Quite frankly, I love.NET, Win2K is the most stable workstation I've ever used (with OS X right on it's heals), and I really love the XBox. However, people like Craig Mundie need to leave MS, because they are overshadowing MS's innovations with these rediculous public statements. For those of us who actually appreciate a lot of what MS is done, he is making our job of convincing others quite difficult.
but you might have noticed that development of IE has slowed drastically since Netscape was bought by AOL
No, I have not noticed.
Just because there hasn't been a complete rewrite (IE4) doesn't mean there haven't been major improvements. Many are not in the area's of visible features (like all of the preferences in Opera or Mozilla), but under the hood for developers. Things like AutoComplete (annoying, but not to the average consumer), real time image modification, and much better CSS and "DHTML" support have made IE continue to be one of the best web browsers. As far as speed it can only be beat by Opera. Missing features like "preventing pop-ups" on the surface doesn't mean a lot hasn't happened under the hood.
Actually, when MS started gaining serious marketshare, Netscape decided to make their browser free in order to compete. Laughably, everyone I knew said, "what's different". You made my point: People chose to ignore the Shareware-like license, and thought it was free. The point is, it was legally available for free, way before IE was available at all.
You are making the assumption that I tried it last night. When I tested BeOS I had Win98 on my other machine. This is what I was comparing it to. BeOS (R5, in fact) was installed on the following hardware:
AMD K62 266 w/64megs RAM 3Com 905C Creative Soundblaster PCI S3 video card (forgot what model) EPox motherboard
Win 95SE had no problem with this hardware, Linux had little problem (some video issues at first, but at least it got on my network automagically) and BeOS could not, for the life of it, work properly. Other peers have had similar issues as well.
Really, I liked a lot of what BE was doing, but they didn't have the maturity or R&D to make a good OS. Look at Apple. They do have the R&D, and they are still coming out with a great OS. I have yet to see a good consumer level OS get hampered by MS. The real issue is that the only other OS other then Windows that's suitable for consumers is OS X. Others (BE, OS/2 Warp, Linux, etc.) have fallen short in major areas.
Everyone keeps talking about MS and political contributions, but we ignore the facts that show how MS (especially BEFORE the antitrust cases) was one of the least politically involved (financially and otherwise) corporations. Really, they stayed out of it until we brought them into it.
BeOS would have superceded it by now and become the standard desktop OS.
I tried installing BeOs and Linux had better PnP then BeOS did (which is pretty bad). I mean, I really liked the concept of a lightweight GUI, and there was some really cool music related software that was exclusive to BeOS, but I could not see the average consumer even caring about it let alone being able to figure out how to use it.
So, when people don't agree with you, they are buying into propaganda? Personally, I too believe that this entire case is brought on by sore losers pick on MS. I'm not saying there was no basis for an antitrust suit. The allegations of OEM strongarming and questionable buyouts are worth investigating. The problem is, the biggest "whine" was from "poor Netscape" regarding the browser war. My tax dollars where wasted on a huge court battle about a stupid browser without looking at some of the more important issues. As a web developer from the "early NS days", allow me to once again reflect why NS lost the war.
First, Netscape 2.0 and 3.0 crushed anything MS had going for it. It was also free as can be, even though it was boxed in shelves. I don't know anyone (laymens included) who ever purchased NS.
When Netscape 4.0 came out, and I wasn't too impressed with the "Layer" tags and other non-W3C crap as they tried to have their "own" DHTML. When IE 4.0 came out, it had it's problems, but eventually (after a few updates) I humbled myself and made the religious switch. It was faster, supported a lot of the W3C recommendations, and was easier for me to develop for.
The reality of the situation, was that MS made the better browser. You should note that most IE4.0 browsers where downloaded (just like NS) since Win98 was not even released yet. Most copies of Win95 being sold still had IE3 AND Netscape on it. Really, by the time Win98 came out in June of 1998, IE4 already had made huge gains, based on consumer choice. Furthermore, many remember that at the time most all ISP software packaged Netscape as the exclusive or preferred browser, yet IE still gained marketshare. Again, remember that this is all before IE packaged with Windows.
Finally, a commercial browser called "Opera", which costs money (unless you want to deal with annoying ads) is gaining marketshare even in the current "unfair" environment. They make a great lightweight browser that is faster then IE or even current versions of NS. It doesn't quite render as well as IE but it is pretty darn close. It already has 5.6% marketshare in Europe and is gaining popularity internationally.
The real problem is, people on/. believe that MS has done X things wrong and deserves N punishments for the crimes that are so "obvious". I don't think they are as obvious as we make them out to be. You may not agree with my reasoning regarding why Netscape died, but you can't argue the fact that determining whethor or not it "died fairly" is not trivial. I think that all the issues at hand (OEM licensing etc.) are very complex issues that deserve a lot of investigating in order to come to any conclusion.
With people paying for metered access and therefore a "per click" fee, why would someone want to visit my journal or personal page? I think you may be killing some of the cool features of/. by making people "conserve" their clicks.
Plus, as many others mentioned, those that use/. the most are generally the ones contributing the most. Therefore, it really all comes out in the wash. Flat rates work for the telco companies, and they will work here as well.
With all of the posts saying that our 1GHz's are fast enough, I say until Quake n looks like Final Fantasy (the movie!) we don't have fast enough CPU,RAM,Video,[Insert Bottleneck Here].
Right. So, if they perceive this Battlenet clone to be a significant enough loss to legally act on it, I highly doubt that a handful of people will equal the potential loss of the clone. My point is we don't have the numbers, and/. seems to think that they represent 99% of the consumer base, but in reality, we probably represent a lot less then 1%. People are not a bunch of extreme zealots out there - they just want to play cool games.
First, I really hate games that don't let you do a direct TCP/IP connection to another server. If my friend set's up a server, I should be able to type in his IP and not go through some stupid "online service" (which is why I stopped buying Westwood games).
So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.
Unfortunately your recommendation lacks insight into the real problem. They may have shareholders that have the power to overthrow you if you don't use your corporate legal power to it's greatest extent. This has nothing to do with an "evil" company. Everytime I see a company "abuse" the DMCA (read: Use the DMCA), I frown on our government that's not acting on it.
Think about the soft money issue. Even the candidates (Gore, Nader) who where very much against soft money accepted soft money because that's the law of the playing field. If they "stood up for what was right" by "boycotting soft money" they would have had no chance in the race. Blizzard is playing by the rules fair and square. Don't like it, Change The Rules. Boycotting their product only does good if you actually use that money towards defeating the DMCA. Otherwise, you are just as passive as those who buys it with no regard.
No, the OEM's have no permission to add software to Windows unless MS grants them such permission. Again, MS would be stupid to NOT grant them permission to do so. This is a question about legalism not "shouldism".
The OEM does not have free reign over MS's products. It makes no difference if the OEM or MS put's the icon on the desktop. The bottom line is it's modification of MS's software. I agree that if it is/was proven that the agreement prevented them from modifying the bootloader menu, that it is wrong regardless of their monopoly status. Personally, I believe it is in MS's best interest to allow the OEM some flexibility in this area, and recent changes to OEM licsenses within the last year reflect this.
Your second point is completely speculative and could have easily gone on a more pessimistic route. And really, where Linux is today, I still have PnP problems.
Microsoft never gave a reason for this, and it is assumed that MS made this change to restrict other OSes from running along side of Windows.
This is really due to the fact that ME was moving closer to the NT codebase, which also has no way of booting into "DOS mode" (which is essentially what BeOS did with win9x).
Five years ago Microsoft's OEM agreements forbade putting a "Boot into BeOS" icon on the desktop. Heaven forbid a company not wanting to give free advertisement to it's competitors. Nothing prevented the OEM's from creating a bootloader menu so that the user could select which OS they wanted.
Be never really had a chance anyway. I installed it about 2 years ago and Linux had better PnP support for my hardware. It was a cool OS in certain ways (I'm an audiophile and there are some cool tools that are exclusive to Be). However, when I turn on Windows, everything is autodetected and Just Works(tm). With Be, I was troubleshooting why it couldn't detect a 3Com 905C, a Sound Blaster Live, and a Voodoo3 (not exactly exotic components). After awhile it became very much a "neet toy OS" for me, but nothing that I could seriously use.
Disclaimer: I'm about to get my Dad the new iMac because I think they're great. However, I must comment on the accuracy of the following claims.
- Seperate Microsoft CALs for everything under the sun.
This is an unfounded claim. You still need 10 copies of Photoshop on a 10 person Mac network. It sounds like you are trying to compare a server to a PC. Let's stick to desktops, since that's what Apple sells.
- Down-time caused by virii, worms, and other compromise.
Zero. Eudora doesn't have the gross security issues that Outlook does. But we're talking mail clients, let's go back to the OS.
- Bandwidth costs associated with said worms.
The worms try to hit all networks regardless of OS.
- Down-time due to hardware failure caused by use of cheap/shoddy/no-name components.
You can buy cheap/shoddy/no-name components for your Mac as well. The choice to buy good or bad components bears no relevance to the OS's quality.
- Hour wasted re-installing OS 2-3 times annually
Now you're just being rediculous.
- Time wasted installing/finding/troubleshooting device drivers when installing hardware.
Okay, this isn't Windows 3.11. Since Win95 (and it's only gotten better) this argument's been old hat. And although I have no experience with OS X or OS 9, I can tell you that I've had more then my fair share of woes with OS 8 and adding hardware.
Apple makes great machines and you should be focusing on their strengths instead of bashing Windows with unfounded claims.
OS X on Intel just wouldn't have the same experience.
You're right - it wouldn't work. There is no way that Apple could come up with an OS that has even half of the hardware support that Windows does. Hardware support on the x86 platform is no easy task. Just look how far Linux has come, and how much farther it has to go.
Once again, the elected leaders of Georgia demonstrate why this state is still ranked 49th in education quality . It's stupidity that leads to violence. Since this state is chock full of stupid people it might explain the high violent crime rate.
But of course it's OK for CNN et al to show scenes of mass slaughter of innocents.
No, because the TV is at home where it's the Parent's job to regulate (or educate) viewing. The Parent may also buy the video game. However, if the Parent chooses not to allow the game into the home, there needs to be a system in place to enforce it. I don't see the difference between Movie rules (PG-13, R, etc.) and this.
Re:You want the collective /. answer?
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 1
If you followed the link and checked out the Tshirt I designed, it is even MORE ironic.
Yes, I got that too:-)
Re:You want the collective /. answer?
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 2
Ironically the site you link to runs on IIS and uses ASP.NET, the Web Application Framework of the.NET platform.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite frankly, I love .NET, Win2K is the most stable workstation I've ever used (with OS X right on it's heals), and I really love the XBox. However, people like Craig Mundie need to leave MS, because they are overshadowing MS's innovations with these rediculous public statements. For those of us who actually appreciate a lot of what MS is done, he is making our job of convincing others quite difficult.
but you might have noticed that development of IE has slowed drastically since Netscape was bought by AOL
No, I have not noticed.
Just because there hasn't been a complete rewrite (IE4) doesn't mean there haven't been major improvements. Many are not in the area's of visible features (like all of the preferences in Opera or Mozilla), but under the hood for developers. Things like AutoComplete (annoying, but not to the average consumer), real time image modification, and much better CSS and "DHTML" support have made IE continue to be one of the best web browsers. As far as speed it can only be beat by Opera. Missing features like "preventing pop-ups" on the surface doesn't mean a lot hasn't happened under the hood.
Actually, when MS started gaining serious marketshare, Netscape decided to make their browser free in order to compete. Laughably, everyone I knew said, "what's different". You made my point: People chose to ignore the Shareware-like license, and thought it was free. The point is, it was legally available for free, way before IE was available at all.
You are making the assumption that I tried it last night. When I tested BeOS I had Win98 on my other machine. This is what I was comparing it to. BeOS (R5, in fact) was installed on the following hardware:
AMD K62 266 w/64megs RAM
3Com 905C
Creative Soundblaster PCI
S3 video card (forgot what model)
EPox motherboard
Win 95SE had no problem with this hardware, Linux had little problem (some video issues at first, but at least it got on my network automagically) and BeOS could not, for the life of it, work properly. Other peers have had similar issues as well.
Really, I liked a lot of what BE was doing, but they didn't have the maturity or R&D to make a good OS. Look at Apple. They do have the R&D, and they are still coming out with a great OS. I have yet to see a good consumer level OS get hampered by MS. The real issue is that the only other OS other then Windows that's suitable for consumers is OS X. Others (BE, OS/2 Warp, Linux, etc.) have fallen short in major areas.
Everyone keeps talking about MS and political contributions, but we ignore the facts that show how MS (especially BEFORE the antitrust cases) was one of the least politically involved (financially and otherwise) corporations. Really, they stayed out of it until we brought them into it.
BeOS would have superceded it by now and become the standard desktop OS.
I tried installing BeOs and Linux had better PnP then BeOS did (which is pretty bad). I mean, I really liked the concept of a lightweight GUI, and there was some really cool music related software that was exclusive to BeOS, but I could not see the average consumer even caring about it let alone being able to figure out how to use it.
So, when people don't agree with you, they are buying into propaganda? Personally, I too believe that this entire case is brought on by sore losers pick on MS. I'm not saying there was no basis for an antitrust suit. The allegations of OEM strongarming and questionable buyouts are worth investigating. The problem is, the biggest "whine" was from "poor Netscape" regarding the browser war. My tax dollars where wasted on a huge court battle about a stupid browser without looking at some of the more important issues. As a web developer from the "early NS days", allow me to once again reflect why NS lost the war.
/. believe that MS has done X things wrong and deserves N punishments for the crimes that are so "obvious". I don't think they are as obvious as we make them out to be. You may not agree with my reasoning regarding why Netscape died, but you can't argue the fact that determining whethor or not it "died fairly" is not trivial. I think that all the issues at hand (OEM licensing etc.) are very complex issues that deserve a lot of investigating in order to come to any conclusion.
First, Netscape 2.0 and 3.0 crushed anything MS had going for it. It was also free as can be, even though it was boxed in shelves. I don't know anyone (laymens included) who ever purchased NS.
When Netscape 4.0 came out, and I wasn't too impressed with the "Layer" tags and other non-W3C crap as they tried to have their "own" DHTML. When IE 4.0 came out, it had it's problems, but eventually (after a few updates) I humbled myself and made the religious switch. It was faster, supported a lot of the W3C recommendations, and was easier for me to develop for.
The reality of the situation, was that MS made the better browser. You should note that most IE4.0 browsers where downloaded (just like NS) since Win98 was not even released yet. Most copies of Win95 being sold still had IE3 AND Netscape on it. Really, by the time Win98 came out in June of 1998, IE4 already had made huge gains, based on consumer choice. Furthermore, many remember that at the time most all ISP software packaged Netscape as the exclusive or preferred browser, yet IE still gained marketshare. Again, remember that this is all before IE packaged with Windows.
Finally, a commercial browser called "Opera", which costs money (unless you want to deal with annoying ads) is gaining marketshare even in the current "unfair" environment. They make a great lightweight browser that is faster then IE or even current versions of NS. It doesn't quite render as well as IE but it is pretty darn close. It already has 5.6% marketshare in Europe and is gaining popularity internationally.
The real problem is, people on
With people paying for metered access and therefore a "per click" fee, why would someone want to visit my journal or personal page? I think you may be killing some of the cool features of /. by making people "conserve" their clicks.
/. the most are generally the ones contributing the most. Therefore, it really all comes out in the wash. Flat rates work for the telco companies, and they will work here as well.
Plus, as many others mentioned, those that use
With all of the posts saying that our 1GHz's are fast enough, I say until Quake n looks like Final Fantasy (the movie!) we don't have fast enough CPU,RAM,Video,[Insert Bottleneck Here].
You sir, need to get a clue.
/. seems to think that they represent 99% of the consumer base, but in reality, we probably represent a lot less then 1%. People are not a bunch of extreme zealots out there - they just want to play cool games.
Right back attcha.
Companies are in the business of making money.
Right. So, if they perceive this Battlenet clone to be a significant enough loss to legally act on it, I highly doubt that a handful of people will equal the potential loss of the clone. My point is we don't have the numbers, and
First, I really hate games that don't let you do a direct TCP/IP connection to another server. If my friend set's up a server, I should be able to type in his IP and not go through some stupid "online service" (which is why I stopped buying Westwood games).
Second, I don't think Boycotting is the answer. See my prior post here.
So: when you see Warcraft III on the shelves, don't buy it.
Unfortunately your recommendation lacks insight into the real problem. They may have shareholders that have the power to overthrow you if you don't use your corporate legal power to it's greatest extent. This has nothing to do with an "evil" company. Everytime I see a company "abuse" the DMCA (read: Use the DMCA), I frown on our government that's not acting on it.
Think about the soft money issue. Even the candidates (Gore, Nader) who where very much against soft money accepted soft money because that's the law of the playing field. If they "stood up for what was right" by "boycotting soft money" they would have had no chance in the race. Blizzard is playing by the rules fair and square. Don't like it, Change The Rules. Boycotting their product only does good if you actually use that money towards defeating the DMCA. Otherwise, you are just as passive as those who buys it with no regard.
A) There are already "cheap joypad nockoffs" that are perfectly legal that you can buy at Best Buy for $20-30.
B) Playstation 2 has region encoding on it's games.
Just don't buy products (in this case an X-Box) that have this sort of "feature".
Better not buy the Playstation 2 either.
No, the OEM's have no permission to add software to Windows unless MS grants them such permission. Again, MS would be stupid to NOT grant them permission to do so. This is a question about legalism not "shouldism".
The OEM does not have free reign over MS's products. It makes no difference if the OEM or MS put's the icon on the desktop. The bottom line is it's modification of MS's software. I agree that if it is/was proven that the agreement prevented them from modifying the bootloader menu, that it is wrong regardless of their monopoly status. Personally, I believe it is in MS's best interest to allow the OEM some flexibility in this area, and recent changes to OEM licsenses within the last year reflect this.
Your second point is completely speculative and could have easily gone on a more pessimistic route. And really, where Linux is today, I still have PnP problems.
Microsoft never gave a reason for this, and it is assumed that MS made this change to restrict other OSes from running along side of Windows.
This is really due to the fact that ME was moving closer to the NT codebase, which also has no way of booting into "DOS mode" (which is essentially what BeOS did with win9x).
Five years ago Microsoft's OEM agreements forbade putting a "Boot into BeOS" icon on the desktop.
Heaven forbid a company not wanting to give free advertisement to it's competitors. Nothing prevented the OEM's from creating a bootloader menu so that the user could select which OS they wanted.
Be never really had a chance anyway. I installed it about 2 years ago and Linux had better PnP support for my hardware. It was a cool OS in certain ways (I'm an audiophile and there are some cool tools that are exclusive to Be). However, when I turn on Windows, everything is autodetected and Just Works(tm). With Be, I was troubleshooting why it couldn't detect a 3Com 905C, a Sound Blaster Live, and a Voodoo3 (not exactly exotic components). After awhile it became very much a "neet toy OS" for me, but nothing that I could seriously use.
Linux takes 20 minutes to boot.
Disclaimer: I'm about to get my Dad the new iMac because I think they're great. However, I must comment on the accuracy of the following claims.
- Seperate Microsoft CALs for everything under the sun.
This is an unfounded claim. You still need 10 copies of Photoshop on a 10 person Mac network. It sounds like you are trying to compare a server to a PC. Let's stick to desktops, since that's what Apple sells.
- Down-time caused by virii, worms, and other compromise.
Zero. Eudora doesn't have the gross security issues that Outlook does. But we're talking mail clients, let's go back to the OS.
- Bandwidth costs associated with said worms.
The worms try to hit all networks regardless of OS.
- Down-time due to hardware failure caused by use of cheap/shoddy/no-name components.
You can buy cheap/shoddy/no-name components for your Mac as well. The choice to buy good or bad components bears no relevance to the OS's quality.
- Hour wasted re-installing OS 2-3 times annually
Now you're just being rediculous.
- Time wasted installing/finding/troubleshooting device drivers when installing hardware.
Okay, this isn't Windows 3.11. Since Win95 (and it's only gotten better) this argument's been old hat. And although I have no experience with OS X or OS 9, I can tell you that I've had more then my fair share of woes with OS 8 and adding hardware.
Apple makes great machines and you should be focusing on their strengths instead of bashing Windows with unfounded claims.
OS X on Intel just wouldn't have the same experience.
You're right - it wouldn't work. There is no way that Apple could come up with an OS that has even half of the hardware support that Windows does. Hardware support on the x86 platform is no easy task. Just look how far Linux has come, and how much farther it has to go.
Once again, the elected leaders of Georgia demonstrate why this state is still ranked 49th in education quality . It's stupidity that leads to violence. Since this state is chock full of stupid people it might explain the high violent crime rate.
Isn't the rap group "Outkast" from Georgia?
But of course it's OK for CNN et al to show scenes of mass slaughter of innocents.
No, because the TV is at home where it's the Parent's job to regulate (or educate) viewing. The Parent may also buy the video game. However, if the Parent chooses not to allow the game into the home, there needs to be a system in place to enforce it. I don't see the difference between Movie rules (PG-13, R, etc.) and this.
If you followed the link and checked out the Tshirt I designed, it is even MORE ironic.
:-)
Yes, I got that too
Ironically the site you link to runs on IIS and uses ASP.NET, the Web Application Framework of the .NET platform.