Slashdot Mirror
Another Belated Microsoft Memo
fiannaFailMan writes "Bill Gates has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as AJAX (that MS 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the idea itself, but the fact that Microsoft is taking it seriously.' Zach Nelson of NetSuite decided against writing a memo. 'Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'"
this is another dupe story that was talked about a few weeks ago...
apparently the editors are stoned on friday nights again
Note to self: learn to write software
Dear Bill..
I Love You!!!!!!
Signed..
Anonymous Coward
So does Microsoft have a patent on AJAX? Can they leverage their parenting of the technology to stifle progress once again? Who owns AJAX?
Personally, the whole AJAX thing is cool, and at the same time scary.
I'm a web developer, and right now I am really getting into the stride of making very good apps, very quickly.
With AJAX, the expectations will rise considerably. The development effort will go way up...all to do the same things we are doing now.
I know that this sounds stupid to a lot of you...but think about games. Better graphics increase development time and effort, but don't necessarily make a better game.
Soon, EVERY web app will need to be an AJAX app...even if it doesn't need to be.
The age of simple software is once again coming to a close.
No reason to lie.
Mr Gates is probably laying the framework for changes in the AJAX support in IE aimed at breaking competitors products.
That has to be the worst idea to come out of a marketing drone since synergistic paradigm. At least Microsoft is actually working on new stuff lately. Google and Firefox have urged them to restart their old habits of copying that we haven't seen since the mid nineties.
Later this year Microsoft is planning to release a hard drive based MP3 player.
These guys are so far behind the times it's not even funny. The next thing you know they'll be talking about how we really need something to search the web with, or an online way to look up an address. Hey, here's an idea, we'll make a website that contains information about stuff and make it editable by everyone.. We can call it a Wiki!
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
...how powerful and profitable Microsoft would be if they weren't always five years late to the party.
This isn't the first time Microsoft has been late to the race. They are the masters of catch up and making the most of what someone else pioneered.
Slashdotters are quick to laugh at Micro$oft, but Microsoft is the one laughing all the way to the bank.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
There you have it Slashdotters. Here, Microsoft has some innovation to show. Sincerely, I have been slashdotting for a long time and can say I have seen very little if anything about M$ being recognized for its innovation.
This I believe, is one of them. Thank you M$.
Memo to self-
Stop writing memos.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Someone take Ajax the bleach and scrub those Ajax Javascript stories for good, please! 'nuff of Ajax!!!
Oh, they managed to exploit it, albeit indirectly.
This time it's web-based software using technology such as AJAX (that MS 'invented but failed to exploit').
... I'm sure that systems running Microsoft's implementation of Ajax will be successfully rooted^H^H^H^H^H^H^exploited in short order.
No problem
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I agree with PBS's Robert X Cringely: the leak's just a distraction. It's only there to make Wall St. think Microsoft is still relevant and on the edge of the wave.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
But with this web-based/AJAX thingies it is a bit a conflict of interest for Microsoft. MS desperately tries to jump onto the services band-wagon. But the truth is that their main revenue comes from shrink-wrapped software (like Windows or Office). They *try* to laverage that to other areas but they fail miserably.
Take MS vs. Google. Now Google still IMHO does everything before MS, and then MS goes "me too" and issues something similar but yet worse than Google offering. In normal situation - meaning MS has no money to pump from OS/software revenue into new markets they would not get a chance against Google - they will simply bankrupt. Right now they pump the money but I doubt they get any revenue (even to go on zero line) from their web services.
Now as far as I understand they wan't to couple web-based software (more like service) with shrink-wrappedsoftware like Windows and Office. I base that on various interviews with MS execs about MS product line I've read. But this is like flawed idea from the begining. The most valuable part (IMHO) about web software is that it only needs a browser and server infrastructure on the other end. So in fact you do not need to pay any special attention to the client side (as you would have to with shrink-wrapped software). So for e.g. you could have a big extranet with 5000 clients across the world, using one sophisticated application by web and only thing you need is decent server architecture and on client side - commodity: standard browser running on any OS, maybe a printer or smth. to get the job done.
This is completely the opposite of having fat clients loaded with bloated OS and software suites - the MS way.
So I see a conflict here.
AJAX is a good idea for larger services, like Gmail, that many people use and it is completely seamless. However, AJAX is much harder to code, and it's not necessary for a smaller company, which doesn't need the marginal gains vs. the coding. Still, for a large company like Google, it takes less time to load (which makes Gmail seem better) and also saves bandwidth.
"Bill, is this your memo: 'how to run a government 101 at 11:00' ?"
"No, it's George's. I took the advanced class last year."
Did anyone else first read the title as "Another Baleeted Microsoft Memo"? :/
Zonk has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as DUPES (that Slashdot 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the story itself, but the fact that Slashdotters are taking it seriously.' Commander Taco of Slashdot decided against writing a memo. 'Posting dupes is easy,' he says, whereas 'professional quality editing is a whole lot harder.'"
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Kinda like the old saying "the second mouse gets the cheese."
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
Lemme fix that link for you
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx
I'd say they've managed to exploit it fairly directly.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
From TFA: This prompted yet another memo from Marc Benioff, the marketing-savvy boss of Salesforce.com, a leading proponent of the software as a service model. If Microsoft were serious about Web 2.0 and Microsoft Live, he suggested helpfully in an internal memo sent to the press, it should rename its traditional software Microsoft Dead. Web 2.0, he said, was not about old companies constrained by their legacy products but new firms such as, naturally, Salesforce.com, Writely, Numsum, Zimbra and Goffice.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Microsoft's success is in monopolization of the market, bundling of software with major vendors, FUD with naive management. What they can't steal, they borrow. What they can't borrow they might have a joint venture to get a start. If your really lucky, and few are they will buy you.
You could not convince me after this many years of Microsoft that Redmond does not intentionally design their products to hinder the competition.
memo (in Spanish)? as in the first meaning? :P
"Isn't the first time"? This isn't the TENTH time! I've lost count, ran out of fingers.
Sometimes they catch up. Sometimes they lose. In the 90s they had a reputation for catching up and winning. This decade they mostly haven't. MS doesn't have the clout it used to.
How come nobody's noticed this YET? Or perhaps, it invited way too many hits last time /. posted it!
What was a nice thing for solving problems otherwise difficult to solve, has turned into something that is making my expensive computer grind to a halt. Currently no browser likes to have multiple commercial pages open at the same time (which is how I often browse). Everybody from the content hoster, the ad folks, the editorial, and design folks gotta have some Ajax running. VERY VERY little does anything useful from either a UI or Content view, but in the end makes browsing slower, makes my computer slower, and makes me hate the F77ck3rs who think Ajax is cool. I hope this comes to a quick near death like when Java was cool.
that they can be late to the game by several years and still dominate by shear force of money and will.
Microsoft doesnt have to take chances, they only need to see whats happening and join the game once they see who the winner is.
Microsoft has a project called 'Atlas' that has a set of prebuilt controls and javascript files that you can use for your projects. It can be found at asp.net. The nice thing about this project is you can define an Atlas (it's just AJAX really) control the same way you define a typical asp control ( vs. ) and then link in the pre-defined .js files. I have been reading about AJAX for a while now on Slashdot (my employeer has been using it for quite a while now and I didn't even know it) but hadn't tried it out. Atlas is so simple that I had my first page converted in a matter of minutes. An earlier submitter pointed out that not all pages need to be converted or built using AJAX but the customer is demanding it. This is an interesting topic, and I have considered this myself. I have found that almost every page in the types of websites that I create don't need this technology. Most of them are your typical form where you just insert data and update a database. If you don't need a high level of interactivity, AJAX might not be the best option.
What a nonsense.
Even further, they don't even support it correctly. XmlHttpRequest is a standard object in E4X (an ECMA standard), but IE supports it only via an ActiveX Object instance.
After you said that writing code is a whole lot harder than writing a memo, I got to thinking: When was the last time Bill Gates coded anything? I mean I was just wondering. For all the supposedly evil things his company has done, albeit with him at the helm, he started out as a geek. Geeks like to do geeking things, I don't care how old you are... what do you think he's done recently?
to provide the "X" in AJAX, but the concept was envisioned by Netscape all along.
But I think the reason why AJAX works so well is that MS had nothing to do with it's further development. If MS had tried to mature the product it would have done it in such away that it only worked on Windows on IE.
It's sad that MS will never be able to develop and mature a product like this because they have to keep the monopoly going. They can however incorporate an good product in later. If MS wants to be a true leader they have to think out of the MS box, and develop good products just for the sake of developing good products. That's not how a good business runs. Last time I check MS didn't have a good business structure they have a great one.
Simply it's just the price of success.
Java applets have all the user interface/networking capabilities that AJAX has and some more.
I think that Sun missed the boat on this one. Instead of working on a lightweight JVM for every platform, they kept bloating the language and the implementation. I don't see many Java applets anymore, it's mostly Flash and now AJAX.
All you say is quite true.
Now if they could just learn ( say catch up a bit ) and
stop acting like they have to own everything software,
maybe slashdotters will stop treating them so terribly.
emt 377 emt 4
"Now a barrage of memos signals the emergence of a new generation of web-based software, often called 'Web 2.0'. As in previous cases, what is new is not the idea itself, but the fact that Microsoft is taking it seriously." Funny how when Microsoft takes something seriously, I don't. This Web 2.0 crap is stupid. Just because the W3C and some developers who use XML are becoming better doesn't mean we have to dub the "World Wide Web" a.k.a. "The Internet" a.k.a. "Porn" a.k.a. "The Net/Web", "The Web 2.0". We already have enough names, can't it just be called, "The Internet" as it should be called, hence the interconnected networks?
It is interesting to read about M$ embraceing AJAX, up until the release release of IE6 MSDN had a lot of good articles about how to use the browser as an application interface (at that time the buzz word was DHTML). But it looked like they got scared about this replacing some of their desktop based apps (where most of their revenues comes from).
web outlook....
Or, tell them that AJAX is out, and LART is in. When they come asking for LART, you'll know what to do.
Back in late 2000 I wrote a web page that displayed a SVG map, based on census tract data from the whole US, and when the user selected a different set of variables to view (say comparing population density to property values) the javascript on the page would request the data from my web server, which would run the needed SQL query, and return the result in XML to recolor/change the map, without reloading the huge map geometry, just the new data.
.CGI module to turn the request into SQL and the data into XML. The big thing was SVG, it just wasn't widly supported at the time, the Adobe SVG software choked on anything complex, and Firefox 1.0 didn't even include it.
I don't recall using any ActiveX; just JavaScript and a little
I guess the distinction is in the asynchronous prefix, where you have an outside object on the client side, calling back into your JavaScript when it's done.
I just put an end marker on the data I was retrieving, and waited for it to appear, or for an error condition to occur.
If they could have enabled threads in Javascript, that would be more flexable I think.
You crack me up.
There's nothing as defensive as an astroturfing MS shill and sucker who blew the trustfund on 'Microsoft Certification'! Hahahahaaaaaaa!
Wait, maybe smokers or SUV owners are more defensive.
You're probably a cigarette-smoking, SUV-driving, astroturfing MS-shill with MCSE.
Yeah, that's it.
I agree with your premise. Microsoft often can't afford to take advantage of truly innovative technology, because that technology might erode their desktop monopoly.
Some of the logic along the way is... problematic.
Microsoft introduced ActiveX to ensure the web was tied to their platform. The reason ActiveX was "much maligned" is because it was just DCOM wrapped up in web semantics. Since DCOM was poorly-designed, ActiveX inherited many problems, including extremely poor security. At the time, CORBA was the standard for remote execution, and although it was a standard, it had many drawback when compared to DCOM-- namely, poor implementations that often didn't work together properly, naming service issues (still a problem, though its getting better), and huge bloat / performance issues.
Their platform was hardly fantastic. It was cobbled together, riddled with stability and security issues, and was tied intimately to the MS-Windows platform. The primary reason nobody adopted it on the web, outside of the compatibility nightmare, was that ActiveX controls required a Microsoft server on the other end, meaning exposing an important service to the internet. I believe that was Microsoft's intent-- get application developers to use ActiveX (most app developers were MS-Windows developers), and force the sysadmins to install MS-Windows servers to support them. But that might just be paranoid delusions on my part.
I'm glad you remember to glory days of ActiveX and IIS servers with such a warm fuzzy glow. All I remember were the serious ActiveXploits, IIS worms, and performance problems created by this "fantastic platform."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Microsoft is far ahead of the curve on "AJAX" stuff its not even funny. Hell, Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest 7 years ago or so. And Ajax is a joke compared to something like XAML and a .NET runtime in the browser. It'll make all this html/css/javascript+dom look like the stone age, and it'll all be in the browser. Word and anything else they want to run will look and almost act native. I used Visual Studio ActiveX that responded reasonably years ago.
Microsoft DID NOT invent Ajax.
..... da ta da da! Next. Given that the only thing it (the web) could run on at the time was Next... I guess Steve Jobs had more to bring to bear in creating Ajax than MS did.
.... it had to exist post Sun creation. Sun was created After the Http request was first used. Java was first created in 1991, and introduced to the public in 1994. LONG after javascript had existed.
Ajax = Asynchronous Javascript and XML.
XML is a subset of SGML which existed before M$.
Javascript is a child of LiveScript, both were created by Netscape. Nothing in what is Ajax was ever created by M$ period. The fact that they are able to see the value and talk it up is cool, but they invented none of it.
Now I'm sure someone will bring up M$ Remote Scripting. It like LiveScript where basically in house products. Remote Script did not exist in the public realm. However at the time of it's "creation", M$ was lacking a viable browswer (Definition of Viable is it works.) IE 1.0 and 2.0 where total jokes, 3.0 was the equal of Netscape 1.0 and 4.0 began to work. By this time however both MS and Netscape were fully supporting LiveScript/JavaScript (Sometimes in name only, as each tried to extend beyond the other.)
But in short Please, stop say M$ invented Ajax. This is like claiming that Honda invented the Car. They build them yes but they did not invent them.
Now according to wikipedia something called. Remote Scripting supposedly pre-dated HTTP requests. (according to Wikipedia.) Nope.. sorry didn't. The concept of HTTP requests etc had been layed out for a long time before M$ existed (pre-dating the Altair) But it took Berners-Lee to be able to make it usable and, Stanford Linear Accelorator to do the most important step. Create a Distant End. In fact at the time the ONLY usable OS for this was
Since Remote Scripting required a Java applet to work
So no, I had more to do with Ajax than M$ did. And I had nothing at all to do with the concept.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
AJAX is a great way to make it harder to get at the data you want without following the intended process. Take flash as another good example of this. Unless a flash author goes out of his/her way to make the thing indexable, the information is locked in. You can't link in to the middle of a flash script the way you can with an html site.
You have to walk through the silly flash stuff to get to the data you want. I tried to get information on automobiles recently, but the trend there is flash in a big way. Well, they didn't really say anything useful about their cars, anyway. The only information I could get was from the third-party sites. It's like any advertising in that they make you walk through the data in the fashion that most influences you to ignore the things you don't like (or don't know) and pay attention to the pretty color.
AJAX, as far as I can tell, is a great way to limit the indexability of information and provide a single point of entry for it.
Of course, XML was supposed to do exactly the opposite by making the information completely indexable, and Mr. Bossman totally got on the hypetrain to Nowhere.
It's just a restricted interface to Sockets. Why, oh why, is there not a Javascript sockets interface? We would have been doing AJAX years ago if not for hackish things like inline frames and the previously non-cross-platform XMLHttpRequest.
Another problem with Asynchonous calls is race conditions in your Javascript. With setTimeout() and async calls, you need locking -- where is the Javascript locking interface?
Without it, all the AJAX stuff I've seen is "cool" until it just hangs or crashes.
Sockets and mutexes being left out of ECMAscript, when both are integral to the browser platform that spawned it, are glaring omissions.
... extend, extinguish.
:)
I mean, duh.
The anonymous user has an informative post.
evil is as evil does
If the wiki is wrong you should do something about it, sure any senseble person should take into account that its not (at) all hard facts that's Wikipedia, but people do tend to get there knowledge from it. If you are aware it is wrong on a certain point, do something about it please.
Microsoft's patents on the C#/.NET APIs have already greatly stifled progress. If Microsoft didn't have those patents, Mono would likely be far more widely used on Linux. It has taken a lot of work to determine that those patents are likely not relevant or enforceable, and nevertheless they still have a bad PR effect for Mono.
In general, merely having a patent stifles progress and is an anti-competitive practice because it forces competitors to work around it, in particular given that Microsoft has threatened to enforce its portfolio and clearly has the means to do it.
Microsoft also uses its patent portfolio to negotiate patent cross licensing agreements and they use patents in the negotiation of individual business deals. And Microsoft uses patents to threaten countersuits when they are threatened with a legitimate patent lawsuit, usually resulting in a cross licensing deal and settlement.
'Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'" Bullshit I say, do you have any idea how many hours that can be wasted writing a memo.
I had always wondered just what they were doing all that time at M$ since it was writing good software obviously. Know we know. Bill writes memos! At least he does that well.
"He's writing memos now because, like a LOT of people who used to code, he can't write software any more."
To be fair, to have Bill Gates coding would be a waste of his and Microsoft's time.
I used to be a pretty good programmer until about 10 years ago when I was promoted to director of architecture for the enterprise of a fortune 1000 company. I haven't really coded in 10 years, and I'm probably no good at it anymore, but that doesn't stop me from telling programmers what to do (or at least their bosses). And sometimes I even write white papers for our CIO and business people that explains how evolving technololgy will change what we have to do.
I could probably start to code again, but that's not my job any more; my day is spent working with our business people to understand where they want to take the business, working with our business partners to understand their business and technology, and finally evangelizing to technical and business people what to do to make sure the technology and business align.
Don't you suspect Bill Gates does a lot of that? I mean... it seems pretty silly to say "Oh gee, Bill Gates doesn't code any more, why should he make any technical decisions, and his pronoucements are probably crap because his Java skills are non-existent".
If I can make an observation, most programmers are too busy trying to get their work done to really see the big picture. That doesn't make them stupid, it means they're doing their job. So by the same token, don't assume Bill Gates is out of touch with the technical side of things simply because he's helping run the business.
"As a user who has had to endure every application being a web application, even if it never needed to be"
The whole reason web apps took off IMHO was because distributing these big apps, both stand-alone and C/S was difficult and was requiring a degree of coordination that was difficult to pull off. Anybody who did C/S apps and tried to make sure all the Windows clients out there had a consistent ODBC driver will tell you what a pain these things are (plus these types of apps tended to be 2-tier, which is harder to scale than a 3-tiered app).
Web apps for all their flaws got around the entire software distribution issue and has allowed people to cut costs by allowing a more rational back-end intrastructure. While some apps suffered, overall, people like them because web apps tend to work in a very consistent way. AJAX is simply restoring the balance by allowing more complex UI's to be distributed centrally. Personally, I think its a bit of a fad, but it will probably have a long-lasting impact on people's expectation of functionality.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"and a .NET runtime in the browser"
.net runtime works in firefox on the mac or linux and then we'll talk. Until then, you bear the mark of somebody who just doesn't get it.
Just what we want. A non-portable solution that only works in Windows in IE.
Great solution.
I'll bet you think everybody should install the jet engine on their desktop, because its so fucking standardized. Whee! Throw whatever MS wants onto your desktop and make sure the next application crashes because of version incompatibilities. What a terrific idea.
Let me know when the
Unfortunately, I just can't see an Ajax version of MS Office products taking off. An Ajax-based document retrieval system implemented on a network could work, though.
I hope you're not one of those who count HTML and CSS as "languages"...
I coded -- and still code -- in more languages than that even before my company decided to label me as a "Web Developer" for working on web-enabled applications. That "age of simple web pages" that you speak of was the time when Webmasters were just that, and nobody thought of considering them "developers". I still do not consider making web pages "software development" as such, but more like User Interface implementation. Multi-tierred, full-featured, web applications are another matter.
-dZ.
--
"There can be only Juan!"
- Juan McCloud from the Clann McCloud, El Highlandero.
Carol vs. Ghost
If Microsoft has suddenly realised that they need to 'exploit' AJAX, great. Make it easy to code. I've been looking at Atlas (atlas.asp.net) and I am unimpressed with the difficulty of getting it working for my application. MS either needs to get better documentation out there, or rethink the framework.
I've also been looking at OpenLaszlo (Openlaszlo.org) and although it is designed for a much jazzier UI than I need, it might do the trick for me. I'm still pondering about whether I want to deal with the Tomcat/Java dependency on the server or not...
My last option if I want to implement a bunch of AJAX behavior is to write a bunch of JavaScript routines myself. I did this for my last project, which is OK, but I feel sorry for the next web developer who comes along and has to maintain that application.
I'm leaning towards Laszlo, just because my development timeframe is very short (hey, what else is new?)
"3, Insightful"? How 'bout "0, Uninformed"? The crimes laid out in Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge's COURT'S FINDINGS OF FACT are criminal under any reasonable legal system, including those of a 'truly free society'. There is an old saying: "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" that is applicable. 5-year perspective on the case is interesting. Microsoft regularly flexes their patent muscle by refusing to grant use of patents it owns to competitors. E.g. Bill Gates himself has turned down patent licensing requests for use of Microsoft patents proposed as IETF standards. (google Microsoft IETF patent or read this) Their anti-competitive practices most certainly do involve patents. Patent abuse is even an incriminating component of the above FINDINGS OF FACT. And Microsoft's abuses go far beyond those discussed in the FINDINGS OF FACT; see http://kmfms.com/whatsbad.html.
Make 'em pay! http://Payola.org #include "stddisclaimer
What, "belated" like the 1995 one when Microsoft tried to get on the internet, but failed, because they were too late?
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
Microsoft pioneered this whole way of thinking
The earliest example that I've noticed of "ajax"-like functionality was on Amazon.com. When you vote on comments for a product, there's a javascript snippet that communicates with the server, using a hidden image object. No XMLHttpRequest object necessary.
While it was a good idea, what doomed Microsoft's effort was that they implemented it as a feature unique to only their browser, based on ActiveX.
It wasn't until after the Mozilla team implemented XMLHttpRequest that it became widely used. So, all this talk which implies that Microsoft is responsible for AJAX's popularity today is hogwash. They invented it, but it took others to make it cross-platform and useful.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.