Just to expand on this, it is, in a way, extortion. Those struggling companies require computers to stay competitive. It's beyond crack, it's food. Ignore it and die. Once you're invested in one platform and you're losing money it's very hard to justify a huge sum to switch platforms.
It's like telling a starving person they now have to pay $100 for every pound of food. They either pay or die.
Separate downloads will always be available because corporate users generally do not use Windows Update for their workstations and servers. They have to download separate patches so they can be fully tested, then distribute it themselves. Whether or not these downloads will be available to everyone on their website is unknown. But the article only says this license check "also" will be used for Windows Update, not Windows Update exclusively.
There's no way they'll alienate all of their corporate customers. Updates will still be available as separate downloads or on CD.
Corporations generally do not use Windows Update to update their desktops or servers. They download individual updates and test them, then distribute in their own way (often SMS). The way I RTFA, I get the impression their installers will also do a check. So here's what'll happen:
Someone with a valid license will download an update.
He/she will either install the update and use a utility to monitor exactly which files are installed, or unpack the binary themselves.
This person will zip those files up into a new binary.
The binary will be spread through web sites and/or P2P networks.
So don't fret. Illegal copies of Windows will get their updates. There's absolutely no way Microsoft can stop it.
Wrong. The foundation has a lot to do directly with Microsoft. The foundation started investing in drug stocks in 2002, exactly the same time Microsoft started pushing harder for stronger IP laws. The foundation also purchased stock in communication companies at exactly the same time as Microsoft. And these are only the investments we know about. The foundation can invest its $20+ billion in any stocks it likes (no one investment over 20% holdings of a company) and it doesn't have to report it.
At the very least the foundation's massive holdings are being used to invest in Microsoft's allies with tax-free money.
Well, here's a start. It references Dow Jones News. They also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in drug company stock, which coincidentally occurred at the exact same time Microsoft started pushing much harder for stronger IP laws. Back in 2002 they had over $21 billion. Also note that they are not required by law to disclose stock holdings.
Even more than that, the Gates Foundation uses their money that's in holding to invest in Microsoft stock and Microsoft's allies. We're talking about over a billion dollars (tax deductable) being used by a non-profit organization to pump up stock prices. Sure, charity is great and it's the right thing to do. But it should be put in perspective, also. I wish I could find the reputable link where I found that...
No, if it saves them market share. It should be pretty obvious by now they don't care what you think of them, as long as you continue to "need" their software and no markets are closed off to them. They fight tooth and nail when a market is open to more competition for them or if they have to limit the bundling of their software. But patent and monopoly abuse cases are just settled, saving them money.
I use 1&1 for linux hosting. They offer cheap Exchange hosting. Click on the Exchange link under Mail on the left side of this page. I think it's exactly what you're looking for.
I'm adamently against the use of Exchange and Outlook. But if you're going to dance with the devil, 1&1 seems to be a great company.
MAPI is the Mail (client) API. POP and IMAP are network protocols. MAPI can't be better or worse then POP/IMAP.
If you think Outlook Web is the best web mail interface you should look around more. There are literally hundreds of options. Outlook Web doesn't use standards either, so it only works with IE.
As for your own Exchange server, there are plenty of Exchange hosting services out there. You pay a monthly fee and you get your own virtual Exchange server.
I think you need to shop around more instead of just reading MSFT's advertisements.
When MSFT first bought HotMail they tried to convert the whole network from BSD to Windows+Exchange and whole thing failed miserably. The HotMail system was simply too big for Exchange to handle because it doesn't scale well. So I know for a fact they stuck with BSD.
But it's been a couple of years. I haven't heard of any progress being made for HotMail to move off BSD. So I'm not so sure you're connecting to an Exchange server when you use this Outlook subscription with HotMail. The users may assume they are, but it might not be the case.
I don't think people here are fully understanding Microsoft's subscription strategy. Besides plain ol' Office they now sell the "Office System." They sell corporations servers which are supposed to help in collaboration of the client-only Office apps. So you pay for the server, and for the client app to work you need to buy the latest version of Office. Upgrading your servers for a new feature? Well you also need to buy the latest version of Office to communicate with the server. I think the major motivation of this Outlook subscription is to get smaller customers into a subscription service. Then it's a lot easier to sell these expensive Office servers to them.
Plus later they'll say you need a newer version of Outlook to use new HotMail features. Most people get Outlook with Office instead of a separate purchase, so they're likely to not know Outlook is offered separate and upgrade all of Office.
I think that may be the point. Netscape's only product (for a long time) was the browser. So when that was overtaken it was all downhill even though they were very well known. These desktop search providers have other primary offerings. They just want to get their foot in the door so if they succeed there's brand recognition and profit there or elsewhere. If they fail because of another Netscape-like incedent it doesn't matter. Their business runs on other products. They can only gain, even if they lose.
I think it's even more important on the Internet. Brand loyalty on the internet is a critical factor for an internet company. It gets loyal users/customers to pass around your link. And people can be very fickle. With so many options it's easy to jump to something else and never return. There are thousands of search engines, but most people have only heard of Google, Yahoo, and (unfortunately) MSN and stick with them. Look at how quickly Google rose immediately after their fellow college students became loyal customers.
That's completely incorrect. I have over 140MB of e-mails at work. I have to save them (record retention at an investment firm). Google desktop can tell me in less than a second who I sent a particular PDF to 4 years ago. I can find every reference to a server in all documents and e-mails to track its history.
Just because you don't have enough stuff to search through doesn't mean others can't organize. You can create as many folders as you want, it's still a ton of crap to look through.
Grandma will need dual-core processors if she wants to check her e-mail and browse with the next version of Windows. And most likely grandma will only ever use Windows because that's what she got from the store.
This is different performance here, though. Apples and apple trees. With monolithic kernels like Linux there's a modest gain with multiple processors. There's significant overhead from switching tasks among them. With microkernels, each component of the kernel can run more independantly in each processor, providing better gains (at least potentially). So holding out for GNU/Hurd (I hear the laughter) and dual-core processors will likely provide huge performance gains.
This is not GHz vs. RAM. This is your computer literally doing 2 things at the same time as opposed to current context switching between tasks. That's a big difference.
Maybe they want to criminalize it so extradition treaties will force other countries to send "pirates" to US jails. If an extradition treaty is ever finalized with China they'll be obligated to round up anyone the US finds violating the law.
Or take apart the RoboSapien you got for the holidays. It's remote controlled. Really fun to play with. It has simple sensors on the hands and feet. It has working hands (can pick up and sort of throw) and makes funny sounds, including some relating to human bodily functions.
Just don't tell the person who gave you the gift. They may be a little annoyed you just took it apart.
All that's needed is a decent design to be built into one piece blogging software. A few people are working on it for Drupal. Once one popular blogging tool has a simple and elegant solution others will adopt it, just like trackbacks.
Personally I think the central server(s) should use something like WordNet to determine common synonyms based on context and build from there. I think the fact that the keywords come from so many people is a good thing. Instead of a few people thinking hard about how to organize, general concensus will help it work itself out, especially as it become much more popular.
If Firefox is using documented APIs for its behavior, any change that MS made to break one of those APIs would be noticed by lots of other ISVs, and the breakage would extend far beyond Firefox.
With every release of Windows and service packs there is a change to the documented Win32 API. Many apps break with every release. Microsoft doesn't care because it doesn't seem to annoy ISVs or others enough to defect.
And if MS breaks something that a fortune 500 company relies on they are going to be under immense pressure to fix it.
Every release of Office breaks some compatibility with prior versions of Office documents. Microsoft removes support, forcing upgrades. Has that stopped customers from using their software? No. Every single patch from every single Microsoft application requires immense testing of every application at every fortune 500 company. Customers are not putting enough pressure on Microsoft for them to fix what they break. Microsoft goes along breaking things and customers feel forced to comply since switching away usually costs more. I've been in the meetings. I've heard from the sys admins, DBAs, and my fellow developers. No one's happy. Yet Microsoft isn't pressured to fix much.
If MS put code in that detected Firefox running and introduced breakage in only that case, they run the risk of a huge downside in publicity and potential legal remedies if they got caught.
Apparently bad publicity and legal actions aren't big concerns. They've been caught breaking the law numerous times, but always settle before they're found guilty. And how much more bad publicity can one company get? I document many cases as www.msversus.org. They have always denied all wrong-doing. They pay to get out of rough situations. Security holes, monopoly hearings on 3 continents, using patents without license, restrictive EULAs... How much more do you need to believe they will do whatever they have to. As long as they don't lose too many customers, they just don't care.
I think MS reaction to Firefox is going to be to put a team back together to upgrade IE before the defection gets out of hand. Oh wait, they've already done that.
So a 2007 release of minor IE features is a solution? How about adding features not already in all the competition. How about releasing it for XP users? Oh wait, they refuse to do that.
So far it seems that closed source can work well on top of open source (OSX, Oracle, etc.). But open source hasn't been proven to work well on top of closed source (maybe Firefox will change that, but not yet).
The biggest issue is that if the underpinnings are closed the vendor can change it as they wish to disturb the higher layers. If MS wanted to they could easily release a patch to Windows just to break Firefox and nothing else. But it would be nearly impossible for someone to release something to GNU/Linux which would break Oracle without someone else fixing it. Closed source producers can make it difficult for competition to run on top of their software. But open source software, by way of its being open, can't limit the software people want to write on top of it.
Start up time and rendering speeds are fast for IE.
And both can be achieved without OS integration. Rendering for any 3rd party app can be direct to the video driver if the OS allows it. That's not integration.
It's already been proven that startup time for all Office apps is from hidden API calls near the start the executable code. They load the visual interface before the application's actually ready for use. That plus pre-loading of DLLs gives fast startup. Office isn't considered part of the OS, yet IE is. Therefore fast startup times have nothing to do with integration.
Try supporting 5 different applications vs. one. Over the phone. With a user with no training or previous knowledge.
I have. An entire office of old-fashioned accountants who prefer ledgers and pencils. How is blending 2 apps tightly together better than having 2 separate apps? If there's a problem with Firefox I can tell someone to not launch it. If there's a problem with IE parts of it are in memory whether I choose them to be or not. If there was less integration in Windows then it could be trimmed down to a minimal size for each user. Instead everything including the kitchen sink must continually be supported. You're only increasing your headache by using Windows and its tight integration.
I'm questioning the statistic mentioned is valid or not. Can this number even be trusted?
Not as purely fact. Yet someone who reads the study may determine that it's better to have the code open to all who can fix bugs instead of one select group. Or it may give insight to management that security can be better achieved when they can have their own people analyze the code. When read properly I don't see how anything but good can come from a study such as this.
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Just to expand on this, it is, in a way, extortion. Those struggling companies require computers to stay competitive. It's beyond crack, it's food. Ignore it and die. Once you're invested in one platform and you're losing money it's very hard to justify a huge sum to switch platforms.
It's like telling a starving person they now have to pay $100 for every pound of food. They either pay or die.
No, SMS. Read the other posts in this thread from 2 hours ago.
Separate downloads will always be available because corporate users generally do not use Windows Update for their workstations and servers. They have to download separate patches so they can be fully tested, then distribute it themselves. Whether or not these downloads will be available to everyone on their website is unknown. But the article only says this license check "also" will be used for Windows Update, not Windows Update exclusively.
There's no way they'll alienate all of their corporate customers. Updates will still be available as separate downloads or on CD.
So don't fret. Illegal copies of Windows will get their updates. There's absolutely no way Microsoft can stop it.
Wrong. The foundation has a lot to do directly with Microsoft. The foundation started investing in drug stocks in 2002, exactly the same time Microsoft started pushing harder for stronger IP laws. The foundation also purchased stock in communication companies at exactly the same time as Microsoft. And these are only the investments we know about. The foundation can invest its $20+ billion in any stocks it likes (no one investment over 20% holdings of a company) and it doesn't have to report it.
At the very least the foundation's massive holdings are being used to invest in Microsoft's allies with tax-free money.
Well, here's a start. It references Dow Jones News. They also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in drug company stock, which coincidentally occurred at the exact same time Microsoft started pushing much harder for stronger IP laws. Back in 2002 they had over $21 billion. Also note that they are not required by law to disclose stock holdings.
Even more than that, the Gates Foundation uses their money that's in holding to invest in Microsoft stock and Microsoft's allies. We're talking about over a billion dollars (tax deductable) being used by a non-profit organization to pump up stock prices. Sure, charity is great and it's the right thing to do. But it should be put in perspective, also. I wish I could find the reputable link where I found that...
"...if it saves them face"
No, if it saves them market share. It should be pretty obvious by now they don't care what you think of them, as long as you continue to "need" their software and no markets are closed off to them. They fight tooth and nail when a market is open to more competition for them or if they have to limit the bundling of their software. But patent and monopoly abuse cases are just settled, saving them money.
Professor Frink: "The Huygens glavin with the switching and the OH NO not working..."
I use 1&1 for linux hosting. They offer cheap Exchange hosting. Click on the Exchange link under Mail on the left side of this page. I think it's exactly what you're looking for.
I'm adamently against the use of Exchange and Outlook. But if you're going to dance with the devil, 1&1 seems to be a great company.
MAPI is the Mail (client) API. POP and IMAP are network protocols. MAPI can't be better or worse then POP/IMAP.
If you think Outlook Web is the best web mail interface you should look around more. There are literally hundreds of options. Outlook Web doesn't use standards either, so it only works with IE.
As for your own Exchange server, there are plenty of Exchange hosting services out there. You pay a monthly fee and you get your own virtual Exchange server.
I think you need to shop around more instead of just reading MSFT's advertisements.
When MSFT first bought HotMail they tried to convert the whole network from BSD to Windows+Exchange and whole thing failed miserably. The HotMail system was simply too big for Exchange to handle because it doesn't scale well. So I know for a fact they stuck with BSD.
But it's been a couple of years. I haven't heard of any progress being made for HotMail to move off BSD. So I'm not so sure you're connecting to an Exchange server when you use this Outlook subscription with HotMail. The users may assume they are, but it might not be the case.
I don't think people here are fully understanding Microsoft's subscription strategy. Besides plain ol' Office they now sell the "Office System." They sell corporations servers which are supposed to help in collaboration of the client-only Office apps. So you pay for the server, and for the client app to work you need to buy the latest version of Office. Upgrading your servers for a new feature? Well you also need to buy the latest version of Office to communicate with the server. I think the major motivation of this Outlook subscription is to get smaller customers into a subscription service. Then it's a lot easier to sell these expensive Office servers to them.
Plus later they'll say you need a newer version of Outlook to use new HotMail features. Most people get Outlook with Office instead of a separate purchase, so they're likely to not know Outlook is offered separate and upgrade all of Office.
I think that may be the point. Netscape's only product (for a long time) was the browser. So when that was overtaken it was all downhill even though they were very well known. These desktop search providers have other primary offerings. They just want to get their foot in the door so if they succeed there's brand recognition and profit there or elsewhere. If they fail because of another Netscape-like incedent it doesn't matter. Their business runs on other products. They can only gain, even if they lose.
I think it's even more important on the Internet. Brand loyalty on the internet is a critical factor for an internet company. It gets loyal users/customers to pass around your link. And people can be very fickle. With so many options it's easy to jump to something else and never return. There are thousands of search engines, but most people have only heard of Google, Yahoo, and (unfortunately) MSN and stick with them. Look at how quickly Google rose immediately after their fellow college students became loyal customers.
That's completely incorrect. I have over 140MB of e-mails at work. I have to save them (record retention at an investment firm). Google desktop can tell me in less than a second who I sent a particular PDF to 4 years ago. I can find every reference to a server in all documents and e-mails to track its history.
Just because you don't have enough stuff to search through doesn't mean others can't organize. You can create as many folders as you want, it's still a ton of crap to look through.
You gotta love the Register's headline for this story: "Extra-solar planet snapped by galactic paparazzi". I supposed they are looking at a big star, but... Anyway, gave me a chuckle.
Grandma will need dual-core processors if she wants to check her e-mail and browse with the next version of Windows. And most likely grandma will only ever use Windows because that's what she got from the store.
This is different performance here, though. Apples and apple trees. With monolithic kernels like Linux there's a modest gain with multiple processors. There's significant overhead from switching tasks among them. With microkernels, each component of the kernel can run more independantly in each processor, providing better gains (at least potentially). So holding out for GNU/Hurd (I hear the laughter) and dual-core processors will likely provide huge performance gains.
This is not GHz vs. RAM. This is your computer literally doing 2 things at the same time as opposed to current context switching between tasks. That's a big difference.
Maybe they want to criminalize it so extradition treaties will force other countries to send "pirates" to US jails. If an extradition treaty is ever finalized with China they'll be obligated to round up anyone the US finds violating the law.
So that's why he's going to China. He wants to put people in jail in the US for spreading "illegal" ideas, just like they do.
Or take apart the RoboSapien you got for the holidays. It's remote controlled. Really fun to play with. It has simple sensors on the hands and feet. It has working hands (can pick up and sort of throw) and makes funny sounds, including some relating to human bodily functions.
Just don't tell the person who gave you the gift. They may be a little annoyed you just took it apart.
All that's needed is a decent design to be built into one piece blogging software. A few people are working on it for Drupal. Once one popular blogging tool has a simple and elegant solution others will adopt it, just like trackbacks.
Personally I think the central server(s) should use something like WordNet to determine common synonyms based on context and build from there. I think the fact that the keywords come from so many people is a good thing. Instead of a few people thinking hard about how to organize, general concensus will help it work itself out, especially as it become much more popular.
If Firefox is using documented APIs for its behavior, any change that MS made to break one of those APIs would be noticed by lots of other ISVs, and the breakage would extend far beyond Firefox.
With every release of Windows and service packs there is a change to the documented Win32 API. Many apps break with every release. Microsoft doesn't care because it doesn't seem to annoy ISVs or others enough to defect.
And if MS breaks something that a fortune 500 company relies on they are going to be under immense pressure to fix it.
Every release of Office breaks some compatibility with prior versions of Office documents. Microsoft removes support, forcing upgrades. Has that stopped customers from using their software? No. Every single patch from every single Microsoft application requires immense testing of every application at every fortune 500 company. Customers are not putting enough pressure on Microsoft for them to fix what they break. Microsoft goes along breaking things and customers feel forced to comply since switching away usually costs more. I've been in the meetings. I've heard from the sys admins, DBAs, and my fellow developers. No one's happy. Yet Microsoft isn't pressured to fix much.
If MS put code in that detected Firefox running and introduced breakage in only that case, they run the risk of a huge downside in publicity and potential legal remedies if they got caught.
Apparently bad publicity and legal actions aren't big concerns. They've been caught breaking the law numerous times, but always settle before they're found guilty. And how much more bad publicity can one company get? I document many cases as www.msversus.org. They have always denied all wrong-doing. They pay to get out of rough situations. Security holes, monopoly hearings on 3 continents, using patents without license, restrictive EULAs... How much more do you need to believe they will do whatever they have to. As long as they don't lose too many customers, they just don't care.
I think MS reaction to Firefox is going to be to put a team back together to upgrade IE before the defection gets out of hand. Oh wait, they've already done that.
So a 2007 release of minor IE features is a solution? How about adding features not already in all the competition. How about releasing it for XP users? Oh wait, they refuse to do that.
So far it seems that closed source can work well on top of open source (OSX, Oracle, etc.). But open source hasn't been proven to work well on top of closed source (maybe Firefox will change that, but not yet).
The biggest issue is that if the underpinnings are closed the vendor can change it as they wish to disturb the higher layers. If MS wanted to they could easily release a patch to Windows just to break Firefox and nothing else. But it would be nearly impossible for someone to release something to GNU/Linux which would break Oracle without someone else fixing it. Closed source producers can make it difficult for competition to run on top of their software. But open source software, by way of its being open, can't limit the software people want to write on top of it.
Start up time and rendering speeds are fast for IE.
And both can be achieved without OS integration. Rendering for any 3rd party app can be direct to the video driver if the OS allows it. That's not integration.
It's already been proven that startup time for all Office apps is from hidden API calls near the start the executable code. They load the visual interface before the application's actually ready for use. That plus pre-loading of DLLs gives fast startup. Office isn't considered part of the OS, yet IE is. Therefore fast startup times have nothing to do with integration.
Try supporting 5 different applications vs. one. Over the phone. With a user with no training or previous knowledge.
I have. An entire office of old-fashioned accountants who prefer ledgers and pencils. How is blending 2 apps tightly together better than having 2 separate apps? If there's a problem with Firefox I can tell someone to not launch it. If there's a problem with IE parts of it are in memory whether I choose them to be or not. If there was less integration in Windows then it could be trimmed down to a minimal size for each user. Instead everything including the kitchen sink must continually be supported. You're only increasing your headache by using Windows and its tight integration.
I'm questioning the statistic mentioned is valid or not. Can this number even be trusted?
Not as purely fact. Yet someone who reads the study may determine that it's better to have the code open to all who can fix bugs instead of one select group. Or it may give insight to management that security can be better achieved when they can have their own people analyze the code. When read properly I don't see how anything but good can come from a study such as this.