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Changing My Mind On Microsoft

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Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#91

Post by [deleted] »

huggyface wrote: post #41
cs702 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they accessing these virtual machines? Probably with Citrix-compatible thin clients. There are a ton of those out there. ...it is very difficult to find candidates who know anything but Microsoft tools. That may be true in the US and some parts of Western Europe, such as the UK, but what about the rest of the world? The author of the blog post, John Hempton, is a hedge fund manager who works out of Australia…

Probably with Citrix-compatible thin clients. There are a ton of those out there. Why would you post this reply when I specifically address that in the next two sentences? That may be true in the US and some parts of Western Europe, such as the UK, but what about the rest of the world? India is overwhelmingly Microsoft-centric. Eastern Europe is overwhelmingly Microsoft-centric. Much of Russia is very Microsoft-centr…

[deleted]

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#92

Post by icebraining »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #30
dneb7 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about propietary software and one OS (Windows specifically, OS X too though) is people using those operating systems expect to pay for their software. I'd love to come out with a Linux version of my software, but I'd then be competing with 10 free versions, and worse, a mindset that expects everything to be free. I gotta eat!

There is definitely a hunger in the Linux community for quality commercial applications in areas where open source has not traditionally managed to perform so well (Image/Video editing, games etc). You would certainly have limited luck trying sell a C compiler or package manager to Linux users for sure, but there are certainly areas (including some developer tools)where there could be a market. If you released (say)…

If you released (say) an image editor for Windows and Mac you are competing with Photoshop as well as countless other programs, whereas if you release for Linux you may have less potential users (although there are still an estimated 30 million) but you are competing with The Gimp.

And Krita: http://www.krita.org/

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#93

Post by icebraining »

dneb7 wrote: post #55
dman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you classify a whole community of users as cheapskates look at the data - http://www.inatux.com/?r=humble-indie-bundle-shows-gnu-linux...

Thanks for that -- a bit surprising really (current stats show Linux users out giving the other two). Is that because they are more willing to pay for software as Linux goes mainstream, or desperate for games? (honest question)

More willing compared to what? On what did you base the opinion that Linux users were opposed to paying for stuff?

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#94

Post by sp332 »

powertower wrote: post #9

> My personal gripe was how poorly Microsoft thought about and handled security issues. My Linux computer is as far as I know virus free . He is comparing Windows 95 to Ubuntu 11.04 (if you follow the link in that sentence)! > They [devs] did not bother developing for other platforms because those platforms were economically irrelevant and the Microsoft developer tools worked. Then he doesn't even make the connection…

Everything after Windows XP had security at its core.

Blame the users who are clueless, that are emailing viruses to all their contacts, download Trojans and warez with backdoors, etc.

I also blame MS for having insecure configurations by default. It's possible to secure a NT system quite well but there were a lot of compromises made in the defaults for convenience.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#95

Post by mcguire »

skrebbel wrote: post #39

> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools unless they are demented or brain-dead. I'm 29 now, switched to mostly doing C# two years ago, and I love it. Its mix of pragmatism, familiarity and modern constructs is unparalleled, and no other truly modern language has this good IDE support. The only thing I don't love about it is the vendor lock-in, but in reality this is a smaller probl…

"The only thing I don't love about it is the vendor lock-in, but in reality this is a smaller problem for many applications than it seems."

I hate to suggest this, but write that statement down and put it somewhere you will find it when you're, say, 40. I've known a number of Microsoft-dedicated (and Apple-dedicated, for that matter) developers over the years, and I can't think of any right off-hand that are still programming.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#96

Post by kstrauser »

powertower wrote: post #9

> My personal gripe was how poorly Microsoft thought about and handled security issues. My Linux computer is as far as I know virus free . He is comparing Windows 95 to Ubuntu 11.04 (if you follow the link in that sentence)! > They [devs] did not bother developing for other platforms because those platforms were economically irrelevant and the Microsoft developer tools worked. Then he doesn't even make the connection…

> Sorry, but that's mostly due to the desktop market size and Windows' share of it.

And yet, Unix/Linux had and has a much larger portion of the Internet-connected server market share but without the constant stream of critical vulnerabilities that Windows servers endured in the early 2000s. By your logic, Windows should have been a safer server choice because Unix servers were constantly falling to new attacks.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#97

Post by Patient0 »

To my mind, Microsoft ought to be putting all of their corporate weight behind Mono. CLR, F#, C# are all technically superior to JVM, Scala and Java IMHO and many others. But what holds alot of people back from .Net in the enterprise is that they want Linux in the server room, not Windows. If Microsoft really put their weight behind Mono then I think lots of enterprise customers would ditch Java in favour of .Net

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#98

Post by mcguire »

steve8918 wrote: post #25

I read Bronte Capital all the time. He is a hedge fund manager in Australia, and it very good at sniffing out fraudulent stocks or short-worthy stocks and shorting them. I'm not too confident in his ability to assess technology though, and I think he may be a bit premature on this MSFT call. I do believe that Windows 8 is a mistake made out of desperation. Given that the change in interface will confuse a lot of peop…

* Prediction: this will wind up with a lower corporate take up rate than Vista (ie next to none).*

* Prediction 2: this will accelerate, rather than slow down, the rate at which enterprises take their enterprise specific software into platform independent programs*

* Prediction 3: by stuffing this up Microsoft has just about lost its bet on moving the retail computer market into docking cloud computers. Apple will do this. And they will do it by stealth.*

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to have survived Vista experience without too much injury. And having had some experience with enterprise platform movements, accelerating a "glacial" speed is still pretty slow. And finally, I still have doubts about Apple's capability and interest in the general "retail computer market". (Although I could be wrong about that.)

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#99

Post by kstrauser »

cbaleanu wrote: post #57
evo_9 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were no serious threats to their dominance before; now they have iOS, Android and even OS-X is starting to gain more marketshare than I'd be comfortable with if I were ballmer.

I really don't see the point that many HN users keep comparing apples with oranges. iOS and Android have no relevance in this discussion as they are not real OS'es. You cannot develop on them, you cannot do work on them except for replying emails and browsing some webpages. And that's how it will remain. OSX is great, but please post the link from Apple store where you can get a decent working laptop for under $500.…

> iOS and Android have no relevance in this discussion as they are not real OS'es.

"Mavicas and Digital Elphs have no relevance in this discussion as they are not real cameras. You cannot expose film with them, you cannot do work on them except for taking candid pictures and sharing them with friends. And that's how it will remain."

It is always dangerous to assume that you're in the market you think you're in, and not the market that your customers are telling you that you're in. Microsoft seems to believe that they're in the "real computer OS" market, but their customers believe they're in the "lets me run my apps" market. And to those customers - whose vote ultimately matters the most - Windows is competing directly with OS X, iOS, and Android as a way for people to run the software they want to run. Increasingly, that software is the kind of stuff that runs on the tablet or smartphone that they're doing most of their computing on.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#100

Post by powertower »

kstrauser wrote: post #96
powertower wrote: post #9

> My personal gripe was how poorly Microsoft thought about and handled security issues. My Linux computer is as far as I know virus free . He is comparing Windows 95 to Ubuntu 11.04 (if you follow the link in that sentence)! > They [devs] did not bother developing for other platforms because those platforms were economically irrelevant and the Microsoft developer tools worked. Then he doesn't even make the connection…

> Sorry, but that's mostly due to the desktop market size and Windows' share of it. And yet, Unix/Linux had and has a much larger portion of the Internet-connected server market share but without the constant stream of critical vulnerabilities that Windows servers endured in the early 2000s. By your logic, Windows should have been a safer server choice because Unix servers were constantly falling to new attacks.

> And yet, Unix/Linux had and has a much larger portion of the Internet-connected server market share but without the constant stream of critical vulnerabilities that Windows servers endured in the early 2000s.

A couple of things...

1. I really don't know what the Linux server market share was in 2000 in comparison to NT server. Nor what the break-down of kernel vs user-space patches and vulnerabilities are. It also makes things much more complicated when you consider that the two were used pretty much in different situations and for different purposes.

2. That quote was in relation to the desktop/home-user market.

So I'm not going to go there as I don't want to compare apples to oranges, and on limited knowledge.

> By your logic, Windows should have been a safer server choice because Unix servers were constantly falling to new attacks.

How you're getting that from what I said makes no sense to me.

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