They didn't take BSD and 'create a whole OS'. Slashbots often whine about the 'strings ftp.exe | grep 'University of California' shebang (I even saw it on someone's.sig once) but those that do display an amazing inability to understand commercial software development and the BSD model.
While shipping NT 3.1 Microsoft was under pressure to add TCP/IP so they bought a commerically available stack rather than write it themselves. This commercial offering was a BSD derivative -- completely legally. For NT4 Microsoft rewrote the stack substantially, retaining old bits for backward compatibility. If this is 'stealing' from BSD, we should just scrap the BSD licence since it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
I run XP SP2, XP firewall, also behind Linux firewall. Running AVG, Spybot and MS Antispyware. Run Firefox, and *never* click on anything dodgy. Last week my machine managed to catch a piece of scumware from somewhere.
Scumware never comes from 'somewhere'. Were you on a LAN with a writable share? Is your wifi open? Do any servers run on your system? (BitTorrent can be a server if configured to be so)
That said, I've found that an XP SP2 box with the firewall running, automatic updates on, and antivirus+updates on is pretty darn safe. Of course I've only done 15 or so (my own and friends) but not one has had problems yet. And no, I don't run antispyware apps, I regard them as an attempt to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted.
What I do instead is configure accounts to not run as administrator. Run as a member of class Users (use runas if you need admin access). Most post-2000 era software run as User quite nicely and for those that don't, a judicious tweaking of NTFS and registry ACLs fixes things nicely. Of course, there are always exceptions, but the vast majority of Windows apps work well.
Of course, if after doing all this you still insist on downloading screensavers from dodgy sources, or running FooAppCrack.exe every so often, Microsoft can't really help you.
Because OBL isn't in Europe? Given that the South Asian grapevine is that he's being treated in Pakistan, it would help if the Pakistani government had more control over their own territories so they could help more.
Yup, it was jumping the gun of sorts -- but it was a gut reaction based on an educated guess. I strongly doubt MS are interested in Claria for their tools alone. As someone noted, Claria is sitting on 12TB of collected information. That data pile, in my eyes, is tainted. The fact that Microsoft would want it (and if they bought Claria they _would_ own it, Claria has no privacy poison-pill) disgusts me.
And Judging by TFA's account of 'internal debate' within Microsoft, I'm guessing some people there had the same gut reaction I did.
Microsofts Antispyware's cred just took a dive for no fault of its own. Pity, since Giant (which it was before MS purchased it) was one of the better antispyware apps.
The thing is, I noticed the count but-- while dragging the slider the count always shows 'loading results...'. That's even when the slider isn't moving but the mousebutton is held down. The count updates only when the mouse button is released. I haven't looked at the source either but I imagine a onMouseUp handler updating the innerHtml of the div. IMHO this is DHTML not Ajax primarily because it isn't asynchronous (the A in Ajax).
This is the sort of thing I meant when I said clueless. Rule 1 of the enterprise game: never let them doubt your commitment to your software. Even Microsoft, with its 7+5 year prouct lifecycle, has learnt this.
You might like to actually get a sense of what Ajax is all about before failing others.
All I see on that page is Javascripted widgets and a big, oldfashioned 'See results' button that reloads the whole page to show the search results. This is Ajax. Not. (Clue: if Amazon had updated a div/frame with diamonds as the user slid the widgets around, then you'd have an easier time convincing me it was Ajax.)
And even if they did use Ajax in this (rather obscure) store section, it'd hardly make Amazon.com an Ajax app in the same breath as Gmail/Google Maps, where the entire interface is built around Ajax.
> Netscape has supported DHTML since Netscape 2.0.
over a very limited subset of the DOM. Result: DHTML apps for NS2..4 distinctly lagged IE4 and IE5.
> And GMail was far from the first popular web app
Saying K5's commenting system is popular is the same breath as Gmail is popular is a bit like saying 'my parrot can talk' and then 'my child can talk'. Sure they both do, but the difference is in degree. Similarly http://map.search.ch/ scooped Google Maps, but how much exposure did it get? Not maps.search.ch's fault, but the point is until Gmail and Google Maps there hasn't been a widely used site that _required_ you to have an Ajax-compliant browser to use it (Note Gmail's light-mode came much later).
First, Amazon has nothing to do with Ajax. Their sites don't even take good advantage of it (except in a limited way, in the 'search inside the book' feature). Google yes (Gmail/Google Suggest), Amazon, no.
> Microsoft is playing catch up.
And given that Microsoft created a very rich version of Outlook Web Access as far back as 1998, it's quite revealing that no one 'figured' out how to make DHTML work on a web app used by lots of people until Gmail came out. Actually, the reason for this is of course that Netscape/Mozilla didn't support it until recently-- although I'm sure the/. crowd would rather tear their teeth out than say IE 'innovated' or Microsoft led the way in any way.
If it helps you get over it, Adam Bosworth, who was on the IE team then and one of the creators of IE4's comprehensive, script-accessible DOM (which made 'DHTML' possible) now works at Google.
And regarding this toolkit-- it's interesting to see so many people reflexively bash it when Ajax today is a _bad_ mishmash of XML, javascript and HTML. RoR helps but RoR has its own set of problems-- chiefly maturity and applicability to a wide variety of projects. Ballmer got a lot of stick for dancing around shouting 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' but trust me that's how Microsoft earns its living: easy-to-use platforms + easy-to-use development tools.
Or maybe those companies knew that India has multiple redundant links: multiple transatlantic and transpacific cables, and satellite. An Indian telco owns FLAG. I doubt they'll lose much sleep over this.
Sun's app server is definitely not new and immature. It's based off iPlanet AS which if anything is older than Weblogic and Websphere. A better reason is that BEA (with Tuxedo) and IBM both have substantial experience selling app servers in general, and they know the enterprise software sales playbook by heart because they helped write it.
Sun, OTOH, was and remains clueless about marketing software*. (Their latest foray, per-employee licensing for the Java Desktop System and the Java Enterprise Stack, got a good deal of buzz but it's far from being an MS- or IBM-killer yet.)
Have you used Frontpage 2003? It's HTML generation is quite clean. It even has a pretty visible Profiles system that lets you switch off (or on) VML, Office-specific styles -- heck, even the META GENERATOR=FrontPage tags.
Objections to this would include: - Microsoft cannot and should not be forced to bundle competing products, it sets a very bad legal precedent - Why should choice be offered only for browsers? Maybe OEMs should bundle OSes and let people choose OSes on first boot. And Office suites too. Maybe PDAs should do it too, after all the newer ones have more power and storage than 486s. From this point on, your suggestion degenerates into several impractical scenarios. However, this is missing a bigger point--
Years ago, people bought word processors, spreadsheets, and so on. Until some bright spark brought out something called 'Office' -- a bundle of all of MS' products at one low cost. This generated a lot of questions and controversy, with editorials in PC Magazine asking whether customers would really abandon best-of-breed apps for a jack-of-all trades, i.e., by giving up Lotus Word Pro for the slightly inferior Microsoft Word. Well, we know now the result of *that* tossup-- Office suites won, big time.
The desktop OS marketplace is in the throes of a similar shift: the OS is no longer a bootloader + (virtual) memory manager, it's a suite of programs that let you interact with the digital world _and_ a platform that lets you build more programs.
Like with Office suites, people have voted with their wallets that they like OSes that let them do more. Apple and Microsoft -- and in a flawed way, Linux distros -- understand this. The only people who didn't were the EU antitrust lawyers, but given their myopia on other matters I can't say I am surprised.
Great post. It's amazing how many people can't see past the cheap populism and wooly-headed economic thinking behind all the tax-the-rich cries.
It's worth noting that countries with a high top-end tax rate have without exception stagnant economies (even the Nordic countries, darlings of many socialists, fare poorly against most US states).
You can say, 'give me liberty or give me death'. The problem is, in today's relatively crowded cities giving _you_ death also involves killing a few others. Sure those others deserved to make their own choice?
> So how many people have blown themselves up lately?
A lot of people might argue that's because law-enforcement is able to do more with their new powers.
> Did that greater access already allow to catch the original perpetrator? Oh wait, nope.
I think the whole point of PATRIOT is to stop future terrorist acts. Catching top-rung Al-Q leadership is a cat-and-mouse game that has _nothing_ to do with PATRIOT. It involves special ops and international diplomacy, given that the people involved are likely holed up in South Asia (probably Pakistan).
> I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of conspiracy theories you mean
Given some of your leaps of logic, I wouldn't be surprised if you have a hard time figuring _anything_ out.
That's a good point. I always thought that there would just be another "terrorist" incident just before the 2008 enections, and martial law would be declared, thus keeping Bush in office indefinitely.
Yeah, because the thought that Bush is just another guy who 51%+ of voters liked enough to vote in _again_ is too horrible for you to contemplate. I guess all those juvenile Palpatine-wannabe fantasies must really work at keeping you sane.
The problem which all you armchair libertarians don't seem to comprehend is that terrorists don't play by the rules. We aren't fighting Basque separatists or IRA who in their better days would actually call up and warn about a bomb going off in a theater so that innocents would have a fighting chance to escape. These are _thugs_ who like sawing off heads on live TV.
Civil liberties imply a certain degree of civility: when you have lunatics ready to blow themselves and hundreds of others up, like it or not the level of civility in society has dropped significantly. Which unfortunately means the guardians of society -- law-enforcement -- can't be hemmed in by too many rules -- it'd be like playing tennis with one arm tied up. Walls like warrants and divisions of power were set up to protect civil liberties and the citizen from the government: terrorists know how to use the these walls to their advantage.
At heart, PATRIOT is about removing these walls and allowing law-enforcement greater access to information. This, according to most of the American public, is a Good Thing. What would be even better is if PATRIOT's opponents actually offered some constructive opposition-- such as writing new law that mandates oversight of any PATRIOT-enabled infringement of rights. Reflexively parroting conspiracy theories only makes the parroter -- and the cause -- look stupid.
Almost, but bot quite. Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) and Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) are both 'light' containers that can load all sorts of OLE documents. explorer.exe defaults to loading the shell namespace and folder views but can also load web pages and other things. iexplore.exe defaults to loading shdocvw to render web pages (but can also load the shell namespace and other things that are designed to run inside OLE containers, like Adobe's PDF, Word Docs, Excel spreadsheets, etc.
The point is both HTML rendering and the shell namespace views are quite componentized, and both explorer and iexplore are the tips of the icebergs.
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They didn't take BSD and 'create a whole OS'. Slashbots often whine about the 'strings ftp.exe | grep 'University of California' shebang (I even saw it on someone's .sig once) but those that do display an amazing inability to understand commercial software development and the BSD model.
While shipping NT 3.1 Microsoft was under pressure to add TCP/IP so they bought a commerically available stack rather than write it themselves. This commercial offering was a BSD derivative -- completely legally. For NT4 Microsoft rewrote the stack substantially, retaining old bits for backward compatibility. If this is 'stealing' from BSD, we should just scrap the BSD licence since it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
I run XP SP2, XP firewall, also behind Linux firewall. Running AVG, Spybot and MS Antispyware. Run Firefox, and *never* click on anything dodgy. Last week my machine managed to catch a piece of scumware from somewhere.
Scumware never comes from 'somewhere'. Were you on a LAN with a writable share? Is your wifi open? Do any servers run on your system? (BitTorrent can be a server if configured to be so)
That said, I've found that an XP SP2 box with the firewall running, automatic updates on, and antivirus+updates on is pretty darn safe. Of course I've only done 15 or so (my own and friends) but not one has had problems yet. And no, I don't run antispyware apps, I regard them as an attempt to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted.
What I do instead is configure accounts to not run as administrator. Run as a member of class Users (use runas if you need admin access). Most post-2000 era software run as User quite nicely and for those that don't, a judicious tweaking of NTFS and registry ACLs fixes things nicely. Of course, there are always exceptions, but the vast majority of Windows apps work well.
Of course, if after doing all this you still insist on downloading screensavers from dodgy sources, or running FooAppCrack.exe every so often, Microsoft can't really help you.
Because OBL isn't in Europe? Given that the South Asian grapevine is that he's being treated in Pakistan, it would help if the Pakistani government had more control over their own territories so they could help more.
Yup, it was jumping the gun of sorts -- but it was a gut reaction based on an educated guess. I strongly doubt MS are interested in Claria for their tools alone. As someone noted, Claria is sitting on 12TB of collected information. That data pile, in my eyes, is tainted. The fact that Microsoft would want it (and if they bought Claria they _would_ own it, Claria has no privacy poison-pill) disgusts me.
And Judging by TFA's account of 'internal debate' within Microsoft, I'm guessing some people there had the same gut reaction I did.
Microsofts Antispyware's cred just took a dive for no fault of its own. Pity, since Giant (which it was before MS purchased it) was one of the better antispyware apps.
Semi-bog-standard Firefox, with scripts enabled.
The thing is, I noticed the count but-- while dragging the slider the count always shows 'loading results...'. That's even when the slider isn't moving but the mousebutton is held down. The count updates only when the mouse button is released. I haven't looked at the source either but I imagine a onMouseUp handler updating the innerHtml of the div. IMHO this is DHTML not Ajax primarily because it isn't asynchronous (the A in Ajax).
This is the sort of thing I meant when I said clueless. Rule 1 of the enterprise game: never let them doubt your commitment to your software. Even Microsoft, with its 7+5 year prouct lifecycle, has learnt this.
You might like to actually get a sense of what Ajax is all about before failing others.
All I see on that page is Javascripted widgets and a big, oldfashioned 'See results' button that reloads the whole page to show the search results. This is Ajax. Not. (Clue: if Amazon had updated a div/frame with diamonds as the user slid the widgets around, then you'd have an easier time convincing me it was Ajax.)
And even if they did use Ajax in this (rather obscure) store section, it'd hardly make Amazon.com an Ajax app in the same breath as Gmail/Google Maps, where the entire interface is built around Ajax.
> Netscape has supported DHTML since Netscape 2.0.
over a very limited subset of the DOM. Result: DHTML apps for NS2..4 distinctly lagged IE4 and IE5.
> And GMail was far from the first popular web app
Saying K5's commenting system is popular is the same breath as Gmail is popular is a bit like saying 'my parrot can talk' and then 'my child can talk'. Sure they both do, but the difference is in degree. Similarly http://map.search.ch/ scooped Google Maps, but how much exposure did it get? Not maps.search.ch's fault, but the point is until Gmail and Google Maps there hasn't been a widely used site that _required_ you to have an Ajax-compliant browser to use it (Note Gmail's light-mode came much later).
First, Amazon has nothing to do with Ajax. Their sites don't even take good advantage of it (except in a limited way, in the 'search inside the book' feature). Google yes (Gmail/Google Suggest), Amazon, no.
/. crowd would rather tear their teeth out than say IE 'innovated' or Microsoft led the way in any way.
> Microsoft is playing catch up.
And given that Microsoft created a very rich version of Outlook Web Access as far back as 1998, it's quite revealing that no one 'figured' out how to make DHTML work on a web app used by lots of people until Gmail came out. Actually, the reason for this is of course that Netscape/Mozilla didn't support it until recently-- although I'm sure the
If it helps you get over it, Adam Bosworth, who was on the IE team then and one of the creators of IE4's comprehensive, script-accessible DOM (which made 'DHTML' possible) now works at Google.
And regarding this toolkit-- it's interesting to see so many people reflexively bash it when Ajax today is a _bad_ mishmash of XML, javascript and HTML. RoR helps but RoR has its own set of problems-- chiefly maturity and applicability to a wide variety of projects. Ballmer got a lot of stick for dancing around shouting 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' but trust me that's how Microsoft earns its living: easy-to-use platforms + easy-to-use development tools.
Or maybe those companies knew that India has multiple redundant links: multiple transatlantic and transpacific cables, and satellite. An Indian telco owns FLAG. I doubt they'll lose much sleep over this.
Sun's app server is definitely not new and immature. It's based off iPlanet AS which if anything is older than Weblogic and Websphere. A better reason is that BEA (with Tuxedo) and IBM both have substantial experience selling app servers in general, and they know the enterprise software sales playbook by heart because they helped write it.
Sun, OTOH, was and remains clueless about marketing software*. (Their latest foray, per-employee licensing for the Java Desktop System and the Java Enterprise Stack, got a good deal of buzz but it's far from being an MS- or IBM-killer yet.)
As soon as I can have:
...and as soon as these don't die if my network dies (I'd hate to lose my compiler during a bad thunderstorm)
* A Full-fledged Word Processor/Spreadsheet
* Full-fledged Image manipulators (vector, raster, 3D)
* An IM client
You forgot to add:
Have you used Frontpage 2003? It's HTML generation is quite clean. It even has a pretty visible Profiles system that lets you switch off (or on) VML, Office-specific styles -- heck, even the META GENERATOR=FrontPage tags.
> Gestures make menus obsolete.
For advanced users. Novices and people with poor motor movements (or bad mice) find gestures nightmarish.
Objections to this would include:
- Microsoft cannot and should not be forced to bundle competing products, it sets a very bad legal precedent
- Why should choice be offered only for browsers? Maybe OEMs should bundle OSes and let people choose OSes on first boot. And Office suites too. Maybe PDAs should do it too, after all the newer ones have more power and storage than 486s. From this point on, your suggestion degenerates into several impractical scenarios. However, this is missing a bigger point--
Years ago, people bought word processors, spreadsheets, and so on. Until some bright spark brought out something called 'Office' -- a bundle of all of MS' products at one low cost. This generated a lot of questions and controversy, with editorials in PC Magazine asking whether customers would really abandon best-of-breed apps for a jack-of-all trades, i.e., by giving up Lotus Word Pro for the slightly inferior Microsoft Word. Well, we know now the result of *that* tossup-- Office suites won, big time.
The desktop OS marketplace is in the throes of a similar shift: the OS is no longer a bootloader + (virtual) memory manager, it's a suite of programs that let you interact with the digital world _and_ a platform that lets you build more programs.
Like with Office suites, people have voted with their wallets that they like OSes that let them do more. Apple and Microsoft -- and in a flawed way, Linux distros -- understand this. The only people who didn't were the EU antitrust lawyers, but given their myopia on other matters I can't say I am surprised.
> Firefox and AdBlock provide a service that is in high demand: the blockery of ads.
*Bletch* *urgh* How many years of school did you have to unlearn to come up with inanery like this?
Well, IE for Solaris was there, but no longer. And, of course, Xenix.
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200502/980519_5.html
These are corporations, not blood enemies. Tech holy wars like Apple/MS, Sun/MS and Intel/Apple are so last-century.
Great post. It's amazing how many people can't see past the cheap populism and wooly-headed economic thinking behind all the tax-the-rich cries.
It's worth noting that countries with a high top-end tax rate have without exception stagnant economies (even the Nordic countries, darlings of many socialists, fare poorly against most US states).
Incorrect. Windows is a registered "®" trademark of Microsoft in the US and Japan, and in most other countries (search for Windows on these pages).
You're right about Word though, and MS is always careful to call it Microsoft® Word.
You can say, 'give me liberty or give me death'. The problem is, in today's relatively crowded cities giving _you_ death also involves killing a few others. Sure those others deserved to make their own choice?
> So how many people have blown themselves up lately?
A lot of people might argue that's because law-enforcement is able to do more with their new powers.
> Did that greater access already allow to catch the original perpetrator? Oh wait, nope.
I think the whole point of PATRIOT is to stop future terrorist acts. Catching top-rung Al-Q leadership is a cat-and-mouse game that has _nothing_ to do with PATRIOT. It involves special ops and international diplomacy, given that the people involved are likely holed up in South Asia (probably Pakistan).
> I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of conspiracy theories you mean
Given some of your leaps of logic, I wouldn't be surprised if you have a hard time figuring _anything_ out.
That's a good point. I always thought that there would just be another "terrorist" incident just before the 2008 enections, and martial law would be declared, thus keeping Bush in office indefinitely.
Yeah, because the thought that Bush is just another guy who 51%+ of voters liked enough to vote in _again_ is too horrible for you to contemplate. I guess all those juvenile Palpatine-wannabe fantasies must really work at keeping you sane.
The problem which all you armchair libertarians don't seem to comprehend is that terrorists don't play by the rules. We aren't fighting Basque separatists or IRA who in their better days would actually call up and warn about a bomb going off in a theater so that innocents would have a fighting chance to escape. These are _thugs_ who like sawing off heads on live TV.
Civil liberties imply a certain degree of civility: when you have lunatics ready to blow themselves and hundreds of others up, like it or not the level of civility in society has dropped significantly. Which unfortunately means the guardians of society -- law-enforcement -- can't be hemmed in by too many rules -- it'd be like playing tennis with one arm tied up. Walls like warrants and divisions of power were set up to protect civil liberties and the citizen from the government: terrorists know how to use the these walls to their advantage.
At heart, PATRIOT is about removing these walls and allowing law-enforcement greater access to information. This, according to most of the American public, is a Good Thing. What would be even better is if PATRIOT's opponents actually offered some constructive opposition-- such as writing new law that mandates oversight of any PATRIOT-enabled infringement of rights. Reflexively parroting conspiracy theories only makes the parroter -- and the cause -- look stupid.
Almost, but bot quite. Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) and Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) are both 'light' containers that can load all sorts of OLE documents. explorer.exe defaults to loading the shell namespace and folder views but can also load web pages and other things. iexplore.exe defaults to loading shdocvw to render web pages (but can also load the shell namespace and other things that are designed to run inside OLE containers, like Adobe's PDF, Word Docs, Excel spreadsheets, etc.
The point is both HTML rendering and the shell namespace views are quite componentized, and both explorer and iexplore are the tips of the icebergs.