6 ms·

Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft. Disclaimer: I have been one of the ones pushing the last 5 years to make that statement true. ;)

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft Yeah, that's why Windows 10 sends all your data to Microsoft by default and Windows updates no longer come with detailed explanations of what is in them. /s edit: judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. I guess all they had to do to win people over was make a few token contributions to the open-source community...
- jongalloway2 11y ago
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history-windows-10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history...
- TylerH 11y ago
  Well they did fire all their technical writers; they kinda had to stop writing those updates when there was no one to write them.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  Nah, nobody in the open source community really cares about them. HN is heavily used by Microsoft employees - and they are legion. That's all you're seeing here.
- phatfish 11y ago
  The Windows 10 privacy issues really do leave a bad taste, and I will be sticking to Windows 7/8.1 for as long as I can. There is a reason there are free upgrades to 10 being pushed so hard, and it's not because they are feeling nice. It seems like they are giving with one hand (open source to developers) and taking with the other (data from their unsuspecting users).
  - Koshkin 11y ago
    > sticking to Windows 7/8.1 Well, you know, you can't walk into the same Windows twice. (Unless you ignore all updates.)
  - discordance 11y ago
    Do you also use only DuckDuckGo?
    - mixedCase 11y ago
      There are different expectations for the Internet and the software that runs your hardware.
- teh_klev 11y ago
  > judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. Seriously, do we need to lower the content level of discussion here to "fanboy" camp accusations, it's not productive. Also, please review the guidelines: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - a_guideline 11y ago
    Please don't regurgitate guidelines that long term users know and deliberately ignore.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    Please stop backseat modding. If you have a problem with a comment, flag it and it will be reviewed. Thanks.
    - dang 11y ago
      teh_kiev was right, and reminding fellow users of the guidelines is fine. I wish users would do it more. Indeed I was just about to post the following in reply to your comment above: Please don't add meta commentary about downvotes and who you imagine downvoted you. It's against the HN guidelines (two of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and is invariably tedious.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Windows 10 privacy settings and .Net as a viable technology platform from licencing and technology point of view are two different things, though. "The different Microsoft" aspect comes from open sourcing the key technological components so migration away from Microsoft licenses is at least a legally plausible, and that people can indeed see what goes into the sausage. From developers point of view this is a huge improvement and makes the .Net a much more appealing proposition. Is a company evil? Does it make good products? To me, at least, it's not very helpful to mix these two discussions.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pekk 11y ago
Except for Microsoft's lawyers who are still using patents against Linux. Same old Microsoft. Is it even possible for you guys to kill the undead SCO monster now? At any rate, it's still working away.
niels_olson 11y ago
I look forward to that. However, after 20 years of bad behavior, it's not unfair to be guarded for a long time after that. Does cancer relapse? Does alcoholism relapse? How about the politics of Russia? How long did democracy last? I applaud your efforts. The road is yet long.
- bachmeier 11y ago
  EEE only works if you're a monopolist. Microsoft in 2016 is so far from being a monopolist that they can't even see monopoly from where they are. Xamarin is just another tool, so it's not clear what Microsoft would gain from extinguishing it.
  - jenscow 11y ago
    Today you can target all three platforms...
- scholia 11y ago
  It's actually after 15 or more years of generally good behaviour. After the anti-trust case, Microsoft spent a decade under the close supervision of the US DoJ, as well as the supervision of the EU (with an eye to imposing large fines if possible). I expect it's done things you (and me) don't like in the past 15 years. However, the same goes for Apple, Google, IBM and Oracle. Microsoft hasn't been the least ethical of that lot.
XzetaU8 11y ago
"A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... Noticed how this date is withing those 5 year of "It's a whole new Microsoft" mantra you guys chanting over and over?
hobs 11y ago
Thanks Scott, I have kept up on your work and blog and I wanted to say I appreciate what you do. There could be many ways to undo the good things MS has done recently, and they are not perfect, but I am much happier the direction in the past year than I have been since the start of the company.
hh2222 11y ago
It worries me more that Microsoft has a track record of abandoning developer tools for the next shiny thing.
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  Same here. I wouldn't be surprised if Xamarin died slowly.
  - sossles 11y ago
    That makes no sense. It's pretty clear that .NET is Microsoft's future, and Xamarin extends the reach of .NET.
    - maxxxxx 11y ago
      Look at Winforms, WPF and Silverlight. They are all .Net and all abandoned. I wouldn't bet my long term future on Xamarin.
      - jimmcslim 11y ago
        Yes, Silverlight has been abandoned. I would argue that Winforms is now a mature technology and requires little upkeep, but it is still a part of the stack. WPF development has slowed significantly, but still proceeds.
        maxxxxx 11y ago
        None of these are good technologies if you want to stay up-to-date. You could also write your site in IE6 compatible HTML which was quite mature but that seems a really bad idea.
        KirinDave 11y ago
        That's not a reasonable comparison at all. Winforms is maintained. IE6 is explicitly deprecated.
sigzero 11y ago
Nonsense. The last 5 years shows that Microsoft isn't quite sure about it yet. Better? Yes. A "whole new Microsoft"? No.
- HeavyStorm 11y ago
  Facts?
jordz 11y ago
Such win Scott.
nitrogen 11y ago
With respect to the progress made by some MS divisions (and the people pushing for it), it seems not all of MS is keeping up. For example, this was on HN today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 It's hard to trust that the currently good sides of MS will be allowed to stay good while other sides of MS are still behaving badly.
mistermann 11y ago
Scott, any word on the inside on whether Excel is going to ever get some major enhancements? The object model desperately needs an improvement, and the ability to write VBA with C# would be spectacular.
- shanselman 11y ago
  Not sure I understand. You've been able to make C# Excel Addins for a long time now (file new | office addin) and you can also write add-ins in JavaScript as well.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    Sorry, I was referring to VBA macros.
OJFord 11y ago
Skype? Sunrise?
cbd1984 11y ago
Yep, now they show full-screen ads on the OS itself. Huge improvement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 I'm sure there are Officially no privacy implications here.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft Yeah, that's why Windows 10 sends all your data to Microsoft by default and Windows updates no longer come with detailed explanations of what is in them. /s edit: judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. I guess all they had to do to win people over was make a few token contributions to the open-source community...

jongalloway2 11y ago
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history-windows-10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/update-history...
TylerH 11y ago
Well they did fire all their technical writers; they kinda had to stop writing those updates when there was no one to write them.
RyanZAG 11y ago
Nah, nobody in the open source community really cares about them. HN is heavily used by Microsoft employees - and they are legion. That's all you're seeing here.
phatfish 11y ago
The Windows 10 privacy issues really do leave a bad taste, and I will be sticking to Windows 7/8.1 for as long as I can. There is a reason there are free upgrades to 10 being pushed so hard, and it's not because they are feeling nice. It seems like they are giving with one hand (open source to developers) and taking with the other (data from their unsuspecting users).
- Koshkin 11y ago
  > sticking to Windows 7/8.1 Well, you know, you can't walk into the same Windows twice. (Unless you ignore all updates.)
- discordance 11y ago
  Do you also use only DuckDuckGo?
  - mixedCase 11y ago
    There are different expectations for the Internet and the software that runs your hardware.
teh_klev 11y ago
> judging by the downvotes, there's a surprising number of Microsoft fanboys here. Seriously, do we need to lower the content level of discussion here to "fanboy" camp accusations, it's not productive. Also, please review the guidelines: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- a_guideline 11y ago
  Please don't regurgitate guidelines that long term users know and deliberately ignore.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Please stop backseat modding. If you have a problem with a comment, flag it and it will be reviewed. Thanks.
  - dang 11y ago
    teh_kiev was right, and reminding fellow users of the guidelines is fine. I wish users would do it more. Indeed I was just about to post the following in reply to your comment above: Please don't add meta commentary about downvotes and who you imagine downvoted you. It's against the HN guidelines (two of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and is invariably tedious.
fsloth 11y ago
Windows 10 privacy settings and .Net as a viable technology platform from licencing and technology point of view are two different things, though. "The different Microsoft" aspect comes from open sourcing the key technological components so migration away from Microsoft licenses is at least a legally plausible, and that people can indeed see what goes into the sausage. From developers point of view this is a huge improvement and makes the .Net a much more appealing proposition. Is a company evil? Does it make good products? To me, at least, it's not very helpful to mix these two discussions.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pekk 11y ago

Except for Microsoft's lawyers who are still using patents against Linux. Same old Microsoft. Is it even possible for you guys to kill the undead SCO monster now? At any rate, it's still working away.

niels_olson 11y ago

I look forward to that. However, after 20 years of bad behavior, it's not unfair to be guarded for a long time after that. Does cancer relapse? Does alcoholism relapse? How about the politics of Russia? How long did democracy last? I applaud your efforts. The road is yet long.

bachmeier 11y ago
EEE only works if you're a monopolist. Microsoft in 2016 is so far from being a monopolist that they can't even see monopoly from where they are. Xamarin is just another tool, so it's not clear what Microsoft would gain from extinguishing it.
- jenscow 11y ago
  Today you can target all three platforms...
scholia 11y ago
It's actually after 15 or more years of generally good behaviour. After the anti-trust case, Microsoft spent a decade under the close supervision of the US DoJ, as well as the supervision of the EU (with an eye to imposing large fines if possible). I expect it's done things you (and me) don't like in the past 15 years. However, the same goes for Apple, Google, IBM and Oracle. Microsoft hasn't been the least ethical of that lot.

XzetaU8 11y ago

"A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c... Noticed how this date is withing those 5 year of "It's a whole new Microsoft" mantra you guys chanting over and over?

hobs 11y ago

Thanks Scott, I have kept up on your work and blog and I wanted to say I appreciate what you do. There could be many ways to undo the good things MS has done recently, and they are not perfect, but I am much happier the direction in the past year than I have been since the start of the company.

hh2222 11y ago

It worries me more that Microsoft has a track record of abandoning developer tools for the next shiny thing.

maxxxxx 11y ago
Same here. I wouldn't be surprised if Xamarin died slowly.
- sossles 11y ago
  That makes no sense. It's pretty clear that .NET is Microsoft's future, and Xamarin extends the reach of .NET.
  - maxxxxx 11y ago
    Look at Winforms, WPF and Silverlight. They are all .Net and all abandoned. I wouldn't bet my long term future on Xamarin.
    - jimmcslim 11y ago
      Yes, Silverlight has been abandoned. I would argue that Winforms is now a mature technology and requires little upkeep, but it is still a part of the stack. WPF development has slowed significantly, but still proceeds.
      - maxxxxx 11y ago
        None of these are good technologies if you want to stay up-to-date. You could also write your site in IE6 compatible HTML which was quite mature but that seems a really bad idea.
        KirinDave 11y ago
        That's not a reasonable comparison at all. Winforms is maintained. IE6 is explicitly deprecated.

sigzero 11y ago

Nonsense. The last 5 years shows that Microsoft isn't quite sure about it yet. Better? Yes. A "whole new Microsoft"? No.

HeavyStorm 11y ago
Facts?

jordz 11y ago

Such win Scott.

nitrogen 11y ago

With respect to the progress made by some MS divisions (and the people pushing for it), it seems not all of MS is keeping up. For example, this was on HN today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 It's hard to trust that the currently good sides of MS will be allowed to stay good while other sides of MS are still behaving badly.

mistermann 11y ago

Scott, any word on the inside on whether Excel is going to ever get some major enhancements? The object model desperately needs an improvement, and the ability to write VBA with C# would be spectacular.

shanselman 11y ago
Not sure I understand. You've been able to make C# Excel Addins for a long time now (file new | office addin) and you can also write add-ins in JavaScript as well.
- mistermann 11y ago
  Sorry, I was referring to VBA macros.

OJFord 11y ago

Skype? Sunrise?

cbd1984 11y ago

Yep, now they show full-screen ads on the OS itself. Huge improvement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964 I'm sure there are Officially no privacy implications here.