We all were. Computers have changed life for all of us. But computers aren't what they could have been...
Microsoft's version of computers is a pale and sickly thing, it's engineered for--that is, optimized for--profit rather than productivity.
Some people use computers to save lives, right? How many more lives might have been saved over the past couple of decades if MS hadn't held features--ideas! concepts!--back again and again to enforce planned obsolescence? How many times did they obfuscate a communication protocol to maintain market dominance?
I appreciate that some current MS employees aren't responsible for what happened before they were hired on.
I hope you appreciate the magnitude of those past sins. There are reasons people yell!
I think you have it backwards. It's the new vision of computers (walled gardens, all the interesting logic hidden away in data centers, content consumption appliances instead of real computers) that is pale and sickly.
> How many more lives might have been saved over the past couple of decades if MS hadn't held features--ideas! concepts!--back again and again to enforce planned obsolescence?
Please enlighten me on the ideas! concepts! Microsoft held back again and again that were not available on free software systems?
If you want to talk about Microsoft's "past sins", I believe data trumps anecdotes: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=269498
If you have any solid data (rather than oft-repeated anecdotes) that MS inhibited innovation on a large scale, I'd like to see it.
People certainly yell for reasons, but those reasons are often very poorly informed.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
> I think you have it backwards. It's the new vision of computers (walled gardens, all the interesting logic hidden away in data centers, content consumption appliances instead of real computers) that is pale and sickly.
Yes, these new trends are worrisome. But it's not the first time!
I firmly believe that we'd all be better off if THIS guy had been the one to introduce computers to the common man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMzojQFyMo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOf4EMN6-XA
To this day, Microsoft is putting computers in schools--but not LOGO, not free software, not unix, not lisp, not crates of disposable m68ks and bread boards... Nope, they are putting products in front of new generations eyeballs.
Data can trump anecdotes, and it should when a culture believes they are doing the right thing but things are still going poorly and nobody understands why--at those times, by all means, collect some data and analyze it!
But when "everybody knows" we're doing something wrong, and things are going poorly, then for the love of god use some common sense and stop doing it!
The whole planet got 0wned by MS before many of us here were born--certainly before most of us were competent. So this is what we've got, this is where we are.
Big picture: Where do we go from here? Immediate situation: don't become part of a new generation of MS fanboys. We don't need that.
As for the Halloween documents, come on, 1) you're going to cite ESR, really? and 2) that boils down to "they said something bad about my religion / OS of choice". Marketing strategy commonly involves belittling your competitors. I laughed along at the Mac vs PC ads, even though I knew most of them were simply hyperbole.
> But when "everybody knows" we're doing something wrong, and things are going poorly, then for the love of god use some common sense and stop doing it!
1) Just like "everyone knew" the earth is flat?
2) "Everyone knows" Microsoft is "doing something wrong" only if you don't step out of the HN / Silicon Valley bubble. You and PG and thousands others might think MS is "irrelevant" and "dead" and "evil" and "produces crappy software", but it's trivially disproved by noting that it has consistently been in the top-5 brands worldwide by many different rankings (google it) for many years.
We may not need MS fanboys, but we sure has hell don't need MS haters who base their beliefs on incorrect information.
1b and 2b) I think you've made my point. So are we going to tell the rest of the world, or let them dangle?
Are you joking? I'll just give you one example: IE 6 and its complete disregard for open standards, end-user security and its lack of change put the web in stasis for years. At first, it didn't make much difference that we had Firefox because developers still made their pages only compatible with Microsoft's non-compliant browser, which was understandable as most people used it. Since IE lost ground the web has become a much more open and welcoming space for experimentation and advancement of its technologies. And that's undeniable.
2. Note also that vendor prefixes always were and are still a thing, so it's not just IE that had "non-compliant" features. Adding non-compliant features and then working them into the standards seems to be the natural way web technologies advance.
Especially with Opera in mind, I recall many new features being added to browsers regardless of IE's stagnation. Sure, they were not widely used because the then-dominant IE didn't have them, but that didn't prevent Opera and Firefox from adding them. So, unless you conflate "experimentation and advancement" with "widespread adoption", I would disagree that IE held back experimentation and advancement of web technologies.
1. It's not just that the held back. It's not even primarily that they held back. It is that they taught countless CEOs that Excel was the state of the art way to think.
I don't believe that the best tools are widgets. I believe that the best tools are programming environments. When I really need to get some facts straight, I turn to my trusty shell and unix family of processing tools. When my boss has the same need, she turns to Excel. WTF? Sure, you can do some reasoning with that tool... "But for BETTER reasoning, upgrade to Excel 95!"
2. Even if some old ideas were never completely lost, they were unknown to most people. If it hadn't been for some crotchety old neck beards, we wouldn't be having this conversation... And some of them had to completely dedicate their lives to preserving the idea that computers are not a product, they are a gift to humanity.
Locking down computers using UEFI Secure Boot and taking control away from the owners of the machine.
Sabotaging the office document standard process at ISO.
Corruption in cases where governments explored switching to alternative operating systems.
Supporting software patents.
All these happened within last 5 years (and continue to happen).
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev...
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev...
huh? I'm not MS lover but can you prove this ?
Microsoft requires that x86 UEFI machines be unlockable by end users.
In comparison, Apple has locked down various aspects of their desktop machines for years.
So, if all choices are bad choices, what are you left with?
among other things.
At least since after I went through puberty (I'm not that young!) Microsoft has been acting pretty damn chill.
I guess my main complaint is that people yell at us for sins that were committed by, quite literally, a previous generation.