Microsoft’s Very Good Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#221

Post by UK-AL » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

harkyns_castle wrote: post #166

gecko wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 developer…

Powershell is the goto console. Cmd is legacy

In fact most admin gui's are now just calling powershell now.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#222

Post by DrShephard » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:34 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)

> 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)

How do you explain things like this then?

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-emails-2011-5?...

That's exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#223

Post by DrShephard » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:40 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…

Do you hold Google to the same standards? Because some of their actions are exactly what people accuse Microsoft of:

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-skyhook-emails-2011-5?...

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-speaks-up-on-the-acer...

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#224

Post by alinspired » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

MS/Windows/Office has always been a workhorse for me, but i might be in the process of becoming a MS fanboy :)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#225

Post by chadzawistowski » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 8:08 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #87

pjc50 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable" But it was technically unremovable, in those days you could open a windows explorer and type an URL and then you suddenly have internet explorer right into your window. It was an awful design flaw that costed them lagging apart after the post IE6 era. The other thing is that wou…

> in those days you could open a windows explorer and type an URL and then you suddenly have internet explorer right into your window

This is still the case, isn't it? You can type "//google.com" into Explorer's address bar and it will launch your default browser to that address.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#226

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 8:59 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #113

craigvn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true similar practices around patents and technology is undertaken by every large tech company. Why do you think Google are so interested in self driving cars? Not because they want to be the next Toyota but because they want to own all technology and patents behind it which they will happily let Toyota use for a small (ok very large) fee.

Actually , i do think Google wants to be either the next toyota or UBER. Just licensing patents is leaving huge amounts of money on the table.

It's leaving a huge amount of money on the table generated by activities unrelated to Google's expertise, such as producing the actual car. Google does a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure running a car factory is not one of their fields of expertise.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#227

Post by rdudek » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

greyman wrote: post #18

emerongi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe so as well. They've switched focus and are going in the right direction now. A few years ago I actually advised everyone to not use Microsoft's products. Every single product was subpar (Windows, Windows Phone, their laptops etc). Today, I'm happy to advise Surface Pro, Windows Phone, etc to anyone. They're striving more for innovation (e.g. Surface Pro, Surface Book), which is cool and will bring them succ…

I agree with the general sentiment, but imho Windows Phone is still not there. Lot of apps are iOS+Android only, or the WP alternative is sub-par.

I only use a handful of apps on my phone and the ones I do use, do everything I need out of them. As someone who used iPhones, androids, and now as of this year a Windows Phone, I have to say, the UI is extremely well done. The live tiles give me most of the information I need. Glance is great, I don't have to turn the phone on, I just lift it and it gives me a low light version of date, time, notifications, etc.

I'm definitely going to pick up the Lumia 950XL phone when it goes on sale.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#228

Post by alexschleber » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC

The piece and ars technica video show both the good and the bad of this new MSFT attempt:

Some good ideas, but let's be real - ultimately a total niche product at $1500. Compare that the surface pro 3 has been selling about 3-4 million units in the last year ( q3/2014 - q2/2015 revenue was estimated around $3b, on devices costing about $800 + $130 keyboard), while Apple sells about 20m Mac units in the same timeframe, which is in itself STILL a niche! www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/

I just don't see how this is going to make any sort of real dent.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#229

Post by plorkyeran » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #98

hga wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) One other point worth remembering: their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability. They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest ). Netscape destroyed itself as much as Microsoft helped them by incompet…

> They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest ). People were doing Ajax-like things before XMLHTTPRequest with hidden iframes. XHR was more convenient, but it didn't bring new functionality to the table.

People used hidden iframes as a fallback for browsers that did not support XMLHttpRequest, but not before XMLHttpRequest existed. XMLHttpRequest shipped with IE 5.0, which also happened to be the first browser where "DHTML" support was good enough that building anything resembling a modern web application was actually practical.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#230

Post by Locke1689 » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #119

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…

There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software. That's awful. But I think writing a competing app is a completely proper way to compete. > they really did have a strong monopoly Evidently they did not. To those of us old enough to remember the "unbreakable" IBM monopoly, it's hard to worry too much about this stuff.

>There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software.

The reverse, as far as I know:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296...

This is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to application compatibility. I could probably write for months solely about bad things apps do and what we had to do to get them to work again (often in spite of themselves). Which is why I get particularly furious when people accuse Microsoft of maliciously breaking applications during OS upgrades. If any application failed to run on Windows 95, I took it as a personal failure. I spent many sleepless nights fixing bugs in third-party programs just so they could keep running on Windows 95.