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Windows 7 To Be "Thoroughly" Tested For Antitrust Compliance
CWmike writes "Technical advisers to the antitrust regulators who monitor Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company. Microsoft is also facing renewed scrutiny from the EU, which two weeks ago filed preliminary charges against the company over bundling IE with Windows, and said more recently that Microsoft 'shields' IE from competition."
First we got antivirus software, then they invented antispyware software. Yeah, Antitrust software is obviously exactly what we need.
Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement will test Windows 7 'more thoroughly' than earlier versions of the operating system were tested, according to a new status report filed with the federal judge watching over the company.
Wasn't this done for XP? If I cannot remove IE or Windows Media Player, then these folks will not have done their job.
But the better move would be to force Microsoft to use open formats for all their applications. That way, we all can be sure that alternative apps have the opportunity to work as required. The only hindrance here would be for programmers to "deliver."
Yup! It's non-compliant. Actually, what are the compliance conditions precisely? I recall that part of the problem was the bundling of MSIE but I can't say if the exclusion of MSIE was ever a requirement.
Microsoft should follow the Linux lead here... the core OS should just be the bare necessities and there should be a user friendly GUI to connect to and download features and software that is supported on the Windows platform. This could be done for both free software (IE, Firefox, etc.) and software they currently charge for or that may be going to a subscription based system (Office).
They could kill two birds with one stone here, they'd just be packaging the OS so it is slimmed down and performs better AND they wouldn't be facing this legal crap every release.
Granted, I still don't see what the big deal is. Yes, IE can't be removed and it is annoying and so the law indicates it is a monopoly. I guess I've always viewed a monopoly as a system where you can't access, obtain, use, etc any competing product. This, of course, isn't the case with Windows as I'm typing this up in Chrome at the moment. I do understand though, this isn't the way the law sees it and I'm sure there are good reasons for this that I'd understand if I fully dived into the required reading.
I think pricing and OEM tactics are much more important to look at. How is it for example possible for Microsoft do demand premium for XP on workstations while at the same time they sell it for spare change in the netbook market? Last time i checked it wasnt legal to use a monopoly in one area to expand into another.
The "marketing" support OEMs get is also something very fishy. Step in line and do as Microsoft tells you or buy your OEM license for much more than your competitors. This in a very low margin business where every dollar counts.
HTTP/1.1 400
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X. It is not merely an issue of web designers not making things compatible, but whole applications and applications interfaces are closed to anything other than MSIE.
Please. If you can't see how IE is shielded from competition like the night is shielded from the day, then perhaps you ought to look closer.
I'm thoroughly testing it, and thoroughly pleased. This is the first time in years I that I did not replace IE immediately. I've been using it for a couple weeks, now. One problem I eventually found is that Google Chrome won't install. IE has frozen several times (it's beta.) I hated Vista with a passion, but so far I am really happy with Windows 7.
what am I going to use to download firefox? Do they really expect end users to learn to use FTP? I'm not sure the DOJ has thought this through.
How is it for example possible for Microsoft do demand premium for XP on workstations while at the same time they sell it for spare change in the netbook market
I think YAATL (yet another anti-trust lawsuit) is coming on :)
Have one version with all the usual guff cut out (no "security", no browser, no apps, utilities or themes.) Make this the "Basic version" and let the user choose what browser to use, what security to install, what apps to run. Effectively this "lite" version is the gateway to the net and our chosen apps, where most PC time is spent.
Think of it as going to Subways - choose the boring brown roll of an OS, then add all your own yummy meats, juicy salads, hot peppers and sauces.
Sell it cheap and you kill Linux and stop the Mac horde in its tracks, problem solved - longer version - http://goffee-freelance.blogspot.com/
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
http://www.getfirefox.com/
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
like I said in the last thread, Is IE that big of an issue when it's losing market share to competitors? IE8 isn't going to save it because it still has abymissial JScript performance and as more sites everyday are using AJAX, IE gets slower and appears to lock up more.
Over the last 2 years, it lost market share, and According to these guys IE dropped from 79.9 down to 68.1. Now Google chrome is in the mix and already eclipsed Opera's share of .7% within 4 months and stands at 1% market share, and it only going up from there.
This isn't 2000, When all you had was a reliable and fast IE, a buggy Mozilla, a decripid and virtually useless Netscape, and a "HTML compliant" Opera that can't render any site correctly. Now, there's a slow and locking up IE, a reliable and fast rendering Firefox, a solid preforming Safari, a super fast and easy to install Chrome and a better, but still renders funny sometimes Opera.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
ive never had a mac so i wouldnt know for sure, but i would assume that OSX or leopard or whatever its called bundles something, itunes and safari maybe? if i am right then surely for fairness such rulings should apply to them aswell and to linux as the market share for both are slowly climbing
Microsoft, you have made the eeeooo very angry! And if you don't comply, we will write many angry letters to you, informing you of how angry we are!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I feel part of the reason Microsoft have got away with a lot of their bad practices is because no one with any power to do anything about it cared.
Now these people of power are waking up. It's not just the wining of nerds and does matter. Computers are like anything else competition is required or things become expensive and broken.
Closed source is broken anyway, but to have a company to make closed software on a closed platform, how can that ever be a level playing field?
Just a simple example: the embedded FTP client in IE that integrates with Windows Explorer. It's a good idea, a sound implementation, but why should it be denied to other browser makers? It's not like I didn't pay for Windows Explorer.
Contrary to what you might think, I would like W7 to do a good job. I would also like to have it work properly in diverse networks, and be able to deploy applications and shares across those networks without regard to OS. I would prefer installing IE8 not to break some of my old .NET applications when it doesn't interfere with similarly ancient Java apps. If it takes Neelie Kroes to make Microsoft do this, I say bring on Neelie Kroes. She's now up there on my "great women in IT" pedestal along with Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Can you please explain why Firefox supports innerHTML, considering it is a Microsoft invention, and NOT STANDARDS BASED (as this seems so important you had to capitalize it) ?
Oh yes, I forgot, be standards compliant, unless it affects your market share. Bravo, Firefox. You stick to your guns, and the lemmings will keep trotting out their tired mantras.
For the time being it remains more profitable for Windows to purposefully limit their platform (by ensuring it isn't as flexible as you describe, limiting it's compatibility with other platforms, etc) and have to deal with the EU then to just make a damn good product for the end user.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
The only solution would be to enable the complete removal of Internet Explorer's GUI. The only reason I don't say to completely remove it is because it is crucial to Windows Update, among other aspects of that OS. However, to force the OS to tell the user, "You must install one of the above to get on the Internet," is ludicrous. The same people claiming that Microsoft's packaging are the ones who have no problem with Firefox being installed by default in Linux distributions. The only difference is that we have the ability to remove Firefox in favor of Opera, Epiphany, or what have you. Therefore the only way to achieve "equality" is for MS to include a way to give the user the option to remove Internet Explorer in favor of a different browser.
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
Sorry, but what "web service applications" are you refering to?
Actually, by making sure other browsers are not [fully] supported by their web service applications, they are locking out competing, STANDARDS BASED, browsers and client machines including those running Firefox and Mac OS X.
Actually I can say that I've begun seeing websites where, if you visit them with IE, they say, "Sorry, but the page cannot be viewed in Internet Explorer. Please use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari." It seems that, by not adhering to standards, Microsoft may be starting to locking themselves out of competition.
Karma. Wouldn't it be funny if Microsoft had to scramble to get their browser standards-compliant because websites weren't bothering to support them anymore?
Their Outlook Web Access application is decidedly more feature-filled for IE than it is for Firefox, for example.
If we allow this sort of behavior to continue, it could hurt Linux adoption. MOD DOWN.
Because a lot of rich-text editors on Webmails and other web pages made heavy use of innerHTML to present pre-formatted output instead of just BBcode type output. I am guilty of writing such an editor for a website I made once, I cringed at every line of code when it wouldn't display properly in Mozilla.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Right now, according to MarketShare, IE6 and Firefox 2/3 are roughly tied for market share (about 20% to each). TheCounter says that IE6 has 34% of the market while Firefox has 17%, and even W3Schools says that IE6 still has about 20% of users.
The moral of this story is: lots of people don't upgrade. They don't even run Windows Update. They use the browser they got when they installed XP, and they probably don't even know anything else is out there.
This is why, whenever Microsoft ties an application to the operating system, the market suffers. It becomes really hard to compete in that space. Right now, nobody's making money selling a web browser that competes with the one that comes with Windows. This is the way it's been for more than a decade now. The antitrust action against Microsoft was nothing more than a slap on the wrist; it did nothing to restore competition.
If Microsoft is so interested in bundling high-quality apps with the operating system for the good of its users, then why haven't they bundled Microsoft Word?
Because supporting a property in JavaScript that returns the HTML string with in an element isn't going to break anything else. Just because something doesn't come from a standard doesn't mean it's not a good idea to adopt it. It's only when you adopt something that breaks a standard or is in conflict with a standard that it becomes a problem. Supporting extensions on top a standard that break nothing else isn't a problem.
Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
No Microsoft paycheck for you.
My blog
That is not a bad idea ... and one, perhaps, I might attempt to sail at my own work place.
Instead of having IE and WMP installed, they have just the link to the installer?
The user at their discretion should be able to decide if they want that bloat or not in their OS.
(either at runtime, or during the instalation)
As much as I detest Windows in all forms, Windows 7 seems to be shaping up to be a half decent OS. Hate to have to admit it, but there it is.
Now all they need is a bash terminal, wget, vim, locate, grep, tail, touch, top, a package management system (emerge, apt, rpm - not really fussy), more text-based config files instead of a registry...
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Can you please explain why Firefox supports innerHTML, considering it is a Microsoft invention
Because (successful) software developers are pragmatic more than they are pedantic. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
Microsoft also invented Ajax (well, they were the first to implement the XMLHttpRequest). Just because the devil gives you a pony doesn't mean he still isn't evil. And it doesn't make the pony evil by proxy.
I think I should probably stick to car analogies.
You'll be hard pressed to successfully make the argument that OS's on workstations and OS's on netbooks are sufficiently different markets.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Poetic but not very accurate.
by BadAnalogyGuy (945258)
Ah, I see.
Back when IE's competition cost money I could see why they would be in trouble for bundling a free program would cause people to think they were using their power as a monopoly. How many web browsers does OS X bundle? In KDE, isn't the web browser also the file manager?
In 10 years when MS is gone due to their so called non competition (and lawsuits) we'll have the same issues with whoever is the BIG company at the time due to these laws not being enforced across the board. Either you can bundle whatever you want or you shouldn't be able to bundle anything.
So... lets imagine a PC with every single web browser installed by default... which one do they put in their start menu? Do they put a program that says pick a web browser? What order to you put them in? Alphabetical? Well, who is at the top, they have a better chance of becoming the standard due to people being lazy and picking the first one. And you better hope it doesn't have anything selected by default or definitely that will be the monopoly version in no time at all. How about anytime a new browser comes out it should be a automatically installed as a critical windows update and so nobody is the majority, when you click Internet in your start menu it randomly picks a different one each time.
So what's next? I think freecell has a monopoly.
It's not necessarily what is bundled or not. It's their #!@$@ business practices and closed APIs. I really don't give a crap if an alternate browser is on the system or not. What they should care about is that it is easy to put it on, remove the one you don't like, etc. You should be able to mix and match as you see fit.
This focus on 'bundling' has always annoyed me. Why should we force microsoft to bundle anything that they themselves didn't create? that's stupid. We definitely should look into their dealings with OEMs though! That whole forcing OS/2 out of the market with their exclusive contracts were not cool. Educate yourself on the real criminal behavior: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
To test for antitrust, they need simply test how easy it is to mix and match different components. If the OS is getting in the way of that, fine the hell out of them.
Is it possible to detect a backdoor in a close source OS? how?
Maybe, just maybe this time they will solve the security out of the box.
But what will happen after 1 month, when everyone has installed all they need and started to use Internet?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It's only when you adopt something that breaks a standard or is in conflict with a standard that it becomes a problem
Fine, I agree with you 100%.
So when you implement innerHTML on your web page, and then display it in a TRULY standards compliant browser, it will for all intents and purposes BE broken. It will not work. (That's what broken means).
So please stop calling Firefox "standards compliant" !
Now, for your next assignment, please show me which part of w3c is "broken" or "in conflict with" by Microsoft's ActiveX container ? That's right kids, nowhere, because ActiveX was NEVER part of the w3c, anymore than innerHTML was.
Quite simply Firefox chose to implement innerHTML (because it is useful), but chose not to implement ActiveX. Instead they quietly implemented plugins and the whole XPI thing (again not part of the w3c), but that's okay because it's not MS.
I'm not on a paycheck from them either, and I use both MS at home, and Linux at work.
I just want this goddamn hypocrasy to stop. NEITHER MSIE NOR Firefox are w3c compliant to the exact letter of the standard, so trying to say one is and one isn't is just utter BS or fanboyism.
The EU created an entire subset of the legal system which only applies to Microsoft. It's a protection racket- give the EU a few billion every year, and they allow them to operate in the EU.
Otherwise, their law would prevent Apple from "shielding" Safari from competition. And let's extend that, too- Google, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry all have to bundle "competing" applications on their devices, allow OS choice on the phones, etc.
But they won't do that, because that entire area of law only applies to one company.
I'd fire anyone who suggested that at my workpace, and I LOATHE IE, just not as much as I love our customers' money.
And which websites would that be ? Ones related to Linux perhaps ? I just can't see any sane web designer/master locking out something like 50% of the web.
bash? No - Windows 7 comes with PowerShell. In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Windows is moving towards xml config files - not the line-based delimiter-of-the-day config files of *nix. Xml files are arguably better for describing many more complicated structures. They also are more bloated ;-) . PS has support for reading/writing/manipulating xml files
Incidently, PowerShell treats the registry, certificate store, the PW function list etc. just as a file system. It means that to manipulate the registry you access registry keys/values just like directories/files - using the same commands.
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I don't propose locking them out, but I do propose detecting the user agent and responding by putting up a message stating something along the lines of "Best when viewed with..."
My web people here spend time designing pages that work and then waste countless hours tweaking them to work with MSIE afterward. Best to let some things look "weird" in MSIE and post a message stating why.
That windows will become nothing more then a gateway to the net. A basic OS nothing more and everything else is supplied by others. Because a basic OS isn't that hard to write. Most Uni IT students do it as an assignment. You think Linus was the first guy to program an OS at home? Hardly.
The trick is that building a complete solution is what is hard to do AND is what MS has made a fortune out of doing. MS doesn't sell an OS, it sells ALL the tools you need to run a computer. This in itself is not enough, what really powers MS is that for a long time THEIR tools were the ONLY tools you could use and be certain they were compatible.
MS doesn't give a SHIT about IE, for a long time it was perfectly happy to let netscape have it. Until it dawned on them that the internet might be big and that if they didn't control the internet, someone else would.
It is the same as with their office suit. people use MS office not because they need all its features or because it is the best but because everyone else uses it too. Since for a long time all documents where MS.DOC format you better be able to open them and write them if you wanted to do business. MS sells their software NOT because it can compete but because if you don't buy theirs you can't connect to anyone else.
This is changing and it is scary as hell to MS. Why are all cars petrol powered? Because that is the fuel that is available. By a car that moves on say compressed air and you won't be driving it far because there are no compressed air stations, just petrol stations. If this changes, then people can change the fuel for their car.
IF MS were to truly create a core OS for which others would then provide the frills, then it would very quickly find that someone else can not just supply the frills but the core OS itself.
Example? MS Outlook. For the longest time Linux users have had to jump through hoops to connect to their employers Outlook servers. More and more however I see companies going to purely webbased mail and voila. Not only can I use that with ANY OS, neither do I need to jump through hoops anymore to access MS software. It is a dangerous thing for MS. If parts of it are no longer the universal standard, what reason have you got to buy their software when there are far cheaper and better solutions out there?
No, your solution would not kill Linux or Apple. It would empower them and others to rise to new heights while MS would quickly die.
Try this, MS opens up DX10 to be implemented freely by say Linux and Apple. Exactly how many gamers would stay with XP/Vista/W7 and migrate away? 99%? Why do think MS is pushing Game for Windows after years of neglecting the market and even having their own rival the X-box?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
. One only has to look at the relative successes of Linus Torvalds versus Richard Stallman as a prime example.
The GPL is more important than Linux. With out GPL there would be no Linux, it never would have taken off. The GPL makes open source projects sticky, making it easier to hit critical mass. It's why GNU/Linux is bigger than BSD. Sometimes pedantic is the long term pragmatic.
Having said that, I think Firefox is right to support innerHTML, and OpenOffice is right to read/write doc files.
Most of the problems around MSIE in terms of standards compliance have been fixed in IE 8. The other half of the problem, though, is ActiveX
They sure have good CSS 2.1 compliance with IE8. The other half of the problem is not ActiveX, though, it is EcmaScript (javascript) compliance and DOM binding compliance. It is not too much of a problem if you use one of the many good JavaScript libraries, but all of those have had to build provisions specifically for IE because of the poor compliance.
... ActiveX, which other browsers cannot implement on platform other than Windows. If ActiveX where implemented aa true open standard, without moving targets, without reliance on the underlying platform, then it would be possible to produce browsers on competing platforms that supported ActiveX.
Since Microsoft has deliberately chosen to keep certain details of ActiveX a complete an utter secret and tie it into Windows, there's no way for anyone to implement on a non-Windows platform.
This deliberate tie-in is an effort by Microsoft to create vendor lock-in. Microsoft can either compete fairly or they can fight dirty. They've consistently chosen to fight dirty and until they stop, they're always going to face criticism for it.
ActiveX is really COM objects. COM is a binary Windows standard for object oriented APIs. Incidently it inspired Gnome which uses a binary standard very much like it. There is *nothing* secretive about ActiveX. There is tons of documentation. Anyone can implement ActiveX objects, anyone can implement ActiveX containers. The problem is that it is exactly a binary standard. With no virtual execution system involved objects are always tied to the platform. It is compiled code calling Windows APIs. That's why ActiveX does not exist on other platforms. It should be possible to implement through Wine, though. Wondering is somebody already did it...
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Because supporting a property in JavaScript that returns the HTML string with in an element isn't going to break anything else. Just because something doesn't come from a standard doesn't mean it's not a good idea to adopt it. It's only when you adopt something that breaks a standard or is in conflict with a standard that it becomes a problem. Supporting extensions on top a standard that break nothing else isn't a problem.
Not completely true. I don't blame Firefox implementation, after all, HTML was designed with extensions in mind (including ignoring unknown tags). But it gives support to those extending standards (on a non standard way!). And surely, extending standards (even with non breaking stuff) is a BAD thing. It creates vendor lock-in. (Think about Visual J++)
is it just me or do other people read the name of that thing as PowersHell ?
I know I used to emphasize dosshell as dossHELL.
someone tells microsoft's marketing dept. that whatever you put in front of the word "shell" MUST be separated by a white space OR be turned into an acronym, three leters minimum, like CSH, KSH, Bash, etc.
or sick MoFos like me will find a way to emphasize the "hell" in "shell".
What ? Me, worry ?
What about sed and awk?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Even if MS were to open it up, I doubt anyone would implement fully because of the issues. I don't know much about ActiveX in detail but it seems to me that ActiveX is something MS won't let do despite its security failings. MS has constantly pledged more security and more stability yet most of IE security problems are related to ActiveX.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Look it's another antitrust story about Microsoft! Look it's already filled with dozens of comments by people who don't know what antitrust abuse is. Seriously people, you're making Slashdot look as ignorant as other Web forums. Don't people think it might be a good idea to know what they're talking about before telling us what they think about it?
Antitrust abuse is undermining free trade in a market using the large amount of influence a company or group has in a separate market. Antitrust laws were made because trusts discovered they could undermine capitalism by tying markets they controlled to markets they did not and then they did not have to work hard and spend money to make the best product in the second market; they could dominate it with an inferior product that did not cost them to produce. This also resulted in them having little or no motivation to please customers, improve that product, or reduce costs... undermining all the important benefits we were gaining from capitalism in the first place. Without antitrust laws, capitalism collapses into a series of competing monopolists, which is why pretty much every country around the world implemented very similar antitrust laws, which have stabilized economies and prevented the worst abuses.
Example: How to abuse a monopoly. Suppose I gain a monopoly or trust. It doesn't matter how. Say I contract with a city to lay the wires that distribute electricity. Fine, this is a common monopoly scenario in the US. Now suppose I decide I want to move into a new market, like selling bottled water. Legally, antitrust law says because water is a separate pre-existing market, I cannot tie those two markets together. The most common form of illegal tying is bundling. Suppose I start shipping every one of my electrical distribution customers a "free" case of bottled water every month. The vast majority of sellers of bottled water go out of business, because everyone already has bottled water. This is both unfair and destabilizes the market by driving good companies out of business without having a better product. Then, I slowly raise the price of electrical power distribution to cover my expense in purchasing and distributing bottled water. What if my water is not as good and tastes slightly off? What if the bottles are non-recyclable? What if it costs me more than it did previous companies and I'm passing on higher costs to you?
In capitalism all those problems are solved by the market. I'm motivated to solve them because it will make my bottled water more attractive and get me more sales. With monopoly abuse, I have no motivation to solve those problems. If people want electricity in their houses they will buy my bottled water, so who cares if it sucks and is overpriced? What can they do?
I'll tell you what they can do. They can pass criminal laws that make such bundling illegal. If you tie a product in a market where you have a huge amount of influence (either as a company or a cartel) to a separate pre-existing market, you are breaking the law. That law makes a lot of sense and has stabilized our economy an insured competition. A lot of people have proposed solutions other than antitrust law, that would let some currently illegal bundling continue and try to solve the problem in a different way, basically trying to solve a specific case by writing laws to cover that case instead of general laws that cover all cases. I think that is a myopic view and misguided.
So what did MS do? They took a product (Windows) where they had huge influence on the market and bundled numerous other products with it. These are products from separate pre-existing markets. When they did it, they knew it was breaking the law, but they figured they'd make enough money to buy their way out of trouble. They paid off companies with enough money to sue them successfully. They made huge campaign contributions to the people who were supposed to be enforcing the laws. They spent large amounts of money on misinformation campaigns to confuse people about the law and spread mi
MS can bundle all they like.
It's when they start giving their own browser preferential treatment that we quite rightly cry foul.
This is the very essence of product tying.
Using market power in the tying product (MS Windows), to restrain competition in the tied product's market (IE, browsers).
In many areas it is much more powerful than bash - and it is certainly a better "fit" for Windows than bash would be (PS is object-oriented and object-based and practically all of Windows API is now exposed as objects either through COM, WMI or .NET). Note, that is not saying that PS would be better for *nix than bash.
Feel the power:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_PingStatus -Filter "Address='127.0.0.1'" -ComputerName . | Select-Object -Property Address,ResponseTime,StatusCode
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=46 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0 ms
^C
----127.0.0.1 PING Statistics----
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/med = 0/15/46/0
No doubt PowerShell offers unheard of (til now) functionality, and to the degree that statement is more meaningful than saying "Best Windows version yet!", I'd say PowerShell is awkward, clumsy, and verbose and indicative of how Microsoft still doesn't "get it".
Who know? Maybe in Windows 8 they might even take the bold step of rewriting cmd.exe, the Notepad of terminals, and really impress everyone, leaving us waiting with baited breath for symlinks in Windows 9.
Forgot: The BIG problem with ActiveX is that it has a very poor security model. Because it really is binary code executing on your machine it can do everything the executing account can do. Which is why ActiveX have got such a bad security rep.
MS has progressively restricted ActiveX controls to the point where they are actually comparable to plugins (which share the same security issues). You now have to permit websites to run even the standard ActiveX controls.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
PowerShell is actually an intriguing concept. Granted, it's not bash, but there is something to be said for the idea of constructing pipelines through which objects flow instead of text. That and being able to cd around inside the registry and environment is an intriguing concept.
We should file anti-trust suits against... Ford, Chrysler, and GM since they're obviously using closed standards and preventing their customers from being able to use competitor's parts...
Yes and since each of those companies has a monopoly on cars (thus the influence to be a trust) they are obviously undermining the market and abusing that trust so antitrust law applies.
.. Seriously, let Microsoft do their thing.
I'll consider taking your advice on economics when you understand the meaning of all the words you use. Seriously, learn what 'antitrust' means before presuming to advise people about laws regarding trusts.
Sorry, the GPL has nothing to do with Linux's success. Linux was successful because it had less of a strict central-planning theme. People like the "some dude out there in a basement" idea and jumped on it because it was easy to tweak and modify.
Apache httpd is of course ridiculously successful - it's not GPL'd.
Why don't you just do a regular ping? Jeez, anyone can come up with an artificially lame example in any language.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
My web people here spend time designing pages that work and then waste countless hours tweaking them to work with MSIE afterward. Best to let some things look "weird" in MSIE and post a message stating why.
As long as the message is not obnoxious. While you web designers put a lot of importance in a pixel perfect look, me and I suspect most of the web inhabitants don't really give a damn.
Their Outlook Web Access application is decidedly more feature-filled for IE than it is for Firefox, for example.
That's because they added features to IE to speed up OWA. Including, interstingly enough XMLHttpRequest, the basis of Ajax. What's interesting is that Microsoft supported this in IE 5 in 1999 via an ActiveX control. Mozilla implemented it as a native object in 2002. Opera copied Mozilla's implementation in Opera 8 in 2005. Finally Microsoft added support for the Mozilla/Opera native object implementation in IE 7 in 2006.
The WWWC published a spec for XMLHTTPRequest in 2008.
So it's not true that Microsoft "don't follow standards". They actually support functionality before the painfully sluggish WWWC standardise it. So in fact do Mozilla, it's just that the WWWC end up making the Mozilla implementation the standard.
And they support OWA on Firefox, they just don't make as feature filled. That seems ok to me. It's not like they tie OWA to IE. I.e. you have an advantage of using IE with OWA, but they don't force you to.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
First thing to realize about awk is that it was really only necessary because bash pipelines are text-only. You need awk, cut etc. to "find" the correct columns and emit something as a result.
Once you move to an object-based pipeline the need for something like awk disappears, at least for combining commands.
Example: The PS ls command is an alias for the Get-ChildItem cmdlet. Executed on a filesystem it will return a sequence of DirectoryInfo and FileInfo objects. Standard formatting rules (the ToString method) of those objects ensures that if they are written to the console they will appear as (somewhat) familar ls lines. But you can also pipe then thorugh another cmdlet, e.g. filtering on size *without* needing to parse the "filesize column":
ls | ?{ $_.Length -gt 30kb }
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
sed is pretty much covered by the script language. Text files are by default processed as a "sequence of strings". Through the pipeline those strings can be changed, filtered; new string can be inserted etc.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Yes, they were Mac or Linux centric sites.
It's not like I was trying to be tricky and sneak that past anyone. Of course they weren't super-mainstream sites where they were anticipating a lot of IE traffic. I was just saying I've seen a few, out there. Often they're web applications or something where it's a bigger problem than just whether things display properly. But, for example, Apple's MobileMe service advises that you don't use IE when viewing their site. I forget what the other sites were, but I've seen a few web apps that weren't necessarily Linux/Mac focussed that said they didn't advise IE, even if they then proceeded to allow you to access it in IE anyway.
Still, even though it's only a few sites, it's out there, and it's not just sites that are doing it to be snarky. They were reputable sites that were doing serious and functional things, run by people who clearly didn't want to put in all the time and effort to support IE's little way of doing things. As someone who's done some web development (not even all that much), I find it understandable.
And my post was implying that it's not very significant now, but it would be a funny little karmic joke if the number of sites doing it did become significant.
I actually thought that was kind of cool. To me it implies that ping.exe can be replace by ping.psx or whatever the fuck a powershell script extension looks like (if it is .ps someone has to die, but microsoft loves three letter extensions anyway...) to save a few bytes. I wonder how many other examples of redundant commands there are. You could potentially save quite a bit of space by removing all the compiled wrappers to common windows components and replacing them with scripts, which you could then extend to be more featureful than the originals.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's true, but there are also other things to consider.
No one will use a web browser that breaks a lot of pages. I guess they must have decided that enough pages use innerHTML to warrant inclusion.
There's also the fact that JavaScript is also used by the XUL applications that run on top of the Gecko framework. innerHTML might be useful to some.
It's a horrible idea. Websites should never discriminate against web browsers, even those strange ones from Redmond. The web is supposed to be open to everyone.
NTFS has had Symbolic Links built into the file system for years.... it's just unsupported in the default installation of windows.
You can download junction.exe (the NTFS version of ln) from Microsoft's Technet.
So... you have one. One which is still completely usable in FF as well.
No, the ponies are working for you... keep it going. ;)
April 1st, 2006 tells us ponies are okay here.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
How exactly is it illegal, or should it be illegal to include in your operating system? Shit. Windows comes with a file compression utility, theres other software companies that make them... MONOPOLY. Crap. Windows comes with a file browser, theres other file browsers out there, OH FUCK, ABUSE OF POWER. WTF...windows includes a game of solitaire, media player, taskbar, simple text program, and even a taskbar, WOE IS ME, POOR COMPUTER USER. And wtf...windows even includes SCREENSAVES AND WALLPAPER?!?!?!? what the fuck are all of the websites that give you screensavers and wallpapers going to do...MICROSOFT MUST BE STOPPED. If you want to buy an operating system that comes preloaded with a bunch of shit, buy windows or apple, based on your preference. If you want to figure all that shit out on your own, use linux. Its not so complicated...Mods...go to work Oh, right, to the people suggesting that microsoft should have to bundle COMPETITORS software on its operating system... ARE YOU RETARDED...and thats not a comical question, i'm 100% serious....are you retarded? Please try and identify other markets where companies are FORCED to market their COMPETITORS services...
Microsoft Project Server can only be acessed trough IE http://office.microsoft.com/pt-br/projectserver/default.aspx
Umm, I'm pretty sure junctions in NTFS on Vista are similar to symlinks.
All your base are belong to Wii.
I guess that's ok, if all you need to filter are objects. If I have tabular data emailed to me as text files, and I need to extract a column, what do I do?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think it's built into Vista, because it uses junctions to point apps to the new AppData\Roaming folder that were expecting Application Data. Of course this is a bitch when you're using robocopy to backup your home folder, and wondering why after several hours it's still copying. For anyone who might be interested, you use the switch /XJ to keep it from following junctions in a neverending loop.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Windows 7 To Be 'Thoroughly' Tested For Antitrust Compliance
I for one do not trust "Windows 7" since it is really Windows version 6.1 or 6.2. I say it passes my "Antitrust Compliance" test; because Antitrust means NOT trust, right? Tim S
I wasn't aware that being W3C compliant meant not including additional features. Does that even make any sense? AFAIK, most browsers have their own set of extra CSS tags prefixed with the vendor name, like -moz-rounded-corners and such, which Firefox uses for parts of the UI. Is that not allowed too? Oh crap, I guess we all better use lynx, none of that useless non-compliant GUI business.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Why does Microsoft have to take it in the ass? Their software has been gimped enough thanks to the antitrust nonsense.
Because of all of the stupid so called "Monopoly" bullshit, we can thank the governments of the world for holding back graphic viewing capabilities in windows, better graphic management solutions, media player functionality, explorer features.... etc
How about APPLE be taken to task for their OS. I cant even legally install it on a PC that I bought, unless i buy it from apple.
Apple has a lot of "be all end all" solutions in its os... so why doesnt Apple take it in the ass?
I guess monopolies are ok when they're "cool".
Now all they need is a bash terminal, wget, vim, locate, grep, tail, touch, top, a package management system (emerge, apt, rpm - not really fussy), more text-based config files instead of a registry...
You can get nearly all of these things for windows already. Well, except the registry, but that will never leave windows.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
I'm thoroughly testing it, and thoroughly pleased. This is the first time in years I that I did not replace IE immediately. I've been using it for a couple weeks, now. One problem I eventually found is that Google Chrome won't install. IE has frozen several times (it's beta.) I hated Vista with a passion, but so far I am really happy with Windows 7.
Chrome installed without a problem for me, it was the first thing I did after installing 7 in a VM.
I had no problems installing Chrome on the 7000 build. I installed it almost immediately just because I've come to like the interface, not that I had a problem with IE8. Maybe I'll give IE8 another go.
I use 3 different OS Platforms everyday. Mac osX, Windows XP/Vista/7 and Ubuntu. So understand that this question does not come from a one sided user. Why hasn't Apple been slapped with the same anti-trust suit for the software that comes on their machines. I had to use Safari, Reader, or Mail. I was not given a choice when I booted up my Mac Pro. I can always download something else. What am missing? It's very convoluted to me.
I must really protest against the "Object-oriented vs text-ONLY" mindset. A text stream is always the same text stream regardless of which platform I send it on to. Say I generate a text stream on Linux and send it using netcat to a system running Solaris or AIX. It'll be received correctly and can be easily processed. OTOH, the "object-stream" has no inter-operable survival beyond Windows machines. Secondly, text-streams are ubiquitous. Files are text-streams. TCP connection data are text-streams. The standard I/O interface of programs is text-stream. This ubiquity of text-streams is the main reason behind UNIX's appeal for power-users. At first sight, (for those who don't fully exploit UNIX) it will appear that this "object-stream" concept is more powerful than text-stream. But it's just snake-oil.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
What are the numbers showing about Firefox these days? Last I checked, the VAST majority of Firefox users were staying up-to-date.
One could argue that these numbers indicate that almost all Firefox users are tech-savvy and keep their software updated, however, I've seen plenty of Firefox users who are not. I think the difference here is that Firefox has a far more user friendly update method. It's very easy to do and it's not constantly in your face asking you to upgrade.
I think people don't run Windows Update for two reasons. The first is that, well, it kinda sucks. It's slow and sometimes it errors and you have to start all over (oh great, another 10 minute scan to tell me the same thing it just told me before the error?). The second reason would be that there are probably still quite a few people running illegal copies of Windows. Maybe not intentionally, they could have just passed it to a friend or relative who set up their computer for them and then told them never to run Update.
So, to summarize, I think people DO update and upgrade, but they do it when it's not going to prevent them from doing their work or otherwise interfere with their computing experience.
I guess that's ok, if all you need to filter are objects. If I have tabular data emailed to me as text files, and I need to extract a column, what do I do?
You can gc tab-delm-file.txt |% {$_.split("`t")} which will split the file 'tab-delm-file.txt' into objects based on tabs.
The Powershell Guy Blog has LOTS of great examples to questions. (The answer to this question came from here)
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The funny thing is that when you use an interpreter like Python, Ruby (irb!) or Perl in some kind interactive mode (or filter mode, to transform commands into function calls), and when you add some functions/routines that implement shell-like behaviour, then you'll probably end up with a similar shell like this. In the end, to me, PowerShell looks more than a *scripting language* rather than a sophisticated shell to me. True, all UNIX shells support scripting too, and it is very satisfying for some to impress one with difficult awk/sed stuff, but most (if not all) of that stuff can be done more easily nowadays in a more suitable scripting language. Real shell scripting semantics should be really geared towards *interactive command shell* usage: running commands, job control command completion and last but not least: something simple. Does PS cover that too?
Hmmm. I use Linux at home, but at work I am a Windows Admin. I was given the task of automating a procedure to synchronise (whole CRUD thing, really) Active Directory from a CSV file FTP'ed daily from a SAP user store. ie create security groups, add / delete users, etc. I wrote a Powershell script to do it, ended up ~40 lines of script, probably less, as I used a lot of white space and comments to make it maintainable. I tried Python first, BTW, as I was familiar with it, but to me it was not a natural fit for the problem. Long story short, Powershell is THE way to administer Windows server - eg Exchange server since 7 has used PS exclusively for admin, and MS has indicated that all server functions (except maybe SharePoint, but - meh) will use PS as the primary admin tool. Cheers!
I'm in to sadism, bestiality and necrophilia. Am I flogging a dead horse?
Do you have any good standards-compliant alternative to contenteditable and innerHTML (BBcode isn't it, obviously - it's not WYSIWYG)? Maybe, you know, it was just a good idea overall, which is why all other browsers started supporting it eventually?
By the way, aren't they going to be standardize both innerHTML and contenteditable in HTML5?
There are no details of ActiveX that are a "complete and utter secret". The spec and APIs are all completely open and have been for ages, which is why e.g. Wine has a COM implementation and can run IE with all its ActiveX plugins.
The "tie into Windows" part is there because an ActiveX control is really just a PE DLL which is free to use Win32 API. For practical purposes, ActiveX is not any different from e.g. KParts, and it mostly serves the same purpose - it's just that IE also exposes it for use from within web pages (which, I agree, was a mistake in the large scheme of things).
But worry not, with Silverlight now released, ActiveX usage in browsers is going to be killed by MS itself soon enough.
In .NET (and therefore PSh), strings are objects, too, so you can split and parse them to your heart's content. Then, of course, there are regex.
How often do you actually use cross-OS, cross-machine process pipelines on the shell?
There are many applications where text streams make sense, which is why PSh supports them, too - they're just another kind of object. Furthermore, since any .NET object has a ToString() method, you can always pipe an "object stream" into another program that only accepts a text stream (such as awk from Cygwin or GnuWin32) as plain text.
However, for stuff like directory listings and such, it makes sense to preserve the original types of entries in the list rather than converting it all to plain text, only to have the next step in the pipeline use text parsing tools to extract that same information back. Doing the latter is both less convenient, and very inefficient.
...You could potentially save quite a bit of space by removing all the compiled wrappers to common windows components and replacing them with scripts, which you could then extend to be more featureful than the originals.
Huh... I wonder why so many things in linux are written using shell scripts...
It is terrible in Firefox if you have to deal with more than one language.
Why don't you just do a regular ping? Jeez, anyone can come up with an artificially lame example in any language.
That could have been a really good question.
A better question would have been is "If everything is a frigging object, then WTF is this ping executable doing on my drive?" Or how about, "If you folks can write ping, WTF can't you write programs for standard sysadmin functions (i.e., coreutils) and we can all skip this passing object nonsense?" Or maybe "Why am I forced to use WMI for certain things, but not others?" If the inconsistencies are starting to dawn on you, do let me know.
Junctions have been around for a while. Vista has real symbolic links.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
No.
Despite all the hype, there's been no real workflow improvements in any version of Windows since W2K. Windows 7's major enhancement to usability is a better "Start" menu.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Huh... I wonder why so many things in linux are written using shell scripts...
There was a trend of perl for a moment, and lately big pieces tend to be written in python.
I think if I made a distribution today I wouldn't even include a gnu userland by default, I'd just make a super-stuffed busybox. You can have the full gnu userland if you need it.
Anyway, I've appreciated the awesome power of shell scripts since 1991 or so (I know, I know, I'm getting off the fucking lawn all you old geezers) when I got a free shell on an open-access UUCP node running SCO Xenix-386. I deliberately let the irony iron on its own. It's still a great idea of a way to slim down the super bloatfest that is Vista, or for that matter, Windows XP. I can install powershell, and remove a bunch of executables. I wonder how well powershell works on XPe, it would be even more useful there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bah, I used Ajax style techniques with iframes or java applets years before I ever heard of XMLHttpRequest.
While microsoft engineers may have been in a better place to establish a standard way of doing it, Ajax is an obvious idea, and many people can claim to have implemented it.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Who will decide whether an application code can be bundled into KERNEL code or not?
1. Supreme Court
2. Congress
3. Administration
4. Company Management
5. Company Customer
6. End User
7. Software Developer/Designer/Security Expert
8. OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
9. Depends on Competitor Software
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
I hated Vista with a passion, but so far I am really happy with Windows 7.
But what does that have to do with not replacing IE? I assume W7b comes with IE8b, unless they're developing a new W7-browser alongside IE8.
Personally, I think both IE7 and IE8b sucks more than IE6 ever did, in an interface point of view.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Despite all the hype, there's been no real workflow improvements in any version of Windows since W2K.
The updated Start Menu in XP, then the search box in Vista, were both significant improvements in "workflow".
The breadcrumb trail in Vista's Explorer is a significant improvement in "workflow".
The per-application grouping of buttons in the Taskbar is a "workflow" improvement. Personally I don't like the collapsing-all-buttons-into-one aspect of that and "disable" it by setting the collapse threshold extremely high, but some people think it's great.
Those are just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could find more if I wanted to waste time doing an in-depth comparison.
Agreed.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Standards compliancy != no additional features.
Standards compliance == no additional features that break the standard.
My blog
Wow... you're getting more and more specific with your complaint. Hardly seems like a valid complaint that "MS web service applications" are totally inaccessable. I suggest you drop this debate here.. even the OP can't really come up with anything, and my question was aimed at him.. not some guy that comes along and lists ONE application that may or may not even be what the OPO meant.
... there is something to be said for the idea of constructing pipelines through which objects flow instead of text...
Perhaps I am being too literal here, but it seems to me that any code written to pass an object from one program to another would be slower, less efficient and less optimized than passing a pointer to that object (whether stored in memory on in a file) or am I missing something here...
I feel like I am missing something here...am I?
I would thing this would be true even if passed from one machine to another or one system to another (using system loosely to include any environment even if geographically distributed...not in the normal system as in a PC or machine).
Can someone enlighten me here, because I honestly feel like I am missing a point or something? Sign me curious.
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I don't know if there is a good way of doing it as you suggest, since I believe each element in the pipeline is a seperate process, as you might expect in traditional unix utilities. I guess you could do something clever with shared memory, but you don't lose anything this way, since in the traditional model the text has to flow the the different i/o buffers anyway to get between processes. Also, it is my understanding (though I could be completely wrong) that for objects with few fields it might actually be faster than passing text.
But worry not, with Silverlight now released, ActiveX usage in browsers is going to be killed by MS itself soon enough.
Silverlight, err, sure, that will not create more vendor lock in...ummm, yea, right....; Fortunately they have only a small percentage of the market so far and if a website attempts to force silverlight, as NBC attempted with the Olympics last year, we can just say no and find another source for the information. Thankfully there are open source codecs for H.264 which is superior to either VC-1 or VC-6 (I wonder if the newer VC-6L will be better or not?)
I agree with others that Active X opens up and creates more problems than it is worth, thankfully there are other ways to do everything that Active X will do for you. So if you decide to use ActiveX, then IMO you have made a questionable business decision that opens up more risk than you should assume for your website. Admittedly if your IT Mgmt has already drunk on the proprietary-is-the only-solution cool-aid there is not much you can do. I would suggest keeping that job until you find a better job with a more forward looking and thinking IT Management structure than you have now, but that is just me. It is getting easier as more of these stuck in the old way is the ONLY way attitudes move on and retire. It will get easier, honest.
More to the point of the article, how can any entity test proprietary code if the company will not release said proprietary code. And its not just proprietary code, as others have mentioned proprietary data storage and manipulation formats. How many of you are looking seriously at proprietary CODECS (audio and especially video)
Seems to me it would be a wiser course of action for all developers to avoid proprietary lock in, they probably can in 80% or more of all circumstances if they try. At least educate your management streams to the possibility, if presented correctly I really do not see the issue with, if we use this codec/data format, instead of xx% of users being able to use our information; 100% of our customers (regardless of their preferences of Microsoft, MacIntosh, Unix or Linux) will be able to use the information on our company's website. Seems like a no brain-er to me.
Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player, not just the Adobe player. Does your content play with other players than Adobes player, just because they have 80% of the market is no reason to get locked in. That just creates hassles for your customers.
Also more and more hand held devices are coming with Linux embedded because Linux will run faster and more apps with less memory and less of a processor than other embedded Oss. If you are producing video output for PCs and hand-helds you are already creating multiple output data streams as you must accommodate differences in processor speed, memory and available bandwidth (cellular, wifi and High Speed Internet)
Since there are open source and free players and free CODECs, why not just switch to a player like MPlayer, which not only works with Linux (BSD, Solaris, etc...), MacIntosh, but also Microsoft Windows. Why limit anyone? Best of all as more sites implement High Definition videos with higher than 30 frames per second, (too many people are in denial about this...if I can view something in a better quailty, higher fps, higher resolution, you bet I will PREFER that website) this player will be able to handle them. In spite of H.264 being a superior yet FREE codec, still the majority of sites default to Adobe Flash players (80%) and Microsoft Media Player; players that can NOT play h.264, go figure ⦠Okay, I get that it is easier for you. You would think you would like an
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It's a horrible idea. Websites should never discriminate against web browsers, even those strange ones from Redmond. The web is supposed to be open to everyone.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary data formats.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary codecs.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with software (.NET, Active X, Microsoft Project, Office, Outlook, Silverlight and many others) that will not let them share their data with others that do NOT use the Microsoft platform.
As it is horrible to act like you are working with standards setting committees when really you are there ONLY pushing your own agenda and refusing to compromise to better standards because that will prevent you from locking in customers with your IE browser.
As it is horrible to bully hardware providers into developing hardware for only your software.
As it is horrible to bully BIOS providers in catering to your software.
As it is horrible to threaten suppliers with pulling your products (which is over 40% of their profit) if they dare carry a competitors product. Or to force suppliers to carry additional copies of your not wanted operating system software (i.e. Vista) with the threats that the next release of your software will not be available to them in enough numbers if they do NOT accept the extra they cannot sale.
As it is horrible to market, extend and replace software with Microsoft's poorer, less functional software but bundled into the operating system software. Often at the expense of innovation in order to dominate the market. Kudos to them for this one, they have been very successful, but at what cost?
It is horrible to act like another companies partner and advocate only to replace them in their vertical market place. (There are too many examples to list, the most recent ones are the Virus and Ad Ware software companies that will not have a marketplace as Microsoft has publicly stated they are replacing them and the Linux and MacIntosh marketplace do NOT need them.
You really should read some of the blogs and posts on owners of website that honestly tried to work with Microsoft with the Web 2.0 standards...shame I do NOT have their links in front of me to share with you; as you would have to either work for Microsoft or be a Microsoft Shill not to see the truth in their statements. It honestly disgusted me.
While I agree with you that it is a horrible idea, I cannot condemn anyone for wanting to turn the tables on I.E.; it really has been a long time coming.
Fact of the matter, the only thing that will honestly bring them back to the standards setting table will be a huge loss of market share because of their resistance to adopting standards. While they have lost allot of market share, they have NOT lost enough yet to even consider changing their historically documented and factual past of interference and obstructionism.
I was forced to support their shenanigans years ago and experienced Microsoft support first hand stating that what I was experiencing was not happening, did not happen, or else I was doing something wrong. Thank goodness that I had enough knowledge to counter their BS, excuses and their LIES; as it almost cost me my Systems Administration job with a telco. That was my FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE back in the day with General Protection Faults...disgusting and horrible. I was in the IT field operations, programming and supporting users before Microsoft ever existed and I have seen almost all of it first hand. As you gain experience you learn what to avoid and it does become easier.
And I have been current with them through to XP, but am off the farm finally, thank goodness, because of their current (and past) business policies of forced updates, forced compliance checks and ignoring my experience. When I set something to not happen until I decide it should happen, that is what I expect to happen. Mid way th
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Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player [slashdot.org], not just the Adobe player.
Yes, but you can do the same with Silverlight and Moonlight. What makes Flash better?
Why is it Microsoft goes under so much scrutiny but Apple and it's iPhone don't
Okay I'll bite, I am in that mood today...
With Apple, you can NOT develop for them if you do NOT pay them a royalty. No way around that. In fact they designed their iPhone so they could delete any app that is not 'authorized' by them. So you are effectively locked in 100%.
IBM's Microchannel architecture was superior in the day to other bus architectures, however, to use it you had to pay a royalty to IBM...thus its market share was diminished, not as widely adopted as if it were free...like the PC was as it was free and open. This is also one of Microsoft's problems, they write proprietary software for an open platform. Sure they irritate many by limiting BIOS and hardware device driver development. But the platform they develop for is wide open.
Because of Apple's model, everything is proprietary, they do NOT get as wide an adoption for their hardware and software as they might have. Thus their market share is controlled and artificially limited by their own business model and methods.
If they had more market share than they do, and spent years doing spreading FUD on everyone and everything else, denying they ever make any mistakes at all cost, than perhaps people would be as frustrated with them. Apple is smarter than that, and Jobs usually did NOT release software until it at least worked. (A Blue Screen of Death when Gates was demoing comes to mind)
Customers understand they must buy Apple stuff from Apple when they go there, so they accept it and happily pay more. Heck they do not even get mad enough to churn when valid technologies, like FireWire, still widely used in Video circles and will be for years, are removed from the platform (as it has been recently) and no longer standard...even a couple of years ago they touted Firewire as a superior technology and sold products based on that. Go figure, as a developer no way was I going to develop any product where I would be forced to pay a royalty to any other company without them doing anything for me...just not smart.
With Microsoft, sheeple don't realize they are being locked in, until it would cost them too much money to get out. At that point, they just follow along oblivious without thinking too much, thus the term sheeple is appropriate. They happily pay more and more and more to Microsoft each and every year, even in bad economic times when their coworkers are getting laid off due to less business and less cash flow. Like an ostrich, they never raise up their head and look for better alternatives that are available and have been for a couple of years now, nope they just go about their Merry way and pay up. They accept the business as usual and future marketing promises that is just enough to have them hang on a little bit longer. By the time they get frustrated enough with yet another wave of missed marketing promises, another wave of marketing promises are issued to get them to hang on yet a little longer. It will be better tomorrow. The next release will fix this. Yes we know its bad, but its not our fault its your fault, but do not worry the next release will be better.
Insanity, yes; as they keep doing the same thing, paying more and more and more, and expecting Microsoft to play nice, not lock in their data where they can use it anywhere else.
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Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player [slashdot.org], not just the Adobe player.
Yes, but you can do the same with Silverlight and Moonlight. What makes Flash better?
Most people when they refer to Flash are talking about Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash reader only. I am not. I am suggesting that create Flash content with whatever software tools that you want, but on your website, DO NOT offer an "Adobe" specific version as the first or only choice.
If how ever you encode it allows it to be opened with Gnash or Flash Player, great.
If how ever you encode it, lets say you use an Adobe specific library and/or function that only can be understood by Adobe Flash Player, so that Gnash or other non-Adobe- specific-Flash players can NOT open it, not good at all. Best to avoid problems due to lock in.
Personally I do not think either Flash or Silverlight either one are superior to a an encoded H.264 CODEC enabled video. Though admittedly it depends on the settings used by the person who encodes the video. It is telling that to get close, not equivalent to, H.264 quality with other CODECs you have to increase the resolution and the FPS. Per this evaluation of video codecs (H.264, VC-6, and VC-1) In all comparisons, H.264 exhibited the best still frame quality. . They analyzed individual still frames of various videos looking for problems with the images and side effects by inferior encoding and compression methods, not just still pictures. H.264 encoded Videos were better of higher quality and better to the eye to watch. H.264 can come in either proprietary or open source coding. The open source codec is superior or equivalent to all proprietary H.264 codecs...so why make anything proprietary unless you are lazy or have alternative motives..i.e. Software or Operating System Lock In.
Therefore I might suggest the MPlayer is superior to either Silverlight or Flash. And it will work under all operating systems that most people use: Unix, Linux, MacIntosh and yes even Microsoft Windows.
Flexibility, open to all; the fact that H.264 is a superior CODEC than what is standard for Adobe Flash and/or Microsoft Media Player is icing on the cake.
As a business that wants everyone to see my content and at the highest resolution and the most effective frame rate (fps) that makes sense for the bandwidth that I have available to me.
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.
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Why not? They're doing the same thing we hate about sites that refuse to acknowledge alternative web browsers that aren't IE or Firefox (and sometimes Safari).
IE is evil, but that does not justify the means. The better solution is not bothering to cater to IE's bugs. Users will see that the website doesn't display well, and as usual, they will blame the browser (rightfully for once).
Something like
gc test.txt |% { $_.Split("`t")[2] }
would just extract a particular column, you'd probably create an object for each line using New-Object and set properties on it for the data you're extracting so you can perform further processing - see here for a function that does it automatically based on the first line containing headings.