March 13, 2009 at 13:36Interview with Peter Didenko (Microsoft)
As promised, Peter Didenko from Microsoft answered almost all your questions. And he answered thoroughly and with undisguised pleasure :) Angie!
Hello! My name is Peter Didenko, I work as an expert in the Russian Microsoft. I mainly specialize in technology partnerships with major Internet projects, and I also do the same with the largest hosting providers. In fact, the scope of my activity is not limited to this, so I am an expert in a rather wide range of issues ;-)
Now I am actively involved in the project to “launch” Internet Explorer 8. I can learn everything about IE8 from a technological point of view and about the prospects for its promotion, partnerships, the future of this product.
I was glad and will answer all your questions, as well as continue the discussion. In some places, I ask the authors of the questions to contact me personally. My email - pdidenko@microsoft.com, Twitter twitter.com/pdidenko, blog and I'm basically at www.kip.ru . Thank you ;-)
- Why did they create a “voting system” in IE8, because of which apple.com and any site in general will be rendered by default, not in standard mode, but in compatibility mode with ie7?
It is very difficult to guess what was meant here. Forgive me for that.
Probably, telemetry (I don’t know how to translate the English word telemetry into Russian - a system for collecting information about user behavior) shows that participants in IE8 beta testing often manually switch to compatibility mode. When installing IE8, everyone is asked two questions: “Do you want to help make IE better” (you probably agreed, although this is not important in this context) and “Do I use automatically updated lists of sites with which the browser will work in compatibility mode” ( here you seem to have definitely agreed). Well, if you agreed, why are you asking this question? ;-)
Apple.com renders beautifully both in IE7 compatibility mode, as well as in standard support mode, which is used by default in IE8. About "any site in general" - you exaggerate, this is not so. Probably not understood. It happens to everyone.
Let's help you figure it out? My cell phone and email are written on any fence on the Internet - please contact (no kidding).
- "We recognize the demand for vector graphics from Web developers, and realize this is a high-priority demand" (microsoft about SVG) - does this mean that SVG will still be implemented in IE16?
Plans for further development of the browser so far without comment. Let's wait for the release of IE8, the first results, and then we'll talk about the results. I hope for your participation in the conversation.
- When will IE fully comply with the standards?
We already fully support CSS 2.1, for example. CSS3 and HTML5 are working versions, not standards. If you immediately specified what exactly you mean, I would give a more complete answer. A good question is half the answer.
We can continue the conversation in more detail, if you want - you give me a link to a standard adopted by a standardization organization in the current status, I give you thoughts about why it is necessary or not to support it. Arranged?
- Tell us about the new Microsoft Gazelle browser development and about the no less new search service, codenamed Kumo.
On "Habré" there was a huge number of truthful and wonderful articles about these experimental things. I think if I just re-type them here by hand, then there will be no more sense on this planet ;-) Regarding Gazelle, there is an exhaustive text for a couple of dozen pages from Microsoft Research - research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx ? id = 79655 . This is the source. I do not know any secret plans about Gazelle that you can tell you here right now.
About Kumo, I also know a little more than you. Honestly, I, like all Microsoft employees, received such an invitation to participate in testing Kumo on the internal network, went there and saw such a picture . I have nothing more to say ;-)
But by the way, I played around with Kumo and found out that there is Didenko in Mali , which surprised me - not a single search engine seemed to tell me this before. Or he didn’t think that this information was any relevant to me and showed somewhere “in the basement”. Or there were so many results that I did not notice it. So Kumo has already earned my “thanks” ;-) In general, I liked the relevance of the issue and the new chips in the UX area.
- Are you going to stop seeing competitors as competitors, and see them as partners? The first step is - Novell. What next?
Most of our competitors are at the same time partners for us. For example, in the USA, we actively cooperate with Yahoo. In Russia, 1C company is a competitor to us in some markets and an excellent partner in others. So we cooperate with many companies where there really is a mutual commercial, academic or humanitarian interest. What else comes to mind:
- we provide technological assistance to Zend / PHP, Sun / mySQL, RedHat / JBOSS, sugarCRM, Citrix / XEN, Firefox and many others;
- we have a joint laboratory with Novell on virtualization and interoperability, we finance it, and we transfer the results under the GPL;
- We somehow support a number of OSS projects (for example, a project with Apache and others).
- Does Microsoft plan to port its .NET Framework to other operating systems in order to compete with Java?
In general, we are developing .NET within the framework of our platform, but we are willing to support initiatives to port it to Linux, for example, this is the Mono project. In addition, Silverlight, partially based on .NET technologies, works not only on Windows, but also on Mac and Linux under Mono. For example, during the official broadcast of Obama's inauguration , only Silverlight was used and it could be watched on any platform. Again, there is support for many cross-platform languages within the framework of the .NET Framework - there is a wonderful article on Wikipedia about this , for example.
- Will IE ever come out for Linux?
We do not see any noticeable meaning in this yet. There are many other browsers. Alternatively, you can run IE on Linux using a Windows virtual machine, if desired. It is simple and does not take up a lot of resources, computational and mental.
By the way, in this regard, people often ask a question such as "how to put three different versions of Internet Explorer on one computer for testing purposes." I’ll answer right away - like that . This is a universal recipe for users of Windows, and Mac, Linux, and generally for anyone. Yes, have a test virtual machine. You can take the finished one here .
- Found your page, Peter, on MyKrug - petr-didenko.moikrug.ru. There are: I have been looking for work since 02 Mar. Is this true or did you just forget to update the information there?
Trembling hand ;-)
- Why does IE8 not support the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) and addEventListner support is missing (could make it at least an alias to attachEvent)?
We have many of our technologies and interfaces, and, most importantly, our priorities. Therefore, in everything we do not support everything that mankind came up with. Forgive us.
Although, I’ll probably add informally from myself that of course the issue with plug-ins in Internet Explorer is not easy. No wonder people from the IE8 team participated in the Add On Con conference in Mountain View in December - read about it in the IE8 team blog . There are some interesting links from there.
- Does Microsoft work with public organizations in Russia, for example, charitable foundations, in terms of providing benefits or free products, especially to small organizations?
There are a huge number of programs similar to what you described. I would not list them in view of the fact that this has already been done a hundred times, but for now I just invite you to the site www.microsoft.com/rus . If you have questions - I’m ready to answer by personal mail.
- Do you use torrents?
Absolutely not. And I do not have stolen programs. None. Not because I work on a government-owned computer or something like that. It’s just that I don’t accept theft on my own - as parents taught me in childhood. I'm sure of you too.
Torrents in themselves, I agree, are not a sign of any crime or offense. But I still somehow unpleasant. I'm sorry. I'm trying to squeeze out of myself what is called the "soviet mentality." I like to pay people for the work that they put for me in software, films, music that I like.
- Will Microsoft branded stores be opened in Russia, and if so, when (approximately)?
So far, nothing has been heard about Russia, as you probably know. I was already in the western prototype of such a store ( Retail Experience Center ) in Redmond. It looks chic-a-arno.
Imagine a gigantic store, where any equipment that you can imagine is put up on real shelves: computers, laptops, various other devices manufactured by Microsoft and partners, phones, Surface tables , boxes with software and a million other things. Real box office, everything real ... and no one ;-)) This is a "test" store ;-) A unique sight. Shooting was strictly prohibited.
I also noticed interesting baskets for goods. You put what you have chosen there, and on a special screen right on the basket you can see that you put there, how much it costs and the total price of purchases. It seems to work thanks to RFID tags.
I would like for such, but real, working stores to appear here.
- Do you think there are fewer pirates in Russia and how do you feel about the trial of the pirate bay and their impunity?
According to our data, the level of piracy in Russia over the past five years has decreased by almost 20%. This is a good indicator and it honors the country. The fate of Pirate Bay personally does not interest me, and I do not follow the news on this topic. Why? Because stealing is bad.
- What do you think of alternative browsers Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and which ones do you use?
I feel good, I use the named browsers, all to the same extent. Just to be in the know. By the way, my colleagues do not do this on average. Maybe I'm the only one ;-)) (just kidding)
In Firefox I like Adblock Plus, in other browsers I have nothing to note. IE8 of the latest build (now March 12th, and I have a build dated March 9th) is fine with me. I often launch other browsers, although I try not to do this - there is simply not the slightest sense.
“Will you bring Ballmer this year?” :-) What new products are waiting for us this year at ReMIX?
They told me not to admit under pain of death, but ... we will bring ;-) I hope that they will not punish me very much for this confession. New items you will soon see at the conference MIX - 2009.visitmix.com . We’ll try to talk about them at ReMIX in Moscow. My favorite novelty is Internet Explorer 8.
Now we are actively working on the ReMIX program. Everything is ambiguous there - there are so many tasty things ;-) If you want to be in the know, go to www.remix.ru and sign up for updates. There is now a funny teaser hanging there ;-)
- Peter, when will you be waiting for Radio T? :) I'd love to listen.
I really enjoy participating in Radio T. Unfortunately, there is such a rule that the guest must come himself - his type is not called. But I’m very humble and I don’t come. Well, in general, in such a strange mode we exist. Sometimes our paths intersect and ... well, you know ;-))
Citizens! Listen to radio-t.com ! (I was in the 116th and 123rd releases).
- How does Microsoft see the prospects of functional programming languages?
I will not say about other platforms, but in Russia, with our F #, we are more and more entering somewhere in the academic community, parallel computing, high performance computing, and so on. All this is not clear to the average developer , but everyone should try , I think. The real prospects that you are asking about, I would not undertake to comment. It's too early.
- What does Microsoft think about netbooks? When will an adequate solution based on MS Windows for netbooks come out?
Netbooks have a certain part of the future, of course. If we talk about the future, it is expected that Windows7 will work fine on netbooks. I have already seen someone with MSI Wind who assured me that Windows7 works better and faster there than, for example, XP.
Although, I do not have a netbook. I can’t think of why I need him. I want to always have everything with me and not to refuse anything. The two-kilogram Lenovo T60p is quite suitable for this. In order not to strain - I bought a JanSport backpack in America, which is very convenient for carrying a laptop, and now everything is OK ;-)
- Why does Microsoft want to put ads in Office? And anyway, is that true?
I think, then, why did Google “put it” in the search engine ;-) Probably, everyone does this to monetize a product that is free or cheap for the user. However, I would recommend that you wait for the exact news from Microsoft about this.
- Do you plan to develop and start using OSS in your company? It is not a matter of competition, but of improving the quality of products and improving reputation.
We are already using it. Read in great detail here, please: www.microsoft.com/opensource
- What do I think about Microsoft “vendekapets”?
We don't speak Olbanian, at all.
- Does Microsoft plan to provide native support for ext2 / ext3 / ext4, at least only in the mount mode of existing disks?
I and a number of specially interviewed colleagues are not aware of such plans. I only know that there is no problem writing / reading in any direction, no - if you want to tinker with third-party drivers. In principle, this should not upset people from the Linux world.
- Is it planned, in the framework of cooperation with Novell and Samba, not only to help implement Microsoft technologies - .NET, SMB and AD - in OSS, but also, on the contrary, to implement support for Windows of such things as, for example, LDAP?
LDAP is already available to some extent on Windows. Take a closer look at Active Directory. Although, personally, I doubt the future of LDAP as a technology, to say the least. As well as in future SMTP, for example. All these are already protocols of the past, still used, but far from ideal.
- MS Expression Web can, though limitedly, work with PHP. Do you plan to support PHP in MSVS?
PHP support in Visual Studio is through third-party applications - www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php. As for native support, I am not aware of such plans. Although personally, I would prefer it to be. Would you buy Visual Studio for money, by the way?
- Is, finally, planned to abandon further support for VB and VB.NET in order to reduce the number of entities to the necessary?
I have not heard of such plans. Although, if further development is called active development, the future of these well-deserved technologies is really not very clear.
- Regarding exFAT, how aggressively Microsoft will promote it, and how aggressively will sue those who implemented its support without royalties?
Sorry, but it seems you turned to the wrong address. I have nothing to do with services that are suing someone. My work on the contrary is interesting new partnerships, primarily technological ones.
- What are the most relevant development vectors of the company for products now and where is more effort being made?
I think no one will answer you better than Steve Ballmer: www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve
- Is there a ... prosperity at Microsoft among employees? Please briefly describe your working day.
You can’t talk badly about colleagues - there is such a rule. You can talk about them well, but you asked me about something else ;-) Having the courage, I’ll answer all the same about the “good” ;-)
My colleagues are wonderful. What I like about Microsoft is that everyone is focused on their area of work and usually do their work very purposefully. This is unusual for most of the domestic IT companies that I had to see. Especially internet companies. I am not saying that we do not welcome the initiative. I just like Western accuracy and determination.
My day looks different each time and as a rule they rarely repeat ;-) The fact is that at the moment I have two main tasks - technological issues of cooperation with the largest Internet resources, which automatically flows into business issues, and also work with the largest hosting providers. This, in turn, means helping them to develop their business both from the technological side and in matters of new partnerships, business ideas, and so on.
In general, I visit the office, of course, every week, but only one or two days. The rest of the time I meet with partners, visit them a lot, and also work from home. By the way, Microsoft offers a huge number of opportunities to work from home and even encourages this when it makes sense. For example, our employees receive reimbursement of expenses for home Internet, everyone has state-owned laptops, access to the Microsoft network (we call it corpnet) from anywhere via a VPN, and much more.
- Peter, why did you betray FidoNet and FreeBSD and use Internet and Windows? :-)
Oh god again! ;-) I have been using Fidonet since 1993, but then, at some point, this “idea” somehow went bad. Therefore, 2: 5020/52 is not even in the nodelist now, in my opinion. Probably the problem of Fido was that this self-organizing structure was not able to self-efficiently-ha-ni-zo-va-enough (uttered!). That is, those who really could help Fido avoid the mess, seeing the scale of this mess with their uncomplicated eyes (I'm not talking to myself!), Began to leave. As a result, the value of the network, which consists of the totality of the values of all its participants, began to decline sharply and ... I decided that I need to do something else ;-)
(in secret - I have hidden the SCSI-disk of the fido.aha.ru machine, so that old times are easy to return!)
About FreeBSD ... Oh, yes, for two years I lived on KDE / windowmaker under FreeBSD ;-) In this regard, for example, I know the answer to the question "How to patch KDE under FreeBSD". And here is what my email client looked like in 1999 - www.ljplus.ru/img4/k/i/kippie/pine.jpg . But now it is Outlook and it is much cooler than pine! Well, Windows really won - with regard to a single me, this is the absolute truth.
- How has the crisis affected the plans of Microsoft in the area of future releases / product development?
The crisis could not but affect, of course, and you probably read about it in the press. But I do not see any mention of any noticeable delays there. Let’s take a look. I’m very interested in the final release dates for Windows 7, for example, and the next version of Office, about which there are so many rumors.
- What should I do if I want English Windows and deliver Russian with laptops?
Buy Ultimate - Vista Ultimate includes 15 languages right away, as far as I remember. As for a more complete disclosure of the question, the phrase “how to change vista language” entered into the search engine worked a miracle - I recommend ;-) If you want - I can answer the question by mail - send details about the version and current language of your OS, as well as how you I received it by email.
- Do you plan to somehow expand or, on the contrary, narrow down the list of languages under the CLI that Microsoft itself supports? What criteria are generally used to decide whether to support a language or not?
I think there is no single criterion. In each case, Microsoft is guided by common sense and the presence of meaningful ideas, why do this.
- Peter, will there be any special extensions in IE8 for popular social web services besides mailrush? I mean all sorts of twitter-facebook-flickers-YouTube-deals ... And why mail.ru? How about integrating the browser with Google and Yandex services, they are by no means less popular among users?
Colleagues from Mail.ru showed themselves to be very interested professionals and wished to participate very actively in the project with IE8. In such cases, we never refuse our support and have also tried to reciprocate Mail.ru as much as we could.
By the way, a press release from Mail.ru- This is not the first thing that has happened in promoting IE8 in our country. On December 3, it was announced that a number of popular domestic resources, including for example Yandex, implemented support for new features provided by IE8 - web slices, accelerators, visual search.
To find out what is happening in the West, I invite you to the add-ons gallery for IE8, which is located at ieaddons.com . There are Digg, and Facebook, and Wikipedia, and many others. There is a Russian version of the gallery, it is located at ieaddons.com/ru .
Our Russian partners occupy priority places in it. By the way, if you want to add your complement there - you are welcome. I, as it turned out, also happened to be a moderator of the Russian gallery IE8 ;-) You need to register there, after which you can add your elements there. Attendance there is not bad even now, when IE8 has not yet been released - hundreds of thousands of domestic Internet users, who took part in testing IE8 beta1 / beta2 / release candidate, are having an impact.
Finalizing: any site can create new features for IE. You do not need to consult with us for this. Take and do . Like everyone ;-)
I also wrote a blog post about my favorite web slices (with pictures) - I invite you to take a look .
- I am very interested in Web slices, I read about them and admired what a cool and promising technology it is. But to my shame, I had not heard anything about it at all - until IE8. Is it because IE8 is the first browser to support Web slices, or just because I'm a retarded housewife?
Yes, we were the first to do it in the form in which it is now. The main idea here is that web slices just work. No need to install any plugins, update them, configure anything. This will simply work for every IE8 user, and for these users to be many, we will provide this. Adding with one click, you don’t need to think, it just works, the website gets to the user’s desktop in one click - the dream of any website.
I would recommend that every owner of each site immediately make a web slice and upload it to the IE8 Russian gallery at ieaddons.com/ru . Ready to argue, make a slice for any site in 5 minutes using only notepad.exe. You can see what slices are and how to make them in my blog .
- Our company is engaged in rental business - we collect servers for other companies at all kinds of exhibitions / concerts / conferences, etc. At the same time, we encountered such a problem: we build a server, install Windows - everything is ok. Tomorrow for the purposes of another event, you need to change the screw \ video card \ something else in this server. Sometimes you need to rearrange Windows. Moreover, after the second or third such procedure, a polite girl from Microsoft tells us: "You are installing Windows on different computers, this version of the OS can no longer be activated." And to us at! go around buying a new windows. In total, we have already purchased 4-5 Windows licenses for each of our rental servers. It is clear that this annoys us a little - we are not involved in piracy, we are trying to use licensed software, and we are being deceived and torn at exorbitant prices.
I must say right away that I am not an expert in licensing or selling Microsoft software, so I reply only with common sense and common logic. Well, plus the general knowledge that I specifically conveyed to Microsoft.
I think that what you agree to when buying is legal and that does not contradict the law itself, is legal. Each Windows version comes with a piece of paper (sometimes electronic). It is called EULA, the end user license agreement. By disagreeing with it, you cannot use the product. In corporate and OEM cases it can be a little different, but very similar.
For each case there, in the piece of paper that you have, it is written how you can use what you are going to buy and / or put. That's what it says there - this is the very law. If you do not agree, you are free to not buy. This is a common market mechanism.
I don’t think that your EULA says something like “this is a license that allows you to buy once and then put on a million servers and never pay anything again” - this probably does not happen. Do you agree? I propose to continue offline - write to me, please. I will try to help with some advice. I would not want you to be upset or unhappy.
- When will the analogue of the Apple Store for mobile devices based on Windows Mobile appear?
So all announcements have already been made, haven’t they? The newspapers write "Most likely, it will begin to work simultaneously with the release of the first devices on the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform." I have no other information, unfortunately.
- Peter, do you use Apple products, if so, which one?
My wife has a “black” MacBook of the previous generation (bought in the summer in America). I bought it under the pretext of buying a new laptop for my wife (last Toshiba was five years old), but actually to experiment and know what is happening there. I think it was a wise purchase, although my wife still hates me a little, it seems ;-) She also has an iPod - I make her listen to podcasts with my participation there (podcast9.ru and kip.rpod.ru). Also tormented. And for this I have Microsoft's Zune. I like him more than iPod, honestly.
- When will MS make an analogue of Gmail offline?
We have a lot of offline mail clients from so immemorial times that I can’t even remember which ones specifically :)
Hello! My name is Peter Didenko, I work as an expert in the Russian Microsoft. I mainly specialize in technology partnerships with major Internet projects, and I also do the same with the largest hosting providers. In fact, the scope of my activity is not limited to this, so I am an expert in a rather wide range of issues ;-)
Now I am actively involved in the project to “launch” Internet Explorer 8. I can learn everything about IE8 from a technological point of view and about the prospects for its promotion, partnerships, the future of this product.
I was glad and will answer all your questions, as well as continue the discussion. In some places, I ask the authors of the questions to contact me personally. My email - pdidenko@microsoft.com, Twitter twitter.com/pdidenko, blog and I'm basically at www.kip.ru . Thank you ;-)
- Why did they create a “voting system” in IE8, because of which apple.com and any site in general will be rendered by default, not in standard mode, but in compatibility mode with ie7?
It is very difficult to guess what was meant here. Forgive me for that.
Probably, telemetry (I don’t know how to translate the English word telemetry into Russian - a system for collecting information about user behavior) shows that participants in IE8 beta testing often manually switch to compatibility mode. When installing IE8, everyone is asked two questions: “Do you want to help make IE better” (you probably agreed, although this is not important in this context) and “Do I use automatically updated lists of sites with which the browser will work in compatibility mode” ( here you seem to have definitely agreed). Well, if you agreed, why are you asking this question? ;-)
Apple.com renders beautifully both in IE7 compatibility mode, as well as in standard support mode, which is used by default in IE8. About "any site in general" - you exaggerate, this is not so. Probably not understood. It happens to everyone.
Let's help you figure it out? My cell phone and email are written on any fence on the Internet - please contact (no kidding).
- "We recognize the demand for vector graphics from Web developers, and realize this is a high-priority demand" (microsoft about SVG) - does this mean that SVG will still be implemented in IE16?
Plans for further development of the browser so far without comment. Let's wait for the release of IE8, the first results, and then we'll talk about the results. I hope for your participation in the conversation.
- When will IE fully comply with the standards?
We already fully support CSS 2.1, for example. CSS3 and HTML5 are working versions, not standards. If you immediately specified what exactly you mean, I would give a more complete answer. A good question is half the answer.
We can continue the conversation in more detail, if you want - you give me a link to a standard adopted by a standardization organization in the current status, I give you thoughts about why it is necessary or not to support it. Arranged?
- Tell us about the new Microsoft Gazelle browser development and about the no less new search service, codenamed Kumo.
On "Habré" there was a huge number of truthful and wonderful articles about these experimental things. I think if I just re-type them here by hand, then there will be no more sense on this planet ;-) Regarding Gazelle, there is an exhaustive text for a couple of dozen pages from Microsoft Research - research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx ? id = 79655 . This is the source. I do not know any secret plans about Gazelle that you can tell you here right now.
About Kumo, I also know a little more than you. Honestly, I, like all Microsoft employees, received such an invitation to participate in testing Kumo on the internal network, went there and saw such a picture . I have nothing more to say ;-)
But by the way, I played around with Kumo and found out that there is Didenko in Mali , which surprised me - not a single search engine seemed to tell me this before. Or he didn’t think that this information was any relevant to me and showed somewhere “in the basement”. Or there were so many results that I did not notice it. So Kumo has already earned my “thanks” ;-) In general, I liked the relevance of the issue and the new chips in the UX area.
- Are you going to stop seeing competitors as competitors, and see them as partners? The first step is - Novell. What next?
Most of our competitors are at the same time partners for us. For example, in the USA, we actively cooperate with Yahoo. In Russia, 1C company is a competitor to us in some markets and an excellent partner in others. So we cooperate with many companies where there really is a mutual commercial, academic or humanitarian interest. What else comes to mind:
- we provide technological assistance to Zend / PHP, Sun / mySQL, RedHat / JBOSS, sugarCRM, Citrix / XEN, Firefox and many others;
- we have a joint laboratory with Novell on virtualization and interoperability, we finance it, and we transfer the results under the GPL;
- We somehow support a number of OSS projects (for example, a project with Apache and others).
- Does Microsoft plan to port its .NET Framework to other operating systems in order to compete with Java?
In general, we are developing .NET within the framework of our platform, but we are willing to support initiatives to port it to Linux, for example, this is the Mono project. In addition, Silverlight, partially based on .NET technologies, works not only on Windows, but also on Mac and Linux under Mono. For example, during the official broadcast of Obama's inauguration , only Silverlight was used and it could be watched on any platform. Again, there is support for many cross-platform languages within the framework of the .NET Framework - there is a wonderful article on Wikipedia about this , for example.
- Will IE ever come out for Linux?
We do not see any noticeable meaning in this yet. There are many other browsers. Alternatively, you can run IE on Linux using a Windows virtual machine, if desired. It is simple and does not take up a lot of resources, computational and mental.
By the way, in this regard, people often ask a question such as "how to put three different versions of Internet Explorer on one computer for testing purposes." I’ll answer right away - like that . This is a universal recipe for users of Windows, and Mac, Linux, and generally for anyone. Yes, have a test virtual machine. You can take the finished one here .
- Found your page, Peter, on MyKrug - petr-didenko.moikrug.ru. There are: I have been looking for work since 02 Mar. Is this true or did you just forget to update the information there?
Trembling hand ;-)
- Why does IE8 not support the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) and addEventListner support is missing (could make it at least an alias to attachEvent)?
We have many of our technologies and interfaces, and, most importantly, our priorities. Therefore, in everything we do not support everything that mankind came up with. Forgive us.
Although, I’ll probably add informally from myself that of course the issue with plug-ins in Internet Explorer is not easy. No wonder people from the IE8 team participated in the Add On Con conference in Mountain View in December - read about it in the IE8 team blog . There are some interesting links from there.
- Does Microsoft work with public organizations in Russia, for example, charitable foundations, in terms of providing benefits or free products, especially to small organizations?
There are a huge number of programs similar to what you described. I would not list them in view of the fact that this has already been done a hundred times, but for now I just invite you to the site www.microsoft.com/rus . If you have questions - I’m ready to answer by personal mail.
- Do you use torrents?
Absolutely not. And I do not have stolen programs. None. Not because I work on a government-owned computer or something like that. It’s just that I don’t accept theft on my own - as parents taught me in childhood. I'm sure of you too.
Torrents in themselves, I agree, are not a sign of any crime or offense. But I still somehow unpleasant. I'm sorry. I'm trying to squeeze out of myself what is called the "soviet mentality." I like to pay people for the work that they put for me in software, films, music that I like.
- Will Microsoft branded stores be opened in Russia, and if so, when (approximately)?
So far, nothing has been heard about Russia, as you probably know. I was already in the western prototype of such a store ( Retail Experience Center ) in Redmond. It looks chic-a-arno.
Imagine a gigantic store, where any equipment that you can imagine is put up on real shelves: computers, laptops, various other devices manufactured by Microsoft and partners, phones, Surface tables , boxes with software and a million other things. Real box office, everything real ... and no one ;-)) This is a "test" store ;-) A unique sight. Shooting was strictly prohibited.
I also noticed interesting baskets for goods. You put what you have chosen there, and on a special screen right on the basket you can see that you put there, how much it costs and the total price of purchases. It seems to work thanks to RFID tags.
I would like for such, but real, working stores to appear here.
- Do you think there are fewer pirates in Russia and how do you feel about the trial of the pirate bay and their impunity?
According to our data, the level of piracy in Russia over the past five years has decreased by almost 20%. This is a good indicator and it honors the country. The fate of Pirate Bay personally does not interest me, and I do not follow the news on this topic. Why? Because stealing is bad.
- What do you think of alternative browsers Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and which ones do you use?
I feel good, I use the named browsers, all to the same extent. Just to be in the know. By the way, my colleagues do not do this on average. Maybe I'm the only one ;-)) (just kidding)
In Firefox I like Adblock Plus, in other browsers I have nothing to note. IE8 of the latest build (now March 12th, and I have a build dated March 9th) is fine with me. I often launch other browsers, although I try not to do this - there is simply not the slightest sense.
“Will you bring Ballmer this year?” :-) What new products are waiting for us this year at ReMIX?
They told me not to admit under pain of death, but ... we will bring ;-) I hope that they will not punish me very much for this confession. New items you will soon see at the conference MIX - 2009.visitmix.com . We’ll try to talk about them at ReMIX in Moscow. My favorite novelty is Internet Explorer 8.
Now we are actively working on the ReMIX program. Everything is ambiguous there - there are so many tasty things ;-) If you want to be in the know, go to www.remix.ru and sign up for updates. There is now a funny teaser hanging there ;-)
- Peter, when will you be waiting for Radio T? :) I'd love to listen.
I really enjoy participating in Radio T. Unfortunately, there is such a rule that the guest must come himself - his type is not called. But I’m very humble and I don’t come. Well, in general, in such a strange mode we exist. Sometimes our paths intersect and ... well, you know ;-))
Citizens! Listen to radio-t.com ! (I was in the 116th and 123rd releases).
- How does Microsoft see the prospects of functional programming languages?
I will not say about other platforms, but in Russia, with our F #, we are more and more entering somewhere in the academic community, parallel computing, high performance computing, and so on. All this is not clear to the average developer , but everyone should try , I think. The real prospects that you are asking about, I would not undertake to comment. It's too early.
- What does Microsoft think about netbooks? When will an adequate solution based on MS Windows for netbooks come out?
Netbooks have a certain part of the future, of course. If we talk about the future, it is expected that Windows7 will work fine on netbooks. I have already seen someone with MSI Wind who assured me that Windows7 works better and faster there than, for example, XP.
Although, I do not have a netbook. I can’t think of why I need him. I want to always have everything with me and not to refuse anything. The two-kilogram Lenovo T60p is quite suitable for this. In order not to strain - I bought a JanSport backpack in America, which is very convenient for carrying a laptop, and now everything is OK ;-)
- Why does Microsoft want to put ads in Office? And anyway, is that true?
I think, then, why did Google “put it” in the search engine ;-) Probably, everyone does this to monetize a product that is free or cheap for the user. However, I would recommend that you wait for the exact news from Microsoft about this.
- Do you plan to develop and start using OSS in your company? It is not a matter of competition, but of improving the quality of products and improving reputation.
We are already using it. Read in great detail here, please: www.microsoft.com/opensource
- What do I think about Microsoft “vendekapets”?
We don't speak Olbanian, at all.
- Does Microsoft plan to provide native support for ext2 / ext3 / ext4, at least only in the mount mode of existing disks?
I and a number of specially interviewed colleagues are not aware of such plans. I only know that there is no problem writing / reading in any direction, no - if you want to tinker with third-party drivers. In principle, this should not upset people from the Linux world.
- Is it planned, in the framework of cooperation with Novell and Samba, not only to help implement Microsoft technologies - .NET, SMB and AD - in OSS, but also, on the contrary, to implement support for Windows of such things as, for example, LDAP?
LDAP is already available to some extent on Windows. Take a closer look at Active Directory. Although, personally, I doubt the future of LDAP as a technology, to say the least. As well as in future SMTP, for example. All these are already protocols of the past, still used, but far from ideal.
- MS Expression Web can, though limitedly, work with PHP. Do you plan to support PHP in MSVS?
PHP support in Visual Studio is through third-party applications - www.jcxsoftware.com/vs.php. As for native support, I am not aware of such plans. Although personally, I would prefer it to be. Would you buy Visual Studio for money, by the way?
- Is, finally, planned to abandon further support for VB and VB.NET in order to reduce the number of entities to the necessary?
I have not heard of such plans. Although, if further development is called active development, the future of these well-deserved technologies is really not very clear.
- Regarding exFAT, how aggressively Microsoft will promote it, and how aggressively will sue those who implemented its support without royalties?
Sorry, but it seems you turned to the wrong address. I have nothing to do with services that are suing someone. My work on the contrary is interesting new partnerships, primarily technological ones.
- What are the most relevant development vectors of the company for products now and where is more effort being made?
I think no one will answer you better than Steve Ballmer: www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve
- Is there a ... prosperity at Microsoft among employees? Please briefly describe your working day.
You can’t talk badly about colleagues - there is such a rule. You can talk about them well, but you asked me about something else ;-) Having the courage, I’ll answer all the same about the “good” ;-)
My colleagues are wonderful. What I like about Microsoft is that everyone is focused on their area of work and usually do their work very purposefully. This is unusual for most of the domestic IT companies that I had to see. Especially internet companies. I am not saying that we do not welcome the initiative. I just like Western accuracy and determination.
My day looks different each time and as a rule they rarely repeat ;-) The fact is that at the moment I have two main tasks - technological issues of cooperation with the largest Internet resources, which automatically flows into business issues, and also work with the largest hosting providers. This, in turn, means helping them to develop their business both from the technological side and in matters of new partnerships, business ideas, and so on.
In general, I visit the office, of course, every week, but only one or two days. The rest of the time I meet with partners, visit them a lot, and also work from home. By the way, Microsoft offers a huge number of opportunities to work from home and even encourages this when it makes sense. For example, our employees receive reimbursement of expenses for home Internet, everyone has state-owned laptops, access to the Microsoft network (we call it corpnet) from anywhere via a VPN, and much more.
- Peter, why did you betray FidoNet and FreeBSD and use Internet and Windows? :-)
Oh god again! ;-) I have been using Fidonet since 1993, but then, at some point, this “idea” somehow went bad. Therefore, 2: 5020/52 is not even in the nodelist now, in my opinion. Probably the problem of Fido was that this self-organizing structure was not able to self-efficiently-ha-ni-zo-va-enough (uttered!). That is, those who really could help Fido avoid the mess, seeing the scale of this mess with their uncomplicated eyes (I'm not talking to myself!), Began to leave. As a result, the value of the network, which consists of the totality of the values of all its participants, began to decline sharply and ... I decided that I need to do something else ;-)
(in secret - I have hidden the SCSI-disk of the fido.aha.ru machine, so that old times are easy to return!)
About FreeBSD ... Oh, yes, for two years I lived on KDE / windowmaker under FreeBSD ;-) In this regard, for example, I know the answer to the question "How to patch KDE under FreeBSD". And here is what my email client looked like in 1999 - www.ljplus.ru/img4/k/i/kippie/pine.jpg . But now it is Outlook and it is much cooler than pine! Well, Windows really won - with regard to a single me, this is the absolute truth.
- How has the crisis affected the plans of Microsoft in the area of future releases / product development?
The crisis could not but affect, of course, and you probably read about it in the press. But I do not see any mention of any noticeable delays there. Let’s take a look. I’m very interested in the final release dates for Windows 7, for example, and the next version of Office, about which there are so many rumors.
- What should I do if I want English Windows and deliver Russian with laptops?
Buy Ultimate - Vista Ultimate includes 15 languages right away, as far as I remember. As for a more complete disclosure of the question, the phrase “how to change vista language” entered into the search engine worked a miracle - I recommend ;-) If you want - I can answer the question by mail - send details about the version and current language of your OS, as well as how you I received it by email.
- Do you plan to somehow expand or, on the contrary, narrow down the list of languages under the CLI that Microsoft itself supports? What criteria are generally used to decide whether to support a language or not?
I think there is no single criterion. In each case, Microsoft is guided by common sense and the presence of meaningful ideas, why do this.
- Peter, will there be any special extensions in IE8 for popular social web services besides mailrush? I mean all sorts of twitter-facebook-flickers-YouTube-deals ... And why mail.ru? How about integrating the browser with Google and Yandex services, they are by no means less popular among users?
Colleagues from Mail.ru showed themselves to be very interested professionals and wished to participate very actively in the project with IE8. In such cases, we never refuse our support and have also tried to reciprocate Mail.ru as much as we could.
By the way, a press release from Mail.ru- This is not the first thing that has happened in promoting IE8 in our country. On December 3, it was announced that a number of popular domestic resources, including for example Yandex, implemented support for new features provided by IE8 - web slices, accelerators, visual search.
To find out what is happening in the West, I invite you to the add-ons gallery for IE8, which is located at ieaddons.com . There are Digg, and Facebook, and Wikipedia, and many others. There is a Russian version of the gallery, it is located at ieaddons.com/ru .
Our Russian partners occupy priority places in it. By the way, if you want to add your complement there - you are welcome. I, as it turned out, also happened to be a moderator of the Russian gallery IE8 ;-) You need to register there, after which you can add your elements there. Attendance there is not bad even now, when IE8 has not yet been released - hundreds of thousands of domestic Internet users, who took part in testing IE8 beta1 / beta2 / release candidate, are having an impact.
Finalizing: any site can create new features for IE. You do not need to consult with us for this. Take and do . Like everyone ;-)
I also wrote a blog post about my favorite web slices (with pictures) - I invite you to take a look .
- I am very interested in Web slices, I read about them and admired what a cool and promising technology it is. But to my shame, I had not heard anything about it at all - until IE8. Is it because IE8 is the first browser to support Web slices, or just because I'm a retarded housewife?
Yes, we were the first to do it in the form in which it is now. The main idea here is that web slices just work. No need to install any plugins, update them, configure anything. This will simply work for every IE8 user, and for these users to be many, we will provide this. Adding with one click, you don’t need to think, it just works, the website gets to the user’s desktop in one click - the dream of any website.
I would recommend that every owner of each site immediately make a web slice and upload it to the IE8 Russian gallery at ieaddons.com/ru . Ready to argue, make a slice for any site in 5 minutes using only notepad.exe. You can see what slices are and how to make them in my blog .
- Our company is engaged in rental business - we collect servers for other companies at all kinds of exhibitions / concerts / conferences, etc. At the same time, we encountered such a problem: we build a server, install Windows - everything is ok. Tomorrow for the purposes of another event, you need to change the screw \ video card \ something else in this server. Sometimes you need to rearrange Windows. Moreover, after the second or third such procedure, a polite girl from Microsoft tells us: "You are installing Windows on different computers, this version of the OS can no longer be activated." And to us at! go around buying a new windows. In total, we have already purchased 4-5 Windows licenses for each of our rental servers. It is clear that this annoys us a little - we are not involved in piracy, we are trying to use licensed software, and we are being deceived and torn at exorbitant prices.
I must say right away that I am not an expert in licensing or selling Microsoft software, so I reply only with common sense and common logic. Well, plus the general knowledge that I specifically conveyed to Microsoft.
I think that what you agree to when buying is legal and that does not contradict the law itself, is legal. Each Windows version comes with a piece of paper (sometimes electronic). It is called EULA, the end user license agreement. By disagreeing with it, you cannot use the product. In corporate and OEM cases it can be a little different, but very similar.
For each case there, in the piece of paper that you have, it is written how you can use what you are going to buy and / or put. That's what it says there - this is the very law. If you do not agree, you are free to not buy. This is a common market mechanism.
I don’t think that your EULA says something like “this is a license that allows you to buy once and then put on a million servers and never pay anything again” - this probably does not happen. Do you agree? I propose to continue offline - write to me, please. I will try to help with some advice. I would not want you to be upset or unhappy.
- When will the analogue of the Apple Store for mobile devices based on Windows Mobile appear?
So all announcements have already been made, haven’t they? The newspapers write "Most likely, it will begin to work simultaneously with the release of the first devices on the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform." I have no other information, unfortunately.
- Peter, do you use Apple products, if so, which one?
My wife has a “black” MacBook of the previous generation (bought in the summer in America). I bought it under the pretext of buying a new laptop for my wife (last Toshiba was five years old), but actually to experiment and know what is happening there. I think it was a wise purchase, although my wife still hates me a little, it seems ;-) She also has an iPod - I make her listen to podcasts with my participation there (podcast9.ru and kip.rpod.ru). Also tormented. And for this I have Microsoft's Zune. I like him more than iPod, honestly.
- When will MS make an analogue of Gmail offline?
We have a lot of offline mail clients from so immemorial times that I can’t even remember which ones specifically :)