But ok: try playing Starsiege: Tribes then. The master server is down, and without it it can't connect to any game servers that may still be up. (If any are.) I believe Tribes 2's master server is down as well.
Let's assuming Microsoft's reason for doing this (friends list limited to 100 friends) is correct. Let's say that instead of cutting off Xbox games, they instead offered this ballot to all Xbox Live members:
Choose one: 1) Raise friend list limit to 1,000 friends 2) Continue playing original Xbox games online
Which do you think the game-playing audience would have chosen?
This seems to me to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of decision. There's nothing you can do to make every happy all the time. However, I'd guess that most Xbox gamers would choose option 1.
I'd even be ok with it if all they did was add a decent Watch Folder feature to it, so I can use my other (preferred) media software 99.9% of the time and *only* use iTunes for iPhone sync. That retarded "Add To iTunes" folder is not even close to the same thing as being able to set a watch folder, especially since you can't replace it with a shortcut to your actual media library.
I read the Wired article, and I never really figured out what he was trying to accomplish with his little experiment. Can anybody fill in the blanks for me?
Look, the pertinent fact here is that you worked for Microsoft,
I worked for a company that was acquired by Microsoft. I was never on Microsoft's payroll, never on Microsoft's health plan, and never on Microsoft's retirement plan. For all intents and purposes, I've never worked for Microsoft.
Should I have quit when my company got acquired? Would that have made you happy?
including Microsoft marketing
That's a blatant lie. Stop lying about me.
If people want to know more about you or your resume, they shouldn't take my word for it, they can just follow the link to your resume.
The link to my resume only shows that you're a fucking liar. I encourage people to follow it.
Your resume shows you to be just what you are: a 20 something who's grown up around Microsoft and with Microsoft technologies and who obviously has had no exposure to anything else.
You didn't even read my resume. You said I worked at Microsoft in 2002. LIE. You said I worked for Microsoft marketing. LIE. You even linked to a page that reveals both of those "facts" are nothing but blatant lies. (Assuming you even bothered to find my resume *before* you started slinging the bullshit.)
You are a lying piece of shit.
I don't know why you'd even think I'd give a shit what you think after you smeared me like that.
My job history there doesn't say I was at Microsoft in 2002! You just made-up a job history, one that has absolutely nothing to do with your source, and posted it here. Man, you really are a jackass. Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.
Yeah, but do you have any qualifications or any experience in anything other than Microsoft Windows?
Yes. You'd know that if you actually read my LinkedIn profile, you lying sack of shit.
Obviously not.
Obviously so. I used Macs exclusively until 2002 or so when I joined the working world. After that, I used a Mac as my main desktop (and a Windows box for gaming) until about 2008, when I put the Mac in the garage and went Windows-only.
Apart from that, I've tried Linux on several occasions: Redhat 6.2, Corel 1.0, a couple versions of Ubuntu (I can't remember which). I never stick with it very long, because I've yet to encounter a Linux install that supports all of the hardware of the computer I install it on-- usually what holds me up is power options, sleep/suspend/whatever.
That said, I've administered a MUD on Linux. Although that's not Linux GUI experience, that's still a lot of Linux administration experience.
Have I defended myself against your lies enough in this thread? I'll leave you be so you can maybe start lying about someone else for a change. Please eat a bag of shit and die in a fire, thank you.
Actually, I didn't even work at the hospital yet in 2002, I was still working retail at OfficeMax.
Please give me the link you were looking at, this is really driving me nuts. Either there's a site full of bullshit about my work history out there, or there's another person with my name at Microsoft (I doubt it), or you're the biggest asshole ever.
Linux (and UNIX before it) has multiple users, they can log in, and each of them can run whatever graphical environment they want to on whatever graphics devices they have access to.
So you're telling me that 5 different Linux users can be logged into a single workstation with a single screen at the same time, and seamlessly switch between accounts without ever logging off? I really get the sense people participating in this discussion don't know what Fast User Switching even is.
I mean, obviously I know that a Linux/Unix mainframe can have multiple users logged in at once, each with their own complete terminal-- we're talking about multiple accounts sharing a single terminal on a single computer without having to log off/on to switch between them.
The reason I don't count CLI-only features is: 1) Since Fast User Switching is a GUI feature, a CLI-only version is same is *not* an equivalent feature. Even if the only "innovation" was making it work with a GUI, that's still an innovation. 2) Features that only exist in a CLI are inaccessible to the vast majority of users.
Note: you have to know WHAT THE FEATURE IS before you can address the point. Please keep that in mind before replying.
a well-designed GUI
Linux has a well-designed GUI? When did this happen?
Look, you have been working for Microsoft since 2002 (I'm going by your home page), pretty much since you finished college.
What the fuck homepage are you looking at? I worked at a hospital in 2002. Hell, the hospital didn't even use Microsoft products other than Windows-- it used Lotus Notes. Are you sure you're looking at the right page?
I did work for Microsoft during two brief periods:
1) I did testing for Microsoft Games for a few months as contract work with Volt. This was, what... 2006? I think? My name is on the credits of Gears of War, which came out in '06, so yah. Volt contractors wear orange badges at Microsoft.
2) I've been working for a web marketing/technology company for the last 3.5 years or so-- for a brief portion of that time, our company had been purchased by Microsoft (so I became a Microsoft blue badge pretty much by accident/default). The division of the company I work in was then re-sold to a French holding company, so I'm no longer a Microsoft anything.
Also: Microsoft took a completely hands-off approach to running our division, we were Microsoft employees in name-only... I've never been on the Microsoft health plan or retirement plan, for example. About the only Microsoft benefit we got is MS Store access. (And the various local businesses in the Seattle area that have discounts for MS employees, but that's not MS' doing.)
For the last few years, you've been working for Microsoft marketing.
I've never worked for Microsoft marketing. Ever.
The company, the 500+ employee company, does have *some* people in it who do work for various Microsoft groups. I'm not in that role, and I've never worked with those groups, and I've never worked with Microsoft itself on anything.
Can you provide a link to this page so I can figure out what you were looking at? You're getting a lot of wrong impressions from it.
Why do you feel compelled to make definitive-sounding statements on things you apparently know nothing about?
Because I'm not? Look, if I'm wrong, correct me, give me a cite. I'm fully aware that I don't understand everything in the world about everything in the world.
My big problem is that I'm being correct by people who *clearly* don't know what they're talking about. The first respondent was telling me that the Arc Mouse wasn't innovative, but he didn't even know what it was! You're giving me a load of stuff about Linux, but you don't have anything in your post that illustrates that you understand what Fast User Switching is, or demonstrates that Linux' feature is equivalent. You also haven't addressed whether it appeared in Linux distros before Windows XP (innovative) or aft
You still haven't given an example of a product you'd consider innovative.
(Also I'm wondering how you reconcile, say, the Surface situation, where Microsoft Research created innovative Surface and it's become an innovative product. But that aside.)
Look, the real problem is that the low level of discourse here means that anything you claim Microsoft innovated, even extremely clear-cut cases like the Office 2007 ribbon, people are going to piss all over. "That's not really innovative!" How do they justify that? Well, the word "innovative" has a vague definition, so fortunately they can... just change the definition to "if it came from Microsoft, it's not innovative."
That's why I prefaced this whole thread with "you're never going to get a fair discussion of Microsoft innovation on Slashdot." Seems to be holding pretty true.
I'd have to use it to see if it's the same thing or not. Just from the screenshots, I can tell that whatever it does with tabs, it didn't get rid of the traditional menu bar and toolbars, so my first inclination is to say "that's completely different."
But thanks for replying with actual information, instead of a long series of wrong.
Well, fair enough. Like I said, I would have taken the grandparent at face level if he hadn't been wrong in pretty much every other detail in his post.
I guess my question then is, did Linux distros have this feature in the GUI before Windows XP came out? Or is it in the GUI now as a response to Windows XP?
(I know this is the unpopular opinion on Slashdot, but I don't really care about the CLI implementation, since it's inaccessible to a high percentage of both users and applications. Only interested in the GUI implementation.)
I mean the ribbon interface is just a different menubar layout.
No, it's not. Try actually using it.
Shadow copy has been almost standard practice in the server world way before Microsoft ever did it.
No, it hasn't. Novell had an undelete function, which is a lot closer than your RAID example. If you had cited that, I'd have been more impressed... but it's still not equivalent to Shadow Copy. (And RAID? Seriously? Do you even know what Shadow Copy *is*?)
Umm nope. Linux has always supported virtual terminals. You can have multple concurrent sessions under different users going on and switch between them without logging in and out at all.
Fair enough; though I've never seen a Linux distro with that option enabled.
I beleive it was acutally Sony who did it first with the PS2 but reagardless, innovative?
The PS2 HD expansion came out long after the Xbox was already popular.
Arc Mouse? I'm not ever going to believe that just slightly changing the shape of a mouse is true innovation.
The fact that it folds is the innovative part. Do you have any familiarity with these products at all? So far you've been wrong on pretty much every detail...
The only assertion you've made that *may* be right is the one about fast user switching in Linux, but since I've never seen that feature enabled on any of the Linux distros I've used, and your poor track record, I'm inclined to call BS on that as well.
Well I would if it was an actual product people could really buy.
It is. It's B2B, but what's stopping you from buying the "actual product" right now? Nothing. Hell, our company owns two of them... how did we get them? We bought them from Microsoft.
All that aside, fine: tell me what you consider an innovative product? Give me an example.
Re:How Marketable Will That Skill Be?
on
The Art of Scalability
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Are you also fed up and sick and tired of the Windows-hating posts?
Yes.
Or IE hating posts?
Only the ones that don't acknowledge IE7 and IE8 exist, which is most of them. So... yup.
Or Apple-hating posts?
Yah.
I must have missed your impassioned pleas for those to stop.
Is it really that wrong to want the level of discourse to rise above "moron" levels on this forum? Is it really so wrong that I object to reading the exact same comment a hundred times a week, that people get modded up for adding absolutely *nothing* we haven't seen a million times before?
Interesting that with all the griping and carping that goes on here, with all the rants against this product or this technology or that company, the one thing you decide to stand up and protect is...Twitter.
Maybe you should have waited for the answer to your questions before making assumptions. Because now you just look like an idiot.
ClearType had plenty of prior art, so I don't think it counts as significant innovation.
Like what?
Font smoothing had been done before, but nothing that made use of subpixel rendering. At least, not to the best of my knowledge... please correct me with a citation. (Or, alternatively, stop spreading bullcrap when you have no citation. Thank you.)
Microsoft has become the Company they scorned in the 90's... IBM. I wonder how many IBM'ers are laughing at Microsoft now that the shoe is on the other foot?
Considering how bloated IBM is, and how poor some of their flagship products are (Domino/Notes, specifically), I'd say in this case that the shoe is on *both* feet.
Everyone seems to agree that Microsoft isn't an innovator, so who is?
You're not going to get a fair answer to that question on Slashdot.
I mean, Apple completely stole Time Machine from Microsoft's already-implemented Shadow Copy feature, were they derided as copy-cats? No. But Microsoft uses a transparency effect in Aero just similar to a transparency effect in OS X, and suddenly there's huge posters accusing Microsoft of being nothing but a copy machine.
To actually answer the question, Microsoft hasn't innovated anything truly new in decades? I'd say the Office 2007 Ribbon interface is certainly something truly new*. I'd say that the fact that Firefox 4's UI looks a hell of a lot like Internet Explorer 8's UI probably means something. (To be fair, it might just mean both of them cribbed from Google. But that's still something.:) Fast user switching was in Windows before OS X or Linux had it. (If Linux has it now?)
In the Enterprise, there's Sharepoint, which isn't a completely new idea, but combines several existing ideas in a very useful fashion. There's Microsoft's dominance in data processing technologies with their OLAP tools. (Actually, I just Googled that and it looks like they bought that from another company-- oops.)
Looking at a different area... I'd certainly say Xbox Live was innovative in many ways. I'd say putting a HD inside a game console was a pretty innovative idea, as was the entire concept of Xbox Live Arcade (especially since all the competitors in that space have ripped it off.) And what about the Arc Mouse for laptops? That thing's pretty damned slick and innovative. There's the Surface table/technology.
In short, Microsoft might not be the most innovative company in the world (although who is?) But don't pretend they aren't doing anything, either-- you're only deluding yourself.
* Of course at this point the Slashdotter chimes in with "the Ribbon sucks! I hate the Ribbon! It takes 46 years to figure out how to save a file now! etc!" That misses the point that the Ribbon is, in fact, new.
Perhaps they will do a follow up on how there can be a huge running firefight with automatic weapons and virtually no cover, and yet nobody from either side gets hurt.
The GI Joe cartoon in the 80s frequently had full-on military battles-- with aircraft, artillery, armor, missiles and lasers-- and nobody got hurt, ever.
Even as a kid, I didn't buy it. "Oh come on, EVERY jet pilot's parachute opens? EVERY tank crew abandons the vehicle before it blows? No way!"
Wow, despite the disclaimer somebody still posts the "OMG I hate Twitterz so much!" post. I guess there's just no avoiding it on this site. Yes, we get it. You hate Twitter. We. Get. It. Stop posting it. Please.
What I mean is, they'll probably put the burguer or soda first, then the fries, when there's only the first item in your tray, rotate it.
Ok I'll bite... why? What is this supposed to accomplish?
"Oh haha! You fast food workers are so stupid! My fries are on the LEFT side of my burger and they're supposed to be on the RIGHT side of my burger! Also they're facing backwards instead of forward! I should complain to the manager because you made me turn my fry box around before eating them, you know."
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. I also think about the thing I've seen a BILLION TIMES in every sci-fi medium ever.
The answer is: since people have been worrying about this since the 19th century, and we haven't destroyed ourselves yet, we're perfectly fine.
Also: watch less cliched sci-fi.
Original Xbox had MMOs on it.
But ok: try playing Starsiege: Tribes then. The master server is down, and without it it can't connect to any game servers that may still be up. (If any are.) I believe Tribes 2's master server is down as well.
Devil's Advocate:
Let's assuming Microsoft's reason for doing this (friends list limited to 100 friends) is correct. Let's say that instead of cutting off Xbox games, they instead offered this ballot to all Xbox Live members:
Choose one:
1) Raise friend list limit to 1,000 friends
2) Continue playing original Xbox games online
Which do you think the game-playing audience would have chosen?
This seems to me to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of decision. There's nothing you can do to make every happy all the time. However, I'd guess that most Xbox gamers would choose option 1.
You wouldn't have this problem on PC,
Sure you would. Try playing Tabula Rasa online right now, that's a PC game.
I'd even be ok with it if all they did was add a decent Watch Folder feature to it, so I can use my other (preferred) media software 99.9% of the time and *only* use iTunes for iPhone sync. That retarded "Add To iTunes" folder is not even close to the same thing as being able to set a watch folder, especially since you can't replace it with a shortcut to your actual media library.
But yeah, what a piece of bloated crap software.
I read the Wired article, and I never really figured out what he was trying to accomplish with his little experiment. Can anybody fill in the blanks for me?
Look, the pertinent fact here is that you worked for Microsoft,
I worked for a company that was acquired by Microsoft. I was never on Microsoft's payroll, never on Microsoft's health plan, and never on Microsoft's retirement plan. For all intents and purposes, I've never worked for Microsoft.
Should I have quit when my company got acquired? Would that have made you happy?
including Microsoft marketing
That's a blatant lie. Stop lying about me.
If people want to know more about you or your resume, they shouldn't take my word for it, they can just follow the link to your resume.
The link to my resume only shows that you're a fucking liar. I encourage people to follow it.
Your resume shows you to be just what you are: a 20 something who's grown up around Microsoft and with Microsoft technologies and who obviously has had no exposure to anything else.
You didn't even read my resume. You said I worked at Microsoft in 2002. LIE. You said I worked for Microsoft marketing. LIE. You even linked to a page that reveals both of those "facts" are nothing but blatant lies. (Assuming you even bothered to find my resume *before* you started slinging the bullshit.)
You are a lying piece of shit.
I don't know why you'd even think I'd give a shit what you think after you smeared me like that.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesschend
WTF!?
My job history there doesn't say I was at Microsoft in 2002! You just made-up a job history, one that has absolutely nothing to do with your source, and posted it here. Man, you really are a jackass. Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.
Yeah, but do you have any qualifications or any experience in anything other than Microsoft Windows?
Yes. You'd know that if you actually read my LinkedIn profile, you lying sack of shit.
Obviously not.
Obviously so. I used Macs exclusively until 2002 or so when I joined the working world. After that, I used a Mac as my main desktop (and a Windows box for gaming) until about 2008, when I put the Mac in the garage and went Windows-only.
Apart from that, I've tried Linux on several occasions: Redhat 6.2, Corel 1.0, a couple versions of Ubuntu (I can't remember which). I never stick with it very long, because I've yet to encounter a Linux install that supports all of the hardware of the computer I install it on-- usually what holds me up is power options, sleep/suspend/whatever.
That said, I've administered a MUD on Linux. Although that's not Linux GUI experience, that's still a lot of Linux administration experience.
Have I defended myself against your lies enough in this thread? I'll leave you be so you can maybe start lying about someone else for a change. Please eat a bag of shit and die in a fire, thank you.
Not going to reply to the whole post right now, but can you explain how you think RAID and Shadow Copy have anything to do with each other?
Actually, I didn't even work at the hospital yet in 2002, I was still working retail at OfficeMax.
Please give me the link you were looking at, this is really driving me nuts. Either there's a site full of bullshit about my work history out there, or there's another person with my name at Microsoft (I doubt it), or you're the biggest asshole ever.
Linux (and UNIX before it) has multiple users, they can log in, and each of them can run whatever graphical environment they want to on whatever graphics devices they have access to.
So you're telling me that 5 different Linux users can be logged into a single workstation with a single screen at the same time, and seamlessly switch between accounts without ever logging off? I really get the sense people participating in this discussion don't know what Fast User Switching even is.
I mean, obviously I know that a Linux/Unix mainframe can have multiple users logged in at once, each with their own complete terminal-- we're talking about multiple accounts sharing a single terminal on a single computer without having to log off/on to switch between them.
The reason I don't count CLI-only features is:
1) Since Fast User Switching is a GUI feature, a CLI-only version is same is *not* an equivalent feature. Even if the only "innovation" was making it work with a GUI, that's still an innovation.
2) Features that only exist in a CLI are inaccessible to the vast majority of users.
Note: you have to know WHAT THE FEATURE IS before you can address the point. Please keep that in mind before replying.
a well-designed GUI
Linux has a well-designed GUI? When did this happen?
Look, you have been working for Microsoft since 2002 (I'm going by your home page), pretty much since you finished college.
What the fuck homepage are you looking at? I worked at a hospital in 2002. Hell, the hospital didn't even use Microsoft products other than Windows-- it used Lotus Notes. Are you sure you're looking at the right page?
I did work for Microsoft during two brief periods:
1) I did testing for Microsoft Games for a few months as contract work with Volt. This was, what... 2006? I think? My name is on the credits of Gears of War, which came out in '06, so yah. Volt contractors wear orange badges at Microsoft.
2) I've been working for a web marketing/technology company for the last 3.5 years or so-- for a brief portion of that time, our company had been purchased by Microsoft (so I became a Microsoft blue badge pretty much by accident/default). The division of the company I work in was then re-sold to a French holding company, so I'm no longer a Microsoft anything.
Also: Microsoft took a completely hands-off approach to running our division, we were Microsoft employees in name-only... I've never been on the Microsoft health plan or retirement plan, for example. About the only Microsoft benefit we got is MS Store access. (And the various local businesses in the Seattle area that have discounts for MS employees, but that's not MS' doing.)
For the last few years, you've been working for Microsoft marketing.
I've never worked for Microsoft marketing. Ever.
The company, the 500+ employee company, does have *some* people in it who do work for various Microsoft groups. I'm not in that role, and I've never worked with those groups, and I've never worked with Microsoft itself on anything.
Can you provide a link to this page so I can figure out what you were looking at? You're getting a lot of wrong impressions from it.
Why do you feel compelled to make definitive-sounding statements on things you apparently know nothing about?
Because I'm not? Look, if I'm wrong, correct me, give me a cite. I'm fully aware that I don't understand everything in the world about everything in the world.
My big problem is that I'm being correct by people who *clearly* don't know what they're talking about. The first respondent was telling me that the Arc Mouse wasn't innovative, but he didn't even know what it was! You're giving me a load of stuff about Linux, but you don't have anything in your post that illustrates that you understand what Fast User Switching is, or demonstrates that Linux' feature is equivalent. You also haven't addressed whether it appeared in Linux distros before Windows XP (innovative) or aft
You still haven't given an example of a product you'd consider innovative.
(Also I'm wondering how you reconcile, say, the Surface situation, where Microsoft Research created innovative Surface and it's become an innovative product. But that aside.)
Look, the real problem is that the low level of discourse here means that anything you claim Microsoft innovated, even extremely clear-cut cases like the Office 2007 ribbon, people are going to piss all over. "That's not really innovative!" How do they justify that? Well, the word "innovative" has a vague definition, so fortunately they can... just change the definition to "if it came from Microsoft, it's not innovative."
That's why I prefaced this whole thread with "you're never going to get a fair discussion of Microsoft innovation on Slashdot." Seems to be holding pretty true.
I'd have to use it to see if it's the same thing or not. Just from the screenshots, I can tell that whatever it does with tabs, it didn't get rid of the traditional menu bar and toolbars, so my first inclination is to say "that's completely different."
But thanks for replying with actual information, instead of a long series of wrong.
Well, fair enough. Like I said, I would have taken the grandparent at face level if he hadn't been wrong in pretty much every other detail in his post.
I guess my question then is, did Linux distros have this feature in the GUI before Windows XP came out? Or is it in the GUI now as a response to Windows XP?
(I know this is the unpopular opinion on Slashdot, but I don't really care about the CLI implementation, since it's inaccessible to a high percentage of both users and applications. Only interested in the GUI implementation.)
I mean the ribbon interface is just a different menubar layout.
No, it's not. Try actually using it.
Shadow copy has been almost standard practice in the server world way before Microsoft ever did it.
No, it hasn't. Novell had an undelete function, which is a lot closer than your RAID example. If you had cited that, I'd have been more impressed... but it's still not equivalent to Shadow Copy. (And RAID? Seriously? Do you even know what Shadow Copy *is*?)
Umm nope. Linux has always supported virtual terminals. You can have multple concurrent sessions under different users going on and switch between them without logging in and out at all.
Fair enough; though I've never seen a Linux distro with that option enabled.
I beleive it was acutally Sony who did it first with the PS2 but reagardless, innovative?
The PS2 HD expansion came out long after the Xbox was already popular.
Arc Mouse? I'm not ever going to believe that just slightly changing the shape of a mouse is true innovation.
The fact that it folds is the innovative part. Do you have any familiarity with these products at all? So far you've been wrong on pretty much every detail...
The only assertion you've made that *may* be right is the one about fast user switching in Linux, but since I've never seen that feature enabled on any of the Linux distros I've used, and your poor track record, I'm inclined to call BS on that as well.
Well I would if it was an actual product people could really buy.
It is. It's B2B, but what's stopping you from buying the "actual product" right now? Nothing. Hell, our company owns two of them... how did we get them? We bought them from Microsoft.
All that aside, fine: tell me what you consider an innovative product? Give me an example.
Are you also fed up and sick and tired of the Windows-hating posts?
Yes.
Or IE hating posts?
Only the ones that don't acknowledge IE7 and IE8 exist, which is most of them. So... yup.
Or Apple-hating posts?
Yah.
I must have missed your impassioned pleas for those to stop.
Well, ok. I did a Windows one just a little bit ago... here it is: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1531200&cid=30967046
Is it really that wrong to want the level of discourse to rise above "moron" levels on this forum? Is it really so wrong that I object to reading the exact same comment a hundred times a week, that people get modded up for adding absolutely *nothing* we haven't seen a million times before?
Interesting that with all the griping and carping that goes on here, with all the rants against this product or this technology or that company, the one thing you decide to stand up and protect is...Twitter.
Maybe you should have waited for the answer to your questions before making assumptions. Because now you just look like an idiot.
ClearType had plenty of prior art, so I don't think it counts as significant innovation.
Like what?
Font smoothing had been done before, but nothing that made use of subpixel rendering. At least, not to the best of my knowledge... please correct me with a citation. (Or, alternatively, stop spreading bullcrap when you have no citation. Thank you.)
Microsoft has become the Company they scorned in the 90's... IBM. I wonder how many IBM'ers are laughing at Microsoft now that the shoe is on the other foot?
Considering how bloated IBM is, and how poor some of their flagship products are (Domino/Notes, specifically), I'd say in this case that the shoe is on *both* feet.
Everyone seems to agree that Microsoft isn't an innovator, so who is?
You're not going to get a fair answer to that question on Slashdot.
I mean, Apple completely stole Time Machine from Microsoft's already-implemented Shadow Copy feature, were they derided as copy-cats? No. But Microsoft uses a transparency effect in Aero just similar to a transparency effect in OS X, and suddenly there's huge posters accusing Microsoft of being nothing but a copy machine.
To actually answer the question, Microsoft hasn't innovated anything truly new in decades? I'd say the Office 2007 Ribbon interface is certainly something truly new*. I'd say that the fact that Firefox 4's UI looks a hell of a lot like Internet Explorer 8's UI probably means something. (To be fair, it might just mean both of them cribbed from Google. But that's still something. :) Fast user switching was in Windows before OS X or Linux had it. (If Linux has it now?)
In the Enterprise, there's Sharepoint, which isn't a completely new idea, but combines several existing ideas in a very useful fashion. There's Microsoft's dominance in data processing technologies with their OLAP tools. (Actually, I just Googled that and it looks like they bought that from another company-- oops.)
Looking at a different area... I'd certainly say Xbox Live was innovative in many ways. I'd say putting a HD inside a game console was a pretty innovative idea, as was the entire concept of Xbox Live Arcade (especially since all the competitors in that space have ripped it off.) And what about the Arc Mouse for laptops? That thing's pretty damned slick and innovative. There's the Surface table/technology.
In short, Microsoft might not be the most innovative company in the world (although who is?) But don't pretend they aren't doing anything, either-- you're only deluding yourself.
* Of course at this point the Slashdotter chimes in with "the Ribbon sucks! I hate the Ribbon! It takes 46 years to figure out how to save a file now! etc!" That misses the point that the Ribbon is, in fact, new.
Only one reason as far as I'm concerned - Netflix instant viewing. Won't run in FF at all
It won't? What the hell have I been doing for the last 6 months?! I must be delusional.
Or, more likely, you have your Firefox tweaked all to hell and you're blaming Netflix for your own tinkering. Believe me: it works fine in Firefox.
Perhaps they will do a follow up on how there can be a huge running firefight with automatic weapons and virtually no cover, and yet nobody from either side gets hurt.
The GI Joe cartoon in the 80s frequently had full-on military battles-- with aircraft, artillery, armor, missiles and lasers-- and nobody got hurt, ever.
Even as a kid, I didn't buy it. "Oh come on, EVERY jet pilot's parachute opens? EVERY tank crew abandons the vehicle before it blows? No way!"
Wow, despite the disclaimer somebody still posts the "OMG I hate Twitterz so much!" post. I guess there's just no avoiding it on this site. Yes, we get it. You hate Twitter. We. Get. It. Stop posting it. Please.
Did Weyland-Yutani bid on it?
What I mean is, they'll probably put the burguer or soda first, then the fries, when there's only the first item in your tray, rotate it.
Ok I'll bite... why? What is this supposed to accomplish?
"Oh haha! You fast food workers are so stupid! My fries are on the LEFT side of my burger and they're supposed to be on the RIGHT side of my burger! Also they're facing backwards instead of forward! I should complain to the manager because you made me turn my fry box around before eating them, you know."