Well Java stays for sure. You will just be blamed for not using whatever fashion is. That is exactly happening to COBOL developers which their code still runs unmodifed on some million dollar state of art Z/OS mainframe for 30-35 years. I know a very big bank's very high level admin, the stories he told me were amazing.
People should look below at their shiny, fashion development tools running OS X and they will see UNIX, with exactly same principles as it was invented in 1970s. Thing calls its shells "tty", if one looks up where that comes from, he will be horrified.
I bet as Java developer, you try to stay in JVM 1.4 compatibility if no fancy stuff needed and you have users asking you "Why not use Java 6 (or 7)? 1.4 is old". Of course same people (if they run Windows) will be advertising.NET to you too.
I guess Sun knows the above about fashion and all that "java fx" etc stuff are designed to feed the fashion people:)
In fact, I use OpenDNS down to DSL Modem's level. It is not DNS or even some spyware, it is Google's management is horrible in certain areas of World and there is no way to easily report search result hackers.
There is a huge industry to make your site appear on top of other results.
They sure have the technology and knowledge to make users report spammy results but somehow, they don't care to code into it. If I logon to my Google account and search same terms, results are somehow better thanks to my profiling I guess but it is completely wrong if you ask me. To have account for better results. It also shows how dynamic results are.
I know the DNS hijack issues and it is somehow getting really serious on OS X scene with the users rejecting the possibility of such thing happening on Mac. In fact, the only up and running trojan on OS X actually attacks DNS entries. (that is why I made them unwritable via permissions)
Also Linux/UNIX (OS X)/BSD gives (raises) "EIO" flag if filesystem senses an inconsistency.
I am giving an example from Windows since chkdsk is questionably best thing for their own format, just to give the idea of old fashion.
Every month, on Flash drives carrying meaningful, non reproducable data (e.g. personal data, not downloads), I suggest running chkdsk/f/r (drive letter). It is very fast and cheap way of learning issues before they happen. As it is not magnetic data/moving parts, I wouldn't keep using it if there is 1 byte of "bad block". As OS X user, I don't have stock command to bad sector check foreign filesystems (in fact, even its own) so I don't know the Linux commands.
We have to get old fashion on USB/Firewire drives too as we (and the OS we run) can't pull the SMART data from them.
I have a feeling that, even some LISP etc. genius comes up with a real revolution (like the Google) overnight and change Yahoo, Ask, Live whatever engines to display neural networks/ AI enhanced excellent results, Google's share won't get hurt because people will keep clicking "Google".
That is bad for state of the internet of course, no competition can't be good for anything.
We pay $140 (family license) to OS X upgrades, I got 3 upgrades so far and I have to apply a very deep input manager hack to Safari, the browser I somehow paid for to use another engine rather than Google. MS is not the only monopoly on Planet as you know.
I bitched about Google search result quality on popular terms and I was accused to be a live.com (complete junk btw) spammer, here, on slashdot. Go figure.
You mean my message is astroturfing? There is no way that one can be questioning Google search quality? Also yes, search results are really changing, it is not 1998, everyone doesn't get same search results.
I personally see 4-6 search engine spammers. I don't even get into the deep hacks required to make my default OS X browser (Safari) change to another search engine as a person who keeps paying to each OS X major upgrade.
You have some real stuff going on there accusing slashdot users as Bangalore spammers. Next time I get a similar accusation, I will report you to slashdot admins FYI. It shouldn't be that cheap.
In a Virtual Windows machine, as I got all stock IE etc. for testing, I remember not being able to find "dotnetfx 3.5 download" via live search. Results coming up were trojans. I ended up going to MS downloads site directly, completely in shock.
Another thing. If you even hear live search is great, better and use Safari, Firefox, you won't feel like going there since you will have a feeling that it will work bad for your browser. I guess that is exact reason why MS wants to partner with Yahoo who never created such "phobia".
I bought a new drive namely WD WD1001FALS, as all new drives, I fired up Safari and entered exactly these search terms: WD1001FALS specs
All I had was bunch of clever search optimization geniuses trying to sell me drive and some really annoying google search spammers. I gave up after 5th page and went to Western Digital directly.
Yahoo search gives some market results too but they seem to be legit search results with known reviewers like PC World. Perhaps Google has become so big that it started to hurt them seriously? I guess everyone out there tries to hack their results and become somewhat successful. There is no mechanism to easily tell Google that they are spammers too. Don't even bother telling me about feedback form.
I had another experience where searching for Avast Antivirus (which is extremely popular freeware) on Windows ended up with actual virus/trojan results while Yahoo search gives better results, at least no malware (they got some scanner in search). It really bugged me because it was a completely unprotected Windows fresh installation. Imagine some newbie actually trusting those results.
It is not free, that was what I was telling. Also somehow, OS X users seem to choose Family license if they will install it to more than 1 mac, all by their choice. It is not like OS X has anything to check for it.
It is completely opposite of MS and we see who wins consumers heart (and even money).
On X86 land, 64bit also means extra registers and commands. It is not like PowerPC which was designed to be 64bit in future from the start.
It took a while for me to understand that fact, I was wondering why people need 64bit "notepad" apps.
For the kernel wise things (e.g. general device drivers) or applications not actually needing 64bit, running 32bit is actually faster than 64bit on PowerPC. Meanwhile, Adobe can ship 64bit Photoshop for OS X _today_ which will really run great on both x86-64 and PowerPC 64bit. On Intel other hand, everything must be 64bit to get actual speed boost.
It is "80386 protected mode" thing all over again and people actually cheer that their only alternative PowerPC has disappeared from sight on Desktop.
I almost forgot, there is also "PAE" issue with x86 which effects machines having higher RAM than 3.2 GB if they run 32bit mode.
Yesterday I went to Java community sites and Symbian community sites. You know what? I have questions about both Symbian Foundation/Nokia Smart phone business and Sun Java, on Desktop.
It really seems they lost their direction already and completely wasting their own inventions. Nokia on other hand, easily talks about the need to upgrade device hardware to get OS updates while some people (not much) are excited about Symbian Foundation.
One must wonder, how come Sun doesn't figure Apple doesn't give a shit to their Java and stop sitting there and waiting for Apple to do the work for free? How BIG deal this Cocoa is? Hell with it, I don't buy it anymore, it is their laziness and they blame the only closed part of OS X, that is all. If they wanted, they could just release Sun JRE 1.6 for OS X console and X11, it is easy.
OS X PowerPC users will never, ever see Java 6 natively running on their system. It is so obvious now. I can understand it but a Fortune 500 company creating the language can't?
You could be surprised how similar Nokia Smart Phone (Symbian) and Sun are. Allthough Nokia can happily sell S40 phones and keep being leader of phone sales. They may even make more money than today as S40 won't cost that much to develop for. What will Sun do? Sell desktops/laptops running Vista?
IBM could give the direction and discipline. The confidence on Sun technologies would go amazingly high. It is sad that they missed the chance.
Guys, Oracle has become World's second biggest commercial software company with -being- only a software and support company. The number 1 is Microsoft and if you exclude the great doing Input devices/Game consoles business, they are only a software/services company too. I see game console as specialised hardware to run their software anyway.
Oracle buying Sun would be more like 3dfx buying ST Microelectronics and going with their own cards which we have seen what happened later.
Just think about their relations with Microsoft when they push Oracle stuff on Solaris/Sun hardware to customers. MS can even say "Their software works so-so on Windows since they want to sell Sun hardware" to their customers.
It is damn hard to find the source (as the man is very famous) but it is almost exactly what Steve Jobs said, about Xerox. Such great technologies and inventions but they can't make money with them.
On some real BOFH situations, it would let you to do such tricks and silently send an alert to the BOFH Admin guy. It gets into your file to be used in future. They generally watch web proxy usage that way, e.g. vtunnel.
I think AV companies should really start separating ILOVEYOU type amateur malware from professionally written, money making malware. Besides not causing harm, they can even install a pirated version of Antivirus and can exclude itself from its scanner without user knowing anything just to get rid of rivals. Happened at least once last year. Something installed pirated Kaspersky, cracked it, removed all other infections except itself and uninstalled Kaspersky without the victim figuring anything. That is the "professional"(ly written) malware kind I am speaking about.
If they have advanced "employee watching" technologies, it will get him into major trouble. In fact, in a real business network, he can't even change DNS or even install anything.
As far as I understand, Sun people now pushes the Java FX instead of Swing making actually successful Swing developers mad. It is the exact same reason why everyone hoped IBM takeover, to add some direction and stability.
Sun should be supporting Limewire, Vuze with money and send thank you notes every week for making such actually successful apps.
If you break a shop glass all alone, you will spend the time in jail or pay for it. If you become part of a some 10s of thousands rioting crowd and break the same glass, you will happily spend the night at your home, with some bruises from cops:)
That is the idea of "being part of crowd" I think.
It took uTorrent guys 1 or more years to ship a OS X version even while their code is still i386 only. The idea of "run on every platform which has a sane Java and support everything" will keep sending developers/researchers to Vuze no matter how much it is attacked by Java and even paid commercial content hating hating people.
Let me remind again that uTorrent is NOT an open source software which is also owned by MPAA/RIAA members partners Bittorrent.com.
They do a great job hiding that fact lately it seems.
Funny is, these are the same people demanding 64bit Flash plugin because they run 64bit browser on an 64bit OS.
If Apple was decent enough (or developers could code anything actually multi arch) to release Snow Leopard for 64bit G5 Macs, I would upgrade to 8 GB (from 4.5 GB) on my Quad G5 in no time. Its max is 16GB btw.
Well, it seems to be open source and gives the developers all the stuff they need to code such a plugin. Except memory usage (which I got plenty to use), I don't see it uses more than 2-5% CPU too. As a person who wants to use P2P technology but in a way that I can pay for the content, their "Vuze Guide" gives me what I need too.
and uTorrent? The one acquired by DRM loving Bittorrent.com because it was way too popular compared to their junk client and nobody knows what is inside it anymore? Before attacking an application as "bloated", pick your other suggestion well.
Even if it supported plugins, releasing such a privacy enhancing plugin for uTorrent would be the irony of the month.
Imagine billions wasted in corporate image, support calls, downtime and even people lost to OS X or Linux which doesn't need such things.
I recently mistyped a Vista ultimate license and just while owner leaving for airport, I could barely notice a small font ''This copy of Vista will stop working in 3 days if not activated with valid serial''. I ended up holding laptop and reading the serial again trying to figure what letter I typed wrong.
People always assume OS X or iLife doesn't need activation or serial because it is assumed that it is a Mac owner will install it. Completely wrong. You don't get OS X major version upgrades free or being mac hw owner doesn't entitle you for anything. It is just clever Apple doing a magnificent PR image trick and also saving user and itself from serial number mess.
There are Windows switchers who lost their original OS X box and looking for OS X serial numbers at home or internet. Believe or not. When they actually figure there is no such thing, they say ''It seems I made the right choice by switching''.
I think it has counter measures against it too. It is not a trivial VBasic junk. It is one of the most advanced professional worms to date. Even basic shareware has counter measures against messing with clock like that. Don't forget that it is not only local code, it gets payload with p2p. So if you can fool it with date, you won't be able to fool the host part.
Did Apple/Real Networks really change their attitude in 2009? OK, real respects a lot to consumer privacy now and they support open source, with real stuff (not just promises) but if you think about why Flash video has become successful , you will be amazed that nothing has changed.
Things got even worsened now. Apple tries to bundle iTunes to people landing to standard www.apple.com/quicktime , the size of download and install is gigantic, there is still stupid "qt_task" installed etc. Windows users really, really go nuts when they see another thing added to startup.
Real Networks, ignoring the very good feedback they get from Apple users (because it is plain player, has always been) still tries to "do all" with their Windows version and fail miserably. Not to forget they still keep that "Real Announcements" junk.
We ended up having gigantic flv files embedded to web pages acting like "streaming". Hell, it is not really different from embedded mpeg of 1994. What happened to UDP? What happened to intelligent stream speed switching? Well content providers and users doesn't care since Flash is always single click, 1 mb install not adding anything to startup. Can you blame them?
If I was a Linux user, I would demand official, same feature level (not 99%) support just like Adobe Flash provides. Who the hell are they really? Why should I rely on Mono team? They ship a plugin to race with Flash. Can you really imagine the size of Flash?
The day MS does ship a thing or creates a standard which will work equally or better on any other OS rather than Windows, I'd say they finally decided to become a software company again. Until then? I stick with Flash and REALLY open standards from companies who has no interest rather than marketing their product.
I was one of the guys who said "Lets be objective, lets see what it does before bitching about it" and it gave promising results in 1.0 for OS X. It was just EULA which bugged me a bit. You know what happened next? They dropped support to MY processor architecture. That was the time I said "So long", rm -rf Silverlight Plugin and never looked back.
If Linux guys keep thanking to companies who doesn't really care enough to pack a binary plugin for their platform, Ubuntu etc. won't really matter. Linux/Wine/Dual Booting/Virtual Machine schizophrenia will continue. Same for OS X though Mac users attitude is a bit different.
Slashdot Mirror
Well Java stays for sure. You will just be blamed for not using whatever fashion is. That is exactly happening to COBOL developers which their code still runs unmodifed on some million dollar state of art Z/OS mainframe for 30-35 years. I know a very big bank's very high level admin, the stories he told me were amazing.
People should look below at their shiny, fashion development tools running OS X and they will see UNIX, with exactly same principles as it was invented in 1970s. Thing calls its shells "tty", if one looks up where that comes from, he will be horrified.
I bet as Java developer, you try to stay in JVM 1.4 compatibility if no fancy stuff needed and you have users asking you "Why not use Java 6 (or 7)? 1.4 is old". Of course same people (if they run Windows) will be advertising .NET to you too.
I guess Sun knows the above about fashion and all that "java fx" etc stuff are designed to feed the fashion people :)
In fact, I use OpenDNS down to DSL Modem's level. It is not DNS or even some spyware, it is Google's management is horrible in certain areas of World and there is no way to easily report search result hackers.
There is a huge industry to make your site appear on top of other results.
They sure have the technology and knowledge to make users report spammy results but somehow, they don't care to code into it. If I logon to my Google account and search same terms, results are somehow better thanks to my profiling I guess but it is completely wrong if you ask me. To have account for better results. It also shows how dynamic results are.
I know the DNS hijack issues and it is somehow getting really serious on OS X scene with the users rejecting the possibility of such thing happening on Mac. In fact, the only up and running trojan on OS X actually attacks DNS entries. (that is why I made them unwritable via permissions)
Also Linux/UNIX (OS X)/BSD gives (raises) "EIO" flag if filesystem senses an inconsistency.
I am giving an example from Windows since chkdsk is questionably best thing for their own format, just to give the idea of old fashion.
Every month, on Flash drives carrying meaningful, non reproducable data (e.g. personal data, not downloads), I suggest running chkdsk /f /r (drive letter). It is very fast and cheap way of learning issues before they happen. As it is not magnetic data/moving parts, I wouldn't keep using it if there is 1 byte of "bad block". As OS X user, I don't have stock command to bad sector check foreign filesystems (in fact, even its own) so I don't know the Linux commands.
We have to get old fashion on USB/Firewire drives too as we (and the OS we run) can't pull the SMART data from them.
I have a feeling that, even some LISP etc. genius comes up with a real revolution (like the Google) overnight and change Yahoo, Ask, Live whatever engines to display neural networks/ AI enhanced excellent results, Google's share won't get hurt because people will keep clicking "Google".
That is bad for state of the internet of course, no competition can't be good for anything.
We pay $140 (family license) to OS X upgrades, I got 3 upgrades so far and I have to apply a very deep input manager hack to Safari, the browser I somehow paid for to use another engine rather than Google. MS is not the only monopoly on Planet as you know.
I bitched about Google search result quality on popular terms and I was accused to be a live.com (complete junk btw) spammer, here, on slashdot. Go figure.
You mean my message is astroturfing? There is no way that one can be questioning Google search quality? Also yes, search results are really changing, it is not 1998, everyone doesn't get same search results.
I personally see 4-6 search engine spammers. I don't even get into the deep hacks required to make my default OS X browser (Safari) change to another search engine as a person who keeps paying to each OS X major upgrade.
You have some real stuff going on there accusing slashdot users as Bangalore spammers. Next time I get a similar accusation, I will report you to slashdot admins FYI. It shouldn't be that cheap.
In a Virtual Windows machine, as I got all stock IE etc. for testing, I remember not being able to find "dotnetfx 3.5 download" via live search. Results coming up were trojans. I ended up going to MS downloads site directly, completely in shock.
Another thing. If you even hear live search is great, better and use Safari, Firefox, you won't feel like going there since you will have a feeling that it will work bad for your browser. I guess that is exact reason why MS wants to partner with Yahoo who never created such "phobia".
I bought a new drive namely WD WD1001FALS, as all new drives, I fired up Safari and entered exactly these search terms: WD1001FALS specs
All I had was bunch of clever search optimization geniuses trying to sell me drive and some really annoying google search spammers. I gave up after 5th page and went to Western Digital directly.
Yahoo search gives some market results too but they seem to be legit search results with known reviewers like PC World. Perhaps Google has become so big that it started to hurt them seriously? I guess everyone out there tries to hack their results and become somewhat successful. There is no mechanism to easily tell Google that they are spammers too. Don't even bother telling me about feedback form.
I had another experience where searching for Avast Antivirus (which is extremely popular freeware) on Windows ended up with actual virus/trojan results while Yahoo search gives better results, at least no malware (they got some scanner in search). It really bugged me because it was a completely unprotected Windows fresh installation. Imagine some newbie actually trusting those results.
It is not free, that was what I was telling. Also somehow, OS X users seem to choose Family license if they will install it to more than 1 mac, all by their choice. It is not like OS X has anything to check for it.
It is completely opposite of MS and we see who wins consumers heart (and even money).
On X86 land, 64bit also means extra registers and commands. It is not like PowerPC which was designed to be 64bit in future from the start.
It took a while for me to understand that fact, I was wondering why people need 64bit "notepad" apps.
For the kernel wise things (e.g. general device drivers) or applications not actually needing 64bit, running 32bit is actually faster than 64bit on PowerPC. Meanwhile, Adobe can ship 64bit Photoshop for OS X _today_ which will really run great on both x86-64 and PowerPC 64bit. On Intel other hand, everything must be 64bit to get actual speed boost.
It is "80386 protected mode" thing all over again and people actually cheer that their only alternative PowerPC has disappeared from sight on Desktop.
I almost forgot, there is also "PAE" issue with x86 which effects machines having higher RAM than 3.2 GB if they run 32bit mode.
Yesterday I went to Java community sites and Symbian community sites. You know what? I have questions about both Symbian Foundation/Nokia Smart phone business and Sun Java, on Desktop.
It really seems they lost their direction already and completely wasting their own inventions. Nokia on other hand, easily talks about the need to upgrade device hardware to get OS updates while some people (not much) are excited about Symbian Foundation.
One must wonder, how come Sun doesn't figure Apple doesn't give a shit to their Java and stop sitting there and waiting for Apple to do the work for free? How BIG deal this Cocoa is? Hell with it, I don't buy it anymore, it is their laziness and they blame the only closed part of OS X, that is all. If they wanted, they could just release Sun JRE 1.6 for OS X console and X11, it is easy.
OS X PowerPC users will never, ever see Java 6 natively running on their system. It is so obvious now. I can understand it but a Fortune 500 company creating the language can't?
You could be surprised how similar Nokia Smart Phone (Symbian) and Sun are. Allthough Nokia can happily sell S40 phones and keep being leader of phone sales. They may even make more money than today as S40 won't cost that much to develop for. What will Sun do? Sell desktops/laptops running Vista?
IBM could give the direction and discipline. The confidence on Sun technologies would go amazingly high. It is sad that they missed the chance.
Guys, Oracle has become World's second biggest commercial software company with -being- only a software and support company. The number 1 is Microsoft and if you exclude the great doing Input devices/Game consoles business, they are only a software/services company too. I see game console as specialised hardware to run their software anyway.
Oracle buying Sun would be more like 3dfx buying ST Microelectronics and going with their own cards which we have seen what happened later.
Just think about their relations with Microsoft when they push Oracle stuff on Solaris/Sun hardware to customers. MS can even say "Their software works so-so on Windows since they want to sell Sun hardware" to their customers.
It is damn hard to find the source (as the man is very famous) but it is almost exactly what Steve Jobs said, about Xerox. Such great technologies and inventions but they can't make money with them.
On some real BOFH situations, it would let you to do such tricks and silently send an alert to the BOFH Admin guy. It gets into your file to be used in future. They generally watch web proxy usage that way, e.g. vtunnel.
It really depends how much evil they are.
I think AV companies should really start separating ILOVEYOU type amateur malware from professionally written, money making malware. Besides not causing harm, they can even install a pirated version of Antivirus and can exclude itself from its scanner without user knowing anything just to get rid of rivals. Happened at least once last year. Something installed pirated Kaspersky, cracked it, removed all other infections except itself and uninstalled Kaspersky without the victim figuring anything. That is the "professional"(ly written) malware kind I am speaking about.
If they have advanced "employee watching" technologies, it will get him into major trouble. In fact, in a real business network, he can't even change DNS or even install anything.
As far as I understand, Sun people now pushes the Java FX instead of Swing making actually successful Swing developers mad. It is the exact same reason why everyone hoped IBM takeover, to add some direction and stability.
Sun should be supporting Limewire, Vuze with money and send thank you notes every week for making such actually successful apps.
If you break a shop glass all alone, you will spend the time in jail or pay for it. If you become part of a some 10s of thousands rioting crowd and break the same glass, you will happily spend the night at your home, with some bruises from cops :)
That is the idea of "being part of crowd" I think.
It took uTorrent guys 1 or more years to ship a OS X version even while their code is still i386 only. The idea of "run on every platform which has a sane Java and support everything" will keep sending developers/researchers to Vuze no matter how much it is attacked by Java and even paid commercial content hating hating people.
Let me remind again that uTorrent is NOT an open source software which is also owned by MPAA/RIAA members partners Bittorrent.com.
They do a great job hiding that fact lately it seems.
Funny is, these are the same people demanding 64bit Flash plugin because they run 64bit browser on an 64bit OS.
If Apple was decent enough (or developers could code anything actually multi arch) to release Snow Leopard for 64bit G5 Macs, I would upgrade to 8 GB (from 4.5 GB) on my Quad G5 in no time. Its max is 16GB btw.
Set it to Run in "Advanced Mode" on startup. And for "just downloading a torrent", I don't think anything will beat rtorrent from console.
Well, it seems to be open source and gives the developers all the stuff they need to code such a plugin. Except memory usage (which I got plenty to use), I don't see it uses more than 2-5% CPU too. As a person who wants to use P2P technology but in a way that I can pay for the content, their "Vuze Guide" gives me what I need too.
and uTorrent? The one acquired by DRM loving Bittorrent.com because it was way too popular compared to their junk client and nobody knows what is inside it anymore? Before attacking an application as "bloated", pick your other suggestion well.
Even if it supported plugins, releasing such a privacy enhancing plugin for uTorrent would be the irony of the month.
Imagine billions wasted in corporate image, support calls, downtime and even people lost to OS X or Linux which doesn't need such things.
I recently mistyped a Vista ultimate license and just while owner leaving for airport, I could barely notice a small font ''This copy of Vista will stop working in 3 days if not activated with valid serial''. I ended up holding laptop and reading the serial again trying to figure what letter I typed wrong.
People always assume OS X or iLife doesn't need activation or serial because it is assumed that it is a Mac owner will install it. Completely wrong. You don't get OS X major version upgrades free or being mac hw owner doesn't entitle you for anything. It is just clever Apple doing a magnificent PR image trick and also saving user and itself from serial number mess.
There are Windows switchers who lost their original OS X box and looking for OS X serial numbers at home or internet. Believe or not. When they actually figure there is no such thing, they say ''It seems I made the right choice by switching''.
I think it has counter measures against it too. It is not a trivial VBasic junk. It is one of the most advanced professional worms to date.
Even basic shareware has counter measures against messing with clock like that.
Don't forget that it is not only local code, it gets payload with p2p. So if you can fool it with date, you won't be able to fool the host part.
Did Apple/Real Networks really change their attitude in 2009? OK, real respects a lot to consumer privacy now and they support open source, with real stuff (not just promises) but if you think about why Flash video has become successful , you will be amazed that nothing has changed.
Things got even worsened now. Apple tries to bundle iTunes to people landing to standard www.apple.com/quicktime , the size of download and install is gigantic, there is still stupid "qt_task" installed etc. Windows users really, really go nuts when they see another thing added to startup.
Real Networks, ignoring the very good feedback they get from Apple users (because it is plain player, has always been) still tries to "do all" with their Windows version and fail miserably. Not to forget they still keep that "Real Announcements" junk.
We ended up having gigantic flv files embedded to web pages acting like "streaming". Hell, it is not really different from embedded mpeg of 1994. What happened to UDP? What happened to intelligent stream speed switching? Well content providers and users doesn't care since Flash is always single click, 1 mb install not adding anything to startup. Can you blame them?
Open Standard like VC-1 you mean? Or Office XML?
If I was a Linux user, I would demand official, same feature level (not 99%) support just like Adobe Flash provides. Who the hell are they really? Why should I rely on Mono team? They ship a plugin to race with Flash. Can you really imagine the size of Flash?
The day MS does ship a thing or creates a standard which will work equally or better on any other OS rather than Windows, I'd say they finally decided to become a software company again. Until then? I stick with Flash and REALLY open standards from companies who has no interest rather than marketing their product.
I was one of the guys who said "Lets be objective, lets see what it does before bitching about it" and it gave promising results in 1.0 for OS X. It was just EULA which bugged me a bit. You know what happened next? They dropped support to MY processor architecture. That was the time I said "So long", rm -rf Silverlight Plugin and never looked back.
If Linux guys keep thanking to companies who doesn't really care enough to pack a binary plugin for their platform, Ubuntu etc. won't really matter. Linux/Wine/Dual Booting/Virtual Machine schizophrenia will continue. Same for OS X though Mac users attitude is a bit different.