Personally, I'm 100% convinced that .net is doing fine and will do fine for years to come. We just have to realize though where .net (and Java, for that matter) are used: Inside Enterprises. There is not a single day where I don't see someone pulling off some amazing stuff on Twitter, usually built in JavaScript, CoffeeScript or Ruby. Looking at people pulling off amazing stuff in .net is always a big undertaking though, because there are pretty much no big non-Microsoft .net projects that are "hip". I think FubuMVC, Caliburn.Micro and Bouncy Castle are the only three that I could mention off-hand. But then again, I see amazing stuff done in .net almost every day, except that no one else outside of my work environment will ever see it. Talking to other .net developers in other companies usually yields similar experiences - people are pulling off some seriously fantastic stuff, but it will never ever leave the company it was created in. The open source environment in .net has improved since I blogged about it 4 years ago, but it is still only a fraction of what node.js or ruby has. Just look at the list of most watched C# projects on GitHub or CodePlex and think how long ago some .net project really made headlines.

That doesn't mean it's a bad environment to work in, quite the opposite actually. If you look at popular libraries for node.js or ruby, you will often find that the BCL or Microsoft's .net Libraries already have something built-in, and it's usually rock solid and fast. You will find Microsoft supplying the big features that everyone uses or will use - LINQ, LINQ 2 Sql, Dynamics, TPL, Async/Await, ASP.net MVC are just a few I can think of. Combine the "No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft" mentality in big enterprises with the fact that the vast majority of software development is done in enterprises, and you see why this attitude exists and why Microsoft has to deliver.

There is no denying that Microsoft had quite a few blunders, of course. WPF, EF and Workflow were downright garbage in .net 3.x, WCF is overly complex for simple scenarios and Velocity... let's just say that I've never heard anyone say anything good about it, and looking at it's API I doubt I'll have good things to say about it. Then, there are signs of the more than 10 year legacy that .net already has, together with the desire for backwards compatibility. System.Configuration is horrible because you cannot just create a Configuration object from a string or any other mechanism, that thing is hard wired to look at a file on your hard drive, which makes it really inflexible for modern, multi-tenant deployments. Have you tried parsing JSON in .net? How many different JSON Libraries/Deserializers do we have as part of the Framework? And how many did Silverlight add? And yet, people mostly prefer the Newtonsoft JSON.net. Have you worked with the ASP.net Provider Model, specifically Membership Providers? Only a mother could love the API of that thing. And speaking of ASP.net, have you ever tried catching an "Attachment too large" error? The error that gets thrown twice, once in IIS before it reaches your app and then in ASP.net itself without a clear way to associate it with the request?

I could go on and on and on about things that are seriously broken in .net, and I haven't even started about testability yet (there is a very good reason for products like TypeMock to exist). It is still overall a great experience, but it is frustrating that we can't do much about the shortcomings of it. To work around the stupid file handling and Configuration madness in ASP.net, we would need a whole different web server since we can't just patch IIS or the ASP.net core components thanks to their closed source nature. Of course, running Mono on nginx is a way to work around this, but enterprises won't approve of such a setup and if it breaks, your behind may be on the line.

I've often experimented with different setups, only to realize that I really like C#. I like its static nature which usually gives good, understandable compiler errors rather than cryptic runtime errors (face it, rails can be a pain to debug). I like that I can mix in dynamics for non-critical things like view models. I like that the Microsoft-provided libraries are mostly good. I like that we can buy support and that there are tons of resources about most topics, since everyone uses pretty much the same stack. I like that they keep backwards compatibility so sacred, even if it means that there is a lot of obsolete stuff in the API (like System.Collections.ArrayList - there is no reason whatsoever to use it. If you need a container for multiple types, fall back to List<object>.

On the other hand, it can be a really frustrating experience when you run against a wall that you can't climb because of its closed source nature and Microsofts reluctance to fix things (Take WPF in .net 3.5 as an example: Things were reported but not fixed. Then 4.0 comes out with Visual Studio, they run into the same problem (e.g., the scrolling popup menus) and HotFix it. That was the moment I've given up on WPF forever) until a major release, if ever. Sometimes it is a really tough sell to use other non-microsoft components like RabbitMQ instead of MSMQ (Search for MSMQ on MSDN and look on the big highlighted article - to me, that's proof that Microsoft doesn't care about their own message queue anymore), or NServiceBus, or a sane ORM instead of Entity Framework.

Most applications start out as simple CRUD applications, and it is usually a lot quicker to start them in node or rails. However, simple CRUD applications usually evolve into more sophisticated pieces, requiring more business logic and safeguards in different places, and here I must say that .net shines - in the long run, its strengths play out well.

However, I really think that we can do better in the web world, much better. Chad Myers had an interesting posting, and even though it was ripped to pieces by Rob Connery, it still holds a lot of truth. Web Applications are unnecessarily complex. I will write a follow up posting with some thoughts about this.

My conclusion would be that .net is overall doing perfectly well. It is used by tons of companies for very important apps, but it was never aimed to be a "hip" language. Microsoft is deeply rooted in the Enterprise, they are pretty much the exact opposite of Apple. That doesn't mean that they do a worse job at it, it just means you won't see as much about it since enterprises like to keep their "secrets" internal and err on the side of safety/secrecy. I have no doubt that there will be .net jobs for the next decade and beyond, while some other language will come and go.

I used to love Dropbox. I own multiple machines and dual boot them, so a convenient way to share files was a big win, and Dropbox delivered on it. They have a seamless Windows and Mac OS X client.

Recently, they had a few security issues – that sucks, but it seems to have been a genuine mistake rather than gross incompetence (like storing cleartext passwords like other did), so I gave them another chance.

But then they crossed the line that no company may ever cross: Taking ownership of your data. TwitPic tried to do that. Adobe tried to do that. And now Dropbox does as well, by adding this to their terms of use:

By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent we think it necessary for the Service.

In all three cases, the TOU have been revised, or “clarified” as the vendors put it. But even though I do know about Hanlon's razor, I’m unwilling to believe that it’s always just a mistake or unclear language, but rather an attempt of free services that are in financial struggle because no one buys their premium services and they simply have to make money.

As I’m a free user, I contribute to these struggles because I cost them money without bringing any in, so I’ve just decided to do Dropbox a favor by logging in and clicking the “Delete my account” link at the bottom of the account settings.

As a User, always remember that in the moment you give your data to any website – be it a hosted blog, a social network, a sharing site, “the cloud” – you have lost a great deal of control over it and have to be vigilant about TOU changes and companies taking advantage of your data for monetary or other reasons.

Choose wisely, and remember that there is always an alternative company that didn’t try to pull a trick like that (yet).

I say that Business IT finally needs to move into the 21st century and embrace this thing called "Internet". Why do you need a long testing cycle for a web browser? This is most likely a sign that your internal web applications are written for a specific browser, usually Internet Explorer 6. It means that your web applications contain countless hacks for that browser and because you didn't upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 and 8 when they came out in 2006 and 2009 respectively. It means that you have amassed considerable technical debt, and now you have to pay the piper.

I say: Sucks to be you. The Web is improving fast. When you wrote that ASP.net 1.1 Application that displays an Oracle Database in a data grid, you made a commitment to the web. You committed to abandon a stable platform like Windows (even with all the negative reactions to Vista, Microsoft is doing a lot to ensure backwards compatibility) and chose a platform that has been chaotic, anarchistic and unstable since the dawn of time, or at least since Netscape 2.

The year is 2011. You don't have to embrace HTML5, but you should make sure all your applications work in IE8, Firefox, Chrome and Safari/Mac without hacks, because then browser updates will be no problem. If you are still on Internet Explorer 6 or 7, upgrade to 8 (XP) or 9 (Modern Windows). If you are vendor-locked in to IE6 - I'm sorry, but you sucked. Your Purchasing Department really dropped the ball when they bet on IE6, because no sane company ties itself to a single product version of anything.

If you wrote an in-house web app or browser extension, then just upgrade it. And don't tell me anything about cost here - your business made the decision to go to the web, so if changes to the web environment come as a surprise, you didn't do your homework properly. Please, go back and write Windows Client apps again or do your job properly. If you want to be a web developer, then you need to do more than just drag/drop a DataGridView and connect it to a SqlDataSource. If you want to be an IT Person, learn how to work with the developers to make them change their apps.

Or, more likely: Continue to whine about how fast stuff changes, how vendors dare to improve their products, how they change the version number. Continue to embrace the waterfall model, get obsessed with version numbers, create test plans that take a year to execute, and stay out of touch with the real world. After all, business needs are more important than quality.

Just do me one favor then: Make sure that your crappy web apps can't be easily hacked. I'm getting tired with incompetent companies constantly losing my customer data to hackers. But then again, there are no penalties for losing customer data, so my plea will go unheard.

A few weeks back I ranted about TV manufacturers unable to properly list their Inputs/Outputs in the specs and how I have to read the user manual to find out if I really am able to use it. Weirdly, some companies are unable to provide a shot from the back and a user manual.

My current reason to rant is the Acer B233HU monitor. I bought it more or less blindly because it has a resolution of 2048x1152 and because it has an HDMI input that supports that resolution (my graphics card can drive 3 monitors, but only has 2 DVI Ports, so I needed a HDMI or Display Port Monitor). Now I'm realizing how much space my monitors take up on my desk, so I remembered Jeff Atwood posting about Monitor Arms some time ago.

Now, to buy a Monitor Arm, I need to know the proper measurements for VESA Mounts. There is 75x75mm, 100x100mm and some other sizes. For my Philips 240BW that's no problem: Go to Philips website, look at specs, see that it's 100x100mm. But my Acer Monitor? No information. I can guess or measure myself that it's also 100x100mm (it is), but really, that belongs in the specs or the manual!

I think it's astounding that they list stuff like what the pins of the DVI Port do (As it's important for me to know that Pin 24 is DDC TMDS Clock-) but not what measurements their VESA Mount it.

Seriously, why is it so hard for companies to determine which specs are important and list them? Yes, I know that I belong to the minority of people who look at the specs and buy stuff that fits a need rather than just buying stuff because of bling-bling and advertising, but do you really need to constantly remind me of that fact? Can't you just - at least sometimes - pretend that us engineers are still valued customers?

Really, why is that? I was looking at a TV, and I want to know if I can connect my equipment and I needed one with RCA Audio Outputs to go into my stereo amplifier. I'm not a big fan of digging through walls of text (often incomplete) describing the in- and outputs, often using different terminology. I want two things. First, I want this:

This is a picture of the connectors on the Sharp LC-52LE700UN, the TV I have on my wish-list now. From this picture, I can see it has everything I want. So the second thing I want is a link to the PDF of the User Manual so that I can double check that there are no caveats.

There are dozens of companies trying to sell their stuff. Amazon listed over 100 TVs when I searched for my criteria. How am I supposed to find the one which has what I need? By looking at the connectors! By simply looking at this, I can already remove many candidates from the list. For the remaining ones, I can then read the User's Manual to see which suits me best.

Yes, I realize that style is a big sales factor, and I'm not saying that pictures from the front/sides are unimportant. But on the other hand: As a geek, I get more excited when I see a battery of connections. Seriously, leave that shiny black high-gloss coating to the ladies and instead show me RCA sockets!

The same goes for audio equipment, and here even more as some amplifiers have shared inputs or a separate phono input. I was looking for a cheap Stereo Amplifier as I still had speakers but no Amp, and I ended up with the Sony STR-DH100 primarily because of the clear back shot and available user manual, and only then I started reading the reviews.

Remember companies: There are dozens, sometimes hundreds of products available in a category, and as a customer I want to be able to remove all but 5 or 6 of them ASAP, so that I can take a real in-depth look at those remaining. So do me a favor and show me your backs.

Love, Michael.

Have the minimize button minimize to tray
That seems to make most sense to me. If your application can minimize to tray, why would you want to alternatively minimize it to the taskbar as well? The downside of this is that for novice users it may be confusing ("Where did my app go?").

Have a separate button to minimize to tray
Some applications have a new button for minimizing to tray:

That seems to be a good balance between "do not confuse new users" and "offer a way to minimize to tray". It's just not consistent as different applications use different buttons, and some programmers do not seem to be able to do this properly, causing weird behavior (i.e. Classic Windows-Style Buttons in a Windows XP Screen).

Use the X Button
Minimize minimizes to taskbar, and the X minimizes to tray. To Exit, right click the tray icon and select "Exit". That is braindead, sorry. The X Button is meant to close, and nothing else. Also, as the Systray (or Taskbar Notification Area) is usually set to auto-hide icons, closing an app is now a 4-Click Action: Click X, Click to expand Tray, Search Icon (and hope you find it before the Tray collapses again), Right Click Icon, Click Exit.

The reason why I am posting this is because TweetDeck just implemented that behavior, and I think it sucks. Really. If I click the X, i want it to close, and not find out later that it's happily still taking my API Requests (Bad when working on a second PC) and using 126 Megabytes RAM.

X marks the spot to close, not to minimize.

Thank you.

[Section]
Key=Value
SomeOtherKey=SomeOtherValue

[AnotherSection]
Hello=World

Hardly exciting, but it gets the job done very well. Today I wanted to work with INI Files in my C# Application, both for reading and writing. But as I just found out, .net does not have built in functions for working with .ini files. It looks like they want everyone to work with XML Files now. Well, apart from the fact that XML looks like my keyboard puked on my hard drive and that the format is unneccesarily complicated for this purpose, I also found that reading and writing them is rather complicated, especially since the XmlSerializer has some stupid restrictions (one being that the class needs to be public - have they never heard of reflection?).

It's great that the .net Framework is so powerful - I believe I can write a function that downloads an MP3 off the internet and uses it to generate a gradient in an image which then gets encrypted and sent per e-Mail in maybe 5 lines or so, but when it comes to something simple as saving some Key/Value Pairs, I still need a crapton of code. So I binged the internets a bit and found some code that uses P/Invoke to call Kernel functions to handle ini files, but I want to avoid P/Invoke at all costs. So in the end I simply wrote a class to Load/Save Ini Files.

It's a simple class to interact with a simple file format that was created to store Key/Value pairs and that just works. Seriously, don't change what isn't broken. The class is licensed under WTFPL and can be downloaded here.

Unfortunately, Localization support in Visual Studio 2008 left me somewhat unimpressed. So I set the "Localizable" property of my Form to true and then automagically it creates the resources I need and allows me to change any form settings, including Text, Position, Size etc. That is so far a great idea and works very well, but it has several drawbacks:

• One resx file per form and language means exponential growth of files
• The resx files are tied to the form - which means I cannot just put them in a "Localized" Folder
• While it's great that Forms are supported, I still have to find another way for my Exceptions and other Non-Form Code
• Translations are stored in satellite assemblies. The Goal of SWiki is to have as few files as possible, preferably only one.
• No way to share strings between different parts

In short: The built in support is unsuitable for SWiki. I have put my requirements in a StackOverflow question, but the answers were somewhat discouraging. I have looked around a bit and naturally also ended up at GNU Gettext which handles strings, but does not solve the problem of a) non-string content (Images, Location/Sizes of Controls) and b) the actual application of resources to the target.

One of the main issues is that the InitializeComponent() function is somewhat untouchable, as the designer will break if you change it too much and will replace your code with it's own anyway. Visual Studio is certainly not lying when it tells you to not mess with the function.

So anyway, I have just decided to build my own localization framework for use with the SWiki UI. Finding a name was reasonably easy, I just called it "The Wheel". I don't know if it's going to be much use, but just in case, it's going to be licensed under Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL). Release Date? I don't know, I hope by the end of the week.

You're in a Marketplace, competing against others

Okay, this may come as a surprise to some CEOs, maybe it will even shatter their view of the world: Your company and your products are not alone in the world. There are other companies and other products, which target the same audience. The sooner you start realizing that you're not alone, the sooner you can evaluate whether your sales force is competetive.

During the initial research of my current task, I ended up with around 20 different product names. I want to cut down that list as fast as possible. I don't have time to do a thorough evaluation of each of these 20 solutions. So I'm naturally interested in cutting down that list to maybe 3 or 4 products which then get a full, deep evaluation. If you want to be one of the 16 companies that get cut without any evaluation, here is what you have to do:

Do not list any prices on your Website

Ah, I get it: You're providing enterprise solutions for enterprise customers. So no need to list prices, just "Contact Sales to get a Quote". Yeah, right. There are exactly two outcomes of this: 1. You look at who we are, and then rip us off or 2. You're too expensive anyway.

Price is a big part of the evaluation. I want to know how much it will cost, and I want to extrapolate the costs for future growth. If I have to contact sales and then have to wait a day or more for an answer because you're busy or in a different time zone, then that creates a high barrier. Also, it does not help to build trust, because I always have to keep in mind that you're likely trying to rip us off.

If we are talking about implementing some Six-Figure software that requires people from your company to come over and implement your solution (say, SAP), then I agree that a dedicated contract is perfectly fine. But if you're just selling a piece of software that is a) priced below 10000 $ and b) will be implemented completely by us anyway, then not having a price listed on the website is almost a guaranteed way to get cut off my list.

Do not list any technical details about the product

So you have this really shiny product brochure, showing how the product looks for the end user, promising that it can do anything? That's great, I'll need this brochure when I present it to the people who sign the cheques. But first I need to know if your solution really fits my needs. I want the deep technical details, the abbreviations, the ugly stuff. Your software aggregates data? Great! Where from? Does it still rely on ODBC? Or does it use ADO.net? Can it get data from the Business Data Catalog? When your solution integrates with e-Mail, does it work with IMAP? Can I modify the Output that your solution generates? If yes, how? Do you use XSLT? Or some templating language you've invented? If yes, how does it work?

Make sure that I can download the installation, administration and end user manuals. If my task is to aggregate data from Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL and BDC, transform it into a specific format and then e-Mail, I need to know if your solution can actually do that and what technology it involves.

Shiny product brochures are good to get the cheques signed, but technical documentation is what makes me write the cheque in the first place.

Require registration to download a trial/demo version or manual

Okay, so your solution is priced nicely and the technical documentation looks great, so I'll decide to give it a try by downloading the 30-day trial version (you have a trial version of all your products, do you?). But then I get this nice little message saying "Before you may enter our holy halls and download our sacred software, you must first kneel down before us and tell us who you are". Well, actually the message is usually saying "Please register to download".

Let me clarify the roles for a moment: You want something from me. My money. I may want something from you, but I can as well live without. Imagine a shopping mall where you have to give your passport to the owner of each store before you are allowed to do some window shopping or take a closer look at a product on a shelf. Unbelievable? Indeed, but that's how some companies try to run their business on the internet.

I usually take one of two ways: a) I move you to the bottom of the list or b) I register under a fake name and e-Mail address. Unlike the real world passport, I can easily set up a fake identity on the internet. Tonight I'm Hermann Li, working for the British Government. Tomorrow I am Tom Selleck, working for Paramount Pictures. And maybe next week I am Goan Farkyu from a small Asian company specializing in underwater golf courses.

You say that you would like to know who downloads your solutions, so that you know which markets you need to target? You say that you are just providing better service by being able to contact interested customers in a personalized way? I say: You fail. I add trash to the contact databases of crappy companies every week, and so do others. I don't work for the government, I don't work for Paramount, and I certainly do not work on underwater golf courses. But your contact databases say something different now. So while you are planning to increase your marketing in Asia, I am already feeding trash into another contact database, this time I am a Prince from Nigeria.

Also, you should apply a rule that was created in Hollywood: Don't call us, we call you. If I download a trial version, that does not mean that I am interested in any follow-up call from you. I don't want your newsletter, I don't want a call from sales, I don't want to take a product evaluation survey. We will contact you if we have questions, not the other way round.

Random observation: If you're working for Pixar, companies seem to be very eager to contact you as fast as they can. As a Pixar Employee, I get contacted usually twice as fast as a Microsoft employee.

Store your passwords in cleartext

Ha, got you. This point seems out of place here, but it fits with the previous point. The first thing that I do after registering with a fake identity: I use the "I forgot my password" feature and see what happens. If you send me back my original password, you're almost certainly out because you don't care about your customers. There is no excuse to storing passwords in cleartext. You say "We want to make it more convenient for the user"? I say "Goodbye, not doing business with you". There are exactly two ways to store passwords: 1. Salted and Hashed or 2. Not at all (i.e. use OpenID instead of implementing your own authentication mechanism). Clear-Text and Non-Salted Hash is completely and absolutely out of question, no exceptions.

I am a programmer, doing a technical evaluation. I know about the stuff I am looking for and working with. If I get the impression that you don't know about the stuff you're working with, then we're not doing business.

In the end, it's all about mutual respect

At the end of the day, both of us want to create a Win-Win situation. I want to solve my business problem, you want to make a good sale. But if any side is not being treated with respect or feels like getting cheated, that will complicate business relations, or make them impossible.

I don't know what "the usual" way of corporate business application evaluation is, but I do know what I am looking for. I want to do window shopping and no-friction evaluation. Thus, you have to make the first step: By allowing me to easily get the information I need, you are showing respect and trust. And if I like what I see, I will make a step forward as well and contact you. On the other hand, if you expect me to do the first step towards you, then chances are high that I look at the competition first.

Looks like the more versions they make, the more stuff they drop out of the name. First it was "SharePoint Portal Server", then "Office SharePoint Server", and now just "SharePoint Server". Makes sense to be fair, SharePoint is really a brand on it's own, so why blur the lines too much. But the actual question will be: Is 2010 going to end this SPWeb.Dispose madness, that not only causes all sorts of weird issues, but is also inconsistent.

Really, SPWeb.Dispose is a big gun that is made for people to shoot themselves in the foot, and I'd love to see that improved more than anything else (Well, apart from CAML, that abomination of SQL).

But there are two Apple Products that I always adored and still truly love: iTunes and the iPod. I did get the original 5 GB iPod when it was introduced and I was always satisfied with it (Yes, the wheel had it's issues, but not to the point of being unusable - and at least they fixed that in newer iPods). Nowadays, I own a second Generation iPod Shuffle (2 GB, in Blue) and I also love it. For me, this is the ultimate iPod from a usability perspective: The way the controls are on the side mean that I can grab my iPod when it's in my pocket and I know where the buttons are: Next track is on the short side, Previous Track is on the long side, Volume controls in between and the Play/Pause button in the center. There is really nothing bad that I could say about the 2nd Gen iPod Shuffle, maybe only that more space would be nice.

So, Apple now recently introduced the Third Generation Shuffle. They addressed my only mini-concern by increasing it's capacity to 4 GB. But sadly, they completely broke it in most other ways. Let's get one thing out first: Their advertising is wrong. It's advertised as "The first iPod that talks to you". *beep* Wrong. The 4th Generation iPod Nano came before (although with a Trick). That is just one indicator that the new Shuffle seems like it was build be people who don't care about the iPod product line.

The main issue with the 3rd Generation Shuffle is that they moved the Buttons from the device into the headphones, which means that blind control is near impossible. How are you supposed to control the iPod if you do NOT want a bulky, unnecessary extra box somewhere in the cable? What If I do not want the controls outside? I usually keep my Shuffle in the inner pocket of my jacket, so I always know where the controls are - with an extra box on the cable, it's a constant searching for it. The iPod Shuffle is a solid piece of Metal, so it does not bend or move.

But even worse: I can no longer use proper Headphones. The ones included with the iPod may be better than most bundled ones, but ultimately they are still crap. But now, it's not even possible to use any Third Party ones because they need to have the Remote Control built in. And as you can guess, Third Party ones will be really expensive because a) the manufacturers can advertise them as an iPod product and b) the manufacturers need to buy a special chip from Apple.

I paid 20 Euros for my last pair of Earphones, some Philips in-Ear with an Earclip. They are a million times better than the bundled ones, but even more important: They are just earphones, with no extra Apple Tax attached to them. Now that consumers will have to pay Apple Tax twice on Earphones (one time for the chip and a second time for the iPod brand), I doubt that proper headphones for a proper price will be available. And yes, I know that you can still use headphones without remote control, to get playback without prev/next Track and volume controls - it's really hard to keep a straight face when hearing this though, that's a typical marketing bullshit excuse.

In Short: Calling the Third Generation iPod Shuffle a piece of shit would be an insult - to shit, because shit can at least be used to fertilize our fields. It has "fail" written all over it, and I really wonder if Apple will kill other iPods by introducing this crap as well, or if the 3rd Gen Shuffle is just a test balloon for shit.

While many big companies still see the Internet as some fad that will surely soon go away, some smaller companies embraced the opportunities that the Internet offers. Companies like YouTube or Dailymotion emerged and allow people to share Videos that they have created themselves.

People are happy, because this new "Web 2.0" gives ordinary people like me and you the opportunity to create content and to actually share it with other people. While this leads to a lot of sub-par quality content, this new freedom also gave birth to some high quality or otherwise excellent content. This Web 2.0 grew and pospered, and everyone was happy.

Everyone? No, a small percent of people were not happy. Those people, let's call them "Major Music Company Managers" or MMCMs for short could not cope with this new freedom. You have to understand their point of view: They were born and raised in a world where the border of a country was a wall, impassable for all but the most wealthy and important people. When the MMCMs grew up, they learned that their products needed separate licensing in every country and preferably for every occasion. They learned that in order to maximize Shareholder value and Profit, they needed to make licensing complex and expensive. And who can really critisize them? Weren't we all told that creating content is reserved for the elite of our society? Wouldn't it be total chaos and anarchy if the mob would get the power to create content?

But the MMCMs realized that they would need henchmen to make sure that only the Elite gets access to their content. Of course, they needed to make sure that the mob can sip from their fountain of high class content, but at the same time they need to protect it from the very same mob. So they made sure to have local authorities, and so they went and instituted the RIAA in the US, the GEMA in Germany and many other similar henchmen companies.

You have to understand that these MMCMs and dinosaurs and that they are unable to evolve. So when this new Web 2.0 thing came up, they did not know how to react, they were never trained to do so. They are used to act and control, not to react and collaborate. So while they do see the meteorite that will make them extinct, they are not realizing it. Instead, they fell back to their primary instinct, the habits that all humans share: Hunt, kill and devour their prey.

If they would be able to evolve, they could see the opportunities that are suddenly open to them. The mob is suddenly creating it's own content, and it's not just some fad that will go away. User-created content may not make the high-budget content go away completely, but it has successfully established a market share that is too big to ignore. But the most important gotcha: User-Created content is on the Internet, and the Internet knows no country borders (except maybe the Great Firewall of China, some Parts of Germany, and some other third world countries that are ruled through oppression).

The MMCMs could have embraced the opportunity just like the common mob did. They could have taken the chance to allow easy and painless world-wide licensing of their content, and they could offer fair pricing and clear legal conditions. They could get advertising not only for free - they could actually have people advertise their content AND get paid by them for it.

Unfortunately, they decided to go down the road to extinction. Instead of trying to find out how they could profit and evolve, they instead decided to cut off the mob from their content. They stopped producing Audio CDs and instead started to offer weird Data CDs that somehow resembly Audio CDs. They decided to offer their music on the internet, but only for rent, not for sale. And they decided to sue people in an attempt to convince people to not advertise their content anymore. They call it "protecting their assets", and again: It's hard to criticise them for it if you just keep in mind that they are primal creatures from a different era.

But, there is hope. Others have seen the inability to evolve as well, and decided to breed a new race of music licensing people. The Web 2.0 gave birth to Creative Commons, to Magnatune, to Opsound and to many more. The Web gave birth to more advanced ways to make sure the mob gains legal access to music, and it also allows musicians to get paid properly. The dinosaurs may still have a bit of an advantage because of their existing back catalogue, but if they stay unable to evolve and work together with us common people rather than beging against us, they will become extinct within this or the next generation.

A loss? Not more that the loss of Mammoths or Bluebucks.

TLDR Version: Dear major record companies, please stop being idiots and finally create the foundation for fair and easy worldwide licensing, or at least stop crying about how bad the economy is, because the economy is perfectly fine, the problem is you. Thank you.

PS: Save some Love is quite cool, I think I'll license it.

Let me start by the usual disclaimer: This is highly subjective and based on my habits.

So yeah, Firefox' URL bar. I regularly browse some web pages, for example The Wikipedia, both in English and German. Their urls are en.wikipedia.org and de.wikipedia.org. Also, I am a regular visitor of stackoverflow.com, where I was part of the private beta when the URL still was beta.stackoverflow.com. Also, I regular visit some German news sites like Spiegel.de or Heise.de.

So, what happens if I want to visit the German Wikipedia? I usually type in "de", press down once since de.wikipedia.org is the first result and hit Enter. Not so with Firefox 3.0: The first result is Heise.de or Spiegel.de, since they END in .de.

When I start to type in "sta" to go to stackoverflow, the first result is... beta.stackoverflow.com, because I visited that site a lot, but that link is now obsolete since MONTHS. And no, I am not going to clear out my cache or history or whatever, just because the browser is too stupid to learn that beta.stackoverflow.com is not being used since 2 or 3 months now...

Oh yeah, and that new download manager... it is as useless as it ever was as a download manager (hint: A good download manager works essentially like "wget -c ", not like "I may just leave that temp file behind, or maybe not, maybe I'll even resume if the download is interrupted, but... meh, let's just start from 0 again), but now they even removed that "Saving to: (Folder)" Button that allowed to quickly open the download folder. That change was a really useless change between Firefox 2 and 3, because it removed convenience without adding any value.

Don't get me wrong: I think that the Firefox guys have done an important and excellent Job. They had success where other failed: In offering a stable and viable alternative to Microsofts Internet Explorer, which is still a very inconvenient browser in Version 7.

But changing core behaviour between releases (and the URL Bar is part of the core of a browser) is something that should be carefully considered, and at least there should be an option. Maybe not in the GUI, but at least about:config should allow me to change behaviour. (You can change some behaviour, but you cannot get the Firefox 2 behaviour back)

I believe I heard that Firefox 3.1 is supposed to change this now, but since there are now viable alternatives, Firefox just got thrown off my hard drive. Ironically, I am now running Chrome, a Browser that I avoided at first. Google recently changed it's policy, and the default settings are a lot more sane now. I do not know if I am going to keep it, but for now, this is my replacement. Chromes download manager is even worse though, but at least the URL Bar is properly working. And at the end of the day, there is still Opera.

Good luck with Firefox 3.1 and 3.2, maybe we'll see us again in the future.

Tools => Options => Preferences => E-mail Options => Advanced E-mail Options => When new items arrive in my Inbox => Untick all 4 options