There's a few problems with the thesis that XP will be the safe platform to write applications to. First, many applications are just downright harder to write with XP. For example, look at the Task Scheduler API for XP vs post-XP. There are thousands of APIs like this. No developer in their right mind would choose to target XP.
In terms of market penentration, since XP mode won't be on Home Premium, it won't make sense to build ISV apps for XP. And given that early indications are that Win7 will have pretty good uptake, it probably makes just as much sense to target Win7. Plus the improved Windows API will make your development generally more productive.
Not only that, most MCPs in the US (maybe it's different in Iceland) don't buy the licenses upfront like this. They get the licenses on demand as partners. They shouldn't be out anything except for the small window where they were installing a product for a customer and the customer goes belly up before paying for it.
This is just absurd. Tons of people can see and use the R&D that Microsoft produces. Go into virtually any CS conference, from PLDI to SIGGRAPH, and you'll see tons of papers that build on and cite research published by Microsoft. And where was some of the most important research on quantum computing done... well another industry lab, Bell Labs. BTW, Microsoft has also done some great work in quantum computing as well. Here's an example of some of their interesting work in topological quantum computing: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.0279v2.pdf
Now what you probably mean is why can't I just copy their research and sell it as my own product. Well like many colleges and universities (and other research groups like HP, IBM, and Sun's) Microsoft will patent ideas that they think have commercial viability. That is really no different than the hundred+ patents that MIT or Caltech does each year. Or the 500+ patents done by the UC system.
I get that slashdot people are supposed to be gung ho about "freedom", but don't be naive about how the real world works.
Open source doesn't do what you suggest. First open source doesn't imply standards compliant. Open source doesn't imply access to government websites (that has more to do with permissions and open networks than it does anything about the source).
The _only_ thing open source ensures is that everyone has access to the source code. No guarantee it is well written, understandable, useful, or correct. With that said I'm not sure that everyone having access to the source code is all that important for government. No more so than the recipe for all foods we eat be available to everyone. It would be nice, but an audit trail (ie., the government has access to all source code, but not every guy on the stret) can probably gets you 99% of the value and doesn't bias against any vendors.
You do realize that this is just stuff added since the beta. But here's a better question for you, what would be bigger than a service pack?
Because in Win7 here are some of the features that I think are MUCH bigger than service packs:
1) User mode scheduler
2) A new service controller model
3) Federated search
4) New taskbar
5) Fast window tiling
6) Multitouch support
7) Home group sharing
8) Device stage
9) And just in Media Center: support for ClearQAM, turbo scroll, home media sharing for recording, on screen keyboard, and a fair bit more http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3253&Itemid=1.
And this is just a partial list. You can argue that you don't like the features, but to say that this isn't a full release is just absurd. This is on par with virtually every other major OS release in recent years by any vendor.
Lets be clear that we're not talking about a monopoly of a commodity, but rather the issue of bundling. Bundling a commodity with a monopoly is not an antitrust violation.
And it's Microsoft's fault that the web is broken? If MS were to disappear tomorrow would the web be a lot better? There is absolutely NO indication (and I mean none, zero, nada, zilch) that there is anyone out there innovating on the web who is held back due to MS. Give me one example of something that is a quantum breakthrough that might exist if MS had not existed or if they closed up shop tomorrow. The fact of the matter is that Firefox, Opera, and even IE are simply incremental improvements over Mosaic. You'd think that in the past 15 years at least ONE product would have done some huge innovation, even if it was shut down later. But it has never happened -- and remember that Microsoft was really late to the web game, and even during that time there was no real leaps in innovation.
In fact, one could argue that the biggest leap in innovation, Ajax, happened by MS.
The thing I don't get is that it's a web browser. It really is an OS commodity today. No one would ask an OEM to give consumers a choice about their process/thread scheduler.
While I totally get the bundling argument, I think that argument made sense in 1996. In 2009 a web browser is as integral (if not more so) than a text processor or a desktop shell or a command line shell. And if you were to make a new command line shell you'd have a hard time arguing that Windows can't ship with theirs and we need to give users the ability to pick one when they buy their computer.
And lastly, while I think Firefox is a better browser than IE7, it's not a LOT better. Browsers really are about as close to commodities as you can find in software. Lets move on to actual real software where there's a difference that people really can see.
Your group must have written really bad code. With proper practices there would be no port necessary. The only huge port was from 16bit to 32bit. That was a pain. But in general, from one OS to the next one, we had to do nothing, zero, zilch. In fact most (if not all) of the applications I wrote back then still work today on XP and Vista.
I don't think the differentiation is for the consumers. I suspect it is for the OEMs. The OEMs want different computer price points and want different margins on all aspects of the buildout associated with the different price points.
Microsoft could make one version and sell it at the average cost of the 3 versions. But then Dell would say, "Well for our really low end machines, we want a cheaper version." Either MS can simply lower the price across the board or can differentiate with a lower cost version.
Likewise, Dell will also say, "For our high-end, high margin machines, we want to be able to say everything is high-end. Can we get an OS that appears to be more luxurious?"
The Windows 7 feature list is extremely public. I can name probably 15 features off the top of my head. Heck, I can name probably 8 new features in Media Center alone!
Featurewise this release is as big as any Windows release I can think of. Probably more feature difference than Win2K vs WinXP.
Do they sufficiently have control of the market to demand terms to Apple, for example?
I don't understand what that has to do with anyting. Apple has, what, maybe 5% desktop market share?
Apple has about a 15% share on laptops, which is actually a growing segment of the market (and now selling faster than desktops).
"When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser."
Would you like some cheese to go with that?:-)
What are these half a dozen other browsers? I can name a few, but I'm not sure I could say they were all strictly better. The only one that I could say is much better is Firefox. And it's the only that has had any real marketing. Never underestimate the importance of marketing. It's not about a monopolistic practices. In this case marketing has played a large role.
My take is that MS is no longer a monopoly. I'd have no problem going against MS in any space where I think there is a significant technology/user experience gap.
Sure I won't do something stupid like try to sell a new filesystem to compete against FAT/NTFS and then argue that there's a monopoly for filesystems on Windows. But I think for virtually anything interesting I'd be happy to go heads up against Microsoft and feel comfortable that I could beat them with a superior product.
The issue isn't market share, but market control. Given that they've been losing market share, I'd argue that they've lost market control. And in the browser space they've dipped below 80%. But it worth being clear that market share alone doesn't a monopoly make (at least not an interesting one).
Does MS have a monopoly on the PC? Do they sufficiently have control of the market to demand terms to Apple, for example? I don't think so. Apple is thriving and doing effectively no business with Microsoft. Is Firefox beholden to MS? Again, another thriving market with no ties to MS.
Sure MS does have a strong position on the Office suite space, but frankly its because they are still hands down the best.
It's just interesting to me that whenever there has been a superior competitor (Apple computers -- although I think the OS is actually somewhat subpar, but the hardware is great -- or Firefox's browser) they've made great strides against the "monopoly". These are things that shouldn't happen in a world with a real monopoly flexing its muscle.
I think the EU needs to go back to determine if Microsoft still has a monopoly. Every indication is that it does not. Let me take a quote from Wikipedia:
"In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos , alone or single + polein , to sell) exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods."
Microsoft no longer has all that much control even on it's own platform, much less all desktop PCs, given Mac's rapidly increasing market share. Furthermore, if monopolies are characterized by a lack of competition for a good or service, then why is there a huge rise in the popularity of different web browsers.
Microsoft has lost desktop PC marketshare, lost broswer share, lost laptop share. If they held a monopoly in the 90s, it's clear to me they no longer do. And if you ask most folks in the Valley now, they don't fear Microsoft anymore either. They no longer wield scary influence or sway in the industry. Sure they're a big player, like IBM, SAP, or Oracle. But no one trembles in their boots going head to head with them.
And my experience beta testing, and just about everyone else I know is that this is "by far" the best version of Windows Server yet. The server version is nothing like Vista in terms of user experience (despite the fact they're built from the same code base). Basically everything gets better, and you get more functionality. They just need the server team to work on consumer OS now:-)
Lets be clear to what I was responding to: Every piece of significant Internet technology designed, developed and deployed over the past 25-30 years has been open-source.
Note that the poster did not say "most" or "nothing is created in a vacuum". But rather "every piece" "has been open-source".
Almost everyone is partially dependent, at least in part, on open source. And like-wise, almost every technology had some roots in closed-source software too. And even the most closed software needs a community to exist.
But the presumption that every piece of significant internet software is open source is just a lie (as the parent suggests -- who was modded up to 5).
There are other items that you could list that were NOT open source developments:
Java, ASP/ASP.NET, C#, Flash, Exchange/Outlook, Adobe Reader, IE, Netscape, Google Search, Akamai caching, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, etc., etc., etc...
Don't confuse the blinders for the edge of the universe.
Windows NT knew about microkernels and moving things out of Ring-0 since the first day of its inception. The fact that you don't know much about the history of OSes or OS design, doesn't make your assertions correct.
It always cracks me up when these people seem to think that Dave Cutler doesn't know basic OS concepts.
Dumping is VERY different than bribery. Dumping is a term used to connote a usually legal act of simply selling your product cheaper overseas than domestically. This is not very uncommon with the US and Africa. In fact, our whole drug industry consistently dumps HIV, malaria, and other drugs into Africa and the East.
The bigger issue is when you do this against a competing foreign product. For example, if Japan was selling Honda trucks for a 20% below cost in the US, thereby hurting Ford and Chevy. But it's typically not considered a problem if what is being sold has no foreign competition.
Wolfram vs Slashdot. No offense, but most people on Slashdot have very little technical skill (relative to those who are technically skilled:-)), whereas Wolfram has shown strong technical skill many times. Slashdot is good for seeing good flame wars, but no one really expects any deep technical or scientific postings on here.
What are features in Vista that are a big step forward?
1) Windows Photo Gallery is massively improved in Vista. It's actually a very good photo application, and very fast. 2) Windows DVD Maker. The lack of this support in XP was a huge issue, at least for me. 3) Better games. As tacky as this sounds... having Texas Hold'em and Mahjong have taken my time wasting to whole new levels:-) 4) Search. While it seems cliche now, it is a feature that no future OS will not have. 5) Improved security. While many will argue this point, I do find things like UAC (or whatever it's called) to have actually been useful.
EVERY math textbook I have (that I can recall), represents angles as radians. The one I happen to have on my desk is, PDEs for Scientists and Engineers by Farlow -- and this is an introductory shallow text (although very good), not some hardcore geek text.
I haven't seen degrees used since about 7th grade -- seriously.
Did you read the study? He attempts to control for this:
"Red Hat and other Linux distribution vendors add value to their workstation distributions by including and supporting many applications that don't have a comparable component on a Microsoft Windows operating system. It is a common objection to any Windows and Linux comparison that counting the "optional" applications against the Linux distribution is unfair, so I've completed an extra level of analysis to exclude component vulnerabilities that do not have comparable functionality shipping with a Windows OS. You may read Red Hat and Windows - Defining an Apples-to-Apples Workstation Build for more details, but basically I install a rhel4ws computer and:
I exclude any component that is not installed by default, which includes all optional "server" components that ship with rhel4ws.
I additionally exclude text-internet, graphics (the gimp stuff) and office (OpenOffice) and Development Tools (gcc, etc) installation groups.
I use the rpm command to list out all packages that get installed and use that package list to filter vulnerabilities."
Slashdot Mirror
There's a few problems with the thesis that XP will be the safe platform to write applications to. First, many applications are just downright harder to write with XP. For example, look at the Task Scheduler API for XP vs post-XP. There are thousands of APIs like this. No developer in their right mind would choose to target XP. In terms of market penentration, since XP mode won't be on Home Premium, it won't make sense to build ISV apps for XP. And given that early indications are that Win7 will have pretty good uptake, it probably makes just as much sense to target Win7. Plus the improved Windows API will make your development generally more productive.
Not only that, most MCPs in the US (maybe it's different in Iceland) don't buy the licenses upfront like this. They get the licenses on demand as partners. They shouldn't be out anything except for the small window where they were installing a product for a customer and the customer goes belly up before paying for it.
This is just absurd. Tons of people can see and use the R&D that Microsoft produces. Go into virtually any CS conference, from PLDI to SIGGRAPH, and you'll see tons of papers that build on and cite research published by Microsoft. And where was some of the most important research on quantum computing done... well another industry lab, Bell Labs. BTW, Microsoft has also done some great work in quantum computing as well. Here's an example of some of their interesting work in topological quantum computing: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.0279v2.pdf
Now what you probably mean is why can't I just copy their research and sell it as my own product. Well like many colleges and universities (and other research groups like HP, IBM, and Sun's) Microsoft will patent ideas that they think have commercial viability. That is really no different than the hundred+ patents that MIT or Caltech does each year. Or the 500+ patents done by the UC system.
I get that slashdot people are supposed to be gung ho about "freedom", but don't be naive about how the real world works.
The _only_ thing open source ensures is that everyone has access to the source code. No guarantee it is well written, understandable, useful, or correct. With that said I'm not sure that everyone having access to the source code is all that important for government. No more so than the recipe for all foods we eat be available to everyone. It would be nice, but an audit trail (ie., the government has access to all source code, but not every guy on the stret) can probably gets you 99% of the value and doesn't bias against any vendors.
Because in Win7 here are some of the features that I think are MUCH bigger than service packs:
1) User mode scheduler
2) A new service controller model
3) Federated search
4) New taskbar
5) Fast window tiling
6) Multitouch support
7) Home group sharing
8) Device stage
9) And just in Media Center: support for ClearQAM, turbo scroll, home media sharing for recording, on screen keyboard, and a fair bit more http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3253&Itemid=1.
And this is just a partial list. You can argue that you don't like the features, but to say that this isn't a full release is just absurd. This is on par with virtually every other major OS release in recent years by any vendor.
And it's Microsoft's fault that the web is broken? If MS were to disappear tomorrow would the web be a lot better? There is absolutely NO indication (and I mean none, zero, nada, zilch) that there is anyone out there innovating on the web who is held back due to MS. Give me one example of something that is a quantum breakthrough that might exist if MS had not existed or if they closed up shop tomorrow. The fact of the matter is that Firefox, Opera, and even IE are simply incremental improvements over Mosaic. You'd think that in the past 15 years at least ONE product would have done some huge innovation, even if it was shut down later. But it has never happened -- and remember that Microsoft was really late to the web game, and even during that time there was no real leaps in innovation.
In fact, one could argue that the biggest leap in innovation, Ajax, happened by MS.
While I totally get the bundling argument, I think that argument made sense in 1996. In 2009 a web browser is as integral (if not more so) than a text processor or a desktop shell or a command line shell. And if you were to make a new command line shell you'd have a hard time arguing that Windows can't ship with theirs and we need to give users the ability to pick one when they buy their computer.
And lastly, while I think Firefox is a better browser than IE7, it's not a LOT better. Browsers really are about as close to commodities as you can find in software. Lets move on to actual real software where there's a difference that people really can see.
Your group must have written really bad code. With proper practices there would be no port necessary. The only huge port was from 16bit to 32bit. That was a pain. But in general, from one OS to the next one, we had to do nothing, zero, zilch. In fact most (if not all) of the applications I wrote back then still work today on XP and Vista.
Microsoft could make one version and sell it at the average cost of the 3 versions. But then Dell would say, "Well for our really low end machines, we want a cheaper version." Either MS can simply lower the price across the board or can differentiate with a lower cost version.
Likewise, Dell will also say, "For our high-end, high margin machines, we want to be able to say everything is high-end. Can we get an OS that appears to be more luxurious?"
The Windows 7 feature list is extremely public. I can name probably 15 features off the top of my head. Heck, I can name probably 8 new features in Media Center alone! Featurewise this release is as big as any Windows release I can think of. Probably more feature difference than Win2K vs WinXP.
Yes.
I don't understand what that has to do with anyting. Apple has, what, maybe 5% desktop market share?
Apple has about a 15% share on laptops, which is actually a growing segment of the market (and now selling faster than desktops).
"When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser."
Would you like some cheese to go with that? :-)
What are these half a dozen other browsers? I can name a few, but I'm not sure I could say they were all strictly better. The only one that I could say is much better is Firefox. And it's the only that has had any real marketing. Never underestimate the importance of marketing. It's not about a monopolistic practices. In this case marketing has played a large role.
My take is that MS is no longer a monopoly. I'd have no problem going against MS in any space where I think there is a significant technology/user experience gap.
Sure I won't do something stupid like try to sell a new filesystem to compete against FAT/NTFS and then argue that there's a monopoly for filesystems on Windows. But I think for virtually anything interesting I'd be happy to go heads up against Microsoft and feel comfortable that I could beat them with a superior product.
That's not how it works in ANY other market. Mergers have been denied, but not because of >50% market share. That's just absurd.
Does MS have a monopoly on the PC? Do they sufficiently have control of the market to demand terms to Apple, for example? I don't think so. Apple is thriving and doing effectively no business with Microsoft. Is Firefox beholden to MS? Again, another thriving market with no ties to MS.
Sure MS does have a strong position on the Office suite space, but frankly its because they are still hands down the best.
It's just interesting to me that whenever there has been a superior competitor (Apple computers -- although I think the OS is actually somewhat subpar, but the hardware is great -- or Firefox's browser) they've made great strides against the "monopoly". These are things that shouldn't happen in a world with a real monopoly flexing its muscle.
"In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos , alone or single + polein , to sell) exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it.
Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods."
Microsoft no longer has all that much control even on it's own platform, much less all desktop PCs, given Mac's rapidly increasing market share. Furthermore, if monopolies are characterized by a lack of competition for a good or service, then why is there a huge rise in the popularity of different web browsers.
Microsoft has lost desktop PC marketshare, lost broswer share, lost laptop share. If they held a monopoly in the 90s, it's clear to me they no longer do. And if you ask most folks in the Valley now, they don't fear Microsoft anymore either. They no longer wield scary influence or sway in the industry. Sure they're a big player, like IBM, SAP, or Oracle. But no one trembles in their boots going head to head with them.
That would give hope to Geraldine Ferraro...
They do give away the code to the Windows kernel:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/researchkernel.mspx
And my experience beta testing, and just about everyone else I know is that this is "by far" the best version of Windows Server yet. The server version is nothing like Vista in terms of user experience (despite the fact they're built from the same code base). Basically everything gets better, and you get more functionality. They just need the server team to work on consumer OS now :-)
See this eweek review: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/Windows-Server-2008-Is-Microsofts-Leanest-Meanest-Yet/
Lets be clear to what I was responding to: Every piece of significant Internet technology designed, developed and deployed over the past 25-30 years has been open-source.
Note that the poster did not say "most" or "nothing is created in a vacuum". But rather "every piece" "has been open-source".
Almost everyone is partially dependent, at least in part, on open source. And like-wise, almost every technology had some roots in closed-source software too. And even the most closed software needs a community to exist.
But the presumption that every piece of significant internet software is open source is just a lie (as the parent suggests -- who was modded up to 5).
There are other items that you could list that were NOT open source developments:
Java, ASP/ASP.NET, C#, Flash, Exchange/Outlook, Adobe Reader, IE, Netscape, Google Search, Akamai caching, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, etc., etc., etc...
Don't confuse the blinders for the edge of the universe.
Windows NT knew about microkernels and moving things out of Ring-0 since the first day of its inception. The fact that you don't know much about the history of OSes or OS design, doesn't make your assertions correct.
It always cracks me up when these people seem to think that Dave Cutler doesn't know basic OS concepts.
Dumping is VERY different than bribery. Dumping is a term used to connote a usually legal act of simply selling your product cheaper overseas than domestically. This is not very uncommon with the US and Africa. In fact, our whole drug industry consistently dumps HIV, malaria, and other drugs into Africa and the East.
The bigger issue is when you do this against a competing foreign product. For example, if Japan was selling Honda trucks for a 20% below cost in the US, thereby hurting Ford and Chevy. But it's typically not considered a problem if what is being sold has no foreign competition.
Wolfram vs Slashdot. No offense, but most people on Slashdot have very little technical skill (relative to those who are technically skilled :-)), whereas Wolfram has shown strong technical skill many times. Slashdot is good for seeing good flame wars, but no one really expects any deep technical or scientific postings on here.
What are features in Vista that are a big step forward?
:-)
1) Windows Photo Gallery is massively improved in Vista. It's actually a very good photo application, and very fast.
2) Windows DVD Maker. The lack of this support in XP was a huge issue, at least for me.
3) Better games. As tacky as this sounds... having Texas Hold'em and Mahjong have taken my time wasting to whole new levels
4) Search. While it seems cliche now, it is a feature that no future OS will not have.
5) Improved security. While many will argue this point, I do find things like UAC (or whatever it's called) to have actually been useful.
These are at least as big as USB support.
EVERY math textbook I have (that I can recall), represents angles as radians. The one I happen to have on my desk is, PDEs for Scientists and Engineers by Farlow -- and this is an introductory shallow text (although very good), not some hardcore geek text.
I haven't seen degrees used since about 7th grade -- seriously.
Did you read the study? He attempts to control for this:
"Red Hat and other Linux distribution vendors add value to their workstation distributions by including and supporting many applications that don't have a comparable component on a Microsoft Windows operating system. It is a common objection to any Windows and Linux comparison that counting the "optional" applications against the Linux distribution is unfair, so I've completed an extra level of analysis to exclude component vulnerabilities that do not have comparable functionality shipping with a Windows OS. You may read Red Hat and Windows - Defining an Apples-to-Apples Workstation Build for more details, but basically I install a rhel4ws computer and:
I exclude any component that is not installed by default, which includes all optional "server" components that ship with rhel4ws.
I additionally exclude text-internet, graphics (the gimp stuff) and office (OpenOffice) and Development Tools (gcc, etc) installation groups.
I use the rpm command to list out all packages that get installed and use that package list to filter vulnerabilities."