'I am not a Microsoft "fanboy"'...

Does this post about how wonderful new web technologies from Microsoft are, and how easy and quick it is to develop for them, set off anyone's alarm bells?

He does keep talking about "Flash and Silverlight", but that could be because he wants 'Silverlight' to come up when people search for 'Flash'. Nothing very specific, but there's a whiff of shilling about it, and the poster has a big ol' string of zeroes for a history.

posted by AmbroseChapel to etiquette/policy at 3:20 PM (87 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

Naw, they're not a microsoft shill, as far as I can tell from their user details/IP/etc. They say up front they work in a all microsoft shop, and MS has been pushing Silverlight, so it's likely he's just repeating the same developer talk he's been hearing. Nothing nefarious going on here.
posted by mathowie at 3:23 PM on March 13

Well, it's still not praising Linux or Apple, so it should probably be deleted.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:26 PM on March 13 [18 favorites]

I am a web programmer and Linux fanboy and it didn't set off alarms for me.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 3:44 PM on March 13

If it's shilling, the answers are not exactly helpful.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:50 PM on March 13

It it did for me. And why I left derisive laughter. Silverlight? C'mon.
posted by tkchrist at 4:03 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]

It's high-tech chatfilter, since there aren't any answers that can be demonstrably wrong.

But I don't think it's a plant.
posted by Malor at 4:10 PM on March 13

The only alarm bell that rang for me was the "chatfilter" one. While it is phrased as a question with the specific goal of gathering opinions, it is really just an invitation to speculate on the possible future of technology development. If the OQ had asked "My intention is not to start a political flame war, but rather to get insight from other citizens on who they think will win the upcoming election. Is Hillary going to win with her centrist experience, or Obama with his message of hope and change?" - well, I imagine it would have been deleted pretty quickly.
posted by googly at 4:10 PM on March 13

I'm an web programmer and big Open Source supporter, and the few times I've used MS-specific tools and languages, I've been not only creeped out, but also angry at their assumptions. But I have several friends who are die-hard .NETties and SQLServerites. And they're just as sure that their tools of choice are firm and mine are shifty and wish-washy.

Final score: One thumb up, one stink eye.
posted by Plutor at 4:13 PM on March 13

I think if it were really shilling the question would have been more about Silverlight itself and less about "Flash and Silverlight". Still a dumb question though.
posted by Green With You at 4:15 PM on March 13

I actually think that AmbroseChapel is onto something. If there are Microsoft shills out trolling the Metafilters, the best that they could possibly hope to do for Silverlight would be to associate it with Flash in search results. Sort of a "teach the controversy" approach to marketing.

This is pure speculation, but I would imagine that a more covert form of PepsiBlue is more common than any of us might realize--one focused not on quick clickthroughs but on long-term effects on search results. But I have no idea how someone could go about finding these people. It would take more than a Smith & Wesson Galaxy 13 LED Flashlight, that's for sure.
posted by roll truck roll at 4:23 PM on March 13

That is definitely a plant. Most definitely.

at worst:
New user+a question that is more of a statement + talking about a new technology made by a company with a marketing department that could hire someone to plant it == schill.

at best it's chatfilter.

And for what it is worth (from my admittedly un-objective viewpoint) Silverlight is a joke.
posted by localhuman at 4:24 PM on March 13 [2 favorites]

The only thing that sets off alarm bells is that he favorited his own question. Maybe someone could build a Silverlight application to see if that's actually a shill-habit or just confirmation bias on my part.
posted by Gary at 4:31 PM on March 13

Silverlight is a joke.

It's not so much a joke as theater. The only people I know even talking about it are people who work for Microsoft. And they are always asking me what I think of it... and I say I don't know because it may as well be Bigfoot or Nessie. The only people who see it are believers. And yet I ask to see samples of actual projects... and they always send me stuff done 99% in Adobe.
posted by tkchrist at 4:32 PM on March 13

oh, and props to adobe for starting to get behind the open source idea.
posted by localhuman at 4:39 PM on March 13

Isn't metatalk googleable?

If the question is an attempted shill move, each and every repeated mention of s!lverl!ght and fl@sh here is adding to it.
posted by CKmtl at 4:42 PM on March 13

And every intentional misspelling makes us look more like porn spam. What a conundrum.
posted by roll truck roll at 4:49 PM on March 13

What a conundrum.

I love that word. It belongs in the Aboriginal dance thread.

Chant it quietly ten times. I swear you will conjure up rain or locusts.
posted by tkchrist at 4:56 PM on March 13

I think it's totally sketchy, personally. I just got back from SXSW where they were pushing Silverlight hard, from every angle and this just seems weird to me. I think if this were a geniune question it would be shorter, would not include all the Flash/Silverlight talk and just plain old wouldn't mention Silverlight so much. I'll keep an eye on the user. We can't delete questions just because they seem fishy, or we rarely do in any case.
posted by jessamyn at 5:05 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

I've shipped a project with Silverlight 1.0 and worked a fair bit with the 1.1 alpha / 2.0 beta 1 bits.

It's definetly real. It is publicially available. ( www.silverlight.net ). The tools for development of 1.0 are (text editors, or Visual Studio Express) and either 2.0 is free (Visual Studio Express) or will be before RTM (probably beta 2).

There is a huge amount of money to be made doing Silverlight work right now. Microsoft, who spends a shitton of money on vendors for web dev, will never fund another new flash based project. That has been laid down from on high. It's a good business to be in right now.

That said, I think this is definetly a plant. Silverlight 1.0 is a not a competitor to Flash. They wish it were, but it has a feature set that would be a good match for Flash 4 with a Media Player tacked on (note: current version of Flash is 9 and 10 is not far off).

Silverlight 2.0 is a big step forward compared to 1.0 but on features alone its still a fair ways behind Flash 9 + the Flex 2 library. However, at the pace they are moving I expect within 2 years (assuming MS continues to fund Silverlight at the current levels) that Silverlight 3 or 4 will be a very serious competitor to Flash (whatever version is out at that time) on technical / feature based merits alone. Already they have a good core vector animation engine which is actually a bit better than what is in Flash and their Media Player is already on par with Flash media player in terms of video.
posted by Riemann at 5:05 PM on March 13

Chant it quietly ten times. I swear you will conjure up rain or locusts.

Done.

Now how do I get rid of the locusts?
posted by languagehat at 5:06 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]

Note: Another important difference between Flash and Silverlight 2+ in the long term is that the CLR is multithreaded and supports multi-threading user code (includes most of System.Threading) while the Flash virtual machine forces user code to be single threaded and so far Adobe has been adamant about not changing that.
posted by Riemann at 5:11 PM on March 13

Shut up you nerds.
posted by Divine_Wino at 5:16 PM on March 13 [6 favorites]

If it's shilling, the answers are not exactly helpful.

Obviously, they're not members of the Coalition of the Shilling.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:20 PM on March 13 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure about that, Riemann. I've heard from a reliable guy (the developer of earthmine) that the latest beta version of the flash player supports dual threaded stuff. There is also talk of full hardware acceleration support for flash player 11.

Damn i'm a nerd. I'm going to get some dinner.
posted by localhuman at 5:25 PM on March 13

There is a huge amount of money to be made doing Silverlight work right now. Microsoft, who spends a shitton of money on vendors for web dev, will never fund another new flash based project. That has been laid down from on high. It's a good business to be in right now.

Probably. For "Right now." But MS reverses it's internal edicts so often. I remember when they insisted print projects be done in Publisher. That worked out well.

I wish I had a dime for... etc.

Any way the next versions sounds interesting I might try the Beta on my virtual machine. Though. Oddly. I don't even do much Flash these days so it might be a stretch for me find something useful for it to do.
posted by tkchrist at 5:25 PM on March 13

It certainly doesn't look like he's plugging Silverlight. He doesn't even mention it in the question, and in the more inside it doesn't come up until the fourth paragraph.

His question seems to be the one he actually ended the "more inside" with:

"Is server-side code with Javascript handling the client side going to continue as a dominant force or do you see other "plug-in" technologies such as Flash and Silverlight edging out a lead in the future?"

I assume most web developers, like myself, are frequently worried about keeping our skills updated and trying to gauge which technologies are "the future" versus false starts.
posted by justkevin at 5:35 PM on March 13

Apple has stated flat-out that Flash ain't gonna be on the iPhone.

The Acid3 test is heavy into SVG.

Webkit, Opera, and Firefox are all getting bit into SVG support.

Chances are, IMO, that SVG is the future. Silverlight sure as heck isn't going to be it.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:58 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

Microsoft has so completely lost the plot in pretty much everything they do, it's a little sad to see. I'd switch to MacOS on my PC hardware if I wasn't such an inveterate gamer (and set in my ways).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:19 PM on March 13

I think it's nice that there's a bit of competition, even if all it does is encourage Flash to get better. Look at what Firefox did for Internet Explorer.

As for the shilling, if that's a shill, then I'm a shill. A shill for LOVE.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:25 PM on March 13

The question could definitely be a plant.

But from my point of view as a long-time web developer who has worked with a variety of technologies on both sides of the IT Iron Curtain, I would not say that Silverlight is simply a joke or otherwise something that can't be taken seriously. I don't think it's the wave of the future by any means - it doesn't have any sort of fundamental technological superiority to the alternatives - but for some developers it's more aesthetically attractive for having a light-weight, declarative front end compared to MXML (I think Adobe's only just getting a JIT compiler for MXML going, right?). And of course if you're working on the MS side of things it's got all the hooks into the MS stuff as people in the AskMe thread pointed out.

And I don't know if there's the equivalent for Flash but there's an open source player already, Moonlight from the Mono Project guys.
posted by XMLicious at 7:07 PM on March 13

Client side Java forever!
posted by delmoi at 7:25 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

Chances are, IMO, that SVG is the future.

I'll bet cash money on that.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:28 PM on March 13

A little more about the Moonlight Silverlight player: The internal MS team actually helped then out extensively with code and information. I was quite surprised with how open the team has been compared with the MS reputation.
posted by Riemann at 7:35 PM on March 13

Chances are, IMO, that SVG is the future.

The future is collapse, ruin, decay. The future is a steaming sea and a deadly mist.

Fire and molten rock await.
posted by breezeway at 7:40 PM on March 13 [10 favorites]

Chances are, IMO, that SVG is the future.

I'll bet cash money on that.

Unfortunately, neither IE6 nor IE7 support SVG. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool, but the chances of major websites being built around it in the next 3 years are nil.
posted by gsteff at 7:45 PM on March 13

Unfortunately, neither IE6 nor IE7 support SVG

You can include IE8 (released in beta last week), which also ignores SVG.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 8:04 PM on March 13

Unfortunately, neither IE6 nor IE7 support SVG. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool, but the chances of major websites being built around it in the next 3 years are nil.

I have often thought that a killer web app that requires Firefox will get people to install it. Hell, people used to buy whole computers so they could run Visicalc or 123. Installation of Firefox is a pretty low bar in comparison.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:20 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

The only thing that sets off alarm bells is that he favorited his own question.

What's wrong with this? Is it like posting on your own wall on Facebook?
posted by Locative at 8:43 PM on March 13

Unfortunately, neither IE6 nor IE7 support SVG.

Actually, it appears at though SVG support in IE8 will be possible with binary behaviors. And generally speaking, if sites have demanded users install the Flash plugin in the past, why couldn't they demand users install an SVG plugin? (Although I agree that plugin-based SVG support isn't as good as built-in support.)
posted by sdodd at 9:04 PM on March 13

Smells like a big time shill to me.

Anyways, off to dinner for me. I'm still trying to decide if I want Kobe or Makashi beef though. I mean, I know I want an ultra high end steak, but I just can't decide between the Kobe or Makashi. Or maybe there's a third choice I don't know about, but frankly Kobe and Makashi are the standards that everyone knows about, so I'll just stick with one of those.

-T

P.S. Kobe and Makashi.
posted by tkolar at 9:51 PM on March 13

Unfortunately, neither IE6 nor IE7 support SVG. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool, but the chances of major websites being built around it in the next 3 years are nil.

Maybe, but I don't hold out much hope for IE usage being in the majority for much longer than two or three years. The holdouts will be corporate clients who have ActiveX albatrosses around their necks. The future is in interoperability, and Microsoft just Doesn't Get It.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:51 PM on March 13

No alarms here, but it probably doesn't meet the guidelines, being a starter for an open ended discussion. That said, it's an open ended discussion about subjects I'm interested in and technologies I work with, so thanks for pointing it out.
posted by Artw at 10:32 PM on March 13

Forget Kobe and Makashi. Go for Waygu.

Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu
posted by slogger at 11:00 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]

Blazecock: I would have said the same exact thing two or three years ago. And (as much as I would like otherwise) I would have been wrong. I think it would be extremely unlikely to see IE drop below 50% market share in the next several years. It has quite a ways to fall to even hit 50. And believe me, any site that has a serious monetary investment behind it is going to be stuck with supporting IE looong after it drops below 50.

A couple years ago producers would balk at requiring Flash 7 over 5 or 6 because it only had 90% penetration as opposed to 96 or 98%*.

Just to look at it the other way, it's extremely difficult to convince an investor to forgo the non-IE percentage of the market (eg: by requiring some IE specific feature) or even just Safari Mac users (god is Safari a pain in the ass, just barely behind IE six in the pantheon of webdev demons) who are in comparison to the IE share a rounding error.

There's plenty of application for techs like SVG as tech demos or in not-for-profit arenas but they are never going to have serious money thrown at them in given their platform reqs.

*Interesting note: the absolutely astounding market penetration of Flash was largely driven by Microsoft's bundling of the plugin with Windows and their extensive use of it in their applications (eg: the intro videos for microsoft works or the like).
posted by Riemann at 11:01 PM on March 13

Market research?
posted by owhydididoit at 11:26 PM on March 13

I should be able to get over this, but I can't. This askMe is fraud. It screams it to me on many levels. One of these levels involve it being a very questionable first post from a user who has only recently joined (feb 11th). The second level is that it involves a crappy, in-need-of-marketing technology that is, to be kind, in dire need of marketing.

Perhaps the issue is too close to me for me to be reasonable. On the other hand, perhaps I am close enough to the subject to reasonably evaluate how fishy it is. I don't know.

I don't like the question. It doesn't even qualify for the requirements of askMe. It is a statement, it is an inquiry for chatfilter. To me, it is an obvious schill for a Microsoft solution.

I'd be glad to hear mountainfrog's reply to this before making any final evaluations. But until then, I will remain unhappy that this piece of askMe remains, and hope that this question and all remnants of it are deleted.
posted by localhuman at 1:20 AM on March 14

This is just a chatfiltery survey. Regardless of suspicions of shilling, this question should be deleted.
posted by grouse at 2:43 AM on March 14

Now how do I get rid of the locusts?

Chant arachnid ten times and invoke a plague of spiders.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:54 AM on March 14

Now how do I get rid of the locusts?

Chant arachnid ten times and invoke a plague of spiders.

"And so started the Apocalypse, my son. The world was nearly destroyed by ever-worsening plauges of insects and other terrible things. But that wasn't the worst of it..."

"What was the worst, papa?"

"tkolar choked on a very expensive bite of steak."
posted by SteveTheRed at 4:02 AM on March 14

Microsoft Silverlight - the official development platform of NAMBLA.
posted by quonsar at 5:01 AM on March 14 [4 favorites]

ObXThread: TIT BBQ

I think there should be a blanket prohibition on "predict the future" AskMes.
posted by Skorgu at 5:20 AM on March 14

I don't understand a lot of stuff in there, but for some reason the tone of the question stinks like a made up persona to me.

Even if that's off base, I agree with the sentiment that it's chatfilterish as it asks people to speculate on the future based on opinions.
posted by like_neon at 5:55 AM on March 14

Forget Kobe and Makashi. Go for Waygu.

When you're used to the sad chemical-laced tortured bonemeal-fed madcow virusvector spongemeatpopsicles that American 'beef' is carved from, yeah, I guess y'all might get excited about Cool Fake Japanese Meat Names.

Come to Korea. The domestic beef doesn't have names, but it's pretty much all you can buy, and it's the best goddamn meat you'll fucking taste in your life, unless you join me on a visit to my folks up in Northern BC, where we carve and cook great slabs out of the sides of moose we shot and hung to age ourselves a few weeks earlier.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:03 AM on March 14

I should be able to get over this, but I can't. This askMe is fraud.

You probably should have restrained yourself from posting in the question then.
posted by smackfu at 6:13 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]

I have only two words for you all: Argentine beef.
posted by languagehat at 6:20 AM on March 14

What real Web developer would feel compelled to put quotation marks around GUI, Flash and Silverlight?

I'm a writer, and I've been working with a Clark Nova "typewriter" but I hear these Martinelli "Word Processors" are good for writing "novels."
posted by Shepherd at 6:23 AM on March 14

I have only two words for you all: Argentine beef.

Decades I've been hearing about and wanting to eat that stuff. Decades. But I reckon it's still not better than the Flesh of Moose You Have Shot Yourself, if only 'cause of the whole killing thing, which is.

Or so I like to think, because I might not ever get the chance to go all Chatwinivorous, sigh grumble.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:26 AM on March 14

None of these technologies require marketing through AskMe.
posted by Artw at 7:04 AM on March 14

I have only two words for you all: Argentine beef.

The Brazilians claim their beef is better. It certainly was good when I was there but YMMV.
posted by tommasz at 7:12 AM on March 14

Wow, I didnt know completely irrational big corporate paranoia ran so high in this place. A couple mentions of silverlight along with mentions of adobe products and a obligatory AJAX mention and suddenly we're reaching for the torches and pitchforks. I doubt MS needs to market to a "help me with my cat problem" forum to sell their product.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:16 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]

My intention is not to start a flame war on which web development technology is best or more viable for the future, but rather to get insight from other web developers on where they think the future of distributed development is headed.

To me this sounds very Chatfiltery. I've seen similar survey/opinion AskMes get deleted. Oh wells, flag and move on.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:33 AM on March 14

unless you join me on a visit to my folks up in Northern BC, where we carve and cook great slabs out of the sides of moose we shot and hung to age ourselves a few weeks earlier

[drools]
posted by five fresh fish at 7:40 AM on March 14

This question is a plant. The first two paragraphs alone make that exceedingly clear.
posted by Ryvar at 7:46 AM on March 14

Wow, I didnt know completely irrational big corporate paranoia ran so high in this place. A couple mentions of silverlight along with mentions of adobe products and a obligatory AJAX mention and suddenly we're reaching for the torches and pitchforks. I doubt MS needs to market to a "help me with my cat problem" forum to sell their product. --damn dirty ape

He mentioned Silverlight! Damn dirty ape must be one of them. Let's torch him before convinces my cat to use IE!
posted by Bugg at 7:48 AM on March 14

Now how do I get rid of the locusts?

Why get rid of them? You could start your own mail-order plague company.

Do you have an enemy? Does the neighboring town need smiting? At United Locust Service, we have the solutions you are looking for! Call ULS and leave the wrath of god stuff to us!
posted by quin at 7:54 AM on March 14 [2 favorites]

Where do people come up with stupid names like "Silverlight?"

It sounds like a hair coloring product.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:56 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Young software developers often sound like shills.
posted by jouke at 8:06 AM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Where do people come up with stupid names like "Silverlight?"
It sounds like a hair coloring product.

Does gray hair count?
posted by jmd82 at 8:25 AM on March 14

I've eaten moose, and to be honest, it's no ostrich.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:55 AM on March 14

"tkolar choked on a very expensive bite of steak."

Makashi steak, mind you. If I were going to die eating a steak it would have to be either Kobe or Makashi (or yes, I guess Wagyu would do as well).
posted by tkolar at 9:06 AM on March 14

These ones are super-dodgy, and their author almost certainly some kind of shill.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM on March 14

Well, at least "Silverlight" is a better name than "WPF/E".

In my response to the question I was about to predict that silverlight would suffer the same fate as WPF/E, another proprietary do-nothing-but-lock-you-further-into-the-MS-world tool I remembered from a year or so back -- and then I googled and realized that it's the same thing, they just renamed it.
posted by ook at 9:56 AM on March 14

He didn't sound like a shill to me. I'm working with a bunch of developers who have just been switched over to .Net. They've been in training for months, basically swimming in a Microsoft stew. They all talk like this now. I'm hoping it will wear off in a few months.

If you check my posting history you'll see a bunch of recommendations for Sharepoint about the time I was neck deep in training. It's a natural reaction when you learn a new technology. In the case of .Net, it's actually a pretty good product. Silverlight is still pointless though.
posted by Eddie Mars at 10:08 AM on March 14

My frequent mentions of Lagavulin- the aristocrat of Islay malt whiskies have nothing to do with any subsidies I may or may not have received from the Classic Malts people. I recommend this video by expert Michael Lam:

On the nose, sea breeze, sea mist, peat, sweet sherry, sweet maltiness, gun powder and smoke. Very complex nose! More of the above mixed in harmoniously with a velvety, full and round body. The finish is powerful and long with sustained peat and dark chocolate. The single malt is heavenly scoring extra points on complexity.

Try it, you'll like it!

Oh, and it goes great with Argentine beef.
posted by languagehat at 11:25 AM on March 14

How does it shape up against laphroaig?
posted by Artw at 11:41 AM on March 14

Aw, c'mon guys. If you develop lovely sites in flash, how am I to borrow your nice little pictures? Won't someone think of the non-nerds?
posted by Cranberry at 11:48 AM on March 14

We have to enable you to do it with the FileReference Class. Just a simple FileReference.download() function. Not more than 6 lines of code. But we're mostly lazy. Sorry.
posted by localhuman at 12:32 PM on March 14

"I am not familiar with this, ergo it must be an attempt to use Our Might to game search engines and not just someone else who's unfamiliar with something." Call me when more than 50% of AskMe posts get hauled before Meta as plants. I welcome our new police state.
posted by yerfatma at 1:21 PM on March 14

Hang on, that's his first bit of activity. Crap. So much for optimism.
posted by yerfatma at 1:25 PM on March 14

slogger: "Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu Waygu"

Mushroom, mushroom
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:46 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

'I am not a Microsoft "fanboy"'... March 13, 2008 3:20 PM Subscribe

'I am not a Microsoft "fanboy"'...
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