I, Cringely | The Misinformed Thursday, May 08 2008
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011108.html
I've never much cared for this man (frankly I've only ever read about 4 articles written by him), but this article takes the cake. I fully understand everything he says about the DOJ deal, although I think likening Microsoft to a murderer is a bit of a stretch.
The rest of the article is mostly attacking .NET. One thing that people (Mr Cringely) need to realize that the .NET Framework and the applications written for .NET (including the .NET MyServices and the other things that HailStorm used to be) are not in themselves .NET.
" Within three years .NET will be everywhere whether customers actually use it or not. And that ubiquity, rather than commercial success, is what is important to Microsoft."
That is very true. Soon the .NET runtime will be a download on Windows Update and will start to be shipped with new versions of Windows. No one is doubting that.
"Here is the deal. .NET is essentially a giant system for tracking user behavior and, as such, will become Microsoft's most valuable tactical tool. It is a system for tracking use of services, and the data from that tracking is available only to Microsoft. "
Now here's where he starts getting a bit wacky... The last time I checked, .NET itself is nothing but a large programming framework/technology and some new languages. These languages are compiled to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) that is then interpreted at run time and JITted by the runtime environment. The .NET MyServices are the "big bad user tracking" things. The .NET MyServices do in fact "track" the users by providing a central point of authentication through .NET Passport. Third party services meant to interact with .NET Passport are not tracked by Microsoft. I can create an application that uses .NET Passport, .NET MyWallet, and .NET MyCalendar, and wrap it all up into one nice little application, and the only thing Microsoft would be tracking is the access to /their/ services. They have no ability to track what I do in my own application, except for the calls I make to their services and most likely my "key" that I use to give my application access to the .NET MyServices. Frankly, for the price of not having to build those pieces myself, having Microsoft know when I use /their/ service isn't that bad at all. Your ISP knows every web page you view. It knows every MP3 you download. They really do monitor network traffic. Are they bad as well?
".NET is an integral part of Windows' communication system with all calls going through it. This will allow Microsoft (and only Microsoft) to track the most frequently placed calls. If the calls are going to a third-party software package, Microsoft will know about it. This information is crucial. With it, Microsoft can know which third-party products to ignore and which to destroy. With this information, Microsoft can develop its own add-in packages and integrate them into the .NET framework, thus eliminating the third-party provider. A year later, as explained above, the problem is solved."
.NET has nothing to do with Windows. Well it does have something to do with WIndows, and that is that it runs on Windows. To clarify that even further, .NET runs on top of the .NET Framework. The .NET framework implements the definition of the Common Langauge Infrastructure (CLI) which provides for everything necessary to run .NET code. Anyone who wants can develop their own .NET runtime as long as it adheres to the CLI. In fact, some people are [1]. So now that this is likely going to work on *Nix, does that mean that Microsoft will somehow own *Nix flavors?
"Alternately, Microsoft could use the information (this .NET-generated market research that Microsoft gets for free and nobody else gets at all) to change Windows to do service discovery giving an automatic priority to Microsoft's middleware. The advantage here is in giving the appearance of openness without actually being open."
Okay, here's my response: don't use it! Frankly, I highly doubt I would ever write something that used .NET MyServices. I don't see the point. It's expensive, bulky, and for any company that has any decent-sized IT department, they can write thier own. And save money in the process! If you don't use .NET MyServices, you have no problems. In my point of view, .NET MyServices will be mostly used by MSN. All of the services available on the MSN network ( and MSN Explorer) will silently be moved to use the .NET MyServices. At that point, it may be forseeable that some companies would want to tie into this pre-established network of data that can be put to their fingertips. But that still doesn't matter. If you don't want to use it, don't. I'm sure the version of WIndows after XP will /force/ someone to get a Passport. Does that mean that in order to authenticate on a website that the site must implement the Passport authentication system? No! Get that through your head!
"Remember that unpopular is not bad for a columnist. UNREAD is bad. So I thank all those people who got upset and told their friends to read what idiotic things I had written."
I kind of see a lot of this man's writing as purely "controversial" for absolutely no reason. If you stay ignorant, write a lot, somehow get a fanbase of loyal readers, then you're surely able to maintain this base of readers.
[1]
http://www.go-mono.org (there are more)
I've never much cared for this man (frankly I've only ever read about 4 articles written by him), but this article takes the cake. I fully understand everything he says about the DOJ deal, although I think likening Microsoft to a murderer is a bit of a stretch.
The rest of the article is mostly attacking .NET. One thing that people (Mr Cringely) need to realize that the .NET Framework and the applications written for .NET (including the .NET MyServices and the other things that HailStorm used to be) are not in themselves .NET.
" Within three years .NET will be everywhere whether customers actually use it or not. And that ubiquity, rather than commercial success, is what is important to Microsoft."
That is very true. Soon the .NET runtime will be a download on Windows Update and will start to be shipped with new versions of Windows. No one is doubting that.
"Here is the deal. .NET is essentially a giant system for tracking user behavior and, as such, will become Microsoft's most valuable tactical tool. It is a system for tracking use of services, and the data from that tracking is available only to Microsoft. "
Now here's where he starts getting a bit wacky... The last time I checked, .NET itself is nothing but a large programming framework/technology and some new languages. These languages are compiled to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) that is then interpreted at run time and JITted by the runtime environment. The .NET MyServices are the "big bad user tracking" things. The .NET MyServices do in fact "track" the users by providing a central point of authentication through .NET Passport. Third party services meant to interact with .NET Passport are not tracked by Microsoft. I can create an application that uses .NET Passport, .NET MyWallet, and .NET MyCalendar, and wrap it all up into one nice little application, and the only thing Microsoft would be tracking is the access to /their/ services. They have no ability to track what I do in my own application, except for the calls I make to their services and most likely my "key" that I use to give my application access to the .NET MyServices. Frankly, for the price of not having to build those pieces myself, having Microsoft know when I use /their/ service isn't that bad at all. Your ISP knows every web page you view. It knows every MP3 you download. They really do monitor network traffic. Are they bad as well?
".NET is an integral part of Windows' communication system with all calls going through it. This will allow Microsoft (and only Microsoft) to track the most frequently placed calls. If the calls are going to a third-party software package, Microsoft will know about it. This information is crucial. With it, Microsoft can know which third-party products to ignore and which to destroy. With this information, Microsoft can develop its own add-in packages and integrate them into the .NET framework, thus eliminating the third-party provider. A year later, as explained above, the problem is solved."
.NET has nothing to do with Windows. Well it does have something to do with WIndows, and that is that it runs on Windows. To clarify that even further, .NET runs on top of the .NET Framework. The .NET framework implements the definition of the Common Langauge Infrastructure (CLI) which provides for everything necessary to run .NET code. Anyone who wants can develop their own .NET runtime as long as it adheres to the CLI. In fact, some people are [1]. So now that this is likely going to work on *Nix, does that mean that Microsoft will somehow own *Nix flavors?
"Alternately, Microsoft could use the information (this .NET-generated market research that Microsoft gets for free and nobody else gets at all) to change Windows to do service discovery giving an automatic priority to Microsoft's middleware. The advantage here is in giving the appearance of openness without actually being open."
Okay, here's my response: don't use it! Frankly, I highly doubt I would ever write something that used .NET MyServices. I don't see the point. It's expensive, bulky, and for any company that has any decent-sized IT department, they can write thier own. And save money in the process! If you don't use .NET MyServices, you have no problems. In my point of view, .NET MyServices will be mostly used by MSN. All of the services available on the MSN network ( and MSN Explorer) will silently be moved to use the .NET MyServices. At that point, it may be forseeable that some companies would want to tie into this pre-established network of data that can be put to their fingertips. But that still doesn't matter. If you don't want to use it, don't. I'm sure the version of WIndows after XP will /force/ someone to get a Passport. Does that mean that in order to authenticate on a website that the site must implement the Passport authentication system? No! Get that through your head!
"Remember that unpopular is not bad for a columnist. UNREAD is bad. So I thank all those people who got upset and told their friends to read what idiotic things I had written."
I kind of see a lot of this man's writing as purely "controversial" for absolutely no reason. If you stay ignorant, write a lot, somehow get a fanbase of loyal readers, then you're surely able to maintain this base of readers.
[1]
http://www.go-mono.org (there are more)
See, nobody wants to hear that .Net is an ultra-modern programming environment. Writing about how nice writing in C# is and how good Visual Studio .Net is won't garner you any readers. Somehow, when MS gives itself the ability to figure out which programs are using the services it licenses (as in Passport, Calendar, etc) it's THE EVIL EMPIRE AT WORK but when programmers let a web service know what software is using it (via some extra header information), it's the spirit of open development.
I strongly recommend you read Dave Winer (http://scriptingnews.userland.com) and alternately the people who keep track of him (http://winerlog.editthispage.com). He makes Cringely look like a super genius, yet for some reason people bother listening to what he has to say. Amazing.