Generally speaking, the office productivity suite that most businesses use (M$ Office) has changed in features over time, but a typical user proceeds through versions without much training. The interface remains largely the same.
You mean a window, menus and toolbars?
So what's the problem again in switching to OpenOffice? It's basically the same thing.
Well, OK if you refer to the basic functions of a car, yes WinCE/Microsoft didn't hamper that.
By "crashes" I assumed we were talking about crashing the phone and the other things the article was talking about not the car actually crashing into something. (Altough the transmission issue sounds not good)
However, my points, all of which you DID get completely wrong:
1. Computer systems are NOT inherently unreliable. There are thousands of very important computer systems which would cause huge amounts of problems and death if they failed (aircraft, nuclear power plants, etc.) yet they work mostly as intended. Lockups and problems are extremely rare. You seem to blindly believe that just because Microsoft is unable to provide a reliable system, they do not exist. They do exist and there is a wide range of software reliability with Micorsoft being usually on the low end.
2. The GPL does indeed give you FULL control of the software. For all technical purposes you can do exactly the same as if you have written it yourself. (You cannot redistribute it without supplying the source-code, but this is NO TECHNICAL limitation, it's a pure marketing/sales limitation.)
3. Microsoft's software (again) did not work as intended. Normally you dump a vendor when they screw you or screw up again and again, but Microsoft gets another chance and another chance and another chance - which is exactly the reason why they do put out half-finished products. The morons will buy them anyway and be *happy* when they get fixed after years. Just look at all the sheep praising Windows2000 which is barely more than Windows95 with less bugs and lockups. Why should Microsoft make the first version work right when they can sell you the same 3 or more times (Win95, Win98, WinXP)?
Sorry I missed that you refered only to drivability and safety, those were not touched by WinCE/iDrive, my mistake, apologies. However your post contained enough BS that needed to be corrected. (See above 3 points)
I would consider it completely irresponsible of an automobile manufacturer to allow something like WinCE or Linux, or anything not under their direct control to play such a large part in the driver's direct interaction with the car.
If you are too dumb to understand that the GPL means exactly that everything is in 100% control of the manufacturer, how do you think you can even dare to think you have any idea what is good to use in a car?
That said, yes there are many reasons why doing exactly that (putting a computer between user and actual physical controls of the car) is a good idea. With the right sensors you can break when the car in front of you brakes suddently and prevent crashes. With even more advanced sensors you could savely stop the car when the driver stops reacting (People often have heart attacks in their cars. It's happening every day.) or do millions of other useful stuff. If done right, you could save thousands of lives every year.
A well designed computer system is much more reliable than a human.
Yes, this excludes most systems that have Microsoft software on them. Actually before Microsoft, it was like that. The big mainframes and even the first home computers (C64, Atari, Amiga) had the reputation of being very reliable and that a problem usually equals a hardware problem. Microsoft changed that.
Now that I've said that, I think you should agree with me here.
Certainly not.
There's no evidence whatsoever in this article that Microsoft or WinCE had anything to do with the drivability or safety of the car.
So everytime some Windows-based device screws up we shall assume it's because of dumb application programmers? Everytime a Windows-based server is hacked because of dumb admins?
So, Mr. IT professional, put the blame where blame is due, and look for someone else to pick on. I swear, the word "Microsoft" can't even be mentioned around here anymore without a childish remark like yours.
Actually Microsoft can't be mentioned anymore without some Winlots coming to their defense without any evidence. Why do always Windows-based product break randomly? Why does my dual-boot computer lock up frequently in Windows but not in Linux?
The sad part is that you are fully right. Hell, even now after Microsoft screwed up *again* your post was modded as flamebait.
Why am I supposed to believe that Microsoft's non-yet-existing stuff will always be bug-free and forgive all the bugs in current products?
Let's face it: Microsoft is incompetent and will always put out buggy and insecure products.
100 (probably paid) Winlots arguing otherwise won't change my opinion, only Microsoft finally creating something without bugs can. And so far it didn't. Yes most software has bugs, but no that does not prove that the quality is the same everywhere. Unix and Linux are 10 times as reliable.
Hell, just look at the "Stinger" problems. Too late, too buggy. It's always the same.
It's just about corporate stupidity and pride. Some suit found the website and went crazy, no business plan, no money to be made, it's just about pride, envy and stupidity. And by the way, what else has PCI-SIG to do except surfing the web all day long and bragging about how great they are?
For a better understanding look here, large organizations really work that way.
PCI-SGI may be stupid, but they are not so stupid to really believe they can make serious money on selling such a service.
.NET is like Java, but it only runs de-facto on Microsoft platforms (in theory it will run on BSD too, but important parts are missing)
Re:Can DRM ever work?
on
Real DRM
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Now we have Microsoft's Palladium. Both Intel and AMD are supporting it in their upcomming chips.
Such as?
I mean, yes Intel is "commited", AMD is "commited", but did they actually release a TCPA-product? No. Has Intel or AMD actually announced a chip with TCPA-functionality? No. Is TCPA showing on their roadmaps? I didn't see it.
Recently, it has become so quiet around TCPA (well it has been quiet around the TCPA-group, the anti-TCPA groups are loud and active) that I don't expect it to become a reality anytime soon if at all.
Let's face it: People love to pirate software/videos/music and will not buy anything that will try to prevent them doing that. Seems like Intel/AMD have realized that.
"Under the SDMA, in the event of a Sendo bankruptcy, Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property, including rights to make, use, or copy the Sendo Smartphone to create other to create other Smartphones and to, most importantly for Microsoft, sublicense those rights to third parties."
Of course we don't know what the exact IP is, but it goes beyond making "stinger run on a cellphone".
No, it's lawyer-speak for exactly that. Nobody would stop them or somebody else from implementing Stinger without Sendo-IP.
Not all of them but the majority. I don't call loosing money a measure of failure - the XBox has been a success in that it has gotten MS the market share they want in the console market, and MS boxes in the home. Again, they are thinking in the long term.
Microsoft expected to sell 6 Million units by June 2001 but sold less than 4 Million. They sold a little more than half of what they wanted - and you usually make easily beatable expectations...
I thought the same way about Palm. At least in this case MS faces a body of determined foes, and so are less likley to have the other side make stupid choices that hands victory by default. But I'll believe it in three years if I see MS phones have gone no-where.
Well, there are differences:
1) Microsoft gets a big marketing bonus from people like you. Gullible people buy Microsoft because of this FUD. Nokia is no small startup like Palm. They are the big guys, no FUD in the world can destroy their reputation in building a successful platform, while it can with Palm. So while you are trying to talk Nokia dead, nobody will listen.
2) Palm made a few mistakes, they didn't supported the newer stuff (Videos, etc.) fast enough.
and most importantly 3) Palm is a proprietary one-vendor technology. That means a new vendor going to market doesn't have a big advantage choosing Palm. Symbian on the other hand is a consortium founded by all major cellphone makers, not a single-vendor effort.
Look, I'm not saying all other companies were doomed (though you could read that out of what I said before). What I'm saying is that you seem like you are taking them too lightly, basically fiddling while rome burns.
Wrong, Microsoft lives from "being not taken too lightly". You essentially advise people to consider Microsoft only because they are Microsoft, therefore generating sales for them.
In the platform business, getting ignored is the absolutely worst what can happen to you.
That's great that you are forwarding Linux in the embedded market, I agree that Linux has done very well there holding off MS.
They didn't "hold MS off", they completely destroyed them. In the mid-90's the majority of embedded apps ran on DOS, which as you remember very well is made by Microsoft. When you need lots of graphics, WinCE is still an option, but generally I would call it almost dead in the embedded space.
All I am trying to get across is that anyone competing against Microsoft should not be lulled into a false sense of security by an APPARENT lack of success in any market. Cell phone makers, embedded designers, anyone.
Well Sendo probably thought exactly that. (Microsoft is so great and eventually they will succeed so better we work with them instead of against them.) No other company would get such a deal. But Microsoft got it because they are Microsoft.
Microsoft's big FUD-machine supported by you and thousands of others at work.
Personally I think Microsoft is doomed as a company, but I still think they can use $40 billion (or whatever they have) to f*ck a lot of things up on the way down and I'm tired of other, non-MS companies and people letting it happen through inaction and sloth.
Inaction and sloth from people is the worst that can happen to Microsoft in a market they are not in. And the companies won't base their business tactics on postings from the Internet.
Also what everybody seems to forget is that running a startup like Sendo or Netscape into the ground is one thing, takling with several multi-billion enterprises is another.
Because the have IP from Sendo that they did not have before.
Wow, that IP can be summarized in "How to make Stinger run on a cellphone". Yes it's not completely worthless, but hardly vital to any business plan. Without that IP, Microsoft would do it themselves, so what.
It really doesn't matter what the implementation is at the moment, now they don't have to share profits with anyone like they would have before so the eventual working version to take over the market will be all MS profit.
I doubt MS will start building cellphones, so no, any profits will be shared between software maker and hardware maker.
Of course I hope it fails but I have seen far too many times how they appear to die, only to return and doominate.
Stop spreading FUD (yes I mean that literally).
It's just not true. There are only 2 projects making money at Microsoft: Windows and Office - everything else is losing money. And despite losing money you could maybe call Internet Explorer a success and WinCE at least not a failure (does fine on PDAs but miserably in the rest of the embedded-market). So you got 3 or 4 successful projects versus a long list of failed ones.
Of course this doesn't mean every project from MS will fail, but it proves that not every MS-project is succeeding.
And Microsoft's cellphone efforts are failing. Without a big cellphone-maker I don't see how it can succeed. Even with Sendo (= newcomer) it would be hard to get established in a saturated market, but now with a nobody (Orange) and an even more saturated market (1½ years later) the chances are even lower.
Destroying the internet - you mean like having a bunch of web pages that only work in a MS browser?
No, I was speaking about a Microsoft network where Microsoft-only servers talk to Microsoft-only clients over Microsoft-only protocols and everybody (servers and clients) have to pay a hefty fee to Microsoft for the priviledge to use their network.
Maybe you are too young to know, but that was Microsoft's big plan in the early 90's and that's why Bill Gates said "The Internet? We are not interested in it" and "Internet will never be popular" and that's why the then proprietary MSN got an icon that nobody used in Windows 95.
Of course now Microsoft pretends that this all never happened.
Already happens, and seems to be getting worse.
Again, FUD. I use Mozilla all the time and I maybe find 3 or 4 pages per year that don't work. And it's getting better, not worse. 2 years ago, browsing under Linux was a problem (but still not so terrible as you want us to believe), but now with Mozilla available and a very much improved Konqueror you have 2 very fine browsers.
Bob? Aspects of that resurfaced in other projects (including clippy) hated, yes, failure, no (don't ask me how that works).
Now that you have proved you have never seen MS Bob, can we go on?
(MS Bob was about a virtual home where every application was represented by a "real" item. For example if you wanted to write a letter, you would "go to" the office and click on the typewriter standing on the table. Kinda like those adventures like Leisure suite Larry or how it was called. Clippy had little to do with that, there was a "helper-dog" which could be vaguely be compared with clippy, but that's hardly enough to call MS Bob a success.)
Hailstorm is on hold while they build up more thunder, as it were.
FUD
Windows on Alpaha actually worked pretty well as I remember, MS simply decided to kill it... but I think that was more of a strategic choice than because it was a failure.
You mean like they only got 5% marketshare on Alpha left and Linux was wiping the floor with them like they do know on Itanium?
The trouble is, anytime you think they have failed all they have really done is gained ground for the next attack.
FUD
Be afraid of them! Be uncertain and doubtful of anything else!
I'm sorry but I'm not buying the apparent lack of stregth in anything MS is doing anymore, they are absolutley to be feared
Bill Gates loves your kind.
and fought against with full stregth no matter how weak they appear to be in any area.
The stronger they appear, the stronger they are.
A otherwise die-hard pro MS company which is a partner of my company are implementing Linux on embedded devices.
Why? Because they do not fear Microsoft and believed Linux will become the standard on embedded devices. (That was 1 year ago, by now Linux is already the de-facto standard on embedded devices except PDAs.) Again, we are talking about a pro-MS company here, 2 years ago non-MS systems weren't even allowed in the company.
I just hope the cell phone makers can hold MS off,
Then why do you spread the "all non-Microsoft platforms are doomed" - propaganda and FUD which is Microsoft's number one sales argument?
With Microsoft having about zero marketshare (the few units from Orange are neglectible, they are not even on sale in most parts of the world, AFAIK England is the only country), without a serious hardware partner (Orange is a provider, not a hardware maker - even with enough demand, Orange couldn't produce enough units to fullfill the demand. Also it is doubtful that Orange wants to start selling cellphones for competing providers and that competing providers would buy those), with an accepted standard all major hardware makers support (Symbian), with powerful enemies (both Nokia and Sony-Ericsson are larger than Microsoft. Siemens and Motorola are also not some startup like Netscape was.) and with at least 2 years of lost time, Microsoft's chances are not only slim, they are non-existant.
Speaking of "I just hope the cell phone makers can hold MS off" is pure FUD. Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt, all without any reason. Normally, FUD like this from people like you give Microsoft some extra marketing spin, but in this situation even that can't help them.
What makes you think otherwise, given that's how they work? If you think about it long term (which Microsoft is), is it so bad to delay success a few years when you can have so much more of the profit? They certianly have the capital on hand to play possum for a few years.
How should they ever be able to "have so much more profit"? *IF* they want to make another wireless-OS, they have to completely redesign it aniway and pretend Stinger never existed, destroying Sendo on the way hardly helps them. It would have been much better for MS to get to market one year earlier.
Microsoft has been declared "dead" in too many things that they eventually returned to have the upper hand in.
Microsoft has also been declared as the victor in too many things that they eventually turned out to fail miserably.
Remember how Microsoft wanted to destroy the Internet and replace it with the proprietary MSN using Microsoft's own protocols? Remember MS Bob? Remember COOl? Remember Hailstorm? Remember the HomeR project? Remember Modular Windows and MMOSA? Remember Windows on PPC, Alpha and Mips?
No, Microsoft did not plan this and most of their projects fail.
I may not think much of MS tech, but I realize that they can sell people an OS that is full of bugs and security holes, and sell it over and over again with little more than cosmetic changes. That's skill, of a sort. I may not admire it, but I do recognize it.
Wrong, Microsoft didn't sell it at all.
Asian hardware manufacturers made cheap PC-parts and PC-makers made cheap PCs which sold well. Hardware manufacturers innovated and created much more powerful features. And the Windows/PC combination *IS* usually much better than a Sun or Apple solution or whatever other proprietary hardware solution there is around - despite of DOS and Windows' deficencies.
Remember that before the mid-90's no serious alternative to DOS/Windows existed for the PC and Linux only recently became suitable for the desktop. Despite being over a decade late, Linux grabbed nearly half of the x86-server market in the last 5 years. That share would have otherwise gone to Windows and not because Windows is so great on servers, but because people would prefer the cheap open hardware platform with or without Windows.
Of course market inertia and customer lock-in keeps Windows going on the desktop. But market inertia and customer lock-in can hardly be qualified as cleverness, it's not really hard to make your product incompatible to everything else.
But market inertia and customer lock-in just slow down the transition from proprietary to open, it won't stop it. Just like the Unix-vendors couldn't stop the transition from proprietary to open hardware, Microsoft will be unable to stop the transition from proprietary to open software. Hell, just look at the latest Helloween documents and how fast Bill Gates is selling his MSFT-shares (he already sold over half of his initial holdings and is selling more each month). Microsoft is scared and should be. They know the party will be over eventually - they still can make obscene amounts of money for quite a few years, but sooner or later it will end.
Bill Gates was very, very clever when he secured the DOS-contract from IBM (clever and lucky, his mother helped him a lot), but that's over 20 years ago. After that, Microsoft was just backwards compatible and reimplemented (or bought the companies right away) what others have created, whoa. You don't need to be clever for that, just very rich - and they were rich because the DOS-contract made the money rolling in.
All the success of Microsoft is based on that contract in 1981, without that contract they would be a rather small software company for Apple.
You think Microsoft purposely delayed the product to their only partner, purposely destroyed their already damaged reputation and purposely destroyed their future in the wireless market?
In the wireless market, Microsoft is as dead as Sendo. Stinger still is not working as promised and we will see how long Orange will ship a half-ready product.
No. Microsoft did not plan it that way. It's just the typical asshole's "if I can't have it, nobody shall have it" attitude caused by incompetence and overconfidence. Microsoft are not evil geniuses, they are incompetent bullies.
If I see an antique on eBay selling for $5 that I know to be incredibly valuable, I should buy it -- I'm under no imaginable obligation to contact the seller and let him know he's an idiot.
OK, imagine you buy that antique for 5$. The seller promises after he got the money that he will ship it. 2 weeks after that he sais, that it is no ready yet. 2 months after that, it is still not ready, but will be soon. The next year he sells it to another one.
That's like suing your parents after they pay for the first five years of college and then refuse to pay for year six.
Well - no.
Microsoft promised to have Stinger ready in summer 2001. Without Stinger, Sendo couldn't make any money. Over a year later Microsoft still hasn't got the product ready and is refusing to fix some of the bugs Sendo found. You get the picture?
So yes, Sendo was stupid. Everybody is stupid who thinks Microsoft can put out a working product in schedule.
Actually, every comments-page is 20 times as large as the average article (without pictures of course)
Hell, even the complaints about slashdotting take more space than the article itself - Add to that that usually the article is pseudo-mirrored in the comments area anyway.
A computer with a non-detachable monitor is not perfect. Even if it would cost half of Apple's price, I would not buy it.
It would be not that hard: All Apple had to do was stop purposely crippling their low-end machines. That means it should have PCI and AGP-slots and a goddamn VGA-port.
And they should sell the CPUs and motherboards seperately.
Even the most crappy 300$ PC is more reliable than a $2000 Mac. Why? Because when something breaks I can get a replacement within half an hour (well if the stores are open;-), while I would have to send in the Mac - or buy a completely new machine.
Next we need to radically cut the number of choices that the average user needs to make at install-time (Gee, which of the following 87 libraries should I install? And what the hell is a library anyway?)
In SuSE you have 4 choices: Minimal system without graphics, KDE-workstation, KDE-workstation with openoffice (default) and customized.
This is (again) the proof that no matter how easy Linux is, there are still people complaining that it's hard.
We don't need to make Linux easier (it already is if you use SuSE or Mandrake) we need to tell people about it.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean a window, menus and toolbars?
So what's the problem again in switching to OpenOffice? It's basically the same thing.
By "crashes" I assumed we were talking about crashing the phone and the other things the article was talking about not the car actually crashing into something. (Altough the transmission issue sounds not good)
However, my points, all of which you DID get completely wrong:
1. Computer systems are NOT inherently unreliable. There are thousands of very important computer systems which would cause huge amounts of problems and death if they failed (aircraft, nuclear power plants, etc.) yet they work mostly as intended. Lockups and problems are extremely rare. You seem to blindly believe that just because Microsoft is unable to provide a reliable system, they do not exist. They do exist and there is a wide range of software reliability with Micorsoft being usually on the low end.
2. The GPL does indeed give you FULL control of the software. For all technical purposes you can do exactly the same as if you have written it yourself. (You cannot redistribute it without supplying the source-code, but this is NO TECHNICAL limitation, it's a pure marketing/sales limitation.)
3. Microsoft's software (again) did not work as intended. Normally you dump a vendor when they screw you or screw up again and again, but Microsoft gets another chance and another chance and another chance - which is exactly the reason why they do put out half-finished products. The morons will buy them anyway and be *happy* when they get fixed after years. Just look at all the sheep praising Windows2000 which is barely more than Windows95 with less bugs and lockups. Why should Microsoft make the first version work right when they can sell you the same 3 or more times (Win95, Win98, WinXP)?
Sorry I missed that you refered only to drivability and safety, those were not touched by WinCE/iDrive, my mistake, apologies. However your post contained enough BS that needed to be corrected. (See above 3 points)
P.S. I am not the parent poster.
If you are too dumb to understand that the GPL means exactly that everything is in 100% control of the manufacturer, how do you think you can even dare to think you have any idea what is good to use in a car?
That said, yes there are many reasons why doing exactly that (putting a computer between user and actual physical controls of the car) is a good idea. With the right sensors you can break when the car in front of you brakes suddently and prevent crashes. With even more advanced sensors you could savely stop the car when the driver stops reacting (People often have heart attacks in their cars. It's happening every day.) or do millions of other useful stuff. If done right, you could save thousands of lives every year.
A well designed computer system is much more reliable than a human.
Yes, this excludes most systems that have Microsoft software on them. Actually before Microsoft, it was like that. The big mainframes and even the first home computers (C64, Atari, Amiga) had the reputation of being very reliable and that a problem usually equals a hardware problem. Microsoft changed that.
Now that I've said that, I think you should agree with me here.
Certainly not.
There's no evidence whatsoever in this article that Microsoft or WinCE had anything to do with the drivability or safety of the car.
So everytime some Windows-based device screws up we shall assume it's because of dumb application programmers? Everytime a Windows-based server is hacked because of dumb admins?
So, Mr. IT professional, put the blame where blame is due, and look for someone else to pick on. I swear, the word "Microsoft" can't even be mentioned around here anymore without a childish remark like yours.
Actually Microsoft can't be mentioned anymore without some Winlots coming to their defense without any evidence. Why do always Windows-based product break randomly? Why does my dual-boot computer lock up frequently in Windows but not in Linux?
The sad part is that you are fully right. Hell, even now after Microsoft screwed up *again* your post was modded as flamebait.
Why am I supposed to believe that Microsoft's non-yet-existing stuff will always be bug-free and forgive all the bugs in current products?
Let's face it: Microsoft is incompetent and will always put out buggy and insecure products.
100 (probably paid) Winlots arguing otherwise won't change my opinion, only Microsoft finally creating something without bugs can. And so far it didn't. Yes most software has bugs, but no that does not prove that the quality is the same everywhere. Unix and Linux are 10 times as reliable.
Hell, just look at the "Stinger" problems. Too late, too buggy. It's always the same.
It's just about corporate stupidity and pride. Some suit found the website and went crazy, no business plan, no money to be made, it's just about pride, envy and stupidity. And by the way, what else has PCI-SIG to do except surfing the web all day long and bragging about how great they are?
For a better understanding look here, large organizations really work that way.
PCI-SGI may be stupid, but they are not so stupid to really believe they can make serious money on selling such a service.
Why should the cellphone usage rate be higher in bigger countries?
Actually, those are the only 2 programs that earn money for Microsoft, all others (XBox, MSN, WinCE, mice, keyboards...) lose money for them.
So they are even more dependent on Windows.
What we need is exactly what Apple did: Preinstall it.
Most will just use the default.
Intel has lots of money but not really much R&D brains. So they buy it from somewhere else.
.NET is like Java, but it only runs de-facto on Microsoft platforms (in theory it will run on BSD too, but important parts are missing)
Such as?
I mean, yes Intel is "commited", AMD is "commited", but did they actually release a TCPA-product? No. Has Intel or AMD actually announced a chip with TCPA-functionality? No. Is TCPA showing on their roadmaps? I didn't see it.
Recently, it has become so quiet around TCPA (well it has been quiet around the TCPA-group, the anti-TCPA groups are loud and active) that I don't expect it to become a reality anytime soon if at all.
Let's face it: People love to pirate software/videos/music and will not buy anything that will try to prevent them doing that. Seems like Intel/AMD have realized that.
"Under the SDMA, in the event of a Sendo bankruptcy, Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property, including rights to make, use, or copy the Sendo Smartphone to create other to create other Smartphones and to, most importantly for Microsoft, sublicense those rights to third parties."
Of course we don't know what the exact IP is, but it goes beyond making "stinger run on a cellphone".
No, it's lawyer-speak for exactly that. Nobody would stop them or somebody else from implementing Stinger without Sendo-IP.
Not all of them but the majority. I don't call loosing money a measure of failure - the XBox has been a success in that it has gotten MS the market share they want in the console market, and MS boxes in the home. Again, they are thinking in the long term.
Microsoft expected to sell 6 Million units by June 2001 but sold less than 4 Million. They sold a little more than half of what they wanted - and you usually make easily beatable expectations...
I thought the same way about Palm. At least in this case MS faces a body of determined foes, and so are less likley to have the other side make stupid choices that hands victory by default. But I'll believe it in three years if I see MS phones have gone no-where.
Well, there are differences:
1) Microsoft gets a big marketing bonus from people like you. Gullible people buy Microsoft because of this FUD. Nokia is no small startup like Palm. They are the big guys, no FUD in the world can destroy their reputation in building a successful platform, while it can with Palm. So while you are trying to talk Nokia dead, nobody will listen.
2) Palm made a few mistakes, they didn't supported the newer stuff (Videos, etc.) fast enough.
and most importantly 3) Palm is a proprietary one-vendor technology. That means a new vendor going to market doesn't have a big advantage choosing Palm. Symbian on the other hand is a consortium founded by all major cellphone makers, not a single-vendor effort.
Look, I'm not saying all other companies were doomed (though you could read that out of what I said before). What I'm saying is that you seem like you are taking them too lightly, basically fiddling while rome burns.
Wrong, Microsoft lives from "being not taken too lightly". You essentially advise people to consider Microsoft only because they are Microsoft, therefore generating sales for them.
In the platform business, getting ignored is the absolutely worst what can happen to you.
That's great that you are forwarding Linux in the embedded market, I agree that Linux has done very well there holding off MS.
They didn't "hold MS off", they completely destroyed them. In the mid-90's the majority of embedded apps ran on DOS, which as you remember very well is made by Microsoft. When you need lots of graphics, WinCE is still an option, but generally I would call it almost dead in the embedded space.
All I am trying to get across is that anyone competing against Microsoft should not be lulled into a false sense of security by an APPARENT lack of success in any market. Cell phone makers, embedded designers, anyone.
Well Sendo probably thought exactly that. (Microsoft is so great and eventually they will succeed so better we work with them instead of against them.) No other company would get such a deal. But Microsoft got it because they are Microsoft.
Microsoft's big FUD-machine supported by you and thousands of others at work.
Personally I think Microsoft is doomed as a company, but I still think they can use $40 billion (or whatever they have) to f*ck a lot of things up on the way down and I'm tired of other, non-MS companies and people letting it happen through inaction and sloth.
Inaction and sloth from people is the worst that can happen to Microsoft in a market they are not in. And the companies won't base their business tactics on postings from the Internet.
Also what everybody seems to forget is that running a startup like Sendo or Netscape into the ground is one thing, takling with several multi-billion enterprises is another.
Wow, that IP can be summarized in "How to make Stinger run on a cellphone". Yes it's not completely worthless, but hardly vital to any business plan. Without that IP, Microsoft would do it themselves, so what.
It really doesn't matter what the implementation is at the moment, now they don't have to share profits with anyone like they would have before so the eventual working version to take over the market will be all MS profit.
I doubt MS will start building cellphones, so no, any profits will be shared between software maker and hardware maker.
Of course I hope it fails but I have seen far too many times how they appear to die, only to return and doominate.
Stop spreading FUD (yes I mean that literally).
It's just not true. There are only 2 projects making money at Microsoft: Windows and Office - everything else is losing money. And despite losing money you could maybe call Internet Explorer a success and WinCE at least not a failure (does fine on PDAs but miserably in the rest of the embedded-market). So you got 3 or 4 successful projects versus a long list of failed ones.
Of course this doesn't mean every project from MS will fail, but it proves that not every MS-project is succeeding.
And Microsoft's cellphone efforts are failing. Without a big cellphone-maker I don't see how it can succeed. Even with Sendo (= newcomer) it would be hard to get established in a saturated market, but now with a nobody (Orange) and an even more saturated market (1½ years later) the chances are even lower.
Destroying the internet - you mean like having a bunch of web pages that only work in a MS browser?
No, I was speaking about a Microsoft network where Microsoft-only servers talk to Microsoft-only clients over Microsoft-only protocols and everybody (servers and clients) have to pay a hefty fee to Microsoft for the priviledge to use their network.
Maybe you are too young to know, but that was Microsoft's big plan in the early 90's and that's why Bill Gates said "The Internet? We are not interested in it" and "Internet will never be popular" and that's why the then proprietary MSN got an icon that nobody used in Windows 95.
Of course now Microsoft pretends that this all never happened.
Already happens, and seems to be getting worse.
Again, FUD. I use Mozilla all the time and I maybe find 3 or 4 pages per year that don't work. And it's getting better, not worse. 2 years ago, browsing under Linux was a problem (but still not so terrible as you want us to believe), but now with Mozilla available and a very much improved Konqueror you have 2 very fine browsers.
Bob? Aspects of that resurfaced in other projects (including clippy) hated, yes, failure, no (don't ask me how that works).
Now that you have proved you have never seen MS Bob, can we go on?
(MS Bob was about a virtual home where every application was represented by a "real" item. For example if you wanted to write a letter, you would "go to" the office and click on the typewriter standing on the table. Kinda like those adventures like Leisure suite Larry or how it was called. Clippy had little to do with that, there was a "helper-dog" which could be vaguely be compared with clippy, but that's hardly enough to call MS Bob a success.)
Hailstorm is on hold while they build up more thunder, as it were.
FUD
Windows on Alpaha actually worked pretty well as I remember, MS simply decided to kill it... but I think that was more of a strategic choice than because it was a failure.
You mean like they only got 5% marketshare on Alpha left and Linux was wiping the floor with them like they do know on Itanium?
The trouble is, anytime you think they have failed all they have really done is gained ground for the next attack.
FUD
Be afraid of them! Be uncertain and doubtful of anything else!
I'm sorry but I'm not buying the apparent lack of stregth in anything MS is doing anymore, they are absolutley to be feared
Bill Gates loves your kind.
and fought against with full stregth no matter how weak they appear to be in any area.
The stronger they appear, the stronger they are.
A otherwise die-hard pro MS company which is a partner of my company are implementing Linux on embedded devices.
Why? Because they do not fear Microsoft and believed Linux will become the standard on embedded devices. (That was 1 year ago, by now Linux is already the de-facto standard on embedded devices except PDAs.) Again, we are talking about a pro-MS company here, 2 years ago non-MS systems weren't even allowed in the company.
I just hope the cell phone makers can hold MS off,
Then why do you spread the "all non-Microsoft platforms are doomed" - propaganda and FUD which is Microsoft's number one sales argument?
With Microsoft having about zero marketshare (the few units from Orange are neglectible, they are not even on sale in most parts of the world, AFAIK England is the only country), without a serious hardware partner (Orange is a provider, not a hardware maker - even with enough demand, Orange couldn't produce enough units to fullfill the demand. Also it is doubtful that Orange wants to start selling cellphones for competing providers and that competing providers would buy those), with an accepted standard all major hardware makers support (Symbian), with powerful enemies (both Nokia and Sony-Ericsson are larger than Microsoft. Siemens and Motorola are also not some startup like Netscape was.) and with at least 2 years of lost time, Microsoft's chances are not only slim, they are non-existant.
Speaking of "I just hope the cell phone makers can hold MS off" is pure FUD. Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt, all without any reason. Normally, FUD like this from people like you give Microsoft some extra marketing spin, but in this situation even that can't help them.
How should they ever be able to "have so much more profit"? *IF* they want to make another wireless-OS, they have to completely redesign it aniway and pretend Stinger never existed, destroying Sendo on the way hardly helps them. It would have been much better for MS to get to market one year earlier.
Microsoft has been declared "dead" in too many things that they eventually returned to have the upper hand in.
Microsoft has also been declared as the victor in too many things that they eventually turned out to fail miserably.
Remember how Microsoft wanted to destroy the Internet and replace it with the proprietary MSN using Microsoft's own protocols? Remember MS Bob? Remember COOl? Remember Hailstorm? Remember the HomeR project? Remember Modular Windows and MMOSA? Remember Windows on PPC, Alpha and Mips?
No, Microsoft did not plan this and most of their projects fail.
Wrong, Microsoft didn't sell it at all.
Asian hardware manufacturers made cheap PC-parts and PC-makers made cheap PCs which sold well. Hardware manufacturers innovated and created much more powerful features. And the Windows/PC combination *IS* usually much better than a Sun or Apple solution or whatever other proprietary hardware solution there is around - despite of DOS and Windows' deficencies.
Remember that before the mid-90's no serious alternative to DOS/Windows existed for the PC and Linux only recently became suitable for the desktop. Despite being over a decade late, Linux grabbed nearly half of the x86-server market in the last 5 years. That share would have otherwise gone to Windows and not because Windows is so great on servers, but because people would prefer the cheap open hardware platform with or without Windows.
Of course market inertia and customer lock-in keeps Windows going on the desktop. But market inertia and customer lock-in can hardly be qualified as cleverness, it's not really hard to make your product incompatible to everything else.
But market inertia and customer lock-in just slow down the transition from proprietary to open, it won't stop it. Just like the Unix-vendors couldn't stop the transition from proprietary to open hardware, Microsoft will be unable to stop the transition from proprietary to open software. Hell, just look at the latest Helloween documents and how fast Bill Gates is selling his MSFT-shares (he already sold over half of his initial holdings and is selling more each month). Microsoft is scared and should be. They know the party will be over eventually - they still can make obscene amounts of money for quite a few years, but sooner or later it will end.
Bill Gates was very, very clever when he secured the DOS-contract from IBM (clever and lucky, his mother helped him a lot), but that's over 20 years ago. After that, Microsoft was just backwards compatible and reimplemented (or bought the companies right away) what others have created, whoa. You don't need to be clever for that, just very rich - and they were rich because the DOS-contract made the money rolling in.
All the success of Microsoft is based on that contract in 1981, without that contract they would be a rather small software company for Apple.
In the wireless market, Microsoft is as dead as Sendo. Stinger still is not working as promised and we will see how long Orange will ship a half-ready product.
No. Microsoft did not plan it that way. It's just the typical asshole's "if I can't have it, nobody shall have it" attitude caused by incompetence and overconfidence. Microsoft are not evil geniuses, they are incompetent bullies.
OK, imagine you buy that antique for 5$. The seller promises after he got the money that he will ship it. 2 weeks after that he sais, that it is no ready yet. 2 months after that, it is still not ready, but will be soon. The next year he sells it to another one.
Who's the idiot now?
Microsoft was too incompetent to ship their part of the product in time. Sendo is paying for Microsoft's incompetence.
Well - no.
Microsoft promised to have Stinger ready in summer 2001. Without Stinger, Sendo couldn't make any money. Over a year later Microsoft still hasn't got the product ready and is refusing to fix some of the bugs Sendo found. You get the picture?
So yes, Sendo was stupid. Everybody is stupid who thinks Microsoft can put out a working product in schedule.
Think about it: Imagine you would make a deal signed with only a handshake with the local mobster-boss and another with Bill Gates.
Which deal would you trust more?
Hell, even the complaints about slashdotting take more space than the article itself - Add to that that usually the article is pseudo-mirrored in the comments area anyway.
On IE:
1. Open In new Window
2. Window pops up
3. Switch back to old window until the new window is loaded
4. Later Switch to now window
On Mozilla:
1. Middle-click for opening in new tab
2. Later switch to new window
Understood?
It would be not that hard: All Apple had to do was stop purposely crippling their low-end machines. That means it should have PCI and AGP-slots and a goddamn VGA-port.
And they should sell the CPUs and motherboards seperately.
Even the most crappy 300$ PC is more reliable than a $2000 Mac. Why? Because when something breaks I can get a replacement within half an hour (well if the stores are open ;-), while I would have to send in the Mac - or buy a completely new machine.
In SuSE you have 4 choices: Minimal system without graphics, KDE-workstation, KDE-workstation with openoffice (default) and customized.
This is (again) the proof that no matter how easy Linux is, there are still people complaining that it's hard.
We don't need to make Linux easier (it already is if you use SuSE or Mandrake) we need to tell people about it.
There is another explanation. Localizable resources are separated from the code, but they are compiled into the same binary.
So you mean to tell me that Microsoft in all it's glory needs more than a WEEK to recompile a servicepack?
Oh, phu-lease.