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Microsoft’s Very Good Day

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Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#71

Post by yread »

harkyns_castle wrote: post #64
togusa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1, writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me. They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open. Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits and licensing agreemen…

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces. There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways. Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched. They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

> cancerous attitude

seriously?

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#72

Post by tdkl »

mariusmg wrote: post #55
loudmax wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just transitioned to a new job that uses Exchange for email, and it feels like the old Microsoft. The only way I've found to get Thunderbird to connect to Exchange's IMAP is by using a proprietary add-on. A lot of .doc and .xls files get passed around that I can't modify in LibreOffice without screwing up the formatting. The hardest part of getting work done on a Linux desktop isn't the drivers, it's interoperabili…

Aaaa....why not use IMAP/POP3 ? If the server administrator only allows that dumb proprietary protocol, you can't really blame Microsoft there.

Exchange isn't popular in Enterprise just because of email and to say "just use IMAP/POP" is showing that you're out of touch.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#73

Post by pmelendez »

kailuowang wrote: post #61
delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

You dont necessarily need to. I still use MS Windows from time to time and my perception is that fundamentally they still dont know how to write software properly: in windows 10, opening a folder full of large video files takes a painful long time, while all it needs to do is to list some file names. I understand that it must be trying to extract some extra "useful" information from those large files, but the keys is…

> I understand that it must be trying to extract some extra "useful" information from those large files, but the keys is that it shouldnt block your UI from showing the basic stuff.

That's weird, all the file-io operations in windows store apps are async for the very reason of not blocking the UI thread. How big was that folder? I'm geniuly curious.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#74

Post by detaro »

harkyns_castle wrote: post #64
togusa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1, writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me. They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open. Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits and licensing agreemen…

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces. There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways. Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched. They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

Sadly, if you use such rules there are not many big tech companies left that haven't done such things...

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#75

Post by jbombadil »

pjc50 wrote: post #33
codeulike wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made it scary is that they really did have a strong monopoly and it looked like they might dominate forever. So its not so much the tactics that offend people, but how much power they had when wielding those tactics. Seems to me like every big tech firm now makes…

Oh, the tactics did offend people. And still do. But it was always a small number of people that cared about software freedom. The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable. By contrast, today Apple idevices not only ship with a browser but ban all competing browsers (via the ban on run-time compilation effectively banning JI…

Not to mention with 'SIP' (aka 'rootless'), Apple even has unrestricted control to part of your filesystem.

They promote it as a security feature, but it only protects their own interests. It does very little to protect actual user data (which is what the user cares about), and all to protect their eco-system (and therefore, their finances).

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#76

Post by harkyns_castle »

gecko wrote: post #41
vegabook wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken a liking to a lot of what Microsoft is doing. I like the open source efforts, I like the RX libraries, the hardware looks great, to my mind the Metro interface is actually better than IOS/Android. I even like Windows 10. Problem is I could never go back to the DOS command prompt. I only moved to the *nix prompt about 6-7 years ago, and I could never go back. I know I can do cygwin etc but that still feels…

I think people with this attitude would be really pleasantly surprised by PowerShell and Cmder. Windows makes a very bad UNIX, but it has a great command-line story these days if you'll play with it on its own turf.

Pleasantly surprised by powershell? I don't know what to say. I have to essentially copy and paste fragments of things that work, it's so arcane. Its like writing 90's Java on a command line. Its revolting.

Still to this day I can't even fscking grep.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#77

Post by JustSomeNobody »

aswerty wrote: post #5
andosa wrote: post #2

It definitely feels like Microsoft is on the right track with Nadella in charge.

Yeah, with the likes of .Net Core it seems very much like Microsoft are on the right track. But you'll still see plenty of, what I call, "Microsoft decisions" that just make things into more hassle or expense than it should be purely for the pursuit of profit. One example is if you want to migrate from Linux to Windows 10 on a few computers you're legally required to buy a Windows 10 license for each machine you run.…

> So for people with a few machines that might be 3 licenses you have to pay for - it's just crazy.

The idea that one wouldn't have to purchase 3 licenses is crazy.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#78

Post by MarkyC4 »

pjc50 wrote: post #9
aswerty wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, with the likes of .Net Core it seems very much like Microsoft are on the right track. But you'll still see plenty of, what I call, "Microsoft decisions" that just make things into more hassle or expense than it should be purely for the pursuit of profit. One example is if you want to migrate from Linux to Windows 10 on a few computers you're legally required to buy a Windows 10 license for each machine you run.…

"You have to pay for our software to run it on a machine" is possibly the least crazy example you could have chosen. There's far more strangeness in Microsoft licensing: Terminal Server, the whole business of CALs, the vast number of SKUs with ambiguous names, VM licensing, and so on.

> the vast number of SKUs

In their defence, we did that to them. They had to make all the N versions of Windows to appease EU courts. What's troubling is that no such restriction is placed on Apple or Google

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#79

Post by pmelendez »

avar wrote: post #38
sz4kerto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/google-and-micros... "Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues. As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility. "

Those are just lawsuits between the two, wasn't the nature of the royalties for Android devices that they contacted OEMs and said "we have these patents, you better pay us or we'll sue you", and the OEMs paid up? That's different than cancelling outstanding lawsuits.

From the announcement:

"Separately, Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers."

Last time I heard that was with Apple and was more like "I won't sue you for this and you won't sue me for that"

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#80

Post by tdkl »

7952 wrote: post #37
InclinedPlane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Microsoft has always had two sides, two forces constantly warring with each other internally. Microsoft is and always has been chock full of serious, 100% authentic "hackers". And those have driven the company as much as high level business decisions over the years. Microsoft has long been a proponent for things like open platforms (such as the original PC design) and has long tried to be a good citizen w…

For years the hackers/pundits were telling MS to adopt a more inviting buisness plan with free versions etc. It is possible that this approach could be detrimental even if they hace good products. It is ironic that as consumer Windows has become a more polished product they have removed the premium pricing in favour of app stores and subscriptions.

Which control panel do I need to open to get that "polished" feature you're mentioning, the Metro or the old one ?
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