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Microsoft’s Very Good Day

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Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#161

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#162

Post by pweissbrod »

hga wrote: post #141
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 y…

In my eyes the only thing microsoft is uniquely guilty of is being the first dominant software company in a digital age.

Both apple and google have had their turn at the same position and done most if not all of the same dubious actions to end-users and developers as microsoft.

I respect a distrust for microsoft but I dont consider it rational to hate one of these big players more than another.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#163

Post by hga »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #154
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".

Then you should actually skim them; while of course their presentation as "the Halloween documents" is propaganda, they're sufficiently damning in their own right.

They financed a bogus lawfare campaign against Linux, although I doubt they knew it was utterly bogus (The SCO Group never actually owned any rights to UNIX(TM), and knew it before commencing the lawsuits.)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#164

Post by throwawaykf05 »

hga wrote: post #108
yread wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cancerous attitude seriously?

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.

> Microsoft has an unmatched record of screwing pretty much everyone who did business with them

Could you list instances of this? Don't get me wrong, they have been absolute bastards in some cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I4i is my go-to example). But keep in mind it is a huge company that has done business with thousands of firms over the past few decades, so to substantiate your point, you would have to produce a pretty big list.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#165

Post by Raesan »

noinsight wrote: post #83
hvidgaard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powershell really is powerful. It's just an entirely different paradigm. The unix philosophy is "Everything is a textfile and pipes" - Powershell on the other hand is "Everything is an object and calls", and it's equally powerful, albeit not as simple.

The "UNIX shell" is a simple, clean solution to a text based interface. PowerShell is what a programmer thinks a shell should be like. PowerShell really is (or should be) obvious to a programmer but the concept isn't as simple to explain to a sysadmin that doesn't know/understand OOP programming concepts.

I see your point, but I think it's increasingly rare to find sysadmins who haven't been exposed to OOP. A little programming has become less and less optional to be successful at the job. At my job, I'm pretty sure even the entry level helpdesk staff have been exposed to a bit of Java, C#, or the like.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#166

Post by harkyns_castle »

gecko wrote: post #115
harkyns_castle wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect you haven't read the documentation or tried using PowerShell for any length of time. PowerShell may be bash-like, but it's not bash, does not try to be bash, and won't reward you if you treat it like bash. But it's very orthogonal, clean, and well documented. For your particular example: > help grep Name Category Module Synopsis ---- -------- ------ -------- Out-File Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.U... Sends o…

Fair enough, and I have and will continue to not really want to invest time into learning Microsoft's stuff, based on past experiences (my first being wanting to develop for the platform as a scrub, and they charged thousands of dollars for a dev environment/compiler). I honestly don't think it'll serve me well going forward, when there are better alternatives.

They have had decades now to get on board with developers, and cmd.exe is still their go-to console. They still strike me as a company of greedy corporate business folk, who happen to run a software company, as opposed to a software company that has to suffer greedy corporate drones to survive in our current race to the bottom.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#167

Post by hga »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #164
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.

> Microsoft has an unmatched record of screwing pretty much everyone who did business with them Could you list instances of this? Don't get me wrong, they have been absolute bastards in some cases ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I4i is my go-to example). But keep in mind it is a huge company that has done business with thousands of firms over the past few decades, so to substantiate your point, you would have to prod…

While your request is not in principle unreasonable, it's way too much work for me to prove it to your satisfaction, or my satisfaction in a formal, balanced, I'd be willing to publish it way. E.g. I'd forgotten about I4i, despite the prominence of the case.

I'm basically asking you, absent either of us going beyond searches like https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+microsoft+crimes ^_^, to trust my observations of these businesses since the fall of 1977 when I started in the field. Heck, I was a great fan of Microsoft until NT 3.51 SP2 (and for a while beyond, it was Vista that completed the job). It was a pattern of behavior that became more and more obvious sometime in the late '90s that changed my opinion of the company, capped with their all out illegitimate assault on Linux and FOSS starting in the early '00s. And I of course don't expect you to take my word for it.

I just don't see it in their peers, not even Oracle.

Ah, here's a different angle: name the healthy peers that are willing to work with Microsoft today, beyond what's absolutely required. Yahoo! fails hard on healthy, Mozilla potentially as hard. I don't understand why/how Yahoo! is still in business, but Mozilla sure seems to be in their endgame (one reason I'm avoiding Rust for the time being).

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#168

Post by throwawaykf05 »

hga wrote: post #163
throwawaykf05 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Then you should actually skim them; while of course their presentation as "the Halloween documents" is propaganda, they're sufficiently damning in their own right. They financed a bogus lawfare campaign against Linux, although I doubt they knew it was utterly bogus (The SCO Group never actually owned any rights to UNIX(TM), and knew it before commencing the lawsuits .)

Yep, I've skimmed them (or at least, ESR's articles about them). Propaganda is a well-know weapon in business, only it is better known as "PR".

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#169

Post by pjc50 »

gecko wrote: post #115
harkyns_castle wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect you haven't read the documentation or tried using PowerShell for any length of time. PowerShell may be bash-like, but it's not bash, does not try to be bash, and won't reward you if you treat it like bash. But it's very orthogonal, clean, and well documented. For your particular example: > help grep Name Category Module Synopsis ---- -------- ------ -------- Out-File Cmdlet Microsoft.PowerShell.U... Sends o…

Select-String works differently enough from grep

Correct - it has a couple of crippling features, such as wrapping output at 80 characters even if piped to a file (unless you tell it otherwise every time).

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#170

Post by [deleted] »

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)

[deleted]
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