I Could Go On All Day But Just One
Thing That Would Be Great Is Competitions Like On MW2 Start With
A Ton Of Matches And Only Players Who Come 1st Get Through To The Next And So On Untill Theres Just Enough For 1 Last Match And Top 3
Players Get A Xbox Game Of There Choice And So On

Come On Microsoft It Top Me Longer To Write That Than It Took Me To Think Of It <<

SneakyWho_am_i, please change pusher.

Daniel, comment #4.
1) “software as a service” has nothing to do with LTS or customer service.
2) As others have pointed out, Oracle and Sun are not limited to making desktop applications. Microsoft is – ergo, Microsoft is the one hurt by Web 2.0.
3) – 7) I didn’t waste time trying to understand these. A “.” between sentences goes a long way.

Mike, comment number 6: “Microsoft is the base that everyone else sets their standards against”…. What!? Not in the IT world…. Every improvement I saw in Windows Vista, I saw under Linux first. Consider Internet Explorer, have all the other browser vendors implemented VBScript and ActiveX? Do all the other browsers show off a broken understanding of the W3C DOM? Do all the other browsers misinterpret every single page of valid CSS and javascript you throw at them? I think not. Microsoft may be ahead in SOME areas, but to think that they set standards for Window Managers or Web Browsers would be very silly.

Jason, comment #28:
1) “paying for software”… What are you smoking? Who said you can’t pay for free software? That’s just stupid. It’s free as in freedom, bitch! I didn’t read the rest of your points because your first one was such a disgusting display of ignorance.
Have you never heard of MySQL AB, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Canonical…??

t-intern, #13:
“Most of my friends are using Live Spaces.” So what? In a survey of thousands of Pidgin IM users, the most popular out of a list of about twenty protocols was ICQ. ICQ? Really? Yeah really. That blew me away – I only know one other person with an ICQ account and she doesn’t use it. These sorts of things are influenced strongly by your school, workplace, geographic region and a huge number of other factors. Concluding that we all use WL Spaces just because everyone around you does would be like moving to Japan and then realising that everybody in the world was Asian.

Those are just my responses to the Microsoft-basher-bashers. It’s hard to feel good about Microsoft after a day of reading Slashdot. They are suing a GPS company for reading FAT-formatted memory cards today, because supposedly FAT is patented. That’s not cool.

However:
- Some specific parts of Microsoft Technology are totally excellent. For example that SkyDrive thing is awesome (although I don’t use it as I’m a webmaster)
- most of my friends use Windows. That’s excellent, I have no problem with that at all. I’m glad they have computers. Windows is reasonably user friendly (it’s not as intimidating as DOS, although not as efficient for a typist) and I am too grown up now to try to talk unconvinced family members into switching to superior operating systems. If you’re on Windows, you should stay there as long as you can because learning to use a new operating system is HARD and the one you switch to will seem unpleasant and poorly designed no matter how awesome it is.
- I like notepad and windows calculator

On the other hand:
- Microsoft’s strong point on the desktop is often said to be its API. Well, frankly I’m a PHP and C++ programmer and I’m not interested in the Windows API at all. I’m quite happy with things like SDL and QT. I wish that Windows had a proper packaging system and repositories, this would make my installers very small (200KB instead of 4MB, for a fact). So, for programmers, Windows is not very nice.
- Internet Explorer fails at internet. The interface is almost flawless, but the actual browser totally sucks and is an abomination.
- Windows has security and stability issues, everybody knows that and it’s no big deal as thousands of businesses all around the world use it every day with no major hiccups. Unfortunately some of these issues are there BY DESIGN (Windows update?) and that’s just stupid
- Support for a particular version of a Linux distribution can last for ten years. That’s ten years of updates, patches, whatever you want to call them. That would be like Microsoft discontinuing Windows 95 in 2007.
- The latest version of Linux tends to be more advanced than its Windows counterpart now. So, with Linux overtaking, Microsoft is going to have no choice but to start cracking out the patent lawsuits to keep its operating system on top — yes, you can patent things without proving that they will ever actually work, and this is Microsoft’s strategy. Patents are extremely expensive too, so only Microsoft can really afford to purchase them. Software patents are nothing to do with inventing something and all to do with having lots of money.

Is Microsoft doomed? I sincerely hope not. There is no substitute for Windows right now and that’s a simple fact. Windows still has a lot to offer us, I’d like to see ten more versions. However, I’d like for those versions to have a less than 60% share of the Operating systems market and I think that ten or twenty years from now when Microsoft’s running out of legal clout, this is going to happen.

Microsoft and Windows are great, but they shouldn’t be everything and fortunately we’re starting to see various forces conspiring to create a sane equilibrium in the areas in which Microsoft dabbles.

“does oracle is doomed? as its selling installable software and not making web app!! does sun? i mean, wtf.”

Daniel, please stop posting on the internet until you learn to write, you semi-literate embicile.

Yes, Microsoft is doomed. They’re a company staffed by many clever people that now manages to produce nothing of value to anyone. It must be something to do with their structure; as usual, it’s senior management’s fault. While the usual suspects are still running the company, they’ll go nowhere. They’re living from past creations, and in this industry, you can’t do that forever, no matter how dominant you are.

1) MS business model is constantly changing. Yes, they have had thier mis-steps but who has not? You think Linux has been perfect? Bah! To read your article you imply open source is making all the right moves. That is laughable. When open source can really make money (not just a few exceptions here and there) then you might have something to talk about.

2) Flunk Web 2.0? Well if you can get a consensus on what Web 2.0 really means then you might could create a test they could flunk. Tim Berners-Lee, has questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of “Web 2.0″ have existed since the early days of the Web. However, until then MS’s software as a services strategy and latest development tools may surprise you. Do your research. They have quite a good offering and whose to say Web 2.0 is the right direction after all. That is the greatest asset/liability of this industry, constant change. So time will tell. Not you.

3) Who has friends in this industry? Do you think Ubuntu is friends with Novell? Isn’t Ubuntu competing against every other LINUX distro? For example, Sun will have its own brand geared to work with their hardware. Until the Linux market consolidates they will all serve to compete against each other, confuse the developer and consumer industries and drive us toward non-standard platforms that will not integrate worth a salt. Ever seen how many different ways the Linux distros have for install packages? It is quite a bit of chaos.

4) They only have a couple of cash cows? Ha, show me a Linux implementation that has a single cash cow like Windows or Office. Funny how no Linux distors have as much cash on hand as MS.

5) Agreed. People are hating on Vista. But what do you think is going to happen. Do you really think Dell will stop offering it to consumers and business alike? With a new PC Vista works better than XP in most regards. When SP 1 comes out you will see most of the issues resolved and the adoption will increase as the confidence level increases. Do you really think a consumer Linux disto would not suffer the same fates if it had the install base MS had? You are naive if you think so.

6) Their stock isn’t rising any more. Whose in the tech industry is? Except those folks who were in the basement in the first place. Do you think Sun or Oracle have made any significant head way or innovation? Think again. Oracle is still trying to hang on to a tired Oracle DB implementation and its tooling is miserable. Sun? They still haven’t recovered from putting the dot in dot com.

7) PC makers are starting to turn their backs on Microsoft. This is somewhat true but only as a natural course for these guys. They are always searching for new sources of revenue and offering another OS product line could be a way of doing that. But don’t think for a minute they will stop offering MS OS. Not in the next 10-15 years anyway, if they want to stay in business.

IBM got into the PC biz a bit late, but they were Big Blue – after all and business loved them… for a time. Now they have no PC biz, but are still Big, Blue and very business oriented.

Anyway, MS definately has its own corporat culture, management and structure to blame. Apple may not be 100% open source, but they do use it a lot these days… even if its not pure Open Source, Apple has changed and adapted and continues to … can MS do the same?

I would say the latest release of Vista and MS Office ’07 says they can not. Time will tell…

The sleeping giant (re:5yrs of head down bum up working) has only just awoken and you’re stating it’s got no energy in the tank? It’s a bit premature to call the final score when we haven’t even walked onto the court?

-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.

Vista, as always, is bloatware. True. But not because of bad code. Any MS developer would write circles around me. There stuff is always bloated because of the kitchen sink. I just wish for once they would fix the bugs in the last release, before moving on. One thing MS has always been good at is changing directions quickly. They have recently started what they call “MQ”, milestone quailty tests. All code must be up to snuff before anything new can be added. Hopefully this will help.

Second of all, Surface is currently being marketed to restaurants and hotels and similar customers, not to consumers. That will come later.

What you missed most of all was that even Apple uses Microsoft as a major marketing point, in the positive way too, even though Apple slams Microsoft in their ads. One of Apple’s main marketing points for their new macs is that you can run Windows on them. Furthermore, on Apples home page for the Macs is a box that advertises Microsoft Office for Macs.

- Celestis

p.s., please don’t say that Apple favors Open Source. The irony hurts my head. Apple is the direct opposite with their exclusiveness and purism. The reason why there are many more applications that are developed for Windows is due to the fact that Apple does not do a good job in providing code for outside developers. Hell, Apple doesn’t even let you install Mac OS X on a PC…