Microsoft screws up again!

[Thue]

Microsoft hotmail bashing

There is a story on slashdot that isn't too kind to microsoft; it did seem pretty outrageous. Some points:

• Microsoft silently added new privacy preferences to existing accounts and defaulted to allow them to share your information.
  
• As can be seen in this slashdot post and it's replies, hotmail doesn't allow you to use any browser other than IE. There seem to be no reason whatsoever to do this, because if you set any of the other browsers to identify itself as IE everything works perfectly.
  

[moomin]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The reason for bundling IE for "free" these days is to provide a infrastructural veichle to promote other MS solutions in fields where the MS still faces strong competitors - like the WMP.

You have to explain this, because I don't see how it makes sense or how bundling IE leads to WMP getting stronger.

Except for the p2p kiddos who swap porn flicks over Morpheus and its ilk, most people encounter moives - trailers, promotional material, and even pay-porn, exclusivly through their web browser. The fact that IE is the de facto standard means that eveyone offering content on the Internet has to take into account what IE is guaranteed to support no matter what - WMP. Which incidentally does not support codecs MS feels are, em, unsuitable, for various reasons - such as DivX - out of the box.

[moomin]

Originally posted by Asher

Unfortunately this would definitely not work with software.

A bold assertion, for sure.

Unlike CPU instruction sets, OS APIs change rapidly with time. Look how often a new DirectX build comes out, for example.

That's how history turned out, but I see no inherent reason for things to be that way. I pretty convinced, myself, that a bunch of stanardized core APIs, owned and updated by standard bodies like the IEEE would work pretty well, too. Would we go from Direct X 1.0 to 8.0 in two years? Nope. But we'd see the competition that leveraged a middle-of-the road achitecture with severe registry starvation into the speediest and most cost-effective hardware you can buy.

There is actually no reason to belive this couldn't happen with software too.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tolls
But would the structure of .NET be open to allow, for example OpenNET to be made, which would do the same thing?

Yes, actually.
MS just gave away the source to a .NET runtime engine called Rotor, and I believe that's what Ximian is using to make "Mono", their .NET runtime (which is open source). Ximian's the same company who makes Gnome, etc.

A bold assertion, for sure.

It WOULD work, but it wouldn't benefit anyone.

A perfect example of why it wouldn't work is OpenGL.
OpenGL is so very, very far behind from DirectX in terms of functionality that all the new features are added by the board makers in extensions, which means they need to give you new software every time to run those extensions anyway, which means they need to develop that code for each specific platform anyway. A large committee-style API group is simply slow to move. We'd probably still be stuck using Win3.1's API because "it worked", and graphics rendering would be stuck at the stock OpenGL 1.2 (blech).

It's certainly possible, but I don't see it actually benefitting the consumer.

I also don't see very many people who will be ready to run away from Windows, which they've used for years, and run on a different platform because it's $25 cheaper or free. Of course, the Linux zealots would be extremely happy and would throw a party, but I don't see many people outside of them actually utilizing that.

And what does everyone else get out of it? Stagnated development, frozen OS APIs, slow-moving committees changing things and requiring each developer to update their OS and how it handles APIs accordingly.

And then there's the support problem.
All software has bugs. It'd be a support nightmare if the same executable ran on many OSes with many settings and many developers and many quirks.

[moomin]

Originally posted by Asher
It WOULD work, but it wouldn't benefit anyone.

It would too. Me, for instance. Being responsible for software being deployed on a variety of platforms - from big iron, over unix servers to PC workstations, as well as a fair amount of dedicated hardware, I'd dead tired of all the games MS plays with semi-supporting various standards, "extending" and "embacing" them. I sometimes feel we spend more time more time working around interesting quirks in MS implemantations of things like Kerberos and LDAP than developing software.

Splitting MS up would at least stop MSs incentive to play these games. Which would add another 50% productivity to cross-platform projects overnight. But if all your work is being done in a MS environment then I can certainly understand you don't feel that particular pain.

[Asher]

I don't understand your Kerberos comment, but it seems to be the typical troll these days against MS: MS extended Kerberos. MS' version is a superset, it should work fine with existing implementations and should cause you no headache.

Splitting MS up would at least stop MSs incentive to play these games. Which would add another 50% productivity to cross-platform projects overnight.

Where did you pull that figure out of?

Splitting up MS would result in having an OS maker doing its own thing, and an Application maker doing its own thing. It would have zero effect on things like Kerberos and LDAP that you've mentioned.

The reason why the splitup was thought of was because people thought that if the OS and its Applications were split up, this would allow companies like Corel and Netscape to compete better.

Here's a newsflash: People don't use Office because of Windows. They use Office because everyone else uses Office. People use IE because it gets the job done and it comes with the OS. And do you know what'd happen if they bundled Netscape and IE with Windows? 90% of people would still choose IE anyway.

Splitting up MS accomplishes nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's why it's not even an option in this case, because somebody actually thought about it.

If you're doing multiplatform work, did it ever occur to you to use a multiplatform environment like Java?

[moomin]

Originally posted by Asher
I don't understand your Kerberos comment, but it seems to be the typical troll these days against MS: MS extended Kerberos. MS' version is a superset, it should work fine with existing implementations and should cause you no headache.

Look, Asher, it might not always have been so in this thread, but I'm kinda trying to have a serious conversation here. If you feel better throwing terms like "troll" around, perhaps I should leave it to you and your friend Cloud 9 to duke it out?

As for Kerberos, MS has hardcoded the resolution of the allowed time quanta a ticket is valid. Not only have they hard-coded it, they have also made their bracket a wee bit different from what most other manufacturers provide - enough so that any auth system relying on good tight clocking is going to "sync out" once every day or so. A lovely little feature to track down and correct. Correcting, btw, in this instance, meant resetting the other systems so they followed the MS "standard". I shudder to think of what would have happened hade some part of that setup not been under our direct control. And MS software is full of little nasty surprises like that.

Where did you pull that figure out of?

Gut feeling, based on my own experience. I've got a bunch of MS projects Gant charts to back it up, but sinve there's no way I'm gonna post 'em here you can choose to believe it, or not.

Splitting up MS would result in having an OS maker doing its own thing, and an Application maker doing its own thing. It would have zero effect on things like Kerberos and LDAP that you've mentioned.

Perhaps it would at least allow me to purchase a better Kerberos for Windows, no?

The reason why the splitup was thought of was because people thought that if the OS and its Applications were split up, this would allow companies like Corel and Netscape to compete better.

And do you have any reason to doubt this?

Here's a newsflash: People don't use Office because of Windows. They use Office because everyone else uses Office.

Actually, I use office because I think it's the best Office package available. But I wouldn't mind using it on a Sun Workstation, for instance, a market the MS App group will never have any incentive to target as long as they're busy by the, admittedly very profitable, word sells windows sells words sells windows loop.

If you're doing multiplatform work, did it ever occur to you to use a multiplatform environment like Java?

The day they port the JWM to MRI scanners and Gene Splicers I'll take your advice under consideration.