Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#321

Post by ionised » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:03 AM UTC

TheIronYuppie wrote: post #214

rurp wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big tech company harvesting extensive user data by default and saying it's ok because "Trust us, we don't do anything bad with it" is not a compelling argument these days. Even if it's true (and that's a big if), that says nothing about what Microsoft will do with the data tomorrow, or the next day.

It's on by default, but literally the first thing we ask you, actively, is about giving us feedback and let you turn it off right then. It's not remotely hidden. I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning

> I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors!

I don't believe you have, sorry (Microsoft I mean, not you specifically). I get the impression Microsoft is the same company it always was, only now it's better at convincing the gullible that it is on their side.

That Windows 10 update prompt for previous Windows versions were obnoxious and downright deceitful, making the 20+ years old traditional 'close window' X in the corner of the window actually download the update instead of doing what users expect it to do.

That's before we even get onto the subject of Windows 10's draconian privacy policies and use of dark patterns all over the OS designed to get people to disable their privacy settings.

Of course, even if they don't fall for tricks like coloring the 'privacy customisation options' link during installation a slightly different colour of blue than the background of the window to make it deliberately hard to read, they will still likely have all their privacy options reset and have previously removed crapware like Candy Crush added all over again in a forced update.

I'm on a Pro version of Windows 10 and I can't even disable the telemetry and constant phoning home every time I launch an application and or encounter a problem (that I absolutely do not need help with) with something I'm running.

I could understand this crap with the Home version. Not on Pro which I fully expected to have a degree of control over like I did with Win7 pro.

As a result of all this, Microsoft finally made my shit list after decades of shady behaviour and anti-competitive business practices and I won't be buying or using anything by them going forward.

Hell I even started PC gaming on Linux, that's how much I dislike the things Microsoft does.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#322

Post by ionised » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #295

TheIronYuppie wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on by default, but literally the first thing we ask you, actively, is about giving us feedback and let you turn it off right then. It's not remotely hidden. I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning

@ThIronYuppie Let me say first of all that I really appreciate your sincerity and belief in the Goodness of the company that you work for. The issue is not insincerity, but: * a lack of trust in corporations in today's economic and political climate and * the skyrocketing growth of the online advertising business, which has made user data quite literally the gold mines of the digital age The incentives today are very…

You say the issue is not insincerity but I beg to differ. Microsoft has never been particularly sincere about the reasons it does the things it does.

It has been a deceitful bully of a company for a long time.

Indeed, one of the main reasons why there is so little trust in corporations is because they are so insincere, anti-consumer and lacking in any kind of social conscience.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#323

Post by ionised » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

TheIronYuppie wrote: post #223

AJ007 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people want to hear is there is none, and there never will be. Even that isn’t enough, but at least there is some legal recourse.

Can you say more? Like there is none what? If there are any changes to this doc - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/gd... - you would be able to check that immediately, and we would never change our data collection policy without changing that document... It's the law! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning but not VS Code

He means no telemetry. None whatsoever. At the very least a default opt-out.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#324

Post by AsyncAwait » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #310

AsyncAwait wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canonical does not maintain most of the software that comes with Ubuntu, at least not exclusively.

That article is about spyware Canonical themselves developed and baked into the desktop environment they developed specifically for Ubuntu.

I know, my point is that the most complex pieces of software within Ubuntu are not primarily developed by Canonical and thus it's possible to maintain complex Linux software without having ads and tracking.

The fact that Canonical had developed spyware has nothing to do with the Linux kernel, glibc, bash, GNOME, systemd, PulseAudio, all of which prove that you don't need ads and tracking to maintain Linux software.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#325

Post by ionised » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:24 AM UTC

leesec wrote: post #210

scarface74 wrote: post #148

Microsoft’s “performance” wasn’t bad by any objective metric during the Ballmer era. If the stock market were rational, MS stock would have been doing a lot better under Balmer than it did. But then again, if the stock market were rational, Lyft would have never been able to go public and Tesla would basically be worthless.

Rational according to you I guess. The market has it's own rationality.

Ah yes, the 'invisible hand'.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#326

Post by criddell » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #229

criddell wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have these things plus the app store really only generated 21 billion? Considering why the number was revealed, Google had every incentive in the world to understate as much as they could get away with. Plus, how is $21 billion profit not a great thing for them? The revenue number was north of $30 billion.

Every incentive in the world to understate except maybe they didn’t think lying to a federal judge was a good idea? Can you imagine the penalties for not being truthful during discovery?

Understating isn't necessarily lying. The value of intangibles on a balance sheet often comes down to a guess in some range.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#327

Post by criddell » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:05 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #230

criddell wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has generated tens of billions of dollars in profit (and a lot of money for Microsoft via licensing). iOS turned Apple into a trillion dollar company. Meanwhile it's not clear if Microsoft made anything from their Windows Phone investment.

Again not according to official court records. iOS turned Apple into a trillion dollar company because of hardware sells. Selling phones haven’t been profitable for any Android manufacturer. Even Samsung’s ASP is around $270 for phones.

I'm not sure what your point is. Microsoft sells hardware as well. If anything, that's another nail in Ballmer's coffin.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#328

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:09 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #318

jillesvangurp wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balmer missed the boat on all of this because he was out of touch. Android and Iphone indeed happened around the 2006-2008 time frame after having been rumored since about 2003-2006. They both were the logical conclusion from OSS and Linux emerging in the late nineties as a viable platform for development on embedded hardware. The difference between Balmer and Jobs is what they did in the nineties. Jobs ran a startup…

Microsoft not only saw mobile coming, Windows Mobile (CE/Pocket PC) was out years before Android and iOS and was decently popular as a smart phone OS. HTC made dozens of models under its own brand and for other manufacturers. But if techies pull their nose up for your platform, you have a long term problem because techies are the people that produce the things that make your platform long term viable. Techies don’t m…

MS saw it coming, enjoyed some brief success with OEMs like htc around 2004, and then Android and IOS steamrolled over it by the 2008-2010 time frame. Sitting ducks basically.

I worked at Nokia back in the day. Nokia knew this as well (I read the internal mailing lists, this was debated and speculated on heavily) and they did not act in time either.

2005 was in retrospect the key moment to act. Neither Nokia nor MS managed to do the right things. Apple and Google did. This was not exactly a secret except it did not translate into meaningful action.

Worse, Nokia actually shut down several projects that in retrospect could have saved their ass when it was handed to them by Apple in 2007 with the iphone launch. E.g. S90 (touch UI for S60) was killed in favor of S60 (no touch whatsoever until 2008) in 2005. Then in 2007 they went "oh fuck" and tried to bring it back on S60 ultimately resulting in a prematurely launched device that was everything the iphone wasn't (slow, ugly, unstable, etc.). Subsequent attempts to fix it yielded no results. Bringing in windows phone years later was an act of desperation.

Likewise Debian linux on tablets and phones was a thing in 2005 already. E.g. the N700 and N800 tablets shipped with it long before the ipad or iphone were a thing. Google ff-ing prototyped Android on these devices even before they shipped their nexus phone. Also, the chrome browser that made Android so successful? Guess what, Nokia had a webkit port for S60 in 2005 already. Google literally built Android/Chrome ecosystem on top of R&D done by Nokia (kernel drivers and optimizations, browsers, and other low level linux stuff).

I'm pretty sure MS has similar stories of death by management. Balmer was the key person in charge at MS throughout this.

2005 is also the same year that AJAX browser apps started displacing desktop UIs at a no doubt alarming rate for MS.

By the time MS was trying to push windows phone, their windows only development stack was a huge part of their problem. They needed developers to write apps for windows phone; especially developers already successful on IOS and Android. Only problem: all the IOS developers were on Macs (because Apple). And many of the Android developers were too (because they were pretty awesome). A windows laptop was a really hard sell to developers at the time because, well, they kind of sucked. Google was actively trying to compete with MS and still best friends with Apple so, the two of them created a developer friendly ecosystem outside of the MS bubble.

Because their developer ecosystem sucked, windows phone lacked apps, and therefore it flopped. Techies matter if you are a tech company trying to create and push new tech. If you are milking cobol, vb6, or some other ancient crap: fire all the techies. Basically, that's what IBM and Oracle did. Techies used to love IBM stuff. Not any more. Lets not talk about just how much they loathe Oracle at this point.

So techies not only matter but losing them cost Balmer his job and regaining their trust is a huge part of Nadella's current success.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#329

Post by manigandham » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

type0 wrote: post #264

manigandham wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VSCode and Visual Studio Code are the same thing, so what do you mean? Are you saying the repo is not providing the actual VSCode?

Because VSCode and Visual Studio Code isn't the same thing. The actual binary releases of Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com/license And here's the license for VSCode itself https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

It says at the top of the page you linked:

"This license applies to the Visual Studio Code product. Source Code for Visual Studio Code is available at https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode under the MIT license agreement..."

Source code and final product have different licenses but VSCode and Visual Studio Code refer to the same thing. If you're using the official release channel then you should have the final product that is licensed to use the debugger.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#330

Post by scarface74 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #327

scarface74 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again not according to official court records. iOS turned Apple into a trillion dollar company because of hardware sells. Selling phones haven’t been profitable for any Android manufacturer. Even Samsung’s ASP is around $270 for phones.

I'm not sure what your point is. Microsoft sells hardware as well. If anything, that's another nail in Ballmer's coffin.

The hardware that Microsoft sells is inconsequential to the bottom line. XBox’s sell at a loss and the few surface computers they sell don’t move the needle.