I'm the first to admit that many of Longhorn's surface features look like like OSX five years ago. But/. readers more than anyone should know that the surface of software is only UI deep, and that under the hood changes are less noticeable by a casual review. The advanced driver model in Longhorn, for example, is going to mean easier driver development as well as a huge increase in stability (it will be very difficult for a driver to crash your box).
Longhorn may be behind the times in many ways, but there's more to Longhorn than eye candy. You just have to look beneath the surface. I don't think we'll be getting any in depth reviews until the OS is launched.
Microsoft will agree that OS/2 was murdered in the dark
Agreeing to settle is not admitting guilt. Even with the large sums at hand there's a point where it's cheaper to settle than to drag things on.
I recall OS/2 Warp having its own set of problems. At the time I worked for a software retail store and OS/2 Warp was probably the most returned product the first couple of weeks it came out. Complaints ranged from "constant crashes" to "severe data loss". Win95 wasn't perfect, but we didn't have nearly the number of complaints. Even if MS's discriminatory pricing was truely illegal (they weren't a monopoly at the time), I don't think OS/2 needed any help dying. The people didn't want it regardless of the price.
Were you working for this Microsoft consulting company when, for example, they were advising customers to install Outlook 10? Or Exchange 5.0?
Absolutely not. I have less experience with the latter, but pre Outlook 11 I would never have recommended Outlook as a viable mail option, mainly due to security concerns. Are you even aware of how good open source databases and servers are...
I run MySql 4.1 at home. I have it for a couple of my apps, but I usually favor MSSql since I get a free dev license. Quite frankly I think the cost of MSSql is nothing compared to the TCO of other databases in many business cases. Let's agree to disagree on this one. Or, like any MS consultant I ever met, do you only ever come up with all-MS solutions?
Well, most of our customers hear from IBM, HP, and the like, so yes, we tout MS solutions. We let our customers choose which firm+solution is the best to go with for their situation.
I'm providing thoughtful critique on the moderation. You may not agree with it, that's fine. I still believe the GP was a troll, and didn't provide anything of value other than "M$ 1S t3h 5uX0r3z".
I never said that MS wasn't behind in some areas. The desktop operating system (compared to OSX) is the most notable example. I'm simply contending that they have delivered in a lot of areas, and those of us that do use MS day to day are far better off today than we were ten years ago. You're free to have your opinion that you think other solutions are better. But to say that MS has practically gone nowhere (especially when they've gone leaps and bounds in some areas) in ten years is ignorant at best.
Nothing you just said contradicts anything I said. I said nothing to specifically bash MS-SQL, IIS, or.NET, so I don't know where the fuck you are getting all this.
Sure it does. You pretty much said Microsoft still sucks just as bad as they did ten years ago, and I'm giving you solid examples of where they do not.
Go back even further if you like. As surely as "no more GPF's" meant "BSOD", and as surely as "no more BSOD" actually means "RSOD", Balmer has been singing this same song for almost thirty years now.
Since Win2k GPF's are almost a thing of the past. Saying "no more" was a bit of an exaggeration, but when compred to ten, or even five years ago, they're virtually a thing of the past. Faulty hardware or drivers are pretty much the only cause of these rare GPF occurances.
Hearing somebody describe Outlook as "rock solid" almost makes me want to weep for the future of America...
I don't see how this sensationalist comment contributes to your argument. I already stated that I believed that Outlook was a very shoddy product, especially from a security standpoint. Outlook 11, however, is practically a rewrite. It's the first version of Outlook that I've extensively used (in the past I'd just remove it because I considered it a trojan horse). If you have actually used Outlook 11 or have any real agruments as to why you don't believe it to be a rock solid product, then I'd love to hear it. If you want to rant about the security swiss cheese that Outlook 10 is, then you're preaching to the choir.
could well be a paid shill for all I know
I'm not a paid shill but I do work for a Microsoft consulting firm. I'm not afraid to admit that. But championing crappy technology is never in my best interest. MS isn't perfect and I'm quick to point out there flaws in the right forums. However the blanket "MS sucks and hasn't done anything" comments that are typical here are getting redundant, and someone has to try and inject some intellect into these emotionally charged assertions.
This post is moderatd as "insightful", but it's really a troll. Microsoft has made huge advances in the last 5-10 years. Win2k and Win2k3 are solid servers. Sql Server 7.0 and 2K are solid database servers. IIS6 is not only the fastest web application server on the market, it has also been able to avoid the security nightmares of its earlier versions. Outlook, Microsoft's biggest source of desktop security holes, is now rock solid in its latest version..NET (please don't regurgitate that "java clone" rhetoric, before I used the platform I used to naively make the same comments) is light years beyond VB6/ASP/COM development.
Is Microsoft behind in some areas? Definitely. Longhorn is not even released and it's behind Apples current offering. Their server operating systems still do not have a lightweight "non gui" installation (this isn't true for Windows embedded). The list goes on. The point I'm trying to make, however, is that your comment that they've never followed up with improving their products and that everything Balmer says is "lip service" is just ludicrous. But then again, this is/., so ludicrous turns into "insightful".
I can say one thing for sure. He's DEFINITELY never used the Siebel interface!;-)
He claimed he hasn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has considering that Microsoft is Siebel's biggest installation (AFAIK).
You Are Old And Cranky
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 1
OOP as a concept is going to have similar constructs, no matter what the language, right?
The basic concepts, yes. How the platform or language treats things, not necessarily. Here's a specific OOP example between the latest so called "fad" languages. In Java methods are implicitly virtual. In C# you have to explicitly declare a method as virtual. Prescriptive guidance as to how one should go about determining which methods to mark as virtual is only relevant to one of these languages. So while you are correct that general coding practices are independent of the flavor-of-the-decade language, there are topics which warrant books targeted at specific languages or platforms.
+1 myself as well. I'm pretty busy busting the microlimits on the party network, but I'd consider signing up to PokerStars just for this type of event.
Huh? Because Apple's music store is doing so badly (read: they're a borderline monopoly). And Real lost the battle because their technology was irrelevant within a couple of years since their major competitors (MS, Apple) far surpassed them. Real has made subpar software and the only reason they made any market impact was because they were first to market with a decent prototype that quickly lost its nostolgia.
I agree as soon as Apple is declared by the courts to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems I think they should be forced to comply with all the anti-trust regulations...That is why their are special rules for monopolies...MS has and is doing just that. They can sell all the cheese they want and all the fish they want, but they can't sell only fish and cheese bundles once they have established a monopoly on fish...
So if Apple reached 85%+ marketshare you think it would be better for consumers for them to strip out Safari, Quicktime, Spotlight, etc.? While these are bundled technologies that can theoretically be seperate products, they work much better when functioning together as an integrated solution. So while MS should adhere to anti-trust regulations, there's no regulation that says that they can't increase the functionality of their product. They're not bundling seperate products, they're adding value to an existing product. Consumers have a much better out of the box experience, and developers can develop against components that they can rely on since they know these components are part of the product. Everyone wins, except for the stupid companies who try and make money off of a commoditized technology.
OEMs could choose to ship PCs with no operating system
That would be shipping a disfunctional product. Maybe not for a few/.ers, but for the majority of consumers this would be a disaster. OEMs ship products of multiple components. Some hardware, some software. To decouple this is ludicrous for the average consumer. It'd be like selling car stereo's without the software. It'd be completely unusable. Why even seperate the two? The only difference is on the x86 platform we allow multiple OS's. The average consumer doesn't know what this means. They buy an Apple computer as a product. Not as a PowerPC with OSX.
Microsoft has said that people *choose* their OS because it is "better" - this would have been a chance to prove it.
They already proved it years ago when they had less marketshare than Apple or IBM. It started with Windows 3.x, but the monopoly reached fruition after Windows 95 hit critical mass. The masses voted with their dollars. Windows was NOT a monopoly before that time. Microsoft had no special edge. Why punish MS because they were successful at beating multibillion dollar companies to the punch?
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft...
Who cares? It's not Microsoft's fault that a companys business model is on commoditized software that people don't care enough to switch to let alone pay for. There's no market for a media player because there shouldn't be. I understand that Microsoft is a monopoly so things are different, but you can't expect Microsoft to stop adding value into its products so that consumers have to continue paying for hundreds of dollars of addons just to do something as "1990s" as playing a video on their computer. I agree that because MS is a monopoly that they should be forced to allow third party alternatives, but not remove value from their product.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
When Windows came out it was very competitively priced. Actually, if I remember correctly it was cheaper than any product offering from any other company (IBM, Apple, etc.). When taking inflation into account Windows is actually cheaper now than it was before it was a monopoly. The price never went up even when IE, Windows Media Player, and a slew of other features were added to the product. Software has never followed hardware pricing (droping like a rock after a year) nor should it, it doesn't lose value over time (unless a new version is released) and it's the reason you have the hardware in the first place.
So when my application needs to play an embedded video, it's not a critical function? The fact that I can rely on certain components being available allows me to avoid reinventing the "video playing" wheel. This is worth a lot to me as an ISV.
Of course somehow this thread turned into a "MS is evil because they do business with China in the first place". Besides the fact that the vast majority you do business with China (many computers have parts made in China), I could also contend that allowing the Chinese government to thrive on Linux is immoral. Unless of course the GPL was updated to dissallow any dictatorship from benefiting from the software.
Considering I've seen and used Monad binaries for over a year I don't think you can call it vaporware. I am surprised about the 3-5 year bit though, it seems relatively stable _today_. I knew it wasn't going to make it into the Longhorn desktop, but I was under the impression that it was going to be released with Longhorn server (the same goes for WinFS).
Microsoft's market cap is about 275 billion, so Google still has a long, long way to go.
Not to mention Google's P/E is almost 5x of MSFT's - this means that Google will most likely not be able to sustain this value, let alone gain anytime soon.
If all websites started MD5'ing passwords before they were transmitted to the server then this would become completely ineffective for the attack mentioned in grandparent.
Think about it.
I'd heed your own advice. Most websites do hash passwords - probably with something much more secure than MD5. However no passwords are hashed before they transmit, they're hashed on the server side before being stored into the database. This way if the database is compromised your password isn't easily attainable. However there are still problems with this from a trust standpoint. First, you have no way of knowing that said website is protecting your password (well) in the first place. While most hopefully do, some do not. Second, a rogue developer (i.e. contractor, pissed off employee, etc.) could easily (depending on code review policies) inject code that could secretly store a plaintext version of your password in another location for future retrieval.
The bottom line is that you simply can not trust websites with your password. The parent post is spot on about the risks related to using the same password accross multiple sites.
Can someone with more legal understanding than myself please explain why emails can be considered as hard evidence?
1) They can't be authenticated: There's no way to prove if the email was written by the person on record.
2) The contents can not be validated: There's no way to prove that the contents were not altered in transit.
To me, email is so easy to spoof that I would take anything I got from such "evidence" with a huge proverbial bucket of salt. Furthermore, I know that institutions such as Morgan Stanley are required to keep certain records on hand but considering the fragile nature of email I find it quite odd that companies would be required to keep it around. Do IM conversations fall into the same category?
Call me ignorant (I am), but this issue really confuses me. It's not like Morgan Stanly destroyed a bunch of notorized documents.
What was that number in the news a while back? North American corporate officers receive something like 400 times the salaries of their European counterparts? It's ridiculous.
Easily as stupid as paying an athlete 90 million dollars to wear sneakers.
The latter is not stupid, it's simply business. If some multibillion dollar corporation wants me to wear shoes for them, I'm going to get the most of their mooney as I can. However the former is exploitation. While good executives may be hard to come by, it's no doubt that they use their position to maximize their gain at the loss of other employees.
The original post regarding $30K is on the very low end. A 4 year degree at a good (but not top) institution is approaching $100K (about $50K if you take the national average) in the states. You can easily double that for top institutions without scholorships. In the US education costs are outpacing inflation by at least a factor of two.
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I'm the first to admit that many of Longhorn's surface features look like like OSX five years ago. But /. readers more than anyone should know that the surface of software is only UI deep, and that under the hood changes are less noticeable by a casual review. The advanced driver model in Longhorn, for example, is going to mean easier driver development as well as a huge increase in stability (it will be very difficult for a driver to crash your box).
Longhorn may be behind the times in many ways, but there's more to Longhorn than eye candy. You just have to look beneath the surface. I don't think we'll be getting any in depth reviews until the OS is launched.
As already posted here a dozen times the illegal acts were the fact that he was selling modded XBoxes with 80 pirated games on the disk.
Microsoft will agree that OS/2 was murdered in the dark
Agreeing to settle is not admitting guilt. Even with the large sums at hand there's a point where it's cheaper to settle than to drag things on.
I recall OS/2 Warp having its own set of problems. At the time I worked for a software retail store and OS/2 Warp was probably the most returned product the first couple of weeks it came out. Complaints ranged from "constant crashes" to "severe data loss". Win95 wasn't perfect, but we didn't have nearly the number of complaints. Even if MS's discriminatory pricing was truely illegal (they weren't a monopoly at the time), I don't think OS/2 needed any help dying. The people didn't want it regardless of the price.
Were you working for this Microsoft consulting company when, for example, they were advising customers to install Outlook 10? Or Exchange 5.0?
Absolutely not. I have less experience with the latter, but pre Outlook 11 I would never have recommended Outlook as a viable mail option, mainly due to security concerns.
Are you even aware of how good open source databases and servers are...
I run MySql 4.1 at home. I have it for a couple of my apps, but I usually favor MSSql since I get a free dev license. Quite frankly I think the cost of MSSql is nothing compared to the TCO of other databases in many business cases. Let's agree to disagree on this one.
Or, like any MS consultant I ever met, do you only ever come up with all-MS solutions?
Well, most of our customers hear from IBM, HP, and the like, so yes, we tout MS solutions. We let our customers choose which firm+solution is the best to go with for their situation.
I'm providing thoughtful critique on the moderation. You may not agree with it, that's fine. I still believe the GP was a troll, and didn't provide anything of value other than "M$ 1S t3h 5uX0r3z".
I never said that MS wasn't behind in some areas. The desktop operating system (compared to OSX) is the most notable example. I'm simply contending that they have delivered in a lot of areas, and those of us that do use MS day to day are far better off today than we were ten years ago. You're free to have your opinion that you think other solutions are better. But to say that MS has practically gone nowhere (especially when they've gone leaps and bounds in some areas) in ten years is ignorant at best.
Nothing you just said contradicts anything I said. I said nothing to specifically bash MS-SQL, IIS, or .NET, so I don't know where the fuck you are getting all this.
Sure it does. You pretty much said Microsoft still sucks just as bad as they did ten years ago, and I'm giving you solid examples of where they do not.
Go back even further if you like. As surely as "no more GPF's" meant "BSOD", and as surely as "no more BSOD" actually means "RSOD", Balmer has been singing this same song for almost thirty years now.
Since Win2k GPF's are almost a thing of the past. Saying "no more" was a bit of an exaggeration, but when compred to ten, or even five years ago, they're virtually a thing of the past. Faulty hardware or drivers are pretty much the only cause of these rare GPF occurances.
Hearing somebody describe Outlook as "rock solid" almost makes me want to weep for the future of America...
I don't see how this sensationalist comment contributes to your argument. I already stated that I believed that Outlook was a very shoddy product, especially from a security standpoint. Outlook 11, however, is practically a rewrite. It's the first version of Outlook that I've extensively used (in the past I'd just remove it because I considered it a trojan horse). If you have actually used Outlook 11 or have any real agruments as to why you don't believe it to be a rock solid product, then I'd love to hear it. If you want to rant about the security swiss cheese that Outlook 10 is, then you're preaching to the choir.
could well be a paid shill for all I know
I'm not a paid shill but I do work for a Microsoft consulting firm. I'm not afraid to admit that. But championing crappy technology is never in my best interest. MS isn't perfect and I'm quick to point out there flaws in the right forums. However the blanket "MS sucks and hasn't done anything" comments that are typical here are getting redundant, and someone has to try and inject some intellect into these emotionally charged assertions.
This post is moderatd as "insightful", but it's really a troll. Microsoft has made huge advances in the last 5-10 years. Win2k and Win2k3 are solid servers. Sql Server 7.0 and 2K are solid database servers. IIS6 is not only the fastest web application server on the market, it has also been able to avoid the security nightmares of its earlier versions. Outlook, Microsoft's biggest source of desktop security holes, is now rock solid in its latest version. .NET (please don't regurgitate that "java clone" rhetoric, before I used the platform I used to naively make the same comments) is light years beyond VB6/ASP/COM development.
/., so ludicrous turns into "insightful".
Is Microsoft behind in some areas? Definitely. Longhorn is not even released and it's behind Apples current offering. Their server operating systems still do not have a lightweight "non gui" installation (this isn't true for Windows embedded). The list goes on. The point I'm trying to make, however, is that your comment that they've never followed up with improving their products and that everything Balmer says is "lip service" is just ludicrous. But then again, this is
How is this post insightful? What does some Ford supercar beating the Ferrari have anything to do with the analogy of a Tarus beating a Ferrari?
I can say one thing for sure. He's DEFINITELY never used the Siebel interface! ;-)
He claimed he hasn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has considering that Microsoft is Siebel's biggest installation (AFAIK).
OOP as a concept is going to have similar constructs, no matter what the language, right?
The basic concepts, yes. How the platform or language treats things, not necessarily. Here's a specific OOP example between the latest so called "fad" languages. In Java methods are implicitly virtual. In C# you have to explicitly declare a method as virtual. Prescriptive guidance as to how one should go about determining which methods to mark as virtual is only relevant to one of these languages. So while you are correct that general coding practices are independent of the flavor-of-the-decade language, there are topics which warrant books targeted at specific languages or platforms.
+1 myself as well. I'm pretty busy busting the microlimits on the party network, but I'd consider signing up to PokerStars just for this type of event.
Both cases are absolutely unacceptable.
Than don't visit the sites in question. If you don't like their adverstising, don't leech their content.
Huh? Because Apple's music store is doing so badly (read: they're a borderline monopoly). And Real lost the battle because their technology was irrelevant within a couple of years since their major competitors (MS, Apple) far surpassed them. Real has made subpar software and the only reason they made any market impact was because they were first to market with a decent prototype that quickly lost its nostolgia.
I agree as soon as Apple is declared by the courts to have a monopoly on desktop operating systems I think they should be forced to comply with all the anti-trust regulations ...That is why their are special rules for monopolies...MS has and is doing just that. They can sell all the cheese they want and all the fish they want, but they can't sell only fish and cheese bundles once they have established a monopoly on fish...
So if Apple reached 85%+ marketshare you think it would be better for consumers for them to strip out Safari, Quicktime, Spotlight, etc.? While these are bundled technologies that can theoretically be seperate products, they work much better when functioning together as an integrated solution. So while MS should adhere to anti-trust regulations, there's no regulation that says that they can't increase the functionality of their product. They're not bundling seperate products, they're adding value to an existing product. Consumers have a much better out of the box experience, and developers can develop against components that they can rely on since they know these components are part of the product. Everyone wins, except for the stupid companies who try and make money off of a commoditized technology.
OEMs could choose to ship PCs with no operating system
/.ers, but for the majority of consumers this would be a disaster. OEMs ship products of multiple components. Some hardware, some software. To decouple this is ludicrous for the average consumer. It'd be like selling car stereo's without the software. It'd be completely unusable. Why even seperate the two? The only difference is on the x86 platform we allow multiple OS's. The average consumer doesn't know what this means. They buy an Apple computer as a product. Not as a PowerPC with OSX.
That would be shipping a disfunctional product. Maybe not for a few
Microsoft has said that people *choose* their OS because it is "better" - this would have been a chance to prove it.
They already proved it years ago when they had less marketshare than Apple or IBM. It started with Windows 3.x, but the monopoly reached fruition after Windows 95 hit critical mass. The masses voted with their dollars. Windows was NOT a monopoly before that time. Microsoft had no special edge. Why punish MS because they were successful at beating multibillion dollar companies to the punch?
OEMs could choose to ship PCs with no operating system,
The suppliers of other media players are hurt because Microsoft...
Who cares? It's not Microsoft's fault that a companys business model is on commoditized software that people don't care enough to switch to let alone pay for. There's no market for a media player because there shouldn't be. I understand that Microsoft is a monopoly so things are different, but you can't expect Microsoft to stop adding value into its products so that consumers have to continue paying for hundreds of dollars of addons just to do something as "1990s" as playing a video on their computer. I agree that because MS is a monopoly that they should be forced to allow third party alternatives, but not remove value from their product.
If there was a competitive Operating Systems market, then Microsoft couldn't force money out of customers' wallets, either, because customers could choose an OS supplier that did not inflate the price of their OS with a Media Player.
When Windows came out it was very competitively priced. Actually, if I remember correctly it was cheaper than any product offering from any other company (IBM, Apple, etc.). When taking inflation into account Windows is actually cheaper now than it was before it was a monopoly. The price never went up even when IE, Windows Media Player, and a slew of other features were added to the product. Software has never followed hardware pricing (droping like a rock after a year) nor should it, it doesn't lose value over time (unless a new version is released) and it's the reason you have the hardware in the first place.
Media Player's not critical
So when my application needs to play an embedded video, it's not a critical function? The fact that I can rely on certain components being available allows me to avoid reinventing the "video playing" wheel. This is worth a lot to me as an ISV.
Of course somehow this thread turned into a "MS is evil because they do business with China in the first place". Besides the fact that the vast majority you do business with China (many computers have parts made in China), I could also contend that allowing the Chinese government to thrive on Linux is immoral. Unless of course the GPL was updated to dissallow any dictatorship from benefiting from the software.
Considering I've seen and used Monad binaries for over a year I don't think you can call it vaporware. I am surprised about the 3-5 year bit though, it seems relatively stable _today_. I knew it wasn't going to make it into the Longhorn desktop, but I was under the impression that it was going to be released with Longhorn server (the same goes for WinFS).
Microsoft's market cap is about 275 billion, so Google still has a long, long way to go.
Not to mention Google's P/E is almost 5x of MSFT's - this means that Google will most likely not be able to sustain this value, let alone gain anytime soon.
If all websites started MD5'ing passwords before they were transmitted to the server then this would become completely ineffective for the attack mentioned in grandparent.
Think about it.
I'd heed your own advice. Most websites do hash passwords - probably with something much more secure than MD5. However no passwords are hashed before they transmit, they're hashed on the server side before being stored into the database. This way if the database is compromised your password isn't easily attainable. However there are still problems with this from a trust standpoint. First, you have no way of knowing that said website is protecting your password (well) in the first place. While most hopefully do, some do not. Second, a rogue developer (i.e. contractor, pissed off employee, etc.) could easily (depending on code review policies) inject code that could secretly store a plaintext version of your password in another location for future retrieval.
The bottom line is that you simply can not trust websites with your password. The parent post is spot on about the risks related to using the same password accross multiple sites.
Can someone with more legal understanding than myself please explain why emails can be considered as hard evidence?
1) They can't be authenticated: There's no way to prove if the email was written by the person on record.
2) The contents can not be validated: There's no way to prove that the contents were not altered in transit.
To me, email is so easy to spoof that I would take anything I got from such "evidence" with a huge proverbial bucket of salt. Furthermore, I know that institutions such as Morgan Stanley are required to keep certain records on hand but considering the fragile nature of email I find it quite odd that companies would be required to keep it around. Do IM conversations fall into the same category?
Call me ignorant (I am), but this issue really confuses me. It's not like Morgan Stanly destroyed a bunch of notorized documents.
What was that number in the news a while back? North American corporate officers receive something like 400 times the salaries of their European counterparts? It's ridiculous.
Easily as stupid as paying an athlete 90 million dollars to wear sneakers.
The latter is not stupid, it's simply business. If some multibillion dollar corporation wants me to wear shoes for them, I'm going to get the most of their mooney as I can. However the former is exploitation. While good executives may be hard to come by, it's no doubt that they use their position to maximize their gain at the loss of other employees.
The original post regarding $30K is on the very low end. A 4 year degree at a good (but not top) institution is approaching $100K (about $50K if you take the national average) in the states. You can easily double that for top institutions without scholorships. In the US education costs are outpacing inflation by at least a factor of two.