I doubt MS will be porting Visual Studio to Linux, it's just to tightly wound up with Windows. It would be a lot more practical to allow for remote debugging, and for Linux to be a "target" for Visual Studio, but I think even this is unlikely. I think .Net is the strategy, plain and simple. Allow developers to write apps in VB and C#, and have those applications run on the "portable" version of .Net. Make it easy for sys admins to install the .Net runtime, and have the legions of VB developers with the millions of departmental apps out there force the market open.

As memory serves, at the time of the investment in Apple, MS was selling roughly $300M a year worth of Office for Mac and there was real concern that Apple was going to fail. From speaking with the Microsofties last week, it did sound like at some level at least they considered the move a reasonable "investment" although I have a lot of trouble believing that it wasn't a strategic move. When I think about the Apple investment now, I'm wondering if the .Net strategy (in whatever form it was in then), wasn't a reason there too

I've watched wild rumors circulate ever since Microsoft made its US$135 million investment in Corel, and to me most seem pretty far fetched. What do you guys think? Is MS trying to keep all of their competitors alive by feeding them cash in order to keep the Justice dept at bay? Does Microsoft want to co-opt a major Linux vendor into supporting .Net? What is this wild thought of a Linux distribution running over .Net? Would it be worth anything

Hmmm, lots to think about. It's interesting that you mention a "personality" I think you're bang-on with that. Yahoo was successful because "someone" sifted through all the crap and put everything into some kind of order that made sense, and actually tried to separate the valuable stuff from the garbage. In the IT world, books and magazines are very hesitant to do product reviews or endorse products because they favor one advertiser over another, despite the fact that product reviews are very well received statistically by readers. Although I find this whole issue intellectually stimulating, everyone knows (I think) that I'm also quite interested in finding the best ways to get our product information in the hands of the people who need it, in a timely and valuable way. Banner ads do work, but the net just screams for something better, way better, for both viewers and advertisers alike.

True, fundamentally web advertising offers the promise of providing exactly the right ad, at exactly the right time, which would theoretically be ideal for everyone. TV ads have matured, and the big decisions have been made there. On the web however, I think we still have much to learn. Do people really look at banner ads? I'm skeptical (as both an advertiser and as a web user). I think more fundamental sponsorships (like the cigarette industry and golf for example) make more sense, or offerings like Google.com where advertisers listing are integrated into the search results. Google's success seems to indicate that users don't find this bias in search results offensive.

Despite chest pounding by the big advertising firms, all appearances are that on-line advertising is having a pretty major meltdown. Companies like Engage have laid off large numbers of staff, rates are falling and there is a general cooling in attitudes about the way people feel about web ads. As viewers, I think we'd all like to see advertising go away, but like advertising on television, in newspapers and in other media I also think we realize that it's a necessary evil. Personally, I don't mind well targeted, appropriate and on-topic ads. I find them interesting. If Microsoft releases a new computerphone, I'm interested, if there's a new version of TrueTime, I'm interested in that too. What do you guys think? Are the on-line ad companies going to take a bath? (I'd sure love to see rates fall dramatically lower!

So how exactly is the web site operator supposed to know whether the .gif software used was licensed or not? And for that matter how is Unisys going to be able to tell. It's been years and years since I looked at the gif spec (89a?), but I don't remember any authored-by tags being contained in the file. Anyone know this better than I do?

Colin, Hey, I'm not trying to rain on your parade ... I just want expound my highly biased and ill-informed view :) Banner advertising inside an application has a number of pretty serious limitations that make it less valuable for advertisers than web ads: 1. You have no idea how long the ads will run, so you can't really advertise a special, sale, or anything time sensitive. Geez, you couldn't even advertise a product or model year of car, because in 3 years people would be still be seeing the 'new' 1998 Corvette, or Visual Studio 5 ads... 2. People may not be able to take immediate action on the ads. The user might not be connected to the net, and therefore couldn't link to the advertisers web site. 3. You can't do the amazingly powerful, DOJ attention getting cruise missle ad targeting that ad companies like DoubleClick pride themselves on. You might do this: 1. Put the banner ads in and offer a version without banner ads for some reasonable fee. Some percentage of users would upgrade (although I doubt I would) 2. Ask users to register. Get their email addresses and develop some kind of meaningful and valuable newsletter. Email sponsorships are much more valuable than banner ads anyway, and you don't suffer the same problems as you do with "bannerware" You application obviously solves some problem, and you can likely come up with a weekly or monthly newsletter that speaks to that problem. D

Colin, Considering the general meltdown in banner advertising, I think i'd make sure there was some economic reason to purse the "bannerware" concept. Could be you add the banner advertising capability to your software only to find that either people won't advertise, or the rates are so low you don't make any money at it. (hmmm, maybe I'll start a discussion topic on this

Thanks guys

Might be more than one :) not sure though

Hi Jonathan, Although I don't believe that any intellectual property issues exist with zLib, who legally warrants that there aren't any? Can you sue the authors or the legal counsel that reviewed the library if they were wrong? FWIW, I think Intellectual property issues are of paramount concern. Ask any corporate counsel in any corporation with a worth of more than $20M, people lose a lot of sleep over this (and corporations spend a lot of time in court over this). Particulary in the areas of compression, encryption, delta comparisons, etc. Although our library doesn't use zLib, I don't see any problem in Stingray utilizing a standard library in their toolkit, unless they aren't being up-front about it. Simply cleaning up the interface and making it easier to use with MFC would be of value, and certainly worth the $495/70 classes = $7 that a developer would pay for it, considering that they *are* warranting it, and are legally liable if there in-fact is an intellectual property issue. In the end of course it is personal choice. Far too often however our fellow developers put code into their applications without thought of its origin, of warranties, and of these legal issues and put themselves and their employers at risk. I have no doubt that companies that are serious about using libraries like zLib (such as Microsoft or AOL) solicit an outside legal opinion on intellectual property issues before including it in anything important. That's how they get their intellectual property protection, from their legal counsel (if they are wrong they can sue their lawyers.) Anyway, legal stuff gives me a headache :) In short, I heartfully say that it is not a non-issue!

Hey Patrice, I'm sure there are about 500 compression libraries available on the net, but if you're looking for a commercial solution (with nice things like intellectual property rights and patent protection... usually of concern to corporate dev's), you should have a look at our Ultimate Toolbox. Here's a link to the docs on the COXCompressor class, one of the 300 or so in the kit. http://www.dundas.com/docs_online/toolbox/file/COXCompressor/overview.htm http://www.dundas.com

Tom, I think fundamentally putting a "lock" on software puts people off. There has to be some value in connecting to a server beyond copy protection, and I think having some part of the app centrally hosted is not a bad approach in the grander scope of things. FWIW, I don't think I have a piece of software right now that doesn't greatly benefit from an internet connection. Your point about the about of trust you have to have to give an application full access to your machine is well taken. Maybe there's an opportunity for a web service in that...? A trusted company (IBM, Microsoft, Rainbow, etc.) offers a web authentication service, and it ensures that no sensitive data is exchanged. Might work, but it would have to be totally free and probably be integrated into the OS so it was standardized enough to be valuable

David, I think your approach is pretty much ideal, and it could apply to almost every kind of software if you think about the design issues up-front. Every program receives periodic updates, bug fixes, patches, etc., and I've purchased a number of packages that use this method, not specifically as a copy protection, but as an integral part of their service. I think in countries other than the US, that demanding an internet connection is quite a bit more difficult, but it shouldn't be a problem in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, etc. Really, the Internet becomes the dongle. My concern with internet based authentication isn't that I'm being authenticated, but rather that I don't know what information is being sent over the wire.

Frank, I agree, it sucks. I'm sure you can understand the position we put ourselves in selling sourcecode based products. I've actually caught people posting snippets our code on CodeGuru if you can believe it. I play EverQuest and their copy protection model is pretty simple: It's useless w/o also buying a subscription to their service. I think the "ultimate" :) goal is to make your software offering much more valuable to own than steal. Does anyone actually run their company on pirated Accounting software? Or write code on a pirated compiler? Maybe they do, it would scare the crap out of me though.

I think the point behind web services is to really allow software to interoperate, and to finally release the legions of human beings that keyboard enter accounting documents to find a higher calling. Internet sites that now attempt to cover their costs through advertising may not be a good fit for webservices, and maybe sites like google, or goto that rank paid links higher will lead in the web services arena. It's hard to tell right now. Microsoft's Biztalk initiative is pretty key in the whole webservices plan. It hopes to specify the "interfaces" that link disparate business processes, and to join together all the different mechanisms by which organizations now exchange standard information. Imagine standard interfaces that would allow you, using Quickbooks, to send an invoice electronically to your client, who uses Peachtree. Imagine a standard format that all accounting packages accepted. EDI has promised this for years and years, but only the largest companies have put it in place. No question that a whole series of web services will emerge, like Microsoft's Passport architecture, that will become fundamental pieces of application development. There will be standard services for currency exchange, payroll deduction calculations, translation, calculating shipping costs (no question FedEx and others have this in the works), etc. and it will be adventageous for we as applications developers to make use of these services. Will we all run out tomorrow and buy subscriptions to a whole list of webservices... I doubt it. But I do believe that vendors will certainly open up their systems to make it easier to integrate with their systems. That's a more reasonable economic driver IMO. I don't think

What a mess. I read through the articles you pointed to Chris, and it's amazing what a mud-slinging event this is turning into. Is the Linux crowd simply being more provocative? Trying to engage Microsofties in fight? I mean there have been tons of rival OSs in the past, and I don't remember them digressing to the point where someone like MSNBC.com would respond emotionally. Maybe the Internet is changing the way big business has to deal with issues and comments. I can certainly see why it's in LinuxToday's interest to stoke the fire, as a much smaller fish they are going to benefit from the exposure that having MSNBC.com's attention will give them. All the wrong people are throwing out very quotable lines that I'm sure will be repeated for months or years. Enough to make the PR managers at these companies cringe I'm sure

I've always found this site an interesting place to poke around: http://www.cetus-links.org

Chris, you know it's funny. I was previously a voracious consumer of magazines, but in the last 18 months I'd say my thirst for absorbing information in that format has really fallen off. FWIW, I still find that MSDN magazine (previously MSJ) is the best source of whitewashed Microsoft propaganda :), which is still very important for us all to know, and it gives excellent treatment to MS technologies that are in the pipe. Hail to Don, Matt and George who keep me reading! The slide-rule guy in me still loves to pick up a copy of C++ User's Journal (CUJ to we insiders), and Dr. Dobb's (DDJ) although Dobb's is going *way* Java and Linux (which I find interesting to read, but not valuable for day-to-day work. I personally am much more interested reading web based material in places like this, as you get the unwashed stuff from the authors, and an often heated debate follows in the comments below. I think web stuff can be more dynamic, and can give treatment to very minor topics that magazines would never find page space for.