except that _if_ they did the Nexus One to step up the level of devices on the market running Android so that others would have to step it up too.... well then it worked IMO. There are other devices now out which are as good or slightly better than the N1. the way I see it, if vendors were left to design and release their own devices, the hardware would be inching its way up and the iPhone would still be leaps and bounds better. Instead, we have a nice competitive device market. the N1 did its job well and its time to let some vendors sell devices at the N1 level because I don't think Google really wants to be selling phones.
it would be silly to think that all private LANs are 100% safe so pulling TJX out of the air is a worthless counter point.
the fact that every POS needs to be maintained to the highest level of security to keep each one from being taken offline or attacked should be a good enough reason to not require every POS have their own internet connection. You require your customers to go to great lengths and if running Windows, almost impossible lengths to keep each and every POS machine running.
And you know, getting onto a POS is a good way to collect alot of credit cards if a keyboard shim or I/O shim could be installed. That is all those devices do so I would not be too sure about what is a target and what is not.
yes, it's better to go with the devil you know will eat you up and spit out your skeletal remains than go with a company which won the hearts and minds of customers to get their marketshare and has not proven to be even close to the evil which lurks inside One Microsoft Way. That makes so much sense.
"What Microsoft decides it wants, it tends to get." only works when they can leverage the monopoly position of Windows. Outside of that game/control they almost always lose. Xbox is not a winner, it's hanging on and it will probably take another 10 years for them to break even if they are lucky. They don't own the market let alone control it.
Even Windows CE/PocketPC/Mobile/what-ever is a $10+ billion loser and they just got shut down by Android and the iPhone. There are a few other areas where they tried to go outside their familiar playground but where they can't be the bully on the block, they do not win.
BING is going to bleed $$$ for a good decade and now that they are playing against a company with a big wallet, it's gonna hurt far more than any other market penetration _investment_ they've ever had. Windows still makes them plenty to lose but if you look at the investment market, they're pretty bland there and once it dips even further, the Microsoft brand becomes dull and the public finally gets it. IMO.
sounds like the easier solution for the vendor, probably not very good for securing the platform. "Cost effective" means pushing off upfront costs because security breaches are not tied to the original purchase and often not even considered in TCO numbers.
And if security does not sell, ie having POS's on a private LAN with a gateway device between the POS LAN and the live services vendors, someone isn't trying to sell very hard. IMO.
pathetic and dumb IMO. if that really is the case, they should be on a private LAN connected to a server supplying that data and info, not every POS having their own live connection. dumb dumb dumb.
one big problem was that when the press and marketing moved beyond PDA's, there was nothing between them and the latest smartphones. Microsoft was basically paying companies to make PocketPC devices and they were unreliable and huge from extended batteries to get all day usage from them. The phones had way too small of a display so they didn't have the application usage value the PDA had or todays smartphones. There was about a 7 year dearth of a valid replacement for the PDA.
This is probably why you'll see things like the press saying that Apple created the idea of an app store and a 3rd party application market for handheld apps. It was Palm and there were many apps stores for Palm applications.
So while the Model T may have been passed up, there was more functional and better models year after year after the Model T.
It is great to see this kind of 3rd party app market again. As we've seen on the desktop, letting one company control the application base doesn't make for great products and definitely not a diverse application base.
and why does a POS computer have an internet connection to get the updates? It reminds me of the story of how a bunch of trains had no signal systems because the computers controlling the railway signals were running Windows, connected to a LAN, and got infected with a virus and stopped operating the signals. I guess with admins, you get what you pay for and maybe those MCSE certs are worthless.
Hilarious? Dude, open your eyes because this stuff happens all the time. Android is eating into the iPhone growth and has destroyed Microsoft Windows Mobile. In one fell swoop, Apple could pretty much send everyone back 2+ years by purchasing ARM and ending licensing. x86 is a battery burner on phones and on netbooks and tablets so everyone would have to jump to some other platform( PowerPC, MIPS, etc ) and that kind of redesign would take years off the product line for everything, including smartphones, netbooks, tablets, etc. Enough time to give Apples new iPhones and iPads the run of the market.
Doing this kind of thing is very common. Microsoft has lost( negative profits ) over $15 billion on that little handheld device os called Windows CE. They've burned atleast that much on the XBox and way over that amount on MSN and probably close to that with MS search now called BING. The oil industry has done this with power storage and generation patent purchases. It's called protecting your profit generator and without a monopoly position, it is 100% legal. And with a monopoly, it's still done because in many countries, businesses help finance government one way or another so they look the other way quite often.
not hilarious and a very real business strategy for many. IMO
indeed but it's only effective because there has been a form of SKUD missile attack going on between Apple and Google. Something like a purchase of ARM escalates the weaponry to CRUISE missiles and does not seem out of the realm of the possible in this ridiculous war. A war which, if they keep at it, will result in a loss to both and a win for the real threat which got sidelined for lack of quality yet again.
On the sidelines waits Microsoft. The company who, when given the chance, will dump billions into the segment just to cut an ARM or leg off of the leaders. For them, this is a sideshow because it's the desktop/server OS which butters their bread. It's pretty obvious it's the iPod and iPhone which butters Apples bread. IMO
it could be just about ARM based HDD controllers but then again, it could be their way to fund and develop Windows for the ARM tablet and netbook segments. ARM based tablets and netbooks are due to hit the market in bucketfuls this fall and with talk of Google doing an Android based tablet, Microsoft has to be ontop of this. Monkey Boy Ballmer is probably throwing chairs around yelling about how ARM devices( iPhone and Android ) are already making Microsoft a laughing stock of the mobile market.
So is it just about saving money/energy for MS BING servers or is it about getting Windows ported to ARM?
that's my thought too, basically it goes like this: 1) Install VMware Player on all the lab workstations because it's free, cross platform, and it's well supported ( another option might be VirtualBox ) 2) Create a disk image large enough to fit on the smallest of the flash drives you expect your students to be using. 3) Pick a distro which you can use with this size disk image and be usable for your classwork. There are a few recent blogs on small/fast distros 4) Figure out how to get the LiveCD of your distro and the virtual machine disk image to every students PC for the inclass instruction on installing into the virtual disk using the LiveCD and VMware or VirtualBox 5) after the class has installed the system, show them how to shut it down and copy it to their USB drive and run from the USB drive.
Now they have some experience installing into a VM and the basic layout of the Linux filesystem and they have a copy of their work on their USB drive so they can try this at home. If you talk with VMware, you can probably get redistribution rights to the VMware Player to you can give them the VMware Player installation file for their home computer.
you mean like the DSP built into the TI ARM chips? cool, so 1080p video and hardware decoding in.5W is around the corner. sweet. I wonder if that Google tablet is slated for this kind of wonderful thing.
Nowhere do you see any "do you really want to..." switches. I mean really, who would build such a space craft and only have a switch or button which doesn't have a secondary switch or button labeled "do you really want to?"(DYRWT) to be sure the operator wants to throw that switch? Or _really_ sure for that matter. It must be fake.
and if what you mentioned is true about them only running on MS XBox then it was also not profit driving which caused Microsoft to purchase these products and then drop all support but MS XBox. It would look like more platform protectionism to me.
Just yesterday slashdotters laughted how Microsoft is burning money on their online division like Bing and other properties, how it's completely useless. Which one it is now, to think long term or not to think?
I believe there are two different threads there. For one, Microsoft spends billions annually year after year on products and projects which have failed to make them profits. Things like MSN, MS Live Search-aka BING, XBox, Windows CE and many more. No other business would keep those projects going with such repeated losses but Microsoft can and does. So people bring this up and it looks like they're against Microsoft having longterm goals. But profits from these things are really not important to Microsoft because the reason all these things exist is to protect the profits they get from Windows, the OS. That is what funds these things, that is what gave and gives them power to control a huge segment of the market.
The fact that Microsoft has no profitable product which has specifically leveraged their position with Windows is a key indicator that Microsoft is not an innovator, Microsoft has never been an innovator, and Microsoft does not know how to create their own compelling product outside of something tied to Windows. If you look at Apple in this light, you'll notice that Apple looks looks and acts like a wide-eyed teenager while Microsoft looks and acts like a gumpy old man. IMO.
from what I'd read, early on it was called Microsoft Office Open XML in ECMA and by ECMA. Many public statements used that naming too. I also saw somewhere that Microsoft requested they drop the "Microsoft" part of it.
So if you abbreviate MS for Microsoft then you get the MS OOXML but if you just use M then it'd be M OOXML or MOOXML as you stated. All the same thing, a Microsoft Office dump and a steaming pile for people, businesses, standards orgs, and governments to step in. When you step in it, it oozes the well known Red Green Blue Yellow colors of Microsoft's logo and it stinks like so many said it would. IMO
except in this case, the "frog" is so clueless that he doesn't even know the scorpion is a scorpion. The truth unravels with the "frog" being completely surprised to find out he's not only been stung, but that they shinny object he trusted was in fact a scorpion who has done this hundreds of times before. Poor stupid "frog". And BTW, our governments are full of such "frogs" and also most of corporate management. Microsoft can hitch rides, and has, for a very long time.
Jane you ignorant slut, Microsoft created Microsoft Office Open XML because governments were starting to require an "open" standard for document storage. They created one they and millions of others knew could not be implemented. They then paid one standard organizations(ECMA) fees to get labeled a standard and then they hijacked a second standards organization(ISO) by flooding their committees with Microsoft partners in order to get it approved.
It is the idiots who keep thinking Microsoft is going to do any of the things they say they'll do when it's said to get their way who are shooting themselves in the foot. And the really moronic thing is that they keep lining up to do this without seeing how many have done the exact same thing year after year after year.
If this "news" gets any traction and Microsoft Office Open XML( notice how their product name is in the name of the standard ) gets bashed any more, they'll just pretend to do some work on it and the same idiots will think that something will come of it and they'll back off. 2, 3, or more years from now someone will cry that Microsoft isn't acting in good faith. Like I said, they're idiots. IMO
And MS IE doesn't do search completion and Windows nor MS Office have unique IDs and have you every read the Microsoft Windows EULA?
BTW, your anti-open source stance is showing through your Microsoft badge.
And if you don't like Chrome, don't use it. Try to do that with your Microsoft software and you have to drop all their software because it only runs on Windows.
LoB
in other news, Novell announces MSFT now owns UNIX
on
Novell Wins vs. SCO
·
· Score: 1
now that there is little question as to who owns the copyrights to UNIX, will we now see another bid to purchase Novell and said copyrights? Why not Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Vultures group which has Bill Gates on is investors list?
the judgment pretty much says that SCO had no leg to stand in claiming Linux infringed on their UNIX copyrights but only in that SCO didn't have the UNIX copyrights. It did not clear up any infringement questions. And you know that right now, Microsoft is out hunting down victims to hang on their Patent Licensing mantel as they start building their case against Linux. What a hammer owning UNIX copyrights would be.
and yes Jane, I do believe that Intellectual Vultures are tied back to MSFT.
>> It was introduced to abstract the OS so that if Microsoft were to also release >> Windows for PowerPC's or whatever architecture,.NET apps would still run,
no way dude. MS.NET was created to take developers away from Java and back onto Windows. Read up on some of the court documents to see what really was the deal. MS.NET came about well after the PowerPC systems(CHRP and PREP ) gone. It was all about stopping a cross platform product from becoming popular and therefore making Windows just another OS and therefore a threat to their #1 profit generator.
he's just getting tired of having to explain away the threats over and over again. I really don't think he's changed his love for Microsoft, he just wishes this audience wasn't so smart about knowing any Microsoft technology is a threat and Microsoft's constant patent related activities just fuel the 'threat' side of the arguments.
Microsoft hasn't changed its ways in over 20 years and I doubt Miguel has changed. He's pissed he can't win the discussions and Microsoft is making that difficult for him. That's how I see it.
from what I've seen of his comments, he most likely has only admitted that Microsoft is making it difficult for him to continue pushing Microsoft software to the open source crowds. I ran across an OpenGL forum where they were discussing OpenGL vs Microsoft DirectX/Direct3D and once again, people brought up MS.Net and Mono and therefore the patent issues and Miguel got involved in the discussion. His best rebuttal was to say that as long as you stick with the ECMA implementations you're ok. Ofcourse, others said that without the frameworks which Windows developers are constantly enticed to use and are using, what is the purpose of using any of what's left.
What really surprises me is how Miguel just does not get it that Microsoft is a business and as such they must protect their profits and their standard business method for doing that is to make sure EVERYTHING they do has a way to protect the Windows platform. They do not make software for other platforms and any ability to run on another platform threatens their profits from Windows. Which BTW is where they get over 80% of their profits and the rest is tied to Windows. So you will NEVER get something from Microsoft which has much value off of Windows or else they will have ways to limit its value. They have never been platform agnostic and never will be. It's all about Windows baby so if you care about competition and platform choice, you can never pick a Microsoft technology. IMO
BSOD's come from the MS NT technology of the early 90s. I'm well aware of them and have seen many over the years. I haven't seen so many in the past decade only because I don't really touch the stuff much. I posted RRoD because for some reason, Red Ring of Fire was what popped into my head when I though of Bill Gates dropping down little nuke balls all over the place. RRoF was the original name for the Xbox crash which cost Microsoft over $3 billion in write-offs to mitigate.
Picture a nice bright and burning red ring of fire rising up in the air above Bill's little nuke balls instead of the classic mushroom cloud.
Slashdot Mirror
except that _if_ they did the Nexus One to step up the level of devices on the market running Android so that others would have to step it up too.... well then it worked IMO. There are other devices now out which are as good or slightly better than the N1. the way I see it, if vendors were left to design and release their own devices, the hardware would be inching its way up and the iPhone would still be leaps and bounds better. Instead, we have a nice competitive device market. the N1 did its job well and its time to let some vendors sell devices at the N1 level because I don't think Google really wants to be selling phones.
LoB
it would be silly to think that all private LANs are 100% safe so pulling TJX out of the air is a worthless counter point.
the fact that every POS needs to be maintained to the highest level of security to keep each one from being taken offline or attacked should be a good enough reason to not require every POS have their own internet connection. You require your customers to go to great lengths and if running Windows, almost impossible lengths to keep each and every POS machine running.
And you know, getting onto a POS is a good way to collect alot of credit cards if a keyboard shim or I/O shim could be installed. That is all those devices do so I would not be too sure about what is a target and what is not.
LoB
yes, it's better to go with the devil you know will eat you up and spit out your skeletal remains than go with a company which won the hearts and minds of customers to get their marketshare and has not proven to be even close to the evil which lurks inside One Microsoft Way. That makes so much sense.
LoB
"What Microsoft decides it wants, it tends to get." only works when they can leverage the monopoly position of Windows. Outside of that game/control they almost always lose. Xbox is not a winner, it's hanging on and it will probably take another 10 years for them to break even if they are lucky. They don't own the market let alone control it.
Even Windows CE/PocketPC/Mobile/what-ever is a $10+ billion loser and they just got shut down by Android and the iPhone. There are a few other areas where they tried to go outside their familiar playground but where they can't be the bully on the block, they do not win.
BING is going to bleed $$$ for a good decade and now that they are playing against a company with a big wallet, it's gonna hurt far more than any other market penetration _investment_ they've ever had. Windows still makes them plenty to lose but if you look at the investment market, they're pretty bland there and once it dips even further, the Microsoft brand becomes dull and the public finally gets it. IMO.
LoB
sounds like the easier solution for the vendor, probably not very good for securing the platform. "Cost effective" means pushing off upfront costs because security breaches are not tied to the original purchase and often not even considered in TCO numbers.
And if security does not sell, ie having POS's on a private LAN with a gateway device between the POS LAN and the live services vendors, someone isn't trying to sell very hard. IMO.
LoB
pathetic and dumb IMO. if that really is the case, they should be on a private LAN connected to a server supplying that data and info, not every POS having their own live connection. dumb dumb dumb.
LoB
one big problem was that when the press and marketing moved beyond PDA's, there was nothing between them and the latest smartphones. Microsoft was basically paying companies to make PocketPC devices and they were unreliable and huge from extended batteries to get all day usage from them. The phones had way too small of a display so they didn't have the application usage value the PDA had or todays smartphones. There was about a 7 year dearth of a valid replacement for the PDA.
This is probably why you'll see things like the press saying that Apple created the idea of an app store and a 3rd party application market for handheld apps. It was Palm and there were many apps stores for Palm applications.
So while the Model T may have been passed up, there was more functional and better models year after year after the Model T.
It is great to see this kind of 3rd party app market again. As we've seen on the desktop, letting one company control the application base doesn't make for great products and definitely not a diverse application base.
LoB
and why does a POS computer have an internet connection to get the updates? It reminds me of the story of how a bunch of trains had no signal systems because the computers controlling the railway signals were running Windows, connected to a LAN, and got infected with a virus and stopped operating the signals. I guess with admins, you get what you pay for and maybe those MCSE certs are worthless.
LoB
Hilarious? Dude, open your eyes because this stuff happens all the time. Android is eating into the iPhone growth and has destroyed Microsoft Windows Mobile. In one fell swoop, Apple could pretty much send everyone back 2+ years by purchasing ARM and ending licensing. x86 is a battery burner on phones and on netbooks and tablets so everyone would have to jump to some other platform( PowerPC, MIPS, etc ) and that kind of redesign would take years off the product line for everything, including smartphones, netbooks, tablets, etc. Enough time to give Apples new iPhones and iPads the run of the market.
Doing this kind of thing is very common. Microsoft has lost( negative profits ) over $15 billion on that little handheld device os called Windows CE. They've burned atleast that much on the XBox and way over that amount on MSN and probably close to that with MS search now called BING. The oil industry has done this with power storage and generation patent purchases. It's called protecting your profit generator and without a monopoly position, it is 100% legal. And with a monopoly, it's still done because in many countries, businesses help finance government one way or another so they look the other way quite often.
not hilarious and a very real business strategy for many. IMO
LoB
indeed but it's only effective because there has been a form of SKUD missile attack going on between Apple and Google. Something like a purchase of ARM escalates the weaponry to CRUISE missiles and does not seem out of the realm of the possible in this ridiculous war. A war which, if they keep at it, will result in a loss to both and a win for the real threat which got sidelined for lack of quality yet again.
On the sidelines waits Microsoft. The company who, when given the chance, will dump billions into the segment just to cut an ARM or leg off of the leaders. For them, this is a sideshow because it's the desktop/server OS which butters their bread. It's pretty obvious it's the iPod and iPhone which butters Apples bread. IMO
LoB
it could be just about ARM based HDD controllers but then again, it could be their way to fund and develop Windows for the ARM tablet and netbook segments. ARM based tablets and netbooks are due to hit the market in bucketfuls this fall and with talk of Google doing an Android based tablet, Microsoft has to be ontop of this. Monkey Boy Ballmer is probably throwing chairs around yelling about how ARM devices( iPhone and Android ) are already making Microsoft a laughing stock of the mobile market.
So is it just about saving money/energy for MS BING servers or is it about getting Windows ported to ARM?
LoB
that's my thought too, basically it goes like this:
1) Install VMware Player on all the lab workstations because it's free, cross platform, and it's well supported ( another option might be VirtualBox )
2) Create a disk image large enough to fit on the smallest of the flash drives you expect your students to be using.
3) Pick a distro which you can use with this size disk image and be usable for your classwork. There are a few recent blogs on small/fast distros
4) Figure out how to get the LiveCD of your distro and the virtual machine disk image to every students PC for the inclass instruction on installing into the virtual disk using the LiveCD and VMware or VirtualBox
5) after the class has installed the system, show them how to shut it down and copy it to their USB drive and run from the USB drive.
Now they have some experience installing into a VM and the basic layout of the Linux filesystem and they have a copy of their work on their USB drive so they can try this at home. If you talk with VMware, you can probably get redistribution rights to the VMware Player to you can give them the VMware Player installation file for their home computer.
LoB
you mean like the DSP built into the TI ARM chips? cool, so 1080p video and hardware decoding in .5W is around the corner. sweet. I wonder if that Google tablet is slated for this kind of wonderful thing.
LoB
Nowhere do you see any "do you really want to..." switches. I mean really, who would build such a space craft and only have a switch or button which doesn't have a secondary switch or button labeled "do you really want to?"(DYRWT) to be sure the operator wants to throw that switch? Or _really_ sure for that matter. It must be fake.
LoB
and if what you mentioned is true about them only running on MS XBox then it was also not profit driving which caused Microsoft to purchase these products and then drop all support but MS XBox. It would look like more platform protectionism to me.
LoB
I believe there are two different threads there. For one, Microsoft spends billions annually year after year on products and projects which have failed to make them profits. Things like MSN, MS Live Search-aka BING, XBox, Windows CE and many more. No other business would keep those projects going with such repeated losses but Microsoft can and does. So people bring this up and it looks like they're against Microsoft having longterm goals. But profits from these things are really not important to Microsoft because the reason all these things exist is to protect the profits they get from Windows, the OS. That is what funds these things, that is what gave and gives them power to control a huge segment of the market.
The fact that Microsoft has no profitable product which has specifically leveraged their position with Windows is a key indicator that Microsoft is not an innovator, Microsoft has never been an innovator, and Microsoft does not know how to create their own compelling product outside of something tied to Windows. If you look at Apple in this light, you'll notice that Apple looks looks and acts like a wide-eyed teenager while Microsoft looks and acts like a gumpy old man. IMO.
LoB
from what I'd read, early on it was called Microsoft Office Open XML in ECMA and by ECMA. Many public statements used that naming too. I also saw somewhere that Microsoft requested they drop the "Microsoft" part of it.
So if you abbreviate MS for Microsoft then you get the MS OOXML but if you just use M then it'd be M OOXML or MOOXML as you stated. All the same thing, a Microsoft Office dump and a steaming pile for people, businesses, standards orgs, and governments to step in. When you step in it, it oozes the well known Red Green Blue Yellow colors of Microsoft's logo and it stinks like so many said it would. IMO
LoB
except in this case, the "frog" is so clueless that he doesn't even know the scorpion is a scorpion. The truth unravels with the "frog" being completely surprised to find out he's not only been stung, but that they shinny object he trusted was in fact a scorpion who has done this hundreds of times before. Poor stupid "frog". And BTW, our governments are full of such "frogs" and also most of corporate management. Microsoft can hitch rides, and has, for a very long time.
LoB
Jane you ignorant slut, Microsoft created Microsoft Office Open XML because governments were starting to require an "open" standard for document storage. They created one they and millions of others knew could not be implemented. They then paid one standard organizations(ECMA) fees to get labeled a standard and then they hijacked a second standards organization(ISO) by flooding their committees with Microsoft partners in order to get it approved.
It is the idiots who keep thinking Microsoft is going to do any of the things they say they'll do when it's said to get their way who are shooting themselves in the foot. And the really moronic thing is that they keep lining up to do this without seeing how many have done the exact same thing year after year after year.
If this "news" gets any traction and Microsoft Office Open XML( notice how their product name is in the name of the standard ) gets bashed any more, they'll just pretend to do some work on it and the same idiots will think that something will come of it and they'll back off. 2, 3, or more years from now someone will cry that Microsoft isn't acting in good faith. Like I said, they're idiots. IMO
LoB
And MS IE doesn't do search completion and Windows nor MS Office have unique IDs and have you every read the Microsoft Windows EULA?
BTW, your anti-open source stance is showing through your Microsoft badge.
And if you don't like Chrome, don't use it. Try to do that with your Microsoft software and you have to drop all their software because it only runs on Windows.
LoB
now that there is little question as to who owns the copyrights to UNIX, will we now see another bid to purchase Novell and said copyrights? Why not Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Vultures group which has Bill Gates on is investors list?
the judgment pretty much says that SCO had no leg to stand in claiming Linux infringed on their UNIX copyrights but only in that SCO didn't have the UNIX copyrights. It did not clear up any infringement questions. And you know that right now, Microsoft is out hunting down victims to hang on their Patent Licensing mantel as they start building their case against Linux. What a hammer owning UNIX copyrights would be.
and yes Jane, I do believe that Intellectual Vultures are tied back to MSFT.
LoB
>> It was introduced to abstract the OS so that if Microsoft were to also release .NET apps would still run,
.NET was created to take developers away from Java and back onto Windows. Read up on some of the court documents to see what really was the deal. MS .NET came about well after the PowerPC systems(CHRP and PREP ) gone. It was all about stopping a cross platform product from becoming popular and therefore making Windows just another OS and therefore a threat to their #1 profit generator.
>> Windows for PowerPC's or whatever architecture,
no way dude. MS
LoB
he's just getting tired of having to explain away the threats over and over again. I really don't think he's changed his love for Microsoft, he just wishes this audience wasn't so smart about knowing any Microsoft technology is a threat and Microsoft's constant patent related activities just fuel the 'threat' side of the arguments.
Microsoft hasn't changed its ways in over 20 years and I doubt Miguel has changed. He's pissed he can't win the discussions and Microsoft is making that difficult for him. That's how I see it.
LoB
from what I've seen of his comments, he most likely has only admitted that Microsoft is making it difficult for him to continue pushing Microsoft software to the open source crowds. I ran across an OpenGL forum where they were discussing OpenGL vs Microsoft DirectX/Direct3D and once again, people brought up MS .Net and Mono and therefore the patent issues and Miguel got involved in the discussion. His best rebuttal was to say that as long as you stick with the ECMA implementations you're ok. Ofcourse, others said that without the frameworks which Windows developers are constantly enticed to use and are using, what is the purpose of using any of what's left.
What really surprises me is how Miguel just does not get it that Microsoft is a business and as such they must protect their profits and their standard business method for doing that is to make sure EVERYTHING they do has a way to protect the Windows platform. They do not make software for other platforms and any ability to run on another platform threatens their profits from Windows. Which BTW is where they get over 80% of their profits and the rest is tied to Windows. So you will NEVER get something from Microsoft which has much value off of Windows or else they will have ways to limit its value. They have never been platform agnostic and never will be. It's all about Windows baby so if you care about competition and platform choice, you can never pick a Microsoft technology. IMO
LoB
BSOD's come from the MS NT technology of the early 90s. I'm well aware of them and have seen many over the years. I haven't seen so many in the past decade only because I don't really touch the stuff much. I posted RRoD because for some reason, Red Ring of Fire was what popped into my head when I though of Bill Gates dropping down little nuke balls all over the place. RRoF was the original name for the Xbox crash which cost Microsoft over $3 billion in write-offs to mitigate.
Picture a nice bright and burning red ring of fire rising up in the air above Bill's little nuke balls instead of the classic mushroom cloud.
LoB