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Microsoft Cancels Major Developers' Conference
Kurtz'sKompund writes "Microsoft has cancelled its autumn Professional Developers Conference, citing bad timing in light of the launch of important infrastructure and platform products. This isn't the first time they have cancelled a PDC, for similar reasons."
Between the office's ribbon interface and the actual launch of Vista, you'd think that now would be the most important time to have a developers conference. With all the new challenges and the conference still several months away, wouldn't it be wiser to schedule the time now and make sure that critical issues are dealt with early?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones"
Translation...
"The things we wanted to show at the PDC are so far behind schedule that we would look like fools for even demoing the software."
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
> I agree.
.net IE/Windows only crap and see if they are receptive. Explore whether your existing stuff can be run under Wine and fix things until it does work. Then plant a bug in your customer's ear that you AREN'T one of those crappy little vertical vendors who only understands Microsoft. and that if they want to escape you won't be one of the vendors holding them back, that you can support other platforms. If everyone is a passive as you and waits for someone else to go first Microsoft wins.
No. You don't really. You like to bitch and moan once in awhile but you really don't mind taking it up the pooper whenever Microsoft wants to shaft you. Harsh? Yup. Happens to be true though, based on what you are writing.
Because you have KNOWN exactly what Microsoft is and how your fortunes (and you customer, etc) are tied to Microsoft's whims for years (hell, decades now) and I didn't hear you mention the FIRST step towards an attempt to correct a situation you yourself realize is ultimately going to hurt you.
Yes you are right, that you and your customers have become ensnared in Microsoft's trap of dependency. And you are at least toying with the first step of admitting you have a dependency problem. Now you need a plan to break the unhealthy addiction. You really needed to start years back to have a leg up on the smart competitors who already figured it out but perhaps it isn't too late for you to save yourself.
Step one: When you are in a hole that is rapidly filling with water, the first step has to be to stop digging. That means make every effort to avoid adding any new dependencies on Microsoft technologies. That means don't touch Vista or any of any of it's new technologies or APIs. Same for Office 2007.
Step two: Develop a roadmap that will lead you where you want to be tomorrow, not where Microsoft wants you to go. Many find the easy path to be web based apps, especially in this era of AJAX. Pitch your customers a client neutral web based version of the apps you currently push on them as
Step three: start finding and deploying alternatives whenever practical. OO.o instead of Office where it will work, Firefox instead of IE anywhere there isn't a lot of ActiveX BS to snarl things up. Outlook/Outlook Express should be trashed anywhere people aren't already addicted to Exchange stuff. The more of those dependencies you can break, both for yourself and your customers, the easier it will be to open up options down the road. Same for file/print servers. They can make a great first step and let you gain practical experience.
Step four: Explore and experiment, learning what is out there is half the struggle. Microsoft crams their stuff down your craw, the free stuff is often waiting for you to go looking for it.
Step five: Don't just look at Linux. Yes a Mac isn't any more RMS pure than Windows and they want the same power Microsoft has, but Microsoft is the threat to independent developers and users today. And a Mac can run Photoshop/etc.
Democrat delenda est
Because my shop is a Windows shop (ugh) I have no choice but to develop on Windows. But we've all agreed to do our in-house Windows development using Java and Oracle tools rather than Microsoft tools. So for us, this is a non-event.
Consider the benefits of this approach:
1. We don't have to worry about porting our applications to Vista, because it's Sun's and Oracle's responsibility to make their platforms Vista-compatbile. All we have to do is copy files to a new server. So we can spend our time actually writing code, instead of worrying about porting issues.
2. In the event we DON'T move to Vista, our stuff will work on Linux, or Mac OS/X, or anything else Oracle and Java run on. It's not likely we'll get a mainframe, but if we did, we'd STILL be able to copy our stuff onto it.
3. Our skills have a long shelf-life. New versions of Java tend to ADD capabilities, but the language itself doesn't tend to change in ways that require re-writes. Oracle's the same way, mostly.
Overall, I don't know why anyone still uses Microsoft tools, given the way they like to "churn" their environment. It seems kind of chaotic and random to me. Remember the switch from VB6 to VB.Net, and how people howled about that? Phew...
NO CARRIER
> Users want the simplest solution.
Of course, so do I.
> They are correct in believing that MS is the simplest solution.
They may be believe it but they would be wrong. Odds are as a developer in a vertical industry you are more computer literate than they are, but YOU believe it too so you can't correctly advise them.
This is 2007, if there is a Windows victim left who hasn't been wiping and reinstalling (or using Ghost) end user machines at least annually I haven't met em. Add in the cost of the 'protection' software that allows one to survive even a year with an end user and it is pretty awful... and expensive. Then add in the other costs of owning and maintaining Windows.
It isn't the best choice. It is just that most users have never even SEEN anything else and are afraid of the unknown.
If you are selling into operations too small to even have consultant system admins you probably should have Macs as your ultimate target to be guiding towards. Remember that there are a LOT of options these days to get the odd Windows executable running on a Mac. Have a look at what Code Weavers is doing in this area. Make YOUR stuff able to either run native on either platform or from a small server in their corner.
If the customer is a little bigger thin clients make sense. Remote in Windows from a server to cover the legacy stuff. But get those Windows desktops scrapped and stop the pain! Crossover Office is also something to experiment with, it runs a LOT of those simple 'industry specific apps' (read VB) and will only get better at it.
If you haven't experienced a thin client or server hosted homes on a thick client you can't really understand the difference. In my world (with 100 total seats at six sites) a workstation can die and we don't care. We toss the spare out and get on with our work. NO inportant data lives on the clients even though ours still have the OS on a local HDD. Yes you can pull most of this stuff off with Windows clients & servers but by the time you are done you have spent a lot more in time and money to make it actually work correctly and will spend more keeping it running. But until you experience it and truly understand there is a better way than unreliable Dells running unstable Windows you won't be able to explain it to others.
Whatever the question, Windows is probably the wrong answer. The sole exception is a gamer who wants more than a Playstation/X-Box can offer.
Democrat delenda est
> My god, you really are a fanatic OSS troll,
Guess you missed the part where I recommended Macs in certain scenarios. Longterm, yea I'm a Free Software believer. But mostly I think Windows is a menace and a disaster. Other than gamers I really don't know of a question where Windows is a good answer.
But more importantly Microsoft is fast becoming a threat to the entire idea of 'personal computers.' I'm becoming convinced they intend, and have a fair chance of attaining, nothing less than the elimination of the general purpose computer, replacing it with something more akin to an X-Box that runs IE and Office. If we can't gain enough control to offer credible competition before they manange to buy a law requiring all unregulated hardware to enforce code signing and DRM we all lose bigtime. On that day all small independent software houses are going to be hosed.
Democrat delenda est