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Wow, good anecdote!

Yes I, too, have been burned by Windows installs. I don't know if it's Windows being flaky, or me having bad Windows karma... but sometimes I think my machine has seen more Windows installs than an OEM dealership. I don't really use it for anything other than games, either. Oh, well.

As a technician who's been in charge of new builds at an OEM, I think I can safely say I'm no stranger to installing Windows. The major difference I've noticed between Windows and Linux, is that while Windows may look more inviting sometimes, Linux installs "just work." Every now and then you may actually need to learn a thing or two about computers, but the installs always just work. Windows installs... well, no. Sure, I've seen it go off without a hitch many times, but I think I'm going to go prematurely bald from the times when it doesn't! My God, when it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Sorry for the long "me too" post. All in all, I wish Linux had more OEM support as well. It would certainly make my job much easier.

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Microsoft is being sued for (among other things) adding a web browser to Windows. If MS is not allowed to add features if it might hurt a competing product, then that impacts their choices as to where they can take their software.

It's not adding features into Windows. Internet Explorer was a separate product, but when they noticed people preferred Netscape, they buried it into Windows so that you couldn't get rid of IE in order to take over the web browser market. I don't really care if they think it's part of the operating system; web browsers were a sperate market and they exploited their desktop market dominance in order to push IE. That's product tying. Whether or not it can be seen as just another feature now doesn't really matter because they used their market dominance to get here.

Um... yeah. This is what we call an ad hom: "you must support Microsoft because you don't know any better." For the record, I don't use Windows, and don't particularly like it. I have a Mac at home, and use Solaris and Linux boxen at work. In fact I avoid Microsoft products for the most part. (although IE for the Mac is pretty good)

Well, that's good to hear. And why, pray tell, do you avoid MS products? We both know the answer to that one. I don't really care if they make an inferior product, but stamping out all alternatives so as to force you into using their products just isn't right. When you buy a new computer, you should have more choices than just Windows. BeOS really deserved a chance, I think. It's a really neat OS that could've been really good. But the barriars to entry in the desktop OS market are simply too steep.

If you look at my slashdot userid, you'll see I've been reding /. since summer '98, so yes I'm familiar with Linux's growth. And when it's ready for use by average consumers, then consumers will start using it.

Okay, it sounds like you're reasonably intelligent; why are your posts coming from the perspective of a desktop user? Surely you must concede that Linux is a kick-ass server platform. But you seem to regard it as if it were intended for desktop use. Am I wrong here? That's how I was reading your posts. The fact is, it was never intended for desktop use, so comparing it to other desktop OS's isn't very fair. And "consumers" have been using it for quite some time. Us Linux geeks are consumers too, not just the Windows users. Sysadmins and technicians count as consumers, the consumers of the server market. I wouldn't want any Windows users wandering in there anyway.

I fail to see how antitrust law is going to make a difference one way or another there.

I agree, it won't.

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What makes you say that? Is defending Microsoft's freedom to innovate so out there that it's automatically flamebait?

There's that phrase again: "Freedom to Innovate." I've gotten positively sick of Microsoft parroting that phrase. Their freedom to innovate is not on trial. It's their predetory, cut-throat business practices that stifle everyone elses "freedom to innovate" that's raising eyebrows. I don't care if they add more features to the latest version of their OS. But using their position as an eighty-pound gorilla in the OS market against smaller companies that can only play fair is simply reprehensible.

Of course there are examples of people who have complaints about specific MS products, as is true with any product. But my point is that the vast majority of MS users are not up in arms about being "forced" to use their products.

So? I admit it--I was practically in love with Microsoft, too. At least, until I was exposed to alternatives. Now that I have a broader experience with operating systems, I can safely say I am so much happier on Linux that there will never be a reason to go back. You may not feel the same way, but that's irrelevant to me and all of the other numerous people who have found Linux to suit them better. I would be much happier if everyone just got along--but Microsoft wants it all, and they won't stop until they have it. If you havn't realized this yet, take a long, hard look at how they've behaved in the past years.

I think NT is another example of Microsoft's non-monopoly. They have been trying to use the dominance of Win32 to take over the server market for years now. And yet apache has cleaned their clocks. People *certainly* have choices in the server arena.

*sigh* The operating systems market is not monolithic. There are different types of OS's for different applications--desktop, server, and mobile just to name a few. Microsoft has a monopoly in the desktop market, and you're talking about the server market. The reason's for this is simple: when people set up a server, they need the best, not the most popular. And NT simply doesn't cut it as a server in comparison to UNIX. Never will.

As I recall, Microsoft in most case simply required that IE be featured on the desktop. OEM's were always free to make Netscape an option. And even if they didn't, so what? The "obvious option" is called a modem. And it's laughable to say that IE was "crammed down users' throats." This is similar to saying cereal companies cram the little toy at the bottom of the package down kids' throats. Microsoft gave away IE *for free.* How can that do anything but help consumers?

You havn't read the Findings of Fact, have you? No, Microsoft threatened to cut off the discounts of all OEM's who preloaded Netscape on their machines. Why don't you go read through the FoF before you continue defending MS.

Netscape is still being actively developed, so if the goal was to drive them out of business it obviously didn't happen. What's the problem?

Like a previous poster said, they only survived because AOL bought them. Don't kid yourself; they wouldn't have stuck around. They were in serious trouble until AOL bailed them out.

Frankly, however good it is as a server platform, Linux isn't ready for use by average users. And since it is not a commercial product, Microsoft tactics aren't going to stop it in any event.

Holy crap, I actually agree with you! But don't understimate how quickly Linux can improve. If you had watched it's grow in just the past six months, and I'm gonna take a wild stab here and guess that you haven't, it's growth is simply mind-boggling. How quickly it's been able to improve has astonished me, and I've only been a user since RedHat 5.2! It ain't on your radar yet, but just wait.

As for Be, they seem to still be there, and the market seems to still be funding them.

No, it's not. They've had to rethink the way their company is going to sell Be, and are moving into the Internet Appliance market, because they simply can't make it in the Desktop market. Have you ever seen Be preinstalled on a computer? Or anything other than Windows (with the obvious exception of Macintosh) for that matter? I didn't think so. That's what we call a monopoly.

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Sure, we could create a better format; but they'll never use it. This isn't exactly a free market here, this is the format made by the industry for the industry. If they had actually allowed people to compete for the format, we wouldn't have ended up with the shitty format we have now. This isn't really a matter of big business trying to screw us over. It's the inevitable butting-of-heads that Open Source and Big Business has coming for a long time. Maybe we will change the software busniess, but it'll take a lot of time. In the meantime, I think we all need to support the underground movement of an open source player.

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I don't know if I'm the only one with mixed reactions to this. On one hand it's nice to see a blessed player on the market, but at what cost?

$29.95 :)

I understand what you mean. Although I'll probably fork over the cash for this (not happily, though) so I can finally watch my movies legally, I'm not going to stop distributing DeCSS. The lack of a DVD player for Linux is being addressed, but not the fundamental idiocy of CSS, Macrovision and Region Coding. Fine, we can play them. But what if we want to use them under our rights of fair use? What if we want to copy them to tape so we can watch them on the TV, which may not have a DVD player? What if we buy a whole lotta movies over here and move to a different country?

<rant>
Recently I've gotten really interested in this anime series, Rurouni Kenshin. Downloading it is a pain, and I'd rather just buy them. However, since I don't speak Japanese, I'd need subtitles, which the VHS wouldn't have. And thanks to Region Coding, I can forget buying it on DVD as well. You hear me, CCA? You're forcing me to pirate! This is just one example of why Region Coding is stupid.</rant>

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Linux APIs may be slightly weazker, but at least they're open. Microsoft has a history of obfuscating their APIs to put competitors at a disadvantage.

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Linux is a UNIX clone--it's supposed to look similar. That was the point.

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Microsoft does NOT have a frigging monopoly people

Okay, if I walk into a store and buy a computer, what OS is it going to have? Windows. Can I get another OS if I want? No. How is this not a monopoly? There is a little bit of competition, but that's semantics. They have monopoly power.

Lastly, think on this: Is Cisco next on DOJ's list to tackle? They're huge, they have a 'monopoly' as defined by the DOJ (as seen with MS).

being a monopoly is not illegal, abusing it to remain one, and to enter other markets, is illegal. Microsoft has done this, a lot, Cisco has not. Cisco is a really cool company. Without them, the Internet would literally not have existed. But they are also a respectible company that doesn't behave like a schoolyard bully.

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1) It's a whole lot easier to set up and use "out of the box" than Linux.

And Windows isn't as easy to use out-of-the-box as Be or MacOS. What's your point?

2)Microsoft's office suite is damn good. Some may argue that it's "good" because of anti-competitive integration with the operating system, but regardless, objectively, it is a feature-rich, fast, and easy-to-use suite. Nobody I know has ever had a problem learning Word.

Their apps don't totally suck. But my God are they bloated! I coulda sworn I was upgrading the OS but nope, just Word 2000. And fricking expensive, too. Office 2000 costs more than Windows. How messed up is that? Corel Office 2000 is every bit as good, and only fifty bucks. Try it out.

3)Breaking up Microsoft will have little effect on its day-to-day business. Sure, the overhead will increase, but I don't think it'll help foster competition. It shouldn't be allowed to unfairly push manufacturers, but breaking it up will have no effect on all this.

No, but they would be unable to use monopolistic power illegally, and that's the point. Leveling the playing field. If M$ is broken into Baby Bills, they will have to compete against each other. They will have to play fair! Hee hee.

4)Microsoft shouldn't be punished for having a better product. Netscape (which helped initiate the litigation) complains about IE, and although I agree it shouldn't be forcibly packaged without alternatives by OEMs, the fact remains that today IE is way better than Navigator. Shell integration aside, IE crashes on me less often than Navigator.

No, they should be punished for using monopoly power to steal marketshare from companies instead of competing. If their stuff is so much better, than why can't they win without abusing power? Don't write Netscape off just yet, either. Mozilla kicks ass, and they have a huge comapany backing them--AOL/Time Warner. AOL will switch over to Netscape 6.0 as soon and Mozilla is done--instant dominate marketshare. Plus, Mozilla will be the only decent full-featured browser to run on other platforms than Windows.

To sum it up, the case seems like punishment for Microsoft for being too successful.

No, they will be punished for killing off other companies illegally to become successful. They don't compete, they smother the competitor out of business. This is why they're in deep shit now.

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Oh well, better than one giant.

Actually, I would tend to believe a bloated monlith like M$ is right now would be easier to overthrow than several seperate companies. Baby Bills would be a lot more versatile, since they have a much more narrow market. Of course, this is purely speculation by some guy who doesn't know a thing about running companies. Still, common sense would dictate Baby Bills would be a hell of a lot more versatile. Still not, however, as versatile as Linux--and never will be.
An eighty-pound gorilla makes an easier target :)

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Gee and here I'm using pipes, redirecting and filtering on windows and I didn't even realise windows doesn't have them. don't i feel stupid.

Yes, DOS does have those capabilities--copied from UNIX, just like so many other of its features. But it's really kludgy in comparison, doesn't work as well.

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Think about it: Linux was written by programmers for programmers(!). Windows was written... to make money. Linux devel tools are freely available and numerous. Windows devel tools are ungodly expensive. Linux has many free API to write for, Windows has a single, partially obfuscated API. Linux's source code of freely available, so you can look under the hood and see how it works--and that can only help developement. Windows? Um, no. Whatever upsides Windows may have, Linux is a programmer's wet dream.

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Well, if you market a service directly towards people who don't know anything about computers (the easiest just got easier! No need to learn a single thing!) it's inevitable that you will end up with the largest portion of the lusers. Even if there are some people on it who aren't ignorant, they're completely outweighed by the majority.

It's not just a simple choice of an ISP--AOL has consistently scored the lowest in every category that matters except for ease of use. Therefore, the only reason you would choose it above a real ISP is if you don't know anything about computers.

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I guess this goes with the statement that geeks generally suck at creating interfaces. We dig complexity and usefulness, but the unwashed masses want simplicity. I think it would probably take a separate group developing the front end, Eazel perhaps? A group of ex Apple and AOL employees sounds like people used to idiot-proofing interfaces. Corel is also doing cool things with KDE to make it easy. (Too bad they have to change Qt, though) But if we should take advice from any interface, it should be Be. Now that's and easy inteface! Certainly one my mom could use.

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I love Gnome, as a matter of fact I'm using it right now. But one thing I've noticed is that it seems to just follow Window's lead in UI design and not really do anything novel itself. When do you think Gnome, and open source in general, will stop following the Evil Empire(tm) in UI and start choosing it's own path for a better, more useful interfaces?

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Good point. In fact, my playlist is almost completely independant, thanks to mp3.com. They have improved greatly since the last time I was on. Instead of listening to the same recycled crap from the radio, I'm listening to a bunch of people I've never heard of before. And I don't miss the mainstream stuff one bit! If I like something from mp3.com, I can just send the band $6 and get the CD (complete with CDDA and mp3 files!)--I'm paying the artist directly for their music, and they're making a hell of a lot more off of me then they would through a label. All in all, I think it's a pretty nice setup. And with mp3.com, there's no need to download songs with Napster to try them out.

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Well, no, the boxes would still be useful. You could still use them to pause/rewind live television, but you'd lose the really cool automatic recording/season pass stuff that the subscription provides. They'd basically just end up being the same as a ReplayTV if that ever happened.

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Hmm... this being Linux, I wonder if you could add in RAID support?

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IIRC, TiVo uses a special type of hard drive that is specifically tuned to read and write simultaneously. It's not a standard HDD, so I don't think you could just drop in another one. (that would be neat, though)

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Well, I believe you can make a quality SF show on a low budget, if done right. I'm a big fan of Red Dwarf. (although living here in the States makes it a little more difficult to watch. Public broadcasting mostly.) I think they did a very good job with the sets before they got a larger budget and started adding all the computer animation. In fact, I think some of the sets looked even more realistic than some seen on Star Trek. And this is a comedy!

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its never been a one step process and never will unlike windows.

Never say never, especially when referring to Linux. Microsoft can only dream of Windows improving itself as fast as Linux, who's to say this won't be streamlined better later on? If it's a source of annoyance (and believe me, it is) it will be fixed.

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This webtv bashing is really piss me off.

Where's the WebTV bashing? All he said was it was for people who didn't want to learn how to use a computer to browse the web and send email. That's exactly how it's being marketed!

webtv's browser's way more ergonomic than nescape or ie

Perhaps, but less functional. And nobody ever said Netscape was a good browser--it's just the best we have. Mozilla is a nice browser, though, and I would use it over WebTV's any day. And no matter what WebTV does with it's browser, it will always by definition be less functional because it's not connected to a computer. Not being able to download stuff would be neutering a rather nontrivial coolness of having the Internet.

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Yes, but if they're trying to give it gaming capabilities, it's certainly understandable that they'd get companies to port their games to it... and that would mean more games for Linux :) That's not it's main purpose, though, so it wouldn't necessarily fling Linux into the gaming industry. If all you want it for is web browsing, email and perhaps music, then Linux is certainly the way to go. And, hey, we have Quake3 and UT, so it's not a total loss!

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Uh-oh. God, I hope this comes out real far down the road, then. Can you imagine the catastrophe of giving all those people an alpha-version browser to use? I love Mozilla, but it's certainly not ready yet.

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Yeah, I'm gonna pay three times as more for the X-box than a regular DVD player just to play DVDs.

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Actually, that's a rather widely accepted abbreviation in the Linux/Open Source community. It's even in the Jargon File.

And who says hating Microsoft makes you ignorant? Most if not all Linux users started out on Dos/Windows. If it was adequate for them, why would they switch? We've all found one reason or another to dislike Windows, and after being a Linux user for some time, you grow to resent Windows being pushed on everyone like that. I think that's where a lot of the animosity towards MS comes from.

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Yeah, certainly not. If you have a computer powerful enough to play decent games, it would be rather stupid to buy a console. Personally, I don't like joystick-based games at all, but you can certainly buy one for your PC if you want--with a console you're stuck with what they give you, pretty much. And once your console goes out of style--tough luck. Can't upgrade.

I just can't imagine playing Quake3 on a console with a joystick-based controller... that would suck. You just can't beat a mouse.

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A database can only be copyrighted if a nontrivial amount of work went into creating it... we're talking about a simple file with a list of addresses. Not worth copyrighting. And I question whether something like a directory is truly copyrighted, since anyone could reproduce entries from it verbatim and no one would probably do anything about it.

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For those who live in larger cities like New York or near the Valley, I can see why you might think threre's too many expos, but they all seem to stick near the coasts! This june I'm gonna be going down to LinuxFest in Kansas City, which should be cool (I hear ESR's gonna speak), but it's the only one I could make it to! Even then it's a three-hour drive. I don't have the means to hop a plane to New York next LinuxWorld, but I'd really like to participate. Hopefully as Linux grows in popularity, they will be more evenly spread out.

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yeah, but we're talking about a list of Internet adressess. You can't copyright a list of other people's net addresses!

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When did this discussion suddenly become about web browsers and not operating systems? I don't care how deeply M$ buries IE into Windows, it's still an application, not part of the OS. We're talking about having to reboot the OS all the time, not some badly written application. I don't recall anyone ever claiming Netscape was good.

FYI, there is a reason why Netscape blows so hard; it's compiled with Motif statically linked in. If they had done dynamic links with GTK and/or Qt, it would be much better. I think Mozilla will do all three, but I'm gonna let that app mature a bit more before I use it as an example.

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You're missing the point. In the real world, when you steal something, you are depriving someone else of that property. Online, however, you're not. The concept of stealing is deeply rooted in the action of depriving someone of property that isn't yours, but online that doesn't happen; thus, it's a gray area. It's certainly unethical, especially for music--artists deserve to be compensated for their works. However, it is not the artists who are at a loss in this situation, it's the RIAA--and it's a little hard to feel sorry for them.

I think mp3.com has shown that it's quite possible that music may go to being all independantly produced and distributed online, without the need of a recording industry, and that's what they're worried about. Mp3 piracy hasn't made a dent in their sales, in fact sales have gone up, so there isn't even any apparent theft being committed.

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probably, but I've seen quite a few people say they just walked into the nearest electronics store and bought one, so they're probably not pursuing it.

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Have you actually tried to play a DVD run through a VCR? How do you think it prevents it from being recorded? By jacking with the signal. And that disrupts the signal going to the television. Fortunately, you could get a Macrovision filter without too much trouble.

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I know you're eyes probably started to glaze as you scrolled down through the loooonnnngg list of replies, but there's one you really should read. The EFF's reply, number 204--excellent. Details exactly what's wrong with the DMCA as it applies to DVDs and other copyrighted works, and brough up a few points that I did even think of:

• I was not aware of Copyright law's First Sale Rule, which states that a copyright owner has no control over what happens to a copyrighted work after it's first sale (other than the usual distribution/public display stuff), which is exactly what the DVD CCA is attempting.
• DVDs should be considered as a completely different product than VHS, since the experience is so totally different. Okay, I kinda thought of this, but it helped clarify quite a bit.

I wonder how the LoC is gonna react to all of these excellent replies; it's so overwhelming, I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't declare DVDs exempt. Let's all cross our fingers.

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I wish. Unfortunately, I'm only just beginning to learn coding, so I wouldn't be very helpful.

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Same reason everybody's still using qwerty keyboards. Path dependance; we're so used to the damn things nobody wants to switch.

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I kind of miss my drop-down location bar too. If you look up to the menus, you'll notice one labeled "go". Apparently, that functions the same as the drop-down menu. I hope they're not thinking of using that instead; I like the drop-down menu a lot more.

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Okay, if there's a certain feature in IE that we don't like, we have to live with it. But Mozilla is open source, man. Just don't compile it in. Or run in simplebrowser if that's what you prefer. All of these extras can easily be removed, which makes it so much better than any other browser available; you can totally customize it. I can't even uninstall IE. I really don't understand all of this complaining.

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Don't forget, Mozilla's Open Source. AOL can't really do much to Mozilla that we can't fix; besides, I don't think they'll even touch the browser itself. The reason they don't use Netscape now is that they need an embeddable browser that they can integrate into their client software. So, Gecko is really all they want. The Mozilla shell we are using now probably won't even be touched.

Besides, I don't think the UI is that bad. It's all a matter of taste, really, and that's where themes come in.

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Yes, that is kinda dumb. But I'd rather describe dragging a diskette icon to the trash to eject than to describe unmounting a disk--can you imagine? We'll have to come up with a better way of mounting and unmounting, at least for the GUI. Gnome's mount panel buttons, and automount are steps in the right direction, but they need to be more automatic than that.

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do you honestly think she can't handle right-click/install ?

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Another thing- when you spread lies and FUD like "10 minutes out of every hour waiting for a reboot" you automatically lose that portion of your audience who know you're lying like a shag carpet.

YMMV. You must realize that for some of us, this is not an exaggeration! That pretty much summed up my experience with Windows, which is why I'm a Linux user now. I don't know if it's the way I use a computer, or simply bad Windows karma, but every time I get on a Windows box I crash it constantly--and I'm not even doing really intensive things, either. So don't go calling people liars just because you didn't share the same experience.

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I've never met a person who got motion sickness from 3D games, but if you do, then the answer is obvious. Just don't use it. It's just a window manager, after all. Unlike Windows, you can replace the GUI at will, and there are certainly quite a few 2D wm's available. I just think a 3D one would be really cool :)

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Who says a 3D interface would have to play by the same rules? Perhaps someone could design a taskbar that brings you to the window of your choice automatically. Why would this be any different than a 2D wm? I think you begin to depend on a certain interface, and if it has shortcomings, you tend to start relying on them. For instance, in Windows you're stuck with just the one desktop. You get really used to minimizing and maximizing windows in order to multitask, even though that's not the best way to do it. When I switched to Linux, I was amazed at how simple a change the multiple desktops were, and how fricking useful they are. Nowadays I feel restricted and contrained when I use Windows because of that. When you get down to it, a 3D inteface would really be nothing more than a more efficient way of arranging windows.

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An interesting interview with Leor Zolman can be found here.

By the way, BDS C ran on 2-4 MHz CPUs with 32-64K (kilobytes, not megabytes) of RAM.