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March 1989: "Nearly four years have elapsed since the initiation of our Joint Development Agreement .. Now, we need to focus on .. establishing OS/2 as the next standard in personal computing."

Aug 1988: "I think we need to think very carefully about how much we want Windows to compete with OS/2 in the OEM channel and for the ISVs attention".

"In December, OS/2 shipped initially from IBM .. I was super enthusiastic that we shipped OS/2"

June 1991: "I have written a PM app that hangs the system (sometimes quite graphically). You can take a look at it anytime, just let me know Eric"

July 1991: 'SteveB went on the road to see the top weeklies, industry analysts and business press this week to give our systems strategy. The meetings included demos of Windows 3.1 (pen and multimedia included), Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 including a performance comparison to Windows and a “bad app” that corrupted other applications and crashed the system'

"The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect"

July 1991: 'SteveB went on the road to see the top weeklies, industry analysts. The meetings included demos of Windows 3.1 (pen and multimedia included), Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 including a performance comparison to Windows and a "bad app" that corrupted other applications and crashed the system".'

'The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect -- to FUD OS/2 2.0. People paid attention to this demo and were often suprised to our favor. Steve positioned it as -- OS/2 is not "bad" but from a performance and "robustness" standpoint, it is NOT better than Windows.' ref

OS/2 is still alive ref

The day Bill Gates screamed IBM's house down

"Microsoft knew ahead of time the update would cause problems for some users but decided to do nothing about it."

Have you given serious consideration to the thought that they deliberately caused KB3133977 to fail to enthuse users to upgrade to Windows 10. If this strikes you as being a little paranoid, MS did exactly this, as in causing Windows apps to crash on OS/2, causing windows clients to not play nice with Netware ref ref and throwing up an error when Windows 3.1 was installed under DR-DOS.

"As Windows 7 does not support Secure Boot, with the update of KB3133977"

How does 'upgrading' an OS cause it to lose functionality?

July 1991: 'SteveB went on the road to see the top weeklies, industry analysts. The meetings included demos of Windows 3.1 (pen and multimedia included), Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 including a performance comparison to Windows and a "bad app" that corrupted other applications and crashed the system".'

'The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect -- to FUD OS/2 2.0. People paid attention to this demo and were often suprised to our favor. Steve positioned it as -- OS/2 is not "bad" but from a performance and "robustness" standpoint, it is NOT better than Windows.' ref

BSA Says 41% Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated

Well customers choose linux because Apps are easier to pirate. Steve Winfield of Microsoft's anti-FOSS Partner Technology Team (a.k.a. Delta Force) says so. It must be true.

In other news, sources not partnered with Microsoft announce that Microsoft's desktop market share has dipped down to 59%. Between Conficker and Internet banking exploits, it could happen.

Seriously, better check the BSA's definition of 'pirated'. Previous announcements like this turned out to classify any non-MS software as 'pirated'.

"There is simply no hard evidence that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly to crush Linux on netbooks"

'The very next day, Asus' chairman, Jonney Shih, after sharing a news conference stage with Microsoft corporate VP, OEM Division, Steven Guggenheimer, apologized for the Android Eee PC being shown'

Microsofts Walmart/Linux Taskforce

'We invest big, big $$ in Dell .. we be quite prescriptive in our investments with Dell relative to the competitive threats we see with Linux .. we constantly benchmark ourselves against the actions they do with RedHat'

'A cross-group team has been working for the last two weeks on a proposal to have a more planned response process to defend against Linux and other low-cost/no-cost competitors in large education/government deals in both developed and developing subs'

You get a fucking clue dipshit. It says non protected content will "not be faced with these restrictions", not that the driver unloads. Why don't you try thinking even for a second. Question: if the DRM loads ONLY when "protected media" is played, what is to keep me from loading an Alcohol 120% style driver to intercept the content before I ever load it and activate the DRM? Answer-Not a god damned thing. The DRM kernel monitor HAS TO run 24/7, or else you could defeat it trivially by placing a hacked signed driver in the path. This shit isn't magic dumbass. It has to monitor the kernel or else you can just bypass it and the DRM would be even more of a joke than the iTunes Fairplay.

But hey, you just keep right on believing that the reason Vista uses 4000% more resources than XP is just because of Aero. Just ignore the constant DRM monitoring, or the fact that there is more than 30 processes that attempt to phone home on a default Vista install(use a real firewall and count for yourself). And feel free to mark me down all you want pal, I got karma to burn. Funny that my #1 request regarding Vista is to wipe that turkey and put on XP,huh? I guess those folks just don't see the Vista "advantage" for playing protected media.

But don't take my word for it, why not take the word of the CEO of MSFT? Read in his own words how they need to toughen the DRM on the next OS(written in 2003-2005) in the hopes of luring big media away from Apple. It had nothing to do with what the customers wanted and everything to do with Ballmer's pissing contest with Steve Jobs. What the customers wanted was a more secure XP. What they got was a buggy as hell DRM infested bloated corpse of an OS that most can't wait for me to wipe out. Great product you got there.

Hey there Anon Coward, as someone who has built and serviced MSFT machines since Win3.xx I got a question for you: What the hell was wrong with the way it was before, where the DRM player came on the damned disc and I didn't have to have it if I didn't want it, huh? 50Gb of space wasn't big enough to drop a 40Mb player on?

Perhaps you might want to read about Protected Path before you spout off? Here let me highlight something for you: "In order to prevent users from copying DRM content, Windows Vista provides process isolation and continually monitors what kernel-mode software is loaded."

You see, that is MY resources they are sucking down like a ziggy piggy for content that I do not now, haven't in the past, nor will I ever have in the future. I have no desire whatsoever to jump on the Sony DRM train so my resources are being blown for nothing. That is of course if I would have kept that bloated train wreck that was Vista. After SP1 left it sucking just as bad as it did before I tossed that garbage and went XP X64 and have never been happier. BTW if you think it has anything to do with allowing BD and poor MSFT got backed into a corner by the evil Sony I suggest you read Comes VS MSFT and look specifically at any emails coming from Ballmer. There he makes it VERY clear that his plan to best Apple in the media markets is to make a DRM so nasty that he'll get all the media companies to go MSFT thanks to their nastier DRM than Apple. Kinda forgot that the iPod pretty much rules the market though.

So as you can read for yourself nasty crap like protected path had NOTHING to do with "Allowing users to play blueray discs that they buy or rent" and everything to do with Ballmer going "Must ^%$^&%%$ KILL APPLE!!!!!" which I think is just funny as hell, as ever since the Ballmer monkey took over all they have tried to do is rip off and show up Apple, which owns 10% of the market, while they screw over their business customers which is where the big bucks are. Brilliant plan there Steve.

I wish! Nope, whether it was UAC, or protected path, or the new driver model, I don't know, but it seemed like with Vista you were just as likely to get your apps to run in Linux on Wine as you were with an actual MSFT OS!

This is one of the reasons why myself and so many others think Ballmer should be fired. When Allchin was there app compatibility was job #1. There are many stories of Allchin himself furiously coding and debugging before a Windows release because they had found some popular app didn't run in the new OS. Sorry I can't find the link ATM but there was a pretty famous at the time trick he had to do for Win95 that basically detected the older versions of Sim City and would change the memory registers so that the game, which used an old DOS/Win3.1 bug, would run flawless on Win95. Now THAT is dedication.

Now let us think about WinXP. It is one of the most popular OSes in history, and according to Wikipedia over 400 MILLION copies were in use by 2006. Think about that for a second. 400 MILLION copies, all with users depending on its apps and peripherals. With that kind of userbase making sure the new OS is backwards compatible would be pretty damned important, don't you think? Not for Ballmer. He was too busy having the developers bolt on PMP so he could try to out epeen Steve Jobs in the media arena. As you can read here (pretty much anything involving Ballmer dealing with Allchin) pretty much Ballmer's entire plan for "dealing" with Apple and the iPod was to create the nastiest DRM to woo away big media. So what is the problem?

One word....drivers. Every driver written for every piece of hardware BEFORE Vista, including ALL those pieces of hardware sold for the past 8+ years for those 400 million XP users, is written to work with the bare metal, as that is kinda what drivers do. They talk to the bare metal and give the OS a way to deal with said metal. But of course if you are trying to cook up the nastiest DRM ever you CAN'T let drivers talk to bare metal, as those "evil pirates" could come up with a driver that bypasses all your pretty DRM(like they ain't gonna go around it anyway) so you institute all these new drivers rules and force driver signing. But ooopsie, pretty much no driver released for XP was ever signed. So you have just made all that hardware into paperweights, and for what? Are they seriously thinking folks will give up their iPods if the get the *.A.As on board the Vista train?

And that is just ONE of the marketing driven total bonehead stupid mistakes done under Ballmer. Look at rushing the 360 to market knowing of the RROD problem, look at Zune screwing all their "playsforsure"(don't now,huh?) partners, I could go on all day. And I apologize for the length. But as someone who has built and serviced Windows machine for nearly 15 years watching Ballmer fuck up what was once one of the great business desktop builders with his constant bumbling is as painful to me as I'm sure watching the Pepsi guy nearly run Apple into bankruptcy was for the Apple fans. Only I don't think we have much of a chance at luring Darth Gates out of retirement to save the company. Let the wife do the damned philanthropy and come home Bill! We need your evil ass to come kill the Ballmer monkey!

Uuhhhh, how many folks OTHER than PS3 owners actually have BD? And BD in a PC? Even less of a tiny niche of a tiny niche. I have yet to see an under $1000 machine with BD support. It just seems like a big waste of resources when they could have pushed that onto the media corps like they did with the "protected players" that come with all DVD discs.

But of course that isn't what this is really about, is it? As we read from emails released during Comes VS Microsoft, their answer to cooking up "scenarios" in which they could actually beat Apple was NOT to actually make a product worth having, but to fill the OS and WMP with so much DRM that they could lock them in and away from the iPod. Too bad iPod=MP3 player nowawdays and this DRM shit is still clogging up the pipes. Oh well. I'm making good money from all the users that hate Vista and want to go back to XP, and I'm willing to bet that Win7 will bring me even more business. Thanks MSFT!

He sounds pretty clueful to me.

"I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems are [sic] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products."

from http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/010807/PLEX_7264.pdf

I haven't read all of them though, maybe he puts his foot in his mouth elsewhere.

Here you go, wiki is your friend! I would ask you to please note the following part, quote:"n order to prevent users from copying DRM content, Windows Vista provides process isolation and continually monitors what kernel-mode software is loaded." Please note the words CONTINUALLY MONITORS. You DO know that you can't get something for nothing right? And that everything has a cost? The ONLY way for the "protected path" DRM to work would be for it to monitor you 24/7/365, otherwise you could simply hack it or load an Alcohol 120% style virtual device with hacked keys BEFORE you loaded the DRM content. So to ensure you "filthy pirate you" that you don't pull any fast ones it HAS to monitor you 24/7.

So while all the Vista fans(all 6 of you) would love to think that they have invented some magically "resource free" DRM, sorry to burst your bubble. Everything costs, and DRM doesn't really have a prayer in hell if it can actually be turned off for ANY reason, even if you are not doing anything to actually NEED DRM. And if you want to know why you are being boned with this crap, please read Comes VS Microsoft to see where Jim Allchin and Bill Gates talk about DRM and their need for "scenarios" to try to shut down the iPod. pretty much ALL they talk about is how to lock in the users. And for those that work in business here is a view of Win7 from the enterprise perspective, and here is a view of Win7 from the performance POV.

I hope this illuminates readers and helps your realize that complaint about DRM are NOT FUD, but simply complaints about performance robbing crap that does ZERO for the user. I myself saw it with Vista Beta 1, which ran damned fast on this 3.6GHz P4 with 2GB of RAM, but when RTM rolled around and I got my free copy for Beta testing it was like those car commercials where they dump the ton of sludge on the race car. It sucked so bad I gave my copy of Vista away and last I heard it was being passed from person to person like an unwanted fruitcake.

Actually I think I can explain that. if you look at the emails in the Comes VS Microsoft case they are all, including old evil Bill himself, collectively shitting their pants over Apple and the iPod, talking about how the WMP "scenarios" just suck ass when compared to iPod+iTunes. So what is their answer? More DRM! Lock down as many media outlets by offering cheaper and nastier DRM than Apple has and hope to lock in the customers to WMP and Windows, no matter how shitty the experience. What I think we are seeing here is those emails bearing fruit.

But don't believe me, read them yourself, especially those by Jim Allchin. As someone who has built, repaired, and sold MSFT products since the days of Win3.x even MY mouth dropped. How guys that have no fucking clue can get to be that high up in a company? Who knows. Maybe it is that "rise to your level of incompetence" thing. But I swear these guys actually BELIEVE they can beat the iPod by cranking up the DRM and then Creative and Dell(BWAHAHA!) will take the market. I shit you not. They have completely lost touch with reality and what the consumers want. At least in the past we could avoid their home shite by buying business OSes like WinNT and Win2K, but with Vista and Vista SE we are all stuck in the suck.

Oh, well. At least I will get to make money hand over fist as folks throw it at me to make Vista and Win7(Vista SE) go away and XP reappear. Because I have YET to have a customer that actually wanted the turd that is Vista. I have even been having my custom builds pick up, in spite of the economy, once I pointed out you can still get those with XP drivers. But I'd be happy to trade the extra business for a low resource business OS that would work with all my hardware and software. But it looks like until Ballmer is told to clean out his desk all we are going to get is DRM wrapped in shiny. Meanwhile my customers are hanging onto their XP discs I get them like the fat lady hangs onto the buffet bar.

'each subsidiary should have a method to track Linux threats and that these should be reported back to Redmond'

link
link
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"My small company has done the very same thing .. there's nothing 'unethical' or 'monopolistic' about it. It's normal business competition"

You mean your company went to other peoples customers and lie about their product and sabotage third party apps .. and if you believe that's not 'unethical' you've been whoring too long ...

I expect Office to get involved in understanding these speedups
I am hard core about trying to find ways to make our applications boot faster

"My small company has done the very same thing .. there's nothing 'unethical' or 'monopolistic' about it. It's normal business competition"

You mean your company went to other peoples customers and lie about their product and sabotage third party apps .. and if you believe that's not 'unethical' you've been whoring too long ...

I expect Office to get involved in understanding these speedups
I am hard core about trying to find ways to make our applications boot faster

There are many signs that M$ is in trouble and that Vista is a failure. This is going to be a list of those signs. This is what Vista looks like to me. It is such a flop it can take M$ down, which would put an end to their attacks on free software, free software advocates and reasonable standards. Vista's failure is the predicted, practical result of a business model that tries to keep customers helpless and divided.

The six year development was troubled and expensive. There were signs that nothing important had changed. Promissed features evaporated and those that came through were downright creepy.

• January 1, 2004 - Jim Allichin sees the future and does not like it.
• July 9, 2004 - Vista troubles go public, rebuild is promissed but never delivered as is clear from legacy bugs.
• March 26, 2006 - M$ Employees Revolt over delays.
• A buggy launch was insured and hardware doomed because XP driver compatibility was intentionally broken just before RTM.
• January 30, 2007 - Vista is officially released. Jim Allchin retires.

Then came real use and real problems for users: security problems, devices not working, features dropped, competitors run off and high costs.

• An objective study of the Vista UI shows the changes have made things worse, not better for users who make it past install, broken software and hardware.
• Basic operations are broken. File copy, for example, takes forever and may fail because it can consume all of your memory. Memory used this way is not released until reboot. IPv6 does not work.
• M$ considers network degradation for media protection normal, so network performance is about 10% of what you get from XP or anything else.
• Insane anti-piracy harms the innocent. An anti-piracy server accidently disabled the nicer parts and required all XP and Vista users to "reauthenticate". Just a few weeks later, M$ made things even worse with a new BSoD for "pirates". They backpedaled a little and now Vista is nagware instead of deadware. The system remains a booby trap. So much as changing a video card will disable your system without warning. People with cracked coppies laugh but M$ can pull the plug for anyone else anytime for any reason.
• Business as usual has not improved security. New problems have been added to the seemingly endless supply of legacy bugs. There are reports of double extensio

There are many signs that M$ is in trouble and that Vista is a failure. This is going to be a list of those signs. This is what Vista looks like to me. It is such a flop it can take M$ down, which would put an end to their attacks on free software, free software advocates and reasonable standards. Vista's failure is the predicted, practical result of a business model that tries to keep customers helpless and divided.

The six year development was troubled and expensive. There were signs that nothing important had changed. Promissed features evaporated and those that came through were downright creepy.

• January 1, 2004 - Jim Allichin sees the future and does not like it.
• July 9, 2004 - Vista troubles go public, rebuild is promissed but never delivered as is clear from legacy bugs.
• March 26, 2006 - M$ Employees Revolt over delays.
• A buggy launch was insured and hardware doomed because XP driver compatibility was intentionally broken just before RTM.
• January 30, 2007 - Vista is officially released. Jim Allchin retires.

Then came real use and real problems for users: security problems, devices not working, features dropped, competitors run off and high costs.

• An objective study of the Vista UI shows the changes have made things worse, not better for users who make it past install, broken software and hardware.
• Basic operations are broken. File copy, for example, takes forever and may fail because it can consume all of your memory. Memory used this way is not released until reboot. IPv6 does not work.
• M$ considers network degradation for media protection normal, so network performance is about 10% of what you get from XP or anything else.
• Insane anti-piracy harms the innocent. An anti-piracy server accidently disabled the nicer parts and required all XP and Vista users to "reauthenticate". Just a few weeks later, M$ made things even worse with a new BSoD for "pirates". They backpedaled a little and now Vista is nagware instead of deadware. The system remains a booby trap. So much as changing a video card will disable your system without warning. People with cracked coppies laugh but M$ can pull the plug for anyone else anytime for any reason.
• Business as usual has not improved security. New problems have been added to the seemingly endless supply of legacy bugs. There are reports of double extensio