Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Hu? IE was never dead, maybe development of IE but certainly not its userbase.
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.
This is MS, its being put into Internet Explorer, and hence its in the OS.
Looking properly however, I can actually see some niceness if a proper API can be developed. Things like checking for software updates, event notification, scanning the security audit logs (subscribe to the domain login failure event list for instance).
Just because the blog world has abused it for headlines doesn't mean thats its only use.
liqbase
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
What made me chuckle was: "RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself"
"Quick! There's a feature out there that a small fraction of users find useful! Let's bolt it directly onto the OS!"
Of course, considering the Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4, this could just be another example of Microsoft following Apple's example.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Hmm...I thought RSS ran on port 80 as it's only a XML file. Hence WHY WOULD ANYONE BLOCK IT???
Gorkman
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.
Exactly, compatibility is Windows' dual problem and strength. The platform is 20 years old now (OK, 15 if you count post-3.0 only.) While Microsoft has pulled back a bit on full backward compatibility, the fact remains that the guts of Windows (especially the APIs and usable methods) have been around for quite a while. When you control the desktop market, you set the standards that everyone follows. Ripping out ActiveX would strand huge numbers of internal (and external in some cases!) web applications that use ActiveX and are often mission-critical. The only way to really fix everything is to draw a line in the sand, and force everyone to update their apps. They can help by providing transition assistance, but the fact is that they would have to stop supporting it to "get rid of" the security problems.
Older organizations (i.e. ones that have been around 20+ years) have this same problem with their legacy systems. In mainframe-land, it's often the case that a core application responsible for running the business was coded, tuned, tweaked, and runs everything perfectly. However, the app is stuck on a platform that is either desupported, or whose vendor has made changes to the platform that will break the app. Stranded platforms tend to develop security problems (see NT 4.0 for examples.) I can't wait to see what happens to Windows Server 2003 in 2013 when it's orphaned.
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.
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)
"Quick! There's a feature out there that a small fraction of users find useful! Let's bolt it directly onto the OS!" Of course, considering the Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4, this could just be another example of Microsoft following Apple's example.
Sadly, some parts of Microsoft seem to believe that their "embrace and extend" philosophy is actual innovation.
For the greater part, "embrace and pervert" more accurately portrays their actual behavior. For anyone who thinks this is flamebait, read up on what they did adding Kerberos to Windows 2000, for instance. It's probably debatable whether they do this deliberately or if it's plain, old incompetence.
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.