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How Ray Ozzie is Changing Microsoft
prostoalex writes "The October issue of Wired magazine takes a look at Ray Ozzie's work with Microsoft. To hear the article describe it, he's rebuilding the company from the ground up. A 70,000-employee company is quietly changing its ways by thinking of software as deliverable services that perhaps could be rented on a monthly subscription basis." From the article: "There are, of course, two major reasons for Ozzie's ascendancy at Microsoft: Gates and Ballmer. Ozzie is one of the few technologists anywhere whom they respect; they'd been trying for years to get him to join the company. Now he's carrying their hopes for the future, and it's a heavy load. Ozzie needs to move Microsoft from selling software in a box to selling lightning-fast, powerful online applications ranging from gaming to spreadsheets. The risks are enormous. The mission is to radically alter the way the company sells its most profitable software and to pursue the great unknown of so-called Web services - trading an old cash cow for an as-yet-to-be-determined cash cow. No, Microsoft doesn't think its customers will stop using PCs with hard drives and work entirely online, but the desktop era is drawing to a close, and that promises to force some painful trade-offs."
If he can get Microsoft to ditch DRM and embrace open source, the company may still have a future. Here's hoping, anyway...
I'm going to puke if I see somebody mention that the desktop days are coming to an end!!!! Who says? What proof, besides companies greed, shows that people don't want desktop software? I sure as hell won't be running apps online rather than on my own machine for a lot reasons. Just to name a few:
1) Bandwidth
2) Keeping apps under MY control, not somebody elses
3) I don't like being required to have an internet connection to type an f'n paper.
And those are just to name a few.
A 70,000-employee company is quietly changing its ways by thinking of software as deliverable services that perhaps could be rented on a monthly subscription basis.
MS has been making it increasingly plain, at a very high volume and in no uncertain terms, that this model is precisely what they are aiming toward.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Software as a service? Perpetual payments? No thanks.
Who -- besides companies looking for more profits and a constant revenue stream -- actually wants this? The cons far, far outweight the pros for the typical customer.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
It wansn't particularly clever or funny when it first appeared years ago, and now with this article it is showing more that slashdot beat that joke to death.
Gates hasn't had a whole lot to do with Microsoft nowadays, and in a few years he'll have almost involvement with the company. It's anachoristic to have Bill represent Microsoft at this time.
Besides, Microsoft was the only icon that slashdot had that so belittling to the subject. It's time that slashdot start growing up.
MS investing a lot of time and research/development into online-ready "mini-apps" does not necessitate a trade off in the quality or time spent developing their desktop OSes.
Look at the Xbox. Microsoft is a big enough of a company that it can afford to branch off into another market and create a whole new division dedicated to new services/products without the other aspects of their business suffering (not any more than usualy, anyway).
Although we may be talking about a change in company culture as well - which most definitely does change a company from the ground up - expandinding into new fields and with new products and service offerings doesn't mean that we should expect an entirely Microsoft that completely departs from it's desktop offerings.
Not to mention that I don't see too many businesses that currently use desktops in their office switching things over to cell phones in the near future.
-TheBaron2
I'm a bit too lazy to look up examples, but there have been rumblings about this for years, I remember hearing about this in High School.
corporate cousin now. Or big brother. Or both. I wonder what it's like having hidden processes by Microsoft, Intel, Homeland Security, and Starbucks all fighting it out to see what I click online and who I instant message.
Is it just me who finds this direction questionable? I write software for a pure online company, so I think online software services are wonderful for a whole bunch of stuff. But there's a lot of things I don't want to do online. Actually, I find the current division pretty good... the more communication oriented something is the more online it is. I think this falls out naturally from what consumers want and what makes sense technically. Do consumers really want an online spreadsheet yet, for example? Someone has to push the envelope I guess. I'm curious to see the reaction to this move.
Cheers.
I've always balked at the idea of people being willing to do software subscriptions. However, I look at the huge success of World of Warcraft, which is basically the same thing, and think it might work. Corporations and other large orgs already pay Microsoft yearly fees to be able to get guaranteed updates at a fixed price. My university paid $250,000 per year to get unlimited seats for Office and the OS. However, the one thing that could undue this is the very long delays for things like Vista. If Microsoft went to an Ubuntu-type model where they promised updates every six months, I could see it working.
I've had several IDs. I started around 1995, and was off and on for a long time. It wasn't that bad back then.
please tell me how I am going to work on a report, a spreadsheet or a presentation at 40,000 feet? Unless I can "rent" my word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation program for offline use for a few days, I am sh*t out of luck. I guess I could play Tetris on my PDA - oops, can't do that since I have to rent the software for that too if I am running Windows CE or whatever it is called now.
Guess I'll just have to go back to reading a book and winging it at my destination.
Seeing as how none of your comments has achieved a mod greater than 1, I'd say don't let the door hit you in the ass, you worthless troll. News For Nerds obviously isn't for you. Maybe you should try something more your speed.
Sincerely,
The Slashdot Community, et al
If ISP's have their way, plans like these could seriously backfire. Especially if the ISP's begin to be more strict on how much people are exceeding bandwidth quotas. Yes, I know that right now quotas are not that common; however, for the likes of the people on my network, we are only allowed 5GB of data, from a combined upload and download, per any given 7 consecutive days. Needless to say, if I turn on and off my computer daily (and we'll keep it simple at once a day,) and I have to download Word, Excel, and Outlook every day, that doesn't leave me with much more data remaining for activites such as watching internet video streams or listening to audio over the internet at a decent bitrate, both of which are applications that many analysts say are likely to boom in the coming years (however, I tend to view this to actually boom once DN:F comes out, but I actually do like to listen to some radio stations from across the world, such as Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.)
The only way we could have applications be truly web-based is if ISP's don't impose quotas, or those quotas are set at such a high level that they are meaningless.
Honest Ma, these are magic beans and I traded the cow for them. And someday... we'll be rich!
And 657393 is some kind of L337 d00d?
Id's under 10k have some cred, for longevity reasons if nothing else. The value of 6 digit ids like yours and mine? Zippo.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Not about any one company in particular; but, I said this years ago that the software industry will move to a services model. The competition will no longer be who provides the best product; but, who provides the best services. Symantec discovered this maxim years ago when they moved from providing A/V protection with free virus definitions and moved to a A/V protection through virus definition-update subscription. Why? {cue speculation} Any john with a computer and their A/V software was getting free updates - meanwhile, symantec still had to pay their programmers and Virus analysts. Where was the money they needed to pay these guys? They had to change in order to stay afloat.
I must admit, it scares me greatly to think of an OS where I'd have to subscribe to use my Windows's software such as Word.
Hey Taco, bring me down to negative karma. Please! No way I'm leaving with semi-positive karma. Just nuke my last posts as 'overrated'. Have fun with that, Taco. Also, have fun with your fat wife. You have such power! You don't need my money (I have payed for every single screen I get at slashdot--including comments).
Chiapaint. A decade old, and more relevant than ever. The only thing out of date is the modem squawk.
Of course, if Chiapaint doesn't convince you, enjoy, you can go to any number of websites that will cause a cute little picture of a steaming coffee cup to appear in your browser window for about a minute and then crash, misbehave, post error messages, display a grey rectangle, or tell you to update your version of Java.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Many, many, many of Microsoft's largest customers want an easy to manage, easy to migrate, cost contolled solution that is an alternative to the "desktop". Additonally, many, many, many of the Microsoft's largest customers want someone else to Host Exchange for them. It has a HUGE number of features that bring value to IT but it is difficult to maintain for several reasons. Beyond those two reasons, there are many, many, many small to medium sized companies that can't afford IT...they are also good candidates. Come on, aren't you guys supposed to understand the Business of IT? Rather than just blindly bashing MSFT, take some time to learn how business works.
Not only that, but given that your customers would also have to subscribe to MS's software services, what developer in their right mind would use such services as dependencies for their software? If MS moves the bulk of their software online, they will want developer tie-ins to such software. Or, will MS simply switch from selling IIS to providing hosting services with APIs and daemons that developers and end-users won't be able to run themselves, and that competitors won't provide? It seems far-fetched and not even beneficial for Microsoft.
A more far-fetched idea is that they might just do a total end-run around developers and provide complete solutions for businesses and even take on administration duties as well... but is that even realistic? Sounds like a nightmare for MS. Maybe developers on MS platforms will be reduced to middle-men in this situation?
Twinstiq, game news
"facetiousness"
I don't think that word means what you think it means. But don't let the door hit you on your way out!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What we are seeing is a maturing OS. In the past, you upgraded to get new features and get rid of the many, many bugs. But as it gets to the point where the OS does everything you need it to do, and does it somewhat on the stable side, you get to the point that upgrading is not as much of an issue.
Microsoft if doing the only thing they can do, make the OS obsolete for reasons other than a new "improved" OS to replace the old one that is working just fine anyway (for most people).
I other news, I heard today that MS is going to have pirated copies of Vista shut down. This move and the move to subscription, is going be great for Linux!
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Web applications are not new. I've built my fair share of them. (Maybe even more than my fair share.) In some circumstances, they work very well:
They have downsides, too:
And yet for many applications, particularly specialized applications dealing with customer account access, inventory management, project management, online publishing, or a whole slew of other things, we accept these limitations. We assess the costs of not using a web application and determine that, overall, the web application provides value for the money.
What's interesting here is that while existing web applications have enough benefits to outweigh the risks, it's not clear that replacing standard desktop apps will come out the same in the risk/benefit analysis. The kinds of things we're doing on the web, we're doing because they work better that way; we've had years of experience with the desktop, and we know some things work better with centralized server models, and others work better with all the work done on the client. Microsoft is betting the farm on everyone being happy to push to the server model, but it won't happen; there are too many compelling reasons to keep ordinary desktop apps right where they are, on your desktop.
What they're afraid of is losing the fight for the desktop. This is their long-term strategy to lock everyone into their system. First they tried to lock up the OS. Then they tried to lock up the file formats. While Linux and OpenOffice are not quite credible threats (if you consider market share only) MS can look ahead and see a day when they have enough market share to seriously threaten their dominance on the desktop, and it isn't 50%, or even 25%. Maybe it's 20%, that magic point where people feel like there is an alternative, and then it's the tipping point, people no longer feel locked in. So MS wants to keep people locked in, because it keeps the cash flowing. That means locking up the data itself. And that's what their online apps are all about.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
I hear slashdot keeps everything except for legal reasons. Surely they have nuked obviously illegal posts. Anyways, don't nuke this! Even though this prime is illegal: 23842984682756823732487342ABABDCDDFAFGOFREAKYOURSE LF238423847234NO234234THIS324324IS324324NOT2143432 HEXADECIMAL234234IT285328IS234234BASE23424332THIRY SIX.
Bullshit.
Just because Microsoft is trying something new doesn't mean it's going to change computing as we know it. They need to get off of themselves if they think otherwise. Not every system is set up to work through the internet, which by itself would render that approach impossible.
/* No Comment */
Frankly, they shouldn't keep running their mouth about these big grand ideas if they're never gonna actually follow through. Sure, they released .NET and have done small parts of what they said they'd do, but so far nothing has come close to completely changing the company the way they keep claiming.
I found a link here:
s p?id=40795&cid=11
:)
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.a
I expect this to make a Slashdot story...in about a week or so.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I continue to be underwhelmed by the genius that is Ray Ozzie. I keep reading how he is mr amazing. however, I have been personally forced to use Notes and even attempted developing on it.
so help me out here....is being the brain behind lotus notes a positive or a negative?
not trolling here on purpose, but come on, what has Ray Ozzie done in the past decade to make him headline worthy?
I win :-P
You say you want a revolution....
Really? So how does one do any of the following from a thin client or mobile phone?
*Edit digital video
*Edit digital audio
*Create 3d graphics and animations
*Editing large images
*Develop and compile software
As long as anyone has any interest in doing any of these, the "desktop era" will keep on keepin' on.
However, if Microsoft wants to turn towards a renting-software-over-the-network paradigm, it'll make it that much easier for me to ignore their offerings. Especially if they only run on Windows.
Long ago and far away, ESR put forth that the whole business of software is really a service industry operating like it's a manufacturing industry -- and that the faster people realize that, the quicker they're able to improve their business model. Give the code away for free, sell services -- installation, config, customization, support, etc. Companies like Red Hat seem to be doing well with that model. (Ok I must admit that I don't have any other examples off the top of my head)
The rent-a-software strategy seems too much like extortion though. Gimme 50 bucks or the spreadsheet gets it! Especially with the population's growing mistrust of Microsoft products based on their past actions. It would be interesting to conduct a business meeting over chat though. (X-Box Live, maybe?)
CEO1: WTF ru doing here?
CEO2: We r suing u 4 p4t3nt infringement
CEO1: STFU, no way, I h8 spawncamping n00bs!
CE02: 4 rlz, tho. U owe us $$$
CEO1: Yo N8-dogg, letz buy their company out.
N8-dogg: Authorizing purchase...
CEO2: O WTF, d00d! U h4x
CEO1: pwn3d. I pwn j00 n0w, n00b!
CEO2: damn lag
CEO1: ur so f1r3d.
yeah ... I really do think all users will want to pay for Word monthly...
So linux finally wins.
Yup, here's the big payoff... When arguing against the antitrust violations, Ballmer cried "back off and watch us innovate". Here we see the fruit of those efforts, rebuilding the company to enable a whole new way of milking revenue.
The microsoft ship is sinking.. slowly and agonizingly, but it's sinking.
There big innovations over the last few years have been around leveraging their monopoly position to keep increasing revenues, as the market demands. 'Windows Genuine Advantage' and the beefed up mechanisms in Vista.. Moving from a purchased software model to a recurring cost license.. Brilliant! Just what customers are clamoring for!
I, for one, hope they really crank up their efforts in these areas. Nothing will drive users to MacOS and Linux faster than this crap.
the folks that read /. aren't going to give up their desktop OSs and apps anytime soon, but many (most) home users would be fine with IM, email, photo, word processing and so on being run off some server in Borat's broom closet especially if this meant no updating/malware/backups or other maintanence, a lot of these folks would see $10 to $20 a month (added to the cable bill) for all of this a bargain
How is Mr. Ozzie going to convince Microsoft that the desktop PC era is drawing to a close, when Mr. Gates thinks that The PC Era Is Just Beginning? This should be interesting....
WoW is more addictive than Word.
... don't believe me. No Problem. The problem are all those mindless MS followers.
MS is going to convince them that they need the same hardware, cept more expensive, to acces their online software.
And they will somehow convince the mindles followers that the hardware is not able to run desktop applications.
(of course the mind full will know its DRM policing that keeps you from running FOSS on your online access device.)
If you are not using a desktop or even a laptop to access your online software, then what are you going to use? your cel phone?
Hey Mel, can you look over that massive spreadsheet and tell me where the problem is?
I suspect what the online software really is, is nothing more than having teh software installed on your desktop system and the licensing being checked ever 5 minutes to see if you paid the bill. And when your google search takes 5 minutes to do a simple search than you can blame MS for bandwidth problems... uh correction, you can blame the mindless followers of MS.....
After spending the GNP of numerous countries on Vista/Windows Server 2007, it's an illusion to think that Ray Ozzie is going shift it all to a dubious "web 2.0" model, and find revenues sufficient to continue to propel Microsoft's stock price. Microsoft would love to rent stuff, but there are companies that do browser based 'office' apps that are literally a decate ahead of Microsoft, and these still suck. The browser is a lousy lay when it comes to doing real user interfaces consistent with multiple OS environments.
Nothing Wired, or Ray Ozzie says is going to change that. The mere fact that Vista has been so delayed that it's become meaningless and nearly nihilistic (if it weren't a laughable clone of things other OSes do correctly) should give you an idea of Ozzie's effectiveness. Short Microsoft stock: that will get their attention where nothing else will.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Once MS rents thier software, then Linux will take over the world, along with OS/X unless Apple follows suit.
Renting sofware isn't for the mainstream user and especially not for the technically savy.
I don't know about you personally, but if the typical /.er is anything to go by, they make a big stink and next thing you know, they are back to their DRM-infested goodies. At least the general public has computer illiteracy as an excuse.
What is DRM/TC if not forcing a desktop into more controlled states, i.e., officially-sanctioned consumption devices? Time to puke, dude.
you'd communicate verbally to an AI that can understand. Long way off though.
Currently MS provides OEM WinXP to the home user at a one-time low cost. The user would use that software for years afterwards without generating any income. Lost profit is basically theft.
How about instead Microsoft started charging a usage fee per time that the computer is actively used?
At, say, $0.12/hour for each non-idle hour (keypress or cursor move), this is bound to stop users stealing from Microsoft, which should keep MS in the business.
For those without internet access/credit cards, a pre-paid cybertime cards could be sold at a local 7/11 (100 hours' worth of computer use for $12, etc.)
You are welcome, Ozzie.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Have you noticed that every other post is a "welcome our new overlords"? Did you see the one on a certain planet? The fake "departments" encourage this behavior. Dropping funny comments won't help. People get tired of tagging people with it at this point. I must have been a three or four digit ID because I remember being here in 1997 at the beginning. I just don't remember it being this bad. Maybe it came with the "departments".
Karma
from the change-or-die dept.
;)
I'm not trolling here, I've had SuSE installed as my only OS for 8 months at one time. I've had Ubuntu installed in a dual boot (and it had a lot less pain than SuSE when it came time to install software). But now I'm back to just Win XP as my only OS. The reason is usability. I'm talking about consistency and integration with other Microsoft products. Download Visual Studio Express. Install it (no pain unlike SuSE). Now try out the code completion including automatically looking inside your own classes for documentation tool tips. Look how easy it is to programmatically leverage other Microsoft products (Yes Microsoft is opening their API's). Use the debugger (hover over a variable in your source code to see it's value, etc.). Wizards. Compared to the PythonWin IDE I was using it's heaven.
Gnome has the right idea, usability should be a major focus of software. It does no good to be technically superior if your users can't make it go. I'm not bashing GNU/Linux here, I think it's great but as good as it is Linux still needs to be heavily polished before it's ready for mass consumption. I've drank Microsoft's kool-aid and you should too.
This is just a bit of constructive criticism. Microsoft's strength is the people on a project that they assign exclusively to polish their products. Shiny. And unlike the past current Microsoft products just go.
I believe in Open Source and I also believe that it is a better process on longer timescales. I also believe that Microsoft will switch to open document formats to keep most users on Windows. But in the mean-time Microsoft (especially with Visual Studio) has the advantage with getting people up to speed and generating useful code sooner than someone trying to master the intricacies of EMACS from scratch. This leads into productivity which is Microsoft's major redeeming strength. I think that in twenty years we'll all be using some-unix inspired operating system with amazing software made by a variety of vendors some free, some not, and with-all-their-money definately including Microsoft. Getting to that point however means producing code and that's where Microsoft is putting their development money.
I could go on about a million other things too, like XNA (Microsoft's new environment to standardize game development and yes it's integrated with Visual Studio). But that would be better left to another comment.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Shh.
>Cell phones, BlackBerrys, and PDAs are now arguably the primary way we check email...
No, they're not. You're a chump, and quite out of touch with the other 90%.
I Guess Sun was right. I see a comeback in the works...
...I'm not trolling here...
You're trolling to some extent whether you realize it or not. If you're not trolling, it ought to be
fairly obvious, up front, in your exposition...
And some of the commentary you give is right- but unfortunately, your examples aren't as good as you
think they are. To you, they're exemplary- but they are only that because you're used
to those tools and software. Visual Studio's nice, but it's not as nice, to me, that is, as Source
Navigator coupled with GCC or Eclipse with the same. It's all integrated and works in a sane manner,
not allowing evil practices (which VS DOES allow) to creep into your code. Some people will tell you
the same thing about Anjuta, KDevelop, or even EMACS. And, they'd be right, each and every one of them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Most of the people who already commented here made good points, and I almost feel like I should have just moderated some of them up, rather then add to what's here.
But here's my only thought I didn't see mentioned yet. Steam is a great example of the "right" way to sell software online. It's not a subscription model, yet the user is always alerted of expansions or new game releases they can buy for a reasonable price by simply clicking a button. Nonethless, this advertising doesn't really get in the way of using the games themselves either -- so it's usually looked at as a "good thing" vs. a "nuisance".
MMORPGs like WoW are, in my opinion, not really representative of the type of success a company like Microsoft could expect to see if they started offering software by subscription. For starters, MMORPGs are a highly addictive genre of games, by design. They do everything they can to get players "hooked" so they keep coming back for more. I don't think you can build this same level of "excitement" into typical business apps like Word or Excel. Furthremore, they're far from the "norm", so people can deal with paying a monthly fee for them. If *most* of your apps all started asking for monthly subscriptions, you'd quickly say "Enough!" and look for alternatives.
Deciding to move the company to selling on-line services is a *marketing* decision.
Either MicroSoft is really screwed up, or the article is a bit off base.
or both.
There are a lot of other markets that are similar to this type of situation.
If you look at the the various players vs. the iTunes store model you perhaps can get a glimpse of the reaction to these competing market and 'solution' delivery styles. Whereas I think people are fine with renting items and services they must live with or don't want to invest in (like power, telephone services, etc.) they hold things that they find 'closer' to them as property and they want to 'own' it.
You probably do have a good amount of people out there who see computers as something they would just want to 'rent' but you also have a wide amount of people, like the slashdot crowd, that hold technology and issues such as these closer and of higher importance. Music is another example of this and the results are visible in the digital music marketshare breakdown (iTunes owning the market currently while others are in the rental/subscription business).
before anybody mentions "reliable" electricity...yeah, I know, grrrrr.
I know one really big reasons for network based applications (they may or may not be "web based"). network based applications are a heck of a lot easier to manage when you're dealing with several hundred or several thousands desktop systems.
Right now, each and every desktop needs to be loaded. When a new version of an application comes out, and users want the newer version, you've got to manually upgrade each system. If someone wants access to an application that isn't on their system, it has to be installed. If a user gets a new PC, you've got to reinstall everything all over again.
Network based applications don't. Users can log onto any desktop system and see the same files, applications, etc. they're use to. Installing a new application simply means changing permissions and maybe some table in a central database. You also don't have to worry about users copying applications around, or loading applications that may contain viruses, malware, or other problems.
It might not be what YOU want for your home machine, but it is what most corporate IT departments want.
Don't worry. Home PCs will continue to use locally installed applications. Home users have administrative rights on their local PCs, more inconsistant network access, and no one who can centrally manage their systems. It wouldn't make sense (like it would in a corporate network) to use network based applications.
I don't think that desktop will die anytime soon. But to have other choices will be good as it will lead others to develop application to compete against MS. Google is already going that way with a mini excel and world online. So one day, it will be irrelevent where you will have to do your work. It will be a good thing, a lot of people can figure out how to click on install.exe when their autorun doesn't start their CDRom.
New York Times, June 23, 2000, John Markoff:
...The strategy will involve repackaging some of the company's core products, like its Office software, as subscription-based services obtained over the Internet."
... But while he and Mr. Gates insisted that those services would be based on an open Internet standard, enabling users with non-Windows-based platforms like the Palm computer and Apple Computer's Macintosh to take advantage of them, the executives acknowledged that such users would be second-class citizens. Mr. Gates said the "richest" interactions with the new .NET services would require the new Windows.NET operating system."
.NET was equivalent to the 100 percent bet the company placed on its shift to the Internet strategy in 1995. Mr. Ballmer said he was confident, but he realized that the strategy was still a gamble. 'It's a bet I feel very confident about,' he said. 'But it's a bet.'"
"The company said it would retool its product line to shift the very focus of computing away from hardware devices and toward a new generation of Internet-based software allowing people to interact with data and one another whether they are using computers, digital cell phones or interactive televisions. William H. Gates, Microsoft's chairman, portrayed the long-awaited move as 'more ambitious than anything we've done' adding, 'There is no Microsoft product that isn't touched by this activity....'
"Microsoft's new view of computing calls for processing to be done everywhere,
"Mr. Gates said that the bet on
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Yes, even given your user ID. Slashdot has become far worse than almost anything else. I'll say it again--the fake "departments" are a big problem. Look at the recent story on the planet again! Literally every comment was a flippant one. There is a difference between not taking a joke and having to wade through constant "overlord" stuff. I have tried to provide content, and have had a lot of great karma in the past (in different IDs). However, fighting the flood of turd is not fun. I am paying them for this. They should be paying me. Have fun wasting your time.
Waiting for the IP ban from a god-mod at this point. Maybe Taco himself. Don't forget to block your slashdot ads people!
Make the engine, upon which the winning succinct byte code runs, a new W3C standard browser programming language (or at least virtual machine) and reduce the Microsoft OS CD to those components required to create a web-delivered application platform using the winning engine. Such an engine would, of course, have some features that dynamically encached expansions (and/or "memoizations") similar to the Hotspot optimization technology that originated with the Self programming language (and was later adopted by Sun's Java Virtual Machine). Hence it would make sense to have the OS CD contain a partially pre-expanded/optimized code base.
Then, for delivery of software services to pre-existing platforms, create a legacy port of the services code to pre-existing W3C standards like XForms implemented in a downloadable ECMAScript Client/SOA library in a manner similar to the way TIBET(tm) does. The idea is to go "Live", ie: web-delivered, with a fundamentally new W3C base (whatever engine won the prize) but support legacy W3C environments for migration.
Again, this prize-oriented strategy would, of course, require a rigorous specification of the software services so the testing could be largely automated.
This approach addresses Microsoft's 2 biggest problems deriving from the same fundamental reality: Everyone has needed their OS to interoperate with the bulk of the information industry.
The first problem is ethical and really goes beyond the scope of my professional opinions to my public opinions about the support of property rights. Suffice to say, I have no trouble with someone who goes after a natural monopoly position and succeeds. I have a problem with someone who then refuses to use that position of success to fix the bug in the society that made them inordinately rich and their technology inordinately influential.
The second problem is technical, which is what my argument here is really all about.
Basically Microsoft's code bloat problem derives from its monopoly position. This may seem like a truism since all of the software "profession" suffers from code bloat, but only Microsoft can take this to monopolistic proportions -- proportions that make Ma Bell's monopolistic complexities of yore look Spartan.
So Microsoft has this problem and it has many programmers (contributing to the code-bloat problem). It also has mountains of cash.
So how can Microsoft bust its own monopoly position turning its many programmers and mountains of cash into succinct code?
Monetary Incentives for the Programmers, ala the Hutter Prize:
S = size of uncompressed code-base
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed code-base
R = S/P (the compression ratio).
Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:
Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X
Fund contains: $Z at the time of the new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))
What happens very rapidly is the programmers first apply their skills to maximally refactoring. What falls out is a series of legacy API layers written atop a tight core.
They'd have to spend more money on code testing to verify the compressed code-bases of the competing teams actually worked to spec but the results should be quite gratifying.
Seastead this.
Bill Gates was thinking about this in 1992.
from the change-or-die dept.
;)
I'm not trolling here - this is just a bit of constructive criticism, I've had SuSE installed as my only OS for 8 months at one time. I've had Ubuntu installed in a dual boot (and it had a lot less pain than SuSE when it came time to install software). But now I'm back to just Win XP as my only OS. The reason is usability. I'm talking about consistency and integration with other Microsoft products. Download Visual Studio Express. Install it (no pain unlike SuSE). Now try out the code completion including automatically looking inside your own classes for documentation tool tips. Look how easy it is to programmatically leverage other Microsoft products (Yes Microsoft is opening their API's). Use the debugger (hover over a variable in your source code to see it's value, etc.). Wizards. Compared to the PythonWin IDE I was using it's heaven.
Gnome has the right idea, usability should be a major focus of software. It does no good to be technically superior if your users can't make it go. I'm not bashing GNU/Linux here, I think it's great but as good as it is Linux still needs to be heavily polished before it's ready for mass consumption. I've drank Microsoft's kool-aid and you should too.
Microsoft's strength is the people on a project that they assign exclusively to polish their products. Shiny. And unlike the past current Microsoft products just go.
I believe in Open Source and I also believe that it is a better process on longer timescales. I also believe that Microsoft will switch to open document formats to keep most users on Windows. But in the mean-time Microsoft (especially with Visual Studio) has the advantage with getting people up to speed and generating useful code sooner than someone trying to master the intricacies of EMACS from scratch. This leads into productivity which is Microsoft's major redeeming strength. I think that in twenty years we'll all be using some-unix inspired operating system with amazing software made by a variety of vendors some free, some not, and with-all-their-money definately including Microsoft. Getting to that point however means producing code and that's where Microsoft is putting their development money.
I could go on about a million other things too, like XNA (Microsoft's new environment to standardize game development and yes it's integrated with Visual Studio). But that would be better left to another comment.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Shh.
They could use the cell phone/cable company business model for payment. 2-3 year agreements at a certain cost, and monthly there after. If you break said agreement, you owe them the full fee, etc... It's a model that's tested and works (except for the customer).
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Id's under 10k have some cred, for longevity reasons if nothing else.
*10* **k** ?????
Them youngsters??
Have you read my journal today?
All a low ID means is that some of us didn't have a life before you folks didn't have a life. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I seem to says this once in every ten Slashdot posts: Your personal wants and needs do not determine the future of computing. Just because you want/need to do things a certain way doesn't mean everybody does. Possibly many computer geeks are different from you and almost all other computer users are different from you.
Most computer users are not hacker/geeks who need personal control of their systems. In fact, they need somebody to manage their system for them. That's why there are millions of adware-infested zombie computers out there that plague their users with popups and everybody else with spam. To them, renting a platform from a service provider is a good alternative to spending big bucks on a self-administered system they just don't have the background to manage.
And what's this crap about bandwidth and needing an internet connection? Broadband connections are cheap and ubiguitous.
What in the world are you talking about. You point to a website that criticizes the interface of a decade old version that was replaced way back in 1998. You do realize it is now 2006, right? Even then the site you point to is largely BS. They complain that you have to double click on desktop icons, and single click on menues? They complain the an arrow is used to indicate a drop down menu? Every major OS short of Mac works exactly the same, and a good many programs. Including the Firefox browser I am using right now. That site has been debunked to death, but it keeps being dragged out for show, years after it stopped being relevent even as an opinion piece.
The developers that I have found complain about Notes, tend to be the ones who are not very good at it. Perticularly people who tend to work primarily in VB (and to a lesser extent C). They are so used to fighting their environment that they loose large amounts of the productivity Domino brings. What they end up with is a kludgy application that is designed to work against it's own operating environment.
I have yet to see a development envirnment that can produce an equal quality application in even twice the time.
Every time MS announces a product, they say theyre 'betting the farm' on it - and then proceed to either lose billions on it (e.g. XBox, XBox 360) or deliver hopelessly late and with a tiny fraction of the promised features (Windows Vista).
Theres no risk with the XBox, theres no risk with MS Vista, theres no risk here - Ray Ozzie could flush 50 billion dollars down the toilet following a flawed and unfeasible business plan over the next 10 years, and MS could fire him, write the whole thing off and still be just fine financially.
So why not talk up 'software as a service', its as meaningful as them talking up tablet computing or voice recognition and how theyre 'betting the farm' on these things - they'll fail to deliver and instead give the world yet another 'Windows 95' in a long series of 'Windows 95's - I don't know why anyone is interested any more.
People will pay the MS tax on computer systems for the foreseeable future, and this gives them the ability to be completely insulated from any 'risk' whatsoever with new products or services. How are you going to access an online application without a PC, and when you buy your PC, youre paying MS for the privilege.
Innovation is completely dead at Microsoft, they arent in the business of shipping new products, they're in the business of shipping old ones. There is no core business outside of that, because they managed to destroy any competition, and thus the perception in the mind of the users that there is anything different - they are their own worst enemy in this respect.
Nobody likes or trusts MS - they just put up with them in order to take the easiest/cheapest path.
So come on, lets hear press release after press release claiming lower TCO, increased productivity, a revolutionary paradigm, how 'Ray Ozzie is turning the company around' etc. etc. etc. parroted by the mainstream computer media because they honestly have nothing else to write about - followed by - Another 'Windows 95'. I just can't wait.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Yes, it was. That's the year I built my current home PC (a Micron Millenia Pro2 Plus tower with a fancy new 200MHz Pentium Pro processor [686 babee!], an Adaptec 2940U, a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 with add-on wavetable card [effectively an AWE32], an Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B NIC, and some stupid video card since forgotten (replaced immediately with a 4MB Matrox MGA Millenium)).
:-) I've applied one FixPak since then (FixPak 15, required for Mozilla), but otherwise the installation is the same one I've had since day one.
:-)
Over the years I've added some additional SCSI drives, a CD burner, a 12MB Voodoo2 card, and various other things, but the core system is still the same system I've had since November 1996. It's been on 24x7 since that time, and I still use it every single day.
1996 is also the year that two of my main home operating systems came out.
Windows 95 OSR2 (otherwise known as Windows 95B, the first version of Windows with FAT32 and the last without the crappy MSIE integration on the desktop) came out in the summer of 1996, and I've used it on the above box for playing various games ever since. Folks here might laugh, but I still get a kick out of games like NFS3 and NFS4, the original Unreal Tournament, Tribes 1, Madden 2001, and Total Annihilation, and those all work just fine.
OS/2 Warp 4 came out in the fall of 1996, just in time for me to install on the box and use as my main desktop OS for the next ten years. Literally.
Some people say I still live in 1996. Nonsense! I'm a modern PC hobbyist -- my two remaining Deskpro 6200's were built in *1998*!
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Next thing you know, it'll be you that we put there.
In a monkey suit.
...from modern computing? Sounds familiar.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I already stopped using Microsoft products so I'm unaffected. I still have to use their OS for now but hopefully they won't try to make that with an on line only product. The only way I could see them trying that is if it was a full install but required an internet connection to authorise it each session. The whole idea is stupid because how are laptop people supposed to cope? Not every place has a wireless connection and not every laptop is wireless. How's this for a big gee I didn't think of that, some of up travel out of country with our laptops. How are we supposed to work abroad? Right now I can work 100 miles from nowhere. Your telling me I can't use my software without an internet connection? Sorry, excellent reason to migrate if I hadn't already. It's a doomed senerio. They every few years threaten this one and they always so far have come to their senses. Offer an on line version, fine, but if you try to migrate the produc t line Microsoft may finally do to itself what no one else could do, cause them to loose market share.
I hope they're not pinning their hopes on SaaS desktop apps, which Google and others already supply freely. Your average home user won't pay monthly fees for something s/he can get free. They might be able to create enough of a value-added product for businesses to spend money on, though, but even that's a bit of a stretch.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
and I have to download Word, Excel, and Outlook every day
You wouldn't be downloading the applications daily. You'd be downloading the DRM keys that allow you run those applications daily.
I don't see the desktop dying anytime soon but online apps I can see as the future but honetsly not everyplace is that wired up yet just think of the u.p. in michigan the internet is still proboly a new and undescovered thing i know my uncle who lives in cheboygen still has dial up because broadband isnt overed yet in his area and he is pissed he hates dial up and satelight is to expensive and not enough of an upgrade for the cost. so the desktop is here to stay until broadband is everywhere and is fast enough where i can play counterstrike at the speeds i am now.
Man, you are taking me back...
1996 was the year I finally got to have my own (blazing fast! 33.600) modem, and finally added a sound card to my 75 Mhz pentium system. I pirated my first copy of Windows 95 (to replace my pirated windows 3.11/DOS 6.22) and was amazed it had a built in DUN! And the start menu!
Hell, I still miss PC GEOS, who am I kidding?
You say you want a revolution....
Lets see now. Micro$$$ out of business! Disastrous? To US?! nawwwww. The only result of Microsoft going out of business would be hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese programmers will be out of a job for a month or so until some more of our outsourcing bleeding from our economy puts them back into yet another slave job. Only a fool would let some outside agency
handle all his/her programs and data. Don't believe me! Check your own credit report if you can and find all the mistakes and misinformation that accumulates in just about everybody's credit file. The mistakes stay there because you the user has no recourse to make them correct it. Ahh yes the recent law changes. All that does is add a rebuttal statement from you but does nothing to remove or replace bad info; and guess who any credit granter is going to believe, but that is besides the point. Assume a data company with a vested financial interest in selling information, your information because that is what credit reporting companies do: loses, misfiles, or accepts wrong information; arbitrarily refuses to correct the same for any reason; keeps out of date information. Then that company is selling a defective product yet is protected by unfair laws from responsibility or accountability for any damages it causes you. Eventually
that credit reporting agency's mistakes earn it distrust among its customer community, but that takes time. So even this kind of company can make many mistakes for many moons before any pressure is brought on it. That pressure will be brought by strong forces in the marketplace that can afford lawyers and years of litigation and not by financially poor consumers that they treated unjustly. If even they do not fear retribution from corporations that really can fight
over a bad product, what in the name of God do these data businesses fear from the likes of YOU!?
You are less than the dust under the shoes of these corporations. You trust your data, your business contacts, your term papers, letters, and your applications to these folks at your
peril.
Their time has come and gone.
The push is towards back to thin clients ( remember the 3270's ) due to vastly reduced support costs and more control/security. Sure we have tried this in the recent past and it failed miserably, but technology has again caught up to make it practical with todays users's needs.
And remember, eventually, what happens in the corporate world filters down to the home user.
Wont be running your apps online eh? I bet you already do to an extent.. webmail ? thats one example.
Is microsoft the answer? I hope not, but the concept is valid.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I thought the whole point of this "revolution" is not that you now have to pay every month to use the software you've always been using up to now, but that you have to pay every month to use it, but you don't have it anymore. Instead, you point your web browser to excel.microsoft.com, log in, and access your spreadsheets. It would be a download size somewhere between the whole app and an access key.
The parent article is a tacit admission that Microsoft is changing so as to side step the Linux issue; Bravo, Linux Community.
Let us see how the mechanics of this could work.
-- The rank and file Microsoft user will need hi speed access to the internet; The revenue generated here is Microsoft's profit model.
-- Consider other compaines like Autodesk, and Adobe using the same business model.
-- Other companies would shift their software over to web application servers also.
-- The culture of, "You own your files, but we own the software" will emerge.
-- This is when the Linux community will write interface applications so that corresponding Linux applications can pick up the slack.
-- NOTE!! In order for any of this to work, web applications will need to be able to "see" the data file on your machine.
-- How will the world community know if the OS in Redmond is Windows, or a variant of Linux; You wont.
-- Microsoft will move its Server software to a Web Application orientation. I'm thinking stuff like Visual Studio, and Office Servers.
-- Businesses that require their networks to be self contained can buy something like Vista Server?
-- This would be basically a Kernel, a Desktop, and a Browser. There may be other demo type products as free bees.
-- Any required components that are not on the Server software have to be purchased separately, or bundles, (OUCH).
-- But in order to push businesses to web application servers, future Windows Server OS's development will have to stagnate.
-- Games are what Linux people use Windows for.
-- Microsoft buys the Wine project?
-- Microsoft "DRM's" future windows PC Hardware, basically taking the 'P' out of 'PC'.
-- Companies like Blizzard, and EA are shown that the business model to use is like "World of Warcraft."
-- Client OS could go the way of the Server OS, it will become cheaper to let Linux, and Mac live with the virii masters.
I do not think this is 100% correct, but I truly think it is VERY close to what Microsoft wants to have happen.
I agree with you that web apps do have the potential to surplant desktop apps among the computer illiterate, but I'm not convinced that software subscriptions will fly even with them.
These people may not know anything about computers, but they do know what money is. It is everything I can do to convince computer illiterate people to pay for an antivirus subscription. And you can bet that other companies like Google or Yahoo, which have as much name recognition as Microsoft, will be competing in this space, and their versions will be advertisement supported. The computer illiterate will flock to those, not the sites with subscriptions.
Which isn't to say that the ad-supported sites can't be cash cows, or that Microsoft won't take that approach, but IMHO the idea of renting software is dead in the water.
I'm a full-time Debian (testing) user at home, routinely flippng between KDE, Gnome and WindowMaker depending on the mood I'm in. At work, I write .Net code for Windows platforms at work. My personal belief is that Visual Studio and SQL Server are probably the two best products that Microsoft has ever produced.
That said, I still prefer to use something other than Windows given the choice, and I'll make the sacrifice to using other IDE's when writing code for other systems. Part of it is the whole freedom thing -- I don't like locking myself into Windows. A lot of it, though, is usability as I see it. I consider myself an expert user, and I like the command line. The Windows command line is yucky, and even with quite intering looking improvements (such as Powershell, still in beta), the whole thing is still locked inside that yucky window that only wants to resize vertically. With Windows, you're essentially stuck with "The Microsoft Way" of doing something, whether you like it or not. To name one more example, Windows XP doesn't have native support for virtual desktops, which I really like, but the only way to do it is to staple on a third party application which might integrate okay with Windows, but probably won't integrate well with lots of other third party software. This is the case with lots of things in Windows -- if you want it, you have to get an independent third party application which often won't play nicely with other applications, will probably cost more money, and might throw up (yet another) annoying splash screen when it starts... just to make sure you don't forget that it's there.
I still wouldn't usually recommend most linux distros for inexperienced users, at least if those users are going to have to administer the systems in any way. They're fine when they work, but many times I've still found situations where if something does go wrong, it just takes a bit too much expertise and understanding of a problem to fix it.
I think one of the most important things that puts me off Windows, especially having used several Linux distros, is that I find the package management to be awful in comparison. MSI's are okay in the same way that .deb's and .rpm's are okay, but they really only work if they're built properly, and a lot of third party app providers don't put a lot of effort into their installers. The most common problems I've had is that they refuse to uninstall properly later, they don't cope well with a damaged app, or that they install much more than necessary so they don't have to worry about things like shared libraries.
I'm also convinced that this issue isn't one that can easily be fixed given Microsoft's development and sales model. The difference between Windows and something like Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora, or SuSE, or whatever, is that all the linux distributions are giving you complete systems including he majority of applications you're likely to ever want. They're also designing the installers, and I know that if I install an application using a .deb that's provided by Debian, it's very likely to install properly. I'd consider the same with most MSI's provided by Microsoft, except that Microsoft doesn't provide half the applications I need to work effectively.
Linux distro providers can do this because
Exactly. The applications will be persistent. They will support versioning. The application might dial home to make sure that it's still up to date but that's about it.
I will never fall to that model of distribution. It was tried years ago and it is a pathetic idea. Anyone falling for it is stupid. You buy a product and you are entitled to use it till the end of time. You never want to keep paying for software over a long period of time even if you think you are getting a deal because in the long run you pay exceptionally more and you get nothing for it in the end.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Me too, I remember when Java came out in 1976. Those were the times!
good grief that's like saying americans will stop using gasoline.. no wait that's saying everyone will eventually stop using pollution enabled cars..
Two words about Ray Ozzie - Notes and Groove.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Good one.
By the way, the rest of y'all? Get off my lawn!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm a little puzzled by what "online applications" means. Does it mean that you download the application online and then use it locally (ala mainframe servers), or does it mean that you use it interactively online? And where does the data reside--on Microsoft's server or on a local server? If either the use or data storage is not local, I'd have SERIOUS concerns about data security, especially for apps that deal with sensitive financial data or text. In any case, it seems like this approach has the old mainframe Achilles' heel--if the "network" is down, you're SOL.
Gates has been talking about that since 1998 or earlier.
changing its ways by thinking of software as deliverable services that perhaps could be rented on a monthly subscription basis
Haven't we been hearing this line for the past decade? It's no truer now than when MS released Office 97.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Thats not really how it works. Rather than downloading the full app every time, it'd be one of two things:
1. The app runs completely in the browser, or some browser plug-in like Flash, and there's either no download, or its so small as to be negligible.
2. You only download the software once, and then patches as necessary. Each time you run the app, the first thing it does is to call home and says, 'Hey home-base, I'm running version 2.3.1, what version do you have available?' If the server replies with greater than 2.3.1, then the app downloads and applies the new version (or maybe asks the user if its okay to do thsi now).
There may be other good hybrid models out there, but those two capture the primary cases.
Hehe, cool. Got any screenshots (especially of you using Mozilla on OS/2)?
How much disk space do you have? Do you run Linux too?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Big Software producers have been looking at their corporate counterparts in Big Media and Big Publishing for decades, jealously eyeing the enormous profits and continuous cash flow they generate from subscriptions. They've been scheming for years how they can package or "re-frame" software in such a way that people can be suckered into paying for its use EVERY MONTH or year instead of just once, catch-as-catch-can.
So far, their efforts have mostly flopped, in part due to smart and loud-mouthed socialists like me, who point and yell every time they've made the attempts. This whole software-as-Net-service paradigm, however, scares the crap out of me... they may have finally hit on a sneaky enough way to legitimize their real aim, which is that subscription cash flow and the massive profits that come with it. There needs to be even more pointing and yelling now than ever before.
Nancy Reagan said it best: "just say no".
Photo management: flickr.
Video management: YouTube.
Email: Google mail. Yahoo Mail. Hotmail.
Encyclopedias: all online.
Interesting gaming: all online.
Video entertainment: all will be online.
There are effors under way by Google and other companies to make available wrod processors and spreadsheets online.
The evidence of where things are going are plain to all to see.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What better way for an immoral businessmodel than forcing people to pay even more and over and over because they are forced to use an online "application" (no dimwit, clearly its not force right this moment, but it will be - all too soon)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So what does Bill Gates care about it?? He's got more money than God.
Microsoft is just a playtoy to him. Sure he's got some ego wrapped-up in it, but ultimately at this point if it tanks, so what?
Tried mainframes/dumb terminals. Didn't work. Let's try it again.
Sure, here ya go...
2GB+6.4GB+6.4GB on this box. Not a lot; I have an 18GB drive I'm gonna put in here soon. And yet, I run Linux on a few other boxes on the LAN. Not this one, though.Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Stick around!