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Microsoft’s Very Good Day

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Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#141

Post by hga »

octref wrote: post #124

Microsoft feels like the new Apple to me. I haven't used Apple's product in Jobs' era, but I've heard a lot of good stories about how solid and easy-to-use their software was. Now I'm on Yosemite, experiencing annoying bugs and unexpected quits/freezes on a daily basis. I don't even dare to update to El Capitan. Yesterday I upgraded to XCode 7.0.1, and all my swift projects failed to compile. If it's not for the touc…

I think people should put down their prejudice about MS's past

There are some things that people find to be unforgivable. Not sure if anything MS has done qualifies for that for me, but in the area of gun control/the RKBA, which I've been fighting since the early '70s, there are companies like Ruger and Smith and Wesson which I absolutely refuse to do any business with after they betrayed US gun owners.

Sounds like your problem is that OS X has become Apple's red headed stepchild, iOS isn't reported to be having problems of this magnitude last time I checked. Too bad OS X is Apple's development platform of choice (only possible one???) for iOS....

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#142

Post by verbin217 »

detaro wrote: post #74
harkyns_castle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I agree. The world needs more granular incentives.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#143

Post by pmelendez »

sfilipov wrote: post #94
pmelendez wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think he refers to File Explorer (explorer.exe) which has nothing to do with Windows Store Apps.

I know but it wasn't clear to me that he was using file explorer (I haven't seen the issue on none of my machines)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#144

Post by ZenoArrow »

hvidgaard wrote: post #89
ZenoArrow wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "As compared to Apples ecosystem, or Android, or?" As compared to most/all open-source OSes (Android being only partially open source). This includes mobile OSes. > " All of it is there to improve the experience for most users, and possible to turn the chatter of such that it shares next to nothing. What more could you ask for, in a system that aims to make is simple and feature rich for the average person?" Did yo…

I have seen stories, however, I haven't seen my own Win10 machines being chatty with MS outside of what I ask it to. With that in mind, I have no reason not to trust MS when they say they're not collecting data unless it's enabled.

Here's one example of a feature I dislike (description from http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/window... )...

"Windows 10, however, shakes this up. Instead of two separate systems—one for error reporting, a second for collecting usage data—both have been rolled into one combined setting. This setting has four positions: off; basic error reporting and simple device capability reporting; enhanced diagnostic tracking that extends the basic information with more detailed error reporting, and usage telemetry; and full data, that adds process memory snapshots to the enhanced data. This means that there's no way to participate in error reporting without also participating in usage tracking, and vice versa.

Further, the "off" option is only available in Windows 10 Enterprise. The common home user versions of Windows, Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, always collect (and report) at least "Basic" level information and no way to turn off the feature entirely.

The genuine privacy implications of this seem slight, but for those who absolutely do not want to send anything to Microsoft, Windows 10 is certainly a regression. Is Microsoft poring over this data, trying to sniff out the details of Windows users' lives and figure out all their secrets? It's highly unlikely—but the removal of the ability to turn off this reporting is nonetheless strange, and there's no clear reason for it."

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#145

Post by osullivj »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #22
hliyan wrote: post #6

It's amazing to think that such a massive behemoth could change direction in so little time.

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…

And good evidence for this has been how developer friendly MS has always been. As Ballmer put it "developers, developers, developers!" Even at their most Netscape destroying height of evilness, MS was always great at documentation, code samples, dev events etc

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#146

Post by _dominic »

baldfat wrote: post #117
Infinitesimus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, is it fair to assume you use hardware and software by a source you consider more ethical then? (your classification above rules out Apple and Google as well since they've both done less-than-stellar things )

This is my ehtical chart Apple (Worst Offender but also helped Open Source at times) Microsoft M$ (Middle of the road with it always depending on who you spoke with at the company) Google (Most powerful of the three in terms of control over people's lives if they wanted it, but I seriously think they stumble ethically not on purpose. I believe they try to follow, "Don't be evil" as a whole)

Google is way beyond "Don't be evil", just look at the google+ forced integration.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#147

Post by pmelendez »

hga wrote: post #133
kabdib wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Microsoft doesn't know how to..." is an unfounded disparagement. Microsoft definitely knows how to write software, okay? They're really good at it. They ship a lot of it. There are many people there who are brighter than you and I and they know their stuff cold. Microsoft is full of - legacy stuff that is really hard to change (many, many reasons for this, few of them pleasant but all of them real) - conflicting pri…

I go so far as to say, starting a bit over two decades ago, that one of the "secrets" of Microsoft's success is their long term ability to write software that basically works. As I mention in another part of this subthread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352022 ), they beat their "Office" competitors in part by not losing that ability when all else but Borland did. (Borland didn't, but lost at higher levels…

> what would you say was responsible for the failure of Longhorn? Wasn't that in part technical? Or did that derive from higher up?

Bill Gates actually touched that topic in is Reddit AMA. If I remember correctly, the bar was set up too high (i.e relational file system) and within the constrains it was a big challenge and at some point they had to deliver.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#148

Post by hga »

outworlder wrote: post #138
hga wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Microsoft has an unmatched record of screwing pretty much everyone who did business with them, and otherwise abusing their position in the market. Worse than IBM when IBM was in their position.

Are you sure you didn't mean "Oracle"? As far as I know, Microsoft deals with their business partners fairly. They don't try to negotiate a deal directly with a big customer and bypass their partners, for instance.

I'm talking more about "peers" than what I think you're referring to as "partners". E.g. 3Com as I cite elsewhere, Verizon WRT to the Kin, the company they licensed the start of Internet Explorer from (expected royalty payments never materialized when the gave it away for free), the examples go on and on and on.

But I suppose with Balmer the salesman in charge in between Gates and Nadella they'd avoid sales channel betrayals like that.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#149

Post by pmelendez »

togusa wrote: post #136
pmelendez wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great! Thanks for sharing it :) > are building contacts and getting out of the agency system as soon as possible. I know, but how do you do that? Right now I am working for home and remotely collaborating with a friend in a product, but the VC path is also hard :(

I'd go for a few agency jobs for a 2-6 month stint, be nice to people and spend your time working with them not alongside them and gain some reputation. After a couple of positions, return work is usually possible. Then general staff turnover in tech companies will propagate your reputation as well. The first 2 years is the most difficult. I'm going to add this as well: never work hard. Work out how not to work hard.…

Thanks for the advice. It makes a lot of sense and I will keep them in mind from now on :)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#150

Post by throwawaykf05 »

cwyers wrote: post #128
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To cool down some of the optimism in this comment section: Microsoft is still accepting cash for practically every Android phone made because of their patent threats, or did they change their ways in this regard as well? (I am genuinely curious whether this continues; I tried to google "microsoft android patent threats" but found only news articles from 2013/2014 about the practice.)

I don't exactly understand the objection to this. Microsoft has the patents (and they don't seem to be spurious patents). Google used techniques covered by the patents in Android without paying Microsoft or indemnifying their OEMs. Microsoft is actively competing with Android. They should let the Android OEMs by because... why? Even assuming for a moment that patents are inherently wrong (rather than our current pate…

And the reason they have these patents are because, contrary to the article, they were doing smartphones long before Apple or Google came to the table. MS was actually one of the bigger smartphone players at the time. Sure, these were not the "modern" touchscreen smartphones that Apple popularized, but MS developed a bunch of technologies that, behind the revolutionized UI, are used by modern smartphones to this day.
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