  I shall try to write an intelligent post about something which i know virtually nothing about: Longhorn, Microsoft's new UI, which is still about two years away. However, Emmanuel and I have been talking about it and I think i have a few thoughts (anyone in the know, feel free to correct anything i have to say about it. ) First of all, i find it funny that within two posts, Emmanuel calls it "stupid" and "really excellent technology. " apparently either he's decided he was wrong, or is just plain confused. Alternatively, maybe its really excellent AND stupid. both are quite possible--- see the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure for something that is decidedly excellent and stupid. Regardless, Emmanuel's most recent post on the matter does show, what I think, is the biggest problem Microsoft faces-- and then, i'm going to draw an analog to the Bush Administration. What Emmanuel says people like Apple, GNOME and Mozilla (who are the biggest potential losers of Longhorn) should do is. . .
well, i'll just block quote him here: If I were Apple, I would push for XAML to be a w3c standard as fast as possible, and make a kick-ass implementation for OS X and then give it away to the open-source community. Make it hard for MS to create Longhorn-only applications by supporting the same technology Longhorn does, and then make your own engine kick ass and get it out before MS does. Microsoft's biggest problem is open-source technology, because they've decided on a strategy that requires an obsession with keeping their coding secret. They go after people who reverse engineer (or even seem to) microsoft's programming. the problem with this strategy is that if there's a problem with the coding (for example, a security bug), they hide it until they can patch it. Open source, however, has hundrends of thousands of compu-geeks working on it at any given time, and therefore is constantly revamping its own bugs. But also because open source code is just that, open, security fixes tend not to rely on secrecy-- so you get a much better theoretically sound security program, one which is secure, even if you know how it was made secure.
(update 5/25/04: for a hugely better discussion of open source/~open source, see Adam U. 's blogpost with the linked final paper he wrote for his class.
. .
relinked urlLink here for your websurfing ease. ) now, how is this like the bush administration? well, the bush administration has become obsessed with secrecy. Having Bush testify before the 911 committee, or suing to keep the members of the Energy council, in secret is much like Microsoft keeping its code secret and suing anytime anyone wants to look behind it.
and just like microsoft, the problem is that if anyone ever finds out what's behind the lies and secrecy, it really destroys a lot of credibility EVEN IF THERE'S NOTHING REALLY INTERESTING THERE. 
