I switched to Linux in 1998, and used it almost exclusively until 2002. Then I switched back to Windows.
I used Linux because it was more convenient. I was writing a lot of code that had to run on UNIX systems, and it was nice to be able to write and compile it on my home computer. I also had better connectivity; the Windows terminal programs I had at the time were quite lacking. I did use Windows for a while in the summer of 2000, when I had a job writing code for Windows and Macintosh.
Qualifying the reason I switched back is harder. I had an interview with Microsoft in 2001, and although I didn't accept their offer, I was quite impressed by the people I met while interviewing. So after I got frustrated with the distribution I had been trying in 2002, I decided to give Windows a try again. Windows certainly isn't perfect, but overall it has been a much less frustrating experience than Linux was. A big part of that is Cygwin, which has helped smooth out a lot of the rough edges that Windows has. My regular environment now includes the Windows port of Vim, Cygwin/X, and VNC, but I still find that Windows is more convenient than Linux is.
I no longer have Linux installed on either of my home computers, but I still use Linux almost every day at school. The biggest reason is that rebooting annoys me, so since I completed the switch back to Windows, I've rarely used Linux at home. I miss it at times, not so much since the connectivity of Windows to Linux is good, but there are still a few things I can do better with Linux. For example, gcc on Linux is more compatible with gcc on Linux than gcc on Cygwin. I'd really like a low cost virtualization option so that I could run Linux without rebooting.
I've criticized OO.o in the past for being a second rate program. When I tried it previously, it was lacking in a lot of areas (in particular I recall issues with import and export of Word files and slow load times). I could ignore most things, but some features involving numbered lists that I use regularly did not work, and when I went to report the bug I discovered it was in the database for many months, had been assigned once, and then unassigned.
I'll try it again now. I am a skeptic, but if it is really good, I will admit that, and if it is superior, I will use it.
More likely, Microsoft would make read support work perfectly, but make write support problematic by having features in MS Office that are not supported by the OpenDocument format. Two other options are also possible, but less likely. First, Microsoft could embrace and extend the format, with vendor-specific extensions. Considering the negative reactions this usually gets them, I doubt Microsoft would do it. Second, Microsoft could add features faster than competitors, and push those features into the standard, thus ensuring that competitors were second class citizens, unable to support the standard fully.
Support for reading, but only incomplete support for writing seems the most probable action for two reasons. First, it resembles how Microsoft beat other word processing competitors, Wordperfect in particular. Second, because there is no real competitor for MS Office, and Microsoft adds features based on customer demand. Supporting OpenDocument as an external, but less featured, format would be consistent with adding it as a customer demanded feature, but not letting the OpenDocument format guide the other features of MS Office.
Read the latest "Joel on Software". His theory is that a focus on service and solution stacks is actually a sign of consulting, a form of software that is more painful and costly to its users and less profitable for the authors. My theory is that as open source software improves, it will become harder and harder to make money from it, since it will require less expensive customization and support.
Stuff like "I saw some problems recently with MS XML that really discloses everything you need to know about where Microsoft wants to take you. It's not pretty." Well, that's nice to know, without any details.
Or "To run Microsoft Office Professional 2003 right, you have to have Microsoft servers installed." Which is absolutely not true. I suspect he means that there are various features of Office 2003 that interact with Microsoft server products, but those are two very different claims. There are other totally bogus claims in there, too, such as non-Microsoft tools being unable to manipulate Microsoft XML formats.
Of course, when someone doesn't even know the name of the product they are talking about, it is also an indication that maybe they don't know what they are talking about. There is no "Microsoft Office XP Professional 2003." It's like listening to people talking about Linsux or Winbloze; I wouldn't instantly grant them much credibility, regardless of how well they knew one side of the issues.
And Microsoft is partly to blame here, too. There are two distinct Microsoft XML formats. One is Word ML, that is supported by Microsoft Office 2003 Professional today. As far as I know, approximately no one uses it, since it is only available in the professional version. This is the format that Edwards is constantly complaining about. The second format is the new format that will be introduced in Office 12. It should be supported more widely (i.e. at least in all versions of Office 12, and possibly through older versions of Office with a plugin), and is seen by Microsoft as their future Office document format. Edwards seems to be unaware of this distinction.
Another questionable part are his claims, that Windows XP is not widely used (he claims that older versions of Windows are more popular), that 15% of Internet users use OpenOffice.org, that OpenOffice.org has a higher install base than Microsoft Office 2003 Professional... I don't know the facts, but these aren't obviously correct, and some credible references would be nice.
I could go on about additional mistakes and misleading stuff in this interview, but I see no need to. I read it as a cheerleading session between Mad Penguin and an OO.o developer. The stuff about Microsoft is gratuitous Microsoft bashing, and not based on facts.
While I completely agree with the sentiments about movie quality, I'm not sure that this is what is causing the "box office slump". For example, we liked Batman Begins, so why did it get hit by the slump, too? And while Star Wars episode 6, err 3, was more critically acclaimed than the previous two, should it really have been the movie to not get hit by the slump, if quality is the reason for said slump?
Besides, the lack of good movies is hardly a new thing. Maybe the Internet has made people more aware of the problem, but do we really think that after a century people have just caught on, most movies suck? And if that was the case, wouldn't we expect Britney Spears and friends to take a hit as well?
No, I think they are barking up the wrong tree. Making better movies would probably help, but more likely they are facing an inevitable decline as newer technologies provide better entertainment. Now movie theatres have to compete with DVD, game consoles, online games, downloaded movies, web browsing, and probably other things that either weren't around or occupied far smaller niches ten (or even two) years ago.
These technologies seem to about the security model of Red Hat Linux. But security and security models are not the same thing. Guess what? Windows XP has a great security model, but buggy implementation and poor default policies made it insecure. OpenBSD has a primitive security model, but careful implementation and well chosen default policies have made it very secure.
Adopting stuff like SELinux will make Red Hat Linux closer to Windows in security model. Red Hat moved to good default policies faster than Microsoft did, but they both seem to be pretty good in that respect now. In terms of implementation quality, it is much harder to say. I suspect that Linux and Windows are on similar ground now, but that Microsoft is improving implementation quality faster.
One problem for Linux in that regard is that a single vendor can't make a decree that all existing and new code will be checked and reviewed more carefully, because no single vendor controls all of the code. But the future is not yet written, and we have to wait to see which of them will improve the implementation.
The problem is that a lot of this stuff is installed voluntarily. If P2PFreeMovies.exe and BritaneySperesNaked!!!.exe say they need admin access to install, people will just type the password in. Better use of capabilities and code signing would help, and, unlike mainstream Linux, Windows actually has an advanced security model that would allow this.
But the fundamental problem is that if someone wants to install this garbage, the only way you can really stop them is by taking control of their computer away from them. I'm not sure that even Microsoft is willing to go that far yet, and I'm not sure I would want them to, anyway.
"In addition, some regressions introduced by previous 1.0.x security updates have been resolved."
Too many regressions caused by security updates, and people will turn off auto-update. That's the very reason that Microsoft moved to a monthly update cycle. Getting updates out quickly is important, but unless the security hole is being actively exploited, it's probably more important to make sure nothing else gets broken by the fix. If you convince people not to install updates, then you're in really big trouble.
I agree, which is why I think this reorganization will probably be very good for Microsoft. Realigning the divisions to match Microsoft's strengths, and cutting the number of divisions in half at the same time, seems to be the right track to make the company grow again.
Of course, Microsoft has been successful in the past few years. But I think that is despite all the seemingly random new projects and acquisitions, rather than because of them.
In some ways, Microsoft seems like a tobacco company: they have a ton of money, and no idea how they can use it to increase their growth. The tobacco companies just went out and acquired many other companies, often large and totally unrelated ones. Microsoft seems to have acquired many software companies that aren't really related to things that Microsoft does.
This reorganization might help that, by shoehorning them into core areas that Microsoft does well. There (if things go well...) they can adapt and profit, or else they will not adapt, and either be sold off or killed. Ideally, anyway. They could also continue on indefinitely, doing unrelated things and losing money. But at least that seems less likely now.
There isn't any firm evidence that global warming is in fact a problem, but we do know a few things.
First, the climate has become slightly warmer over the past hundred years. This is known fact, over the period for which accurate measurements and records are available.
Second, there are suggestions from analysis of tree trunk rings that the climate has become progressively warmer over the past several centuries. This research is controversial, and not everyone accepts it.
Third, records from antarctic ice show that there is much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any time in the recent, or even quite distant, past.
Accepting global warming requires a belief that the first item is part of a trend, and that it is a result of human behaviour. Although that isn't proven, it does seem a distinct possibility, especially in light of the third item.
Actually, memory is very important to intelligence. Being able to know what you can reasonably look up and not focusing on details that you don't need is important, but memory is very useful, too.
As an easy to understand example, consider an intelligent programmer. He may not remember the exact syntax for creating a connection to a PostgreSQL database in Python, but he knows that he can look it up, and he understands (in a general sense) how the programming language and the database operate, and how the network works. Understanding those details shows his memory at work.
Consider how it would be if he didn't remember those things. He would not be able to anticipate correctness and performance problems, and would be much more likely to produce bad code.
If his memory was much worse, he wouldn't even realize that he could connect to a PostgreSQL database using Python! Someone with such a poor memory would seem to have little intelligence. They would probably not be considered a programmer worth hiring.
It's harder to show how great memory leads to intelligence in general, but I claim that it does. If you're talking about a particular technical discipline, it's easy to see how a great memory translates into intelligence. Remembering details of how computers work, various algorithms and libraries that can be called on to solve problems, details of changelogs, and other things have an obvious link to programming ability. People who memorize those things seem to also memorize details of many other things, too. If you look at Reach For The Top, Jeopardy!, or even Trivial Pursuit, the people who do well in these tests of random memorization are typically the same people who show intelligence in many other areas.
There is a lot of value in knowing what you can look up and how, but it is obvious that memory is still a very important part of intelligence.
From Gates in the CNET interview, talking about Oracle buying Siebel:
"Larry (Ellison) forecast big consolidation, and he wanted to see that come true, so he's making it come true. It's a brilliant forecast. If the next three people under you don't write code but they do deals, what do you get? You get deals. They will probably do more deals than anybody, and we'll write more code than anybody.
Microsoft has beaten several tough talking adversaries in the past, including Sun and Netscape. Gates didn't come out and say that Oracle is going the way of the dinosaur, but I suspect that they are next. Google seems safe for the moment by that measuring stick. Linux is harder to judge, since the community has so many different voices, but I guess that if the community can't completely overwhelm and drown out the esr-style fire belching monsters, that Linux will peak and be on its way down soon, too.
x64 is Microsoft's vendor neutral name for x86-64/AMD64/IA32e/EM64T. Linux calls it x86-64, but since AMD officially deprecated that name, Sun goes by the Microsoft convention and says x64.
Sun would probably say AMD64, since that is what they sell, except that they also want you to run Solaris on your non-Sun boxes, which may have 64 bit Intel x86 processors. They may also want to avoid burning bridges, in case Intel processors become more compelling in the future.
I agree that the discontinuation of Windows 2000 support is likely to have a much bigger impact on Linux migration. Also note that for most enterprises, the big costs will be installation and retraining, not licensing costs. So depending upon how Windows Vista looks in those departments, it could drive more people to Linux or it could make people who are currently looking at Linux stay with Windows.
If there are significant changes that are seen as positive, Windows Vista could well solidify Microsoft's hold on the corporate desktop. And a quick glance at the Office 12 screenshots ought to disprove the people who think that Microsoft isn't innovative. Although I'll withold judgement on whether this particular innovation is good or bad until I've actually used it. Which is likely what corporations will do when considering Windows Vista versus Linux, as well.
Thanks. That was really funny. I have to go to the dentist to get my teeth pulled out now, so please excuse me.
Has there actually been any confirmation from Microsoft about these various editions of Windows Vista? Whoever made the list seems to be including server versions, and there are several current server versions of Windows not on the list. Also, there is no Tablet or Media Center edition, and last I heard, Microsoft hadn't decided if these should be separate SKUs or rolled into the mainstream version(s) of Windows.
My best guess is that this whole story is a hoax. Which would totally explain why Dvorak picked up on it.
I know that the interface is superior, but someone who hasn't used it isn't going to see the interface. The most visible feature to someone who is considering switching is the storage.
In my own case, I usually read Hotmail with Outlook on my laptop, so the interface isn't that big a deal. I guess that was another reason for my sticking with what I've got.
The most visible feature of GMail is the extra storage, but with Hotmail, Yahoo and others offering more storage now, will many people who haven't already switched to GMail want to? Acquiring a new email address is a pretty heavy operation, since you have to inform everyone who has the old one (well, everyone that you still want to communicate with via email...) about the new one. I have a Hotmail account, and despite the search features (that most people won't even bother learning about) I didn't switch when I got GMail invites, just because it would be more effort than it is worth.
My personal opinion is that Google waited to long to release this service to the general public, and they have lost their edge in web mail.
I think it boils down to no one wanting to fund a Google competitor. Of course, who is competing with Google? If you are a startup with an idea, chances are there is a rumor that Google is working on the same idea. So you don't get money.
So the problem is partly stupidity--obviously, Google isn't working on all the stuff that they are rumored to be working on. Still, Google could help the problem by being a bit more communicative. They really cultivate the mysterious atmosphere right now.
I do agree that the salaries thing is just sour grapes. I'm on the other side of that one, and I don't mind one bit when salaries going up.
I hate to break it to you, but your hatred is misguided. Microsoft is one of the few organizations in the world that consistently puts out high quality code. Let's talk reliability. Both Windows and Linux are pretty decent, so we'll go on application reliability. Who expects to lose more data due to application crashes, users of Openoffice.org on Linux, or users of Microsoft Word on Windows? Users of Firefox on Linux, or users of Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows? Both times, the first people get more crashes, and in the case of Word, crashes usually don't cause data loss. Ok, let's talk hardware support. Not who supports more hardware, but who has fewer bugs in their hardware support. Who tolerates more quirks when using external 1394 hard drives, a Macintosh user or a Windows user? Who doesn't even have a hibernate mode, a Macintosh user or a Windows user? The first, both times.
Truth is, Microsoft writes some of the best software around, that is very stable and works predictably on numerous different types of hardware and in numerous different conditions.
Even organizations that do produce superior software than Microsoft in some situations usually do so at the cost of ignoring many other situations that Microsoft does not ignore.
I really don't think that anyone else will come out with a better version of any of Microsoft's core products any time soon.
Google wants to have a bigger market cap than Microsoft, of course.
Why? What did you think they were going to do? Free wireless access, with a VPN client that also delivers advertising (textads only, no flash animation) based on the web page you are currently looking at, or based on your browsing history if you aren't looking at web pages? With direct support for Internet Explorer, and support for alternate browsers if you use the Google Web Accelerator?
Zotob infects through ports that Windows likes to leave open to the local subnet, so if you get an infected machine on your subnet you can get hit anyway. Some firewalls may block these ports, anyway, and they are usually blocked for external networks.
The mitigating factor is that it attacks a code path that is disabled by default on Windows XP and Windows 2003. So you probably aren't vulnerable anyway.
My guess is that ATI and NVIDIA will continue to make drivers for recent versions of OpenGL with proprietary extensions that perform at least as fast as the current drivers do.
What Microsoft is probably doing is revamping their software OpenGL client so that it runs on top of DirectX. This will make software only OpenGL even slower. What it will mean, though, is that in cases where crappy hardware manufacturers release bad (or no) OpenGL drivers, but merely mediocre DirectX drivers, they can use Microsoft's OpenGL drivers to get better performance and quality than they could with their own drivers.
So I suspect that for most people (i.e. those with decent video cards) there won't be any difference. For people with low-end cards, this will probably be an improvement.
Hrm... I'm not going to say a whole bunch of mean things, but read the interview. Leo Laporte isn't an OS hacker, doesn't seem to know the details of operating systems, and doesn't seem to know the history of Windows or Unix.
Although this interview doesn't have the controversial tone of a John C Dvorak article, the content seems to be similarly well thought out.
Sounds to me like that last one makes this story a dupe, unless Google Scholar has gone from release back to beta in the meantime. Given the first article, that may be the case.
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I used Linux because it was more convenient. I was writing a lot of code that had to run on UNIX systems, and it was nice to be able to write and compile it on my home computer. I also had better connectivity; the Windows terminal programs I had at the time were quite lacking. I did use Windows for a while in the summer of 2000, when I had a job writing code for Windows and Macintosh.
Qualifying the reason I switched back is harder. I had an interview with Microsoft in 2001, and although I didn't accept their offer, I was quite impressed by the people I met while interviewing. So after I got frustrated with the distribution I had been trying in 2002, I decided to give Windows a try again. Windows certainly isn't perfect, but overall it has been a much less frustrating experience than Linux was. A big part of that is Cygwin, which has helped smooth out a lot of the rough edges that Windows has. My regular environment now includes the Windows port of Vim, Cygwin/X, and VNC, but I still find that Windows is more convenient than Linux is.
I no longer have Linux installed on either of my home computers, but I still use Linux almost every day at school. The biggest reason is that rebooting annoys me, so since I completed the switch back to Windows, I've rarely used Linux at home. I miss it at times, not so much since the connectivity of Windows to Linux is good, but there are still a few things I can do better with Linux. For example, gcc on Linux is more compatible with gcc on Linux than gcc on Cygwin. I'd really like a low cost virtualization option so that I could run Linux without rebooting.
I'll try it again now. I am a skeptic, but if it is really good, I will admit that, and if it is superior, I will use it.
Support for reading, but only incomplete support for writing seems the most probable action for two reasons. First, it resembles how Microsoft beat other word processing competitors, Wordperfect in particular. Second, because there is no real competitor for MS Office, and Microsoft adds features based on customer demand. Supporting OpenDocument as an external, but less featured, format would be consistent with adding it as a customer demanded feature, but not letting the OpenDocument format guide the other features of MS Office.
Read the latest "Joel on Software". His theory is that a focus on service and solution stacks is actually a sign of consulting, a form of software that is more painful and costly to its users and less profitable for the authors. My theory is that as open source software improves, it will become harder and harder to make money from it, since it will require less expensive customization and support.
Or "To run Microsoft Office Professional 2003 right, you have to have Microsoft servers installed." Which is absolutely not true. I suspect he means that there are various features of Office 2003 that interact with Microsoft server products, but those are two very different claims. There are other totally bogus claims in there, too, such as non-Microsoft tools being unable to manipulate Microsoft XML formats.
Of course, when someone doesn't even know the name of the product they are talking about, it is also an indication that maybe they don't know what they are talking about. There is no "Microsoft Office XP Professional 2003." It's like listening to people talking about Linsux or Winbloze; I wouldn't instantly grant them much credibility, regardless of how well they knew one side of the issues.
And Microsoft is partly to blame here, too. There are two distinct Microsoft XML formats. One is Word ML, that is supported by Microsoft Office 2003 Professional today. As far as I know, approximately no one uses it, since it is only available in the professional version. This is the format that Edwards is constantly complaining about. The second format is the new format that will be introduced in Office 12. It should be supported more widely (i.e. at least in all versions of Office 12, and possibly through older versions of Office with a plugin), and is seen by Microsoft as their future Office document format. Edwards seems to be unaware of this distinction.
Another questionable part are his claims, that Windows XP is not widely used (he claims that older versions of Windows are more popular), that 15% of Internet users use OpenOffice.org, that OpenOffice.org has a higher install base than Microsoft Office 2003 Professional... I don't know the facts, but these aren't obviously correct, and some credible references would be nice.
I could go on about additional mistakes and misleading stuff in this interview, but I see no need to. I read it as a cheerleading session between Mad Penguin and an OO.o developer. The stuff about Microsoft is gratuitous Microsoft bashing, and not based on facts.
Besides, the lack of good movies is hardly a new thing. Maybe the Internet has made people more aware of the problem, but do we really think that after a century people have just caught on, most movies suck? And if that was the case, wouldn't we expect Britney Spears and friends to take a hit as well?
No, I think they are barking up the wrong tree. Making better movies would probably help, but more likely they are facing an inevitable decline as newer technologies provide better entertainment. Now movie theatres have to compete with DVD, game consoles, online games, downloaded movies, web browsing, and probably other things that either weren't around or occupied far smaller niches ten (or even two) years ago.
Adopting stuff like SELinux will make Red Hat Linux closer to Windows in security model. Red Hat moved to good default policies faster than Microsoft did, but they both seem to be pretty good in that respect now. In terms of implementation quality, it is much harder to say. I suspect that Linux and Windows are on similar ground now, but that Microsoft is improving implementation quality faster.
One problem for Linux in that regard is that a single vendor can't make a decree that all existing and new code will be checked and reviewed more carefully, because no single vendor controls all of the code. But the future is not yet written, and we have to wait to see which of them will improve the implementation.
But the fundamental problem is that if someone wants to install this garbage, the only way you can really stop them is by taking control of their computer away from them. I'm not sure that even Microsoft is willing to go that far yet, and I'm not sure I would want them to, anyway.
Too many regressions caused by security updates, and people will turn off auto-update. That's the very reason that Microsoft moved to a monthly update cycle. Getting updates out quickly is important, but unless the security hole is being actively exploited, it's probably more important to make sure nothing else gets broken by the fix. If you convince people not to install updates, then you're in really big trouble.
Of course, Microsoft has been successful in the past few years. But I think that is despite all the seemingly random new projects and acquisitions, rather than because of them.
In some ways, Microsoft seems like a tobacco company: they have a ton of money, and no idea how they can use it to increase their growth. The tobacco companies just went out and acquired many other companies, often large and totally unrelated ones. Microsoft seems to have acquired many software companies that aren't really related to things that Microsoft does.
This reorganization might help that, by shoehorning them into core areas that Microsoft does well. There (if things go well...) they can adapt and profit, or else they will not adapt, and either be sold off or killed. Ideally, anyway. They could also continue on indefinitely, doing unrelated things and losing money. But at least that seems less likely now.
First, the climate has become slightly warmer over the past hundred years. This is known fact, over the period for which accurate measurements and records are available.
Second, there are suggestions from analysis of tree trunk rings that the climate has become progressively warmer over the past several centuries. This research is controversial, and not everyone accepts it.
Third, records from antarctic ice show that there is much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any time in the recent, or even quite distant, past.
Accepting global warming requires a belief that the first item is part of a trend, and that it is a result of human behaviour. Although that isn't proven, it does seem a distinct possibility, especially in light of the third item.
As an easy to understand example, consider an intelligent programmer. He may not remember the exact syntax for creating a connection to a PostgreSQL database in Python, but he knows that he can look it up, and he understands (in a general sense) how the programming language and the database operate, and how the network works. Understanding those details shows his memory at work.
Consider how it would be if he didn't remember those things. He would not be able to anticipate correctness and performance problems, and would be much more likely to produce bad code.
If his memory was much worse, he wouldn't even realize that he could connect to a PostgreSQL database using Python! Someone with such a poor memory would seem to have little intelligence. They would probably not be considered a programmer worth hiring.
It's harder to show how great memory leads to intelligence in general, but I claim that it does. If you're talking about a particular technical discipline, it's easy to see how a great memory translates into intelligence. Remembering details of how computers work, various algorithms and libraries that can be called on to solve problems, details of changelogs, and other things have an obvious link to programming ability. People who memorize those things seem to also memorize details of many other things, too. If you look at Reach For The Top, Jeopardy!, or even Trivial Pursuit, the people who do well in these tests of random memorization are typically the same people who show intelligence in many other areas.
There is a lot of value in knowing what you can look up and how, but it is obvious that memory is still a very important part of intelligence.
"Larry (Ellison) forecast big consolidation, and he wanted to see that come true, so he's making it come true. It's a brilliant forecast. If the next three people under you don't write code but they do deals, what do you get? You get deals. They will probably do more deals than anybody, and we'll write more code than anybody.
Microsoft has beaten several tough talking adversaries in the past, including Sun and Netscape. Gates didn't come out and say that Oracle is going the way of the dinosaur, but I suspect that they are next. Google seems safe for the moment by that measuring stick. Linux is harder to judge, since the community has so many different voices, but I guess that if the community can't completely overwhelm and drown out the esr-style fire belching monsters, that Linux will peak and be on its way down soon, too.
Sun would probably say AMD64, since that is what they sell, except that they also want you to run Solaris on your non-Sun boxes, which may have 64 bit Intel x86 processors. They may also want to avoid burning bridges, in case Intel processors become more compelling in the future.
If there are significant changes that are seen as positive, Windows Vista could well solidify Microsoft's hold on the corporate desktop. And a quick glance at the Office 12 screenshots ought to disprove the people who think that Microsoft isn't innovative. Although I'll withold judgement on whether this particular innovation is good or bad until I've actually used it. Which is likely what corporations will do when considering Windows Vista versus Linux, as well.
Has there actually been any confirmation from Microsoft about these various editions of Windows Vista? Whoever made the list seems to be including server versions, and there are several current server versions of Windows not on the list. Also, there is no Tablet or Media Center edition, and last I heard, Microsoft hadn't decided if these should be separate SKUs or rolled into the mainstream version(s) of Windows.
My best guess is that this whole story is a hoax. Which would totally explain why Dvorak picked up on it.
In my own case, I usually read Hotmail with Outlook on my laptop, so the interface isn't that big a deal. I guess that was another reason for my sticking with what I've got.
My personal opinion is that Google waited to long to release this service to the general public, and they have lost their edge in web mail.
So the problem is partly stupidity--obviously, Google isn't working on all the stuff that they are rumored to be working on. Still, Google could help the problem by being a bit more communicative. They really cultivate the mysterious atmosphere right now.
I do agree that the salaries thing is just sour grapes. I'm on the other side of that one, and I don't mind one bit when salaries going up.
Truth is, Microsoft writes some of the best software around, that is very stable and works predictably on numerous different types of hardware and in numerous different conditions.
Even organizations that do produce superior software than Microsoft in some situations usually do so at the cost of ignoring many other situations that Microsoft does not ignore.
I really don't think that anyone else will come out with a better version of any of Microsoft's core products any time soon.
Why? What did you think they were going to do? Free wireless access, with a VPN client that also delivers advertising (textads only, no flash animation) based on the web page you are currently looking at, or based on your browsing history if you aren't looking at web pages? With direct support for Internet Explorer, and support for alternate browsers if you use the Google Web Accelerator?
The mitigating factor is that it attacks a code path that is disabled by default on Windows XP and Windows 2003. So you probably aren't vulnerable anyway.
What Microsoft is probably doing is revamping their software OpenGL client so that it runs on top of DirectX. This will make software only OpenGL even slower. What it will mean, though, is that in cases where crappy hardware manufacturers release bad (or no) OpenGL drivers, but merely mediocre DirectX drivers, they can use Microsoft's OpenGL drivers to get better performance and quality than they could with their own drivers.
So I suspect that for most people (i.e. those with decent video cards) there won't be any difference. For people with low-end cards, this will probably be an improvement.
Although this interview doesn't have the controversial tone of a John C Dvorak article, the content seems to be similarly well thought out.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/15/144723 2&from=rss Google Scholar sucks because it can't count accurately, and it does a crappy job of searching by date, and it doesn't consider variations on names.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/11/19 24254&tid=217&tid=123&tid=146 The American Chemical Society (maker of SciFinder Scholar) sues Google over Google Scholar.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/18/1317241.shtm l?tid=217&tid=188 Google Scholar. It exists.
Sounds to me like that last one makes this story a dupe, unless Google Scholar has gone from release back to beta in the meantime. Given the first article, that may be the case.