Contents tagged with Backseat Driver
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Why Microsoft can't ship open source code
I've suggested a few times that Microsoft could go beyond just cooperating with the open source community and actually ship open source code. For instance, Paint.NET is a great alternative to MS Paint, so not just bundle it? Tonight I had a very long conversation with someone who is in a position to really understand both Microsoft and open source. Now I understand why my suggestion - though well intentioned - was hopelessly naive.
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The 9 things Microsoft SHOULD be announcing next week at MIX07 (but won't)
Microsoft has said they'll have some kind of big surprise to announce next week at the MIX07 conference in Las Vegas. If you want to hear some good guesses as to what will actually be announced, you've come to the wrong place. If you'd like some good guesses, try the following: - Miguel de Icaza - speculation on MIX07, including a dynamic language runtime
- Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft to roll out dynamic-language layer for .Net
- InternetExplorer8 - General info on what's known about IE8
- Channel9 Forums - Speculation about dev.live.com updates
But accuracy's not what this post is about. No, this is good old armchair quarterback time. I'm not going to talk about idealistic things like firing half the marketing and legal departments, I'm going to focus on product direction and long term vision things. Ray, if you've been procrastinating on your keynote, I've put together a few talking points for you. Style point: remember that the great speakers of history were men of passion. Wave your arms a lot and bang on the podium.
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Make Zune a winner... as a platform
It's no secret - the Zune could be better than the iPod and still languish as an also ran for years. iPod has a huge marketshare, a solid brand, and a following whose passion would be the envy of most terrorist organizations. The "second mover advantage" sweet spot time has come and gone. iPod is firmly established, and "feature parity and a bag of chips" won't win any marketshare. The Zune WiFi feature is a good example - it's a cool feature, but it's been written off as to heavily locked down by DRM restrictions; the iPod doesn't have any WiFi and the Fairplay system is pretty restrictive. My point is that features alone won't beat brand loyalty. -
Microsoft should ship SubSonic (formerly called ActionPack) with Atlas
Yesterday, Phil got me to watch the SubSonic screencast (it was actually called the ASP.NET ActionPack and was since renamed). I'd seen posts about it on my main RSS feeds and had ignored it because everyone had been giving their posts titles like "ActionPack - Ruby on Rails for ASP.NET." I've watched all the ROR screencasts and have been a little underwhelmed1, so I didn't bother reading further. Big mistake.
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CodeProject - Avoiding software licensing makes for a very bad license
Update: CodeProject has added license support since I wrote this. Hooray!
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Could desktop search and virus scanning start a carpool?
Most of us have at least two systems scanning our hard drives. In my case, one is checking them for viruses, the other is updating indexes for desktop file search. It seems like a lot of duplicated effort, since they both do very similar things: -
MS Office - free, but pay for services?
There's a very interesting article in this month's issue of Business 2.0 about Ryanair's innovative business model. This is an incredibly successful business model - Ryanair's profit margin is about 3 times Southwest Airlines' margin ; Ryanair is said to have the strongest financials of any European airline. -
More .NET apps in Fedora Core 5 than Windows Vista?
Will Fedora Core 5, the Linux distro supported by Red Hat, have more managed code than Windows Vista? It sure looks that way. Microsoft has made heavy use of .NET in their developer and enterprise products, but .NET is pretty much absent from Windows Vista , as evidenced by Richard Grimes' recent analysis. -
Windows OneCare, Automatic Updates, and Automatic Reboots
I've been beta testing Windows OneCare™ Live : "the all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service aimed at helping consumers more easily protect and maintain their PCs to keep them running well."It integrates smoothly with Windows, consolidates firewall, antivirus, backup, and more. It's one of the better designed pieces of software I've used , and it puts the standard Windows security packages (Symantec, McAfee, etc.) to shame. I'm a thrifty consumer (readers of my blog will note my love of free software), and I think the price is very reasonable: the subscription price for up to three computers will be $49.95. If that seems pricey, consider that it does a lot more than the other antivirus packages, does it very well, and covers three computers. They're now in an open Beta period, so you can try it out free here.
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"Vista Re-Introduced (as OSX)" vs. "Developers, Developer, Developers.."
Windows Vista is a heck of a development platform. Head and shoulders over the competition - Mac's stuck with Objective C, and the real action in Linux development these days (at least in my twisted world) is in Mono, the open source implementation of .NET. Group hug...