Microsoft killed my Pappy
hanselman.com
hanselman.com
For me, it's really not a matter of hatred, I've gotten over it. It's just straightforward ROI. I'd need a really compelling reason to consider Microsoft technology, to offset the expected amount of integration pain, license cajoling, oh-but-it-really-only-works-if-you're-using-a-full-MS-stack bait and switchery that I've experienced in the past. There's more than enough fantastic tech out there to keep me busy that doesn't have that baggage attached. Sorry, guys.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_one#Initial_used_games_and...
That's 20 years ago. And for bundling a browser
in the operating system that couldn't be uninstalled
or easily replaced? Sure, no operating systems do that
in 2014. I wonder if I can swap out Chrome from Chrome
OS or Mobile Safari in iOS. Point is, it's common now.
But they still do rather icky things: Rockstar Bidco lawsuits and the "Scroogled" campaign come to mind. I'm biased, but they've got to can it with these things (and just innovate) until I'll look at them as a pleasant company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G5
I mean, dear god. WindowsXP is OLDER than PowerPC iMacs. And people expect Microsoft to support it for free? Where the hell is my iMac G5 support?
Oh yeah, thats right. Its in the trash. When Apple declared the PowerPC (or was it Mortorola?) dead, and switched over to x86 Machines.
Keep in mind Safari is not a critical part of OS X and can be deleted without affecting anything.
Yes, I got reminded of that recently when I installed MS Office on my Mac. I just wanted Excel and Word - now I have Microsoft Messenger, Microsoft Remote Desktop, Microsoft Connection Manager(?!), Microsoft Communicator, Microsoft Office Setup Manager, Microsoft Document Connection, and the complementary launch agent "com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper".
Best thing: They plastered my dock with app icons that I just couldn't drag out of the dock to delete them. I had to go the rightclick->submenu->"remove from dock" route for every of the ~10 icons. Now why would they do this? So the typical Mac user won't be able to remove them because the default way to remove them doesn't work?
MS truly lives and breathes bloatware.
Yet when you were in that "Customize Installation" menu choosing Excel and Word, you for some reason didn't de-select Messenger, RDC, or the Dock Icons. And that's Microsoft's fault... hmm.
Microsoft is still extracting software patent royalties from android OEMs this very minute - that's not anyone's pappy, and it's not a vendor overreaching. It's a calculated, evil decision by the highest levels of management.
The world of computing could have been and would be today a better place if they hadn't dominated through business practices, but instead dominated with products.
That is absolutely weak man. If you don't like Word, then don't use it. There are plenty of alternatives. TeX, LaTeX, Abiword, Open Office, Wordpress...
I kid you not, I submitted every single college paper manually typeset in TeX / LaTeX document, created using Vim + Makefiles I hand crafted. Graphs were generated in GnuPlot, maybe R if it were statistics related. Gnumeric was my spreadsheets program, and occasionally I'd use Abiword for times when I needed a more classic "double-spaced 500-word" homework assignment.
And I use Gnumeric (and assume you do too) because of the latex export function.
If Microsoft wants my business back, having really good LaTeX export from every MS Office program would be the place to start, along with native Linux clients.
What? They won't do that?
MS Word however, will forever be incompatible with the notions of LaTeX. It solves a different problem than LaTeX anyway. An export tool would be nice though.
There's a fair bit of overlap though. I know people who typeset books with Word :-(
Why would they? Latex is garbage to 90% of the normal human beings they're trying to sell to. I finally learned it for a comp models class a year or two ago and I have no intentions of ever touching it again. I use Libre Office now but given all the incompatibilities with the rest of the world, I'd use Word if it worked on Linux.
That is absolutely weak man. If you live out in the real world, there aren't plenty of alternatives.
I kid you not, I keep buying MS Word, despite hating it passionately, because it's the only word processing document format that we can share in common with business partners, our legal counsel, accounting, etc.
When a customer asks for a Word Document, I deliver a Word Document. When a customer asks for a 200-page print-out, I deliver it however the hell I feel like it. I'll deliver it using InDesign if I believe its the best tool for the job.
Here's why Microsoft Office is used. Because it works. Sticking with a standard office font works across Mac, Windows, and yes, even Linux (thanks to Crosstools). Abiword and OpenOffice are much better at reading Microsoft Office documents than they are at reading each other.
But when it comes down to beautiful typesetting, semantic markup and the like? LaTeX is quite hard to beat.
When it comes to opening up a 25 year old document and it still looking exactly like how it was typeset in Word 95? Well... Microsoft actually has accomplished that quite decently. Tell me, does Libre Office support the StarWord format as well as Word 2013 supports a Word95 document?
On the other hand, LaTeX supports documents from the 80s quite well, ditto with TeX.
Nonetheless, its how Word is used today. I can't think of many tools with a beginner-friendly UI that can do what Word can do.
Blaming Word because some cheap printer isn't able to use as much of the page as something else is shooting the messenger. And Word is word processing software. It attempts to do the most logical thing - reflows the document to fit within usable margins. If you need absolute page layout control, use a tool devised for that purpose, like InDesign. To not, and complain, is to complain that HTML and web-browsers can't be relied on with certainty for pixel perfect display.
Got it.
I'm not sure what Wordpress is doing in the list, but the fact is that dealing with Word documents can be pretty much unavoidable (depending on where you work), and they don't always open correctly in Open Office.
Best part about Wordpress / Wikis, is that you get open collaboration, instant publishing, RSS, Emails, and everything. Its the perfect publishing platform.
On the other hand, a number of businesses still pass around Word Documents like the internet hasn't been invented yet. Tell me this, which is easier to collaborate on. A Group-Blog hosted on Wordpress? Or the 20 copies of a Word document that your office is passing around by email?
If I want to know what the spec was six months ago before someone changed it, I'll go check the wiki.
There's little motivation to keep them up-to-date. They are usually sold to companies on the basis of feature lists rather than getting the simple shit right. I can't edit Confluence in text/plain any more.
I'm a Wikipedia admin. We actually know how to use a wiki and there's at least some motivation to make shit presentable because even minor topics are going to have a couple hundred readers each month. There's no such motivation in enterprise wiki-land. I can write a long and detailed document, put it up on the wiki and people still won't read it.
Enterprise Wikis, while the project is active, are usually kept up to date decently. When the projects die down a bit and enters "maintenance mode", thats when the real trouble begins.
But the update problem happens exactly the same with Word Documents and classical media.
Also, to ing hell with Confluence. Piece of . But its still easier than emailing Word Documents to everyone and getting lost between the versions.
You won't find in me a staunch defender of collaboration via Word documents (or of Word in general). However, the fact that Wordpress and Word share a relatively small use case doesn't mean Wordpress is a viable Word replacement, otherwise I'd point out that you could just as well setup a private Git repo and collaborate that way.
Again, use Tex, use LaTex. Google Docs (although I really dislike the cloud). Make .rtf files in WordPerfect if you really want to avoid Word.
I guarantee you, building RTF files is just about the most cross-platform thing you can do. Its supported by damn near everyone, Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Abiword.
I mean, have you even tried not using a Microsoft Product? Its a hell of a lot easier than you're making it out to be.
As for document writing... I've mentions practical alternatives already. WHY are they sending you an OOXML file? Is it for collaboration? In which point, a Wiki is more than suitable as a replacement. Are they sending it for final consumption? A PDF file is good for documents where the layout must be faithfully preserved.
If you're documenting code and leaving the documentation in an SVN server, .doc documents are treated as binary and don't really get revision editing you'd like. Its better to document using Doxygen (which is much akin to HTML) than .doc in many cases.
I really like Hanselman and his blog and I even like some of the stuff Microsoft has been doing, but this is a distasteful marketing piece.
And BTW, in society trust is a fragile thing and many people don't forget so easily. Other companies should pay attention to this fact. Fool me once shame on you and all that.
1. Android patents is part of an all our war between all vendors. Everyone is shitting on everyone's lawn. Apple, Google, Samsung are all just as bad. The whole mobile market is lawyer driven.
2. SCO is gone, dead. They went after Microsoft as well for Xenix. They weren't involved other than to cheaply get them to go away.
3. Web standards. There were no web standards. There are barely web standards now and IE10/11 do a pretty good job with supporting them.
4. Nokia yadda yadda. Nokia was dying and knew what was going to happen. Nokia is a big company and handsets were a dead end for them so it made sense to lose them cheaply to Microsoft. The Nokia board made a killing.
All companies are assholes but facts are facts.
I remember the J# lawsuit!
From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J++ "Some observers have remarked that this was deliberate from Microsoft, in an attempt to at least slow the advance of Sun's Java technology."
I know an ex-J++ team member. The objective was to produce a Java IDE that didn't suck (do you remember 1996 Java)? Sun wouldn't license them the runtime, name and class libraries so they cloned it much like GCJ and GNU classpath did. Absolutely no one moans about that..
Despite being an ex Solaris cert guy, Sun screwed up literally everything from 1995 on. This was another thing.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_controversie...
3. IExplorer 11 is lagging behind all other popular browsers: http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html
4. Nokia's fate was sealed the minute it signed that agreement with Microsoft.
Did you know that Nokia N9, the last MeeGo/Maemo phone they released as a limited edition, was a success with raving reviews? Do you realize that almost everybody that has held a Nokia Lumia in their hand thinks that the models are awesome, including the cheaper ones, too bad it isn't on Android? And besides the phones it produced, Nokia was huge and as a result had amongst the best distribution networks and brand recognition - it wasn't too late for them to turn around, they could have been bigger than Samsung. But ALAS, that Microsoft shill had to become their CEO - and Nokia's board I'm sure got bonuses, but what about the shareholders? Not happy ...
http://thenextweb.com/eu/2012/05/04/nokia-and-execs-hit-with...
2. Still bollocks. Caldera/SCO owned patents. Microsoft had Xenix and SFU out in production and wanted to avoid litigation as well. This was a pay off. The whole capital arrangement was similar to how most corporations bet on capital funds for pay offs. Granted it looked bad on paper. I'd understand if you listed the "get the facts" campaign which was nasty. SCO and their litigators and the legal teams were the only bad actors here.
3. They can't pump out browsers as quick as the other vendors. They're the only browser vendor that can offer a support lifecycle and paid up support. Google don't give a shit about support. Mozilla close anything that isn't easy to fix. I can phone up MS and get a paid fix in under a week. Not only that, most of these browsers are pushing broken shit out half the time and trying to get one over on the competition.
The whole browser market is a complete mess.
4. Typing this on a Nokia handset (Lumia 820). They have market differentiation with Windows Phone. They have a reliable stable platform, no fragmentation and a backer with more cash than you can imagine. Its sensible. Shareholders and staff for screwed yes, but what do you expect from a corporation. Just because they're a brand you trust, doesn't mean they aren't populated by money grabbing assholes.
And Android is a royal mess. A fine example of fragmentation and a rave to the bottom. Google have really poorly managed the platform resulting in a rotting mess. We've shot 200 Android handsets from our company because they're constant trouble (various including Nexus, HTC, Samsung). Over to iPhones and WP8 devices.
I know the prevailing opinion amongst the tech culture is that Microsoft are a bag of shite, but you need to look deeper. The whole industry is horrible.
At the end of the day, all I get from people is childish tribalism rather than facts and a fair process. It's like Slashdot in 2001.
I'm sitting here with a Windows phone, a MacBook Pro, ssh'ed into a FreeBSD machine with VS2013 running in parallels.
Please everyone just grow the fuck up.
2. WTF? Xenix and SFU were in no way central to Microsoft's business, and I don't see how Microsoft arranging other banks to invest in SCO's scam had anything to do with licensing. Besides, the SCO case was about copyright, not patent, and Microsoft funds other companies to attack open source.
3. Microsoft actually disbanded the IE team after IE 6. Nobody can develop more slowly than not at all. I'm still not comfortable with modern IE, because Microsoft is trying to standardize DRM.
4. Fragmentation was never a problem for Nokia before, and Microsoft is still on the hook for S40 dumbphones. It doesn't help to differentiate by standardizing on an OS that (almost) nobody wants, or else Think Penguin would have a huge market. Nokia was a horribly mismanaged company, but Microsoft was not without fault for its rapid collapse.
Microsoft was never fair to us. It's still not a fair company.
Society works well when we have diversity. Most people "grow up" and become jaded and don't change anything. But society depends on people keeping their ideals and trying to change things for the better. One way is by reminding people that what we have actually is pretty awful compared to what we could have. So, it's instructive to remind people that Microsoft is still evil.
When discussing past wrongs of an institution, the question to ask is not "how long ago did they do it?" but "has the institution changed since?". In Microsoft's case, the answer seems to me to be "not enough".
Is Microsoft any more evil than Google? No, and they are probably less so these days. Google strikes me as more deeply invested in defence informatics and surveillance than Microsoft, for example. But am I going to run out and use Windows Phone because it is the lesser of evils? Definitely not.
Lesser of evils unfortunately has proven very successful in American politics. But it has very little place in business.
So far the worst effect has "merely" been to introduce needless hassle and obstacles when installing non-Microsoft operating systems [1]. Microsoft's current hardware certification spec (that manufacturers tend to implement so they can put "Certified for Windows 8" on the box) requires that the user be able to switch off Secure Boot (generally taking the entirety of UEFI with it) as long as they are not on an ARM system. They could change this at any point, and unification of ARM and "PC" is a current trend at Microsoft of which the move to Secure Boot on both platforms is already a part. Forgive me, but I'm not ready to accept Microsoft having me by the balls just because they haven't clenched their fist yet.
Secure Boot's purported threat model is a solution looking for a problem ("boot sector viruses" in 2014?). It doesn't really make much sense to make the boot process entirely unmodifiable on the grounds that "malware might modify it". Malware might modify anything else on your system too, and you are pwned either way. So it's probably safe to assume Microsoft had a different motive. I don't think it's wise to think of it as over-and-done-with.
No we are not cool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 is not cool, still not cool. I won't repeat the horrific things that happened there, read it for yourself, but no, just saying "we are cool" about it goes a little too far.
> Is Microsoft circa 2014 worse than Google, Apple, or Facebook? We're not nearly as organized as we'd need to be to be as evil as you might think we are.
Microsoft has been, as most people perceive today, de-fanged. It was a scary monopoly, it was pushing crappy APIs, not following standards, perverting them. That legacy crap is still there. It is still maintained. Someone deals with it. So it wasn't just about browser wars. Imagine perhaps Facebook merging with Google so now everything you do online or anywhere on your computer is controlled by one company. That was kind of how Microsoft was viewed.
So, true, there isn't as much reason to hate anymore. But there is a lot of reasons to not forget as well.
What does that mean in practical terms? It means I won't be jumping on or using any Microsoft technologies if I have a choice. F# looks awesome, but nope, I am not touching it. Maybe Visual Studio 2014 is going to be really great, but I won't even try it. If it is tied with .net anything, not touching it.
> Moreover, I think that Microsoft is very aware of perceptions and is actively trying to counter them by actually being open.
Too late. Open source Windows if you want to be open. Open source your browser if you want to be open. Go back and fix your broken APIs and start following standards. Google as much as many don't like it (and I am in that camp too, when it comes to privacy), has to be commended for being open and contributing to Open Source. So use Google as your example in that respect.
Google's core products are: Plus, Hangouts, Chrome, Search, Docs, Mail, and all these products on Android. They're the same to Google as Windows is to Microsoft. Yes, Android is open source, the rest aren't. And what consumers call Android is not free/libre either. I have no problem with that, and I'm not criticizing Google, just saying, that companies very rarely open source their core business stuff.
Your point is valid though.
Android's core is open source.
So MS would have no problem releasing their source to Bing ?
> So MS would have no problem releasing their source to Bing ?
What is the line from Android to Bing? Does google open source google? gmail?
Asking for open sourcing WinCE or NT kernel would be a valid point. Both are products that date from ~20 years ago so it's probably not gonna happen.
EDIT: also Android is based on Linux code. It would be illegal to distribute it without source
> What is the line from Android to Bing? Does google open source google? gmail?
The line is that Bing is not core to Microsoft, but complementary, so why not open-source the technology behind it?
In fact, Bing is even less important for Microsoft, than Android is to Google, because Android for Google is their insurance that they'll stay relevant in this mobiles connected world. Without Android, Google would be at the mercy of the various walled gardens that popped into existence, a trend started by Apple ... quick question, can you set Google as your search provider on Windows Phone? Maybe you can, but I can't do it on my Nokia Lumia. There is no way to make that search button open Google and the option in IExplorer doesn't work.
Open-sourcing Bing would be great for everybody, including Microsoft, just like when Yahoo open-sourced Hadoop. Yet, they won't do it - because they are the same bastards, that's why.
Fair enough. It is a server software, though. How much server software do companies usually opensource?
The point that Android as a whole doesn't have to be open source is true. But how much linux- (or other opensource) based software does MS distribute where it open sources only the needed parts? None, AFAIK. So none of its products are in a similar position. It does distribute sources with plenty of their proprietary software, though. Admittedly, for many it does it only because it has to to stay relevant. People want to fiddle with the sources of their web stack.
In short, yes, they are bastards, just as any other for profit company.
Oh and for the search you have to jail break WP7, in WP8 it is possible http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/support/faq/?action=singleTopic&t...
That's very odd, just tested on my lumia with Google set as default and it searched using google in IE. Not being able to set the search provider for the search button does annoy me a bit though.
*BSD systems are not based on Linux code. It wouldn't be illegal to not distribute it. It wasn't like Google was caught by surprised. Besides, they still do not have to open source anything running on top of it. But they did.
Original claim -- Google is not open sourcing their core software. (Let's assume Android is not their core software). So Microsoft should have no problem open sourcing Bing.
I think you've missed the point. You can't blame a Japanese child for the sins of his grandfather. The same goes for a German child whose family has a Nazi past or an American whose ancestors slaughtered native American women and children like they were animals.
The difference, and I pointed out, is between an individual that inherited a last name from another individual (their parent) and a large entity like a company or country.
Microsoft is still Microsoft, US is still US. Unless Microsoft was bought or acquired somehow and assimilated, it is still itself.
Because mind you, German government is still paying restitution back to its victims. US still prosecutes and kicks out those 90 year old concentration camp guards.
My point was that equating Microsoft to a child is a little too much. It was a bad analogy to start with.
In summary, I do not support discriminating again children based on their last name. That is not right. But I do support not forgetting what companies and countries did. Especially if they haven't made amends or taken steps to distance themselves and remediate the past wrongs.
Overall I can just ignore Microsoft because they no longer impact me as a developer, but if they and Oracle manage to make API's copyrightable it will have a huge negative effect on software development, in particular interoperability, the fact that they are aiding Oracle in this crap shows me that they are not changing their tune at all.
Hate is perhaps a strong word, but I'd say being acutely aware of whom you're dealing with is still in order.
Microsoft never ceased to be hostile. I can point to 3 specific things in recent memory to illustrate that:
- 2008: Corrupting a standardization process
- 2010, ongoing: extracting royalties from people who don't use their technology (Android royalties)
- 2012: Throwing a monkey wrench at Linux install fests (by more or less goading laptop manufacturers into this SecureBoot thing).
Here's hoping that Nadella is a more level-headed guy than Ballmer was, and this trend stops.
Maybe Nadella can change the culture but I have my doubts.
Scott, actions are much louder than words.
EDIT: I'm not saying other companies are much better. However I think it's more productive to have an internal company awareness campaign and mission of "Don't be an asshole", instead of publicly whining about people who still remember past misdeeds or current ones.
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-most-profitable-mobile-opera...
It isn't enough to fail at being evil. Trying to do so loses you points.
I'm ambivalent towards MS today. I'd like to see good stuff from them, but I treat their stuff with caution.
I always thought that Windows kinda spoiled the digital culture of a generation And therefore I always supported Linux for professional usage and Apple for personal usage. But that's an opinion based on a range of products; sticking a sentiment like hate to a company that makes tools you still can decide to buy or not to buy, is always pretty stupid.
Unless they're Nestlé or Monsanto, of course.
Microsoft is not any worse than the other companies. They are all at the same terrible level.
But Microsoft became a bit better over the last years, I would say.
Another thing is trust. Why would you trust an organization which still had at least a famous C-level executive which executed a number of business strategies you have a problem with? Why would you trust an organization run by Steve Ballmer? Now, maybe new management will turn Microsoft around, but it has done enough dodgy things over the years that yes, it will have to "bend over backwards" for a long time before I trust it again.
I love my job, but in my job, Internet Explorer 8-9 is pain. It's why we can't have nice things. I checked out a Windows Phone in a store once, and thought it was pretty sweet until I saw the IE logo and physically recoiled. There was no way I was going to own something where I'd have to hit that logo every day to browse the Internet.
That's not ancient history, that's present-day reality.
you might want to do a double check on that
Developing for Internet Explorer 8 is my present-day reality too, but if IT departments were instead mandating Firefox 3.0 or Chrome 1.0 I'm not sure how much better it would be.
In many ways, Microsoft's Open Specification Promise is quite a bit stronger of a promise than most people might expect.
A lot of devs are also still pissed because of the countless hours , ie lost evenings and nights, they had to spend to make their app compatible with IE.
This isnt a defense of apple or google btw, any market controlling company is harming progress imo.
For entirely pragmatic reasons, I'd rather use Chrome, Linux, Android, Gmail, Google search and Google Docs.
Typescript looks nice, I might use Babylon.js, and I still use Skype from time to time, but I'll still never use Windows, IE, Hotmail, etc...
Chrome? Gmail? Maybe. Google however is pushing far more than Microsoft has as far as dropping my anonymity from Youtube, pushing me into their Google+ features and making me share sign-in information across Chrome sessions. I'd say its a Tie between Microsoft / Google here, both want me in their cloud services.
Although, Outlook.com works a hell of a lot better on Android than Gmail / Google Calendar works on Windows8. So from a usability point of view, Google is beginning to lose it in their anti-microsoft wars. I don't like getting caught up in the middle of their politics. So that's my tiebreaker: Microsoft's calendar platform is supported in more platforms than Google Calendar.
Google Docs vs Microsoft Office? That one is easy. One of them runs on my computer, and the other one is untrustworthy, in the cloud. Do I really trust Google's servers over my own computer? Will Google protect the privacy of my documents from prying eyes?
Nothing beats cold storage on my own computer, Microsoft Office gives me that. Open Office vs Microsoft Office is another story of course... but Open Office is pretty terrible IMO.
Open Office is pretty bad in my experience. Instead... its about Abiword and Gnumeric. Unfortunately, there is no adequate replacement for OneNote and Powerpoint, so I'll keep using those.
All android needs are sync adapters for your own mail/calendar/whatever service running on your own hardware. There is no need to discard entire platform just because you don't like Google cloud services.
Most people won't bother running their own servers though.
I was quite supportive of Meego, although my enthusiasm has dampered quite a lot with Tizen. There are only so many failures that one can put up with...
You realize that Linux is just a kernel?
OpenBSD and FreeBSD are both server/desktop operating systems, meanwhile Debian Linux and Android are desktop and mobile OS'es respectively, your comparison is pretty worthless.
A similar comparison to Debian Linux with Android would be FreeBSD with iOS.
Microsoft has forced me to continuously deal with my providers for sending me invoices in a non-standard format (.doc). Because they fought, and are fighting open standards for office documents (I am exclusively using open office / libre office, but that is not a 100% working solution)
Microsoft is one of the biggest extorters using the patent system to tax us all.
I would say that MS is still one of the biggest drags on the world economy: not because their products do not increase productivity (they do!), but because we could be in much better place if they wouldn't have fought open standards.
The damage done is not reversible in a generation: I would say that the economic consequences are more lasting than the ones caused by both World Wars, since those proprietary products have a huge lifespan and have full world penetration, in all economic areas.
So no, I am not about to forget what they have done (and are doing).
http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft-...
I'm sure others can list more recent FUD and lies put out by Microsoft.
If in another 5-10 years there's no more incidents of that kind of stuff maybe I'll like them again?
...
Actually I can't really say I hate them now. But I think it's important to point out they are still a pretty shitty company in many ways. I hope they stop that crap.
An x-coworker at my last job had previous worked at Microsoft. His parting message to everyone was how happy he was that at this job the company always tried to do the right thing whereas at his previous job at MS the company always tried to see how much they could get away with.
Of course that's just one anecdote but if true I hope MS can change that attitude to something positive and that we'll see the results for the next few years.
WebGL shipped in IE11. I argued with them over getting it in earlier, too, but they had some semi-valid concerns over running web-delivered instructions directly on your GPU.
Really? I had a PC on which Firefox and certain WebGL content would hard crash my machine thanks to what I resume are video card driver bugs. (Upgrading video card drivers resolved that particular instance of that problem)
Given that, it is by no means unreasonable to assume that WebGL content might be able to hit security holes in video card drivers. What that entails, who knows. Presumably going right away and saying "sure, we'll just add a hole to let people stream code directly from the web right into your video card" sounded like a horrible idea.
And since IE is shipped with the OS, level component, it has to be supported to customers for-bloody-ever. (Or so it seems at least!) So there is a higher bar, and all of a sudden releasing patches isn't an "auto-update the world and hopefully don't break anyone" sort of thing like it is with Chrome or Firefox, but now it becomes a "well have to test this patch across an almost unimaginable number of test scenarios and machine configs because we don't want to break functionality that any one of our large customers rely on".
At that point, adding a new feature, which even sorta smells like it could open up a whole new can of worms, becomes, for good reason, somewhat less desirable!
(Disclaimer: I work for MS, but in a completely unrelated area, opinions are my own, those of an overly paranoid-for-the-customers software engineer.)
Cmd-F WebGL
I'm all for them switching to sweetness and light but the OP is suggesting their evil ways were 20 years ago. They're not. Their evil ways are still recent.
So why did Microsoft go ahead and include WebGL? Why, because they had to respond to Google who did exactly the same thing that Microsoft was lambasted for doing with IE: pushing proprietary, unsafe technology before it became standardized and forcing other browsers to catch up. But since you work for Google, I am sure you consider Google's actions to be perfectly not "evil"...
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is-fundamen...
> But there’s more! Not only is WebGL inherently flawed, but Google — one of WebGL’s strongest proponents — even knew about the DoS and cross-domain image vulnerabilities months before they were thrust into the limelight by Context’s report. Not deterred by these flaws in the WebGL spec or its implementation, Google pushed ahead and turned on WebGL by default in February 2011, in Chrome 9.
> As terrifying as that is, we now have to wonder why Google rushed the deployment of a nascent, dangerous technology...
Note that it was enabled before the v1 of the specification was even released. But worse, when I follow the embedded links in the top para, why I do believe they show that you ("you" as in not Google, "you" as in you specifically) were aware of these security flaws before anyone else reported it, and yet you (as in Google) went ahead and enabled WebGL in Chrome by default. And then you accuse Microsoft behaving badly! Really?!
> They are still a bad company that does arguably bad things
I'd like examples of Microsoft "behaving badly", preferably:
1) stuff that isn't religious fanaticism;
2) stuff that isn't driven by vested interests that are not in everybody else's interests;
3) and stuff that I haven't already covered in my linked comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7282162). I hope you do better than the other replies in that subthread.
As for the CORS issue, MS shipped CSS first and CSS had the same issue. Namely that you could change the :visited property to something heavy and then through timing divine a user's web history. Once that was discovered it was fixed. I suspect it was similar to WebGL where someone was like
"hey, you know, it might be possible to use timing to figure out some stuff"
"yea, but that seems pretty unlikely"
a few months later someone shows a working timing attack.
"oh shit, let's fix that"
As for DOSing, as detailed in my post, we (or I) didn't see that as the same level of important because there's no incentive to do it. Sure we worked on fixing it (and that's why WebGL is now enabled by default on several Android devices who's drivers can deal with the issue). But even on devices that can't deal with the issue there's no incentive to DOS someone's machine because they aren't going to visit your website a 2nd or 3rd time if you do that and you weren't able to do accomplish anything else except to get them stop visiting your website. Awesome. I'm going to go make a site right now that people actively avoid visiting. Yea!
You also realize that Mozilla started the WebGL spec, not Google and that Mozilla also released WebGL long before v1. Opera was also involved and MS was welcome to join but never bothered. WebGL is not proprietary. Never has been. So claiming Google is copying Microsoft by pushing proprietary standards is pretty disingenuous.
Want some MS evil evidence? Just Bing it
And as far as I can tell, that was the issue MS needed fixed before going ahead with WebGL, but then again I haven't been following their actions in this area. On the other hand, another Microsoft employee seemed to agree with Mozilla and Google: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/20/webgl_/
"And, frankly, if Microsoft has taken a formal position against WebGL, no one I know got the memo.”
So maybe it was only the MS Security team being paranoid, as they are supposed to be?
>As for the CORS issue, MS shipped CSS first and CSS had the same issue.
Wouldn't that indicate that they have more reason to be wary of things like this?
>You also realize that Mozilla started the WebGL spec, not Google and that Mozilla also released WebGL long before v1. Opera was also involved and MS was welcome to join but never bothered. WebGL is not proprietary. Never has been. So claiming Google is copying Microsoft by pushing proprietary standards is pretty disingenuous.
Mozilla doesn't have clean hands in this either. It may not be proprietary, but releasing an implementation with known vulnerabilities? Enabling something widely used connected to the Internet without sufficient hardening is exactly what MS did with Win95/WinXP/ActiveX, and it created a decade of malware-infested Internet. They also got widely excoriated for that. I wouldn't blame them for being cautious going forward.
> Want some MS evil evidence? Just Bing it
So negative advertising is "evil"? I knew F/OSS folks thought MS's publicity against their religion was "evil", because, well it offends their personal beliefs... but so is negative advertising against your employer? Sorry, but Google engages in a lot of that itself, it's just that people in this echo chamber uncritically accept it as fact because it confirms their biases.
Microsoft did the latter.
I'm sorry you can't see it but Microsoft was clearly not showing concern for WebGL's security. As pointed out before, if they had they would have also have brought up Silverlight and Flash 11, which both provide the same features as WebGL.
You might say that stuff that happened a decade ago is done and gone, but the thing to really consider is whether the people running Microsoft has changed significantly and whether their overall approach/philosophy has changed. I think the answer to that is not much.
Microsoft IE stagnated at that point, as Netscape morphed into Mozilla Communicator, and then was rewritten into Mozilla Firefox. But IE reigned supreme only after it defeated Netscape Communicator (which was supported by the internet monopoly AOL)
I'm still boycotting GoDaddy, for example, even though I forgot why. Presumably I had a good reason. And when I've forgotten why I was mad at the companies who wrong me today, I'll still avoid them. This is an incentive for them to be nice now instead of later.
OK. I'm pissed that they dropped the deployment tools from Visual Studio. [1]
People keep saying that the desktop is dying, but PC makers still managed to sell over 300M units last year. But if the desktop market ever does truly die, I think Microsoft can be said to have had a part in that.
[1] I'm not actually pissed. I moved on to WiX, but since you asked I felt pressured to come up with something.
Even though it was limited, it was very useful. I lost a fair number of days trying to rebuild setups from scratch using other solutions.
Edit: I just span up a copy fo the virtual machine snapshot and it didn't say anything even though that had been technically not used and has no network connection.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
They've made some pretty piss poor decisions over the last 10 years that have had some huge impacts. IE6 was bad, but I can forgive their ignorance on that — no-one knew any better at the time.
What I can't forgive is IE8, and the years since then that they've CONTINUED to make major-versioned browsers. If IE6 was a one off problem, it'd be fine. But with IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, IE11, and new ones being released all the time, it just seems like MS don't realise it's a problem. No-one should be making browsers that don't silently auto-update at least once a month. It's physically harmful to the web ecosystem.
I don't care how good IE11 is now, whether they've caught up or not, I care about them putting a system in place that ensures everyone always has the latest web technology. Don't tell me it's not possible. Google and Mozilla have had it sussed for years now. (Apple could do with sorting themselves out on this too. Could also see them go in this direction since Blink split off.)
I can't help but think the version numbers are political? Some group in Microsoft trying to prove its worth by making a big deal about version numbers every year? "Look how much we care about the web, look at our new shiny browser. It goes to 11..."
The web would be way further ahead if Microsoft had stopped making browsers years ago. Millions of hours are wasted every year testing websites in dead browsers. Microsoft created this situation, and they've still not adequately addressed it.
Put your latest browser on everything you've ever made, stop calling out the major version numbers, release every month or so. That's how you'll get people to like you.
Doubly so if you work for Microsoft who are currently making similar arguments against Google in Europe.
Nevermind Microsoft, I'm barely three paragraphs in and I'm forming a strong dislike of the writer due to his breezy dismissive style.
It's the free-wheeling multifaceted Bay Area – or more generally California – against a monolithic empire to the North, whose offerings are most popular among the crass bean-counters of the East.
Even those far away from these regions can be swept up in the same thematic framing.
1. "Open source Bing/Windows": Yes, please, give away the things that took thousands of engineers and billions of dollars and decades to build. Look, I like open source and use entirely open source stuff at my day job and hobby projects, and even have open sourced my piddly crap that nobody uses on Github... but nobody is entitled to somebody else's work for free. And damning somebody else for not espousing your beliefs is simply being a religious fanatic.
2. "Antitrust/Monopoly": They were dinged by the US and the EU for essentially trying to turn their OS into a browser while having an OS desktop monopoly. They were trying to be ChromeOS before Google even existed. They were accused of leveraging their monopoly to enter another market but, as is obvious now, is that the desktop and browser market were one and the same. And then people insist that they "missed the web"! And after almost being dismantled by the US government for going that route, people are angry that they let IE stagnate!
3. "Android patent trolling" - They have an impressive patent portfolio (well, by the standards of most patents out there) and have every right to monetize it, which is how things typically happen in all industries. And as an early incumbent in mobile OSs, they did do a lot of work that modern smartphones still use, so it's not like Android isn't standing on the shoulders of WinMobile in addition to iOS.
4. "API copyrightability": It's not so much that Microsoft and Oracle are right on this, it's Google that's wrong. Google's arguments as to why why APIs should not be copyrightable, taken to their logical conclusion, mean no code ever can be copyrightable. My take is they would be found copyrightable, but Google may probably prevail on fair use.
5. "Scroogled": It's based on surveys that shows people are not aware that gmail scans their email contents, and when told of this, most of them disapprove. And if the surveys don't convince you, the class action "wiretap" lawsuits recently filed against Google are a clear indication that there are those who don't like this. It's perfectly fine to make consumers aware of their product choices, especially if it's also in your business interests.
6. "WebGL": There were actual security holes (DOS was just one hole -- the screencap exploit was much worse), and what Microsoft had said then was "WebGL in its current form is not safe". However, as the standard was redesigned to address such issues (http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/why-micr..., search for "CORS"), MS has gone ahead and included it in IE 11.