I obviously have not seen the patents, and my position on them is, aside from a general dislike of software patents, that Microsoft should have never done what they're doing now.
Having said that, and contrary to popular belief, Exchange and Outlook have a lot of unique features that other clients and servers have copied over the years. I found out recently that one never fully appreciates Outlook/Exchange until you are forced to use Notes/Domino. Compared to Outlook, Notes is so primitive it might as well have been be a console application.
OTOH, the Domino/Notes combination makes for a more flexible application platform, if that makes your day.
But yeah, every new release of Thunderbird or Evolution has features Outlook introduced three versions ago, so I wouldn't be surprised those are the patents they're talking about.
I've seen a LOT of companies switching to VoIP lately (say, the last three years). That doesn't mean they're ditching all their PBXs, but the classic PBX setup is becoming less and less prevalent. Also, keep in mind you can happily outsource most of your VoIP needs, so you don't even have to invest in the infrastructure to get there.
Really? Has the BIOS spec changed at all since the mid-90s? Because you can still download the APM BIOS spec from them, among other things.
Or are you referring to EFI? AFAIK Phoenix was offering a DRM BIOS as early as 2004-2005 but apparently no one bought into it, or at least I've yet to see a standard white box PC with a BIOS like that.
So what "games" are you referring to? And what does "M$ damaged hardware" mean?
you are hard pressed to make the average PC boot off anything but a CD or hard drive.
I wouldn't go as far as comparing them to the power of a Linux Live CD, but there are certainly ways to create stripped-down but usable bootable Windows XP images with lots of tools and whatnot. For example, BartPE. Even Microsoft will give you one, though I think you need to be an OEM for that one, which obviously makes it far less useful.
but it's still easier to sftp to your home box.
I'll be sure to ask my employer to open up the firewall to I can "sftp" into my home box. That sounds a lot easier than an automated ~/ mount from a four-inch thumbdrive I can carry around in my pocket.
A few jobs ago I had just gone about nine hours trying to find a problem with an application running on a Solaris box. It was frustrated, and had not gotten much sleep the night before. Anyway, I needed a smoke but I saw one of the directors outside the server room (through the glass in the main doors), thought better about it, turned around and still deep in thought about the problem proceeded to open one of the emergency exit doors that used to lead to the loading dock areas. Despite the "ALARM WILL SOUND" signs and whatnot that I had seen a hundred times before.
Why does it matter? I use "nyet" sometimes instead of "no". Does that make me Russian? No one can be that stupid, seriously.
I didn't want to strain you with requesting actual references
References to what, exactly? That the US maintained peace in Europe for the past 50 years? Wow, that's gonna be hard to prove. That the US helped defeat Germany and Japan? Wow, where will I ever find references to that. That the US was involved in stopping the Kosovo genocide about which your governments were doing precious little? Good god, that's going to take me all week.
What exactly in my post did you find worthy of requiring documentation?
guess I'll also forget about your promise to deconstruct my post.
I'm a little fuzzy on this, because for some reason so far you've alternatively have been insulting me and trying to desperately prove I was born in the US. What part of your post did you figure needs "deconstruct"? The part where you call all Americans ignorant and scary? The part where you do the Eurotrash thing and claim I live in a trailer, or the part where the "American Empire" will "end" in thirty years?
Nope. Anything else? I lost track of whatever it was you wanted me to "prove", but whatever it is I'm sure I'd actually feel embarrassed about it. For example, I feel that way when I try to explain to my nephews that chlorine bleach is bad for them. Of course, they're 9 years old.
By the way, only an intellectually barren person would ever demand "Wikipedia links", as if that were the end-all of knowledge in the world. Maybe when you grow up you'll figure that out.
Yep, back in the day I saw a lot of interesting things done with ActiveX, but always behind corporate walls. It's a conundrum that as a technology that was very useful for many things, yet is supposed to run on a platform-agnostic environment (the browser), and so obviously tied to a single platform (Windows). It was also difficult to do correctly - the promise of ActiveX from VB really never materialized so most of the time if you wanted to do it right you'd do it in C++/ATL, which is not exactly RAD goodness.
ActiveX is an interesting technology that unfortunately was developed with that "we trust everyone" mindset that existed within Microsoft at the time. Eventually this of course came back to bite them.
I think AJAX has signaled the end of usefulness for ActiveX. Many of the simpler things people used to rely on ActiveX for (such as showing a dropdown calendar and so on), are simple to do with prepackaged JavaScript libraries.
Effectively, Microsoft looked at Java Applets and said, "The biggest problem with it is that it doesn't access Windows APIs and has all that security BS. We can do better."
No, they looked at Java and said "holy mother of god, this crap is slow".
Of course, the security implications hit Microsoft less than a year later as Malware started exploiting the system for all kinds of nefarious purposes.
Oh, without question. The problem with ActiveX is that it forces the user to implicitly trust a non-sandboxed piece of native executable downloaded from an untrusted network.
On the other hand, if you're OK with that (or just careful) then ActiveX is great. Otherwise it's not very appealing. Though it has made things like platform- and codec-agnostic streaming audio and video possible that would have probably been impossible with Java or anything else.
Who knows, if Silverlight does run on more than one platform it just might be the next big thing. It all depends on whether or not it's designed with security in mind rather than just snazzy features.
Whether you want to be thankful or not, that's your problem. My point is that the OPs argument that the EU has "kept the peace" for 50 years is revisionist at best.
By the way, I'd love to attend your twelfth birthday.
Oh god, that's so clever. I bet you get all the chicks. Thanks for playing!
Holy zealots, that is just farkin' hilarious. And of course, impressed as always with your uncanny ability to address arguments that invalidate your ridiculous FUD and lies. Another worthy addition to your posting record. Or record posting, I guess.
If you think that the measure of success for a product is merely to be able to turn a profit, you're naive at best. The fact that MS Money would die if you "spin it off" to another company is irrelevant. It's like being disappointed at the fact that your car didn't float when you threw it on the river. It was never meant to float. Money and many other Microsoft products were never intended to be cash cows or attain magnificent success.
Oh, and I think it's amusing that you can sit there and claim that the fact that Microsoft has not been able to create more monopolies as proof of their "failure". My head almost exploded at that one.
Okay, that and technically they are responsible for keeping peace
You've been at peace for the first time in 60 years (I think that's the longest stretch so far?) thanks to the United States of America. Without the US, you'd be posting in Russian (or German. Or not at all). Wait a minute, that's not true if you consider the Yugoslavia debacle, which you had surprisingly little will to solve until the United States practically forced you to. And then essentially solved for you anyway.
You've been perfecting the art of killing each other (and everyone else) for the past thousand years or so. You've started, fought and alternatively won or lost by far the most violent, protracted and destructive conflicts in the history of humanity. And you wonder why the US complained about your idea of having a unified Army?
Nothing personal, but I'd rather ya'll sweat the petty stuff and let the US be the world's police. They don't do it all that well, but I'm pretty sure the alternatives would be worse.
Mozilla made $70M last year! Three apps based on Mozilla exist! Ubuntu is appealing to home users! [Click here to see the latest prices on Linux!] Conclusion! Open source has no competition!!
What a great article. Maybe one day someone will write a relevant one about how and why GNOME and KDE compete, for example, and why. I'll be looking forward to that one.
Every MX machine on every MSFT domain is an Exchange box. Maybe not Hotmail, but everything else is. The fact that it's configured as an SMTP relay doesn't mean it's not running Exchange.
ROTFLMAO, SQL Server? And Sharepoint? WTF? Are you for real? What, just because they give them some of them away they're "failures"?
Even Bob and especially "At Work" served as the basis for later products and enhancements to products.
Travelocity? And XBox??
Bwahahahaha!
*sniff* Thanks for that, I was having a bad day but now there's soda on my keyboard and I feel better.
Seriously, how is Microsoft Money a "failure"? I'm actually curious. Just clarify that one for me, if nothing else. Or Virtual PC? Really, I'm curious.
And what about all the products of the Server division? And the Development Tools? Oh please, rationalize those for me as well.
The rest are money pits
There's a lot of money to fill those pits, which is what any number of companies do in any number of ways. HP's printer business is a money pit, but they make it up selling the ink. Atari used to lose money in each console, but they more than made it up with game license fees. Don't insult my intelligence with that "this is bad and unique and Microsoft is the only company in the world that does it" spin. Save it for the slashbots.
Hey, you wouldn't happen to be one of twitter's sockpuppet accounts, would you? No dollar signs or anything but that authoritative "Microsoft has never achieved anything" tone and FUD sure fits.
Slashdot Mirror
Having said that, and contrary to popular belief, Exchange and Outlook have a lot of unique features that other clients and servers have copied over the years. I found out recently that one never fully appreciates Outlook/Exchange until you are forced to use Notes/Domino. Compared to Outlook, Notes is so primitive it might as well have been be a console application.
OTOH, the Domino/Notes combination makes for a more flexible application platform, if that makes your day.
But yeah, every new release of Thunderbird or Evolution has features Outlook introduced three versions ago, so I wouldn't be surprised those are the patents they're talking about.
Wow twitter, you really cleaned up on this one. Always painful to watch you crash and burn but also mildly amusing.
Alternatively, you can always say Stallman and the FSF are scared shitless of Microsoft so they're feverishly rewriting their license.
I've seen a LOT of companies switching to VoIP lately (say, the last three years). That doesn't mean they're ditching all their PBXs, but the classic PBX setup is becoming less and less prevalent. Also, keep in mind you can happily outsource most of your VoIP needs, so you don't even have to invest in the infrastructure to get there.
90%? That's a lot of sack for someone who is also complaining about how much FUD Microsoft (oh, "M$") dishes out.
When did you decide you were going to use their same slimy underhanded tactics?
Irrelevant to my question, unless you're pretending you're not twitter and just want to avoid my points.
I'm sorry you were abused by a corporation when you got out of highschool. Most companies aren't nearly as bad as you like to preach.
Really? Has the BIOS spec changed at all since the mid-90s? Because you can still download the APM BIOS spec from them, among other things.
Or are you referring to EFI? AFAIK Phoenix was offering a DRM BIOS as early as 2004-2005 but apparently no one bought into it, or at least I've yet to see a standard white box PC with a BIOS like that.
So what "games" are you referring to? And what does "M$ damaged hardware" mean?
I wouldn't go as far as comparing them to the power of a Linux Live CD, but there are certainly ways to create stripped-down but usable bootable Windows XP images with lots of tools and whatnot. For example, BartPE. Even Microsoft will give you one, though I think you need to be an OEM for that one, which obviously makes it far less useful.
I'll be sure to ask my employer to open up the firewall to I can "sftp" into my home box. That sounds a lot easier than an automated ~/ mount from a four-inch thumbdrive I can carry around in my pocket.
That was fun.
In Soviet Russia the alarm sounds YOU!
Maybe this time we'll know who fired first...
Why does it matter? I use "nyet" sometimes instead of "no". Does that make me Russian? No one can be that stupid, seriously.
References to what, exactly? That the US maintained peace in Europe for the past 50 years? Wow, that's gonna be hard to prove. That the US helped defeat Germany and Japan? Wow, where will I ever find references to that. That the US was involved in stopping the Kosovo genocide about which your governments were doing precious little? Good god, that's going to take me all week.
What exactly in my post did you find worthy of requiring documentation?
I'm a little fuzzy on this, because for some reason so far you've alternatively have been insulting me and trying to desperately prove I was born in the US. What part of your post did you figure needs "deconstruct"? The part where you call all Americans ignorant and scary? The part where you do the Eurotrash thing and claim I live in a trailer, or the part where the "American Empire" will "end" in thirty years?
Nope. Anything else? I lost track of whatever it was you wanted me to "prove", but whatever it is I'm sure I'd actually feel embarrassed about it. For example, I feel that way when I try to explain to my nephews that chlorine bleach is bad for them. Of course, they're 9 years old.
By the way, only an intellectually barren person would ever demand "Wikipedia links", as if that were the end-all of knowledge in the world. Maybe when you grow up you'll figure that out.
Arguments that are true, no matter how much your distaste (or that hilariously selective memory you seem afflicted with) for them clouds your POV.
Oh, I'm still trying to figure out the "get back in your trailer" part. Powerful stuff.
ActiveX is an interesting technology that unfortunately was developed with that "we trust everyone" mindset that existed within Microsoft at the time. Eventually this of course came back to bite them.
I think AJAX has signaled the end of usefulness for ActiveX. Many of the simpler things people used to rely on ActiveX for (such as showing a dropdown calendar and so on), are simple to do with prepackaged JavaScript libraries.
No, they looked at Java and said "holy mother of god, this crap is slow".
Oh, without question. The problem with ActiveX is that it forces the user to implicitly trust a non-sandboxed piece of native executable downloaded from an untrusted network.
On the other hand, if you're OK with that (or just careful) then ActiveX is great. Otherwise it's not very appealing. Though it has made things like platform- and codec-agnostic streaming audio and video possible that would have probably been impossible with Java or anything else.
Who knows, if Silverlight does run on more than one platform it just might be the next big thing. It all depends on whether or not it's designed with security in mind rather than just snazzy features.
Once we're done with that, we'll get into the "USA suxx and i r teh clevar" part of your wannabe tough guy blabber.
Whether you want to be thankful or not, that's your problem. My point is that the OPs argument that the EU has "kept the peace" for 50 years is revisionist at best.
Oh god, that's so clever. I bet you get all the chicks. Thanks for playing!
Oh, that's right. I guess we'll add the Soviet Union to the list of people who've helped you out of your most recent mess.
Maybe you'll get lucky and your "take it easy Superman" tone won't get you modded down as flamebait? Who knows.
Holy zealots, that is just farkin' hilarious. And of course, impressed as always with your uncanny ability to address arguments that invalidate your ridiculous FUD and lies. Another worthy addition to your posting record. Or record posting, I guess.
Oh, and I think it's amusing that you can sit there and claim that the fact that Microsoft has not been able to create more monopolies as proof of their "failure". My head almost exploded at that one.
You've been at peace for the first time in 60 years (I think that's the longest stretch so far?) thanks to the United States of America. Without the US, you'd be posting in Russian (or German. Or not at all). Wait a minute, that's not true if you consider the Yugoslavia debacle, which you had surprisingly little will to solve until the United States practically forced you to. And then essentially solved for you anyway.
You've been perfecting the art of killing each other (and everyone else) for the past thousand years or so. You've started, fought and alternatively won or lost by far the most violent, protracted and destructive conflicts in the history of humanity. And you wonder why the US complained about your idea of having a unified Army?
Nothing personal, but I'd rather ya'll sweat the petty stuff and let the US be the world's police. They don't do it all that well, but I'm pretty sure the alternatives would be worse.
What a great article. Maybe one day someone will write a relevant one about how and why GNOME and KDE compete, for example, and why. I'll be looking forward to that one.
Every MX machine on every MSFT domain is an Exchange box. Maybe not Hotmail, but everything else is. The fact that it's configured as an SMTP relay doesn't mean it's not running Exchange.
Oh yeah, I've never seen that on the other side of the fence. Evar.
Even Bob and especially "At Work" served as the basis for later products and enhancements to products.
Travelocity? And XBox??
Bwahahahaha!
*sniff* Thanks for that, I was having a bad day but now there's soda on my keyboard and I feel better.
Seriously, how is Microsoft Money a "failure"? I'm actually curious. Just clarify that one for me, if nothing else. Or Virtual PC? Really, I'm curious.
And what about all the products of the Server division? And the Development Tools? Oh please, rationalize those for me as well.
There's a lot of money to fill those pits, which is what any number of companies do in any number of ways. HP's printer business is a money pit, but they make it up selling the ink. Atari used to lose money in each console, but they more than made it up with game license fees. Don't insult my intelligence with that "this is bad and unique and Microsoft is the only company in the world that does it" spin. Save it for the slashbots.
Hey, you wouldn't happen to be one of twitter's sockpuppet accounts, would you? No dollar signs or anything but that authoritative "Microsoft has never achieved anything" tone and FUD sure fits.