Microsoft Censorship? You tell me....

Well, I seriously doubt it. I mean, what can I say about Microsoft that hasn't already been said in a thousand other places? Then again, I am trying to post these through the Microsoft Community newsgroup servers.....

Perhaps it is a bug in Vista Ultimat 32 bit edition, or the Microsoft Community Newsgroup servers or Windows Mail. In any event, I can reply to a thread about Vista and VS2005 as long as I DON'T reply with the following (which never shows up in the threads)...

(Please forgive any formatting errors. :) )

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(4th try at posting)

"RobinS" <RobinS@NoSpam.yah.none> wrote in messagenews:dfCdnRY2F7MEQV7YnZ2dnUVZ_oGlnZ2d@comcast.com...>> "Jim Hubbard" <jim@privateaddress.net> wrote in message > news:CBAD44AC-5138-406D-931A-83833D193046@microsoft.com...

>> The Mac situation really does suck - thats why there are so few Mac users >> (<3% of all computer users).



>> MS does what they want because they're the only game in town.
>> Microsoft basically has no boundaries. There is nobody ready to eat
>> their lunch if they screw up. So there is a tendency (which is also
>> human nature btw) to get away with as much as you can.
>> I think the quote is "It's easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask
>> permission.

"Since when have you heard Microsoft beg anyone's forgiveness? It's morelike "Here, we did this. Now shut up and use it."

>>> Scrap Vista and start from scratch
>> There's no way they could afford to do that. And there's a lot with XP
> that worked just fine. Mine only BSOD'd on me once in 3 years. It's always
> better to fix what you have than it is to scrap it and start over. Joel
> Spolsky (http://joelonsoftware.com) talks about this in his book, how
> doing that was the end of Netscape. It took too long to start from
> scratch, and in the ensuing years, MS took over the browser market. (Great
> book, by the way, very very entertaining, and *not* a pro-MS book,
> although he used to work for MS.)

I love Joel's work....got the book on my shelf and have actually read it (areal feat with my schedule).The problem with Netscape's rewrite is that they didn't have a competingbrowser in the market while they did the rewrite, they tried to SELL thiers(while Microsoft gave IE away) and they had real competition. Microsoftwould still have XP (which many people in businesses will run for the next2-3 years at least) and they have no competition.

>>> instead of putting out a warmed over UI change like Vista.
>> I think Vista looks pretty cool, and it's not just the UI that changed,
> but that is what sells things to many customers. Do you think Apple would
> sell as many iPod Nanos if they weren't so cute? I mean, for another $50
> you can have a 30GB iPod, what's the point?

Businesses don't buy cute - at least not the ones that I service. And homeusers usually have crappy PCs (like the cheapo Dell special of the week)that barely run as is - they can forget running Vista unless they buy a newPC, and most of them won't fork over the cash for that.

For the most part, when I mention Vista to anyone, they kinda shrug and sayXP is working just fine for them. I agree with them too. If it ain't brokedon't fix it.(BTW, if anyone reading this wants to make their XP look and feel likeVista - I've heard this is good -http://www.jcxp.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7006 - but I haven't tried itmyself. You can also look at the tweaks onhttp://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/the-poor-mans-windows-vista-no-upgrading-necessary-182597.phporhttp://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1089/make_xp_look_like_vista_longhorn_free.)

>>> they would be giving people ample warning that a major OS shift was >> coming that would require new applications (or at least a virtual PC app
>> to run XP and thier old apps).
>> They did give people ample time. Apparently anything that was refactored
> to be "Windows XP Certified" works under Vista without any major changes.
> Some people did not want to spend the money to upgrade their apps to work
> with XP if they could get their software to work within the confines, and
> now their software won't work with Vista. (Example A: Intuit's
> QuickBooks). It took MS 5 years to develop Vista, and they've been working
> with customers on compatability for a couple of years now. How much
> frickin' notice do people need?

That brings up the original question in this thread.....if Microsoft knewaout the upcoming changes AND they were even writing the OS, why the heckisn't VS2005 compatible? It's incredible...

>>> Microsoft's goal is to maximize revenue, not serve its customers.
>> Duh. Welcome to the corporate world. The purpose of any public corporation
> is to make money for its shareholders. Period. Usually serving the
> customers better aids them in that process. I think Vista and Office 2007
> will do that. They are fairly impressive-looking, and after people get
> over the shock, they will like it better than any version they have used
> before.

People *are* suckers for "shiny" stuff - even if there is no other benefit (sometimes even if there is less).But, I have always found it more profitable to treat customers like friends and family. The old golden rule thing. It's been around a lot longer thanMicrosoft because it works. It works in business and personal life.

For instance, all it would really take to shake Microsoft is a Linux distrowilling to take a fresh look at how they are blowing things and make acouple of key corrections. Heck, I'd help 'em do it. Not because I hateMicrosoft, but because competition is good for consumers - it even makescompanies stronger and spurs innovation.

>> I would point out that the developers are not MS's customers, the large
> corporations are. However, they will not succeed as well w/o our
> cooperation, and they know it, because developers help drive the business.

You are right. Although big corporations are the main targets, the developers influence the big corporations' IT decisions. So, you'd thinktheir flagship development studio would work on their flagship OS, wouldn'tyou?

>>> I would encourage you to dscard McAfee and try NOD32 (www.eset.com). It
>> has a smaller footprint, scans faster and scored better than any other
>> protection application (including Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro) in
>> independent testing by Virus Bulletin (http://www.virusbtn.com/index).
>> I'll check it out; I definitely need to do something different. I want
> something that will scan my e-mail, and let me scan my drives when I want
> to. I don't want something (McAfee and Norton) that scans every single
> document every time I open it. I turned ActiveScanning off, and McAfee
> puts up messages about how my system isn't protected every time I reboot,
> or standby and come back. It's really, really annoying. But when I open a
> solution with 80 classes and a bunch of forms, I don't need all of them
> to be virus-scanned. I *know* where they've been. ;-)

>> So will this product you've recommended plug into Outlook and scan my
> e-mails? Does it do active scanning? I appreciate the information. I've
> about had it with the big ones.

NOD32 does scan your email (in and out). It does do active scanning (which canbe disabled without annoying messages resulting from that decision), but itis so fast that I haven't even noticed it at work (except when it finds avirus in the incoming email and alerts me).

The big ones (especially Norton) fell for the whole .Net thing and screwed up their products. They are bloated and slow.Even Microsoft doesn't use .Net to do most of its internal coding (if they did - it would probably be compatible with Vista).

So, why do we?

Jim Hubbard
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Now, you tell me why Microsoft failed to post this through the Microsoft Community newsgroup servers.........