Even if MS decided to realize what interoperability actually is, the only reason they would add OpenDoc support to Office is to grab back the millions of dollars they'd lose on MA not buying Office licenses. This is precisely why MA is switching, and whether or not MS can FUD them into going back to Office remains to be seen. I predict promises that will ultimately go unfulfilled.
I think in ten years you will see Microsoft become a major opponent of patents
I think in 10 years MS will be reduced to a position similar to Novell was 5 years ago. They'll be doing little more than grubbing for pennies on the measly Vista support contracts they trick people into signing over the next 4 years. And because all the top brass there are such greedy egomaniacs, they will refuse to adapt like IBM did. MS will be so stressed out about losing market dominance(s) that they won't have time to reconsider their position on anything.
If AOL offered HP a bunch of money for this, then HP could have saved the same amount on future tech support calls and given users a browser they might have heard of.. something called Firefox.
Never mind that Netscape 8 has an ugly interface and the rendering engine switching is one of the lamest schemes ever to be thought up by an AOL PHB.
For $DEITY's sake AOL, now that you've killed Netscape, let us old school geeks remember it fondly... just let it die. Stop pissing on its grave. Assbags.
Since there's no technical reason to upgrade to Vista (and at least one reason not to... *cough*drm*cough*), they'll need the giant marketing push to create the perceived need to upgrade.
1. 80% of.doc files don't require any of Word's features, and can be.rtf or.txt instead.
2. 90% of Word users only know and use 10% of its features.
Plus, no one at Microsoft fully understands the.doc format, and it's not fully documented, even within MS. Only a fool would rely on a format which the author doesn't understand.
Linux itself is a reaction to draconian software pricing.
Anyway, Western society tells people they must experience rather than think. We've become an entertainment culture rather than a productive one.
MS has been coddling windows users for 20 years, and doing it in such a way that the user simply can't be insulted by it: they're too busy being intimidated. Apple users generally aren't clueless, and they're not treated that way. The people who use Linux are those who have sought it out (frustration), been exposed to it for practical means, or think of and use a computer as a tool. The key words there are think, use, and tool: the basis of human civilization.
We wouldn't be where we are now if our ancestors had just sat around laughing at the other jungle animals and staring up at the stars. We'd still be doing that now.
Oh shit, we are. Except that our big, unused brains that give us the skill of language allow us to refer to these activities as "reality TV" and "Dukes of Hazzard on the silver screen".
When people re-learn how to think for themselves, Linux usage will rise. That's just one change for the better.
Mostly because I don't allow a cookie to be set if I suspect the host is an ad server or whatnot, and only allow it to survive as a session cookie otherwise. Sites I frequent get to set necessary cookies normally.
I've posted this before, but this story makes it particularly apropos:
*nix has users
Apple has fanatics
Windows has victims
Microsoft has Billions of dollars, and yet they can't deliver products that are well documented, well-architected, stable and secure? If they could do that, they might get more respect.
Not just because it's not standards compliant, more importantly because its tied to Windows. When MS abandons ActiveX, that would be a huge step.
It seems to me that Firefox's threat to MS isn't the UI features (which are easy to implement), but the compliance and security issues. Now that developers have a product that can make use of the standards (from 1997-1999, that is), MS has no choice but to play the game with everyone else.
The catalyst for better standards support in IE is the loss of market share, not Firefox specifically. When Opera declares to be itself soon, we'll have even more accurate numbers, probably another 2-3% drop for IE.
Microsoft blames backward-compatibility problems for the stalemate over true Web standards compatibility.
This is the price they pay for 8 years of doing things their own way, and using their OS monopoly to try and control the web. Obviously, that gambit failed. they dug this hole for themselves, now they're scrambling to get out of it.
I see change in the job market too. Dreamweaver is now starting to be seen as the liability that it is. A surprising amount of jobs lately specifically list hand-coding (HTML) as a requirement.
Now we have to settle the impending HTML5 vs XHTML2 battle that's going to cause an even bigger rift for developers.
When the DSL provider says you're getting X bandwidth, that's what you and only you get. When the cable company says you get X bandwidth, you're actually sharing it with up to 253 neighbors.
Because users are more likely to get Firefox for free than spend $200 to upgrade IE.
They don't know about Firefox.
They won't, without influence. Microsoft will try (and likely fail) to convince users to walk their upgrade path (to XP) for a price. Friends/relatives/coworkers will attempt to get the user to switch to Firefox for free instead, and will probably be more successful at it.
Cookies were not intended for the uses that internet marketers abuse them for. If my location bar says foo.com I don't want cookies for 10 other sites, and I don't need them--Only the marketers need them. They're just another way to annoy the user, without the user knowing about it until later, when the marketdroids can achieve the horror portrayed in Minority Report.
If enough of the data pointed to by cookies in various tracking databases can be assembled, there's yet another avenue for identity theft, I bet.
I've never seen a legitimate reason for cookies to persist more than a few months. Cookies that last until 2037 are just begging to be denied.
Also, Spybot and AdAware both delete cookies from IE that are malware related. The people responsible for those can simply go f*ck themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if MS decided to realize what interoperability actually is, the only reason they would add OpenDoc support to Office is to grab back the millions of dollars they'd lose on MA not buying Office licenses. This is precisely why MA is switching, and whether or not MS can FUD them into going back to Office remains to be seen. I predict promises that will ultimately go unfulfilled.
Almost.... someone figured out that iD10t might be an ambiguous model number.
Dell for selling it priced this way, or the customer for buying it priced this way.
I think in 10 years MS will be reduced to a position similar to Novell was 5 years ago. They'll be doing little more than grubbing for pennies on the measly Vista support contracts they trick people into signing over the next 4 years. And because all the top brass there are such greedy egomaniacs, they will refuse to adapt like IBM did. MS will be so stressed out about losing market dominance(s) that they won't have time to reconsider their position on anything.
If AOL offered HP a bunch of money for this, then HP could have saved the same amount on future tech support calls and given users a browser they might have heard of.. something called Firefox.
Never mind that Netscape 8 has an ugly interface and the rendering engine switching is one of the lamest schemes ever to be thought up by an AOL PHB.
For $DEITY's sake AOL, now that you've killed Netscape, let us old school geeks remember it fondly... just let it die. Stop pissing on its grave. Assbags.
Didn't they change their metrics a couple months ago to favor IE?
"Finite number of Microsoft haters" translates to "people who have used something else and/or read any web standards.
When OneStat agrees with this drivel, I might buy it.
Since there's no technical reason to upgrade to Vista (and at least one reason not to... *cough*drm*cough*), they'll need the giant marketing push to create the perceived need to upgrade.
Federal Extreme Mismanagement Agency
Isn't FEMA part of the Department of Homer Sim...er, Homeland Security? Don't they read their memos?
Come on, HTML 4.01 Strict? And it still has 4 errors on the front page?
It's 2005, catching up to 2000 is kinda pointless. Go for XHTML 1.0 Strict.
1. 80% of .doc files don't require any of Word's features, and can be .rtf or .txt instead.
2. 90% of Word users only know and use 10% of its features.
Plus, no one at Microsoft fully understands the .doc format, and it's not fully documented, even within MS. Only a fool would rely on a format which the author doesn't understand.
Linux itself is a reaction to draconian software pricing.
Anyway, Western society tells people they must experience rather than think. We've become an entertainment culture rather than a productive one.
MS has been coddling windows users for 20 years, and doing it in such a way that the user simply can't be insulted by it: they're too busy being intimidated. Apple users generally aren't clueless, and they're not treated that way. The people who use Linux are those who have sought it out (frustration), been exposed to it for practical means, or think of and use a computer as a tool. The key words there are think, use, and tool: the basis of human civilization.
We wouldn't be where we are now if our ancestors had just sat around laughing at the other jungle animals and staring up at the stars. We'd still be doing that now.
Oh shit, we are. Except that our big, unused brains that give us the skill of language allow us to refer to these activities as "reality TV" and "Dukes of Hazzard on the silver screen".
When people re-learn how to think for themselves, Linux usage will rise. That's just one change for the better.
Surely the Department of Homer Simpson, er, Homeland Security, will now outlaw naptha. Should go well with the duct tape.
(naptha dissolves the adhesive on most stickers, making them easy to remove cleanly)
Mostly because I don't allow a cookie to be set if I suspect the host is an ad server or whatnot, and only allow it to survive as a session cookie otherwise. Sites I frequent get to set necessary cookies normally.
All federal, state, and local government websites are required to comply with section 508 of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Developing an IE-only web application makes this compliance impossible.
Ironically, it is Microsoft's only real innovation for the web in the last 6 years that will seriously damage its desktop monopoly: XMLHTTPRequest.
I've posted this before, but this story makes it particularly apropos:
Microsoft has Billions of dollars, and yet they can't deliver products that are well documented, well-architected, stable and secure? If they could do that, they might get more respect.
Not just because it's not standards compliant, more importantly because its tied to Windows. When MS abandons ActiveX, that would be a huge step.
It seems to me that Firefox's threat to MS isn't the UI features (which are easy to implement), but the compliance and security issues. Now that developers have a product that can make use of the standards (from 1997-1999, that is), MS has no choice but to play the game with everyone else.
The catalyst for better standards support in IE is the loss of market share, not Firefox specifically. When Opera declares to be itself soon, we'll have even more accurate numbers, probably another 2-3% drop for IE.
This is the price they pay for 8 years of doing things their own way, and using their OS monopoly to try and control the web. Obviously, that gambit failed. they dug this hole for themselves, now they're scrambling to get out of it.
I see change in the job market too. Dreamweaver is now starting to be seen as the liability that it is. A surprising amount of jobs lately specifically list hand-coding (HTML) as a requirement.
Now we have to settle the impending HTML5 vs XHTML2 battle that's going to cause an even bigger rift for developers.
Stop spoofing as Netscape 4?
Don't develop for any browser, develop according to the standards. I've been doing this for 7 years.
Kudos for recommending Firefox to your customers.
When the DSL provider says you're getting X bandwidth, that's what you and only you get. When the cable company says you get X bandwidth, you're actually sharing it with up to 253 neighbors.
MS profited $12B this year, and is expected to profit $15B next year. And they make $10B just from being a convicted criminal?
If only duh-byah hadn't quashed the anti-trust suit.
Point by point:
It's amazing how fast someone will scramble to find a boot disk after you add "autoexec.bat" as the last line of that file.
Cookies were not intended for the uses that internet marketers abuse them for. If my location bar says foo.com I don't want cookies for 10 other sites, and I don't need them--Only the marketers need them. They're just another way to annoy the user, without the user knowing about it until later, when the marketdroids can achieve the horror portrayed in Minority Report.
If enough of the data pointed to by cookies in various tracking databases can be assembled, there's yet another avenue for identity theft, I bet.
I've never seen a legitimate reason for cookies to persist more than a few months. Cookies that last until 2037 are just begging to be denied.
Also, Spybot and AdAware both delete cookies from IE that are malware related. The people responsible for those can simply go f*ck themselves.
It will in about a year.
Aw, somebody already did get to that.