Re: The big intro text on their website homepage says...

"When the cloud drops like a rock, there's nothing left overhead but empty. blue skies"

And on the ground are the remains of the suckers that paid for the cloud and got splattered when it crashed on their heads.

Re: Act 1, Scene 1

"throws a Surface Pro against the wall" - a hefty brick would do a lot of damage to the wall.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@Don Mitchell, Actually it is connected with the OS - People that use Windows know or care relatively little about security and therefore it's unsurprising that such people let certs expire. It's not the coincidence it seems, methinks. Eadon sees deeper.

"Amazon are experts at dealing with emergencies because they use Linux?" Sounds like bullshit to me. London Stock Exchange - they switched to Windows and the system crashed. They couldn't bring it up and a Trillion was lost in Trades. They quickly reverted to Linux and have been fine ever since.

FYI Dynamics CRM is Microsofts photocopy of Amazon's AWS and Salesforce CRM. BTW Microsoft were caught astroturfing (again), with an actor posing as a businessman pretending to prefer Dynamics.

"Dave Cutler doesn't know how to design an operating system" - Cutler copied VMS to make the NT kernel. Granted that kernel was OK. But the crap on top of that kernel sucks. The Win 32 API, the bloat that subsequent engineers added to it, the layer-upon layer of crap - apparently there are 50 complex, interwoven layers and a serious engineer can master only about 3 of these.

"if you think Linux never fails without a lot of tweeking and patching," - FUD

"then I gotta wonder why you feel so passionate about a subject you don't actually know much about" - My friend, it seems it is you who is the one who is ignorant of both operating systems and operations. Your entire tirade of clueless PHB bullshit is hereby repudiated.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@Spoddyhalfwit - yes, it's a cert issue - but, you know what? Windows systems seem to be chosen by the types of people that do not understand security very well. And such people are more likely to overlook even basic tasks, like ensuring the PKI certs don't expire.

So it's not a Windows issue, yet somehow it IS a windows issue.

Re: 20 goto 10 - MS GOTO FAIL

@ElNumbre - there have been at least 3 - THREE - MAJOR Azure embarassments in the space of a year - there was another one only two weeks ago, that has Microsoft's finest spending a week recovering users' data after Azure crashed.

To be pedantic, only Microsoft fails like this, other megacorps put in place sensible engineering processes.

Amazon and Google and even Salesforece have cloud systems that handle exponentially more data than Microsoft's mickey mouse Azure system. Those megacorps use Linux server systems to do the job.

Re: Data Utilities

@mmeier - so? Without the "application layer" of the stack working correctly on the servers then the internet is useless.

Fortunately for us all, however, the internet does "route" around damage, it can avoid servers running MS Azure. Though admittedly that's not coded into TCP/IP. Yet.

Re: @plrndl

@AC 16:10 ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hehehe ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha :-)

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@AC 17:54 - I'm not here to win a BEAUTY contest, I am here to tell the TRUTH! And THEY CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@mmeier - the argument, "nothing is perfect" is a meaningless argument. Why are you guys so forgiving towards such a dereliction of duty?

Some organisations are more competent than others. Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Apple etc. do not let their Cloud certs expire. I mean, it's such a fundamental aspect of security. Only Microsoft, with their casual attitude to security, could operate a cloud system that could FAIL in this way. It hardly garners confidence in Microsoft's motivation or capabilities to manage data securely.

If MS were running a hospital, everyone would be dying in the winter because they forgot to pay the heating bills. Would you trust such a hospital? Oh sure, they can operate on me, I'm sure they know what they're doing!

If you were an engineer, you would understand.

Re: .. and nothing of value was lost.

@AC 15:36 "You can pretty much be assured that they will engineer a way to prevent this happening again"

Hahahah they said that about security too, but Windows STILL needs a virus checker and it's 2013!

MS write software that is low quality and they have dysfunctional management. Yes, they will put in place some process where some droid checks the PKI certs get renewed before going tits up, but, you wait and see - there will be more disasters. It's in Microsoft's nature to make something "Good enough" but not Excellent. But "Good Enough" does not cut it with clouds.

You can't make your beta software a "Version 1.0" in the Cloud because Beta testing in the Cloud gets embarrassing - your bugs cause world wide outages, as happened here.

Re: This doesn't kill "the cloud" for me

@cpreston - you seem to be apologising for Microsoft's incompetence. If this was a one-off occurrence, then, sure, we can say, it was just a freak mistake, it can happen to anybody.

However, you seem to be turning a blind eye to the litany of dumb F**K UPS by MS. Everything they do is dumb these days, from a legion of security fails, to customer data loss on an unprecedented scale (Danger) to the very recent Azure screw up of a crash followed by a week trying to recover the data.

If you trust MS to have the competence in security, reliability, resilience to manage your data, then you must be a PHB.

Re: .. and nothing of value was lost.

@cpreston - WTF? You come out with some real crap. You think that Microsoft have mended their ways since the Danger debacle? That was caused by a clueless MS exec. She ordered the engineers NOT to back up prior to an upgrade, despite their strong warnings. And *wham* - the users of Dangers phones lost their data.

The point is this: Microsoft are project-manager - not engineer - driven. So you will always end up with Microsoft screwing things up due to poor management decisions, PHB style.

You cannot trust Microsoft to be competent, and ergo, you cannot trust Azure.

What did we just see? A world wide outage of the Azure cloud. Caused by what seems an error that a fool would avoid making.

If MS can't manager their PKI keys, what hope is there that they can keep your data safe, or keep your data secure? As I say, only Microsoft makes these amateurish mistakes due to it's "f*ck it, just deliver" project management led culture.

EPIC FAIL!

Re: Just what you need

@Lars "Just what you need"

Bullshit! Why do people say that we can't do science whilst there is inequality? The amount spent on space is hardly a rounding error on the US budget. Spending less on astronomy will do nothing to fix the "divide".

Muppet!

Re: History will...

There is a US law that does categorise this. It's not a conspiracy, the US gov actually wrote it down! Even Stalin didn't do that.

Re: In Redmond Microsoft fire the photo copiers up.

@vishal vashisht - Apple take pre-invented concepts and improve on them. They have a knack for creating new markets based on style and they excel at execution.

Re: Willy Gates Melinda

@W.O.Frobozz - in MS they attempt to preserve their female staff as there is a relative dearth of them. It's all about "affirmative action hires" where less qualified people from a perceived minority group are promoted over the heads of those who are more qualified.

Re: @SuccessCase

@Trevor_Pott - even if what you say is correct, let's assume for the sake of argument that it is, even so, the price of the machine to run Windows 7 "Starter" was way too high. If you price your machines out of the market then you FAIL, which is what the original poster was pointing out, I think.

The entire point of netbooks was that they were really cheap to buy and ran a fast OS (Linux). That's not how MS does business so they successfully sabotaged the game.

It was easy for MS to kill Linux netbook systems, but they won't find it so easy to attack Google.

Re: @SuccessCase

@AC 13:08 "I just inadvertently echoed Eadon! Someone take me out back and shoot me :("

If you dare tell the truth then prepare to get shot down whether you like it or not....

Re: @SuccessCase

@Trevor_Pott - I am afraid that it you who are "full of shit" as you quaintly put it.

Netbooks running linux were cheap and ran Linux, which runs fast on very affordable kit. MS then ported XP to netbooks and strong-armed the OEM's to stop selling Linux netbooks. Because of Windows bloat, Netbooks need to be twice as powerful with trice the memory and the price shot up.

Plus windows ran dog slow on these things.

THAT is why netbooks died. MS killed the market. But in doing so, they have left a niche open for Google. BIG MISTAKE!

Re: This is worth a patent?

Patent trolls and megacorps look at the logical next steps for computing, brainstorm ideas around it and patent the ideas, hence locking out the smaller players and start ups from the game.

EVIL!

Re: "...with 3x the capailities"

@Katie Saucey - "Those aren't bugs they're capabilities" -

+1 - that's the funniest comment I've read today (apart from mine of course)

Re: Windows can deliver clouds, but it takes a week to recover your data

@the-it-slayer "MS don't make billions of dollars for nothing. "

So you think that MS make money from writing high-quality software? How quaint :-) Now hand in your geek badge.

Re: Buzzwords

@Philip Lewis The truth is out there....

Re: Willy Gates Melinda

@EvilGav 1 - "Android hasn't done so well because it's open, it's done so well because the cost to enter the party has been dropped"

But that's a tautology isn't it Gav? Anyone else could have done what Google did! What Google did was to take Linux, put Java on it and release it as a mobile phone platform. Google did it, and they crucified everybody except Apple, and even Apple lost some market share.

"Everyone* missed the internet," -

WTF? Microsoft missed it, everyone else was all over it. It was all the rage.

"In 1995, when that book was released, most of the internet was a text driven space"

WTF 2.0. The web was widely used back then, everyone was using Netscape (remember the animated godzilla?) to surf and they were connecting via Compuserve, AOL and the like.

As I say, Gates was hardly a visionary when he missed what everyone else was going crazy about! That's the exact opposite of visionary, it is blindless.

Re: El Presidente

I never thoguht I'd say this, but EvilGav 1 - absolutely!

+1

Re: Willy Gates Melinda

"Google are the late comers" - yes, but Google are a search engine / advertising company! And they aced everybody else, with a (relatively) open system (which, I think, explains much of their success with Android).

I've no idea why people seem to revere Gates as some kind of visionary. His book, The Road Ahead, didn't even mention the Internet. (Until version 2 of his book that is. "The Road Ahead 2nd edition. Now with Internets!").

Gates was not a visionary, never has been, he always stole, whether software, deals or ideas. But he was good at business, that's true. Yes, he had a lot of luck,but he was in the right place to receive that luck. That was his moment of triumph. His career after that point has been to play dirty and to copy what everyone else was doing. Where they went down their own path - e.g. making phones with a start button and windows - and indeed with the METRO UI fiasco - they went wrong.

Gates is still extremely influential at MS, he's the chairman. The failures of MS are just as much Gates' fault as Balmers. Gates has refused to fire Balmer. Why is that?

Re: El Presidente

@AC 10:38 - "commercial world of software" - yes but the commercial world of software is a soft skill. Anyone can learn how to use a spreadsheet or a word processor - and you can use LibreOffice to teach it, you don't need to buy an expensive DRM'ed suit like MS Office.

The real skill is in learning the basics, and that's what RasPi / Linux do. Everything flows from there. Once you know how to program then not only can you use commercial / open source office suits, but you can program marcros for them. You see? Instantly you have raised your game.

To take an analogy - rasPi and Linux are teaching kids the concepts of basic arithmetic and geometry. Later on then, you can teach kids more abstract stuff, such as calculus.

Making schools in to MS Office training centres (at the tax payers expense) is insane.

Re: Buzzwords

A "Cloud" is an abstraction of a system that stores data in a way you don't have to worry about the technology. It's pretty useful for stuff you want to share with the world, e.g. photos .But, as you say, toxic if you have sensitive data you don't want the Chinese (or anyone else) to see.

But people trade convenience for privacy, they trade reducing costs for privacy. people take risks knowingly or out of ignorance. Clouds are there to exploit them :-)

Re: El Presidente

I'd infinitely rather kids at schools are taught computing with raspberry pi's than being taught to be ribbon-clicking MS Office slaves (at the tax payers expense!), to be dispatched into the faceless machine.

Open source is the only software that should be taught, and open hardware too, methinks. Teach kids real computing and you will have the new generation of kids creating start-ups and silicon roundabouts - because they will understand computers, instead of ribbons.

Re: So if the PC dies @eadon

@BlueGreen ANDROID. The last laugh is on you. Even OSX is based on open source: the Mach kernel.

Re: So if the PC dies

@PatientOne - It is you that has the misunderstanding - open source licences, such as the GPL licences are absolutely consistent with ownership.

You might not own the copyright, but that's also true of a book. You own the book but not the copyright of the novel within.

typing fail

@mark - "fastest to launch software by typing the name"

Yes, IF you can remember the name. If it's something you don't use so often, then you need a GUI.

Suddenly Windows apologists magically think typing is GOOD now that windows requires you to type stuff in to run a program or find a doc. Yet they are terrified of the command line. Suckers.

If it's a GUI that requires you to type to be productive then that GUI is

WINDOWS 8 GUI FAIL!

Re: I was GIVEN a Chromebook last year...

@cap'n - good point. Usually google stuff improves with generations. Android 4 was better than 3 was better than 2 was better than version 1.

Conversely, with Microsoft there is not that sense of progress. They remove useful features and add poor features at the drop of a hat. There are features in XP that are not in Windows 7, those useful features were killed, and people lament that. To give one example.

Re: Different kinds of products

"Note - "start button" is not an OS feature"

doubleplus good @dogged! War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power.

Windows 8 has been an utter disaster in the market place, on desktop and on tablets and on phones. Yet people are ordering kit with Windows 7 on it (and that's a bad enough OS (in my opinion)).

So there are 3 explanations

a) Windows 8 has removed something that was in Windows 7 that people want.

b) Windows 8 has added something to Windows 7 that people detest.

c) both a) and b)

I vote c.

Re: New blow for Microsoft Surface?

@JDX - You can get MS systems with touch screens now. They are not selling. The reason? Metro. MS was selling tablets before Apple and Google but Apple and Google did it right. It is not the hardware - it is the software.

When I say that, there's another factor too. The brand. The Windows brand is toxic. People think of Windows as something that takes forever to boot, is crippled with crapware and AV systems and runs boring spreadsheets (the work association).

Windows is not cool and people want to be free of it. That factor will work in Google's favour. MS recently attacked Google on the spying / privacy front. whilst such attacks are hypocritical, they're a good tactic.