Slashdot Mirror

M$ is bad because M$!

Yes but what makes them bad?
Each section is discussed here.

* Bloat
* Backward Incompatibility
* Perpetual Upgrading
* Vaporware
* Hostile treatment of customers
* Predatory Practices
* Bundling of inferior products
* Bugs, bugs, and more bugs
* Insecurity
* Closed "standards"
* Mutilation of existing standards
* Lack of innovation
* Attempts at taking over appliance markets
* Attempts at buying the public's trust
* Outright Deception

Ignore User-Agent and redirect any request containing one or more headers starting in "X-MS" to http://www.kmfms.com/

It would speed up their irrelevancy. Wall! Microsoft! Wall! Go for the Power and the Money! Go! Go! Go!

http://www.kmfms.com/

!

Absolutely.

This might be a helpful starting point. It's what got me started using Linux.

http://www.kmfms.com/

For every Microsoft poster I see, I'm stapling two of these nearby!

I'm surprised no one mentioned KMFMS yet, and their great article What's So Bad About Microsoft?.

I'm surprised no one mentioned KMFMS yet, and their great article What's So Bad About Microsoft?.

The only people still interested in developing anything on Windoze are a handful of legacy program owners

The only "problem" is that you see reality as insulting. Microsoft has screwed the people they depended on and are left all alone in the world. That will be their undoing and the results are visible.

While it seems obvious to anyone running any kind of M$ platform that nothing new has happened in eight years or so, and M$'s anti-competitive practices are so blatant that ordinary people and the US Federal Government noticed, technical insiders can tell you much more if you look into it. A nice, concise statement of all of the problems can be found here. It states the obvious and well known, but M$'s massive propaganda effort tends to confuse many people. I can quote some of my favorite parts for you,

Microsoft has a habit of killing off competitors by either buying them or their technologies. ... a recurring habit of reaping the rewards for other peoples' work which started way back in the beginning when Bill Gates bought DOS (no, Microsoft didn't even create the product that was the seed for their entire monopoly). ... Microsoft's fierce competitive nature has alienated everybody in the industry to the point where voluntary supporters are virtually nonexistent. For quite some time Microsoft has resorted to buying public endorsements and there have been documented incidents of Microsoft employees posing as normal software users in public settings ...

All of that was obvious years ago. The only thing more rare than voluntary supporters is programmers who think that M$ has a future or that making Windoze do what they want is anything but an expensive waste of time. It's easier and cheaper to do things with free software. The lack of programmers working on the M$ platform is the reason Vista has taken six years to develop. M$ has been forced to make their own tools for a change and they chose to waste all of their effort on DRM. Vista is going to suck and it's market failure will be the end of M$.

Having said that, I am trying to understand whether the horror-scenario you sketch is the one that actually happened, and to be frank I am totally skeptical. I cannot think of any motive for the EU to deliberately allow Microsoft to produce documentation that is useless. Ordinary everyday incompetence on part of the EU, yes (the EU are a Government organisation after all ...) but not sabotage. And ... forgive me if I repeat myself from previous posts, but Microsoft was charged with producing a specific result, and not with sticking to a format or a process. Can it not be blamed for trying to take advantage of the EU's (apparent) incompetence in assessing the technical documentation as an excuse not to have to deliver?

Since the correspondence between Microsoft and the EU will likely not be public, I am looking for different ways to get a handle on whether their claim is true. If you can give me any (verifiable) information I would be happy to study it.

I think the problematic bit with the argument you make is that it makes assumptions (they're evil) about the intention of Microsoft and use those assumptions to reinforce the original argument (they are evil. so their intention in producing industry standard documentation was to obfuscate and be useless. Therefore they are evil).

Circular reasoning on my part to decide "Microsoft is Evil"? If I did commit circular reasoning, then I retract that part of what I said. I do admit that my previous post seems a bit disorganised. Sorry about that, I'll do better. However I didn't mean to commit circular reasoning, and frankly I don''t think I did. My argument has two parts: first arguing that Microsoft is inherently untrustworthy, second combining that with the motive they have to err ... present the facts as other than they really are.

I mean that I believe that, given Microsoft's conduct in court cases over the past 10 years, we have excellent cause to be distrustful of Microsoft's good intentions. Why? I base that on:

- the material presented at this http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html#deception site. a)the doctored video(s) that Microsoft presented, purportedly showing the "crash" of MS Windows after Explorer was removed. I think that any ordinary person who pulled a stunt like that would have faced prosecution for perjury. For some reason Microsoft didn't suffer any comparable penalty b)Microsoft going back on the promise to support JAVA when it needed people to believe that Microsoft would in fact support Java c)Bill Gates' claim that Windows doesn't have bugs in an interview with FOCUS. If Allchin was aware of the problems with Windows message queues, then Gates would have been to. He simply told untruths. d)Microsoft's misleading claims regarding the security of it's passport service.

- Microsoft's use of astroturfing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing). "In 2001, the Los Angeles Times accused Microsoft of astroturfing when hundreds of similar letters were sent to newspapers voicing disagreement with the United States Department of Justice and its antitrust suit against Microsoft. The letters, prepared by Americans for Technology Leadership, had in some cases been mailed from deceased citizens or nonexistent addresses. [3] " According to this article, Microsoft actually sent letters of support with the address of (among others) of deceased citizins, which clearly proves that the letters were in fact written by Microsoft and posted under other names.

- Microft's deceit (again) by astroturfing (see http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/st

Bill Gates would agree with you, but you might want to do as he does rather than as he says. Here's some nice reading material for you. It does not even mention the big greedy grab of macsyma, nastran and other software developed at public cost. Stealing software, on way or another, is something Bill is good at. It's a shame you should take any moral advice from someone who thinks it's OK to sue public school systems for sharing software.

What you walk away with is very wrong. In most circumstances, you should think sharing with your friends is more important than forcing your friends give more money to Bill and Co to be able to work with non free file formats. If you want to avoid punishment for sharing, avoid non-free software. You can't share what you don't know and free software is better than non free.

use GPL code in something and won't let people have the source code. Why is that bad? Because they are using somebody else's stuff without permission.

It is rude and wrong, but not because you violated the will of the "owners". The greater outrage is the reason for not sharing the source code: you are trying to control your users. There's no other reason to hide source code for software you want others to use. At the very least, your added features are difficult to modify, so the user is unable to use it for their purposes. At the worst, you add DRM abuse that directly limits what the user can do with their own time and effort. Do you really think you need someone else's permission to do things with your computer? Using code from people who know better only adds insult to injury.

Code ownership is only needed as long as people would try to steal your work to abuse others. When the last of the non free software companies that emerged thirty years ago finish sinking in red ink, and there's nothing left but free software why bother with "ownership"? Yes, you will still be able to earn a living by writing free software. It's easier when your tools and support environment is free.

The core argument Bill Gates made 30 years ago was wrong. No one needs commercial software because users and others will indeed provide quality software and documentation. The way Bill has driven others from the field proves that non free software can only proffit by theft and draconian control.

I'm sorry you took my comment so close to heart, but--- if your going to post something inflammatory, expect to be flamed.

The EU can't find it in their hearts to switch to Linux, but feel that OSS is the right way to go. The solution, force MS to publish their source.

What a victory for... capitalism? No, if they were letting capitalism work, they'd switch products. Open Source? The FSF must be thrilled that they can now license to peek at MS source... not so much. Ahh, Linux... no, the EU hates Linux so much, that they can't bear the thought of departing from Windows.

Whoever you are, whatever you've accomplished, uhmm, congratulations or... something.

Perhaps the EU would like to switch to Linux, but interoperability with Windows systems is a requirement. Perhaps the EU would like to switch portions of their infrastructure to alternative systems, but these alternative suppliers have not been able to develop comprehensive interoperable protocols, because extensive reverse engineering is expensive.

Both EU and U.S. courts have found Microsoft to be a monopoly. As a monopoly, Microsoft represents a market failure. I'd argue that in many ways Microsoft got into its position via illegal acts. Microsoft has been known to play dirty for a long, long time. Look what they did to Stacker, OS/2, and a wide variety of companies that tried to work with them.

Look at the bullshit they pulled in their antitrust trial. Look at the video they doctored for the trial.

What about Microsoft's funding of the SCO madness, to the tune of nearly $65 million?

Pardon my french, pardon my bad attitude about the matter, but these fuckers play ugly. Really ugly. As someone who's business was once badly damaged in a Microsoft play, without the cash to pursue it legally (like Stacker, who was shut down by Microsoft, and eventually forced Microsoft to settle with them, once their business (stackers) was already beyond repair), I take the notion of "illegitimate barriers to market entry" more seriously than most.

Capitalism only works when people play by the rules. Once you switch to clearly illegal acts, once you start breaking agreements with your supposed allies, and start stabbing them in the back; once you start destroying competitors not throught competition, but through fraud--- you're a monopoly, and an evil one at that.

Capitalism doesn't work when someone doesn't play nice; that's why we have government, to make sure people play nice. I'm a libertarian, but even objectivists will recognize that the government has some role in protecting against fraud.

You come off as downright derogative towards the EU, yet have absolutely no grasp of the issues at hand. You're right; I overreacted in my response. However, lines like "Whoever you are, whatever you've accomplished, uhmm, congratulations or... something." come off very, very badly to me. I've personal experience the wrong end of the Microsoft stick (in a small way). People have been fighting the fradulent activities of this company for _decades_. This company has literally held the entire computing sector in an iron grip for over a decade.

The EU attempts to force MS to produce documentation, to facilitate interoperability, in an attempt to directly address the most obvious form of market barrier that Microsoft has established. This isn't a huge fine; this isn't breaking the company. I cannot, in fact, think of a better, more capitalist, more lenient solution.

Capitalism doesn't mean that the government never intervenes. Even Objectivists view Fraud as a violation of their Non-Aggression principle, permitting government intervention.

I shouldn't have been as hot headed as I was, but don't attempt to make a glibe insult in a discussion about which you are not fully aware of the major facts.

MS has a longterm history of misleading "s

"3, Insightful"? How 'bout "0, Uninformed"? The crimes laid out in Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge's COURT'S FINDINGS OF FACT are criminal under any reasonable legal system, including those of a 'truly free society'. There is an old saying: "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" that is applicable. 5-year perspective on the case is interesting. Microsoft regularly flexes their patent muscle by refusing to grant use of patents it owns to competitors. E.g. Bill Gates himself has turned down patent licensing requests for use of Microsoft patents proposed as IETF standards. (google Microsoft IETF patent or read this) Their anti-competitive practices most certainly do involve patents. Patent abuse is even an incriminating component of the above FINDINGS OF FACT. And Microsoft's abuses go far beyond those discussed in the FINDINGS OF FACT; see http://kmfms.com/whatsbad.html.

http://www.kmfms.com/

Here is: what's wrong with Windows.

My favourite hate site: KMFMS.com.
Author of a very good article "What's so bad about Microsoft", that is referenced in the Microsuck site.

KMFA? Oh, you mean KMFMS... :)

KMFMS stands for Kein Mitleid Für MicroSoft. It's a German acronym meaning "no pity for Microsoft." For those of you who were expecting the 'K' to stand for kill because that's what you thought it stood for in KMFDM, KMFDM is actually a German acronym meaning "no pity for the majority."

Colin Powell is involved, next will it be Rumsfeld? What kind of excuse will he find this time?

I have given up that this point and as of today I am switching the email system so that all new users must be paid users. These spammers are like a swarm of locust consuming everything in their path, and now they have destroyed the free service I had been offering for years. I wish they were in the US so I could pursue legal action.

The one slide that describes everything is available here. ;-)

(Converted to PDF, though. Distributed under these terms.)

The problem isn't M$ it's the industry.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. But without M$ the problem would not have gotten this far out of control.


More info: www.kmfms.com

from kmfms.com

It, however, does not appear to have been updated since the late 90's.

Someone needs to start a list of companies Microsoft has screwed over. It needs to be the first site that comes up when someone googles for "Microsoft Business Partner"

Agreed. All the technical issues are solveable, and in fact have been solved at some level; and the namespace would not significantly change in size regardless of structure (unless it shrinks majorly, as name-squatting becomes far less profitable).

The problems are non-technical. One is the FUD being spread about the technical issues (I am *really* tired of hearing all this nonsense about a supposed technical need for artificially scarce namespace) and another is the problem of rule creation and enforcement.

ICANN and the Department of Commerce control the rule-making and enforcement process (by holding the root nameservers hostage). It seems that they will not allow a better system to evolve.

Internet users' best bet is probably to end-run ICANN. Just as we can use samba and samba-tng to defeat Microsoft's attempt to dominate our networks, we can use OpenNIC and friends to obviate ICANN.

PS: I included the definition of obviate because I got savaged for using it in a post once. I can use the most arcane networking terms imaginable and nobody complains, but use a slightly offbeat non-technical word and everyone's suddenly too busy flaming me to look it up. ;^>

...and here. (that's supposed to be bill gates on the ground.)

Everybody please avoid Passport for *nix when it comes out - they are in all likelihood doing the exact same thing. They will abandon you as soon as they get what they want (i.e., a monopoly position).

Microsoft succeeds at anything it wants, because it all amounts to the one thing that drives America: Money. As long as Microsoft has money, they will get what they want, because history has shown us that with money, you can buy whatever you want.

Want proof: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/catalog/This website lists all the companies that Microsoft has either:

1) Bought
2) Stolen technology from
3) Sued into nothingness
4)Bundled software with its OS to drive it out of market.

http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html#deception This site lists all kinds of lovely information about Microsoft's practices.

Beat him and see his mp3 collection among other things, such as his selected links, etc.

Bonus: notice the links on the right side of the page ! (though you have to remove the mp3/ bit out of the URLs).

Microsoft may be evil, but none of their web pages commit the sin of having white text on a black background :-)

Fair enough. Try this link instead (same page, but printer friendly without the colors). I really do normally avoid white text on black backgrounds, but the artwork dictated otherwise for KMFMS - I'm not one to argue with BRUTE!.

Microsoft may be evil, but none of their web pages commit the sin of having white text on a black background :-)

Fair enough. Try this link instead (same page, but printer friendly without the colors). I really do normally avoid white text on black backgrounds, but the artwork dictated otherwise for KMFMS - I'm not one to argue with BRUTE!.

http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html#deception

Check out this for a nice page about other things Microsoft has done.

Probably something like this.

Note that the site says nothing about where Tux's baseball bat ends up, so it could be Tux and Gates in a fight to the death or Tux about to have a little "fun" with Billy-boy. Nice thing about the picture is that either way, it sounds like a happy ending.

Hmm... because those bugs are fixed much faster? or maybe because they TELL us about them, instead of keeping 'em hidden like Microsoft.

I'm not sure how well it fits, but some good anti-Microsoft propaganda can be found at KMFMS. KMFMS apparently stands for something in German. I don't know what it means, so I just use the words "Kill Mother-F***ing MicroSoft" to remember the letters.

How about a t-shirt with a picture of an all-powerful attack-penguin on it? Come on, you know you want one.

Fuck laser beams.

Just gimme a baseball bat and a giant penguin-shaped robot.

kmfms.com

what does it stand for?
Kein Mitleid Für MicroSoft

or... No Pity For Microsoft

if you've ever wanted to know What's so bad about Microsoft?, then check em out.

kmfms.com

what does it stand for?
Kein Mitleid Für MicroSoft

or... No Pity For Microsoft

if you've ever wanted to know What's so bad about Microsoft?, then check em out.

I've been thinking awhile about making an interactive price comparison web page for my website that would allow users to see how much they could save by switching from Windows to Linux. This is just a formative idea at the moment - if people have suggestions for this, please email me. Right now I'm thinking of something along the lines of a set of "wizard" pages that ask the user a series of questions about what software they want to run (and what hardware they have available) and keeps a running tally of the savings they would get with Linux over Windows.

Notice that no mention is made of Microsoft's "Black Ops" division (often referred to as "R&D"), whose current research documents include "Mind Control using pre-packaged Windows Sound Schemes" and "The Manchurian Candidate and You: What it All Means."

You forgot about their black ops attempts to pay for ownership of intelligent children with stock options.

Disclaimer for those who don't get the above article: just to be entirely clear so as to distinguish my usual complaints about Microsoft from the above joke, the linked article above is a joke and is not a real complaint.

if they're gonna spend so much on the hardware, why don't they buy a decent expensive OS? I mean, more expensive must mean better right? (anon for a reason)

Now if someone could fully animate the KMFMS logo, I'd *love* to see how this ends!! Kinda like the cover from the greatest punk album of all time, Big Black's "The Hammer Party".

You are assuming way too much clue on behalf of the user. I frequently get email sent from a form on my web page where the senders ask questions about completely different websites apparently thinking that my site is the same as these other sites they were on because they followed a link from those sites and ended up on mine. These people aren't going to know what the difference between a regular link and a squiggly purple link signifies. Unless they have been trained to know (and you should assume that most people won't be), how is the end user supposed to know that squiggly purple links have been added by the browser and aren't part of the site? This is something that only technically savvy people are likely to recognize (as pathetic as that sounds).

I desperately hope there is some way to disable this from an individual webpage or for an entire site. Even for the "clueful" end users who do know the significance of the special links, I don't want this anywhere near my site which has negative commentary on Microsoft as it could totally distort the meaning. I don't want my site to be a springboard for Microsoft propaganda, especially since that is exactly what I'm trying to counteract on my site.

That only scratches the surface but the idea behind Web services is to create an Internet where it's easy to combine services from different vendors/suppliers to create your own Web applications.

This actually sounds useful. What open source alternatives are there that provide similar functionality? Does anybody know of a good web page that suggests open source alternatives for each of the different aspects of .NET? I could use this for a project that I'm working on right now, but I need software that is cross-platform (and not in Microsoft's definition of the term "cross-platform" - I want to run it on OpenBSD). I could also use a .NET comparison page to link to from my Microsoft Alternatives page which is in desperate need of updating.

Maybe it's time for you to get educated.

For those wondering What's so bad about Microsoft, you can check here.

For those not sure what to recommend with ethical concerns, offer a choice, let them know about MS ethics, but that Linux (or other option) is maybe not the best solution.

Then it's the choice of the customer.

As a past MS intern, I must whole heartedly agree with furiousgeorge. MS does not care about your appearance. All they care about is what you get done and what you'll get done in the future. (Nearly everyday at work I walked around without shoes on... heck, no even cared when I wore my KMFMS shirt to work.)

As for the allegations of racial discrimination, all I can say is bah!
The number of Asian people that work for MS is extremely high. In fact my manager was Indian, and half of my team was Chinese. Also my group was at least half female, which is outstandingly high for the tech sector.

Do you have any links to something like a news article which would back up the claim that Microsoft announced office applications for the JavaStation? I'm trying to start a list of Microsoft's vaporware and this sounds like it would make an excellent example. So far, the best link I've found has been the Caldera court brief regarding DR DOS which does a terrific job of explaining how Microsoft uses vaporware to harm competitors at the expense of consumers, but I could use some more examples, and this JavaStation announcement sounds perfect. If you have a link to a reference on this (or any other vaporware for that matter) please email it to me or post it here. Thanks.