Yeah, we're trying so hard to kill Thunderbird we created a new subsidiary company to drive it, hired a top guy to run the company, and gave it $3M to get started. Pretty expensive way to "kill" it...
Re:And all of a sudden....
on
SCO Loses
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The intentions of rank-and-file Microsoft employees are mostly irrelevant, because Microsoft's course is determined by executives.
Employees need to evaluate how the company they serve wields the power they generate; if it's less than ethical, they should find a more ethical employer. Talented software developers have the luxury of taking the high road with negligible material risk. Those who just take the money and ignore what they are supporting are, in fact, evil.
> How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox?
There are many actually that only work with Firefox and IE.
However, we handle this situation very differently from IE: We are always fixing standards compliance bugs. If some site depends on a glaring Firefox standards-compliance bug, we will almost always fix it and break the site, forcing the Web developers to fix their site. This, plus the fact that WHATWG keeps tightening up specs, should mean that the situation keeps getting better over time for users and developers of other browsers.
Note that this actually hurts Firefox, by creating work for our developers, annoying Web developers, and making life easier for our competitors. But that's OK: it's the right thing to do.
Browser market share matters. As long as IE had all the market share, Web developers tended to ignore Web standards and build sites that only worked in IE --- it's a simple economic decision on their part. Wherever Firefox has major market share, they can't do that anymore. They are forced to build sites that at least work in Firefox too. That has the nice side effect that those sites are now usable by Linux and Mac users, and they're also much more likely to work in other browsers. Everybody wins --- except Microsoft.
This is why it's not enough for us to just believe in freedom and build free software. We have to make sure it succeeds in the market, or we'll lose the ability to communicate with the non-free world and ultimately our free software will be useless.
Like most Microsoft "internal emails" that are "leaked", likely as not this is thinly disguised Microsoft PR. As far as I can tell it's a collection of mostly true facts with very very heavy Microsoft spin on them.
Users will quickly learn to ignore the status bar color just like they've learned to ignore all other security warnings (thanks to expired certificates and other false negatives we throw in their face every day).
I don't hate Microsoft. I think their products are often very good, given that software from any vendor tends to suck in various ways.
I *oppose* Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in markets with high barriers to entry. In this situation, competition suffers, and without competition we get stagnation. It is a good thing for me to spend my efforts towards increasing competition rather than decreasing it, which generally requires opposing Microsoft.
How we arrived at this situation is not very relevant. It's partly Microsoft's doing, partly not. The computer industry suffers from structural network effects that drive the marketplace towards monopolies; that's not Microsoft's fault. But Microsoft certainly did (and does) many ethical and unethical things to reach and maintain its position.
People tend to think that if you oppose Microsoft, you must also hate them, but it's not so.
I think the numbers quoted from the article here were bungled.
> having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including > 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone, > which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD > candidates in the United States."
suggests around 1200 CS PhDs *awarded* in 2004-2005 in the USA and Canada. The number for the USA alone may be lower than this, but it might also be higher since 20% of departments surveyed did not respond. But assuming 1200/year is close to the mark, the number of "computer science PhD candidates in the United States" must be several times that, since a PhD takes several years and furthermore a lot of PhD students never complete their degree. I think an average of five years of studentship per PhD awarded would be a reasonably conservative estimate; then the 21% number quoted should be more like 4%.
GMail has not been abandoned. They added some new features just recently, like live update of conversation threads when new mail arrives while you're reading a conversation.
Certainly some companies are lucky enough to have the right combination of IT staff and organizational commitment to make Exchange work well. But as far as I can tell, most don't, and even for those that do, it's very expensive.
Oh, I also hear you say "even so, conservative IT departments won't go for this". Probably so. It's a disruptive play that will start with small companies and gradually work up the food chain.
The good news is that every organization using GAFYD instead of Outlook/Exchange will find it that much easier to switch away from Windows in the desktop.
Exchange is an expensive disaster. Attempting to replace it with something equivalent that's open-source is a waste of time. The genuinely attractive alternative is Google Apps For Your Domain, i.e., GMail (and GCalendar) for your company. Instead of spending lots of energy and money on IT staff and infrastructure and getting crappy results, Google gives you a better product for free. Who's going to say no?
"People want to control their data", I hear you say. Actually many companies already outsource this stuff, and more would if it was free and the service was great.
"Disgruntled Google employee could steal my data", I hear you say. Hello, your OWN disgruntled employees can already do so, and are probably more likely to.
"GMail doesn't guarantee uptime", I hear you say. Google's already more reliable than than 99% of IT departments. I'm sure they'd be willing to take a little of your money in exchange for a contract that says so.
"Don't want ads", I hear you say. I'm sure Google would take a little more of your money to make them go away. Thanks to their economies of scale, they can charge far less than the cost of in-house email and still make ridiculous profits.
Reason #1: The hyperlinked nature of the Web drives all content into the browser. You don't want link navigation to open content in another application. It's just a bad user experience.
Reason #2: A critical feature of Web applications, frequently overlooked, is that they do not require the user to make a trust decision. You just go to the site and use the app without having to click "OK" or "Install". This only works because the app is *visually* sandboxed with browser UI to label the app and separate it from stuff you trust.
Reason #3: The three major contenders for a Web-like application platform are Flash, WPF, and the HTML/JS/DOM Web. Only one of these is standards-based, not controlled by a single company. Only one of these has top-notch open-source implementations. You can dream about creating an open source, standards-based Web alternative --- the W3C does --- but it's not going to win.
Part of the problem is that GTK, which Firefox relies on on Linux, is designed to abort on memory allocation failure. It's hard to build something more reliable on top of that.
If you're smart, you should go to Google. Our industry is prone to monopolizing effects and one of the only ways to counter these effects is for talented people to flock to the underdog. So your choice is between helping entrench Microsoft's monopolies and helping encourage healthy competition. Do the right thing.
Microsoft needs to go after the iPod because their strategy is founded on total platform dominance. Unchecked, Apple will leverage its iPod strength into other devices such as cellphones and the fabled living-room computer, as well as expand the iPod's own capabilities, encroaching on the functions of PCs. It's the same reason they had to go into the console business. Before you know it, people might not be running Windows anywhere in the house. Maybe, maybe not, but it's best to crush every potential threat as early as possible.
A secondary reason is that Microsoft needs to keep growing and expanding into new markets like music players is one way to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't like what WHATWG is doing, join in and fix it.
The "ping" feature is a poor example. Sites can already do what "ping" does, just slower and in a way that's more difficult for users to disable.
So by "killing Thunderbird" you mean "set up a new subsidiary corporation to develop Thunderbird with $3M to get started"?
Yeah, we're trying so hard to kill Thunderbird we created a new subsidiary company to drive it, hired a top guy to run the company, and gave it $3M to get started. Pretty expensive way to "kill" it...
The intentions of rank-and-file Microsoft employees are mostly irrelevant, because Microsoft's course is determined by executives.
Employees need to evaluate how the company they serve wields the power they generate; if it's less than ethical, they should find a more ethical employer. Talented software developers have the luxury of taking the high road with negligible material risk. Those who just take the money and ignore what they are supporting are, in fact, evil.
(Hey, Google's hiring!)
> How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox?
There are many actually that only work with Firefox and IE.
However, we handle this situation very differently from IE: We are always fixing standards compliance bugs. If some site depends on a glaring Firefox standards-compliance bug, we will almost always fix it and break the site, forcing the Web developers to fix their site. This, plus the fact that WHATWG keeps tightening up specs, should mean that the situation keeps getting better over time for users and developers of other browsers.
Note that this actually hurts Firefox, by creating work for our developers, annoying Web developers, and making life easier for our competitors. But that's OK: it's the right thing to do.
Browser market share matters. As long as IE had all the market share, Web developers tended to ignore Web standards and build sites that only worked in IE --- it's a simple economic decision on their part. Wherever Firefox has major market share, they can't do that anymore. They are forced to build sites that at least work in Firefox too. That has the nice side effect that those sites are now usable by Linux and Mac users, and they're also much more likely to work in other browsers. Everybody wins --- except Microsoft.
This is why it's not enough for us to just believe in freedom and build free software. We have to make sure it succeeds in the market, or we'll lose the ability to communicate with the non-free world and ultimately our free software will be useless.
Like most Microsoft "internal emails" that are "leaked", likely as not this is thinly disguised Microsoft PR. As far as I can tell it's a collection of mostly true facts with very very heavy Microsoft spin on them.
Yeah, I guess.
Users will quickly learn to ignore the status bar color just like they've learned to ignore all other security warnings (thanks to expired certificates and other false negatives we throw in their face every day).
I don't hate Microsoft. I think their products are often very good, given that software from any vendor tends to suck in various ways.
I *oppose* Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in markets with high barriers to entry. In this situation, competition suffers, and without competition we get stagnation. It is a good thing for me to spend my efforts towards increasing competition rather than decreasing it, which generally requires opposing Microsoft.
How we arrived at this situation is not very relevant. It's partly Microsoft's doing, partly not. The computer industry suffers from structural network effects that drive the marketplace towards monopolies; that's not Microsoft's fault. But Microsoft certainly did (and does) many ethical and unethical things to reach and maintain its position.
People tend to think that if you oppose Microsoft, you must also hate them, but it's not so.
I think the numbers quoted from the article here were bungled.
l
> having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including
> 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone,
> which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD
> candidates in the United States."
http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may06/taulbee.htm
suggests around 1200 CS PhDs *awarded* in 2004-2005 in the USA and Canada. The number for the USA alone may be lower than this, but it might also be higher since 20% of departments surveyed did not respond. But assuming 1200/year is close to the mark, the number of "computer science PhD candidates in the United States" must be several times that, since a PhD takes several years and furthermore a lot of PhD students never complete their degree. I think an average of five years of studentship per PhD awarded would be a reasonably conservative estimate; then the 21% number quoted should be more like 4%.
Except that in a separate covenant they agreed not to sue anyone using the Office XML spec.
Just how do you know this?
Oh, also, as the spam-to-real-email ratio increases, having the spam filtered Google-side could actually be saving you bandwidth.
I mentioned this. Lots of companies already outsource their IT operations, including email.
You wouldn't want to put medical records into GMail, but I don't think you should be sending medical records by email at all.
Bandwidth will certainly be a problem for some users in the immediate future, but it'll get inexorably better over time.
GMail has not been abandoned. They added some new features just recently, like live update of conversation threads when new mail arrives while you're reading a conversation.
Certainly some companies are lucky enough to have the right combination of IT staff and organizational commitment to make Exchange work well. But as far as I can tell, most don't, and even for those that do, it's very expensive.
Oh, I also hear you say "even so, conservative IT departments won't go for this". Probably so. It's a disruptive play that will start with small companies and gradually work up the food chain.
The good news is that every organization using GAFYD instead of Outlook/Exchange will find it that much easier to switch away from Windows in the desktop.
Exchange is an expensive disaster. Attempting to replace it with something equivalent that's open-source is a waste of time. The genuinely attractive alternative is Google Apps For Your Domain, i.e., GMail (and GCalendar) for your company. Instead of spending lots of energy and money on IT staff and infrastructure and getting crappy results, Google gives you a better product for free. Who's going to say no?
"People want to control their data", I hear you say. Actually many companies already outsource this stuff, and more would if it was free and the service was great.
"Disgruntled Google employee could steal my data", I hear you say. Hello, your OWN disgruntled employees can already do so, and are probably more likely to.
"GMail doesn't guarantee uptime", I hear you say. Google's already more reliable than than 99% of IT departments. I'm sure they'd be willing to take a little of your money in exchange for a contract that says so.
"Don't want ads", I hear you say. I'm sure Google would take a little more of your money to make them go away. Thanks to their economies of scale, they can charge far less than the cost of in-house email and still make ridiculous profits.
For a few reasons.
Reason #1: The hyperlinked nature of the Web drives all content into the browser. You don't want link navigation to open content in another application. It's just a bad user experience.
Reason #2: A critical feature of Web applications, frequently overlooked, is that they do not require the user to make a trust decision. You just go to the site and use the app without having to click "OK" or "Install". This only works because the app is *visually* sandboxed with browser UI to label the app and separate it from stuff you trust.
Reason #3: The three major contenders for a Web-like application platform are Flash, WPF, and the HTML/JS/DOM Web. Only one of these is standards-based, not controlled by a single company. Only one of these has top-notch open-source implementations. You can dream about creating an open source, standards-based Web alternative --- the W3C does --- but it's not going to win.
Full disclosure: I'm a Firefox developer.
If HTML is dead and XHTML has won, why does everyone use HTML and approximately no-one use XHTML? Pull your head out of the clouds.
Part of the problem is that GTK, which Firefox relies on on Linux, is designed to abort on memory allocation failure. It's hard to build something more reliable on top of that.
If you're smart, you should go to Google. Our industry is prone to monopolizing effects and one of the only ways to counter these effects is for talented people to flock to the underdog. So your choice is between helping entrench Microsoft's monopolies and helping encourage healthy competition. Do the right thing.
Indeed. Jan 01 was about the height of the dot-com boom. The crash came right after. Blaming those job losses on globalization is completely bogus.
Microsoft needs to go after the iPod because their strategy is founded on total platform dominance. Unchecked, Apple will leverage its iPod strength into other devices such as cellphones and the fabled living-room computer, as well as expand the iPod's own capabilities, encroaching on the functions of PCs. It's the same reason they had to go into the console business. Before you know it, people might not be running Windows anywhere in the house. Maybe, maybe not, but it's best to crush every potential threat as early as possible.
A secondary reason is that Microsoft needs to keep growing and expanding into new markets like music players is one way to do that.