Microsoft’s Very Good Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#151

Post by lallysingh » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #107

iheartmemcache wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On first read, I was going to ask to get a link to that thesis, thinking it was some Masters or PhD work. Every 10 years you're going to have the 'big-evil'. I'm with you 100% about it being standard practices in big companies, and 110% about users being complacent about accepting the walled garden. Also re: patents- IBM has a huge patent portfolio. Very little of it is used to patent troll. Those boxed-office Texas…

> (I can't install my legally purchased copy of OS X on my Intel machine? Really?) I can't install Android on my iPhone as well, even if they have similar hardware Unless it was advertised as capable of doing that, then you can't (of course you can with some hacking, but the idea is the same) Does Apple have the same market share on phones as MS on the computing market of the 90s? So there you have it

Can't you? A quick web search found android install instructions for several iPhone models.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#152

Post by debacle » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

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.

Corporations are ships of Theseus.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#153

Post by hga » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

_dominic wrote: post #146

baldfat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand, Google+ as a project was an aberration, and the guy mostly responsible for it has left the company. My question is, have Vic Gundotra's superiors learned the proper lessons?

That said, the Google+ real names insanity removed all my trust in the company's products at that level, and I'm only now considering doing business with them due to their low cost of cloud storage and trusting them at the technical and operational levels more than Amazon.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#154

Post by throwawaykf05 » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

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…

> I still characterize them by their Halloween documents...

Anytime somebody mentions this, all I hear is, "They said mean things about my ideology of choice".

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#155

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #77

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.…

> 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.

You mean like OS X or Linux crazy?

Or Office 365 Home - one license for up to 5 desktops/laptops + five tablets - crazy?

I'd be surprised if Windows didn't move to a subscription model soon. The current free period looks like an attempt at lock-in to me.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#156

Post by hga » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #147

hga wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also remember that a lot of it was going to based on .NET, and it wasn't mature enough/they weren't able to get it mature enough. The whole process was also impacted by security issues reaching a crisis level.

But #1 would seem to be more ambition than Microsoft could deliver at the time.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#157

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

_dominic wrote: post #146

baldfat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are we really back to calling UI design decisions "evil"? That word used to mean something, and slightly inconveniencing people who use YouTube wasn't covered.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#158

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #151

raverbashing wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I can't install my legally purchased copy of OS X on my Intel machine? Really?) I can't install Android on my iPhone as well, even if they have similar hardware Unless it was advertised as capable of doing that, then you can't (of course you can with some hacking, but the idea is the same) Does Apple have the same market share on phones as MS on the computing market of the 90s? So there you have it

Can't you? A quick web search found android install instructions for several iPhone models.

Not officially, as mentioned (which is the same situation with Mac OSX and notebooks from other brands)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#159

Post by throwawaykf05 » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

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)

Why is Apple the worst offender? Many would put them above the rest because of their stance on privacy.

> Google... stumble ethically not on purpose.

Stumbling? When they ripped off Sun, they did so with deliberately and with awareness at the highest levels. There are emails revealed during the trial that leave no doubt.

Also, of all the companies engaged in all the smartphone patents wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_patent_wars), Google (via Motorola) was the only company that was actually found guilty of abusing patents: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/4-billion-motorol...

Pretty rich coming from a company that accused everyone else of abusing patents.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#160

Post by Raesan » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

harkyns_castle wrote: post #76

gecko wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When powershell comes up, someone always gripes about how they can't do this or that like they can in bash. I'm not going to deny that grep is nicer to use that the powershell equivalent (Select-String). But you don't configure Windows and other software in the Microsoft ecosystem by messing around with text. For example, if you had a new user and you wanted to set up an account, email address, and phone number (so AD, Exchange, and Lync/Skype for Business in Microsoft land), it wouldn't just be hard using something like Cygwin, it would probably be impossible. There is just no way to talk to those programs text streams or config files.

I guess what I always want to know when people complain about powershell is what they were actually trying to do. I think it's an excellent tool for system administration in a Microsoft environment. When you start moving away from that use case, it gets less and less useful.