If you want to know more about MS Research results, you just have to look in any ACM proceedings.
Yes. As you and other posters noted, there is some great stuff that MSR does behind the scenes. Lookin online a bit reveals that google researchers also do a lot of research that can be called scientific. Their lesser know research blog show some quite interesting stuff.
MS does this they give someone some money and a place to work and leave them alone I first read about them working on something similar to.NET in the late 1990's.
I agree with your observation. And I agree that.NET is a great piece of technology, but I don't think it can be called "amazing stuff" compared to what IBM, Bell Labs and PARC did.
The research of those three gave us the mouse, GUI, laser printers, SQL and OOP, among other things:)
Google has some of the best scientists around. Yet what do google labs give us? autocomplete for search strings? The only thing that seems worthy of notice in Google labs is google sets, which has that 'next gen AI search' feeling to it.
The same goes for Microsoft research: while there are some gems in there, you will see people presenting research on new ways for drag and drop and similar stuff. While that's useful, it's nowhere near what IBM, PARC and others were/are doing. Even Sun seems to have cooler research projects.
Either those next generation companies are not as scientifically inclined as the old 'dinasaurs', or maybe the truly amazing stuff MS/Google have is hidden from prying eyes till the market is ready for them:)
I'm looking into it now, thanks for the lead:) I wonder, however, has anyone used it as a general server (apache+php, CVS..etc)? The site mainly talks about using Smoothwall as a firewall.
Correct me if I am wrong, but would not a standard Debian installation or custom slackware installation serve this purpose, and work better?
You're probably right:)
I went straight to DSL without looking into other distros. The machine was really old and had only 64 megs of RAM and a small hard disk, so I thought I'd use the smallest possible distro. I tended to avoid customizing a mainstream distribution since I'm not a Linux expert ( my strength is programming) and thus wanted to avoid any manual customization.
I had an old unused Pentium II machine running Windows 95. I reformatted the hard drive, installed DSLinux and used it as a file server/CVS repository. It had some glitches but essentially it's like having a new low end PC for free.
I wonder if the DSL project can be forked to create a "Damn small server" project, so anyone can set it up on an old machine, enable some services, hide it in a corner, and use SSH/VNC to administer it.
From the article the software will let people share and access their information without having to know where a certain e-mail or photo is stored
from that, and from the diagram here I'm guessing that they are developing an API for 'peer to peer' web applications, i.e the applications are distributed over multiple servers and hosting companies but to each other and to the programmer they're part of the same environment. Also, they seem to depend on search a lot, and want to use it instead of traditional databases. This makes sense since a distributed application wouldn't be written to connect to a hardcoded address but to request some piece of information "wherever it is".
Whether in practice that's a good or bad idea remains to be seen, but it is interesting.
The thing is, Microsoft always had a "Buy for product, not market share" mentality.
Almost all companies they bought have been startups with a really cool product ( Hilgreave, WebTV, Bungie...). As far as I know, Microsoft has never bought a Novell or a Lotus or a Compaq, they kill competition with hard work and/or unfair practices, but not with company acquisitions.
So when you see Microsoft thinking of buying eBay instead of developing an alternative and slowly increasing their market share( like they did with IE) you know they are very desparate and afraid of Google.
Microsoft has the habit of 'Microsoftizing' all software and web sites it acquires, where 'Microsoftize' means "make ugly, slow and unusable".
Hotmail, Frontpage and Visio were all excellent, lightweight products until MS added tons of links and toolbars and menus and images and made everything crawl.
Yes, but how would that directly benefit Microsoft's MSN strategy? I mean if eBay launched a search engine today not many people will say "gee, they're eBay..the famous auction guys! so their search engine must be good!". Amazon tried to use their success in ecommerce to promote their search engine and yet people didn't leave Google and flock to A9..making your brand name mean one thing is often better than making it many things.
Sure, making MSN the default search on ebay will certainly make a proportion of eBay users MSN users but is that worth enough for Microsoft to pay billions and inherit all the workforce and liabilites of another giant company?
why would Microsoft want to aquire a whole company when there's nothing eBay can offer that MS can't get by investing a few hundred million in them like they did with apple?
This is what I experienced and the same story I've heard from admin after admin who runs a mixed environment. How you got a different impression is my question. Have you ever administered a mixed environment with MS server products and other servers?
Well, I'm not an administrator but a developer. So I don't have firsthand experience with running MS Exchange in a multi-platform environment but I've seen fellow developers who are capable of doing almost everything with the Exchange API. That API has been used to integrate with Notes and Groupwise and there nothing to prevent useing it to build a bridge to integrate with your OSS tool of choice if enough OSS developers see it as an itch to scratch. The same can be said about Sql Server, IIS with ISAPI and other products.
As for your ClamAV example I've seen a colleague integrate her custom antivirus tools with Exchange in a matter of weeks. Again the ClamAV guys should find no problem with Exchange integration if they want to do it.
Myself, I much prefer the freedom of having the source code/open formats but the 'normal programmers' who just want to get the job done will be more than happy with the API+tons of documentation that Microsoft provides. Freedom may be better but convenience sells:(
I think that might indeed contribute to the IBM/Oracle sale, and may also contribute to the general crappiness of the products, since making Notes or Oracle software very easy to use will kill half of the consultancy market overnight.
Heh, Oracle even has "software installation consultants"
It has been my experience that if [you] are already an all MS shop, MS products are less expensive, but only if you are an all MS shop
The Oracle products I used (in 1999 I admit) were hard to install, used a nonstandard GUI and were programmed with PL/SQL, a crappy nonstandard language that I despise to this day. So while MS products are friendly when you're an MS shop and hard otherwise, it's a step ahead of the competition, which is hard on any platform. I hear Oracle improved the quality of the database and replaced PL/SQL with Java, but I still hear complaints from time to time. And IBM/Lotus products seem to be no better.
and may the gods have mercy upon you if you ever need to integrate with other platforms or do anything beyond those limited capabilities because it will truly be a hellish experience.
While that's true with their desktop applications, Microsoft's server software is built on open standards like everyone else. They use TCP/IP, and XML everywhere. Also, MS's products are very programmable and If you know a bit of C++ and COM you can make the software work with almost anything.
The MS motto should be, "you're already locked in, so suck it up and pay a little more, cuz we're usually 'good enough.'" Their motto is, unfortunately: "If you already use one of our products, using any other product we make will be easier than using our competitors' stuff". Yes, it leads to MS automatically gaining market share in their new products by exploting familiarity with old products, but that's not neccessarily "cheating" since other vendors can work a bit harder and make their software as easy to use as Microsoft's offerings.
I wonder how the "enterprise" companies like IBM and Oracle sell their software in the first place. My experinece with a lot of their ( very expensive) products is that they are difficult to install, use and develop with. As if they're following a "Making customers hate your product HOWTO". Microsoft's products are like 5 or 6 times more usable, always.
I understand that products of IBM and co are more capable and powerful, but in 70% of the cases the MS product would do fine..how come then the 'enterprise guys' sell much more than they are expected to?
If "the law is with them" as they say, why did they resort to hacking and stealing information to obtain evidence instead of using the normal legal channels?
Perhaps they could use a subset of the Java libraries? If J2ME could run on several kilobytes on a mobile phone, what prevents another API subset to work on the specs you mentioned?
Java on the OLPC computer makes a lot of sense. That way the organizers can use any hardware and software configuration, ( even change the HW and SW in future models if they find cheaper alternatives) and not worry about re-developing applications. also, tons of educational Java applets would be instantly available to the new machines. perhaps even bundled with it.
and kids need not fear learning Java. There are tons of languages including scheme, python and others, that run on the java VM.
> Islam strongly encourages learning as one of the noblest forms of worship and > scientists were often praised in the Quran. That seems at odds with the (apparent) reality of muslim countries. Perhaps they aren't really muslim countries at all?
Yes. A big portion of people in Islamic countries is Muslim only by name. Contrary to belief on both sides, Islam is much more than dividing people into groups and saying which is 'friendly' and which is 'the enemy'. As I said, the problem is ignorance.
I disagree, it isn't a coincidence that these bad social circumstances occur in religious countrys its consequence of the country being religious. Hence my comment about the USA.
Not neccessarily. In the early stages of Islam religion was more influental than any other time, and yet the Middle East thrived and science, freedoms and the economy florished. Any noble concept can be used to manipulate people if they don't stand up to the manipulators. Doesn't the current administration also pervert the words "freedom" and "democracy" and redefine them to mean "giving us what we want"? it is neither democracy nor religion's fault that people believe so strongly in them. America (and everyone) should worry about the real enemies: ignorance and apathy.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, own't is the contraction for "owns not". Don't you know your English?
Yes. As you and other posters noted, there is some great stuff that MSR does behind the scenes. Lookin online a bit reveals that google researchers also do a lot of research that can be called scientific. Their lesser know research blog show some quite interesting stuff.
I agree with your observation. And I agree that
The research of those three gave us the mouse, GUI, laser printers, SQL and OOP, among other things
Google has some of the best scientists around. Yet what do google labs give us? autocomplete for search strings? The only thing that seems worthy of notice in Google labs is google sets, which has that 'next gen AI search' feeling to it.
:)
The same goes for Microsoft research: while there are some gems in there, you will see people presenting research on new ways for drag and drop and similar stuff. While that's useful, it's nowhere near what IBM, PARC and others were/are doing. Even Sun seems to have cooler research projects.
Either those next generation companies are not as scientifically inclined as the old 'dinasaurs', or maybe the truly amazing stuff MS/Google have is hidden from prying eyes till the market is ready for them
I'm looking into it now, thanks for the lead
I wonder, however, has anyone used it as a general server (apache+php, CVS..etc)? The site mainly talks about using Smoothwall as a firewall.
You're probably right
I went straight to DSL without looking into other distros. The machine was really old and had only 64 megs of RAM and a small hard disk, so I thought I'd use the smallest possible distro. I tended to avoid customizing a mainstream distribution since I'm not a Linux expert ( my strength is programming) and thus wanted to avoid any manual customization.
I had an old unused Pentium II machine running Windows 95. I reformatted the hard drive, installed DSLinux and used it as a file server/CVS repository. It had some glitches but essentially it's like having a new low end PC for free.
I wonder if the DSL project can be forked to create a "Damn small server" project, so anyone can set it up on an old machine, enable some services, hide it in a corner, and use SSH/VNC to administer it.
Companies tell YOU what you want! ....oh wait, nevermind.
From the article
the software will let people share and access their information without having to know where a certain e-mail or photo is stored
from that, and from the diagram here I'm guessing that they are developing an API for 'peer to peer' web applications, i.e the applications are distributed over multiple servers and hosting companies but to each other and to the programmer they're part of the same environment.
Also, they seem to depend on search a lot, and want to use it instead of traditional databases. This makes sense since a distributed application wouldn't be written to connect to a hardcoded address but to request some piece of information "wherever it is".
Whether in practice that's a good or bad idea remains to be seen, but it is interesting.
The thing is, Microsoft always had a "Buy for product, not market share" mentality.
Almost all companies they bought have been startups with a really cool product ( Hilgreave, WebTV, Bungie...). As far as I know, Microsoft has never bought a Novell or a Lotus or a Compaq, they kill competition with hard work and/or unfair practices, but not with company acquisitions.
So when you see Microsoft thinking of buying eBay instead of developing an alternative and slowly increasing their market share( like they did with IE) you know they are very desparate and afraid of Google.
Microsoft has the habit of 'Microsoftizing' all software and web sites it acquires, where 'Microsoftize' means "make ugly, slow and unusable".
Hotmail, Frontpage and Visio were all excellent, lightweight products until MS added tons of links and toolbars and menus and images and made everything crawl.
Prepare for slower uglier eBay & Paypal.
Yes, but how would that directly benefit Microsoft's MSN strategy? I mean if eBay launched a search engine today not many people will say "gee, they're eBay..the famous auction guys! so their search engine must be good!".
Amazon tried to use their success in ecommerce to promote their search engine and yet people didn't leave Google and flock to A9..making your brand name mean one thing is often better than making it many things.
Sure, making MSN the default search on ebay will certainly make a proportion of eBay users MSN users but is that worth enough for Microsoft to pay billions and inherit all the workforce and liabilites of another giant company?
why would Microsoft want to aquire a whole company when there's nothing eBay can offer that MS can't get by investing a few hundred million in them like they did with apple?
I don't know where kids get the idea that the only ones who would ever look at their MySpace blogs are people in their own age group.
:)
Considering the color schemes of most myspace pages and the spelling/grammer, Im surprised anyone looks at myspace blogs
If there is something you don't want your boss, your friends your family or your enemies to know, don't put it online.
If it's really really sensetive, don't write it down either.
If you say "hah...no one will care what I said/wrote anyway", you'd be suprised.
This is what I experienced and the same story I've heard from admin after admin who runs a mixed environment. How you got a different impression is my question. Have you ever administered a mixed environment with MS server products and other servers?
:(
Well, I'm not an administrator but a developer. So I don't have firsthand experience with running MS Exchange in a multi-platform environment but I've seen fellow developers who are capable of doing almost everything with the Exchange API.
That API has been used to integrate with Notes and Groupwise and there nothing to prevent useing it to build a bridge to integrate with your OSS tool of choice if enough OSS developers see it as an itch to scratch. The same can be said about Sql Server, IIS with ISAPI and other products.
As for your ClamAV example I've seen a colleague integrate her custom antivirus tools with Exchange in a matter of weeks. Again the ClamAV guys should find no problem with Exchange integration if they want to do it.
Myself, I much prefer the freedom of having the source code/open formats but the 'normal programmers' who just want to get the job done will be more than happy with the API+tons of documentation that Microsoft provides. Freedom may be better but convenience sells
I think that might indeed contribute to the IBM/Oracle sale, and may also contribute to the general crappiness of the products, since making Notes or Oracle software very easy to use will kill half of the consultancy market overnight.
Heh, Oracle even has "software installation consultants"
It has been my experience that if [you] are already an all MS shop, MS products are less expensive, but only if you are an all MS shop
The Oracle products I used (in 1999 I admit) were hard to install, used a nonstandard GUI and were programmed with PL/SQL, a crappy nonstandard language that I despise to this day.
So while MS products are friendly when you're an MS shop and hard otherwise, it's a step ahead of the competition, which is hard on any platform. I hear Oracle improved the quality of the database and replaced PL/SQL with Java, but I still hear complaints from time to time. And IBM/Lotus products seem to be no better.
and may the gods have mercy upon you if you ever need to integrate with other platforms or do anything beyond those limited capabilities because it will truly be a hellish experience.
While that's true with their desktop applications, Microsoft's server software is built on open standards like everyone else. They use TCP/IP, and XML everywhere. Also, MS's products are very programmable and If you know a bit of C++ and COM you can make the software work with almost anything.
The MS motto should be, "you're already locked in, so suck it up and pay a little more, cuz we're usually 'good enough.'"
Their motto is, unfortunately: "If you already use one of our products, using any other product we make will be easier than using our competitors' stuff". Yes, it leads to MS automatically gaining market share in their new products by exploting familiarity with old products, but that's not neccessarily "cheating" since other vendors can work a bit harder and make their software as easy to use as Microsoft's offerings.
I wonder how the "enterprise" companies like IBM and Oracle sell their software in the first place. My experinece with a lot of their ( very expensive) products is that they are difficult to install, use and develop with. As if they're following a "Making customers hate your product HOWTO". Microsoft's products are like 5 or 6 times more usable, always.
I understand that products of IBM and co are more capable and powerful, but in 70% of the cases the MS product would do fine..how come then the 'enterprise guys' sell much more than they are expected to?
If "the law is with them" as they say, why did they resort to hacking and stealing information to obtain evidence instead of using the normal legal channels?
Fix a system that judges disputes between corporation by accepting help from...specific corporations.
Yeah I forgot, copyright is already reformed :(
1- Let some problem annoy too many people until everyone ask them to intervene.
2- Introduce a solution that is worse than the problem, and only helps gov & friends.
3- when people complain, say "Hey, didn't you ask for it?"
That happened with CAN-SPAM, and now apparently will happen to patents.
I wonder how the government proposed "Copyright reform" would look like.
Perhaps they could use a subset of the Java libraries? If J2ME could run on several kilobytes on a mobile phone, what prevents another API subset to work on the specs you mentioned?
Java on the OLPC computer makes a lot of sense. That way the organizers can use any hardware and software configuration, ( even change the HW and SW in future models if they find cheaper alternatives) and not worry about re-developing applications. also, tons of educational Java applets would be instantly available to the new machines. perhaps even bundled with it.
and kids need not fear learning Java. There are tons of languages including scheme, python and others, that run on the java VM.
> Islam strongly encourages learning as one of the noblest forms of worship and
> scientists were often praised in the Quran.
That seems at odds with the (apparent) reality of muslim countries. Perhaps they aren't really muslim countries at all?
Yes. A big portion of people in Islamic countries is Muslim only by name. Contrary to belief on both sides, Islam is much more than dividing people into groups and saying which is 'friendly' and which is 'the enemy'. As I said, the problem is ignorance.
I disagree, it isn't a coincidence that these bad social circumstances occur in religious countrys its consequence of the country being religious. Hence my comment about the USA.
Not neccessarily. In the early stages of Islam religion was more influental than any other time, and yet the Middle East thrived and science, freedoms and the economy florished. Any noble concept can be used to manipulate people if they don't stand up to the manipulators. Doesn't the current administration also pervert the words "freedom" and "democracy" and redefine them to mean "giving us what we want"? it is neither democracy nor religion's fault that people believe so strongly in them. America (and everyone) should worry about the real enemies: ignorance and apathy.