What is Digg?34 Comments
- wankerface, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20"Killed"? Granted, it sounds a little more exciting than "canceled my account", but it doesn't exactly make sense. I expected to be reading the account of a hacker who DDoS'ed the thing or something.
- Gregd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20schestowitz,
Unless I'm not following you, this article is talking (bashing) about Microsoft's Office Live. This isn't a *nix product he's "bashing".. - TomFrost, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Even worse.. RTFDescription!
- yohan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13RTFA.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+22And that is different from Apple in what way??
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+17It's a Microsoft product.
WHAT. DO. YOU. EXPECT. ???.
Seriously. This is not a troll or a wind up. Even if you love Microsoft (for some unimaginable, perverse reason), you have to accept the fact that the engineering and management structure of their organisation causes them to produce REALLY badly engineered (and designed to a large extent) products. It is that simple. (and that's the reason, because they have lots of very clever people working there, lots of money, and do lots of market research)
The same thing afflicted IBM for a while, and afflicts other big co's. I have read quite a few insider accounts of MS of projects being paralysed (really) by committee, and by egos, and by stupidity, and by too many managers to sign off on things in triplicate, etc. etc. etc. Old Billy G despite his alleged genius in other areas (I don't think he's anything particularly special personally, he just had a lot of luck) failed miserably to maintain engineering quality when the company grew to be the behemoth it is today. Sorry Mr Gates, you failed. (yes, despite all those PCs with Windows and Office on, your income, and your market share. You still failed). Failed to produce quality products that make life less stressful for consumers, and instead make hundreds of millions of people stressed or worse on a regular basis (as yet another Microsoft product crashes and loses your work). Failed to keep people happy with your products.
Sure, you can't please all of the people all of the time, but Microsoft's products could be great, when in fact that they are a mess of bloated, buggy, crap, that could so easily be lightweight, easy to use, flexible and above all, RELIABLE. The latest Windows and Office are two examples not just out of many, but out of pretty much their entire software product line. Why is XBox 360 good? Because the team went off and had a lot more autonomy for starters.
(And no, I'm not some pimply 17 yr old fresh out of "programming 101". I've written commercial grade stuff for 20+ years, and know a ***** product when I see one).
Cheers - intekra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8What sucks the most, is you can't actually design your own website with your own code.
(And if you can, they sure made it difficult to find that feature) - Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -13/+19Lucky for me my Ford does not require Ford gas...
Microsoft doesn't want just you and your money. It wants your soul. - jakeblat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I tried contacting them through the support form and the support email but didn't get a reply.
- misterjangles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ajck - Its obvious that you think you're pretty clever because you can write code for a hand-held. Here's a news flash for ya - writing software is easy - it's monkey work. I know because I'm a code monkey too.
Bill Gates was lucky - no doubt. I don't personally care one way or another about Bill Gates. But you have to accept that he didn't just write some piece of software. He was never a code monkey. Writing software wasn't even an industry then. You see a path to success in front of you now. When those guys were doing this in the 80's there were no paths. They were just blazing through the woods creating an entirely new industry. You're just plodding down that path whether you know it or not.
It really doesn't matter how awesome your piece of software will be - it's not even in the same ballpark as what Gates did. - jakeblat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9I signed up for office basics however I soon discovered how limited the service is. After about a month struggling to use it I contacted the Office Live support team, I've now sent at least 10 emails asking for the domain to be transferred so that I can actually use the domain. I'm yet to receive a single response from them.
- lordkenthegreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@schestowitz
Were you on crack while reading the damn description? - rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6At least in the Open Source world you can jump from one bureaucratic community to another...
- UltimaNut, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'd like a happy ending.
- flake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It looks like that might be a good alternative but I can't find any pricing info. This leads me to believe it is a typical large/enterprise level product that would be way out of reach of most people including small businesses.
LOL, I tried to try out their first demo but it's just erroring out.
I guess at any rate it is the so common "you get what you pay for." :) - NeilM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Maybe your story will have a happier ending than mine."
From what I gathered, that wasn't an ending. - scristian, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5amazing bad or amazing good ?
- Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Better figure out which one of these outfits grabbed your soul and grab it back. Be careful what you sign-up for.
- michaelfl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Office Live is a rehash of Sharepoint in a hosted environment. I tried to use it a few times, it basically required me to use IE (not my primary browser) and the user interface felt very confusing to me.
Sharepoint itself has a LOT of functionality and if you know asp.net you can basically do anything you want with it, but that basically means you need to be a programmer.
If you are looking for collaborative office solutions go check out:
http://www.jotspot.com (now owned by google)
http://www.centraldesktop.com
http://www.weboffice.com - SystemBomb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If you don't like Office Live, you can always try Google Apps: http://google.com/a
Its free, and has most of the same features the free Office Live has, but it plays nicely outside of the MS world (Firefox, IE, and Safari supported.) I have been using it for about 4 months now and had no problems at all. - CBTF, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"That depends - if you want to completely ignore the massive costs that have been borne by people due to Microsoft's complete lack of attention to security issues, then maybe it's not so bad."
Massive costs? I've never had a problem with this. Windows update/antivirus/antispyware.
And how is MS trying to lock down my system? As of now, I can still do whatever I want. Don't say WGA- I have never had issues with that. - 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6-> Not all the products from Microsoft are *****. What about Windows XP and Office?
That depends - if you want to completely ignore the massive costs that have been borne by people due to Microsoft's complete lack of attention to security issues, then maybe it's not so bad. If you also want to include that Microsoft's proprietary document formats make it very difficult to pursue any real alternatives (vendor lock-in), then again, maybe it's not so bad. If you want to ignore the direction in which Microsoft is moving, wanting to completely lock down *your* system so that you no longer have much control over it, then maybe it's not so bad.
If anything, it's clear that aside from the reliability issue, there are also other, far-reaching issues that should be considered. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What's surprising is that anyone bothered to try it. Oh that's right, he was paid to review it.
I guess he won't be getting a free MS Vista laptop after that review. - tackle, on 10/12/2007, -8/+9I havent written "commercial grade" stuff for 20+ years. But from my experience, I can say this: Not all the products from Microsoft are *****. What about Windows XP and Office? I can say they are the best (from average user's point of view) in their kind. Sure Linux has more features and more secure, and OSX is.... shiny(??) but from the average person's point of view, they cannot top Windows XP.
I've often listened to old men with 20+ years of "commercial grade" experience talk about how Mr. Gates has "failed". But I think its just because Gates is from the same period of time as them. And, Gates is the founder of multi-billion dollar organization and they are... well... let me say... not as succesfull as him.. - zigamorph, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I just did the same and I actually got a response right away. Try contacting them through their own contact form.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@tackle:
With all due respect, what you say is absolute utter and total rubbish. That's like saying people in 3rd world countries who drink, wash and piss in the same polluted stinking river "have the best for them" - because it's all they know - because someone more enlightened didn't come along and hand them the gift of good technology. I spent a while doing my own IT support co a couple of years ago for small businesses and home users. "The best for them" was repeated pain, frustration, feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, and worst of all, blaming themselves. And this was in the era of Windows XP + service packs + latest patches.
No, Windows and Office are *****. So *****, they should be banned, in a sane and just world. I have seen numerous articles on the Digg frontpage recently about people who've seen the light with Ubuntu - who are average users, or have shown average users around them the light. And the light that Ubuntu and other good Linux distributions (and to an extent Mac) is so much, much, brighter than anything that has ever or will ever come out of Microsoft.
Also, I'm not an old man. I'm in my 30's (yes, with 20+years commercial experience). I'm not Bill Gates generation. I, and many of us, are the generation that's going to dig Microsoft's grave and bury it, with our better, faster, more useable and reliable products. Especially on mobile, which is where the next generation will play out. - CBTF, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I hate to say this, but MS is doing *something* right, evidently.
- childprey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3zybch: Yknow... how Apple supports Parallels and Boot Camp while Vista's ToS does its best to disallow use of virtualization software?
- joe90210, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6my experience has been amazing
- nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6"OMG Micro$oft sux0rz so bad they want your MONEY! They are like satanic, they actually want your mind and soul man ***** ***** *****!!"
"Apple want your MONEY and soul too!! OMFG WTF!!!"
Yeah real insightful guys... and diggers keep giving them the thumbs up. This is one life-changing discussion here. ... Why the knee-jerk reaction mentioning Apple? Seriously, you could've pulled any computer company's name out of your ass there: HP, Dell, Sun, etc. And it would be true for them all. - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Greg, have a look at one example:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/microsoft_calls_on_geek_squad.html
Ghandi_Khan :
When did Microsoft start paying your salary? Every article you've recently
submitted is extolling the virtues of MS. Your opinion seems to be that MS
can do no wrong, although they have done very little right lately. While MS
isn't evil incarnate, you can spare the world your platitudes to them. Save
them for fan mail. For the love of all that's holy, write about something
else. Else people like me are going to take your off our bookmarks list.
Posted by Ghandi_Khan | December 18, 2006 4:22 PM
Ghandi_Khan :
that should have read, "your site off our bookmark's list."
Posted by Ghandi_Khan | December 18, 2006 4:43 PM
Roy Schestowitz :
@ Ghandi_Khan : I fully agree with you. I am disappointed to put Jupiter
alongside Gartner, IDC, Yakee Group, and NPD now...
This blog used to be less biased.
Also see:
NY Times bans Microsoft analysts from Microsoft stories
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/15/nytimes_ms_ban/
Posted by Roy Schestowitz | December 19, 2006 12:54 AM
KC :
Yeah, I'm guessing they got a new kool-aid supplier at MS Watch.
Posted by KC | December 19, 2006 12:59 PM
Ted Roche :
"I challenge any normal mortal to quickly and efficiently install wireless
drivers on notebooks running Linux. Free software=you get what you pay for.
If you pay nothing, well..."
Totally off-base, Joe, and you're showing some pretty incredible ignorance
here. An Ubuntu CD is all I've needed to get a couple of ThinkPads up and
running. If "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch," then maybe the
internet ought to stop running BIND and 60% of the internet stop running
Apache. Free software is based on a gifting economy. It might be better to
ask what you are giving up by paying for software you don't get read the
code for, and need to agree to an onerous EULA.
It's true that there are some proprietary hardware vendors that are unwilling
to share the details of how to drive their devices with open source
software. That's the vendors fault, not Open Source's.
You're better than this, Joe. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1What I don't get...there are much better products than SharePoint out there if you're looking to set up hosted applications and single sign-on. Here's one:
http://www.stone-ware.com/
So much nicer not to deal with MSFT. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+7How surprising -- another Microsoft service/product that sucks ass in every way.
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -47/+10The author has turned that blog of Mary Jo Foley into a Microsoft fanboy and Linux-bashing ground. I wouldn't feed him by digging. Sorry, Gregd, but many old readers of microsoft-watch (myself included) tend to agree.
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