Speaking of Microsoft-sponsored malware, what about the installation of the FireFox plugin by Microsoft? You know, the one which reports additional plugin information to any site that wants it? The one not included in Add/Remove programs, the one that has the "uninstall" button disabled?
Worrying about a site they link to getting hacked is the least of Microsoft's worries. Computers running Microsoft Windows are child's play for hackers -- in January 2009 alone, every Office product and Windows system had dozens of exploit vulnerabilities. If you're serious about security at all, you shouldn't be running Windows.
Microsoft is losing ground quickly and resorting to all kinds of foolish games and underhanded tactics. They have no decency anymore. I cheer anyone who will replace them.
What magical system do you have that runs IE faster than FireFox on Windows?
I have over 50 servers, 300 workstations, and 50 laptops running Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2003 R2, XP (all 3 levels of SP's) etc and I've never seen any of these systems running IE 6, 7 or 8 RC1 that weren't significantly faster running FireFox.
We're having to switch to IE because of a decision to use SharePoint 2007 and the users are complaining left and right about having to use the "slow blue E".
Hope you're not programming for SharePoint 2007. The edit-in-place feature doesn't work although it works fine in IE6 and IE7.
Another example of why standards are important, here we have 2 major products released by the same company that don't play well together. This isn't some never-used functionality either, some fringe test case, this is a feature that all the people I know using SharePoint use daily.
Here's another for you, when one tab is busy refreshing data from SharePoint 2007, you usually can't open or switch to other tabs. With FireFox (which has limited SharePoint support) you can open and switch tabs when refreshing SharePoint 2007 pages with no problems.
Many would say that the loss of productivity caused by Microsoft forking so many standards has resulted in fragmentation of same standards.
If web developers didn't have to do the "if ie" code or adopt workarounds to do even simple CSS positioning and formatting for Internet Explorer (the predominant browser used for web browsing on all computers running Windows), or generate syntactically invalid code, there would be more time for everything else. Including pushing the envelope of new standards.
Yet another example of how the Microsoft monopoly hurts everyone.
Special File Exempt directory... hmmm what about the people who have Excel files in potentially hundreds of folders spread across many network servers? Ugh.
But thanks for the workaround anyway, really it's better than nothing for those companies that must run Excel.
OpenOffice keeps looking better and better every time this stuff happens. I haven't launched Office except to accept meeting invitations (and once to convert some Ami pro files) in years.
Microsoft has never claimed they wrote 100% of that source, and in fact the source to BASIC was published as a howto to teach others how to program.
In this case the fact that the original code for BASIC was freely available is very different than the example you cite. Having access to the source made it possible for them to port it to a different platform without inventing BASIC, which is exactly what they did.
And again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they licensed it and gave credit to the original authors.
Your argument that despite the original code for BASIC being freely available they chose to write their own from scratch is disingenuous at best.
SharePoint DLLs used to edit documents in place are one example. They don't work with IE8, apparently there's a problem loading them without also installing Office 2007. They will not manually register.
Multiple versions of Office DLLs have caused quite a few problems in the companies I've worked actually. Granted, these are all orgs with > 300 users so you might have missed them if you haven't had exposure to that.
Of course, if you've been a Visual Studio programmer, you would have been exposed to this many many many times by now, it's a common issue.
Dr. John G. Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed the BASIC language at Dartmouth in 1964. BASIC stood for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". Their objective: to create a simplified computer language for teaching students how to program. Gates and Allen recognized that the compact design of BASIC made it ideal for the limitations of the first personal computers, which had extremely restricted memory and processing power.
They ported an existing language, written by others, something like 11 years after it was invented. The newsworthy part of it is that it was done for the Altair, a computer within the grasp of many hobbyists of the time.
Do your own research then. Many of us were alive and kicking and involved with the industry at that time.
Parent is correct on all counts, although he should have mentioned Microsoft was started with code purchased from others, not from code they created. Since then it's been mostly a law-based organization who happens to also create software, not the other way around.
So it's especially ironic that a company convicted of monopolism and illegally typing software components together to stifle innovation is now trying to claim that open standards are the way to go.
For goodness' sake, even SMB had to be reverse engineered!
Except SharePoint 2007 has bugs with IE8 RC1. For instance, you can edit Office docs in-place using IE6 or 7. Doesn't work in IE8 and so far I haven't found a workaround.
And don't even get me started about forcing us to stop using FireFox and switch to IE...
Bad analogy. In this case Microsoft, a convicted monopoly, through the use of contracts, forbade vendors who wanted preferred pricing (and marketing allowances) with selling XP on new machines.
When the market rejected this approach, Microsoft decided they would sell XP but at an increased price, apparently in an attempt to force consumers to the new product, which many feel is inferior to XP and has reduced functionality. Most large businesses, including hardware and software manaufacturers, have rejected Vista on their corporate systems, and there have been many articles in the media concerning this.
Microsoft charged consumers for the downgrade, which is in conflict with what they charged businesses (it was a free downgrade for businesses). I would argue that there was no substantive additional cost to Microsoft to continue to allow vendors to sell XP machines.
Manufacturers already had the images in production, so I can't see any substantive additional cost to them either. Vendors such as HP offered the XP downgrade at no additional cost, which furthers this argument. If this were some small shop building custom machines and didn't have the level of sophistication to image the systems, I could see charging for labor, but that wasn't the case here.
And of course the obvious, Apple was never convicted of being a monopoly. If there was sufficient market demand for old versions of OSX, they would be available.
Contrast that to most major corporations who have passed up Vista -- do some research and you'll find even Intel passing it up -- because of compatibility issues, user training issues, increased hardware requirements, etc. Many hardware accessories still don't work in Vista. It is a big deal to be forced into buying an OS that gives you less functionality than your current system.
I feel bad for those whose computer dies and all they have is their OEM version of XP. When they purchase a new computer it costs more just to get what they had before versus the new OS.
If Microsoft can offer downgradeable licenses for corporations at the same cost as the current OS, they should do the same for consumers. Frankly I'm shocked they don't discount the old version a little... if the new is so good, why wouldn't people pay extra for it?
The obvious answer is that a lot of people feel it's an inferior product. They would rather have XP.
Microsoft is indeed selling Windows XP even today. We have not yet moved to Vista (and will probably wait until Windows 7 instead) so we purchase downgradeable licenses for XP on every new computer that's deployed.
There are still literally hundreds (or thousands) of places you can still buy XP retail from as well, just not necessarily your local Staples or Office Depot. It's my understanding that Microsoft forces those companies to drop XP in favor of Vista. It may be part of their marketing agreement, who knows?
You must be describing consumer-level support. Business-class machines qualify for support regardless of which OS you run. We run Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, Red Hat Fedora Core 8, and Red Hat Enterprise 3 and 5.1 on our HP servers, laptops and desktops.
I wrote "Must show ID" on the back of all my cards after having one stolen. The credit card's fraud department actually suggested it.
I've had only one place that gave me a hard time since 1995 or so. I travel extensively, both outside the U.S. and never have a problem. I use it frequently.
YMMV of course, but in my experience it's not an issue.
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And what unit of stadium? Football, baseball, soccer...
getfirefox.com ?
JDBC. Forms which connect to ODBC databases is one example.
Speaking of Microsoft-sponsored malware, what about the installation of the FireFox plugin by Microsoft? You know, the one which reports additional plugin information to any site that wants it? The one not included in Add/Remove programs, the one that has the "uninstall" button disabled?
Worrying about a site they link to getting hacked is the least of Microsoft's worries. Computers running Microsoft Windows are child's play for hackers -- in January 2009 alone, every Office product and Windows system had dozens of exploit vulnerabilities. If you're serious about security at all, you shouldn't be running Windows.
Microsoft is losing ground quickly and resorting to all kinds of foolish games and underhanded tactics. They have no decency anymore. I cheer anyone who will replace them.
What magical system do you have that runs IE faster than FireFox on Windows?
I have over 50 servers, 300 workstations, and 50 laptops running Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2003 R2, XP (all 3 levels of SP's) etc and I've never seen any of these systems running IE 6, 7 or 8 RC1 that weren't significantly faster running FireFox.
We're having to switch to IE because of a decision to use SharePoint 2007 and the users are complaining left and right about having to use the "slow blue E".
I want some of what you're smoking.
Hope you're not programming for SharePoint 2007. The edit-in-place feature doesn't work although it works fine in IE6 and IE7.
Another example of why standards are important, here we have 2 major products released by the same company that don't play well together. This isn't some never-used functionality either, some fringe test case, this is a feature that all the people I know using SharePoint use daily.
Here's another for you, when one tab is busy refreshing data from SharePoint 2007, you usually can't open or switch to other tabs. With FireFox (which has limited SharePoint support) you can open and switch tabs when refreshing SharePoint 2007 pages with no problems.
Tested using IE 8 RC1.
Companies (and people) who make bad decisions must pay the consequences.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and has to play by different rules. They couldn't compete on a level playing field.
If it's easier for you to understand the phrase "they cheated" then by all means think of it that way.
Many would say that the loss of productivity caused by Microsoft forking so many standards has resulted in fragmentation of same standards.
If web developers didn't have to do the "if ie" code or adopt workarounds to do even simple CSS positioning and formatting for Internet Explorer (the predominant browser used for web browsing on all computers running Windows), or generate syntactically invalid code, there would be more time for everything else. Including pushing the envelope of new standards.
Yet another example of how the Microsoft monopoly hurts everyone.
Being a convicted monopolist, Microsoft has certain obligations not to illegally tie software. This is the case here, it's violation.
As much as I like Apple, they are 1) not a convicted monopolist and 2) do not currently have the predominant market share.
The day that 99% of the places require you purchase a new computer with OS X we can complain about Apple's anticompetitive behavior.
So Rogers is rogering you nicely.
Special File Exempt directory... hmmm what about the people who have Excel files in potentially hundreds of folders spread across many network servers? Ugh.
But thanks for the workaround anyway, really it's better than nothing for those companies that must run Excel.
OpenOffice keeps looking better and better every time this stuff happens. I haven't launched Office except to accept meeting invitations (and once to convert some Ami pro files) in years.
Umm when I type it in, I don't get a "page not found", I get the exact same error on his screenshot.
Microsoft has never claimed they wrote 100% of that source, and in fact the source to BASIC was published as a howto to teach others how to program.
In this case the fact that the original code for BASIC was freely available is very different than the example you cite. Having access to the source made it possible for them to port it to a different platform without inventing BASIC, which is exactly what they did.
And again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they licensed it and gave credit to the original authors.
Your argument that despite the original code for BASIC being freely available they chose to write their own from scratch is disingenuous at best.
SharePoint DLLs used to edit documents in place are one example. They don't work with IE8, apparently there's a problem loading them without also installing Office 2007. They will not manually register.
Multiple versions of Office DLLs have caused quite a few problems in the companies I've worked actually. Granted, these are all orgs with > 300 users so you might have missed them if you haven't had exposure to that.
Of course, if you've been a Visual Studio programmer, you would have been exposed to this many many many times by now, it's a common issue.
For your edification...
Dr. John G. Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed the BASIC language at Dartmouth in 1964. BASIC stood for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". Their objective: to create a simplified computer language for teaching students how to program. Gates and Allen recognized that the compact design of BASIC made it ideal for the limitations of the first personal computers, which had extremely restricted memory and processing power.
They ported an existing language, written by others, something like 11 years after it was invented. The newsworthy part of it is that it was done for the Altair, a computer within the grasp of many hobbyists of the time.
It's all the big words, like "distinction". And the proper capitalization. Not very American.
Do your own research then. Many of us were alive and kicking and involved with the industry at that time.
Parent is correct on all counts, although he should have mentioned Microsoft was started with code purchased from others, not from code they created. Since then it's been mostly a law-based organization who happens to also create software, not the other way around.
So it's especially ironic that a company convicted of monopolism and illegally typing software components together to stifle innovation is now trying to claim that open standards are the way to go.
For goodness' sake, even SMB had to be reverse engineered!
Except SharePoint 2007 has bugs with IE8 RC1. For instance, you can edit Office docs in-place using IE6 or 7. Doesn't work in IE8 and so far I haven't found a workaround.
And don't even get me started about forcing us to stop using FireFox and switch to IE...
The RAR format is open, you can find the decode spec at the RarLabs site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAR .
Bad analogy. In this case Microsoft, a convicted monopoly, through the use of contracts, forbade vendors who wanted preferred pricing (and marketing allowances) with selling XP on new machines.
When the market rejected this approach, Microsoft decided they would sell XP but at an increased price, apparently in an attempt to force consumers to the new product, which many feel is inferior to XP and has reduced functionality. Most large businesses, including hardware and software manaufacturers, have rejected Vista on their corporate systems, and there have been many articles in the media concerning this.
Microsoft charged consumers for the downgrade, which is in conflict with what they charged businesses (it was a free downgrade for businesses). I would argue that there was no substantive additional cost to Microsoft to continue to allow vendors to sell XP machines.
Manufacturers already had the images in production, so I can't see any substantive additional cost to them either. Vendors such as HP offered the XP downgrade at no additional cost, which furthers this argument. If this were some small shop building custom machines and didn't have the level of sophistication to image the systems, I could see charging for labor, but that wasn't the case here.
And of course the obvious, Apple was never convicted of being a monopoly. If there was sufficient market demand for old versions of OSX, they would be available.
Contrast that to most major corporations who have passed up Vista -- do some research and you'll find even Intel passing it up -- because of compatibility issues, user training issues, increased hardware requirements, etc. Many hardware accessories still don't work in Vista. It is a big deal to be forced into buying an OS that gives you less functionality than your current system.
I feel bad for those whose computer dies and all they have is their OEM version of XP. When they purchase a new computer it costs more just to get what they had before versus the new OS.
If Microsoft can offer downgradeable licenses for corporations at the same cost as the current OS, they should do the same for consumers. Frankly I'm shocked they don't discount the old version a little... if the new is so good, why wouldn't people pay extra for it?
The obvious answer is that a lot of people feel it's an inferior product. They would rather have XP.
Microsoft is indeed selling Windows XP even today. We have not yet moved to Vista (and will probably wait until Windows 7 instead) so we purchase downgradeable licenses for XP on every new computer that's deployed.
There are still literally hundreds (or thousands) of places you can still buy XP retail from as well, just not necessarily your local Staples or Office Depot. It's my understanding that Microsoft forces those companies to drop XP in favor of Vista. It may be part of their marketing agreement, who knows?
You must be describing consumer-level support. Business-class machines qualify for support regardless of which OS you run. We run Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, Red Hat Fedora Core 8, and Red Hat Enterprise 3 and 5.1 on our HP servers, laptops and desktops.
Throw in some brokers too while you're at it. Stockbrokers are so full of it I'm surprised they can still swallow.
I wrote "Must show ID" on the back of all my cards after having one stolen. The credit card's fraud department actually suggested it.
I've had only one place that gave me a hard time since 1995 or so. I travel extensively, both outside the U.S. and never have a problem. I use it frequently.
YMMV of course, but in my experience it's not an issue.