Read scoble's discussion in longhornblogs

Scoble's longhornblogs "Sun Microsystems fires back at Longhorn" is very interesting.

From the beginning, we can feel the opposition of MS, sun, apple, and Oracle. this discussion discusses many technical and business-level issues, such as profit issues and copyright tax issues. We still remember the competition between IE and Netscape's browser overlord, in addition, we also talk about many technical aspects, such as XAML, XUL, Macromedia Flex, Mozilla-Java combo, rich client experience, user experience, of course, the main character is Microsoft's most promising next-generation operating system Longhorn, which is fully based on the managed code, including its indigo, avron, Yukon, and ASP. net adapters.

It took me a whole afternoon to finish reading this discussion, but it is worth it. Please digest it.

There are two links: Bill Gates and Ballmer's speech at PDC 2000 and fusion 2000, which allow us to have a deeper understanding of future planning of MS and. net.

Ballmer's keynote from fusion 2000
Http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/07-14fusion.asp

Bill Gates Keynote: PDC 2000
Http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2000/07-12pdc.asp

The following is an excerpt of discussion:

Schwartz is definitely right that the "Killer (desktop) app is called the browser ". microsoft's current thinking is that rich client experience is equivalent to rich desktop experience. XAML has a new XML syntax but is a language for building good old desktop applications. macromedia seems to be doing the right thing with Flex, their just announced platform for rich Internet applications. hopefully Macromedia Flex and the Mozilla-Java combo that Schwartz mentions will prove to be popular, so that Microsoft realigns its definition of rich client experience with what MERs are expecting.
-- George Mladenov

the problem that I feel here is not that sun doesn' t have a good platform, but instead of trying to make money they're trying to knick Microsoft off their perch-at any cost.
-- Michael Ward

The fact is that if sun can't figure out how to make Java profitable for sun then they are going to become extinct or someone else's acquisition.
-- Kevin Hegg

don't be too surprised that I use XP despite my academic work. there are running things that XP does better than any other OS. namely, in my case, Excel and games. oh, and for my senior project, I am required by my principal sor to develop for Win2k using visualstudio. net. in terms of research, UNIX platforms do still rule the day in the Cu College of Engineering. applied math is getting big into MacOS X. CS is the only dept I know of that is fairly evenly spread kernel SS Windows XP, UNIX and MacOS X. all of the required ments face reality: computers are tools. use the right tool for the job. also, I wouldn't take Cu's one application as an indication that Java is production grade -- look at the industry itself. (Yes, I do vaguely remember that memo... not well nough to respond to it though .) and, lest we forget, Microsoft had just tipped a big hand.
-- Ryan Nielsen

In fact, there are usually people who start businesses who know they won't make a profit unless they get acquired by a bigger fish. that's pretty common in the software business since so far people made so much money that way (heck, degree of them sold out to Microsoft ).
--Robert scoble

Anything that can be done in a high level language can be done in C or assembly. however, the hlls provide valuable activities actions and constructs that permit the developer to focus on the logic and complexity of He application rather than the difficulties of the programming language.
--Ryan Nielsen

Well, as a developer I look at platforms differently than I do as an end user. As an end user all I really care about "does it solve my problems better than the others? "For everyone that'll be different. I know some guys who use their PCs for doing nothing but playing flight simulator. Seriously. Everyone will have a different answer.
--Robert scoble