Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Unique Innovation
Anonymous Coward writes "The way John Carroll sees it, Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents. The company's understanding of the marketplace, argues Carroll, has proved fertile ground for many of the inventions, however incremental, that Microsoft produces on a regular basis. That awareness is that all software markets, however "unrelated" they may seem, have linkages to each other. And it's an awareness that open source will have a hard time matching. Another reason many fail to appreciate Microsoft inventiveness, continues Carroll, is because most inventions are pieces of larger puzzles."
* checks calendar *
Nope... it's not April 1st. Did I miss something?
This guy is pretty amazing in his energy applied to convincing the world (and himself) Microsoft is an inventing kind of company. He even uses a bizarre example:
Wow! I'm not sure in this universe what comparison is being made. But I infer he is saying Microsoft is getting accused of being non-innovative because they're making the Formula One racers. I'm not sure this is a metaphor I can accept for the stuff I've seen coming from Microsoft, unless a Formula One racer:
I would however cede their metaphor in these regards:
There are also some specious arguments and claims:
Regardless, it's kind of fun to see the periodic article pushing yet again to tell the world Microsoft is innovative. In Microsoft's case, it is actually possible saying so makes it so.
Not inventing them.
Never mind the man behind the curtain. Look at this!!! Ooooh shiny!!!
Honestly. From what I've read so far, he doesn't have a solid basis for his statements.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Riiiight. I work in an almost all MS shop, and if everything suddenly started working seamlessly, I'd have a friggin' heart attack.
You are not the customer.
sulli
RTFJ.
WORLD domination!
Who let that troll/MS Shill in?
I thought I was through reading his retarded "Microsoft is God" shite when I stopped reading ZDnet.
What's worse, he used to just be a messageboard troll and now they're PAYING him for his trollery.
Someone please shoot him and put him out of our misery.
Another AC with an e-mail address (really people, think a little). Oooh and another inflammatory story from zdnet blogs. Yo slashdot, just save us the trouble, stop accepting blogs as news. All you do is drive up ad revenue for these sites that often are filled with jibberish and anything that resembles news worthy material...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I don't remember having to reboot as much with other platforms ... I guess that's sort of an innovation
I'm just curious.
I know a very long list of technologies that MS claims to have invented... but buying a company that invented something and inventing something isn't the same thing.
They were all my friends, and they died...
Wait. That was Jim Carroll.
ZD has always and will forever be a marketing arm for Microsoft. They have been the worst apologist for Redmond's outgrageous behavior since Bill Gates' mom.
Anything from ZD can safely be dismissed as propaganda.
The way John Carroll sees it, Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents. The company's understanding of the marketplace, argues Carroll, has proved fertile ground for many of"
Sure every Newly created worm and other type of virus made for Windows are made just for Microsoft mostly and are in fact born because of them.
So they can get credit for the expansion of viruses for sure.
This guy actually works for Microsoft as acknowledged by ZDNet themselves. You should take some of this with a pinch of salt then.
Both very fine pieces of technology innovation.
Everything else -- I mean *everything* else -- was a copy of the successful work of a more deserving 1-in-a-thousand startup that suffered through all their hard times only to get stomped by the monopoly in the end.
Sam
A mature, rational discussion will follow.
Maybe I am a bit out of the loop but the lion's share of M$ revenue comes from Windows & Office. An operating system and a collection of applications, that are direct dirivitives of the same software you would likely buy over 10 years ago. Sure both are a bit more polished than the same version from a decade ago but I would not call that innovative. Nothing else springs to mind when thinking of what M$ is known for. They just buy or steal other people's ideas and rebrand them.
When was the last time Microsoft actually developed something on their own? Arent most of their products bought then developed on top of? ie: DOS - Windows, XBOX, Direct X, Hotmail. Microsoft is not a great software development/inventing company they are however a great marketing company.
GL HF!
Microsoft not getting credit on Slashdot?!
:)
Never
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
But when compared to the rest of the industry, they stagnate. Certainly, they've made some valuable contributions, but when you consider their next closest competitor is less than half the size, they should be responsible for an overwhelming majority of invention and innovation in the market. But - they're not. Part of my problem with Microsoft is that it seems like since Windows 95, they've been constantly playing a game of catch up, rather than bringing unique products to the market. They certainly have a way of solving integration, and seemless interface design with other Microsoft products, which has made them successful. Microsoft might be the master of integration, but innovation leader? Most certainly not.
And Microsoft's innovations always seem to hurt the consumer in the long run. Granted, they have made some significant contributions and ideas to the software industry, but MS seems more concerned about catering to the companies that demand to impose regulations on digital media (**AA, et al.) while most of the open-source and freeware community listens to their users and tries to help them all the more, instead of partially helping, and partially hating.
I suppose I just prefer unconditional love, than a love-hate relationship.
Anyone can sit and fantasize about what the motives of an XYZ company are in doing what they do. Much like critquing a work of literature: many times the author himself doesn't know why he wrote what he did and many times his intentions are much more basic than how others interpret them.
Given that there still isn't a consensus as to what the P in LAMP stands for, I don't know if I'd hold my breath on that happening. Not that I'm so optimistic about the LSB either, but at least they know what it stands for!
Anyway, Microsoft -- the place where they excel is this: They make something that isn't very good. They make a version 2 that's better, but still not good. 3 isn't bad, and by 4 it's 90% there.
Their competitors (Sun is a perfect example) can frequently make a better version 1, but then Microsoft is still there and competing with them, they get bored and go on to something else. The open-source projects have trouble doing the boring 30% that gets you up to 90%, and start adding translucent menus and XML feeds instead.
Oh, and that's why I'm a Mac user, given the choice...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Man, as if this story wasn't posted with the express purpose of seeing just how many people would spit in fury...
It's "PLOAF," not "P-LOAF." Ask about it.
Can I just ask a question? Is there such a thing as a non-unique innovation? Is this story title a bit redundant?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
This guy works for M$ and has a lot of hypothetical junk in his blog. Imagine this, now imagine that, now imagine M$ really is innovative. What a fanboy.
This is sales and marketing. You put a twist that is difficult for anyone who isn't technical in understanding (99% of people). This is what politicians do to get people behind something. You use a lack of understanding, make it sound good, and talk like you know what you are talking about and people buy it and believe you. Sales and marketing.
Evolution or ID?
It's worth noting that John Carrol is a Microsoft employee, who also writes for ZDNet. The journalistic integrity here is absolutely zero.
Now I don't blame him for his obvious slant. He's paid by Microsoft. Hell, he probably wants to think that his work, and the work of his co-workers is innovative. Who doesn't?
Personally, the fact that ZDNet brought him aboard as a writer is where the real problem lies. I remember at one time how ZDNet used to try to defend themselves against accusations of being MS-shills; but now they seem to embrace it whole-heartedly.
So, coming from this source -- can anybody be surprised by the conclusion? It's worth just what we've paid for it: absolutely nothing.
Yaz.
I can think of preceding examples for a couple of is examples of innovation, so all he's really convinced me of so far is that he didn't do his research before writing this article.
Apparently, innovation isn't developing new technology. It's noticing new technology coming out of obscure companies and the academic community and then re-implementing it for Windows and backing it with 8,000 metric tons of advertising hype.
is that most developers like getting paid for their work. :)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
...inventing startling new technology, like Gadgets. I mean...wow. I've never seen anything like this before! *coughwidgetscough*
To actually have a reasonable conversation about this. I'll help, by clearing the deck of:
1) 1,000 monkeys typing = Shakespeare, yadda yadda
2) Broken clock right twice a day, blah blah
3) Every other thing that's always said about buying innovation rather than... what, mining it? Every employee that works there is "bought" every week when they get paid, and sometimes they're bought in a group from somewhere else. Same as anyplace else with a lot of irons in the fire.
But - surely people aren't going to pretend that Excel doesn't exist, or that Active Directory isn't actually pretty damn effective. And Visual Studio actually has its moments (me: old timey VB6 fan, but what do I know).
If you actually work with MS's server products all day long, you'll find that there really is a sum of the parts that actually scratches quite a few itches. And don't forget their hardware... given my choice of a anything from Logitech, MS, or several others (especially for the money), for some uses I'd probably reach for the MS stuff more often. Strictly on touchy-feely-reliability merit, no brand loyalty whatsoever in that area. Unfortunately, they don't make the asbestos products I'll need for this comment.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
John Carrol is the guy who used to be an developer living in Geneva, Switzerland. Anyone who had the misfortune to follow the ZDNet talkback boards would never fail to see John jump to Microsoft's defence no matter what the topic was, be it the DOJ case (Jonh:Microsoft is being punished for innovating), Linux (John:Developing for Windows is far easier. Just look at how easy it is to make a COM object I can use anywhere) or Microsoft's business practices (John:Microsoft is innovating).
Now, years later, after having trolled incessantly for Microsoft for years, he finally got a job with them and a blog at ZDNet where he, surprise, trolls for Microsoft.
I actually do think that Microsoft does innovate in places (xmlhttpobject for example)but I don't think I'd listen to John Carrol when I wanted impartial advice on Microsoft or th IT market.
>but I consider the Tablet PC (a form factor that hadn't been tried before)
d om.html
I had a NCR 3125 in the 90's. It was tablet-shaped, it had crappy handwriting recognition, etc. http://www.pencomputing.com/TabletPC/pen_history_
Try again, M$!
... a mad hatter, and a few other unlikely characters, and we have a proper story.
Oh wait, his brother already has!
...MS did get a lot of things right. However, claiming it "doesn't get enough credit" is ludicrous - they have the de facto monopoly in the OS market and money to burn. What more credit do they need, anyway?
he actually knows that he can't claim microsoft being innovative unless he redefines the meaning of the word "innovative" in some bizzard way he can't even express proberly.
That Microsoft innovates. You have to trust me . John
Microsoft has given us (indirectly) so many invaluable things! Improved antivirus and antispyware applications, internet browsers, email clients, media players, office programs, the list is endless..
..after all, they say necessity breeds innovation.
Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents.
This should read all the technology they steal or buy. Microsoft's stance has always been to "borrow" steal or buy any technology the produce as their own.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Clippy. Judging by all the praise from Dido and Enderle it has to be the greatest thing ever invented since .... eh ... Bob?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Another reason many fail to appreciate Microsoft inventiveness, continues Carroll, is because most inventions are pieces of larger puzzles." I have no doubt that ms did some innovative things (not all of which came directly from them, but nevermind that.). What I have problem with is that larger puzzle. Small pieces don't matter if the rest of the puzzle are chewed up by a wolverine.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
MS does help innovation, although not in a sane way. Sure, there are lots of small companies with fresh, innovative ideas which get bought up by MS. Evil MS, no cookie? Wrong. How likely is it that those companies would have survived? For most: zero. So, in theory its a good thing that the 800-pound gorilla takes the innovative ideas and includes them in their products. In theory. In practice the new ideas often vanish in the patent portfolio, or they mutate to really ugly MS incarnations.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
You see, there was this company called "Go" a few years ago. Read about it here.
They were working on a Tablet PC before MS fucked them over - at least that's the way they tell it.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
MS is good at innovating names...some examples: Windows...Word, Excel, Powerpoint.. Windows Media player, Internet Explorer
& then all the jiggetty-bigetty presentation they do..like Windows Tour
bottom line is IMHO they are all crap, but the package box, name, logos, marketing stuff i mean are/were good.
I have a microsoft mouse.
It is bud-ugly though...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
His opinion shifts to match whatever Microsoft's agenda is. When Microsoft was anti-expensing of options, Carroll was anti-expensing of options, even using the same misdirections Microsoft was using. When Microsoft decided to expense options, he suddenly because pro-expensing of options.
If you know how it works, a certain Microsoft UBS account plays a big part.
To this day I still can't think of a *single* product that Microsoft actually "invented" completely in-house. There are some software projects that I run that literally have no equivalent elsewhere (and I don't consider myself an inventor). At one time I thought that maybe Space Simulator was created by them entirely, but it was made by BAO of course.
Practically every product they have is the result of some other company's work (and those companies usually get bought out and merged with MS very quickly).
Even something as stupid as Microsoft Bob doesn't seem to have been invented by them, since there were "user-friendly" house-like interfaces before that; and usually shipped with computers like Packard Bells. From what I know, their entire Office suite is a collection of bought-out companies.
-eventhorizon
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
This has to be one of the silliest articles I have seen for a long time.
... that works everywhere'.
I have been using Microsoft products since the 1970s and they have never supported portable skills and consistency. They have regularly dropped technologies (and abandoned developers and users) in order to change direction. One of the biggest examples of this is a recent one - attempting to force developers to switch from 'traditional' Visual Basic - for better or worse one of the most popular development environments ever - to VB.NET, which has major incompatibilities. This move alone alienated a large number of developers who had been MS supporters. So much for 'portable skills'. Then there are Windows incompatibilities, changes to network protocols, changes to registry structures, user interface changes (which require significant retraining for Windows administrators with every other release). Developers struggling with DLL hell and installation issues on different Windows versions will be most amused by the statement that 'there should be a standard
It is nothing but marketing spin and nonsense, and the author should be embarrassed.
Look at all the things they HAVE created:
DOS
The GUI
the Web Browser
Word Processing
Media Compression
Solitaire
The future seems to hold limitless possibilities if we look at their past innovations. Long live Microsoft!
"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -Terry Pratchet, on Popcorn.
that awareness is that all software markets, however "unrelated" they may seem, have linkages to each other.
I agree completely, so try taking a slice of IE code and sticking it Linux, now try it with mozilla code and see who doesn't get their pants sued off and who does. Now you know why free software is so competitive.
That microsoft actually invented. Just one....seriously. I've been trying to think of something for the past 5 years and I draw a blank.
.Net? Please, it's just another coding language
Now....I'm not talking about "inventing a way to make it work on Windows". I'm talking about INVENTING something, not just taking someone else's idea and running with it.
Windows? Xerox
Scandisk? Symantec/Norton
DOS? Sold, and then purchased from the person that wrote it
The list goes on and on and on......
It's like if everyone already had Formula One Racers, and MicroSoft came out with a Ford Escort, and then whined that no one sees the obvious innovation here in having a heavier car that gets less mileage and has tons of useless crap in it.
But look--cupholders!
The article cites a string of predictably obscure accomplishments in non-standard extensions to technical standards. For example: adding generics to C++ to remedy code bloat was first debated by the standards people in the early 90's and rejected repeatedly. Now Sun adopts generics in Java and it becomes a Microsoft innovation in C++. As a developer who used generics in Ada in the mid 1980's, I wonder if DoD appreciated that a generation later generics would be a Microsoft "innovation".
The mindset revealed in the article, that Microsoft makes the best products because Microsoft has the resources to make their products more monolithic than the competition, lacks a basic appreciation of the mechanisms of innovation. Innovation frequently emerges as a criticism to the limitations of the mainstream or monolithic position.
Based on this article, any Microsoft technology adoption is "innovative", even if it is a late response to the presumably "uninnovative" competition.
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
I'd be inclined to agree that they fairly improved many of these things, after buying the companies that initially developped them. Well, "improve", or rather "made them widely available to the base consumer". We can't deny how Microsoft helped the computers to become the major tool it is today, but I honestly fail to see what major invention they came up with.
Apparently some of you have forgotten the Golden Rules of Slashdot.
Here they are:
Rule 1: If you're discussing a problem with Windows:
Blame the monopolistic, capitalist monstrosity which is the root cause of this problem. If Microsoft weren't a bunch of money-grubbing, back-stabbing pigs your problem would never have occured.
Rule 2: If you're discussing a problem with OSX:
It isn't Apple's fault. Maybe its your fault. Or maybe its that third party software you're using. Most likely your problem is the result of incompatibilities with MS Office (see rule 1). Apple doesn't make mistakes. Apple loves you.
Rule 3: If you're discussing a problem with Linux:
Agree that there *is* a problem. Then state that the hardworking heroes of the opensource community are hard at work making this problem go away. The message has to be that "We're on it". Remember, one shining day in the future these problems won't plague our people any more. It doesn't matter that your system is losing data, we proudly wear the banner of responsibility in this matter, and we are slavishly addressing your problem.
Any questions?
----------
judge a man by his wallet
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Other than some parts of IIS, the TabletPC, Microsoft Bob and IntelliSense and that rolly thing on those IntelliMice, what else is there?
COM - rip off of IBM's SOM (System Object Model)
Money - there were several DOS based checkbook programs for DOS at the time Money was released
Internet Explorer - wonder why your browser returns "Mozilla?" and has a blub in help->about you see something about "developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
Outlook - email clients not much of an innovation these days
Windows NT - this was originally going to be OS/2 3.0, until the API was ripped out and replaced with the Windows API at the last minute (however the kernels between NT3 and OS/2 2.x were amazingly similar)
Explorer - after Program Manager bombed, surprisingly Microsoft created something that felt and acted quite a bit like OS/2's Presentation Manager
Word - go see Xerox
Excel - go see VisiCalc
SQL Server - we all know that was Sybase
WindowsCE - *sigh* Palm and countless others
BizTalk - see Gentran
FrontPage - see those _vti folders in IIS? That stands for Vermeer Technologies, Inc.
In fact, if you look at the long history of Microsoft products, you really don't see that much grand innovation anywhere. In fact, the big moneymakers at Microsoft AREN'T the items they've dreamed up completely by themselves and rightly-so.
Why spend a lot of capital to invent something that probably won't be successful, when you can buy a small fry that obviously does have lots of potential and go for the patents and quash the competitition with your marketing?
It's America. What's wrong with it?
I read the article with utmost objectivity. I employed Morgan Jones's analysis techniques as well as Edward De Bono's structuring methods. Here are my judgment-free one line assessment of the piece: It's full of shit. No substance. Rhetorical treatise on MS's innovation.
shouldnt this read "inventions Microsoft _bought_"?
At the risk of being flamed... does linux innovate? does open source innovate?
And I mean besides being open-source alone which is pretty innovative... It
marginalizes existing industries and makes software cheaper + it provides jobs and opportunities without having to shell out $$$ for official certification programs.
A lot of what we like is *NIX apps and utilities... linux is not entirely innovative in this way. Sun with Java? Is a JVM innovative? I can say that in
academia there were previous VMs around.. Apple with Aqua? perhaps... but seriously... most people take what works and make it a little bit better and in many cases a little bit cheaper (or expensive by adding/increasing value). Apple
did this with OS X. It makes *NIX more valuable. DirectX? Is that innovative or a complete smash up of OpenGL? Visual Studio? Visio? SQL Server? MSFT buys good tech... SQL Server may get slammed by many here, but for a small-medium business that needs advanced data analytics to query financial data and export it to XLS/PPT for the executives to make decisions I think it works pretty well and is way cheaper than the alternatives. Big companies use Big Iron and Oracle. MSFT has largely been medium user to end-user desktop based. That is because there is a lot of money in those areas. Follow the money and
you will find MSFT.
For businesses that don't need that, such as web2.0 companies there is little incentive to go with MSFT on the backend since it is pure cost than value. Plus you can tweak and extend your linux implementation freely. Linux is more customizable and that helps in many instances and it is cheap for building a server farm. But for data analytics, for integrating information, and providing information value for cheap MSFT is the way to go. They own the corporate information pipeline. That is where value is. Information is valuable. Making it easy to create, get, and use information. Open source hasn't done that yet, except in limited cases where programming gurus go off and start there own companies (Yahoo,Google) etc... and even then they scale to large company size and then will buy Oracle and other large-scale data analytics (or write there own). Google makes then NET valuable. Ebay makes garage sales valuable.
I think open-source will continue to marginalize infastructure, but as long as MSFT keeps providing information value it will always have the lead. Here information value is provided by the solution and not necessarily the product.
Is that why they "invented" Microsoft Bob?
BlackNova Traders
Thats not even a word... this Carroll guy is pretty smrt. :P
It ends when "I wonder if Open Source can do what Microsoft did."
:) Google seems to be doin a great job so far.
There alone, explains the author's lack of grasp on the subject. The Open Source movement is riddled with people that once upon a time, made Microsoft a great company. And I will give credit, even as taboo as it may be on Slashdot with the large followers of Microsoft *cough cough*.
Microsoft's ability to innovate does not lie at the OS level, or the application level. It lies at a fundamentally different area, one that's not related to software in and of itself. Microsoft's brilliance is simple -- they made it possible for a business to conduct complete workflow thru their software, from beginning to end. Businesses will always mandate what the future of consumers will buy, and their decisions. If you work for a finance firm and they tell you "Okay Johnson, we are switching to Linux to save $2523432!".. do you think that Johnson is going to go home and buy another Windows PC for his home? He will need a Linux PC to mirror his work environment. Then he will have a friend who comes over and says "wow, what's that?", where Johnson will explain the benefits (as explained to him by his company) of Linux on his desktop, and will thus propogate the use of Linux on the desktop.
Microsoft made Windows -- arguably a crap OS, arguably not. But with the combination of Exchange, Biztalk, Sharepoint, the Office Suite and Windows working in (relative) harmony under Active Directory well.. I'll argue it takes some vision to bring a company that far, and innovation to boot.
But I wouldn't count out Linux as the author did... the people who made MS what it is are who are working in Open Source, working at Google, working at Yahoo, working at IBM. And they will tell us how innovative open source can be, or hell, not even Open Source... but MS alternatives
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If they had just straight copied Apple's Trash, think of the landfill problems we'd be having right now. Reuse! Reduce! RECYCLE!!!!
On "Microsoft Invention"???
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
I wish I could find a link somewhere, but back in the Windows 3.x days, the days where serial mice were common, the days when _Mouse Systems_ actually meant something, the days when mice were ugly bricks, the days before the MS dove bar mouse, I remember seeing a mouse by Genius that had a front-center-mount scroll wheel.
The wheel wasn't clickable as a third button, but the spiel on the box was all about how it would make scrolling that much easier.
So Microsoft didn't invent the wheel mouse, but they did refine it considerably and make it universally usable, thanks to their ability to integrate tightly into the OS. It's so much easier to do that when you control the APIs.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
A lot of people fail to understand what real innovation is. Sure every now and then there is an invention that abruptly changes the world. Some people consider the Segway scooter an example of such a thing. I do not.
Microsoft has made a lot of very small innovations (often called "soft innovations"). Whether it's the ease of use of VB or the elegance of C# or the xml grammars used in the speech SDK. They are not huge, "big bang" style innovations, but they are not insignificant.
Microsoft slowly advances the state of the art and we're all better off as a result. Sure it's not flasy like the industrial design of an iPod or the first space walk or the Polio vaccine, but added up they are a huge force of progress.
Amazing magic tricks
When that day arrives it will be worthy of a Slashdot mention.
OK, just kidding, MS like any high-tech company its size does do a lot of incremental "innovations" and sometimes comes out with some truly good ideas (none come to mind at the moment though). It's too bad they don't always do what is right for the world with their patent and copyright portfolio - it makes them look bad and deservedly so.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The way John Carroll sees it, Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents.
You mean like the Play-Once DVD?
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
The aquaduct, don't forget the aquaduct!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Please don't buy xbox360 it's for your own good. Don't use windows media player or windows media formats, nobody needs it... yet, think office format. *sigh* I guess it'll be too late by the time everyone realizes what's happened. Why even bother, I'm so depressed. With the news about fat file systems and fan boy articles worshiping Microsoft, a bad day on Slashdot.
Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for innovation, and a distraught Bill Gates cries himself to sleep atop a 400-foot high mound of $100 dollar bills.
not that there's anything that interesting there, but your statement about driving up revenue sure sounds nice ;)
I think he needs to get out more. See the world a bit.
"Gee Steve. How can we increment Clippy?"
"Well Bill, how about a dog"
Microsoft's innovation is the application of brilliant marketing tactics and envelope pushing legal tactics to the software industry. Microsoft is NOT a technology driven company, and woe the the technology driven software company that dares to go head-to-head with Microsoft. Their 'innovation' has been tremendously profitable to Microsoft, but if anything has hindered innovation in the software field.
[Insert pithy quote here]
There is always Bob and.... clippy and ....
Always thought that was dumb.
Standards? Works everwhere? Hey dude -- you're working for M-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t... you know, the people who don't like standards, who won't use open standards (OpenDocument), tweak standards so they are not compliant (Kerberos), invent their own "standards" and not share them (MS-Word format), and then finally try to patent everything (FAT filesystem) so that other people (that would be us, the open source community) can't use it.
Maybe you should read your own article and think about those things, eh? Maybe a lot of people at Microsoft should think about those things...
coding is life
Microsoft is inovative because:
.NET generics which escape the problem of code bloat found in C++ templates, and custom SQL aggregation functions written in .NET that are a feature of the next version of SQL Server (Yukon) to be good examples.
.NET less bloated than C++?
Article Part 1: Even though they didn't invent the parts they make copies of the enventions so they will work with other Microsoft products.
Article Part 2: Microsoft has enough money to make the products that they "tweeked" work better than the poor smuck that actually invented it.
Most memorable statements:
but I consider the Tablet PC (a form factor that hadn't been tried before),
Microsoft's unique area of innovation, however, isn't technology-specific, though it is certainly related to it.
Apple had a tablet when?
Well, at least the final sentence is true. Microsoft's area of innovation is definately not in the technology department.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Edlin... a piece of a larger puzzle indeed. :)
This guy works for Microsoft, and had released an article with a rather defensive tone to it. I laughed the same way when I heard Mrs. Bush chastising the American public for picking on her husband.
"Microsoft first implemented the XMLHttpRequest object in Internet Explorer 5 for Windows as an ActiveX object.
Similar functionality is covered in a proposed W3C standard, Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Load and Save Specification. In the meantime, growing support for the XMLHttpRequest object means that is has become a de facto standard that will likely be supported even after the W3C specification becomes final and starts being implemented in released browsers (whenever that might be)."
Source.
Translated, I'm saying that technology across software domains should be consistent.
Two words: Office 12.
You forgot about Minesweeper!
1992 was the year that OS/2 2.0 (the first 32-bit version) was released by IBM with its nifty ability to run both DOS and Windows software out of the box and a real drag-and-drop GUI that made the newly released Windows 3.1 desktop look fairly primitive.
:-)
Unlike DOS GUIs like GEM, PC/GEOS, and others which preceded it, OS/2 was demonstrably better than Windows in almost every way you could think of except in three areas:
* It required more RAM than Windows did (OS/2 was usable in 8MB while Windows was usable in 4MB).
* It had support for fewer devices (especially video cards) than Windows, which was a major issue for a number of people I knew who were interested in it including myself, and
* It required a bit of a mind shift to use if one was used to Windows, mainly because it actually used the second mouse button for context menus and such (unlike Windows).
It was missing native software, but that didn't matter -- most of the folks I know used it as a platform to run DOS or Windows software anyway. Why not? It that that job very well.
We know from history that preloads, developer deals, and various other Microsoft tactics and actions would cause OS/2 to drop from the industry radar roughly four years later, but I'm sure that the introduction of IBM's product scared the crap out of some folks in Redmond.
I for one am thankful that IBM released such a product -- in those days, we didn't have many alternatives on x86 hardware (BeOS wasn't around yet, nobody in PC land had heard of the BSDs, and Linux was just barely starting to become useful).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Microsoft Didn't invent anything other than a huge market-share and a mainstream platform, primarily for people to become victims of DDoS Attacks and Identity Theft!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
You can definitely credit Microsoft with inventing lots of unheard-before-jobs though...
So, according to this guy, consistency is innovation? Microsoft does have some interesting innovations, but this guy didn't bother to mention any of them.
For one thing, intellisense is innovative. Not the idea, but how it actually works right, and nothing else does. Some come close (I don't know xcode, so maybe it's ok too?), like anjuta, but most like emacs and eclipse are utterly crippled. (Eclipse because it's unusably slow, emacs because it doesn't actually do anything useful).
Microsoft innovations: Around 1980, IBM wanted Bill Gates to write an operating system for them. Since he had never written an operating system, he bought the rights to QDOS from the author, Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Works, for fifty grand and kept his deal with IBM a secret from Paterson and SCW. Gates then talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the rights to his new MSDOS and to market the operating system separate from the IBM PC.
So much for innovation at Microsoft. It's what they did then and what they do now.
The reason for that unstoppability is the lack of an awareness on anyone else's part of the value of an end to end solution where everything works together using the same technology (or at least an unwillingness to commit resources to the construction of such a solution).
It could also be that Microsoft exersizes unchecked monopoly power over PC technologies that have made it very difficult for competitors to survive on equal terms. "Everything just works" is Micro$oft newspeak describing grayscape mediocrity that is the Windows world. "Everything works for Microsoft" might be more accurate.
an ill wind that blows no good
After 25 years in the business, that's all I can think of that Microsoft 'invented'. Microsoft is really good at monopolizing other people's ideas, novel preditory pricing schemes and spewing complete nonsense about how much they 'innovate', and that is all they are good at. BTW, the article points out the John Carroll has been a paid Microsoft shill since May. That might color his thinking somewhat.
I haven't read the article yet, but from past experience this seems like another attempt by MS to promote itself. Like the letter writing campaigns of yesteryear when MS was in the antitrust suit.
:-/ Sorry - got off of the subject a bit.
Although MS has changed (somewhat) since the Antitrust suit, MS is still a marketing company and not a software developer (at least, that is how it has been listed in the Standard & Poor's books). This would mean, to me, that MS actually waits for someone else to develop a new idea and then it procures a program that does something similar and takes it from there. This would mean that MS really isn't an innovator - no matter how much PR weight they throw behind a given product or ad campaign. Instead, they just have some really talented individuals who can (and do) understand concepts already brought forth by other individuals and those people can write software which does the same thing.
Given MS's history of abuse of the law, is it any wonder they have to hire people (or ask them to write things) to make them look good?
Is it me? Or does it seem that since the 1990s graft, bribes, paid-for laws, underhanded deals in government, lock-outs of the average citizen, and more terrible things have been happening than ever before in history? The computers we have created to help people do more things are being used to (in some cases) make people's lives worse. And since when do we try people in the legal system by popular vote? MS's letter writing campaign (and other company's letter writing campaigns) does nothing but confuse whether a given law should or should not be passed. The one person - one vote has been replaced by one company - unlimited votes. Need a law - hire a company to do it!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
MS gave us Clippy!
I hate that damned thing.
Microsoft, I would like to commend you for your wonderful mice. They are superior to all other mice in the field. Your addition of the scroll wheel, not only saves strain on my wrists, but helps to make me a lazier human being. Kudos!
Maybe MS can invent a way to give me back my two minutes spent skimming that article.
I had to do a double take when I read the intro. My dad's name is John Carroll, and he uses Mozilla, so slashdot is now onto you, you John Carroll imposter!
We don't WANT the technology (read: DRM) that Microsoft invents!
I keep posting the same list. Some of this is my opinion of course, but a few of them are in agreement. I believe Microsoft did "innovate" in a number of areas of GUI, but not as many as Microsoft believes. Most everything was from Windows 95 or so. Here is my list of the most important advances from Microsoft, ones that have been adopted everywhere:
1. The "taskbar". Before Windows 95 there was a concept of a window being "iconized", where the "icon" vanished if the window was open. It appears that Microsoft first made an "icon" that stayed there even if the window was open.
2. Also in the taskbar, the realazation that words are more important than icons, and shrinking the icon to a more appropriate 16x16 size and making the text visible.
3. Eliminating the artificial dividing line between the window border and the contents, so that a window displaying a uniform gray rectangle of the right color blends cleanly into the border. Although I wrote something like this myself quite a few years earlier for the NeXT, I hardly publicized it, and never saw similar graphics design until Windows.
4. "Combo box" where text input and multiple selection are done by the same widget. Having worked with NeXT before this, I'm pretty certain it did not have this, and never saw it on any other system either. (crappy popup implementation with the scroll bar is irrelevant to the innovation, although I really wish they would fix that...)
5. Scroll wheel. The idea of having another control to scroll data on the mouse was older, but Microsoft seems to have realized that a 1-D version would provide most of the benifit without the confusion or flakiness of older attempts that tried for 2 or even more degrees of freedom.
6. Having all files be "commands" in that if you double-click it examines the file (even if only the filename) and opens it with the correct program. The Mac does not count because it relied on imbedded metadata in the file, rather than an outside deciding program. Nor does #! notation in Unix exec of files, as it still requires the execute bit and does not work for files that lack this. I think a very important detail is that this idea could have been implemented 20 years earlier, it does not rely on GUI, and no CLI system ever did. A useful idea that is not realized until long after it is possible is a real indication that it is an "innovation".
There are certainly others, I'm only familiar with GUI issues. But neither claims that Microsoft invented nothing, nor claims that they invented major things, are true. The above list is imho an indication of the style and size of a list of actual innovations.
- We have about 1000 employees across 6 locations. Every single workstation runs XP Pro.
- We have about 45 servers, all either Dell rackmounted or Dell blades. They all run Server 2003, or some variation. We use Microsoft solutions for our domain, Active Directory, data storage, DNS/Nameserver, etc.
- Our database servers are MS SQL 2000 (two running 2005 beta, plan to migrate all when it is released).
- Our web servers all run IIS 6.
- Our accounting system is Great Plains.
- Our mail solution is Exchange/Outlook.
- All co-location systems are Microsoft-based solutions.
- Our IT staff is 5 people and the only things that ever break, ever (emphasis on the ever) is the non-MS software we HAVE to use for things like managing those massive printers.
It all comes down to what you know and what you're good at. Our IT admin is good at the Microsoft approach, and the implementation is flawless. If you're not good at it, then you are either a) good at Unix/Linux/OSS/whatever, or b) you're just stupid. Either way, the problem with your MS systems is you, not MS.Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"I know Microsoft invents quite a bit. I'm privy to many things that Microsoft has invented with respect to IPTV, and I could tell you about them, but that would probably get me bricked up in a closet in Bill Gates..." - John Carrol This is exactly what is wrong with journalism today. ZDNet hiring a Microsoft employee to spouse his opinion brings zero credibility to the table. I think Microsoft is sooooo inventive, and you'll just have to trust me on that because of all of these innovative things I know are in the works. This is the similar to the journalism that I expect to hear from Fox News. While I agree many innovations are built upon another invention's foundation, in Microsoft's case I don't believe this to be the case. Microsoft has a habit of taking a cross platform standard and bastardizing it to lock you into their products, not to improve the product itself. Some examples: HTML, XML, and Java. (And soon PDF?) As everyone here knows, this list could fill an article of its own. Proprietary file formats, DRM that isn't cross platform, and creative ways to avoid anti-trust laws and the EU are pretty creative innovations for the money machine. The author's analogies about F1 Racing is a poor choice. How about a Microsoft car that can only use Microsoft certified gasoline (the gas nozzle is square, not round)? I admit I could be biased, unlike the author. But I'd love to hear some examples of true Microsoft innovation. If Microsoft wants to improve its image, it needs to do so with action not biased press pieces.
Y'mean innovations like Bob and Windows ME?
Microsoft not getting enough credit for the technology they really invent is a good counterweight to the credit they claim when they copy everyone else. Just because Microsoft knows how to come up with a zazzy new name for everything doesn't mean that they've actually invented it.
I want to bottle. I'd put Bill Gates' fortune to shame.
Copying competitor's products and then having it praised as "innovative" is a mind trick I've never, ever been able to pull off.
I'm thinking it's because they pay to advertise their message and it keeps the writer's food on the table.
Any clues?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The one piece of TFA I thought was interesting is the part about COM. I am new enough to Linux and open source so am not familiar with the desktop applications but is there a COM-type intereface with OOo and other desktop apps? Has anyone in FOSS mentioned and/or thought about it?
It seems if there is not one, there should be. After all, hundreds if not thousands of applications with the ability to be accessed programmatically would make open source even stronger.
BTW, I am not a troll and not a MS supporter. I stopped buying Windows and Win2K and expect to be 100% open source by the end of the year (4 servers, 3 desktops)
"Saying that Linux is inferior to Windows because more people use Windows is like saying that all restaurants are inferi
I think there is nothing to see here (literally). Move on?
Maybe they sorta improve on stuff when they have competition, but real innovation? Nah.
John Carroll should go back to Microsoft instead of being a paid writer for them. Microsoft propaganda has never been that bold and obvious.
There's also the fact that they don't play well with other. People at Microsoft deserve a big share of the credit for inventing XSL — and it would be hard to overstate the importance of that. But, as they always do with any activity they can't control, Microsoft gradually withdrew from the XSL working group. So whenever you hear about XSLT or XSL:FO, it's in connection with somebody else.
same direction...
The Boot-Once PC!
This message has been scanned for memes and dangerous content by MindScanner, and is believed to be unclean.
Hotels have had them for years... so where's the innovation?
Now, I know as well as the next pro-Windows shill that Open Sores copies everything Windows does, so give it a year or two and I'll have unlimited free beer, whisky, chocolate and peanuts.
All they have to sort out is free hookers and I'll be sorted.
Stick Men
As for businesses Microsoft has made dsecent strides in the low and midrange server segments. However they still have not cracked the big enterprise nut which linux/bsd has a better chance at.
As for the users, well, lets just say Microsoft sucks badly. The UI experience is abismal. Clumsy and designed by Fisher Price. System degradation over time, Winrot, is a problem. The registry is a joke. (let's put all my system eggs in one, fragile basket) An installer model that allows apps to drop files all over the place and many times they do not completely uninstall. "Plug and pray". The list goes on and on and on.
If Micro$oft were smart they would spec out hardware design and force vendors to comply. "Certified" hardware is the way to go for everyone but geeks. I almost never encountered the issues in my HP-UX or Apple environments that so commonly plague the PC world. Microsoft Windows is a joke.
Geez, what more do they fucking want, our first born children?
What's next, turn down service?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Most of the base technology that MS has been touting since its glory days of DOS/Win3.x was copied from Apple, or the Xerox PARC. [For those unfamiliar with PARC, I highly recommend the book "Dealers Of Lightning"... or just google "Xerox PARC history".]
MS's claim that they're responsible for ANY major innovations in the computer industry is on par with Al Gore's comment that he "invented the Internet". How can a company whose base technology was stolen from someone else, and enhanced with innovations originated elsewhere, claim any innovation of their own?
Below are a few examples of the baseline concepts that completely changed the computing world, and led to the proliferation of personal PC's, the Internet, and quite a few other things. And NONE of them were pioneered by MicroSoft.
1.) A suite of applications that shares data and is designer with multiple users in mind.
2.) A packet-based, self-monitoring networking protocol? i.e. "let's work out a stable connection over an unstable medium".
3.) Image rasterization (conversion of displayable image to printable).
4.) A programming language whose specs fit on a SINGLE piece of paper, and from which dozens of other languages spawned.
5.) Seamless scrolling, adjustable by-screen, by-line, and by-pixel.
6.) In-application adjustment of application parameters, as well as command scripting.
Just six examples out of hundreds, of the concepts that were invented by others, but co-opted by MS. And now, they claim innovation? I call "bullshit"! Almost everything that is promoted by MS today is based on technology that was invented in the 1970's.
There's a significant difference between "enhancements", and "invention". My advice to Microsoft's mouthpieces would be, look up the definitions of these terms, and don't make yourself look like a fool in front of a worldwide audience.
Subject says it all.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Here's a list of their rejected submissions:
Auto/hiding task bar [rejected] CD-ROM Autorun [rejected] ClearType [rejected] Excel/Multiplan [rejected] Hypertext Help [rejected] Pivot Table [rejected] VFAT Filing System [rejected] Word for DOS [rejected]
Perhaps, you think that OO copies MS office, but disregard that Office simply took much from Lotus, Word Perfect, etc.
Or do you feel that KDE/GNOME take alot of ideas from Windows, but still disregard the fact that many of those ideas came from Mac and/or Xwindows? In fact, a number of MS's ideas can be traced to earlier work by other individuals, groups, companies that MS either stole, borrowed, or bought from.
Seriously, what items do you see OSS taking from MS? Is it a few, or is a lot?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just wait and see.
And the GPL "borrows" from BSD. So what else is new?
It appears as though the author of the article feels that microsoft has invested much in creating a very wide, broad reaching network of products, file formats, and hardware that makes an overall seamless work environment for MSCE IT departments to play in.
The only problem is, Microsoft products Only work with Microsoft products. Whereas the Open Source community chooses to use more global standards. What should I bring up? OpenDocument beating out Microsoft XML format, the fact that Microsoft still doesn't adhere to W3C standards? Or maybe the fact that the goal of the Open Source community is for everything to talk with everything, whereas Microsoft's goal is for Microsoft Products to talk with Microsoft Products.
That's not innovation, that's pigeon-holing your customers into using your product, and your product alone.
Funny enough, my Mozilla Browser has yet to have a problem displaying a web page just because it is on a Linux or Windows server. Brand consistency is only important when you are being narrow minded and working without standards. Maybe if Microsoft adopted more of an open source mentality about things, they could be even more far reaching, but I think that will be something Microsoft will never be able to do to catch up with the Open Source Community.
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
I have two words for your "excuse". Statistics and psychology. Chew on them apples.
- weighs about 6,000 to 7,000 lbs.
- gets about .0001 miles per gallone
- has a whole bunch of extra, unwieldly, unnecessary, undecipherable, and just plain weird instrumentation that never gets used
- has none of the critical and necessary instrumentation available or if it is, it's under the seat.
- has to have the tires upgraded every lap
- shuts itself down if you: don't pay a fee, or if you seem to be doing something suspicious
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
"Apparently, innovation isn't developing new technology. It's noticing new technology coming out of obscure companies and the academic community and then re-implementing it for Windows and backing it with 8,000 metric tons of advertising hype."
*shrug*
Apparently it worked for Apple and Xerox/NeXT.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
use pipes
Mythtv is a great example using many disparate focused programs together in one package.
Open source developers don't usually copy Windows features because they think they are good, they copy them in order to make it easer for Windows users to switch. OpenOffice, for example, could be a much better office suite if it weren't constrained by the shitty Microsoft application it is trying to replace.
And many of the features you may think of as open source copying from Windows weren't actually invented at Microsoft at all--a Microsoft product is simply the first time you happen to have seen them.
You've overlooked things like the transistor, plastics, airplanes, jet engines, vulcanization of rubber, cheap steel production, superchargers, electronics, turbines, radio, etc., all came from private enterprise and without which the space program would have been impossible.
Oh, and Goddard's pioneering work in rockets, upon which the V2 was based, was not funded by the government.
Microsoft Bob and Clippy
Is that all you can think of? What about Donkey.bas? It written by Bill Gates himself, is innovative, and sets the bar for GW-BASIC games for years to come.
Microsoft Bob and Clippy, get with the program man.
The submitter cleaverly distanced us from all the innovation out there that isn't unique. Good work!
for an article that's designed to be inflammatory? It could just be me, but it seems like posting pro MS articles on /. is like a white guy yelling "Up with the man!" in the middle of Harlem. I can almost hear half the /.ers thinking the nerdy equivelant of "Oh no he di'int."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Dang, what is with the Slashdot editors? As I read it, I thought great, the Microsoft party line, published on ZDnet. I should've stopped reading at the Ferrari vs. Ford Escort analogy - give me a break! It's bad enough we have to put up with the various Linux hating Microsoft shills at Forbes & whatnot, but this guy works for the company! What _else_ is he gonna say? At least, Slashdot editors, note in the summary, that the dude is a Microsoft employee, before we waste time reading this thinking there is some enlightened, informative news. (Sorry, I'm real tired of the open-source doesn't innovate line. COM? Huuh? Standardization? That's innovation? Gimme a break. Owning the standards is how Microsoft keeps it's monopoly. Not through innovation. Drop it, Microsoft. And Slashdot, stop assisting them.)
From TFA: But, I've argued that for the past few days, so let's move on to the point of this post, which is to detail an area of invention Microsoft is singularly good at (one that the open source competition will have some difficultly matching).s not so much of an invention per se. Right. Inventors who don't invent! It's perfectly clear now!
Microsoft certainly innovated that POS. If there was ever a piece of software so central to an operating system, yet so fragile, vastly overburdened and insecure with a tendency to break if you just look at it, then it's the Windows Registry. I don't know how often in all the years that I've used Windows just been dumbstruck at what a braindead idea it was to make the registry so central to the OS.
The irony is that the Registry reflects Microsoft's company structure, i.e centralised, as compared to any OSS OS where there are hundreds of competing config files in different formats which ensure that the OS won't become unusable if one of them goes down. And that is probably why OSS is inherently stronger than Microsoft. No matter what Microsoft does, Linux is simply too broadly based to die. Microsoft will pay one idiot like John Carrol thousands per month to blog about how he loves Microsoft (he's been developing for 11 year and that's why he *knows* Microsoft is better than OSS or anything else, according to him. He doesn't realise that there are people who have been coding on other platforms for over 20 years and have the exact same opinion about their favourite OS for the same reason).
Still, his zealotry paid off in that he got a well paid job to troll about Microsoft, even if he has become more defensive about it over the years, which makes me laugh, to be honest. The guy's like a little kid trying to win a fight by shouting the loudest.
Slope of progress? Like, do you measure that in utils, or what? Lines of code? Eye-candy? How many OEMs include it? Or do you measure it in reliability, security, standards-adherence? The underpinnings (openstep, freebsd) have always been there for the taking by anybody in the OSS community yet it took Apple to produce what I think (and many others do, too) is the first decent version of UNIX for the desktop.
Always there for the taking? Nice corporate attitude. Well, that sentence speaks for itself. Apple benefits from the hard work of the folks at Berkeley and KDE, then adds some polish, calls it innovation. 'cepting they wouldn't be where there are now had it not been for open-source. And by the way, if you search the Slash archive, you'll see Apple is not exactly a self-respecting member of the open source community. They see far, by sitting on the shoulders of giants. But don't contribute anything back, unless they get their hands slap. Read up on Safari's roots in KDE's KHTML.
Even if Microsoft gets Longhorn out in 2008, it will still beat linux.
NOW you're talking crack. What an inane statement first of all. Still beat linux in what way? Again, what are your criteria? Besides, the Linux development pace has forced Microsoft to entirely revamp their glacial development process to the 'Agile' process of the Linux crew. Read up on the article in WSJ recently about how sloooooow it took to get builds from Microsot.
Just look at GNOME. It's practically got a [bleep] start menu.
The start menu. Oh, thank you very very much Msf. What a wonderful contribution. But they stole the entire user interface for Windows, and Windows 95, from Macintosh, who stole it from Xerox PARC. Xerox Parc built the GUI interface. Msft contributes a button. Thanks.
Consider something like numerical computing - most advances are made in academia and the code is often published along with the paper - so it is as innovative as it gets.
It's a big world out there and there a lot of computers that are used are more than glass typewriters.Ah yes. I remember having to find out how to disable that monstrosity on one of my early computers. Just the sort of thing that MS would copy.
I'm sure I've still got it on an old CD somewhere. I wonder if it works under wine?
(Now how am I supposed to read _that_ captcha???)
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Apache not innovative?! Really. ...and what were you "browsing" as the internet came into existence?? Pages being served out by Apache web servers...the basis of the modern-day internet age. You know...that thing that Microsoft didn't think was anything worth investing in initially....(recall needing Trumpet winsock to connect Windows to the internet??). Talk about ignorance.....
Besides, KDE standarized on DCOP, GNOME on Bonobo (CORBA?), that blows away his argument that nothing like that exists in the open-source world. Microsoft's advantage is copying an existing standard (CORBA), and embracing/extending it (COM).
Besides, so what? DCOM (distributed version) is a failed standard, and COM is only applicable *within* Microsoft (think intranet vs. internet), that's why they bit the bullet and are pushing web services, having realized having a Microsoft-only standard doesn't do them a bit of good in the real world. Further, let's take CORBA. This is a well-adopted standard, supported by 800 companies, and many great open-source implementations, such as omniORB. With CORBA, or web services, or even REST - interoperability works. .
Well, they ain't using COM either. [Granted, it would be *great* if KDE and GNOME standardized on *something*. There was talk of some sort of Bonobo-DCOP bridge. ]
In soviet russia [subject of article] [main verb of article in present tense] YOU!
Thats right I'm still stalkin you
which one? the blue screen?
honest question: I'd be interested to know - how much innovation is there within Microsoft's server-side stuff (I admit there's precedents for most, but what's new). In no particular order here's some off the top of my head.
.Net Remoting, MTS, Exchange/ISA, Active Directory, Vista, Commerce, Sharepoint, Clustering, Terminal Services, etc etc.
Systems Management Server, BizTalk, Microsoft Operations Manager, SQL Server/Reporting Services/Analysis Server, the CLR, SQLCLR, Server System, Exchange, WinFs, ObjectSpaces, LINQ, Enterprise Library,
How about the MSDN itself, microsoft.com, technet, ms support & the ms newsgroups.
I for one reckon VS.Net 2005 Team System & SQL 2005 are gonna kick some serious butt. (Ajax support and ongoing ORM systems are gonna be the icing on the cake.)
I know a lot of this stuff has precedents or simply integrates other technology, but you gotta admit - with their workforce, the unique situations in development they must come across, and the amount of time, support & experience they have in the lab - a lot of the stuff in this software has gotta be their own ideas/solutions.
... again and again.
...and even innovation doesn't come in a distant third and that is the place of the buyout/shutout division... fromn which they buy whatever innovation they then claim inventorship of.
... that you can taste in the complete lack of advancing the shell to be even halfway to where the rest of the world is shell wise (Oh yeah.. it'll be in longhorn....Uh not really...) to simpler innovations such as the hard drive formating utility in windows XP in comparison earlier versions... of uh... windows.. not the rest of the world... Oh it nice they are making improvements except they complixicate it enough to sum to much less then it could have been...
... a summary of the more common programming concept and datatypes integrated in sum to be non conflicting. An accident or by the way look what we did in the process of trying to corner the industry...
Microsoft is first and formost a marketing company followed second a chess playing legal firm in support of the marketing goals
This goes all the way back to how Bill Gates got his start...a law school drop out, yet with law connections (good ol' daddy judge), with his porting of BASIC to tha altair (Porting - for those who do not know the term, doen't mean being innovative but taking the innovations of another and making it available on another platform)... and of course lets not forget the selling of DOS to IBM before Microsoft even approached the guy who wrote and owned it...
Success by Microsofts standards is accomplished by "Making people need them" and this is done by the practice of never really giving customers a full products by which they might themselves then not need MS.
If the is any innovation out of Microsoft it is either by accident of trying to "make people need them" of is of the type of innovation you could do without, such as the "manifested integrated user frustration function"
Microsofts Common Language infrastructure research and resulting CIL, etc..is an example not of innovation but of effort to simply sum up all the many works of others
Right is right and wrong is wrong.... the eolas patent is wrong and two wrongs don't make a right. Not only is the eolas patent wrong in what its claims of uniqueness are but software itself is by it's nature is not patentable and this is provable. This is important to understand when you bring MS into the picture with their claims of "software factories" and other things in that direction.
It's important because if MicroSoft really genuinely knew about what it is they make claims to, then they would have been able to defeat the eolas patent crap.
As a marketing company applying market testing and using art of war tactics to apply the same "market testing" concept in their marketing but in sole effort to suppress the competition, discourage the competition.... If they were genuine innovators of software (instead of at best innovators of applying art of war tactics in marketing...) then they really wouldn't have felt they ever needed to break the anti-trust laws..... in so many countries...
They don't lack marketing skill.... but to resort to unfair play..... thats not consistant with innovation competition but consistant with knowing you are a little guy (read on to understand this evident self perspective)
They are not olympic material and never will be, even if they throw their art of war marketing tactic at it to convince the masses.
Innovation competition of the olympic level is that of being a competitor, even if you lose, you win. Like the way open source works. Once the four minute mile was achieved and then broken... others then knew it was possible and worked to do better, even using the same tools, mental and physical.
Unlike the proprietary closed source which in essence says that you cannot use the values accomplished to then do better than.
Standing on the shoulders of giants vs. being a giant that other then stand on your shoulders....
Microsoft will never be that giant, no matter how damn rich and big they are, have been or might be. Bill Gates Himself Knows this!!! How else could he even think to even today claim he's the little guy being picked on (as he has done)?
Compare to Next, CDE, KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox and other really innovative GUIs, even bash for getting actual work done. Wikipedia's Bob Page with links to screenshots of hell.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It isn't innovation technology-wise (i mean come on.. MS has been copying ideas from its competitors since... like... forever...) but innovation in the "Can Grandma Use It?" (TM) department. It took me a couple months to become fluent in Linux, but most grandmas can get up and running in a few hours. Linux is awesome, (i use it for everything) but with ease of use for grandmas and all the other non tech-smart people, Windoze is the way to go. Sure, it's a steaming pile of monkey (a polished steaming pile of monkey for Longhorn) but it is hard to beat usability wise.
Hopefully OpenSUSE will fix that. Linux will never reach the end-user market until there is a way to completely avoid using the console.
Msf does deserve credit. It has innovated in new and creative ways of taking our money. Making us buy something we already bought over and over. Convincing us that we REALLY need to buy broken software and furthermore that we NEED to pay to upgrade it. Holes in the Windows operating system basically created the entire antivirus industry. Msf does INDEED deserve credit for building a better mousetrap. One designed so well that the mice dont even know theyve been caught. Kudos.
I mean, really. What kind of world would we live in if people actually got what they need, when they need it? Would we continue to pay taxes to fund antiterrorist and antihacker government programs? Microsoft has succeeded in creating a disease that everybody wants -- the almighty upgrade.
i thought i was going to have to argue against a very dangerous idea, and have to really talk about the totally misbegotten ideas about the correlation between warfare and technological advance. but then you knocked down your own house of cards:
"You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market"
yes, that's exactly right. if "government" needs something awesome-- AND pours money into it (that part is crucial)-- good things can happen. you can actually cut out the middleman, who is war. it's all about the money, not war. somehow you haven't noticed that.
not only are there peaceful technologies that could improve everyone's quality of life if it was made a national priority for THAT REASON, rather than the hysterical r&d impulses and blank-checks for the military-industrial complex that come with war, there are many technologies that ALREADY HAVE ARISEN without war. so what you said is coming off as very crackpot and very dangerous.
the immediate forms and formats of every piece of gadgetry i use has nothing to do with military technology, and has everything to do with consumer technology. the world wide web itself has come unto its own without war. now you can argue until youre blue in the face that somehow everything that i find useful, in some ultimate or original way, comes from military research. but you'd be pathological. for example: "It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2." you might as well surmise that we wouldn't have "fast-moving vehicles" if somebody somewhere didn't want to kill somebody in short order. because, actually, regardless of what the connections between some sectors of space-technology and warfare are, satellite communication BOOMED for just that-- communication, not war. peaceful commercial purposes are what gave rise to modern satellites, not war. similarly, automative technology comes from companies who want to make money off of it, and who want to make their racing teams the fastest. you see, it's kind of nice, isn't it? because hundreds of thousands of people don't have to die. (the profit-motive, even during peace-time, has some obvious problems, but i digress...)
war just happens to be the easiest current way to get the money floodgates open. in fact, there's even some people out there who don't think "government" should bother collecting or spending any money at all on anything other than warfare. but in reality, war does not magically make venture capitalism, or wise investments possible.
you'd be correct if you could name some things that are anything close to unfeasible without the motivation of national warfare. but, you're not correct.
did the first commercial spaceflights have military objectives? did the first GUI have military objectives? does my beautiful ibook come about from war? desktop linux? the blogosphere, the world wide web? no. they didn't.
you can blab all you want about how war is the greatest thing ever and we should say prayers in thanks for it every day. but it's sickening. there's not some magical barrier stopping people from innovating during peace-time. it's a matter of national fear and the willingness to invest in new technology. military industry gets a blank check during war-time. that's all it is. how could you not have noticed this?
for any piece of technology that owes itself to some military research somewhere, some DARPA project, some ancient innovation of death, i could probably name a hundred computer, scientific, biomedical advances that have absolutely nothing to do with war. yes, "it can even be argued that innovation has slowed in america because we don't have a war."
innovation hasn't slowed down. technology does not start or stop at your, or war's, convenience. you'd have to live under a rock to think that, because so many breakthroughs are all over the web, all over the news, and they make the items on your shortlist of nic-nacs look puny and trivial in comparison. have you looked at a physics or astronomy journal lately? visited a biomedical lab? surfed the internet?
Microsoft fosters innovation indirectly. Their hegemony over operating systems creates a single target platform for others to standardise on, freeing these third parties to focus on their problem domain.
... raises some good points about usage of the term "innovation" in regard to Microsoft. Although he now works for Microsoft, he only recently joined them and has been on the commentary scene "since the last century" as he puts it. He writes extremely well, so I suspect Microsoft hired him to provide some class in the war of words in this field that often seems to lack it. It'll be a tough job, because as is pointed out by many people here, Microsoft isn't known for technical innovation. However, they have done exceedingly well in the realm of business innovation, where the word has a somewhat different meaning than in the technical world. It is this definition of the word in a business context (see, e.g., www.investorwords.com - "the creation of new products and/or services") that the word innovation is aptly applied to Microsft. Carroll is merely pointing this out, and it is a valid point.
You're spot on. The poor guy is talking about the MS development environment and MS' own paradigms for doing stuff. That should be compared to the BSD paradigm (of excellence for whatever purpose wherever you use it) or the GNU paradigm (of freedom and liberty in software for the good of all) -- which interleave in places, but appear to be the appropriate comparison to me.
Given the fact a *fucking lot* of Open Source applications are copying ideas from Windows, there must be some clever heads at Microsoft. Hmmm...call this innovative? (1) .NET API and the Java API
(2) Xbox and PS2
To add, maybe *sometimes* OS apps are even better than Win apps.
Developers developers developers developers! I got four words for ya!1
I don't know why I bother posting at all, but every so often I come across a bunch of supposedly rouge individuals, who are all sitting around telling each other how right they are, as long as they all tow the rouge individual party line, and I have to stop and make a comment.
I love this. Microsoft seems to be the one company left on earth selling an OS that isn't an open source copy of UNIX, and everybody gets incensed at the mere suggestion that perhaps they have made some innovation to the market. "No" everyone says, it takes a true innovator like Apple who can come up with earth shattering inventions like an MP3 player in 2001 to advance the state of the art! "No" everyone says, real innovation comes in the form of a pretty shell, and a shiny case wrapped around a free old version of UNIX, cobbled together with some development tools from the early '90s. "No" everyone says, a cobbled together open source copy of Photoshop has more innovation in its pinky than the evil M$ empire will ever have!
Come on people! Why don't we all change the entire world for once, exhale, let go of our childish brand loyalties, and personality cults, and look at the world in some semblance of how it really is, instead of spending our lives trotting out the same old clichés, and regurgitating the same old information.
First off, I would think that of all people, /. people would know that graphic user interfaces were not invented by Apple, Microsoft, or even Xerox PARC. Most of the elements of graphic user interfaces had already appeared in Lisp machines, CAD programs, and even games, long before the Mac ever came out. Xerox PARC didn't invent the graphical user interface; they invented the term GUI, and some of the ideas that shaped how it was applied to an OS. Apple and Microsoft both saw those ideas, and went about developing them in different ways, at different paces, towards different markets. Any of the usual crap about how Microsoft stole the whole idea of the GUI from Apple, might as well be applied right back at Apple these days. How many years did fans of Mac computers rant and rave about how Windows was crap because it was just a GUI presentation layer on top of what was just a command line OS? Doesn't that pretty well describe the current Mac OS? Does that mean Apple stole the idea of a command line interface with a GUI on top of it from MS? No, of course not! Gee, I guess it isn't all so cut and dry.
By the same token, how much of OSX is really all that new? Most of the "innovation" really comes out of Nextstep, which was really in large part Steve Jobs' rip-off of IRIX. Aqua you say? From a technological standpoint (as opposed to the "look, it's shiny and pretty" standpoint), how different is it really from DirectX (Direct Draw, Direct Show, Direct Whatever) and WinG before it, or the presentation layer of BeOS? For that matter, doesn't the whole advanced graphics subsystem, unified graphics library concept really come back to SGI OpenGL and IRIX again?
Look, whether you call them Microsoft or M$, you are walking through the world with blinders on if you don't think they have done anything that has changed the way people use computers, and moved forward the state of the art. Some of the systems they have come up with for how to allow any program to interface with any hardware are really quite clever. You can say all you want about the "plug and play" capabilities of other systems, but the actual plugging and playing was dependent on carefully picking a piece of hardware off a limited list of supported hardware. Before Microsoft, there was no way you could go grab any MB, slap a processor in it, pick up any old RAM from any manufacturer, and then hook up whatever HD you wanted, and then expect it to all work. Sure, that is expected from any modern OS (unless it is made by Apple), but that sure wasn't the case even 15 years ago. Did you ever try to tell HP support "yeah, I saw a special on RAM down at the local computer shop, and was thinking about putting it in
People say this like is a surprise! What do you expect from the largest, most powerful tech firm in the world? Just sit back and watch all the technology pass them by while they twiddle their thumbs? It always gets to me when people refer to Microsoft like an open source group, news for you: They're Not, they're a big fucking all consuming multi-national company, and when you're one of them, you can afford to pay people to cover every angle of the market with innovation after innovation, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't allow other companies.
I only really realized this last night but its a very good example, e-media and streaming is coming, no doubt about it (The BBC are beta testing a way to stream ALL their shows to users) and of course this new technology need a control of some kind. BANG! In step DRM, and who made that? Microsoft, any other sililar tech? no. anything that could do its job? no. anybody going to make one? no.
You see, this is what 10 million bucks will do for you, Microsoft saw this coming and they made sure that they didn't drop the ball, and now sure as fuck, every bit of equipment i buy will be riddled with DRM.
Monopolies commission: How fucking corrupt can you people get??? What ever happened to "We're Splitting Microsoft into 3 separatly managed parts"???
I'll leave you with this: It won't be open source beating Microsoft. It'll be somebody, with fewer morals, with better marketing skills and a lucky break. Fight fire with fire, only somebody who plays them at their own game and is in it for the money will have a chance. God...i hope it isn't Intel!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
...may well be the two most important inventions made by MS...
I'm still not quite sure what I need them for...
They are like all dick and no balls. No matter how big the dick, everytime you see them, you say, "Whoa, there's no balls!"
One is no good without the other!
I know Microsoft invents quite a bit. I'm privy to many things that Microsoft has invented with respect to IPTV,
The idea Microsoft invented IPTV or have even made any significant contribution is absurd. They are at least 6 years behind.
Steve Maine and Matt Child are the real visionaries behind IPTV, through Kingston Interactive Television they launched the world first commercially IPTV service to consumers in November 1999. Kingston lead the world by delivering Video over copper/POTS with the BBCi Yes and HomeChoice both starting out on Kingstons Platform.
I had the good fortune to be the Senior Software Enginner who designed and took the technical lead for Kingstons own inhouse iDTV, VOD and content management solutions.
The article does a great job of building up to... nothing. It doesn't say what Microsoft actually invented! I'm sorry but ".NET generic templates" is not an invention.
Antisource - antivirus, antispam, antispyware
As I've said before, most corperate firewalls don't let you have access to it.
click me
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
THAT should be the urgent question for the country.
Speaking as one who has worked at Bell Labs when they really did extensive fundamental research, I would suggest that there is a critical gap in the innovation process which is NOT being filled by Microsoft or any corporate entity right now.
Remember what the best corporate labs have contributed in the past century: PARC, Westinghouse, IBM. They have all disappeared or became a ghost of their former self where ROI (this fiscal year) now rules the day. Microsoft Lab DOES have a potential to reach greatness, but it is still a long way off. What I don't know is whether it has the right culture for it to develop.
While research universities also originate innovation, it's not clear if
universities + VC is adequate to jump start major projects.
If they want to do things not yet possible they can alter the API, if they want to do something currently impossible due to the OS they splice in the necessaries.
When may I ask have MS been the lead innovator on the any desktop available for Linux or on the Mac?
"the world wide web itself has come unto its own without war." Yes, but the WWW was built on top of a technology that was invented due to preparations for nuclear war: ARPANET.
There are many technologies that the commercial market can't get a quick enough profit on, so they don't invest in it. But when you throw billions at an agency doing something so important as killing the enemy (perceived or real), then you suddenly have justification and funds to do things the commercial market may not be able to justify or sustain.