What is Digg?195 Comments
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -8/+49Give us a break. "Application servers" have been about to destroy the desktop OS market for what, 7 years? *****. Remember "thin clients"? Yeah, that set the world on fire too.
- chris9902, on 10/10/2007, -4/+36not this again. buried.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -10/+39Tell me about the death of Microsoft when they don't continue to rake in more and more earnings each fiscal year.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -7/+35No, they won't. Stop being naive.
- Odiwan, on 10/10/2007, -42/+61I have three words for you: Silverlight, Silverlight and Silverlight. With the amount of great talent being pouring into it, in time Silverlight will become the new layer between the operating system and web applications.
Computer hardware (irrelevant, choose one) -> Operating system (irrelevant, choose one) -> Browser (irrelevant, choose one) -> Silverlight (Adobe doesn't stand a chance, they don't have the 3rd party support, Developers Developers Developers) -> Web applications
Vistualization and open source software? Irrelevant :) - fugazi, on 10/10/2007, -5/+24O ya because we all know that computers view web pages without an OS And that web applications run so fast...
- memoBug, on 10/10/2007, -4/+21"The real revolution will come from virtualization and open source software."
Does Google open source anything? - twrife, on 10/10/2007, -17/+34With 90% of the OS market, it's going to take a lot more than a few open source, free apps to kill Microsoft.
- Oakes, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18If they are offline, then by definition they are computer-hosted, not server-hosted. The move taking place is not from the computer to the server, but from the desktop to the web browser. Unfortunately that won't be happening soon, because browsers are downright primitive compared to desktops (WPF and Core Animation come to mind).
- newyawker, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17Dugg down for misleading and ridiculous title.
- frodirk, on 10/10/2007, -6/+20Excuse me, but how is google open source?
Sure, they bet for open source on some of the clients, but they keep everything they value on their proprietary servers which are certainly not open source.
And try downloading the javascript code for google maps or gmail. I wouldn't call that obscurified code open source. - Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -4/+17Spyware is only spyware if it spies on you without knowing it. Is the article summary really unbiased here? Is it known that Microsoft will try to add Internet-enabled features that report on you in the background in future versions of Windows or Office, without even telling? I doubt that has been confirmed.
Actually, given Microsoft's track record, I think it looks pretty good as for reporting to the user what it wants to do. For example, Vista asks you if you want to participate in a survey after installing the OS, it tells you if it wants to send a crash report to MS and allow you to not do it, it tells you that it needs to install a component for Windows Update to look on your computer via the web, it lets you decide how freely Windows Update should update your computer unattended, and so on. IIRC, Windows Media Player even nowadays default to not send user info to MS, and also lets you choose how you want to do there.
In short I think at least Microsoft's *recent* behavior (I'm not sure how it looked in the mid-90's or so) doesn't warrant jumping to conclusions like this. - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13There are plenty of IP issues as well. We don't have any guarantee that MS aren't going to sue the pants off the Mono team at some undisclosed point in the future. At least with JavaFX (well the entire Java stack) you know that there are no IP issues, Sun have taken steps to grant some level of security against litigation. The only problem is if you start calling something that isn't Java by said name.
Technically there is no problem. The speed at which the Mono project built it's Silverlight implementation shows as much. The sole issue is the state granted monopolies and other nonsenses. Personally I think Silverlight should be resisted until we get reasonable assurances over IP. - Aharoni, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Am I the only guy in the world who doesn't have internet 24/7 on his laptop? am I the only guy in the world whose work proxy is horrible, with disconnections and slow internet speeds? Am I the only guy in the world who is concerned about the security ramifications of uploading sensitive material to Google's (a 3rd party) servers?
Microsoft is going to be killed by Google? tough chance. They might lose some market share, but no business in their right mind, and many many many computer users, would never use web-based applications. - fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13You're missing the point if you think making Google Docs & Spreadsheet work offline via Gears is going to change anything. Docs and Spreadsheet have one common weakness, the technologies used to create them are crippled.
HTML + CSS + JavaScript is the answer to a question nobody asked because the question could only be asked in a profoundly stupid way. Google picked those technologies, crippled by security limitations and tied down in a sandpit from which they'll never escape, while MS and Adobe developed sophisticated alternatives that can simply do far, far more.
For instance:
Open local files - with HTML/CSS/JS you have to upload the file, it's saved to the server and then you make your changes, resave it and download it. With MS and Adobe you just work with the file locally.
Right click menus - fudged together with JS and hacked for each browser, may or may not work and may have the 'real' context window being displayed over/under/whatever.
Keys - Tab, Print Screen, Alt+F4, F1-for-help, all of these keys and more aren't available to work with in JavaScript.
Many things you're accustomed to doing in your operating system can't be done in a browser-based web application because your operating system still 'owns the rights' to those keys, or the os and browser are locked down to prevent the web application having that kind of access to your system. - DrSpud, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13Riiiight, choose any operating system and browser, as long as it's Windows and IE/FF, or Mac and Safari/FF. Freedom to choose between the limited choices Microsoft gives you is not the same kind of freedom that Google (and others) web apps will give you.
- consonance, on 10/10/2007, -4/+14I'd like to believe it, but Google Docs has a terrible time recognizing some of the more complicated formatting both Writer and Word both know how to interpret. It's patently awful.
- SouLFacE, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13dugg down for misleading title!
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11How many times. Latency, latency, latency! Web apps are not viable far beyond what they already do, no matter how much bandwidth you have we are close to fundamental limits on latency. Seriously some of the Web 2.0 people need to take a serious look at some basic physics. We could make it so that you download the entire application every time you go to the web site but what possible benefit does that give, may as well install it locally (it will even run faster).
The web will never take over from desktop computing. There is simply zero benefit to running web apps (that isn't easily reproducible for a local application). Maybe your files will be web hosted with the appropriate plugin for your favourite office suite but that's a hell of a long way from the Web 2.0 vision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing - Oakes, on 10/10/2007, -16/+26Why is Odiwan being dugg down? It's not completely true that the OS and browser will be irrelevent, but I'm amazed that this article made no mention of Silverlight. It will have a .NET runtime built-in, so it's pretty obvious that this will be the platform MS will use to deliver a web based Office and other apps.
- Ai3d, on 10/10/2007, -9/+19This is frickin retarded! "Vista sales hit 60 million - http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135158-c,vistalonghorn/article.html " Majority of the people browsing Google use Windows! Buried!
- Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10I have a feeling it's being dugg down by supporters of Adobe Flex which among other things has superior platform independence, with Flash being officially supported on Linux as opposed to the Silverlight hacks. It has also had time to mature more than Silverlight.
However I agree that the well integrated .NET platform support can be a big supporter of Silverlight's popularity in the future. But we'll just have to wait and see about that. So far, not much is happening and Flash still dominates for being the industry standard. - adude, on 10/10/2007, -5/+14"Microsoft's plan to embed spyware and advertising into Windows & Office will be a dismal failure"
Arg - wth are you talking about? I'm guessing you're referring to the patent Microsoft made where they patented using ads in an OS. In no way does this mean that Microsoft is planning on putting adware and spyware into all of their products. In fact, it probably means that there will be a free version with ads and a regular version that you have to pay for. I think it's most likely for developing countries (check out Windows Starter Edition). Either way, the description is just more anti-Microsoft crap. - insanebrain, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11So . .. you think adding yet ANOTHER layer will make a difference ??
- frederoil, on 10/10/2007, -3/+12to the person that created this Digg entry: Join the discussion with the rest of us down here, don't try to throw out your BS opinion in the subtext of a headline.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9He's using logic, no blog can change the fact that Microsoft owns 90% of the market.
- Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -9/+16Who wants to put money down that 75% of the people glorifying Silverlight have never even taken the time to download the examples, open them up in Visual Studio, and play around with them.
Mindless. Microsoft says it's the future......so.......it's gotta be.........I guess........ - HillerMylife, on 07/24/2008, -1/+7Does anyone even use Web Apps for documents or spreadsheets or anything?
- murlox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Web app is crap, unless you are in real emergency; why should I use them over freebies, such as OpenOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric, or K-Office?
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Google runs almost entirely on Linux, hardly proprietary. They do a lot of good for OSS, big contributors to the kernel and the Wine project over the years.
- tizz66, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Anyone else find it ironic how when google is mentioned, web apps are the coolest thing ever and will replace the operating system and will kill Microsoft, but when it was announced that the iPhone would only run web-apps, people thought it sucked? Seems a bit double-standards to me.
- 8bit_Hero, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7absolutely the best response!
- FutureGuy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5funny how ignorant your comment. Google is going to bury MS with Google Docs. You have no idea who deep MS's roots are, not only they have a 90%+ desktop market share, they have around 40% of server market share, a huge slice of the enter price software market (SQL Server, Exchange, BizTalk, IIS etc), has a bigger online presence then Google (surprised? http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none ), is big in entertainment XBox, Zune. And Google is going to get them using Docs, **fall down laughing* wishful thinking I guess.
- MusicalGenius, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Wow, it worked for me, not your link but when I went to the site to get it.... I had no problems.
- LowRentDiggs, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9What 3rd party support does Flash/AIR need? All it needs are developers and Adobe has a very healthy development community.
- Atomic1fire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5or do they buy out a plugin company or even just use java (java has major crossplatform support and google could easly reach anyone and everyone with java apps and with jws no need for google gears because they can just download the java files to your computer
- smex, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Not only this, if Microsoft is really doomed, why did they just hire 4000+ new developers within the last 12 months?
- etnu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Actually, it would only take one: An Office suite on par with (or better than) MS Office with complete compatibility for all relevant Office files. That is the only application that keeps business customers coming back to Windows time and time again. Hardware support is certainly an issue, but a few major vendors (Dell, HP, Lenovo) providing support would make that a non-issue as well.
- adaptdev, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8Silverlight for Rich Internet Application Development is like FrontPage for WebDevelopment. Weak and not entirely thought out. They are already 10 years behind Flash, and where are all the creatives that use VisualStudio at?
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Thin clients are very much in use in the corporate environment.
But the idea that everything will be server base is COMPLETE BS. Could you imagine "Downloading..." and waiting for your mission-critical spreadsheet? Or if the network goes down, there's no way for you to do your work? That would be unacceptable in a business.
There will still be many, many applications that will be locally hosted and run. As the saying goes, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. - snapcase, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I was wondering when someone was going to mention the inherent security issues.
I'd much rather just see people support things like OpenOffice.org than web based apps.
In my opinion, simply put, web based apps are NOT the real future of computing. - kelly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"Microsft happens to own a large portion of stock in Apple"
Microsoft does not own stock in Apple any more... they sold that stock many years ago. - Odiwan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Don't compare the .NET framework, WPF (subset) and C# to FrontPage. Did you realize you just did that?
(Yeah, I can't help, occasionally, commenting on things I know nothing of, either) - LowRentDiggs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Yes Adobe has a healthy developer community. I don't have to compare Adobe and Microsoft's developer communities because ther wasn't a lot of overlap pre-Silverlight. Adobe has Flash player installed in 98% of computers, what is Silverlight's penetration? Microsoft making their own knockoff of Flexbuilder isn't going to attract a million Adobe developers to jump ship.
- grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I find it interesting that yesterday the SAME guy submitted an article about Microsoft 'software plus' and in the process called it the Ultimate Spyware System because your data could be stored on Microsoft servers, yet today Google is legitimately going to kill Microsoft with Web Apps?
If a 3rd party company hosting your data is a privacy concern for you, then NEITHER of these are going to be acceptable. I am more worried about what Google is doing with my data than Microsoft, because it seems that Microsoft's every move is scrutinised and Google is assumed do no evil. - chris9902, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6no. In fact they do the opposite and collect endless tons of information.
- benjpw, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8Web apps blow. I like using my computer. Having everything in a browser and not on the task bar is lame.
- etnu, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Spoken like someone who's never written a piece of software in his life, and has probably never even seen a Silverlight app, much less written one.
- fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You've missed the point completely for my argument - it's not about availability it's about functionality. JS is widely compatible but it's also heavily crippled with what it can do. Creativity and workarounds doesn't compensate for the set-in-concrete limitations the language and browser environment has.
"Have you ever actually written a successful web application before?"
Depends what you guage success by. I consider an app successful if it works, meets the requirements and satisfies the company I work for, cause aside from bug fixing that's where my involvement stops. If you mean successful as in 500 gazillion people use it, no, but getting the users isn't my job. That's a whole other industry. - pumacub, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5I've completed several projects using Silverlight... it has some serious issues, but nothing that I don't be see being fixed by the time it is released (1.1 _is_ in Alpha after all).
I've also done work in Flash, including Flex, and I must say that Silverlight is a much more developer friendly solution. It's design and architecture is well done. -
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