Just curious what your view of the ruling this week about Dr. Lee and Google. I tend to agree with the ruling although not agree with how Dr. wen about going over to Google.

Interesting, kinda makes me respect Windows abit more, just due to the fact I've stuck with it so long, but it's also more compatible than people give it credit for.

Typical politician answer... He just rambles on about what he wants to discuss and ignore the question.

I have been a MS developer for over 14 years now and I have to admit that I find this answer somewhat dodgy. Application delivery continues to target the web browser utilizing client-side scripting (Javascript) and plug-ins (i.e. Flash) atop an increasingly irrelevant, almost commoditized, client OS. I haven't programmed a desktop application (Fat, Smart, whatever) in over 3 years now! Why? I desire my applications to be consumed by all browser clients irrespective of OS. MS server products are excellent and continue to incorporate distributed data API tie-ins. But to target an OS specific desktop is not cost effective for most companies. I would anticipate continued advancements, even within MS, to achieve rich Internet applications such as Google Maps delivered to increasingly thin client OSs. Remember, Linux is now in many consumer electronic devices with a small memory footprint, pretty damn good open source email and browser clients and is free (Debian + internal IT saavy). I've gotta get the most bang for my coding time: Internet applications are the way to go.

As a .NET consultant myself I feel \the same as Chris does. There are definitely more Web applications related jobs out there than Windows apps related ones. However, most web apps are implemented in ASP/ASP.NET/SQL Server, which requires Windows box most likely. MS is not losing its dominance in server business. On the other hand, on the client side, MS will continue pushing the IE as the standard de facto browser used by clients, which also required Windows OS.

How Windows and Web applictions will evolve IMO is still fuzzy at this moment, though Web-based apps seems getting more popular.

If Microsoft would stop stealing everybodies ideas(like Java > .net) and software and actually inovate something new, and quit trying to get a monthly fee through XP Activation, they would be OK...

You need to start using Eclipse.

http://www.eclipse.org

This is my take on the whole thing. Ballmer is a techno idiot. I've known the man for 15 years, due to his on going assault on me because he couldn't read my e-mail about OS/2 to billg. I would like to see Bob Herbold take over as CEO. He has a computer degree and understrands this technology. It would be better for Microsoft.

Microsoft is in the same place the big studios were in back in the 50s and 60s in Hollywood. They are so big and bureaucratic, talented people no longer want to work for them. The attrition rate there is stagering. I know this is the real reason Lee Kai Fu wants to leave. He finds no challenged there intellectually. All you have to do is look at his resume and you can see it.

I also sat in onb the court case and watch and listened to him very well. Microsoft has no real presents in China in the search engine Market. Lee didn't think there would be a problem. But Microsoft is at war with Google! They don't want anyone who is talented going to work for them. Since Microsoft competes with everyone in the computer industry, including hardware OEMs, there is virtually no where that Lee can go. They might even go after him if he wanted to take a teaching possition in China where he has a huge student following.

Then there is the other big issue in this case. Preston Gates and Ellis wrote these contracts. They are trying to defend what they wrote. Well, they did this in the antitrust case and these contracts were found to be anti-competitive. Since Gates senior is very influencial locally in the courts, they are trying to use the money and power of the Gates name in this case. They did the same thing to me. It eventually backfired. While I never got a cent from Microsoft for my very REAL disability I was left with due to an assault and hazing at the company by two men, my not being compensated and my case being dismissed on a summary judgment before I was even deposed or the case was legally briefed, was used against them in the antitrust case. Because of the federal court rules about subpoenaing a disabled person I was able to avoid getting involved. BUT, that didn't prevent exparte' meeting with judges and other political people. Let's just say they had a bit of a hard time explaining spying on a women who was disabled in a wheelchair due to an assault at their company 9 years after the fact. When Ballmer want's to bury someone, he just never lets it go, until you are dead. The harassment has never stopped. But given that I am as intelligent as Gates and Gates seems to be attracted to me because of this, I would bet that Gates will destroy Ballmer before Ballmer can destroy me.

The reason Microsoft doesn't want to open their source code is because they have stolen so much code from other people. I reported this to Gates in 1991. But it's OK. Their attorneys told the engineers to change the sequence of the code, and then it wasn't stealing. Problem with that is that when you change complex computer code, which is based mostly on math operations, it doesn't work the same. What you do is interject bugs! I told Gates he would never be able to make his Multimedia products work until he had the patents. Well, in 1997 he gave Apple $150 mil. to support them and bought $256 mil in patents! They eventually bought patents from Borland and Corel. Corel got $138 mil. I don't know what Borland got. But there are many small companies and individuals that were ripped of and have no evidence - yet!

When you think about how much money this company had (over $75 million in cash assets prior to the one time dividend pay back) it makes you wonder why a few million would be a big deal?

PS: I've made an attempt to translate Lee Kai Fu's name into English. Free Associate: Kung Fu, Goag Fu!

Joan L. Grove (Brewer) BS Computer Systems Engineering/3D graphic Artist
Issaquah, WA 98027
425-392-3812

http://homepage.mac.com/redmondrose/Menu1.html
redmondrose@yahoo.com

Wow alot of bad brains posting on here... I for one am one of the people that make the decisions about what technology will be used in the system I design for my clients. My clients then hire programmers to build it and I teach the programmers how to do it best. I agree that I was doing alot of web work but that was only because I was doing work for companies selling to the masses ...you know that is because the internet is new and alot of things must still be done for the masses.

But when I started doing work for vertical markets again I stoped using ASP/ASP.Net for all but edge scenarios. Why? Because from an architectual perspective using a web browser doesn't make sense when you need to do things like communicate to software like ID card scanners or signature pads. Browsers are not good at installing MSDE on clients and doing local/offline caching of data to both speed up execution beyond what a ASP app can do and to provide continued service when Internet access drops temporarily.

In the end there is nothing a Desktop app can not do that a ASP/Javascript app can do and it doesnt make professional sense to use more technologies than is neccessary to compelete the job. Why make the coders have to deal with ASP/DHTML/Javascript AND C#/VB.Net to do the things that ASP/DHTML/Javascript cannot do? Just have them use C# for everything ..the client taking full advantage of everything that a Desktop app can do. C# to do all communication to the servers over the Internet. And C# to do all server side business object layer coding, data access layer coding, and things such as Windows Services and MSMQ processors?

ASP/DHTML/Javascript is great for mass market products ... but there are far more business apps than mass market apps.

Just my $2c... I have recently designed/built a very large all C# system that does all communication over the Internet to the companies servers that host all databases and backend processing that does all the things my client wanted and HOW they wanted it. I built a proto type of a ASP.Net app and then a Desktop App and they chose the Desktop App hands down. But then again this was only being sold to a certain vertical market.

Joan's comments certainly are off the thread's principle topic and fall under the category of oral diarrhea. To extend some of Gerald's points... the use of client-side hard/software authentication and authoriziation gear and local offline data persistence is certainly a valid reason to engineer desktop only apps. I'm in complete agreement with you. But how long will the use of proprietary client-side modules/add-ons last. There is a significant amount of work being done by standardization bodies to provide a basic API framework developers can patch into to ensure optimal interoperability with such client-side modules/add-ons without having to write OS specific tie-ins. Admittedly, however, this will take time, vendor posturing and a few bloody noses. At the development slot machine I'm pulling the web application lever, anticipating that I will have better return on my quarters. Is this a mistake? Quite possibly, but time will tell.

Joan Brewer, I'm sure you've known Steve Ballmer for 15 years.

In response to your comment: "The reason Microsoft doesn't want to open their source code is because they have stolen so much code from other people. I reported this to Gates in 1991. But it's OK."

Please, just shut up. A two-year old could have come up with something more believable. Maybe if they opened their source code then the following would happen:
(a) Every script kiddy and hacker on the planet would begin learning the Microsoft code in and out and youll be seeing in excess of 100 times the current number of viruses and worms online.
(b) Microsoft is a business. If a business doesn't make money, it will not exist. Opening your 'secret' book to the world just because 'you should, and open source is nice, and file compatability is so nice', it wont take Microsoft anywhere.

Stop pretending like you worked for Microsoft for 15+ years, your grammar tells you haven't.

Joan Brewer, I'm sure you've known Steve Ballmer for 15 years.

In response to your comment: "The reason Microsoft doesn't want to open their source code is because they have stolen so much code from other people. I reported this to Gates in 1991. But it's OK."

Please, just shut up. A two-year old could have come up with something more believable. Maybe if they opened their source code then the following would happen:
(a) Every script kiddy and hacker on the planet would begin learning the Microsoft code in and out and youll be seeing in excess of 100 times the current number of viruses and worms online.
(b) Microsoft is a business. If a business doesn't make money, it will not exist. Opening your 'secret' book to the world just because 'you should, and open source is nice, and file compatability is so nice', it wont take Microsoft anywhere.

Stop pretending like you worked for Microsoft for 15+ years, your grammar tells you haven't.

I work in a support project for a US retail giant. We support over 300 applications. Almost 90% of the applications we added to our list in the past 1 year run on app servers. The most common recovery for these is to restart the JVM. All servers are unix based and all clients use Windows XP on their desktops.

Again, all of the older applications are Windows based and would not run on anything else. And many of those are being phased out. Its easy to see where we are heading.

Seems to me BG thinks it's a dumb question, so he gave a generic answer.

Most IT journalists don't report on bread and butter business app development or more vertical market product development. In these situations one often needs or desires a standard desktop type app. Also, many apps rely on client system services. These often cannot be constructed as thin clients, or as apps that run in a tight sandbox. There also is a large class of apps that could be called "client centric tools" that are geared toward the client or are a mixture of client, server and web features.

So, it will never be either/or as the question implies. This is what BG just said.

Chris ..good points indeed. However I would refer you to history of the past 15 years. Standards are nice...but nobody follows them as close as is needed to get the type of all inclusive and integrated system that Microsoft can guarantee because they closely control the process. To get open standards to work as consistantly across all products lines as well as Microsoft does will take more than just a few years. In the mean time Microsoft will be moving forwards. How long will proprietary client-side modules/add-ons last? Forever. In the end it doesnt matter if something is proprietary as long as it works and can be built as fast as possible. As much as the mainframe elite would like to think we are headed back to the days where all we got are dumn clients and super servers that isnt going to happen. Clusters are the future. And clients will be part of those clusters in the next 10 years. A single point of failure at a hosted server environment is not the way to go. That is what the PC revolution is all about. If a system of shared processing between clients and servers where a connection doesnt have to be maintained 100% of the time can do everything that a dumb client/super server can do (which they can) then there isnt much of a point in giving up the reliability of having smart clients and smart clusters of servers.

Nothing in the world has turned into 100% open standards... that would require the small guy to stop innovating because they would be labeled proprietary. Each person has the right to invent their own way of doing something and if it does better than 'The Standard' then they win and the 'standard' loses. Its called evolution. Know what Defacto means? Microsoft IS the defacto standard. As long as we Microsoft programmers can do anything the open standards can do but better then the standards will always just be 2nd rate knock offs of the real thing.

There is nothing I hate more than trying to use open source. It takes forever to get it installed, figure out how in the world it is supposed to be used, and then deal with the inconsistancies of how it works with the rest of my system. But that is not to say I never use it. Sometimes the commercial equivalent is too costly for the situation I am in and so instead of just doing without or trying to build my own I turn to open source. Crypto++ comes to mind. If I am using .Net I will use .Nets encryption. But if I must use C++ I prefer using Crypto++ rather than buying an expensive commercial encryption package. Another example is Macromedia. I really hate having to use ActiveX controls in my .Net apps and I dont like having to deal with 2 totally different development environments on the same project. That is why I am very excited about the new Microsoft Expression products. I will be able to use a Microsoft environment from A-Z for all aspect of UI development instead of cobbling together one between Microsoft and Macromedia products. Cobbling together is how you develop with nonMicrosoft stuff...it just feels wrong.

Windows is the Yugo of our age.

Buying a computer today is like buying a car in a communist bloc country during the cold war.

Thankfully, this is changing and the tide is turning against the biggest theives of the 20th century.

Microsoft has never and will never be able to make anything as solid, secure and well-designed as OSX.

Ever see the video clip of Gates getting the pie in the face!?!

Oooh. That's good pie.

Gerald, again, I agree with you, but in the short-term (today to about 3-4 years). Certainly large companies and small engineering shops already have an incentive to innovate: justifiably reaping reward$ in the open marketplace. In addition to the dollars, technology proposed for standardization is also a reward as it is recognized to offer essential service(s) to a process/users/an industry. It's similar to the Lifetime Achievement Awards handed out by various industry bodies for outstanding contributions that REALLY mattered. Regardless which camp people come from, everyone stands, applauds and shakes their heads in agreement that indeed what they did had significant value. The key issue here is whether software vendors commit to implement the core funtionality of standards in their products. For example (very humble examples at that):

(1) MS' gradual inclusion of CSS standards into IE. Today, IE 7 implements many of the CSS 2.0 specifications. Can you imagine building a large site today (100's to 1000's of pages) without CSS? A maintenance nightmare!
(2) MS' and IBM's work on pushing WSDL for standardization.

Now I'm not advocating that vendor's should incorporate every standard out their into their products but standards undeniably allow well engineered applications delivered, in this case, through the web browser, a lower ROI and the opportunity to reach the largest number of clients (mass or vertical markets). MS in particular hasn't played well in the past as it relates to including common, industry recognized standards. I contend that as time progresses we'll see many more proprietary module/add-on technologies bestowed as standards. This is critical as interconnected computers running diverse OSs require ever increasing services from one another. Hey, this thing is larger than any one company, industry or country!

By the way, not all open source projects are crape. You have to pick and choose carefully.

Chris... thanks for the reply. Yes I am in agreement. The standards for the mass market aspects of the Internet has been absolutely crucial. So much so that Microsoft did what they do not like doing and gave up some of their 'sovereignty' to the outside world in making their apps adhere to things like HTML and Javascript. There will never be an all Microsoft world so a total dependance on Microsoft is not possible for THE standard. Public domain standards will always be needed for the most basic interchange/communication methods so that all the world can integrate. However behind that 'firewall' an all Microsoft world has proven in my career to be the 'best practices solution' of choice.

Gerald, thanks for the feedback. You must have been the captain of your high school's debate team. I checked out the recent demo of North Face tauting Windows Presentation Foundation (http://channel9.msdn.com). Very cool. But the company, Fluid, who engineered the application has a licensed-out a very cool flash-based technology for RIA retail product inspection (http://www.conceptretail.com). This elegantly illustrates application delivery through the browser using a standard (Flash) that is OS independent. FYI. What ya think?