Microsoft, like most other companies, has indeed had it's share of "innovation", popular opinion not withstanding.
It's easy to find things that are "kind of like" a new invention, that can be said for every single product in existence. It's just fun to do it for Microsoft.
Can you name a single software invention by anyone else that was truly unique? Anyone? Bueler? I guarantee anything you name can find something that is "kind of like" something else. That's how invention works, and that's why patents always have a list of references to other patents which the new patent draws upon. Unfortunately, you can't list things that aren't previously patented.
A short list of things which Microsoft has innovated (off the top of my head, without even googling) in would include (whether you like the ideas or not)
The Ribbon Photosynth COM (originally OLE) Internet Explorer Protected Mode
If you google around, you find lots of tongue in cheek and sarcastic comments, and comments like yours that say point blank that microsoft has never innovated anything. It's certainly true they've bought a lot of their technology, but not all of it and even when you consider technology they bought, they've often improved it with their own new technology (IE Protected Mode, for instance).
Also, Microsoft certainly has their share of bad technology they've implemented. ActiveX, for instance. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's still a novel idea (no, plug-ins weren't novel, but auto-installing them, and creating a generic model that could be used by more than just web browsers was).
So in reality, comments like your really are just hyperbole. It's simply not true that Microsoft has never created anything novel. Hell, Clippy anyone?
Ugh.. I'm sure there's lots of people that love their "highly customizable" UI's, and they would need to be pried from their cold, dead, stinking, rotting hands... but I move from machine to machine a lot, and have new versions of OS's all the time, taking the time to customize the UI would mean i would never get anything done.. so I need a good, solid, usable default UI so that I don't have to worry about customizing it, other than very slight tweaks.
Not to mention, they want the hard drives turned over? They've never heard of, you know.. copying?
So, rather than work with google to make sure all data is destroyed, regardless of whether it was copied, they'd rather google just give them the hard drives.. cause then.. what?
The fallacy of your argument is that you don't take into account known technology and other events that can lead to the obvious idea.
For example, one cannot have the idea of a flash on an iPad before there is an iPad. The genesis of the iPad makes the obvious idea possible.
Let's take another obvious idea. XOR'ing bits to create a cursor or pointer. There's prior art on this (and a patent) going back 30 years. Obviously, this obvious idea could not exist without CRT based graphics and the concept of cursors or pointers, so the idea cannot go back further than that.
If an idea is, in fact, obvious, then shortly after the idea is possible, there will be lots of people implementing it. If the idea was possible 20 years ago, but nobody did until last week, the idea isn't obvious.
To be fair, all ideas are obvious, once someone has created them.
If something is "obvious" it would have tons of prior art going back years. You can't simply look at something, and with the benefit of having seen it say "Well, that was obvious".
Let's take, as an example, the Office Ribbon. Whether or not you like it, or whether or not you agree with it, the fact is, it was not an "obvious" UI change, and it did in fact radically change the UI to the extent that many people feel it's agregiously difficult to retrain people.
Certainly there are "Ribbonish" kinds of interfaces that existed before, if you only look at the visual style, but what makes the Ribbon unique is not only it's visual style, but its functionality as well. I'm sure you will say it was obvious, but the reality is that your hindsight gives you the benefit of looking at it with what you know now, not what was known then.
Yes, but what you're really talking about is the difference between trespassing and theft. Copyright infringement is more like trespassing. When someone trespasses on your property (not counting possible destruction of property) they are depriving you of the right to control who can and cannot go there (and possibly making money off the use of the land).
Nobody says "Hey, Stop that thief! He walked on my land!"
Holy shit! Google Cloud Print? Google wants me to send all my print jobs to them, so they can send them back to me?
Frankly, this is getting ridiculous. Google is finding new ways to harvest our data, and make us dependant up them as a service. I love my android phone, but I realized recently that their new "voice control" and "voice to text" features means that every time you say something to your phone, it goes to google, and they process it, then send back the text. This means that google has a record of everything you've said to it.
Google will then have a record of everything you've printed with this cloud service. They have a record of all your email. They have a record of all your search queries. Who knows what their toolbar is sending back to them about your surfing habits.
I don't like ot think of myself as part of the tinfoil hat brigade, but wow. If google WANTED to be evil, they have set themselves up to be the masters.
Part of the problem is that if they use an OS that gives too much functionality, they want it to start running Windows apps. And when it can't do that, they become frustrated and return it.
Sadly, Linux seems to be relegated to "appliance" status in most devices, largely because they don't want users to start asking too many questions.
Well, in that case, the shop owner has lost $100 (or whatever the wholesale cost of the product was) out of his pocket. He hasn't simply failed to make $150. He paid $100 for those shoes, and someone took them and he is incapable of selling another pair without spending another $100 out of his pocket. He now has to sell two more pairs of shoes just to break even (not counting salaries, utilities, rent, etc..).
Lost sales are not equal to stolen goods, no matter how you want to look at it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. However, a case could be made that if that starving student downloads a copy of photoshop, he isn't likely to purchase a less capable product he could afford, like PaintShop or PhotoImpact. Thus, because he can get a professional level product for free, he won't buy a consumer level product he can afford.
Of course you could use the same argument for free softare. Why would they buy the consumer produt when they can get a (legal) free product? Or, more interstly, why would someone use the GIMP when they can get Photoshop for free?
Still, there's no guarantee he'd pay for those either.. but if he couldn't pirate, and needed the functionality, and hated the gimp, he very well might.
But it's all stupid anyways. Lost sales is not the same as lost product, as in the case of stolen physical copies.
There's no compatiblity issue between 32 bit and 64 bit versions in terms of files or what not. There is likely compatibility issues when it comes to plug-ins, if they're not.NET based. But a file created in a 32 bit version of Office is readable in the 64 bit version.
I don't know, took me all of 15 seconds to find internet headers, it's in the same place it's always been, individual message properties. The only difference is that you have double click the message and open it up, then do file->Properties, it's no longer available on a context menu.
The ribbon can only give you context sensitivity if there's an actual context. It can read your mind.
You said "if i were using a widescreen monitor", that would mean you would be buying one, so my point is, why not buy one that can be vertically rotated while you were at it.
The Office 2010 ribbon is completely configurable, you can change stuff around however you want it. You can even create your own tabs.
Also, the ribbon automatically adjusts the size of buttons to fit smaller screens. Don't look at the pictures and say "that won't work on my monitor", because i assure you, it will.
I just checked, and things have changed a little. It looks like Rob Weir (and IBM employee) now co-chairs the TC with Michael Brauer, an Oracle employee.
IBM now has 10 members on the committe, and Sun has 7. So IBM now outnumbers Sun, but Sun still has significant influence, being both a co-chair and the second most members.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft now has 4 members on the TC, although one of them is Doug Mahugh.
The point still stands, though. Sun (nee Oracle) submitted the standard to Oasis, they co-chair the comittee. It's "their" standard.
Only for legacy documents that have been converted to OOXML. The feature is dropped, but there because it corresponds to an element in old.doc formats that are no longer supported.
Yes, it's available in Visual Studio Express. And yes, you need to download VS because the code is used to step through in debugging. Without the debugger, it's not much use given it's license.
First, Microsoft did not promise anything open source. They promised a read-only shared source version under the reference license. They delivered that, and are still delivering it, though as of yet no.net 4.0 libraries.. but that's only a couple of weeks old.
The reason the site hasn't been maintained was the the functionality was moved into visual studio for automatic download. It's just a part of the tools now.
Except of course that Sun submitted ODF originally to OASIS, and a Sun/Oracle employee chairs the group, and there are 5 Sun/Oracle employees on the committee (more than any other company).
Odd, and here I thought OpenOffice also had word compatibility, seems that OpenOffice would be just as much an open source reference implementation for word compatiblity.
And from what you hear? You mean the part where i said that was the case?
Ironically, the people that complain about "format like word 95" are the same people who think nothing of "do formulas like OpenOffice.org".
You lose a lot of credibility when you bitch and moan up a storm about one thing, then complain when others don't do the very thing you're complaining about in the other.
Yes, Microsoft should have implemented ISO OOXML in Office 2010, but it sounds like they just didn't have the resources to do it in time. That may sound silly, but understand that most app functionality in a app the size of Office is frozen at least a year out from planned finalization.
And, given that there was a bunch of winging after teh ratification of OOXML, they probably felt it wise to delay implementation until they were sure the standard was going to stay.
In any event, it doesn't seem like conforming to a standard is a requirement these days. Is there any current shipping office app that conforms to ODF 1.0? I think most are at least 1.1, and some are 1.2, neither of which are currently ISO standards.
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Microsoft, like most other companies, has indeed had it's share of "innovation", popular opinion not withstanding.
It's easy to find things that are "kind of like" a new invention, that can be said for every single product in existence. It's just fun to do it for Microsoft.
Can you name a single software invention by anyone else that was truly unique? Anyone? Bueler? I guarantee anything you name can find something that is "kind of like" something else. That's how invention works, and that's why patents always have a list of references to other patents which the new patent draws upon. Unfortunately, you can't list things that aren't previously patented.
A short list of things which Microsoft has innovated (off the top of my head, without even googling) in would include (whether you like the ideas or not)
The Ribbon
Photosynth
COM (originally OLE)
Internet Explorer Protected Mode
If you google around, you find lots of tongue in cheek and sarcastic comments, and comments like yours that say point blank that microsoft has never innovated anything. It's certainly true they've bought a lot of their technology, but not all of it and even when you consider technology they bought, they've often improved it with their own new technology (IE Protected Mode, for instance).
Also, Microsoft certainly has their share of bad technology they've implemented. ActiveX, for instance. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's still a novel idea (no, plug-ins weren't novel, but auto-installing them, and creating a generic model that could be used by more than just web browsers was).
So in reality, comments like your really are just hyperbole. It's simply not true that Microsoft has never created anything novel. Hell, Clippy anyone?
Ugh.. I'm sure there's lots of people that love their "highly customizable" UI's, and they would need to be pried from their cold, dead, stinking, rotting hands... but I move from machine to machine a lot, and have new versions of OS's all the time, taking the time to customize the UI would mean i would never get anything done.. so I need a good, solid, usable default UI so that I don't have to worry about customizing it, other than very slight tweaks.
Not to mention, they want the hard drives turned over? They've never heard of, you know.. copying?
So, rather than work with google to make sure all data is destroyed, regardless of whether it was copied, they'd rather google just give them the hard drives.. cause then.. what?
The fallacy of your argument is that you don't take into account known technology and other events that can lead to the obvious idea.
For example, one cannot have the idea of a flash on an iPad before there is an iPad. The genesis of the iPad makes the obvious idea possible.
Let's take another obvious idea. XOR'ing bits to create a cursor or pointer. There's prior art on this (and a patent) going back 30 years. Obviously, this obvious idea could not exist without CRT based graphics and the concept of cursors or pointers, so the idea cannot go back further than that.
If an idea is, in fact, obvious, then shortly after the idea is possible, there will be lots of people implementing it. If the idea was possible 20 years ago, but nobody did until last week, the idea isn't obvious.
To be fair, all ideas are obvious, once someone has created them.
If something is "obvious" it would have tons of prior art going back years. You can't simply look at something, and with the benefit of having seen it say "Well, that was obvious".
Let's take, as an example, the Office Ribbon. Whether or not you like it, or whether or not you agree with it, the fact is, it was not an "obvious" UI change, and it did in fact radically change the UI to the extent that many people feel it's agregiously difficult to retrain people.
Certainly there are "Ribbonish" kinds of interfaces that existed before, if you only look at the visual style, but what makes the Ribbon unique is not only it's visual style, but its functionality as well. I'm sure you will say it was obvious, but the reality is that your hindsight gives you the benefit of looking at it with what you know now, not what was known then.
Yes, but what you're really talking about is the difference between trespassing and theft. Copyright infringement is more like trespassing. When someone trespasses on your property (not counting possible destruction of property) they are depriving you of the right to control who can and cannot go there (and possibly making money off the use of the land).
Nobody says "Hey, Stop that thief! He walked on my land!"
Holy shit! Google Cloud Print? Google wants me to send all my print jobs to them, so they can send them back to me?
Frankly, this is getting ridiculous. Google is finding new ways to harvest our data, and make us dependant up them as a service. I love my android phone, but I realized recently that their new "voice control" and "voice to text" features means that every time you say something to your phone, it goes to google, and they process it, then send back the text. This means that google has a record of everything you've said to it.
Google will then have a record of everything you've printed with this cloud service. They have a record of all your email. They have a record of all your search queries. Who knows what their toolbar is sending back to them about your surfing habits.
I don't like ot think of myself as part of the tinfoil hat brigade, but wow. If google WANTED to be evil, they have set themselves up to be the masters.
Part of the problem is that if they use an OS that gives too much functionality, they want it to start running Windows apps. And when it can't do that, they become frustrated and return it.
Sadly, Linux seems to be relegated to "appliance" status in most devices, largely because they don't want users to start asking too many questions.
Well, in that case, the shop owner has lost $100 (or whatever the wholesale cost of the product was) out of his pocket. He hasn't simply failed to make $150. He paid $100 for those shoes, and someone took them and he is incapable of selling another pair without spending another $100 out of his pocket. He now has to sell two more pairs of shoes just to break even (not counting salaries, utilities, rent, etc..).
Lost sales are not equal to stolen goods, no matter how you want to look at it.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. However, a case could be made that if that starving student downloads a copy of photoshop, he isn't likely to purchase a less capable product he could afford, like PaintShop or PhotoImpact. Thus, because he can get a professional level product for free, he won't buy a consumer level product he can afford.
Of course you could use the same argument for free softare. Why would they buy the consumer produt when they can get a (legal) free product? Or, more interstly, why would someone use the GIMP when they can get Photoshop for free?
Still, there's no guarantee he'd pay for those either.. but if he couldn't pirate, and needed the functionality, and hated the gimp, he very well might.
But it's all stupid anyways. Lost sales is not the same as lost product, as in the case of stolen physical copies.
There's no compatiblity issue between 32 bit and 64 bit versions in terms of files or what not. There is likely compatibility issues when it comes to plug-ins, if they're not .NET based. But a file created in a 32 bit version of Office is readable in the 64 bit version.
I don't know, took me all of 15 seconds to find internet headers, it's in the same place it's always been, individual message properties. The only difference is that you have double click the message and open it up, then do file->Properties, it's no longer available on a context menu.
The ribbon can only give you context sensitivity if there's an actual context. It can read your mind.
You said "if i were using a widescreen monitor", that would mean you would be buying one, so my point is, why not buy one that can be vertically rotated while you were at it.
And if you want vertical space, why not get a monitor that can be rotated to be used vertically?
The Office 2010 ribbon is completely configurable, you can change stuff around however you want it. You can even create your own tabs.
Also, the ribbon automatically adjusts the size of buttons to fit smaller screens. Don't look at the pictures and say "that won't work on my monitor", because i assure you, it will.
I just checked, and things have changed a little. It looks like Rob Weir (and IBM employee) now co-chairs the TC with Michael Brauer, an Oracle employee.
IBM now has 10 members on the committe, and Sun has 7. So IBM now outnumbers Sun, but Sun still has significant influence, being both a co-chair and the second most members.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft now has 4 members on the TC, although one of them is Doug Mahugh.
The point still stands, though. Sun (nee Oracle) submitted the standard to Oasis, they co-chair the comittee. It's "their" standard.
Only for legacy documents that have been converted to OOXML. The feature is dropped, but there because it corresponds to an element in old .doc formats that are no longer supported.
They posted it in many places, for example:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sburke/archive/2008/01/16/configuring-visual-studio-to-debug-net-framework-source-code.aspx
Since when is "Free" $2000? Visual Studio Express, free download, no restrictions on what you can build with it.
Yes, it's available in Visual Studio Express. And yes, you need to download VS because the code is used to step through in debugging. Without the debugger, it's not much use given it's license.
First, Microsoft did not promise anything open source. They promised a read-only shared source version under the reference license. They delivered that, and are still delivering it, though as of yet no .net 4.0 libraries.. but that's only a couple of weeks old.
The reason the site hasn't been maintained was the the functionality was moved into visual studio for automatic download. It's just a part of the tools now.
Basically, the entire story is wrong.
And the "Do autospacing like Word 95" was legacy, marked as deprecated, and boldly told not to be used in new documents being created.
Except of course that Sun submitted ODF originally to OASIS, and a Sun/Oracle employee chairs the group, and there are 5 Sun/Oracle employees on the committee (more than any other company).
Yeah, Sun has nothing to do with ODF... right..
Odd, and here I thought OpenOffice also had word compatibility, seems that OpenOffice would be just as much an open source reference implementation for word compatiblity.
And from what you hear? You mean the part where i said that was the case?
Ironically, the people that complain about "format like word 95" are the same people who think nothing of "do formulas like OpenOffice.org".
You lose a lot of credibility when you bitch and moan up a storm about one thing, then complain when others don't do the very thing you're complaining about in the other.
Yes, Microsoft should have implemented ISO OOXML in Office 2010, but it sounds like they just didn't have the resources to do it in time. That may sound silly, but understand that most app functionality in a app the size of Office is frozen at least a year out from planned finalization.
And, given that there was a bunch of winging after teh ratification of OOXML, they probably felt it wise to delay implementation until they were sure the standard was going to stay.
In any event, it doesn't seem like conforming to a standard is a requirement these days. Is there any current shipping office app that conforms to ODF 1.0? I think most are at least 1.1, and some are 1.2, neither of which are currently ISO standards.