It didn't sound like boasting at all, I think you've read that into the article.
To me it sounded like a simple explanation disparity between results on the acid 2 tests. It simply states the behavior is due to how they have implemented security on cross domain content, it doesn't say this is the appropriate behavior, failing to process the html within the object tag is probably NOT the appropriate behavior.
I think the only defensiveness I can see in this post, is that they don't want people leaping to a more cynical conclusion for the issue that they have simply written code in IE8 that looks like
if (url == acid2 test)
print acid2 graphic
Apple are not the competition for Android, just look at Google's major development partner - HTC.
Android is defnitely a competitor to Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile and Android, circulate in an entirely different market to Apple's iPhone. The iPhone is a consumer device, Android and Windows Mobile are firmly aimed at the business market which requires the abilitiy to customise and extend the device for all sorts of different purposes, requiring wireless connectivity and rich client applications communicating across wireless protocols with heavily customised server systems e.g applications that need to read bar codes, rfids, for field service, warehouse management etc.
I think making the sort of comparison your making shows a really intense lack of understanding of the market and the product Google are producing. So, yea basically, you're going to be really disappointed with what Google produces, because they're simply not making what you think they're making.
I think he's saying if you read between the lines he's saying swing is total shit.
But really ur right, Apple r just a bunch of thought Nazi's, sure Java would probably make their phone look crap, but it's more about domination and control of their platform. It's the jobs effect, the man is a genius, but he has an ego exceeding that genius by an order of magnitude, whilst he creates great stuff he ruins it with his megalomania. To Jobs anyone elses input or ideas without his right of viteo is just a recipe for imperfection. Nothing will go on the iPhone without Steve giving it his approval and more importantly taking ownership of the idea like he had it all on his own.
This is why, I've always preferred Microsoft over Apple as the lesser of two evils, as Microsoft is really just a business entity. They're not that interested in technical perfection, just perfect business models. They don't care what you do with their platform, they let people do whatever, just as long as it doesn't screw their business model. The net effect is you have a lot of creative and technical freedom on the MS platform, but the day you screw with their business model they'll crush you like an ant.
Wow can't remember the last time so many pro Microsoft technology posts were made on Slashdot, and were actually positively modded !!! I think that alone is proof that Microsoft must have got something right with Silverlight (a rare thing, but it does happen occasionally), either that or something really scary has happened to Slashdot.
Aaaah, but look up the top... we can all sleep easy, hell hasn't frozen over, despite being shown the error of his ways 20 times over in numerous replies to his post our friend at the top with his ignorant rant is still rated +5 Insightful.... It's still the slashdot we all love.
I've been developing.NET since day 1 (as in reading the white papers to using the first betas). I can tell with absolute certainty that Silverlight is not just an after thought add on to.NET for Microsoft. The basic constructs and security architecture leveraged by Silverlight have been in place since the first beta of the.NET Framework back in 2001, its a technology they have always planned to introduce, before Silverlight they released many browser deployable.NET applications, so the delivery and security mechanisms are well tested and already main stream.
I think you also need to think about the huge API available to Silverlight developers. Since the release of the framework Microsoft has been hooking.NET into every part of it's server and desktop platform..NET is everywhere throughout every piece of Microsoft Technology, from ERP systems, accounting to gaming consoles.
Did you know.NET is on the XBox 360? Can you create flash content for a the XBox 360? Or any other gaming console for that matter?
Microsoft ships the.NET framework on mobile devices as part of the ROM. Does flash ship on ROM chips?
So in summary the demand is already there as huge amount of development goes on in.NET today and all of these companies will be able to leverage their existing code base through Silverlight far easier than what they could through Flash.
But that doesn't mean there's any reason to switch, I think Flash will be around for many years to come and will probably continue to dominate the more traditional Flash areas such as marketing. I think Silverlight will get some penetration in this area, however, I believe it'll more commonly be used for implementing clients for more sophisticated business systems that are looking for an easier way to deliver rich client browser based apps than developing them in HTML/AJAX.
So basically if you're sick of the sort of light on development you typically have with your average Flash marketing project and are looking to get into more serious project development, you might consider Silverlight as a good stepping stone into that arena.
I think the thing that really ticks off the tech community about Microsoft, is that they don't really invent anything, they're just extrordinarily good and spotting excellent software early on, acquiring it and then marketing it better than any other company out there.
Actually I don't believe it's using silverlight, which is a pity for linux dudes out there because whilst there is Linux support for Silverlight, I don't think there's linux support for Photosynth. Guess, you'll just have to be content with Google Sky;)
I believe it's using the Photosynth engine. I think the beauty of photosynth is that it is a self organising system for seamlessly navigating between photographs that gives you the illusion of animation. Microsoft's system can crawl web pages for material to add to the collage. So it does seem to be better" than google sky as this system will be allowed continue to collect images published in astronomical papers and add these pages to the world wide telescope system.
Make no mistake about it Photosynth is a world changing technology.
Today XML is the ubiquitous standard for flat file data storage, and as such it has LOTS and LOTS of tools and software that leverage it.
I can't think of two many things stupider than a developer designing a new non-xml text based flat file for data storage in todays day and age would be someone who thinks XML is not human readable. I think only persons possibly stupider than that are the moderators who rated your ridiculous rant as insightful.
If slashdot was half honest, they'd have another rating which is something like
Lacking all merit except
it
antagonises Microsoft
In which case you might have been rated +5 LameIam.
Anti-virus software shouldn't be a requirement of an operating system. The operating system should come with adequet securtity to guard against and detect attempts at intrusion. 3rd party anti-virus solutions are just patches on a leaky boat. If Microsoft ever gets around to doing it's job properly the whole anti-virus business model will be defunct
Google is showing Microsoft how it's done on the web with their browsing and email solutions quickly becoming the defacto industry standard for spam email and malicious online attacks. Likewise Microsoft harness the peer to peer power it has at it's disposal, to detect and eliminate unauthorised intrusions on their platform.
If Windows ever becomes a truely safe and secure operating system it'll be Microsoft and not 3rd party anit-virus solutions that does it. Unless Microsoft really opens up it's OS, they are the only ones in a position to actually do a proper job of it.
It's just a zip file containing XML, try opeening it with a archive utility...
Looks something like this...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <w:document xmlns:ve="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:m="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main" xmlns:wne="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2006/wordml"> <w:body> <w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1"> <w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C"> <w:rPr> <w:b/> <w:sz w:val="24"/> <w:szCs w:val="24"/> </w:rPr> <w:t>Announcement Overview</w:t> </w:r> <w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C"> <w:rPr> <w:b/> <w:sz w:val="24"/> <w:szCs w:val="24"/> </w:rPr> <w:t>Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability</w:t> </w:r> </w:p> <w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1"> <w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C"> <w:rPr> <w:i/> <w:sz w:val="20"/> <w:szCs w:val="20"/> </w:rPr> <w:t>New Interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products</w:t> </w:r> </w:p> <w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00360CFD" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1"> <w:r w:rsidRPr="00360CFD"> <w:rPr> <w:bCs/> <w:sz w:val="20"/> <w:szCs w:val="20"/> </w:rPr> <w:t xml:space="preserve">Microsoft is making a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices that will increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice across the IT community of developers, partners, customers, and competitors. </w:t> </w:r> </w:p> <w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00360CFD" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1"> <w:r w:rsidRPr="00360CFD"> <w:rPr> <w:bCs/> <w:sz w:val="20"/> <w:szCs w:val="20"/> </w:rPr> <w:t xml:space="preserve">Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding across its high-volume business products Windows Vista (including the
I think you missed the whole point of what I'm saying, it doesn't matter if they have dominance over the desktop computing market when that entire market is about to be superceded by newer ways to accessing computing technology. I think your thinking is a little too conventional, you assume in 10 years time the majority of people will still be doing most of their computing via a desktop machine, I say most people won't even own a device like a desktop computer, they'll have mobile devices to access internet based technology in and out of the work place, and home entertainment systems that will leverage internet server based systems, and given present trends and Microsoft's inability to conquer new markets these systems are unlikely to be Microsoft based. So what good will their monopoly be then?
A resurgent Apple is erroding their dominance over the desktop market, and the whole desktop market is itself in decline, mobile devices are on the rise, they have no dominance in the mobile market. Windows Mobile has less than 10% market share and HTC the biggest vendor of Windows Mobile devices has partnered with Google to bring Android to the market. Windows Mobile may very well be dead within a few years as a consumer item.
Whats worse the mobile market is dominated by thin client server based systems, the sort of systems Google has dominance over.
Microsoft has lost ground for the last 5 years in about every area except the corporate collaboration market with sharepoint, and I believe they'll see that dominance erroded significantly by slicker, cheaper web 2.0 collaboration systems over the next few years.
So in short. I think Microsoft is in an extremely bad position at the moment. Google and Apple are going to have them for lunch.
So maybe it's you who needs to get out and smell somes roses.
For years slashdotters have gone on about Microsoft and it's evil closed formats...
I think old habits die hard.
Lets put it this way. I think the chances of anyone being able to successfully parse an old word document from the 1990's in it's original binary format are infinitely smaller than the chance you'll have of parsing that same document once it has been converted to OpenXml utilising the contentious optional parts of the OpenXML spec.
Essentially, through OpenXML, Microsoft has to a degree opened up all it's old binary office formats.
It's all moving in the right direction. Unless forced to do so by lobbiests with vested interests and anti-MS zealots, almost no one is going to convert their MS Office systems to OpenOffice ODF. At least this way the next gen of office documents will be infiinitely more open and accessible to 3rd party players. So I really don't think there's much to complain about.
Creating a competing "open standard" with backwards compatibility for MS docs to an "open standard" with no backwards compatibility for MS docs.
And the dirtiest trick of all!!! They supplied an easy to use free SDK to create, alter and extract info from those docs.
My god!! The depths they'll sink to!! Those bastards!!
Sarcasm aside what has happened is actually all very standard practices...
There's nothing noble about Star Office/ODF, it came about as result of very standard business practices. Sun acquired a german company Star AG, giving bith to StarOffice, which gave birth to ODF. Sun has spent 100-200million on this, and they didn't do it out of charity, or because they had any hopes of making money directly out of the venture. Their sole purpose was to inflict billions of dollars of damange on a company they are competing fiercly with.
So what rational explanation can anyone possibly give as to why Microsoft is not allowed to compete back?
I don't know about you, but I code in C++ only when a feature I need cannot be implemented in.NET. If I could do everything in.NET that'd be great.
I think the key to being a really good software developer is knowing the point at which you have to let go, because to cling on to old programming paradigms no matter how familiar and productive they may seem is only going to slow you down in the long run, with newer technologies offering faster development times (even with a steep learning curve).
I'm sure component manufacturers for android, knowing that only Java is supported will ensure that the API required to work with their component is available.
I agree with the earlier post though, this is definitely a direct competitor to Windows Mobile, this is very obvious when you see the following links...
It's very obvious HTC is a very big partner in Android, who are coincidently also the main manufacturer of Windows Mobile phones. HTC may very well be dumping Windows Mobile, this would leave Windows Mobile as a consumer device essentially dead.
At some point unless Microsoft dramatically changes its game, there are a lot of Microsoft developers out there who may need to come to a decision whether to just simply retire and letter a younger generation take over, or make the switch to non-Micorosft technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
He's right.
However, I still like the site, I think their interface is pretty cool.
Heard of Silverlight? .NET technology, you can target, different browsers, platforms desktop/mobile.
A recommendation I would make to the author of this article is - stick to commenting on what you're an expert on.
Having vague understandings about a major technology (with thousands of experts out there) simply doesn't cut it if you're going publicly dismiss it.
It didn't sound like boasting at all, I think you've read that into the article. To me it sounded like a simple explanation disparity between results on the acid 2 tests. It simply states the behavior is due to how they have implemented security on cross domain content, it doesn't say this is the appropriate behavior, failing to process the html within the object tag is probably NOT the appropriate behavior. I think the only defensiveness I can see in this post, is that they don't want people leaping to a more cynical conclusion for the issue that they have simply written code in IE8 that looks like if (url == acid2 test) print acid2 graphic
It's a beta.
Why don't you save the huffiness for when it's actually released?
They'll probably fix this issue for the RTM.
http://linerider.com/
http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html
http://www.wiicade.com/playGame.aspx?gameID=213
http://www.wiicade.com/playGame.aspx?gameID=22&gameName=Paintball
Simplicity is beautiful.
10 years from now the biggest gaming platform will be the mobile phone.
Apple are not the competition for Android, just look at Google's major development partner - HTC.
Android is defnitely a competitor to Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile and Android, circulate in an entirely different market to Apple's iPhone. The iPhone is a consumer device, Android and Windows Mobile are firmly aimed at the business market which requires the abilitiy to customise and extend the device for all sorts of different purposes, requiring wireless connectivity and rich client applications communicating across wireless protocols with heavily customised server systems e.g applications that need to read bar codes, rfids, for field service, warehouse management etc.
I think making the sort of comparison your making shows a really intense lack of understanding of the market and the product Google are producing. So, yea basically, you're going to be really disappointed with what Google produces, because they're simply not making what you think they're making.
I think he's saying if you read between the lines he's saying swing is total shit.
But really ur right, Apple r just a bunch of thought Nazi's, sure Java would probably make their phone look crap, but it's more about domination and control of their platform. It's the jobs effect, the man is a genius, but he has an ego exceeding that genius by an order of magnitude, whilst he creates great stuff he ruins it with his megalomania. To Jobs anyone elses input or ideas without his right of viteo is just a recipe for imperfection. Nothing will go on the iPhone without Steve giving it his approval and more importantly taking ownership of the idea like he had it all on his own.
This is why, I've always preferred Microsoft over Apple as the lesser of two evils, as Microsoft is really just a business entity. They're not that interested in technical perfection, just perfect business models. They don't care what you do with their platform, they let people do whatever, just as long as it doesn't screw their business model. The net effect is you have a lot of creative and technical freedom on the MS platform, but the day you screw with their business model they'll crush you like an ant.
Wow can't remember the last time so many pro Microsoft technology posts were made on Slashdot, and were actually positively modded !!! I think that alone is proof that Microsoft must have got something right with Silverlight (a rare thing, but it does happen occasionally), either that or something really scary has happened to Slashdot.
Aaaah, but look up the top... we can all sleep easy, hell hasn't frozen over, despite being shown the error of his ways 20 times over in numerous replies to his post our friend at the top with his ignorant rant is still rated +5 Insightful.... It's still the slashdot we all love.
I've been developing .NET since day 1 (as in reading the white papers to using the first betas). I can tell with absolute certainty that Silverlight is not just an after thought add on to .NET for Microsoft. The basic constructs and security architecture leveraged by Silverlight have been in place since the first beta of the .NET Framework back in 2001, its a technology they have always planned to introduce, before Silverlight they released many browser deployable .NET applications, so the delivery and security mechanisms are well tested and already main stream.
.NET into every part of it's server and desktop platform. .NET is everywhere throughout every piece of Microsoft Technology, from ERP systems, accounting to gaming consoles.
.NET is on the XBox 360? Can you create flash content for a the XBox 360? Or any other gaming console for that matter?
.NET framework on mobile devices as part of the ROM. Does flash ship on ROM chips?
.NET today and all of these companies will be able to leverage their existing code base through Silverlight far easier than what they could through Flash.
I think you also need to think about the huge API available to Silverlight developers. Since the release of the framework Microsoft has been hooking
Did you know
Microsoft ships the
So in summary the demand is already there as huge amount of development goes on in
But that doesn't mean there's any reason to switch, I think Flash will be around for many years to come and will probably continue to dominate the more traditional Flash areas such as marketing. I think Silverlight will get some penetration in this area, however, I believe it'll more commonly be used for implementing clients for more sophisticated business systems that are looking for an easier way to deliver rich client browser based apps than developing them in HTML/AJAX.
So basically if you're sick of the sort of light on development you typically have with your average Flash marketing project and are looking to get into more serious project development, you might consider Silverlight as a good stepping stone into that arena.
Microsoft didn't invent it. They bought it.
I think the thing that really ticks off the tech community about Microsoft, is that they don't really invent anything, they're just extrordinarily good and spotting excellent software early on, acquiring it and then marketing it better than any other company out there.
Actually I don't believe it's using silverlight, which is a pity for linux dudes out there because whilst there is Linux support for Silverlight, I don't think there's linux support for Photosynth. Guess, you'll just have to be content with Google Sky ;)
I believe it's using the Photosynth engine. I think the beauty of photosynth is that it is a self organising system for seamlessly navigating between photographs that gives you the illusion of animation. Microsoft's system can crawl web pages for material to add to the collage. So it does seem to be better" than google sky as this system will be allowed continue to collect images published in astronomical papers and add these pages to the world wide telescope system.
Make no mistake about it Photosynth is a world changing technology.
Yes it was, wasn't it.
XML was a fad probably about 11 years ago.
Today XML is the ubiquitous standard for flat file data storage, and as such it has LOTS and LOTS of tools and software that leverage it.
I can't think of two many things stupider than a developer designing a new non-xml text based flat file for data storage in todays day and age would be someone who thinks XML is not human readable. I think only persons possibly stupider than that are the moderators who rated your ridiculous rant as insightful.
If slashdot was half honest, they'd have another rating which is something like
Lacking
all
merit
except
it
antagonises
Microsoft
In which case you might have been rated +5 LameIam.
Anti-virus software shouldn't be a requirement of an operating system. The operating system should come with adequet securtity to guard against and detect attempts at intrusion. 3rd party anti-virus solutions are just patches on a leaky boat. If Microsoft ever gets around to doing it's job properly the whole anti-virus business model will be defunct
Google is showing Microsoft how it's done on the web with their browsing and email solutions quickly becoming the defacto industry standard for spam email and malicious online attacks. Likewise Microsoft harness the peer to peer power it has at it's disposal, to detect and eliminate unauthorised intrusions on their platform.
If Windows ever becomes a truely safe and secure operating system it'll be Microsoft and not 3rd party anit-virus solutions that does it. Unless Microsoft really opens up it's OS, they are the only ones in a position to actually do a proper job of it.
It's just a zip file containing XML, try opeening it with a archive utility...
Looks something like this...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<w:document xmlns:ve="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:m="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main" xmlns:wne="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2006/wordml">
<w:body>
<w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1">
<w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C">
<w:rPr>
<w:b/>
<w:sz w:val="24"/>
<w:szCs w:val="24"/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t>Announcement Overview</w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C">
<w:rPr>
<w:b/>
<w:sz w:val="24"/>
<w:szCs w:val="24"/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t>Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability</w:t>
</w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1">
<w:r w:rsidRPr="00C36F7C">
<w:rPr>
<w:i/>
<w:sz w:val="20"/>
<w:szCs w:val="20"/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t>New Interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products</w:t>
</w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00360CFD" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1">
<w:r w:rsidRPr="00360CFD">
<w:rPr>
<w:bCs/>
<w:sz w:val="20"/>
<w:szCs w:val="20"/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t xml:space="preserve">Microsoft is making a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices that will increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice across the IT community of developers, partners, customers, and competitors. </w:t>
</w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p w:rsidR="00FC386E" w:rsidRPr="00360CFD" w:rsidRDefault="00FC386E" w:rsidP="008506E1">
<w:r w:rsidRPr="00360CFD">
<w:rPr>
<w:bCs/>
<w:sz w:val="20"/>
<w:szCs w:val="20"/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t xml:space="preserve">Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding across its high-volume business products Windows Vista (including the
Yes Bill has retired. As you can see from the following video...
...the pressure from Google, Apple and others has finally taken it's toll.
http://on10.net/blogs/larry/Bills-Last-Day-CES-2008-Keynote-Video/Default.aspx
He remains now only as chairman of the board.
Their movie industry will be totally lost for plot lines...
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=chinese+ghost+stories
I think you missed the whole point of what I'm saying, it doesn't matter if they have dominance over the desktop computing market when that entire market is about to be superceded by newer ways to accessing computing technology. I think your thinking is a little too conventional, you assume in 10 years time the majority of people will still be doing most of their computing via a desktop machine, I say most people won't even own a device like a desktop computer, they'll have mobile devices to access internet based technology in and out of the work place, and home entertainment systems that will leverage internet server based systems, and given present trends and Microsoft's inability to conquer new markets these systems are unlikely to be Microsoft based. So what good will their monopoly be then?
A resurgent Apple is erroding their dominance over the desktop market, and the whole desktop market is itself in decline, mobile devices are on the rise, they have no dominance in the mobile market. Windows Mobile has less than 10% market share and HTC the biggest vendor of Windows Mobile devices has partnered with Google to bring Android to the market. Windows Mobile may very well be dead within a few years as a consumer item.
Whats worse the mobile market is dominated by thin client server based systems, the sort of systems Google has dominance over.
Microsoft has lost ground for the last 5 years in about every area except the corporate collaboration market with sharepoint, and I believe they'll see that dominance erroded significantly by slicker, cheaper web 2.0 collaboration systems over the next few years.
So in short. I think Microsoft is in an extremely bad position at the moment. Google and Apple are going to have them for lunch.
So maybe it's you who needs to get out and smell somes roses.
Oh and one other thing...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
Microsoft have supplied support for OpenXML back to Office 2000. So OpenXML clearly is compatible with earlier versions of MS Office.
And one other thing whilst I'm educating you, its OpenXML, not OOXML. You don't even seem to know the name of it.
For years slashdotters have gone on about Microsoft and it's evil closed formats...
I think old habits die hard.
Lets put it this way. I think the chances of anyone being able to successfully parse an old word document from the 1990's in it's original binary format are infinitely smaller than the chance you'll have of parsing that same document once it has been converted to OpenXml utilising the contentious optional parts of the OpenXML spec.
Essentially, through OpenXML, Microsoft has to a degree opened up all it's old binary office formats.
It's all moving in the right direction. Unless forced to do so by lobbiests with vested interests and anti-MS zealots, almost no one is going to convert their MS Office systems to OpenOffice ODF. At least this way the next gen of office documents will be infiinitely more open and accessible to 3rd party players. So I really don't think there's much to complain about.
Dirty tricks like...
Creating a competing "open standard" with backwards compatibility for MS docs to an "open standard" with no backwards compatibility for MS docs.
And the dirtiest trick of all!!! They supplied an easy to use free SDK to create, alter and extract info from those docs.
My god!! The depths they'll sink to!! Those bastards!!
Sarcasm aside what has happened is actually all very standard practices...
There's nothing noble about Star Office/ODF, it came about as result of very standard business practices. Sun acquired a german company Star AG, giving bith to StarOffice, which gave birth to ODF. Sun has spent 100-200million on this, and they didn't do it out of charity, or because they had any hopes of making money directly out of the venture. Their sole purpose was to inflict billions of dollars of damange on a company they are competing fiercly with.
So what rational explanation can anyone possibly give as to why Microsoft is not allowed to compete back?
What monopoly position?
You been asleep the last 5 years?
I don't know about you, but I code in C++ only when a feature I need cannot be implemented in .NET. If I could do everything in .NET that'd be great.
I think the key to being a really good software developer is knowing the point at which you have to let go, because to cling on to old programming paradigms no matter how familiar and productive they may seem is only going to slow you down in the long run, with newer technologies offering faster development times (even with a steep learning curve).
I'm sure component manufacturers for android, knowing that only Java is supported will ensure that the API required to work with their component is available.
I agree with the earlier post though, this is definitely a direct competitor to Windows Mobile, this is very obvious when you see the following links...
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20071105_mobile_open.html
Google Inc., T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others have collaborated on the development of Android
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/smartphones/htc-boss-says-2-to-3-android-phones-in-2008-new-touch-interface-coming-and-more-321473.php
It's very obvious HTC is a very big partner in Android, who are coincidently also the main manufacturer of Windows Mobile phones. HTC may very well be dumping Windows Mobile, this would leave Windows Mobile as a consumer device essentially dead.
At some point unless Microsoft dramatically changes its game, there are a lot of Microsoft developers out there who may need to come to a decision whether to just simply retire and letter a younger generation take over, or make the switch to non-Micorosft technologies.