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Sun Microsystems

Sun Claims MS Steals Vision 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the amusing-turns-of-event dept.
Dan Reiland sent us linkage to an interesting little ditty on Sun's web page that mocks Microsoft for stealing their Vision. I'm actually amused by this on 2 levels: First, its amusing that Microsoft (Already legendary in this industry for their innovation and originality) has actually been caught "borrowing" something.) but more amusing is the fact that Sun thinks people actually care about (or for that matter read) vision statements.
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Sun Claims MS Steals Vision

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  • ... application service providers.

    http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,25478,00.html
  • The term "Network Computer," or NC, seems to pop into my mind now... a computer that would have no hard drive and boot its OS from rom (or the network, even) and get all apps and stuff from the network. I didn't know they wanted everybody to pay for every byte though.
  • Liskov-substitutability is already violated when there are the classes of circle and ellipse in the design and ellipse has methods that can't be implemented for a circle while maintaining it's invariant. I know this is a bit backwards, since the design of the superclass has to take into account the subclasses.

    It depends on whether you view subclassing as extension or superclassing as generalisation. In my point of view subclasses can also add new constraints so actually the methods of the would-be superclass may violate the invariants of the subclasses (this is a bitch for maintenance if the superclass isn't abstract enough). So the methods that would cause that violation would have to be removed and the superclass made more abstract by moving the methods down to those classes where they don't threaten to violate the invariants. In some cases you could just change the class of the object in question when such a method is used. The question is about mutability, the base classes that account for substitutability shouldn't be too mutable or you can run into problems, rather they should be abstract and take into account the future limitations that subclasses may require.

    In the mathematical world the circle is a subclass of the ellipse. It is an ellipse with certain constraints, which allow some optimizations to take place in the implementation. Yes a circle is substitutable for an ellipse provided that the ellipse class has no methods that would violate the circle's invariant or the circle object would then change into an ellipse object, which is what it logically does, when you for example scale it in the X direction only. In this case there's the problem of someone else expecting it to remain a circle...
  • You have a point, and we don't run that many games that need direct control over the video hardware.

    However, I'm so fed up with the cruddy Microsoft OSes that I'm ready to jump anywhere else, even if it means selecting something other than Quicken for finances. I run a mixture of WinNT 4.0 Server, WinNT 4.0 workstation, Solaris 2.7, and Linux 5.2 and 6.0 in my labs at work, and Windows gives us the most trouble by far. We have several products currently using WinNT that we are currently migrating to Solaris, simply because we have so many problems with the lack of reliability we experience with WinNT.

    I'm currently trying to hire two WinNT Server Sysadmins to run my WinNT shop, and I'm having a hard time finding qualified, experienced personnel, because good ones are in so much demand because WinNT is so hard to keep running reliably.
  • There's nothing wrong with vision. Vision is great. Unfortunately, vision statements seldom have any noticable relationship to actual vision. They're usually the result of a bunch of marketroids with delusions of gender^Ograndeur sitting around a conference table with their ties choking off the flow of blood to their brains (if any) and stringing together a bunch of meaningless, polysyllabic words of the sort usually seen only on motivational posters and high-school graduation speeches.

    "We will achieve greatness through enhancing the pulchritude of the dominant paradigm of customer-product interaction."
  • And cellular telephones don't even give you a dial tone, do they? Nor do they have dials. I still haven't figured out how you're supposed to dial a number with no dial and no dialtone.

    "Telephones should have wires. Televisions shouldn't. Anything else is heresy."
  • As usual, CmdrTaco has 'em all beat. His vision is pithy and succinct:

    "Stuff that matters".

    How can anyone top that?

  • They changed it from FORTRAN to Fortran, but I still use FORTRAN for the older versions of the language.

    I still think it is the best language for number crunching in physics and engineering. The only problem is that not enough money is invested in new Fortran compilers. Fortran has become a niche language.

    C++ has all the modern bells and whistles for general purpose programming by professional programmers. I think it is too complicated for many people who don't need all of its features.

    When I look at K&R's C book and compare its size to the latest edition of Stroustrup's C++ book, I wonder if the costs outweigh the benefits.

  • This is sort of like Dr. Evil making off with Austin's "MOJO" isn't it? Maybe both would be better served if they realized you can't bottle "VISION"

  • Not surprised with the similarity at all. They were both made with the Mission Statement generator [dilbert.com]

    (we could argue about Mission vs Vision but that would be petty)

  • Yes, I remember when MS got caught stealing doublespace from Stacker. MS countersued Stacker about using undocumented system calls. The use of these call violated trade secrets in MS's Open OS.


    MS won the countersuit but it was only a token amount.

  • Some of us don't trust C++ for a number of reasons.

    The available compilers and libraries are not compatible with each other or the ANSI standard.

    Much of the compiler and library documentation is terrible.

    You can't look at a page of C++ code and get a good idea of its time/space requirements. Operator overloading is not a feature.

    I know a number of scientists and programmers who do research on the physics of the ionosphere. They write all their software in FORTRAN-77. It lets them do their work without having to learn the language and operating system of the day.

  • Good gosh, she was his best partner. Certainly he was the bigger star, but his movies after Ginger became incerasingly silly, pairing him with some young spring chicken. Whereas her movies after Fred showed class. No one was as good as Fred Astaire, and no one was as good as Ginger Rogers. To compare her to Microsoft shows no respect.

    --
  • Oh, man. Can't you just *imagine* the kinds of criticisms we'd get from the FUD-mongers about that? We're complaining about the "fragmentation of Linux" accusations as it is! Can you imagine what it'd be like if people started using names other than "Linux"?
  • This gets moderated up? huh?

    keep in mind:
    1. Linux has nothing to do with this article.
    2. Solaris ain't too bad (esp. when it comes to uptime).
    3. "win"?

    War mentality sucks. Sorry to post basically flaming verbiage against another /.er, but this is just really stupid and inane.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • Sun is alot closer to global domination than Microsoft. What kind of machines do you think that China is using to perform ballistic tests? My only hope is that they shipped them with the JavaOS installed. Also, how secure are their systems if Mitnick can break into them? And if he did so much financial damage buy stealing so much software, why weren't the stockholders notified? Just a few things to ponder.


  • Its funny you mention that. I always thought the NC vision was one of the most retarded concepts ever created :!. NC was like an unglorified Xterm! The most expensive thing to me is my bandwidth, why would I want to get rid of something as ridiculously cheap as my hard drive?
    I know bandwidth is getting cheaper (gigabit ether and all that) and there are administration costs that make not having a harddrive cheaper.. but as far as admincrap is concerned wouldn't it be simpler just to use rsync and a few perl scripts etc?
  • A lot of it is the libraries unfortunately.. much of the fortran libraries are handoptimized since fortran is column ordered. This isn't really that big of a deal since you can just do a transpose but vaguely annoying. I do numerical crap and I use (shock,shock,horror,horror) C++. The fact is if you write decent code and are smart about it your code should pretty much be the same speed in any language.. (Fortran people dont tend to believe that but its simple enough to test, take a simple project and implement it in two languages.) Anything that really needs to be optimized can link to blas routines, so the language itself doesn't really matter) The real problem w/ c++ is that it is *really* easy to write really horrendous code, because you can hide huge routines in things like +,= etc .. but of course if you going about doing that you should be aware of what you are doing right?
  • I'm shocked! Simply shocked! Next thing you know they might claim credit for something they didn't invent, or market something that doesn't exist yet.

    Of course it is even funnier that sun posted something like this on the site, I mean how weird is that? It seems Sun might be spending a wee bit too much time thinking about ol' billg. (Note that this is very different from thinking about or complulsivly reloading /. , which I would of course never do)

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems.
    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • I think another reason some like Fortran is a large body of publically available, well-tested, and highly optimised fortran code to perform common algorithms like FFTs. They can all be done with C++ just as efficiently I'm sure, but then you often have to write them, test them, and optimize them, which takes time.

  • Wasn't Sun the company that came up with the rent-an-app model a few years ago, the one that Ballmer said MS was looking in to earlier this week? If so, just another case of MS trying to seem like innovators when they've really just stolen somebody else's idea.

    See also: Windows (regardless of whether you think they stole it from Apple or Xerox).
  • I'm in no way defending Microsoft, but if companies have similar goals (actually, I didn't know Sun was going for global domination too, but that's besides the point), then they'll probably have similar 'mission' or 'vision' statements. There aren't many ways someone can say that they want their software to run anywhere, anytime, and on any computer.
  • Ever since Sun got a coherent vision statement ("the network is the computer" may have been interesting, but did any PHBs really get it?), they and Microsoft and everyone else in this industry have all been racing towards the same set of targets; at least now some of them are admitting it.
  • Sun has always loved the idea of small computers and downloaded Java running everything. Rent-An-App at it's best.
  • not that i like ms but they generally win. i mean, if you look at it they're not competing against sun, or linux, or java, or oracle, or ____ - they're competing against the COMPUTER INDUSTRY. any software company with revenues is a threat to them. its truly staggering - what are they worth now, half a trillion??? i'm more scared of them now that ballmer is running the show because he'll do _anything_ - he has no attachment to win, or anything else. he would open-source win api tomorrow if it was the correct decision (not that it is). its easy to bait them now while nt crashes etc. but they are going to compete,, and unfortunately they dont lose too often.
  • "I like the optical mouse idea, though. Don't know who actually thought up that."

    I don't know either, but our lab full of XTs in grade 12 computer science had optical mice. Back in 1987. They needed metal 'mouse pads' with tiny green lines in one direction, and tiny red lines in the other. The neat thing was that up and down, left and right were always the same, even if you twisted the mouse.
  • I normally never make "moderated" comments, however the above moderated up? I am a Diehard
    Linux supporter, but if this title, and tone
    were directed toward Linux it would be a -1 Flamebait.

    Come on guys.
  • Not that OOP is a bad thing, but not all programmers can program OOP (its true!). It has something to do with the ability to abstract I believe, and many programmers like to think of things as one thing after another and what they will actually do, not where they came from.

    The abstraction doesn't comme from OOP usually.

    What are you manipulating? 'objects' They are either abstract or real, but they are still familiar things. And inheritance is a very common process, that's a bit the way we organise our Thinking. (analogy, inheritance links between facts and concepts)

    If you really want an abstraction ride, rather try a functionnal language. And with most ones you can still do OOP. (clisp, haskell,...)

  • Neither Java nor Visual Basic are functional. Look at LISP or Haskell or something for functional languages. They rock!
  • Oh, this must be sarcasm.. I get it!

    Cause no one would call Object Pascal anything but ugly and repulsive.

    I didn't see the smiley, though!

  • A model in which an Ellipse may or may not be a Circle from moment to moment, or in which some instances add secret invariants, is only appropriate for a language with classes but no types, where clients have to be ready for anything because they have no guarantees about how an object will behave.

    No they don't, since the behaviour of the methods is specified in the post-conditions. The problem is that the superclass may have methods (for convenience or efficiency perhaps) that are impossible to implement in a class that would be the logical subclass while maintaining it's invariant. In this case it is most likely that there is a superclass missing in the design that could provide the necessary substitutability of classes. Mutability in the superclass usually leads to problems. Secret invariants ? What are you talking about ? The invariant of the subclass is the union of all the invariants of it's superclasses and the new conditions it adds. It is stricter than that of the superclass and it's the duty of the subclasses methods to enforce it.

    This also a question whether the traditional OO approach can model the world as such to an acceptable degree or not. OO breaks in the circle vs. ellipse case. The relation between the usual Circle and Ellipse is IS-A in the mathematical sense. Sometimes the world has to be bent around the OO conceptual primitives. In dynamic languages the OO primitives can sometimes be extended to cover these situations. For instance the the transformation from Circle to Ellipse can be implemented in a static language with a design pattern called Bridge, which is quite contorted to plain metamorphism. Metamorphism is perfectly valid in some models, for instance, consider the lifecycle of a butterfly.

  • Actually the way that Microsoft operates, that should read more like "A computer on every desktop, running only Microsoft software".

  • I certainly hope so. It's an amusing vision, but you've made it all dark and scary now
  • Is Microsoft the first company to bring an innovative technology to market, or the first to popularize the technology so that the majority *are* first introduced to it as coming from Microsoft and thus perpetuate the myth that Microsoft actually inventes and innovates technology?
  • I wouldn't exactly try to take credit for the term "WebTone". In an industry full of buzzwords, that one is nearly the worst I've heard...(away from the attempted conversion of PCMCIA to PcCard).

    I mean really, if a dial tone refers to a tone prompting you to dial....then a web tone must be a tone prompting you to....wait a minute, that doesn't make sense.

    Andrew (really hating PHB buzzwords)

  • As far as I recollect it was first coined as the "Internet Dial Tone" by the former head of the Open Group, Joseph De Feo.

    In a previous existence he was a champion of open systems at Barclays Bank in the UK
  • On my system Java is not too bad. I wrote some code which does some matrix operations in both C++ and Java. The Java was 30% slower than the C++, which is really pretty good. This was running on IBM's OS/2 Java 1.1.8 (which is *much* faster than MS Java). With the performance improvements I've seen with Java I suspect that Java will come close to C++ in performance within the next year or so. Running Hot Java 3.0 on OS/2 loads faster and feels faster than Netscape 4.61 for OS/2. Java's only 4 years old. Remember how C++ was at 4 years old?
  • Can you give me an example of how Multiple Inheiritance is a flaw? Since you are an AC, I can't mail you, but you can mail me (mass@ufl.edu).

    I have written several large programs in C++, and have only used Multiple Inheiritance once. When I saw what I had done, I changed it and no longer used MI. It really isn't a great feature, and with interfaces and inner classes in java, I've yet to see a single example of it.

    Sure Microsoft implemented multiple inheiritance in their 'J--' product, claiming that it was 'required, they couldn't implement things without it', but when I look at the bastardized code, it looks like ATL code- and my MFC programming experience tells me that this is the WRONG way to do things (object interfaces should be inner classes). the Multiple inheiritance way leads to namespace collisions.

    -David Waite
  • >They needed metal 'mouse pads'

    These don't, thats the innovative thing. Still it must be the only truly innovative thing they have done.

    One of the truly amazing things to come out of the DOJ case is MSloths claim that they can only innovate if there is a monopoly, and to think I thought it was competition that promotes true innovation.
  • Exactly!

    Anyone who claims Java is just a toy language is unqualified to comment on it, because it just isn't true. I've been doing sizeable commercial apps with Java for a long time (longer than most, anyway), and it kicks serious butt over anything else in the following critical areas:
    1) Portability (duh!)
    2) Error handling (too easy with Java!)
    3) Debugging (if you have a good tool and good technique. Command-line development is pathetically inefficient. I use Visual Age Enterprise, and long ago got my money back in increased productivity.)
    4) Memory handling (the great flaws in C/C++ are lost memory and bad pointers)
    5) It plays nicely with others. I've done programs linking C, assembly, C++, SQL, ... with Java, and it always works
    6) Threading for free (threads really suck in almost anything else!)
    7) Excellent protection of variables (prevention of race conditions). Crucial for threaded programs, since it's almost impossible to catch in testing. Such occurences are probably the cause of many Windows crashes
    8) Less customer support needed, since it's less likely to have uncaught bugs
    9) Easier to reuse and replace modules. Reused code and free code are almost synonymous
    10) Easy to have it upgrade itself
    11) Most important of all: fast and easy to finish stable code. Sure, maybe its runtime is 10+% slower, but so what?! I typically cut coding time at least in half by using Java due to all of the above. It's impossible for a C version to be faster when it's several months from actually getting finished (unlike the Java version, which would already be done!). The old adage that time is money is so true! Spend a couple hundred dollars apiece on faster machines to make up the difference in speed, from the far more significant hundreds of thousands you saved in development costs and maintenance. Duh! Is doubling the cost really worth that (theoretical) improvement in performance? Outside of something like gaming, I don't think so! (and I'm still convinced that somebody's going to pull off writing hit games in Java, with assembly subroutines for some graphics handling)

    Oh, yeah, we were talking about Sun. Cool machines, but their pres. is a weasel, and is no better than Gates. But since they turn out some cool _original_ technology (my favorite of which is, obviously, Java), I forgive them their sins (once they repent by handing everything over to Linux!).
  • Ah - here it is:

    (The links are expired, and interestingly Amazon doesn't have these releases at their website)

    Amazon.com Said:

    (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__1.h tml)

    Company Press Release
    SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.

    Amazon.com Issues Statement Regarding Barnes & Noble's Acquisition Of Ingram Book Group

    SEATTLE, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN - news) today released the following statement in response to the announcement that Barnes & Noble Inc. has agreed to acquire Ingram Book Group:

    Amazon.com currently purchases books from a variety of sources, including Ingram. Our long-term strategy has been to diversify our supplier base and to increase our direct purchasing from publishers. We anticipate that this trend will continue for some time to come.

    That said, Ingram is the largest book distributor in the United States, and many independent book stores rely on it as their sole source of supply. The combination of the country's biggest book retailer with its biggest distributor, and, given the recently announced Bertelsmann transaction, its biggest publisher group, undoubtedly will raise industry-wide concerns. Like other independent booksellers, we hope that Ingram resolves those concerns with a strong commitment to treating all bookstores fairly.

    ``To our customers: Worry not,'' said Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. ``Those who make choices that are genuinely good for customers, authors, and publishers will prevail. Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.''

    Barnes And Noble Responded with:

    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/981106/barnesandn_1.html

    barnesandnoble.com Issues Statement Regarding Amazon's Statement About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

    With regard to the acquisition of the Ingram Book Group, Barnes & Noble, Inc. is amused to read Jeff Bezos' quote, where he describes himself as an independent bookseller: ``Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.''

    Well, Mr. Bezos, what with a market capitalization of some $6 billion and more than four million customers, we suppose you know a Goliath when you see one. Your company is now worth more than Barnes & Noble, Borders, and all of the independent booksellers combined. Might we suggest that slingshots and pot shots should not be part of your arsenal.

    To which Amazon Replied:

    http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__2.ht ml

    Company Press Release

    SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.

    Amazon.com Issues Statement Regarding BarnesandNoble.com's Statement Regarding Amazon.com's Statement About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

    SEATTLE, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- "Oh."

  • I thought it was just the opposite, they are
    infamous for stealing other's work and passing
    it off as their own.


    please remove nospam
  • Anyone who claims Java is just a toy language is unqualified to comment on it, because it just isn't true

    I implore you, please don't make silly statements like this. Think about the logic there.
  • mr dobalina, mr bob dobalina...

  • Sun missed the obvious slam -- the one so graciously provided by Microsoftie VinodV:

    When describing this problem to JimAll, he provided the perfect analogy of "chasing tail lights". The easiest way to get coordinated behavior from a large, semi-organized mob is to point them at a known target. Having the taillights provides concreteness to a fuzzy vision. In such situations, having a taillight to follow is a proxy for having strong central leadership.

    There you have it, straight from the source! Microsoft isn't plagiarizing, they're simply chasing Sun's tail lights! :^)

    Plagiarize,
    Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
    Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
    So don't shade your eyes,
    But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
    Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
    -- Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky [wiw.org]

  • The big problem I have always had with Java from a coding standpoint is due to my C/C++ background. GC makes me feel dirty. I want to free that memory when I'm done with it damnit. After coding something in Java, I'm always sort of nervous that the Garbage Collection thing is all just a trick. :/

  • Apply a little logic: If a server was brought to its knees by slashdotting, wouldn't the name resolution to it have to work first?

    Your DNS is messed. Or more likely netscape glitched and blamed DNS like it always does. Hit shift-reload a few times.
  • Legendary? Aye, that's a tad strong. Not everything they do is obviously inspired by other work (such as that done by Xerox PARC, or others).

    If memory serves, they do have a fairly insane number of patents (many of which for seemingly minor details, such as single-clicking behavior under various circumstances and what not).

    They have the resources to try strange things like mice with wheels, or {shudder} "Bob"-like software, because even if something completely flops, their flagship products will still more than compensate...
  • Yes. I'd generally rather implement the destructors and deallocators, and be *sure* that I can deallocate memory in a timely manner without waiting for a GC, and also that if an app leaks, it's the fault of the code itself (something that can be examined) versus the JVM.

    If you've ever seen a particular vendor's JVM die with a bus error, you'll recognize the twin irritations that a) some implementations bite, and you have to work around them in your allegedly platform-indy code, and b) you won't be able to examine the JVM code to figure out what's triggering the crash, but instead can do just black-box testing and workarounds.

    The documentation is sometimes iffy -- neither "Java in a Nutshell" nor Sun's online tutorials seem to bother noting byte-ordering (which is an issue for any app[let] that communicates, either via sockets or files...), leaving it to the user to experiment and determine that it's big-endian.

    Or, if you need unrestricted network access, but the browsers you target don't natively support javakey, then you either have to force a plugin or have further hacks 'round that.

    Errrrrrrrrrrg.
  • I find it amusing that Sun is mocking Microsoft when Scott McNealy "borrowed" his whole Webtone focus and wording from John Roth, CEO of Nortel Networks. Solar flare must have fried their memories.

    Not that I like Microsoft. I dream of a Microsoft free day. My wife (a computer novice) almost weekly begs me to dump Win98 on our home machine and install Linux. She is extremely frustrated by the fact that Win98 croaks constantly and yearns for the stability I experience at work with our linux boxes.

    Hmm, that would keep the kids off our machine and on theirs...
  • Get new glasses damnit and stop being so whiney.. not like they can't afford it ;> .

    -sporty
  • Ok, I'm not saying that you can't do things without MI, but if your logical analysis of the problem domain ends up with a model that has MI then you _shouldn't_ change the model not to use MI. This means giving up the seamlessness of OO from analysis to implementation.

    This may sound like methodologist ranting, but the cleaner the mapping from the analysis model to the implementation model the better. I wonder what is the real world conceptual counterpart of an inner class or interface. Well, clearly I'm biased toward the methodological and philosophical side of OO, while most people in the US are being taught the pragmatic side of OO (dependency management and modularity). The philosophical side of OO, clean mapping from analysis model to implementation, is easier to implement in dynamic languages. CLOS for instance can do an extremely clean implementation of the multiple dispatch and the circle vs. ellipse dilemma can be solved using the polymorphic abilities of the language.

    Circle is a subclass of ellipse, no question about it. The problem is that the superclass probably has operations that may violate the invariant of the subclass, which is a bit backwards... This is a problem of the static languages, they attach the form (struct) of the implementation tightly to the logical object, which leads to problems in certain situations like the circle-ellipse case. The solutions to these kinds of problems are usually quite contorted.

  • Isn't domination of NCs and anything else that can run software a fairly logical extension of domination of desktops? The latter was adequate before the advent of spiffy PDAs and powerful consoles and talk 'bout all these network appliances and all that, but now...

    If memory serves, MS did have a motto of something like "A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software" or so. Considering now that people are putting more computing functionality in devices that are not traditional desktop computers, why not update that? It's in line with, say, trying to wrest the PDA market from 3Com's Palm devices w/ CE, and so forth.

    Both MS and Sun could naturally have the same goal: domination of anything that runs -- or could run -- software. That could be an interesting fight {shrug}.
  • I haven't been over to Sun's site yet, but I suspect I understand why they posted this: is M$ *so* obsessed with spying on other companies, so that they don't get ahead of the self-proclaimed industry leader, that they'll steal something *so* petty as a mission statement?

    I mean, after all, most bloody companies out here have a missions statement that includes, usually last, chief place, "...to provide value for stockholders..."; that is, to make money for the CEO and the others with serious stockholdings. What's the *point* of a mission statement, other than to try to show that human resources, or whatever they call themselves, have some purpose (other than to not hire people, not promote people, not transfer people, but just talk to 'em and shuffle papers)?

    mark
  • Sun compared Microsoft to her, not her to Microsoft. There is a slight difference...
  • Not likely. Companies that have to please stockholders, and are usually very carefull how they word their vision statements. This gives shareholders an idea of where their money will be invested in the future.

    So with the above in mind, a Tech Company must come across as a Leader not a follower, as well as orginal and innovative, within their Vision Statement. MS used poor judgement and failed at all.
  • While I agree this is a little petty, the rest of your statements are poor, and not supported.

    People tend to forget that Sun is a Hardware Vendor, Solaris accounts for less than %10 of Sun profits, couple that with the support they must provide, Sun wants to drop it like a rock in the future. If Linux or any OS for that matter, were able to take full advantage of Sun's hardware they would jump ship in a minute. I personally believe they will jump within the next year.
    Take a look at SGI, SGI just dropped IRIX, why? It's just not paying for itself. SGI was in trouble and just said "Hey, let's concentrate on what can pay the bills, highend Hardware".

    Java dead. Where do you work? Here in the telecommunications sector most all client side apps are now written in Java. Maybe that's just here but I know we make quite alot of money selling this "stuff":)

    Rob
  • Does MS actually market it as WinTone? If so I think its a little too close to being just a coincidence. Though the comparison Sun gave was sorta loose. Doesn't sound as if Sun and MS are really talking about the same thing, or if so it sounds as if Sun has a clearer idea of what it is. The MS WinTone piece sounds like typical marketing blather. Not that Sun was that far from it, but at least it makes sense from Suns part.

    Set cron for 2 weeks for Sun to publically flame MS again.
  • Say what you will about Sun, but please remember this:
    • Because of Java, I/we can finally write programs for Windows (when we have to) without having to waste time on their dead-end APIs, keep my attention away from Linux and Solaris.
    • Sun DOES make some of the best hardware out there!
    • Sun has been pretty supportive of Linux overall... They help blackdown.org, and they have a Linux wrapper for Solaris too.
    • Some of Sun's founders (Bill Joy, et all) actually created much of the environment we love so much. They're still on our side!

    Sure, they've got a few problems too, but overall, wouldn't you agree that we're better off with Sun in our industry that without? I sure do!

  • Guys with big portfolios read vision statements.
  • If microsoft were smart (which it's not..) they would have MSN Messanger use the TOC servers instead of the oscar servers. That way, AOL couldn't get mad at Microsoft without hunting down other aim clients like gaim and faim that make use of the TOC servers.

  • I wonder which vision was stolen first.. Sun's vision of this "anything anywhere" crap, or Microsoft's "we want to rule the world" that Sun is striving for.

    This, of course, comes from the people who gave us "Java Server Pages". I wonder where they got the idea for that. Funny how Java Beans gives you the same functionality as ActiveX (except that it only really works with one language).

    Don't forget, Sun was always "open standard, open standard! Let the best implementation win!" Now that have a successful product like Java, they don't want it to be open. They just want to pretend that it's open.

    Don't just blindly follow Sun because they pick on Microsoft. They have warts, too.
  • Would that include Microsoft copying java?

    I seem to remember a little lawsuit that resulted in my prepackaged PCs coming with Windows and a little mostly unmarked (and totally unsupported) disk that said "update to Java VM".

    Get back to work, Bill might be watching.

  • Create a REAL product, so it better than anyone else, then open source it...Hmmmm, that wouldn't work would it?

    BortBox
  • Man, look at these comments...

    I though people had their troll detectors running while reading this site. Silly me ;-).

  • I agree fully. There are going to be similarities in vision statements and their ilk amoing companies with similar goals. But this goes a little to far. I mean micro$oft has a tendency to come up with sexy little marketing slogans so instead od connect anwher, anytime with any device or whatever it was how about "What do you want to connect Today?" I mean if you ran a company making intimate lubricant... how many ways could you say "We Make It Glide"???
  • The MS ones aren't the same as the Xerox ones, which required a grid.
    On a side note, most mice today are opto-mechanical...there's a little wheel with holes which interupts a LED-sensor pair. It's actually closer to an optical mouse conceptually then you might think at first. The grid is just inside the mouse, controled by a ball.
  • Give you a break? And what account should I address it to @microsoft.com?


    Instead, I think it is more appropriate to give you the Eastwood "Legend in his own mind" award. If you really want to understand what is legendary at Microsoft, send out a good survey asking whether they are known for innovation or arrogance!

  • For an appraisal of Microsoft's "innovation" look here [vcnet.com].

    Regards, Ralph.

  • Microsoft used to have a vision statement that was interesting: "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software." Now that's vision. And guess what? They did it. But what with "a computer on every desk" sounding a bit much like "take over the entire industry by any means necessary" to DoJ, they needed to tone down their published vision a bit. So they did what everybody else does: they got a hardcover book with an improbable title like "Building Managment Excellence for the Next Millenium", lifted a vision statement from Chapter 6 ("Vision Statement Excellence for the Next Millenium"), approved it in a committee, then filtered it through attorneys, and what came out was the same positionless, meaningless crap everybody else uses.

    Nowadays, mission statements and vision statements are intended to fit on plaques in the offices with nice carpet. They are what management use to "inspire" one another with the latest and greatest buzzwords--they get printed on tee shirts and given out as prizes for whoever regurgitates the right motivational mantras the fastest during the next Team Building Retreat. As a rule of thumb, mission and vision statements are so vague as to be meaningless; if the plaque contains the words "quality", "enable", or "enhance", feel free to rip it off the wall, flip it over, and use the back as a fish scaling board. That's probably the most useful it could ever be.

    --

  • I think the idea here is to visualize Bill Gates dancing backwards in high heels. Am I the only one turned on by this?

    --
  • Java is dead? Not really. Java has been around for 4 years. It took C roughly 10 years to become accepted over FORTRAN in the percentage that Java is over the rest of all languages. FORTRAN is still taught to engineers! Java isn't dead. Just compare the growth of java to C++. Many people still refuse to touch C++ even though its 12 years old, supercedes C and makes things like serialization trivial from an applications programmer point of view. Java does the same but it also makes memory management and porting trivial. The reason that I think its not accepted as much as it could be is that it forces OOP on you. Not that OOP is a bad thing, but not all programmers can program OOP (its true!). It has something to do with the ability to abstract I believe, and many programmers like to think of things as one thing after another and what they will actually do, not where they came from. The languages I most commonly use are Java, C++, and Perl. If I want it to be secure, portable, and not spend alot of time thinking about it I use Java. If I want it to be fast I use C++. Really fast, assembly. For hacks and testing software I use Perl.

    I figure Java is just as dead as Perl or C++.

  • It matters to investors, lawyers, and politicians. (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Monday August 16, 1999 @07:36PM (#1743461)
    This sort of thing may not matter to technical folks, but it does matter to investors, lawyers, and politicians. As long as those people consider Microsoft an innovative company and Gates a technical wizard, Microsoft will outcompete other companies for investments, and lawyers and politicians will take a hands-off approach to Microsoft.
  • Correct me if I misunderstood you Rob, but, I didn't really like that snipe at vision.

    I'm frankly very disappointed that you're mocking "vision". People do care about vision. Sun's "The network is the computer" is a great vision and very inspiring if you think about its implications. So what if it comes from a corporation? It's still an attempt at moving towards a goal other than making shareholders rich.

    Sure, vision is a misused concept, but it is one of the key factors that differentiate people that make a difference vs. people who just complain. The reason most vision statements SUCK is because most managers don't have an ounce of vision or leadership in their bones.

    On the other hand, companies like Sun *do* have leaders like Bill Joy that have had widespread technological influence. Other visionaries are people like Alan Kay, Don Norman, Doug Englebart, and Steve Wozniak.

    Who would you rather listen to, a visionary with a cool idea, or a cynic who just complains about stuff? Or do you just not want to listen to people with decent ideas just because they're part of an "Evil (tm) Corporation"?

    Leaders with vision try to "do the right thing", and are continually learning what the right thing is. People without vision often do the wrong thing well.

  • Ummm what? NT doesn't run the games that you can run on 98. It's somewhat more stable than 98, but not nearly as stable as Linux or Unix. Remember the win2000test.com machine? heheheh
  • you know, dilbert web site has really cool
    'vision statement' generator. well, actually
    this is a 'mission statement' generator, but
    what's the difference anyway?

    ---


    The customer can count on us to assertively leverage other's quality materials to allow us to enthusiastically create unique intellectual capital because that is what the customer expects


  • Lest you think that Sun has a Microsoft fixation, the reality check column on Sun's home page has applied the same microscope to SGI, HP, EMC and others in the past. There is an archive of past columns at :

    http://www.sun.com/dot-com/realitycheck/archive. html

    As you can see, Microsoft is the target only slightly more frequently than SGI or HP.
  • I know MS is first to have many technologies to market, but I do not think that they actually innovate many technologies. The obvious example is the Win GUI that both upgrades and degrades concepts of the Mac GUI. I think other companies do the innovation and come up with the ideas, but MS has the size and market strength to bring those ideas to market first, and, if not, they buy the innovator. I like the optical mouse idea, though. Don't know who actually thought up that. adam
  • Why should we be shocked should MS steal something? They have been caught at this sort of game before...

    Anyone else remember when they lost the lawsuit over doublespace?




  • ..It's a *given*

    Well, here's _my_ new vision statement:
    "I'm going to make applications which run only at the north pole next tuesday at 11am on a 386."

    Duh.

    Vision indeed...

    -- Listen to music [xoom.com]
  • sun seems really unprofessionally bitter on this press release (or whatever it is). the future of computing is very obviously going to have a lot of wireless, "instant internet" appliances. there's no reason sun should have a monopoly to that "vision", even if they were the first company to concentrate their efforts on this.

    of course, they're involved with the doj case, complaining about microsoft and has been angry with them for hijacking java. but simply attacking microsoft at every turn is not a good way to act. so, microsoft wants to compete in the market for the future internet appliances. that's a good thing. we don't have to have a sun monopoly, do we? i would think that if this came from any other company but microsoft, they wouldn't have said anything publically. and, in fact, i'm sure other companies have said things like this. this "vision" is almost a fact. this should've been left as an in-office joke memo.

    yes, microsoft is bad and evil and do everything wrong, but sun's constant "official" whining about their monopoly makes me respect them less. is there anything like this on red hat's website? i would be surprised if there is. "we did it first!" is not a good argument to get customers. "we did it better!" is. sun should've simply taken the imitation as a compliment and continued their effort to create products that are better than microsoft's, not just think up buzz words.
  • Damn that 'note' was funny.. I never believed something like that would ever be posted on a corporate site. Hats off to Sun ppl for having the balls to post it.. every other company would NEVER post anything like that coz they're scared of M$.

    mtor

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