I honestly was surprised to see this issue posted on/. as a discussion topic. I accept it as the way companies act today, nothing unusual
If Belkin chooses to put a piece of literature in the box with the product, fine. I might look at it and even be interested. If the want to put a removable sticker in the device to make it more obvious, that's OK, too. Modifying the product to insert advertising into my workflow, however, is not acceptable at all.
Imagine buying presentation software that would randomly insert ads into your presentations. How would that go over in front of a large audience?
Some fool at Belkin thought it would be a good idea to add this behavior to the router because it would create a highly visible exception - One that was bound to get your attention. The problem was that the exception was not clever or amusing, an acceptable form of advertising, rather it gained your attention because it broke the implicit trust between the customer and the manufacturer of a device.
We dare not allow vendors to go down this path, or information flow will be overwhelmed with unwanted messages. The Internet is useful because it offers individuals easy and fast access to vast amounts of information. Allowing vendors to inject unsolicited info into this stream risks destroying the fundamental value of the Internet. Pop-up ads were bad enough, and now even M$ will allow one to eliminate them from the browsing experience. Fortunately most vendors seem to understand what NOT to risk. We should all be glad people emailed Belkin with their disapproval, and that this has encouraged Belkin to ultimately reject such a stupid idea.
This is totally OT, but Mr. Gherald, I gotta tell you: Your sig indictates you absolutely nothing about history. Instead of posting here, why don't you read about WWII instead of making such idiotic comparisons. Veterans day is next week. Maybe you should attend a ceremony so you can learn something.
I use iTunes, and I like it as well. I think the UI lacks in some ways, but I'm sure it will improve in the future. My guess is that Jobs' real intent is to break the grip of the majors on artists, and become a big source for content. Whether they will really be able to do this remains to be seen. M$ is one big player, but there's another one as well, one that does not get mention here very often: GE.
Remember that GE just bought Universal Studios (not the music division, though) which would suggest that someday they might be interested in delivering content directly. Also remember that GE owns NBC, which has a relationship with M$. Not exactly tin-foil hat time, but I could imagine a content distribution agreement being created by GE and M$. That would be an interesting enterprise.
In the CPU world, Intel has 82.6% of the x86 market, AMD 15.8% according to this PC World article. That means desktops and servers. M$ has a larger percentage of the desktop market, but a much smaller percentage of the server market. In total, I believe Intel is effectively more of a "monopoly" than M$. People on/. rant on about "M$ must be evil, they are a convicted monopolist!" My interpretation is that Intel understands gov. policy and politics far better than M$; therefore they settled with the DOJ rather than litigate. M$ made a huge mistake by litigating.
I don't know whether M$ had bad legal representation, Gates was just too freaked out about "turning into IBM", or both. The result is that people trot out the "monopoly" argument constantly, w/o accounting for the political factors. The reality is that Intel is most likely a greater "monopoly", but no one questions that because there is no official sanction. Linux also runs on x86, so therefore Intel is OK. Something about cake and eating comes to mind...
I'm afraid the only judges that understand the full extent of what MS does become enraged, like Jackson, whose public ranting damaged his work
Actually his public ranting was a reflection of his inability to understand technology. Did you ever read the decision and his interpretation of the technical details? Appalling stuff. For example, he seemed to think that including the browser with the OS was some kind of undue burden on the consumer because of the amount of disk space the libraries consumed. In addition, he believed that there was no use for a browser not connected to the Internet, which could only be described as nefarious. There are plenty of other ridiculous arguments in his decision. Jackson was utterly clueless, which is disturbing to say the least. To be fair, I have never believed M$ is a monopoly, since I have always purchased OS-less boxes. I run 2K, 2K3, XP and Red Hat on different machines, and none of them were preloaded.
M$ achieved market domininance primarily by exploiting the mistakes of its competitors: fragmentation in the *nix world and overpricing by Apple and IBM. I remember telling people in 1994 that M$ would get hit with anti-trust in a few years; not because I thought they deserved it but rather because the competition was so inept. (FWIW, I figure eBay will get it in a few years as well.)
The other thing about monopolies is that by any measure, Intel is a bigger monopoly than M$. DOJ went after them as well, but Intel understands D.C. better than M$, so they settled. M$ could have done the same thing, but I guess Gates & Co. were about due for a big mistake. They made it. Does anyone honestly believe that if the DOJ hadn't taken any action, Linux would not have become what it has today? If not, then why is M$ a monopoly?
what people want, they will first tell their neighbors, next their spouses, next their kids, and only last some faceless "proprietary software concern
But usually it's the other way around. People buy stuff that is marketed to them - generally by faceless market types on behalf of proprietary interests.
Laugh, but I predict the last stronghold of Windows will be the US, while in a few years only the rest of the world will have gratefully converted to Linux and FOSS and forgotten the dark ages of 'software license fees'
That's one possible outcome. Another is that some company will develop nifty feature set customers want, but the source will be proprietary. Once the utility of the new feature set is proven, OSS developers will seek to replicate it. The proprietary people will then move on to the next high profit design. OSS isn't a high profit model, so people will not invest dollars or make big bets with it if others will instantly be able to include the ideas in their own offerings. OSS is badly fragmented now. Imagine what will happen as different countries and cities start modifying it to their locales. The proprietary model isn't going way any time soon.
I'm lamenting that the Linux community can't advance and think outside of the server box.
That seems to be the problem with OSS. So far most of it is "Gee, this is a better Windows than Windows" IBM used the same approach with OS/2. OSS has more enthusiasts than OS/2 ever did, but I'm just not seeing the innovation I would expect. Lot's of cool ideas, but many are partially complete, vary w/regard to installation, etc. TiVo is one of the best uses of Linux I have seen, but it is also has proprietary elements. For someone to justify a large development expense, there has to be a big return. Proprietary models provide that - OSS requires a low cost/hign volume commodity model.
Michael's Minute: I recently received an email from a reader who noticed that FrontPage was used to create one of the web pages in use on the Lindows.com site.
Not as good looking? Dang, I think it's the ugliest player out there! The Edsel looked better. Maybe they should have put tailfins on it, if one can figure out where tailfins would go.
This story doesn't make sense. Win2K for a personal system? Why not WinCE or Palm, or any of a number of RT OSs? I doubt the orignal system was using Win2K. Not sure why a new version would use Linux. Seems to me a firmware solution makes more sense. I can tell you SINCGARS certainly doesn't run Win* or *nix. Why would the soldier system?
Nifty idea, though the markup is ridiculous. But, it does represent YAWAM (Yet Another Way to Acquire Music) that is a lot easier than dealing with CD stores or even online CD sales.
Sure would be interesting to know how the economics of iTunes music distribution compare with retail CD distribution. More profitable for the label? Less?
Even if it is more, isn't there as risk to the label in that getting on iTunes may not require the backing of a big organization? That is, iTunes represents a much better prospect for the artist? Sure would be interesting to know what Jobs thinks of all this, let alone the accountants in the record industry.
The SCO convertibles have a fixed conversion ratio
We don't know that what the conversion rate on the Convertible Preferreds are. Whig explains why this is important, which I should have added. Doh! My speculation is that SCO must provide BayStar with enough common stock to keep BayStar whole on the preferred. So as the price drops, SCO gives BayStar more common, which they can sell for a profit. If the price goes up, BayStar is covered.
The investment in SCO was structured as a private placement of non-voting Series A Convertible Preferred Shares, convertible into common equity at a fixed conversion price of $16.93 per share, which was the average closing bid price for the Company's common stock for the five previous trading days prior to the date of closing.
As someone else pointed out (but didn't get modded up since this is a site for tech geeks, not financial geeks), SCO has more than likely received what is generally known as "Death Spiral Financing." If BayStar believed in SCO, and SCO thought it had a future, the conversion price would have certainly been higher than the "average closing bid of the last trading days..."
Here's how BayStar makes money:
"Invest" $50M in SCO
Receive shares for their "investment", $50M/$16.93 = 2,953,000 SCOX
Last but definitely not least, go short 2,953,000 SCOX in the open market. (They don't tell you this part)
For those who aren't familar with shorting, this means borrowing stock you don't own to sell to someone else. You get the money, but you will have to give the stock back in the future, since it is borrowed. What you are anticipating is that the share price will go down, so you can buy the shares back for less than you got for them. Profit!!! The danger is the that stock will go up, which you means you will have to pay more than you originally got, causing a loss to you. So why is BayStar doing this? Easy, SCO just gave them enough shares to "cover their" short position. If the stock goes up, BayStar is covered. If it goes down, Profit!!! This is a big SHORT bet by BayStar. If SCO wasn't desperate, they could have told BayStar the conversion price is $20/share for example, something higher than the current average price when the deal was signed.
This most likely signals the beginning of the end of SCO.
You might want to brush up on your 'isms. Study fascism very carefully. I'm not a fan of Michael Ledeen, but here's an editorial he wrote that makes some interesting observations.
MR didn't get anywhere near that kind of money. That's the selling price of the company, not the net to him. How much he made has not been made public, though I'm sure it was a decent piece of change. Who knows, maybe Lindows is profitable and they don't need VC. Seems hard to imagine, however.
That's why I'm speculating he may be more interested in the SIP phone. It seems MR cares about OSS only to the extent it can make money for him. If Lindows isn't going to get the return for him MP3.com did, it's on to the next thing.
Wonder what this means for Lindows. Can MR run a SIP phone business as well as Lindows? The story I heard about the funding of MP3.com was classic dot-com mythology, though it is evidently true:
Monday: Sequoia Capital: Hello Michael, we are interested in seeing your business plan. Can you send it to us? We would like to review it and fly down to talk to you on Wednesday.
MR: Oh, OK, I'll send it to you. (Feverishly writes up 2 page plan.)
Sequoia calls back later in the afternoon: Michael, you don't have to send us the plan, we will be down there tomorrow. How do we get to your office?
That has apparently not happened with Lindows. Does this mean MR sees a better opportunity with SIP phones? That is, a better opportunity to get funded again? I wouldn't be too surprised. Looks like the Red Hat, SuSE, IBM (Try saying "We are going to compete with IBM" to a VC with a straight face.) are taking the Linux mindshare. Otherwise one would have expected Lindows to have announced a deal with a VC by now.
In the case of UMG, they would probably try to sell you a subscription to a content unlocking service that would allow you to play all of the old formats. This would be something like the businesses formed around the mainframe tapes that have to be deblocked to be read.
Of course, a free solution would appear on file sharing networks, so the RIAA would run around trying to end distribution of it via the DMCA. The question then becomes whether the DMCA (if it still exists by then) can be used to cease distibution of software to unlock unsupported content.
This will be come the second most popular/. topic after commentary on the litigation pursued by the newly merged SCO/Sun company...
If they are falling out of style then that is even more of a reason to have a program like this
Makes me believe that big vendors may start to think software DRM is an inherently bad idea over time, since they will find they have to support it. Imagine if 5 years from now, M$ has a few million customers complaining about the fact that they can't read their old e-books anymore. (Not that this will happen with the unpopular e-books; I'm just using it as an example.) The tech support will cost more than the money they could have made selling DRM "protected" content. Another possibility is that cracking obsolescent DRM'd content could become an ongoing Y2K like business. A solution to a problem that shouldn't have occured in the first place.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story.
A week goes by and he couldn't figure out how to use the 2nd mouse button? Is this review a spoof?
Right, I should have used better wording in my post.
So not having it can be a good thing, too, as you certainly learn the language faster that way.
Is this really true? I've often discovered useful types, properties and methods just by wading through the Intellisense window. It's not my first choice of action, but it has been useful. Another post today described the phenomena of "Software Fashion Victims." Software Fashion describes paradigms, protocols, etc that are hot for today and gone tomorrow. The opposite notion describes things that are generally useful, become ubiquitous and improve with time. I put Intellisense in that category, and believe it represents an early phase of the next evolution in software development...
Right, the author obviously doesn't understand.Net.
Having coded in VB6, VB.Net, C++ and C#, I have noticed that VB editors highlight what I think represents the "language" of the future...
(Prepare for Troll or Flamebait mod - Now!)
Intellisense.
As a language, I like C# better than VB.Net, but the line completion and type lookup under VB.Net make it easier to work with. Fewer typos and faster coding are the result. This is obviously tricky to do in languages where whitespace is insignificant, though. I haven't tried Python with Intellisense, but I suspect I would have the same impression.
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly was surprised to see this issue posted on
If Belkin chooses to put a piece of literature in the box with the product, fine. I might look at it and even be interested. If the want to put a removable sticker in the device to make it more obvious, that's OK, too. Modifying the product to insert advertising into my workflow, however, is not acceptable at all.
Imagine buying presentation software that would randomly insert ads into your presentations. How would that go over in front of a large audience?
Some fool at Belkin thought it would be a good idea to add this behavior to the router because it would create a highly visible exception - One that was bound to get your attention. The problem was that the exception was not clever or amusing, an acceptable form of advertising, rather it gained your attention because it broke the implicit trust between the customer and the manufacturer of a device.
We dare not allow vendors to go down this path, or information flow will be overwhelmed with unwanted messages. The Internet is useful because it offers individuals easy and fast access to vast amounts of information. Allowing vendors to inject unsolicited info into this stream risks destroying the fundamental value of the Internet. Pop-up ads were bad enough, and now even M$ will allow one to eliminate them from the browsing experience. Fortunately most vendors seem to understand what NOT to risk. We should all be glad people emailed Belkin with their disapproval, and that this has encouraged Belkin to ultimately reject such a stupid idea.
I use iTunes, and I like it as well. I think the UI lacks in some ways, but I'm sure it will improve in the future. My guess is that Jobs' real intent is to break the grip of the majors on artists, and become a big source for content. Whether they will really be able to do this remains to be seen. M$ is one big player, but there's another one as well, one that does not get mention here very often: GE.
Remember that GE just bought Universal Studios (not the music division, though) which would suggest that someday they might be interested in delivering content directly. Also remember that GE owns NBC, which has a relationship with M$. Not exactly tin-foil hat time, but I could imagine a content distribution agreement being created by GE and M$. That would be an interesting enterprise.
In the CPU world, Intel has 82.6% of the x86 market, AMD 15.8% according to this PC World article. That means desktops and servers. M$ has a larger percentage of the desktop market, but a much smaller percentage of the server market. In total, I believe Intel is effectively more of a "monopoly" than M$. People on
I don't know whether M$ had bad legal representation, Gates was just too freaked out about "turning into IBM", or both. The result is that people trot out the "monopoly" argument constantly, w/o accounting for the political factors. The reality is that Intel is most likely a greater "monopoly", but no one questions that because there is no official sanction. Linux also runs on x86, so therefore Intel is OK. Something about cake and eating comes to mind...
I'm afraid the only judges that understand the full extent of what MS does become enraged, like Jackson, whose public ranting damaged his work
Actually his public ranting was a reflection of his inability to understand technology. Did you ever read the decision and his interpretation of the technical details? Appalling stuff. For example, he seemed to think that including the browser with the OS was some kind of undue burden on the consumer because of the amount of disk space the libraries consumed. In addition, he believed that there was no use for a browser not connected to the Internet, which could only be described as nefarious. There are plenty of other ridiculous arguments in his decision. Jackson was utterly clueless, which is disturbing to say the least. To be fair, I have never believed M$ is a monopoly, since I have always purchased OS-less boxes. I run 2K, 2K3, XP and Red Hat on different machines, and none of them were preloaded.
M$ achieved market domininance primarily by exploiting the mistakes of its competitors: fragmentation in the *nix world and overpricing by Apple and IBM. I remember telling people in 1994 that M$ would get hit with anti-trust in a few years; not because I thought they deserved it but rather because the competition was so inept. (FWIW, I figure eBay will get it in a few years as well.)
The other thing about monopolies is that by any measure, Intel is a bigger monopoly than M$. DOJ went after them as well, but Intel understands D.C. better than M$, so they settled. M$ could have done the same thing, but I guess Gates & Co. were about due for a big mistake. They made it. Does anyone honestly believe that if the DOJ hadn't taken any action, Linux would not have become what it has today? If not, then why is M$ a monopoly?
what people want, they will first tell their neighbors, next their spouses, next their kids, and only last some faceless "proprietary software concern
But usually it's the other way around. People buy stuff that is marketed to them - generally by faceless market types on behalf of proprietary interests.
Laugh, but I predict the last stronghold of Windows will be the US, while in a few years only the rest of the world will have gratefully converted to Linux and FOSS and forgotten the dark ages of 'software license fees'
That's one possible outcome. Another is that some company will develop nifty feature set customers want, but the source will be proprietary. Once the utility of the new feature set is proven, OSS developers will seek to replicate it. The proprietary people will then move on to the next high profit design. OSS isn't a high profit model, so people will not invest dollars or make big bets with it if others will instantly be able to include the ideas in their own offerings. OSS is badly fragmented now. Imagine what will happen as different countries and cities start modifying it to their locales. The proprietary model isn't going way any time soon.
I'm lamenting that the Linux community can't advance and think outside of the server box.
That seems to be the problem with OSS. So far most of it is "Gee, this is a better Windows than Windows" IBM used the same approach with OS/2. OSS has more enthusiasts than OS/2 ever did, but I'm just not seeing the innovation I would expect. Lot's of cool ideas, but many are partially complete, vary w/regard to installation, etc. TiVo is one of the best uses of Linux I have seen, but it is also has proprietary elements. For someone to justify a large development expense, there has to be a big return. Proprietary models provide that - OSS requires a low cost/hign volume commodity model.
Michael's Minute: I recently received an email from a reader who noticed that FrontPage was used to create one of the web pages in use on the Lindows.com site.
At least now we know how he forms strategy.
I don't have a position in SUNW, because I don't understand their business model. Since you are long the stock, can you explain it?
Not as good looking? Dang, I think it's the ugliest player out there! The Edsel looked better. Maybe they should have put tailfins on it, if one can figure out where tailfins would go.
This story doesn't make sense. Win2K for a personal system? Why not WinCE or Palm, or any of a number of RT OSs? I doubt the orignal system was using Win2K. Not sure why a new version would use Linux. Seems to me a firmware solution makes more sense. I can tell you SINCGARS certainly doesn't run Win* or *nix. Why would the soldier system?
I bet I'll see Gates running the resort
No, he will be running the lift. Once all of the the Linux people are in the chairs, the lift motor will mysteriously BSOD!
Nifty idea, though the markup is ridiculous. But, it does represent YAWAM (Yet Another Way to Acquire Music) that is a lot easier than dealing with CD stores or even online CD sales.
Sure would be interesting to know how the economics of iTunes music distribution compare with retail CD distribution. More profitable for the label? Less?
Even if it is more, isn't there as risk to the label in that getting on iTunes may not require the backing of a big organization? That is, iTunes represents a much better prospect for the artist? Sure would be interesting to know what Jobs thinks of all this, let alone the accountants in the record industry.
Kremlinology
Interesting that Gates is smacking Office. Interesting that Ballmer feels compelled to make statements easily refuted.
JMHO, but I think there is trouble in paradise. One of these days Ballmer will become Chief-Flag-Waver and M$ will have a new CEO.
SB ain't the CEO BG was.
The SCO convertibles have a fixed conversion ratio
We don't know that what the conversion rate on the Convertible Preferreds are. Whig explains why this is important, which I should have added. Doh! My speculation is that SCO must provide BayStar with enough common stock to keep BayStar whole on the preferred. So as the price drops, SCO gives BayStar more common, which they can sell for a profit. If the price goes up, BayStar is covered.
From the PR:
The investment in SCO was structured as a private placement of non-voting Series A Convertible Preferred Shares, convertible into common equity at a fixed conversion price of $16.93 per share, which was the average closing bid price for the Company's common stock for the five previous trading days prior to the date of closing.
As someone else pointed out (but didn't get modded up since this is a site for tech geeks, not financial geeks), SCO has more than likely received what is generally known as "Death Spiral Financing." If BayStar believed in SCO, and SCO thought it had a future, the conversion price would have certainly been higher than the "average closing bid of the last trading days..."
Here's how BayStar makes money:
For those who aren't familar with shorting, this means borrowing stock you don't own to sell to someone else. You get the money, but you will have to give the stock back in the future, since it is borrowed. What you are anticipating is that the share price will go down, so you can buy the shares back for less than you got for them. Profit!!! The danger is the that stock will go up, which you means you will have to pay more than you originally got, causing a loss to you. So why is BayStar doing this? Easy, SCO just gave them enough shares to "cover their" short position. If the stock goes up, BayStar is covered. If it goes down, Profit!!! This is a big SHORT bet by BayStar. If SCO wasn't desperate, they could have told BayStar the conversion price is $20/share for example, something higher than the current average price when the deal was signed.
This most likely signals the beginning of the end of SCO.
You might want to brush up on your 'isms. Study fascism very carefully. I'm not a fan of Michael Ledeen, but here's an editorial he wrote that makes some interesting observations.
MR didn't get anywhere near that kind of money. That's the selling price of the company, not the net to him. How much he made has not been made public, though I'm sure it was a decent piece of change. Who knows, maybe Lindows is profitable and they don't need VC. Seems hard to imagine, however.
That's why I'm speculating he may be more interested in the SIP phone. It seems MR cares about OSS only to the extent it can make money for him. If Lindows isn't going to get the return for him MP3.com did, it's on to the next thing.
Wonder what this means for Lindows. Can MR run a SIP phone business as well as Lindows? The story I heard about the funding of MP3.com was classic dot-com mythology, though it is evidently true:
Monday: Sequoia Capital: Hello Michael, we are interested in seeing your business plan. Can you send it to us? We would like to review it and fly down to talk to you on Wednesday.
MR: Oh, OK, I'll send it to you. (Feverishly writes up 2 page plan.)
Sequoia calls back later in the afternoon: Michael, you don't have to send us the plan, we will be down there tomorrow. How do we get to your office?
MP3.com funded a few days later...
Check out the quote.
That has apparently not happened with Lindows. Does this mean MR sees a better opportunity with SIP phones? That is, a better opportunity to get funded again? I wouldn't be too surprised. Looks like the Red Hat, SuSE, IBM (Try saying "We are going to compete with IBM" to a VC with a straight face.) are taking the Linux mindshare. Otherwise one would have expected Lindows to have announced a deal with a VC by now.
Expect him to attract lawsuits and press coverage
This one will be something to watch.
In the case of UMG, they would probably try to sell you a subscription to a content unlocking service that would allow you to play all of the old formats. This would be something like the businesses formed around the mainframe tapes that have to be deblocked to be read.
Of course, a free solution would appear on file sharing networks, so the RIAA would run around trying to end distribution of it via the DMCA. The question then becomes whether the DMCA (if it still exists by then) can be used to cease distibution of software to unlock unsupported content.
This will be come the second most popular /. topic after commentary on the litigation pursued by the newly merged SCO/Sun company...
If they are falling out of style then that is even more of a reason to have a program like this
Makes me believe that big vendors may start to think software DRM is an inherently bad idea over time, since they will find they have to support it. Imagine if 5 years from now, M$ has a few million customers complaining about the fact that they can't read their old e-books anymore. (Not that this will happen with the unpopular e-books; I'm just using it as an example.) The tech support will cost more than the money they could have made selling DRM "protected" content. Another possibility is that cracking obsolescent DRM'd content could become an ongoing Y2K like business. A solution to a problem that shouldn't have occured in the first place.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I need to work quickly if I want to earn a living, and I don't see why Windows wants me to go through all those extra hand motions just to paste a URL into a story.
A week goes by and he couldn't figure out how to use the 2nd mouse button? Is this review a spoof?
Intellisense is not a language feature of VB.NET
Right, I should have used better wording in my post.
So not having it can be a good thing, too, as you certainly learn the language faster that way.
Is this really true? I've often discovered useful types, properties and methods just by wading through the Intellisense window. It's not my first choice of action, but it has been useful. Another post today described the phenomena of "Software Fashion Victims." Software Fashion describes paradigms, protocols, etc that are hot for today and gone tomorrow. The opposite notion describes things that are generally useful, become ubiquitous and improve with time. I put Intellisense in that category, and believe it represents an early phase of the next evolution in software development...
Right, the author obviously doesn't understand
Having coded in VB6, VB.Net, C++ and C#, I have noticed that VB editors highlight what I think represents the "language" of the future...
(Prepare for Troll or Flamebait mod - Now!)
Intellisense.
As a language, I like C# better than VB.Net, but the line completion and type lookup under VB.Net make it easier to work with. Fewer typos and faster coding are the result. This is obviously tricky to do in languages where whitespace is insignificant, though. I haven't tried Python with Intellisense, but I suspect I would have the same impression.