So only on Slashdot does all marketing become "lying and fraud".
Really? Did you just run out and buy the biggest broadest paint brush you can
find? What do you do for a living? How do people know about it? Do you work with
Marking people? Are they lyers and fradusters? Would you have the guts to
say that to their face?\
Really, Im enouraging you to answer these questions. You took
the time to post something that is massive troll. Now take the tame
to back it up.
People have "moral qualms" against marketing? Do you? really? What the heck is wrong with marketing? I suppose you dont like lots of things then. Are you going to level your criticisms at all companies that engage in marketing? How about the company you work for? Do they do marketing?
Next, you mention "stupidity". Thats a great word to throw around.... can you be a bit more specific? Its easy to call someting stupid. Its harder to say why.... come on, spend a little time on it.
Relay? how do you figure? That's a pretty big statement to make. Can you back it up with anything other than hand waving? We just had a spectacular quarter. A lot of that is attributed to selling Windows 7. Looks like we did a pretty good job of evaluating value there... Note that a lot of these sales were upgrades where people chose to buy. The could just have just as easily chosen Linux. They didn't.
I think you misunderstand. This change was just in an options dialog for the code editor. It has nothing to do with how the compiler works, the code generator works, or how Visual Studio interoperates with antying else.
Its doubly a lame criticmsm as putting tabs in source code is almost universaly considered poor practice.
What makes you think I'm astroturfing? Because I work for Microsoft?
Are people tha work on Linux posting about Linux being astroturfers?
At least call me what I am - an apologist:)
Dude, the news item was non-news and it made the front page. The contrast I made is called 'irony'. Some slashdotters will make the most picayune criticism of Microsoft and laud the tiniest little new thing in Linux or some other FOSS thing. Many, its
so over the top hypocritical.
Plus, you gotta admit, that was just a low value post. Who uses tabs in
their code? Even if they wanted to all they needed to do was write a
simple editor extension to fix it. "No Tabs" is
baic coding standard 101 - freshman level stuff.
But he launched a title with a salcious title "Visual Studio 2010 Forces
Tab Indenting". Forces? Really?
Come on... if "you guys" are going to level critisim at me, make it better than
that, or calling me an astroturfer. Pick someting orignal or
material at least.
Well, to be honest - the whole WinMO thing is a huge bummer for me. That's one reason I bought a gaggle of iPhones for my family. I was tired of waiting for a mobile OS that didn't suck.
So, I don't have any insider knowledge on the WinMO stuff, but do know a
couple things:
Some really good people moved to the WinMO org lately.
We get stuff right eventually. Im optimistic that the new team
will deliver something credible.
The problem is this I think: WinMO 7.0 could be awesome and sill not be
successful in the mobile space in any material way becuase the market has gotten
locked in to two other very good solutions (iPhone, Android). Just
like we have a lock on the desktop and office space with Windows and Office.
Its hard to comment on the iSlate/Pad/thing. There is TON of
speculation about it and any tangible facts. Ill wait until Jobs
launches it to form an opinion.
RRegarding Ballmer - I think you are being hard on him. One problem I
have with many Microsoft critics is they expect Microsoft to be perfect.
Kind of like your comment "Hey! Look Ballmer isnt perfect HAHAHAHA."
You see this kind of thing all the time here on Slashdot.
I love the repeated reference to Ballmer throwing a chair. Its
like the lamest thing ever to keep brining up. Really... its lame.
I think it probably happened. Maybe he didnt throw it, but
something with a char likely happened. Many CEOs are famously
pasionate. Jobs is quite the tyrant. How about Larry
Ellison? He has an ego the size of the Death Star. Ill tell
you this - Ballmer is a much better leader than Gates. Gates is a
brilliant strategist, but Ballmer has corporate leadership skills in spades.
Hes also good at growing skilled execs.
YYes, we have failed products, we also have products that are profitable, but
dont reach the level of expectations we set for it. I think the tablet is
a great example. Our tablet stuff has some great features. For
example, the handwriting recognition is stellar - it really is. But
we didnt change the rest of the experience to match - it is still the normal
desktop experience. I suspect apple will nail this.
What people forget is despite the lack of market dominating success as Bill
predicted, the Windows tablet PC has been a success. If any other
company had done it they would be declared fabulous. The proof is in
the pudding - our partners still make them and sell them. Believe
me, they wouldnt do this if they didnt make money. The OEMs cut
stuff faster than you can blink when it isnt successful.
Yes, we have failed products and Ballmer makes bad decisions form time to
time. But, I’m not sure what point that makes. So do all big companies,
including Apple, Google, HP, IBM and many others. Apple tried for years with
hand held computing things. Remember the Newton? They have had other bombs too
like the Cube, the Motorola Rokr, the Pippin (game console), EWorld, Apple
PowerCD, Apple Powered Speakers, How about Apple TV? Is that a failure or is the
Jury still out on that? Have you used it? Its pretty lame. XBOX live is way/em>
better – and has way more content. They also failed utterly in the
productivity software market – remember Claris Works?
I do ask you to consider that Microsoft has the financial, corporate,
cultural fortitude to stick with things that need to be strategically
successful. We m
How is this tab things news or interesting at all? Here is what
Brittany Behrens a PM for the editor team said:
Hi Brien,
Thank you for logging this issue. Before making this change we
solicited feedback on the decision to combine Tab Size and Indent Size from
a wide variety of sources, including public blog posts and forum
threads, and found that the vast majority of user
feedback was in favor of combining the two. If its seriously
impacting your code to have Tab Size always equal Indent Size,
it is possible to write a short editor extension to
override the Tools->Options dialog and set the two options separately.
If thats something youd be interested in, please let me know and Ill see
about posting sample code for how to do this.
Im resolving this issue as By Design because we intentionally combined
these options for VS 2010, but please feel free to post again here if you
have any further questions or comments and well be happy to help.
Thanks for trying Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and sending your feedback!
Brittany Behrens
Program Manager, VS Platform - Editor
(bolding above mine for emphasis)
Gee, the team solicited comments, did some research and made a change that
people wanted. Of course, any change will make somebody unhappy.
Brittany even volunteered to give folks a simple editor extension to make the
settings different for those that want it. My assumption is that anyone using
Visual Studio is a developer and capeable of using such an extension, or writing
it themselves. It is not difficult.
When is it ever the right thing to release a security patch with no
QA or testing? You use an interesting word may, as in
... lots of other developers/power users/hackers/whatever
may be willing to take the patch and provide feedback on it.
Are you suggesting to leave security QA to chance? Hoping someone will take a
look at it? How are you going to make sure your patch really fixes
the problem?
How about this: with a commercial software vendor - heck, lets just use
Microsoft - you have a vendor that has the funds and qualified staff to fix
problems quickly; Seucrity and regular bugs alike. You likely have a
support contract that requires this. Things are found and fixed quickly
and reliably. There are people whos job it is to respond to email
and answer the telephone. Heck, they will even fly out to your site if they
need to. If you are in a moderately big city there is likely support
people already there.
Ok, with Redhat someone can get the same thing, becuase
they pay $800 a year for support.
Here is another way to look at it: you suspect you have a bug in some
OSS software....Lets say its a major one like Firefox. You send the
security email alias a mail (there is no phone number). Its a good group
of people, but hey, they are busy and you dont have any kind of business
relationship with them. No money changed hands, you have no support
contract. They are under no obligationto help you at all - the
license agreemetn even says so. You downloaded Firefox for free remember?
You are dependant upon their largese and good repuation (and with Mozial, it is
good).
So you hope they can get around to it - they have some people you can
exchange email with, and a bug you can watch. Thats groovy, but there are
no solid expectations? They fix bugs and are generally reliable about
getting patches out. They have a schedule and everything, but are not
under any obligation to do so for you in particular. They are good honest
folks so Im sure they will get to it sooner or later.
Like I just
mentioned to X0563511, I dont by the argument that "its open so anybody can look at it and fix
bugs". Thats just bogus. Yes, of course its open. I saw
a hilariously appropriate post on Slashdot a while back (paraphrasing):
The ratio of people that comment on security problems to the people actualy
qualifed to fix them is about 1000000:1.
Its a myth that for any given open source project there are legions of
devleopers with the skills, knowledge and expertise to correctly fix complex
security bugs and issue a patch as you say "fixed tomorrow".
Its not even a good myth. The Myth Busters wont be interested.
All the major OSS projects have teams that own the code - just like
Microsoft. They dont let just anybody fix bugs - let alone security
bugs. The have bug triage and code review processes - just like Microsoft.
They also have test, QA and releases processes too. Note there is at least one
guy thinks security bugs in OSS code can be fixed with no QA (read
this
golden post...) and no, hes not being subtly humorous, just naive.
All major OSS projects have a vetting and qualification process just like we
do. For example, I can fix security bugs in code I own, but not in
the Windows kernel. Even for changes in my code I get a seucrity dude to
do a code review.
Ill ask you this - how many security code reviews on other peoples code have
you done? How many bugs have been fixed as a result? How many
did you fix? Can you link to the bugs and change lists in a
repository somwhere?
Fixing security bugs is hard - harder than regular bugs and those can be
hard. You really think that just any old developer can just dive right in
and triage and fix security bugs? Really? Do you think the
owning teams would let you? If so, then go read some of polices of
major OSS projects, like the Mozilla pages
here. "Virtually anyone" is most certainly not
allowed to just dive in and fix security bugs in Firefox - hey wont let you
unless you are qualifed and vetted.
So look, I really do love open source software. The fact that it is
open
Im not on the IE team so I cant speak to specifics. But here is what
I know. Finding and fixing security bugs is the highest priority on
every developers plate. When we learn about one in code we own things
stop, we triage it, and we come up with a plan to fix it.
Often that plan is executed pretty quickly (sometimes even days...).
Other times it takes longer. The reason is that almost none of these
issues are easy to fix. Many of them must be done carefully so as not to
break things or cause other security bugs. There is also some pretty
extensive regression testing and review involved before we ship a fix.
Note, this isnt any different from Linux, Apache, Firefox or other widely
used FOSS software. Even Linux has latent bugs that have been there a long
time and only recently fixed. Here is
one.
The maintainers of these products are diligent, responsible and work hard to fix
security bugs - just like Microsoft teams.
Did you actually look at the Microsoft
Security Bulletin Page? Its really easy to find. We go to
great lengths to get these out. You can get them on an RSS feed, via
instant messaging, texts to your cell phone, and via email.
What more do you want?
Note that Mozilla guys dont publicize every security bug either. On
their very
professional security policy page they say this (excerpted, read the page
for the full context...):
Full information about security bugs will be restricted to a known group of
people, using the Bugzilla access control restrictions described above.
However that group can and will be expanded as necessary and appropriate.
As noted above, information about security bugs can be held confidential for
some period of time; there is no pre-determined limit on how long that time
period might be. However this is offset by the fact that the person
reporting a bug has visibility into the activities (if any) being taken to
address the bug, and has the power to open the bug report for public
scrutiny.
... The Mozilla security bug group will have a private mailing list,
security-group@mozilla.org, to which everyone in the security bug group will
be subscribed....
he security module owner, peers, and other members of the Mozilla security
bug group will not be asked to sign formal nondisclosure agreements
or other legal paperwork. However we do expect members of the group
... not to disclose security bug information to others who are not members
of the Mozilla security bug group or are not otherwise involved in resolving
the bug, except that if a member of the Mozilla security bug group is
employed by a distributor of Mozilla-based products, then that member may
share such information within that distributor, provided that this
information is shared only with those who have a need to know, only to the
extent they need to know, and such information is labeled and treated as the
organization generally treats confidential material...
... not to post descriptions of exploits in public forums like newsgroups,
and to be careful in whom they add to the CC field of a bug (since all those
CCd on a security bug potentially have access to the complete buzg report)..
.. to be careful in whom they add to the CC field of a
Well, APK is a bit rambling. But he did ask me an interesting question and yes, I'm going to get him some kind of answer. I'm not sure it will be the answer he is looking for though. I'll know more in a couple of weeks.
Sorry to pop your fantasy bubble, but IE, Windows, Office, Visual Studio and
pretty much everyting else we ship build every day. That includes all the flavors: release, checked (debug), 32-bit, 64- bit, Itanium (yes, we still build that), and several languages.
The build pretty quickly to - usually just a few hours. This is from
100% source to a fully installable product.
With few exceptions, the code base is very 'clean'. That's true for most our products as well. For example, we have what we call 'MQ' phases of a project where we do nothing but clean things up.
Of course, nothing is perfect: one thing great about code is that it can always
be better. Thats true for our code, and others as well.
So are you are calling people at Microsoft shitty? If you are than
Ill ask you this: Really? Is that the best you can do?
Name calling? Okey dokey then...
Slashdot Mirror
Nice post
Great post.
So Microbox - what do you do for a living? Do you work for a company? Are the marekting people there imoral?
My question is this : why the broad brush? Is it all marketing that you have qualms about?
So only on Slashdot does all marketing become "lying and fraud". Really? Did you just run out and buy the biggest broadest paint brush you can find? What do you do for a living? How do people know about it? Do you work with Marking people? Are they lyers and fradusters? Would you have the guts to say that to their face?\
Really, Im enouraging you to answer these questions. You took the time to post something that is massive troll. Now take the tame to back it up.
People have "moral qualms" against marketing? Do you? really? What the heck is wrong with marketing? I suppose you dont like lots of things then. Are you going to level your criticisms at all companies that engage in marketing? How about the company you work for? Do they do marketing?
Next, you mention "stupidity". Thats a great word to throw around.... can you be a bit more specific? Its easy to call someting stupid. Its harder to say why.... come on, spend a little time on it.
Relay? how do you figure? That's a pretty big statement to make. Can you back it up with anything other than hand waving? We just had a spectacular quarter. A lot of that is attributed to selling Windows 7. Looks like we did a pretty good job of evaluating value there... Note that a lot of these sales were upgrades where people chose to buy. The could just have just as easily chosen Linux. They didn't.
Mod parent up please....
You mean you are looking at Ubuntu. Ubuntu updates and upgrades come from Ubuntu - not Microsoft.
Don't make stuff up....
-Foredecker
I think you misunderstand. This change was just in an options dialog for the code editor. It has nothing to do with how the compiler works, the code generator works, or how Visual Studio interoperates with antying else.
Its doubly a lame criticmsm as putting tabs in source code is almost universaly considered poor practice.
I wish I had mod points for you.
What makes you think I'm astroturfing? Because I work for Microsoft? Are people tha work on Linux posting about Linux being astroturfers? At least call me what I am - an apologist :)
Dude, the news item was non-news and it made the front page. The contrast I made is called 'irony'. Some slashdotters will make the most picayune criticism of Microsoft and laud the tiniest little new thing in Linux or some other FOSS thing. Many, its so over the top hypocritical.
Plus, you gotta admit, that was just a low value post. Who uses tabs in their code? Even if they wanted to all they needed to do was write a simple editor extension to fix it. "No Tabs" is baic coding standard 101 - freshman level stuff.
But he launched a title with a salcious title "Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting". Forces? Really?
Come on... if "you guys" are going to level critisim at me, make it better than that, or calling me an astroturfer. Pick someting orignal or material at least.
No worries mate :)
Na :) Yours was a fine post...
How do you figure? See my repsonse and feel free to mak a cogent reply.
Well, to be honest - the whole WinMO thing is a huge bummer for me. That's one reason I bought a gaggle of iPhones for my family. I was tired of waiting for a mobile OS that didn't suck.
So, I don't have any insider knowledge on the WinMO stuff, but do know a couple things:
The problem is this I think: WinMO 7.0 could be awesome and sill not be successful in the mobile space in any material way becuase the market has gotten locked in to two other very good solutions (iPhone, Android). Just like we have a lock on the desktop and office space with Windows and Office.
Its hard to comment on the iSlate/Pad/thing. There is TON of speculation about it and any tangible facts. Ill wait until Jobs launches it to form an opinion.
Note, you wont find harsh criticism of Apple from me - they are a great company. See this blog post and its comments. Apple is not big enough to do search They needMicrosoft/a>.
RRegarding Ballmer - I think you are being hard on him. One problem I have with many Microsoft critics is they expect Microsoft to be perfect. Kind of like your comment "Hey! Look Ballmer isnt perfect HAHAHAHA." You see this kind of thing all the time here on Slashdot.
I love the repeated reference to Ballmer throwing a chair. Its like the lamest thing ever to keep brining up. Really... its lame. I think it probably happened. Maybe he didnt throw it, but something with a char likely happened. Many CEOs are famously pasionate. Jobs is quite the tyrant. How about Larry Ellison? He has an ego the size of the Death Star. Ill tell you this - Ballmer is a much better leader than Gates. Gates is a brilliant strategist, but Ballmer has corporate leadership skills in spades. Hes also good at growing skilled execs.
As an aside, the exec to watch at Microsoft isnt Stephen Sinofsky (who is pretty good), is Qi Lu/a>. Ive heard him speak at internal meeting severl times now. He is the single most impressive executive Ive ever seen. I think he is the next Bill.
YYes, we have failed products, we also have products that are profitable, but dont reach the level of expectations we set for it. I think the tablet is a great example. Our tablet stuff has some great features. For example, the handwriting recognition is stellar - it really is. But we didnt change the rest of the experience to match - it is still the normal desktop experience. I suspect apple will nail this.
What people forget is despite the lack of market dominating success as Bill predicted, the Windows tablet PC has been a success. If any other company had done it they would be declared fabulous. The proof is in the pudding - our partners still make them and sell them. Believe me, they wouldnt do this if they didnt make money. The OEMs cut stuff faster than you can blink when it isnt successful.
Yes, we have failed products and Ballmer makes bad decisions form time to time. But, I’m not sure what point that makes. So do all big companies, including Apple, Google, HP, IBM and many others. Apple tried for years with hand held computing things. Remember the Newton? They have had other bombs too like the Cube, the Motorola Rokr, the Pippin (game console), EWorld, Apple PowerCD, Apple Powered Speakers, How about Apple TV? Is that a failure or is the Jury still out on that? Have you used it? Its pretty lame. XBOX live is way/em> better – and has way more content. They also failed utterly in the productivity software market – remember Claris Works?
I do ask you to consider that Microsoft has the financial, corporate, cultural fortitude to stick with things that need to be strategically successful. We m
This tab thing makes Slashdot front page and the following didnt? Windows 7 way hotter than Vista off the line, now more popular than all OS X versions. Okay then...
How is this tab things news or interesting at all? Here is what Brittany Behrens a PM for the editor team said:
(bolding above mine for emphasis)
Gee, the team solicited comments, did some research and made a change that people wanted. Of course, any change will make somebody unhappy.
Brittany even volunteered to give folks a simple editor extension to make the settings different for those that want it. My assumption is that anyone using Visual Studio is a developer and capeable of using such an extension, or writing it themselves. It is not difficult.
-Foredecker
I was being a tad sarcastic. Im not now.
When is it ever the right thing to release a security patch with no QA or testing? You use an interesting word may, as in
Are you suggesting to leave security QA to chance? Hoping someone will take a look at it? How are you going to make sure your patch really fixes the problem?
-Foredecker
How about this: with a commercial software vendor - heck, lets just use Microsoft - you have a vendor that has the funds and qualified staff to fix problems quickly; Seucrity and regular bugs alike. You likely have a support contract that requires this. Things are found and fixed quickly and reliably. There are people whos job it is to respond to email and answer the telephone. Heck, they will even fly out to your site if they need to. If you are in a moderately big city there is likely support people already there.
Ok, with Redhat someone can get the same thing, becuase they pay $800 a year for support.
Here is another way to look at it: you suspect you have a bug in some OSS software... .Lets say its a major one like Firefox. You send the
security email alias a mail (there is no phone number). Its a good group
of people, but hey, they are busy and you dont have any kind of business
relationship with them. No money changed hands, you have no support
contract. They are under no obligationto help you at all - the
license agreemetn even says so. You downloaded Firefox for free remember?
You are dependant upon their largese and good repuation (and with Mozial, it is
good).
So you hope they can get around to it - they have some people you can exchange email with, and a bug you can watch. Thats groovy, but there are no solid expectations? They fix bugs and are generally reliable about getting patches out. They have a schedule and everything, but are not under any obligation to do so for you in particular. They are good honest folks so Im sure they will get to it sooner or later.
Like I just mentioned to X0563511, I dont by the argument that "its open so anybody can look at it and fix bugs". Thats just bogus. Yes, of course its open. I saw a hilariously appropriate post on Slashdot a while back (paraphrasing):
Its a myth that for any given open source project there are legions of devleopers with the skills, knowledge and expertise to correctly fix complex security bugs and issue a patch as you say "fixed tomorrow". Its not even a good myth. The Myth Busters wont be interested.
All the major OSS projects have teams that own the code - just like Microsoft. They dont let just anybody fix bugs - let alone security bugs. The have bug triage and code review processes - just like Microsoft. They also have test, QA and releases processes too. Note there is at least one guy thinks security bugs in OSS code can be fixed with no QA (read this golden post...) and no, hes not being subtly humorous, just naive.
All major OSS projects have a vetting and qualification process just like we do. For example, I can fix security bugs in code I own, but not in the Windows kernel. Even for changes in my code I get a seucrity dude to do a code review.
Ill ask you this - how many security code reviews on other peoples code have you done? How many bugs have been fixed as a result? How many did you fix? Can you link to the bugs and change lists in a repository somwhere?
Fixing security bugs is hard - harder than regular bugs and those can be hard. You really think that just any old developer can just dive right in and triage and fix security bugs? Really? Do you think the owning teams would let you? If so, then go read some of polices of major OSS projects, like the Mozilla pages here. "Virtually anyone" is most certainly not allowed to just dive in and fix security bugs in Firefox - hey wont let you unless you are qualifed and vetted.
So look, I really do love open source software. The fact that it is open
Dang - you mean that with open source you cna just patch someting and send it out with out testing it! Wow. That's AWSOME!
Im not on the IE team so I cant speak to specifics. But here is what I know. Finding and fixing security bugs is the highest priority on every developers plate. When we learn about one in code we own things stop, we triage it, and we come up with a plan to fix it.
Often that plan is executed pretty quickly (sometimes even days...). Other times it takes longer. The reason is that almost none of these issues are easy to fix. Many of them must be done carefully so as not to break things or cause other security bugs. There is also some pretty extensive regression testing and review involved before we ship a fix.
Note, this isnt any different from Linux, Apache, Firefox or other widely used FOSS software. Even Linux has latent bugs that have been there a long time and only recently fixed. Here is one. The maintainers of these products are diligent, responsible and work hard to fix security bugs - just like Microsoft teams.
Did you actually look at the Microsoft Security Bulletin Page? Its really easy to find. We go to great lengths to get these out. You can get them on an RSS feed, via instant messaging, texts to your cell phone, and via email. What more do you want?
Did you read the page on how we monitor and manage vulnerabilities? Mmm... seems pretty professional to me.
Note that Mozilla guys dont publicize every security bug either. On their very professional security policy page they say this (excerpted, read the page for the full context...):
Don't worry :)
Well, APK is a bit rambling. But he did ask me an interesting question and yes, I'm going to get him some kind of answer. I'm not sure it will be the answer he is looking for though. I'll know more in a couple of weeks.
Sorry to pop your fantasy bubble, but IE, Windows, Office, Visual Studio and pretty much everyting else we ship build every day. That includes all the flavors: release, checked (debug), 32-bit, 64- bit, Itanium (yes, we still build that), and several languages. The build pretty quickly to - usually just a few hours. This is from 100% source to a fully installable product.
With few exceptions, the code base is very 'clean'. That's true for most our products as well. For example, we have what we call 'MQ' phases of a project where we do nothing but clean things up. Of course, nothing is perfect: one thing great about code is that it can always be better. Thats true for our code, and others as well.
So are you are calling people at Microsoft shitty? If you are than Ill ask you this: Really? Is that the best you can do? Name calling? Okey dokey then...
I disagree, Apple is not big enough to do search on their own. The issue isnt money, its people. This was worth blogging about. Read this...
-Foredecker
CountBrass - I work at Microsoft. I'm a dev manager in Windows. Ready my profile. Its very easy to find and quite public.
I think I can safely say 'we'.
-Foredecker