Those that lack innovation.... live in Redmond

I don't know if anyone else has really looked into Vista's new technologies but OMG are they old-school. I realize that what's new for MS is old for the KDE, Gnome, Mac OS X users but still, how can a company as large as MS be so proud of their dinosaur technology? Shouldn't they be able to come out with an OS that will be ground-breaking? It'll be late 2006 for goodness sake. Their (currently) old technology is going to be old+1.5 years which in technology years is about 5 years old. I'll stick with Win2K and other operating systems that actually contribute to innovation (Win2K mildly innovative for its time). UGH. WHY SO LAME? Is this the best they could pull off since their release of XP (Xtreme Problems) in 2001? What have they been doing since then??? We should have had about 3 new OSs since then!!! Everyone else had at LEAST 3 major updates since 2001!!

It's all cool, Microsoft will just redefine "old-school" as "the latest thing" tm (Patent Pending)

I read today that Microsoft has patent over drawing smiley icons. cool move!

about Vista, they probably prefer to use things they already used in the past, so they avoid the mess of endless bugs and security threats. what have they done since 2001? stockpiled money, of course. what else you expected them to do??!

A patent on smilies? What do you mean by that?

Every time we use a smiley we are stealing from Bill

Are you serious or is this a joke I didn't caught on to?

Is this patent old, because I was positive that smilies have been part of the public domain for years...

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/07/2...tid=155&tid=109

Okay so they filed to get it, doesn't mean they got it yet, right?

Read the article and what I got from it was that they're trying to get it...

Smilies have been part of the public domain for years, heck MSN Messenger didn't even have emoticons while AOL Instant Messenger did.

Doesn't the technology have to be new (or improved), useful, not already in the public domain to get a patent?

From my engineering ethics seminar I had a few months ago I learned a man tried to patent his death ray gun, but failling to give a blue print (because he didn't want his design stolen) he didn't get his patent...

It's like if I tried to patent a butter knife, uuugh I hate MS...

Yeah but its the US Patent Office. I think they only have an OK pile. I mean even IBM have said that it is too easy to get a patent these days! (Sorry Bill)

I suppose I was ignorant to believe US's system was the same as Canada's...

I don't know if I'd go that far. They'll give you a patent for pretty much anything if you're a small business owner with a new idea so that small businesses can grow. I don't think we know the ins-and-outs of the US Patent Office

We also don't know much about the smilies that MS is patenting. Maybe they're smilies that smile larger when a virus attacks your computer or when spyware starts sending out your personal data. That stuff makes Bill happy because people have to buy new PCs all the time.

Here's a really simple request which bugs the living heck out of me... MICROSOFT, PROVIDE SOME DECENT, DEFAULT DESKTOP PICTURES!!! Everyone else has buckets of default desktop pics which are very cool and make the computer desktop rockin right off the bat. MS gives us images from the neanderthal era. Cave drawings are more elaborate than the default desktop patterns and images.

I think that's a pretty simple request too. If I were to get bold I might consider asking MS to fill some of those code holes and fix some of those unnecessary security flaws in the OS to maybe, just MAYBE, keep out a virus or two. Heck, spyware would be nice too... or even a piece of adware once in a while. It's not because they're the biggest OS, it's beacuse they're the least secure and most flawed. I'd love to see Vista be a Linux OS. At least I wouldn't tremble every time I have to put my name in a form online.

I've decided that I'm just going to complain about all of the things that, after all these years, MS still lacks. First let me start my future ramblings by saying that MS Office is awesome. Love it. It actually works!! although Access is a pretty poor DB.

Imagine how much better office would be though if they took the time and effort on more innovation instead of obscuring their .doc and other formats so that open office couldn't read them.

-MBirchmeier