to aggressive/bad business practices and having a meaning not too dissimilar from "getting the edge over everyone else" (by any means possible.)
I submitted a question to Slashdot about this a couple years ago, wondering the same thing. Where is the Open Source innovation coming from? Are there any projects out there that really innovate, coming from Open Source developers?
Sure, Microsoft and Apple have the resources to hire artists, and study usability, and implement ideas that come to mind, but the entire desktop paradigm, for example, hasn't made significant improvement since the days of Windows 95. Are there any projects out there for any platform that actually show innovation in a way that's not just like trying to copy or slightly-alter something that's been done by one of these commercial entities?
It's a serious question. What can those of us who enjoy Open Source software use as a showpiece, an example of just how much better it can get for a user? I've installed three linux distributions on a server of mine just this past month, and let me tell you, they're not all that impressive to your typical Windows person. ("What's that dialog about your sound not working?" "What the hell is that icon supposed to be?" "What the hell is that?")
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
That's what occured to me just watching.
Shrinkwrap Software only business is over. 50 Billion$ on the bank or not. That's the simple truth. Be it that MS will roll on with XBox 360, 720 or whatever. But their core milkcow is withering.
The CEO of MS having a sweet-little-nothings chinwag with one of his minions and hideously bullshitting 90% of the time won't change that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Or, to quote a semi-famous Spaniard, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Floppy disks, hard disks (RAMAC and Winchester), 8-bit bytes, compatible systems (regardless of model), relational databases, perpendicular recording, vacuum tape transport, silicon-on-insulator, copper semiconductors, the light pen, scanning tunneling microscopy, UPC laser barcode scanning (e.g. supermarkets), the Mark I, electronic multiplication, proportional spacing typewriter (and the monospaced Courier typeface), first computer that can modify a stored program, FORTRAN, I/O channels, first commercial transitorized calculator (the 608), the first "self learning" (AI) program, first fully automatic transitor production line, lookahead and pipelining (CPU), the Selectric "golfball," SABRE airline reservation system (real time, online), the first interchangeable disk packs (way before Iomega), the semiconductor diode laser (fundamental to CD and DVD) and laser data transmission, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (the first word processor), Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), first monolithic germanium ICs, CPU cache memory, "80 columns," the Esaki diode, various bubble memory innovations (including bubble lattice storage), fractal geometry, first superconducting polymer, first laser/electrophotographic printer, DES encryption, RISC architecture, "thin film" data recording head, etc., etc.
Slackers.
Actually, the real irony here is your commenting on the source of the quote, and not the actual message.
Microsoft on the other hand introduced...uhm...the animated paperclip?
The Lotus software was particularly horrid
!!!
You should pray to develop such "horrid" software. There were two primary things that put the IBM PC on desks all over corporate America: 1) The TLA logo and 2) Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus invented the first "Killer App".
Microsoft introduced their first spreadsheet product before Lotus 1-2-3 hit the market (1982 for the former, 1983 the latter). It was such a huge scary success compared to that horrid Lotus crap that nobody can remember it's name ("Multiplan", BTW).
Excel (for Windows, it was originally introduced on some silly fruit computer of some sort) came out in 1987, leaving Lotus to pretty much own the spreadsheet market in the interim.
and swiftly abandoned by nearly everyone that wasn't glued to their memorized 1-2-3 key combos.
You mean like F1 = Help? Yeah, what a goof that was!
This message brought to you by Old Farts Inc, keeping history on track for hundreds if not thousands of years
OK, GP just trolls about MS being a marketing company not a technology company and get tons of insightful mods.
;-)
Parent takes some time and does a good job of pointing out some interesting information and is all around a VERY high quality post (at least compared to GP) and gets nothing. At least he hasn't been modded troll (yet) for not bashing MS!
Do these people really believe this garbage?
90% of what Microsoft does was either copied ( and 'extended' ) from someone else, or just outright bought.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
All the knowledge that has been picked up over the years for windows in not necessarily going to apply to linux, you can't expect to know what is there without finding out.
Lots of places, including the conventional ones like universities and software/hardware companies - like the embedded firewall company twenty minutes walk from where I live that puts linux on PCI card sized systems that pretend to be network cards for windows PCs. Look around, there's probably something near you.I can whip up a usable, very functional Windows app in seconds.
...or were you thinking "Hello World" was a usable and functional app...?
Jesus. It takes me days, weeks, sometimes months to come up with a usable and functional app - regardless of platform. And you can do it in seconds!
I'll go throw myself off a building now.
Balmer is great at making presentations.
Yet another ironic recursive statement.
Dear Steve,
I disagree with your contention that IBM has not out-innovated Microsoft. So tell you what: let's settle the matter amicably. I propose a softball game pitting IBM's Nobel Prize winners against Microsoft's. Name the time and place. How about the winner gets another $850 million, eh?
Hugs and kisses,
Samuel J. Palmisano
Clippy? <gd&r>
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
it is unscientific and unreliable but as I watched the video my first observational was that this guy just wants to confuse me and not talk about some things. All this body language and waving with hands.... I dont buy it.
Funny, the way he dances makes me think he's on crack.
On the subject of desktops, I don't recall Windows coming with OSS tools like Python and DCOP the way most Linux distros do. These 'technologies' provide a great deal of control to interested power users.
I think MS products like Visual Basic and Access were innovative (correct me if I'm wrong): Consistently providing an OO, forms-based environment for power users and beginning programmers has created a strong tendency for management to keep MS on the desktop AND (as small projects tend to snowball) to push Windows into server room.
Clippy was also innovative (but awful
I do have to disagree a bit about MS and IBM not being innovative. Don't know enough about Oracle to say one way or another.
MS does have some neat research going on, but 99% of it never goes near their mainstream product line, and instead, they spend effort copying up and coming ideas that are proving themselves in the field and making them fear being left out. The really innovative stuff from their employees largely sits on the back burner, being considered not worth the risk to bring to the forefront, until, of course, competitors start embracing a similar idea, then they may use it.
IBM is similar, but occasionally brings stuff out. A recent, very successful example is Blue Gene. A system with remarkable communications architecture connecting low-power (compute and literal sense) processing elements at incredible scale. They are guilty, however, or slowing the rate of innovation to a crawl once a product shows degrees of success. Once the formula has appeared to work, they don't mess with it, again, considered too risky to do so. They'll make evolutionary changes to keep pace with their perceived competition, but little else.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
Clippy?
More accurately, Microsoft Bob, the abyss from which Clippy and his demonic bretheren were spawned.
Bob actually was innovative. IMHO.
I've seen this rant before -- and call complete bullshit.
You 1) are lying and 2) don't know what you're talking about, not to mention 3) don't know what you're doing.
I *regularly* copy GIG files around on my lowly dual 800Mhz G4 to both internal SCSI and external firewire drives -- while having (and using) such applications (ie: they're open and in use):
word, excel, tv, quicktime video, quake3, safari, firefox, mail, so on and so forth. DOZENS and DOZENS of applications open and running with the file transfer typically going at 20M/sec with no issue. Of course if the system is idle it can be +50M/sec no issue. Windows chokes just opening AutoCAD -- while Vectorwork or Maya on the Mac is a non-issue.
You are simply lying. A fucking lying asshole. Probably work at Microsoft. That's my guess. I'd start looking for a new job if I were you. Loser.
See, I know how to configure and manage Linux well enough to be impressed with what's done. What I'm referring to is the typical Windows user. What is there that they can see on a first boot other than indecipherable icons, non-working sound drivers, and interfaces that look ... well, to be honest, IMHO, the interfaces for KDE and Gnome both appear to look a strange combination of both cluttered and barren.
What I want to know about are the things that Open Source development can point to and say "This is where we innovated." in a way that'll impress Joe Windows. Compilers, kernels, and development tools won't do it. The crowning achievements of Open Source in the eyes of Windows users are Firefox and Mozilla, and most of those users don't know where those came from, let alone the heritage. Plus, they're not even particularly innovative.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Ballmer, you are full of shit. You know why?
Anyone who says IBM and Oracle did not innovate is full of shit.
It is a person who did not dirty his hands with actual technology. Ballmer, show me your MSSQL Engine and let's compare it with the work of art & genious that is the Oracle SQL engine. It is like comparing "Made in Taiwan" and "Made in Switzerland" with Microsoft being the cheap taiwanese crap.
You guys managed to push your Windows SHIT over IBM's amazing OS/2 not because it was better. Far from it. You guys just had better marketing! You made dirty deals with intel and retail channels. You forced your crap upon us for too long, and now it's backlashing against you. I don't care that Microsoft is one of the richest companies on this planet - I don't use ANY of your products. Your BSA thugs are no use against me! They can visit my company offices and find NOTHING BUT LINUX & BSD!
Microsoft, wake up, you guys are crap! All those opensource people, they are not doing it because they hate you, not really, they are doing it because the alternative is simply shit! So what if some opensource solutions were not comparable to certain microsoft products? Bullshit walks, and money talks, and soon enough your money source will be no more as the opensource products out there better your products. I use OpenOffice and I love it, and I did not pay a dime for it.
Anyone who says IBM did not innovate, does not understand that the number one company today is IBM, holding the MOST patents! You don't know the kind of research facilities IBM runs, you don't know the kind of genious researchers working for IBM, and how they do not have to suffer draconian internal cultures such as the people in Microsoft.
Ballmer, WAKE UP! You like Google? No you don't! You hate their guts because they represent "Good" while MSFT represents "Evil". They are just so good there's nothing you can say against them. For example, They are not the ones removing spyware from their anti-spyware programs as part of a strategic move (hint!). They are not the ones buying young technology companies, in order to stiffle them and kill the competition before it reaches wide markets. They don't steal technology and try to make it better, like microsoft does (Never mind that Microsoft ends up making it worse yet, AND proprietary! Which is ridiculous!)
I strongly suggest you guys do things right while you have the money & the power. The chances are slipping under your feet. You guys have the chance to make it right, still - don't lose it! Such interviews do not impress people like myself - they do the opposite. Think about THAT.
Skaag
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
I totally disagree.
Innovation is the original process, not the subsequent process of copying.
Innovation is more revolutionary then evolutionary.
Is evolution important? Sure it is, but just dont claim you are innovating when you are mainly copying others work.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
what, I guess you are not form america. foreigners. When somebody says wheel the first thing that has to comet to your mind is CAR
Are you referring to Windows 95, with its right click support?
First of all, that's not exactly innovative. Scanning electron microscopy, that's innovative. But second, that was IBM's idea from their CUA '91 revision, and IBM OS/2 Version 2.0 shipped it. The historical record is rather clear on that, because the Workplace Shell was all IBM's baby. Microsoft copied that behavior.
But I think X-Windows predates them both. Most of the window managers had/have lots of right clicking.
Force feedback in joysticks? No, that's an innovation that dates back at least to stick shakers in fly-by-wire Airbuses from the 1980s, and probably earlier than that.
The Pocket PC followed Palm which followed Apple Newton which followed... Microsoft was very late to that party. Hell, they called it Palm(top) PC precisely to try to interfere with Palm's brand.
DirectX 1.0 shipped in late 1995. By that time IBM had already shipped DIVE (Direct Interface Video Extensions) in OS/2 Warp. And that took about 30 seconds to figure out via Google. It's likely somebody can find comparable technology that predates DIVE.
Come on, let's get real. Did Microsoft invent, oh, say, fractal geometry?
OSS is so un-inovative, that Apple based their OS on it, borrows heavily (but they acknowledge it and contribute back). MS steals all the ideas and then declares it for their own.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Microsoft didn't create COM, they bought the technology from IIRC a company called Wang (Technologies? can't remember the details).
Although Visual Studio is actually a fairly decent product (at least, it was from about version 5), it has never been "innovative" in any sense - there is nothing new or original in it, they just added features that were equivalent to what you could already do with competitors' products.
But I value the opinion of mathematicians, hackers, and scientists much more.
I call.
Ballmer is bluffing.
He's the worst poker player ever, and his air of aloof pretense spreads like strawberry frosting.
I'm all-in.
Not debating if its true or not, but what is your point?
I dont hear a project like BSD claim they are innovating. I do hear Microsoft doing that. That's my beef with the issue.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
PROBLEM: Giving away software has killed technological innovations.
Why should Microsoft or any company for that matter spend millions on technological innovations when the market price for software is quickly approaching zero?
How much would you pay for a car if you could get a free one, albeit a no-frills one? How quickly would the car prices drop and the car manufactures stop creating new ones in such a market?
When programmer's jobs are being outsourced to other countries, the programming community is developing sophisticated software systems that could easily compete in the marketplace and giving them away.
We are destroying the very environment that we depend on for a living wage by working for free.
SOLUTION: Stop giving businesses free licenses to Open Source Software.
By making businesses pay, it reminds them that what we do is hard and worth money. The market price for software can begin to rise up creating software development jobs in this country and innovation can begin to rise up from the dead.
Those flaws have existed for YEARS.
They can even just look at one of the Open Source OS's and SEE how others have solved those problems.
Yet the problems still exist within Windows. I still have to ensure that the DAILY anti-virus/anti-spyware downloads happen.Go ahead and ask those people you've met WHY Microsoft does NOT just FIX the virus/spyware problem instead of forcing the users to replace the bandage EVERY SINGLE DAY and just HOPE that they aren't one of the first hit with a new strain of virus.
See what answer you get and that will tell you why other people don't share your opinion.Listen up.
The same virus that was known to infect Win98
THAT is the problem.
Microsoft's security model PREFERS for you to run ADDITIONAL 3rd party software because the OS itself does not (without massive amounts of work and testing on the part of the HIGHLY TRAINED administrator) provide any way of stopping viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, etc.
Hahaha. You got all emotional over a troll.
Don't become a fucking drama queen over mindless bullshit. It only emboldens the troll.. I know its pointless to say it because retards like you will keep replying with righteous indignation, so.. keep being a fucking drama queen for all I care.
No, "innovation" is not the same as "distribution".
Name 5 things that Microsoft has innovated and NOT just distributed to more people (because more people use Microsoft desktops).
...can anyone else take as much credit for successful marketing hype, buyout of other companies in order to disect them, call innovation of others their own and lets not forget the anti-competitive and anti-user freedom of their own work behaviour, does anyone else even come close?
.net enterprise ideal there marketing came up with, wasn't working so well. I guess doing business vai the internet/.net and general security problems history just don't mix for the typically business common since.
MS is first and formost a marketing company with the goal of making people need them, well versed in teh law from which they the cost of being busted for illegal acts as part of the cost of doing business.
Their development goal is to keep things complicated enough that things the typical user should be able to do with ease, is often something that requires more than ease, and this development/integration has resulted in teh manifestation of the user frustration function. Which simply cannot be taken out of their products because it is no one function, but rather, as I said, teh result of the mindset of MS development.
If MS can lay genuine claim to something innovative it'd be user entrapment abuse.
What MS has done, motivate by the goal of a marketing company, is to sell for the highest profit margin product the least (reinvention is not invention but reuse) effort in put into that they can get away with.
In the process of this they, in their research collection process, collected up many programming concepts and datatypes and put them together in a not conflicting manner that they call the "Common Language Infrastructure". But in their marketing of ".net" (which the C.L.I. is core to) they really didn't know what it was, what they had or how to market it. This was a sure sign that they didn't innovate it but applied simple collecting up of much others had done, mixed it together - removed conflicting issues - and then said they innovated. Sure a run time engine etc.. are all logical common since next steps.
Recently they admitted the
Next on the list of things to try, which also makes use of other peoples works, though somehow taking claim of the bigger picture in which this new (not really) ideal is about, is "software factories".
Now what would one expect of a marketing company who's employees have been trained ingrained into their thinking brain, user entrapment abuse, "make people need you" do with the ideal of "Software Factories"?
Simple make it much more complicated and feeding MS biased, then it really is. Polluting it in effort to profit off the works of others.
MicroSoft being innovative?
Absolutely, But nothing ever said innovation must fall within the law or ethics even.
Are there any projects out there that really innovate, coming from Open Source developers?
... the whole explosion of amazing automated websites (like, you know, google) depend on that.
Scripting languages: Perl, Tcl, Python,
Kernel events: They seem pretty obscure and geeky, until all of a sudden Apple's sending events from the file system to applications in Spotlight.
Immutable file systems, overlay file systems and Jails: they don't show up on the front lines, but they let you build the same kind of sandboxed environment as in VMware or Xen with a fraction of the resources spent on each environment. This is a killer technology for shared hosting.
XPI: building the whole application user interface out of XML. Look at the MASSIVE flood of innovative extensions to Firefox that have resulted from that.
Softway's Interix: it's a whole UNIX system running under the NT kernel, built on top of GCC and OpenBSD. Not Open Source, but it wouldn't have been possible without it. Microsoft liked it so much they bought the company, and they wouldn't have been able to convert Hotmail to NT if they hadn't had it.
I've installed three linux distributions on a server of mine just this past month, and let me tell you, they're not all that impressive to your typical Windows person.
That's because they are copying Windows. But for an OS with an open source core that isn't, turn them on to Mac OS X. Yeh, Apple's built a bunch of closed-source stuff on top of it, but it wouldn't have happened without the open source innovation under the covers.
Yes, when Microsoft Word for Windows came out, it kicked the hiney of every DOS based word processor out there
Being "better than the competition at some particular time" and "being innovative" are two different things. "Innovative" means there are features that nobody else has ever done before. What features in the first version of Word for Windows were totally original/new? Also, being "first for the PC" and "being first" are two different things, the PC wasn't the first platform, and comparing to DOS is simply being deliberately misleading, as the first Apple systems had decent visual WYSIWIG word processing in the mid 80's already. If you want to be comparing to DOS (i.e. text-based) word processors, then I can tell you right off the bat that MacWrite easily kicked their asses long before any of those even existed.
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us.
The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down.
Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
He sounds like Bush.
.. blah blah... Freedom!!!"
"Blah blah Freedom! Blah Blah peace! Blah democracy
Just replace key words with innovation.
------ http://timothylive.net
Between Balmer and Gates, I don't know which one bores me more. Gates is getting pretty hilarious these days though. I crack up every time he says that speech recognition is about to take off and when he says anything about the tablet PCs...
;-)
I guess they've gotta keep trying to find SOMETHING that can produce money outside of their desktop OS monopoly. But 15 years of this stuff is getting pretty old. IMO.
Another thing that cracks me up is when Microsoft talks about how WindowsCE costs less than GNU/Linux on embedded devices. This, from the company that consistantly loses ~$1 Billion annually on that productline. Talk about Cost of Ownership.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If it weren't for IBM, Microsoft would be best known as the company that wrote ROM BASICs.
Probably not.
IBM might have invented ROMs. (I'm quite sure IBM invented DRAM.) But Microsoft's Altair BASIC wasn't in ROM, at least not at first. Microsoft would have had distribution problems because IBM invented the floppy disk. Still more problems shipping on CDs and DVDs because IBM invented semiconductor diode lasers and all sorts of laser data techniques. The Internet would at least be a lot slower without IBM inventions. Although maybe the Internet is a net minus for Microsoft.
Concentrating on the BASIC programming language, I believe Dartmouth's timesharing system ran on IBM hardware. If it weren't for IBM there probably would not be a BASIC language, at least not at the right moment in time for Harvard dropout Bill Gates to "borrow" it and port it. BASIC itself was greatly inspired by FORTRAN (also invented by IBM). IBM even invented 8-bit bytes (despite overwhelming pressure to have fewer bits to save money on precious memory) and the whole 80 column concept (which dates back to 1920s IBM punch cards).
Windows performance would suck even more (IBM: CPU pipelining, lookahead). And it would load from cassette tape (IBM: hard disks) and into...well, I'm not sure. SRAM, maybe? Cathode memory?
A lot of today's Microsoft employees would be dead if it weren't for IBM (scanning electron microscopy), quite literally.
You've got the derivation the wrong way round: Goebbels borrowed the technique from Madison Avenue.
Exactly. Joe Windows, as "Rick and Roll" calls him, isn't worth the effort. They are coming to us in droves because of what we offer -- plain ordinary freedom. If ever Joe Windows decides that he wants freedom he will choose to join us. The "big guys" are addressing our needs now because they see a powerful growing market. Microsoft has only one direction to go, down. Joe Windows is worth only our disdain. He is the slave who supports the slaver system.
You don't get a lot of dates, do you?
I know this because Tyler knows this.
They opened the market for cheap computers made of interchangeable parts that can exchange software because of software compatibility.
"What is CP/M and the S100 bus, Alex?"
"You're absolutely right, Peter!"
I was writing software for a UNIX clone on a CP/M-compatible S-100 bus before I ever saw an IBM PC, and for several years after the PC came out one of the most important cards was the "Baby Blue" CP/M emulator so you could actually get commodity interchangable software for your PC clones... because MS-DOS was so ineffective that most developers write their software for the IBM or Zenith or Tandy BIOS... and all the really portable software was either public domain (open source wasn't a buzzword yet) source in basic and C, or commercial CP/M-80 software.
Are there any projects out there for any platform that actually show innovation in a way that's not just like trying to copy or slightly-alter something that's been done by one of these commercial entities?
The problem with Monkey Boy is that he is cynically trying to market the concept that Microsoft is the source of innovation. It makes me want to vomit. It is the same revisionist history that we hear from Microsoft time over time, again and again. Bill Gates puts it in his books, Balmer in the trade press. The result is that the sheeple think Microsoft invented the personal computer, the internet and probably television, the laser, the transistor, the light bulb, and printing press too.
Look at the roots. UI and OS Innovation was done at SRI by Doug Englebart and at MIT, Bell Labs and Xerox PARC in the 60's and 70's. Not by commercial mass marketers like the popinjay Balmer and his Microsofties who have done nothing but guild the lilly.
What are the projects underway today that will lead to real gains? There are some pretty clear changes in the way hardware is evolving. The innovaters are the guys working on new softwware paradigms to take advantage of these changes.
Isn't that kind of like Bush on Critical Reasoning?
The cash cow has been sitting on this above fact since they were/are a monopoly but ms is slowly being brought back to earth through some competition. Shows you the sad state of the world when you need to GIVE something away in order to start competing with MS.
So now MS is trying to back themselves out of the corner they put themselves into. MS figured wrong that they will always be a monopoly with no stiff competition so they can get away being stagnant and now its coming back to bite them in the ass.
Remember Ballmer, even Rome had to fall at some point in time.......
From the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary :
innovative - using new methods or ideas
Notice there is nothing in that definition that indicates the origin of those ideas ? Microsoft are an innovative company, because they take ideas and use them. They aren't an inventive company, because they very often don't come up with any new ideas themselves.
IBM and Oracle are innovative companies too.
As for being inventive, I'm not sure about Oracle, however, IBM are, based on the fundamental intention of patents (registering new inventions), and based on the number of patents they are granted (more than 3000 in 2004), IBM are one of the most inventive, if not the most inventive organisation in the world.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Unfortunately everyone clearly understands why Ballmer now has to resort to the Jerry Springer routine about M$'s competitors (real or imagined).
M$ has never innovated, they have purchased and swallowed whole those who innovate using the horde of plenty they illegally received from their monopoly.
And that's the ONLY thing that keep M$ relevent today is their huge stash of cash.
If I recall the last original idea Microsoft had was called BOB!
Right on Ballmer... keep on using that mouth instead of the "big" grey blob that drives it and M$ will just become MORE irrelvent faster.
Microsoft innovation will be on hold for a while, as their R&D division has just announced that they will concentrate on the platform change from PowerPC to Intel.
[Insert pithy quote here]
because it really was an incredibly sh*t API compared to D3D, especially in the beginning.
That should read "compared to GL"
# Incremental compilation
# Incremental linking
Forth, um, 1972? Lisp, 1965?
# Pre-compiled headers
Manx C on the Amiga in 1986.
# A very strong visual debugger, with useful features like DataTips.
# Integrated source browser
# Integrated class browser
Smalltalk, 1978
Remote debugging over tcp/ip
EVERYONE, as soon as TCP/IP existed.
Intellisense (auto-completion)
GNU Readline?
The guy who is asking the question doesn't even know why he is on the evangelism team! Ballmer should have fired him on the spot.
Don't worry. Microsoft is in its last throes.
What's your definition of "innovation" ? Name "5 innovations" on some other platforms.
"Did IBM out innovate us?"
IBM has *tons* of hardware innovation -- PPC, materials science, copper-on-silicon, hard drive breakthroughs, etc, etc. But I don't see much software innovation since OS/2. Much of their business is systems integration where if there's innovation, who notices it? I'm sure I'm missing some high points but neither MS nor IBM can hold a candle to Sun when it comes to software innovation.
Here's a simple question, how do you define innovation and what do you consider innovation?
If you look at the other threads you see several replies that saids Microsoft copied all it's technologies from other people and that Linux did also. Big deal. As Newton stated, we can see more clearly because we can stand on the shoulders or giants. It's very easy to claim that the other guy is innovative because you can almost always find "something" that it was built upon.
To me, there were a few key innovations in the Linux world that are true giants on which others stand on:
* the GPL (nothing like that existed before, although you might claim that it's just a distillation of Newton's "Giant's Shoulder" idea)
* the Linux development model. For the development of something as complex as Linux with as many competing interests as Linux, a license or employment contract is not enough. You need a good social structure to herd the wild cats of programmers from companies and hobbyist/enthusiasts and still keep things from falling apart in anarchy.
* the Debian Social Contract (and it's offshoots, the Open Source Definition, the Gentoo Social Contract, the Ubuntu Social Contract, and even commercial-leaning distros like Fedora) -- The GPL isn't God, it's one of many licenses that work on Newtonian Giant Shoulder Logic. Debian first defined what sorts of licenses would capture the essense of "free as in freedom" and came up with a social structure that allowed Debian to get all the catherders to work together, whether they be from distro companies that build off Debian or the Linux kernel catherders, or the catherders of each of the thousands of packages of Debian. Their work has been a key force in eliminating the digital divide and preserving the languages of dying cultures.
I find it hard to believe that Microsoft did force-feedback first.
Mouse right-click for a context menu was well established on X-windows long before Microsoft did it.
I don't think a scroll wheel that tilts sideways is an innovation, it is obvious. What *is* an innovation is making the scrollwheel, all earlier attempts was to make a 2-D extra control for panning. Deciding to reduce the control to 1-D is true innovation and I think Microsoft did it.
DirectX and DRI are totally different. DirectX is an API for end programs while DRI is an implementation of an API. I have to complement Microsoft in DirectX in doing the f**king obvious of implementing backup versions of the functions, rather than the stupidity of every other graphics API (especially on Unix, but including GDI32) where you have to query to find out what is supported and then write your own damn backup versions.
My list of innovations from Microsoft:
The "taskbar" where the indication of a window is unchanged whether or not it is "iconized". All previous interfaces had an "icon" that only appeared when the window itself was removed from the screen.
Realizing that "icons" are far less important than text and making the text much bigger, and enclosed in a box, in the taskbar.
Removing the divider line between the window border and contents on Win95. (I personally did this earlier on my NeXT software, but I doubt they stole from me, and I certainly did not popularize it). Making resize work without visible controls.
The general idea of having any file, not just programs, be an executable command. You can double-click any file and it will launch something. Before this only a small set of files worked (ie in Unix executable files and ones that start with !#, on the Mac files were "marked" by the previous program that ran them and unmarked files did not do anything). The real proof that this is innovative is that, if you think about it, it is unrelated to the GUI. A shell in 1970 *could* have implemented this, where you type the name of any file, and it does something. It would have worked quite well with computers that existed then. This, I think, is the true test whether something is "innovative", is the fact that it did not exist earlier for any reason other than the fact that nobody thought of it.
The mouse scroll wheel, as you mentioned above.
I may be wrong, but the "combo box" is a Microsoft innovation, one of the only ones I can think of for GUI. This is a combination of text editing and a popup list. Do not confuse with the lame implementation with the scroll bar and non-positional popup, but the basic idea of using the same widget to pick from a list and also type in selections not on the list was not seen before Microsoft did it. Certainly not in X or Mac or NeXT.
Non-obtrusive on-the-fly spelling correction (the red squiggle)?
I'm sorry, I'm stumped. I have been here for about 1/2 hour, trying fairly to think of another innovation from Microsoft, and I can't think of one. In any case, I think the above is a fair list. It may sound short, but there are companies where a truly fair criteria would give them a zero-length list.
Innovation isn't form over function. Don't confuse the two. It's like saying the US is the most innovative country in the world because we've managed to outsource everything and are borrowing heavily to buy all the stuff we used to make here.
- Expose Style for the Windows (mac)
- PS / PDF totaly integrated into OS (nextstep / mac)
- application forwarding through X (any unix)
- central software / install repository (some linux distributions, xBSD)
- scripting languages (way before MS)
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
A drama queen like you and your post?
moo ha ha
So what you're saying is that *Microsoft* was innovative because it *bundled* an IBM invention (the hard disk) with its game console? (Game consoles were invented in 1972 by either Nolan Bushnell or Ralph Baer, depending on your definition.)
That's called "derivative," not innovative.
Please stop telling moderators what to do.
There are a lot of them, and I'm quite sure they all know how to read.
Additionally, please do not respond when you are being flamed. Flame wars bring nothing constructive to the community, they consume a lot of bandwidth, and they will almost always contribute to lower your karma.
He's relying on faulty math for his argument, need I say more?
I'm not the one who threw a fit. Sorry, you can't project your own stupidity onto me.
If Microsoft hadn't decided to keep the rights to sell DOS, there wouldn't have been any IBM clones ;-)
If the IBM PC had become popular, there would have. They'd just be running CP/M-86 and then MP/M-86 instead of MS-DOS.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Expose style is hardly an innovation, and to match it we have Alt+Tab switching which was first on Windows.
PS/PDF integration is not "innovation". It's integration, just as you called it.
I don't know what you mean by application forwarding.
Central software repositories were in use long before linux. They were used within organizations to keep track of software. Linux simply brought them to more people (as you said this list would not be).
Scripting languages were not invented by companies. You didn't name one because there wasn't one, so why is this on your list?
Slashdot readers may wish to know that the parent copied his/her rant from here from 1998 and just updated the hardware.
First, the development model (and maybe business model - but that is not the essential thing) itself is THE innovation of free software.
... must be joking, maybe they do not know exactly what it is (sorry, naughty here). ... try again
Next, are wiki's not an innovation of free software?
And are P2P networks not an offspring or cousin of free software?
And I would say that Mozilla/Firefox are more inventive than IE.
What did Microsoft invent?
The OS ?
The Desktop concept? Nay
The spreadsheet? No
The word processor? Niet
The presentation tool? Nope
The database? No
The browser? Come on
Eventually, all these concept orifginated over 30 years ago, in the early days of computers becoming popular.
The recent waves of new concepts are, I suggest, all related to free software.
Free software is a new paradigm (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paradigm) enabling the occurence of new concepts.
Ah Microsoft, they've got some pretty screens and some nifty point-n-click widgets, but all they've really done is buy up innovation, squash creativity, stimy the IT industry, and sue the bejeezus out of anybody they couldn't otherwise intimidate or coerce. There's no innovation there, they're just bullies. We've seen this business model before.
Apple systems had decent visual WYSIWIG word processing in the mid 80's already ... MacWrite easily kicked their asses long before any of those even existed
MacWrite was really a demo program. The state of the art WYSIWIG word processor on those mid-80s Apple systems was Microsoft Word.
Was WinWord innovative? Only in that it was a clone of the innovative Mac Word program, which itself was a clone of Xerox WYSIWIG word processors. Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi from Xerox PARC to lead up this work -- they certainly were ahead of the industry as a whole.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
microsoft doesn't innovate, they just player hate. they are teh sux0rz. now mode me up too!
I'm sorry but what has Micros~1 ever "innovated"? I have whatched them find small companies whom have good ideas and take them over (oh, sorry.. "buy them out"); and the products they did come up with were stolen or copied. What have they ever innovated? Micros~1 is a hostile marketing company, nothing more.
What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation.
What have Microsoft actually innovated? I would seriously like to know. All I ever see from them is new functionality in the form of defensive answers to the innovation of others. They copy, modify or buy innovation. But what have they genuinely innovated?
I love using OpenBSD servers and firewalls, OSX desktops and begrudgingly use Windows XP Pro on my laptop (along with FreeSBD, which I love too). I just bought a very nice new Sony VAIO VGN-A49GP notebook with a 1920x1200 17" LCD display. The display is spectacular to say the least, but text is difficult to read at the default dpi setting within Windows XP of 96dpi. This displays true resolution is about 133dpi so I have tried various settings within XP including the "Large Size (120dpi)" setting which I figured would be catered for well. All settings larger than 96dpi, even the 120dpi option, cause font problems within system dialogs and web sites including Microsofts own from within IE. Often text within a SYSTEM dialog renders beyond the window it is within and is thus unreadable. I can't imagine such a problem occuring within OSX. Even Windows XP is still a dogs breakfast in these sorts of regards and shows that Microsoft products are still completely covered in bandages, instead of being fixed at fundamental levels. Do they even bother testing these perhaps fringe settings? 120dpi is their "Large Size" setting, so you would think at least it was tested. Could this come down to the driver? If so I would have to say that that indicates a fundamental design flaw if a driver is able to cause such havoc.
OpenBSD has deployed (I realise they may not have innovated the fundamentals) active memory protection security measures which Microsoft attempted much later and only came half way to what OpenBSD deployed.
Microsoft is not leading innovation in usability or security and I personally would say they are also not leading in stability (although I agree they have come a very long way). Performance is an area where there is a lot of overlap, but for a company with so much money and so many paid developers, I have to wonder why they don't have it all?
Oh no, wait a second, no I don't... that's right, they trumpet features and all those other things in prime time slots, etc and sell product based more on the trumpetting than the actual quality they deliver. I guess this is to be expected though, just like from the rest of the big capitalist corps like Cisco, Sony, Apple... wait, then how is it that Apple can keep reinventing themselves and their products, while keeping viable AND delivering quality products?
I live for the day when Microsoft dies. Thank heavens FreeBSD runs on my $5,000 AU notebook. ; )
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
That's ridicuposterous! I have more intellimegence than 20 folks like me. Besides Karl tells me what to think every morning. Today I just have to sit here on my big ole' airplane and color pretty pictures. Wee! Daddy can I have Iran? Before you go, would you please hand me my bicycle?
Now I don't have a very great memory, but here's a very incomplete list of the innovative things Apple has done:
The point is that while Apple invented some things, they were also the first to actually use many other things, and I think leading the industry and making bold moves such as getting rid of the floppy is innovative. Any other examples or corrections are welcome.
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IBM, Oracle, and open source don't innovate? How about Eclipse?! Xen and hypervisor technology? Grid computing? The Cell processor? Damn, there's so many things. As far as market innovations that Joe Average would care about, though ... no, they don't "innovate" much. And most of the innovations that happen in the software world come incrementally, through the efforts of multiple organizations and countless developers.
About the only good thing to ever have come from Redmond is the .NET framework and the XMLHttpRequest object.
Ironic that Microsoft can't seem to make hardly any cash off two of its best innovations ever.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I will certainly give credit to the NeXT tools, but these weren't really widely available until fairly recently. (And still aren't, as Apple killed the Win32 and Unix versions.)
RealBasic, on the other hand, is a straight clone of Microsoft Visual Basic (which itself certainly borrowed ideas from NeXT and SmallTalk.) Maybe your point is "Macs can do it too!", but there certainly was a long period when Windows could do it and Macs couldn't.
[And in 1995, I saw a few thousand Macs go right into the dumpster for exactly that reason -- no VB-like RAD tools.]
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
How can an IDE be innovative? Seriously, you can make it nice, functional, intuitive, but innovative?
Is that your proof that MS is innovative? That they have a really nice IDE? Seriously?
Creating something new.
Examples of innovation:
#1. The first spreadsheet app.
#2. The first use of a mouse.
#3. The first GUI.
#4. The first web browser/web server.
#5. The first relational database app.
Note the repeated usage of the phrase "The first" and how that phrase is NOT followed by "by Microsoft" or "on Windows".
Now, looking at that criteria, you will see that MOST of the functionality you expect from a computer/app is NOT "innovative". It is derivative and the original innovation happened a long time ago.
"There are going to be some other companies that do some innovative work. And our job is to go out and do what we're gonna do which is to out-innovate them^W^W copy them and claim the innovation as our own."
Ballmer also claimed linux is more expensive and slower then windows, with all his "mircosoft sponsored" independant studies, such as the one that ran Redhat Enterprise on problem causing hardware with the slowest possible configuration, while the ISS server got optimal settings and hardware with huge amounts of tweaks.
5 /0 5/07/0531210&tid=109&tid=106&tid=2/>
<URL:http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
Honestly i dont even know why his quotes get posted here, all they are is hype and BS and a good old flamewar jumping off point...
They manage the compatibility AND the security.
They can do it, but Microsoft cannot.I have. And one of those "basic security principles", for Windows, includes daily downloads of anti-virus/anti-spyware signatures.
I find it very amusing that you seem to be suggesting that anyone using Windows become well versed in "security".
Isn't Windows supposed to be "user friendly"?
IBM doesn't do anything innovative, eh? Quick, Steve, better tell your XBox division that they're basing their next-generation console on a non-innovative, IBM-made processor!
Is anyone else getting really, really, really sick of hearing that word?
Ballmer: [...] I think you have to ask us are you gonna give us a way to have one plus one be three with other applications in terms of the way they communicate and work out on the Internet. We're working hard on strategies to facilitate that. With MSN and some of the other things we're doing. I think that's an important area. I think at the end of the day developers, though, more than almost anything wanna know "are you guys gonna win?"
Interesting... The question of inter-operability, which is at the centre of the issues addressed to Microsoft by users and legislators around the world is in this excerpt:
1. volunteered by Ballmer as the most important question that should be addressed to Microsoft
2. oxymoronniccally answered in terms of market dominance.
So... They are acutely conscious of what is at the source of the universal "unease" with Microsoft, and here Ballmer, in an act of unbelievable candor, offers a invaluable peek into how they approach the question.
You are absolutely right on everything - but, in all fairness, there is ONE INNOVATIVE item that McSoftware did - that equation editor in WORD - assuming they actually did that in-house - I forget - did they buy that too?????
GP claims M$ innovated a lot of things, and parent poster creams his jeans.
Then other posters bitchslap claims about M$ "innovations", revealing parent poster to be stupid fucking M$ fanboy.
I hate Microsoft. Hate, hate, hate.
But, sometimes, they hit the mark. I think, for instance, they are the first to use a web browser to present operating system controls to the user. That is actually a cool idea, despite the security problems they have with IE.
Is Ballmer a bloated overpaid gasbag? Yes. Wouldn't you be too, if your job was to rag about how wonderful MS is all day?
Strange, I was under the impression Innovation had a restraining order on Microsoft. There's One More court case Microsoft has to face. Poor company, I blame its parents :(
You tell them the sky is blue and they will argue with out about it.
He's just too self centered to consider anyone's opinion other than his own and he will push it on anyone.
that's what I thought. IIRC, Apple hired Microsoft to port their DOS based word proc to their new GUI based computer. It was then that Microsoft learned the internals of the Mac OS( APIs etc ) and started on Microsoft Windows. Just like they did to Go Inc and their PenPoint OS. Microsoft "invented" Pen for Windows...
Another thing to remember is that Microsoft defines what they want things like "innovation", "open source", "open standard", etc to mean. They will use those terms as they apply to THEIR use of the terms.
Marketing 101: If you say it enough times, it will become true.
Heck, even George W Bush knows this. How many times has he said the Iraq war is "the war on terror" and is related to the 9/11/01 attacks.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Q: Now time for some tough questions. A: OK. End of the softballs. Q: On the blogs there are those who say that Microsoft doesn't innovate anymore. Can you give us some examples of where you see innovation? (in other words: gibber at me about INNOVATION) A: Blah blah blah, innovation, blah, technology, blah blah, innovative, blah blah innovation. Did I mention innovation? Q: Coming up with tough questions for you is pretty hard, if you were in my position, what tough questions would you be asking the CEO of Microsoft? (translation: Wow! You can answer softball questions even when I call them hard! I'll make them even softer: YOU ask them!) A: Why, I'd be asking myself about INNOVATION! I'd be asking why all those other technology companies aren't doing it! And I assure you it has nothing at all to do with the fact that my company has single-handedly annihilated any definition that was once connected with that word. Q: To end it up, since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9 too, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world who work at Microsoft? (One softball-in-disguise was enough! Now I'll just ask one last stupid question that uses the company name redundantly!) A: I'd say keep INNOVATING! Yep! Oh, and did I mention INNOVATION? Haha! Isn't it great being able to say a word so much that nobody knows what it means anymore?
Q: Now time for some tough questions.
A: OK. End of the softballs.
Q: On the blogs there are those who say that Microsoft doesn't innovate anymore. Can you give us some examples of where you see innovation? (in other words: gibber at me about INNOVATION)
A: Blah blah blah, innovation, blah, technology, blah blah, innovative, blah blah innovation. Did I mention innovation?
Q: Coming up with tough questions for you is pretty hard, if you were in my position, what tough questions would you be asking the CEO of Microsoft? (translation: Wow! You can answer softball questions even when I call them hard! I'll make them even softer: YOU ask them!)
A: Why, I'd be asking myself about INNOVATION! I'd be asking why all those other technology companies aren't doing it! And I assure you it has nothing at all to do with the fact that my company has single-handedly annihilated any definition that was once connected with that word.
Q: To end it up, since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9 too, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world who work at Microsoft? (One softball-in-disguise was enough! Now I'll just ask one last stupid question that uses the company name redundantly!)
A: I'd say keep INNOVATING! Yep! Oh, and by the way: INNOVATION! Haha! Isn't it great being able to say a word so much that nobody knows what it means anymore?
I can't speak for their marketers or upper-management, but I've met with and interfaced with a couple hundred employees
INTERFACED with them? Are you sure you're not confusing their employees with their printers?
2) Microsoft doesn't lead. Because they are a marketing company, they __watch__ marketing __trends__ to see which way the wind blows.
I guess this should've read:
2) Microsoft doesn't lead. Because they are a marketing company, they __watch__ marketing __trends__ to see which way the windows blows.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
I remember when I was taking the Oracle 8 DBA sequence. Instructor happens to mention that DB2 also has a particular feature. Student asks for an opinion and the instructor says DB2 is a fine product but, with a little chuckle, we're here to study Oracle. Another student says, "And what about SQLServer?" And the whole room chuckles.
It'll take more than Ballmer giving interviews to change professional opinion.
"Google has done some interesting stuff. We've done some interesting stuff. Peace."
Hmm.. okay.
"There are going to be some other companies that do some innovative work. And our job is to go out and do what we're gonna do which is to out-innovate them going forward. Which is what we will do, even in their prime domain of search."
Freely admitting that MS replicates, not innovates.
It's not just Microsoft with the bullshit redefinition of "innovate". Not long ago the KDE guys were doing exactly the same thing. I tried to point out the absurdity, but I was told that I've "bought into marketing lies".
I think that something that a lot of the technorati/digirati/techno-snobs are forgetting is that Ma and Pa Kettle -- the unblessed mundanes that buy a lot of computers these days -- are not going to go out and download another Internet browser when they already have one that works, and there's nobody around to tell them that they should download another one.
I hardly see using the default browser an overwhelming vote for the superiority of MSIE.
And that's why I work so hard at home to keep the family away from MSIE, pop-ups, and "free" screen savers. I have to use MSIE now and then, but I'm careful and exit it when I'm done an not browse anywhere else.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
So basically he just says "no, they didn't out-innovate us, noone did, it's all an illuuuuuuusion!"
Microsoft learned the internals of the Mac OS( APIs etc ) and started on Microsoft Windows
That's true, MS licenced the MacOS API from Apple, and then turned around licenced the Windows API to IBM for use in OS/2 PM (Although IBM changed a bunch of stuff). They also licenced stuff to X/Open Motif for Unix use.
But you entirely missed my last sentance -- MS was hiring from Xerox and knew as much about GUI application software as anyone, including Apple.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I can whip up a usable, very functional Windows app in seconds. Try doing that on any other platform.
You're so full of crap and ignorant, that you could also work for them [MS], you wouldn't stand out of the crowd. Ok, so as to lift your clouds just a little bit above from your brain, try kdevelop3 or kylix. I just love the fully integrated rad environment that kdevelop3 provides and with quite a lot of visual c++ usage I still find it to be refreshingly easy to code in it, today it's my ide and platform of choice.
Step 1: Look at what is popular--see what the kids are buying from everyone else.
Step 2: Acquire the company that makes it -or- steal the technology (if these don't work skip to step 3B).
Step 3: Munge the code and make it proprietary
Step 3B: Spread FUD campaign and carry out industrial/legal sabotage
Step 4: Use monopoly to force new inferior "innovation" on Windows user base (for a fee!)
Step 5: Gloat in victory and repeat.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
People give you money for running a CD copier. It's like piracy, only protected extensively by law. How can you be against making big fistfuls of cash? Are you some pinko communist sympathizer? China called, it wants its Marxist doctrines back. No, really.
Expose style is hardly an innovation, and to match it we have Alt+Tab switching which was first on Windows.
Oh, really? Wasn't that a Mac feature first?
"Steve Ballmer on E"
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
Heh are you kidding? The one thing i hate MOST about visual studio is that you have to make an ENTIRE friggin project with its own directory and everything just to make even the tiniest and most usable tool. Here, all i need:
nano bla.c
tcc -run bla.c
that's it.
If anything, the good thing about visual studio is it's code completion.. most other tools i've seen were not as good in this.
YAZBS (Yet Another Zonk Blogging Story)
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
"NNTP, which, although it's not as popular as it once was,"
NNTP is mostly just out of the mainstream, but it's still very, very popular. There exists over 100,000 USENET groups today, and the size of a fully populated usenet feed with 20 days binary retention is tens of terrabytes. Maybe even hundreds. There's dozens of companies which offer usenet access. I can't imagine how fast their network connections must have to be to maintain the feeds AND all the clients. (Interesting to note however that even with the vast amount of data being transmitted with NNTP, it's still very low on the list of top internet traffic protocols!)
Of course, this is off-topic but I thought I might comment on that.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
"But the biggest innovator in our business, besides us, is Dell. Those guys are amazing."
When Gates first grabbed up QDOS, he peddled it to IBM as an OS for the PC. Up to that time MS was a fairly boring company that published a dialect of BASIC. MS was a bit player. IBM's introduction of the PC and the open standard for the machine MADE MS what it is. The Intel alliance certainly didn't hurt, but without the IBM PC and the clones, there's no telling just how Intel would have made out.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Mircosoft admits Xbox 360 isn't innovative and it doesn't really care how about it. Who do you think makes your cpus? =)
Its interesting to hear Microsoft talking heads frequently claiming that they M$ is innovative.
I suppose if innovation is what Micosoft does then IBM hasn't done a good job. To 'inovate' IBM needs to do 2 things, take top talent from Borland and write an 'innovative' new programming language and environment which is a lot like Borlands product. Then IBM needs to go back a few years and create 'innovation' with java by making their own additions to ummm 'improve' while making no visible improvements.
M$ innovation= controling market share.
Normally innovation="a creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation [syn: invention]"
Spotlight and the associated file meta-data is pretty darn nice in Tiger.
Expose on Panther -- that's been a huge part of how I use the file system, navigate open documents/applications, move files around, etc...
Keychain on Mac OS 9 -- was huge. One password for all your user/pass pairs in any app that chose to call the api.
Freaking a, the Chooser that let you point and click install printers! Hah! in 1987 I was "installing" printers. I still laugh at the notion, install? what do you mean? I select my printer.
6. Multitasking Operating systems
This is plainly wrong. From http://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html, CTSS, of course, stands for Compatible Time-Sharing System. That is, the first multi-user/multi-tasking operating system. True, it was not fully multi-tasking in the sense we are used to today. That had to wait for MULTICS and UNIX, which were developed at.... ta-dah... Bell Labs! Oh wait, look at that, that's NOT IBM...
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
In my opinion, computer science is about reinventing the wheel. Just make it rounder, lighter, stronger, what ever your goal is.
Who cares about which company that makes the most inovative stuff, choose the best for your situation. All new things aren't great you know...
Sorry, just want to add iMovie
p.s. Apple bought FinalCut from Macromedia but packaged iMovie and it rocks for what it is
Success with an "innovation" usually comes from the second or third company down the line that's able to market it to the public at large.
Xerox Park may have innovated with the windows, mouse, and the gui, and Apple may have planted the seed, but MS is the one who brought the concept to the masses. Which one "deserves" the credit?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Slashdot is fooled all to easy. You have linked to the Channel9 viral marketing site how many times now? Everytime the Microsoft marketing machine want your attention you line up and deliver!
"Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so.
Ballmer's ignorance and arrogance are astounding. Let's just take a simple example: Longhorn. IBM was shipping Longhorn technologies already years ago: database file system, vector graphics (DPS), managed code (Smalltalk, among many others), handwriting and speech recognition, and system wide object model (SOM). Some of these, IBM already shipped decades ago. Some of these technologies, Microsoft is only shipping because they cloned existing products and even hired away IBM employees.
The notion that Microsoft is even in the same league in terms of innovation as IBM is laughable. Microsoft has yet to prove that they can deliver any kind of innovation beyond Clippy and Bob in their products at all.
The quote you are replying to is taken out of context. The context of the question was obviously software development. The sentence before Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so." was, "But, I look out at the world and I say who is doing the innovative stuff over the last few years?" This changes things, and I have no opinion on who has been the most innovative with software in the last few years.
Actually, MS and Apple did have licensing agreements years before that. One of the reasons Windows 3 didn't have a "trash can" and a "desktop" ala Windows 95/MacOS was because of contracts MS had with apple that didn't allow it. When those contracts expired, MS was free to do what it wanted to.
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If you're an engineer or other technical person, the one who deserves the credit is the one who invented it. No one can profit off an idea or invention if no one invents it in the first place.
If you're a slimy marketing creep, you probably believe the credit should go to whomever stole the idea and made the most money off of it.
Maybe this philosophy works for some people right now, but it's clearly not a path to long-term technical success for a society to reward their true innovators with "arrows in their backs". We're already seeing this in America where no one wants to go into engineering any more, instead favoring more profitable fields like law. This is working out for a while because we can outsource our engineering to low-cost 3rd-world countries and profit by selling to the comparatively rich American market, which is that way because of the vast differences in cost-of-living. But as that gap shrinks, the American market won't be able to survive on debt any more since the dollar will be so heavily devalued, and we as a people won't be able to produce anything any more that anyone else will want to buy (sorry, American lawyers aren't exactly in demand overseas). This will mean the doom of our economy.
No, the Xbox was not the first dedicated home game console to have persistent storage. 3DO made a console that did in 1993 (using battery-backed static memory). There were undoubtedly earlier examples, but I found that one quickly. "Killer Instinct" was the first commercial video arcade system with a built-in hard disk, in 1994.
IBM built Sega's Teradrive in the early 90s for the Japanese market. This Mega Drive-based console had a hard disk, at least in the top end model. It also doubled as a PC for general purpose computing, so it was truly a convergence device. Amstrad built Sega's Mega PC for the European market around the same time. Hard disk included.
So was the Xbox "the first home game console with a built-in hard disk (instead of more expensive, faster, and more reliable solid state persistent storage) that couldn't also act as a PC (unless you hacked it) from a company that had not previously built game consoles"? Maybe, but so what?
Innovation? How about Visual Studio? How about the whole COM platform? *That's* what Ballmer is talking about when he talks about "developers". That's innovation. I can whip up a usable, very functional Windows app in seconds. Try doing that on any other platform.
That ability is decades old. Since the late 70s Smalltalk implementations have allowed the ability to visually design complex applications in a way that makes Visual Studio and COM look primitive. Bill Gates knew about Smalltalk. COM was not innovative, and neither was Visual Studio.
Well if innovation in open source means that my consulting company which switched from Windows to Linux (servers) and the Mac desktop and Powerbooks doesn't have to pay the huge license fees to Microsoft we were on all upgrades, then I say it is the most innovative. Capitalism is about finding the best and lowest cost solution to the problem in a market. Open Source is that solution. That is why governments like it. They can tax less and use the money somewhere else. That is why big corporations like it. We all know they like cheap information technology and workers. That is why small business like me like it because it helped me pay for expansion and my second home by saving licensing costs. I even use college kids to administer the server. Talk about low cost.
No, Alt-Tab was a feature that Apple blatantly copied from 1980s versions of Windows and OS/2.
The same can be said of the comments posted here on Slashdot. Propaganda is a two-edged sword, and Slashdot is the Information Ministry of anti-MS enthusiasts.
Microsoft should forever be banned from using the word "innovate" and all its derivatives.
Seriously, I'm sick of hearing it, it's like their propaganda word.
I guess you never used HyperCard? It was a great RAD tool for the Mac.
This definition of innovation favors companies that do core research. Did Archimedes invent the steam engine? He clearly had a working model but he came from a slave economy and didn't care about "commerce"? What about Thomas Savery? He invented the British model and saw the potential but until he met Newcomen they didn't use it for anything. I don't think its unreasonable for a Microsoft to say that in practice Newcomen invented the steamengine.
As for innovations I'll pick one very big one:
The Microsoft/Intel/Western Digital standard of a non patented generic hardware base for computers allowing the same operating system and hardware parts to be used with a varity of manufacturer's computers. How is that one?
You have to make up your mind.
Every time we try to add something of value to the OS (what *any* good OS builder would do - whether we're talking about *nix, or anything else), people completely freak out.
I think there are two seperate issues.
1) Microsoft is a monopoly and engages in monopolistic practices that are pretty serious. Bundeling is someting that is illegal for them because of the way they sell their product.
2) A naked Microsoft OS is fairly feature poor compared to most other OSes on the market today (OSX, Z-OS, Linux, AIX. Solaris, OS/400...). It also has a truly unique user base. For this group of people more software and better integration are needed.
The proper approach for Microsoft is to resolve issue (1) so that they can resolve issue (2).
No, the interface lawsuits were largely thrown out because Apple and Microsoft had a contract licencing MacOS tech.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Nope, I used it. It was much more minimal than VB (think it was largely used in .edu) and lacked things like database drivers.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Blog blog blog!
RSS or die!
Tablet PC!
Blog! RSS! link link link
Google is cool! (but they don't scale)
I have a big vaporware secret that I must be vague about.
Blog blog blog!
Not being a big fan microsoft--your last point is dead on and not one I thought of much. I first got into computers when microsoft was actually in the last throes of competing with IBM for PC market share.
At that point, Microsoft and its partner companies were the Davids, and IBM was the goliath. None of my friends bought IBM computers, they bought competing "generic" PCs. Dos and then windows 3.1 brought the PC to the masses.
That said, roles have reversed--IBM does have a track record of developing new technologies. Microsoft hasn't done something new in a long time.
Well I hope the GP also agrees on that innovation. In terms of more recent innovations OLE (object linking and embedding). The fact that you can "cut" from visio and paste into word as either:
.NET compiler using a functional programming language for the basis of object oriented procedural code. That's new.
1) A graphic (with the two programs handeling the details)
2) A graphic (in a format windows understands but word may not
3) A live document (which if you try to edit in word will run visio)
That's more recent (from the early 90's on). More recently the
Microsoft doesn't "understand" Open Source
MS is the company that killed open source.
Before MS, the hardware vendors ruled. Software sold hardware, and was shared freely. People mailed tapes, and source code was published in magazines. The big debate was whether anyone would pay for something that could be copied so easily.
MS proved they would. And yes, that required more marketing than programming. Nobody ever admired MS's software if they had knowledge of any alternatives. But MS's marketing department is incredible, because it had to be.
"Free Software" was a backlash against a world where code was hidden, trying to regain the sharing of the ancient days of computers. "Open Source" is a modern reinterpretation designed to make FSS acceptable to business.
Yes, MS understands "Open Source". It is their worst nightmare, their original enemy reincarnated and ready to fight.
Innovation
MS uses the word to mean "stealing and marketing to defeat competitors". It does not mean "inventive". It does not mean "original". It means waiting for someone to show something can be sold, and then doing just enough to claim that something for marketing purposes. And yes, MS is the best in the world at "innovation".
Ballmer: Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so.
IBM does not innovate. IBM invents. Even IBM's attempts to take control of Java are done by inventing new libraries of functionality that become the standards. IBM did not "extend" Java so it only works on their machines. IBM did not "replace" Java with J++ or C#. They created add-ons acceptable to everybody.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
troll! The first cite is just a splash page, the second doesn't have ANY history of Web servers, and the third is a rather self-serving history from CERN.
s /2001-January/002462.html Q .html 1 .htm e R -L.LOG9607.txt T YPE=en&ID=12970
Check these out:
http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/wwwsf3.html
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/internetworker
http://www.w3.org/Daemon/User/Admin.html
http://www.bergen.org/ATC/Course/InfoTech/VRML_FA
http://csc.colstate.edu/summers/NOTES/servers-ch1
http://roub.net/mtmstitch.cgi?conversation=allair
http://aolserver-archive.cleverly.com/GNNDEVELOPE
http://sirius.itfrontier.co.jp/kb/cf_article.cfm?
If Balmer's trying to court developers in the high tech market place he's looking in the wrong place...uh...I meant to say the wrong subcontinent.
Software development in the USA is a shrinking market and will continue to shrink for the foreseeable future: proof positive that the bean counters the board puts in charge don't understand the first thing about software development.
Also, the most important customer segment to microsoft is not the software developer community. It's the legion of secretaries who cost companies $10,000 a piece in training simply to learn how to send an email.
Want proof? How many emails do you get a week at the office that have no text and the only content is an embedded Word or Powerpoint doc? How many of those Word/Powerpoint docs have nothing but three lines of text and an uncropped, unresized 8x10" piece of clipart straight off the paperclip's back porch?
The folks whose type those memos rule the IT decision world. Think about it. If you in upper management, do you want to listen to your secretary complain incessantly about the horror having to learn how to use the software they've been assigned?
Nothing to see here. Move along. Don't even bother to RTFA.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
And that's why SQL Server wins.
Because to "admin" Oracle or DB2, you apparently have to go to training classes.
Whereas just about anyone can install, configure, maintain, and tune SQL server. Without expensive, pompous training.
SQL Server has TPC-C scores higher than the # of annual transactions on the NYSE. _You_ do not have a problem so big that SQL server couldn't handle it (but oracle or DB2 could).
Compared to Oracle (and i think DB2, but i dont have as much experience), SQL server is easier to install, worlds easier to administer, easier to develop for, easier to automate maintenance tasks, has way better tools, and costs less. I beleive that for certain work loads, it's also faster.
Given what Oracle costs, and given what the fluffers that are members of the professional oracle babysitting guild expect to be paid, i can't beleive anybody is still even using Oracle.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
All crappers supporting microsoft, check the record. This company is trying hard(read very very hard) to make companies upgrade to its OS released 4 years ago. The businesses do not want to upgrade. Probably, there are afraid of all the latest greatest innovations in there.
According to Balmer, nobody has come up with anything? Forget about things like mp3's, bittorrent, and voip. Please pay no heed!
Your arguement takes a critical hit when you say he used a word he didn't. He said "distribution", not "integration".
It's been a long time.
One point that seems to be missed a lot is the open source is just a subset of the sharing of knowledge which has been going on for centuries and has given us the scientific advances we have today - standing on the shoulders of giants because the giants published their finding. Closed source software is historically the new thing, there weren't a lot of software companies before Microsoft and code was often shared after you got the binaries with your hardward. RMS was not kicking back against a long established thing when he got upset about not being able to read the source code for a printer driver, but a new restriction he didn't have to worry about proir.
Art is designed to impress - movie stars get all kinds of attention. An engineer who builds an impressive bridge that was not possible before that will stand for centuries and have thousands travel over it daily gets a brass plaque with their name on it attached to a support. Software is rarely designed to impress.
Linux is not a marketing exercise, I think most of the people that use it do not have some childish dream of world domination by a single OS.
that normally somebody else start them. Rarely, do they start as a standard. It seems that whenever they do, they do not get adopted.
I was thinking about OSI vs. Internet. OSI was supposed to be the killer, and yet, it did not become that way.
Another one was Modula and Ada were designed to kill off C++ and other languages. But they have occupied small niches. Ada is/was dominant in the US military, while Modula was used for teaching back in the 80's/90's. Both were designed standards based languages and have basically failed in the market place.
Of course, there are exceptions. Java comes to mind, but even then it was originally designed for set-tops, not internet.
What I find funny is that the vast majority of used standards today, were actually from OSS backgrounds. Even *nix. It was started in a quasi-hidden fashion (the funding was for a text editor! ). *nix caught on because Bell Labs was not allowed to sell, but had to give it away. And they gave it in source. The same for Internet vs. AOL/Compserve/MSN etc. The proprietary BBS lost out to the OSS based internet. As time went on, *nix and the internet became nothing but standards (posix/sysV/etc. and of course, a large number of network/data RFCs).
OSS is not the answer to everything, but it has given us a large amount of inovation.
BTW, sorry, if I sounded curt earlier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
While it is indeed true it's the browser account that's compromised, it brings me to my main point - where it isn't that it's windows that makes it insecure.
The main problem with windows is the users browser/email accounts are typical high privilege accounts (or their main accounts with important data) AND the users will do silly stuff using those accounts. Once their main account is compromised it is usually good enough for the attacker - that machine can become a spam zombie (most linux distros won't prevent that either), or the attacker might even be able to escalate to an admin account using keylogging and other attacks.
Now if the browser accounts were _lower_ privilege accounts from the main user accounts, then that makes things a fair bit more secure. I've got that setup on some of the machines I use[1]. Even if I have an exploitable firefox or IE, it's harder for the attacker to read or affect my main account's data. It's not impossible - there are other attacks - e.g. shatter attacks, video exploits etc. But it is harder.
With respect to chroot, Windows does have enough fine grained control over the file system and the its registry. However if you are talking about jail ala freebsd and other security enforcement mechanisms then yeah Windows lacks those.
[1] I've this setup on my workplace machine (SuSE 9.1) and my previous workplace (Windows XP). So it's possible to do it for both O/Ses.
Currently on my home machine I actually view untrusted sites that require javascript etc using a browser running in a vmware virtual machine. I regard this as safe enough for my purposes.
I don't see Joe Average being willing to do what I do at home, but it shouldn't be too difficult for a distro to set things up the way I have it at work - just make sure the browser's downloaded/saved files and other files to be shared are stored in a folder that the main account can access (and other accounts can't).
Innovatively speaking, everything has been pretty much downhill since clippy.
I can name 2 genuine Microsoft innovations right off the top of my head:
1. Clippy
2. Microsoft Bob!
AFAIK, nobody ever did those before! Hopefully nobody will ever do them again.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Xerox Park may have innovated with the windows, mouse, and the gui, and Apple may have planted the seed, but MS is the one who brought the concept to the masses. Which one "deserves" the credit?
Xerox Park?
WTF... try "PARC" (for Palo Alto Research Center).
Microsoft paid Wang Corporation a large sum to settle on issues regarding OLE.
That had to do with 2 software patents that were worded pretty broadly. I figure most /.ers don't count that as disqualifying Microsoft from having done some original work.
Let's go play soccer at Xerox Park.
I think the meaning of "innovation" has changed over the years. To me, innovation means doing things that haven't been done before to solve an old problem in a more efficient way or to solve a problem that was unsolvable with current technology.
I don't believe that Linux, Firefox, JBoss, etc. are real innovations. They are simply a better fill-in-the-blank.
While the idea of free and open software makes sense from the emotional stand point, it runs counter to software as a profession where one expects to get paid.
The prevailing "wisdom" on Slashdot is that OSS is far superior based on the simple fact that it is free. However, another belief on these same boards is that outsourcing is terrible and wrong and all things evil but is mainly maintenance programming or application programming. The real programming is done in the developed countries.
Let's assume that all of this is true for a moment. What do we have by applying these common beliefs?
OSS is very innovative and outsourcing, while evil, isn't really the cream of the crop development. So the innovative, i.e. cream programming, work is best done for free and the drudgery jobs are going to be outsourced.
Great. So how do we get paid????
so, then:
NOBODY invented ANYTHING. Therefore ALL software patents in the world are INVALID from now on, because, thanks to you, it was proven, that there are no software inventions.
so, but now serious:
Who, before apple, had the windows move aside like this like alt-tab? Nobody! So somebody at apple had this great idea. This idea is definitly unique and therefore an innovation. Like the first time Alt+Tabe was used for application switching.
Sometimes an integration can bin an innovation. Great somebody invents PS but nobody uses it. So Nextstep (now Mac OS X) takes it, and puts into into their OS in a way it can be used in all applications in very innovativ ways.
application forwarding: start an application on a server and have its output (window/GUI) forwarded to your desktop. Probably you are too young or too ignorant if you don't know this.
Even if central repositories where in use long before linux, who used them in a way like apt-get or the freeBSD/gentoo portage trees?
REXX was invented by IBM. but again, probably you are too young to know this.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Smalltalk, a RAD tool, easily also predates Amiga CanDo by a decade and IS 'rad' according to your definitions here and constraints (no platform specifics) & based on your saying this to me -
g _language
g _language
"THE ONLY FUCKING THING I AM TALKING ABOUT IS RAD... It would. That is the ONE SINGLE POINT I was trying to make. CAN YOU GROK THAT?"
Question is, can you GROK THIS, next?
(And without blowing your cork?? lol... seriously, consider decaf!)
Here is what your FIRST STATEMENT TO ME WAS IN FACT, not what you're saying there which I quoted above:
"You say others talk without facts to back them up after doing the same thing yourself. To use an extremely old example, the Amiga had the CanDo language, which is a little different, but basically a RAD as well. And that's from the 80s (or maybe very early 90s)"
Looked like an OUTRIGHT attack on me! So, you will get facts based replies on me that disprove your points in attacking me.
Kind of tough to deny your own quoted words and profanity directed my way, isn't it at this point?
Well, like I said, here's on earlier than yours, in SMALLTALK from the 60's/70's
FIRST the HISTORY OF SMALLTALK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk_programmin
& SQUEAK (which is SmallTalk):
http://www.os2ezine.com/20030916/Squeak_Main.jpg
* Thus, my point is made again, don't you agree?
OK, here we go, facts, histories, & screenshots of SmallTalk the FIRST RAD tool that predates yours which I mentioned to you in fact as what you should have tried to attack me with instead imo:
(Thus, my point is made again, don't you agree? SmallTalk's REALLY the first RAD, and you tried to bust on me and ended up with your you know what handed to you, or aren't the facts here for that?)
AND, IBM "VAST" (Visual Age SmallTalk):
http://www.os2ezine.com/20030916/VAST_Compose.PNG
Which, smalltalk in its history? First of all, CLEARLY predates your Amiga CanDo example by a decade & is "RAD" because it is as you said "VB like" & what I said you should have mentioned first really, here is why:
Screenshots of SmallTalk-80:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk_programmin
It appears that SMALLTALK (which I mentioned early on) IS the first of them all as far as RAD tools, not your Amiga CanDo!
And again, dude, please, the profanity? It's lame. Facts, win. NOT profanity & name tossing etc. or sarcasm.
AND it really does appear that SmallTalk & its derivants really fit the bill here & predate your Amiga tool.
APK
P.S.=> And, I quoted your first attack on me, which it DEFINITELY was @ that as quoted above no matter how you evade that! Accusing me of not using facts, & here? I most certainly am!
Also? You misinterpreted (or intentionally twisted) what I meant early on anyhow & came up short trying to burn me anyhow!
Above all?
You did not note I said "ONE OF THE FIRST, IF NOT THE FIRST" regarding VB!
Meaning VB may not have been the first, but was one of the first RAD tools, IF NOT FIRST in fact!
For X86 though? Again, I am pretty sure VB may have been THE FIRST! That is unless, like I said above? SmallTalk was there first & there's a GOOD CHANCE it was. After all, & why I mentioned it early on in my first reply to you or second one?
SmallTalk predates both your Amiga CanDO and VB, by 10-20 years in fact in concepts & design frameworks, being "RAD" & "LIKE VB" as you stated as constraints here... apk