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MS is Back...? — Parallax Forums

MS is Back...?

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  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-12-03 13:44
    Erco,
    Great commercial for IE10 & MS haterz...

    Heater is no MS hater. I just wish the world all the best in getting along without them. Why make yourself dependent on a corporation in a foreign country? That would be stupid would it not?

    Why does anyone argue against that proposition? Does MS pay you? Do you benefit in some other way? What is it?
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2012-12-03 13:48
    The problem is that 50% of Windows users are stuck on IE 8 because Microsoft won't release IE 9 and above on XP. So it doesn't matter how good IE 10 is because people are moving to Google Chrome on XP just to get an HTML5 compliant browser. That's probably a major mistake for MS.
  • Oldbitcollector (Jeff)Oldbitcollector (Jeff) Posts: 8,091
    edited 2012-12-03 13:53
    We love IE.. It's good for business..

    /a computer technician..
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2012-12-03 13:53
    From the comments section;

    The day that micro$oft stops making things that suck is the day they start making vacuums.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-12-03 13:54
    The problem is that 50% of Windows users are stuck on Windows instead of using something else:)

    And yes, how are our customers supposed to view our WebGL apps on IE anything?
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2012-12-03 14:08
    The company got a new logo in August. It has Bing, Xbox, Windows 8, the Surface tablet

    I feel like a right womble. I always thought Bing was a virus.

    In my defence, on many downloads if you don't read it very carefully you end up missing the "uncheck this if you don't want Bing". And it is hard to uninstall. All virus/trojan behaviour in my book.

    Ok, time to claim the $10,000,000 I just won in a lottery I didn't enter...
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2012-12-03 14:15
    I saw that vid on a hairloss website and just figured it was another ad for Cialis.

    IE1.png

    http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#symbol=msft;range=20120920,20121203;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2012-12-03 18:27
    Google: Steam on Linux. This event signals the paradigm shift. The best PC games on a free OS, and they run faster. Now the only reason for windows is gone.

    Once the decent games migrate to Linux, (by this time next year?) Microsoft Windows and Apple OS will both be about as important as Sun Solaris is now.

    It could be argued that not ALL games will move to linux, but once Left 4 Dead and Counter Strike are available on linux, its game over.

    Good riddance to bad rubbish.
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    edited 2012-12-03 18:43
    Migrate to Firefox and that solves the problem.

    Let M$ keep Iexplorer and no need to migrate to Linux..

    Though I don't see Linux stealing the desktop corporate accounts no matter how many games they have. They're what 2-5% of the market and they've been there for over a decade.
  • JordanCClarkJordanCClark Posts: 198
    edited 2012-12-04 02:37
    Heater. wrote: »
    The problem is that 50% of Windows users are stuck on Windows instead of using something else:)

    And yes, how are our customers supposed to view our WebGL apps on IE anything?

    Sure! I'd be willing to fully relocate to Linux-- just as soon as linux version of Solidworks, ACAD Electrical, and all of my PLC programming tools port over, I am sooo there!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-12-04 03:04
    JordanCClark,
    I'd be willing to fully relocate to Linux-- just as soon as...
    Who said anything about Linux?

    The issue is that the entire worlds computing infrastructure is dependent on a single source. As you have pointed out in your post you are stuck. Stuck because all the software you need has grown up based on non-standard, non-open, API's, formats and protocols.

    For many, indeed most, that source is a corporation in a foreign country and totally out of control. This is clearly a very poor situation to be in.

    I don't expect this unhealthy dependence to be fixed any time soon but I will do my little bit to chip away at it whenever possible.
  • JordanCClarkJordanCClark Posts: 198
    edited 2012-12-04 05:37
    Sorry, Heater. Usually when someone says "something else", it ends up as a code word for "linux". I didn't realize you really meant "anything else"! :lol:
  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2012-12-04 05:38
    The Microsoft bashing gets a little old sometimes.

    I would venture to say that having for the most part that single target OS in the 80's and 90's led to the vast amount of software that is available and the proliferation of the PC in the corporate workspace. Do they get everything right. no, but they do get a lot right.

    When another OS arrives that is anywhere near as easy as Windows for installing and upgrading software maybe it will get somewhere.

    Everytime I deal with linux is yum this, rpm that, tarball this, fuzzball that, find another repository, on and on and on...

    I've dealt with some disros for specific tasks, like LinixCNC that make install and use a breeze, but that isn't the general case.

    If someone really likes Linux or OS/X or whatever, great, but why do you have to denegrate MS in the process?

    Like another poster mentioned, in the corporate world, especially engineering, most software is windows centric.

    In CAD user productivity is a key factor, so the UI is usually optimized for the OS. A clunky set of least common denominator generic UI elements that work across multiple platforms is not going to sell product.

    C.W.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2012-12-04 06:39
    Heater. wrote: »

    The issue is that the entire worlds computing infrastructure is dependent on a single source. As you have pointed out in your post you are stuck. Stuck because all the software you need has grown up based on non-standard, non-open, API's, formats and protocols.

    For many, indeed most, that source is a corporation in a foreign country and totally out of control. This is clearly a very poor situation to be in.

    It doesn't really matter that the implementation of Microsoft's OS is closed, as long as the Windows API is documented well enough to allow third parties to produce clones. For example there's WINE which reproduces a fair bit of the Win32 API on top of Linux. There's also React OS project which looks stalled, but does run Windows programs at its 0.314 release. If the situation were truly intolerable someone would get it working.

    MS seems more misdirected than out of control. They've had no vision for a good eight years and it shows. They've stumbled from technology initiative to initiative and never really get anything polished well enough to be a category killer. Some recent OK but now edging into also ran tech status are WPF, Silverlight, the office ribbon, the mobile strategy du jour, and their new tiled UI. They're all symptoms of them reacting tactically to other vendors without a coherent plant to make each platform the best.

    The exception seems to be the video game division, but frankly Sony is another company that's lost its way.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-12-04 06:46
    I just have to choose between an OS that assumed it had a lock on my pocket book and could force me to buy unneeded hardware and software or to take control of my computer with an OS that was stable and helpful.

    If MS built airplanes, would you fly?
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-12-04 06:50
    Heater. wrote: »
    JordanCClark,


    Who said anything about Linux?

    The issue is that the entire worlds computing infrastructure is dependent on a single source. As you have pointed out in your post you are stuck. Stuck because all the software you need has grown up based on non-standard, non-open, API's, formats and protocols.

    For many, indeed most, that source is a corporation in a foreign country and totally out of control. This is clearly a very poor situation to be in.

    I don't expect this unhealthy dependence to be fixed any time soon but I will do my little bit to chip away at it whenever possible.

    Ummm, Heater..............

    Linux is the backbone of the entire world's computing infrastructure, not Windows. 70% of the internet servers are Linux. ISPs prefer Linux.

    It is the end-user that is force to buy a machine with bundled Windows that knows no better.
  • JLockeJLocke Posts: 354
    edited 2012-12-04 06:58
    Here's an interesting article concerning the problems facing Microsoft... Steve Ballmer's Nightmare Is Coming True
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-12-04 07:22
    @JordanCClark

    I love Linux as much as the next geek. But my argument is not a simple "Use Linux instead of Windows bla bla". My feelings about MS and Windows are probably clear enough but that is not my major point either.
    I just hate the way the world, its governments, its military, its industry, its people, god damn everything in computing exists in a state of dependency on one company. I just think that after all the decades of building computers and operating systems and applications we should have moved on from that situation.

    @ctwardell
    If someone really likes Linux or OS/X or whatever, great, but why do you have to denegrate MS in the process?
    As you see from the above I'm not really into MS bashing. I'm bashing the situation we all find ourselves in.

    I do agree with you comments re: "yum this, rpm that, tarball this, fuzzball that" we have a long way to go....

    Martin_H,

    Thank God for Wine. Wine makes it possible for me to run LTSpice on my machine. However endlessly chasing the Win API is a serious waste of human resources.
    MS seems more misdirected than out of control
    Perhaps they are misdirected. I meant "out of control" as in we users don't get any say in what is going on.
    Even when things get really serious and it's time for regulatory investigations nothing much can be done.

    Loopy,
    Linux is the backbone of the entire world's computing infrastructure, not Windows.
    Yes I know, perhaps "infrastructure" is the wrong term. Notice how nearly every company, government, school, individual etc etc is dependent on MS to run their business? That's the infra structure I meant.
  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2012-12-04 07:52
    [QUOTE=Martin_H;1147221They've stumbled from technology initiative to initiative and never really get anything polished well enough to be a category killer. Some recent OK but now edging into also ran tech status are WPF, Silverlight, the office ribbon, the mobile strategy du jour, and their new tiled UI. They're all symptoms of them reacting tactically to other vendors without a coherent plant to make each platform the best.[/QUOTE]

    I feel this one, from a dev side there is way too much "flavor of the month" activity. Not sure what the answer is, it seems like its an attempt to keep up with the pace of change on the web and trying to unify desktop and mobile development.

    Application automation is my largest area of work, and things went pretty well with VBA and using COM for automation, doing COM interop from .Net works well enough, but leaves you using one language for "outside" (C# or VB.net) automation and another for "inside" (VBA). Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) held promise but didn't really catch on.

    It looks like the IPod and now Chromebook may kill off Silverlight, I image WPF will die with it.

    I'm hearing HTML5 and Javascript may be the way of future Office automation...

    C.W.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-12-04 07:56
    I tried Linux a few years ago and lost 2 years worth of work because the disk crashed.
    Then I bought another Win-tel desk top having gobs of memory and started using virtual box.
    I have a Mac for development, but generally despise it. I use google chrome everywhere.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2012-12-04 09:56
    @jazzed
    The disk crashed? Did you buy one of those infamous after the Thai floods hard disks? It may have had nothing to do with Linux, just bad timing on your part.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-12-04 10:09
    I feel safer running Windows, when I have to, in a VirtualBox under Linux. That way when the Windows install gets screwed, as it always does, I can revert to the last good image in seconds.

    Just to be really safe I run that Linux in a VirtualBox under another Linux. That way when the Linux upgrade screws, up as it always does eventually, I can easily revert to the last good image in seconds.

    Too be really, really safe I run that Linux in a VirtualBox.....

    In fact I don't actually have a computer. It's VirtualBoxes all the way down:)
  • localrogerlocalroger Posts: 3,452
    edited 2012-12-04 16:24
    Ballmer's the guy who once said "Developers, developers, developers!" Well he chased off this developer by planting a knife in my back.

    I do most of my work on embedded devices but when I need to whip up a WIMP application I use VB. Been using it since VB3. It was simply brilliant and got even better with the VB4 compiler. At VB6 it was stable, easy to use, and reliable. Competing programming tools were clunky half-complete imitations by comparison. The original Mac programming tools really sucked. I didn't need to get too deep into the OS (well, I did wean myself from plugins, learning to program serial and TCP to the API, but that's not really a big deal; once you get it working you never need to go back.)

    Then MS said "We don't support VB any more, we have this .NET thing to replace it. Oh, and we're not supporting the old VB any more, at all."

    It was inferior, slower, and completely incompatible with trillions of lines of code, including a great deal of what I spent ten years writing. Why did they do this? They wanted .NET to push Java out of the market, so it had to pretend to be cross-platform, and by forcing VB users onto .NET it suddenly had a huge captive market. I told everyone who swallowed and opened the .NET docs they were fools and I stand by that statement. I will never, ever again allow myself to become that dependent on any Microsoft product.

    So I still use VB, because it still works, and the day I can't buy a computer with an OS where it works will be the day I finally switch to PureBasic (for which I've already bought my license). Meanwhile it's not worth the trouble; PB is very capable but different in its own ways (but much more aligned with my own style than .NET). I'd run VB code under Wine except that my API serial routines can't receive data. (They don't work on 16-bit Windows, e.g. Win 98, either.)

    I always said that, having proven their untrustworthiness they would do it again, and everyone told me I was crazy until last year when they started making noises about some new Silverlight thingie taking the place of .NET. Slashdot just about exploded over it. The problem is, having gotten away with murder selling crappy products to captive markets since 1977, I don't think they have a clue where that bridge too far is. They've already crossed it for me, but the weird complexities of serious .NET programming chased a lot of people to web development and later IOS. They're used to forcing people to go along with them in order to keep their market share up, and eventually people realize that the pain of jumping off that treadmill won't be as bad as the exhaustion of staying on.
  • msrobotsmsrobots Posts: 3,709
    edited 2012-12-04 18:51
    @localroger,

    I went down this road also. Even now there is no working way to upgrade a VB6 program to net.

    I still have two major projects out there in VB6 (one 5 years, one 7 years of development.) the only way to resolve this mess is to rewrite everything.

    But I stayed with MS and - I really like C# and the net-frramework.

    YEs - it is not VB. But it is quite close. I do not know of ANY development-tool working as nice as Visual Studio. I tryed tons of them.

    Over the years I moved most of my stuff away from Windows to web-applications, Sometimes with a windows-wrapper aka embedded-IE. So the user has his windows-program - but it is a web-site.

    Way back I started with COBOL, and I still have some customers using it. Sometimes it is funny how incredible fast COBOL is. Even running on a PC not a mainframe. But it is a PITA to program. The only positive thing on COBOL (and ADA?) is you do not need comments in your source - it is talkative enought.

    So I am not a FAN of MS but - It is working. I can pull out a cocept in a couple of days. show it, sell it. Like in VB it is not really OO (think smalltalk) but you can encapsulate things and easy get some teamwork running. Its all about staying BEHIND the newest stuff.

    NEVER use a actual Version of MS products. Stay behind. Wait for service-packs. I still run VS2008. It works.

    Silverlight?. Metro? - well let them sort it out - you do not need it.

    But C# and net-stuff works. Thanks to Miguel & friends even cross-platform on MONO.

    IBM-370? jupp. ARM? jupp, SPARC? jupp - I can run my stuff everywhere.

    I am not talking about "windows-apps" i am talking about web-applications and commandline tools.

    and the funny thing there is - if you do it right in the first place - it is copy and paste for your app-directory. Just cpopy and Paste. Even a network-share will do and you run the same website on Windows, Linux, PC, ARM, SPARC, you name it.

    no recompile needed and you can keep your sources away from your installations.

    You know @localroger, I can feel your pain, I have it also - still in need to rewrite those two applications left.

    But over tha last 10 years I moved over all the other stuff, And I feel confident to tackle the last two ones...

    There is NO WAY to automate this. DO NOT even try to 'update' your project to net. will not work.

    Just rewrite it with the new paradigma. You will be astonished how nice it will work out.

    well

    just my $0.02

    Enjoy!

    Mike...
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2012-12-04 20:22
    In fact I don't actually have a computer. It's VirtualBoxes all the way down

    Heater probably has this all running on a zicog emulation on a propeller chip!
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