A comment on a message board I occasionally visit (a comment in which a poster asked what the most popular commercial non-Microsoft software for Windows was) made me revisit some thoughts I have often mulled about: The Windows platform, originally envisioned as a multi-vendor foundation on which a rich ecosystem of best-of-breed software would interoperate in this standardized GUI environment, has in many cases turned into a Microsoft-only affair, often customized with at most a couple of internal, proprietary apps.

This is an obvious observation that many have been "warning" about for years (over a decade, really), but it really is profound when you stop and really think about it. Personally I know that my average day is almost entirely filled with Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server, all on my Microsoft Windows 2003 operating system, with additional services provided by Microsoft Windows Servers and Microsoft Exchange. I hardly think I'm an exception.

Some of the last bastions of widely distributed commercial alternatives, firewalls and anti-virus, have both been brought in-house as well, and soon enough will be a part of the platform. Niche markets, like high end image-editing, are also being competently assaulted by Microsoft, and even Macromedia Flash is coming under assault in coming months. Microsoft has had considerable success in the entertainment (games) market, but even then is working to usurp the Microsoft Windows gaming crowd with hardware like the XBox 360.

Of course Microsoft does see some competition, such as the fantastic success of Firefox (which accounts for almost 40% of the visitors here), but it is almost entirely from free software (with an emphasis on the free-as-in-beer element). The ranks of competing professional software companies targetting the Windows platform has whittled down enormously. It has to make ISVs nervous when faced with pages after pages of questions about their business and products when signing up for programs like Microsoft's Empower program

It just is remarkable how diverse and competitive the Windows platform once seemed, yet now we're at the point where Microsoft might as well sell tools like Office prepackaged as a "part" of the OS. Maybe a "developer" install that comes with the OS, Dev Studio, and SQL Server Dev Edition.

I pass no judgement on this or what it all means - it could very well be that these are the superior products in each of their classes, and it is simple capitalist survival of the best that brought us to where we are (most certainly an arguable point. Microsoft Office, for instance, once faced tremendous competition, but it fought on merit to the top of the heap), but it is nonetheless stunning when you compare the diversity that once existed with the largely single-vendor platform we have today.

I authored an entry this morning detailing how my PCs - which for conservation reasons I regularly turn-off/hibernate except when in use - mysteriously fail to restart whenever I really critically need them immediately. e.g. When I have to grab a piece of info before I head out the door, or I'm on the phone and need an address. In such situations, with an unbelievably high degree of correlation,  the hibernation restart will fail, or the BIOS will throw up some random error, or Windows 2003 will stall on the beginning progress bar - Something will happen that screws up the startup. I'm forced to power down on the back of the power supply (otherwise the next startup will bizarrely claim that no keyboard is attached), and then wait for the time-sucking from-scratch startup. Perhaps in such a rushed situation I hit the power button more vigorously, or in my haste I shuffle my feet on the carpet and deliver a static shock to my PC: There has to be some rational explanation for this, as my systems are flawless the other 96% of the time (when it doesn't really matter how quickly I can get at them).

It has since become apparent this information - revealing the malice and schadenfreude of our PCs - had to be suppressed. Upon trying to post this I discovered that yafla.com was down due to a RAID failure (what they really need is a RARAID). When it finally came up, after 4 hours of downtime, and the big chance came for the post to be published, Radio Userland promptly spit up a GPF and unceremoniously deleted that entry.

Coincidence? I think not...

Just noticed that I subtitled the personal category "Personal Photos and Musings". Egads, the word musings has got to be one of the most abused and overused words in the, err, blogosphere. As such I have evicted it.

Saw a commercial for the "Q-Ray" on television earlier today, and it always grabs my interest it's so ridiculous ("oooh, an ionized bracelet!"). One thing that especially caught my eye this time was the scammy wording of several of the segments, for instance (and I'm paraphrasing, so take this as satire and go watch the commercial yourself if you care enough) "For $19.95 (+shipping and handling) get your Q-Ray 30-day trial only!". Now this little piece of braided wire seems to be a ripoff at $19.95, but their deceptive wording made my wife and I curious. So much so, that she dialed the 1-800 number, and we learned that it's $19.95 (+s&h), and if you don't return it within 30 days it's two more installments of $50+ (again, I didn't care enough to really catalog it in my braincells accurately, so call if you really want more specifics). I'm sure the return-within-30-days thing is about as easy as getting a rebate check, though the weak of mind that orders this sort of garbage will likely attribute every positive event in their life to the magical ionization, and thus happily fork over another $100 plus..

Speaking of ripoffs, what's the deal with instant rebates? I understand the concept behind mail-in rebates (which in a nutshell is that many customers don't bother to mail it in from the get go, and of those who do you can get rid of many of their claims just by ignoring them, conveniently losing material, and so on. Pretty clever use of fraud to compliment legitimate retail), but I fail to see who the winner is in a scheme where 100% of the customers get the savings immediately at check-out. What I suspect is that it's an accounting trick - sell a $200 item for $300 + $100 instant rebates, and then put a $300 sale on the books, and a $100 expense. Sales then are bloated, although the profit percentage has decreased. Corner stores should hop on this idea, selling chocolate bars for $10,000 - $9,999.01 rebates, chocking up record breaking sales quarter over quarter.

On the theme of lame adverts and sales techniques, another source of irritation are car leasing ads that put gigantic monthly leasing values ("$299/month. You read it right! $299!"), and then absurdly hide the down payment portion in tiny text at the bottom: The first value is pretty much meaningless without the second -- you could lease a Mercedes S600 for a pittance per month if you just put $120,000 down. Car companies think they're being clever with this sort of lowest-common-denominator advertising, but the end result is that all car ads become nothing but noise, with a bunch of meaningless, context-free random values on them.

This sticker is on my neighbour's eavestrough, and it cracks me up each time I see it. It reminds me of the mid-80s, when bags of Hostess Chips always came with some sort of enticement, such as stickers of wrestlers, stickers of bands like Honeymoon Suite, and so on. This subdivision was built in the first half of the 80s, so it could very well be a holdover from those days. Great stuff.

While I don't actively target the Linux platform, I have always been comforted by the Mono Project. That cross-platform-.NET project gives me a feeling that my .NET work could at least partially be ported to other targets if a need arose, removing the vendor lock-in to Windows when using the .NET platform (even though I have never had the need to use it, I pursue the same target when developing in C++). Every couple of months I install the latest incarnation of Mono on a Linux virtual machine, copy over an assembly (ensuring that it uses only features that exist in Mono), and run it, and it really is a little bit of magic when it runs successfully (and quickly I should say - the performance on Mono is spectacular).

The thing that I don't get, though, is the bubbling animosity Microsoft displays towards the Mono project, and the legal uncertainty some within Microsoft continually try to create around Mono. Don't you realize, Microsoft, that Mono is one of your greatest allies? That .NET has been sold within countless shops based upon the argument that it was "cross platform", courtesy of Mono, and that the worries of the executive that Linux needs to be considered are all taken care of, again courtesy of Mono? Microsoft really should be sending Manuel a big, fat commission check.

I can appreciate that Microsoft doesn't want anyone usurping their creation, but really - in virtually every rational situation Mono is a winner for Microsoft.

• It helps sell .NET as "cross-platform"
• It will always be one step behind, ensuring that Microsoft has the upper hand. Sure, it'll implement some technologies (such as vector graphics) more quickly than the Microsoft's .NET framework, but to most developers that is non-standard, and instead it'll "really" come out when Microsoft releases it (and Mono will then have to play catch up)
  
• It's training loads of Microsoft-hating OSS lovers in the ways of .NET, drawing them away from other superb environs like Python. A very large percentage of the people targeting Mono would have targeted Python or J2EE or C++ otherwise.
  
• It helps Microsoft compete on their "home turf"

Microsoft really needs to put down the gauntlet, embrace Mono, and remove the legal uncertainty around it.

If you're in the Cogeco service area (in Ontario and Quebec), you owe it to yourself to look at their broadband solutions. I've been a cable-modem customer for about 4 years now, in different parts of the city, and have been extremely pleased. Prior to that I was a Rogers cable-modem customer, and my experience then was much less satisfactory.

This comes to mind watching the download task for the newest Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate progress - 2.5GB in, my average download speed is a constant 650KB/second. Not Kb/second, but real, bonafide KB/s. Amazing.