Well, Apple was also pretty bad at it. Anybody who used a Mac "back in the day" remembers how many applications designed for System 6 broke when System 7 came out, and how many 680x0 apps simply failed to run on PPC Macs even despite Apple's compatibility layer. And don't get me started on the Classic environment in OS X, and the transition of Carbon apps between Classic and OS X, both of those moves broke more applications than I care to remember.
Maybe I used too many crazy indie apps, but I'm pretty sure Apple only really tests the big players when they make moves like this.
Since I worked for a competition, I feel compelled to mention: DoubleClick may, or may not, be the largest banner advertising company on the web. They're definitely in the top three, but this isn't an industry that actually has metrics to determine who the "leader" is, like most industries do, and DoubleClick (and the other two big players in this field) don't share enough data to really determine this.
DoubleClick is certainly the most visible to the public, though.
If you now have search and banner campaigns through DoubleClick, suddenly your search campaigns are shuttled off to some other company? You can't feed both campaigns off the same budget anymore or access all your performance indicators in one place?
Sounds like Google is crippling DoubleClick's search business to provide a dubious benefit.
As far as oil companies go, it pisses me off because they are part of the reason our economy is doing so horrible. Yes, I know, it's business, and in business your goal is to make more money than the other guy...but still, it gets to the point where you would think someone would say "If we keep this up, the economy in our home country is going to flounder and get fucked. We should do something about this."
There's something you're forgetting: most oil companies, if not all of them, are multi-nationals. And they'll all happily sell to China, India, and all those other developing countries no matter how the US economy is doing.
You mentioned this twice in different replies, and I have to address it because it shows such a misunderstanding of economics. (Not that I'm an expert.)
I don't like that I'm paying more for gas in the US than I EVER have while oil companies are enjoying record profits...but that doesn't change the fact that I can only get gas for my car from one of those companies.
The demand for oil increases every year, and the amount of oil sold increases every year. And the demand for oil is rising a hell of a lot quicker than most products, considering that all the development nations like China and India is fueled by massive quantities of oil.
Oil companies make profits by skimming a percentage off the top of each gallon sold. Since more gallons are being sold, they're making "record" profits, even though they're charging the exact same for their product as they always have.
When you think about it, it would be off if they *weren't* making record products, it would indicate either fatal government meddling or imminent bankruptcy in that industry.
(The other one that bothers me is people's claim that gas stations are "gouging" gas prices every time there's some emergency in the world that lowers the supply of oil. They're not gouging, they're charging increased prices because the demand increased! These people obviously have no clue what gouging actually is.)
For instance, whenever I cut'n'paste a link from the Firefox URL bar into an Outlook email, you would expect the URL to paste into the email, right? NO! Because MS is so awesome and Outlook is Internet-aware, instead it pastes a cryptic little graphical question mark in a box.
I can't reproduce this using Firefox 2.0.0.13 and Outlook 2003.
But in any case, why blame Outlook? Firefox is the one creating the clipboard items, Outlook is just attempting to render them in a sensible fashion. It doesn't sound to be like the pasting application is at fault here.
Perhaps you're confusing some kind of MS Office ActiveX embedding with browser-based editing. Or maybe you're simply lying.
Now you're picking nits. Using the offline feature in Google Docs is going to require a plug-in also... GASP!
Really? I've never come across one...
Well, evidently, you're living under a rock.
Maybe, but you still haven't provided any examples, so I'm more inclined to think they simply don't exist. That's not to say Google isn't trying, but there's no point in saying there are all these third-party sites that can use data in Google Docs if there ain't.
care to show us some examples?
Go read the Google Docs API documentation, or just try out one of the many third party Google Docs gadgets; they're a right click away in Google Spreadsheets.
And yet you can't actually link to a single one. Or are you saying the API documentation has a list of third-party sites that can import Google Docs?
Ah yes, the "fewer features are better" view. Seriously?
Within this context, it's not a view, it's a fact. Seriously.
If your co-workers waste your time with "fancy features" or whatever the hell you're complaining about, how is that Microsoft's fault? Take it up with your co-workers. More features in a product is always better; that's why Office sells so many copies in the first place. Seriously.
I want to complement uptownguy for basically making all the replies I would have made if I hadn't been on a commuter train while this discussion was happening.:)
Office Live doesn't let people create or edit Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files from the browser.
100% wrong. I don't know how new the feature is, but Office Live has let you do this for some time. Please don't spread FUD.
And it doesn't work with Firefox on Linux at all (not because of Linux, but because Microsoft has disabled it).
Well, that's a point, but I take issue with your insinuation that Microsoft disabled it out of some 'evil' anti-competition policy when it's much, much more likely that it's disabled for a much more mundane reason. For instance, some compatibility issue that came up during testing.
In Google Docs, when one user selects and changes a cell in a spreadsheet, all other users see that in real time in their own application instances. Office Live doesn't have anything like that.
Yeah, you have to hit "refresh changes." But it's not far off, and frankly I think Google (and you) vastly overestimate how important this feature is.
Very easy. Many on-line services accept Google Docs as sources and/or sinks,
Really? I've never come across one... care to show us some examples?
It's a myth that MS Office works with 100% of MS Office documents; there are serious version incompatibilities, font problems, and macro problems.
In my decades of using Office, I've never seen it. I'm not saying that the compatibility headaches don't exist for some documents, but comparing an import from Office-to-Office (which I've seen done hundreds of times and never with any problem) to Office-to-Google Docs, the difference is night and day. You're saying that because 0.01% of Office documents have problems it's ok that 25% of Google Docs imports have problems-- that math doesn't add up.
In fact, I find the limits Google Docs imposes on formatting to be an advantage because it keeps people from wasting their time and my time by adding tricky features to documents.
Ah yes, the "fewer features are better" view. Seriously?
I don't really get the argument here. What's the difference between Google Docs' new functionality and Office Live? Other than that Microsoft is working from the desktop and moving to the web, and Google is working from the web and moving to the desktop. Oh, also: Office Live exists right now (albeit in beta), and Google only has a press release.
The article doesn't give a compelling reason for Microsoft being "scooped" in this case-- in fact, I think its author simply just don't know Office Live exists. Or am I missing something?
The results of this survey are: "people don't know what the hell they're talking about."
Basically, it says they don't like ads that "track their behavior", even if they're not personally identifiable. Then they say they don't like ads that aren't relevant to them. How's the advertiser supposed to know what's relevant to them without tracking their behavior at all? I don't know how these questions were asked, but the answers make no damn sense. Either that, or people in the survey didn't spend more than 3 neurons thinking about the issue.
For what it's worth, I'm all for tracking my behavior for ads... since it's a given I'm going to see ads, I'd much rather see ads about the topics I'm interested in.
even as the vice-president literally got away with shooting another man in the face.
He didn't "get away with it", there were no charges filed. It was an innocent mistake in which he injured a friend and they both moved past it. You're really weakening your case by including this little gem in it.
Yeah, screw the 240 million websites that use Javascript every day without causing seizures! We should throw them all out the window immediately because of this one offense! Also, I think C++ was used to write a virus once, so let's destroy all C++ compilers and programs! Help us make the world safe again, Dogun!
First of all, the planes looked like DC-8s. DC-3s are cute little prop transports, Xenu definitely had commercial jet transportation.:) (See the Wikipedia interpretation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Xenu_space_plane1A.jpg )
And as long as Scientology encourages the brain-washing of its followers, it's evil in my book and not even close to comparable to Christianity or Judaism. (I won't get into Islam!) If you are having a problem with your faith, your priest, pastor, or rabbi will be the first person to take some time off, read some books on philosophy or religious history, and make up your own mind about what to believe. Scientology, on the other hand, will charge you $20,000 to hook a pointless electrical device to you and waste an hour of your time.
That's great, but the Flash plugin doesn't have access to your browser's cache either. And even if it did, how could you copy a file *out* of the browser cache? Since the browser has no capability for that, and since Flash has no filesystem access, it'd be pointless-- when your browser decided to clear its cache, boom, your file is gone. Or if you use another computer.
Adobe's solution is the best for the 99.999% of the population that doesn't give a flying whit where their files are stored. For people like you, well, suck it up and use a different product, whiner.
Vista can recover from video card driver crashes. Please gain at least a minimal amount of experience with Vista before lying about its capabilities, please. Thank you.
Obviously, an OS can't protect itself entirely from faults in a driver that handles operations that the OS requires for its own operation... the driver that access the disk drives, for example. But a graphics driver? Surely it can and it should.
And... does.
This is the third post in this thread giving FUD about how Vista handles video card driver crashes. I'm sick of it.
Vista is different. When a video card driver crashes, Vista automatically restarts it and continues on like nothing happens. The entire premise of your rant is wrong. What makes you think that: 1) The crashes reported in this article resulted in BSODs? 2) Anything in Vista BSODs at all, other than buggy hardware? (I certainly haven't seen a BSOD in Vista, or whatever it's called now, and I've been running it since release. With some XP un-approved drivers.)
In fact, it's much easier to crash a Macintosh or a Linux computer with a bad driver, considering that they have no real way to auto-recover from that problem.
I'm sick of this pointless Vista bashing. Just admit that NVidia drivers suck without bringing Microsoft into the equation, ok? Microsoft is already doing everything possible, and much more than their competition.
I've been using ATI cards my whole (Windows) life, and I've never noticed any significant difference between the stability of ATI drivers and NVidia drivers. And considering that this post doesn't give the percentage of crashes caused by ATI drivers means the percentage is likely much, much lower... I'm inclined to just call your post bullshit.
You had one bad computer, a lemon. Sorry. Now get over it and join the rest of us in sanity-ville.
More seriously, I rag on Nvidea for poor Linux support, and this is more of a chance to bash them, but their drivers work fine under XP.
How do you know? Microsoft hasn't released the numbers for XP, these numbers only apply for Vista. (Or you're comparing 'statistical data' apples with 'personal experience' oranges.)
If Microsoft provided better documentation of their APIs, as the EU has been demanding, perhaps writing drivers wouldn't be such a pain in the ass?
ATI, Intel, and Matrox seem to manage just fine. Or at least they don't crash often enough to be called-out in the Slashdot headline.
I also wonder why closed source vendors don't open their code. They don't have to release it under the GPL, they can reatain all their copyrights, just publish the source. How could it hurt them? They retain copyrights and presumably patents so it's not like anyone could copy them.
They could be using patents they don't own, and have licensed from other companies for one. They could also be using entire code modules licensed from other companies, for that matter. In both cases, NVidia has no right to release that code, and their own code would (probably) be utterly useless without it.
For NVidia chipsets that include wifi chips, it's also a bit of CYA... the wifi chips have to be constrained to specific frequencies in different countries, and if someone downloaded their (hypothetical open source) driver and modified the frequencies, they could run afoul of the FCC or some other agency and suffer huge fines.
Is closed source closed so that nobody will realise just how abysmally shitty their kludges are?
Also a possibility.:)
If your OS crashes, your OS is crap. Microsoft, fix your OS and publish the code.
Vista can re-initialize hardware drivers that crash (in a detectable fashion) automatically and without rebooting. As far as I'm aware, this is better driver handling than every other OS except possibly BeOS. When my ATI video card driver crashes (usually while watching a DVD and playing WOW at the same time-- if someone from ATI is reading this, please fix this!), my screen goes blank for a few seconds then springs back into life. WOW and VLC don't complain, they just go on playing as usual, and I'd never know what happened if not for the little Vista caption that reads, "your video card driver just crashed and was restarted."
In other words, Vista already handles shitty drivers better than most other OSes. This is clearly NVidia's fault.
If they did, you'd see long rants on Slashdot how an OS should do nothing but run applications. Unless it's Linux, in which case it should include several different, competing, kitchen sinks.
Frankly, I agree with you, but Microsoft improving bundled software goes against the Slashdot zeitgeist. I'd recommend Paint.NET, but you can't install software so... uh... sorry.
Well, for one, the name "Photoshop Express" doesn't bring to mind crippled people and/or bizarre sexual acts. (Besides, there are better free paint programs than GIMP... Paint.NET springs instantly to mind.)
The other questions, you'll have to address to Adobe.
Oh no! Adobe has alienated you! Surely Photoshop Express is doomed to failure, since Ralph Spoilsport refuses to turn on his modem! (Except, apparently, to make inane self-important posts on Slashdot.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Apple was also pretty bad at it. Anybody who used a Mac "back in the day" remembers how many applications designed for System 6 broke when System 7 came out, and how many 680x0 apps simply failed to run on PPC Macs even despite Apple's compatibility layer. And don't get me started on the Classic environment in OS X, and the transition of Carbon apps between Classic and OS X, both of those moves broke more applications than I care to remember.
Maybe I used too many crazy indie apps, but I'm pretty sure Apple only really tests the big players when they make moves like this.
Since I worked for a competition, I feel compelled to mention: DoubleClick may, or may not, be the largest banner advertising company on the web. They're definitely in the top three, but this isn't an industry that actually has metrics to determine who the "leader" is, like most industries do, and DoubleClick (and the other two big players in this field) don't share enough data to really determine this.
DoubleClick is certainly the most visible to the public, though.
If you now have search and banner campaigns through DoubleClick, suddenly your search campaigns are shuttled off to some other company? You can't feed both campaigns off the same budget anymore or access all your performance indicators in one place?
Sounds like Google is crippling DoubleClick's search business to provide a dubious benefit.
As far as oil companies go, it pisses me off because they are part of the reason our economy is doing so horrible. Yes, I know, it's business, and in business your goal is to make more money than the other guy...but still, it gets to the point where you would think someone would say "If we keep this up, the economy in our home country is going to flounder and get fucked. We should do something about this."
There's something you're forgetting: most oil companies, if not all of them, are multi-nationals. And they'll all happily sell to China, India, and all those other developing countries no matter how the US economy is doing.
You mentioned this twice in different replies, and I have to address it because it shows such a misunderstanding of economics. (Not that I'm an expert.)
I don't like that I'm paying more for gas in the US than I EVER have while oil companies are enjoying record profits...but that doesn't change the fact that I can only get gas for my car from one of those companies.
The demand for oil increases every year, and the amount of oil sold increases every year. And the demand for oil is rising a hell of a lot quicker than most products, considering that all the development nations like China and India is fueled by massive quantities of oil.
Oil companies make profits by skimming a percentage off the top of each gallon sold. Since more gallons are being sold, they're making "record" profits, even though they're charging the exact same for their product as they always have.
When you think about it, it would be off if they *weren't* making record products, it would indicate either fatal government meddling or imminent bankruptcy in that industry.
(The other one that bothers me is people's claim that gas stations are "gouging" gas prices every time there's some emergency in the world that lowers the supply of oil. They're not gouging, they're charging increased prices because the demand increased! These people obviously have no clue what gouging actually is.)
For instance, whenever I cut'n'paste a link from the Firefox URL bar into an Outlook email, you would expect the URL to paste into the email, right? NO! Because MS is so awesome and Outlook is Internet-aware, instead it pastes a cryptic little graphical question mark in a box.
I can't reproduce this using Firefox 2.0.0.13 and Outlook 2003.
But in any case, why blame Outlook? Firefox is the one creating the clipboard items, Outlook is just attempting to render them in a sensible fashion. It doesn't sound to be like the pasting application is at fault here.
Perhaps you're confusing some kind of MS Office ActiveX embedding with browser-based editing. Or maybe you're simply lying.
Now you're picking nits. Using the offline feature in Google Docs is going to require a plug-in also... GASP!
Really? I've never come across one...
Well, evidently, you're living under a rock.
Maybe, but you still haven't provided any examples, so I'm more inclined to think they simply don't exist. That's not to say Google isn't trying, but there's no point in saying there are all these third-party sites that can use data in Google Docs if there ain't.
care to show us some examples?
Go read the Google Docs API documentation, or just try out one of the many third party Google Docs gadgets; they're a right click away in Google Spreadsheets.
And yet you can't actually link to a single one. Or are you saying the API documentation has a list of third-party sites that can import Google Docs?
Ah yes, the "fewer features are better" view. Seriously?
Within this context, it's not a view, it's a fact. Seriously.
If your co-workers waste your time with "fancy features" or whatever the hell you're complaining about, how is that Microsoft's fault? Take it up with your co-workers. More features in a product is always better; that's why Office sells so many copies in the first place. Seriously.
I want to complement uptownguy for basically making all the replies I would have made if I hadn't been on a commuter train while this discussion was happening. :)
Office Live doesn't let people create or edit Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files from the browser.
100% wrong. I don't know how new the feature is, but Office Live has let you do this for some time. Please don't spread FUD.
And it doesn't work with Firefox on Linux at all (not because of Linux, but because Microsoft has disabled it).
Well, that's a point, but I take issue with your insinuation that Microsoft disabled it out of some 'evil' anti-competition policy when it's much, much more likely that it's disabled for a much more mundane reason. For instance, some compatibility issue that came up during testing.
In Google Docs, when one user selects and changes a cell in a spreadsheet, all other users see that in real time in their own application instances. Office Live doesn't have anything like that.
Yeah, you have to hit "refresh changes." But it's not far off, and frankly I think Google (and you) vastly overestimate how important this feature is.
Very easy. Many on-line services accept Google Docs as sources and/or sinks,
Really? I've never come across one... care to show us some examples?
It's a myth that MS Office works with 100% of MS Office documents; there are serious version incompatibilities, font problems, and macro problems.
In my decades of using Office, I've never seen it. I'm not saying that the compatibility headaches don't exist for some documents, but comparing an import from Office-to-Office (which I've seen done hundreds of times and never with any problem) to Office-to-Google Docs, the difference is night and day. You're saying that because 0.01% of Office documents have problems it's ok that 25% of Google Docs imports have problems-- that math doesn't add up.
In fact, I find the limits Google Docs imposes on formatting to be an advantage because it keeps people from wasting their time and my time by adding tricky features to documents.
Ah yes, the "fewer features are better" view. Seriously?
I don't really get the argument here. What's the difference between Google Docs' new functionality and Office Live? Other than that Microsoft is working from the desktop and moving to the web, and Google is working from the web and moving to the desktop. Oh, also: Office Live exists right now (albeit in beta), and Google only has a press release.
The article doesn't give a compelling reason for Microsoft being "scooped" in this case-- in fact, I think its author simply just don't know Office Live exists. Or am I missing something?
The results of this survey are: "people don't know what the hell they're talking about."
Basically, it says they don't like ads that "track their behavior", even if they're not personally identifiable. Then they say they don't like ads that aren't relevant to them. How's the advertiser supposed to know what's relevant to them without tracking their behavior at all? I don't know how these questions were asked, but the answers make no damn sense. Either that, or people in the survey didn't spend more than 3 neurons thinking about the issue.
For what it's worth, I'm all for tracking my behavior for ads... since it's a given I'm going to see ads, I'd much rather see ads about the topics I'm interested in.
even as the vice-president literally got away with shooting another man in the face.
He didn't "get away with it", there were no charges filed. It was an innocent mistake in which he injured a friend and they both moved past it. You're really weakening your case by including this little gem in it.
Yeah, screw the 240 million websites that use Javascript every day without causing seizures! We should throw them all out the window immediately because of this one offense! Also, I think C++ was used to write a virus once, so let's destroy all C++ compilers and programs! Help us make the world safe again, Dogun!
The media never could grasp the correct usage of hackers (hackers versus crackers
Ok, that battle was lost literally 20 years ago, give it the hell up already. Seriously, you're only deluding yourself on this one.
hackers versus script kiddies
I've always assumed that script kiddies are a type of hacker who use only code/exploits written by other people instead of writing their own.
and confusing Anonymous for hackers isn't likely to help.
Yes, well, if they're going to be a group, maybe they should get a name that isn't completely moronic.
First of all, the planes looked like DC-8s. DC-3s are cute little prop transports, Xenu definitely had commercial jet transportation. :) (See the Wikipedia interpretation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Xenu_space_plane1A.jpg )
And as long as Scientology encourages the brain-washing of its followers, it's evil in my book and not even close to comparable to Christianity or Judaism. (I won't get into Islam!) If you are having a problem with your faith, your priest, pastor, or rabbi will be the first person to take some time off, read some books on philosophy or religious history, and make up your own mind about what to believe. Scientology, on the other hand, will charge you $20,000 to hook a pointless electrical device to you and waste an hour of your time.
Self-respect?
Maybe you missed this part of the movie: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dT59FXkS93Q
Playing with the boys, indeed.
I like when people who use OS X's Dashboard, or Vista's Sidebar, or Google Widgets say that Active Desktop sucked.
It's the same thing! From my perspective, Microsoft was a full decade ahead on this front.
(Not saying that the parent doesn't also hate Dashboard, Sidebar, Widgets.)
That's great, but the Flash plugin doesn't have access to your browser's cache either. And even if it did, how could you copy a file *out* of the browser cache? Since the browser has no capability for that, and since Flash has no filesystem access, it'd be pointless-- when your browser decided to clear its cache, boom, your file is gone. Or if you use another computer.
Adobe's solution is the best for the 99.999% of the population that doesn't give a flying whit where their files are stored. For people like you, well, suck it up and use a different product, whiner.
Vista can recover from video card driver crashes. Please gain at least a minimal amount of experience with Vista before lying about its capabilities, please. Thank you.
Obviously, an OS can't protect itself entirely from faults in a driver that handles operations that the OS requires for its own operation... the driver that access the disk drives, for example. But a graphics driver? Surely it can and it should.
And... does.
This is the third post in this thread giving FUD about how Vista handles video card driver crashes. I'm sick of it.
Wow, welcome to Windows 95 or Mac OS 7, Linux world.
Vista is different. When a video card driver crashes, Vista automatically restarts it and continues on like nothing happens. The entire premise of your rant is wrong. What makes you think that:
1) The crashes reported in this article resulted in BSODs?
2) Anything in Vista BSODs at all, other than buggy hardware? (I certainly haven't seen a BSOD in Vista, or whatever it's called now, and I've been running it since release. With some XP un-approved drivers.)
In fact, it's much easier to crash a Macintosh or a Linux computer with a bad driver, considering that they have no real way to auto-recover from that problem.
I'm sick of this pointless Vista bashing. Just admit that NVidia drivers suck without bringing Microsoft into the equation, ok? Microsoft is already doing everything possible, and much more than their competition.
Wow, tell us how you really feel.
I've been using ATI cards my whole (Windows) life, and I've never noticed any significant difference between the stability of ATI drivers and NVidia drivers. And considering that this post doesn't give the percentage of crashes caused by ATI drivers means the percentage is likely much, much lower... I'm inclined to just call your post bullshit.
You had one bad computer, a lemon. Sorry. Now get over it and join the rest of us in sanity-ville.
There are several problems with your post.
:)
More seriously, I rag on Nvidea for poor Linux support, and this is more of a chance to bash them, but their drivers work fine under XP.
How do you know? Microsoft hasn't released the numbers for XP, these numbers only apply for Vista. (Or you're comparing 'statistical data' apples with 'personal experience' oranges.)
If Microsoft provided better documentation of their APIs, as the EU has been demanding, perhaps writing drivers wouldn't be such a pain in the ass?
ATI, Intel, and Matrox seem to manage just fine. Or at least they don't crash often enough to be called-out in the Slashdot headline.
I also wonder why closed source vendors don't open their code. They don't have to release it under the GPL, they can reatain all their copyrights, just publish the source. How could it hurt them? They retain copyrights and presumably patents so it's not like anyone could copy them.
They could be using patents they don't own, and have licensed from other companies for one. They could also be using entire code modules licensed from other companies, for that matter. In both cases, NVidia has no right to release that code, and their own code would (probably) be utterly useless without it.
For NVidia chipsets that include wifi chips, it's also a bit of CYA... the wifi chips have to be constrained to specific frequencies in different countries, and if someone downloaded their (hypothetical open source) driver and modified the frequencies, they could run afoul of the FCC or some other agency and suffer huge fines.
Is closed source closed so that nobody will realise just how abysmally shitty their kludges are?
Also a possibility.
If your OS crashes, your OS is crap. Microsoft, fix your OS and publish the code.
Vista can re-initialize hardware drivers that crash (in a detectable fashion) automatically and without rebooting. As far as I'm aware, this is better driver handling than every other OS except possibly BeOS. When my ATI video card driver crashes (usually while watching a DVD and playing WOW at the same time-- if someone from ATI is reading this, please fix this!), my screen goes blank for a few seconds then springs back into life. WOW and VLC don't complain, they just go on playing as usual, and I'd never know what happened if not for the little Vista caption that reads, "your video card driver just crashed and was restarted."
In other words, Vista already handles shitty drivers better than most other OSes. This is clearly NVidia's fault.
If they did, you'd see long rants on Slashdot how an OS should do nothing but run applications. Unless it's Linux, in which case it should include several different, competing, kitchen sinks.
Frankly, I agree with you, but Microsoft improving bundled software goes against the Slashdot zeitgeist. I'd recommend Paint.NET, but you can't install software so... uh... sorry.
Why does it require my images to be uploaded to be edited? (I do not want any of my copyrighted media to cross the line of possession demarcation.)
Because Flash plug-ins don't have access to your filesystem, duh.
Am I the only one noticing this "service" appears to be only intended for amateurs in image manipulation?
It's a Flash site. Duh. You can't get professional tools over Flash, last time I checked Photoshop was over a gig.
How is this ANY better than the FREE GIMP?? http://www.gimp.org/
Well, for one, the name "Photoshop Express" doesn't bring to mind crippled people and/or bizarre sexual acts. (Besides, there are better free paint programs than GIMP... Paint.NET springs instantly to mind.)
The other questions, you'll have to address to Adobe.
Oh no! Adobe has alienated you! Surely Photoshop Express is doomed to failure, since Ralph Spoilsport refuses to turn on his modem! (Except, apparently, to make inane self-important posts on Slashdot.)