Silverlight 3: Somebody stop me

Seemingly Microsoft presents similarities to the well known green-face character from “The Mask” movie; it just doesn’t shout “Somebody stop me”. Silverlight 2 is alive only for about 6 months, but Microsoft already announced the availability of Silverlight 3 beta. And is awesome.
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Microsoft Windows – They are just faking it..

..And blagging their way through what realistically should have been a very short business life.

Let me explain.

We know Microsoft is a blue chip company with a huge global presence. They have by far the largest percentage of global operating system usage – roughly around 85% market share.

Normally that would be considered a major achievement, as nearly any major saleable product or service is duplicated or copied and mass marketed by multiple companies around the world.
But there are only two contenders that could compete against Microsoft’s operating system – Linux and Macintosh OS X – and with less than 20% total market share to split between them both, it’s not worrying competition for Microsoft.

But shouldn’t we then give Microsoft credit for achieving this incredible market position in the first place? Yes of course. But while taking no credit away from Microsoft for achieving this, the global domination could easily have been someone else’s.
Back in the times when operating systems were for people who could write applications in binary, had green teeth, no girlfriend and didn’t even know what a pub was, all that was required for any company to start a spiral into market domination was simply to introduce a huge global advertising campaign.

There were plenty of other operating systems, arguably better ones too. In fact Microsoft ‘borrowed’ many ideas from the competition, parcelled it up into a nice neat package, made it slightly more user friendly than the competition and told the entire world “this is what you need”.

Their figures for revenue and profit are commendable.
In 2008, Microsoft was impressively ranked 7th of the Financial Times Global 500, and rated 63rd on the Forbes 2000 list.
In one year on the Forbes 2000 list, if their metric used was solely market value, Microsoft would have come in first at $270 billion.

Figures and rankings are from Forbes and Financial Times websites:
Forbes Data on Microsoft
Forbes 200 list
Financial Times 500

Usage of revenue:
Yet, all those billions of dollars they make each year are seemingly not used well at all, as their operating systems are always rolled out with problems, and none to this day have been 100% user friendly for the standard end user.

With the huge profit and resource available to Microsoft, one expects a better service and higher standard of product than a smaller company
Yet a lot of small companies with only a few thousand dollars monthly revenue manage to provide products, services or software that is more stable and reliable than Microsoft’s. In fact, many businesses achieve this for free, relying only on donations.

It is of course arguable that Microsoft Windows is considerably more complex than most other software, but then Microsoft’s profits, work force and the immense amount of resources available must also be considered in proportion.

So, what’s bad about Microsoft Windows?
Well…. All their operating systems have been far from perfect and don’t come up to the expected standard! A bold or unfair statement? Not really, and it’s not just an opinion .. it’s a fact…

Windows XP and Vista are their modern versions, and truthfully (and mercifully), all the versions of Windows prior to XP were in times of old thinking, old computers, little in the way of decent resources and hardware and of course importantly were developed in times of learning – the baby stages.

So, let’s review XP.

XP was released in 2001, a year after Win 2000 and a long time after 3.11, 95, 98 were developed and released.
Windows was a young adult by then that should have been dumped by a few girlfriends, been out to work and learned to stagger home drunk. Simply put, it should have matured.
But alas, it still had spots, no pubic hairs and frequently had, and still has, random tantrums.
Surely during Microsoft’s tweaking, obtaining feedback and developing all these previous versions over 6 years, they were developing Windows to be a better system?

From 3.11 to Win 95 this was very true, the newer version(s) did accomplish ’significant’ improvements over the older ones.
But after we got over the excitement and wonder of having this “Windows” system in our homes, and the sparkle wore off from Win 95’s vast improvement of Win 3.11’s not-so-friendly environment, we wanted something more substantial, something with great performance, excellent functions and importantly easy to use.

Windows XP brought a lot of this, with performance and functionality improvements over its predecessors, but a lot of people don’t have a major interest in their PC.
They just want to go on the internet, and perhaps download some software to play their MP3’s or a photo album for their family pictures (etc).
And standard users get lost and bewildered, for example, when the download goes wrong, or they don’t know where the software is downloaded to or installed, or when trying to run their newly installed software there are errors. There is no help within Windows to assist these people – ‘Microsoft’s customers’ – with the everyday usages of the software..

Of course Microsoft also developed Windows with professionals and businesses in mind, and not just home users. And they tried to cater for individual needs with their “Home” and “Professional” editions, but the difference between them both was pointless in terms of providing for two very different sets of requirements.

Home should have been simple with a very useful and in depth help and assistance system to help standard private home users wanting to do basic things like surf the net and play movies and music etc. Explanations of errors and typical reasons and possible fixes should come with the pop up errors.
And then Professional should have had a lot more functionality for business requirements, like more networking facilities and more scope with the user management system.

But instead, the two had the above suggestions mixed in together, and neither was individually developed to work solely for Home use or solely Business use.

Error – your computer produces too much smoke…
Still to this day with XP and even Vista, it is only considered “easy to use” when it works perfectly. As soon as an issue with Windows or a third party software occurs, most standard users, and sometimes even IT experts, are left scratching their heads when windows “informs” the user “Stop: 0×0000000A
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
112 Address 25 has base at df – xhg66.dll”
Huh?

Even without the above error report being useless to standard users, to understand a lot of what are considered basic everyday functions a user has to have some IT knowledge, or at least a good deal of time spent learning Windows.
Some people, as well as Microsoft, will argue against all this, claiming it IS easy to use. But most of those people simply don’t realise the lack of PC skill and knowledge a user has, and often forget that just because they themselves are familiar with something and it’s easy to them, doesn’t mean it’s the same for those with less knowledge and experience.
And in Microsoft’s case, most of them are IT professionals who develop Windows without a thought towards the fact that a lot of end users barely manage to find their “My Documents” folder.

There were great new avenues opened with XP, especially when compared to ME, with some amazing new features and options both graphical and functional. But as with most things on the operating system, having to resolve issues, fix bugs or figure out how it all worked and discover were everything is located simply took the shine off it.

Even if an end user did figure out how to use it, and were getting to a stage were they could confidently change settings and set up their Windows environment to their pleasing, along came the next Windows version with many of the basic locations and functions changed around and moved somewhere else.
So the standard end user could no longer find all the things they had spend months figuring out.

It’s like getting into your car one day and the pedals are on the roof, the steering wheel under the seat and all the roads have been hidden in secret locations.

Please tell us if it works ok…
Also, not only did XP roll out with horrendous bugs, major security issues and problems with third party software, but Microsoft cheekily implemented an “error reporting service”.
They basically relied on their end users, their customers – that’s me and you – to effectively quality control the product and tell them all the errors we found so they could then fix them.

Imagine you buy a new car and the doors fall off, and the manufacturer tells you “Oh, thanks for that info, we’ll fix the next batch of cars. In the meantime, here’s a bag of nuts and bolts and you can fit the old doors back on yourself”.
Well, that was Windows XP’s idea of resolving the many bugs it was released with.
Which could have been more acceptable if it was reasonably priced. But let’s face it, something that doesn’t work properly most of the time, and confuses us regardless of whether it works or not, isn’t worth installing for free let alone the hundreds of dollars they want for it.

If a clothing company produces garments that fall apart in the washing machine, the sales outlets get tired with replacing them and giving refunds, so stop stocking clothes from that company.
The clothing company either goes bankrupt, or manages to resolve the issue and then has to try very hard to convince its outlets and customers that it has learned by its mistakes and their new clothing range is sorted.

So with Microsoft and the comparison above …The world was sick of XP, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of forums full of complaints, disgruntled customers, people without a clue on how to operate Windows or change settings. There are websites full of fixes, tutorials, common and unique faults, Microsoft’s site full of updates, security patches, fixes etc.

And what is Microsoft’s answer to all of that?
Well, they don’t have one, they simply whack out another one, call it Vista and pray it works a bit better than when XP was first released.

If their software is supposedly so terrible, how do they get away with it?
Other companies don’t get away with this, regardless of their size – large, small or global.
If all Sony’s stereos blew up when you used them, they wouldn’t get any sales.

But due to their being no competition to Microsoft Windows, and therefore them having an 85% market share, nearly everyone is forced to use Windows.
This gives Microsoft a monopoly on the market.
Homes, schools, councils, governments and businesses all rely on it, and without an alternative well known system to turn to, we all simply have to put up with it.

So, is vista any better then?
Vista does have some improvements over XP. Visual enhancements were improved with new transparencies, live icons and thumbnails.
They have tried to make things in a more logically organised structure. With an attempt at more user friendly menu systems. Like the Control Panel being less IT-Geeky.

But it yet again removed or changed all the folder locations and options we had all gotten used to.
One thing I see asked and moaned about a lot is the removal of the drop down menu items in explorer. You can press the ALT key, and change the option of this view, but WHY did they remove the drop down menus that contained all the options people had only just become used to using?

The software crash recovery is vastly improved in Vista, in fact I tried very hard to get it to hang, and it just happily ended programs in the background.
And as insignificant as it may seem, Vista not having the issue where multiple file deletion would simply stop the entire delete queue when one of the selected files couldn’t be deleted, was a sigh of relief.
But why wasn’t it in an earlier version of Windows?

In the 10 years from Win95 to the fix in Vista (2005), did NO-ONE at Microsoft EVER try to delete more than one file at a time and get annoyed at it halting the entire deletion queue for one pesky file?
This is the exact lack of thought that seems to be missing from the development of Windows – the simple things to standard users are often not catered for. And however trivial the file deletion may seem, it’s this kind of end user requirement and functionality that is always missing, that and the lack of end user support.

Quick, make another one, no-one might notice…
So, Vista is released, although XP still has issues…

The last time I tried to update Windows XP to service pack 3, the process went for about 15 minutes only to tell me “You don’t have permission”.
Don’t have permission, *sigh*, is this not my PC in front of me?

Why produce yet another version of Windows when the previous version hasn’t been perfected or even fixed?

Once everyone has bought the current Windows version, Microsoft release another one. Then the world goes out and buys the newer one presuming as it’s the newer version it must be improved and more secure.
Who would have guessed it – It comes down to money!

Why don’t they just stick with XP for a few more years and improve that?
Ok so it is acceptable that the newer versions, Vista, has architecture in that the previous version, XP, doesn’t have, and certain aspects of the new architecture and structure allows them to progress and develop new functions and features.
This is all a good thing if the new structures allow for improvements. And it is also acceptable that a company wants to develop new software and improve on their old one.
But as portrayed here, they don’t really improve or fix issues in the newer version, they simply change them around and add more complex features that probably aren’t necessary or used by most users.

As Vista is the latest Windows version and is the current up-to-date software, and as Vista itself is nearly 3 years old, we can safely say XP is most certainly no longer a modern version of Windows, it is now 8 years old.
So, then, can we please have XP for a massively reduced price then?
Is that someone mumbling something in Redmond?

Keep trying to improve…
Microsoft are working on the next Windows version.
Currently the inspired name is “Windows 7″.
Let’s just hope it’s as good as methode seems think.
Read about Windows 7

This article is only the opinion of the author, although does include some factual content.
And although this article resides on devoracles, they do not necessarily agree with the author’s opinions.

Microsoft Adds New Board Member and Declares Quarterly Dividend

REDMOND, Wash. (Press Release) — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Maria Klawe, Ph.D., president of Harvey Mudd College, was appointed to the company’s board of directors, returning the board’s size to 10 members. The company also announced that the board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.13 per share. The dividend is payable June 18, 2009, to shareholders of record on May 21, 2009. The ex-dividend date will be May 19, 2009.

“Maria has made significant research contributions to computer science and mathematics, and we are very fortunate to have her join Microsoft’s board of directors,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman. “In particular, I think her close connection to university students and the way they shape computing trends will bring an important perspective to the board.”

Klawe has been president of Harvey Mudd College — a highly regarded private liberal arts college in Claremont, Calif., that focuses on engineering, science, and mathematics — since 2006. Before joining Harvey Mudd College, she served as dean of engineering and a professor of computer science at Princeton University from 2003 to 2006, and held several positions at the University of British Columbia from 1988 to 2002 including dean of science, vice president of student and academic services, and head of the Department of Computer Science. She also worked at IBM Research in California for eight years, and held academic positions at the University of Toronto and Oakland University.

“Through her strategic planning work at Harvey Mudd College, Princeton and elsewhere, Maria has demonstrated the kind of long-term vision and focus that we were looking to add to the board,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “In addition, there’s no doubt that she brings a solid grasp of the technologies that will be important to Microsoft’s future growth opportunities.”

“Computing, and the role it plays in people’s lives, is on the verge of an incredible transformation,” Klawe said. “Microsoft plays a unique role in shaping the impact that technology has on society, and I’m excited to join Microsoft’s board at this point in computing history.”

Klawe was the first woman to serve on the board of the Computing Research Association and she co-founded CRA-W, the highly successful Committee on the Status of Women. She has served on the board of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology since its inception and as chair from 2003–2008. From 1997–2002 she held the IBM-NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering for British Columbia and the Yukon, and led several research studies and projects related to increasing the participation of women in computing.

“The underrepresentation of women in the fields of science and engineering is one of the critical issues facing the computing industry,” Klawe said. “Microsoft has been active and focused in helping to address this challenge, and I’m looking forward to helping the company continue to make progress on this important issue.”

Klawe is also a past president of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, Calif., and a member of the board of Math for America. She is a fellow of ACM and the Canadian Information Processing Society and the recipient of numerous awards including the Computing Research Association’s Nico Habermann Award. Klawe holds several honorary doctorate degrees in the areas of science and mathematics. She received her Ph.D. and bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of Alberta.

Klawe has made significant research contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, and the design and use of interactive multimedia for mathematics education. Her current research interests include discrete mathematics, serious games and assistive technologies.

In addition to Klawe, Microsoft’s board of directors consists of Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman; Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO; James I. Cash Jr., Ph.D., James E. Robison professor and senior associate dean emeritus of Harvard Business School; Dina Dublon, former chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase; Raymond V. Gilmartin, former chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; Reed Hastings, founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix Inc.; David F. Marquardt, general partner at August Capital; Charles H. Noski, former vice chairman of AT&T Corp.; and Dr. Helmut Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW AG.

Microsoft announced Wave of Local Training, Certification Events

Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions and Microsoft Certified Trainers host events to help businesses and employees maximize technology expertise.
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Cheap academic PCs from Microsoft and Lenovo

REDMOND, Wash., and RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Microsoft and Lenovo announced today the Ultimate Academic Personal Computer promotion. The two party will offer higher-end Lenovo laptops designed specifically for college and university students, faculty, and staff.
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Internet Explorer 8 – How to add WebSlices for Wordpress

Probably it’s just me, but I think the idea behind web slices are great. I feel the same as when RSS started to appear on the net: I get information way faster than the traditional way — going to the web site and see whether something has been updated–, RSS saves me a great deal of time.
WebSlices do the same but in a much more focused way. Take the following example: You release a book on Amazon for sale and want to see what others say about it in their reviews. What can you do? You do this: you open your browser, go to the page where the reviews are, scroll to the reviews and see what did change.

With WebSlices the above process looks like this: You subscribe to the webslice and when you want to see what happened on a specific page, you click a button which will face you with up to date information from that page. Like this:

The above example shows a WebSlice from Devoracles and it contains the titles of the latest posts. But it could show anything else as well; comments for a specific post, recent comments, list of the authors, list of the upcoming posts. Anything.

How to enable WebSlices on Wordpress

Enabling WebSlices basically on any website is extremely easy. So is on WordPress.
What you have to do is to surround what you want to display in the WebSlice in a, for example a DIV with a specific class name, hslice by name, and an ID of your choice.
Like this:

<div class="hslice" id="my_id">
I have content
</div>

You can also choose a title for what you want to display. Better said you have to provide it else the WebSlice won’t have a title. This can be achieved by putting another element in the above DIV, again, with a specific class name, entry-title.


<div class="hslice" id="my_id">
<span class=entry-title>I have title</span>
I have content
</div>


Where could you use this in Wordpress. The very first thing which popped in our mind was to display the most recent posts. To do this, you would insert something like this in your sidebar.php for example:

<div class=”hslice” id=”recent”>
<h2 class=”entry-title”>Recent Posts</h2>
<ul class=”entry-content”>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=postbypost&limit=10′); ?>
</ul>
</div>
Should you want to learn more about WebSlices, here’s its documentation meant for developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc196992(VS.85).aspx

Too bad Mozilla and Google doesn’t support it, hopefully they will because it’s a very cool addition.