Unfortunately, as a market matures, true innovation becomes rarer and rarer, simply because when you have a much broader pool of technology to work with it becomes more and more difficult to think of things that haven't already been thought of (and implemented).
Having said that, I can't think of a single technology that works the same as ASP.NET can in one specific way.
This isn't the default for ASP.NET 1.x, but it is for 2.x. The ASP.NET runtime will compile (from source) it's "code behind" files and dynamically cache them.
JSP's and Cold Fusion must be compiled to byte code first. ASP.NET is the only similar technology that works strictly from source, compiles to byte code on demand, and then caches that byte code until a change is detected.
Now, i'd call that an innovation, using your definition. But it's not that big of a deal. Lots of such innovations occur every day, but they're not the ground shattering examples that GUI's, Mouses, or Spreadsheets were.
Paradigm defining innovation is VERY rare these days, but innovation happens all the time.
Actually, MS and Apple did have licensing agreements years before that. One of the reasons Windows 3 didn't have a "trash can" and a "desktop" ala Windows 95/MacOS was because of contracts MS had with apple that didn't allow it. When those contracts expired, MS was free to do what it wanted to.
BitTorrent was just an extension to early protocols like gnutella which was just a distributed form of napster, which of course was a distributed form of other protocols before it.
Where do you get your information? I don't think IBM invented *ANY* of those things. They may have been the first company to bring products with those features to market, but that's the same thing Microsoft does.
Patents are not a sign of innovation. MS also owns 10's of thousands of patents. Would you agree that this makes them more innovative than a company that might own 100? It just means they have an army of lawyers to file patent applications.
I believe the statement being made is that those smart guys are not working in management. Further, that Microsoft management is incapable of the mindset required to understand the motivation of those that make OSS work.
There's more of that "They just don't understand" mentality. I think they understand just fine. They just disagree, and the "open source mindset" is different from their own and incompatibile.
You seem to be under the impression that if you "understand" the OSS mindset, you have no choice but to convert to it. That's simply not the case.
Microsoft seems to waffle a lot on their position in regards to OSS because they're trying different avenues of attack. Sort of a "throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks" approach.
And, have you noticed, all your examples are from 30 years ago?
BTW, Web browsers were not innovative, but evolutionary. There existed similar things like Gopher, WAIS, and what not for many years before that.
The fact of the matter is, Technology has become "middle aged" and very little room remains for doing something nobody has ever done before. Everything is an evolution of something else.
Today, "Innovation" basically means "Doing something in a way nobody has ever done it before". We, the technologists and engineers, are focusing on improving things rather than creating new things. It's not just Microsoft.
Name a single true innovation in the last 10 years. Just one.
Huh? Do you actually understand how antivirus and anti-spyware work?
They work by intercepting the filesystem and noticing the virus or spyware as it's entering the system and before it's had a chance to execute. Therefore, it can't drop its payload if it's not even executed yet.
I think you'd have a hard time finding any major company that wasn't exactly as you describe, including Novell, IBM, Oracle, and Sun.
You can't let the techies run a multi-billion dollar company or nothing gets done. As the old saying goes, "There comes a time in every project to shoot the engineers."
If every company waited until their products were perfect nothing would ever be produced.
I'm strugling to understand how your argument has anything to do with the differences between 2000 and XP in regards to hyperthreading. Even if your argument were correct (which it's not, see my later comment to you for details), it's a completely different point than the person you are responding to made.
It is a fact that XP has fixes which make it more Hyperthreading friendly, but 2000 doesn't. No registry key will change that.
Windows 2000 is no longer supported. That means any new vulnerabilities found in XP probably exist in 2000 as well, and you won't get fixes for them. That alone is reason enough to stop using 2000 (whether you go to XP or Linux is irrelevant).
Personally, I make daily use of features in XP that 2000 doesn't have. You might as well, if you actually used it.
I think the problem that most people with a brain have with comments like yours is that USING YOUR BRAIN would help your argument.
Do you honestly think that WIndows 2000, 2003, and XP are the exact same code with only some registry keys set differently?
Apart from the fact that tons of work has been done on each version (bug fixes, new features, etc..) The difference between server and workstation versions is very clear. Various server programs that exist on the Server versions of the OS do not exist on the workstation versions.
There is no DNS server, DHCP server, Active Directory Server, etc.. on XP. Fooling the kernel into thinking it's a server version doesn't make those programs magically appear.
XP ships with IIS5.1, 2003 with IIS6. Fooling the kernel into thinking it's a server version doesn't make IIS6 magically appear.
Sure, you can switch the kernel of a workstation version of Windows to a Server version, but that's like claming that you can convert Fedora Core into Red Hat Advanced Server by changing some config entries.
It's mostly the userland that you're interested in, not the kernel tunings.
Oh come on, Outlook 2003 is a pretty major upgrade in usuability from previous versions, and Enterage 2004 provides exchange connectivity (which Office X didn't). Access also added a lot of improvement.
Word and Excel? Not so much, but to claim that there's no improvement in office is not very accurate.
Not exactly. Yes, the case of a PDF would work for that, but that's not the only kinds of documents. But what about spreadsheet files that the students need to use with their work, or Word documents. You want to give them generic storage that they can use for their class related files, and give them a "folder" metaphor so that they can work on stuff without downloading it locally first, and then have to re-upload it after you're done.
Also, you might have to pay licensing fees on the number of copies of files you distribute and only want to give some people access, and many colleges and university webservers don't have the infrastructure to give permissions to students based on the courses they're enrolled in, etc...
iFolder is a folder synchronization package, not a remote file access package. In a university setting, I want to be able to access my files anywhere (coffee shop, parents computer, my laptop, lab computer) without leaving them laying around for the next person to find and dig through.
I think the problem most universities have is that they can't require a solution that requires specific software on the computer. The students might be using a home computer, or a work computer, or a coffee shop computer. They need something that allows them to access files and still maintain some level of privacy and security while allowing flexibility.
There's the rub. Many universities want to MANDATE the use of web based file services for document distribution. You can't take the opt-in approach for this.
For example, a professor wants to distribute a pdf document to his 300 students. Rather than print off 300 copies, he just drops them in their file storage area.
Excuse me? I'm no appologist. I simply don't believe in over-exagerations just because Microsoft is evil.
Binary drivers are often better than open source drivers in terms of performance, but clearly open source drivers are better in terms of being able to recompile them. However, the open source drivers suffer from the same problem that code libraries like Borland's VCL do. Change the version, you break the interfaces.
Come on. Answer me one question. How can a case be "settled" if the plaintiff has won? If the plaintiff has won, he gets whatever the judge or jury grants. You settle to end a case before it is won.
You are simply trying to do anything to justfying making infactual statements. In US law, a lawsuit (which is what this was) cannot be a "conviction". Period. The only results of a lawsuit are damages, not felony convictions.
My point was simply that you should be accurate. I agree completely that the civil cases are based on facts presented at criminal trials in the cases you mention, but the MS case was never tried criminally. That's the difference.
Wrong. There were lots of apps that simply did not work correctly for a variety of reasons.
For example, Terminal emuluation applications had all kinds of trouble, mostly because the dos mode com port driver was timing based and was screwed up by the way OS/2 multitasked.
OLE and ODBC apps didn't work right because OLE and DDE didn't work across virtual machines (OS/2 ran each Windows app with it's own complete version of Windows, which made object sharing impossible). And while yes, i did make up that number (What was your first guess, the fact that I said "something like"?) it was based on my own experience working as an IBM Business partner.
It was a fact that DR-DOS had compatibility problems with Windows as well as other non-MS programs. The AARD "error" message had nothing to do with actual compatibility issues that existed.
Yeah, it certainly helped MS's position, but by falsely claiming that the REAL compatibility issues were because MS intentionally broke those programs is misstating things. Novell themselves acknowledged bugs in DR-Dos that effected compatibility.
conviction n. the result of a criminal trial in which the defendant has been found guilty of a crime.
Tell me, how excatly can someone be "convicted" if the judgement is vacated? Actually, i did misspeak. It's the judgement that determines "guilt" or not.
No, actually, IBM's fatal mistake was outlined by John Dvorak (IIRC) many years ago.
What OEM would purchase OS/2 from IBM, their main competitor? Microsoft, evil as they were, were vendor neutral. Buying Windows didn't subsidize your competitor.
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Unfortunately, as a market matures, true innovation becomes rarer and rarer, simply because when you have a much broader pool of technology to work with it becomes more and more difficult to think of things that haven't already been thought of (and implemented).
Having said that, I can't think of a single technology that works the same as ASP.NET can in one specific way.
This isn't the default for ASP.NET 1.x, but it is for 2.x. The ASP.NET runtime will compile (from source) it's "code behind" files and dynamically cache them.
JSP's and Cold Fusion must be compiled to byte code first. ASP.NET is the only similar technology that works strictly from source, compiles to byte code on demand, and then caches that byte code until a change is detected.
Now, i'd call that an innovation, using your definition. But it's not that big of a deal. Lots of such innovations occur every day, but they're not the ground shattering examples that GUI's, Mouses, or Spreadsheets were.
Paradigm defining innovation is VERY rare these days, but innovation happens all the time.
Actually, MS and Apple did have licensing agreements years before that. One of the reasons Windows 3 didn't have a "trash can" and a "desktop" ala Windows 95/MacOS was because of contracts MS had with apple that didn't allow it. When those contracts expired, MS was free to do what it wanted to.
BitTorrent was just an extension to early protocols like gnutella which was just a distributed form of napster, which of course was a distributed form of other protocols before it.
Sorry, no cigar.
Where do you get your information? I don't think IBM invented *ANY* of those things. They may have been the first company to bring products with those features to market, but that's the same thing Microsoft does.
Patents are not a sign of innovation. MS also owns 10's of thousands of patents. Would you agree that this makes them more innovative than a company that might own 100? It just means they have an army of lawyers to file patent applications.
I believe the statement being made is that those smart guys are not working in management. Further, that Microsoft management is incapable of the mindset required to understand the motivation of those that make OSS work.
There's more of that "They just don't understand" mentality. I think they understand just fine. They just disagree, and the "open source mindset" is different from their own and incompatibile.
You seem to be under the impression that if you "understand" the OSS mindset, you have no choice but to convert to it. That's simply not the case.
Microsoft seems to waffle a lot on their position in regards to OSS because they're trying different avenues of attack. Sort of a "throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks" approach.
And, have you noticed, all your examples are from 30 years ago?
BTW, Web browsers were not innovative, but evolutionary. There existed similar things like Gopher, WAIS, and what not for many years before that.
The fact of the matter is, Technology has become "middle aged" and very little room remains for doing something nobody has ever done before. Everything is an evolution of something else.
Today, "Innovation" basically means "Doing something in a way nobody has ever done it before". We, the technologists and engineers, are focusing on improving things rather than creating new things. It's not just Microsoft.
Name a single true innovation in the last 10 years. Just one.
Huh? Do you actually understand how antivirus and anti-spyware work?
They work by intercepting the filesystem and noticing the virus or spyware as it's entering the system and before it's had a chance to execute. Therefore, it can't drop its payload if it's not even executed yet.
I think you'd have a hard time finding any major company that wasn't exactly as you describe, including Novell, IBM, Oracle, and Sun.
You can't let the techies run a multi-billion dollar company or nothing gets done. As the old saying goes, "There comes a time in every project to shoot the engineers."
If every company waited until their products were perfect nothing would ever be produced.
I'm strugling to understand how your argument has anything to do with the differences between 2000 and XP in regards to hyperthreading. Even if your argument were correct (which it's not, see my later comment to you for details), it's a completely different point than the person you are responding to made.
It is a fact that XP has fixes which make it more Hyperthreading friendly, but 2000 doesn't. No registry key will change that.
I really don't understand this line of argument.
Windows 2000 is no longer supported. That means any new vulnerabilities found in XP probably exist in 2000 as well, and you won't get fixes for them. That alone is reason enough to stop using 2000 (whether you go to XP or Linux is irrelevant).
Personally, I make daily use of features in XP that 2000 doesn't have. You might as well, if you actually used it.
I think the problem that most people with a brain have with comments like yours is that USING YOUR BRAIN would help your argument.
Do you honestly think that WIndows 2000, 2003, and XP are the exact same code with only some registry keys set differently?
Apart from the fact that tons of work has been done on each version (bug fixes, new features, etc..) The difference between server and workstation versions is very clear. Various server programs that exist on the Server versions of the OS do not exist on the workstation versions.
There is no DNS server, DHCP server, Active Directory Server, etc.. on XP. Fooling the kernel into thinking it's a server version doesn't make those programs magically appear.
XP ships with IIS5.1, 2003 with IIS6. Fooling the kernel into thinking it's a server version doesn't make IIS6 magically appear.
Sure, you can switch the kernel of a workstation version of Windows to a Server version, but that's like claming that you can convert Fedora Core into Red Hat Advanced Server by changing some config entries.
It's mostly the userland that you're interested in, not the kernel tunings.
Oh come on, Outlook 2003 is a pretty major upgrade in usuability from previous versions, and Enterage 2004 provides exchange connectivity (which Office X didn't). Access also added a lot of improvement.
Word and Excel? Not so much, but to claim that there's no improvement in office is not very accurate.
Umm.. but InfoPath has been around since 2002.
Not exactly. Yes, the case of a PDF would work for that, but that's not the only kinds of documents. But what about spreadsheet files that the students need to use with their work, or Word documents. You want to give them generic storage that they can use for their class related files, and give them a "folder" metaphor so that they can work on stuff without downloading it locally first, and then have to re-upload it after you're done.
Also, you might have to pay licensing fees on the number of copies of files you distribute and only want to give some people access, and many colleges and university webservers don't have the infrastructure to give permissions to students based on the courses they're enrolled in, etc...
iFolder is a folder synchronization package, not a remote file access package. In a university setting, I want to be able to access my files anywhere (coffee shop, parents computer, my laptop, lab computer) without leaving them laying around for the next person to find and dig through.
I think the problem most universities have is that they can't require a solution that requires specific software on the computer. The students might be using a home computer, or a work computer, or a coffee shop computer. They need something that allows them to access files and still maintain some level of privacy and security while allowing flexibility.
There's the rub. Many universities want to MANDATE the use of web based file services for document distribution. You can't take the opt-in approach for this.
For example, a professor wants to distribute a pdf document to his 300 students. Rather than print off 300 copies, he just drops them in their file storage area.
Excuse me? I'm no appologist. I simply don't believe in over-exagerations just because Microsoft is evil.
Binary drivers are often better than open source drivers in terms of performance, but clearly open source drivers are better in terms of being able to recompile them. However, the open source drivers suffer from the same problem that code libraries like Borland's VCL do. Change the version, you break the interfaces.
Your link doesn't work.
Come on. Answer me one question. How can a case be "settled" if the plaintiff has won? If the plaintiff has won, he gets whatever the judge or jury grants. You settle to end a case before it is won.
You are simply trying to do anything to justfying making infactual statements. In US law, a lawsuit (which is what this was) cannot be a "conviction". Period. The only results of a lawsuit are damages, not felony convictions.
My point was simply that you should be accurate. I agree completely that the civil cases are based on facts presented at criminal trials in the cases you mention, but the MS case was never tried criminally. That's the difference.
Wrong. There were lots of apps that simply did not work correctly for a variety of reasons.
For example, Terminal emuluation applications had all kinds of trouble, mostly because the dos mode com port driver was timing based and was screwed up by the way OS/2 multitasked.
OLE and ODBC apps didn't work right because OLE and DDE didn't work across virtual machines (OS/2 ran each Windows app with it's own complete version of Windows, which made object sharing impossible). And while yes, i did make up that number (What was your first guess, the fact that I said "something like"?) it was based on my own experience working as an IBM Business partner.
It was a fact that DR-DOS had compatibility problems with Windows as well as other non-MS programs. The AARD "error" message had nothing to do with actual compatibility issues that existed.
Yeah, it certainly helped MS's position, but by falsely claiming that the REAL compatibility issues were because MS intentionally broke those programs is misstating things. Novell themselves acknowledged bugs in DR-Dos that effected compatibility.
Ample recedence? How? A civil court cannot convict anyone of anything. It can only award damages.
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From a legal dictionary:
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=3
convict
1) v. to find guilty of a crime after a trial. 2) n. a person who has been convicted of a felony and sent to prison.
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=3
conviction
n. the result of a criminal trial in which the defendant has been found guilty of a crime.
Tell me, how excatly can someone be "convicted" if the judgement is vacated? Actually, i did misspeak. It's the judgement that determines "guilt" or not.
No, actually, IBM's fatal mistake was outlined by John Dvorak (IIRC) many years ago.
What OEM would purchase OS/2 from IBM, their main competitor? Microsoft, evil as they were, were vendor neutral. Buying Windows didn't subsidize your competitor.