Radiohead has always been planning on releasing their CD in January. Putting out a 160 kbps crap quality version is there way to whet your appetite for the real CD, which will probably contain more content than the mp3 release and be of much better quality.
I've purchased and used it. It worked really well. My kid wasn't a hacker, but could work his way around the registry and Windows in general, and he couldn't circumvent it, even though he knew it was running.
It does a really good job of logging email and chat activity. I understand from a notification from them about the new version that it even somehow logs MySpace activity and friends (no idea how/if it works and my kid is grown, his problems are now his own).
I think, though, that Symantec Corporate detects it and will try and remove it.
I'm going through something similar myself. I've found that I've had to readjust my up-front goals. As a coder, I was more interested in how to accomplish something and, in point of fact, getting it accomplished.
As a manager, I've found it becomes just as important to demonstrate progress (not just results), and to make sure that what has been asked of me is achievable, measurable and makes business sense for the company.
Also, don't underestimate the importance of compliance stuff (SOX if you are with a public company, HIPAA if with a medical organization, PCI for credit cards, etc.). It all seems like a big waste of time but getting through audits and such is critical.
And, for those who say "don't take the management job, ignore them." When they have to move out of mom's basement, they will be more sympathetic to you.
I'd bet a lot of it is just all of the "hacks" one comes up with to do anything useful with the VB6. Whether it's your swiss army toolkit of API wrapper calls, voodoo to implement threading, etc. most of this either comes "free" with.NET or it's much easier to implement. People work so hard to get stuff to work under VB6 that they don't want to go through the agony of doing all again, when in fact it is much easier. Not to say that there aren't workarounds required in.NET, but they are less frequent and far less ugly than with VB6.
Why was this modded a Troll? Because s/he said something positive about Microsoft?
Everything this poster said is true, unless you take exception to the description of VB6 code as "decrepit" (having my share of battles to get VB6 to behave with null-terminated strings for API calls, I would say the poster was charitable)
Scripting is a very important part of Office productivity suites. This is not going to change. But what does have to change is the notion of "I'll just toss in a macro with my document/spreadsheet". In reality, macros can get so complex, especially with Microsoft Office's ability to set up references to COM libraries, anything but the simplest macros require careful distribution.
Documents and spreadsheets should not have macros. Ever. The Office vendors need to make it a lot easier to create macro files that are distributed differently than document files. If you have to send along macros to recalc/resort a spreadsheet or something, they should go in a different file. When you open the macro file, the Office app should state which macros that are being activated, and give you the option to use them temporarily or permanently, and by default do not allow them access to the file system unless you specify otherwise, etc. Enabling/disabling macros is not enough, there needs to be levels of trust.
Certificates are good things, especially if you are a company that uses macros a lot internally. But for an individual, getting a code signing certificate by a trusted authority is cost prohibitive and difficult. The Office macro engines simply need to do a better job of limiting the exposure to macro vulnerabilities and make it easier for Joe User to distribute macros in a "responsible" manner.
Speech recognition has been at a standstill for years now, it's been "almost there now" for well over five years. As mentioned in other posts, there has been a lot of consolidation and that has really hurt growth. Lernout & Hauspie and Dragon were constantly going back and forth a few years ago trying to get a leg up on each other. When L&H got into all of their accounting problems and shut down, that left Dragon and IBM. IBM's product went to Scansoft and went to Nuance where it languishes until somebody pulls the plug (for example, if you call for support on ViaVoice and mention you have XP SP2, they will tell you it is not a supported platform).
Most of the improvement in the Dragon and ViaVoice over the last couple of years has been in the reduction of training required to get to the high-ninety's level of accuracy (assuming noise-cancelling mic in a quiet room and you do not have a cold/sore-throat). The advancements in training have not corresponded to much in the way of translation accuracy. A "trained" Dragon 7 recognizes speech pretty much as well as Dragon 9 (I haven't played with Dragon 10 yet).
Most of the real speech recognition advancement these days is focused on discrete word sets for voice mail trees and other interactive systems. When you are on the phone giving your credit card number, two/to/too is all the same thing. While speech recognition in its current incarnation is good for people who can't type (disabilities, carpal-tunnel, etc.) it is not a replacement for typing, and isn't any closer today than it was five years ago.
Thanks for posting this. I thought I was the only one crazy enough to seem that this was a solution looking for a problem. I can imagine going to my server/security group:
Hey guys! I have a great new app. It's going to make everything simpler. All we have to do is load Apache on everybody's machine (because we sure as hell don't want IIS running on workstations), put Perl on, and we'll have an application looks like crap is but is really easy for me to work on.
By the time we get done setting up Apache permissions to deal with reading/writing files, locking down port 80 properly, and managing multiple applications in the same Apache configuration file, I can't see how this works anywhere other than an engineer's workstation.
What is the point of limiting ourselves to HTML's crappy GUI toolkit, inherent lack of session state, etc. for more administrative overhead? Seriously, the only reason this article got any attention because it its inherent anti-M$ substance (again, there is no way anybody in their right mind would ever role out IIS on individual workstations).
Adobe and Symantec are perfect examples of why Windows isrelevant. Software companies are not properly supporting other operating systems. Although Adobe still builds graphics apps for the Mac, they support for Linux is, at best, tepid; they rarely even bother supporting Mac on non-graphics applications, such as Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro, which they acquired years ago). Symantec's support for non-Windows operating sytems is anything but legendary (ex. management console for corporate AV is all Windows).
I wish Microsoft would expand the scope of the article to not only how to write applications to leverage the "Vista experience", but also to author your applications so that they will properly levergage any updates to standard libraries (current and forthcoming) so that if your applications is loaded onto Windows 2K, XP or Vista; the user will have a consistent experience.
In Microsoft's view of the world, all corporations will update to Vista the day after it is released. In reality, many are still running "legacy" OS's. Letting us know which standard libraries, fonts, etc. will be propogated to older OS's that are still in use will help developers create applications that an organization can deploy without fear of incompatibility.
One example is the new Aero wizard. Will versions of this control be available on XP/2K? Or are we supposed to build different versions of an app for different OS's? (disclaimer, I have not yet done any research on this, so if this is a poor example, appologies in advance)
a) Arms stuck out in front of you, palms facing down.
b) Arms hung low, palms facing together.
Between both of these admittedly non-optimal positions I'll take arms in front, palms down any day. Given the size of most PS2-type controllers, you have to bend your wrists inward to play, and that isn't good for you. My PC has a big fat ergo keyboard with a raised palm rest on the front (i.e. the keybaord tilts up in the front, not in the back). My wrists stay pretty straight. Again, not optimial, but until somebody sets up a controller that doesn't force you to hunch your shouders and tweak your wrists, I'll take it. I haven't played with the WII two-part controller, but it seems like a possible move in the right direction, at least from an ergonomic point of view.
Mouse, keyboard = full, configurable control. Just about every game lets you set up the keyboard however you want.
PS2 controller = cure for carpal tunnel? Puhleeze. PS2 controllers are a plot by the apes to destroy our thumbs, and thus, eliminate our evolutionary advantage of opposeable thumbs.
If you wanted to use wxPython, why would you be using.net anyway?
Sort of "I want my cake and eat it too." It'd be nice to get all of.NET's framework libraries (insomuch as they are available in Mono), and to get the nice native-looking apps wx gives you on Windows and Linux (I'm not a huge fan of GTK+ on Windows, they never seem "native" but maybe that's just the apps I've run into and I'm sure that makes me lame, but whatever) -- this post isn't meant to debate the virtues of GTK, the parent was just asking "why"?
It would be a pity if, instead of just using the opportunity to "clean up" some of the cheesier effects, if they instead used the opportunity to tweak the story line, insert new characters, added ridges to Klingons, etc. I don't say this as a "historical society of Star Trek" member or any such thing, it's just that such manipulation tends to stick out like a sore thumb and distract more than enhance.
There is nothing genius about the iPod, iTunes, etc. Apple made a quality product that had fewer buttons and created a music store that was "relatively" easy to use. Every user of this site knows how easy it is to use apt-get (or equivalent) to get the software to access an iPod or most any other mp3 player. This is not an issue.
We can all bitch about DRM, about how it screws everybody (consumers, musicians, whatever), and it will not change the fundamental fact that the music conglomerates will only release their music with it. The fact that Apple is making decent money off of iTunes is a fair indicator that the public will eventually accept DRM even when they understand the strings attached. We have lost the debate.
With the supposed DRM exclusions in the new GPL (which, I admittedly haven't read, and I could be wrong), Linux will be even less relavant with consumer devices as time goes by. I can tell my kids all about they great music they can download unencumbered and it won't make a goddam bit of difference if they can't get whatever MTV-regurgitated crap is popular that week. Open source needs to deal with DRM, and content protection, in a sane, rational way. It is not enough to say "DRM is bad, DRM is bad". It is reality. People need to seriously evaluate open source DRM projects like Authena and Sun's project, and make a concerted effort to work with the media conglomerates to implement it. It is going to be a hard sell, but maybe not impossible.
Ultimately, it will not matter if my kids can drag-and-drop to their iPod from Linux if the content isn't there.
IMHO, the problem comes down to how security works on PC's - it's based on the user, not the app. This is true on Linux as well as Windows. An application runs under the security context of what the user can get to. Applications ought to run under their own security accounts, and when they try to write somewhere they have not been authorized to write before, the user ought to get warned. If the application makes an outbound Internet connection or starts listening on a port without prior authorization, the user ought to get warned. It might seem a hassle to have a couple of hundred security accounts on the PC, but it is far less of a hassle than invasive anti-virual software, especially crap like Norton and McAfee.
Yes, I know Linux is secure than Windows, I'm a happy Ubuntu user. I SUDO whenever I do anything administrative (install apps. install devices, etc.) But there is nothing from stopping a hostile application from going out and nuking every file that my non-admin account has access to..
Depending on how Microsoft chooses to implement it, it can be a Good Thing or a Distracting Thing. For example:
They can make it simple or difficult to change the default file format (hide the option in some obscure dialog or make it impossible to implement via a group policy)
They can change the default file format back to the proprietary format whenever there is a service pack (think Internet Explorer browser tug-of-war)
They can throw up dialogs like "If you save in this format your document may look like crap later" (sort of what they do now)
If they stick to previous behavior, the converter will work, but it will be annoying enough to implement that a lot of people and organizations won't bother with it.
Linux, BSD, OS X, take your pick. The "point" of the fines is that the EU wants to force Microsoft to open up source code and protocols because of their supposed monopoly. You can attempt to fine or regulate to modify behavior, or you can let the market do your work for you, by leveraging alternatives.
I agree Linux is not the answer as much as Samba, Open Office, JSP or Notes are. The point should not be to "hurt" or even "punish" Microsoft, the point should be making sure that the continent's systems remain interoperable and not subject to the whims of a single entity. The best way to do that is to leverage open systems when appropriate, not to throw money at lawyers/barristers/politicians.
Microsoft does not "set the rules to the game". There are choices. It's a bunch of crap to say that "we use Windows because we have to". There are a number of alternatives to most of Microsoft's components and applications. If the EU likes Microsoft software, fine. They should use it. But they should not be in the business of regulating behavior. If they want Microsoft to "open up" the best way to do it is to affect their revenue stream. If you try do this by regulation and fines, Microsoft can make the arguement that "the only way we lose is to get fined to death, but our products are still preferred," and this will ultimately placate shareholders, because there are not too many companies driven out of business because of regulation (cigarette and drug companies are doing just fine, thank you very much; and Enron was fraud, not fines).
If the EU starts implementing alternatives, Microsoft will then see their bad behavior leading to a loss of marketshare, and that will concern investors much than intermitable legal action. Microsoft is starting to dig into their large stash of cash for R&D, so market cap will become more important as their liquid assets utilized. Drop in sales, not fines, will get investors to pressure Microsoft to play nicely.
What will work is redirecting the money wasted on legal action in a bonafide attempt to ascertain the feasibility of switching servers and workstations to Linux. They won't be able to do it everywhere, but they could concentrate on the following:
Migrating from Exchange to the newly announced Notes on Linux
Setting up file storage shares on Linux/Samba instead of Windows Server/Windows Storage Edition
Migrating targeted groups of users from Microsoft Office to Open Office ("power" users may be harder to switch, but the guy using Word as a memo authoring package will be able to)
Migrating ASP/ASP.NET applications to Java Server Pages (or maybe PHP)
Investors won't freak out because of a arbitrary fine that Microsoft won't end up paying (they'll settle on a lower amount or give away licenses or something). Investors will freak if an entire continent starts a concerted effort to shut down a significant part of Microsoft's revenue stream.
I was going to say "I Don't Get It" but somebody beat me to it.
I think the title of TFA "Separate data and formatting with microformats" is a bit ironic since it's about wedging your data into a web page in such a fashion that somebody might be able to pull it back out.
If you want to make your data available there are all sorts of standard and more efficient ways of doing it than embedding it in the presentation layer. If somebody is going to all the trouble to create a parseable human-readable page, why wouldn't they go to about the same amount of trouble and make a far more efficient and standard RSS feed? What about the buzzword of the last few years, SOAP? Hell, what about XML?
From TFA:
How great is that? I have one script that reads a page with calendar items and exports it as XML. Then, I have another page that turns that XML back into calendar items. The original script can then read that page and come out with the same data. It's definitely a circular action. Okay, maybe it's not that great.
I agree. This reminds me of the lame number tricks where you have somebody pick a number, add something, multiply it by something, blah blah blah, you take the result, divide it by 7 and then you give them their orignal number because you had it all set up ahead of time. If they screw up in their calculations, the trick doesn't work. In this thing, if you screw up embedding the text within the HTML (plenty of ways to do that), the trick doesn't work - and doesn't accomplish much even if it does.
Slashdot Mirror
Radiohead has always been planning on releasing their CD in January. Putting out a 160 kbps crap quality version is there way to whet your appetite for the real CD, which will probably contain more content than the mp3 release and be of much better quality.
I've purchased and used it. It worked really well. My kid wasn't a hacker, but could work his way around the registry and Windows in general, and he couldn't circumvent it, even though he knew it was running.
It does a really good job of logging email and chat activity. I understand from a notification from them about the new version that it even somehow logs MySpace activity and friends (no idea how/if it works and my kid is grown, his problems are now his own).
I think, though, that Symantec Corporate detects it and will try and remove it.
I'm going through something similar myself. I've found that I've had to readjust my up-front goals. As a coder, I was more interested in how to accomplish something and, in point of fact, getting it accomplished.
As a manager, I've found it becomes just as important to demonstrate progress (not just results), and to make sure that what has been asked of me is achievable, measurable and makes business sense for the company.
Also, don't underestimate the importance of compliance stuff (SOX if you are with a public company, HIPAA if with a medical organization, PCI for credit cards, etc.). It all seems like a big waste of time but getting through audits and such is critical.
And, for those who say "don't take the management job, ignore them." When they have to move out of mom's basement, they will be more sympathetic to you.
I wonder if this is among the "first things" to know about Linux, how it will ever become widespread on the desktop...
I'd bet a lot of it is just all of the "hacks" one comes up with to do anything useful with the VB6. Whether it's your swiss army toolkit of API wrapper calls, voodoo to implement threading, etc. most of this either comes "free" with .NET or it's much easier to implement. People work so hard to get stuff to work under VB6 that they don't want to go through the agony of doing all again, when in fact it is much easier. Not to say that there aren't workarounds required in .NET, but they are less frequent and far less ugly than with VB6.
Why was this modded a Troll? Because s/he said something positive about Microsoft?
Everything this poster said is true, unless you take exception to the description of VB6 code as "decrepit" (having my share of battles to get VB6 to behave with null-terminated strings for API calls, I would say the poster was charitable)
Scripting is a very important part of Office productivity suites. This is not going to change. But what does have to change is the notion of "I'll just toss in a macro with my document/spreadsheet". In reality, macros can get so complex, especially with Microsoft Office's ability to set up references to COM libraries, anything but the simplest macros require careful distribution.
Documents and spreadsheets should not have macros. Ever. The Office vendors need to make it a lot easier to create macro files that are distributed differently than document files. If you have to send along macros to recalc/resort a spreadsheet or something, they should go in a different file. When you open the macro file, the Office app should state which macros that are being activated, and give you the option to use them temporarily or permanently, and by default do not allow them access to the file system unless you specify otherwise, etc. Enabling/disabling macros is not enough, there needs to be levels of trust.
Certificates are good things, especially if you are a company that uses macros a lot internally. But for an individual, getting a code signing certificate by a trusted authority is cost prohibitive and difficult. The Office macro engines simply need to do a better job of limiting the exposure to macro vulnerabilities and make it easier for Joe User to distribute macros in a "responsible" manner.
Speech recognition has been at a standstill for years now, it's been "almost there now" for well over five years. As mentioned in other posts, there has been a lot of consolidation and that has really hurt growth. Lernout & Hauspie and Dragon were constantly going back and forth a few years ago trying to get a leg up on each other. When L&H got into all of their accounting problems and shut down, that left Dragon and IBM. IBM's product went to Scansoft and went to Nuance where it languishes until somebody pulls the plug (for example, if you call for support on ViaVoice and mention you have XP SP2, they will tell you it is not a supported platform).
Most of the improvement in the Dragon and ViaVoice over the last couple of years has been in the reduction of training required to get to the high-ninety's level of accuracy (assuming noise-cancelling mic in a quiet room and you do not have a cold/sore-throat). The advancements in training have not corresponded to much in the way of translation accuracy. A "trained" Dragon 7 recognizes speech pretty much as well as Dragon 9 (I haven't played with Dragon 10 yet).
Most of the real speech recognition advancement these days is focused on discrete word sets for voice mail trees and other interactive systems. When you are on the phone giving your credit card number, two/to/too is all the same thing. While speech recognition in its current incarnation is good for people who can't type (disabilities, carpal-tunnel, etc.) it is not a replacement for typing, and isn't any closer today than it was five years ago.
Thanks for posting this. I thought I was the only one crazy enough to seem that this was a solution looking for a problem. I can imagine going to my server/security group:
By the time we get done setting up Apache permissions to deal with reading/writing files, locking down port 80 properly, and managing multiple applications in the same Apache configuration file, I can't see how this works anywhere other than an engineer's workstation.
What is the point of limiting ourselves to HTML's crappy GUI toolkit, inherent lack of session state, etc. for more administrative overhead? Seriously, the only reason this article got any attention because it its inherent anti-M$ substance (again, there is no way anybody in their right mind would ever role out IIS on individual workstations).
If the folks who were identifying these "bombs" were related to the geniuses in Florida who couldn't figure out how to "Vote for One"
My floppy drive, my fat-client PC, bloated government, metal CD's and countless other things that those in the "know" have deemed dead.
Adobe and Symantec are perfect examples of why Windows isrelevant. Software companies are not properly supporting other operating systems. Although Adobe still builds graphics apps for the Mac, they support for Linux is, at best, tepid; they rarely even bother supporting Mac on non-graphics applications, such as Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro, which they acquired years ago). Symantec's support for non-Windows operating sytems is anything but legendary (ex. management console for corporate AV is all Windows).
Maybe Nintendo couldn't get fully-functional, reliable drivers for current chipsets like the rest of us.
I wish Microsoft would expand the scope of the article to not only how to write applications to leverage the "Vista experience", but also to author your applications so that they will properly levergage any updates to standard libraries (current and forthcoming) so that if your applications is loaded onto Windows 2K, XP or Vista; the user will have a consistent experience.
In Microsoft's view of the world, all corporations will update to Vista the day after it is released. In reality, many are still running "legacy" OS's. Letting us know which standard libraries, fonts, etc. will be propogated to older OS's that are still in use will help developers create applications that an organization can deploy without fear of incompatibility.
One example is the new Aero wizard. Will versions of this control be available on XP/2K? Or are we supposed to build different versions of an app for different OS's? (disclaimer, I have not yet done any research on this, so if this is a poor example, appologies in advance)
Between both of these admittedly non-optimal positions I'll take arms in front, palms down any day. Given the size of most PS2-type controllers, you have to bend your wrists inward to play, and that isn't good for you. My PC has a big fat ergo keyboard with a raised palm rest on the front (i.e. the keybaord tilts up in the front, not in the back). My wrists stay pretty straight. Again, not optimial, but until somebody sets up a controller that doesn't force you to hunch your shouders and tweak your wrists, I'll take it. I haven't played with the WII two-part controller, but it seems like a possible move in the right direction, at least from an ergonomic point of view.
Mouse, keyboard = full, configurable control. Just about every game lets you set up the keyboard however you want.
PS2 controller = cure for carpal tunnel? Puhleeze. PS2 controllers are a plot by the apes to destroy our thumbs, and thus, eliminate our evolutionary advantage of opposeable thumbs.
Sort of "I want my cake and eat it too." It'd be nice to get all of .NET's framework libraries (insomuch as they are available in Mono), and to get the nice native-looking apps wx gives you on Windows and Linux (I'm not a huge fan of GTK+ on Windows, they never seem "native" but maybe that's just the apps I've run into and I'm sure that makes me lame, but whatever) -- this post isn't meant to debate the virtues of GTK, the parent was just asking "why"?
So, if I'm using Iron Python under .NET, would I use be compelled to use WinForms at that point or would libraries like wxPython still be available?
It would be a pity if, instead of just using the opportunity to "clean up" some of the cheesier effects, if they instead used the opportunity to tweak the story line, insert new characters, added ridges to Klingons, etc. I don't say this as a "historical society of Star Trek" member or any such thing, it's just that such manipulation tends to stick out like a sore thumb and distract more than enhance.
There is nothing genius about the iPod, iTunes, etc. Apple made a quality product that had fewer buttons and created a music store that was "relatively" easy to use. Every user of this site knows how easy it is to use apt-get (or equivalent) to get the software to access an iPod or most any other mp3 player. This is not an issue.
We can all bitch about DRM, about how it screws everybody (consumers, musicians, whatever), and it will not change the fundamental fact that the music conglomerates will only release their music with it. The fact that Apple is making decent money off of iTunes is a fair indicator that the public will eventually accept DRM even when they understand the strings attached. We have lost the debate.
With the supposed DRM exclusions in the new GPL (which, I admittedly haven't read, and I could be wrong), Linux will be even less relavant with consumer devices as time goes by. I can tell my kids all about they great music they can download unencumbered and it won't make a goddam bit of difference if they can't get whatever MTV-regurgitated crap is popular that week. Open source needs to deal with DRM, and content protection, in a sane, rational way. It is not enough to say "DRM is bad, DRM is bad". It is reality. People need to seriously evaluate open source DRM projects like Authena and Sun's project, and make a concerted effort to work with the media conglomerates to implement it. It is going to be a hard sell, but maybe not impossible.
Ultimately, it will not matter if my kids can drag-and-drop to their iPod from Linux if the content isn't there.
IMHO, the problem comes down to how security works on PC's - it's based on the user, not the app. This is true on Linux as well as Windows. An application runs under the security context of what the user can get to. Applications ought to run under their own security accounts, and when they try to write somewhere they have not been authorized to write before, the user ought to get warned. If the application makes an outbound Internet connection or starts listening on a port without prior authorization, the user ought to get warned. It might seem a hassle to have a couple of hundred security accounts on the PC, but it is far less of a hassle than invasive anti-virual software, especially crap like Norton and McAfee.
Yes, I know Linux is secure than Windows, I'm a happy Ubuntu user. I SUDO whenever I do anything administrative (install apps. install devices, etc.) But there is nothing from stopping a hostile application from going out and nuking every file that my non-admin account has access to..
Depending on how Microsoft chooses to implement it, it can be a Good Thing or a Distracting Thing. For example:
- They can throw up dialogs like "If you save in this format your document may look like crap later" (sort of what they do now)
If they stick to previous behavior, the converter will work, but it will be annoying enough to implement that a lot of people and organizations won't bother with it.Linux, BSD, OS X, take your pick. The "point" of the fines is that the EU wants to force Microsoft to open up source code and protocols because of their supposed monopoly. You can attempt to fine or regulate to modify behavior, or you can let the market do your work for you, by leveraging alternatives.
I agree Linux is not the answer as much as Samba, Open Office, JSP or Notes are. The point should not be to "hurt" or even "punish" Microsoft, the point should be making sure that the continent's systems remain interoperable and not subject to the whims of a single entity. The best way to do that is to leverage open systems when appropriate, not to throw money at lawyers/barristers/politicians.
Microsoft does not "set the rules to the game". There are choices. It's a bunch of crap to say that "we use Windows because we have to". There are a number of alternatives to most of Microsoft's components and applications. If the EU likes Microsoft software, fine. They should use it. But they should not be in the business of regulating behavior. If they want Microsoft to "open up" the best way to do it is to affect their revenue stream. If you try do this by regulation and fines, Microsoft can make the arguement that "the only way we lose is to get fined to death, but our products are still preferred," and this will ultimately placate shareholders, because there are not too many companies driven out of business because of regulation (cigarette and drug companies are doing just fine, thank you very much; and Enron was fraud, not fines).
If the EU starts implementing alternatives, Microsoft will then see their bad behavior leading to a loss of marketshare, and that will concern investors much than intermitable legal action. Microsoft is starting to dig into their large stash of cash for R&D, so market cap will become more important as their liquid assets utilized. Drop in sales, not fines, will get investors to pressure Microsoft to play nicely.
What will work is redirecting the money wasted on legal action in a bonafide attempt to ascertain the feasibility of switching servers and workstations to Linux. They won't be able to do it everywhere, but they could concentrate on the following:
Investors won't freak out because of a arbitrary fine that Microsoft won't end up paying (they'll settle on a lower amount or give away licenses or something). Investors will freak if an entire continent starts a concerted effort to shut down a significant part of Microsoft's revenue stream.
I was going to say "I Don't Get It" but somebody beat me to it.
I think the title of TFA "Separate data and formatting with microformats" is a bit ironic since it's about wedging your data into a web page in such a fashion that somebody might be able to pull it back out.
If you want to make your data available there are all sorts of standard and more efficient ways of doing it than embedding it in the presentation layer. If somebody is going to all the trouble to create a parseable human-readable page, why wouldn't they go to about the same amount of trouble and make a far more efficient and standard RSS feed? What about the buzzword of the last few years, SOAP? Hell, what about XML?
From TFA:
I agree. This reminds me of the lame number tricks where you have somebody pick a number, add something, multiply it by something, blah blah blah, you take the result, divide it by 7 and then you give them their orignal number because you had it all set up ahead of time. If they screw up in their calculations, the trick doesn't work. In this thing, if you screw up embedding the text within the HTML (plenty of ways to do that), the trick doesn't work - and doesn't accomplish much even if it does.