"Windows is broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates."

http://www.smartofficenews.com.au/Co.../News/E5T7U6H8

that is a really excellent article, thanks for posting it. i only wish more people could understand what a piece of junk windows is, and what a bloated piece of crap "vista" is going to be (if they ever make it), so they would switch to linux and we wouldn't have to worry so much about all the "trusted computing" stuff that's supposedly on the way and that M$ wants to use to kill OSS. thanks.

in the article... all that stuff from MS about innovations and features to attract new customers... is this where all the Windows bloat comes from?
If I'm not using Linux I'm still using MS Office for Windows 95 -- because those "innovations" and "features" always just mess up my work.
Not to mention all the system crashes.
Not to mention the relentles upgrade treadmill.
A reason for migrating to Linux? -- How about this: "Seems the concepts 'fast', 'reliable', 'secure', 'improvement', are of no importance at all at Microsoft."
I could hardly believe the bloat and slowness of XP when I tried it.
Now when I read the articles about Longhorn all I get is the message "Think you've seen bloat? -- you don't know bloat until you've seen...

This is so similar to what both DEC and IBM encountered in their day. The first attempts to do MVS/360 became the world's first software failure.

But Microsoft has some smart brains working for them. Their "Software Development Classics" series includes a very detailed description of the goods and bads of the project of bringing "Office for the Mac" and "Office for Windows" into one cohesive code-base. They can work this one out, too. Admitting to the problem, at the top of the organization, is the first step.

nice find and a good read. also found the artical about the state of Mass. putting the kibosh on MS Office formats.

http://www.smartofficenews.com.au/Co.../News/C3M2X3P3

always love to see when companies and gov. agencies wake up and smell the coffee so to speak about how MS does things in computers.

ok, how is this going to force any one to move away from MS Office? it will not, but it will make it easier to move away from MS Office and more power to those that do.

I don't know if StarOffice "automatically" saves in some format, but I do know that KWord, AbiWord, and OpenOffice all give you the option to change your default save format to be .doc or .rtf

QUOTE :: "... such a policy is unfair to commercial software developers, who should have an equal opportunity to win state government contracts ..."

rather true , maybe that would be the hardest dilemma when making decisions on the higher levels ...

"... they can work this one out..." ???
I'm not so sure.
Just today I tried to fix a game (Counterstrike) for my (10) dear little children on my XP machine.
Seemed the first thing to do was to note the advice that Cstrike would like the latest version of DirectX.
In the past I would just head off to Microsoft.com or something like update.windows.microsoft.com or whatever, download the latest DirectX and everything would be fine.
This time I couldn't dload DirectX without going via some "Windows Validated System" thingy.
I have a perfectly valid and legal XP system, but for some reason this validation process and its ActiveX whatnots presented an impenetrable obstacle to my upating DirectX.
What am I supposed to do?
For how many hours am I expected to read all those bloody pages... "If you have a problem", "Validation FAQ", "Solutions"... ?
I know from experience that I could spend a week on this and not get anywhere.
"Sorry kids, I know you spent all your pocket money on Counterstrike but it's over now."
I have already spent about ten hours this week simply trying to install MS Office on an pre-used win98 machine and make it work.
If had put that time into paying work I could have bought a new box with the money.
Well, I choose my battleground and perhaps I chose the wrong one...
I am well aware that people who are richer than me and know less about computers just solve software and OS problems by buying a new computer.

I suppose, in summary, I wish Microsoft had been less attuned to their innovations and features -- the land of "now you can email photos from your digital camera to your friends even though you know nothing about how your computer works" and more attuned to a world of "carry on doing your daily work with minimal disruptions, crashes and compatibility problems".

it is fair, the commercial software devs. just need to comply with the requirements of the state gov. if the requirements are X, then all companies bidding need to comply with X standard. it is very simple.

it is not for EVERYONE to be able to bid on a project, just that everyone CAN bid on a project. that is the differance. in order to bid on a gov. job you have to meet all of the prerequisits what ever they may be. in some cases it is as simple as not using a specific program (like QuickBooks for your accounting) or have X number of employees, or have Y amount of liquid assesst in the bank, in the case of computers with Mass. state it is as simple as be complient with the format the state has chosen.

nothing more, nothing less. just means that those commercial software devs. who currently are NOT compliant can not bid until they become compliant. this is better for the world at large as those programs are now more useful not only to the state of Mass. but to everyone else who uses them.

I'm a little pessimistic here. don't you think that there will be an 'Office ME' (Massachusetts Edition) or something like that, with all the other Office versions unchanged (i.e. with OASIS support disabled)?
I appreciate the Mass. decision but I don't think that it will change anything as long as the rest of the world doesn't care about open standards.

Anything to do with the band oasis?

I was personally shocked when I read the requirements of vista. Its really silly to be honest. It will work on about 0.1% of current computers and no DVD's will play on any current TFT monitor(apparently).

if i understand it correctly ... if the state of massachusetts is self-sufficient in itself , i mean it doesnt rely much on other states and places in trading and commerce , that would be great and practical , better still if others are the one who heavily rely on the state of massachusetts , that would greatly helps in promoting free softwares and opensource , i think it may be the time to get ourselves ready and be prepared ...

I wonder who payed Microsoft to only support the latest technology then? Only Microsoft could get away with forcing their customers to upgrade in this way, because of their huge market share. Is this really fair on other companies such as Apple and Sun, and Linux/OSS developers? I don't think you can really ever say is it fair towards Microsoft.

However, I do think that this idea of rewritting Windows from scratch (I'm sure not all of it will be re-wrote :P) is going to do alot of good. Windows Vista may be more secure and faster. I read an article yesterday on why Mac OS X will always be more secure and less prone to crapware than windows, and it's simply because their isn't so many places to hide all the adware, spyware and malware. In Windows, theirs the registry, C:\WINDOWS, and I'm not going to even start on the system32 directory, that is possibly the biggest mess in the world. If Vista tries to make the whole system more simple, I would expect it to become easier to maintain a Windows System.

But I will still resent using Vista, as I cannot agree to alot of Microsoft's previous policies and current policies.

hey, did you people hear that wronghorn will ship in 7 flavors? there's "home basic edition" at the low end, and über-professional-expensive editon at the high end.

i bet every single one is a piece of junk.

if microsoft switched to open-source and created a linux distribution, who here would use it if it was completely awesome?

^ this is hypothetical. don't hate me!

Microsoft is losing business to linux and apple.

With this latest news, MS is going to lose more customers to linux and apple.

You can be sure MS is watching other companies and other developments very carefully.

I could see MS selling their own unix version in the future. If you can't beat em, join em.

Didn't MS hire a Gentoo head honcho?