So, let's say you have 1000 patches available for the OS in question...That's a 20,000 byte download.
Huh? Did you pull this info out of your ass? Consider all of the hardware configurations, software configurations, and OS configurations, and I would put a lot of money on the fact that 1,000 doesn't even cover all of the hardware vendors, let alone their individual products.
I don't know anyone who is delighted to use Microsoft products.
Now that you've met me, you can no longer make this claim.
What do I like? Win2K,.NET (C#), MSSQL server (slammer didn't slam our properly configured servers), Age of Mythology, and my and almost all MS hardware.
What don't I like? What I don't use: Office, Outlook, Frongpage, etc. I'm not forced to use these apps, and neither is anyone else. Heck, Dell ships with the Wordperfect office suite by default.
.NET is the reason that there will be a mass exodus from MS? I know that myself and others who stayed AWAY from MS (Perl, Cold Fusion, J2EE, etc.) have switched mainly because of.NET (as well as the stability of Win2k).
For the record: I do not use XP and what little I've seen of it confused me.
That being said, although XP isn't perfect, I've anecdotally heard a lot of positive comments regarding it's UI. Sometimes you HAVE to change things around to make something more intuitive. Sure, you and I are very used to the win9x interface, but a new computer user may find XP more user friendly. Human's naturally resist change, so don't mistake change as "less user friendly" in this scenario.
First of all these features really aren't "DRM" per say, rather, a system for organizations to control who does what with which document. This is very important for government secrets or corporate trade secrets - being able to minimize the chances of a leak is huge.
This being said, I have no use for these features at home. I use Open Office at well, but I'm not incredibly happy with it (I like MS Office better for most tasks), but the main reason I use it is because I know it's not going to give a spreadsheet arbitrary access to my filesystem.
Why is that interesting? If Win2K is working fine for me at home, and since it matches the OS used at my office, why would I go through the trouble of upgrading? Sure XP is supposed to have all of this "cool" stuff, but I don't need cool. When I build my next machine I'll put XP on it (and _maybe_ dual boot Mandrake - give Linux on the desktop Yet Another Try), but for now I'm doing just fine with 2K.
Well, when was the last time YOU (or someone you know) got paid for submitting a Kernal patch that you developed on your own time? The ownly thing commercial about Linux is the Red Hat's and IBM's making money off of YOUR backs.
I don't use XP, but I know a lot of people who do... I've never heard of such an unstable XP install. Race conditions in C#? I've been coding almost exclusively in C# for over 18 months, and I work with many developers who do too. I'm not denying your claim, but based on my experience I demand a little more evidence before I buy this extraordinary claim.
I'm sorry, but especially after Win2K came out, there was no better desktop alternative (disclaimer: At work I had two boxes, an RH 6 box and a Win2K box). MacOS at the time was good for a narrow set of applications, but it was still that same-old-quircky Mac interface, with the lack of good memory management or efficient multitasking. Linux, well, I can't tell you how often Linux crashed on me. It was such a PITA that I simply stopped using the GUI, and I just went back to the "good ol' days" of using emacs to script up perl for our Apache server. So, yes Linux had a nice CLI, I wouldn't put that infront of my mother.
Linux has done a lot to catch up, but I still wouldn't implement it on the desktop for a large company. MacOS has made leaps and bounds, to the point where I've stopped turning my nose at Apple, and now have a huge respect for their technology. Still, MacOS X is a recent development, and until then, I'd say that one can objectively prove that Windows was hands down the best desktop OS. Now, I think it's arguable, but that just means that there's no clear winner.
Just like the Intel tax? Just because MS is dominent in the x86 market doesn't mean it's a tax (oh, and it's closer to 2% to anal - stop comparing the expensive shelf price of Windows). I don't know what beef this guy has with the iBook (or even better, the 12" powerbook). He's thinks it's too big?! The only reason that I wouldn't get an iBook is because they're too slow for me, but the powebook's are pretty speedy, smaller, built better than any PC laptop that I've seen (and I've been actively reviewing PC laptops) and priced pretty well.
6. Employee finds out that data is all encrypted and is unable to use the data to his/her advantage.
NTFS encryption is available, and much safer means of encrypting your files are also available. Encryption is your only defense against someone who has physical access to your machine.
This is the #1 reason Linux et al will achieve the famed world domination in the not too distant future.
I disagree. I think that OS X has a better chance at this. Apple keeps surprising me left and right on both the software and hardware front.
It is like a rite of passage for the best and the brightest.
No, a $40B bank account is the rite of passage for the best and the brightest. Google is one of my favorite examples for this. They have incredible compensation plans (salary, working environment, benefits (gormet chefs ON STAFF!)), and they get extremely bright people.
There is currently 1000+ people working on the various aspects of the Linux kernel.
Again, Google is a very small company yet they innovate without a large number of people. The Cliche "Too many cooks in the kitchen" comes to mind.
The idea of MS innovating its way out of this is silly.
No, it's not. MS has some extremely bright people working for them, they have contributed a lot to computing, and it's rediculous to attribute all of their success to "luck" or "aggressive business".
Still, as successful as Linux is, I think that OS X is going to start eroding Linux's [potential] marketshare within the desktop OS product space, and eventually the server product space. Heck, if Apple would get it's act together and build proprietary x86 based hardware (which would make cross-platform coding a bit easier, and make Apple's hardware more affordable and performant), I'm not sure if Linux could compete at all on the desktop.
I disagree that Flamebait is appropriate, but I also disagree with the fact that some moderators moderated my post +4 insightful! I didn't say anything insightful either - I was just offering my opinion of moderation!
Recovering from current external perceptions of Microsoft as a paranoid, untrustworthy, greedy, petty, and politically inept organization will take years.
Linux is certainly a threat to Microsoft's less-than-perfect server software right now (and to its desktop in the not-too-distant future)
My absolute favorite: Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results.
There are many clever and motivated people out there, who have many different reasons to avoid buying directly into a Microsoft proprietary stack.
I like how he doesn't judge people who go against MS - he respects their intellect and their decision making process. OSS folks should do the same for those of us who make the decisions to use MS in certain areas.
+5 Interesting - I'd buy that because it's interesting discussion. +5 Insightful? Please, there's too much anti-MS, anti-corporation, communisitic BS in this post to give it an Insightful rating.
Although I haven't used OS X much, I personally hated the old Mac OS UI (among other things). I've always thought of Mac's as second-rate expensive computers aside from the very narrow set of tasks that it could do better than a "Wintel" box. However, when I sat down to OS X I thought, "It's not perfect, but this is a pretty slick OS" - and that was pre-Jaguar. I can't wait to try Jaguar with Safari and Keynote. If only I could get a fast G4 (1.25 ghz) for ~$1500 with a smaller footprint then the current towers, I'd probably get one for all of my A/V stuff (which I current do under Win2K).
The biggest parts of the.NET API that are proprietary are ASP.NET (most of system.web.*), ADO.NET (system.data.*), and WinForms (system.windows). It's important to note that while these aren't standards, they can definitely be implemented on other platforms because of their abstraction. True, there are parts of windows.forms that tie into the Win32 API - hence the need for WINE. But there are many projects (like GTK#) that allow you quickly and efficiently write a GUI that is not dependant on Win32. As far as ASP.NET and ADO.NET, these can be reimplemented with no emulation for the most part. Actually, ASP.NET is written in C#, and Mono has mad a lot of progress in this area (although they will always be one step behind - ASP.NET 1.1 is going to be released soon). As far as ECMA standardization, yes, C# and the CLI are ECMA standards (the actual runtime is not, but the specifications to build your own are). This means that MS can't arbitrarly screw over Mono (for example) by changing the CLI and rendering all of Mono's class libraries inneffective. What they CAN do, and what your concern is, is change their libraries (like ADO.NET). However, that would also screw over their own developers. So, the most they can do is copyright and patent ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc., which is no worse then what Sun has done.
The real point is, however, that if you invest in.NET and MS decides to screw everyone over, you can expose that investment to your new platform (Say, J2EE) via SOAP (or.NET Remoting which is faster, but would require additional work implement on another platform) while you slowly migrate to the new platform, all the while avoiding the need to buy into Microsoft to keep your existing investment running. The above can all be said for Java or any other platform that supports SOAP or another common RPC. This is all in contrast with Windows development earlier, in which you where (for the most part) locked in with proprietary (and ugly) technologies like COM and VB.
In most cases SQL should not be found in the "codebehind" (essentially an abstract object in which the aspx page inherits), as the codebehind is generally very specific to the presentation. Unless dynamic SQL is being generating (which should be upon RARE exception), a DAL (Data Access Layer) class or a Utility class (eg: PersonUtility for the Person object) should be the only places that access a backend datastore, and for a database one should just reference stored proc's.
No, and thank goodness. A drastic measure a solution is not, albeit it "feels" right because it's drastic. Remember that MS is a business, and we can always choose a competitor (Apple's doing quite nicely now, and the MS still doesn't have the lead in the Enterprise).
What needs to be done, and what has been done, is to enforce regulations about how MS has operated it's business in an anticompetitive nature. However, do confuse aggressive business (in which the aim is to crush the competition) with anticompetitive practices (strong-armed OEM agreements that prevent competition). Competing strongly and crushing the competition is completely different then competing well in a race and beating everyone in the long run.
So, MS now has strict guidlines as far as "special pricing" for OEM's, therefore giving other x86 based operating systems a chance to compete for the desktop. Other browsers have popped up (and NS 4.x sucked), so I'm not worried about the "IE Integrated" nonsense, because one way or the other IE would be where it is today. Apple, MS's biggest competitor on the desktop since Day 1, has not been hurt by anti-competitive means because they operate on their own hardware, and are now pulling away from MS (Jaguar, Safari, Keynote, iTunes, etc.) at an alarming rate. And even though Linux is still a second-rate desktop (IMHO), it has come a long way and is available to the "normal" end user from large companies such as Walmart. Actually, my Mom works for a school district with a lot of lower income kids and I mentioned these $200-300 Lycoris boxes to her - what a great way to get a functional computer to someone who can't afford it.
So, now that the US has restricted MS's unfair OEM agreements, what more is there to be done? Let the market decide.
Languages are differnt. So they both compile into an IL? Big deal. Yes, it's nice that all languages on the.NET framework have access to the powerful class library, and all run on the CLR so that you can use a VB.NET DLL with a C# DLL (because in the end they're really just IL DLL's). However, the IL that VB.NET generally create's is a mess - especially if "option strict" is off, making it a loosely typed language.
Of course, you have the minor language features (not used most of the time) like "safe" pointers that makes C# nice to have as well.
So allthough the languages are a lot closer than ever, they still are different languages, and the differences do go beyong curly braces and verbose declarations.
Beyond the less proprietary nature of.NET (ECMA standards, minmal tie to Win32), it's also possible to any investment of.NET with any future technology through some form of XML (SOAP, etc.)
- Better uptime - Significantly Faster (even if it's on a shared Frame), especially during "peak usage" when consumer broadband generally slows down. - "Mission Critical" level support. It's a BIG deal when your T1 goes out. When your cable modem is down, you get to wait on hold, and then schedule a guy to come take a look at it within 1 - 2 business days.
The point of ISP's "capping" bandwidth (eg: 256k up, 640k down for some DSL's) is to limit the saturation. Adding a per-byte cap is rediculous as the bandwidth cap should cover "extreme" usage.
Slashdot Mirror
So, let's say you have 1000 patches available for the OS in question...That's a 20,000 byte download.
Huh? Did you pull this info out of your ass? Consider all of the hardware configurations, software configurations, and OS configurations, and I would put a lot of money on the fact that 1,000 doesn't even cover all of the hardware vendors, let alone their individual products.
How long will it be before Microsoft charges developers royalties for every copy of a program that runs on Windows? Think it can't happen?
s/Microsoft/Sun/g
Theories with only the basis of "it could happen" are worthless.
I don't know anyone who is delighted to use Microsoft products.
.NET (C#), MSSQL server (slammer didn't slam our properly configured servers), Age of Mythology, and my and almost all MS hardware.
Now that you've met me, you can no longer make this claim.
What do I like? Win2K,
What don't I like? What I don't use: Office, Outlook, Frongpage, etc. I'm not forced to use these apps, and neither is anyone else. Heck, Dell ships with the Wordperfect office suite by default.
.NET is the reason that there will be a mass exodus from MS? I know that myself and others who stayed AWAY from MS (Perl, Cold Fusion, J2EE, etc.) have switched mainly because of .NET (as well as the stability of Win2k).
For the record: I do not use XP and what little I've seen of it confused me.
That being said, although XP isn't perfect, I've anecdotally heard a lot of positive comments regarding it's UI. Sometimes you HAVE to change things around to make something more intuitive. Sure, you and I are very used to the win9x interface, but a new computer user may find XP more user friendly. Human's naturally resist change, so don't mistake change as "less user friendly" in this scenario.
First of all these features really aren't "DRM" per say, rather, a system for organizations to control who does what with which document. This is very important for government secrets or corporate trade secrets - being able to minimize the chances of a leak is huge.
This being said, I have no use for these features at home. I use Open Office at well, but I'm not incredibly happy with it (I like MS Office better for most tasks), but the main reason I use it is because I know it's not going to give a spreadsheet arbitrary access to my filesystem.
Why is that interesting? If Win2K is working fine for me at home, and since it matches the OS used at my office, why would I go through the trouble of upgrading? Sure XP is supposed to have all of this "cool" stuff, but I don't need cool. When I build my next machine I'll put XP on it (and _maybe_ dual boot Mandrake - give Linux on the desktop Yet Another Try), but for now I'm doing just fine with 2K.
as if there's nothing "commercial" about Linux
Well, when was the last time YOU (or someone you know) got paid for submitting a Kernal patch that you developed on your own time? The ownly thing commercial about Linux is the Red Hat's and IBM's making money off of YOUR backs.
I don't use XP, but I know a lot of people who do... I've never heard of such an unstable XP install. Race conditions in C#? I've been coding almost exclusively in C# for over 18 months, and I work with many developers who do too. I'm not denying your claim, but based on my experience I demand a little more evidence before I buy this extraordinary claim.
NO, it's a piece made by developers, you know, people who care about code, not all of the politics and conspiracy theory's around them.
There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003.
I think it's safe to say that they're most defniitely _NOT_ using VSS!
I'm sorry, but especially after Win2K came out, there was no better desktop alternative (disclaimer: At work I had two boxes, an RH 6 box and a Win2K box). MacOS at the time was good for a narrow set of applications, but it was still that same-old-quircky Mac interface, with the lack of good memory management or efficient multitasking. Linux, well, I can't tell you how often Linux crashed on me. It was such a PITA that I simply stopped using the GUI, and I just went back to the "good ol' days" of using emacs to script up perl for our Apache server. So, yes Linux had a nice CLI, I wouldn't put that infront of my mother.
Linux has done a lot to catch up, but I still wouldn't implement it on the desktop for a large company. MacOS has made leaps and bounds, to the point where I've stopped turning my nose at Apple, and now have a huge respect for their technology. Still, MacOS X is a recent development, and until then, I'd say that one can objectively prove that Windows was hands down the best desktop OS. Now, I think it's arguable, but that just means that there's no clear winner.
Just like the Intel tax? Just because MS is dominent in the x86 market doesn't mean it's a tax (oh, and it's closer to 2% to anal - stop comparing the expensive shelf price of Windows). I don't know what beef this guy has with the iBook (or even better, the 12" powerbook). He's thinks it's too big?! The only reason that I wouldn't get an iBook is because they're too slow for me, but the powebook's are pretty speedy, smaller, built better than any PC laptop that I've seen (and I've been actively reviewing PC laptops) and priced pretty well.
5. Employee hickjacks data to floppy unlogged
6. Employee finds out that data is all encrypted and is unable to use the data to his/her advantage.
NTFS encryption is available, and much safer means of encrypting your files are also available. Encryption is your only defense against someone who has physical access to your machine.
This is the #1 reason Linux et al will achieve the famed world domination in the not too distant future.
I disagree. I think that OS X has a better chance at this. Apple keeps surprising me left and right on both the software and hardware front.
It is like a rite of passage for the best and the brightest.
No, a $40B bank account is the rite of passage for the best and the brightest. Google is one of my favorite examples for this. They have incredible compensation plans (salary, working environment, benefits (gormet chefs ON STAFF!)), and they get extremely bright people.
There is currently 1000+ people working on the various aspects of the Linux kernel.
Again, Google is a very small company yet they innovate without a large number of people. The Cliche "Too many cooks in the kitchen" comes to mind.
The idea of MS innovating its way out of this is silly.
No, it's not. MS has some extremely bright people working for them, they have contributed a lot to computing, and it's rediculous to attribute all of their success to "luck" or "aggressive business".
Still, as successful as Linux is, I think that OS X is going to start eroding Linux's [potential] marketshare within the desktop OS product space, and eventually the server product space. Heck, if Apple would get it's act together and build proprietary x86 based hardware (which would make cross-platform coding a bit easier, and make Apple's hardware more affordable and performant), I'm not sure if Linux could compete at all on the desktop.
I disagree that Flamebait is appropriate, but I also disagree with the fact that some moderators moderated my post +4 insightful! I didn't say anything insightful either - I was just offering my opinion of moderation!
My favorite quotes:
Recovering from current external perceptions of Microsoft as a paranoid, untrustworthy, greedy, petty, and politically inept organization will take years.
Linux is certainly a threat to Microsoft's less-than-perfect server software right now (and to its desktop in the not-too-distant future)
My absolute favorite: Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results.
There are many clever and motivated people out there, who have many different reasons to avoid buying directly into a Microsoft proprietary stack.
I like how he doesn't judge people who go against MS - he respects their intellect and their decision making process. OSS folks should do the same for those of us who make the decisions to use MS in certain areas.
+5 Interesting - I'd buy that because it's interesting discussion. +5 Insightful? Please, there's too much anti-MS, anti-corporation, communisitic BS in this post to give it an Insightful rating.
Although I haven't used OS X much, I personally hated the old Mac OS UI (among other things). I've always thought of Mac's as second-rate expensive computers aside from the very narrow set of tasks that it could do better than a "Wintel" box. However, when I sat down to OS X I thought, "It's not perfect, but this is a pretty slick OS" - and that was pre-Jaguar. I can't wait to try Jaguar with Safari and Keynote. If only I could get a fast G4 (1.25 ghz) for ~$1500 with a smaller footprint then the current towers, I'd probably get one for all of my A/V stuff (which I current do under Win2K).
The biggest parts of the .NET API that are proprietary are ASP.NET (most of system.web.*), ADO.NET (system.data.*), and WinForms (system.windows). It's important to note that while these aren't standards, they can definitely be implemented on other platforms because of their abstraction. True, there are parts of windows.forms that tie into the Win32 API - hence the need for WINE. But there are many projects (like GTK#) that allow you quickly and efficiently write a GUI that is not dependant on Win32. As far as ASP.NET and ADO.NET, these can be reimplemented with no emulation for the most part. Actually, ASP.NET is written in C#, and Mono has mad a lot of progress in this area (although they will always be one step behind - ASP.NET 1.1 is going to be released soon). As far as ECMA standardization, yes, C# and the CLI are ECMA standards (the actual runtime is not, but the specifications to build your own are). This means that MS can't arbitrarly screw over Mono (for example) by changing the CLI and rendering all of Mono's class libraries inneffective. What they CAN do, and what your concern is, is change their libraries (like ADO.NET). However, that would also screw over their own developers. So, the most they can do is copyright and patent ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc., which is no worse then what Sun has done.
.NET and MS decides to screw everyone over, you can expose that investment to your new platform (Say, J2EE) via SOAP (or .NET Remoting which is faster, but would require additional work implement on another platform) while you slowly migrate to the new platform, all the while avoiding the need to buy into Microsoft to keep your existing investment running. The above can all be said for Java or any other platform that supports SOAP or another common RPC. This is all in contrast with Windows development earlier, in which you where (for the most part) locked in with proprietary (and ugly) technologies like COM and VB.
The real point is, however, that if you invest in
In most cases SQL should not be found in the "codebehind" (essentially an abstract object in which the aspx page inherits), as the codebehind is generally very specific to the presentation. Unless dynamic SQL is being generating (which should be upon RARE exception), a DAL (Data Access Layer) class or a Utility class (eg: PersonUtility for the Person object) should be the only places that access a backend datastore, and for a database one should just reference stored proc's.
wasnt Microsoft supposed to be split up
No, and thank goodness. A drastic measure a solution is not, albeit it "feels" right because it's drastic. Remember that MS is a business, and we can always choose a competitor (Apple's doing quite nicely now, and the MS still doesn't have the lead in the Enterprise).
What needs to be done, and what has been done, is to enforce regulations about how MS has operated it's business in an anticompetitive nature. However, do confuse aggressive business (in which the aim is to crush the competition) with anticompetitive practices (strong-armed OEM agreements that prevent competition). Competing strongly and crushing the competition is completely different then competing well in a race and beating everyone in the long run.
So, MS now has strict guidlines as far as "special pricing" for OEM's, therefore giving other x86 based operating systems a chance to compete for the desktop. Other browsers have popped up (and NS 4.x sucked), so I'm not worried about the "IE Integrated" nonsense, because one way or the other IE would be where it is today. Apple, MS's biggest competitor on the desktop since Day 1, has not been hurt by anti-competitive means because they operate on their own hardware, and are now pulling away from MS (Jaguar, Safari, Keynote, iTunes, etc.) at an alarming rate. And even though Linux is still a second-rate desktop (IMHO), it has come a long way and is available to the "normal" end user from large companies such as Walmart. Actually, my Mom works for a school district with a lot of lower income kids and I mentioned these $200-300 Lycoris boxes to her - what a great way to get a functional computer to someone who can't afford it.
So, now that the US has restricted MS's unfair OEM agreements, what more is there to be done? Let the market decide.
Languages are differnt. So they both compile into an IL? Big deal. Yes, it's nice that all languages on the .NET framework have access to the powerful class library, and all run on the CLR so that you can use a VB.NET DLL with a C# DLL (because in the end they're really just IL DLL's). However, the IL that VB.NET generally create's is a mess - especially if "option strict" is off, making it a loosely typed language.
Of course, you have the minor language features (not used most of the time) like "safe" pointers that makes C# nice to have as well.
So allthough the languages are a lot closer than ever, they still are different languages, and the differences do go beyong curly braces and verbose declarations.
Beyond the less proprietary nature of .NET (ECMA standards, minmal tie to Win32), it's also possible to any investment of .NET with any future technology through some form of XML (SOAP, etc.)
Don't they understand WHY T1's cost so much more?
Yes,
- Better uptime
- Significantly Faster (even if it's on a shared Frame), especially during "peak usage" when consumer broadband generally slows down.
- "Mission Critical" level support. It's a BIG deal when your T1 goes out. When your cable modem is down, you get to wait on hold, and then schedule a guy to come take a look at it within 1 - 2 business days.
The point of ISP's "capping" bandwidth (eg: 256k up, 640k down for some DSL's) is to limit the saturation. Adding a per-byte cap is rediculous as the bandwidth cap should cover "extreme" usage.