MS Promises World Domination

[Lead Head]

Los Angeles (CA) - The way we build and use personal computers will change dramatically over the next 24 months, and if Microsoft has anything to do it, they will be a principal catalyst for these changes. Linux developers will regret admitting this, but the changes being made to Windows, announced at last week's Professional Developers' Conference, will dramatically impact the architecture and feature set of all personal computers, handhelds, and to some degree, even other consumer appliances.

 This change at the software level is important, because it impacts not only how we work, but what we work with. No software producer in the world has the degree of influence over computer architecture as Microsoft. We benchmark systems today using performance tests that are at least ten years old, and are based on the way some people have always known Microsoft Office to work. These benchmarks help companies decide how much processor power, memory, and storage to deploy when purchasing or building systems in bulk. Now, the fundamentals of the applications we've tested are about to change. No longer will Office documents be locked into a proprietary format; in fact, the contents of those documents can be unlocked, queried, compared with and against one another, and shared using open formats. And not just the version of "open" formats that Microsoft has been pushing, but really Open in the traditional, Internet way.

 

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well i have really nothing to comment but i thought some people might be interested

[worker201]

They talk big, but open && under Microsoft domination is really the same thing as closed.  The key to Linux's openness is open && freedom to do whatever the fuck you want with it.  That freedom will not easily be given up.

[Jack2000]

Yeah ...
OpenSource and Microsoft in the same sentence ... WHAT!



are they mad

that is like saying CCCP and Democracy or Justice in the same
sentence


ps;it may turn out for good though

[noob]

the day hardware is all modified and my toaster runs Vista Toaster Edition(Unregistered) cause M$ says so I will go to russia and eat 10 hairy cows.

[Kintaro]

It is interesting to see how once again that someone is claiming that Linux is going to fall behind and fizzle out, although in these paragraphs this is not the direct claim, they do however on the same page claim “Nonetheless, Microsoft is doing what no single Linux vendor, or association of such vendors, have accomplished so far: It's putting these new standards together and making a working information sharing system out of them. And it is putting their own products, servers, and services squarely in the middle.” This appears to me that another visionary feels that Linux is threatened by open standards, which are somehow Open Standards that use closed products, servers, and services – in other words it is some strange usage of the word Open in the computer industry that I am unaware of.

The fact is that if they are open standards, Linux will support them in no time. This includes document formats, and especially Microsoft’s XML Web services and the .NET platform. There are projects in the Open Source community everywhere attempting to get a hold on these strategies. In fact they claim that Office 12 will change the way users interact with their computers, when has Microsoft not made this claim? They always make claims like this, every Windows release and every other new product. Hell they said Windows 98 was faster than Windows 95.

In the Open Source world they are also working on restructuring XML so it works around the Operating System. They are also working on a million other things. One thing Microsoft seem eager to give away is near perfect cross platform compatibility with .NET which is also work in progress with Mono and other things. This could very well give Linux, Solaris, Mac Os X, etc the power to run almost any new Windows application. Compatibility layers are in progress, and it is a hell of a lot easier to cover the API’s for .NET than with wine.

GNU/Linux always have and always will cover their tracks, and just like any other project or organisation they will get ahead, behind, and wherever at times. Linux is not dead, I don’t think it ever will be.

[Carolina]

Microsofts tactics seem less directed at world market domination than personal information domination. The drive to gather more and more of our personal information by Microsoft (and then turn around and sell it) is where they must be focusing. Wallet, link to web licensing features, registration for each piece of software....
Microsoft has enough engineering talent to stop our daily problems with their programs. Why don't I get popups in my Opera browser. How come I can delete everything and nothing gets stored to the registry. Why is my linux system protected against unathorized changes?
It's not stupidity. It's people finding holes that they left open to exploit.
Plus if Microsoft rules the world, then it's going to take me a long time to get up in the morning and just as long to go back to sleep. Some mornings I'll just feel too blue to do a damn thing.

[worker201]

Well, they are a marketing company - that's what they do.