There have been some astute observations buy some niners, including the guy that stated indecision about any .NET making it into WinRT - had this been the case this operating system would have been a failure - I just hope Steve Jobs or any of his team can fess up and say that Microsoft "dun good". Boy they really dun good!

Credit must go to the Windows Phone team, where the key Metro design emerged, subsequently taken and refined by the Windows team. The usual suspect niner developers that complain about UI are implacable, so ignore their cries, they are smart and we love them, but we take them out shopping and not the other way around.

I also wish Fanbaby, Bass and our open source unit can be man enough and admit that this operating system is a thing of beauty, instead of trying to find capital in Silverlight is dead posts, this is now boring and nauseating, please change your tune.

Yes, the Metro UI will set the standard in design for many, many years to come, and in all sort of industries. You will see it in movie titles, on soup cans, and what not. Thank god Microsoft has patented the fonts! Soon Apple would have copied it as it has shamelessly done in the past. Not to mention UNIX free-loaders who were stopped at the last moment from redoing their man pages in Metro.

But that's not the thing of beauty i'm talking about. No sir. It's the internals. I have never ever seen this level of CS. Teaching CS is never going to be the same. Tennenbaum Shmennenbaum. Books will be rewritten. nothing will ever e the same.

Browser theory and history will also need a rewrite. Who will remember those puny little browsers who never managed to go above 7 FPS. HAHAHA, 7 FPS!

1 hour ago,vesuvius wrote

.... instead of trying to find capital in Silverlight is dead posts, this is now boring and nauseating, please change your tune.

You tell me

3 minutes ago,Bass wrote

I'm going to have to download it first in order to properly criticize it. But no worries, I'll eventually get there.

What?! That's not the internet way. What's wrong with you?!

We'll see if everything is as jolly as it seems over the next year or so, but it looks like a really good paradigm that will have a lot of mileage.

Me being serious now: Metro is "nice", and it works on mobile devices because it cleanly and clearly displays information, that's fine.

And we've all seen that it doesn't work as well on a desktop. The same UI designed for 1024x768 is simply upscaled for 1920x1200.

...and I'm actually getting a bit "seasick" of Metro's bold and contrast-y design, in much the same way I almost felt physically nauseous over Vista's sea-green colour scheme (thankfully 7 sorted it out and introduced more neutral blues).

I'm of the opinion that an OS should not have a strong visual identity of its own (by 'strong' I mean like how Metro is, it's incredibly pervasive). Don't think I don't want consistency (I'm a huge proponent of it) but I think Metro mandates too much.

I'm not alone in feeling this: many people I've spoken to have expressed similar "fatigue" over "METRO ALL THE THINGS!" and just want to go back to the not-so-in-your-face classic desktop.

I'll analogise Windows 8 to the New Coke: enough people will write letters of complaint, comparing the new thing to some form of excrement and then they'll introduce "Windows Classic" 2 years later.

Another analogy I made was:

[20:26:56] Me: I think Windows 8 will be Microsoft's Mirrors Edge to Apple's Portal
[20:27:06] Leo: hah, nice analogy
[20:27:17] Me: i.e.: give them praise for experimenting and coming up with something new, original, and fun to use ... but it just "doesn't work" in some vague undefined way

i think a lot of metro sea sickness could be cured - in part - by offering a choice (yes a choice - remember those?) of Wipe, Disolve in or Plain

The screens flying back and forth doing routine things (like going between flipping desktop and start "menu" is insane

Does apple hold a patent on apps that fade in from nowhere - zooming in quickly?

that would be better than huge WIPES

PS - W3 - i see youve shaved 

If yes, you spend too much time on facebook/twitter/reddit/(other time wasting sites) and must really be bored of being an actual geek...

• http://bit.ly/oUmBB2
• http://bit.ly/qftQKW
• http://bit.ly/renprJ
• http://bit.ly/pIhxqJ
• http://bit.ly/pu5S5d

You probably watch a lot of cop/lawyer and reality television as well. Sheesh.

14 minutes ago,W3bbo wrote

Me being serious now: Metro is "nice", and it works on mobile devices because it cleanly and clearly displays information, that's fine.

And we've all seen that it doesn't work as well on a desktop.

I think Metro is the right solution for touch devices... although it remains to be seen how quickly the "fashionable" look dates.

However, as a desktop computer environment, not so much.

If MS are going to impose this as the primary environment for all personal computers, then I fear there is going to be another VISTA style rejection by business users, who have a large base of people working with the "classic" environment and who are not going to want the expense (time and money) of retraining them.

I believe this should be a personality mode that can be selected, so that the default environment can be set to match the type of device and application.

hells kitchen

*dont forget - to the corp bean counters - the less you know about your pc - the more they can feed you pap

thats why they love Jobs model ... oh its a tablet - NOT a pc

uh no thanks - i want an ms tablet - WITH touch that looks great that IS a pc - with options and right mouse (however) and properties of every last icon

but it is not in their interest to empower that way anymore (or so they think)

they just want the vending machine pc - and are run by an ad salesman football player

(and we all no how much respect i have for him)

18 minutes ago,sysrpl wrote

What's the matter with you geeks? Do you really want to use the metro interface (an interface that dumbs down the entire OS and all the applications) so very much?

It doesn't dumb anything down, it just "streamlines" the experience so you can do common tasks more quickly and easily (it's true, except that "common tasks" are what Joe Users want to do: email, the web, the sort of things you used to hear in the old "Get a Mac" ads on TV).

I hear they're going to slightly "metro-ify" Office 2014, but this could mean anything from keeping the current UI for "classic" users and introducing a new "Metro mode" (think: for tablets) to just replacing all the icons in Office 2014 with ridiculously oversized text.

15 minutes ago,JoshRoss wrote

There is some good stuff under the covers, from a programming perspective. However, I think the design language of Metro is too restrictive for the desktop. I like to think of the problem as the three little bears of UI. The WinForms bed was too small, it was difficult to make applications that looked distinct. While the WFP bed was too big, promoting applications to look like anything the programmers dreamed -- plus a little scoop of ugly butter. Metro was a good set of guidelines for the phone, when space is at a premium, but becomes too restrictive as precision of the user input increases. What needs to be created, IMHO, is a design language that scale up and down the precision of controller to optimally complete a given task when presented with the constants of the interface. Or something along those lines.

This, except replace "little scoop" with "a whole industrial ice cream tub".

Oh, and of course, the annoying JIT delay in CLR applications. Even NGen doesn't solve that.

11 minutes ago,JoshRoss wrote

There is some good stuff under the covers, from a programming perspective. However, I think the design language of Metro is too restrictive for the desktop. I like to think of the problem as the three little bears of UI. The WinForms bed was too small, it was difficult to make applications that looked distinct. While the WFP bed was too big, promoting applications to look like anything the programmers dreamed -- plus a little scoop of ugly butter. Metro was a good set of guidelines for the phone, when space is at a premium, but becomes too restrictive as precision of the user input increases. What needs to be created, IMHO, is a design language that scale up and down the precision of controller to optimally complete a given task when presented with the constants of the interface. Or something along those lines.

That's a great analogy, and I completely agree.  I have seen nothing to indicate Metro scales well to larger displays or more complex apps at all.  The massive visual (and usability) shock when you invoke Metro by just calling a search from the standard desktop is very jarring and is just very poor design.

And..."beautiful"?  Really?  Metro can be beautiful, but I haven't seen much evidence yet in Win8.  On a small touch display, monochromatic icons and huge fonts are fine - you need to see info quickly and from a good distance from your eyes.  

But blow that up to a 23" display, and it really starts to look as if was designed by Crayola - and that's the good stuff, the tiles that were designed from the outset for Metro.  Seen the metro start screen after you add an app?  Separate, mono chromatic square with small, ugly old icon.  

Especially with the bastardized Aero they've got going - that is truly the ugliest GUI MS have put out in recent memory.

The problem with MS and GUI's really comes down to fit and finish.  Some concepts are good and somtimes - like with the Zune player - they do show attention to the details.  But it's rare.  You can not like Apple's designs, but you can't argue that one of the reasons so many people find their interfaces attractive is that spend a lot of time on the little details - font rendering accuracy, drop shadows, slightly curved edges, smooth backgrounds that don't clash with the foreground elements, detailed icons, etc.  MS has never shown that attention to detail and so far they don't appear to be starting now (I mean really, a bright-green monochromatic background is the new Metro design guide?  Really?).

There's of course time for tweaks, but some of the visual problems go deeper than needing a nudge - and again, MS seems to be leaving GUI design to the last element instead of having a culture of design from the outset - which I think it needs.

I am considering getting a third monitor that supports touch, especially since I want to test the touch aspects of any apps that I create.

Hey, when did spell checking get enabled on this forum? Is that new for Windows 8?

I'm not sure what I am more thrilled about, the new Metro stuff, or that Hyper-V is now built into the client.

The elephant in the room here is the strategy. Microsoft wants devs to produce a bunch of 99 cent "fast and fluid" lightweight consumer grade apps. This isn't a replacement for the desktop nor a new home for LOB apps. WinRT/Metro is a Windows 8 only game. Only those who can afford to be limited to selling their apps on Windows 8 should use WinRT/Metro. It's like Rogaine -- once you start using it there is no going back.  

For us LOB apps guys we'll be stuck on the sunsetted Silverlight/WPF/.NET stack or moving over to ASP.NET (and Azure if Microsoft had their way). Most improvements will be made to the WinRT API (i.e. networking, XAML). And no you can't use WinRT in a Silverlight app (yes you can PORT a Silverlight app to WinRT/Metro but that's a whole other enchilada.)

IMO, Microsoft is back to their old bundling ways, Instead of going for rich and reach with Silverlight on multiple platforms their going for embedding a phone OS on Windows (like IE was originally bundled in Windows) in hopes that by being the default consumers would grow to accept WinRT/Metro as "just enough".   Their "reach" comes from getting Windows 8 on as many devices as possible. Being that WinRT/Metro is a Windows 8 only gig their hoping to retain their install base just like their did with bundling IE originally.

What's different this time around (and as proven by their lackluster results with Zune, WP, and regaining market share with IE) is that the market is saturated with iOS and Android devices. The Microsoft guys I've talked to all talk about the vast numbers of Windows desktops out there and still consider the iOS and Android numbers a rounding error in comparison.

Don't get me wrong; I want Microsoft to succeed here. I've enjoyed the homogenous environment that I've had the luxury in developing software for but the landscape is changing quickly. From my experience with the dev preview tablet they still have a long way to go before Windows 8 is ready. Every day that goes by makes it that much more difficult for Microsoft to regain that mind share they once had. 

Now back to my work on Android...

Most of your complaints will be addresed. If we dont have a

 private void SetUI()
{
if(MultiTouch.IsEnabled)
{

this.MetroUI.IsEnabled = true

}

else

{

this.MetroUI.IsEnabled = false;

this.ClassicDesktopUI.IsEnabled = true;

}

this.ClassicDesktopUI.IsEnabled = true;

}

then there will be far too much dissapprobation. Microsoft need to accept their legacy, I am afraid, and much as they say that WinRT is the way everyone should now develop their applications, this simply is not going to happen. If the Windows team can show me a complex application that is more than a RSS reader or game then there clearly will be a co-evolution of the two desktop paradigms.

For now they should be satisfied that they needed a strong tablet competitor, and they have blown the iPad out of the water into smithereens with something far more audacious and beautiful than an iPad.

What remains is Sony or someone to really go to town and create some exciting hardware, and the tablet war is now a two horse race, with Apple really showing inadequacies and deficiencies in their iOS software, that will require a serious amount of reengineering.

Bravo Win 8, all the way!

2 hours ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

Guys the UI isn't the issue here. While I hope I'm repeating what someone else has said as I haven't had time to read all of the threads...

The elephant in the room here is the strategy. Microsoft wants devs to produce a bunch of 99 cent "fast and fluid" lightweight consumer grade apps. This isn't a replacement for the desktop nor a new home for LOB apps. WinRT/Metro is a Windows 8 only game. Only those who can afford to be limited to selling their apps on Windows 8 should use WinRT/Metro. It's like Rogaine -- once you start using it there is no going back.  

Well, you've just saved me a couple of minutes typing.

The people 'calling for Ballmer's resignation' weren't doing so because he was alienating developers. To be honest, Microsoft's developer relations and tooling have always been vastly superior to Apple's. No, the problem has been not having a clue how to sell to the mobile market. They had lots of developer support for WP7, but no one actually bought the phone.

I love the Metro UI, but this cramming all of Windows into a tablet; haven't they tried this a couple of times before?

All the screams of approval are coming from developers (and that is important), but these are the same people who don't understand why WP7 is failing in the marketplace.

And as you said, these won't see the light of day until 2012. Let's not assume Apple and Google will just sit around waiting for it to land.

This is also a bit of a warning to Microsoft in that they doo need to concentrate on the dektop as well, as that will be very important as well, but I accept thay they need to prommulgate their new audacious design at present

And as to developing on Windows 8;

We will make stuff happen, we will work around the caveats! We are developers!

Seriously;

We are geeks, experts, gurus. We want full control, not some boxes we can push. But we also have to realize, we are a very very small minority. Windows 8 will appeal to 99% of all windows users. And I welcome the new platform, because it's now very easy for me to come into contact with end users via the marketplace.

Developers are water!

errrr,...

EDIT: Surly, you don't think that Apple is biting its fingernails thinking: run for the hills, the Borg is coming. (I care about Apple as much as I care about Silverlight, thank you)

My son thinks it is, he's so used to phone 7, he wants to swipe to his favorite episodes. Very fun to not be able to see the movie because of off the fingerprints on the screen.

Herbie

This whole metro thing just screams mediacenter to me. I love how they did the menus in mediacenter on W7, I just hope they didnt take that personalisation stuff into it in W8. As with my family, everyone interacts with it, not just one person.

If they did integrate all that social stuff, it would be awesome if they integrated your family into some sort of hub.

We'll see, I'm excited!

Microsoft has always outdone Apple. No doubt about it. Sure Microsoft had their moments of weakness, but;

Apple is a closed eco system, money to be made only by a chosen few and mostly by Apple. Now that even seniors are using their products, they are losing hipness fast!

Microsoft is a partner organisation, they provide the best developer tools in the world! Allowing all hardware manifacturors to participate, wether it's a tablet, phone or a desktop pc. Enabling businesses world wide to write their own apps and tailor the platform to their own needs!

If you want to compare Apple to Microsoft, you should also include all Microsoft's partners in that equasion.

5 hours ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

 The Microsoft guys I've talked to all talk about the vast numbers of Windows desktops out there and still consider the iOS and Android numbers a rounding error in comparison.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "For Microsoft to succeed it's not necessary for Apple or Google to fail"

I must admit, the BSOD is very nice.

That's on boot, of course. I guess it's too much work for the largest software company in the world to test their flagship operating system on popular virtual machine platforms.

Thus far I must give a Windows 8 a 1/10, the one point being for the pretty BSOD. Perhaps I'll get it to work eventually, but IMO if I can get Gentoo Linux or FreeBSD to install in a VM without problems, I expect a "professional" and "user friendly" OS to be similar, even a prerelease.

So after fixing the VM problem, my first impression is "slow as f**k". If this was Ubuntu, I'd already be using it by now. I was even being generous and gave Windows 8 access to 2 GB of RAM (I give Ubuntu only 1 GB).

But after install, Windows 8 seems to be endlessly stuck on some ugly loading screen. Maybe it actually crashed, but I am too scared to reboot in the case it will corrupt my install.

So, I'm removing that 1 point I gave it thus far. Windows 8: 0/10.

1 hour ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "For Microsoft to succeed it's not necessary for Apple or Google to fail"

And if the Linux community had learned this long ago then they might have made a dent in the desktop market.

4 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@vesuvius:

So after fixing the VM problem, my first impression is "slow as f**k". If this was Ubuntu, I'd already be using it by now. I was even being generous and gave Windows 8 access to 2 GB of RAM (I give Ubuntu only 1 GB).

But after install, Windows 8 seems to be endlessly stuck on some ugly loading screen. Maybe it actually crashed, but I am too scared to reboot in the case it will corrupt my install.

So, I'm removing that 1 point I gave it thus far. Windows 8: 0/10.

So you're installing a pre-beta OS in a VM ?

Finally, the "Personalize settings" wizard thing popped up. Green on white. Ugly as sin. I click "Express settings", nothing happens for quite some time. No progressbar, nothing. No warning at all.

And why the hell not? I install many things on a VM, it seems on Windows 8 is having problems here. I'm not going to hold it to a lower standard because Microsoft wrote it. They can test their sh!t a little better before they release it to the world, especially if an OS made by a bunch of volunteers manages to get it right.

PS: Still waiting on "Express settings" to complete.

34 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Thus far I must give a Windows 8 a 1/10, the one point being for the pretty BSOD. Perhaps I'll get it to work eventually, but IMO if I can get Gentoo Linux or FreeBSD to install in a VM without problems, I expect a "professional" and "user friendly" OS to be similar, even a prerelease.

It might be hard to believe from using them, but Gentoo and FreeBSD are actually "release" versions, so naturally should be more usable. Expecting pre-beta software to work properly, especially in an environment you have been recommended not to try it in (i.e. a VM), is kind of dumb.

The fact that I even had problems at all is a huge fail this far, but I'm still not giving up on my evaluation. Maybe there is something really good in Windows 8 as vesuvius claims.

Still stuck on "Express settings".

I'll beat you to the personalized settings!

Now, are two mice supported so I can pinch?

The beautiful Windows 8 UI thus far:

10 minutes ago,Bass wrote

No, I am not holding Microsoft to a lower standard. They are a huge company with THOUSANDS of paid software engineers. FreeBSD and Gentoo do not. Even so, Gentoo works on a rolling release (possibly a foreign concept to people who only use Windows) and I still never recall having problems installing it on a VM.

Ah, okay. I see what this is about ...

Your personal prejudices aside, this is a pre-release OS so expect problems. If this was the final release then you'd have a point. As it stands, you don't.

The fact that I even had problems at all is a huge fail this far, but I'm still not giving up on my evaluation. Maybe there is something really good in Windows 8 as vesuvius claims.

Well, good for you, but I'm not sure why you're bothering;  you clearly have no intention of giving it a fair shake.

Still stuck on a black screen. I'm guess I'm being to strict though, being stuck on a black screen for 10 minutes is just part of the Windows pre-release experience.

I am a C# developer in my day job and I feel like MS have let down all the .NET devs.

25 minutes ago,Ray7 wrote

*snip*

So you're installing a pre-beta OS in a VM ?

WHY NOT!

Guys at times I Bass is not very nice but in this i agree....    if you do not have a spare machine to wipe a VM should work.

Yes it's pre beta and might have issues but it should be runnable in a VM.

heck I am planning on setting one up on my desktop when i get time so that i can mess with it w/o running two pc's all the time.

sounds though like i need to get the VMware beta to run it on VMWare  so i will wait a bit and see what happens before i do that.

Scrollbar?!

Seriously?!

Back to pro mode

ahhhhhh

Microsoft must have it out for you Bass.

if(User.Naam.Contains("Bass"))
{
foreach(var operation in Operation.Pending())
{
Thread.Sleep(30000);
}
}

Started clicking on the other tiles. Nothing happened. Except for a slanty animation when you click. Maybe I'm impatient (or holding Windows to a unbelievably high standard), but I expect something to happen when I click something.

I'm going to try to reboot AGAIN, see what happens.

6 minutes ago,Bass wrote

I'm holding it to the same standard as amateurish OSes written by volunteers and designed for computer experts (Gentoo/FreeBSD). I guess my standards are too high, haha.

Still stuck on a black screen. I'm guess I'm being to strict though, being stuck on a black screen for 10 minutes is just part of the Windows pre-release experience.

I run Gentoo at home and I find that programmers who program without having to be paid are usually 1000x better than the corporate drones who don't know what a pointer is.  look at the Linux Kernel written by volunteers and is much more stable than Windows (although at least MS have made the BSOD nicer)

When to the corner left of the screen, found a menu. Clicked on search. Finally something happened. Some kind of sidebar thing popped up. Clicked on Internet Explorer in the sidebar. Nothing happened, again.

Went back to the "Metro" page. Clicked on "desktop". I got a Win7-style desktop. Clicked on Internet Explorer there. That opened. Finally.

This desktop looks very similar to Win7 (replacing the Windows logo in the corner with a uglier color mismatched version), but it looks like Metro is completely broken.

I went to check out Explorer. Looks okay I guess. Don't know if I like the ribbon, seems to take too much screen real estate.

At this point I am trying to find something genuinely postive to say about my Windows 8 experience. Struggling with that.

I guess IE10 was pretty fast.

I'll give Windows 8 2 points for that.

Windows 8: 2/10

I click on the Weather tile. It pops up with some kind of slanty animation thing and has a splash screen.

Nice, it has animated clouds. They are stuttering though. It's kind of distracting.

No idea how to close it.

Tried clicking on "Air craft" it's loading now. Taking a very long time. I can't tell you exactly why, but my guess is 2 GB of RAM and virtualized hardware is not "good enough" for Windows. It takes a lot of horsepower apparently to render those fancy slanty plane animations I guess.

And "Air craft" seemed to have crashed on load..

It seems to be stuck here. I don't know if I should just wait or reboot again.

It's impossible to keep a full time job next to a pet project like an operating system.

Well I think I'm out-Window8'ed about now. I'll take off a point for that air plane game. Final score: 1/10.

Sorry it didn't work out. I guess I'm still pro-open source and anti-Silverlight, probably more so after that experience. I guess it's back to my old "Silverlight is dead" posts, or something.

Now excuse me, I'm going to reboot to a different operating system (Ubuntu Linux) because I actually have to get some work done today.

51 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Still stuck on a "black screen". At least it isn't as ugly as the previous screen. I can move my mouse, but that's all.

The beautiful Windows 8 UI thus far:

39 minutes ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

 

WHY NOT!

Guys at times I Bass is not very nice but in this i agree....    if you do not have a spare machine to wipe a VM should work.

Yes it's pre beta and might have issues but it should be runnable in a VM.

heck I am planning on setting one up on my desktop when i get time so that i can mess with it w/o running two pc's all the time.

sounds though like i need to get the VMware beta to run it on VMWare  so i will wait a bit and see what happens before i do that.

I installed both Windows 8 and Windows 8 Server as guests on Hyper-V. Both OSes installed and run just fine.

I always thought that if a guest OS doesn't install on a VM, you * at the VM host for being a $hitty piece of software, not the other way around.

I'll take off a point for that air plane game. Final score: 1/10.

Wait, now you're taking points off Windows 8 for sample apps that MS has clearly stated are not part of the product, will not ship with it, and were written by summer interns?

I don't like the Metro UI on the desktop at all, but you just seem predisposed to hate everything about it. Yes, the fact that it doesn't work right in a VM is pretty bad (and frankly ridiculous in this day and age), but to then condemn the rest of the product based on your experiences in that broken environment is just as ridiculous.

 

57 minutes ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

WHY NOT!

Guys at times I Bass is not very nice but in this i agree....    if you do not have a spare machine to wipe a VM should work.

Well, the chaps who write the VM software have probably had access to it for just a little while longer than you.

I'm amazed it works at all

Mr. Vesuvius was preaching it like the second comming and challenging me to try it. I took him on his offer. Indeed, I come to any Microsoft product with criticism off the bat. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft at all. I'll say that. But Windows 8 didn't even challenge me to find criticism. It was just handing it to me with every single thing I did.

Basically at this point I'd rate ReactOS is a more functional and useful OS over Windows 8. Microsoft will need to get their act together and fix all the problems before release. And even so, if everything magically worked, it still isn't that great. I'm sorry, but I think the Metro UI is not that useful or pleasant to look at. The best OSes in my opinion are ones that you can't even easily see, they let you do your work and get out of the way. Windows 8 get out of your way and let you do what you need to do without resistance. Putting fancy animations and colorful widgets all over the place is not conductive to that. The UI is horrible and the fact that you are forced to use it to do even basic tasks is ridiculous.

After that experience I think it's about time for Microsoft to go away and someone else to take their place. Legal action, or some kind of competitive force, it needs to happen. Microsoft is no longer competent enough to write operating systems, period.

5 minutes ago,Ray7 wrote

*snip*

Well, the chaps who write the VM software have probably had access to it for just a little while longer than you.

I'm amazed it works at all

well given how MS has put Hyper-V in WIn8 and pushes Hyper-V for other stuff i would figure that they spent at least a little bit of time in the last 2 years making sure this new OS build will work with virtualized environments.

13 minutes ago,Bass wrote

*snip*

Quite frankly, if Microsoft has something half backed they shouldn't release it to the world on a public website.

*snip*

Uh, it's a "Developer Preview". Translation: not even beta.

Actually, I quite like the fact that I can download half-baked software from a public website.

11 minutes ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

well given how MS has put Hyper-V in WIn8 and pushes Hyper-V for other stuff i would figure that they spent at least a little bit of time in the last 2 years making sure this new OS build will work with virtualized environments.

It's not Microsoft's job to make sure their new OS runs on every single legacy VM host in existence. They made sure it worked flawlessly with Hyper-V, which is expected.

This now gives Oracle and VMWare an excuse to release a new version of their software and charge for their respective paid versions.

1 hour ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

WHY NOT!

Guys at times I Bass is not very nice but in this i agree....    if you do not have a spare machine to wipe a VM should work.

Yes it's pre beta and might have issues but it should be runnable in a VM.

Because it's pretty much built around the concept of modern, fully hardware accelerated 3D graphics. And the one thing that VM's have universally sucked at doing is modern, fully hardware accelerated 3D graphics.

So sure, you'll get a bad experience trying it that way, that should be blindingly obvious from the outset. I installed it on a 4 year old laptop and there it works a whole lot better (minus a touch screen issue which was the entire reason I originally stopped using this machine in the first place), I would imagine most devs have an older machine kicking around they could try it on.

It was part of the OS

There is a huge difference between being part of an OS and being bundled with a developer preview as samples.

And it also doesn't change the fact that all of your complaints can be traced back to "it doesn't work well in a VM". That's a valid complaint, but it's a single complaint. Once you know it doesn't work well in a VM, nitpicking all the individual things that are broken by it is pointless. The download page even indicates that you need a "DirectX 9 compatible video card with WDDM 1.0 drivers" to run it properly. Does VirtualBox provide that to its guests?

And again, I remind you that I don't like Win8 either. I'm not defending it. I'm just criticizing your method of criticizing.

3 hours ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "For Microsoft to succeed it's not necessary for Apple or Google to fail"

Wow. That's like saying "hey, its ok if we screw this up; there is plenty of room in the market.". Microsoft throws out the Windows numbers and acts like that's what our install base is for selling metro apps to. Well they forgot to factor out all of the business machines, all of the utility machines, all of the XP machines and older that won't be upgraded to Windows 8 because they lack the hardware or desire as they've been replaced by an iOS device. It a shell game. This is a do-over like WP and they are playing the same failed strategy.

16 minutes ago,Bass wrote

*snip*

How the hell can a competitor emerge if no OEMs are willing to ship any reasonable amount of PCs with that OS?

*snip*

That's sort of the problem that WP7 has right now. You and WP7 fans share a common angst. Can you believe that?

If you didn't do that because it's still cheaper (either monetarily or time-wise) to buy a pre-built machine from Dell or HP with Windows pre-installed, then you really have nothing to b1tch about.

It's usually cheaper and more convenient to just buy the pre-built computer and wipe it's HDD. Sad but true.

If only someone could convince the EU to put a "OS ballot" or something like they did with browsers. You boot your computer, and have a number of options with prices. If you want Windows, you put in your credit card # to pay Microsoft for a license and it gets unlocked almost instantly. If you don't, you can pick the no OS option and install your own OS. That would be great!

42 minutes ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

Wow. That's like saying "hey, its ok if we screw this up; there is plenty of room in the market.". Microsoft throws out the Windows numbers and acts like that's what our install base is for selling metro apps to. Well they forgot to factor out all of the business machines, all of the utility machines, all of the XP machines and older that won't be upgraded to Windows 8 because they lack the hardware or desire as they've been replaced by an iOS device. It a shell game. This is a do-over like WP and they are playing the same failed strategy.

Actually, Microsoft didn't tout that the entire Windows install base is the target market for Metro applications. Otherwise, the target market would be easily over 1 billion machines.

They basically took the figures from Windows 7 sales for the past couple of years (350 million) and said that that would be the size of your target market in the near term. Who knows if Windows 8 will sell as well as Windows 7? But considering that it will install without hardware changes on virtually any machine that currently runs Windows 7 AND can be installed on the buttload of ARM-based tablets that we will surely be inundated with in the next 12 to 18 months, I don't think it's that far-fetched a possibility.

5 minutes ago,Bass wrote

It's very different actually. WP7 phones are widely available at multiple carriers. The problem is no one is buying them.

Not really. One device each on 3 of 4 major US carriers. If Fry's or Best Buy put a single Linux-based notebook on the floor at each of their stores, Linux would still be ignored.

But they don't. That's the point. I'd certainly buy a computer with Linux on it if it was less expensive then an equivalent Windows machine (which makes the proposition pointless, since I can wipe the Windows machine and install Linux if it is cheaper to do so). Also people who want Windows but already have a license they can use don't have to pay twice.

It's just literally not possible. If you want convenience as a Linux user, you have to buy a Windows machine and pay for a license you might never use. Sorry but it's lame and one of by biggest qualms with the PC industry at this point. I can even avoid buying Intel if I want to, but Microsoft's OS is a virtual monopoly and nobody seems to be able to compete Linux or otherwise. That's why I think the EU should get involved, I think this is far more important than their stupid web browser ballot thing. It's far easier to download a competing web browser than it is to find inexpensive computer with no-OS or non-Windows OS.

39 seconds ago,Bass wrote

"If Fry's or Best Buy put a single Linux-based notebook on the floor at each of their stores, Linux would still be ignored."

But they don't. That's the point. I'd certainly buy a computer with Linux on it if it was less expensive then an equivalent Windows machine (which makes the proposition pointless, since I can wipe the Windows machine and install Linux if it is cheaper to do so). Also people who want Windows but already have a license they can use don't have to pay twice.

It's just literally not possible. If you want convenience as a Linux user, you have to buy a Windows machine and pay for a license you might never use. Sorry but it's lame and one of by biggest qualms with the PC industry at this point. I can even avoid buying Intel if I want to, but Microsoft's OS is a virtual monopoly and nobody seems to be able to compete Linux or otherwise.

My point is that even one machine per store is not enough to break Microsoft's "virtual monopoly". It took Apple years with even having their own separate section with Mac software and peripherals before I even bothered to go look at the Apple products whenever I walked into a big-box store. Now they have a fleet of shiny, silvery aluminum things sitting on that table, and I admit that I go over there to check out the products every now and then.

14 hours ago,W3bbo wrote

I'm of the opinion that an OS should not have a strong visual identity of its own (by 'strong' I mean like how Metro is, it's incredibly pervasive). Don't think I don't want consistency (I'm a huge proponent of it) but I think Metro mandates too much.

In one sense I understand you, in another not: Metro promotes consistency but is also very anonymous in the sense that there is little "chrome". In the case of Internet Explorer Metro, most of the time there isn't any chrome at all.

Metro is precisely what I want on a tablet. But not on the desktop.

5 minutes ago,Blue Ink wrote

@Bass: Yes, it's cheaper to buy pre-built computers. The irony is that this is because they have Windows preinstalled, so people buy them by the cartload and this is what allows manufacturers to get low production prices. Arguably, yousaved money by getting those Windows licenses you don't use...

Let's not forget that OEMs also choose Windows just from an ease installation standpoint. They can slap together virtually any combination of components, and it's almost guaranteed that Windows will install correctly and all the devices will work properly. Microsoft has made Windows a low-hanging fruit. There's really no reason for OEMs NOT to sell Windows machines.

Also I mean I'm a big fan of open source because I agree with Stallman and the like that proprietary software harms collaboration. See I want to share some piece of code with you because I know you could do something cool with it, I can't because it's proprietary.

Not because it's technological limitation, it would take seconds to share that code. But because as software developers we are hampered by things called "NDAs" and licenses that exist for no purpose to but stop collaboration.

So you have groups that constantly reinevent the wheel and I think stuff like robotics really suffers from that. You can improve ASIMO because it's proprietary, for instance. So if you wanted to build a robot that was a ASIMO++ you'd have to to all the work that that Honda team already did over the years, delaying your own enhancements. That's stupid and inefficient.

But it happens ALL THE TIME in the industry. The way the business works is you got to keep secrets to be successful in the industry. But it hampers the industry in the long run. Instead of you know, 5 years to build ASIMO++ it will take 30, or you go bankrupt before than because of the huge capital investment needed, because you know Honda isn't going to share. This is just an example btw, plenty of others out there, and everyone is involved, Google, Microsoft, Apple whatever. It's not just Honda obviously, almost anyone that writes software uses this crappy anti-collaborative way of doing it.

Imagine if we could just share everything and still have our jobs, there would be such a deluge of stuff out there hidden in secret source repositories in software companies, that others could innovate on top of. It might advance humankind like ten fold in a year.

But seriously I need to STFU at this point and get some work done. Stop provoking me guys, thanks.

And Linux is just too geeky to run on the desktop.

The belief about proprietary software harming collaboration is complete and utter B.S. If it weren't for proprietary software, you wouldn't even have open source software. Somebody has to pay the bills. It's great that such skilled developers can devote their free time to improving the Linux kernel. So what do those highly-skilled developers do in their day jobs? They're likely working on proprietary software that allows them to earn enough income to have the free time to work, unpaid on projects like the Linux kernel. Sorry, but a utopia in which everybody shares their source code with everybody else is simply untenable. A FOSS future that fanbaby envisions is like those MLM schemes that pitch you with a scenario that has half the US population in your downline selling Amway products of which you can get a cut. Sure, let's have everybody quit their jobs as teachers, firemen, and policemen to sell hand lotions so you can become a millionaire.

Besides, the software industry works harder than most others to collaborate and allow proprietary systems to work together and/or share data. How many genuine Ford parts have you seen that can be used in a Chevy without modification? Look at the monumental waste of human energy that goes into designing automobiles by different manufacturers. Why not implore the one industry that could truly stand to benefit from "open sourcing" their designs to collaborate? Oh, I forgot. We actually want to keep those people employed, wasting their efforts inventing two separate wheel designs even though one shared design would be better for the consumer. We so wanted these people to keep their jobs that the US government had to loan them money to stay in business and offer customers rebates to buy new cars.

I dont believe for one minute that OSS developers are not sponsored or paid. It's virtually impossible to coordinate and build so much and so complex software in your spare time.

3 hours ago,AndyC wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio:No it isn't. Windows 7 has been, by any reasonable metric, a resounding success. And yet the iPad still exists. If Microsoft manage to sell as many licenses of Windows 8 in the same time frame then it too will be a success. This is not dependent upon the success or failure of the iPad.

What you and cbae are both ignoring is that WinRT/Metro isn't about selling more Windows licenses. Sure Microsoft will sell plenty of copies of Windows 8 to those who use or want PCs. The battle here is for devices and that's what WinRT/Metro is all about. It is a phone-like ecosystem design for the creation of lightweight apps. Microsoft is trying to lure devs into writing little 99 cent apps for the Windows 8 marketplace. This is the same sad approach they took with their too little too late WP7. IMO, they'll get the same results with WinRT/Metro.

I'm sure the folks at netscape said the same thing about IE. 

If WP7 was a piece of cr@p, then perhaps you'd be right, but it isn't, and Win8 looks, cursorily, like it will be quite nice on both phones and tablets and of course, desktops.

MSFT is notorious for hammering away until they 'win' a market. 

7 hours ago,Bass wrote

But they don't. That's the point. I'd certainly buy a computer with Linux on it if it was less expensive then an equivalent Windows machine (which makes the proposition pointless, since I can wipe the Windows machine and install Linux if it is cheaper to do so). Also people who want Windows but already have a license they can use don't have to pay twice.

But a couple of years ago that was exactly the situation with netbooks. And OEMs and stores stopped producing them because the return rates on them were appalling. People went for the cheap option and didn't like it because it just caused them more problems than it solved. And what did the Linux community make of them? It just berated them as 'Lusers' who probably aren't clever enough to be using Linux in the first place.

7 hours ago,Bass wrote

So you have groups that constantly reinevent the wheel and I think stuff like robotics really suffers from that. You can improve ASIMO because it's proprietary, for instance. So if you wanted to build a robot that was a ASIMO++ you'd have to to all the work that that Honda team already did over the years, delaying your own enhancements. That's stupid and inefficient.

Because reinventing the wheel never happens in the open source community? Remind me again, exactly how many audio stacks has Linux gone through in the last decade? How many ftp clients can I find? They can't even settle on a single window manager for crying out loud.

Open Source should, in theory, be more efficient in this regard but in reality it isn't because when the driving factor isn't a corporate need to make money everything becomes about the egos of the people involved.

4 hours ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

It is a phone-like ecosystem design for the creation of lightweight apps. Microsoft is trying to lure devs into writing little 99 cent apps for the Windows 8 marketplace. This is the same sad approach they took with their too little too late WP7. IMO, they'll get the same results with WinRT/Metro.

Except it isn't. WinRT is the replacement for Win32, the aim is unquestionably for every single PC application to ultimately end up living in the WinRT world. If you don't see that, you will be left behind.

Windows 8 is a touch based tablet operating system. I have managed to test it on a tablet and adore it. Most developers that are complaing (including you) have got it wrong. For all intents and purposes you are taking a rally car to a NASCAR event or a formula one race.

I realise that people are want to see the classic desktop, but most of the innovation has been for tablet based computing, so unless you install Windows 8 on a tablet, your posts are affect me like "water off a ducks back"

You deductions also illustrate to me why your finger is not on the trigger. Yes entitlement to opinion is universal, but I know that for the most part you are incorrect, delusional and unripe in matters of usability and understanding what makes the great general public tick. I am not saying that this capability will  never develop, you are just not at that point of inflexion yet, so will practice patience till such time that the "penny drops"

--vesuvius

Yeah, MS should have posted a tutorial how to configure the most popular virtual machines themselves, but a geek who downloads some pre-pre-alpha build should know how to search on Google, sheesh.

Bass: there was no like "danger, Will Robinson" on any of the apps. I don't care if interns or Richard Stallman wrote the OS, it's not acceptable. Quite frankly, if Microsoft has something half backed they shouldn't release it to the world on a public website

Of course there were warning signs, on the damn download page itself no less!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516:

The Windows Developer Preview is a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers. These downloads include prerelease software that may change without notice. The software is provided as is, and you bear the risk of using it. It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. It should not be used in a production environment. The features and functionality in the prerelease software may not appear in the final version. Some product features and functionality may require advanced or additional hardware, or installation of other software.

People like Bass make it hard to constructively criticize Microsoft. I am not exactly thrilled by Windows 8 right now, but thanks to folks like Bass constructive criticism gets lost in ridiculous "Microsoft is Satan" booha.

He was invited to a mature discussion where he could have stated his case in a reasoned and considered way and has failed to do so. I have worked with Apple and Linux organisations (some of my friends and colleagues are steeped in Linux) and we always manage to have productive conversations.

I don't think he gets this yet, but that "Road to Damascus" moment has not occured to him yet, that's all

3 hours ago,vesuvius wrote

I don't think he gets this yet, but that "Road to Damascus" moment has not occurred to him yet, that's all

5 hours ago,wastingtime​withforums wrote

Man, seriously, Bass, can't you use a search engine?

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-install-windows-8-on-virtualbox/

Links like these appeared like ten minutes after the Preview was released on the net. I think on this very forum a link to a tutorial was posted just after the download went live.

Yeah, MS should have posted a tutorial how to configure the most popular virtual machines themselves, but a geek who downloads some pre-pre-alpha build should know how to search on Google, sheesh.

I think it's quite obvious that Bass's concern was not that there weren't tutorials or instructions on how to install Windows 8 in VirtualBox -- in fact, he alluded to no such thing at all. It's brain-dead easy to do and there's nothing special about the instructions at the URL you pasted - it's just like installing any other operating system in Virtualbox. His issue was that when he installed the Windows 8 preview in a virtualization platform that runs every other x86/x64 based OS on Earth, that it barely even booted and even the most basic functionality didn't work.

People like Bass make it hard to constructively criticize Microsoft. I am not exactly thrilled by Windows 8 right now, but thanks to folks like Bass constructive criticism gets lost in ridiculous "Microsoft is Satan" booha.

What makes it hard to criticize Microsoft is the seemingly pervasive idea that if something doesn't work properly, it obviously must be the fault of the person installing it and he must need a link to a tutorial on how to do it. This attitude goes all the way from the tech support guy answering the phone to the developers of software who don't have to deploy/test/actually use it. Bass never said he didn't know how to install Windows in a VirtualBox. He knows exactly how to do it. His complaint was that it barely worked once doing so.

Add to that the other idea that seems to be pervasive --- that people shouldn't be criticizing the way things work because "it's a preview." When should we start critcizing? Should we wait until the beta comes out, complain, and be told it's too late to fix it and that we should have brought it up earlier?

And none of his posts in this thread alluded to Microsoft being Satan, evil, or anything of that sort. He simply expected a preview version of Windows 8, which is, presumably, built on proven Windows technology that has worked fine for over a decade, and an evolution of a solid operating system like Windows 7 -- to be able to launch a web browser.

We can talk about "regressions happen" all the time, but I think it's a little abnormal for an operating system, which is an evolution of a solid, working, stable, and productive platform, to suddenly behave as if the entire thing, including tested, working, solid code that has been in there for years, was just rewritten last week from the ground up -- whether it's a "preview" or not.

16 hours ago,AndyC wrote

Except it isn't. WinRT is the replacement for Win32, the aim is unquestionably for every single PC application to ultimately end up living in the WinRT world. If you don't see that, you will be left behind.

Yet when you go to the Win8 forum and ask if there will be a datagrid in WinRT, you get told by MSFT that Metro Style apps aren't intended for that kind of use case and you should stick to desktop apps.

And vesuvius, you conclusions about what Win8 is are reasonable, but that is most assuredly not the message people like Jensen Harris and Steve Sinofsky are giving about the "reimagining" of Windows.

Add to that the other idea that seems to be pervasive --- that people shouldn't be criticizing the way things work because "it's a preview." When should we start critcizing? Should we wait until the beta comes out, complain, and be told it's too late to fix it and that we should have brought it up earlier?

Bitching about the UI or the programming model in the preview is reasonable, these things could carry over to the final product, but bitching about it not working right in a VM is not. There is a warning on the download page which says that this thing is buggy and probably doesn't work right in a lot of cases. ("Some product features and functionality may require advanced or additional hardware, or installation of other software.")

Should we wait until the beta comes out, complain, and be told it's too late to fix it

The majority of his complaints was about the VM issue. Do you honestly think Windows 8 final won't be able to run under a VM if King Bass, the Holy Half-Freetard who has seen the UnderTux, wouldn't have moaned about that? Especially in today's cloud hype atmosphere? That VM nag (which is easily fixable by using a search engine for 5 seconds) on alpha software was jarring.

And none of his posts in this thread alluded to Microsoft being Satan, evil, or anything of that sort

His ranting about bundling and evil shops hurting Linux (despite tons of started and failed Linux initiatives in retail) could have have been straight out of 1999 Slashdot. Even they have disposed that broken record by now.

Win 8 needs lots of flak right now in my opinion, but the right kind of flak, not this rebellious teen bullshit.

13 minutes ago,wastingtime​withforums wrote

Bitching about the UI or the programming model in the preview is reasonable, but bitching about it not working right in a VM is not. There is a warning on the download page which says that this thing is buggy and probably doesn't work right in a lot of cases. ("Some product features and functionality may require advanced or additional hardware, or installation of other software.")

I don't agree that this particular complaint is unreasonable. Is the underlying code in the Windows 8 preview that talks to the hardware so vastly divergent from that of Windows 7 that it can barely run with the minimum of capabilities on virtual hardware that runs Windows 7 perfectly?

The majority of his complaints was about the VM issue. Do you honestly think Windows 8 final won't be able to run under a VM if King Bass, the holy half-freetard who has seen the UnderLinux, wouldn't have moaned about that? Especially in today's cloud hype atmosphere? That VM nag (which is easily fixable be using a search engine for 5 sec) on alpha software was jarring.

If Windows 8, which is obviously an evolution of Windows 7, can barely boot, restart, and launch an application under a virtual environment, while Windows 7 can under the same environment, I'm afraid we can't make any solid assumptions about what Windows 8 will be able to do at release.

What I am certain of, however, is that if it doesn't work properly under a virtual environment at present, it's reasonable to make those observations known so that it can be fixed.

Which VM nag of Bass's is easily fixable by using a search engine for 5 seconds? The imaginary complaint where he askedhow to install it? Because the search engine result you posted answers that particular question -- which he never asked.

Win 8 needs lots of flak right now in my opinion, but the right kind of flak, not this rebellious teen bullshit.

Well, I think the type of flak from Bass's post on this thread is reasonable. Perhaps he and I just want to know why it seems that when Microsoft wants to evolve from the release N to release N+1, they apparently, from our perspective from the outside, start with code which behaves like the alpha quality version of release N minus 6.

Does Microsoft rewrite everything from scratch with each release? Because out here in not-a-programmer-just-a-customer land, that's what it seems like. 

I don't agree that this particular complaint is unreasonable. Is the underlying code in the Windows 8 preview that talks to the hardware so vastly divergent from that of Windows 7 that it can barely run with the minimum of capabilities on virtual hardware that runs Windows 7 perfectly?

It seems that Metro needs a DX9 card to work really fast, that was not needed with Win7, because there was the fallback "Aero Basic", there is no Metro Basic.

Though I am sure VMs will provide that by the time Win8 launches, they have experimental DX acceleration today.

If Windows 8, which is obviously an evolution of Windows 7, can barely boot, restart, and launch an application under a virtual environment, while Windows 7 can under the same environment, I'm afraid we can't make any solid assumptions about what Windows 8 will be able to do at release.

I ran it in a VM on VirtualBox, it was not exactly blazing fast, Metro apps were somewhat slow, but it booted and restarted just fine, the "express" setting on the first startup did its job quite fast. I was also able to launch applications (after setting the screen to 1024x768). That resolution thing is annoying, but an expected quirk in an alpha version. I think the boot time was on par with the Win7 installation on my machine.

My PC is not exactly high-end: C2D 6420 with an ATI DX9 graphics card. That's a 2006 configuration.

The tutorials clearly state that you need to enable IO-APIC and PAE/NX. Not exactly world shattering for an alpha build whose download page is splattered with warnings. I guess his problems happened because he didn't enable those (Because bitching on this stupid forum for hours is apparently easier than typing "Windows8+Virtualbox" in a search engine) or he is running the newest OS in a VM on an older config than mine.

My compassion is limited in both cases.

Man, I don't even want to defend Win8, because I really don't like the UI, frankly as it is now (start menu..) I just hate it on the desktop, but you idiots made me do it.

Thanks.

29 minutes ago,Craig_​Matthews wrote

*snip*

I don't agree that this particular complaint is unreasonable. Is the underlying code in the Windows 8 preview that talks to the hardware so vastly divergent from that of Windows 7 that it can barely run with the minimum of capabilities on virtual hardware that runs Windows 7 perfectly?

The latest Building 8 blog post covers this and specifically calls out the way Windows now works with high resolution timers, which are another thing poorly implemented by VMs, as being a cause of a number of problems not to mention low-level interactions with the operating system kernel, often in not-really-supported ways.

It's not really any different than the situation with trying to run Linux in Virtual PC, which for years was horrendously difficult to get working properly despite numerous releases of Linux distros. It shouldn't really be that surprising that a newer operating system might highlight limitations in virtual machines.

1 hour ago,DCMonkey wrote

*snip*

Yet when you go to the Win8 forum and ask if there will be a datagrid in WinRT, you get told by MSFT that Metro Style apps aren't intended for that kind of use case and you should stick to desktop apps.

And vesuvius, you conclusions about what Win8 is are reasonable, but that is most assuredly not the message people like Jensen Harris and Steve Sinofsky are giving about the "reimagining" of Windows.

Yes,

"As long as you need the high precision of using a mouse, that's a lot more precise than using a finger, there's always going to be applications," said Larson-Green when questioned on Microsoft's desktop application support. "Just like a surgeon has different kinds of knifes for different kinds of cutting things, you should have different kinds of tools depending on what you're trying to get done. I think the mouse is around," she added. Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live Division, claims that desktop apps will "absolutely" always be a part of Windows:

"The reason we made the bet that we did, the bold bet on saying 'hey we should build on windows', is because we looked around and we just don't see these apps being replaced by something else. The technology that is there is not an accident. People had problems to solve and they developed tools to solve those problems, other tools come along and they don't necessarily solve the same problem. In this case you can imagine just taking precision typing and precision pointing – as screens get bigger and bigger and bigger and pixels get denser and denser and denser, mouse and pointing devices only become more important not less if you take advantage of all of that. So your finger with the resolution of say 40 DPI compares today to amounts of 1200 DPI. Mice is like lasers that stuff so they're going to get way more precise and your finger is only a few million years of evolution and it's going to take millions of more before it becomes that precise."

http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-well-always-support-desktop-applications-in-windows/

Although I don't see any reason why data grids shouldn't be in a Metro-based app. It seems to me that terminal-style data entry would work pretty well in a full screen environment that also has touch controls. 

37 minutes ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

The latest Building 8 blog post covers this and specifically calls out the way Windows now works with high resolution timers, which are another thing poorly implemented by VMs, as being a cause of a number of problems not to mention low-level interactions with the operating system kernel, often in not-really-supported ways.

It's not really any different than the situation with trying to run Linux in Virtual PC, which for years was horrendously difficult to get working properly despite numerous releases of Linux distros. It shouldn't really be that surprising that a newer operating system might highlight limitations in virtual machines.

That's a reasonable enough explanation. Virtual machines do kind of have a lot more "moving parts" than a real physical machine and these guys developing hypervisors are recreating in software what off the shelf parts do in the physical world. It stands to reason that the different virtualization platforms would present a compatibility challenge similar to that of the different physical hardware platforms -- but maybe slightly magnified because of nature of the thing.

21 hours ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

Except it isn't. WinRT is the replacement for Win32, the aim is unquestionably for every single PC application to ultimately end up living in the WinRT world. If you don't see that, you will be left behind.

Oh really? Is that why they had so many demos of LOB apps at build? I counted a big fat zero. Is that why they said for apps like Photoshop they require a control rich environment and are not an example of an app that should go to WinRT/Metro? Is that why there is such a nice WinRT/Metro implementation of Explorer? Oh, that's right their big innovation was adding the ribbon to the existing desktop version.

At build I spoke to the group PM of WinRT and when I questioned him on what should I build my LOB app in he didn't say "WinRT/Metro". He said that developers needed to choose what worked best for the application they were developing. There were not abandoning SL/WPF and that if the app was better suited for it then that's what should be used. He said they still support Windows 16-bit apps so support will be there. Did he lie to me Andy?

I think many of us will start to change our tunes once we see it used to its fullest.  I certainly don't think the desktop is going to go away.  I already tested my company's main app on the preview (which runs in IE with about 15 activex, .net 2 and MSVC pieces) and it doesn't run in Metro IE period.  That being said, it is fairly easy to tab to the desktop and launch whatever you need, and I don't even have a touch computer.  So, even at worst-case scenario (and metro is it for good), it is still useable.  The point is imagining what we can put there to help people in their daily workflows.  

I can imagine business centric KPI/reporting services apps/reports having a nice refreshing Tile to keep people in the know.  That's just the beginning.  The point is to start to rethink the way you make apps too.  It's not just a gui.  Like I said, I think once we see it used in the right way, using all its potential, it will be easier to see how this "rethinking" of windows is really just that.  Of course they couldn't take our desktops away, so they did the next best thing (allowed both).

As far as demos of LOB style apps go, I think tha's probably a lesson they learnt from the WPF days. All the demos from then were a myriad of LOB apps that looked like they'd require massive amounts of designer time to get looking right. As a result the developers of those were turned off, whilst the developers of the kind of apps that might have benefitted from heavy design work were uninspired by a bunch of data vizualization apps.

7 hours ago,AndyC wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio:You're thinking short term. V1 of WinRT focuses on the Metro experience and not the desktop. I'd expect V2 of WinRT will bring a desktop model that embraces many of the newer concepts like auto suspending apps that aren't in use and global system contracts as a method of data sharing between apps.

And can you also tell me the winning lottery numbers for this week? Thanks.

7 hours ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

And can you also tell me the winning lottery numbers for this week? Thanks.

WinRT is being promoted as the Metro platform today but I hope it is more long-term focused than that. In fact it also has I/O and networking namespaces, right? The prime rationale for WinRT must be the shared platform and interoperability features that it has. The features that allow wildly different languages and runtimes to all talk to the same libraries with near-zero friction.

COM interop, begone.

But sure, we don't know all the details and plans here. Let's see...

I already know it's okay to criticize Microsoft products as long as you hate FOSS, Apple, and/or Linux. That's why it's okay for "Linux victims" like yourself to make multiple threads on this forum spamming about how much you hate things in Windows 8. But if the "freetard" does the same thing, you have to get all defensive about it.

Why? It's the tribal/outsider mentality at work. You involuntarily belong to a tribe and you don't even know it. With the of death of real tribalism in much of the Western world, the masses are lost without anything else to cling to. Normal men start getting weird tribal attachments to things that they shouldn't. Sports teams get tribal status. Worse even, corporations gain tribal status.

But the thing is, corporations are not not places of belonging and identity. They don't care for you. They are only here to make profit for their shareholders, and tribalism is just a useful tool to that end.

15 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@wastingtimewithforums:

I already know it's okay to criticize Microsoft products as long as you hate FOSS, Apple, and/or Linux. That's why it's okay for "Linux victims" like yourself to make multiple threads on this forum spamming about how much you hate things in Windows 8. But if the "freetard" does the same thing, you have to get all defensive about it.

Why? It's the tribal/outsider mentality at work. You involuntarily belong to a tribe and you don't even know it. With the of death of real tribalism in Western world, the masses are lost without anything else to cling to. Normal men start getting weird tribal attachments to things that they shouldn't. Sports teams get tribal status. Worse even, corporations gain tribal status.

But the thing is, corporations are not not places of belonging and identity. They don't care for you. They are only here to make profit for their shareholders, and tribalism is just a useful tool to that end.

really I will have to say that Mr. Bass sometimes they do jump on what you say w/o a good reason but at other times I have to say that you have brought it on your self with the way some of your posts have been worded and the way at times you come across in your posts.

heck your avatar image gives me the creeps when i look at it, and it may not be a sound basis for passing judement it does tend to convey an idea that you have an attitude.

so IMHO if you want better treatment then you may want to work on the way you come across.

If you think i am wrong then whatever ....

Perhaps I do bring it on myself. I have very little respect for corporate tribalism. Tribalism was highly useful back in the day when strong shared defense amongst a group people ensured their survival in the harsh reality of nature. Corporate tribalism is a means of subverting this innate human instinct as a means of parasitic control of lesser individuals.

But I'm not going to sate people who feel they need to be apologists for faceless corporations. Quite frankly I don't intend to appease to something that amounts to evolution unable to keep up with the modern environment. If you want to find a suitable tribe in the modern world, try sports teams. They are pointless but mostly harmless. And they work well as distractions from adopting nationalism, strong political ideologies, religion or racism - other forms of tribalism that were the cause of so much human suffering the past.

54 minutes ago,Bass wrote

I brought it on myself? I rarely if never insult anyone directly. If I insult anything here, it is Microsoft's products or business model.

Perhaps I do bring it on myself. I have very little respect for corporate tribalism. Tribalism was highly useful back in the day when strong shared defense amongst a group people ensured their survival in the harsh reality of nature. Corporate tribalism is a means of subverting this innate human instinct as a means of parasitic control of lesser individuals.

But I'm not going to sate people who feel they need to be apologists for faceless corporations. Quite frankly I don't intend to appease to something that amounts to evolution unable to keep up with the modern environment. If you want to find a suitable tribe in the modern world, try sports teams. They are pointless but mostly harmless. And they work well as distractions from adopting nationalism, strong political ideologies, religion or racism - other forms of tribalism that were the cause of so much human suffering the past.

I get paid to write software in a language and on a platform created by and maintained by MSFT.  I come here to learn about upcoming technologies that will affect my future employment and ability to make a living.

You come in here and sh*t on it every chance you get.  Many folks who happen to also make a living in this environment call you out.

It's not 'tribalism' or whatever other buzzword you happened to read in your big-boy thesaurus.  It's you.  Being a hater.  For the sheer joy of doing so on a public forum provided by the very company you are hating upon.

At least own what you do.

If you want to talk about tribalism, you need only read the comments on sites like Engadget and Gizmodo. These people don't depend on the success of Apple or Google for their incomes. Hell, even if many of these posters were developers, how many of them actually make enough money selling 99 cent iOS or Android apps to earn a living? No, these are people who only care about what kind of toys they can get their grubby little hands on. Yet, they will NEVER criticize the companies whose logo is on the stupid freaking phone that's in their pockets.

7 minutes ago,ScanIAm wrote

*snip*
Christ on a cracker, what the f*ck are you talking about. 

I get paid to write software in a language and on a platform created by and maintained by MSFT.  I come here to learn about upcoming technologies that will affect my future employment and ability to make a living.

You come in here and sh*t on it every chance you get.  Many folks who happen to also make a living in this environment call you out.

It's not 'tribalism' or whatever other buzzword you happened to read in your big-boy thesaurus.  It's you.  Being a hater.  For the sheer joy of doing so on a public forum provided by the very company you are hating upon.

At least own what you do.

LOL You beat me to it.

1 hour ago,Bass wrote

@wastingtimewithforums:

 But if the "freetard" does the same thing, you have to get all defensive about it.

There is a difference between a "freetard" and a "free-turd". I think it unrealistic to look at an organisation such as Microsoft and try "spin" everything they do by saying all their products are bad or Product X sells because the people that buy it are sheep.

These are the turds that you promote for the most part and it is unhealthy. I have always worked with some form of Linux, and from time to time dabble in it, and seem to always have productive conversations and relationships with hardcore Linux developers. This is not the case with you, where dialogue becomes like that of a politician always trying to come across with their party political message.

I don't claim to see into the future, but Microsoft have truly outdone the competition, and nothing FOSS could have invested in procurement of something like Windows 8 in this day and age. It is this inability to acknowledge a good tablet product, that removes all credibility and respect for you, because most people are quite reasonable and intelligent yet you treat them like sheep.

56 minutes ago,Bass wrote

But I'm not going to sate people who feel they need to be apologists for faceless corporations.

Next to you I spammed this laggy craphole of a forum with more Microsoft criticism that just about anybody else. I think I have never congratulated MS or their employees on ANYTHING here.

There is a difference though - I see MS indeed just as a faceless corporation and not some kind of supreme evil.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, they are all assholes - so what, that's life. "Freetards" (the true few who are left anyway) are in a different category though - they are assholes with zeal, while the others are in it for the money. Mostly.

I called you a freetard because you're on a mission. If MS or someone else fucks it up I can call that bullshit out. Your "criticism" here on the other hand always has the same worn out "M$ isEVVVVIILL!, Gates ate babies!" tone.

I could complain about MS (or Apple) and their products all day, the problem is, constructive criticism gets lost because there is so much ridiculous ambient noise.

56 minutes ago,Bass wrote

But the thing is, corporations are not not places of belonging and identity. They don't care for you. They are only here to make profit for their shareholders

Absolutely agree.

56 minutes ago,Bass wrote

Quite frankly I don't intend to appease to something that amounts to evolution unable to keep up with the modern environment. If you want to find a suitable tribe in the modern world, try sports teams. They are pointless but mostly harmless. And they work well as distractions from adopting nationalism, strong political ideologies, religion or racism - other forms of tribalism that were the cause of so much human suffering the past.

Now you're spouting typical internet teen crap.

I find it quite rich that someone who seems to trout around Stallman's sound bites complains about ideologies and religion. But oh well, I guess that's expected. Robespierre executed monks only to place Jean-Paul Marat busts in churches after that.

2 hours ago,Bass wrote

I brought it on myself? I rarely if never insult anyone directly. If I insult anything here, it is Microsoft's products or business model.

Perhaps I do bring it on myself. I have very little respect for corporate tribalism. Tribalism was highly useful back in the day when strong shared defense amongst a group people ensured their survival in the harsh reality of nature. Corporate tribalism is a means of subverting this innate human instinct as a means of parasitic control of lesser individuals.

But I'm not going to sate people who feel they need to be apologists for faceless corporations. Quite frankly I don't intend to appease to something that amounts to evolution unable to keep up with the modern environment. If you want to find a suitable tribe in the modern world, try sports teams. They are pointless but mostly harmless. And they work well as distractions from adopting nationalism, strong political ideologies, religion or racism - other forms of tribalism that were the cause of so much human suffering the past.

So tell me, why is your brand of tribalism (because you're the most tribal person here) better than everyone else's?

I don't view Microsoft as some kind of supreme evil, but I do view the Windows monopoly to be largely unhealthy to the market. I guess the US Govt and EU agree as well since they sued Microsoft multiple times because of it.

My allegiance is only to the progression of technology, and the betterment of the world. I will get annoyed at things that move contrary to that mission.

Just curious, are wikipedia and Jimmy Wales also assholes or just freetards? Or I am a freetard for liking and using it? I am losing count.

Something huge (and it's not a conference hyperbole) is going on before your very eyes and you are missing it completely.

I don't really have sympathy for people who hard-lock their career to a specific company's products. That's also something that is very unhealthy in the computer industry. I don't see doctors who specialized in "Pfizer" or "AstraZeneca". I don't see why it is acceptable to be specialized in "Microsoft" or "Apple".

I've think I've said this before but I blame it on the relative immaturity of the computer industry and at some point the work will normalize towards disciplines of work rather than vendors of technology, as it is in most other industries. Maybe at that point these kinds of pointless flamewars will start to die down, who knows.

I'm sorry you feel that way. But quite frankly I'm not going to change my assessment because it displeases you. I have the right to tell the truth the way I see it.

Like I said previously, the idea that progression of technology toward betterment of the world is worthwhile to be concerned about. That is largely immutable.

The way we can make the world a better place is not. I would be open to opinions that are anti-FOSS or pro-monopoly. I have yet to see convincing arguments. Largely when these topics arise the common outcome is irrational discourse and ad homiem attacks.

This sort of reaction does not do anything to dampen my opinion. It enforces it, solidifies it and provokes it into greater action.

11 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@ScanIAm @cbae

I don't really have sympathy for people who hard-lock their career to a specific company's products. That's also something that is very unhealthy in the computer industry. I don't see doctors who specialized in "Pfizer" or "AstraZeneca". I don't see why it is acceptable to be specialized in "Microsoft" or "Apple".

Who says anything about being hard-locked? Even if you're a Jack-of-All-Trades or even an expert in everything, you're still allowed to have a preference, are you not?

I've think I've said this before but I blame it on the relative immaturity of the computer industry and at some point the work will normalize towards disciplines of work rather than vendors of technology, as it is in most other industries. Maybe at that point these kinds of pointless flamewars will start to die down, who knows.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again. You're barking up the wrong f*cking tree. There are plenty of other industries to go on a crusade about.

"Who says anything about being hard-locked? Even if you're a Jack-of-All-Trades or even an expert in everything, you're still allowed to have a preference, are you not?"

No, you are not. At least not at the level shown in the computer industry. It's borderline unethical.

"I've said this before, but I'll say it again. You're barking up the wrong f*cking tree. There are plenty of other industries to go on a crusade about."

Maybe so. But it is only the computer industry that interests me.

25 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@ScanIAm @cbae

I don't really have sympathy for people who hard-lock their career to a specific company's products. That's also something that is very unhealthy in the computer industry. I don't see doctors who specialized in "Pfizer" or "AstraZeneca". I don't see why it is acceptable to be specialized in "Microsoft" or "Apple".

That's a poor analogy, in the case of a doctor there isn't the same kind of dependency structure there is in the computer industry. As a developer of software you ultimately have to take some reliance on the underlying platform that you write for, whatever that may be. And it isn't just the careers of the developers, it's the time invested in building a quality product that addresses your customers problems. If the platform provider makes choices which risk your ability to deliver then you should be making that opinion heard.

28 seconds ago,Bass wrote

@Ray7:

Like I said previously, the idea that progression of technology toward betterment of the world is worthwhile to be concerned about. That is largely immutable.

*snip*

That's pretty much the reason I can't stand what's happening in the FOSS community. Because it's not about progressing technology. It's more about f*cking over another company than truly making something better.

When you're not blinded by hate for one company, you can see that Microsoft has been responsible for quite a bit of the technological progress that we've seen in the last 15 years. Can you honestly say that the DRAM, storage, CPU, and GPU technologies would have advanced as quickly as it has over the past 15 years were it not for Microsoft and Windows? What about other software vendors like McAfee, Symantec, Intuit, VMWare, and Citrix? Where would they be were there no Windows ecosystem to feed off of?

15 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@cbae:

"Who says anything about being hard-locked? Even if you're a Jack-of-All-Trades or even an expert in everything, you're still allowed to have a preference, are you not?"

No, you are not. At least not at the level shown in the computer industry. It's borderline unethical.

WTF are you talking about? I'm talking about MY preference of using Microsoft products even though I'm not locked in.

"I've said this before, but I'll say it again. You're barking up the wrong f*cking tree. There are plenty of other industries to go on a crusade about."

Maybe so. But it is only the computer industry that interests me.

Take interest in other world matters. Don't lock yourself into only issues of computing.

"That's pretty much the reason I can't stand what's happening in the FOSS community. Because it's not about progressing technology. It's more about f*cking over another company than truly making something better."

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I was hoping someone would come out something anti-FOSS at some point. I'm not being factitious here. There is even some pro-monopoly arguments that I feel have some validity.

That being said my opinion is that FOSS is simply a better way to write software. I've come to this conclusion by looking not only at FOSS, but the things that made a company like Microsoft successful.

Consider the economics of the software industry. It is an industry where capital reigns supreme. Consider that Microsoft sells Windows for some price that may vary from $50 to maybe $200-300 at full retail. The exact price is not all that relevant except for the fact that it is not in the thousands.

Now consider how much money Microsoft "spent" to make Windows. Billions? Probably.

Now look at another industry, say mining, and lets look at this product, say this thing:

That's a very fine piece of machinery. But did it cost billions to build? Probably not. Even capital costs is is unlikely to exceed the cost of building Windows. Windows was popularly billed as the largest engineering project I recall.

So why does a machine as the above cost hundreds of thousands while I can get Windows for something like $200?

Because of capital costs vs manufacturing costs.

That's the true "magic of software" in my opinion. The fact that something that literally costs billions to make can be sold for $200 and still allow the seller to many an unusually healthy profit.

But the economics of software only work well at scale. What if only 1,000,000 copies of Windows were ever sold? It would be hugely unprofitable. 10,000,000? 100,000,000? Maybe now. Windows needs to be spread to huge amounts of people to be profitable.

It's a totally different kind of market. Software and physical objects. Yet software is sold as a product no different that that giant truck above. With per unit price tag, and artificial limitations on use ("defective by design") to attempt to mimic the physical limitations of physical objects, the fact that you can't easily copy that truck.

I didn't answer how Microsoft is like FOSS though. For software to be "economical", in the sense of getting the biggest societal bang for the buck, it needs to used by the largest possible number of people. We see this with Windows.

For software to be useful to this many people it has to be flexible. Imagine if Windows had no API? That's the opposite extreme of full FOSS. A totally inflexible system. Microsoft allows Windows to be flexible to a large degree, that get this, it allows people to use Windows to build things that nobody in Microsoft would ever think of making. All by allowing some degree of, wait for the word, freedom.

I think everyone can agree that this is a good thing.

In the line of Proprietary vs Free, Windows does not score that badly compared to other software systems. That's why I think the computer industry advanced the way you say. It's not because of the proprietary nature of Windows, but rather the aspects of Windows that support freedom.

That being said, it's still a compromise. Windows is not open source and thus there ARE limitations of what people can do with it, both legal and technical.

What if Microsoft could make the same exact money from Windows, but with it being open source? Suspend some disbelief here, I know it's not possible in the current climate. But what would happen is the net "loss" from the economy - the money and resources Microsoft used to make Windows would be the same. Yet Windows would suddenly become much more useful to society as a whole.

The more "free" a piece of software is, the more useful it to others who want to build things on top of it. The more useful it is than to progress of technology.

It might be as trivial as writing some code that alerts a end user that the printer is jammed. That's saves people time. That's exactly the problem Richard Stallman was trying to solve, and the dilemma of closed source printer drivers and firmware prohibited him from solving it. Thus the Free Software Foundation was born.

That is the essence of why I support FOSS. It is collaboration at it's finest. Without all the software companies that resemble closed medieval guilds or fiefdoms, we'd be so far ahead.

11 minutes ago,Bass wrote

@cbae:

It might be as trivial as writing some code that alerts a end user that the printer is jammed. That's saves people time. That's exactly the problem Richard Stallman was trying to solve, and the dilemma of closed source printer drivers and firmware prohibited him from solving it. Thus the Free Software Foundation was born.

It's also the reason I don't think much of Stallman's argument. The lack of a rich interface into the system was why he couldn't write code that alerts the end user a printer is jammed. There may well be plenty of people hitting limitations in the APIs, but rather than getting together and deciding on a better API design things just get hacked in to the code to produce an immeadiate solution at the expense of a good one.

You see it numerous times in the FOSS world, with things being constantly re-invented rather than taking a more strategic approach that really does produce a better for the end users. Microsoft's greatest contribution to software was probably the creation of COM (and it's following forms) because software componentization is a far better way of solving problems like Stallman's than simply dumping source code out and leaving it at that.

As far as Windows 8 goes, I can't see how anyone can argue that working on a revolutionary UI that has the potential to finally bring appliance-like simplicity to general purpose computing is a less worthwhile effort for "the betterment of society" than the Gnome/KDE teams just reinventing the Windows 95 interface all over again.

15 minutes ago,Bass wrote

*snip*

What if Microsoft could make the same exact money from Windows, but with it being open source? Suspend some disbelief here, I know it's not possible in the current climate. But what would happen is the net "loss" from the economy - the money and resources Microsoft used to make Windows would be the same. Yet Windows would suddenly become much more useful to society as a whole.

The more "free" a piece of software is, the more useful it to others who want to build things on top of it. The more useful it is than to progress of technology.

*snip*

Windows need only be sufficiently useful with respect to what it costs to me. If it increases a computer manufacturer's cost by 50 bucks and that cost is passed on to me, then it's 50 bucks I'm willing to pay. It's actually a pretty good deal.

It might be as trivial as writing some code that alerts a end user that the printer is jammed. That's saves people time. That's exactly the problem Richard Stallman was trying to solve, and the dilemma of closed source printer drivers and firmware prohibited him from solving it. Thus the Free Software Foundation was born.

That's a nice little anecdote that probably occurs so infrequently now that it's almost laughable to think that THAT was the basis for the GNU project. You're going to discount all the good that came from Windows and the markets whose growth that it fostered because of the rare occasion when some dude might not be able hack a device driver? Seriously? What closed aspect of Windows as prevented some Windows-based software from coming to fruition?

I've found hacks to get new display drivers to work on ancient notebooks, and I'm guessing display drivers are far more complex than printer drivers. Yet, the closed nature of Windows hasn't stopped the little display driver "cottage industry" that exists.

That is the essence of why I support FOSS. It is collaboration at it's finest. Without all the software companies that resemble closed medieval guilds or fiefdoms, we'd be so far ahead.

The multiple, closed fiefdoms, inventing and reinventing their own wheels to sell keep people employed, and that's a GOOD thing considering how software and information technology may very well have been responsible for a considerable amount of job loss over the years.

31 minutes ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

You see it numerous times in the FOSS world, with things being constantly re-invented rather than taking a more strategic approach that really does produce a better for the end users. Microsoft's greatest contribution to software was probably the creation of COM (and it's following forms) because software componentization is a far better way of solving problems like Stallman's than simply dumping source code out and leaving it at that.

*snip*

That's the thing. Bass's idealistic view of FOSS is that collaboration is so efficient, no effort is ever wasted. The reality is that there is not only wasted effort of reinvention in FOSS, there's really no driving force to ensure that only the successful FOSS projects continue. In paid software, market forces dictate which products succeed and which fail. The pain points of having to pay developer's salaries and trying to make a profit make it so. In FOSS, a project will survive as long as the participants' interest and ego drive them to participate.

5 hours ago,cbae wrote

*snip*

Who says anything about being hard-locked?

To be fair, you did (emphasis mine):

@Bass: As far as I can tell, most of the posters here are developers whoselivelihoods depend on Microsoft products. This is more about protecting one's source of income. That's why many of posters here will lash out at Microsoft if they feel that Microsoft is jeopardizing its own future, thereby putting all developers in Microsoft's ecosystem at risk of losing their livelihoods.

36 minutes ago,Craig_​Matthews wrote

*snip*

To be fair, you did (emphasis mine):

*snip*

Having one's CURRENT position being dependent on Microsoft's products does not constitute being "hard-locked". If Microsoft dropped .NET tomorrow, I would venture to guess that most people on this forum are sharp enough to learn Java and get another job within a few months. Sure, it would suck donkey b@lls to have to do so, but that's no more "hard-locked" than a Java developer having to learn C# to get a job if Oracle decided to kill Java tomorrow or a PHP developer having to learn RoR because Ruby is all of a sudden flavor of the month (again).

Nowadays, it's less about the language and more about the framework anyway. You can be just as "locked" into an open source framework than .NET or Cocoa or anything else. I'm sure people doing web development using Ext JS would just as rabidly defend Sencha as anybody defends Microsoft.

11 hours ago,Bass wrote

@ScanIAm @cbae

I don't really have sympathy for people who hard-lock their career to a specific company's products. That's also something that is very unhealthy in the computer industry. I don't see doctors who specialized in "Pfizer" or "AstraZeneca". I don't see why it is acceptable to be specialized in "Microsoft" or "Apple".

Ignoring the fact that doctors regularly favour one brand of medicine over another, this is still a bizarre analogy, if I may say so. Medicine is not the same as software development, so why pretend it is?

Here's a better analogy for you:

I used to work for a nephrologist. Nice bloke, totally believe the internet was the future of medical research. Anyway, I always thought that kidneys was a very narrow sort of specialism, and mentioned this to him over lunch. 

'Yes, lots of people say that,' he said, and showed me the books from his specialism courses. 

There is a set of books that is required reading for nephrology students that is about the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Just on kidneys. And much of this is for diagnosis. To actually tackle the problem would probably need a specialist in surgery, or chemotherapy, or both. Perhaps the patient would rather try a holistic approach, or maybe the problem can be fixed with a change of diet, in which case a dietician would probably be the order of the day.

You can be really good at a handful of technologies, or mediocre in lots of them. If I decided to go Java then I would hire someone who knows Java inside out, and not a .NET bod who does a bit of Java once in a while. If I want to go .NET, then I would look for a Microsoft technology specialist.

Or would you happy to have your appendix removed by an acupuncturist who did a bit of surgery on the side? Personally, I'd rather have it done by someone who removes appendix day in, day out.

10 hours ago,Bass wrote

That is the essence of why I support FOSS. It is collaboration at it's finest. Without all the software companies that resemble closed medieval guilds or fiefdoms, we'd be so far ahead.

Can you name any FOSS technologies that are not rehashes of commercial offerings?

12 hours ago,Ray7 wrote

*snip*

Ignoring the fact that doctors regularly favour one brand of medicine over another, this is still a bizarre analogy, if I may say so. Medicine is not the same as software development, so why pretend it is?

More to the point:

Most doctors work in some sort of bureaucracy, whether its a government bureaucracy like NHS or an HMO like Kaiser Permanente. They also deal with agencies that have influence across these bureaucracies, like the AMA.

The API system you're working with is the equivalent of a bureaucracy, whether its a cross-platform standards-body approved API like AJAX, or a proprietary API like Win32. An API isn't the science -- its not equivalent to the medical science, its the equivalent to the medical bureaucracy.

Computer languages aren't the science either, they're the tools you use. Once you know one computer language expertly, its pretty easy to move to another one, because they aren't incredibly different. The most learning you'll do is when moving to a high-level language to a low-level language. But if you understand basic programming concepts, that shouldn't be that hard either.

Many university programs keep this in mind and focus students on the concepts and abstract nature of programming, rather than on the business-end ( the toolsets ).