Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#261

Post by ZenoArrow » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #246

ZenoArrow wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the web" Okay, but that's sort of technological shift is rare. Nothing else in my lifetime has come close. >"home broadband" Just a refinement of the web. >"Linux" Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first released. >"smartphones" I hope you realise smartphones did not start with the iPhone. The smartphone has gone through a long period of iterative design improvements. If you're looki…

> >"home broadband" > Just a refinement of the web. What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all. > Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first released. Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary her…

> "What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all."

In terms of impact, which is seemingly how you want to measure how innovative something was, home broadband changed how much the web was used. Compared to the dial-up era it made the Internet something people could connect to 24/7. However, in my own personal experience I was already a heavy Internet user before home broadband, so it mostly changed how quickly things got downloaded. I still watched videos, listened to music, chatted to strangers, played games, etc... in the dial-up era.

>"Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary here. GNU had been around for quite a while. It's Linux that was revolutionary. It's a kernel that worked well and that people could contribute to and package up with GNU to enable operating systems of very high quality."

If open-source was the thing you wanted to point to as innovative, then you should've said open-source. Other than the development methodology behind it and how widespread it is, there's not much that's interesting about Linux. As for 'enable operating systems of very high quality', that's debatable. High quality compared to what? Linux is far from perfect. To give one example, CoreAudio is far better than ALSA or ALSA+PulseAudio when it comes to flexibility and latency respectively.

>"Aye carumba. What were called smartphones before the iPhone were awful. WinCE was a disaster, and Blackberries were a niche tool for a niche market. iOS and Android devices made computing usable on a mobile platform by everyone for the first time."

Again, this seems to come down to you wanting to measure innovation in terms of impact. Quite a bit of the UI of the iPhone has its roots in the PDA market, which was arguably also started by Apple with the Newton. The iPhone introduced capacitive multitouch, and had a sleek design, but if it didn't become popular it would've been just another evolution of the smartphone, just like the LG Prada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

>"But some technologies are actually revolutionary (like the ones just listed) and others are not (Kinect.) This is obvious by the impact or the lack of impact that they have."

So it's not the design that's revolutionary but the impact it has? Was putting wheels on luggage revolutionary?

>"You are not fun to talk to because you are missing very obvious things, and I think you're doing it deliberately, so I'm done with you."

Feel free to ignore me if you like, I'm not fussed.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#262

Post by runeks » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #68

bargl wrote: post #31

Microsoft has done some very good things and some very bad things. I'll let everyone else point out the bad things because there seems to be plenty of that. I personally like the: Surface products, Typescript, C#/F#, .NET Core, Visual Studio Code, and the Hololens. These are all recently new developments for Microsoft that are really awesome. The fact that a lot of this has become open source is even better. You have…

Microsoft has a huge, huge intellectual capital in Microsoft Research. They have very interesting results and experimental ideas in programming languages and interaction design, and I'm sure they'll have most of it patented.

> They have very interesting results and experimental ideas in programming languages and interaction design, and I'm sure they'll have most of it patented.

That's the problem with Microsoft. They make their money by holding on to their IP (Windows), rather than spreading it around (like Google, with eg. Kubernetes), and I don't think this will work for anything like it has worked for Windows.

For example, Microsoft didn't design the current default (dare I say) cloud runtime environment Kubernetes, because they would rather keep their technology within the Microsoft ecosystem, in order to attract customers to Windows (which is where they make their money). Google, on the other hand, is willing to let go of their IP (using the Kubernetes example), by donating it to a non-profit, and thus having it succeed because open standards always succeed in the end. It's just not possible for Microsoft to create some service within Azure, and have it become the "Windows of the Cloud". Companies just aren't willing to tie themselves to any particular vendor, and in that light Microsoft just doesn't seem that attractive.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#263

Post by cmdrfred » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 1:45 AM UTC

hashhar wrote: post #195

cmdrfred wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if Apple threw a stylus and a word processor on the iPhone they would be innovators too?

Well, I agree with them not being innovators but they definitely made a marketable product. It's the same thing for which business circles praise Apple. Apple turn already known things into a marketable package which is not so different from what Microsoft did here. That's what being a device manufacturer is about. Innovations come in small bursts. Take the Surface Hub as an example.

I get that people like the product. I guess my problem is if everything is innovation than nothing is.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#264

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 3:32 AM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #241

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually suffered through corporate pressure against my use of Linux for applications I developed (and users LOVED), because of the press onslaught in the trade magazines about the ridiculous SCO trial. (And then I see from a comment above that this is being appealed. Still. 13 years later. OMG.) So, my cynicism may be intractable. You may see a "new" Microsoft, but all I see is a Microsoft which is making moves th…

I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. So, how does that make the outcome any worse? RedHat isn't contributing to the Linux kernel out of a sense of charity. IBM isn't contributing to OpenStack as a philanthropic endeavor. Facebook isn't improving PHP because it's a fun hobby project. They're all doing the things that they're doi…

No, they're not different from anyone else for having a profit motive, but Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very long stretch of using underhanded and illegal tactics to stifle competition. I would argue that they're STILL abusing their monopoly position on the desktop. THAT is what makes them different than the rest, and that, to me, is what tempers my attitude about these recent announcements.

Another difference is that the other examples you've listed here are all free software. Of all the glowing coverage Microsoft has been getting of late, only .NET on Linux is comparable. But you're never going to get Windows-forms-like applications on Windows (which a surprising number of people seem to think will happen). It's only the web stack. Does ASP.NET really stack up well against Rails or Node.js as a web application stack on Linux? I don't know, but at the least, they have some catching up to do.

But, really, I think it's another example of my main point. Microsoft could have used some pre-existing open source project and built on top of that, but they chose to create another language for the future. It's even pretty good, by all accounts. It's just that, in a world of PHP, Javascript, C++, Ruby, Python, Erlang, and all the rest, what place does a closed-source language and compiler have? They had to make it open source.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#265

Post by blakeyrat » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:30 AM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #137

marricks wrote: post #15

I was going to rag on this article for touting the the same non-specific garbage we've seen the past couple days like, "more mac users switching to surface than ever!" without any hard numbers, did is go from 20 to 25? But this article is actually pretty interesting. It focuses on how Satya Nadella has respected the leaders of Companies he's bought out and invited them to key meetings. Using their insight not only fo…

As a developer there's been so many times that I've gotten tired of MS solutions, and get excited about new emerging platforms elsewhere. Then I smirk when MS incorporates that new platform's ideology. Then I'm pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be cool, and often surpassing the original. I've heard some devs claim they cherry pick from other people's work, and others that they work hard to remain progressive…

I have different priorities than you. In terms of IDE quality, debugger quality, flexibility (ability to use actual threads if you want them!), performance... in my opinion .NET Core is already so far ahead of Node.JS it's embarrassing for them.

The only thing I might stack in Node.JS' favor is their NPM package manager. Maybe. Possibly.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#266

Post by supernovae » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:49 AM UTC

cutler wrote: post #221

supernovae wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different than the MS I grew up with in the 90s. It's time for the community to recognize this and just let people bask in positive news that is worthy the bask in. I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I…

Do you love the fact that MS earns millions from patent trolling Linux companies? How's that for open source "support"?

All of that was prior leadership. Satya has largely reversed this trend (which wasn't limited to Microsoft) and has gone the polar opposite of open source licensing a-la BSD/Apache licenses (no strings attached) and joining the Linux foundation.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#267

Post by caleblloyd » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #169

dpark wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely gone but it's dying. I'm still in a private office. Lots of devs on my team are doubled up, though. Many teams have already moved to open spaces. Demographics are a factor. Lots of devs, especially younger devs, and especially devs who've worked at other younger companies are asking for open floor plans. Not all of them, but a sizable chunk. That plus reduced cost for providing office space to devs…

My building is currently undergoing a renovation and we still have private offices. To support your point: a number of people have voluntarily taken over a former conference room to turn it into an open space office. Personally I have worked in both and don't find one better or worse than the other. I actually value sunlight, direct or indirect, more than the layout.

Amen to sunlight! Why is that such a hard thing for companies to understand?

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#268

Post by supernovae » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 5:01 AM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #79

supernovae wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different than the MS I grew up with in the 90s. It's time for the community to recognize this and just let people bask in positive news that is worthy the bask in. I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I…

I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests: (1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.) (2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, witho…

1) This is the entire industry, but much less so today than in 2007.. 2) Microsoft is listed as the highest level of foundation support for the Linux foundation and a member of patent ocmmons. 3) true.. but people seemingly don't care that everyone does this.. have a chrome book? you're being snooped, use a mobile device and mobile apps? you're being snooped.. 4) That was said 21 years ago.. see #2

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#269

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #224

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the "ads on the lock screen" thing is a wee overblown. Microsoft is the single-party provider of any of their so called "suggested content". Aka, you saw Tomb Raider not because Square Enix paid to be on the lock screen, but because Microsoft was trying to push that you can get AAA games in the Windows Store. The Surface has been up there, I think they put a movie-related one up once or twice, again, referring…

>you saw Tomb Raider not because Square Enix paid to be on the lock screen, but because Microsoft was trying to push that you can get AAA games in the Windows Store I would still consider this to be an ad.

I never said it wasn't still an ad. But as I explained, it has essentially none of the problems that are associated with ads. Ergo, complaints about it are more that it offends your special snowflake sensitivity against ads, than that there's an actual problem that needs to be addressed.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#270

Post by benaadams » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #264

quanticle wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. So, how does that make the outcome any worse? RedHat isn't contributing to the Linux kernel out of a sense of charity. IBM isn't contributing to OpenStack as a philanthropic endeavor. Facebook isn't improving PHP because it's a fun hobby project. They're all doing the things that they're doi…

No, they're not different from anyone else for having a profit motive, but Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very long stretch of using underhanded and illegal tactics to stifle competition. I would argue that they're STILL abusing their monopoly position on the desktop. THAT is what makes them different than the rest, and that, to me, is what tempers my attitude about these recent announcements. Another difference…

> Does ASP.NET really stack up well against Rails or Node.js as a web application stack on Linux?

Yes; have a look at the language column one this page:

https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r13&hw=...