I have just finished reading the Microsoft .NET White Paper (link posted in the article referred to by robot in the “Someone define .NET” thread) and here is my take on the subject. While reading through the white paper, I was reminded of two things constantly. 1) While talking to a guy at a place I used to work in the early 90’s, he made a statement something to the effect of "Microsoft wants to merge all programming into a single conglomerate language..." 2) "Business @ the speed of light" - Bill Gates. When I bought the book and read through it, I was astounded by how *boring* the book was. First off, he never really specified any of the details of the implementation process. He only describes his vision of “how it could be” and in some instances "case studies". But it wasn''t a book on theory either. I would describe it as a book of "dreams" as that is how Bill Gates portrayed his thoughts throughout the book. Why do I think those two points that I am reminded of important? Let me explain. But first, I’d like to say that, you may think that neither of these two points are relevant or even new concepts but for the sake of argument, lets look at the facts. Well, we all know that the first way to provide language merging happened in the form of libraries (.LIB/.DLL) for code sharing. Now, I don’t know if M$ was the forerunners in that arena, but they have come up with many other ideas. Ok, maybe not. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single idea that they had that was truly original. Most, if not all of their ideas were rip-offs of other people’s ideas but they have managed to gather all of these ideas into a single foundation. One group of their “ideas” are COM/DCOM/COM+ and the like. Again, they may have grabbed the idea from someone else (wasn’t COM based on CORBA?) but they have managed to build their entire foundation out of it (Windows, Office, etc.) Anyway, they eventually came up with the idea of packaging their development languages into a single package (IE: Visual Studio). Well, Borland and Computer Associates have gotten themselves caught in the frenzy of a bandwagon as well. They both also have “Enterprise” type products that incorporate one or more of their development languages. The other point about the book is because Bill has a “dream” and he clearly identifies that dream as a vision of the future. This .NET stuff is not his first step, but is merely a stepping-stone towards that vision. Reading that white paper, it appeared to me that he is trying to get us, the developers to “contribute” in the design of his “Internet Operating System” by providing “Services” to individual users. Note: I have dubbed the .NET as the Internet Operating System. I have not seen any other reference to .NET as such and I just wanted to clarify that so as to avoid any confusion. Essentially, it all boils down to a quote Bill Gates made in 1981 that says:

quote:

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Published in the book “Microsoft Secrets” by Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby (page 157).ISBN: 0-02-874048-3 “Why do we need standards? … It’s only through volume that you can offer reasonable software at a low price. Standards increase the basic machine that you can sell into [the market]…. I really shouldn’t say this, but in some ways it leads, in an individual product category, to a natural monopoly: where somebody properly documents, properly trains, properly promotes a particular package and through momentum, user loyalty, reputation, sales force, and prices builds a very strong position with that product”

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So you see. All along, Bill Gates was building his empire to form a “natural” monopoly. It was not until recently, that it was really visible as to his intentions and unfortunately, we as developers have in the past latched onto his “standards” at a time when there were no otherwise “real” programming standards aside from the ANSI standards of the time. By developing systems and applications for the MS-DOS/Windows operating systems, we as developers were merely pawns in his big game of chess. And this .NET is just another attempt for him to make us “Check” the market in his proverbial chess match. If you managed to read this entire post, I just want to say Thank you. I know it is a bit on the lengthy side but I had to vent some frustration. I am not sure where the future of .NET is heading and I don’t like what I see so far. Without further ado, I will come to a close with this post. Regards, Jumpster

Yep, I agree. And if you really want to be scared, read Jackson''s finding of fact; the amount of raw power he exhibits MS having over other large corporations is down right scary.

I too have trouble thinking of a single true innovation of MS''s, but I''m sure there''s one somewhere.

Mike

.NET is also the latest and most bold of M$''s moves to make everyting only compatible with windows. I have yet to see a coherient specifications for the .NET system. I do admit that it is language agnostic, but it is NOT platform agnostic. I also shudder at the fact that with everything being a COM/ActiveX object how quickly people will find the broken ones that can be called from IE to exploit systems over the internet. Developers should still have to define classes/functions they want exported, not every support class needs external hooks. And don''t even get me started on how C# java w/o protection.

I''ll stick to java for my component system thank you, nothing against M$''s software, I just want true platform independance. I can write in clost to a hundred diffrent alnguages that all run on the JVM. I have both system dependant and system independant windowing systems, and a robust library of functions/classes to draw on.

Correct me if I''m worng, but this just seems like a bad idea overall.

...But it will work, because people (developers and ESPECIALLY users) want standards.

Ever get frustrated because a windows program didn''t have the file menu laid out like...

New
Open
Close
_______
Save
Save as...
Save a copy

etc.

People want things to work the same. A few years ago, there was a study going on on some web site (forget url) to find out what people disliked most about the Internet. #1 was speed, #2 was that hardly any web sites have the same "flow" from one to the next.

The smartest thing that Microsoft ever did was pushing standards. The real reason why new OSs have a tough time gaining popularity isnt because of MS forcing them out of the market (i can go into Best buy and see 5 flavors of Linux and only 2 flavors of Windows hmm...), but rather because the standards the other companies are trying to push ARE DIFFERENT (well that and the thought of open source scares a lot of developers thinking about the possible economic loss)

The problem with software today is that it is one of the few markets that having more diversity creates more problems.

Maybe one day all software developers (including Operating systems) will be able to come to an agreement on standards. The main downfall of this of course is that it will take forever for any new standards to be created, as each company will want ITS ideas to be the standard.

The future of development is probably going to go 1 of 3 ways.

1.) Set standards, slower progress but happier developers
2.) Chaos, Massive innovation with a 0 on the happiness scale..
3.) Thermonuclear war (my pick )

Thanks,
Etnu

Sometimes I think I know what I really don''t, but then again usually I do know what I don''t, but just don''t realize it, maybe its because I am so young, but then again it could be because I am insane.

The problem is that microsoft DOESNT define standards however. They take existing standards, break them, and publish them as the new standards.

That is entirely against the concept behind standards.

Microsoft has never been an innovator. They just implement other peoples ideas first, since they have a large enough capital base and can afford to do so.

If Microsoft was ever interesting in creating standards, they wouldnt go off and break C++ (C#, non ANSI-Visual C++), they wouldnt change their freaking file formats every time a new update happens (MS Word, excel), and they wouldnt try to break java (J++ Builder), they wouldt try to break HTML (IE4 and 5... they succeeded in breaking html because IE has over 70 percent of the market. Of course, if they had some decent competition, things would have turned out differently, but lets face it, Netscape 4 was a joke).

Microsoft are at best hypocrites. They run around screaming about making standards, yet break them every day in the name of "competition".

===============================================
If there is a witness to my little life,
To my tiny throes and struggles,
He sees a fool;
And it is not fine for gods to menace fools.

Etnu,

unfortunaltly .NET does nothing for true standards besides line M$''s pocket. .NET is a interface standard, and it will make programming eaier under windows to some extent, but this does not make any demads on how the interface is laed out.

To some extent this will cause problems in the future when GUID''s start colliding because everything under the sun has a GUID now ( COM object ).

Just my .02

Quoted from Etnu:

"The smartest thing that Microsoft ever did was pushing standards. The real reason why new OSs have a tough time gaining popularity isnt because of MS forcing them out of the market (i can go into Best buy and see 5 flavors of Linux and only 2 flavors of Windows hmm...), but rather because the standards the other companies are trying to push ARE DIFFERENT (well that and the thought of open source scares a lot of developers thinking about the possible economic loss)."

Ok, one point from me: there may be more flavours of Linux than Windows (I''m not sure if that is true, I haven''t checked) but you must realised that the general user (even some developers) will not go into the store and buy a computer then a seperate operating system. Whereas distributors like Tiny, Time and PC World will sell PCs with Intel or AMD processors they nearly all sell PCs with some flavour of Windows pre-installed, so buying a new O/S becomes a total non-event. However, if there were PCs that came with Linux or BeOS or whatever (and the features were clearly available to the customer) then I think the number of those O/Ss sold would definitely increase.
Bill Gates used the words "sales force" in the quote that Jumpster used and this is what he is doing by offering Windows in some form on pre-constructed high-street store PCs. It doesn''t just stop with the O/S though, you get IE, Outlook Express, Office, et al. This is my biggest complaint about M$ (well, that and their hacky code: MessageMap my arse).

My rant is over...



"Success can make you persevere for hours, failure can make you quit in seconds" - KlDzny

quote:

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Original post by: KlDzny
It doesn''t just stop with the O/S though, you get IE, Outlook Express, Office, et al. This is my biggest complaint about M$ (well, that and their hacky code: MessageMap my arse).

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The reason he gives all of this software away with Windows is also made perfectly clear in the book. His focus is to provide products to the users so that they get so hooked up on his stuff, that they can''t afford to go somewhere else to get a replacement package.

He is producing a "demand" for the products by offering them for free. The people use those products. Become dependent upon those products. Before they know it, they are hooked. Just try to get rid of Outlook express on my dad''s computer. Or the Internet Explorer on my mother''s computer (they are divorced by the way).

They both rely on those programs too much to get something new. My father doesn''t want to use the Netscape mail package and my mother doesn''t want to use Netscape browser...

And it doesn''t just stop there. Look at the businesses that buy new pc''s all the time. Virtually every pc sold to businesses (and privately now I believe) come standard with Office 2000 - Small Business...

Now as far as business goes, conceptually, it''s beautiful, effective and damn good business practice. I applaud him for that. But, to what extreme should he be allowed to use this practice and use it against us in this manner? One of the points I was trying to make in my first post is that the .NET! is just another method for using this same exact concept.


Regards,
Jumpster

I don''t use Outlook, I use Hotmail. So I''m not dependant.

Wait, Microsoft bought Hotmail, so now I use a Microsoft product! What''s more, it''s free Hotmail, so now I''m dependant on a free product. Dang it.

Microsoft has a lot of power. They can set standards. Standards are good, it makes programming simplier. But they can also change the standards when they wish. That is bad. But what can one do? Split the company? That is already being done, but for some reason, I have a feeling that nothing will change. Good ole'' Bill (Not Clinton mind you, Gates), will find away to keep their software integrated with windows.

-Blackstream

Will you, won''t you, will you, won''t you, won''t you take my virus?

-The Mad Hacker

Open standards are the only good standards. It is unfortunate that america fell so hard for windows. I think it will be like tolken ring networks. It may be a better technology but at the time ethernet was cheaper and now we are too far down the road to change directions. I think a fine is the only acceptable outcome to the antitrust case against ms. We are reaping the whirlwind now. MS may end up like IBM, too big to fail but not the leader. But that won''t be for a decade at least.

I wanrned you! Didn''t I warn you?! That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself!