Microsoft. Good job!

i9804511 said:
Microsoft. Good job!

Words which don't work together.

Radioactive said:
Words which don't work together.

There's nothing wrong with Microsoft.

dkamm65 said:
There's nothing wrong with Microsoft.

Would you like a list of things they've been fined for?

SciFi said:
Would you like a list of things they've been fined for?

That doesn't matter. Radioactive is acting like they've never done anything good.

dkamm65 said:
That doesn't matter. Radioactive is acting like they've never done anything good.

actually, they didn't.
except for directcompute of course.

it's so strange a character named as japanese but for activities in taiwan. feel taiwanese more familiar with japanese characters than chinese? really incomprehensible why did so, microsoft

dkamm65 said:
That doesn't matter. Radioactive is acting like they've never done anything good.

To be fair here, there is very little that you can actually attribute the creation of to Microsoft. They are well known for acquiring technology from other companies instead, often not quite legally. (See their history of fines and court losses.) Especially in their earlier years, they were much better at taking other's technologies and refining them (embrace, extend, extinguish) than they were at creating anything new. This is also what caused them to have so many anti-trust problems. Just because they've done a few good things in the fairly recent past doesn't excuse their past behavior. There's still lots of room for improvement in all their current business practices too, so no, Microsoft and Good job! don't belong together, at least not yet, maybe someday.. （￣へ￣）

If it were not for Windows and IBM PC clones, we'd still be using proprietary systems like Mac/OS X and pay the Apple/IBM/DEC/etc tax. That's not to say I condone their early disregard for intellectual property. But then again, Apple did borrow a few ideas from Xerox's GUI when they were building the Lisa. I think all software companies borrow ideas (for example Google Android's use of Java and their current problems with Oracle). It's all a matter of how much do you take and how much you can get away with.

lftwgr said:
If it were not for Windows and IBM PC clones, we'd still be using proprietary systems like Mac/OS X and pay the Apple/IBM/DEC/etc tax.

Err, Windows is proprietary as well, and still is. IBM allowing clone systems is the only reason we have mass wintel hardware available, but that could have happened without Microsoft.

Linux, while not proprietary, is by no means restricted to wintel hardware. You can run it on Mac hardware, including pre-OS X hardware (as well as almost everything else out there). Something like Linux would have ended up created for whatever hardware reached mass market saturation by someone. ヾ(´･ω･｀)

lftwgr said:
That's not to say I condone their early disregard for intellectual property. But then again, Apple did borrow a few ideas from Xerox's GUI when they were building the Lisa. I think all software companies borrow ideas (for example Google Android's use of Java and their current problems with Oracle). It's all a matter of how much do you take and how much you can get away with.

The whole thing with Xerox PARC and Apple is largely mis-characterized. Much of the work on LISA and the Mac's interface was well underway before the visit, and the visit was sanctioned by Xerox because Xerox's venture capital wing had invested in Apple and agreed to show them what they were working on in the PARC labs. So anything Apple took was with Xerox's blessing. (Don't take this to mean I'm a fan of Apple, I'm not, for the most part I hate Apple worse than MS, I just try to be fair.)

However, when talking about Microsoft most people aren't talking about borrowing of concepts, they're talking about out-right theft. See Apple's QuickTime Lawsuit (got settled after MS threatened to stop making Mac Office) Stac Electronics (Won the case) and Sun's Java lawsuit (also won the case). This doesn't even begin to cover all the cases reported over the years from small startups, who MS would deal with, acting interested in investing and/or buying them so they could get looks at their technology (under non-disclosure agreements), then... suddenly stop talking to them. Months later, lo and behold, Microsoft would bring out something that worked exactly the same. That's not borrowing, and it's quite illegal, but most of those companies were too small to survive a court fight, and with their product market wiped out overnight, few survived long enough to even try. （￣へ￣）

While MS had gotten better, this hasn't stopped either. The most recent example I remember was in 2009 when Microsoft China stole most of Plurk's source to make a product. (Microsoft ended up admitted this happened, but claimed it was a vendor who did it.) There was also a case in 2002 where Sendo accused Microsoft of terminating their partnership so they could take Sendo's code and use it in Windows Smartphone 2002. (￣Д)＝３

So no, it's not borrowing people complain about MS doing, it's something far less ethical. It's been a truism in the industry for a looooong time that dealing with Microsoft always ends up in tears -- for you, not MS. ―(T_T)→