5 ms·

I'm almost afraid to reply to this. It's like the hunt for Communists in the US during the cold war - ah another MS sympathizer. MS made a lot of mistakes - so

I'm almost afraid to reply to this. It's like the hunt for Communists in the US during the cold war - ah another MS sympathizer. MS made a lot of mistakes - so did Apple. I was an Apple tech support - it really sucked not having multitasking and dealing with so many OS issues. Now I make a living off the MS stack. I think MS sticking with RT is a bad move - go with full Windows support. I would still say a Nexus device is probably the best bang for the buck. In the end it's just an opinion, but you don't need to jump down a company's throat because their not the ones in vogue at the moment.

mikeash 13y ago
And much like the Communist thing, there are some good underlying reasons even if the end result is not necessarily good. For the Communists, it's because they were horrible oppressors. For Microsoft, it's because they nearly destroyed the industry back in the day, and to many of us it seems like they set back computing about a decade with their monopolistic tactics. That doesn't mean that the Microsoft of today, much diminished in power and much increased in reasonable behavior, deserves our continued ire. But it's hard to shake the reaction to that kind of massive mistreatment.
- kefka 13y ago
  Aside the whole Communist topic.. Ye who enters that debate lies in Internet flamewars. Who cares what Microsoft did to the community. They changed SMB protocol to screw up open source devs. They intentionally fouled up Kerberos authentication. They added API after API in part to foul up WINE. Not only that, but then they continuously stagnated on any sort of browser development until Mozilla kicked in. But that's the past. Now, we have them to thank for 'trusted computing', where the computer trusts the owner (hint: we aren't one). We can thank them for bringing in the forefront HDMI and trusted video/audio path. I can only remember how many sound/graphics cards were trashed after the newest Win Vista refused to even work with them. And I now do tech support for the industry that requires 'secure boot' turned on all newer machines. If you're one of them unlucky ones running SurfaceRT with an ARM, sorry, it's not compatible with anything other than what the owner wants (another hint: you still aren't the owner). Yeah, the MS dev team does seem pretty cool. But you all get criticized over what the whole company has and still does. If you don't like it, dnot tell people you work for them. There are other research places other than MS, if you don't like them.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Microsoft Research is the only company still doing pure CS research that I'm aware of. This is widely acknowledged also, even by my peers who are working for Google (we talk often, Apple is completely MIA from the research space).
    - beagle3 13y ago
      And that gives MS some love in academic circles. But that's all it should give them.
    - curiousDog 13y ago
      Do you it's time MS cut funding to do pure research and focus on research that'll lead to products instead? Like Google research does? There seems to be waay too much fluff in MSR too. I mean the number of techfest posters on campus showing off social (facebook, twitter data) related research was just ridiculous - I don't see that even remotely benefiting us in the near future. Also, most of these researchers do not collaborate or are otherwise unaware of similar product projects going on in-house. For example, we have a ZooKeeper committer and contributer from MSR, yet we ended up building a distantly similar one in azure only to find out later that it existed (this was in it's early days).
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- quaffapint 13y ago
  Then why such crazy love for Apple when Jobs was trying to do the same thing with the iphone suing companies left and right and patenting a button? They both have bad sides, it just seems one is ignored.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Apple never did anything remotely comparable to MS's rampage of destruction in the 90s. A few lawsuits against smartphone makers is small potatoes by comparison, especially since they didn't really work out. How many competitors has Apple put out of business, not by having better products, but by simply leveraging a monopoly to drive them out? The answer, of course, is none, because they don't have any monopolies and aren't in a position to drive better products out of business.
    - mixmastamyk 13y ago
      shakes fist at Win98 Never forget.
- mindslight 13y ago
  Of course in both cases, it's very important to not let the hunt for one particular type of witch take on a life of its own - the ensuing hysterical myopia makes it easy for differently-branded beasts (in these cases, Apple and Democracy) to escape scrutiny.

mikeash 13y ago

And much like the Communist thing, there are some good underlying reasons even if the end result is not necessarily good. For the Communists, it's because they were horrible oppressors. For Microsoft, it's because they nearly destroyed the industry back in the day, and to many of us it seems like they set back computing about a decade with their monopolistic tactics. That doesn't mean that the Microsoft of today, much diminished in power and much increased in reasonable behavior, deserves our continued ire. But it's hard to shake the reaction to that kind of massive mistreatment.

kefka 13y ago
Aside the whole Communist topic.. Ye who enters that debate lies in Internet flamewars. Who cares what Microsoft did to the community. They changed SMB protocol to screw up open source devs. They intentionally fouled up Kerberos authentication. They added API after API in part to foul up WINE. Not only that, but then they continuously stagnated on any sort of browser development until Mozilla kicked in. But that's the past. Now, we have them to thank for 'trusted computing', where the computer trusts the owner (hint: we aren't one). We can thank them for bringing in the forefront HDMI and trusted video/audio path. I can only remember how many sound/graphics cards were trashed after the newest Win Vista refused to even work with them. And I now do tech support for the industry that requires 'secure boot' turned on all newer machines. If you're one of them unlucky ones running SurfaceRT with an ARM, sorry, it's not compatible with anything other than what the owner wants (another hint: you still aren't the owner). Yeah, the MS dev team does seem pretty cool. But you all get criticized over what the whole company has and still does. If you don't like it, dnot tell people you work for them. There are other research places other than MS, if you don't like them.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Microsoft Research is the only company still doing pure CS research that I'm aware of. This is widely acknowledged also, even by my peers who are working for Google (we talk often, Apple is completely MIA from the research space).
  - beagle3 13y ago
    And that gives MS some love in academic circles. But that's all it should give them.
  - curiousDog 13y ago
    Do you it's time MS cut funding to do pure research and focus on research that'll lead to products instead? Like Google research does? There seems to be waay too much fluff in MSR too. I mean the number of techfest posters on campus showing off social (facebook, twitter data) related research was just ridiculous - I don't see that even remotely benefiting us in the near future. Also, most of these researchers do not collaborate or are otherwise unaware of similar product projects going on in-house. For example, we have a ZooKeeper committer and contributer from MSR, yet we ended up building a distantly similar one in azure only to find out later that it existed (this was in it's early days).
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
quaffapint 13y ago
Then why such crazy love for Apple when Jobs was trying to do the same thing with the iphone suing companies left and right and patenting a button? They both have bad sides, it just seems one is ignored.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Apple never did anything remotely comparable to MS's rampage of destruction in the 90s. A few lawsuits against smartphone makers is small potatoes by comparison, especially since they didn't really work out. How many competitors has Apple put out of business, not by having better products, but by simply leveraging a monopoly to drive them out? The answer, of course, is none, because they don't have any monopolies and aren't in a position to drive better products out of business.
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    shakes fist at Win98 Never forget.
mindslight 13y ago
Of course in both cases, it's very important to not let the hunt for one particular type of witch take on a life of its own - the ensuing hysterical myopia makes it easy for differently-branded beasts (in these cases, Apple and Democracy) to escape scrutiny.