7 ms·

I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different tha

I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different than the MS I grew up with in the 90s. It's time for the community to recognize this and just let people bask in positive news that is worthy the bask in. I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I love that Office on my mac is current and that Microsoft's mobile strategy is 100% cross platform unlike that of Apple and Google.. I love that MS is honest these days and its disappointing the community is largely dishonest in return.. often snarky.

oelmekki 10y ago
I've hated MS a decade ago, because of their position against linux and because of IE6. I've watched them doing big efforts the last few years, and I welcome them - I can't wait to feel good about them. That being, this article indeed sounds too emphasized to not be fishy. Maybe it's a PR article, maybe it's just that the author from this financial publication bought MS shares lately, maybe it's something else, I don't know. But yeah, I don't see either any major change in mobile MS usage around me.
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests: (1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.) (2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, without joining the Patent Commons. (3) Microsoft seems to intentionally subvert its OS's users' attempts to disable snooping. AFAIK, Microsoft not only refuses to say what data are gathered, but also phone home to so many different IP names/numbers that it looks like they're trying to hide the activity from the OS user. (4) Microsoft is now "embracing" Linux. Microsoft became famous for "embrace, extend, extinguish". People outside of the CEO's inner circle can't know if that's the plan here as well.
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  In case you hadn't noticed, "Embrace, extend and extinguish" is from 1995, 21 years ago.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    That's a good point. I guess the question is, in a case like this, what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? I don't know. The manner in which Microsoft pushed Windows 10 may be a data point.
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      A big part of the current senior leadership wasn't even at the company in 1995.
      - michaelmrose 10y ago
        The sco scam was in 2003 and the recent move towards arm devices that use treacherous computing to lock the user out of modifying their machine was recently who cares about 1995.
        mynameisvlad 10y ago
        This whole thread is about EEE, which is a concept coined in 1995 and my reply was addressing >what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? So, quite relevant.
        michaelmrose 10y ago
        The point is that they have been user and competitive marketplace hostile far more recently than 1995.
  - treebeard901 10y ago
    The "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme is largely overused these days in reference to Microsoft. If the trend towards using the cloud continues and the desktop OS becomes more of a terminal to cloud services then we could be looking at a modern version of "EEE". Embrace linux for the customers, extend Windows software to Linux for those customers, and let market trends extinguish the desktop OS.
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nabacbi 10y ago
They decided not to upgrade most of their mobiles from wp7 to wp8. They promised not to do that again, then did it again when they decided not to upgrade most of their mobiles from wp8.1 to wp10. Windows 10 is rubbish for reasons I'm not even going to explain because we all are well aware of them. They also have inconvenienced millions of people to make us upgrade even if we didn't want to. They got rid of all their QA. Quality of all of their software has gone downhill since then. They don't care. They put ads in their OS which we already had paid for. They are doing all they can to get rid of win32. That's going to be their bane, as win32 is the only reason most of us still use windows. That's all I know of the recent Microsoft. Fuck Microsoft.
digler999 10y ago
> I love my Surface Pro 4, I'd love one if I could put linux on it. or if I could buy an OEM pc without an OS (and yes I know there are some vendors that "allow" (just that word makes me cringe) you to do it, but it should be a right). If, by their own definition, it's "intellectual" (and not material) property, then if I dont use it I shouldn't have to pay for it. If they want to sell Surface because it's an awesome product, why do they need to go out of their way to lock their software on it ? If it's so awesome, surely people would want to use it, right ? If the proverbial destination is so great, why do they need to lock their guests inside ?
- Zaheer 10y ago
  You're not their target demographic. 99% of people don't want to put linux on it.
  - PNWChris 10y ago
    Beyond that, I find those that want to run Linux on a Surface often put it in Hyper-V and use putty + WinSCP + $TEXT_EDITOR_OF_CHOICE wired up to WinSCP. Heck, now there's the Windows subsystem for Linux. X11 and VNC help if you want a Linux desktop, but that's admittedly a less than ideal experience. Of course, virtualization generally precludes USB peripheral access, so my suggestions are a pure software and web development solution.
  - digler999 10y ago
    back in the 90's, 99% of people didn't want linux either, and MS did just fine without "physically" locking you out of their competition.
    - eropple 10y ago
      I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?
TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
I actually suffered through corporate pressure against my use of Linux for applications I developed (and users LOVED), because of the press onslaught in the trade magazines about the ridiculous SCO trial. (And then I see from a comment above that this is being appealed. Still. 13 years later. OMG.) So, my cynicism may be intractable. You may see a "new" Microsoft, but all I see is a Microsoft which is making moves they HAVE to in order to survive. In this world of "the cloud" and the utter dominance of Linux in everything with a CPU that ISN'T a desktop computer, what else can they do but the things they're doing? That Microsoft is executing WELL is a byproduct. If they didn't, they'd have become the IBM they defeated 20 years ago, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. (They'd offer legacy support for Windows XP, and we'd all wish we could cut them out of the budget, along with the mainframe.) I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. I find the bright and cheerful comments like yours depressing. They seem to belie a belief that the upper management of Microsoft has somehow been knighted with a sense of civic duty. I see it as the same business shrewdness they've always shown. They no longer have the power to dictate absolute terms to corporations, and must play nice with the rest of the IT world. And I bet it chaps some of the old guards' asses.
- quanticle 10y ago
  I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. So, how does that make the outcome any worse? RedHat isn't contributing to the Linux kernel out of a sense of charity. IBM isn't contributing to OpenStack as a philanthropic endeavor. Facebook isn't improving PHP because it's a fun hobby project. They're all doing the things that they're doing because it's good for business. Why is it any worse when Microsoft does it?
  - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    No, they're not different from anyone else for having a profit motive, but Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very long stretch of using underhanded and illegal tactics to stifle competition. I would argue that they're STILL abusing their monopoly position on the desktop. THAT is what makes them different than the rest, and that, to me, is what tempers my attitude about these recent announcements. Another difference is that the other examples you've listed here are all free software. Of all the glowing coverage Microsoft has been getting of late, only .NET on Linux is comparable. But you're never going to get Windows-forms-like applications on Windows (which a surprising number of people seem to think will happen). It's only the web stack. Does ASP.NET really stack up well against Rails or Node.js as a web application stack on Linux? I don't know, but at the least, they have some catching up to do. But, really, I think it's another example of my main point. Microsoft could have used some pre-existing open source project and built on top of that, but they chose to create another language for the future. It's even pretty good, by all accounts. It's just that, in a world of PHP, Javascript, C++, Ruby, Python, Erlang, and all the rest, what place does a closed-source language and compiler have? They had to make it open source.
cutler 10y ago
Do you love the fact that MS earns millions from patent trolling Linux companies? How's that for open source "support"?
- supernovae 10y ago
  All of that was prior leadership. Satya has largely reversed this trend (which wasn't limited to Microsoft) and has gone the polar opposite of open source licensing a-la BSD/Apache licenses (no strings attached) and joining the Linux foundation.
  - cutler 10y ago
    As far as I'm aware MS are still operating their Linux patents extortion racket. What on earth were the Linux Foundation thinking when they allowed MS to become a member? It seems the Linux Foundation is little more than a corporate jamboree.

oelmekki 10y ago

I've hated MS a decade ago, because of their position against linux and because of IE6. I've watched them doing big efforts the last few years, and I welcome them - I can't wait to feel good about them. That being, this article indeed sounds too emphasized to not be fishy. Maybe it's a PR article, maybe it's just that the author from this financial publication bought MS shares lately, maybe it's something else, I don't know. But yeah, I don't see either any major change in mobile MS usage around me.

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests: (1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.) (2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, without joining the Patent Commons. (3) Microsoft seems to intentionally subvert its OS's users' attempts to disable snooping. AFAIK, Microsoft not only refuses to say what data are gathered, but also phone home to so many different IP names/numbers that it looks like they're trying to hide the activity from the OS user. (4) Microsoft is now "embracing" Linux. Microsoft became famous for "embrace, extend, extinguish". People outside of the CEO's inner circle can't know if that's the plan here as well.

Aldo_MX 10y ago
In case you hadn't noticed, "Embrace, extend and extinguish" is from 1995, 21 years ago.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  That's a good point. I guess the question is, in a case like this, what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? I don't know. The manner in which Microsoft pushed Windows 10 may be a data point.
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    A big part of the current senior leadership wasn't even at the company in 1995.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      The sco scam was in 2003 and the recent move towards arm devices that use treacherous computing to lock the user out of modifying their machine was recently who cares about 1995.
      - mynameisvlad 10y ago
        This whole thread is about EEE, which is a concept coined in 1995 and my reply was addressing >what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? So, quite relevant.
        michaelmrose 10y ago
        The point is that they have been user and competitive marketplace hostile far more recently than 1995.
- treebeard901 10y ago
  The "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme is largely overused these days in reference to Microsoft. If the trend towards using the cloud continues and the desktop OS becomes more of a terminal to cloud services then we could be looking at a modern version of "EEE". Embrace linux for the customers, extend Windows software to Linux for those customers, and let market trends extinguish the desktop OS.

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nabacbi 10y ago

They decided not to upgrade most of their mobiles from wp7 to wp8. They promised not to do that again, then did it again when they decided not to upgrade most of their mobiles from wp8.1 to wp10. Windows 10 is rubbish for reasons I'm not even going to explain because we all are well aware of them. They also have inconvenienced millions of people to make us upgrade even if we didn't want to. They got rid of all their QA. Quality of all of their software has gone downhill since then. They don't care. They put ads in their OS which we already had paid for. They are doing all they can to get rid of win32. That's going to be their bane, as win32 is the only reason most of us still use windows. That's all I know of the recent Microsoft. Fuck Microsoft.

digler999 10y ago

> I love my Surface Pro 4, I'd love one if I could put linux on it. or if I could buy an OEM pc without an OS (and yes I know there are some vendors that "allow" (just that word makes me cringe) you to do it, but it should be a right). If, by their own definition, it's "intellectual" (and not material) property, then if I dont use it I shouldn't have to pay for it. If they want to sell Surface because it's an awesome product, why do they need to go out of their way to lock their software on it ? If it's so awesome, surely people would want to use it, right ? If the proverbial destination is so great, why do they need to lock their guests inside ?

Zaheer 10y ago
You're not their target demographic. 99% of people don't want to put linux on it.
- PNWChris 10y ago
  Beyond that, I find those that want to run Linux on a Surface often put it in Hyper-V and use putty + WinSCP + $TEXT_EDITOR_OF_CHOICE wired up to WinSCP. Heck, now there's the Windows subsystem for Linux. X11 and VNC help if you want a Linux desktop, but that's admittedly a less than ideal experience. Of course, virtualization generally precludes USB peripheral access, so my suggestions are a pure software and web development solution.
- digler999 10y ago
  back in the 90's, 99% of people didn't want linux either, and MS did just fine without "physically" locking you out of their competition.
  - eropple 10y ago
    I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago

I actually suffered through corporate pressure against my use of Linux for applications I developed (and users LOVED), because of the press onslaught in the trade magazines about the ridiculous SCO trial. (And then I see from a comment above that this is being appealed. Still. 13 years later. OMG.) So, my cynicism may be intractable. You may see a "new" Microsoft, but all I see is a Microsoft which is making moves they HAVE to in order to survive. In this world of "the cloud" and the utter dominance of Linux in everything with a CPU that ISN'T a desktop computer, what else can they do but the things they're doing? That Microsoft is executing WELL is a byproduct. If they didn't, they'd have become the IBM they defeated 20 years ago, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. (They'd offer legacy support for Windows XP, and we'd all wish we could cut them out of the budget, along with the mainframe.) I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. I find the bright and cheerful comments like yours depressing. They seem to belie a belief that the upper management of Microsoft has somehow been knighted with a sense of civic duty. I see it as the same business shrewdness they've always shown. They no longer have the power to dictate absolute terms to corporations, and must play nice with the rest of the IT world. And I bet it chaps some of the old guards' asses.

quanticle 10y ago
I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business. So, how does that make the outcome any worse? RedHat isn't contributing to the Linux kernel out of a sense of charity. IBM isn't contributing to OpenStack as a philanthropic endeavor. Facebook isn't improving PHP because it's a fun hobby project. They're all doing the things that they're doing because it's good for business. Why is it any worse when Microsoft does it?
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  No, they're not different from anyone else for having a profit motive, but Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very long stretch of using underhanded and illegal tactics to stifle competition. I would argue that they're STILL abusing their monopoly position on the desktop. THAT is what makes them different than the rest, and that, to me, is what tempers my attitude about these recent announcements. Another difference is that the other examples you've listed here are all free software. Of all the glowing coverage Microsoft has been getting of late, only .NET on Linux is comparable. But you're never going to get Windows-forms-like applications on Windows (which a surprising number of people seem to think will happen). It's only the web stack. Does ASP.NET really stack up well against Rails or Node.js as a web application stack on Linux? I don't know, but at the least, they have some catching up to do. But, really, I think it's another example of my main point. Microsoft could have used some pre-existing open source project and built on top of that, but they chose to create another language for the future. It's even pretty good, by all accounts. It's just that, in a world of PHP, Javascript, C++, Ruby, Python, Erlang, and all the rest, what place does a closed-source language and compiler have? They had to make it open source.

cutler 10y ago

Do you love the fact that MS earns millions from patent trolling Linux companies? How's that for open source "support"?

supernovae 10y ago
All of that was prior leadership. Satya has largely reversed this trend (which wasn't limited to Microsoft) and has gone the polar opposite of open source licensing a-la BSD/Apache licenses (no strings attached) and joining the Linux foundation.
- cutler 10y ago
  As far as I'm aware MS are still operating their Linux patents extortion racket. What on earth were the Linux Foundation thinking when they allowed MS to become a member? It seems the Linux Foundation is little more than a corporate jamboree.