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10 Biggest Microsoft Surprises of 2005
IZ Reloaded writes "The Microsoft Watch has a top 10 list of the biggest Microsoft surprises of the year. Among the surprises are Internet Explorer rising from the dead, Microsoft gets RSS and Microsoft Office team blogging. From Microsoft Watch: MS 'gets' RSS: While some folks were less than overjoyed that Microsoft was tinkering with the "little orange RSS box," Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."
Some anti-dupe software...
Steve Balmer discovered at the office party having sexual relations with Google in a storage cupboard.
The recent announcement of MS's new slogan:
-Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women
5. Microsoft refuses to take the EC seriously
7. Redmond still can't find a way to shake its shoddy security image
I'm not really sure why these two are considered surprises. These seem more like expectations than anything.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
RSS is gospel in Redmond these days
It must be a bit bittersweet, given that RSS is basically a sloppier version of Microsoft's "push" technology CDF, which was introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0.
Is it just me or do other people not get RSS?
It seems to me to be very limited, only useful to be able to quickly read headlines from peoples blogs.
Sorry to piss on your blogfire, but most people have better things to do that keep up to date with blogging.
I realise its Web 2.0 and all that, but is RSS really important enough to put into the OS?!
Who cares.
I hear their tinkering with the XML standard too. MS: back off.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
Posting this article on this site is like tossing Nemo into a shark tank.
Let us count the intellectually absent posts.. damn, where did I put that Long Integer?
Cogito Ergo Sum
Hu? IE was never dead, maybe development of IE but certainly not its userbase.
So what the article is saying there is only one big suprise - Microsoft is doing something right.
Let the flame war begin...
(I kid)
1. IE rises from the dead: After insisting that Internet Explorer was an inextricable part of Windows, Microsoft abruptly changed course and decided to develop and deliver a new standalone version of its browser, after all. Nothing like a little competition to open new doors (and windows).
Doesn't look like much of a surprise to me. If they're going to want to compete with Google with their Web-based Office products, they're going to want to have a semi-proprietary (and predictable since they own and develop it!) platform on which to work on their competitive edge: IE.
Do they really, or is this just the fad du jour up in Redmond? It's more like Uncle Bill saw demonstration of RSS and liked it as a basis to further his vision of pervasive fee-based web services, a vision where MSFT is squarely situated as the tollbooth in the middle of everything.
Sure, they have the feeds everywhere and have built the protocol into their core products, but that doesn't mean they "get it" in the same sense that you or I "get it." It's more like RSS it the kool-ade of the month, just like "security-security-security" was last January (or was it in 2004?), and "developers-developers-developers" was a few months back.
I'm so disillusioned with MSFT and its leapard's spots that never change: embrace, extend, vanquish, bugify and feature-encumber with more bugs. Then churn the non-compatible and bug-rich versions to pump up revenues.
They "get it," maybe, but only to the extent that it gets them theirs: they want to own all the tollbooths on the web-services highway.
"Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when..."
I imagine you'd attribute their overwhelming success to dumb luck, then?
It sounds so incredibly pathetic when tiny organizations say such things.
Who here honestly believed that MS would really put some effort in cleaning up the crap that is IE? Oh sure, they might make some fixes to the next version but what do you expect? The people at MS are not insane or stupid, they do not produce shoddy code on purpose. It is just the MS always adds so many features to its product that on release it turns out there are a whole lot of open holes because of all the features. The best way to make IE more secure is to rip out activex. Not going to happen.
You can in theory do the best more secure development in the world and if you then have some idiot decide that it would be really cool if unknown code could have free access to the system (html/javascript email) none of it matters. It would be like trying to design a safe and have markelting insist on a nice clear glass panel in the outside wall so people can see how save their money is.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1. IE is resurrected
2. RSS
3. Win FS
4. Ray Ozzie 2 Microsoft move
5. MS laughs at the EC
6. No major vendor app purchase
7. MS Security Sucks - Whats the suprise?
8. Office embraces XML, developers blog, and etcetera
9. Marketers are given free reighn - Whats the suprise?
10. Hailstorm (.Net) is reintroduced
And the number one point of confusion?
'So, the old stuff was Dead, right?'
No, seriously - what the heck is 'Live' supposed to mean? Any ideas?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
RSS can be handy for stock watchers. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for each company you track by entering their symbol on Yahoo Finance, and clicking the RSS button. An application like RSSReader (which is free) will pull all of the headlines together. It saves a ton of time when you want to read each stock's daily news.
Well, to me, there is nothing new MS has done this year. Nothing innovative. Resurrection of IE with tabs? Folding RSS into Windows/IE? MS has always been doing so with technologies or stuff created/innovated by others (and problem is, they usually do it fairly well). Office 12 XML to ECMA? Well, they needed an answer to ODF. Windows Live? I don't know. Is it yet another portal?
Of course Microsoft would finally embrace RSS, when Atom reached 1.0 a while ago. Gotta keep comfortably behind the times, but still pretend that you're "with it."
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Hard to tell from the hyper "This is all _so_ cool" attitude of the writer, but
every indicator I've seen in the past year says that more and more Americans
(not sure about the Europeans) have wised up to the MS process of whipping up
some alpha-level code, throwing it on the market all the while marketing said
code as the greatest thing since sex. The experience of the consumer after she
gets her pretty new Dell does not match the picture presented by Microsoft and
Dell as to what the experience will be.
I talk with a lot of folks from grandmas to IT people and the one constant across
the board is that people are sick of Microsoft's junk because of unreliability
problems, whether due to security or stability or scalibility, etc, etc. ad
infinitum, ad nauseaum.
The only reason Microsoft has managed to get away with pushing their junk on the
market is because most of these folks were coming into the PC realm for the
first time and didn't know any better. Well, they sure as hell know better now:
They've been burned repeatedly by lousy MS junk since the middle of the
1980's and they are actively looking for alternatives.
Look for Apple and F/OSS to have a banner year.
Cheers.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Microsoft tried but couldn't convince Sergey and Larry to sell out.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The Windows Genuine Advantage validation plug-in was the biggest surprice for me. In the download page they even have step-by-step instructions with photos on how to install it on Firefox.
They hired Clemens Vasters
RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself
and given Microsoft's past record on integrating network functionality into the OS, I'm looking forward to a new market for RSS virus scanners.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"Let us count the intellectually absent posts.. damn, where did I put that Long Integer?"
It's not intellectually absent to point out slashdot group behavior.
Anyway even though programming is only 20% more efficient from the commodore days. Microsoft's VS 2005, SQL Server, and Biztalk still represent a big 2005 surprise.
RSS is gospel in Redmond these days.
Yer, because they want to kill it and replace it with something of their own. And this is supposed to be Microsoft Watch? They obviously haven't been watching closely enough!
Yeah, mod this guy underrated because +5, Flamebait is really humorous rating. Plus, I'm from China
Although I am an dedicated Mac guy, this is not an attempt at a flame of MS....and I hope the following post proves that:
I get a little scared everytime MS gets interested in adopting some standard. So I will be interested to see what they do in terms of XML. The reason is basically due to some of their other forays into standards. The most publicized would be Java. However, some of you may also be aware of MS's use (misuse) of the Kerberos standard. Rather than use the standard, they co-opted it slightly by using fields previously unused in Kerberos. While the jury was still out last time I checked on whether this degraded the security of Kerberos, I just do not understand why they felt the need to change it at all.....especially when they are adamant about not telling anyone what the heck they did exactly so someone--other than MS--can determine if what they did has some potential for holes or cross system interoperability problems.
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
How on earth can Microsoft's 2nd greatest surprise of the year be addition of RSS support in IE? Blogmonsters living in their blogospherecaves don't seem to have any clue about the real popularity of RSS. Hint: it's close to zero in any scale.
Why didn't the writer tell us about the results of MS Research http://research.microsoft.com/? Or the growth of Raymond Chen's fan club http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/? Or that the notorious nitpick Jacob Nielsen gave a bit of positive feedback to Microsoft and the upcoming Office http://www.useit.com/alertbox/wysiwyg.html?
3. WinFS bits go out early: For some strange reason,
Strange reason? Mac OS X with Spotlight shipped!
I don't see any surprises here. The most important items listed in the article are related to a root issue concerning security. A true surprise would be MS announcing a development path to a truly new operating system. Maybe the MS marketing group should take a hiatus so the developers could work on what MS customers truly want and need.
There were no surprises from Microsoft in 2005. They have ended the year as they began it: fighting, bullying and litigating. Unless Microsoft decides to do a deal with the EC and various other parties, chances are they will end 2006 in the same way too.
The "surprises" in the article are at best changes of nuance and pretty darn piffling. So Microsoft gets keen on RSS and the Office team starts to blog? Only in a very boring corporation suffering from serious organizational arthritis would this be considered news. The proceedings of the 23rd convention of the Chinese communist party would hold more interest.
It's hard to think there will be any surprises from Microsoft for as long as Gates, Ballmer and their supporters are in such tight charge. Mabye events or Wall Street will force some change (all those Xbox zillions pouring down the manhole cover), but until then it looks to be strictly yesterday's men and yesterday's business practices.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I hope by end of 2006 the top 10 surprises are have something like MS releasing some of their biggest apps for Linux, or had no major security problem in the entire year or promoting one or several already stablished really open source projects (something like solaris, ibm or novell are doing from some years now) or things like that... There are a lot of space for Microsoft to give us good surprises, not needing to be in the "closing doors" sense.
But for now, and specially from the article, my feeling is just "more of the same", nothing very surprising (could be some things i didn't know, or matter, maybe, but not surprised exactly)
to some extent
Why isn't RSS subject to spam? Because in RSS, the recipient pulls the information from a known server, whereas in e-mail an arbitrary sender sends the information to a known recipient.
Now in the era RSS, recipients have to check two places: e-mail and RSS. Thanks to e-mail spam.
MS 'gets' RSS: While some folks were less than overjoyed that Microsoft was tinkering with the "little orange RSS box," Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."
Microsoft is adding RSS features years after they have become standard in other browsers and email clients. Microsoft is blogging years after others started. MS adds RSS feeds to its websites years after others. And this means MS gets RSS?
MS was slow to RSS just like they were slow to understand that the Internet was important. But they will probably dominate RSS just like the Internet.
Where the fcuk is XBOX? It should have been mentioned there.
A lot of people are going to get owned by this in the next few days / week, especially with so many people out of the office until next week...
see SANS / ISC for more info.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. In other words sthey still do not 'get' the basic design principles of modularization and encapsulation. This could easily increase their attack surface area, opening them up for more security problems.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I could go on, but you get the idea. All the usual M$ flaws and spyware friendly technology will be added to anything M$ embraces and extends. That's how they give everything a bad name which ultimately extinguishes everything.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
html ~ xml ~ rss => file formats.
You send information over the transfer protocol, and the other end translates it. You can send whatever you want over most protocols (http and ftp especially), so stop talking about "blocking RSS." An ISP (internet service provider, which the airport is at least a proxy to) blocks HTTP, which keeps you from getting your RSS.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It's an attempt to confuse users about Live CDs. "Live" sounds good and other people have made enough buzz that Joe Sixpacks is starting to hear. At this point M$ swoops down with six alternate jargon terms to confuse everyone and slow down trial and adoption of alternate desktops that blow M$'s expensive shit out of the water for ease of use and functionality.
It's kind of like the language they use about Trusted Computing. It's designed to confuse in a way that's advantageous to them. Quoted from the FSF:
When Microsoft speaks of "security" in connection with palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in the presentation listed several types of secrets palladium could be used to keep, including "third party secrets" and "user secrets"--but it put "user secrets" in quotation marks, recognizing that this somewhat of an absurdity in the context of palladium.
The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we frequently associate with the context of security, such as "attack", "malicious code", "spoofing", as well as "trusted". None of them means what it normally means. "Attack" doesn't mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy music. "Malicious code" means code installed by you to do what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. "Spoofing" doesn't mean someone fooling you, it means you fooling palladium. And so on.
Every feature added to Windows has Microsoft control as it's ultimate aim. Every word Microsoft uses has the same goal. The purpose of that control is to keep your money flowing to them to fund yet more restrive controls.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Apple. /topic.
1. IE rises from the dead: After insisting that Internet Explorer was an inextricable part of Windows, Microsoft abruptly changed course and decided to develop and deliver a new standalone version of its browser, after all. Nothing like a little competition to open new doors (and windows).
Haven't they been doing this...?
It would be a surprise if Microsoft didn't take on all of Firefox's features a year later, that's always their gameplan. Someone else innovates, then they put the technology into their POS products.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I do find RSS headline feeds useful, based on the implementation. For example, many RSS aggregators are more time consuming to fire up, read headlines, and go to the rest of the story, than going to the web sites directly. These RSS aggregators are not useful IMHO.
I do use a free utility called slashdock (on OS X) that provides a nested list of headlines which lives in the dock. A quick right-click allows many different feeds to be browsed and followed if more info is desired. I keep it running all the time, and in seconds I can check Slashdot, and many other sites for interesting updates. Quick, easy, and out of my way...
Sheldon
To quickly derail this thread, you're not only incorrect (or misstating yourself), but you're missing the point entirely.
/. retort to the "Let's wrest control of the DNS root servers out of the US's hands!" debate: If you don't want to use our stuff, do it your own way. If an incredibly isolationist China were to decide to mandate all internal Webservers to operate over Port 1938138, and announce this to all ISPs, the public, et al. they could simply block port 80 at all outgoing routers, and effectively cut off any Chinese accesses to the rest of the world's Web. The same thing goes with DNS root servers, they could just set up their own, instead of implicitly giving the US root servers authority by registering domains there.
Port 80 == http
Well, no, actually. According to the HTTP 1.1 RFC, port 80 is an [AFAIK] arbitrary port that's simply the de facto standard for HTTP traffic ("The default port is TCP 80 [19], but other ports can be used." Source). This argument is just like the standard
Back on topic. The OP was talking about the "RSS port" being blocked, but as you've established, there is no "RSS port", and one may transmit RSS over any port they wish. However, just like the de facto [but again, not required1] port for HTTP is 80, the de facto transmission protocol for transmitting RSS XML files is: HTTP. As someone mentioned, this person probably just doesn't notice his aggregator picking up new headlines before he gets to the airport, then while at the airport (where port 80 is blocked/redirected) he checks his 'fresh' headlines, but is not their long enough or with enough frequency to notice that no new headlines are being populated while he is there (because the default port for his RSS streams is being blocked).
--- What
Just trying to fix the semantics - thanks for the RFC correction (thought that the port was standardized, but I guess testing is usually done on 8080 anyway, so perhaps not).
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
No way.
It's Linux or bust.
Signed: Yours truly, RSS.
DISCLAIMER: This is my personal opinion, not my employer's. Brands belong to their respective owners.
There's no technical reason why you couldn't get a little program which polls an RSS file and sends you an email for each new item. RSS is just data: how you consume it is up to you.
I knew he said he'd fucking kill google, but who knew he'd try death by snoo-snoo?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
it was always burnin'
since the world was turnin'
we didn't start the fire!
etc...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I feel sleepy.
I think God is more into the turning-people-into-salt business than shooting them. Who knows, though, maybe he'll find the exercise quaint.
And for number 11, XBOX 360 was delivered before the close of 2005. What was once thought as vaperware is now a reality. Although Microsoft has said they have produced the products, no one has yet to see them at the store. Maybe it is really vaperware..
Obama = Socialism.
Ummm... Hello?!?!
The obvious missing item on this list is Microsoft coming out with a handful of licenses that even the Free Software Foundation recognizes as "free software" licenses. Sure, they haven't released any important software under these licenses yet, but coming out with the licenses is an amazingly interesting step for Redmond.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.