What is Digg?166 Comments
- binorgog, on 08/07/2008, -3/+100Good article, first sentence of the Vista piece is dead on. I still remember August 1995, standing in line at CompUSA in Towson, MD for a midnight release of Windows 95, MS PLUS and finally the real reason to be there in line, you could buy 4 megs of ram to boost your machine to 8 megs of ram for ONLY $200.00 if purchased with Win95.
Stayed up all night installing and playing. Miss those days.
Where is my boot disk anyway! - Superperson, on 06/28/2008, -14/+68Digg needs a Bill Gates section.
- fatas, on 06/28/2008, -6/+56IE deserves to be on that list, it is the most convenient browser in the world.
When someone finds bookmarks to porn on your browser you can always say
"Bloody spyware these days." - digitalgopher, on 06/27/2008, -12/+54The guy is a legend already and will go down in history as one of the pioneers in the industry.
- digitalpencil, on 06/28/2008, -0/+41omg.. just looking at that ME screenshot makes me writhe.
- doctechnical, on 06/28/2008, -11/+50I haven't seen such an enthusiastic outpouring of goodwill since John Lennon got shot. You'd think Bill Gates was dead with all the press he's getting.
MS-DOS? The only effort Bill Gates put into DOS was writing the check for the company that created it: Seattle Computer Products.
That's not a screenshot of Visual Basic, looks like PDS or Application BASIC (or whatever they called it). I will cop to this: Microsoft's strong point has always been it's language tools. I still fire up PDS when I need to whip up something quick and dirty.
And damnit, digg me straight to the center of the earth, but I *liked* Bob. I thought it was cute. It was also sort of an admission of failure ("Windows is so simple anyone can use it! Except it isn't, so you'll need this animated dog"). It also had some built-in apps that didn't suck, like a check-book program, a greeting-card thing, address book, etc. Now I'm going to go find a Bob torrent, just to be contrary :)
And OS/2 Warp rocked. It was a better DOS than DOS, and a better Windows than Windows. - Frost9999, on 06/28/2008, -1/+32If you measure it's installed base, there's no question. Even crappy pop tunes that make number 1 are considered a hit.
- potterboy, on 06/28/2008, -3/+33Yes, it is profitable, the majority, and back in the day it was fairly decent.
- johndi, on 06/28/2008, -2/+30I don't know which I hate more clippy or the search dog. Sure, they are both easy to turn off, but I truly hate them both.
- SushiCW, on 06/28/2008, -1/+26Visual Basic definitely belongs on the list, but I don't know what Engadget is talking about: "discontinued in 1998?" "Met its demise?" On the contrary, Visual Basic (in its .NET incarnation) is STILL one of the most-used (and most-abused) programming languages in existence.
- stopbrorape, on 06/28/2008, -0/+21"Bob suffered an early death in 1996 due to general hatred for the little bastard."
- chapium, on 06/28/2008, -1/+22Despite Vista's flaws, its nowehere near as bad as WindowsME. At least its stable.
Also where's Windows 95? I'd say thats one of their greatest accomplisments. - Doomsan, on 06/28/2008, -2/+22It's called Microsoft
- IDIGTHEDIGG, on 06/28/2008, -16/+33IE is considered a "hit"?
- awesometastic1, on 06/28/2008, -1/+17Visual Studio and C# anyone??? Probably one of the few things microsoft produced that is great in it's own right (not only great due to context alla windows 3.1 and company).
on and let's not forget MS SQL Server which is clocked as the second fastest RDBS in existence behind Oracle. Though both lack the freeness appeal of MySQL. - earthforce1, on 06/28/2008, -1/+15It could have potentially blown the iPod out of the water wireless networking, except for the "feature" of having anything transferred over the wireless link self destruct after a couple of plays, thanks to the DRM. This rendered what could have been its killer feature completely useless.
- lokoluis15, on 06/28/2008, -5/+18You know, Henry Ford didn't invent the car, yet he is renowned as the grandfather of automobiles. Sometimes taking a good idea and implementing it better, in a way everyone can use is harder than having the good idea in the first place.
- Rikkochet, on 06/28/2008, -0/+13Load both browsers.
Navigate to digg.com (for example)
Open 10 new tabs of various stories.
Come back and say that.
IE7 is acceptable, but the tabs are dreadful to use and the extension capacity for Firefox makes it king. - djpray2k, on 06/28/2008, -6/+18Good article but a bit over the top as is this talk of microsoft being a pioneer. They did some amazing things for the industry but real innovation was bought in. DOS, the graphical user interface and more.
Gates is a great businessman and made some great deals but he owes a lot of it to other people. - inactive, on 06/28/2008, -10/+20Microsoft BOB was awesome.
- mossblaser, on 06/28/2008, -0/+9vb.net is quite a different beast. I used to know vb (blushes) but I could never master .net (a stroke of luck as I found out later...).
- axis, on 06/28/2008, -0/+9Passport is no on the miss list? Wasn't that supposed to make it easier for me to sign in to everything online?
- earthforce1, on 06/28/2008, -13/+22The Zune didn't make the failures list?
- hackiavelli, on 06/28/2008, -1/+10Because he never said it.
- Gee1004, on 06/28/2008, -3/+11Most of the people are too young to see all the lawsuits that Microsoft had, plus they made their money on the overpriced cost on licenses and $10-$20 for every guinea pig that wanted to test drive a beta copy throughout the years. Lastly, the OS's that were failures just to bring in money. All of this is forgotten because of his foundation. A Robin Hood but takes from everyone. LMAO
- mossblaser, on 06/28/2008, -2/+10The dog - it didn't even pretend to be a useful addition.
- notzak, on 06/29/2008, -0/+8I think Vista would be a very successful OS if it did what you said it did.
- FutureGuy, on 06/29/2008, -1/+8omg you were born just yesterday, already on digg?
- Dylson, on 06/28/2008, -2/+9Yes.
- FutureGuy, on 06/29/2008, -0/+7They missed Sync, .Net and Exchange.
- viditbhargava, on 06/27/2008, -8/+14great work by Bill...yeah some were failures but the others have made the computer world.
- iamgreg007, on 06/28/2008, -0/+6I would have added Q Basic to that list as well. It came preinstalled with MS-DOS and allowed a generation of would-be programmers a free and (relativaly) simple programming language to take that first step towards geekdom with. I can't even count how many days I spent trying to debug my simple blackjack or text based RPG programs.
- inactive, on 06/29/2008, -1/+7Dugg for the description of why vista really sucks.
- digitalpencil, on 06/28/2008, -1/+7- vista was delayed
- the list of cut features was impacting enough that a large proportion of the user-base decided to either downgrade, or to not bother with it in the first place. WinFS, virtual folders.. these were the reasons i upgraded, not for aqua-esque eye candy.
- XP was a hit, a troublesome hit that took way into SP2 for the majority of bugs to be ironed out, but a hit all the same.
- whilst i'm of the opinion that we won't see Win7 until 2010, there is sufficient evidence (leaked roadmaps) to suggest MS are trying to get it out as early as 2009 (2nd 1/4). in this sense, they are 'scrambling'
Don't be so damn defensive, it's an article, about Bill Gates.. your OS does not define you and whilst i'm not generally a fan of the mandatory MS-bashing, this article wasn't that. It was recalling MS' long history, where they've gone wrong and where they've gone right, released in the light that Bill is finally leaving. Moreover it's not alone, another popular tech pub, Gizmodo which is also frequently accused of anti-MS bias (although i think this is interpreted when any journo writes anything positive about Linux/Mac) just released an article, http://digg.com/microsoft/Things_No_One_Gives_Micr ...
PS: When he says' Sadly, improvements to Media Center, aesthetics and even that quirky little sidebar got overlooked in the process' i think he's referring to an already disgruntled user-base overlooking these improvements. - CCmachined, on 06/28/2008, -7/+13IE's gotten more people on the web over the years than any browser < excuse me? i only ever used IE when i was forced to (brought up on netscape and then firefox, since ever)
they mean "the Windows monopoly shipped this ugly POS browser with it, and so more people are now using the web in a craptastic way." what a joke. it was Microsoft's decision to include it as a Windows component that got people onto the web, not the browser itself. - Fartag, on 06/29/2008, -0/+6@lokuoluis15
Ford is much more the grandfather of the "modern assembly line" (building factories to do it), and made the existing automobile through it widely available, and cheaply, etc helping many more people afford one. So he's indeed associated to the automobile and mass diffusion of it into society.
First, did Bill Gates revolutionize mass production of software? Did he make DOS widely available or did IBM? Did he invent software copying, recordable media, etc? Mass production itself is a wonderful thing, and Bill Gates did nothing on this front to my knowledge. I'd like to hear instead about those folks that actually did though, from the physicists and engineers to the assembly line.
Bill Gates and/or Microsoft _has_ advanced the anti-copyability of software though through various copy protection schemes up to modern day Windows Genuine Advantage ("advantage" indeed!) and diverged into other realms like protected pathways and other user limitations.
@Rikkochet
Bill Gates did indeed market MS-DOS (clone of CP/M PC-DOS) to IBM, but how did he make this "newfangled computer" that supposedly nobody had ever heard of before win popular acceptance?
This has happened through other manufacturers. Have you heard of the great Commodore up to and including Amiga, for example? Does anyone seriously doubt we'd have personal computers today at the rate and direction we were going? We'd have them now and unless something _worse_ happened, be in a far less technologically costly position as well.
And those that dream up new ideas are absolutely essential, I can't understand anybody slighting those guys. Those that implement and make available new ideas are essential too, two essential parts of the whole invention / distribution process. What new ideas did Bill Gates implement, what did he mass produce? I'm not saying there were _no_ new ideas, just about everybody on this planet has new ideas. But I'd like to hear the _good_ ones and especially the non-obvious ones and see if this all matches up with "pioneer".
It seems without some significant increase in opposing evidence that you guys might be after some kind of Mao complex where we must exalt and never disagree with "our leader" no matter the enormity of opposing facts and scarcity of supporting facts. Should we just vote in the most inaccurate history possible and bury factual and opposing viewpoints? For what purpose? That's religion, that's propaganda. Bill Gates and Microsoft has _harmed_ this industry and many others overall by the vast majority of accounts I know of. - scy1192, on 06/28/2008, -1/+7you don't want to see what happens when Jobs leaves Apple...
- GregFD3S, on 06/29/2008, -0/+6IE !== Success
How can they call it a success when it takes Microsoft 3 versions to get it right? - mrBitch, on 06/29/2008, -0/+5Hi, I'm from Microsoft Marketing and I would like to ask your permission to use your idea for a new set of Vista adverts :
" Vista: it's not as much of a failure as Windows ME." - jynweythek, on 09/17/2008, -0/+5actually that IS a screenshot of visual basic, for DOS. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic#Timeline ...
- gravel, on 06/28/2008, -0/+5Good article. Vista has be ok for me and I use it on a laptop. Still prefer XP because SP3 is smokin' fast.
Microsoft is a very important company and hopefully they will get new and exciting leadership. Steve Ballmer maybe be good at sales, but he seems pretty crazy to be the frontman. - Rikkochet, on 06/28/2008, -1/+6No, it's a total flop, because it's only used by non-Firefox users?
- hadak, on 06/28/2008, -4/+9Xenix? And I thought I knew it all...
- tian2992, on 06/28/2008, -0/+5Visual Basic was originally made for Macintosh, but when they made the contract for Microsoft Office, Microsoft demanded that they stopped development and that Microsoft could make it.
- Pinhedd, on 06/29/2008, -1/+5actually it is not. Many years ago, my friend's father blocked IE on his computer. I had to use window's built in command prompt based FTP client to download it.
- Cryoniq, on 06/28/2008, -0/+4Uhm.. no.. MS bought their way in as usual. If OpenGL had been embraced, which it is going to be from here and on, you wouldn't belive how far ahead we would have been today. Microsoft slowed down the development.. a lot..
- badassninja, on 06/28/2008, -2/+6Man keep this ***** off of digg.There has been so many ***** MS posts to make it to the front page in the last week that it is sick. I'm 70% that Microsoft them self has something to do with this and need to send them the message that they are not welcome here.
- workharderscum, on 06/28/2008, -0/+4Misses - forgot windows ultimate extras.
- kraetos, on 06/29/2008, -0/+4Microsoft didn't invent Ajax. Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest, a key part of Ajax. But they didn't invent JavaScript, and they did not come up with the idea of interactive web applications.
- LtXenodite, on 06/29/2008, -0/+4Boot disk? Pff I still have my 50 original Windows 95 install floppies safely in my desk drawer :)
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