Microsoft's strategic interests are Windows and Office. Those two cash cows act as coverups for every other project they lose money on.
Everything they do is focused on getting people onto those two items as a platform... from that follows Exchange, Sharepoint, IIS and their other server infrastructure offerings.
I wish you would stop out spouting that nonsense about TurboHercules. IBM never attacked the open source project Hercules. Let's get that clear from the outset. They *do* have licensing requirements for Z/OS based on resources available to the system such as CPUs. They will not license their software to a virtualised platform.
This is no different than Apple's position with MacOS X on their hardware and the licensing position they take.
The back stab I was referring to for OS/2 wasn't Windows NT but rather Windows 95. As per the documentation put forward by IBM in the USA Vs Microsoft case... and Microsoft eventually settled with IBM for the damage they caused them:
Fortunately IBM, of course, were large enough to survive that.
Microsoft actually contracted with Spyglass to provide a royalty form Internet Explorer revenue in order to use Mosaic as a base... Microsoft then gave the product away free and therefore skipped out on said royalties. They eventually had to pay Spyglass a settlement for this action but not before sufficient damage was done and teh company did not survive - being bought out by OpenTV in 2000.
With Java Microsoft contracted with Sun to write their own Java VM for the Windows platform. They then added interfaces to the java.* namespace and changed behaviour in this namespace. As a consequence things written for Sun's Java would not run properly due to changes in what was expected to be standard and things written for Microsoft's Java VM were not likely to run in Sun's one. The issue came to a head since Microsoft used the Java name and logos... Note that Microsoft would have been okay if they had used their own microsoft.* or similar namespace... but then that would have made Sun's VM the preferred write once run anywhere target. Sun survived this and the result was Windows XP SP1a and the removal of the MS Java VM. Microsoft were free to continue to develop MS Java VM if they actually stuck to the specs... instead they produced.Net and C#.
I'll let you google the references for that one yourself;)
It may be hip to hit on Microsoft on Slashdot... however there are occasions they deserve it (just as there are occasions they do not). I put it to you that the highlights I've picked from the past 10-15 years are points against them... and are far from an exhaustive list.
Almost every single company that has had dealings with Microsoft has been stabbed in the back by them...
IBM : OS/2 Stacker : Doublespace Spyglass : Mosaic Sun : Java Everyone : plays4sure (DRM servers shut down leaving purchases useless) Go : Mobile technology (at least I think the company was called Go) Caldera : DR-DOS Novell : Wordperfect
How many times does this have to happen before people see a pattern and avoid partnering with Microsoft? The bigger players can survive the knife between the shoulderblades... the smaller players *if they eventually get a payoff* still usually end up dead anyway.
Disclaimer: I work for BSkyB albeit not in their broadband division and this is just form personal knowledge and not any company internal info....
If you log into the ADSL router provided by them there is no where to see or change the ADSL specific settings. Username/Password/etc... basically everything that could affect the ability to cause connection issues are not even shown much less open to change.
You get to see line speed up and down, change firewall settings, set a ddns provider and that is, for the larger part, it.
As part of the contract with Sky Broadband I believe that you are required to allow them to perform maintenance on your router and they indeed lease it to you. As such the GP would be unable to do anything to mess up his connection (unless he blocked inbound/outbound traffic himself on the firewall part) if he was experimenting with the various settings... and to say he brute forced it with admin/sky is kind of amusing... that is hardly secure and well documented various places on line anyway!
It's a P4 desktop.... so presumably it isn't designed for headless use on the mobo/BIOS behaviour....
Haven't seen this mentioned yet - but part of the POST sequence is initialising video and most boards will fail POST with no video interface... even if it was an old ISA/PCI card... which pretty much makes all this moot.
I recently reread Making Money - a Discworld book by Terry Pratchett...
The ruler (argh scorpion pit... I mean democratically elected leader) of the main city of Ankh Morpork is Lord Vetinari.... they have the one man one vote rule - he's the man and he has the vote....
There is a section early in the book where someone is given the option of doing a job.... or walking out the door never to be bothered by him again...
The person questioned checks the door - there is a deep, deep pit behind it....
"I am free to chose not to work?" he asks (paraphrased)... the reply (again paraphrased) "Of course... freedom of choice is important... it's just teh consequence of teh choice you must be aware of!"
It seems month by month parody gets closer to reality.... it is a uncomfortable thought.
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Oh come on Florian!
Microsoft's strategic interests are Windows and Office. Those two cash cows act as coverups for every other project they lose money on.
Everything they do is focused on getting people onto those two items as a platform... from that follows Exchange, Sharepoint, IIS and their other server infrastructure offerings.
I wish you would stop out spouting that nonsense about TurboHercules. IBM never attacked the open source project Hercules. Let's get that clear from the outset. They *do* have licensing requirements for Z/OS based on resources available to the system such as CPUs. They will not license their software to a virtualised platform.
This is no different than Apple's position with MacOS X on their hardware and the licensing position they take.
To answer your counter-points specifically....
The back stab I was referring to for OS/2 wasn't Windows NT but rather Windows 95. As per the documentation put forward by IBM in the USA Vs Microsoft case ... and Microsoft eventually settled with IBM for the damage they caused them:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2005070114163052
Fortunately IBM, of course, were large enough to survive that.
Microsoft actually contracted with Spyglass to provide a royalty form Internet Explorer revenue in order to use Mosaic as a base... Microsoft then gave the product away free and therefore skipped out on said royalties. They eventually had to pay Spyglass a settlement for this action but not before sufficient damage was done and teh company did not survive - being bought out by OpenTV in 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.
With Java Microsoft contracted with Sun to write their own Java VM for the Windows platform. They then added interfaces to the java.* namespace and changed behaviour in this namespace. As a consequence things written for Sun's Java would not run properly due to changes in what was expected to be standard and things written for Microsoft's Java VM were not likely to run in Sun's one. The issue came to a head since Microsoft used the Java name and logos... Note that Microsoft would have been okay if they had used their own microsoft.* or similar namespace... but then that would have made Sun's VM the preferred write once run anywhere target. Sun survived this and the result was Windows XP SP1a and the removal of the MS Java VM. Microsoft were free to continue to develop MS Java VM if they actually stuck to the specs... instead they produced .Net and C#.
I'll let you google the references for that one yourself ;)
It may be hip to hit on Microsoft on Slashdot... however there are occasions they deserve it (just as there are occasions they do not). I put it to you that the highlights I've picked from the past 10-15 years are points against them... and are far from an exhaustive list.
Almost every single company that has had dealings with Microsoft has been stabbed in the back by them...
IBM : OS/2
Stacker : Doublespace
Spyglass : Mosaic
Sun : Java
Everyone : plays4sure (DRM servers shut down leaving purchases useless)
Go : Mobile technology (at least I think the company was called Go)
Caldera : DR-DOS
Novell : Wordperfect
How many times does this have to happen before people see a pattern and avoid partnering with Microsoft? The bigger players can survive the knife between the shoulderblades... the smaller players *if they eventually get a payoff* still usually end up dead anyway.
Disclaimer: I work for BSkyB albeit not in their broadband division and this is just form personal knowledge and not any company internal info.... If you log into the ADSL router provided by them there is no where to see or change the ADSL specific settings. Username/Password/etc ... basically everything that could affect the ability to cause connection issues are not even shown much less open to change.
You get to see line speed up and down, change firewall settings, set a ddns provider and that is, for the larger part, it.
As part of the contract with Sky Broadband I believe that you are required to allow them to perform maintenance on your router and they indeed lease it to you. As such the GP would be unable to do anything to mess up his connection (unless he blocked inbound/outbound traffic himself on the firewall part) if he was experimenting with the various settings... and to say he brute forced it with admin/sky is kind of amusing... that is hardly secure and well documented various places on line anyway!
It's a P4 desktop.... so presumably it isn't designed for headless use on the mobo/BIOS behaviour.... Haven't seen this mentioned yet - but part of the POST sequence is initialising video and most boards will fail POST with no video interface... even if it was an old ISA/PCI card... which pretty much makes all this moot.
I recently reread Making Money - a Discworld book by Terry Pratchett... The ruler (argh scorpion pit... I mean democratically elected leader) of the main city of Ankh Morpork is Lord Vetinari.... they have the one man one vote rule - he's the man and he has the vote.... There is a section early in the book where someone is given the option of doing a job.... or walking out the door never to be bothered by him again... The person questioned checks the door - there is a deep, deep pit behind it.... "I am free to chose not to work?" he asks (paraphrased)... the reply (again paraphrased) "Of course... freedom of choice is important... it's just teh consequence of teh choice you must be aware of!" It seems month by month parody gets closer to reality.... it is a uncomfortable thought.
My cat's name is mittens....