MS To Launch Internet Versions of Office And Windows

daria42 writes "In a press conference this morning, Bill Gates said Microsoft plans to launch Internet-based complements to its core products, dubbed 'Windows Live' and 'Office Live'. Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment MS' Office suite. The programs won't replace the paid software but instead seem aimed at diminishing Google's ad revenue. Windows Live already appears to have 'gone live' in a preview format on the web."

Comments

That can't be Microsoft

[Psionicist]

Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

. Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?

Hmm. Cool.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Juanvaldes]

As long as they hurt google they will do almost anything. Besides, they can break compatibility later.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[748boy]

Ill believe that when i see it,

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[inburito]

Not only that, but top feed is slashdot. This is surreal!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[R3d M3rcury]

Gee, when I ran it with Safari, I didn't get any message at all. I guess it's not coming...

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[gregbains]

Seems to be working OK in Firefox at the moment, and I don't know about you, but this beats Google IG in my opinion!

Wow, did I just say that

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[jhoffoss]

The hell...

Are we looking at some new, cuddly Microsoft? A fracking emoticon?

Weird. Let's just hope this doesn't turn out to be "we'll support you...by helping you go back and open this webpage with IE."

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[aussie_a]

don't know about you, but this beats Google IG in my opinion!

Really? I personally don't see how. Colors are a bit easier on the eyes, but that's it. There's no better features.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[AKAImBatman]

It works! Really! All you need is the flash plugin, and even FireFox can run Microsoft Windows Live!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[gregbains]

Slashdot built in! Also it seems to take better use of my screen space, more customisation is possible, it has MY weather - not weather from 50 miles away from me, I use Hotmail more than Gmail (due to pain of updating), and actually easier and nicer to use, IMO

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

It doesn't appear to work in Opera

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[AKAImBatman]

Do you have Flash installed in Opera?

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

Of course I do. The same goes for Firefox. I have Flash installed for all three browsers on my computer, yet I can only view Live in IE.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[dindi]

actually I tried it with firefox and it seems to be working just fine...

actually I just tried IE : A runtime Error has occured. Do you wish to Debug?

Line:2
Error: 'fun' is undefined :)

HAHAHHHHAHAHA

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[AKAImBatman]

Did you actually follow the link I posted, or did you miss the joke entirely?

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

Correction: I can now view Live in Firefox, but it looks like crap. Certain interface elements overlap in Firefox.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

You know, I didn't even notice the link until you just mentioned it. Sadly, that tired old Flash animation doesn't apply too much anymore.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[AKAImBatman]

Sadly, that tired old Flash animation doesn't apply too much anymore.

Only the blue screens. The "accessing A:" and "Cannot find CD named HomeConstruction" feel all too familiar. Not to mention, "Cannot delete because the file is in use." Or the 500+ popups for the same thing. (There's a bug in explorer where you can manage to cause more than one delete confirm box to show up when using the Shift+Delete combination. The first one works, and the rest error out when you try to delete.) Plus I think the whole "Order Food" program is particularly apt for the issues you're having with live.com...

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol... and web users please be patient, Internet Explorer will support CSS properly when we REALLY have to do it.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[StarvingSE]

I don't know whats going on wiht your google IG, but my weather is right from my home city. and I love the fact htat you can totally customize where your info is on the screen, and how much to display.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[gregbains]

Might be I'm from the UK

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

Why would you need to use a Shift+Delete combination, just out of curiosity?

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ToasterofDOOM]

Despite what you and almost every other /.er would love to think, MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right? That they might want to experiment with new technologies? That this is actually pretty cool? No? Didn't think so.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

. Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?

Hmm. Cool.

I test my web services in IE, Mac IE (what a POS), Firefox, Safari, and Opera (though I don't care much about the Opera bugs, as long as it vaguely works). I am a Microsoft developer and my code is live today.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the blue screens.

Not really. I remember Microsoft touting that as big in Windows XP -- no more BSOD. I recently had some serious problems where my PC would reboot all the time, but I didn't see any reason why that was happening. I found out that Microsoft "fixed" the stability issues and BSOD by simply not displaying them. They're still there, but the default behavior in XP for a fatal error is to not show them and just reboot. Problem "solved".

Once I realized I was actually getting a BSOD error, it was a little easier to track down the problem.

That, to me, summarizes everything Microsoft is about.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[David Nabbit]

All I get in Safari is the "Windows Live" logo and a search box. Throw in the BSOD and I'll have a full blown Windows box!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[mpathetiq]

Instead of putting the file into the Recycle Bin (like Delete), Shift+Delete simply removes the file.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Further, when you are at the top of the heap all of your mistakes are in a glaring spotlight.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

MS isn't inherenty bad.

Microsoft is raping US industry to the tune of billions of dollars for a very poor (insecure) implementation of software principals (task switching, memory allocation, and everything else that's in operating systems) that's been a commodity for decades.

Worse, they do this with a very poor implementation.

Even worst they do it by abusing monopoly power so that better alternatives aren't possible (i.e. by forcing OEMs to bundle their expensive commodity software to continue to get access to their software that might have some innovation).

And worst of all, they can NOT change, because any admission that they're forcing commodity crap on US businesses just to perpetuate the endless upgrade-so-i-still-get-securityupdates-cycle that they live on would violate their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders.

Yes, they are indeed inherently bad.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Baricom]

Microsoft has made so many mistakes at the past, that they've lost the trust of customers. To regain that trust, they need to make a number of correct decisions in a row. Keep in mind that even more people distrust Microsoft than complain about the quality of their software, so even if they stop making "mistakes," they still need to work to re-gain customer goodwill.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[sasha328]

"support coming soon"? But I was able to use this portal page in my FF1.5 Beta2.
I was actually impressed at the speed. I wonder what other gadgets they'll add in the future.
By the way, this is what Office Live is saying about the service:

WHY MICROSOFT OFFICE LIVE?

• A professional Web site, expertly hosted by Microsoft
• A secure online workspace for organizing and managing customer and business information
• A complete set of tools for managing time, tasks, projects, and company data that integrates with your existing Microsoft Office programs

It looks like it's an online version of SharePoint services to me. Like others have mentioned, this looks like the old ASP (application services providors) that was the buzz in the late 90s. I reckon it'll be just as successful and popular!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[TadZimas]

Firefox support is coming. As soon as Microsoft helps finish up Duke Nukem Forever, they'll work on Firefox support. (For the people who don't get the joke, replace Duke Nukem Forever with "Grand Unification Theory". For people who don't get THAT reference, insert a reference to pigs flying.)

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[hackstraw]

As long as they hurt google they will do almost anything. Besides, they can break compatibility later.

I'm napping now.

Wake me up when Google is hurt by Microsoft.

These two companies are almost like oil and vinegar. Your choice as to which is which.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[dhasenan]

I think there are many people who don't complain about MS software, and many people who do that don't distrust Microsoft. Windows XP was a rather good product, in my opinion; the only instability I've seen in the OS was an issue with a bad driver installation. And even then, the only issue with the exception handling was that the computer wouldn't shut down.

On Linux, that wouldn't happen; but keep in mind that 90% of Linux drivers (aside from proprietary video card drivers and some printer drivers) are included in the kernel. That allows for a lot more stability and quality control.

Really, one of the biggest features that Windows could use is apparently included in Vista: loadable module support.

I'll still use Linux, but at this point, it's a matter of preference. And package managers. And money.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac IE does the same. I guess that is really all there is too it... ;)

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[MinutiaeMan]

Yeah, I checked the page with OmniWeb, and I got the same thing. Not that I'd ever, ever use the product, but I still want to know what they're doing... Even more amusing to me is the fact that they went to the trouble of adding an XHTML DOCTYPE, but it fails validation miserably.

Somehow, I have a feeling that Office Live might turn out to be more useful (and practical) than Windows Live. I mean, isn't the whole point of the World Wide Web that your computer's operating system doesn't matter? What features of Windows (other than the crashing, the viruses, the spyware, the buffer overflows...) would be useful via a Web browser instead of the actual operating system? And if there are useful features, wouldn't it make more sense to make these new "Live" services completely platform-independent, in order to lure back those who've been using alternative platforms?

Office Live, on the other hand, could definitely be useful, assuming it's done right. It would make it easier (and possibly cheaper, though that would really depend on caveats below) for people on non-Microsoft systems to have access to Office's features and file formats, making cross-platform document sharing easier for all platforms, not just Windows and Macintosh. (Seeing how Office for Mac OS X is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows right now...)

However, I see a couple of problems with this whole "Live" concept, as Microsoft is approaching it:

(1) Based on my attempted preview of the pages, the services seem to be Windows-only, at least for now. Why the hell should anyone already using Windows pay for an additional "Windows Live" service? Likewise for Office. Additionally, unless they intend to change the purpose and capabilities of Windows, I'm starting to realize that a Web-based operating system seems like a complete oxymoron, and probably a solution in search of a problem.

(2) Unlike Google, which would use their rumored OO.o-based service as a means towards getting advertising revenue, Microsoft is almost certainly approaching these products from the perspective of simply edging out competitors and maintaining their stranglehold on the OS and productivity suite markets, and also to boost their revenues by suckering people into subscription-based services. This means that once again, they're probably going to be working on pushing out a product that's "just good enough" (c.f. Internet Explorer) in order to rake in the cash and lock people into their own proprietary system.

(3) Ownership of data. With the hypothetical Google service and OO.o's use of the OpenDocument standard, the very nature of open source and open standards makes it crystal clear that the user owns the documents that would be created/edited/shared/published via the service. Naturally, by contrast, Microsoft will be seeking to limit the exporting functions, ensuring that once you create a document with their service, you'll have to send them perpetual payments in order to maintain access to that document -- i.e. they own your document.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!"

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ArcticFlood]

Shift+Delete is the delete keyboard shortcut that bypasses the recycle bin in Windows Explorer.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[dotgain]

You'll also need a floppy drive to poll. Without a floppy attached, Windows will wait forever for it to finish reading the nonexistant disk, and will appear hung.

That's hardly fair on it..

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[patternjuggler]

MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right?

People who stay in abusive relationships all sound exactly alike...

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[tux_fairy]

No, thanks. I don't want my browser to crash.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Edd!3]

Actually the first feed in the Slashdot section is titled `No Respect for Windows Open Source', I find that pretty amusing. Guess they didn't pay much attention on the fact that Slashdot does not like Windows.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that even more people distrust Microsoft than complain about the quality of their software

I've known many people who curse at or complain about Windows because it crashes at an inopportune moment, but I know very few people who have switched to Linux or Mac because they distrust Microsoft. They mostly do it because they're simply sick of cursing or complaining about Windows crashing. Those who do it because they distrust Microsoft are the type who read Slashdot all day, which represents a minority.

So is this a real statistic you're quoting, or did you just pull it out of your ass while looking for karma?

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Zonk's not so bad.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing customer trust isn't the worst thing they did. They managed to lower consumer expectations. People now expect computers and applications to crash. They're happy when their system doesn't freeze for a few hours and things are "a little slow."
People should only be dissatisfied when the above happens. They should be happy when the new application is on time, bug free, and helps them improve their process.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Hosiah]

MS isn't inherenty bad

Naw, hell no! That's why Microsoft has to be defended every ten minutes by one of you Whack-moles poking your head out of the hole to chatter Microsoft-isn't-really-evil-and-get-that-Bill-Gate s-as-Borg-icon-outta-here-already and then disappear one hair's breadth ahead of the hammers. The day I have to go around trying to bash it into people's heads that Linux, Unix, BSD, Macintosh, OS X, BeOS, Novell, and Sun Microsystems don't deserve their Evil Overlord reputations, then we'll be even.

Know what quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and goes steady with ducks? Ducks!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Hosiah]

That, together with the original thread makes this the funniest discussion ever.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ToasterofDOOM]

1) I think the Borg Gates icon is rather humorous. So are jokes referring to him ass herr Gates or the fuhrer or depicting him as a Nazi.

2)I use Linux. I also use Windows and OS X. All have their own vices and virtues, some more than others.

My point is that nobody deserves to be depicted by the other side as evil. I like a product that proves itself as better instead of stating or proving that a competitor is worse. I don't want product A to dominate the market. I want them all to coexist. That's right, you heard me. I said, on /., that I think Windows should peacefully and cooperatively coexist wit Linux/OS X/whatever. Proprietary alongside open as well. There is no absolute right here, onlyimprovement.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Kingrames]

let's see how this works out:

Bill Gates: do you think we can beat those FireFox guys?

Some Random Employee: You mean, out-non-profit them?

Bill: ...

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

So is this a real statistic you're quoting, or did you just pull it out of your ass while looking for karma?

Statistic? More like common knowlege. Go to any customer service training seminar and you'll be told the same thing: for every person who complains, there's 10 more that are just silently pissed off. Maybe they're busy, maybe they figure someone else will report it, maybe they have their tinfoil hat strapped on tight and refuse to hit the "Report Now" button on the crash dialog. Have you called to complain to Microsoft recently? If not, you yourself are the statistic. All it takes is one person to dislike microsoft but not complain to them in order to make the statement true.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[n.e.watson]

Please be patient :-)

I'm trying to decide if use of the emoticon is just showing their aptitude to the internet ( teenage girl ), or on evil grin.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when MS says this for Office Live.

Linux Users
Linux support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[westlake]

Microsoft has made so many mistakes at the past, that they've lost the trust of customers.

Microsoft Revenues Grow 6 Percent, Profit Soars to $3.1 Billion Back-to-school sales were good. Server sales are strong. Windows MCE looks to be a big winner.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[LegendLength]

Would be funnier if it didn't say beta in big red letters at the top of the site.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[LegendLength]

It's funny, the only other place I get that overlapping is microsoft.com.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[circusboy]

allows you to bypass the recycle bin and delete completely right away. just a bit of a time saver really. It is, however, unrecoverable, so you had better mean it.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[spagetti_code]

What is likely to happen is that Microsoft will create a version 'compatible' with firefox, but it will be a second-class citizen.

Compare this with Outlook Web Access - you can run it in 'premier' mode which is a pretty darn good impression of outlook on the web, but sorry - IE only. Or you can run it in standard mode which is ok but klunky and lots doesn't work right (like contacts).

They are not in the business of making anything easy for competitors. Remember that this is the company who made their webpage break when you used Opera to view it.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[sewagemaster]

yep, but also notice the number of microsoft ads here on slashdot. linking to slashdot is adding exposure to their ads.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ErikTheRed]

MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right?

People who stay in abusive relationships all sound exactly alike...

I think you mean this jokingly and are being moderated as such, but I've known people in abusive relationships and you are dead on.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[sanspeak]

Dude, Atleast you are told about the FireFox. A Safari user gets a complete blackout or shall I say a bad ride in Safari ;-) Or it could be the death of MSN Butterfly Let the butterfly rest in peace. Santy

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[aralin]

Well, go and try to tell that to any Novell Netware System Administrator and you will hear stories that will make the hair on your back stand for days. Besides, consistent incompetence is usually indistinguishable from malice anyway.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the mistakes that I dislike, it's the deliberate ongoing harm they're doing to their customers.

This includes deliberately inconveniencing them by corrupting or ignoring established standards, making interoperability difficult. MS are still refusing to publish their network protocols as required by the EU courts. They are steadfastly opposing the OpenDoc standards.

It includes making recovery from disk failure very difficult by not supplying intallation CDs. This one I take personally, They have wasted many days of my time struggling with a so-called "revocery CD" that refuses to recover to a clean disk.

It includes ignoring security issues for years. I believe that it is only the fact that they are now losing sales to Apple and Linux that prompted them to even now consider security an issue. While only every customer suffered, they just didn't give a damn.

It includes ignoring stability bugs for years. Again, only the threat of defections to other OSs has made them care at all about the trouble and expense that persistent crashes and data loss cause their customers.

In every way, MS has shown it doesn't care at all for its customers welfare. Why people still deal with a company that deliberately makes things hard and expensive for its customers is a mystery. Most suppliers try and make their customers happy, to feel the purchase was equitable, worthwhile. With MS, at best it's a necessary evil.

Anyone can make mistakes. Deliberate and ongoing harm is a different thing altogether.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?

No, you didn't. MS implying that support for a competitor will be forthcoming. Not for the first time. Suspect you will need more than a little patience.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ysegalov]

They have an automatic process working on Firefox support. It is even open-source, there you go:

sleep 60*24*365; print "Please update to IE, we rely on its bugs for our software to work, sorry\n".

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[simong_oz]

This place has become ridiculously closed-minded in the last year re: MS vs Google (if that even exists?). Sorry to say and I'm sure you realise you're preaching to the wrong crowd there, but I fully agree with you.

MS is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Google is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Yes, in the end it really is that simple. The only way a CEO can make a really genuine difference in terms of business being less about the bottom line is when they own the company, like Richard Branson does with Virgin (I think?).

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[killjoe]

"That's right, you heard me. I said, on /., that I think Windows should peacefully and cooperatively coexist wit Linux/OS X/whatever. Proprietary alongside open as well. There is no absolute right here, onlyimprovement."

IF that's what you really want then MS is your enemy. They don't want the same thing that you do. In fact they are spending millions of dollars trying to make sure you don't get what you want. They are bribing politicians to make sure you don't get what you want. They are rigging their products to make sure you don't get what you want. They are hiring astro-turfers and so called journalists to make sure you don't get what you want.

If you really want that then you should spend your time fighting MS not defending them. MS thinks people like you are communists.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Slashdot field, live.com just gave me the following message:

"Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed. Please try again later."

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[redGiraffe]

MS may not be 'inherenty bad', but what they do makes me feel 'icky'. I don't like it and don't have to take it.

MS playfully experimenting with new technologies? No, don't think so!

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[jsebrech]

Despite what you and almost every other /.er would love to think, MS isn't inherenty bad.

MS is a publicly held enterprise. Because of this, it is neither good or bad, it is amoral. A corporation has only one aim: to maximize profit for its investors. That is all microsoft does, and all it ever will do. "Doing the right thing" is only useful in as far as it serves profitability. Microsoft could conceivably be losing customers due to doing the wrong thing too often, so for a while they may try to do the right thing, to gain goodwill. But make no mistake, publicly held corporations have no morality. You can never trust a corporation to do the right thing, only to maximize profit.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Maian]

I haven't really used Google's personalized homepage that much, but from what I've seen, MS's version looks better. Not only are the colors better, I like the way the X appears only when the box is hovered over, and how the boxes can be minimized. And unlike Google, adding new boxes doesn't temporarily freeze the browser. For a beta product and with partial support for Firefox, I'm somewhat surprisingly impressed.

Seriously, slashdotters are always saying MS is spreading FUD, but IMO they spread just as much as FUD. Mod me down if you want, but I think this whole FUD war thing is stupid. If this wasn't made by MS, I doubt people would criticize nearly as much as they are right now.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[mikiN]

It might be a case of Stockholm Syndrome. Actually, looking at the present state of world politics and economics in the world, I think there's a real pandemic going on.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Eivind]

It's not about them being bad in the sense of the people working there trying their best to be evil -- they very obviously do not.

The prime "bad" thing about Microsoft is that they are too large and thus have too large an influence. Any other company in an equally dominant position would likely be just as bad, or worse. We've seen this through history time and time again.

Thus it's fairly uninteresting what MS do -- as long as they're as dominant as they are today, they are a problem. Regardless of if their individual actions are good or bad.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The application remoting technologies being internally demoed at M$ (dig though techNet) are astounding. Software as a Service is going to happen *very* soon and graceful degredation for unsupported platforms (IE to which an admin cannot push an MSI) is high on their list of priorities.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[chord.wav]

IG has no weather for Buenos Aires. How hard that could be? Live has it.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[mattspammail]

Okay, so I just tried the live.com site in Firefox first. Coming soon is what they said, even though the majority of the site showed up. I used my trusty "View this Page in IE" extension to show the page in Interbutt Exploder, and alas, IE CRASHED. I took my screenshot (for posterity), chose to report my crash, and then clicked the "More Information" link to see why it crashed. The crash report showed up in Firefox, saying that Microsoft hasn't a clue why IE crashed. Thank you for my time. Obviously I took a screenshot of that one too. Too rich to pass up. I'm no statistic. I'm just an inwardly-smiling user.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[jmony]

Did they buy the source code from google (google.com/ig) ? Google could even sue them over the way it works ;-)

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[campaign_bug]

Heh. Don't worry. When I went to the site using Opera, it was virtually non-existent. Normal service resumed.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Hosiah]

I want them all to coexist.

You're cribbing from my post history. That still doesn't answer the question: Why do you have to DENY that Microsoft is inherently evil? Do people say that about it alot? Does this happen with other operating systems? Why does it happen so much with Microsoft? Could it just be coincidence?

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what you and almost every other /.er would love to think, MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others,

Yes, they have made plenty of mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And you are mistaken when you think that mistakes are why ./ers hate Microsoft.

They hate Microsoft because of its long history of screwing people, both their competitors and their customers. This screwing was and is done willfully and with forethought.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

[...]
In the meantime, the new products help Microsoft better compete with online rivals. Although the traditional software industry is very profitable and well understood, online advertising is an important opportunity, Ozzie said. He praised Google for demonstrating some of the possibilities.

"Google is doing an amazing job of making that ad engine click on all eight cylinders." Ozzie said.
[...]

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[nine-times]

MS supporting Firefox?

Yeah, that's nice...

Of course, it'd be a little nicer if they were more general about it, like, you know, supporting web standards in general so that any web browser that worked according to those standards would... work?

But it's not the final version anyway, so whatever.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[dindi]

the funny thing IS NOT that it had a java error, the funny thing IS that it said Mozilla won't work, and then it was unusable with my IE and was testing it in Moz no prob.....

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's track record is clear: Evil to fair competition, Evil to business productivity (yes, that's right), Evil to data privacy and security, Evil to open standards and innovation, Evil to customer needs and satisfaction, Evil, Evil, Evil...they need to be killed by Google, then we'll need to kill Google, since they are aiming to be the next Microsoft.

P.S. You are a troll

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[ccp]

MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right?

People who stay in abusive relationships all sound exactly alike..

Perfect! Just one killer line... +1, Insightful.

An addition to my friends list.

Cheers,

Carlos Cesar

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[4of12]

Microsoft has made so many mistakes at the past, that they've lost the trust of customers.

Microsoft Revenues Grow 6 Percent, Profit Soars to $3.1 Billion [itjungle.com] Back-to-school sales were good. Server sales are strong. Windows MCE looks to be a big winner.

The mistakes are not in business execution of MS up until this point in time, just in losing the trust of customers.

It's easy for a near monopoly to earn great profits while people don't like or trust them.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[kubevubin]

Ahhforgot about that. You know, I have a friend who so despises the Recycle Bin that he removes it from his computer altogether. He deletes all references to it in the registry and everything. I suppose it just isn't enough to simply change the option to bypass the Recycle Bin. *shrug*

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[fbg111]

Maybe you should read up on the history of MS a bit, as well as the Findings of Fact from their anti-trust trial. I personally don't hate MS and as an IT professional I use their products when the situation merits it, but not blindly. It's worth understanding the source of the antipathy toward MS b/c it's not without reason or justification.

Re:That can't be Microsoft

[matthew_t_west]

Yeah, but the definitely aren't supporting Mac. I tried the site with IE 5.2, Safari, and Firefox. Firefox is the only one that displayed the whole page, but did not do so well. It's not too surprising though, they stopped development of IE for Mac.

Because anyone who's not running Windows wants to,

[Anonymous Coward]

right?

Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[Anonymous Coward]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the reason news of Goo.... Goooo... Ggggg... I can't say the name... but it has nothing to do with them and their work with Open Office.

Re:Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[ackthpt]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the reason news of Goo.... Goooo... Ggggg... I can't say the name... but it has nothing to do with them and their work with Open Office.

Of course not. It's just his latest Keep-Rich-Quick Scheme

Honestly, sounds utterly hokey.

Re:Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[someonewhois]

Yeah, it must be related to Google's announcement regarding Open Office. I mean, Microsoft can develop and release Windows Live and Office Live in the matter of 48 hours. Yeah, they're amazing alright.

Re:Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm, maybe you haven't visited Windows Live yet. So far it looks to me like something that could have been developed very quickly (like in 48 hours).
First, Windows Live is just a carbon copy of myGoogle (which, of course is similar to--but not a carbon copy of--myYahoo!); second there are only 8 "Gadgets" (an obvious rip off of Konfabulator); third, there is no Office Live yet--it's just Windows live.

Re:Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[maotx]

I mean, Microsoft can develop and release Windows Live and Office Live in the matter of 48 hours

Maybe, maybe not.

"SiteCatalyst code version: H.1.
Copyright 1997-2005 Omniture, Inc. More info available at
http://www.omniture.com/"

Re:Bill Gates was quoted as saying

[hahn]

Oh come on. People have speculated about Google's interest in developing an online Office for a LOOOONG time now. And you'd have to be crazy to think that Microsoft also hasn't considered it and even done some work on it. Microsoft's release of Live most certainly has SOMETHING to do with Google's growing aspirations.

Beta is the new buzzword...

[mister_llah]

Ahh, it seems Google's betas have given the name buzzword status...

I remember the good old days when Microsoft's "beta" products were full versions... ahhhh...

Good to see Google's eminent technological takeover is at least causing Microsoft to be a little more honest :)

Go for it, Microsoft...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Why would anyone PAY for something they can't have? And what happens to those Word docs when your subscription runs out? Read only and no copy/paste?

All I can say is "Microsoft, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE 'bet the farm' on this".

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[jm92956n]

Sun called: they want their dumb terminals idea back.

The market has repeatedly shown that there is no interest in the concept of remote software or slimmed down computers. People really do like their personal computers. I had thought Microsoft understood this well, though it looks as if I've now been proven wrong. Are customers asking for this?

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[Eryq]

Why would anyone PAY for something they can't have?

...must... not... make... hooker... joke...

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[Lucractius]

the "market" just doesnt realise they like it.

HTML & server side scripting are another form of "dumb terminal",
Hands up if you use a remote X session to a server for something, ditto VNC or NX

AND suns sunray thin client workstations are works of F***ing art damn it, they can pull more central server based tricks with those than any company buying them could ever want id. there are people that want these kinds of machines because it IS cheaper for them. If you are working on a number of platforms simultaneously with a number of groups/projects, its simpler to deal with one central server (real or virtual) for each reasonably sized team and platform they need and give them all their necessary enviroments. When the projects over theres only one machine to wipe and reinstall, not 10 or 20. They arent for everyone but they arent the rejected has beens you make them out to be.

Above all. the remote software pardigim is becoming more useful to the end users only now, while there has always been a set of proffessionals and technical types making use of it in various forms. Its only now with the explosion of the (god i hate using this term like this) Web 2.0 revoloution, that they have become aware that they dont have to be stuck on their computer all the time. They dont want to be. they want to be able to show someoen their stuff when theyre vistiting a freinds place, they want to be able to do stuff at work, or on vacation they did at home without the hassle. They want "their stuff" to be more available to them than ever. MS is tapping this in a big way now.

I just hope it kicks google to counter it, and revamp their now becoming stale personalised google.com/ig page design.

Minimalism like google is only one way to get a great UI,
and MS seem to have gotten a good one to counter it subtly.

overall, im pissed im hearing this from MS, come on google & sun, i cant stand this.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[rwyoder]

Why would anyone PAY for something they can't have?

So you've never seen a guy pay for a lap dance, eh?

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[ScentCone]

Why would anyone PAY for something they can't have? And what happens to those Word docs when your subscription runs out?

The same thing that happens when thousands of businesses stop paying their subscriptions to salesforce.com or netledger.com. Totally web-based apps, with critical business data living behind the firewall at the service provider, is scarecely a new thing, and continues to ramp up - especially for mid-sized companies. It's a risk, but only to the extent that you don't have a provision for obtaining your data in some form before pulling the plug. No one who cares about their business would use MS's toys or Google's without a graceful way out.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[el cisne]

Why would anyone PAY for something they can't have?

So you've never seen a guy pay for a lap dance, eh?

HA. Nor has he been married. Apparently.

sigh....

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[Lord_Dweomer]

And you've just hit on the reason MS is doing this. Their dream is to have their entire usebase on a subscription model. Easy control, easy ability to monitor them, easy ability to start putting in ads even though people are paying subscriptions, etc.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[Keeper]

Yeah, why would anyone ever pay money to watch something in a movie theater? Or pay money to rent a movie? Or lease a car? Or rent an apartment? Or pay for phone service? For that matter, why would anyone pay money for cable service? Or hell, internet service?

There is a lot of money to be made with a "rental" software model, especially for people who don't use their software often enough to justify dropping green on it.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[BlackShirt]

customers are asking for dirt cheap computers. Dumb terminals make it possible.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[grolschie]

> Hands up if you use a remote X session to a server for something

I use rdesktop (on Solaris and Linux) and mstsc (on Win32) extensively for my uni study, 2 jobs, and also home use.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[malfunct]

It seems like many of the offerings are free or ad funded.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[Thugar The Terrible]

Actually, the thin client/dumb terminal idea is still alive and well for certain types of distributed networks. The death of the mainframe and gradual loss of shared processing terminals was a huge hit to dumb terminals and thin clients but the growing popularity of Terminal Services and Citrix Metaframe has given a new home for this slim, inexpensive computers for easily maintained distributed networks. You have one admin team at one location with a ring of servers and no admins at your rinky dinky 5 user sites. If a unit goes down, you have them pull another thin client out of the closet, hook it up and you're in business!

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[TheSync]

What good are thin clients? You don't have to worry about trojans and viruses coming in due to installation of new programs...and if your hard drives die, you don't lose your data.

Re:Go for it, Microsoft...

[scumbaguk]

You are completely wrong, times are changing. I work in the IT services industry and remote software and IT services are on the up.

Think about a hypothetical situation, you're a company of 5 to 250 lawyers, you don't run your own Telco or hand deliver your mail, but you currently have an IT staff running a email system and software or hardware to scan for virus/spam in email, then running and maintaining web content filtering systems, installing software updates to application like office on the desktop and running any sort of collaboration software.

Why are you doing this? With the price, speed and reliability of the modern internet why not just pay an IT service company to provide you with hosted shared Microsoft exchange with mail scanned for spam virus's and unwanted content, fully customizable web proxies which scan all your incoming web traffic for bad sites, viruses, spy-ware. Collaboration tools linked in with smart-phones, hosted application which are always up to date. (something like a coporate version of office live maybe? or ms office/open office accesed through citrix)
This is all done at the internet level and no doubt with tight SLA's which provide your business with a safety net.

Add to that licences at a monthly cost so your business can scale in any way you want rather then buying costly multi year CAL's and also changing the budgeting from CAPEX to the operation budget.

Essentially in this hypothetical situation your company is paying for staff who aren't generating any cash and are totally unneeded.

By using a service, cost are also brought down by the fact these guys have the economy of scale. They can host your system in world class data centres on large high class systems and split the price between many customers, but still providing all the power the user needs. And then of course competition in the market means you'd be more likely to get a deal then buying software.

I can't see why the world will not realise this soon.

Something like 95% of companys are 10 people or less, the IT industry would be fools to avoid this market and just focus on the big guys and this is where hosted apps are perfect.

Ripping off Google

[Ridgelift]

Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage. It all just Microsoft up to their old tricks: copy someone elses idea then try to extend it.

This time, however, the deck is stacked against them. Developers are leaving Microsoft and going to Google in hopes to make millions like early Microsoft employees did. Also Microsoft is stuck using their own software as a development platform which is not as flexible as Google or even Apple to make changes. Google can simply outcode Microsoft in the web arena.

Should be a bloodbath.

Re:Ripping off Google

[log2.0]

It doesn't seem to actually do much of the stuff that windows does as an OS. I don't see how they can call it "Windows Live".

I expect this to be a flop.

Re:Ripping off Google

[Otter]

Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage. It all just Microsoft up to their old tricks: copy someone elses idea then try to extend it.

That's what used to be known as a "portal". About 10 years ago, anyone who could slap together a page like that could instantly IPO for a billion dollars. It's hardly something Google invented.

Re:Ripping off Google

[blueadept1]

It's not just a Microsoft concept ("copy someone elses idea then try to extend it"). It's a fact of the business world. Google had a competitive advantage, so Microsoft moves in to destroy that advantage. Business is business, fight for the consumer.

Re:Ripping off Google

[Chokolad]

Google personal homepage showed up waaay after Microsoft experiments in this kind of homepage under http://start.com./ Talk about revisionist history...

Re:Ripping off Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean ripping off Yahoo? They have been doing this for years at http://my.yahoo.com/index.html you will most likely need a login to see it, but yahoo has been doing this way before google did.

Re:Ripping off Google

[putko]

It will be interesting to see if they can pull this off.

I'm pretty sure the folks over at Google are laughing and yelling a big collective, "Nigg@#$ Pleeeeeeeeze!"

MicroSoft is choosing to compete in territory where it tends to do badly. E.g. Hotmail is 3rd, compared to Yahoo! or Google. MicroSoft isn't a service organization -- they don't do continuous uptime, no bugs, rapid releases well.

I'm sure Google is happy MicroSoft is trying to do this; they'll hemorrage money and generally be feeling like they are on the receiving end of a bukkake session for a long time.

However, if Yahoo! said they were going to do this, the Google folks would be kicking themselves, for not getting it out the door first. And they'd be scared, because Yahoo! knows from running web services. Microsoft knows from bubkis about this.

Re:Ripping off Google

[ergo98]

Windows Live is a painfully bad rip off of Google's Personal Homepage [google.com].

I hope you're kidding. It seems, more and more, that there are the deluded who believe that Google, along with Apple, are responsible for everything.

This is nothing more than a rehash of portals, such that we saw in the late 90s. Excite was one of the biggest and most configurable portals, and of course many of us configured it, setting up our stocks and our weather, and then never used it again.

Developers are leaving Microsoft and going to Google in hopes to make millions like early Microsoft employees did.

It's a bit late for that at Google now: It's too big of a company for that get-rich-quick type nonsense. However it is true that a lot of ex-Microsofters have left to join small startups, or to create one themselves. This is especially true too now that Microsoft is becoming just like every other traditional "where careers go to die" organization.

Also Microsoft is stuck using their own software as a development platform

Nonsense. Microsoft's development platform is extraordinarily powerful, and it certainly isn't a detriment that they use it.

The problem that Microsoft's internet ventures have, and it's always been this way, is that they do the absolute minimum amount possible to ensure that they aren't eviscerated, but no more. If you remember, the IE team smoked Netscape, and then they were promptly disbanded. Why? Because that team and group represented a threat to the Microsoft cash cows - Office and Windows. These "web versions" of Office and Windows are almost laughable - if anything they'll complement, and most certainly they won't replace until Microsoft is on its deathbed and the revenue has completely dried up.

Re:Ripping off Google

[rindeee]

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

In seriousness, once Jobs gets the brains to partner up with Google, MS is going to be a distant memory (not that this scenario is necessarily a good thing mind you...I'm all for healthy competition).

Re:Ripping off Google

[R3d M3rcury]

"Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging."

According to Microsoft, Instant Messaging is part of the operating system...

I suppose e-mail and blogging will become so, as well, in Vista.

Re:Ripping off Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm yes I believe that this is a dupe http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/001622 3&tid=109&tid=189&tid=1

Re:Ripping off Google

[Skreems]

Windows live lets you program your own gadgets that anybody can then add to their page... does google home let you do anything other than collect RSS feeds as far as custom content?

Re:Ripping off Google

[NitsujTPU]

Developers are leaving MS. I don't think that anybody in their right mind is hoping to make millions, at least, not off of stocks. Google went public and shot their stock through the roof. It's worth what it's going to be worth. People are going to Google because they want to work at Google. I've talked to their recruiters about the research topics that interest Google. It sounds pretty good to me.

Re:Ripping off Google

[lakin]

I dont really feel like this is directly competing with anything google has atm. The Google personalized portal thing is (as many people have already said) basically the same as start.com, both of which bring your internet to one page - frequent sites, news, mail etc. This new windows live seems more like its going to bring together your local pc and your internet life. Granted, it doesnt do much of this at the moment, but the ideas page mentions pc files. Make it easy enough to use, and slap an icon on the windows start menu they could easily make this the way people do basically anything with their pc. (Want to work on a word document? Fire up the Windows Live page!)

Given how limited it is at the moment though, google still has enough chance to make up something that similarly makes you think Google whenever you have a task/problem.

Personally though, i dont really care who wins, aslong as its not just one company. Whatever google (and yahoo and everyone else) comes up with doesnt need to be a Microsoft killer, it just needs to be something Microsoft cant kill. Otherwise in ten years, microsoft will be going bust and we will all be complaining google has a monopoly over our internet browser office suites with few companies able to use an alternative because of the big discounts google is giving them and the new propriety format meaning it doesnt always look the same. Still, we can always hope one state will demand all departments use Suns version because it uses an open format. And of course, microsoft will start to turn around when they release a new portable device (with a web store) thats more expensive than the current unpopular ones, but it looks soo good... And its ok that they build a monopoly on this device, because they are the good guys and google is the evil empire.

Re:Ripping off Google

[Randall311]

He's right. I have a portal too. http://randall.kicks-ass.org/wwwportal.html where are my millions of dollars? ;-)

Re:Ripping off Google

[Sebilrazen]

It doesn't seem to actually do much of the stuff that windows does as an OS.
So it doesn't randomly quit, chuck my files, waste my productivity with stupid updates and make my day miserable? Sign me up!

I don't see how they can call it "Windows Live".
That's because it doesn't come with the standard BSOD. I wonder if that's an optional feature, then I'd have the full version.

Re:Ripping off Google

[EvanED]

The only thing that MS is ripping off from Google is the "Beta" in the logo.

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

I'm sorry, you're on the wrong site to show that Microsoft may in fact be innovative.

Re:Ripping off Google

[Osty]

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

Have you even tried using Live.com? Sure, it's superficially like Google's personalized home page, but it does more than that. First off, Live.com is from the Start.com project, which has been around longer than Google's personal page (as others have already pointed out), and thus Google is copying Microsoft. BWAHAHAHA. Ahem. Second, Live.com is more "slick", for lack of a better word. You can change the number of columns (want 2 columns instead of 3? only 1 long column?), and the interface just feels "smoother" than Google's (not sure if it's the colors, fonts, icons, or what, and I'll agree that this is really personal preference).

Third, and probably most importantly, Live.com is much more customizable than Google's page. Sure, you can add or remove certain canned items or create a new "section" from a search or a feed on Google's page. You can do that on Live.com as well. However, you can also write your own "gadgets" to add on to the page that are not just RSS feeds. I'm sure Google has the knowledge and talent to be able to do something like that, but you can't deny that Live.com does things Google Personal doesn't.

As for the name "Windows Live", the Slashdot article title is just completely stupid. This is not an "Internet Version of Windows", but a companion. The "Live" naming obviously comes from Xbox Live, which is not an "Internet Version of Xbox" but a companion service that allows you to communicate and interact in new and interesting ways with your Xbox ("new" and "interesting" as applied to Xbox, as online gaming, voice chat, and friends lists have all obviously been done elsewhere before Xbox Live). "Windows Live" is obviously aiming at that same idea. Whether they get there or not is still yet to be seen, but at least they're trying. That the beginning looks like stuff we've already seen (though to be fair, we did see it from Microsoft before Google) isn't the point. Go to Windows Live Ideas and look at some of the stuff that's coming. Live Mail is just parity, but Windows Live Safety Center looks pretty cool, as does Windows Live Favorites (okay, so it only imports from IE and not Firefox, but a) it is Beta, and b) it is still Microsoft ...). And it sounds like this is just the beginning. Maybe the whole Windows Live thing will fizzle out with nothing more than a neat portal and a modern web mail client, but it could also turn into something really cool.

Re:Ripping off Google

[rawwa.venoise]

in fact start is so informative that i don't now where i shold START ... It this is another idea like this start page then i can bet our money on google, otherwise i'll bet my money on google again. At least they support some open source and pay for school geeks in the google summer of code

Re:Ripping off Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Hotmail is actually the number one used e-mail service. Hope you play again next time ;)

Re:Ripping off Google

[skingers6894]

"I hope you're kidding. It seems, more and more, that there are the deluded who believe that Google, along with Apple, are responsible for everything."

Tich, you are SO right. We all know Apple did it by themselves!

Re:Ripping off Google

[putko]

Hotmail is actually the number one used e-mail service.

And AOL is the "number one" ISP.

That's a big SO FUCKING WHAT!

Hotmail sucks. Ask anyone who has used Yahoo!, Google and Hotmail. Furthermore, Hotmail, under Microsoft, has had massive security problems (remember the Passport bug that let anyone log in as you?) That bodes very well for the web services offering -- nothing like having everyone being able to read your documents to make you say, "FUCK OFF, BILLY GATES!" Finally, if you've used Outlook's web offering, you know it sucks. The person I know who used that (on a LAN) was bitching about how fucking slow it was, compared to Google, over a WAN.

But if its the case that you actually work for MicroSoft -- I take it all back. I hope you folks just keep on doing what you are doing. Google is just a fad. You'll slay them any day now. And we'll all go back to sucking MicroSoft cock any day now, and taking it up the ass too. Billy and Ballmer can do a Bukkake sessio on me.

Re:Ripping off Google

[xtracto]

Actually, it is a rip off of netvibes and all of them are rip offs of myYahoo portal (only with a lot of javascript [no, i wont use THAT buzzword]).

Microsoft has another page which IMO is better than this, it is start.com. It works with firefox and it is under that domain that the new Hotmail beta service is 'hidden'.

about the Windows Live bit, it is just plain brand naming.

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

What?

The last part about Google paying for school is totally bogus. The Summer of Code paid less than $4,000, which would not even get a person through one semester of college. If you want to pay for college, then you definitely were not doing the Summer of Code BS, but if you wanted to do something neat and maybe cool, plus get paid a little bit for it, then do Summer of Code.

Re:Ripping off Google

[rawwa.venoise]

You should read the FAQ before posting. http://code.google.com/summfaq.html#when_do_i_get_ paid
total per completed projct is: $4500 whic is more than fair enougth for 8 weeks of work.
If that is not enought for paying one semester of college than it's your goverment fault not google.
Where i live it actually is enoutgh for a year, and i can guess that in countries as India it would be more than enougth, but that is not the question here. Of course 852 / 8) * 4500 dosen't give you the average incoming of a US IT professional worker but it's a start ...

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

I actually meant to put $5,000, but I apparently hit the 4. Oh well. Also, you only get $4,500, as opposed to just $500, if you are deemed to have completed the project.

It makes very little difference to me since at my last summer programming internship I made quite a bit more than $5,000.

Also, it's not the government's fault that college is more expensive here than in other countries because, for the most part, our colleges are much better and we, as a nation, do not pay higher taxes to put everyone through college, including those that do not deserve or need it.

Re:Ripping off Google

[rawwa.venoise]

>Also, it's not the government's fault that college is more expensive here than in other countries because,
>for the most part, our colleges are much better and we, as a nation, do not pay higher taxes to put
>everyone through college, including those that do not deserve or need it.

I agree with you. People that do not deserve should not get access to education. And of course "do not deserve" is a well stablished rule based on what's your father's incoming salary. That's also reflected on your medical care. People who do not have a Social Security number can die, wayting for proper care on a hospital. Not very different from a third world country. After all why should a nation pay higher taxes for people who do not deserve basic medical care?

That's the benefits of a superior education ...
Not your fault either if you don't understand the basic principles of such complicated things as Democracy ...

Nobody's fault. It's John Doe fault's ..

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

Excuse me, I paid for college. So take your incredible ignorance somewhere else.

People without a SS die waiting for proper care? Are you kidding me? We pump billions of dollars into the medical system to COVER money lost from treating illegal aliens (READ: PEOPLE WITHOUT SS). As a matter of fact, it's such a problem that there was a bill in congress specifically for paying for it.

It's fine if you want to just accept what you see one the news as fact, and, as such, I guess I can start assuming everyone in the middle east/south asian countries are all a bunch of ignorant morons that agree with terrorism who live in the stone age and throw spears at [U.S.] helicopters when they bring in aid [Tsunami Relief done by Pakistani or Indian villages, just in case you were wondering]? I see that on the news all the time.

By the way, "democracy" does not mean anything in terms of basic medical and higher education; it may LEAD to such protections, but that is because you have ADDED onto democracy. The government serves to protect (military) and organize (government/basic education), it does not have an obligation to save every individual with medical benefits or give us an education beyond our basic needs (though we DO have Medicare and tons of Federal College Loans). That's why we have the best nation in the world. We recognize self-worth; not everything we do or get is handed to us on silver platter. You must EARN something or else you should probably be in some other country, receiving half-assed medical care from half-assed physicians with half-assed wages (but admittedly, nice vacations). Why does ANYONE with a problem come to America for medical care? Our doctors are the best, that's why. Even in England, they have their public hospitals, which are terrible, and then they have private hospitals, which anyone that can afford it goes too.

Are there people born into a little bit of power, or have an easier life than some of the others? Of course. Every country has that issue, and it's only an issue because people like you envy those people. I have no problem with it. They lucked out. They won the lottery at birth. Big deal, now prove to the world why that should have been you.

Thanks for the laughs.

Re:Ripping off Google

[rawwa.venoise]

I also pay for my education. But i pay for people with no money to receive a proper assistance and education. I also pay taxes, so people that do not have monet can access a free medical care. Take a step further and help poor people, helping yourself. You see, if you educate people with no money to realize the benefits of working they will make part of our society as workers. If you can only show them that money is what differentiates a healty life style from a john doe, them why should people go to work anyway?
BTW: I guess I can start assuming everyone in the middle east/south asian countries are all a bunch of ignorant morons that agree with terrorism who live in the stone age and throw spears at [U.S.] helicopters when they bring in aid [Tsunami Relief done by Pakistani or Indian villages, just in case you were wondering]? I see that on the news all the time. The same morons that helped the fucking taliban people with weapons in the 80's to fight against teh russians in afghanistan, or did you forget? The same bastards that trainned a guy so well it turns out to crush New York WTC in 2001. When you feed rattle snakes with your hand you should count with a strong bit. Consequences of your democracy. Any way, your country is not a real democracy, since in your voting systems people's vote don't count at all. All the elections are based in the electoral college system and thus you don't get any real democracy in that system. Democracy means people vote note a rich guy that represents the votting people in some state. Take a look at Brasil voting system. It's electronic based, free from frauds and represents people true whises. Lula Da Silva was elected using the system and guess what? I was an opponent to the main president. See the principles of democracy here? An electronic system elected the president opponent and nobody complaint on the way votes where counted ...
Ps: i don't have envy of you people. I' can only feel sorry for you having elected a dum guy that dosen't know world geography and think Texas is the center of the world ...

Re:Ripping off Google

[rawwa.venoise]

Just as a side note, has i read a article about the 10 most expensive bugs (/.) and i found this interesting:
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official. Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.
and this is very very interesting: At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it ....
CIA sabotage
A fine example of how your democratic country has developed over the years, causing damages to other countrys ...
I find this example as a TRUE DEMOCRACY lesson don't you agree?

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

What's your point? That was espionage.

If I recall correctly, no country enjoys giving out its secrets to its greatest enemies. Maybe that's just me. No, it wasn't a nice thing to do, but it was the tactically correct thing to do and I would hope that we would do it again to any country in that situation (China seems to be having fun stealing our secrets, so hopefully we have issues there too).

Re:Ripping off Google

[PickyH3D]

"The same morons that helped the fucking taliban people with weapons in the 80's to fight against teh russians in afghanistan, or did you forget? The same bastards that trainned a guy so well it turns out to crush New York WTC in 2001."

Afghanistan served two purposes for us when the Soviets attacked them. First and foremost, it was to stop the Soviets from toppling country after country, and we succeeded here. Second, it was to show that Democracy beats Communism; we failed here because we did not follow up with anything. As for the 9/11 comment, do you mean our easily accessible schools? We trained Usama Bin Laden, not the people on the planes. Also, we didn't exactly train him to use planes to fly into buildings--that was his idea.

"Consequences of your democracy. Any way, your country is not a real democracy, since in your voting systems people's vote don't count at all. All the elections are based in the electoral college system and thus you don't get any real democracy in that system."

You're right, we're not a real democracy. Technically, we are a Republic.

The only position where direct voting does not hold a one-to-one result is that of the Presidency. Why? So one state cannot dominate an election; all other elections (Congress, and local/state level) are tallied and the majority wins. Instead, for the Presidential election, we have an Electoral College, which tallies its votes by state, which are given out by population. Most states require that the electoral college 'voters' follow the state's majority decision (i.e., if Bush gets 51% of the vote, and Kerry gets 49%, then Bush gets all of the electoral votes). It's pretty clear in our Constitution for the reasoning of this.

So you guys have a direct election of your leader, and the guy not in power won? Great, we had a turn-over of power similar to that when Thomas Jefferson was elected. Thanks for playing. So our election is still done on paper? Oh, well, we're cautiously moving towards electronic voting systems. The only people that complained about vote counting were people against the winner in VERY narrowly won areas. It's a legitimate practice and the fact that they CAN voice their concerns and be HEARD is an example of democracy, not a slap in its face.

As for the comment on Bush. That's just a shot (and you misspelled 'dumb'). To be honest, I'm more concerned with domestic problems than international issues. That's a side effect of living in the most powerful country in the world, and I realize that it comes off as selfish, but I don't regret feeling that way. I'm being honest. I care about Americans a lot more than Brazilians, or any other nation. Unless you guys send your military to attack us (futilely), then you don't effect me. The last big news I saw about Brazil was that you guys were pro-open source. I do not agree with everything Bush does, especially in terms of his spending (not so much on the military, but the general trend in high spending on other bloated areas of the government). I'm not against deficit spending, but I am against stupid deficit spending. I'm also against the recently proposed (and since rejected) to cut the budget in some areas that are ironically what you have been talking about (Medicare, student loans, etc); there are better areas to cut.

Anyway, you need to wake up and realize you don't know half as much about this country as you think you do. Everyone in America goes to K-12 public schools, OR BETTER, on tax payer money, until they are old enough to drop out, at which point it is their legal decision. Everyone that wants to go to college CAN through loans from private institutions (e.g., banks), extremely large amounts of scholarships (many with maximum income limits, to ensure they go to poor students rather than less-poor, or even rich students), and federal school loans. Also, it's illegal for hospitals to turn away people from getting medical care because they cannot afford it, or do not have insurance.

I was more impressed...

[ColGraff]

I have to say, I was more impressed with "Windows Live" when it was called the Google Personalized Homepage.

Re:I was more impressed...

[dejamatt]

I have to say, I was more impressed with Google personal homepage when it was called start.com.

Re:I was more impressed...

[badriram]

You mean like Google Personalized Homepage was like start.com

Re:I was more impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh oh... Now knoppix has competition!

Re:I was more impressed...

[leonbev]

MSN has been offering a free personalized homepage with news, weather and stock quotes since 1996. Hell, I remember using it with Internet Explorer version TWO, for pete's sake. There is NOTHING original about customized portal sites, as most of the major players like Yahoo, MSN, Netscape/AOL and the like have been offering them for nearly a decade.

Re:I was more impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Google Personalized Homepage was like start.com

Check it out, it's now ©2005 Microsoft.

Re:I was more impressed...

[superspaz]

You mean like when start.com was more like myYahoo.

Hate to break it to you but yahoo was first to the gate. Still the real question is which interface do people like more.

Re:I was more impressed...

[oztiks]

Before today i never saw live, and before 5 mins ago i never saw google personal homepage ..

I find the google one much easier to arrange stuff with..
Plus their drag and drop seems a lot nicer .. And the way the screen divides itself ..

Im trying not to be against ms here with my comments but nah do not agreet wid ya :) ...

Re:I was more impressed...

[Darth Daver]

You mean like start.com was like Excite?

Re:I was more impressed...

[catalyst]

No, Google Personalized Homepage allows RDF feeds in addition to RSS ones...

Re:I was more impressed...

[sco08y]

I could have sworn it was called "My Yahoo!"

Firefox version comming soon. Please be patient :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nooooo !!!!

I want my intentionnally-broken html now !!!!!

MS has tried this before...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was pretty good! http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/WinRG.htm

The scary thing about this is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Under Categories>Top Feeds>Slashdot is the first option.

Impressive

[JPyun]

If MS keeps developing awesome stuff like this, then go Bill. Weee.

Plus I get a warm and fuzzy feeling using "Windows Live" from Linux.

Re:Impressive

[iriefrank]

I'm sorry, what? What is impressive about this? Just what the world needs, another second-rate personalized homepage. Blech.

Re:Impressive

[JPyun]

It looks nice. And it works. I don't see what's second rate about it. Admittedly I like http://www.google.com/ig better, but the colors are fugly.

and haven't I had bloody enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

of ads? This is crazy. Everything on the web is now driven by advertising. You just can't get away from it!

And now Microsoft wants to tie my desktop into online advertising? No, thank you! OSS begins to look better and better.

Re:and haven't I had bloody enough...

[RobertF]

Oh my god! You're totally right! Google would never provide a free service like this, that used advertising to make money. And besides, this is just Microsoft ripping off Google's idea. Which was based off of what tons of companies did in the 90's. Google didn't steal that idea, though because they're Google. It amuses me how everyone is quick to bash microsoft for making their own versions of popular products, and even products Google has come up with. Yes, both Microsoft and Google have map systems, mail, search, portals, and now personal home pages. Umm, but isn't this called "competition"?

Re:and haven't I had bloody enough...

[Sporkinum]

What ads? I didn't see any when I went to live.com and signed in. I didn't check to see if adblock was blocking anything or if it didn't really have any.

Re:and haven't I had bloody enough...

[TheSpoom]

No, no ads right now. Bill said that there would be at launch though (or at least it was implied, with his statement that advertising was the future or some such.)

Re:and haven't I had bloody enough...

[Attrition_cp]

What are you talking about exactly? The OP mentioned OpenSource, Google never came up at all.
He mentioned 'everything on the web' as being driven by ads, so your own bias has nothing to do with it.

Desperate times...

[mister_llah]

Google's pushing Microsoft into a corner... they've got a distinct edge in innovation...

I definately smell a hint of doom on Microsoft, though... but in business, as good as it seems now... we'll just be trading one tyrant for another... call it FUD, but I guess we'll all see in time :)

Re:Desperate times...

[arhines]

I'm not sure what brought you to that conclusion...

My reaction, avid OSS user that I am, was basically "Wow. This is actually pretty cool - they've surprised me." I needn't point out that google has said publicly that they have no plans to in any way turn OO.org into a web-based product, so if anyone has an edge here it is clearly the people who just released a beta of their web-based office suite...

Re:Desperate times...

[antimatt]

call it FUD, but I guess we'll all see in time :)

indeed. what happens when google executes order 66?

Re:Desperate times...

[Lally Singh]

A hint? Look at their stock history. No real growth in *years*.

Also, isn't this MS leveraging their existing monopoly to gain an edge in a new market? Anti-competitive?

Re:Desperate times...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah MS is doomed, they're liable to drop down to 94% marketshare any day now.

Re:Desperate times...

[JPriest]

So you decide to agree that MS is dying and base your assumption on MSFT's stock price? Did you notice that their net income was 8 billion from 6/03 to 6/04, and 12 billion from 6/04 and 6/05? Becasue I know I would consider a 4 billion dollar gain "no real growth" as well.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

How exactly is Google a tyrant?

All that this says is, "All of these years, the reason that I've hated MS is because they were successful. All of that bitching and moaning was because MS made money. I have never had anything objective to say about Microsoft. It's all been lies."

Seriosuly. What did Google do? All that anyone has accused them of is 1) Stealing all of the talent in software (damn, people want to work there, sounds evil) and 2) Raising the prices of software engineers (shit, and now I make more money).

News flash, the only people who complain about Google are the evil corporate masters that you're also supposedly railing against. Really. If their company was all that good, people would want to work their anyway. Amazon.com is not having any problems hiring talented people. Trust me. I've met some of their people.

What you're saying is that nobody can succeed and not be evil. I disbelieve that. I believe that honest people can make an honest living and still, at the end of the day, be honest. Call me old fashioned like that, but believe it or not, one day I'd like to be successful too. Also, I'd appreciate it if you don't call me a tyrant when I am.

Re:Desperate times...

[krygny]

" A hint? Look at their stock history. No real growth in *years*."

That's because they have a 90%+ market share in mature, no-growth markets and are non-competitive or marginally competitive in all their other markets (which are low margin commodities anyway). Hey, we all knew the Soviet Union would implode; we just didn't know the moment at which it would happen. Same for Microsoft. Could be next month, next year, the year after, or the year after that. But this nonsense won't even delay the inevitable.

Re:Desperate times...

[rwyoder]

Google's pushing Microsoft into a corner... they've got a distinct edge in innovation...

So you are saying a company that actually innovates has an edge over one that just repeats the word a lot? ;-)

Re:Desperate times...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ripping off Apple and Google is hardly distinct or innovation.

Re:Desperate times...

[Dante Shamest]

If you really believe Microsoft is dying, then nothing it does can be considered anti-competitive.

Re:Desperate times...

[gnuLNX]

Honest living...billionaire...hones living...biolionaire....hum...something seems funny to me.

As an aside not I am a capitalist and I support the work that google is doing...but lets get real on the honest living....no one making a billion dollars while people are starving is making an honest living. If you believe otherwise you should have a long hard look at yourself tommorrow in the Mirror.

Cheers

Re:Desperate times...

[Mr. Underbridge]

As an aside not I am a capitalist and I support the work that google is doing...but lets get real on the honest living....no one making a billion dollars while people are starving is making an honest living. If you believe otherwise you should have a long hard look at yourself tommorrow in the Mirror.

And if you think that throwing money at a problem solves it, you're a fool.

Re:Desperate times...

[Penguinoflight]

While Microsoft was never really a dog you liked, they weren't really the city eating blob they are today until windows 98. Microsoft started abusing their monopoly very clearly at that point, and they have been getting worse ever since. I dont think anyone should fear google, or walmart (well, maybe walmart), but the kind of government that puts up with corporate wrongs. Dont boycott google, they're a good site. OTOH, if I found a search engine that gave me 80% as good results I'd probably start reccomending them just so I could feel safe in case google turns evil.

Re:Desperate times...

[Nutria]

Ripping off Apple and Google is hardly distinct or innovation.

It depends on your definition of "innovation", I guess.

Re:Desperate times...

[robertjw]

I definately smell a hint of doom on Microsoft, though...

I'm not sure if it's doom, but definitely desperation. Thing that I find funny is the company I work for has a product that's very similar to what Microsoft is doing (check it out at http://www.ike.com/ as far as workflow, Instant messaging, document management and process autmomation. We have struggled for the last two years attempting to get customers and can't find a marketplace for it. Microsoft has immense marketing muscle, so maybe it will work for them, but in our experience the market isn't ready for a complex product like they are preparing to launch. I suppose desparate times call for desparate measures...

Re:Desperate times...

['nother poster]

Already am. I like a lot of things that Google does, but I don't like them keeping data on everything I do with their sites.

Re:Desperate times...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love that IBM commercial... "Are you suggesting we throw... MONEY.. at the problem?"

Re:Desperate times...

[JWW]

indeed. what happens when google executes order 66?

Damn, I wish I had some mod points for ya. Thats a good one.

Re:Desperate times...

[zerocool^]

Belief in the good-natured core of the human being... it's a disease I share with you. I just can't let it go, I can't believe that human beings are fundamentally anything but good: I refuse to believe it.

Some days it's hard.

Re:Desperate times...

[pimpsoftcom]

2) Raising the prices of software engineers (shit, and now I make more money).

So your telling me the reason its so hard to get a decent job - and the reason I have to do 'consulting' to pay my rent - is not because everybody is illegally outsourcing to India in direct conflict with the legal definition of treason as per the US Constitution and weakening the american economy, but instead because they expect to pay me more when I would be perfectly happy with a job that paid the bills doing what I love?

Is not that the same thing?

Re:Desperate times...

[MikeFM]

It really depends on what the problem is and where you throw the money and how much money you throw. Try solving problems without throwing money, or some sort of economic resource, at it. Not many that can be done for free. Even your investment in time translates to throwing money at the problem.

Intelligence is how you fix problems. Money is the tool that lets you leverage that intelligence to fix problems. Just thinking wisely at the problem rarely works.

Re:Desperate times...

[rohan972]

...no one making a billion dollars while people are starving is making an honest living.

I've heard this type of thing before, but my question is, if making a certain amount of money is evil, who sets the limit? A couple of years ago someone told me that having as $30,000 dollar car (Australian) is just greed and evil, you say it's at (or somewhere below) a billion dollars... who sets the limit of how much money you can make before you turn evil? 100K? a million? 10 million? It doesn't seem to make sense to me, but I do think it's needed for the rich to give to the poor. I don't think making a particular amount of money makes you evil, although how you do it counts, and what you do with it, but I don't think it should be assumed that if you don't give everything away, or even down to a certain level that you should be judged.

Re:Desperate times...

[bit01]

What you're saying is that nobody can succeed and not be evil. I disbelieve that.

Depends what you mean by succeed.

An unethical person/business can always act ethically if that is the optimal strategy in a situation to maximise income but an ethical person/business does not have the option of acting unethically if the situation demands it.

Unfortunately, in a complex business environment there will always be situations where unethical approaches will maximise income while the ethical competitor loses out.

The reality appears to be that the optimal strategy for many business leaders is to talk a storm about ethics but to not actually do ethics unless forced to. They rationalise anything they do that maximises their income as ethical.

An ethical person can succeed, but only by accepting a different definition of success.

Society deals with this by having ethical people gang up on unethical people via the law or social networks so that the optimal strategy for an unethical business person is to act ethically.

This strategy breaks down when the business environment is so complex or new that the law can't handle it. e.g. software patents, broken IP law, manipulation of congress by lobbyists, manipulation of the public by lying marketing or large companies cross subsidising products to kill competition and create monopolies.

Having said the above I do agree there's plenty of successful, ethical, admirable people out there. Generally though, they're not the most financially successful.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:Desperate times...

[gnuLNX]

You make a good point. I however wasn't assuming that a dollar amount makes you evil. I was simply stating that I believe it is hard (perhaps impossible) to make a billion dollars by being totally honest. Give some thought to how much a billion really is. There are small (very small) countries that don't have a billion dollars.

But you are right...I mean who determines what an obscene amount is? To me it is a billion dollars...to the homeless guy on the corner it is probably $30,000.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

Starving people is a political problem, not a financial or supply problem. Charitable organizations can't bring food to the starving when their trucks are shot at. That is, unless they want to bring along UN peacekeeper troops, which always goes over really well.

Re:Desperate times...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying is that nobody can succeed and not be evil.

Well, certain socialists and other anti-liberty groups actually do believe that voluntary trade is "evil". Ironically, their answer is to combat the "evil" principle of voluntary association with government-sponsored coercion.

Personally, I hold that it is self-evident -- by human nature -- that voluntary association is moral and just, and coercion is immoral and unjust. But maybe that's just me.

The problem is that government (and its tool of coercion) is now so deeply entangled in "free" trade that it's nearly impossible to run a successful business on 100% voluntary association. Somewhere, somehow, you are going to come up against a competitor who has the advantage of government (coercion) on his side.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

No, it's not.

Money goes a lot farther in India. I know quite a few Indian graduate students. They're looking for jobs in the US so they can make their fortunes and retire wealthy in India. Incidentally, many Americans that I've known who have lived in India have the same plan. A lot of people are retiring to Spain these days too.

American companies didn't need any help outsourcing work to India. They were doing this long before anyone complained about Google and long before Google IPO'd, hit critical mass, and started growing rapidly.

The reason that American companies are doing this is because they are run by people who take no pride in the goods that their companies supposedly produce. They believe that having management is a value-added proposition, when all of their intellectual capital works for a different company in a different country. The only thing to stop the Indian companies from just producing the goods directly is brand recognition, which will go out the window eventually when people realize that Company X hasn't produced a damn thing in 10 years except for a markup on an Indian product.

Already Indians are talking of things in India being outsourced elsewhere.

Anyway, so when you take these soul-free companies, and have gutted of all that ever made them worthwhile, the bottom falls out and the company is no more. The CEO still made a couple billion in short term growth by firing all of the programmers.

That's how this works. I'm sorry that you think that Google or India are somehow at fault. The problem is that nobody sees the wheels turning and stops it. If you need someone to blame, blame the CEOs and blame politicians. Also, consider what you're missing. You're missing working with people who believe that, at the end of the day, don't give a damn about anything and take no pride in their work. I've had a coworker or 2 like that before. I'd rather sling burgers than work at a company full of those people.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

Ok. So, what did Google do?

Just because you can build an argument that says that unethical people can be successful doesn't mean that you've built an argument that success necessitates unethical behavior. Nor have you cited what Google has done wrong.

Just pick one. All that I want for you people to do is tell me what Google is doing wrong. It shouldn't be this hard. Not a single person in this thread has managed to tell me what Google did wrong. The one who came closest to an answer (and actually tried to blame Google for something, rather than merely make some convoluted statement that success begets evil) was blaming Google for things that are clearly the fault of the government and of the corporations that he's trying to be hired by.

Re:Desperate times...

[Dobeln]

" I believe it is hard (perhaps impossible) to make a billion dollars by being totally honest."

I'd like to broaden that statement a bit:

" I believe it is hard (perhaps impossible) for most to get through a normal working day while being totally honest."

Re:Desperate times...

[Intrigued]

...but good for the earth/self/society/company/religious views?

The real question is not whether people are fundamentally good. I can't say that I have ever met anyone that truly did evil things just because they were evil. They always believe that they are accomplishing some good thing. Even if just for themselves.

The real problem lies in deciding to "choose the greater good". Choosing good profits over good ethics, clubbing that baby seal to get that beautiful coat, tearing down some trees to house people, shooting that violent guy to feed my family, doing anything to keep my "street cred", telling the kids that the deceased puppy ran away, keeping that woman "in line" because my family is falling apart.

Even people that go out after revenge think that they are justified.

The best people that I have met truly believe in "choosing the least harm". If you can make a huge profit by harming a few people, make a small profit by harming fewer people or barely break even by harming none - which do you choose?

The people running Microsoft see penalties from antitrust and broken ethics as a cost of doing business, with the greater good being what is good for Microsoft profits.

People are fundamentally good, but sometimes severely misdirected. Ultimately, the determination of good/bad person is based on what mark their actions left on the world and the individuals' lives that were touched.

Re:Desperate times...

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me old fashioned like that, but believe it or not, one day I'd like to be successful too. Also, I'd appreciate it if you don't call me a tyrant when I am.

Ah... I think your still in your high teens. No adult would dare to make a proclamation stating they have an aspiration to succeed.
Get down you bastard and be mediocre with the rest of us!

Don't worry. You'll lose you aspiration for success in 20 years. Mark my words: You will be just another slave to the machine.*

(*I hope my taunting will word the right way ;))

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

Significantly older. Perhaps I merely have a different life experience. Someone has to rise to the top you know ;-)

Re:Desperate times...

[16K Ram Pack]

It's not a zero-sum gain. A lot of people who make a gazillion bucks are creating employment for others, and opportunities for others.

Generally, the more free-market a country is, the more prosperous everyone in the country is.

Re:Desperate times...

[pimpsoftcom]

Sometimes its not about where we "want" to work, its about the fact that we have families to take care of and bills to pay, and just happen to know a hell of a lot more then the people overseas who have been doing it for 10 years less and only working for 2 months in a call center, yet call themselves "professionals". Its sickening. You would think american companies would rather have competent people who can do more for there business working for them and not badly educated and incompetent people who put there core business at risk every time somebody who calls for tech support cant understand there accent, hangs up, and then never buys from that company or its service provider again.

I am also worried about is the idea that america jobs are no longer American jobs. Companies who started here, got big here, and where founded by Americans who should respect there country do not, so they commit treason and outsource thereby affecting the american economy negatively and attacking the core of america in the process. Do you know that legally all it takes to get a CEO of one of these companies - any anybody actually - sent to jail and possibly killed (Capital punishment) for treason is "the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction" as per the constitution? I wish I had a list of every big name who outsource to India and takes american jobs away from Americans who need them, because I would use it.

So based on the above way of looking at constitutional law and economics, Out sourcing is treason in my humble opinion, and the reason the economy is so bad right now. More jobs in america equals more money in taxes and more money for public works and a better country for us all. The system may not work perfectly, but at least if you have a job you can pay your rent and take care of your dependants.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

Despite my disagreements with some of your sentiments (education in India rocks by relation to education in the US), I still don't see how that places a spec of blame with Google.

Re:Desperate times...

[bit01]

Relax. I was just responding to your comment "What you're saying is that nobody can succeed and not be evil. I disbelieve that." implying to me that success is independent of "evilness".

I know little about Google; they may well be bucking the statistics (that's why I said "many" and "generally") and if they are that's good news because they will be setting a much better example for the software industry than M$ has.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Re:Desperate times...

[NitsujTPU]

Sorry, grad student... I'm used to tearing up arguments. All of my stress is purely related to school :-)

Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[codepunk]

I hope they don't plan on using ajax or java script to do it. The IE java script interpreter is so damn slow it is like watching paint dry. I just tried to build a large scale app using a java script interface kit and failed. It failed not because the program was bad, as a matter of fact it was damn snappy in firefox. Then I did the unthinkable and loaded it up in IE, slow as mud to the point of being totally unusable. The next person that tells me how great IE is, I am going to punch in the teeth.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet Explorer is great! (ducks).

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Krach42]

The next person that tells me how great IE is, I am going to punch in the teeth.

Dude, IE is great! </blatantly-asking-for-it>

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[mpcooke3]

DHTML effects like moving text or images are much faster in IE than Firefox. And I mean an order of magnitude faster. The bugs have been sitting in the firefox bugtraq since the early releases.

Mind you DHTML/AJAX stuff tends to leak memory in IE if you don't implement work arounds, so in my case I have a slow implementation in firefox or one that runs fast but crashes IE after a couple of hours.

Of course the whole web platform was never designed for writing client side apps so it's not suprising using the technology in this way is either slow or unstable in both the major browsers.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[tb3]

JavaScript? You want JavaScript? Visit the site with Firefox and the Developer Tools, view the JavaScript source, and be amazed! Tons of code, most of it proof-of-concept quality. Tons of comments along the order of "Fix this later'. If I was Bill, I'd be bloody humiliated to release this to the public.
I honestly wonder if the coders at Microsoft know that we can see their code? At least the JS isn't Hungarian notation. :P

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Centurix]

The XMLHTTPRequest ActiveX threading model is wrong for client side operations. When invoking an abort() on a long running asynchronous request in IE, the JScript interpreter simply waits for the request to return before doing anything else. May not be so bad for client side stuff, but as far as I know the same model is used for the server-side component (wininet)...

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[jwjcmw]

I have been wondering whether all of these new Ajax apps are going to be workable on the client. Especially when you start having multiple applications open at once. I was checking out various calendar apps earlier today (kiko.com, planzo.com and others). My machine was seeming pretty sluggish...firefox was taking up over 200MB of memory and constantly using between 25-50% of my cpu...and none of the windows seemed to be doing anything.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[jsight]

:) I totally agree. I was amazed that they would release this pile of junk at all, especially with this much fanfare.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they don't plan on using ajax or java script to do it.

It's Javascript. One word. There's no such thing as "java script"; it's not scripted Java.

The IE java script interpreter is so damn slow it is like watching paint dry.

Using AJAX and Javascript speeds up web interfaces. That's why GMail is so fast, because it uses AJAX and Javascript.

I just tried to build a large scale app using a java script interface kit and failed.

In my experience, people who refer to Javascript as "java script" are always people who build things by bodging, copying and pasting, rather than writing and understanding code. A rule of thumb that always seems to work well is that if somebody has had such little exposure to a concept that they can't even spell it right, then they aren't qualified to comment on it. Would you trust somebody's opinion of the Linux kernel if they routinely spelt it "colonel"? Or would you think that they don't know WTF they are talking about?

It failed not because the program was bad, as a matter of fact it was damn snappy in firefox. Then I did the unthinkable and loaded it up in IE, slow as mud to the point of being totally unusable.

So what? I can show you dozens of areas where Internet Explorer runs Javascript faster than Firefox. Different browsers are optimised in different areas, and there's lots of places where you can write poorly-performing Javascript that only shows up in some browsers. Loops are common places - for (var i = 0; i < foo.length; i++) { // lots of foo[i] accesses } is a decent example. My initial assumption is that you've made lots of little stupid mistakes like that and Firefox managed to work around them quite well. Doesn't mean it's not your fault.

The next person that tells me how great IE is, I am going to punch in the teeth.

You are a violent psychopath.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Pollardito]

A rule of thumb that always seems to work well is that if somebody has had such little exposure to a concept that they can't even spell it right, then they aren't qualified to comment on it.

next your gonna tell us that we shouldn't listen to Bush when he talks about nucular energy

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[Anubis350]

But have you ever tried do any css work in IE? I use drop down menus on my site, and the css+html works fine in any standards compliant browser. But on IE I need to use a suckerfish javascript to make the damn thing work properly.

Re:Hope it don't use ajax or java script

[l0b0]

Pardon me all the way, but I'd call BS on anyone trying to convince me that s/he's build a "large scale app" without even knowing how to spell the language s/he used. No sirree.

Live.com

[TubeSteak]

Live.com still ends up going directly to msn's search results.

The result of searching for linux through live.com

The page looked a lot nicer with my adblocking software on.
And is it just me... or does the page look almost exactly like google's?

Re:Live.com

[jZnat]

The order is different. After linux.com, redhat.com comes in MSN while kernel.org comes in Google. Besides, you know as well as I do that linux.org, linux.com, redhat.com, debian.org, kernel.org, gentoo.org, ubuntu.com, etc., are all the top-known sites regarding Linux, so of course those should be the top results.

That sound you hear...

[pedantic bore]

... is your local broadband company throwing a party.

Unless they can really trim the fat, this will be the biggest motivation for broadband since pr0n.

Re:That sound you hear...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant aside from. It's okay. Honest mistake.

Re:Again...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Bingo. This is a bunker-buster-sized FUD bomb.

I saw some versions of this when I worked there

[Saint Stephen]

I saw some HTML + webified versions of Office when I worked there. Probably around 2000. They cancelled it. I wish I could remember more about it.

Re:I saw some versions of this when I worked there

[Osty]

I saw some HTML + webified versions of Office when I worked there. Probably around 2000. They cancelled it. I wish I could remember more about it.

Most likely you're thinking about NetDocs, which, though it never shipped as a single product, did actually contribute many pieces to Office (InfoPath in particular), MSN (parts of their billing and support system, Messenger, pieces of MSN Explorer), and other Microsoft products that did ship. Alternatively, you might have seen pieces of Hailstorm, which was later named ".NET My Services" before being killed. Again, much of Hailstorm's knowledge made its way into .NET (Hailstorm was all about Web Services right when the whole .NET thing was starting up, and it's no coincidence that .NET has very robust support for SOAP-based web services).

This is not all that different from what other companies do, with the exception of Microsoft publicizing projects that are eventually killed or integrated into something else. This is not even unusual for Microsoft. For example, where do you think the Office Assistant (Microsoft Agent) stuff came from? Microsoft Bob (especially the dog and cat). While it was patronizing and simplistic, it was also way ahead of its time -- task-based interface, scaleable vector graphics, "interactive" help (say what you will about Clippy and the Office Assistant crap, but many people liked them and you can't really argue with the cuteness factor), etc. This is how companies grow and innovate. What Microsoft learned from Hailstorm surely has a direct effect on Windows Live, just as what they learned from NetDocs affected Office and what they learned from Bob affected Windows and Office. For example, they've learned to use open betas to their advantage, and to incubate fresh ideas with little intervention (Start.com, the origin of Live.com and arguably the cornerstone to the whole project, was developed, shipped, and supported by a team of only two or three developers with no management overhead or other BS, and who were allowed to be open about the process through blogging and customer interaction -- they were even allowed to support Firefox!).

People scoffed at the first couple versions of Internet Explorer, but when Microsoft got fired up they really blew everybody away. Hopefully this time they've learned that follow-through is just as important as shipping, and Windows Live doesn't stagnate the way IE did.

Re:Because anyone who's not running Windows wants

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much, yeah.

Great - Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

This is JUST the set of office tools I've been waiting for. Finally, an office suite that is always available and will be known for its stability. I can't wait to make the switch.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't

[Steven Reddie]

They could have had these products in the works for quite some time, though it seems a safe bet that this is in response to the recent Google rumours. Who cares, though? Reacting to the needs of the market is what smart businesses do. Microsoft seems to be going through a stage of re-inventing themselves somewhat. Becoming leaner and quickly responding to the market is what they need to do to survive. Good on them.

Ha! It's fun to watch ...

[Pharaoh_B]

Microsoft's knee-jerk reaction to google rumors.

I love marketing-talk

[kebes]

"This advertising model has emerged as a very important thing," Gates said.

Translation: "We really missed the boat on that one, and are desperately trying to catch up."

"The live phenomenon is not just about Microsoft. It's partners, it's competitors...the whole space is being transformed."

Translation: "I woke up one day and suddenly there was this technology company making alot of money... and to my surprise it wasn't Microsoft! I knew I had to take over that tech sector ASAP so I asked someone what all this 'online' stuff was about."

Re:I love marketing-talk

[Anonymous Coward]

This is modded insightful? rediculous.

Re:I love marketing-talk

[krappie]

"The live phenomenon is not just about Microsoft. It's partners, it's competitors...the whole space is being transformed."

Have you noticed that since the antitrust lawsuits that every quote from Bill Gates mentions competing and competitors?

live.com domain

[Karamchand]

I really wonder how much they had to pay for live.com. According to whois the domain was just updated on Oct 31.

Re:live.com domain

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the exact same thing. I bet the shelled out quite a bit for it. According to the Internet Archive, live.com used to be a streaming media web site, looks to have been run by a single guy who was on top of things when domain name selling began:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041126052107/http://w ww.live.com/

I bet Live Networks, Inc. founder/CEO Ross Finlayson made out nicely. Oddly enough, the archive doesn't have any entries for live.com after Nov 26, 2004. Ironic..

Re:live.com domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks bunk. Haven't changed the domain registration info, uses an emoticon when talking about Firefox, claims it will support Firefox, doesn't use an M$ product to produce the page.

Re:live.com domain

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought they would have already owned it for xbox live...

Re:live.com domain

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I don't think it's bunk. A google search found connections to http://www.microsoftgadgets.com/ which has references to the new live.com and, in addition, a search of channel9.msdn.com shows no hits (yet) for "www.live.com", but several referring to the microsoftgadgets page, including some from (apparently) Microsoft employees. WHOIS shows that both microsoftgadgets.com and live.com have the same contact name. That's enough for me to dismiss the idea of it being a hoax.

Re:live.com domain

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Wow. Further analysis of the page at http://www.microsoftgadgets.com/ reveals sock-puppetry at it's finest.

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to read up on the history of Windows and how quickly they announced it after seeing what the competition was. It didn't need to work at that moment... or ten years later, but hey, people bought it.

Anti-Competitive?

[potat0man]

Wouldn't this fall under monopolistic/anti-competition laws? Giving something away below cost in order to crush competition?

Re:Anti-Competitive?

[JMUChrisF]

i wouldn't particularly think so. they're not forcing you to use it. you have other choices.

it's different than them basically forcing OEMs to put windows on their machines.

Re:Anti-Competitive?

[antikristian]

Giving something away below cost in order to crush competition?

...And their competitors are doing what?
What is the cost of software anyways? The law was probably invented to stop people from giving away baked beans to crush their competitors. Baked beans have a "per can" production cost, baked beans can not be copied without some kind of loss in quality.

Re:Anti-Competitive?

[Bulmakau]

not really.
Anyway, the competition is supposedly developing a free office/os alternative, and StarOffice is free anyway. So MS is not really giving it cheaper than the competition.
Anti-competitive can't really hold when you are talking about MS vs. Google given that google is not really a poor competitor and taking into consideration that Google will have hard time proving they are not a monopolistic company by themselves in the search arena.
Take for example the latest news about google TV thingy.. Probably planning on giving out free TV broadcast for advertising, right? Does that classify as giving away free product in an already existing (paid) market? I don't think so. It might very easily mistaken for Anti competitive act when the company you are up against is a huge wealthy company. Think about all the products google releases. None of them costs money, right? However, they are all going into existing markets (paid or free). It is not really anti competitive actions on behalf of google, are they? They are just moves of a huge company with very deep pockets. Same for MS. Only thing is, MS is going against Google, which is hardly a defensless company.

Re:Anti-Competitive?

[dhasenan]

Um...no.

First, there's no online office product yet, and Microsoft hasn't been crushing anything like that.

Second, live.com is, as everyone else has been saying, another web portal (albeit with some interesting features and probably Windows integration). Nothing prevents anyone else from implementing all the same ideas.

If you're the first to make something, that makes you a monopoly by default. So should we punish all inventors?

Hoax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really an official Microsoft site? It looks like it's probably a hoax. Microsoft wouldn't release something this unpolished and clearly inferior to Google's personalized homepage. Microsoft takes Google VERY seriously.

The first sentence on the page seems like a giveaway: "Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together." Microsoft employs lots of good writers; I can't see something like that making its way through to a front page.

My tracert was inconclusive.

Re:Hoax?

[mbaudis]

You haven't seen one of the microsoft advertisements lately, have you? like the child in the sweater, dreaming in amazing windows, or the chef etc.
As bad as it gets. They don't care about anything but brand recognition; if you recognize MS by telling hilarious stuff and being completely wacky, that is fine - you accept the mightyness of the money bying all the bad ads.
Actually, this is in accordance with the old branding scheme: better stupid ads than none.

Re:Hoax?

[oztiks]

I think its real but it is in desperation..

MS Office makes up a large amount of MS's income with the recent resignation of Offices key executive and just a day after google goes public about contributing actual paid employees into open office it does make you wonder...

This whole www.live.com thing looks nice but two things i dont get is a) the slashdot feed is there (linux users haven) and i saw the netscape logo there too b) its all beta beta beta, MS has a reputation of releasing stuff with a little more substance.

You know what this means?

[thepotoo]

Microsoft is getting really desperate. They are downright paranoid about us slashdotters, as well they should be. Firefox support (I hope soon) probably means Linux support (interesting... an alternative to WINE, or just useless?) means that they are really panicy about the google situation.

Also, is it just me, or does firefox do the same thing IE does there? Tried both, and it looks the same, with just the little Firefox users... banner at the top.

Re:You know what this means?

[gregbains]

Well it beats Opera, which gets nothing, not even a nice error bar!

And it seems the same except the sidebar which seems a bit squashed in Firefox

Re:You know what this means?

[AKAImBatman]

Remember when Microsoft was going to do this last time? Supposedly Office was going to be sold to users on an ASP (as in Application Service Provider) basis. You'd pay your monthly fee and you'd get to keep running your software. The market didn't care so much for this extortion^W business plan, and Microsoft decided to move to their "forced upgrade" cycles.

BTW, if anyone is interested, you're not missing anything on live.com. I just went there in IE and it immediately tried to install a bunch of spyware crapola. I was not amused. On the bright side, there's a category for Slashdot!

Re:You know what this means?

[jZnat]

I'm using the Firefox trunk, so support for Windows Live might actually be better (or far superior) than in Firefox 1.0.x. Hell, I'm also wondering what they need to do to support Firefox at this point on their site as it seems to work fine other than maybe a couple layout-related glitches.

Re:You know what this means?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Microsoft is getting really desperate."

Is that why they made more income in Q2-2005 than they have ever made before?

"They are downright paranoid about us slashdotters, as well they should be."

No, they aren't. Slashdot isn't even 0.1% of their userbase. Firefox, on the other hand, represents 8-10% of web users - a significant enough potion that it's only logical to support them.

Re:You know what this means?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I just went there in IE and it immediately tried to install a bunch of spyware crapola.

That's definitely not the case when I visited using IE.

Re:You know what this means?

[AKAImBatman]

Didn't you get all the popups of some sort of "Windows Registry Fixer" thing trying to run? The darn thing wouldn't leave me alone.

Re:You know what this means?

[AKAImBatman]

Okay, I just tried it again. No spyware this time. Then again, the screen was all messed up last time, so maybe they were having a hiccup of some sort.

Honestly, after two minutes of using it I realized that the whole Windows Live thing is just an attempt to compete with Google Homepage. Hopefully Microsoft will show a bit more imagination with Office Live. :-/

Re:You know what this means?

[StikyPad]

More likely it's spy/adware you already had. Alot of programs put their hooks (literally) into IExplore.exe and make it look like the webpage is to blame.

Re:You know what this means?

[AKAImBatman]

I did consider that, but it seems a bit unlikely. I never browse with IE, nor do any of the other users on this computer. There's not even an icon for it. Plus the computer is new.

The the *only* possible way I can think of that it got in (if it is indeed pre-existing) is through these SOBs. I had to remove some "free" bundled software (that they didn't warn you about, or give you the option not to install) that came with it. It's people like this that make me wish there was a national anti-spyware bill. :-/

Re:You know what this means?

[game kid]

Hopefully Microsoft will show a bit more imagination with Office Live. :-/

I'll bet that it'll look like GMail/Google Mail's Compose box (blatantly copied by NetZero et al., BTW) though. Google can have Microsoft muy caliente under their white collars indeed, just by embracing, extending, and pwning their mail/doc formatting tools.

Re:You know what this means?

[patdabiker]

It is interesting to note that opening in Safari gives nothing but a search bar; while Firefox you get plenty of content.

Riding the Bear

[axonal]

Microsoft is in the position IBM was years ago and they are just beginning to realize the effect of Google and it seems a bit too late now... ...a lot of Microsoft's current offerings aren't all that appealing or innovative compared to Googles and other companies.

Re:Riding the Bear

[Osty]

Microsoft is in the position IBM was years ago and they are just beginning to realize the effect of Google and it seems a bit too late now... ...a lot of Microsoft's current offerings aren't all that appealing or innovative compared to Googles and other companies.

Alternatively, Microsoft is in the same position as they were a decade ago, with Google now playing the role of Netscape. We all know how that ended.

Re:Riding the Bear

[chord.wav]

MS does innovate when put under pressure, I'm not so sure that it is "late" for them.

the point of windows live is...

[cryptoz]

what, exactly? since you seem to have to have the real windows to use it, what's the point of using a web based version of an operating system which you're already using?

I'm posting this in the context that live.com is COMPLETELY broken in opera and mostly broken in firefox on my linux machine, which is all I have access to right now.

worst. service. ever.

heh

[hurfy]

I can't get past the image of clippy popping up to sell me a widget cause i typed widget in a speadsheet ;)

Not entirely bad idea, access to word at home could be handy at times ... just not enough to justify buying it myself. I am betting that a subscription based one will be a rip-off tho.

Re:heh

[LiquidCoooled]

Check the license on your version of Office at work.
The greater majority (at least upto Office 2000, cannot verify later) allow a second copy to be installed on seperate computers and used by yourself (ie one instance at once)

The MS Office Eula9.chm on my computer states the following:

Can I make a second copy for my portable computer?
The End-User License Agreement (EULA) for many Microsoft application software products contains the following sentence: "The primary user of the computer on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed may make a second copy for his or her exclusive use on a portable computer." If your EULA contains this sentence, then, subject to the conditions mentioned, you may make a second copy of the software. Note that you must be the primary user of the computer on which the software is installed. The primary user is the individual who uses the computer most of the time it is in use. Only that individual is entitled to use the second copy. Furthermore, the software must be installed on the local hard disk of your computer; you are not entitled to make and use a second copy on your portable computer if you run the primary copy of the software from a network server. Finally, only one secondary copy may be made; you may install this copy on more than one portable computer.


There was a thread about this very subject recently, for a bit more discussion you can follow it Here. Theres other bits mentioned in the overall story as well.

Its certainly worth looking at especially for those infrequent uses without paying out any money at all :)

Try a real online OS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bunch of B/S from Microsoft. If you want to try a real online os (still in Beta) go to www.eyeos.org. That is some really cool stuff

~Alan

Irony???

[mayhemt]

The MS Live site shows "TOP FEEDS"
come one take a guess...
our very own ./

Apple .Mac anyone?

[curmi]

Windows Live sounds a lot like .Mac. Only with ads.

Great to see Microsoft innovating once again.

Re:Apple .Mac anyone?

[Lurk3r]

What? Its a giant mac ad. Sigh. Mac addicts just can't tell the difference anymore...

They just don't get it.

[barik]

Microsoft just doesn't get it. The fact they consider Firefox an afterthought is a good indication that they're going to lose the online search/portal wars to Google. They still don't understand that they no longer have a monopoly on the web and that proprietary platform development will no longer cut it.

In the past year, I've seen sites like Chase, Georgia Power, and others write better web code to support alternate browsers. Three years ago, these sites would barely work. Firefox isn't a predominant player yet, but it can't easily be ignored either.

Re:They just don't get it.

[Thu25245]

How long did it take Google to build a Firefox version of their toolbar?

How long will it take until a Linux or Mac version of Google Earth comes out? Google Desktop Search?

Almost 90% of the market uses both Windows and IE. It should come as no surprise that they're the first priority. That Microsoft intends to support Firefox at all is a step forward.

Re:They just don't get it.

[Skreems]

Despite the fact that they have a "Firefox support coming soon" banner at the top, the page works just fine for me in Firefox...

Re:They just don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now apart from that fact that firefox only has about 10percent of browser useage... maybe... If you are a big company that has its own document format or application suite that has a leading market share you would be stupid not to build your stuff to take advantage of that first....

Problem with IT is that most people talking about it yell and scream about OSS this and Freeware that, but the simple truth is if microsoft continues to make a profit, alot of the IT inudstry must still be buying their products. If this is the case then why should their business model change?

In the end it is all your own fault so suck it up!!!

Re:They just don't get it.

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Microsoft just doesn't get it."

10 billion a year says that they do.

"The fact they consider Firefox an afterthought is a good indication that they're going to lose the online search/portal wars to Google."

Well, seeing as the Live.com/Start.com/MSN/VirtualEarth teams have been very responsive and committed to bringing support to a platform that competes with their product, I'd say that Firefox is more than an afterthought. Live.com already works with Firefox. And full support is forthcoming.

Re:DEFEAT SAMUEL ALITO

[st1d]

>>"...but your Fuhrer's days are numbered..."
>>"Defeat Samuel Alito. We're not asking you. We're telling you."

Okay, now I'm really confused. Is Bush the Fuhrer, or are the liberals??! :)

Bad Move?

[B4L1STA]

This seems like it could be the beginning of everything moving to a more web-oriented computer experience. Who needs Windows when you can use Office, MSN, etc. FROM FIREFOX (under Linux). Windows could be left for professionals who need a robust platform to run "real" applications for things like video/image editing, CAD design, etc. Everyday users could do the most basic computer tasks in the same way under Linux as under Windows... I guess even if this kills Windows, Microsoft has a stake in it either way now...

Re:Bad Move?

[RevDobbs]

Windows could be left for professionals who need a robust platform to run "real" applications for things like video/image editing, CAD design, etc.

Wait a sec... I thought that is what IRIX was for?

Re:Bad Move?

[John Muir]

Gamers.........

Macs are great for all that stuff too, and widely liked by those trying them for the first time. But the one group of average Windows people hard to switch is those who like their games on a desktop instead of from a console where they should be!!

Re:Bad Move?

[DavidD_CA]

I didn't get that impression at all from TFA.

Windows Live and Office Live appear to be *supplemental* services to Windows and Office.

Windows Live seems to take MSN/Start.com, and add features from MySpace, messenger, Hotmail, and anti-virus all into one. Corporations will then be able to tie that in, a la SharePoint.

Office Live is probably an extension off the existing Office site with free templates and clipart, upgrades, tutorials, etc. There's also an Office 2003 feature which allows for the remote sharing of documents called Workspaces. I imagine Office Live will encoprorate that as well.

Re:Bad Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

The beginning or network based clients? Please. Try working with X-Windows, "thin clients", or the Java-based version of VNC that can run on any contemporary web browser.

The problem for all of them is the service of poorly optimized, huge, honking applications like the CPU and memory-wasting king of them all, Microsoft Office. Running even two implementations of that on a server is pretty much guaranteed to bring anything but big iron to a grinding, shuddering, tire-wrenching trip to the breakdown lane.

Re:Bad Move?

[IANAAC]

Who needs Windows when you can use Office, MSN, etc. FROM FIREFOX (under Linux)

Eh. I would have sat up and taken notice a couple of years ago. But you know what? There are open source apps that deal quite nicely with everything now. OO.org 2 deals with pretty much everything I throw at it these days. And what exactly is MSN that can't be had elsewhere on the net?

Re:Bad Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows could be left for professionals who need a robust platform to run "real" applications for things like video/image editing,"

surely this should be modded as funny?

Windows Live

[Eli Gottlieb]

So how soon before we can have a full Windows operating system "live", complete with BSODs and malware?

Looks a lot like Start.com

[EraserMouseMan]

Don't you think so? I just wonder weather Start.com was a trial baloon to see how the public would respond to the new format.

Re:Looks a lot like Start.com

[Idontpostmuch]

It wasn't about how they would respond. The real reason for start.com was so they could write it and stablize it, and also so devs could write gadgets earlier.

Re:Looks a lot like Start.com

[xWastedMindx]

actually it appears to be just that.

disclaimer text at the bottom of the screen:
this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. for other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ enjoy!

IE Crash

[Anonymous Coward]

When I visited the site, my internet explorer crashed. No joke. I'm using IE6. Anyone else have this happen?

difinetly M$$..

[xTantrum]

live.com wow, wish i was the one who owned that name. Imagine how much money they payed for it.

Re:difinetly M$$..

[imroy]

Live555 use to have live.com. They make various bits of streaming media software. They have a library that's used in compiling MPlayer with stream playing support. I wondered why they changed. I thought it was some silly bit of corporate branding, but I guess MS made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

Re:difinetly M$$..

[Xarius]

I bet it's not as much as they paid for it.

Re:difinetly M$$..

[Anonymous Coward]

To be a successful grammar Nazi, one must first consult dictionary.com. You have failed, sir.

Re:difinetly M$$..

[Slashdoc Beta]

i bet they paid .... ONE MILLLION dollars

Re:difinetly M$$..

[DigiShaman]

Thanks for the link. The Live555 website made me feel like I was browsing the web back in 1996. Wow, such memories!!!

Re:difinetly M$$..

[terkozer]

Sure enough.

Archive.org's last record of live.com is from late last year

http://web.archive.org/web/20041126052107/http://w ww.live.com/

Re:difinetly M$$..

[Anonymous Coward]

GATES
Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if anything, LIVE.COM does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.

LIVE.COM
This is it. I've poured my heart and soul into this business and now it's finally paying off. We're rich! Richer than astronauts.
I reluctantly accept your proposal!

GATES
Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!

That's the effect of the "C" word...

[AvantLegion]

... "competition".

Netvibes

[GFPerez]

Windows Live remembers me of www.netvibes.com (or any other "customized homepage" system).

Wow. Great Name

[bullitB]

Seriously, live.com is an insanely good domain name. If I had $50bn in cash, I'd probably buy that too.

And the RSS reader is pretty darn neat too.

It doesn't actually do anything I use Windows and Office for (playing games and pretending to do work, respectively), but eh...interesting.

So shoot me...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm an optimist.

Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Says a lot. Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft is starting to see the error in their ways.

This does seem like a good idea. I wish them success.

This crashes my IE in XP

[Augusto]

At least if I go in with firefox it renders incorrectly but doesn't crash my browser.

Re:This crashes my IE in XP

[DigiShaman]

I run XP with IE and I'm not having browswer crash. Maybe you should clean out all the spyware and other crap first.

Painfully bad?

[awful]

Painfully bad? I think that's a bit strong. I do use Google's Personal Homepage, and the live.com page seems remarkably similar - editable drag and drop content sections, options for adding other or custom content. It has support for 5 languages including 3 variants of English (UK, US and Australian), and interestingly, they are quite mature about what suggested content they offer up - eg. Google News, FLickr. Two of their biggest competitors and they're prepared to send traffic their way.

Painfully bad? Well, I won't use it (it's just another service similar to things I already use) but other people will, and I don't think they'll find it painfully bad.

Re:Painfully bad?

[Dan_Bercell]

editable drag and drop content sections, options for adding other or custom content. It has support for 5 languages including 3 variants of English (UK, US and Australian),

All these features are part of SharePoint which has been out for years, so I doubt they are copying google. If people still think this is a rip off of google they need to think ahead. MS Vista is going to tie into this type of online content, and will be able to do cool things with it

Like a JUNKIE

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Are customers asking for this?

No. And, I don't think, as I'm sure will be said here, that it has anything at all to do with Google. It has to do with Microsoft wanting to figure out a way to develop an bottomless income stream. For example, many people where quite happy with Windows 95 untill they where forced to upgrade. Many people saw no particular reason to migrate from Windows 2000, untill they where forced. Many companies have built very expensive internal server applications around NT and Windows 2000 Server, but soon, they will be forced to upgrade. Over many of these platforms, people have stuck with Office 95 or Office 2000, because they sill functioned on the platforms and did what the users needed, not reason to upgrade. Microsoft sees revenue here, basically locking users into forced upgrades because once you buy into Subscription Office, you have to keep paying like a junkie if you want to access your documents.

Re:Like a JUNKIE

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one is forcing upgrades. Where on earth did you get the idea that someone happy running windows 95 has been forced along the upgrade path? Sounds like you simply don't know what you're babbling on about.

Re:Like a JUNKIE

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a jack-ass. Do you masturbate a lot? I'll bet.

Interesting

[Auckerman]

It seems like this page was thrown togethor pretty quickly. According to a job posting I saw on craigslist this afternoon, MS is looking for Systems Admins/Engineers for Windows Live (with command line experience). The DNS was updated yesterday, the registrar (register.com) still has the owner being some guy named Jack Spurr and not Microsoft. I guess these are two reasons why it's "beta".

Re:Interesting

[x96kxrk]

It's clearly based on the not-thrown-together http://www.start.com/ I actually prefer start.com over what they've decided to do with live.com

Michael

Excellent

[Evil Pete]

Internet Versions of Office And Windows

A great idea! Just as long as the security is rock solid ... oh wait....

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

how about an internet version of ie first?

Not even paying for 1st choice!

[billybob2001]

It was their 2nd choice...

http://evil.com/ was already taken, so they thought laterally!

Make that 3rd, http://vile.com/ is taken too...

Re:Not even paying for 1st choice!

[managedcode]

Evil and Live are the best Aanagrams to quote in MS interview. I will do it. LOL

Indeed...

[mister_llah]

Google themselves don't have any plans because they don't have an office suite... but they just invested a ton of money into the open source community... ... and if Microsoft's "live" beta does well... you'll see clones... open source clones, and if it is good enough, Google might do it... (but who knows, "copycatting" doesn't seem to be their style just yet, they've got a lot of creativity left in them)

===

From the POV I think Google is looking from...

It's a lot easier not to look like a bad guy when you are letting other people do your work for you, I think... Google's got a good edge on that... the open source community is large and just needs money to help it along... it'll edge in on Microsoft's turf while being respectful towards Google for helping it originally.

They don't need to branch into these areas because they are basically paying other people to possibly do it for them... putting them in a better position to indirectly influence that part of the market...

It's a good long term strategy... very sneaky :)

Re:Indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot easier not to look like a bad guy when you are letting other people do your work for you, I think... Google's got a good edge on that...

Google the evil, manipulative genius?

IAGO:
. . . How am I, then, a villain
To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,
Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.

Re:Indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google themselves don't have any plans because they don't have an office suite... but they just invested a ton of money into the open source community... ... and if Microsoft's "live" beta does well... you'll see clones... open source clones, and if it is good enough, Google might do it... (but who knows, "copycatting" doesn't seem to be their style just yet, they've got a lot of creativity left in them)

Google has done plenty of copy catting...
Webmail
Online Maps
Web Portal
Localization
Online Price aggregation (Froogle)

The above have been done many times by other companies, Google found a way to make it seem like they did it better.

Deficit of Ideas

[esconsult1]

See, this is why MS still sucks.

Windows users would sign up for droves for something like Apple's .Mac, this would have been a great way for Microsoft to get more revenue stream, offer backup services, personal home pages, file exchange, groups, and what not. Sure, Windows is crappy enough already, but a service like that, for Windows would have been a great thing. I'm sure Google will introduce it soon enough anyway.

Instead, they're in full reaction mode to Google with this really crappy site that seems to get the worst features of the web assembled all in one place.

Man, these guys have lost the ability to innovate Big Time (tm). I don't use Windows, but we all can see the opportunity that they missed here.

Re:Deficit of Ideas

[Skreems]

Do you think it's possible that the current state of this site is not ALL that it's going to be, in the long run? Jesus, everyone on here is assuming that it's taken MS two years to catch up to this, and all the resources of the company have gone into making this one rather light-featured website.

Holy Crap!

[SamSeaborn]

Holy Crap! This is slick!

www.live.com -- the best drag-and-drop web implementation I have ever seen. Everything feels light and slick ... delightful.

Watch out, Google -- MS is on the move. This is an *awesome* implementation of an interactive web interface.

Sam

Re:Holy Crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

the best drag-and-drop web implementation I have ever seen.

I take it you haven't seen Google's Personalized Homepage then?

Re:Holy Crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Start.com (MS aswell) and Googles Personalised Homepage did this months ago, nothing new here.

subscription versions..

[nurb432]

Ah, and so it finally begins.. The end of the stand alone PC.

Its been tried before, but it will happen. This just might be the final nail in the coffin, reducing us to 'media appliances'.. With that pesky monthly fee.

Re:subscription versions..

[tomstdenis]

Two words. "Get fucked".

Enough people do software development and number crunching that computers won't become appliances.

Things like MSNTV [or whatever it's called] have been around for quite some time. People still buy their redundant power hogging P4 boxes from Dell...Imagine that. The US and Canada are just not in the mindset of "limited resources". At all. I mean gas hits all time highs and people are still buying SUVs and what not.

A web version of office will never fly for two reasons

1. Inability to work offline [including backup storage]

2. Security. I'm sure every company in the world would want to put their sales figures, internal documents and business slides on a website that is just as likely to leak them to a million users as it is to render them appropriately.

If you have to manually download your work instead of just keeping it on a samba share that gets tape backed every night nobody will use it.

Now shut your stupid hysteria and get a firm grip on reality. Hold tight!

Tom

Re:subscription versions..

[sco08y]

Ah, and so it finally begins..

How does MS making a crappy website begin the end of the PC?

Even if they *could* get Office running over a thin client (in 10 years, maybe) there'd be nothing to stop you from simply using OpenOffice. Running Office over a website would never be more than a convenience.

Re:subscription versions..

[nurb432]

Call me back in 10 years.

Oh, and avoid the 'language' next time. It only shows you are a clueless idiot.

Re:subscription versions..

[tomstdenis]

10 years from now ... just like the "paperless office" right?

People will still want to control their information. I'm not saying nobody would use the online versions, I'm saying it won't make the desktop obsolete.

Specially considering the trend is towards home and small businesses where desktop boxes normally serve as cheap workstations and servers.

Tom

Is it just me

[Anonymous Coward]

The page is a bit more pleasurable to view than the google homepage, which is surprising to me. I use gmail and I find that to be the most superior webmail out there. But it's interesting, because in this case it seems like google has made a homepage that is more busy than Microsoft's Live site!

Hint to google: Please remove all the google search junk and bookmarks at the top of the personalized homepage and just provide a simple search bar like in gmail. I really prefer to have an uncluttered display, and the google search along with everything else just makes it too complicated.

It failed.... Google just won.

[davecrusoe]

First search result when "Desktop" is searched for in MS "Live": Google Desktop! http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=LIVE&q=des ktop w00t!

Re:It failed.... Google just won.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the 5th result is:

http://www.gnome.org/

GNOME !!!!!

Re:It failed.... Google just won.

[oztiks]

Type in "server" and you get http://httpd.apache.org/
Type in "os" and you get http://www.apple.com/macosx
Type in "operating system" and you get http://www.debian.org/

Oh you could have lots of fun here! :)

Re:Ha! It's fun to watch ...

[xTantrum]

what do you expect, microsoft has been conditioned now. once you get burned you don't do the same thng again. They ignored the significance of the net in the early days and continued to push office. Google and other companies came along and showed just important it was. Then OSS became popular as well...do the math. they are caught between a rock and a hard place. The good thing for them is that they are not trying to determine the market this time, they seem to be trying to adapt to it otherwise they know they'll die.

Microsoft loves us!

[game kid]

Microsoft really loves our tendency to click all kinds of links that could give them lots of indirect ad money^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wus!

And The Point Is?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid the whole idea of Window's Live makes absolutely no sense to me. What's it supposed to be? An all in one portal for Microsoft Web Services? From what I've been able to see by logging in with my .Net Passport (Why are those still around anyway?), functionality is virtually nil - I wouldn't even call that site an alpha; there's nothing on it.

The Window's title in the name is misleading as well. There's absolutely nothing Operating Systemlike on the entire site.

Too little, too late from MS if you ask me.

Not just the web

[nurb432]

Have you watched tv lately? or listened to the radio? Or simply drove down the street?

We are living in a virtual sea of ads. its sick.

Re:WebTv again?

[elementary_penguin]

Reminds me of when M$ changed WebTv to run on windows, totally screwed things up. Lost files etc.

What?

[Steven Reddie]

Your criticism doesn't make any sense. If a beta is a full product, that's good isn't it? If no showstoppers are found you'd expect it to quickly become a release candidate and then soon after that to be released. That sounds like a pretty good use of the beta cycle to me. So in what way has Microsoft not been honest in their use of the term "beta"?

Re:What?

[mister_llah]

You are missing the point. That may be because I was not clear enough.

So I will detail my feelings in a story for you.

Once upon a time there was MS-DOS. It was alright. It got the job done.

Then there was a program called Windows, let us say, Windows 3.0. It was buggy and problematic.

Then an upgrade came out to what was, in my opinion, only beta quality software (that was released as a final release) ... and you had to pay for that... and it would upgrade you to a more stable beta quality product... and so on... and so forth.

Does that make things more clear to you?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in other words, you expect all software to work perfectly with all possible features included that can be included the first time around? Yes, it's obvious you've never touched a compiler before, at least not for anything beyond "Hello World."

PIcs

[Anonymous Coward]

Pics on s/MSN Messenger/Windows Live messenger
http://www.betanews.com/slideshow/Windows_and_Offi ce_Live/96/2

No, NO.

[game kid]

They're not just gonna hurt Google. They're gonna fucking kill them!

...or maybe not, but they (and Yahoo!) did made their personalized-portal-type things before teh Go0gley*...God knows what'll happen.

*Google, NOT this Go0gley.

Re:No, NO.

[rogabean]

I'm going to bank that they don't hurt Google in the least bit. Google has a customizable portal that I tried using for a while as well. And honestly I ended up back at the original Google page (well truthfully I'm using the suggest version... I love that page).

When it comes to searching the web... I don't want a portal and I'm going to assume that most people don't care. Portal services I use Yahoo, but I never use Yahoo for searching I use Google. It's simple and clean which is what i want in a search engine.

Microsoft is likely to hurt Yahoo in the portal arena for me if they can match and surpass what Yahoo currently offers though.

just my .02 copper though.

Re:No, NO.

[iceanfire]

actually I love their portal. On one side I have the slashdot rss feed (along with a couple more at the bottom) and next to it I have my gmail feed. its very easy and gets me the info FAST, all i doo is press : alt+home when I want to check my mail, search or check out the new feeds. due to my broadband connection it doesn't slow the page loading down, nor is it intrusive.

Re:No, NO.

[chris_mahan]

At the risk of being redundant (not that that's ever stopped me before) I'm going to echo that. I /., gmail, google news, bbc rss, and a few stocks... Very handy.

Re:No, NO.

[ZagNuts]

The point was that if the Microsoft page starts becoming widely used advertisers will have to make the choice between advertising on Microsoft's portal or with Google's Adsense and Adwords, thus reducing Google's revenue by splitting the ad market.

Re:No, NO.

[Retric]

Googles advantage with targeted adds is based around the high conversion rate when someone clicks on a Google add they are 2x as likely to buy something from that site as they are from yahoo. Thus people are willing to pay about 2x a much per click for Google adds vs any other type. Now if people really start using Microsoft's portal you might cut into MS's profit's but I don't expect that to be an issue. I use hotmail instead of gmail because I can't connect to gmail at work but I still use Google for search. For MS to cut into Google's profits they are going to have to compete in search AND provide an add service that is as profitable for other sites to use. (Addwords pay's a lot for little space and it fit's in with a lot of websites.) AND take over all the other Google websites that are supported by Addwords.

PS: Advertisers already have hundreds of options for advertising, as long as people are still looking at websites that are willing to use addwords MS is not goign to cut into Googles profits. In some ways advertising is a zero sum game, but Google is only a tiny fraction of overall advertising. If MS where doing 30billion / year in web adds it would do little to Google's bottom line.

Re:No, NO.

[Crayon Kid]

But the GP does have a point. At the core of any search engine is, of course, a search box. That's why, I suspect, for many of us Google starts at the search box in Firefox, or as a bookmarklet on the bookmarks bar (works in any browser).

Heck, on Linux you can go one step further and bind a key combo to pop-up a text box, then have a shell script use the text to launch Google in Firefox, or Beagle on your documents, or IM someone.

I'd say the "live" desktop is already here. Of course, integration is still a nice thing, but frankly if I can get quality results from the same unified text box, I can live without a unified interface for the results.

Check out Windows Live Mail beta!

[Why Login]

You can find it on this page: http://ideas.live.com/ What it gives you Previews of your messages you can read without leaving your inbox Drag-and-drop organization One-click control over junk and scam e-mails Right-click power--reply, delete, and forward 2 GB of storage (2 GB = 2,000,000,000 bytes) Will it be like myname@wmail.com? :-) Looks very familiar... can't remember where I saw a similar e-mail service... with ~2GB inbox...

Its like chess ...

[oztiks]

Google was going to do this then didnt and the whole thing seemed like a rumor... all perpertuated by slashdot anyway..

Do you think MS has fallen for Googles bluff..

Anyway i cant wait for Googles contribution to OO to take off, then being advertised by Google is going to snap MS back a few notches and i dare say thats what MS is worried about.

Re:Its like chess ...

[Dan_Bercell]

Do you think MS has fallen for Googles bluff..

MS has probably been working on this for some time now, so I doubt recent news spured this. I still think google is working on such a solution, but either couldnt come up with something worth pushing out to beta (this would be suprising considering the crap google has been putting out recently) or got word of MS coming out with its version and wanted to make sure the google version was better when released.

Preparation for making XBOX Live more versatile?

[adlib24]

I just read a TIME article about XBOX 360 trying to take over all media in the home. M$ is going to try to win the NextGen console war with XBOX Live. Mark my words these web-apps are just a preparation for making XBox 360 "THE" all-purpose multimedia machine. I mean if XBOX Live lets Mom and Dad do email, surfing, basic word processing (over the web), while letting the kids play video games, watch DVDs, and listen and burn music, why would you ever need a PC? Adlib24 p.s. I don't plan on owning a 360, but if one should...happen...to come my way, I wouldn't complain.

AJAX Active Desktop

[Annon201]

One thing that looks like it might actually take off properly with all this AJAX web development is Microsofts active desktop.. try Meebo, Google Personal, Microsoft Live/Start as your Desktop Background - it works suprisingally well.. Now, google & microsoft need to start competing by cooperating with each others service.. have the ability to add hotmail to google/gmail to live, imap/pop3 to both, add meebo like featuers as panels to support a range of IMs/chat software, interactive flash/java widgets... intergration with google desktop/microsoft search deskbar for interaction with data stored on the users PC and finally using the desktop search indexing programs to manipulate some widgets for complete offline support.. all of this allowing complete user choice & customisation. If done right, i forsee these technologies being almost indesposible in a post-vista internet dominated world.

remides me of IE 2.0

[jmyers]

I remember seeing IE 2.0 and thinking what a lame rip off of netscape. It was horrible. Two years later IE was better than netscape. Dont underestimate MS.

Re:remides me of IE 2.0

[Randall311]

And then they never worked on IE ever again. The End.

Re:remides me of IE 2.0

[TheRaven64]

I remember IE 2.0 being installed with NT 4.0. It crashed as soon as I tried to run it on a clean install. It did again the next time I re-installed. That was okay though, because I had a Netscape CD handy both times.

Back then I didn't use Windows Update (did it even exist?) I just got the service packs off magazine cover CDs when they were released.

What to search for

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace windows with linux

Re:What to search for

[VStrider]

Hahaha! I actually tried it, "Replace windows with linux", and their top result was "Why linux won't replace windows", and some other gems like "linux is not windows" etc.
Hilarious! Either their search algorithms cann't understand a simple frase or, more likely, their search algorithms are biased and adjusted to favor windows and hide linux links under the table. If they feel they need to resort to these kind of dirty tricks, they really *are* afraid of linux and google.
Google, on the other hand, correctly interprets "replace windows with linux" and comes up with "Constructing A Windows-Less Office" and "Windows to Linux Migration Guide".

Re:What to search for

[mikeage]

Either their search algorithms cann't understand a simple fras

Perhaps thei nede a spel cheker. Hint: can't has wun N, and phrase beginns with ph.

http://www.start.com

[kenicheema]

Have anyone seen www.start.com? It looks very similar to www.live.com except it has been around for several months now. If you look at the bottom of start.com, it says that it's by microsoft.
[sarcasm]hm...I wonder if microsoft is feeling the pressure from Google[/sarcasm]

There are no desparate billionaires

[LibertineR]

That is the thing some of you keep forgetting.

Google has done their job, just like Lotus, Word Perfect, Novell, Borland and Netscape before them. Their job was to show Microsoft where the money is, and then get the hell out of the way.

Hate them all you want, but if BillG knows one thing, it is how to crush the enemy. Google is smarter, faster and more aware of history than the others, but Microsoft has the desktop, still most of the browser space, and a shitload of money to throw any direction they please.

Google wont die, they might make a fine adversary, but we are talkin about Office here. Google and nobody else, is going to make a better Office than Microsoft, whether on the web, desktop or anywhere else.

Re:There are no desparate billionaires

[Anonymous Coward]

Google wont die, they might make a fine adversary, but we are talkin about Office here. Google and nobody else, is going to make a better Office than Microsoft, whether on the web, desktop or anywhere else.

Or, no one is going to make an Office that's sufficiently better to overcome the lock-in factor MS Office has working for it.

Re:There are no desparate billionaires

[Jason Earl]

This is almost certainly why Google has staff members that are working with Firefox and with OO.org. Google's execs know that as long as Microsoft's Windows and Office businesses are safe that Microsoft will push relentlessly into any new business that appears profitable. If OO.org starts grabbing marketshare, or if developers start building Firefox specific applications, then Microsoft's investors will demand that Microsoft's execs focus on Microsoft's "core business," and side ventures like MSN will be de-priortized.

IMHO if Windows Vista and Office 12 gain a lot of traction then Google is in trouble. Vista will replace Google's desktop search and Microsoft's new products will almost certainly be fairly hard-wired in MSN for internet search.

Re:There are no desparate billionaires

[rtb61]

Apparently exploiting a monopoly provided by others is the only thing wee willie and crowd knows. Intel and IBM, now didn't those two get a poke in the i'es/eyes for there failure to see what was available for the asking at the time.

The market has long changed and microsoft are just clinging to what was given to them some time ago. Vendor lock in, raising prices once the monoply was gained, charging extra for manuals, support and the real help files, free customer perpetual beta testing, crap code is normal, insult any one that disagrees, political interferance any time any government attempts alternate choices (truly the software they you never stop having to pay for - until now). Business practices to be promoted or reviled as well as those self serving individuals that profit by them.

Everything comes to an end, including the current mis-management team from microsoft. They were recently bragging about the potential sales of the next iteration of their game console, I see they have just recently started to back peddled from their claims about the potential sales. They are even going so far as to make the laughable marketing spiel of not wanting to sell too many consoles in the early period as it will cost them too much. Well based upon that bit of illogical silliness, perhaps they should be selling play station consoles, so that way they can cripple sony as a competitor.

Microsoft's shareholders have a lot of money, it is not, nor ever will be wee willie's to throw away of one failed venture after another. Besides a lot of it is currently being used on a stock buy back to prop up their flagging share price (the artifice of a management team that has no vision).

Microsoft already lost against google, why do they keep forgetting that bit of info in their latest round of marketing.

Re: Live windows and Office

[rodgster]

It would be great if it supported firefox on Linux, that way I could see what these windows viruses I see in email do. 8^()

Firefox on Windows

[mgkimsal2]

What's the betting it'll be only Firefox on Windows?

Re:Firefox on Windows

[timeOday]

It doesn't seem to work for me using Mozilla on Linux.

What did they implement this thing in, anyways? Coming from Microsoft I would have guessed ActiveX, but apparentliy not if it works (or will work) under FireFox. It can't be Java. What is it?

if i wanted something labeled "Live"

[FudRucker]

i would get a Knoppix Live CD :^P

Office Live?

[TorKlingberg]

Now Windows Live seems to be just a package of services Microsoft already have online. But what is Office Live going to be? Yes, Im too lazy to RTFA.

pretty choice domain name

[equilith]

With a great domain like that, I was curious about its history.

According to the Wayback machine, the domain live.com was owned from 1998 to November 2004 by one Ross Finlayson. The archived pages say that the company (Live Networks) has in business since 1995.

Some time after November 2004, the Wayback archive for the main page ends ... but Ross registered live555.com quite a bit earlier (August 2004). (Negotiation time?) Could this mean that Microsoft has been cooking this for a year or more? If so, I would have expected more from the debut.

As an afterthought ... it's really too bad that transactions of this type aren't disclosed. We could all make better domain-name choices if we had the vaguest ballpark idea of what the "going rate" was. And I have a feeling that it's usually not the small guy who benefits from the non-disclosure.

office.live.com

[centinall]

Yep, I remember hearing about such a suite about 2 years ago. Back then it was of course speculated to be a subscription based office suite, but the general idea was there. Anyone else remember much about this?

Re:office.live.com

[Tuross]

It was more than 2 years ago, more like 5 or so. Microsoft put out vapourware press releases about how they were moving from boxing products for sale in stores and instead moving to a subscription model where they host the app and you rent it off them. The reason at the time was that with the popularity of the Internet, *lots* of people were discovering just how bad Microsoft and their products were, and were thinking about subjects like "this really is a buggy, defective product - either fix it or give me my money back". Both of those choices means Microsoft lose money. So instead of selling someone a product which they own, the product is instead rented to them under very strict terms and conditions; we've seen Microsoft EULAs so we know what those terms are like - you can't use it to speak the truth (ie, say how bad Microsoft or their products are), you can't use it to compete with Microsoft in anything, you must sacrifice your firstborn child to the Redmond gods, yadda yadda.

Since there was such a huge backlash over this idea, they have instead been slowly but surely been edging towards it, sneakily bringing it about anyway. That's what the whole "genuine advantage" thing is about - tracking who is using their stuff so they can bill them via the subscription model once they drop the boxed versions from the shelves and all support. That's why there's this concept of "end-of-life" product with no more support - it's not just about forcing people to buy their same product again, its just getting people used to the idea that instead of a class-action lawsuit for continually defective products, you just upgrade. And if you have to upgrade so often it becomes a pain, maybe its easier to simply subscribe instead rather than buy this stuff you get no support for anyway?

Your homework is to go find out the other things they have done in the past decade to support their move towards the unaccountable subscription model. It's scary.

Yeah bitches...

[h2d2]

Microsoft is back!

Troll me, if you will, but nobody really saw this coming, at least none of the Google and Apple fanboys on /. And did you see all the features and the fact that you can build on top of it.

Oh, and for those who don't know, Microsoft Start.com development has supported Mozilla based browsers for over a year. Anyway, it's good for innovation.

tried this before

[-ryan]

Back when Internet Explorer 4 came out with all it's DHTML goodness, Microsoft started talking about selling Office as a service delivered via the browser.

Apple's .Mac

[Scooba_steve]

To me this new "Windows Live" seems to be something similar to Apple's .mac service. However, it also includes a personalized home page type thing though like Google. But it seems like its targeted more towards something like .Mac considering that it will also offer a subscription-based service.

Yay!

[digitalFX]

Now even linux/OSX users can experience the blue screen of death! I do find it funny though that they are actually going to support firefox...or so they say.

Firefox...

[smash]

Firefox Users Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Acknowledgement that craptiveX, etc is not required for this sort of app by Microsoft? :D

Actually - where's the actual useful stuff, it just looks like yet another web portal to me...

smash.

no chair was big enough for Balmer to throw,

[Anonymous Coward]

so he ripped out the toilet. I for one welcome moi overlordi iz googalya.

Linux feeds

[Lairdsville]

Is it just me, or does everybody get:
Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed. Please try again later
every time they try to add Linux content to the sidebar? I did a search for Linux and all four feeds that I clicked on failed (including linux.com, which was the first one). I sniff a MS conspiracy!

Re:Ha! It's fun to watch ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is your logic? Where you even around when the net was booming? Google wasn't even there for a little while and they have only been booming after the whole crash.

Re:and haven't I had bloody enough...Love.

[Anonymous Coward]

"of ads? This is crazy. Everything on the web is now driven by advertising. You just can't get away from it!

And now Microsoft wants to tie my desktop into online advertising? No, thank you! OSS begins to look better and better."

Ah yes, that idealic world were everyone gives to everyone else, and all wants and needs are met.* A very religious idea. Unfortunately God is dead, and we're stuck with man's version of the dream.

*You hunger, I feed you. I hunger and someone feeds me, etc, etc.

for($i=0; $ihowEverManyTimesWeFeel(); $i++)

[jmilezy]

"Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment MS' Office suite." How many times will I have to pay for my software? This is a horrible idea and consumers need to be made aware that "bigger and better" is hardly better and is usually filled with useless features. On that note, Office 2000 works fine for me. It already has tons of features I have never used.

reminds me of IE 7.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember seeing IE 7.0 and thinking what a lame rip off of Firefox. It was horrible...

Living Large

[Doc Ruby]

Microsoft must be scared of the "Live" Linux CDs, so they're trying to "embrace and extend" the term with Office/Windows. I think they're pretty nifty, especially as rescue CDs - and especially for rescuing Windows installs. In fact, especially for rescuing computers from Windows. All Linux Live CDs should include a simple button in the taskbar for "Install Permanently", and another menu item in the installs for "Burn Live CD". A really neat web service would be a downloadable Windows executable that, when run, either burns a bootable Linux Live CD, or installs Linux on the HD. Auto repartitioning can keep or reclaim the legacy Windows capacity, at the discretion of the distro, or the user. Let's give Microsoft a really live CD to be really afraid of.

There a web based office suite for you

[Ilgaz]

Its interesting it gets no mention in this new "google,ms" war.

There is a pure java office suite written in java 2 which is kind of free to try.

http://www.thinkfree.com/

It is java, multiplatform, unicode, exports PDF too.

Web version of Outlook

[everphilski]

Web version of outlook has existed for quite some time and works very well. If they can pull the rest of the office suite off as well... good game.

-everphilski-

Re:Web version of Outlook

[superpulpsicle]

While that is true. The web version of outlook feels severly poor in performance compared to the app version. There is no way Word, Excel and the likes will be taken seriously if they are to be as clunky as outlook web.

Whoops

[dtfinch]

They list "Google News" among the available RSS feeds.

dont think of this

[jwegy]

as a normal internet application....
you should be thinking Indigo (fancy .Net remoting) instead.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/01/Ind igo/default.aspx
Do you really think they will let their core application suite(Office) run in a web browser on linux? *yeah right*

MS may be copying google's idea...

[kkek]

...but who cares. I think its great that microsoft is trying to make a site to compete with google's personal page. thats just more incentive for both companies to put out a better product. I personally will be sticking with google's version unless microsoft manages to come up with some 'incredible feature' that google doesnt have. Still, I think its great that this will probably mean an update from google in a few months trying to fight back against microsoft.

Javascript is not an application language.

[Anonymous Coward]

Javascript was never intended to fuel any sort of web application. If you're using enough of it that execution time is noticeably slowed, then you should probably be using something else---a Java applet, for instance.

TLD

[divisivemind]

I wonder how much MS paid for the live.com domain name....

Catchy Name

[Valdukas]

And the code name for the Windows Live will be Lindows!!!

Internet Explorer and live.com

[hackwrench]

Support for Firefox? How about they support Internet Explorer first! I went to the live.com website with Firefox, saw that the sidebar covered the content (a problem common on some sites with Firefox), sent a broken website report, fired up IE...lo and behold, the sidebar overlapped in IE.

Can I run vmwareplayer...

[Anonymous Coward]

and boot into Linux?

Is it just me or ...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

is Windows Live (www.live.com) exactly the same concept as google.com/ig ?

not that desperate

[MegaFur]

I agree with the Score 5 post
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167044&cid=139 28878
IMHO, Google is no kind of tyrant.

But more importantly, MS ain't exactly dead and buried yet. I forsee many, many more years of massive overbearing dominance by MS. They are far from dead so, even if Google-as-tyrant turned out to be plausible after all, we're still far away from that point in time.

Doesn't work on IE for OS X

[dxminxs]

Shame on you MS

Re:Doesn't work on IE for OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, nothing works in IE for OS X.

It's not 2001 any more -- maybe it's time to think about upgrading.

live.com domain.. wow that changed fast

[derekb]

I knew I had heard of that domain - I was just on there the other day looking at rtsp support for VLC.

On November 26th, the website was this but now it appears to be here

Wonder how much this guy got paid by Microsoft for the domain.. good for him!

Typical Microsoft...

[embezzled]

I just loaded it in Explorer (Firefox support coming soon...) and it crashed it. Well, at least Windows stays true to form, whatever the platform!

Re:Typical Microsoft...

[quaxzarron]

Same here. Try logging onto Passport first and then going onto live.com. IE survives then.

What bugs me most about this ....

[gstoddart]

Back in the day when Microsoft were too stubborn/clueless/scared-shitless of thin-client computing, they did everything they could to kill the whole idea of network computing. They would hear nothing about how software would be delivered to lightweight machines over the network.

When Sun was saying "The Network Is The Computer", Micosoft was busily saying "Network? What Network? There's no network -- Hey, look, Clippy!".

And, now that they're trotting out what is, oh, what, a 10 or 15 year old idea, they're going to spin this and say they've innovated, and look at what they came up with.

The simple fact (IMO) is that Microsoft couldn't innovate the shit into a diaper. They rehash ideas other people have done, make incompatible implementations, and bray really loudly about how they're giving the consumer what they want.

It's only because Google is lining up to completely eat Microsoft's lunch in the area of web-delievered technologies that they're even beginning to look at this market segment. The difference being, Google implements it, releases it (and free SDKs for it), and then moves on to making other stuff. [ Witness an earlier story about a Carmen San Diego-esque game based on Google maps, Google pedometers, and god knows what else I've missed ]

As has been pointed out by smarter people than I, Google is leaving the actual technology in their wake. Microsoft is leaving press-releases and open-ended promises about what they might deliver in the future.

Re:What bugs me most about this ....

[Keeper]

It should be noted that 10 or 15 years ago (that's 1990-1995 for the math impaired), 28.8kbps modems were considered top of the line. Those came out about '95. In 1990, you were lucky to have a 2400bps modem. I used to own one. You could read text as fast as you could download it. In 1990, Atari still made computers. In 1994, a 100mhz Pentium processor cost $1000.

The reason the concept of network computing was ridiculed in the early 90's was that there was no realistic way to deliver content to your target audience.

Fast forward to today with broadband representing the majority of internet connections; you've got download speeds that people didn't even dream about 10-15 years ago. You're seeing this "reinvention" today because the technology has advanced far enough to make it possible, not because someone woke up and decided a bad idea wasn't so bad afterall.

Re:What bugs me most about this ....

[Kjella]

Three words: Time to market.

Where's Sun now? Where's Microsoft now? Being able to flip-flop around when the market is ready is crucial. Paste up a few old quotes about Jobs and "video on the iPod", and you'll see what I mean. If it's not your product you diss it, if it is it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

There is no good or bad. It just is.

[Gordo_1]

Microsoft is simply making decisions that are intended to increase profit. There are one of two outcomes to such decisions: the intended increase in profit materializes or an unintended drop in profit occurs. So long as Microsoft can successfully bully around competitors, lock in customers to proprietary technology and gain from it (i.e. get away with it), it will do that. When market dynamics change such that Microsoft needs to do something that would seem out of character under previous circumstances (i.e. fully support rival web browsing software), be sure that it's TO MAINTAIN PROFIT IN THE LONG RUN. Don't be too surprised if Microsoft out-does Google at "doing no evil" so long as it benefits the company. As hard as it may seem at times, it's easier to understand these decisions when we stop personifying companies and recognizing them for what they are -- profit driven organizations.

Re:There is no good or bad. It just is.

[richlv]

oh, will you stop this ? :)
you either assume that good/bad don't exist at all, or you apply them to everybody - you can not selectively choose entities and apply these things to only some of them.

all companies ar comprised of people. after _every_ decision is a human. so suddenly there are no ethical measurements for a human actions when they are in a company ? cool, i'll found a company and start shooting people. or will that be bad ?

also an excuse "oh, i was just given orders to kill people" isn't exactly the best thing to do, as it usually is not accepted.

companies can and are good and bad. mostly though companies can easier and faster change than individuals, but that is not an excuse to apply relaxed norms to them, exacttly the opposite.
i think most of us have had close experience with a lot of companies - and generally there are some that we have declared "bad" (as they have either not been honest or done other things that we have determined to bee bad), but there also are cases when only a couple of executives change and the company's attitude changes rapidly and their actions fall into the "good" cathegory.

so, yes, anything that has conscience can be good or bad. it does not apply at this level to animals - they are labelled agressive and whatnot. but unless you insist that companies are braindead (though some of them might be...) they should be held to the same standards, if at all.

Blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I see very little use for this. Microsoft has in no way, shape or form introduced anything new here... and I highly doubt Office Live will be anything more than OWCs tied to some form of server-side storage. For those of you who've actually tried implementing a full-fledged spreadsheet using nothing but Javascript and DHTML, you should understand how quickly something like this will transform into "You must have Windows installed for Office Live to work". Christ, it takes my machine at work 20 minutes to recalculate formulas sometimes... I can't imagine what that would translate to inside IE...

I'll believe it when I see it... my bets are on Google to have something more usable introduced first. The live.com interface could have been written in about 2 hours... frankly, I see no art in it.

That's funny.

[vought]

Nothing happens on my Mac.

Wonder why?

Poor IBM...

[Mart Ashan]

Yes and last time i checked IBM is now a company that tuns in billions of dollars in profit anunally and is the largest technology company in the world... poor little IBM.

First they crash our computers

[Alien54]

First they crash our computers

Now they want to crash the internet.

When when they get the idea that the internet is not a party that they were invited to?

;)

Windows?

[Refrag]

What the hell does Windows have to do with "e-mail, blogging and instant messaging?" This is just Microsoft (ab)using the only two brands they have that are worth anything.

M$

[seabreezemm]

Might as well launch it to the moon since I won't be allowing anything of this type on my system. I'll be damned if I will pay for a subscrition OS.

Am I the only one

[caitsith01]

...who actually likes the Windows one better? Much more elegant and configurable so far than Google's rather boring page. And as many others have pointed out Google also 'ripped off' older portals in making their page.

All hail Bill!

[Assassin bug]

I think this image from his image gallery speaks for his intentions pretty well. :-)

Re:All hail Bill!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this image from his image gallery speaks for his intentions pretty well. :-)

Hur hur hur I'm Assassin bug, and I'm really really original and think for myself and shit.

Call us when you get out of kindergarten.

Re:All hail Bill!

[Assassin bug]

Ooook. Notice, Anonymous Coward, I didn't post the image on his servers. I just thought it was amusing that such dramatic anit-microsoft images have made it into his images servers all ready. I guess I'll go now to take a knap-time after I learn my new alphabet letter.

Another option

[ikaru5]

We've been working on something quite similar to 'Window's Live' over at fyuze.com. It does the standard RSS/Atom thing, plus integration with Flickr, Amazon, Yahoo, Technorati, Feedster, IceRocket, Upcoming.org, del.icio.us, and Indeed. Check it out. Works great in Firefox.

Re:Not because they want to...

[symbolic]

Microsoft is doing this because they HAVE to. I dare say that had it not been for Linux and Google, we'd be seeing the same monopolistic crapola that led the company to the anti-trust violations in the first place. It's funny how things change when suddenly you're faced with the very real prosect of losing your ivory tower.

Talk about killing of their "Windows" brand!

[Anonymous Coward]

How in God's name does this have *anything* whatsoever to do with Windows?

Not just corporations complain...

[IANAAC]

News flash, the only people who complain about Google are the evil corporate masters that you're also supposedly railing against.

I bitch about Google enough as a user, and I suspect I'm not alone. You see, I don't use WinXP. They have a couple of really good apps that I'd love to see ported to open platforms, Picassa and Google Earth being two worth mentioning.

It's all well and good to say that Google's pro-open source, but when they fail to actually deliver the cool apps to an open platform, what does that say, exactly?

Re:Not just corporations complain...

[joranbelar]

It's all well and good to say that Google's pro-open source, but when they fail to actually deliver the cool apps to an open platform, what does that say, exactly?

That they're not totally open-source. The leap from that statement to "Google is evil" is over a pretty wide chasm.

Re:Not just corporations complain...

[NitsujTPU]

Do you think that Linux offers a large enough market segment to interest them?

They're a company, not a charity.

Re:Not just corporations complain...

[IANAAC]

I do, actually. I also think Macs should be considered a large enough segment to interest them. As it stands, for all the apps they offer, you need XP/IE5+. The only app on their site that could remotely be considered cross-platform would be Google Talk. And all they really do is give you instructions on how to connect to their Jabbber network via native Mac/Linux clients.

Re:Not just corporations complain...

[NitsujTPU]

Eh, ok. Google DID just have the Summer of Code, where they promoted open source projects, so they can't exactly be trying to run Tux into the ground, can they?

been in the works since 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really, really stupid to assume this was done in response to Google. Hell, just google NetDocs and you can see Microsoft's been working on this since 2000:

http://news.com.com/2009-1001-250261.html

Slashdotters have no frickin experience or memory.

Re:been in the works since 2000

[Steven Reddie]

I didn't mean that the development of the product was done in response to Google but rather this latest announcement. Of course, it takes more than a few weeks to develop something like this (I'm talking Live Office, I haven't looked at their Live Windows which sounds pretty lite on functionality).

Webserver hosted applications are nothing new and of course Microsoft has dabbled in this. However I believe that the recent Google rumours could have prompted Microsoft to dust off some of this stuff. We slashdotters do have experience and memory (are you not a slashdotter yourself?). I remember them looking into this circa 1997 with ActiveX. Of course the ability (and motivation?) to support non-IE browsers was not there, and that movement started with a lean towards thick-clients, however it was clearly recognition that accessing rich applications through a browser was up and coming. It's only now with Ajax that this is gaining momentum. Until now it seems that Citrix over a browser was the way to go [not] :-)

Limited success because of same old goals

[bhav2007]

This is a nice move by Microsoft to "kill" Google, and I would bet a lot that this is what Ballmer has been thinking of when he is throwing chairs and swearing to kill Google. It really fits with what they have been saying all this time, and their "war". It will probably be very successful in some areas (All of the guys I know who are "Official Microsoft Partners" are gonna have a fit), but I don't think it will do what they believe it will. The problem is that Microsoft's overall vision is the same as it has always been, despite the obviously huge amount of work somebody has done to convince management to make this project more open (firefox support).

It is pretty clear that the top brass at Microsoft have a very specific vision about their software. I think they really do have good intentions, and it's probably not bad, with a nice looking Windows interface, and solid .Net platform, and "connectivity" out the yinyang. Of course, it also involves Microsoft holding all the keys, powering all the programs, and generally controlling everything. Even if they believe their marketing department's crap about improving peoples lives and "discovering" something on Windows, their policies are increasingly limiting their effectiveness. Computing is changing, dramatically, and Microsoft is still playing their old games. You still need to buy into their product lines to access the best of these services, and they still only works with Microsoft software. It is just not in Microsoft's nature (i.e. their management) to create products which are truly open, truly innovative, or truly free from the rest of their sources of income. I say good luck to them with this strategy, but it is gonna kill them slowly (unless, of course, their competitors are complete idiots).

Google seems fine now...

[mister_llah]

Google is making wise decisions that will eventually bring them even greater leverage in the technology industry. They are operating as any good company would.

However, people who think that Google is not a business but some sort of benevolant entity will, in my opinion, find themselves to eventually be wrong.

I agree with the notion of absolute power corrupting absolutely... since you can't get that absolute in business, we'll just say more power means more corruption. It is only a matter of time before Google falls sway to it, just as any other company has.

===

They are making very good long term, strategic decisions to develop technologies that will serve them better. It will hurt their competitor's market share... and the goal of any company in doing such a thing is domination.

Like I said, it sounds like a bunch of FUD until they dominate the market share and start using their influence to keep that dominance.

Just look at Intel and Microsoft, our two giants, for examples.

I am not saying Google is 100% certain to fall into that, as nothing is 100% certain, but reviewing the list of companies throughout history... and going over human nature when humans are in power... it seems highly likely, that if their long term strategies work out... and there are no tech bubbles bursting... they'll follow the same path.

We may just have to wait 10 years for that to happen.

Re:Google seems fine now...

[NitsujTPU]

So, you think that MS was a good, honest business, that somehow changed midstream? You believe that this is soley $$$ related?

Does this make Ivy League schools evil, but state institutions and little Baptist colleges in Virginia good?

Re:Google seems fine now...

[mister_llah]

Not everyone starts out clean, I don't think I inferred that.

Also, it isn't JUST money that causes companies to "change midstream", it is influence and power that COMES from that money...

If a company started off bad, they just had less to change when they earned their power.

Re:Google seems fine now...

[NitsujTPU]

So, your ambition in life is to be mediocre?

Red Herring

[Mr. Underbridge]

I think there's a good chance Google is starting weekly rumors just to watch Bill work himself into a lather and waste MS's time chasing what he thinks Google is going to "do next."

something's borked here

[cosminn]

M$ has said multiple times that they would not port their main products (Windows, Office) to the web. With Vista coming out soon, as well as Office12, their vast effort is put into marketing THOSE products. They want to tie people to the actual PC, or why buy one, or more importantly, why buy one with M$ products on them? They have enough issues with Vista being basically XP SP3, Office12 being a new-Apple-like-UI with no real new features and having people move to OO, so breaking it like this makes no sense.

just a thought..

Yeah, fancy that...

[mister_llah]

Microsoft had its period of innovation and like any creative venture, they struggle in the box they have made for themselves.

To say Microsoft is not innovative would be incorrect... but Google is certainly much more creative these days than Microsoft.

(to say "than Microsoft ever was" would be a disservice, times were different in the 80s, technology has much more opportunities, as far as invention, now than it did before)

slashdot recognized

[cerelib]

Am I the only one that noticed that slasdot is listed under sci and tech news on the Windows Live page?

I tried the Beta

[TheOriginalCaptainHe]

I went to log into the Beta. It accepted my hotmail username and password fine. For some bizarre reason, however, the entire page is in French. I am a Canadian, but I barely know any French. As far as I can tell, there is no way to adjust this.

Way to go M$. Your performance: "Meets expectations perfectly"

Should I have expected any more?

Re:I tried the Beta

[akaulins]

Are you based in Quebec? I live in Germany and so the Windows Live interface is in German language by default since it obviously runs across a .de server and so the language is geared to the country server (AOL and Google also follow the same terrible practice in Germany). There is a settings menu item (paramètres in French) to the right top of the Windows Live interface where you can select English as your language.

Re:I tried the Beta

[TheOriginalCaptainHe]

I'm actually from Ontario. But, it's either going through a Quebec server, or M$ sets the default as French for all of Canada. I've certainly heard people expect me to speak French just because I'm Canadian. My French is limited to "Je ne suis pas une omelette au fromage." :)

This is a huge upgrade

[Mustang Matt]

Now blue screens of death will only crash browsers.

ActiveX

[marciot]

This is gonna be one hell of an ActiveX control...

Nastier IM Worms

[mattwarden]

Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging.

It all makes sense now!

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[Maxo-Texas]

Sorry to bust your balloon but microsoft is fundamentally dedicated to a world where everyone pays a monthly subscription for microsoft products and there are no competitors and any potential competitors are locked out before they can even get started.

Fooled me once, shame on me- fooled me at least 15 to 20 times- well I guess I should assume you are trying to fool me on any future attempts. (convicted of stealing competitors products, well known tendency of breaking competitors products by tweaking the operating system, well known tendency to slow competitors products by tweaking the operating system or using illegal API's and still certifying product, bundling, giving away products for free until the competition is dead then never innovating, "embracing and extending" java, j++, the halloween memoes, "collaborating" on products with a competitor and then bringing out their own version using knowledge they picked up during the collaboration, etc. etc. etc.).

They are not just another large capitalist company. They are something unique and they want to lock that in forever. They bought or drove out of business every legitimate business that competed with them either legally or illegally (Stak/doublespace comes to mind- there are others).

Trust me, you don't know it but you really do want 4 to 5 solid OS's competing with many different products so that they keep each other honest.

No, they are not

[ToasterofDOOM]

I already said in another post that I want coexistence, not a monopoly on any side. I said specifically that MS has made many mistakes. Can you not pound it into your thick, bigoted, "Linux is GOD, Open Source is GOD, proprietary stuff is evil", head that Windows can be good??? Ever heard of .net? MS technology, but developers love it, even OSS developers, hence Mono and dotGnu. But, then again, MS came up with it so it must be bad. There is no point in arguing this further.

Re:No, they are not

[Anonymous Coward]

What YOU seem to be unable to understand is that MICROSOFT doesn't want coexistence. Their business model is not built around coexistence; it's built around LOCK-INS.

The reason that I'm such a strong proponent of OSS is that it, by definition, forces fair competition in the software space--because it's about as far as you can get from presenting a lock-in situation.

I totally agree with you in that I'm: (a) anti-monopoly and (b) (by implication) pro-coexistence; and that's why I want Microsoft to be gone. Now, the second that Microsoft begins altering its business model to be more like OSS (in the sense that it isn't a business built on lock-ins), I'll fully support their presence in the business world--because then they'll be competing fairly, and driving their success through strength-of-product and not strength-of-massive-business-deals. And, as a matter of fact, I really hope that they do some day convert to that sort of company, because I'd love to see what good they could churn out with their immense resources.

Re:No, they are not

[Travoltus]

Can YOU get it into your neutronium-reinforced skull that it isn't MicroSoft's products that piss us off as much as their Orwellian attempts at forcing DRM on us? And they also bully hardware manufacturers into not offering drivers for Linux - that they were actually busted for.

Windows is NOT good. They're an enemy of consumer freedom.

Now "bigotry" that.

Re:No, they are not

[guet]

I already said in another post that I want coexistence, not a monopoly on any side.

Unfortunately what you want doesn't matter at all.

What Microsoft wants is to kill all competitors by 'cutting off their oxygen supply'. BTW, every other IT company is seen as a competitor. This is ingrained in the corporate culture, and starts at the very top with Gates/Balmer. That is why no one trusts them, not because they love Linux and hate MS (or whatever), but because they hate the things Microsoft has done and wants to do.

Re:No, they are not

[glavenoid]

And they also bully hardware manufacturers into not offering drivers for Linux - that they were actually busted for.

Interesting. Could you post a link?

Re:No, they are not

[killjoe]

"Ever heard of .net? MS technology, but developers love it, even OSS developers, hence Mono and dotGnu. But, then again, MS came up with it so it must be bad. There is no point in arguing this further."

MS didn't come up with it. They just took java and re-implemented it with three or four new features.

VB.NET wow now there is a cool product!

Re:No, they are not

[Anonymous Coward]

I said specifically that MS has made many mistakes.

What the hell do you consider "mistakes"? Murder?

Re:No, they are not

[Maxo-Texas]

Dude...
I didn't say a word about linux.

Microsoft was bad almost before linus was born. Back in the beginning we all said, "Dos isn't ready until Lotus 1.2.3 won't run." Windows specifically checked for DRDos and failed with a hard error if drdos was installed. If you disabled the check, windows ran fine. The entire purpose of the check was to spike a dos competitor. Even back then you knew that if you used microsoft that other products might break with each release of the operating system if they were major competitors of microsoft.

and p.s. .net pissed off a lot of microsoft vb developers/supporters when they dumped support for vb6 without an upgrade path.

Re:No, they are not

[ToasterofDOOM]

Have you ever used .net? Have you ever used c#? Have you seen those '3 or 4 new features' and advantages, speed and openness of the standard to name a few?

Re:No, they are not

[killjoe]

" Have you ever used .net? Have you ever used c#? Have you seen those '3 or 4 new features' and advantages, speed and openness of the standard to name a few?"

Yes Indeed I have. The speed is basically similar to java, the new features have already been implemented by java and the standard only covers the core c# language and does not cover any of windows forms, ado.net, asp.net or anything else. 90% of the .net stack is prorietary and patented. At least with java you can download JVMs from other companies or use open source ones. .NET is just another me too product from MS. As always a few years behind the real innovation.

For another example take a look at visual studio. After three years the VS users finally get refactoring, javadoc, and ant (they still don't have hibernate, micro containers, dependency injection and mocking!). It took them all this time just to implement some of the features of eclipse. Meanwhile eclipse will speed along for the next two years while VS.NET 2005 stagnates and falls behind.

Discontinue IE

[Gates82]

Will this finally rid us of core OS pieces that are supposed to be simple applications? By having all of these services remote it seems that IE could revert to a simple web browser and office wont change how the OS runs, etc. Microsoft could free Windows of all extra (and dangerous) applications that make themselves one with the operating system.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?

It's not good with "java script", eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called JavaScript. One word. CamelCase. As a general rule, I disregard anyone who spells it "java script" as technically incompetent. And besides, modern browsers support ECMAScript (also CamelCase). Please learn English, and then learn ECMAScript before making comments about a particular browser's support for it.

Having said this, IE does not support the current W3C reccomendation for the ECMAScript XHTML DOM. Not even close. addEventHandler, anyone?

Re:It's not good with "java script", eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

IE does not support the current W3C reccomendation for the ECMAScript XHTML DOM.

Then again, Mozilla only partially supports it. Try hooking into the mutation events, for example. Only KHTML gets that right.

Must...try...to...be...serious...must...try...

[Hosiah]

OK, first off, they promise support for Firefox. Well, I'm running Firefox from Linux, and the site, as far as I clicked around, appears to be working for me. Is that because they aren't supporting it yet? (Haw haw, blew it already...OK, sobering up!)

Ahem: A whole remote desktop in a website has been done before: a KDE desktop, no less: http://www.cosmopod.com/ with 1 Gig of storage per customer. The mind boggles at the bandwidth...for the KDE, not the Gig...

Finally: Hell is not freezing over, so I'm not about to say Microsoft is redeemed...but even *I* will admit that this seems to be a positive step in the right direction. If I am to understand, that it's going to be like a free mini-windows online? And will work with any ol' system at all? And it won't try to kill me in 101 new, creative ways? And it won't become virus-central? And MS won't shut it back down in a month? If it's all I hope and more, then Microsoft just may yet stumble out into the light, though it'll have to soak an awful long time in Holy water before it washes away the stench of it's past.

I *have* said all along: Microsoft and the rest of the world will fare better if it can just *get* *along* with the rest of us. Let the big, bad ogre put down his spiked club and be *nice* to us for a change, and watch our frozen little penguin hearts melt!

Obnoxious PR-Speak

[bedouin]

"It's easy. It's live, and it has 'me' at the center of the universe," said Blake Irving, a Microsoft vice president who was on stage to demonstrate Windows Live.

Microsoft has the most obnoxious PR-speak of any corporation on earth. On the other hand, Google or Apple would just tell you what their product does and why you need it, usually in one sentence.

Re:Obnoxious PR-Speak

[pe1chl]

... but that is only possible when your product actually does something, and anyone needs it!

Re:Obnoxious PR-Speak

[Hank_MD]

That is a bit harsh.
What about Xbox 360 delivering "the Zen of gaming"?
That was pretty clear and to the point.

Re:Obnoxious PR-Speak

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, you used "Xbox" and "delivering" in the same sentence...

firefox support, ya right

[fordracerguy]

Microsoft can't even properly support Firefox with Hotmail. I will never once even attempt to log into live.com... You know what I mean about hotmail/Firefox... Various little things that don't work right.

whoa

[handsome b]

can you imagine what "live.com" cost them?

Ops

[Retric]

"as they are from yahoo" = "as they would be when geting their from a Yahoo add."

Bad idea

[Crouty]

Handing over the control over my email client to Microsoft must be the worst idea I have ever heard of. I always thought the same about Hotmail, but this is certainly worse.

sigh...

[circusboy]

redundancy is what happens when you respond without scrolling down aways first...

mod me away...

Re:Windows RG

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuxing hilarious!

Dear God.

[Thad Boyd]

I work in a computer store. On a daily basis, I deal with customers who do not know the difference between Windows and Office. "Do you guys have XP?" Or, worse, "Do you guys have Microsoft?" I swear to God the next time somebody asks that I'm going to pull a Microsoft mouse off the shelf. And now Microsoft is putting up a Web suite of IM, E-Mail, and blogging tools and calling it Windows? Oh, swell, guys. There's no better marketing than confusing your customers.

So what about start.com?

[teewurstmann]

Hmmm.... that's strange. I thought MS wanted to kill Google with http://start.com/. Seems to be almost the same thing. Why develop two brands, two domains, two applications that seem to do the same thing? Doesn't make much sense to me.

koolaid?

[MikeFM]

Where can I get some of that kool-aid?

It's not M$'s mistakes people mind so much as their trying to make up for their mistakes by using anti-competitive behavior. Y'know.. all those anti-trust lawsuits that keep popping up. Darn us for not giving the boot that smashes a fair chance to start coming for our heads before we run for cover.

Firefox users: Sit down and wait

[SgtChaireBourne]

Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

. Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?

No. Parse the statement for tense. They are telling Firefox users in effect to sit down and wait quietly for an unspecified period.

Given the company's history on meeting deadlines, it's not going to be any time soon, unless it's a priority. Given the company's history on interoperability and supporting competing products, protocols and formats, it's not going to be a priority.

It's just a placation to encourage users of competing software to postpone action. You must be new here, and new anywhere else for that matter. ;)

People that need an office suite via the net can download OpenOffice.org or individual packages like AbiWord for free.

Whack-a-mole

[SgtChaireBourne]

If you think about M$ supporters that post, you do see a pattern.

One strategy, Hit and run is common enough as a tactic that it is well documented. The other twenty four tactics will also look familiar. Slashdot has become mainstream some while ago, you do see it mentioned and even cited in non-tech print media. So that means you will get a fair number of people that don't know any better than to swallow the marketing. But there are also those that do know better and do seem to have an agenda.

The implications are that no one would support MS without getting paid in some way.

Anyway, MS is probably making so much noise about vaporware like 'Internet versions of Office and Windows' in order to steal thunder from discussions of open standards like OpenDocument or to get people from downloading and testing OpenOffice.org. I mean if MS Office is so much better, what does M$ have to lose? People would try OOo, say 'nah', and then go back to MS Office, right? Or won't that happen ?

yet another portal??

[mcn]

do we not have enough portals already? how is live.com different from start.com?

Maybe it's not Microsoft!

[Steeltoe]

BEWARE!

I read the same sentence, switched to IE to try out the "Live"-site. However, IE crashed instantly, even before I had the chance to block a cookie from the site. Yes, *crashed* IE. This is not something a webpage should be able to do (but if this is really MS, then I'm impressed. I wonder if Blue-Screen is next.. This would *really* become "Windows-live" then..)

Without SP2 I suspect this site could infect your computer with a Trojan, or maybe it already got my machine. WHOIS didn't turn up much meaningful information either, so I doubt it's Microsoft at work here.

Windows live is old hat

[squoozer]

People have been getting their copy of windows of the Internet for ages. Yet again MS is just copying rather than innovating.

... but we are patient!

[dwalsh]

"Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)"

Don't worry, we are patient. We have Google :-|

Windows Dead

[allanc]

That's right, folks. That system everyone's been using up until this point? Windows dead. Microsoft just never wanted to admit that they were trying to sell a shambling zombie operating system until they came up with an alternative.

Good ol Clippy

[eLijahTheReticent]

Can't wait to see the Live Clippy®!

DOING something RIGHT? I Doubt it...

[OwlWhacker]

MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change.

It can change, but I doubt it's going to.

Microsoft has always been anti-competitive, and has shown a desire to domainate particular markets in any way possible - which is usually via bundling.

This is still going on, as shown here:

"Microsoft's Office Live services also represent a threat to those providing small businesses with e-mail and Web hosting services. Microsoft said that, for free, it will give businesses a domain name, a Web site with 30MB of storage and five Web-based e-mail accounts.

Any number of Web hosting firms, telecommunications companies and Internet service providers could see a chunk of business lost to Microsoft's free offer."

strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

from the site, when searching for "msn messenger":

SPONSORED SITES

        *
            MSN, AIM, Yahoo and ICQ in One

            Zango Messenger lets you communicate with people on AIM, MSN, Yahoo,...

            www.zango.com

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[quarkscat]

Amen, brother!

For a market segment (INTERNET) that Microsoft had largely ignored, they have expended a large amount of money and energy (and legal woes) to catch up. They invented a new business process (embrace, extend, extinguish) that they have applied against all competition in whatever market segment they have focused on.

As one portal business (WebTV) has been stagnant, Microsoft has placed more emphasis upon MSN more successfully. At least one telco (Verizon) and one media distribution channel (DirectTV) have embraced MSN as their portal of choice. While more knowledgable internet users might prefer an unfiltered and direct internet experience, many users prefer the warm fuzzy experience of a web portal. Microsoft's indominable desire to control a market segment end-to-end has led them to the goal of controlling content. The primary "new feature" of MS Windows Vista appears to be its support of tight DRM control. Microsoft's lack of ownership of nearly all content avoids the inevitable DoJ monopoly review.

Furnishing a server-based UI (Windows functions) via the internet, as well as metered server-based Office functions will lower the initial cost to new internet users, particularly those who prefer a portal. It may also appeal to small busness owners who might find the financial burdeon of a full-blown MS-based business rollout daunting. While various government entities worldwide continue to challenge Microsoft hegenomy, MS is exploring a way to (1) generate new revenue streams from existing product lines, and (2) expanding exposure to neophite users to "The One Way".

The only downside that Microsoft might experience from this new profit center, at least in the USA, is reliance upon the telcos and cable companies for the ubiquitous broadband internet access that server-based metered applications require . In the USA, even the FCC cannot skew the marketplace enough to ensure ubiquitous broadband internet access. Of course, with a nod from the DoJ, they could out-source that objective to Microsoft.

What is Microsoft's Real Intent???

[TraderZoo]

What is Live.com's intent? Is it just a portal, or is it your new OS? Consider this, an online operating system that can be used from anywhere that has internet access. I know most computers have operating systems, but does your Cell Phone have an GUI OS? Does your Car have a GUI OS? Does your iPod have a GUI OS? Could your Palm or iPaq have a GUI OS that is consistent across all platforms? The answer is frightning. Think about it, all Big Brother (I mean Microsoft) needs to do is rely on the evolution of wireless Internet. They will no longer need to sell you an OS that runs your machine, when they can sell you a subscription to use your OS on your microwave, TV, phone, car, and portable music player. Microsoft wants everyone to pay a monthly utility bill or subscription for the privledge of accessing your personal files on the internet. The internet will run on everything that has a wi-fi card, and a screen, and your OS will be Live.com... Sure there are some advantages, like shared colaboration of files, and the ability to run Windows from my Mac, but think about it. Who safeguards your data? Who has their billion command lines into your appliances? How will microsoft keep it from crashing? May you live in interesting times. TraderZoo.com

sidebarred ;p

[Anonymous Coward]

Categories
>Top Feeds
>>Slashdot

Control the world?

[trancemission]

Is this the beginning end of the end for the 'average' home user PC? Why do I get the feeling Bill Gates wants everybody to have a completly locked down Xbox in their living room running a web client/directX desktop and no other PC to speak of? All media/games content we know can be streamed - now live apps are looking quite promising. I'm never throwing a PC away again...............

stockholm syndrome

[jellybear]

that's what you sound like

Netvibes

[jacoplane]

Windows Live seems to be a clone of Netvibes

HOAX????

[fios]

Live.com doesn't even appear to bo owned by Microsoft. WHOIS

My best bet

[pascalv]

Microsoft is forecasting that Google is working on an OpenOffice.org version
- that runs on a Google Linux server
- and that you can remotely access for example through ssh and Cygwin/X

Microsoft feeling threatened?

[EddyPearson]

"When a wounded dog is cornered, its more dangerous than an angry, healthy one"

It seem Microsoft are doing whatever they can to hit out at Google, MSN really stepped up their game, started trying their own 'AdSense', and now they've gone for what I thought was the more likly thing google was going to branch into: WebApplications. Are Microsoft feeling threatened by Google? Well, Google hasn't encroached onto Microsofts market space (yet!), Desktop Products and OSs etc, But they are 'surrounding' Microsoft. They have a VERY diverse set of products, all for free (as in beer) and soon we'll see base.google.com (Going to KILL ebay) coming out of the box, and perhaps Microsoft are feeling scared :p Heh, thing is everybody loves google, cos google likes firefox :D and now M$ seem to have bowed to that pressure :D

Windows Live Servers running FreeBSD?

[blindd0t]

Is it just me, or is there some irony here? http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /www.live.com

The Redmond mafia

[elrous0]

I guess MS made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

Bill threatened to send some viruses over to break their Windows.

-Eric

live.com=google.com/ig=start.com

[josea]

I'm glad Microsoft is getting involved, competition is good thing. But as long as there is some improvement or change from version to version. I saw the http://www.google.com/ig website as a marked improvement over start.com. I currently dont see http://www.live.com/ as an improvement over Google's, though I understand that may not be the main purpose. The real interesting part will be if Google decides to up the ante and improve their portal or if they decide to leave it as it is, just happy that they distracted Microsoft long enough and had them use up resources to get to a point they were already at.

Slashdot is top Feed!

[TheSync]

If you go to www.live.com and click on "Top Feeds", Slashdot is the #1 feed!

make it IE only

[bdigit]

That will force a bunch of people to still have windows.

what happen to the rstp library from live.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious, Microsoft bought the live.com for a LARGE SUM of MONEY. I used to get the get rstp function from live.com to combine with mplayer on linux to streaming audio websites using real player. Where can I get the rstp function, now that live.com has gone to Microsoft?

Re:what happen to the rstp library from live.com?

[Ross Finlayson]

The Open Source RTSP/RTP streaming software is now called "LIVE555 Streaming Media", and is available at http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/.

(Note that it was only the domain name that changed. The Open Source RTSP/RTP streaming software is still ours, not Microsoft's :-)

such as?

[dmnic]

I haven't run into the first problem using Hotmail in Firefox.
granted, I dont use every feature of Hotmail as I could care less about calendaring, etc...but for basic email, it works fine in Firefox.

what doesnt work right?

To Quote from "Fight Club"

[npsimons]

Hey, good for you, doesn't change a thing.

Money For Nothing

[LifesABeach]

And the Clicks AREN'T Free!

Embrace and break.

[Anonymous Coward]

For your information, they are using broken specifications. Just try viewing the demo with a different browser (FF) under a different OS (Linux, OS-X). See how far you go.

Typical of M$. Embrace and break, I mean, "extend" the prevailing standard.

- Done smoking the company dope.

LMAO

[zlogic]

I've just typed "what is windows live" at http://www.live.com/
The result is http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=LIVE&q=wha t+is+windows+live

And guess what the Microsoft(R) AdWord(R) for that search is?

"SPONSORED SITES
Windows Problems? - www.yourtechonline.com
Get professional computer help now. Fast, friendly techs standing by. Call now for a free consultation and repair estimate...."

It really speaks for itself...

Re:LMAO

[zlogic]

Here's an even funnier thing:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=LIVE&q=win dows+crap
The first link is to www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/wm7/drm/wha t.aspx (Windows Media DRM, as it reads from the URL)

MS To Launch Internet Versions of Office

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Great ! Now I won't need a great honking machine to run my apps along with VMware to run windoze to run office to share files with the less enlightened or to run ie to visit broken web sites etc. ;-) All I need to do is use the web version and ignore a few adds as I do with "Get the FUD" ( or configure the ad bocker on Firefox ) ...

Fancy RSS Aggregator?

[JhohannaVH]

All this looks like is a web based RSS aggregator for the web. We're prohibited from using Firefox at work (ISA server to get out to the 'net), so I tested it with IE 6. It's just another portal. *bleh* How is this supposed to be innovative, inspiring or new? Oh, to anyone who's just born or just woke up from a coma. I see.

But then I clicked on the What's New tab, and found a lot of what they have planned.... I think this is what scares me more. How can you have webbased IM? Isn't webbased antivirus an oxymoron? WTF over? I guess I'm going to go ahead and check it out... only because god knows it's going to be mandated by mgmt. at some point to pull it internally. *feh* I hope not though... we're more a *nix shop now these days.

Jho

Re:Fancy RSS Aggregator?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to see web based IM this site is pretty slick

http://meebo.com/

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[Idontpostmuch]

oligopoly

        A market in which a limited number of sellers follow the lead of a single major firm. For example, the domestic automobile market was long characterized as an oligopoly, with American Motors, Chrysler, and Ford following the pricing lead of industry giant General Motors. Compare monopoly, oligopsony.

Google Suggest

[GPS Pilot]

Wow, I didn't know about Google Suggest until I read your post. It IS great!

Re:Google Suggest

[rogabean]

yeah.. I fell in love with the google suggest page myself. glad to have steered someone else towards it.

Doesn't seem to be working yet.

[Koatdus]

Humm....

I went to www.live.com with my mozilla browser and with Konqueror.

With Mozilla I can see a few of the menu items along the left side of the page but the search box at the top is missing and has a message saying that firefox support is coming soon. With Konqueror the search box at the top is there and seems to work (took me to MSN search) but the rest of the page is blank. When I investigated a little I found that it seems to be because of java script errors. Namely:

Error: http://stj.live.com/live/extern/atlas/compat/0.082 305.0-private/AtlasCompat.js: SyntaxError: Parse error at line 218
Error: http://stj.live.com/live/extern/atlas/runtime/0.10 0305.0/AtlasRuntime.js: TypeError: Value undefined (result of expression window.attachEvent) is not an object. Cannot be called.
Error: http://stj.live.com/live/extern/atlas/bindings/0.1 01005.0/AtlasBindings.js: TypeError: Undefined value
Error: http://stj.live.com/live/js/App.js?v=1.0.4.201.1: SyntaxError: Parse error at line 3
Error: http://www.live.com/: TypeError: Undefined value

This must be very complex java script for the top Microsoft programers to be fighting this much with it.

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree with your point from a point of extreme precision.

However the computer situation is more akin to having GM and Delorean, not GM and Ford. Given the apple situation (where microsoft actually gave them money to prop them up), it would be like calling the above auto market an oligopoly when GM was giving Delorean money so it would not declare bankruptcy.

Microsoft had a unique ability that GM lacked. They can change the 'road' to be a foot narrower without warning- making other peoples 'cars' non-functional until they adapt them to the new roads.

Power + Money != greatness

[mister_llah]

No, my ambition is to do intelligence research... and many researchers are underpaid and do what they do out of the love of knowledge.

It is my opinion that you can do great things and not have power and money. It would, by no means, be 'mediocre' to succeed without gaining either, depending on what you were doing.

That being said, I am quite concerned with letting any of my accomplishments get to my head.

Re:Power + Money != greatness

[NitsujTPU]

Again, you're making an argument that holds no weight. I never argued that money + power = greatness.

I did argue that Google is great, and that they have money and power. I never ever said that the reason that they are successful is related to their money or power.

You've argued that money and power necessitate evil. You still haven't supported your point.

Incidentally, by intelligence do you mean artificial intelligence, cognition, or military intelligence and the like?

I research artificial intelligence.

Re:Power + Money != greatness

[mister_llah]

Apologies, your statement 'Then your ambition is to be mediocre?' ... I inferred to mean that I do not long for power and money, therefore I do not long to be great, therefore I strive instead to be mediocre. If this was not your point, I missed it, sorry. If it was meant as a barb, there is no need to explain your point, but if it was not, I'd like to know what you meant.

===

The majority of human history supports my argument on corruption by money and/or power. If you'd like I can provide examples from American business history, American government history, or I could expand to international history (Germany and Japan are good examples)... though I am sadly lacking in knowledge of international business history.

Some quick references...
[abusers of monopolies]
Rockefeller and the early U.S. monopolies...
Ma Bell (and SBC is on the rise to the same heights)...
Microsoft...
-- In this regard, Google is not a monopoly yet, but I believe it will become one and it will abuse its influence.

[abuse of power]
Japanese imperialism just prior to WW2...
German imperialism prior to WW1, then prior to WW2... (annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the 1939 invasion of Poland)... (though the annexation of Austria may be viewed as justifiable, as the population was largely ethnically German, but that's debatable)
Hell, any country's vision of it having the right to bully others...
-- These refer to corruption based on power. When the nations hit a height of power, they felt the need to expand and did not hesitate to use aggressive methods of doing so.

Throughout history there have been repeated cases of men in power wanting more power...

Business is in no way different from history, it's all powered by human beings with the same motives, no matter their vocation. That means the same weaknesses.

Just because Google seems fine and supportive now... doesn't mean they won't (if they haven't already) employ devious methods to get ahead if threatened by another company.

You will also note that I said that it is not 100% that it will necessitate evil... very few things are absolute in that regard... but it seems likely, given in almost every case throughout history... that it has caused corruption... that in this one... it would as well.

One man may seem uncorruptable, and this may be true, but if you consider a company is many, many men... the likelihood of remaining uncorruptable goes sharply downward.

It's an opinion, not a fact, that I feel is well supported by mankind throughout history. I would love greatly to be shown a good amount of evidence to the contrary... it might make me a little less of a misanthrope.

===

As far as Research
Intelligence in regards to artificial intelligence as well as cognition, specifically regarding language acquisition.

Re:Power + Money != greatness

[NitsujTPU]

Not a problem. I should have realized that that was the context.

===

Also a pretty fine argument. I was just prodding to see if anybody would ever make one akin to that.

===

Nifty. I've been working on some natural language problems, and take part in my schools NLP seminar. I take what you're saying to mean the less applied emulation of human language acquisition for cog-sci type experiments.

Are you CS/Info Sci/Psych?

Re:Power + Money != greatness

[mister_llah]

For the most part, my Slashdot responses are half-lazy, if I don't have to provide a string of evidence (i.e. my point makes itself) ... I try to avoid it.

I generally tend to assume everyone knows a fair amount about history, but I often assume too much.

===

As far as my area of "expertise" ... but I am no expert by any means, just yet...

ComSci/CogSci/Linguistics (formal)

===

My heart is in linguistics, though...

Re:Power + Money != greatness

[NitsujTPU]

Eh. I feel that history being what it is, doesn't dictate what all future behaviors will be. It certainly is possible that someone could be wealthy and benevolent. Someone funds all of these private universities and fellowships.

===

Nifty. CS & AI here.

===

Ahh, I know a few of those. I can't really relate, my interest in NLP takes a different form.

Schadenfreude

[Sun Rider]

Pathetic. MS trying to hurriedly imitate Google.

Something's wrong here

[foreverdisillusioned]

So wait a minute, let me get this straight... Microsoft is launching a free internet version of Office that will be compatible with Firefox, and thus compatible with Linux. Oh yeah, and MS Office is supposed to get OpenDocument support, too.

Wow. Ok. I'm waiting to Balmer to announce that he's going to light his balls on fire. You know, for the finishing touch.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that internet-based apps have a very bright future, and I'm thrilled that MS is doing this, but either this is the stupidest decision they've ever made or they've suddenly grown morals or they've got a trick or ten up their sleeve. Personally, I'm betting on the latter. No matter how much they hate Google, they can't be willing to sacrifice their second-largest cash cow just to get a little ad revenue.

So what?

[RaNdOm OuTpUt]

Really, if MS wants to, as they have control over mostly everything in the computer industry (and probably the car, home appliance, etc. industries as well) they can, and they probably will, just charge people even more than the desktop version of windows, saying that having your files on the internet increses productivity so it should cost more.

OpenOffice.org increses productivity and is FREE, you MS weasels

In other news .......

[chawly]

This afternoon - during his second press conference of the day - Mr. Gates announced the opening of an entirely automated factory in Tibet. The factory is remotely controlled, using exclusively Microsoft Software across the Internet and the process is so perfected that no human presence is required in the building. Mr. Gates described the whole affair as "spiffy" and said that he would personally (his very own self) control the manufacturing from his personal office. When asked what was made in this new factory, Mr. Gates hesitated and was obviously in need of help. After listening to an aide, he was able to answer the question. He turned to the audience with a large smile and said that this latest advance in technology from Microsoft made banjos - pale blue banjos. A slightly hysterical fellow who began shouting an incoherent question concerning ukeleles was escorted from the building by Microsoft Security Personnel. A Microsoft spokesperson later dismissed a rumour concerning the fate of this person as "totally untrue". "And anyhow" she said, "you'll never be able to find the body"

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[Idontpostmuch]

I also both agree and disagree with you.

Microsoft can't make an apple computer non functional. All it can do is compete. The leader remains the leader, wether through good ol' fashioned competion or underhanded "competition". If someone uses MS office over OO.o, they choose to.

Many a Linux user here on slashdot would say "You can render my Linux installation useless when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." (The same holds true, if not moreso, for the Mac users.)

Microsoft gave Apple money because the market needed to be shared. (Much like scene where the idea oif oligopoly was conceived in "A Beautiful Mind")

MS is and will always be commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody seems to be talking about free in MS. Everything is free if you go to open source world. But come back to the real world(the world were most corporations invest billions of dollars in purchasing software). Everything has a price. Now how do we expect a company topping the charts in NYSE to become a philanthropist. Not so fast no the change isnt coming so fast , believe me. There are many things out there which call themselves free. " Free they are not " which you realise after you invest your time and efforst learning it. PDF documents are a example of free that comes bundled with a big tag price you dont notice until you use it for something meaningful. Always remember advertising as "FREE" gets you instant publicity.

Re:Yes microsoft is bad

[Skreems]

Windows (many variants), Mac OSX, Linux (many many variants), Solaris, *BSD, up-and-comers like SkyOS...

Seems like we already have at least 5 solid OSs competing in the market, and that's if you count all Linux variants as one. Just because the ones you like don't have greater market share doesn't mean the ecosystem is broken. You CAN successfully run only Linux, and get just as much done as on Windows. You CAN run only Mac OSX or only FreeBSD.

You're missing the point...

[Gordo_1]

so suddenly there are no ethical measurements for a human actions when they are in a company ?

No. Humans can and should be held to ethical standards, but profit driven organizations (regardless of the fact that humans are in them) only understand money. If, as CEO of a company, I choose to use slaves to manufacture goods, I have questionable morals and should be prosecuted criminally. Thinking of my company as good or evil by extension is mostly useless since it's not an entity that can be held to such standards. Boycotting their products (or some other way of affecting the bottom line) is really the only way you can convince this company to make moral labor decisions. If you were to hold it to human standards, it would probably be labeled psychotic, bipolar and/or schizophrenic based on its seeming lack of compassion, constantly changing outlook and contradictory decisions.

Re:You're missing the point...

[richlv]

most people that are labelled evil/bad are not announced to be schizophrenic - this cathegorisation does not require direct involment of social measures to isolate unstable persons.

of course, companies are not unified to the point where they have no chance to radically change views - so you should not apply to them everything that is applied to humans.

i think, you should try to view this more as "groups of persons".

what label have german ss units received ? how is al-quaeda labelled ? can you cathegorize actions of american government in good/bad cathegories ?

generally first two have been classified as bad/evil. third one would be in the not-so-sure cathegory, as views split on that one.

in the same light companies in it perform good and bad actions. we can see them, we are able to understand impact and evaluate wether they correspond with our moral norms. isn't this the same as with humans ?