Rick Zeman writes "the new York time, which has, magazine a fascinating article to dismember all innumerable ways the fact that people are diverted from their computers on the job and ', as HalloHi techvorrichtungen affects our behavior.' Of the article: ' information is not any more a scarce aid - attention is. Before David rose, a Cambridge, measure based expert on computer interfaces, may underline that 20 years, an office worker had only two kinds communicationses: a telephone, which required an immediate answer, and post office post office, which took days. "now we have dozens of possibilities between that posts," say rose. Are you are to email an announcement to answer as fast? Or an immediate announcement? Computer-assisted interruptions fall into a kind of the Heisenbergian uncertainty case: to know it is with difficulty, whether email is an announcement, to interrupt your work for it is you opens and read it - on, which point you have interrupted itself naturally.' Which could be done, in order to change a counting to the assistance, did you weaken this multitasking?" off
About PDF, my thought is the same as many, ABOUT TIME!
About OpenDocument format, we ought to start a pool on how many versions it will be before they "listen to their customers" for that request.
(And why don't some Open developers whip up a plugin for Office to allow OpenDocument support for Office?)
BUT WHAT I FIND MOST INTERESTING, IS Office 12's ENTIRELY NEW and RE-ARRANGED INTERFACE!!
Its NOT JUST AN UPGRADE!
Its a WHOLE NEW USER EXPERIENCE, which means...
...THERE'S NO REASON CORPORATE USERS CAN'T BE SWITCHED TO OpenOffice, StarOffice, or any other Office!
There is no way a corporation can "drop" Office 12 into place without people first being trained! (Well they could, and probably will, but to their non-techie users it'll be a shock!)
Thank-you Microsoft! For once again giving us innovation to do the same work an entirely different way! (But now we have another good reason to look at alternate brands for that "entirely different way"!)
With all those other stars out there, probably some other stellar-planetary systems have been disrupted and the planets freed from their orbits around their star...
...what do we call them then if we're basing their "planet" status based on their orbits around a star... ..."the big round thing formerly known as a planet"??
Lets think a little beyond the here and now, so we don't have to have this discussion AGAIN in a 100 years...
Geez keep it simple.
Either add some new planets to our system, or give Pluto "honorary planet" status to keep our count above 8.
What?! No more Flash-based Microsoft Ads?
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 2, Funny
What?! No more Flash-based Microsoft Ads?
I mean I so enjoy seeing Microsoft advertise their development tools using Flash based ads on Slashdot! It just makes me laugh everytime I see one!
I'm curious how much extra time and work did you commit and create for your company by going with Software Assurance?
Does someone at your company read the 100+ page "printed" EULA update Microsoft sends you practically every month?
Who manages and keeps track of how many "points" you've spent or accumulated? And how many more you have to go?
Yeah there's a percentage savings; but there's a commitment to Microsoft and additional managment time involved. Please elaborate on what that costs your company.
How much extra management or purchasing work does OpenSource software create for handling licensing? Quick answer... NONE.
I mean, naturally, the reason to upgrade to Office 2003 is because it is better... so sure, say my employer has 200 users x $300 per upgrade license, that's $60,000. Of course I can explain in my budget how when we upgraded 3 years ago to XP, assume again for the same reason... "it was better..." that it in 2000 it was just a temporary $60,000 expense, leading up to and preparing us for this EVEN better version in 2003. OH, but wait, I forgot, just 2 years prior to that we spend maybe $50,000 to upgrade to the 2000 version from the '97 version. And two years prior to that we spent maybe $40,000 upgrading from '95 to '97.
In case you don't have Excel handy, that's...
$40,000 in '97, $50,000 in 2000, $60,000 in 2001/2, $60,000 in 2003 equaling $210,000 in 6 years just on licenses...
THEN there was the amount of time and labor necessary for my IT department to upgrade each of these 200 computers...
And the training time, to make the most of each new version, and teach my company's employees how to work together in the "even better" way that Microsoft has so carefully designed for us.
Plus the memory, and computer upgrades necessary to run the newer versions...
AND with 2003, to MAKE THE MOST OF IT, we needed to add a new server to run SHAREPOINT Server for our 200 people.
Yes, that is what Microsoft and Mr. "Who uses Office XP anymore?"' would have you do.
Fortunately, up until but not including the last sentence, my upgrade story is fiction. We're still using Office 2000. A few are using Office XP. Some of us even use the old Wordperfect and Quattro suite from Corel. And when the Engineering department told us they wanted 2003, I told them NO. (Unless of course they can tell me what features from 2003 it is that they NEED. And I gave them a link to Microsoft's webpage showing the differences between 2003 and XP.)
Now when time permits, we're going to find out just what features our company REALLY needs, and the suite that provides those features best, will be what we will convert the whole company to. If that is Office 2006, (which of course will be EVEN BETTER, so you ought to go get it NOW if you can!), then so be it, but until then this IT Department is trying the OpenOffice 2.0 beta, and thus far, except for "Convert Text To Columns" in Excel, there has been no need for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice 2.0 beta works great, has most of the USED features of MS Office, and removes most of the need having Acrobat (full version).
We've already switched most people from IE to Firefox, which most everyone had no problem with, they hated IE's "many" popups and like Firefox's tabs. AND we have MUCH less Virus/Spyware problems now.
And as Outlook keeps chewing up people's PST files, they are being moved to Thunderbird.
Hmm... before you know it, I may be able to CHOOSE which OS we're going to run too...
Who wants to bet that by the time Longhorn comes out, NGSCB will be dead?
Or replaced by another even MORE INNOVATIVE security solution by MS?
(Oh but that will just be NGSCB repackaged and renamed a third time.)
I mean geez, do they ever look at their own history of failures, (oh I'm sorry, INNOVATIONS un-adopted by the industry). And compare it to their own history of successes...
...now I get to have twice as many problems than I have now with XP 32?:)
Think they improved the wait to display "My Computer" while it has a connection to a remote share, that is either slow or unreachable?
With XP, 512MB ram, and Pentium 4, I get to wait a good minute or two, just to SEE, let alone access, the drives that are still ON or CONNECTED to the machine.
Of course this is the DEFAULT settings, I've not taken the time to research how to "reconfigure" or "tweak" it.
You think they would have optimized such an ancient and basic behavior, OUT OF THE BOX!
Oh wait, it must be one of those "innovative" things...
If MM ever goes down the tubes its going to be because whomever "comes up with" or "says yes to" their idiotic marketing ideas drove the company there.
My two favorites thus far have the trying to sell Flash Remoting separate from Flash; and the "almost" separation of their ColdFusion Reporting from the ColdFusion Server product.
Oh yeah, then there's the $10000+ Flex product... geared only toward "enterprise" development.
So obviously this "employee" who comes up with these ideas got involved with the marketing of the Flash Player... ..."Hey, I haven't screwed up this section of the company yet!"
Flash, Actionscript, Flash Remoting, ColdFusion, ColdFusion Reporting... all run on Windows AND Linux.
You could do some cool apps with these products to free companies from the tyranny of being stuck with Windows clients because of developing VB or.NET applications. Switch to MM development, and then you can gradually switch your OS...
But they can't seem to market THAT idea.
No instead, let's help Yahoo Toolbar by letting them piggyback on our Flash Player's success.
Actually I'm beginning to wonder if MM is hurting for "cashflow"; and this was just an easy way of generating some. But from a "reputation" point of view, it was just plain stupid!
Microsoft tried this with Java, they called it J++.
Sure some people went to the MS flavor of Java, but not MOST.
In the same way, just because MS starts offering Linux, some will go to it, but certainly not MOST, let alone EVERYONE.
Then there's those who have been so abused by Microsoft's manipulations the past 10 years. Why would anyone who's been paying attention to MS for 10 years not view this as yet another attempt by MS to manipulate and control. As such anyone with experience and sense would know NOT to touch this attempt by MS with a 10 foot pole.
Then there's the fact that MS itself will blow its own effort out of the water; first by completing the product 3/4 of the way, like they do most everything else; second by changing their marketing of it 50 gazillion ways, like they did to their.NET campaign; third by replacing it with some other new innovative wonder 6 months later; or fourth just by dropping the product when they don't see EVERYONE switching to it.
Not to mention he doesn't even take into account that many of the hardware vendors are in Asia, which has more than one country embracing Linux, or trying to do their own Linux like OS. Lets see the counties making our hardware, use Linux, so naturally we can conclude they'd prefer to write Windows drivers.... nah!
I don't think Dvorak got enough sleep the night before he wrote this idea down. He made it too simplistic.
What is this, the quarterly "keyboard" post?!?
on
New Standard Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
I mean how many times do we have to read on/. the same-old-same-old...
"Woe is us for having to use QWERTY keyboards."
"Praise be to DVORAK keyboards!"
and
"Ooh Dexter, look a this pretty alternative keyboard."
I'm going to predict the following will happen before QWERTY ever sees a demise:
1.) The U.S. will be using the metric system almost entirely in place of our current system of measurement.
2.) Microsoft will have "perfected" speech recognition and made it easier to use than typing.
3.) Every restaurant is Taco Bell.
4.) We'll have read at least 80 more posts at/. about QWERTY vs. DVORAK vs. Other keyboards.
(Since we know that M$ doesn't "perfect" anything, except "pretty icons" from their "Dee Dee" department, it is probable that we will be using QWERTY for a long time.)
NOT because he's right, but BECAUSE its HIS responsibility to clean up the mess that IE will probably allow to sneak onto your network!
Oh, ask him what a BHO is!
(Answer: Browser Helper Object -- programs that can be integrated into IE, but can't be uninstalled from IE's built-in menus.) If he doesn't know about this, he's never REALLY dealt with the trash IE allows onto networks, so all the more reason to listen to him.
As an IT Manager, I have to say, listen to your IT department.
But I'm also going to say that after dealing with virii/worms coming onto my network via IE BHO's, (my 2nd week on the job too, what a mess!), we've been rolling out Firefox for people's main browser. As long as I have people using IE, I keep getting virii/worms trying to establish themselves. With Firefox, none of this.
(Perhaps its only a matter of time... hope not.)
I only have people use IE when they have to access some extranet site using "legacy" ActiveX controls. So you can't get rid of IE altogether, even if you wanted to, (although yes it can be done... but you won't be able to install MDAC then... but that's another story.)
Just to clarify my position... Firefox rocks!
But if you work for a company set on M$, follow your company's wisdom (or lack thereof). Its THEIR responsiblity to maintain your network's security, and to clean up the mess THEIR decisions make.
FYI: WARNING when trying to remove or disable IE..
on
Redmondmag on Dumping IE
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Just a WARNING to anyone trying to
remove or seriously disable IE......I tried this a year or so ago. All I wanted was the Windows OS, no IE. I used the IE-Uninstaller of the time, (now I think its called LitePC or 98Lite). It worked great, and effectively removed IE...
BUT HERE's WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW...
You CAN'T use MS SQL Server, MS SQL Server Client, or any program needing ADO! Why? Because all three of those require MDAC, and guess what...
MDAC WON'T install without IE being on the computer!
No MS SQL Server, its client or ADO without MDAC... thus none of the same without IE!
I'm pretty sure this lovely symbiosis was completely missed by the Anti-Trust adventure.
So time for me to learn about other SQL Servers... MySQL being the first.
You got to love the people in the IT industry...
Let's see...
Linux friendly...
Web based...
No roundtrips to the server for EVERY refresh of a control...
Can make "rich applications" and "rich user interfaces" and "rich whatever"...
Is object-oriented...
Not dependant upon M$ or.NET...
Try Flash! And Flash Remoting!
(...OH, but its NOT open-source... go ahead change the SH to an ME and FLA** me!)
Come on Microsoft! Geez. With that whole RESEARCH department you have and $50 Billion, you'd think we'd see MORE than this tripe innovation from you!
Oh wait that's right, you put all your time in the AESTHETICs, mouse cursors, icons, freaking large graphical interfaces that treat the user like a child and use up half the screen's space...
I'm going to ask......what is the "business reason" for any corporation, to upgrade to this OS, its hardware requirements, and the need to rewrite every piece of software to deal with WinFS and Avalon?
How does changing the OS, hardware, and software, going to "increase profits", and "maximize shareholder returns"? (Other than Microsoft's and those people reselling Microsoft.)
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't seen any comments about Skynet yet!
So does this bring us one step closer to AI capable hardware running the Windows "Hasta La Vista Baby" version?
Yes and no.
Yes, the Internet enables/permits/allows redundant routes, but...
No, it doesn't require/demand/"enforce with any government or legal authority" redundancy at all levels.
So any smaller ISPs connected to Level3, and all their customers would have had problems reaching the rest and being reached by the rest.
(sarcasm mode)Obviously this wouldn't have happened if the EU had been in control!(/sarcasm mode)
Actually, how many of these corporations are US companies, and how many are NOT?
To German and back...
Rick Zeman writes "the new York time, which has, magazine a fascinating article to dismember all innumerable ways the fact that people are diverted from their computers on the job and ', as HalloHi techvorrichtungen affects our behavior.' Of the article: ' information is not any more a scarce aid - attention is. Before David rose, a Cambridge, measure based expert on computer interfaces, may underline that 20 years, an office worker had only two kinds communicationses: a telephone, which required an immediate answer, and post office post office, which took days. "now we have dozens of possibilities between that posts," say rose. Are you are to email an announcement to answer as fast? Or an immediate announcement? Computer-assisted interruptions fall into a kind of the Heisenbergian uncertainty case: to know it is with difficulty, whether email is an announcement, to interrupt your work for it is you opens and read it - on, which point you have interrupted itself naturally.' Which could be done, in order to change a counting to the assistance, did you weaken this multitasking?" off
...just call them both: "Walmart Factory Zones"
About PDF, my thought is the same as many, ABOUT TIME!
...THERE'S NO REASON CORPORATE USERS CAN'T BE SWITCHED TO OpenOffice, StarOffice, or any other Office!
About OpenDocument format, we ought to start a pool on how many versions it will be before they "listen to their customers" for that request.
(And why don't some Open developers whip up a plugin for Office to allow OpenDocument support for Office?)
BUT WHAT I FIND MOST INTERESTING, IS Office 12's ENTIRELY NEW and RE-ARRANGED INTERFACE!!
Its NOT JUST AN UPGRADE!
Its a WHOLE NEW USER EXPERIENCE, which means...
There is no way a corporation can "drop" Office 12 into place without people first being trained! (Well they could, and probably will, but to their non-techie users it'll be a shock!)
Thank-you Microsoft! For once again giving us innovation to do the same work an entirely different way!
(But now we have another good reason to look at alternate brands for that "entirely different way"!)
Solar Orbit Won't Work... Size Only
...what do we call them then if we're basing their "planet" status based on their orbits around a star...
..."the big round thing formerly known as a planet"??
With all those other stars out there, probably some other stellar-planetary systems have been disrupted and the planets freed from their orbits around their star...
Lets think a little beyond the here and now, so we don't have to have this discussion AGAIN in a 100 years...
Geez keep it simple.
Either add some new planets to our system, or give Pluto "honorary planet" status to keep our count above 8.
What?! No more Flash-based Microsoft Ads?
I mean I so enjoy seeing Microsoft advertise their development tools using Flash based ads on Slashdot!
It just makes me laugh everytime I see one!
Will they now be Sparkle-based?!
Actually I do.
We do Volume Licensing for newer things.
I'm curious how much extra time and work did you commit and create for your company by going with Software Assurance?
Does someone at your company read the 100+ page "printed" EULA update Microsoft sends you practically every month?
Who manages and keeps track of how many "points" you've spent or accumulated? And how many more you have to go?
Yeah there's a percentage savings; but there's a commitment to Microsoft and additional managment time involved. Please elaborate on what that costs your company.
How much extra management or purchasing work does OpenSource software create for handling licensing?
Quick answer... NONE.
Go play with your Sharepoint.
That is the question isn't it!
I mean, naturally, the reason to upgrade to Office 2003 is because it is better... so sure, say my employer has 200 users x $300 per upgrade license, that's $60,000.
Of course I can explain in my budget how when we upgraded 3 years ago to XP, assume again for the same reason... "it was better..." that it in 2000 it was just a temporary $60,000 expense, leading up to and preparing us for this EVEN better version in 2003.
OH, but wait, I forgot, just 2 years prior to that we spend maybe $50,000 to upgrade to the 2000 version from the '97 version. And two years prior to that we spent maybe $40,000 upgrading from '95 to '97.
In case you don't have Excel handy, that's...
$40,000 in '97, $50,000 in 2000, $60,000 in 2001/2, $60,000 in 2003 equaling $210,000 in 6 years just on licenses...
THEN there was the amount of time and labor necessary for my IT department to upgrade each of these 200 computers...
And the training time, to make the most of each new version, and teach my company's employees how to work together in the "even better" way that Microsoft has so carefully designed for us.
Plus the memory, and computer upgrades necessary to run the newer versions...
AND with 2003, to MAKE THE MOST OF IT, we needed to add a new server to run SHAREPOINT Server for our 200 people.
Yes, that is what Microsoft and Mr. "Who uses Office XP anymore?"' would have you do.
Fortunately, up until but not including the last sentence, my upgrade story is fiction. We're still using Office 2000. A few are using Office XP. Some of us even use the old Wordperfect and Quattro suite from Corel. And when the Engineering department told us they wanted 2003, I told them NO. (Unless of course they can tell me what features from 2003 it is that they NEED. And I gave them a link to Microsoft's webpage showing the differences between 2003 and XP.)
Now when time permits, we're going to find out just what features our company REALLY needs, and the suite that provides those features best, will be what we will convert the whole company to.
If that is Office 2006, (which of course will be EVEN BETTER, so you ought to go get it NOW if you can!), then so be it, but until then this IT Department is trying the OpenOffice 2.0 beta, and thus far, except for "Convert Text To Columns" in Excel, there has been no need for Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice 2.0 beta works great, has most of the USED features of MS Office, and removes most of the need having Acrobat (full version).
We've already switched most people from IE to Firefox, which most everyone had no problem with, they hated IE's "many" popups and like Firefox's tabs. AND we have MUCH less Virus/Spyware problems now.
And as Outlook keeps chewing up people's PST files, they are being moved to Thunderbird.
Hmm... before you know it, I may be able to CHOOSE which OS we're going to run too...
Maybe this is just what the Super Door Of The Future and its System needs to operate!
/ 21/1519237&tid=126&tid=137
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08
-- So is this going to be both the Workstation and the Server product name?
-- Have they improved it yet so it needs something less than 480 MB just to load the OS?
-- AND AGAIN WHY do I need this for my BUSINESS users? WHY? Windows 98 and 2000 STILL WORK JUST FINE!!
(Oh, I forgot, we haven't paid Microsoft lately...)
Who wants to bet that by the time Longhorn comes out, NGSCB will be dead?
Or replaced by another even MORE INNOVATIVE security solution by MS?
(Oh but that will just be NGSCB repackaged and renamed a third time.)
I mean geez, do they ever look at their own history of failures, (oh I'm sorry, INNOVATIONS un-adopted by the industry).
And compare it to their own history of successes...
...now I get to have twice as many problems than I have now with XP 32? :)
Think they improved the wait to display "My Computer" while it has a connection to a remote share, that is either slow or unreachable?
With XP, 512MB ram, and Pentium 4, I get to wait a good minute or two, just to SEE, let alone access, the drives that are still ON or CONNECTED to the machine.
Of course this is the DEFAULT settings, I've not taken the time to research how to "reconfigure" or "tweak" it.
You think they would have optimized such an ancient and basic behavior, OUT OF THE BOX!
Oh wait, it must be one of those "innovative" things...
Oh yes. You can still get them!
http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/board.html
Metagaming may have died with Mr. Thompson, but Mr. Jackson rescued a few gems.
This is just another idiotic MM marketing move.
..."Hey, I haven't screwed up this section of the company yet!"
.NET applications. Switch to MM development, and then you can gradually switch your OS...
If MM ever goes down the tubes its going to be because whomever "comes up with" or "says yes to" their idiotic marketing ideas drove the company there.
My two favorites thus far have the trying to sell Flash Remoting separate from Flash; and the "almost" separation of their ColdFusion Reporting from the ColdFusion Server product.
Oh yeah, then there's the $10000+ Flex product... geared only toward "enterprise" development.
So obviously this "employee" who comes up with these ideas got involved with the marketing of the Flash Player...
Flash, Actionscript, Flash Remoting, ColdFusion, ColdFusion Reporting... all run on Windows AND Linux.
You could do some cool apps with these products to free companies from the tyranny of being stuck with Windows clients because of developing VB or
But they can't seem to market THAT idea.
No instead, let's help Yahoo Toolbar by letting them piggyback on our Flash Player's success.
Actually I'm beginning to wonder if MM is hurting for "cashflow"; and this was just an easy way of generating some. But from a "reputation" point of view, it was just plain stupid!
The arguement's too simple, leaves parts out....
.NET campaign; third by replacing it with some other new innovative wonder 6 months later; or fourth just by dropping the product when they don't see EVERYONE switching to it.
Microsoft tried this with Java, they called it J++. Sure some people went to the MS flavor of Java, but not MOST.
In the same way, just because MS starts offering Linux, some will go to it, but certainly not MOST, let alone EVERYONE.
Then there's those who have been so abused by Microsoft's manipulations the past 10 years. Why would anyone who's been paying attention to MS for 10 years not view this as yet another attempt by MS to manipulate and control. As such anyone with experience and sense would know NOT to touch this attempt by MS with a 10 foot pole.
Then there's the fact that MS itself will blow its own effort out of the water; first by completing the product 3/4 of the way, like they do most everything else; second by changing their marketing of it 50 gazillion ways, like they did to their
Not to mention he doesn't even take into account that many of the hardware vendors are in Asia, which has more than one country embracing Linux, or trying to do their own Linux like OS. Lets see the counties making our hardware, use Linux, so naturally we can conclude they'd prefer to write Windows drivers.... nah!
I don't think Dvorak got enough sleep the night before he wrote this idea down. He made it too simplistic.
I mean how many times do we have to read on /. the same-old-same-old...
"Woe is us for having to use QWERTY keyboards."
"Praise be to DVORAK keyboards!"
and
"Ooh Dexter, look a this pretty alternative keyboard."
I'm going to predict the following will happen before QWERTY ever sees a demise:
1.) The U.S. will be using the metric system almost entirely in place of our current system of measurement.
2.) Microsoft will have "perfected" speech recognition and made it easier to use than typing.
3.) Every restaurant is Taco Bell.
4.) We'll have read at least 80 more posts at /. about QWERTY vs. DVORAK vs. Other keyboards.
(Since we know that M$ doesn't "perfect" anything, except "pretty icons" from their "Dee Dee" department, it is probable that we will be using QWERTY for a long time.)
NOT because he's right, but BECAUSE its HIS responsibility to clean up the mess that IE will probably allow to sneak onto your network! Oh, ask him what a BHO is! (Answer: Browser Helper Object -- programs that can be integrated into IE, but can't be uninstalled from IE's built-in menus.) If he doesn't know about this, he's never REALLY dealt with the trash IE allows onto networks, so all the more reason to listen to him. As an IT Manager, I have to say, listen to your IT department. But I'm also going to say that after dealing with virii/worms coming onto my network via IE BHO's, (my 2nd week on the job too, what a mess!), we've been rolling out Firefox for people's main browser. As long as I have people using IE, I keep getting virii/worms trying to establish themselves. With Firefox, none of this. (Perhaps its only a matter of time... hope not.) I only have people use IE when they have to access some extranet site using "legacy" ActiveX controls. So you can't get rid of IE altogether, even if you wanted to, (although yes it can be done... but you won't be able to install MDAC then... but that's another story.) Just to clarify my position... Firefox rocks! But if you work for a company set on M$, follow your company's wisdom (or lack thereof). Its THEIR responsiblity to maintain your network's security, and to clean up the mess THEIR decisions make.
Just a WARNING to anyone trying to remove or seriously disable IE... ...I tried this a year or so ago. All I wanted was the Windows OS, no IE. I used the IE-Uninstaller of the time, (now I think its called LitePC or 98Lite). It worked great, and effectively removed IE...
BUT HERE's WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW...
You CAN'T use MS SQL Server, MS SQL Server Client, or any program needing ADO! Why? Because all three of those require MDAC, and guess what...
MDAC WON'T install without IE being on the computer!
No MS SQL Server, its client or ADO without MDAC... thus none of the same without IE!
I'm pretty sure this lovely symbiosis was completely missed by the Anti-Trust adventure.
So time for me to learn about other SQL Servers... MySQL being the first.
You got to love the people in the IT industry... Let's see... Linux friendly... Web based... No roundtrips to the server for EVERY refresh of a control... Can make "rich applications" and "rich user interfaces" and "rich whatever"... Is object-oriented... Not dependant upon M$ or .NET...
Try Flash! And Flash Remoting!
(...OH, but its NOT open-source... go ahead change the SH to an ME and FLA** me!)
Come on Microsoft! Geez. With that whole RESEARCH department you have and $50 Billion, you'd think we'd see MORE than this tripe innovation from you! Oh wait that's right, you put all your time in the AESTHETICs, mouse cursors, icons, freaking large graphical interfaces that treat the user like a child and use up half the screen's space...
I'm going to ask... ...what is the "business reason" for any corporation, to upgrade to this OS, its hardware requirements, and the need to rewrite every piece of software to deal with WinFS and Avalon?
How does changing the OS, hardware, and software, going to "increase profits", and "maximize shareholder returns"? (Other than Microsoft's and those people reselling Microsoft.)