"Microsoft Killed My Pappy"

theodp writes "A conversation with an angry young developer prompts Microsoft Program Manager Scott Hanselman to blog about 'Microsoft Haters: The Next Generation.' 'The ones I find the most interesting,' says Hanselman, are the 'Microsoft killed my Pappy' people, angry with generational anger. My elders hated Microsoft so I hate them. Why? Because, you wronged me.' The U.S. and Japan managed to get over the whole World War II thing, Hanselman notes, so why can't people manage to get past the Microsoft antitrust thing, which was initiated in 1998 for actions in 1994? 'At some point you let go,' he suggests, 'and you start again with fresh eyes.' Despite the overall good-humored, why-can't-we-get-along tone of his post, Hanselman can't resist one dig that seems aimed at putting things into perspective for those who would still Slashdot like it's 1999: 'I wonder if I can swap out Chrome from Chrome OS or Mobile Safari in iOS.'"

Comments

Change

[amiga3D]

People can't get past MS's sins because MS never really changed. They still bend the rules until they're warped and often just snap. They are still they same company in many ways.

Re:Change

[Anonymous Coward]

People can't get past MS's sins because MS never really changed. They still bend the rules until they're warped and often just snap. They are still they same company in many ways.

I work for a software company that need to relate to/work with MS, and Apple, and Google. And from our end they have definitely changed, and that is what I'm hearing from others in the industry as well. They have learned a lesson and are much easier to work with, more flexible and communicative, less arrogant. Apple and Google on the other hand, from an industry perspective they have really taken over the "my way or the highway" arrogance leadership MS used to have, are difficult to work with and can do things that torpedo partners, without communication or remorse. The stuff MS used to do. Not an end-user perspective, but still, a major change of hats.

Re:Change

[Antique Geekmeister]

s a business tactic, Microsoft's behaviors have been often very effective. I'd refrain from mentioning older thefts by Microsoft except these are at the core of what they sell now: The NT kernel, at the core of Windows 8 and Windows Server, was extensively VMS code stolen from DEC, and DEC bent bankrupt after that. The browser standards wars continue to include "embrace, extend, and break compatibility". The entire "OOXML" debacle of "publishing open standards" for Microsoft Office document standards, then ignoring them for actual MS Office software is an ongoing example. Microsoft Office violates its own standards, and the standards were themselves corrupted, to allow Microsoft to claim "open standards" compatibility which it doesn't actually have.

And then there's "Trusted Computing". The entire ongoing project is not aimed at user privacy: it's aimed at vendor lockin for software, data, and even hardware. And the private keys, including keys to revoke other keys, are held almost entirely in escrow by Microsoft, with no usable guarantees of the keys protection from wholesale abuse.

Re:Change

[ThePhilips]

Wow. That's deep.

3rd party products *depend* hard on Explorer's "feature" of stealing focus from the search input box?

Or inability to disable/reassign the Win-P keyboard shortcut??

Very deep indeed.

Re:Change

[cduffy]

FTFY. No need for subtlety.

Or accuracy, apparently. That story was debunked.

Re:Change

[Billly Gates]

People can't get past MS's sins because MS never really changed. They still bend the rules until they're warped and often just snap. They are still they same company in many ways.

Let's see for a moment of today vs 1990s
1999:
-MS makes IE incompatible on purpose to destroy the last innovation left
-MS strong arms OEM's
-MS makes crappy products that crash. Though NT 4 shows some promise
-MS makes bad things in standards like it's own versions of C++ and .doc .xls formats to prevent others from using them. A bad buggy product creates lockin as developers rely on their products hence IE 6 is still here in a few spots
-MS owns the ecosystem! Apple is dead. Palm is about dead and will be dying soon
-Expectations are by 2014 we will all live in a MS only world with IE 6, Crappy Windows, and desktop apps with 0 competitors! Hence why companies made IE 6 web and VB client apps

... fast foward to 2014
-IE is the most standards compliant browser which uses the least of W3C unsupported specs compared to webkit and mozilla
-Windows 7 is rock solid and so is 8 (ignoring the GUI)
- The 8 kernel is so improved it runs on mediocre Nokia phones with qualcom 1.5 ghz cpus and is snappy and responsive
- Mobile GUI wise MS is innovating. Yes it is fashionable here at MS to bash Windows Phone if you have never run it. But interactive tiles are nice on my phone. Ask any Windows Phone user. It is not bad REALLY
- Word finally doesn't botch formatting nearly as much and excel has hardly any bugs
-MS goes for the more open ooxml. Yes it is not as clear as ODF I do admit that. But it is MUCH more readable as .doc has executables hidden in containers inside them?! How in hell can you read those
-The ribbon UI makes things easier to find. Statistics show it ... since this is slashdot someone here will say how wrong I am as he knows his 3 layers of menus so well that everyone else has to be wrong! Once learned it is really keyboard only friendly with shortcuts, and neophytes and even office pro users now use more functionality
- Windows is much more secure now compared to XP
- VS 2013 C++ is ahead of GNU with support.
- OEM's are giving MS the finger thanks to Android
- MS owns a tiny % of the smartphone/PDA market
- Apple and Google are competitors

So today MS is not perfect. But we can conclude their products are
1. More standard compliant
2. More reliable
3. Better quality
4. MS is innovating more and copying less
5. Competitors now exist

I look at it this way. Companies are not your friends folks. I would not want Apple owning 90% of the market. Google would make Chrome the next IE 6 too if it owned 90% of the browser market. Infact they kind of are with Chrome only stuff. Instead of activeX it is dart and native client.

I will support companies that change. In addition, I fear Google more than MS at this point. I doubt MS will ever be the bad boy of 1999 again. It is the new IBM. Android is taking such a HUGE marketshare that I worry. In developing markets no one is buying the iPhone which is why in India Apple is remaking the iphone4s for them.

I would like to see corps using IE 11 instead of IE 8. More Windows Phone users. Also a unified Windows Phone/Windows desktop for apps what work on a desktop UI

Re:Change

[sfcat]

- VS 2013 C++ is ahead of GNU with support.

You must be kidding? VS C++ (I use it every day) is easily the worst C++ compiler there is. Hell, Borland compilers from the late 90s still have better C++ standards support than VS C++ today!

This doesn't compile in VC C++

int main(char* argv[]) {

printf("hello world\n");

int c = 0;

return c;

}

but this does...

int main(char* argv[]) {

int c = 0;

printf("hello world\n");

return c;

}

Re:Change

[DeVilla]

I certainly would not give Apple, Facebook or Google a pass. But none of they have yet earned the reputation for foul play that Microsoft has.

I can't think of how many times I've heard comparisons asking "Is X the Microsoft of the Y world?" Microsoft has set the bar for being underhanded and abusing a Monopolistic position and have done so to such an extreme to be Godwin worthy. You want to talk about facism you compare to the nazis. You want to talk employee abuse you talk EA or Foxconn. You want to talk monopolistic abuse, you go to Microsoft.

They've worked hard earning that reputation and actually had to wrestle it way from others. You don't just expect that to be forgotten.

Re: Change

[kenh]

The Linux distros continue to make significant headway, by any measure you care to apply, except dollar measures. So long as they stay healthy, which looks like a very long time, there will be no duopoly.

Market share? Linux enjoys half the market share of Microsoft Vista...

Re:Change

[dryeo]

NT started out as a rewrite of OS/2, written by ex-VMS developers, not stolen as MS got ver 3 in the divorce and NT started out as OS/2 NT ver 3.
Up until W2K it still had the OS/2 16 bit subsystem and ran OS/2 ver 1.x textmode software fine and you could get a Presentation Manager layer as well to run ver 1.x graphical apps. I also have a Byte magazine article around somewhere about them getting the 32 bit Presentation Manager running under NT so if OS/2 had won the OS war they were ready with their version.

Re:Change

[bzipitidoo]

OOXML was inappropriately fast tracked, and MS leaned on members of the standards body to vote in favor of OOXML. MS is a convicted monopolist in both the US (United States vs. Microsoft Corp., 2001) and Europe (Microsoft Corp. v Commission of the European Communities, 2007). MS agreed to stop strongarming their users into using the Internet Explorer browser by offering choices, then due to a "technical error" in Windows 7 service pack 1, failed to fulfill that promise for 14 months starting in 2011. In March 2013, Microsoft was fined, again, for that failure.

For years, anyone who tried to buy a music player that could play the Ogg Vorbis format would have no luck in the US, thanks to Microsoft trying to kill competition to their WMA format. The very same hardware, such as the Samsung Yepp YP-U2 music player, had different code in the ROM between Europe and the US, with the European version able to play Ogg Vorbis, and the US version not.

Another dirty stunt was Microsoft's support of SCO Unix when they tried to extort license fees from innocent users of Linux, which dragged on through 2008.

Disingenuous to point of Safari swap

[SuperKendall]

The thing about not being able to swap out IE was, that Microsoft claimed it could not be done - and was a true monopoly at the time, where it basically affected everyone.

With Sarai/OSX, it's a whole different matter - OSX does not have 90% market penetration. And if it did, Apple could not claim you could not swap out WebKit from the system since it's open source that's well documented - in fact you CAN swap in more recent, or custom, builds of Webkit into OSX quite easily.

Re:Disingenuous to point of Safari swap

[geoskd]

The shell is a BIG part of the OS. I'm not sure most of the complainers actually know what they are saying

Only because MS designed it that way, and their reasons for designing that way had nothing to do with providing a "better" solution for the end user. It had everything to do with designing a system that was so tightly integrated that various parts could not be substituted. MS wanted to do everything they could to prevent third parties from offering replacements for part of their OS, as that would ultimately undermine their monopoly. A properly designed system has all of the parts compartmentalized so that individual parts can be replaced so long as they conform to the apropriate APIs. This is true for programs, electrical designs, buildings, mechanical structures, everything engineering related. MS deliberatly ignored centuries of engineering best practices to build their monstrocity. Just look how difficult it has been to create a stable eumlator for windows (wine). We have excelent DOS emulators, excelent PS2, Wii, etc emulators, but Windows remains the one place we do not have a good emulator. This is because it was built to be belidgerant...

MS was never properly punished for their behavior, either by the market, nor the regulatory bodies. Consequently, they think they are above the law (Hence Windows 8). I for one will not be satisifed until MS is wiped from this earth and Gates and Balmer are safely away from their Ill gotten fortune.

Ye Gods

[Anonymous Coward]

"People can't seem to get past the antitrust trial"? The one where Microsoft forged evidence and pissed off the first judge so bad that she was replaced on account of the bias they had created? The one that ultimately said, clearly, YES microsoft's business practices are bad for both the individual and the nation?

Yeah, poor Stalin! People never could get past those purge-things he got famous for.

Because they won

[rsilvergun]

hands down, they won. They got absolutely everything they wanted. There was absolutely no material action taken against them whatsoever. This is especially bad when there were so many smoking guns, like the old "It's not done until Lotus 123 won't run" emails or the stuff they did to Beos. It doesn't help that the "Punishment" for killing Sun Java was giving their software to schools, something they'd been trying to do for decades. What kind of company gets a cherished reward as punishment?

Plus If you're into computers then you're frustrated because Microsoft tech has always been just barely good enough. If you remember the early days stuff like Novel and Wordperfect, the aforementioned Beos and even some of the Win 3.1 competitors were far superior to Microsoft's offerings, but backdoor deals killed a lot of that tech. Their "good enough" approach has held back a lot of real enhancements to computing :(.

So yeah, there's a lot of ill will floating around...

Stop extorting open source with software patents.

[andydread]

Hey Microsoft people don't like you coming up and demanding payment for FOSS code that they wrote that you have nothing to do with.
People don't like the fact that you spoke out against software patents when you had none yet you lobby to kill a bill reforming software-patents now that you have a ton of obvious software-patents. now you are one of the biggest supporters of software-patents.
Using the BSA in a draconian manner. See Ernie Ball.
Calling the hard work of people who write open source software a "cancer"
Corruption of standards committees in order to push a standard that not even you microsoft can honor
Constant lying and spreading FUD and misinformation in the marketplace.
Funding and aranging for additional funding for the SCO attack on Linux
Funding a book spreading lies that Linux was stolen from Minix
There is many many many more reasons.

Re:Seventy years

[Chris Mattern]

Binary blob or... you know... perhaps... maybe... XML?

Or both. You can store binary data in XML. Which is just what OOXML does. It stashes opaque binary blobs in XML stanzas.