Pride Before The Fall

In his new book Pride Before The Fall, John Heilemann explains how Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder, a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world. For years, programmers perceived Microsoft as nearly satanic because of its staggering monopoly, questionable products and ruthless practices. Turns out they saw what nobody offline could or did. Heilemann talks to everybody involved, including Gates. This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

For his new book Pride Before The Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era, " author John Heilemann got to do what many people reading this must have fantasized about a thousand times:

He flew out to Redmond, sat across from Bill Gates, and asked if he regretted his handling of the Microsoft antitrust trial, during which he alienated state attorneys general, the public and Justice Department trial lawyers, and enraged the federal judge trying the case with a series of provocative and intemperament public statements. Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had told reporters the trial was a "travesty of justice," that "we are absolutely confident we will win on appeal", and that they would "never" allow Microsoft to be broken up -- comments that helped convince Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson that Gates was unrepentant and that no solution short of a breakup could change Microsoft's predatory, monopolistic behavior.

To this day, neither Gates nor any of his aides has admitted an iota of wrongdoing before, during or after the catastrophic trial.

In one of the many dramatic incidents recounted in this astoundingly well reported book, Heilemann said he understood that Gates had "the right"..to make such statements.

"What I'm asking here is a tactical question. It was a moment of great political sensitivity. Wouldn't it have been better to keep your mouths shut?"

The look on Gates' face, recounts Heilemann, fairly radiated contempt. "We are defending principles of greated importance," he harrumphed. "Our right of appeal. Our right to innovate. Our right to have an appeals court sit and judge that." Even to mention tactics and sensibilities, he told Heilemann, was to sully those great principles with the grubbiness of politics.

Gates was unwavering. The company had done nothing wrong, the judge's findings were baseless, he had made no mistakes of any kind. He and Microsoft would be fully vindicated by the appeals process.

Pride Before The Fall is the best account we're likely to see of the downfall of Bill Gates, the wealthiest and most successful businessperson in the world, and until the antitrust trial, one of the most fawned-over. Heilemann sheds some piercing light on how the debacle that engulfed Microsoft could have been allowed to happen -- something analysts, competitors, geeks, CEO's, journalists, coders and Microsoft employees have been wondering for years and have never quite been able to explain. This book and story give credence to the old saw that has it that just because you're paranoid about somebody doesn't mean you're wrong.

Media coverage of Microsoft of is so riddled with hype and hysteria -- an exception has been Joseph Nocera of Fortune Magazine -- that Heilemann's account comes as a brilliant jolt, even to Microsoft-haters. He seems to have penetrated every nook and corner of the trial to tell this story.

The impending break-up of Microsoft was quite avoidable, according to almost every principal close to the case. Gates could have changed some of Microsoft's practices early on, especially those relating to the relationship between IE and Windows and PC makers. He could have settled. He could have accepted relatively generous mediation terms. He could have lobbied for support in Washington, instead of treating bureaucrats with contempt. He could have told DOJ lawyers and the judge the truth in his testimony. He could have avoided gratuituously offending the judge, members of Congress and the public, thereby tarnishing the previously wholesome image of his company, perhaps for good.

Why didn't he?

The patterns of powerful men (my only squawk with this book is that Heilemann didn't go into this history at all, but it is helpful) brought low by hubris -- Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, now Gates -- are eerily similiar. They all seem to have believed that the rules that govern other people didn't apply to them. They underestimated their enemies, and lacked friends who could tell them the truth. They surrounded themselves with people who told them what they wanted to hear. They were unable, when things went wrong, to apologize, acknowledge wrongdoing or change their behavior or tactics, or avert looming disaster that everyone else could see coming right at them.

Although his wrongdoings are not comparable, and there are plenty of serious questions about U.S. antitrust laws as they relate to a new kind of economy, Gates hubris fits the pattern. Despite the conclusions of every principal in the trial that Microsoft engaged in predatory, illegal and reprehensible business practices, Gates still can't accept it.

Before the trial, Heilemann points out, Gates was more than a high-tech billionaire. "He was the pristine embodiment of the high-tech myth. At an impossibly young age, he'd come out of nowhere, consumed with ideas and a pure burning passion. He had launched a company that unleashed an industry, and then led that industry as it transformed an economy. For a long time, Gates represented everything that was inspiring about this protean phenomenon taking shape in our midst -- its freshness and its ambition, its sense of possibility and its connection to the future. But like a figure lifted from classical tragedy, Gates sowed the seeds of his own undoing."

If anything, Heilemann understates Gates' unique public position during the late 80's and early 90's. Vice-presidents of the U.S. flew out to Redmond for his parties, editors of Time, The New Yorker and other magazines and publications visited him to write worshipful tributes and gather up his wisdom. Gates wrote a series of vapid and self-aggrandizing books that became instant best-sellers. The historical function of media, to harry and probe the powerful and famous, broke down.

Gates created a company that reflected his image, says Heilemann, and that fostered a worshipful culture of Gatesian omnipotence. He mastered a complex business, but failed to develop any peripheral vision, political sensibility, flexibility, or public relations antennae.

"In his arrogance, he lost whatever perspective he once had, and in his monomania he was unwise to the ways of the world....When his reckoning came, it was shocking and final."

Strong stuff, but Heilemann, a special correspondent for Wired and a former staff writer for The New Yorker , backs it up. He not only interviewed Gates, he had access to nearly every other important figure in the trial, from the judge and his clerk to Justice Department officials and lawyers on both sides. He also is clearly well-connected with the increasingly organized and embittered coalition of anti-Gates executives, lawyers and activists in Silicon Valley, seething for years over the way Microsoft did business.

One of the book's many triumphs is a penetrating look at the Valley's craven and incestuous corporate culture, which increasingly resembles not the new but the old order, the bitter, back-stabbing and opportunism of Washington. In the headquarters of the new economy, the old-fashioned laws of butt-covering and money-grubbing capitalism seemed to dominate. A couple of isolated oddballs did the right thing, but only a couple. Everyone else ducked or ran for cover.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the appeals under way, it's hard to overstate the significance of the Microsoft trial. The case was a watershed. At times, Gates seemed very nearly broken, and the halo surrounding the company he built has vanished. The case will shape the nature of competition, innovation and law in the high-tech markets pushing aside the practices of the old economy. Economists believe that the outcome will set the rules for years to come. What's amazing is that everybody involved seemed to grasp what was at stake except for the primary target: Gates himself.

Heilemann nails Gates, and more importantly, explains him. Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder, traits not perceived by his legions of profilers or challenged by his hordes of subordinates, a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world beyond his own company. For a man who believes in his own omnipotence, some bitter pills. The phrase "tech-smart but world dumb" is sometimes used to describe even brilliant programmers and computing executives. It captures Gates perfectly. In fact, he embodies it.

One of Heilemann's most telling scenes -- in one of the best books yet written about power and the new economy -- shows Gates, just as Microsoft lawyers readied their case, leaving other MS execs in charge, and heading off on a weeks-long vacation accompanied by his wife and bigwigs like financier Warren Buffet and new media scion William Randolph Hearst III. Gates had chartered a train to ferry his troupe around the American West on a sightseeing tour. Heilemann reports that Gates was surrounded by adoring minions and acolytes who made sure he never got bored or testy, who arranged for a string of experts -- archaeologists, historians -- to suddenly appear out of nowhere and describe a canyon or town.

The image is not of a new kind of leader for the new economy, but of a standard tycoon losing touch with reality, the Citizen Kane of cyberspace, his every whim satisfied, the number of people who can say "you're wrong" dwindling. Small wonder he couldn't bring himself to believe some geek programmers, Silicon Valley whiners and a handful of underpaid Justice Department lawyers could pose much threat.

Many developers, programmers and workers in the tech industry had for years perceived Microsoft as nearly satanic because of its staggering monopoly, its products of questionable quality, its ferociously proprietary ethic. They were right, able to see their world from a vantage point the off-line world still hasn't quite grasped. Many, many stories circulated about the company's arrogance and brutal business style.

Ironic that these sometimes paranoid-seeming notions turned out to be largely valid. The Microsoft culture that Heilemann presents was actually worse than many believed.

The feelings that many Microsoft employees had for their boss went beyond respect or loyalty, writes Heilemann, "and crept right up to the brink of infatuation: in one way or another, everyone in Redmond seemed to have a crush on Bill. Gates inspired this intense following without being, in any conventional sense, a charismatic or especially winning figure."

What he was, the book says, was very smart, and in the universe that he had personally created, "to be deemed smart -- or, better still, super smart -- was to be awarded the greatest accolade in the Microsoft lexicon."

But Gates' behavior before, during and after the antitrust case was anything but smart. At every critical juncture when a friend, colleague, attorney or ally needed to grab him by the threat and force him to come to his senses, nobody did -- either because he was considered above reproach or because, as Heilemann seems to suspect, he simply wouldn't have listened and won't to this day.

Microsoft is still a powerful corporation, and Gates still has many billions in the bank. There are tougher ways to fall. But Heilemann is dead on when he says the Microsoft era is over, done in by the same smart and flawed many who created it.

As for Pride Before the Fall, it's timely, economical and powerful. Skillfully reported, it captures better than any other our transition from one historic period to other. It has enormous moral and human punch, and is convincing and unsparing. It's gripping reading.

P.S. Full disclosure: Heilemann and I worked together as columnists at Hotwired several years ago.

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Comments

My name is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi! My name is.. (what?) My name is.. (who?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!
Hi! My name is.. (huh?) My name is.. (what?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!

Ahh emm.. excuse me!
Can I have the attention of Slashdot
for one second?

Hi kids! Do you like trollin'? (Yeah yeah yeah!)
Wanna see me rap to this tune that I've stolen? (Uh-huh!)
Wanna copy me next time Slashdot's pollin'? (Yeah yeah!)
Try goatse.cx, get some fucked up shit rollin'? (Huh?)
My brains dead weight, I'm tryin to get my head straight
but I cant figure out which editor I wanna impregnate (Umm..)
Taco said, "First Poster, you a basehead!"
Uh-uh! "Then why's your face red? Man you wasted!"
Well since age twelve, I've felt like I'm someone else
Cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt
Got pissed off and ripped Jon Katz's dick off
And smacked him so hard I knocked his clothes backwards like Kris Kross
I smoke a fat pound of grass and fall on my ass
faster than a fat bitch who sat down too fast
Come here slut. (FP, wait a minute, that's Cowboy Neal!)
I don't give a fuck, MS sent me to piss Slashdot off.

Hi! My name is.. (what?) My name is.. (who?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!
Hi! My name is.. (huh?) My name is.. (what?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!

Cracksmoker wanted to mod me down just before
Thanks a lot, now my karma's down to -4
I smacked him in his face with a keyboard, hit his sig with a warlord
and flogged his nuts with a mouse cord (Owwwwwwww!)
Walked in the strip club, had my jacket zipped up
Flashed the bartender, then stuck my dick in the tip cup
Extraterrestrial, runnin over pedestrians
in a spaceship while they screamin: "LET'S JUST BE FRIENDS!"
Ninety-nine percent of my life I was lied to
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and try to touch your hands like some screamin Linus fans (Aaahhhhhh!)
This guy at ALS asked for my autograph
(Dude, can I get your autograph?)
So I signed it: 'Dear ESR, thanks for the support, ASSHOLE!'

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My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!
Hi! My name is.. (huh?) My name is.. (what?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!

Stop the tape, this kid needs to be locked away! (Get him!)
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I'm not ready to leave, won't disconnect from this host (Fuck that!)
You'll have to format my HD, and even then I'll Ghost
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Can't troll IRL, giving jocks shit is suicide
(Whoops!) Clothes ripped like the Incredible Hulk (hachhh-too)
I spit when I talk, I'll fuck anything that walks (C'mere)
When I was little I used to troll people on IRC
HOW YOU GONNA K-LINE ME DUDE? (WAH!)
YOU DON'T KNOW MY IP! (WAHHH!)
I stay awake all night on Slashdot
Forget to click "anonymous", let the mods take their best shot (BANG!)
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And by the way when you see Taco? (Yeah?)
Tell him that I'm gonna blow us his site like Waco

Hi! My name is.. (what?) My name is.. (who?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!
Hi! My name is.. (huh?) My name is.. (what?)
My name is.. {scratches} First Poster!

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

PHB Logic:
1. Notes cost = $450.00 / seat
2. Ya get what you pay for.
Conclusion: Notes is worth $450.00 / seat. QED.

You just can't argue with logic like that.

Insightful? How about Just Plain Wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for posting this as an Anonymous Coward (my name is Blair A. Petterson of Edmonton's Petterson Law Office, and yes, I am a lawyer and can be reached at (780)439-2529), but you clearly have not distinguished between the powers of a shareholder and those of an officer in a publicly traded corporation.

In brief, a shareholder is an owner who hires an officer to run the company in the best interests of the shareholders.

In brief, MicroSoft is not strictly Bill Gates' company once he put up shares in an initial public offering. He was the founder and Chief Executive Officer for awhile, but he no more owns all of MicroSoft than you do. His shares give him an interest in the company, but he no longer owns the majority of shares. I'm not going to get into different kinds of shares here, however.

MicroSoft is not Bill Gates' to torch, since it is NOT despite your post "HIS empire to destroy if he so desires it", or else a lot of people who hold MicroSoft shares own something very different than they were told they were buying. In my view, MicroSoft shareholders may have a cause of action against Slick Billy for *not* settling the actions apparently despite shareholder instructions.

I realize you aren't a lawyer, but please don't offer legal opinions such as who owns the Evil Empire and I won't give you advice on coding.

By the way, we concur on our opinion concerning the Anti-Christness of Billy G.

_____________________________________________
Proud user of Red Hat Linux since May 1, 1999

stickiness factor

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I would want a book that I would "literally" not be able to put down. Thanks for the warning.

Re:stickiness factor

[Ronin X]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

YES! I'd like some more information on this booby-trapped book! Does it excrete some sort of epoxy when you pick it up?

And how did you type the review with the book still in your hands?

Re:stickiness factor

[Golias]

Dammit AC! You almost 'literally' made me shoot coca-cola out my nose! Dang, that was funny.

When a writer misuses a word that badly, he deserves to be laughed at.

Mr. Katz

[Anonymous Coward]

It would seem you have a 50% chance of being right in your review since you have based it 100% on MS falling. Unfortunately -- you have not counted on the tenacity or deep pockets of MS -- nor has the author. NEVER underestimate your enemy. From the tone of the article (and apparently the book if the article is accurate) MS and Bill G. are both past tense. This is a major tactical error.

The original post is nothing more than a fawning attempt to pander to your audience. Perhaps if you had spent less time on referring to a mythical fall of a company that dwarfs the entire Linux movement in product line, revenue and longevity and more time focussing on the facts of the case and the potential that this apparent tactical mistake on the part of MS/Bill G. may have your article would be a better read.

Do not forget MS has been to the court of appeals before. Judge T is at best a little out of his water and at worst addled and the court of appeals seems to like MS. Add to this the new administration in Washington and we may find that Judge T is best off retiring early or having several cases overturned on appeal (slap!) because he has /slanted/ his opinion on MS publicly.

Re:WTF?

[Herschel Cohen]

Is it really that easy to switch databases?

I have a strong suspicion that it's not quite that easy.

Just consider the syntax in the various stored procedures, e.g. Transact-SQL is used on both Sybase and MS's SQLServer. However, dependent upon the version of the latter, a working stored procedure in the former will fail run on the latter. Moreover, as of version 7 the extensions added would certainly not allow one to migrate to Sybase.

Having first starting with Oracle's PL/SQL, Transact-SQL seems to be a subset of the former, but Sybase deviates in version 11 from the SQL-92 standard in odd ways. Hence, seeming similar stored procedures may fail to yield identical results on different database products or in the worse case fail to even run. Moreover, the method of using temporary tables may differ between products.

In summary, an export to a new back end may require <B>significant</B> effort.

Re:Ummm...

[Chris Johnson]

Your faith in the honesty of Microsoft's accounting practices is touching :)

Seriously, listen to yourself for a second. You sound just a _bit_ like you're wearing a tinfoil helmet... the fact is, Microsoft is a public company with truly staggering expenses and an entire culture _based_ on geometric expansion. It doesn't matter _how_ much money they have (and which set of figures are you looking at?), they're not spending it any slower.

I honestly, seriously believe that if Microsoft is absolved of all wrongdoing by the courts their next move is to run themselves into massive debt through uncontrolled expenditures and implode. It's possible this would destroy them a lot better than a court-ordered breakup. Steve Ballmer agrees with me and has made public statements about wanting to alter Microsoft's very culture into more of a culture of frugality (ha! not!). Who are you going to believe, me and Ballmer, or some PR flack feeding you nonsense about MS invincibility? That's what they're _paid_ to do...

Re:Ruling to be Vacated!

[Chris Johnson]

How nice. Will MS follow the rules too, or will they fabricate video evidence in open court again?

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[cduffy]

No, Netcraft doesn't count raw or unconnected installs at all -- rather, they poll running, net-connected servers.

See more about their methodology in the document with the results, eg at http://www.netcraft.com/survey/index-200007.html

IBM was brought down

[Tony]

It depends on how you define "brought down." IBM is at its strongest ever, yet it was brought down in the '70s and '80s.

Read your history-- at one time, IBM was in the *exact* same position as MS, destroying competition not through superior products, but through superior market position and greater reach. It used suspicious contracts and marketting to lock customers in, and make them happy to *be* locked in, same as MS does now.

Take a look at IBM today-- it has greater global reach than MS, superior products, and embraces the Free/Open Source software movement. Yes, it's not completely converted, but IBM bases its technology on standards. Mostly.

Not that IBM is a model company; but it was brought down from its position of dictatorship, and is today a stronger company because of it.

Of course he is immortal

[Telcontar]

Bill Gates survived the cream pie assault two years ago, so he'll survive everything ;-)

a tad early for post mortems

[Wansu]

M$ is still doing what they are about. Put out a book like this after they lock up the place.

For interesting reading...

[defile]

For anyone truly interested in how Microsoft thinks, there's some entertaining reading available from the transcriptions of the minutes of Microsoft's shareholder meetings. They're conveniantly available from Microsoft's site. Here's one:

The 1999 Shareholder Meeting

See the previous years as well. Their shareholders consistently advise Microsoft to settle with the government, and they're basically shrugged off.

Re:won't save them

[jedidiah]

Actually, there has been a visible shift in public opinion against Microsoft in the past few years. This tends to be more true amongst the part of the population that actually USES computers. While surveys of random 3rd parties is nice for consoling yourself if you're an MS cheerleader. The fact remains that Microsoft's public image has taken a severe beating. Today, it's nothing like it was in 1988 or 1995.

In the part of the public that really matters, there is considerably more awareness of alternate options and competitors.

...and yes, I do see people running from MS products.

Re:Ancient History

[jedidiah]

Rabid republicans didn't cut Clinton any slack. Why should anyone else do Bush II any special favors?

Re:Note to Katz

[jedidiah]

Microsoft does NOT dominate the video game market.

Microsoft does NOT dominate the server OS market.

Microsoft does NOT dominate the RDBMS market.

Microsoft does NOT dominate the handheld market.

The only place were Microsoft currently has a stranglehold is the DOS based microcomputer market. Get beyond that and MS is nothing special.

Re:It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[jedidiah]

I dispute that Microsoft ever created product better than Wordperfect and Lotus. What Microsoft had in ~93 was good branding. They were the "IBM" of that day. MSOffice gained due to that fact primarily and the rest was a matter of market inertia.

There is much babble about msoffice being better than it's competitors but seldom is addressed WHY it's supposed to be superior.

Re:Gates Is One Of Us

[jedidiah]

NO, it is not acceptable to subject the common man to CRAP just because they are not a geek. One need not be a geek to deserve a quality product. There are people out there that have STOPPED INTERACTING WITH THE OS entirely because they know they will bring the system down otherwise. THESE PEOPLE DESERVE BETTER.

...and no, WinDOS is NOT designed for the main stream. This is just a irresponsible myth perpetuated by the ignorant. Windows is an arcane, badly done CP/M clone with a GUI grafted on top.

How can anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the Windows product line spew such drivel?

The DOS core of Windows is what drove many of us to Unix.

The typical geek has more pride and professionalism than this half-shark called Gates. Just look to GEM, the real CP/M, Unix, VMS, Macintosh, BeOS or Next to see the real products of a geek mind.

How clueless can you be?

[jedidiah]

How clueless can you be...

When you are in front of a judge, you do NOT treat him like some servant. You treat him/her with respect and not like some illegal migrant worker. 'Real' Tycoons and Robber Barons realize this. That is primarily why Microsoft is under scrutiny while far more dangerous corporations remain hidden from the public eye.

Gates is just enough shark to get the best of a bunch of geeks. THAT is why he is where he is today. Whether or not he can survive swimming with the real sharks is questionable.

Re:Anyone one else...

[jedidiah]

Except the rest of the industry did not.

Kildall did not bend over and say ahh for IBM, nor did he try to sell them an OS that didn't exist.

The Unix community didn't restrict their OS to a single platform or tie it to the excentricities of a 20 year old piece of hardware.

Jobs and Wozniak did not keep their OS trapped on obsolete CISC technology and did not stunt the development of easy to use end user interfaces (both hardware and software).

Did you people forget what a mess MS-DOS was, and the fact that you had to mess with THAT in order to run Windows until 1995. Did you forget what a joke Windows was before the 90's?

Re:This is a lil' weak

[slim]

"Wow, an anti-microsoft book gets headlined on slashdot.org, wonder if a anti-linux book would ever get posted"

If and when such a book is published, I expect we'll see a headline about it here. In the meantime here's a few slashdot stories which refer to criticism against Linux:

1

2

3

Obviously there are more.

--

Ummm...

[jd]

Microsoft hasn't actually fallen, yet. Are we waiting for the barbarians, Jon?

Also, Microsoft has enough capital to survive, intact, if it never sold another product for a decade.

Microsoft can ignore any judgement passed against them, with impunity. Bill Gates isn't worried, because there's nothing to worry about.

Short of levelling Redmond with a tac nuke (and it wouldn't surprise me if B.G. bought surplus Star Wars anti-nuke technology), how do the US courts think they're going to actually get Microsoft to split up?

By throwing stones?

Sorry, but in this battle, Goliath has depleted uranium armour, and the stones are paper mache.

Look, if things got really bad for Bill, he's enough money to finance an army large enough to seize control of the country, should he wish. Worse, the US military's mostly using MS products, making any kind of opposition a joke.

Paranoia? Probably. But that's not the point. The point is, if it =DID= come to a showdown, Microsoft would win. So how exactly are they fallen?

What fall?

[Urmane]

Erm, I haven't read the book, but seems to me that it's still in the category of wishful thinking. I don't like MS, either, but they're still the de facto standard, they're still worth a kajillion dollars, they have no debt, they're a great investment ... unless the gov't fines them $100 billion dollars, a loss in the Appeals process will probably result in lots of press but no real changes. Convince me I'm wrong.

--

Re:What fall?

[edoug]

I concur.

I think that to say the "microsoft era" is over is dead wrong...they still have cash, market share, and much corporate mindshare.

What may be over, however, is the "bill gates era" (which I think is more likely). Consider the _slightly_ lower profile he keeps now in his new role. No longer CEO, no longer calling all the shots. I think he has more recognition of his mistakes than the tone of the review gives him credit for.

Although this could be more of a retirement from the spotlight and not really a change of beliefs, but the end result is the same, the Bill Gates Era is over

What is this...

[talks_to_birds]

"...end of Micro$oft..." nonsense?

Where have you been, Katz?

Ever hear of Florida?

Ever hear of "chad"?

Paid any attention to the Supreme Court lately?

Gee Dub Ya was appointed President of the United States, and his new Justice Department is gonna make it all better.

The world's safe for capitalism, with 'ol Gee Dub Ya at the helm.

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

Re:Micrsoft Windows is proprietary, unstable, etc.

[Bake]

I can keep running Windows 2000 without a glitch for months. If I feed a faulty driver to Linux, or load a wacky kernel module, Linux is just as unstable as Windows with some faulty software or drivers.

ooh, pray tell, how do I "rmmod NAME_OF_WACKY_KERNEL_MODULE" in Windows? :-).

I've had Linux go a bit unstable on me in situations like this, ie. wacky module, but the problem always vanished when I rmmod'd the said module.
There have been many a time when I wished I had _that_ kind of control over a Windows box

Re:Micrsoft Windows is proprietary, unstable, etc.

[Bake]

Yes I did once, when my System Volume got a bit corrupted. Although I had to boot of the CD to get to it since the windows recovery console appears to require an OK system volume.

When you're just surfing like any average Joe one of the last things you wanna see is "Unable to write, System Volume corrupt". The really icky part was that I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.

hear the author on WBUR webcast

[bcboy]

http://theconnection.org

Re:Ancient History

[johnnyb]

GWB does appoint justices, but every justice that is appointed is there for life. So, he can only replace justices that have retired.

Re:far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[johnnyb]

How is not participating in government admirable?

As long as there's gravity...

[alumshubby]

...I'll be able to literally put down any book I pick up, Jon. :o)

Re:Microsoft: the world's biggest utility

[germano]

Now I remember a good explanation for
this... people who don't like something
tend to tell it to everyone else, but
people who like it don't tell everyone.
So what you get is bad publicity when a
few people don't like you. Like when
you see someone drinking Coke, you say
"How can you drink that? It tastes like shit"
but if you acutally like Coke you don't
go and tell everyone "Coke is very tasty!"

So you better try not to make haters and
please everyone, at least on places where
you can benchmark (computers).

Re:Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[scrytch]

Microsoft is not evil nor ruthless

Yes they are.

skillful riposte. are you going to hold your breath til you turn blue when someone says "are not"?


--

Re:FIRST NAZI

[scrytch]

insightful? looks like the moderators have been smoking the cheap crack again.
--

Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[Cid Highwind]

Microsoft is hardly dead. They still have 90%+ desktop OS market share, the best (sorry StarOffice) office suite, and IIS is still gaining on Apache. How can this possibly be mistaken for a dying company?
Sorry, Jon, you're way off on this one. MSFT stock may be in the toilet right now, but that doesn't mean they're about to shut down.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[Admiral Burrito]

From the Netcraft site: The relatively static market share for Microsoft on the web as a whole contrasts sharply with its progress in our companion SSL Server Survey where Microsoft makes consistent and relentless gains, month after month, and now accounts for 49% of the sites performing encrypted transactions on the internet.

I wonder how many of these were given a small fortune's worth of hardware and software by MS.

I suspect they've been doing that a lot lately. There is a start-up I am close to, hasn't even received funding yet, is getting offers of free hardware and software from MS. Six figures worth! The condition is that they re-write all the unix-based stuff to become a pure W2K shop.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[avdp]

Oh come on... Yes, the latest Netcraft survey did show an increase of 1.82% since the previous month. Netcraft highlighted that fact because it's the largest gain from IIS in one month in a long time (possibly ever).

But the fact remains that Apache has been hovering at 60% for over a year and IIS at 20%. From month to month one goes up by 1%, comes back down the following month, goes back up the one after and so one and so forth. This little statistical dance has been going on for quite some time.

Unless Microsoft sustains that 1.82% growth month after month from now on (possible, but I'd be very surprised), it is a bit premature to even *suggest* that IIS might be catching up to Apache. Apache still has 3 times the market share of IIS.

The original poster said "IIS is still gaining on Apache" (the highlight is mine). Please. This is the first month ever that Netcraft has shown a possible gain from IIS over Apache. Isn't the word "still" a bit premature??

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[divec]

IIS is still gaining on Apache.

Do you have figures which are unarguably better than the Netcraft ones that everyone uses? Apache at 60%, MS at 20%. It's been like that for over a year. (Actually, Apache has increased its share from about 52%, but hey).

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[Wariac]

Wasnt there a discussion here before that mentioned that one reason Apache's stats were so much higher was that whenever anyone installed a *NIX, usually Apache is installed by default and then counted by netcraft?

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[szcx]

Do you have figures which are unarguably better than the Netcraft ones that everyone uses?

Everyone except you apparently. According to Netcraft, Apache dropped 1.29% between December 2000 and January 20001, while IIS gained 1.82%.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[szcx]

Unfortunately, when the apes took over Earth, most of Netcraft's records were destroyed.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[graniteMonkey]

You have spoken out against the Hive and will now be ignored.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[Chagrin]

You're nuts. Linux rules the internet arena in terms of FTP or HTTP installations, and all the big guys either run on Sun or IBM.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[smitcham]

From the Netcraft site:

The relatively static market share for Microsoft on the web as a whole contrasts sharply with its progress in our companion SSL Server Survey where Microsoft makes consistent and relentless gains, month after month, and now accounts for 49% of the sites performing encrypted transactions on the internet.

I don't think MS is slipping at all in the Webserver market.

Re:Did I sleep through the fall of microsoft?

[BEHiker57W]

I've used OpenOffice/StarOffice and M$ Office and I can tell you that Micros~1 Office is just not nearly as solid and well designed as SO/OO.

-Brian

Live by the lower TCO. Die by the lower TCO.

[crovira]

The conditions that brought M$ to domination and the same ones that will lead to its decimation. M$ exists because it ran on clones that had a lower T.C. of Aquisition than IBM PCs.

Now that NT has some serious competition with a lower T.C. of Aquisition, M$ has started on a slow inextorable death spiral. Why do you think they are trying .NET and X-Box?

Since most shops using NT have sys admin staff, the OS itself doesn't matter anymore. Its now somebody job to get the systems up and running. That Linux is better is nice. What will kill M$ is that Linux is cheaper. But better has never mattered. Good enough is good enough. The people who buy the products don't use them.

Re:WTF?

[rnturn]

``Unless they have some sort of backdoor built into Office 2000''

Yep. No doubt that when any of the following:

• Bill Gates's conviction (or death)
• Microsoft's stock price falling below a certain level
• Microsoft losing money for several consecutive quarters

The backdoors are used to punish American businesses for the arrogance in believing that they could fnction without Bill Gates's benevolent vision and guiding hand. ;-)

``People in the tech industry commonly overestimate the size and importance of Microsoft to the world as a whole.''

Actually, I'd say it was mainly the folks outside the tech industry that overestimate Microsoft's importance.

--

Re:Ancient History

[baglunch]

Gore won the popular vote by such a scant margin that it's statistically a tie. Quit waving that pathetic little "Gore won the popular vote" flag because so the hell what. The US HAS a president now. Support the office and the institution, even if you don't support the person. In case no one had told you: we're trying to run a country here, and we need your help, too.

Re:Ancient History

[baglunch]

According to CNN.com:

Although Bush won the presidency by winning the vote in the Electoral College 271 to 266, Gore won the national popular vote by 539,947 ballots.

...just to provide actual numbers instead of guess and half-memory. But I can't find numbers (or, I tired of looking before I found them) on what the actual percentage of voters 539,947 ballots represents.

And, see, the way it works is: it's not a matter of whether Gore had an extra 539,947 ballots across the whole country or not. The country is compartmentalized into 50 voting blocks (called states) and unsurprisingly, 539,947 ballots / 50 states is about 10,000 ballots per state. I think my own CITY could recount and find 10,000 ballots to support Bush if we wanted to.

And where was I when Clinton was president? Right here, posting on slashdot, working at my job, not agreeing that Clinton was the best man for the job, but generally supporting the office itself.

My point is, Bush is president. If you are an American, he IS your president. I voted for someone else, but I'm willing to support the office of the presidency and even the president himself as long as I don't think the president is actively defiling the office through his actions. But even then, I support the office. If you think Bush sucks after 4 years, vote him out. That's what happened to the Clinton/Gore legacy. Enough of the country thought they sucked to kick them out. Too bad for Gore if it was Clinton doing all the sucking and making Gore look bad. Like TMBG says, "You can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding." or pick your own fitting phrase.

Re:Ancient History

[baglunch]

Are you saying that rapid republicans are worthy of emulation?

Re:Ancient History

[baglunch]

Where are you getting your 700,000 number from? I got just under 600,000 from CNN.com. References are appreciated when presenting facts. And, I still don't know what percentage 600,000 or 700,000 ballots is of the full national tally. Were there 6 million votes cast? 60 million? 700,001? Distinct, referenced figures are appreciated. Otherwise it's just me making numbers vs you making up numbers.

Linux == "communistic"?

[pivo]

It's pretty sad when the idea of sharing is considered bad or equated with evilness, as in how some people have come to think of communisim. Do these people that equate Linux with communisim share anything in their life or does every exchange require a cash transaction?

Maybe the next time I invite the boys over to watch the game, I'll need to charge them for the beers so I won't be thought of as evil or a looser. Maybe it really is immoral for me to donate blood, I should be selling it instead. After all, I don't want to be communist!

Come to think of it, I'm sharing some of my thoughts in this post. Ok, everybody cough up a micro payment right now, or face charges of communisim!

Re:Linux == "communistic"?

[pivo]

Just for the record, I didn't say communisim was bad or that Linux was not a communal entity, I said that some people have come to associate communisim with badness or evil.

The phrase "communist" or "socialist" is, at least in the US, a powerful term generally used by the few people who wouldn't benefit from a particular idea to scare the rest of us away from that idea. For example wealthy people who use the phrase "socialized medicine" or developers are heavily invested in closed source software that call Linux and *BSD "communist."

Linix is a communual or socialistic OS, but that's not bad. We live quite happily with socialistic instituions every day, only they aren't labeled that way because most people like them. For example, the police and fire departments, city sanitation, national defense. These are are public institions, and thefore socialized.

I actually don't believe that communisim is fatially flawed, just the version of communisim that has recently failed so miserably. It's worth noting that Plato found democracy as distasteful as most people find communisim today. Democracy failed Plato's Athens tragically, to same degree and effect as communisim has had on Russia.

Re:Linux == "communistic"?

[Wreck]

Just for the record, Linux (and free software in general) is communistic. Just look at the dictionary. Look at us talking about the linux "community".

The reason communism is associated with evil, is that regimes practicing forced communism were, in fact, evil. It is the force that was evil though, not the social ownership per se. However, it is also true that there is no workable method for allocating socially owned material objects. That is to say, that communism (as applied to material things) is inherently contradictory; and hence the association of communism with evil is not that ridiculous, since there was in fact no way of communism coming out good.

Except that now, in a domain of information instead of physical things, there is. And so we can expect the knee-jerk opposition of right-wing yahoos for a while more. Don't worry about it. The difference between information and physical things is apparent enough that in time, such complaints will simply melt away.

Re:WTF?

[rhavyn]

I know this is a troll, but I have to respond. I just hope you know that MS *bought* Visual Basic, IE and most of Office. Furthermore, BASIC is hardly a Microsoft creation, thats like saying that GNU created the C language becuase of GCC.
And XMS is a dirty hack for DOS to understand more then 640k of ram. Notice Linux, FreeBSD and SCO don't use XMS and have no problem addressing all the RAM you have.

Re:FIRST NAZI

[Shuh]

"which enabled Hitler to murder the jews more efficiently than thought possible, resulting in the sole largest mass murder in history"

Not to nit-pick, but Hitler is like 2nd or 3rd behind Stalin in Russia and whoever the ruler of China was when they went red.

Re:FIRST NAZI

[Shuh]

There's no denying the Holocaust happened. I'm just saying don't disrespect the memories of those *many more* who died for the sake of communism by acting like this was the world's biggest extermination of people. It wasn't. http://members.spree.com/ojoronen/murder.htm http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM "Another View of Stalin?" Pfft! As if.

Re:WTF?

[funkman]

Exactly. Microsoft is as dead now as IBM was in the early 90's. By the way, how is IBM doing now?

I'm not saying that MS will do what IBM did in the last 5 years. But big companies with an active large market share do not die easily.

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[ethereal]

As much as some of us would like to think otherwise, Microsoft, a half _trillion_ dollar company is not going away any time soon. I personally don't think that's a bad thing even if they are in dire need of a good spanking...

I agree that it's a little over the top to start crowing about Microsoft's demise so early, but did you ever consider that the big reason that Microsoft is a half trillion dollar company is precisely because of the actions that they are in trouble for? You can't just say "they're good 'cause they're big" without considering how they got big, and what might have happened instead if they hadn't got so big or had done so differently.

To da Gaol witem I say!

[IQ]

Mr. Bill is just a boy who got lucky. Now he is a convicted monopolist and his company an illegal monopoly. Its all in the FoF...

If he is so responsible for his actions then lets shackle his arse and lock em up.

Re:Arrogance is relative, indeed-hierarchical even

[sammy baby]

Not anymore.

Straight to the bottom, with a bullet!

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

Arrogance is relative, indeed.

[sammy baby]

Hrrm... let me get this straight. Some random ass-munch on Slashdot, on the strength of sheer force of ego, presumes to post that this guy, who has been a staff writer for the New Yorker, a Washington correspondent for The Economist, and covered political affairs for Wired and HotWired, that he's a hack.

Sorry, who's the troll here?

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

Heilemann's article on same for Wired

[sammy baby]

Heilemann did an article for Wired a couple of months ago called The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth on exactly this subject. I'm assuming that the book (which I haven't read) is essentially a more in-depth look at the same thing.

When I started the article, I was hopeful that it would be an even-handed analysis of how Microsoft had come by the drubbing they'd received at the hands of Jackson. (Although - pardon the pun - the jury is still out on whether it will stick.) I couple pages into it, I started to become disappointed: it seemed to me at that point to be shaping up to be a tale of how a dedicated band of young lawyers turned a foundering investigation against an evil empire around, and blah blah blah.

I'm glad I stuck with it. The article was indeed even handed, and still managed to be damning. For example, Heilemann asked Ballmer point-blank if Scott McNealy was right when he said that Microsoft licensed Java in bad faith (with the intent of breaking the contract). The response, edited for space:

"We always honored our license. We always intended to... We said, Hey Sun, you want to get on the back of us and ride, baby, ride?..." Ballmer's face was beet-red now, and he was screaming... Up on his feet, leaning across the table so that his face was no more than 6 inches from mine, "Nobody was ever one little teeny tiny bit confused that we and Sun had this wonderful dovetailing of strategic interests! Those sub-50-IQ people who work at Sun who believe that are either uninformed, crazy, or sleeping!"
I took this as a Yes.

It's such a weird picture - Ballmer starts off saying "Of course we entered into the contract in good faith," but seems to immediately do a 180, and finishes up with "Of course we didn't. And the Sun people wore morons to think we did."

I'm gonna buy the book. The article was worth the price of admission just for that.

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[anomaly]

Wait a minute....
We just left the administration of "it's the economy, stupid" and

Didn't we bomb the Sudan and Afghanistan under Mr. Clinton as well?

Don't attack Mr. Bush without foundation - wait until he does something bad before beating him up.

Mr. Clinton did exactly what you accuse Mr. Bush of doing.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[anomaly]

On what basis do you attack Mr. Bush's character?

On what basis to you attack Mr. Ashcroft's character?

You may disagree with their politics, but that's no reason to attack their character.

Now, former president Clinton - there's reason to attack his character - whether you agree with his politics or not!

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[anomaly]

Separation of church and state is violated by declaring a national day of prayer? This is something which has been done many times in our nation's history with no outcry of violation of church and state.

This concept was developed by people who wanted to protect the common man from an oppressive national government forcing them to have certain religious beliefs. (eg, what is happening with the religion of atheism today in the PRC.)

A national day of prayer has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.

Double-standard? Give me a break. Apparently Mr. Bush believes that abortion is murder.

There's no debate in the scientific community about when life begins - it's at conception - so Mr. Bush apprently believes in protecting the rights of the unborn child.

Many faith-based programs work where "secular" ones fail. For example the rate of recidivism in drug rehabilitation programs is much lower in faith-based programs than in ones that have no faith component. It's better use of tax dollars to give money to programs that work.

Sabotage of the federal budget? This MUST be a troll. People who have historically paid more should get more of a break! It's a precentage thing - and it's fair! Besides the so-called surplus is greater than originally thought. It's MY money, and I want it BACK so that I can distribute it the way I choose. I think I can choose better distribution mechanisms than my federal employees can.

Tell me one case where Mr. Ashcroft has not upheld the law.

I suppose it all depends on how you define bad.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[anomaly]

Not a single day of prayer?
It's got a long history - the first I know of was 1775, and it's been an annual thing since 1952. Abraham Lincoln called on the US to do this as well.
For more info, see this site

Atheism has no beliefs? dictionary.com disagrees with you.
Atheism asserts that there is NO God. In the PRC, it is against the law to believe in God. It was that way in Albania and other communist countries as well.

Life's beginning as arbitrary? That doesn't make sense to me. Please explain yourself.

WRT drug treatment progams, This site claims that traditional programs work 20% of the time. I think it's telling that there are not consistent methods for evaluating the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. An article about this is located at the Teen Challenge site They claim a very high success rate.

BTW - Atheists consider narcotics anonymous a religious program, and teen challenge is a Christianity-based program

If Mr. Ashcroft is 'on record' as doing something illegal or unethical, please provide a reference to the record.

If you believe that he lied under oath during his confirmation hearing, do you have evidence of this, or is it simply your assertion that he lied?

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[anomaly]

> Well, I obviously didn't know about the National Day of
> Prayer every year. But that doesn't diminish the argument
The fact that this occurs every year for the last 49 years without a successful constitutional challenge indicates to me that the argument is not as compelling
as you believe it to be.

> atheism asserts that there is no god. Atheism as a whole just denies certain beliefs, and as such, has no beliefs.
In denying beliefs, it is asserting other beliefs. Claiming the non-existence of a God is by definition promoting the belief that there is no God.

> Life's beginning is arbitrary because the difference between life and non-life is a matter of definition.
> As there is really no consistent definition of life, then the choice between life
> begining at conception, and life begining at birth is arbitrary.
The definition of the difference between life and non-life is somthing I believe you would say is absolute, at least when it comes to whether you are alive or dead.
In my circumstance, it is most certainly not arbitrary!

Interesting (to me) page at http://www.lifeuk.org/lifepg4.htm

> WRT your statistics about drug programs, please post some impartial statistics.
I made the point in my last post that there are no objective standards for measuring the effectiveness of drug treatment programs. This make 'impartial
statistics' something which is simply not available.

> Don't make blanket statements.
With all due respect, isn't the statement that there is no God a blanket statement?

> I am an atheist, as well as many of my friends.
> I do not know a single person that considers narcotics anonymous a religious program.
Isn't this a blanket statement, too? Have you polled them? All of them?

BTW - I read the assertion that narcotics anonymous was religious on http://www.positiveatheism.org, and in legal proceedings that
indicate that it's a violation of church and state to force convicted drug users to participate in narcotics anonymous because in the 12 steps it calls on a
'higher power' (see google for more references)

Finally, there is still only your assertion that Mr. Ashcroft lied.
Do you have evidence of this, or simply an opinion? Apparently it's just an opinion.

Why Microsoft lost

[crow]

This may be mildly off topic, but my take on why Microsoft lost is that they were, indeed, way too arrogant. Instead of disputing every charge, they should have been open about what they were doing, and then try to argue that it was legal. Instead of denying that they were trying to use Windows to crush Netscape, they should have said they were trying to do just that. They should have argued that it was perfectly reasonable to identify Netscape as competition for Windows (not just competition for IE), because the comsumer OS market is really a user interface market. Then the court battle would have been over defining where the lines between separate software markets lie. Then if Microsoft lost, they would have said, "Sorry, we didn't mean to break the law. The lines weren't clear, and we thought they were in a different place." Then the judge would have slapped them on the wrist with fines and not broken them up.

Re:Why Microsoft lost

[crow]

Unfortunately for your argument, using a monopoly to gain a monopoly in a related market is illegal.

You missed my point entirely. They should have argued that it was not two different markets (OS and Browser) but only one market (User Interface).

That way they could tell the court they at least thought they were following the law, and regardless of whether the court bought the argument, since they were misinterpreting the law instead of arrogantly ignoring it, they wouldn't have been broken up.

Re:Why Microsoft lost

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Instead of denying that they were trying to use Windows to crush Netscape, they should have said they were trying to do just that.

Unfortunately for your argument, using a monopoly to gain a monopoly in a related market is illegal. And has been for many decades.

Re:Why Microsoft lost

[GMontag451]

The only problem with that argument is the fact that this was not their first offense. Their history with forcing Dell to package Office, stealing code outright from other companies, etc. shows that they were arrogantly ignoring the law.

Re:Why Microsoft lost

[WorldMage]

>> Unfortunately for your argument, using a monopoly to gain a monopoly in a related market is illegal.

>You missed my point entirely. They should have argued that it was not two different markets (OS and Browser) but only one market (User Interface).

Well you missed the point of the article completely. :)

If Microsoft was able to admit the possibility that they were wrong they wouldn't be where they are now.

If Microsoft didn't feel that all mass market application developers are there competition they wouldn't be where they are now.

If Microsoft could restrain it's self from attacking perceived rivals with all available means (legal or not) they wouldn't be where they are now.

The point of the article is that the only reason Microsoft might be broken up is because of Microsoft. Microsoft had dozens of ways to 'get out' of the lawsuit, but because it's Microsoft they couldn't take any of those options. What the article was trying to point out was that the reasons they couldn't take those options were the same or similar reasons to why Microsoft is successful and disliked.

In some sense Microsoft is caught in a Catch 22, without being as incredibly aggressive they couldn't have become a monopoly, but once they became a monopoly they couldn't modify their behavior as required by law since that aggressiveness had been so strongly reinforced by the Open Market.

True - Technology is improving

[augustz]

Very good point, some of the real technology they are pouring into Windoes is really good stuff.

.NET *is* cool for example. Their Visual Studio product is quite good. Administering a Window 2000 machine is trivial when compared to a linux server. The point and click, single look and feel integration pays off. I imagine that as their R&D pipeline fills we'll start and continue to see real neat stuff coming out.

That said, we run our servers on linux, for freedom more than anything else.

Re:True - Technology is improving

[spectecjr]

Depends on your expirience, I always think, when clicking like crazy in M$ NT-Server blah,blah, where is my bash?

A few keystrokes expanded via TAB and I would be done...:-)

Do a search in RegEdit for "CompletionChar" ... set it to '0x09'.

Bingo! TAB completion.

Simon

Re:True - Technology is improving

[charon.de]

Administering a Window 2000 machine is trivial when compared to a linux server.

Depends on your expirience, I always think, when clicking like crazy in M$ NT-Server blah,blah, where is my bash?

A few keystrokes expanded via TAB and I would be done...:-)

Michael

Re:True - Technology is improving

[charon.de]

Yeah, I knew this, but how much is this worth if you have this in your silly MS-DOS box, before you reply, I should install cygwin to have bash handy, I know this and have used it too!

Michael

I'll believe it when ...

[CrazySailor]

I have a greater variety of mainstream applications for my Mac (You may insert Linux/Be/whatever as applicable.)

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[ConceptJunkie]

Thanks for the correction. Apparently their worth have gone down significantly in the last several months. However, any company that can measure it's value as a sizeable fraction of a trillion dollars is already bigger and more powerful than a lot of entire countries.

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[ConceptJunkie]

I never said they're good because they're big.

Actually what I was saying was they're not all bad despite them being big in part because of unfair business practices. I rail against Microsoft's products and practices as much as the next guy, but I am also willing to give them credit for some things that they do well (or at least better than anyone else).

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[ConceptJunkie]

Agreed.

As far as "delusional" goes. Gates' "delusion" of his pre-eminence as a technological messiah looks to the majority of the world to be a fact.

I think the article, and presumably the book, has a level of arrogance that assumes some kind of failure of Microsoft that has not and may never happen. As much as some of us would like to think otherwise, Microsoft, a half _trillion_ dollar company is not going away any time soon. I personally don't think that's a bad thing even if they are in dire need of a good spanking, but as my bio says, I'm a "shameless Microsoft user".

Re:Bill Gates

[msaavedra]

Not only that, but Bill never would have gotten his sweet deal with IBM if his mother hadn't been a friend of one of the IBM bigwigs. They were on the board of some charitable institution (I forget which one), and Bill's mom basically got Microsoft a consulting role with IBM in designing their PC.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"

Re:WTF?

[spectecjr]

Do yourself a favor and NEVER look at any chart comparing UPTIMES between the Unixen and Windoze OSes 'lest you come to the same conclusion that the good folks at M$ Hotmail came to when M$ tried to convert them:

Well, given that Hotmail runs on Windows 2000 right now, I guess the correct conclusion (based on your logic) is:

Windows 2000: Accept no substitutes!

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[jmauro]

I really don't think that Microsoft is driving the new economy. Its stock headed for a down turn a long time ago. I really think if the US is that dependant on one company it's time to force that company out. Homogenous ecnonomies are just frought with peril. Even if the DOJ were to let up on Microsoft, I don't think it would have any more effect than a temporary raise. Remeber the entire sector has been filled with companies that have no reason to exist let alone float stocks, that's what's pulling down the stocks, underpants gnome corps. And added to that a self induced recession by GW, who despite all indications that the economy is just slowing down, keeps saying were in a recession in order to get his tax plan passed and not be like his father. Even after this, I doubt Microsoft can pull it out, there bottom line is based on the number of PC's sold. But market saturaiton for PC's is high, and there is little demand to upgrade or to buy a new Microsoft OS (the old MS OSes work well enough). They need a change of business models, i.e. dot net. It has yet to be seen if they can pull this dot net thing off.

You'd like GW to let up, but it's out of his hands now. Even if the DOJ would let up (but really why would they forfit a game that they won by a big margin) the states AJ are ready to continue rhe case with or without the Feds. Microsoft will be attacked until the bitter end and get a lot more that just a slap on the wrist.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[itachi]

As for the tax breaks, the tax code is extremely UNFAIR. There should never have been a "sliding rule" for taxation. They should tax the money not the people that earn it... Made clearer: A FLAT TAX RATE or TAXATION based upon CONSUMPTION.

Dude, that is biased in favor of people who have greater amounts of disposable income. Under consumption-based taxes, poorer people have to pay a greater share of income that richer people. The way to set up a flat tax that hits everyone equally is to set all incomes to be equal. Otherwise, flat taxes are unfair and everyone is better off with a graduated tax rate. The people who benefit from flat taxes in a capitalist economy are the very wealthy - most flat tax plans don't count earned interest income or other non-salary incomes. Most of the U.S. doesn't have a whole lot of that sort of income...
Additionaly, cutting taxes in the face of a recession may not encourage spending, which is what GWB needs. In the face of a recession, the reasonable person might save for that looming rainy day, which would result in a situation where a recession happens but the govt. has fewer cash reserves with which to combat the recession. The drop in interest rates may have helped prevent this. Citing two tax cuts hardly makes your case, esp. since the two cited were under circumstances so different from each other and from the current situation.

itachi

BillG forgot the "Evil Overlord Rules of Thumb"

[nmarshall]

rule 16:
One of my advisers will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

for more rules vist Evil Overlord Rules of Thumb

nmarshall

The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..

Re:BillG forgot the "Evil Overlord Rules of Thumb"

[crucini]

And from that page:
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
This seems strangely relevant.

Re:BillG forgot the "Evil Overlord Rules of Thumb"

[SuiteSisterMary]

Gosh, but that's a bad copy of the real site located here: http://minievil.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.ht ml

Re:WTF?

[Kwantus]

Isn't that like saying Parker has a stranglehold because everyone uses their pens? Or Hammermill because everyone uses their paper? The only way M$ would have a real stranglehold is if they actually had a remote killswitch built into all their wares ... Oh wait, they do, it's called Outlook ... after all, ILOVEYOU "brought the world to its knees" according to some media organ... okay, point conceded.

:-)

Re:WTF?

[riley]

What does MS have that companies actually need?

Oil companies can put a stranglehold on moving products, on heating homes, on production of electricity.

Time/Warner can enter the homes of nearly every consumer in western economies, to advertise and shape their expectations, both commercially and politically. How much of an American's viewpoint is formed by what they learn on CNN? Or through Time magazine?

Companies with real power shape the policies of a nation by supporting candidates with contributions, and directing perception of politicians and policy.

Microsoft does not do these things. Bill Gates is worth a ton of money, but how much of that is liquid and available for use in these ways? How much can MS actually affect public policy?

They're trying, I'll give them that. But does anyone really think that something with the name MSNBC is not going to be biased? It doesn't matter if they are completely above board; using the name as a method of advertising for MS gives the perception of bias.

In truth, the amount of real power outside the tech industry that MS wields is limited to its liquid assets. They just aren't a real player.

Re:WTF?

[riley]

Most powerful? Most influential?

Don't believe the tech hype. There are really powerful companies out there, and Microsoft is among the smaller of them.

Try AOL-Time/Warner. Try Monsanto. Try the Royal Dutch Shell companies. Those organizations have power the way MS can only dream of. Given that Microsoft is the current 500 lb gorilla of the tech world, don't think that it translates to the rest of the econmomy.

Honesty

[macdaddy]

Who ever said telling the blatently honest truth is arrogant? Personally I admire people that don't try to blow sunshine up my ass by telling me what I want to hear. Tell me what you're thinking, even if it isn't what I want to hear.

Arrogance != Honesty

--

ohmigod! jon!

[jamesbrown1000]

"you had an extra comma in the 23rd paragraph! what a moron! i can't believe slashdot lets this guy post! he doesn't know anything about linux!"

one day, i hope katz writes about macintosh -- good things, mainly -- so that the heads of thousands of slashdot readers will explode all at once.

he's a good writer with good points. people pick on him for the silliest of reasons. it debases the dialogue on this page when people start flaming him. i am rather disappointed by the intelligence and maturity of some of the posters here.

Re:ohmigod! jon!

[Velox_SwiftFox]

i am rather disappointed by the intelligence and maturity of some of the posters here.

Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap.

Re:ohmigod! jon!

[cute-boy]

Guess it's the nature of geeks, to play devils advocate. Stop's him (and us) getting lazy.

Re:ohmigod! jon!

[graniteMonkey]

Guess you get what you pay for...

Re:ohmigod! jon!

[rebelcool]

thats because the majority of the readership here is still in high school and hasnt had a real job that requires writing software for - god forbid - money.

Re:This is a lil' weak

[winse]

here is an anti-Linux artice (obviously outdated) There's another one I've read somewhere with more updated and valid points against Linux in general, but I forget where it is.

God complex

[CAIMLAS]

The whole 'Fall of the Gates,' so to speak, is very well depictive of what is called God complex. People in power are conditioned by continued success and inpenetratability that they are, indeed, invulnerable, and that nothing anyone does could possibly have any effect on them.

Katz hit upon Clinton, Nixon, and a few others. However, these are by far not the best examples. Tribal leaders, European kings and queens of the Middle Ages, and various other kingdom leaders throughout time - most specifically leaders of monarchs - have exhibbited such trains. These leaders, or powerful people, have errected huge monuments to themselves - the pyramids being a prime example of such.

It's not a terribly new thing. People of great stature who are looked to as leaders and heros fall into corruption more times than not. Look at Hollywood - that place is notocious for having messed up people.

-------
CAIMLAS

Re:Financially speaking...

[brianvan]

No I don't work for Microsoft. I have my reasons for biases, but whatever.

I still believe it's a perfectly valid point that whatever little vengeful plans anyone in the computer world has against Microsoft would not just affect Bill Gates in a profoundly negative way.

The world can operate without Microsoft. But I don't think we're ready for that yet. We would need an adequate replacement for a desktop OS (don't say Linux, it's not ready yet), we would need the stock market to jump ship on them slowly (as in not causing a market crash), and we would need 19,000 Microserfs to have new jobs lined up. If that happens, I think it's perfectly fine if Gates and Co. go down in flames. Otherwise, who are you really hurting there? A lot more people who don't deserve it than ones who do.

Don't forget that you'd be stranding MILLIONS of licensed Windows users, who depend on that OS and programs written for it in their business and personal lives. Few of these people can pick up Linux or MacOS tomorrow and make a smooth transition. Granted, the software will be there and the company won't be... but you still need tech support and bugfixes (lots of em), and no other company will want to do that for the sake of charity.

Notice that none of my arguement tries to downplay or deny what they've done in the past. I know they have been unethical... although not THAT bad recently in my opinion... and I believe people have a right to feel that way. Just think of the consequences first, though, to OTHER PEOPLE when you plot your revenge.

And no, Microsoft doesn't hold up the world. As a matter of fact, if they ever went away, I'm sure other companies would step up to the plate to take their place, although it would be a painful transition. But it would be possible. Just don't think that anyone's ready for that yet.

One more thing... with the dominance of Windows and the advent of Linux, the business of operating systems isn't too profitable anymore. Linux is free, it's difficult to start another OS from scratch and get a lot of people to use it (e.g. BeOS), and it's not really feasible to make a Windows clone without breaking a few copyrights. So why would anyone else wanna be in the operating system business right now? Let MS have it for now and let them deal with all the bullshit like new peripherals/drivers, compatibility, bugfixes, security and stability, etc. I don't see anyone else lining up to deal with these responsibilities....

Re:Financially speaking...

[brianvan]

Thank you thank you... I appreciate that SOMEONE on here doesn't make me feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone when it comes to having a real discussion about these topics...

I mean, what the Justice Dept. wants to do is GREAT for me! My family (not me personally) owns MSFT stock, and while I'd rather not see my parents die old and poor... I think two is better than one in this case. But ignoring that...

The whole point of the posting was about a book that consistently says "Microsoft has fallen"... when it's not true at all. But it's wishful thinking on part of the Slashdot crowd. I just don't like that idea... everyone on here hates Bill Gates, that's fine, he's a great villian. But they're still around, and I think there's a lot of GOOD reasons why the government shouldn't try their best to bankrupt them... although I don't mind if another company does that on their own, as it would be fair competition (and fun to watch).

However, I don't see that happening soon. Linux can't do it, and probably shouldn't. I'd rather see Linux destroy Sun anyway. Sun represents everything evil against the Open Source movement - closed source, expensive hardware, few options, dumb lawsuits and bullying to protect shoddy technology (Java). Microsoft sells an operating system that none of you like but isn't targeted toward you anyway... and they don't represent real competition to anything that anyone on here does anyway. And they make more money on investments and MS Office anyway. It's like saying, instead of just admitting you don't like cheesy teen romantic comedies, that you want Freddie Prinze Jr. and the rest of them to die horribly.

Or maybe not. It's late, my analogies suck.

Anyway, my first idea was that we'd rather see an honest MS than a dead MS. Can anyone agree on that?

Financially speaking...

[brianvan]

I know that there's this standpoint within the industry that Microsoft, not being the world's biggest unstoppable company anymore, is better off dead. Hence the wishful thinking that they are dead.

Once again, we fail to see the irresponsibility of our desires. MSFT is still listed on the DJIA. It still heavily swings the NASDAQ index too. Gates, Allen, and Ballmer might be still filthy rich off their own company's stock, but there are a large number of middle class, blue-collar investors that have a significant amount of Microsoft shares... not for lack of portfolio diversity, but because their share value went steadily up for a while and the overall eventual wealth of MSFT holdings well outweighed the wealth of... let's say, AT&T or Exxon stock. And don't forget the large number of mutual funds with a big portion of Microsoft stock... generally the financial world still thinks that it's something to hold onto, maybe even a bargain right now.

I don't condone unethical behavior, but compared with the other giants in the industry, they're in good company. (Intel, Sun, Oracle... hell, even Hemos is whining about RAMBUS today, and you tell me which company you'd rather see die) But more importantly, we'd rather see Microsoft REFORM and avoid unethical behavior... correct? A company of their size and clout could contribute very much to the computer industry... as they have already, although not as much to our line of interests... and I think they would be more beneficial honest than dead.

Of course, the typical 3-year-old child way of thinking is to bring bulldozers to Redmond, put 20,000 people out of work, destroy the personal finances of millions of middle class people, crash the stock market, remove the current lynchpin of the OS business (possibly collapsing the computer industry if people go back to using bank calculators rather than learn *nix), create a nightmare for the retail world, and hand the wheel over to... well, no one is quite ready to take their place just yet.

Hey, you're entitled to your own opinion.

Re:Financially speaking...

[Field Marshall Stack]

Don't forget that you'd be stranding MILLIONS of licensed Windows users, who depend on that OS and programs written for it in their business and personal lives. Few of these people can pick up Linux or MacOS tomorrow and make a smooth transition. Granted, the software will be there and the company won't be... but you still need tech support and bugfixes (lots of em), and no other company will want to do that for the sake of charity.

Your last couple of messages have struck me (and, I assume, others) as being FUD of the worst sort, but it's this particular paragraph that I find particularly... amusing.

Dearest brianvan, what remedies, exactly, did the Justice Department propose? More specifically, what was the most drastic remedy proposed? Now, unless I'm mistaken, that proposal was a proposal to split Microsoft into two companies, one inheriting the current Microsoft's apps division, the other the OS division. As far as I've heard, you're the only person, ever, anywhere, to propose a "bulldozer solution."

Under the most drastic of the remedies proposed by the Justice Department, Windows would still exist. Office would still exist. IE would still exist. And they'd still be maintained and updated.

Who, exactly, would be stranded?
--
"HORSE."

Re:Financially speaking...

[Syphtor]

Warning partial flame to follow

I thought I'd just re-iterate for your benefit the commonly touted belief around slashdot, that Microsoft is the 'Evil Empire', 'Borg', etc... and no-one should use Microsoft, it's a crime, etc, etc... Not really stating that Redmond should be 'bulldozed' but definitely stating they should be destroyed. So the other poster paraphrased ya, get over it!

Ok, flame kinda over, back to reason

Now the original poster I believe never made any refernce to the JD ruling or solution he was making reference to the general feeling on slashdot (or at least the percieved feeling) that Microsoft should be destroyed. Now whether or not you agree with the feeling of Microsoft being destroyed, I think you would at least take intelligently the issues that are raised if this was to occur. Hell the JD obviously did, assuming they ever contimplated such a drastic measure...

Ok, I've finished my rant. Tag your it.

EULA for Books now?

[Kenshin]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down. Dammit, now they've got EULAs on books! Stupid people didn't bother to read the line saying you can't put it down after opening it...

Re:Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[SecretAsianMan]

Microsoft is not evil nor ruthless

Yes they are.

--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)

Re:WTF?

[divec]

I would be willing to wager that each of the organizations you mentioned use MS software to run their business.

Quite possibly, but what's that got to do with power? I would be willing to wager that almost every employee at any of those companies buys music/TV/film off Time Warner. That doesn't make Time Warner the most powerful.

M$ [...] could easily bring our economy to it's knees.

How? By suddenly revoking licenses they've already sold? By stopping developing Windows? By putting a big enough security hole in that everyone jumps ship to Unix? I can't see how M$ could bring the American economy to its knees.

Re:Come on Jon....

[xtal]

Got my hopes up there for a second; I thought it would be fiction of some sort about the linux movement bringing down Microsoft (perhaps a history what-if scenario). Heh, that wouldn't be a bad premise to write a book, now that I think about it. Maybe that'll keep Katz busy for awhile and outta our hair?

Watcha say, John? Try some fiction for a chance? (Hell, original content, even :).

Phew

[Hard_Code]

Yeah, I am *so* glad Microsoft is just a forgotten relic. I mean, who even *remembers* that company these days?

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[Drath]

I suppose that would be the "Bush" response. Economy over humanity. Perhaps we can find a nice country to bomb the hell out of to draw attention away?

Re:Premature

[NetCurl]

No. Users do not want to learn a new OS just because it's free or cheap, they will gladly pay for an inferior product that they know than be given a superior product with which they have no familiarity.

That's exactly why I asked "do they have a shot?" Because your argument has always been applicable to a variety of markets.

With whom? Linux users? Maybe you perceive Slashdot as a good thermometer of the status quo

I do not think the majority of Americans disagree with the MS trial. I know that Microsoft has been battling a tarnished public image.

Premature

[NetCurl]

While I wish this book was dead accurate, it seems insanely premature. I think the jury is definitely still out on Microsoft. You have the following factors (not all inclusive):

A) Bush as the new President
B) Ashcroft now over-seeing the trial
C) Open Source revolution
D) Competing OSs (do they have a shot?)
E) Microsoft's increasing unpopularity
F) Microsoft's HUGE installed base

All of these undetermined factors, or maybe variables, will tell the tale. But this book is far too premature. I think MS is still on top of the food chain, as much as I HATE to admit that.

Re:Premature

[XiRho]

D) Competing OSs (do they have a shot?)

No. Users do not want to learn a new OS just because it's free or cheap, they will gladly pay for an inferior product that they know than be given a superior product with which they have no familiarity. There are still many avid Windows 3.11 users, there's still a huge installed base of classic Mac users. (recall that the classic Mac is now 17 years old.) For Linux and all other new OSes to suceed with the majority of users they will have to first:

1) Usurp Microsoft (keep dreaming)
2) Survive the 20+ year transition period, notwithstanding any larger commercial competitors

E) Microsoft's increasing unpopularity

With whom? Linux users? Maybe you perceive Slashdot as a good thermometer of the status quo, but the majority of American people disagree with the Microsoft Antitrust trial. Microsoft could care less about how unpopular it is with geeks.

Re:Premature

[The Blackrat]

Also, show a user WHY any other given OS is superior...Better IP stack, the BSD's say...I don't use IP, I use AOL!, the users say...etc. I REALLY likied corel linux for its utter simplicity. If I knew linux better, my parents would now be using it. But for the VAST majority of users, win9x will be 10times more OS then they need (or know how to use)

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[Coward, Anonymous]

Microsoft, a half _trillion_ dollar company

As of this moment, Microsoft is worth $309 billion, that is much closer to a quarter of a trillion dollars than half of a trillion dollars.

won't save them

[Illserve]

The author acknowledges the possibility that they'll be freed by the appeals court, but doesn't think that will save them. His point is that the public perception of Microsoft is where the real damage was done, and having the appeals court let them off won't fix that. Instead, it'll just make it look like they got away with it.

Re:won't save them

[kurioszyn]

What damage ? Do you see people running from MS products or suddenly running MacOS or some other crap ?
People don't give a damn, in fact , lots of them think that MS is just another victim of the system.

I'm not sure Katz emphasized the critical points

[Illserve]

While I haven't read the book, I heard the author today on NPR. He's not claiming that Microsoft is economically finished. Rather, their public image is shattered by the trial, by the facts discussed and by the MS attitude during the whole ordeal. Even a save by the court of appeals won't fix this damage.

Obviously MS is still in control of the OS market, and I think Katz's review is a bit skewed in that he fails to present the author's idea that the public image of MS is what has sustained the real damage.

THIMK

[boskers]

<CODE>thimk</CODE>

Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[Enoch Root]

Sorry, not to sound like a troll, but... How in hell is Microsoft dying? If you look at the recent Nasdaq downturn, it's Linux companies that are taking a hit. Is Linux dying, then?

Microsoft is not evil nor ruthless. They're attributed these qualities because they're on top, but to get to the top, you only need to be the best at what you do. Microsoft took computer code, and envisionned it as a product, to be marketed and sold appropriately. Business-wise, it's a brilliant strategy, and doesn't involve screwing anybody. That vision of the world of software will keep on going, and is the real issue here.

And judging by the market, at least one of these visions is taking a serious credibility hit.

Re:Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[Error27]

You never mentioned the recent ruling that Linux should be split into 2 companies. One an applications company and the other will focus only on kernel development.

Re:Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[HalfFlat]

Hello? Who modded this as Flamebait? Did you read the thing I was replying too? Sheesh.

Re:Microsoft, dying? Or do you mean Linux?

[pjrc]

Microsoft is not evil nor ruthless.

How about dishonest? Even when testifying in a court of law under oath?

Re:Ancient History

[Velox_SwiftFox]

"Only because of the electoral college"? Rather offtopic, but since you are obviously rather confused:

Bzzzt! I suppose they don't teach Civics in the schools anymore, so for your edification Doug:

The President of the United States is not elected by "popular vote" (versus the electoral college).

The President of the United States has never been elected based on a "popular vote".

There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution of the United States which refers to this so-called "popular vote", or which gives any legitimacy to a claim on the presidency by anyone claiming to have won this tally.

This "popular vote" fantasy is an invention of the media based on confusion due to the fact that in the majority of cases, those elected president happened to also have won the sum of the votes from the individual states, a fact that is otherwise irrelevant.

Clear now? BTW, the endorsement of GWB by his brother was not included in any of the vote tallies.

Re:Ancient History

[Velox_SwiftFox]

Wrong person, that would be the Secretary of State, not the Governor.

Who happened to be a Republican IIRC. Just as the officials in many of the states Gore won were members of the Democratic Party.

Slightly premature, but...

[Arkaengel]

All the replies here saying that Microsoft is still far from being brought down are right. MS is sitting on a great deal of money and a huge market share. They won't simply go away overnight.

But...the antitrust case, and especially Chairman Bill's handling of it, has hurt them badly in terms of public image. Here in Europe, where many state departments are slowly ditching their old (mainframe-based) computer systems in favor of newer tech, a lot of institutions that would otherwise have installed NT without a second thought are more predisposed towards alternatives, especially Open Source ones such as Linux or BSD. Sure, the evangelists in the OS movement had something to do with that, but the media flap attached to the antitrust case also made a lot of government officials, especially the ones who decide what gets bought, to think twice about what they're doing. Also, many people in government (among them Germany's minister of the interior, who has quite some influence within the EU) see proprietary software as being unsuitable for secure applications, and have gone on the record to that effect. Those institutions and companies aren't going to wait for the entire appeal process to run its course - they're going to be looking hard at the alternatives to MS products, and in a lot of cases those alternatives are going to be used. That's quite a few doors that even a divested Microsoft won't be getting another foot into. And don't forget that for the first time in MS' history, there's no axis with IBM that'll artificially flood the coffers with sales. IBM seems more interested these days in finding some way to market their own semi-proprietary Linux version than in selling bundled NT licenses.

Yes, they're not dead yet, but unless they start doing a lot of things right they might well find themselves in serious trouble a few years down the road, at least in terms of OS and server software.

Re:How much do you value these methods?

[Arkaengel]

Gates deliberately set out with the goal of dominating the software industry and has, throughout his career, stooped to practices most hackers wouldn't even admit to knowing about. I think it's not violating hacker ethics to expect him to run true to his usual scumbag form. He is first and foremost a businessman, and his tactics are typical of the underhand approach taught behind the smoker's shed at Harvard School of Business.

Besides which, let's say a hacker's water main breaks, and I happen to have a plumber on permanent retainer. If I decide not to ask him how to fix it, make no effort otherwise to learn how it's done, and end up flooding my house, I am not being true to the hacker ethic, I am being stump dumb and unneccessarily arrogant.

Re:How much do you value these methods?

[Arkaengel]

Pardon the mixed tenses on that last sentence. This is why one should preview before one posts.

Re:Ancient History

[MrEd]

Actually, Microsoft gave at least $50,000 to both major parties in this election. Note that I said major.

Katz is no geek...

[SvnLyrBrto]

And from what I can tell he doesn't even have pretensions of being one.

What he DOES suffer from, is the delustion that he SPEAKS for all geeks.

... that and a desperate need for a professional editor.

john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!

Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if

Re:Bush won't have Microsoft broken up . . .

[gabrieltss]

I think this just goes to show that Republicans/Conservatives are PRO-Coporation and ANTI-Individual rights. (Democrats/Liberals are no better!)

"Every now and then a little revolution is good for a country." - Anonymous Author

He won the majority of the votes COUNTED

[Convergence]

Not all votes cast were ever counted. (In states with a clear majority, they don't necessarily count all votes. Similarily, some people got discouraged (like in california) and didn't vote.

"Fall" of MS?

[michael_cain]

I maintain that the breakup of MS is potentially just a speed bump. Given a split into an OS company and an application company, the current dominant position of the application company in many fields, the fact that the OS company can't do middleware but the application company can, and the introduction of middleware portions of .NET, it seems entirely possible that the .NET middleware gets ported to many different OS platforms, the MS OS company declines, but the MS application company takes an even more dominant position.

And I will certainly bet a beer that the .NET middleware platform will contain undocumented APIs that MS applications developers know about that no one else does... Five years after the breakup (if it occurs), the MS application company antitrust case defense begins with "Your Honor, we did everything that the government demanded the last time we were in court. Are you going to punish us again because they claim now that they didn't get it right?"

Another Perspective

[Smilodon]

Regardless of the content of the book (which may be good), I think "a special correspondent for Wired and a former staff writer for The New Yorker" says a lot here. Katz's praise-heaping prose is an obvious favor for an old buddy. Another "old media" type who sees finanicial opportunity in "computer/geek" media. Expect to see a blurb about Katz and "those silly SlashDot geeks" in an upcoming New Yorker.

Seriously, haven't the "evil Bill Gates" articles and books gotten passe already? Seen much about some of the morons that run GM lately?

Smilodon
V V

Just a point

[jmoo]

Okay, I think saying that Microsoft is dead is stupid but I do think they peg old Bill correctly. He is not in touch with reality and is surrounded with yes-men.

That being said, I think sooner or later he will start getting M$ in to trouble. Not by the government, but through poor business decisions and not seeing where the industry is actually going.

Re:WTF?

[vizshun67]

Er-uh...
The article proclaims that the Microsoft ERA is over, not necessarily that Microsoft is dead (wishful thinking notwithstanding). Declaring the ERA over (to me) means that finally we are living in a time where "Operating System" IS NOT EQUAL TO "MS Windows". When we started this journey, software from Wordstar to Lotus 123 and hardware from the Compaq to the original PC billed itself as "Microsoft Compatible". Thankfully, we now live in a world that makes room in the mental landscape for alternatives such as Linux, FreeBSD, Beos, Solaris, and others. Yeah, they still don't enjoy the market share that Windoze does, but whereas Microsoft once largely DEFINED standards in DOS/Windows times, Win2k sells itself in part by being compatible with the features of OTHER operating systems.

YES. The ERA is OVER. As strong as ever? Not when my server is as likely (if not moreso) to run Oracle under Unix as it is MS SQL under NT/2k.

And that is a GOOD thing...

For the people that write the programs as well as use them.

Newsflash:

MS doesn't "innovate" anything. Their fearless leader considered the internet to be a toy until Netscape established the market. We can only hope that one day consumers will become informed enough to stop paying M$ for antiquated technology.

The point is (my point anyway) that the ERA IS over, not because Microsoft is on the skids, but because just as IBMPC NOT-EQUAL-TO PC in a world of clones, MS NOT-EQUAL-TO Operating Systems/Applications in a world of software.

Thankyou Judge Jackson!

Re:WTF?

[vizshun67]

Whatever...

As time progresses, I'm willing to bet that more idiots like myself will be more than willing to administer their remote *nix servers from behind their favorite X interface while "enlightened individuals" like yourself pay M$ through the nose for their Advanced Terminal Server :-)

Who knows? Maybe with enough time and YOUR money, M$ will come up with an "innovative" way to install software WITHOUT rebooting the system.:-)

In all fairness however, I must commend them on one of the innovations that they are BEST known for:

The Blue Screen of Death...

Blue is my favorite color (Really! It is... ;-)

Do yourself a favor and NEVER look at any chart comparing UPTIMES between the Unixen and Windoze OSes 'lest you come to the same conclusion that the good folks at M$ Hotmail came to when M$ tried to convert them:

Unix: Accept no substitutes!

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[vizshun67]

Hmmm,

As for "the national day of prayer"...

Interestingly enough, while there is a separation of CHURCH and STATE, the founding documents of this nation confirm that there is no separation of GOD and STATE. (Which is probably why upon being asked to testify, they say: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... SO HELP YOU _GOD_?) The founding fathers when declaring this land a separate entity specifically stated that they were forming the government to protect the unalienable rights given to us by "the Creator".

Remember the history in that many of the early colonists were fleeing England which had established the Anglican Church/Church of England. Quakers were prominent in Pennsylvania, and Catholics in Maryland (to name a few). Keep in mind that the same constitution that separates Church and state also guarantees Freedom of Religion. To lock out effective faith based organizations from being able to compete to offer services is in fact to truly _endorse_/exhalt a religion and place it above all others:

Atheism.

As for the tax breaks, the tax code is extremely UNFAIR. There should never have been a "sliding rule" for taxation. They should tax the money not the people that earn it... Made clearer: A FLAT TAX RATE or TAXATION based upon CONSUMPTION.

If the tax rate is a flat 10%, then the man with a million dollars still pays more than the man with 10 thousand; it should not be for a government to determine that the millionaire needs the MONEY HE EARNED any less than anyone else especially when the fact is that he still pays 100 times more tax than his counterpart in the previous example.

We are supposedly in A SURPLUS. A SURPLUS means that the government took in more money than it needed. Past/beyond its obligations, it is not for the government to decide that it needs our money more than we do. We live in a REPUBLIC. That make it the government's job to SERVE us, not ROB us.

It is my opinion that Bush is on the right track. Besides, cutting taxes to spur economic growth has precedent - JFK & Ronald Reagan both cut taxes in front of economic upturns. Beyond that, an endorsement from the Grand Wizard of Wall Street (Mr. Greenspan) probably doesn't hurt his case.

I will say this:

As far as the Scum-o-meter goes, please keep in mind that Mr. Clinton is out of office and he's STILL making headlines with his scandals.

Re:WTF?

[vizshun67]

Re-Whatever...

I'm sure whatever your time is worth pales in comparison to:

a) The amount of money spent reviving thousands of windows systems after the last teardrop attack.

b) The amount of money spent reviving MS dns servers when they all went down a week ago.

c) The amount of money spent rescuing and cleaning windows PCs from Word Processor MACRO-VIRUSES.

d) The amount of money spent rescuing windows PCs from the FUN-LOVE virus and its cousins.

Besides THAT... the windows world is full of companies that both got their start and made their living off of the deficiencies in Microsoft "Innovation" (Symantec & Novell name a couple that come mind) ONLY in a monopolistic environment can the ability to destroy every shread of data on a hard drive by your word processor or spreadsheet be considered a "feature". (Thankyou again, Judge Jackson)

So when a server goes down in a production environment, how much money do you suppose gets burned up as people like yourself spend their time TWIDDLING THEIR THUMBS waiting for it to come back up?

Don't tell me you're NOT a system administrator?

Of course you're NOT, because if you were you'd know that in all applications and environments that COUNT (including those in Wall Street and the nation's telephone network), UNIX OWNS THE SERVER.

"Friends don't let friends use Windows."

Re:WTF?

[vizshun67]

Windows 2000: Accept no substitutes! ... for COMEDY maybe. ;-) Anyone wanna start a betting pool as to how long it will take before the next M$ tech-blunder hits the national news? It takes Linux to make a '386 run like a Pentium, it takes Windows to make a Pentium run like a '386.

Re:Cursed

[jomomomo]

Hmm...I might have a potion of holy water lying around here..

Re:WTF?

[cliftronic]

Although I respect Gates for his incredible business savvy, I agree with the "adopt and extend" moniker. This is how most large American companies tend to survive (witness the big 3 in Detroit).

In addition, how many times has Microsoft devoured a product and repackaged it as "A Microsoft Favorite". Word was simply MacWrite ver 1.2, Excel from the fires of Lotus 1-2-3 / VisaCalc, and let's really stop pretending about IE. I did see anyone from Redmond helping Andreessen with Mosaic. And then there are the other less known road kill on the Gates New Highway, such as Stacker.

Innovation is simply not a tenant of the Microsoft mantra.

"tech-smart but world dumb"? Quite the opposite.

[g051051]

The phrase "tech-smart but world dumb" is sometimes used to describe even brilliant programmers and computing executives. It captures Gates perfectly. In fact, he embodies it.

Huh? I don't follow this at all. Gates is quite the opposite. The Microsoft tradition has been one of second and third rate products, crammed down the throats of computer users. Microsoft has never successfully innovated. It takes them release after release, year after year to get things anywhere near useful. The "embrace and extend". I have never seen any evidence of Gates being "tech smart". His grasp of technology is poor. His grasp of business is tremendous. I can't think of a single Microsoft product that wasn't purchased from another company and re-branded (Flight Simulator, Mechwarrior 4, C++, IE), or a blatant ripoff of another product (DOS, Windows, Word, Excel).

Re:arrogance is relative

[scoove]

What does it mean when you read a slashdot thread description and you can immediately identify the source of the submission as JonKatz?

Besides the obligatory 40,000 word submission (words are cheap when you're Katz), the typical relativistic garbage is easy to spot, like:

- man's pride in his work is evil
- man exists to serve others
- he who takes pride in his work and opposes parasites must be destroyed

Since all JonKatz posts are the same (in intent/meaning), let's save everyone the time and have him put up a URL pointing to his original post.

*scoove*

Gates could have what?

[scoove]

Jon "Monk Tooey" Katz writes:

> He could have settled.

As in Kafka's "The Trial," it is always easier in relativist worlds to accept the charge and plea for the mercy of the court. Even when it the charge is not true in objective sense, this is demanded because the subjectivist believes truth is determined by external perception.

Ergo "JonKatz perceives Microsoft as guilty, and therefore should have settled." By Katz not accepting for the resolution of the legal process (which he probably fears due to the fact that the initial judgement was by a judge who by parties on both sides, deviated from acceptable practice.

> He could have accepted relatively generous mediation terms.

Guilt inferred by the charge. The only acceptable plea when charged is guilty. Declaring innocent is an insult to the prosecution. See above.

> He could have lobbied for support in Washington, instead of treating bureaucrats with contempt.

Why? And feed this corrupt animal? Recognize this bastard system? There is a reason people in Washington are suck-ups to folks like Marc Rich - they're parasites. And some folks (like Gates, apparently) prefer to not recognize parasites.

> He could have told DOJ lawyers and the judge the truth in his testimony.

Who's "truth"? JonKatz's "the truth is what we perceive" truth?

> He could have avoided gratuituously offending the judge,

Why? The judge offended persons of reason through his actions. Why should we care not to offend him by disagreeing with them.

> members of Congress

Parasites.

> and the public

What obligation does Gates have to the public? If they don't like his product, they don't buy it.

> thereby tarnishing the previously wholesome image of his company

Tarnished from who's perception? Microsoft's shareholders (owners) probably have a great perception of Microsoft. That's the only perception that matters.

*scoove*

Re:Gates could have what?

[scoove]

I would guess that scroove has a problem with representative democracy, no?

Sure. If it represented me. What do we have (actually supposed to be a republic)is a system that represents those willing to either pay for protection or grease the wheel.

Granted, pretty much the rest of the world works this way, but at least a parasite in a third world nation isn't pretending to be honorable and deserving of great respect.

So which should I respect? People like Jesse Jackson (and his "pay us large sums to give you a clean racial employment bill of health or we'll cause a riot" racket) and Bill "Get Your Pardons Here" Clinton? People that cause greater inefficiency, causing projects, products, etc. to cost more due to their graft expense? (If you really do care about the common man, how about telling him who's paying for these scams?)

Or should I admire people who actually produce things, create solutions to problems, and make life better for people. Hate Gates as you wish, but he's done more for the productivity of the world than probably anyone on this thread.

This is the reason people like JonKatz and other relativists will never be happy nor successful. They're condemned to hate people who have any worth to society, fully knowing that they are expendible and their absence would actually improve the state of things.

Re:Gates could have what?

[geomon]

>> members of Congress

> Parasites.

> Microsoft's shareholders (owners) probably have a great perception of Microsoft. That's the only perception that matters.

I would guess that scroove has a problem with representative democracy, no?

Re:Gates could have what?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Representative democracy (which is a oxymoron; democrocy as a term cannot be qualified) often isn't. Give an (organization) a set of tasks, and eventually an additional task will be added; preservation of the organization. As soon as that happens, the other tasks fall back in priority. The American governmental system is a signorial system; a noble class of rulers. There's not a whole lot of difference between raiding another lord's castle for his livestock, or slagging your honorable opponent in the media for his vote share. Don't even get me started on Canada's system, where an elected official must vote along party lines, even if every human being in his riding tells him to vote differently.....

Re:Gates could have what?

[kurioszyn]

Precisely, Katz is equivalent of these communist apologists who used to be so common in intellectual circles in 30s and 40s.

Re:Gates should have been more paranoid about hims

[scoove]

Actually, you're referring to Andy Grove (Chairman of Intel) and his book Only the Paranoid Survive.

Software. Hardware. What's the difference.

*scoove*

You must have checked a long time ago...

[argentus]

The "last time (you) checked" was quite a long time ago, then, indeed...

You see, Computer City went out of business about 2 years ago.

Re:You must have checked a long time ago...

[argentus]

Apparently they kept the name in Canada. My apologies.

In general, anything that was "Computer City" is now either closed down or relabeled CompUSA.

ZDNet Article

Re:You must have checked a long time ago...

[naasking]

Oh, I guess that's not a Computer City just down the street from me. huh. Thanks for the tip.

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:You must have checked a long time ago...

[naasking]

Well, Computer City in Canada is now owned by Future Shop(though Future Shop says they are going to keep all Computer City locations open).

They even have a website that's been unders construction for two years now(when I worked there... or was it three years...). Pretty sad. Things sure went down since I left, yesssir. ;-)

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:You must have checked a long time ago...

[ichimunki]

Actually, I can no longer tell the difference between any of the non-Best Buy stores. And the only reason Best Buy is distinguishable is that big ugly yellow price tag.

Re:Microsoft: the world's biggest utility

[geomon]

This is the most piercing analysis of MS I've read yet. Mod this article up.

Re:If it wasn't for Gates......

[geomon]

I would have agreed with half of what you wrote here until you started attacking geeks who *may* have a beef with MS for making a closed shop out of what some of us rightfully regard as a scientific discipline.

The idea that anyone who disagrees with MS's business practices because they are anti-capitalist or elitist should replace the computer theme in this rant with biology, physics or geology.

I don't fault Gates et al. for making huge sums of money. I fault MS for making any innovation in the field of computer science the life-long propriety of one company.

Science, in its current form, is only a few hundred years old. If the current trend in capitalizing every scientific discovery holds, there will be no area of science that will advance beyond the corporate boardroom.

Re:Bill Gates

[geomon]

> He's not some rich boy who took Daddy's money and added a little more to it.

Where did Bill get the $50k to buy his reverse-engineered copy of CPM (became DOS 1.0)?

His Dad is/was a prominent attorney in Seattle.

Draw your own conclusions, but don't claim that Bill is the ol' pull-'em-up-by-the-bootstraps entrepeneur.

Not dead yet

[obtuse]

Microsoft's fall has not happened yet. My bet is that it won't. I'd bet that their legal costs so far will exceed the cost of whatever punishment our new (conservative religion of big money,) government allows to be stuck to them. Dubya won't stand by while billionaires are insulted by the state.

Microsoft fall? Ha! More likely is to look forward to Microsoft ownership of whatever nannyware is mandated for you to use. Instead of being forced to buy MS whenever you buy a built PC, you might be mandated to buy MS to comply with the law.

Welcome to a world where business has the rights that you gave up.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[markt4]

what Fortune 10 company has been driving the American economy in the last 10 years

Dude, what Fortune 10 company would that be: General Motors, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Ford, General Electric, IBM, Citigroup, AT&T, Philip Morris or Boeing. (See the list at Fortune 500.) Microsoft is number 84 of the list (216 on the Global 500).

Just because you worship Microsoft doesn't mean that Shrub Bush thinks it is driving the American economy. Dubya knows that energy is still king in the American economy. (Read a newspaper if you haven't seen what is sending us into a "recession".) Of course, Microsoft and Bill did give a lot of money to Dubya and the party, so a slap on the wrist may be called for, but it won't be because Microsoft is so vital to our economy.

Re:WTF?

[markt4]

I would be willing to wager that each of the organizations you mentioned use MS software to run their business.

Sorry again, but this is a common mistake. Very few organizations use Microsoft to "run their business". They use Microsoft for file servers where they store their mountains of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. But, despite what the paper-pushers and PHB's of the world might want you to believe, Word and Excel documents, and most especially PowerPoint presentations do not run the business. And they could just as easily be ported over to Word Perfect, WordPro, StarOffice, 1-2-3, or any of thousands of other business document formats. (We did it before from WordStar to Word Perfect and then from Word Perfect to Microsoft Word.) And for e-mail and other group-ware, Lotus Notes is still more popular with corporate America - although I can't for the life of me figure out why companies think this brain-dead software with its piss-poor user interface is worth $450 per user.

Most serious software for "running the business" runs on high-speed servers from Sun, IBM, HP, DG and others. The critical business software is giant Oracle databases. And even there Oracle is not all that crucial since a database is a database. The data could just as easily be put onto a Sybase, Informix, DB/2 or other database system.

Re:WTF?

[markt4]

the fact that Microsoft is the most powerful, influential company in the United States

Sorry, but until it's not all about money anymore (yeah, right) either General Motors - in terms of revenues - or General Electric - in terms of market capitalization - is the most powerful, influential company in the United States. Microsoft is number 84 on the Fortune 500. In deference to our international friends, Microsoft is only number 216 on Fortune's Global 5000. Hell, Microsoft didn't even know what a lobbyist was until the anti-trust case was filed.

The fact that Microsoft's stock price has dropped from a high of $120 per share in December of 1999 to around $58 per share today is a pretty good indicator of a company on the ropes, if not dying. Regardless of how much you love Bill Gates that does not change the fact that Microsoft is only as powerful as it is because it used anti-competitive practices to ensure that we all had to use their products regardless of how much we thought they sucked. I would challenge you to point out the last time Microsoft was truly innovative and didn't just "adopt and extend" some existing technology.

Shakespeare wrote the first book about microsoft

[Ukab the Great]

It's called Julius Caesar . In this play, you have an powerful guy, Julius Caesar (Bill Gates) who rises to power and riches by besting all his rivals (Apple, Sun, IBM) and doing all sorts of nasty things like killing millions of gauls (strong-arming OEM's, embracing & extending Java). Eventually, he gets so overconfidant and full of himself that even as former partners decide to collaborate against him (IBM, Dell, HP, and lots of other folks investing in linux) he plans to proclaim himself more or less a god (rule the internet). In the final act, all the people he screwed over or threatened gather upon him and stab him to death (move to linux) because he has become way too powerful for anyones good. "Et tu, Intel?"

IIS is gaining on Apache

[graniteMonkey]

Nope, you sure didn't sleep through it. Some people, however, seem to have deluded themselves about the facts no matter how present they are in their own posts.

Let's review that link to Netcraft's survey again, and read off to ourselves every line that has the word "Apache" in it.

Three cheers for literacy!

The manifesto

[graniteMonkey]

Of course, the typical 3-year-old child (Read: Slashdot reading "me too" high-schooler) way of thinking is to bring bulldozers to Redmond...

I think you're looking at this issue in too complex a way. Repeat after me "Microsoft Bad. Linux Good(tm)." You have to understand that - darn it; I'm late for P.E. I'll finish with you later.

Wired article: The Truth, The Whole Truth, and...

[Graham S]

A long and excellent article in Wired on this subject by the author is available here.

Actually....

[lostlover]

The book really seems more about what everyone wants to hear. No wonder its a best seller everyone likes to hear that their right. People come down real hard on microsoft but the fact still remains. Microsoft still controls a large portion of the market share and I dont really see that being jepordized.

Until we get another crutch or a crutchless system were still all going to be leaning on microsoft. It seems to me that theres a spitefull hatred of that which we regret needing. Now granted I know that there is Linux and BSD but there prevelance is no large enough nor established enough to show real dominance.

We all hate to admit it but the fact remains that to adopt a common standard new OS's have to cater to the "AOL" user. The "I just want to get on, get my email, and play my games." IMHO another setback that should ease with time is that Microsoft has a history, there are a lot of old programs and moving to another OS procludes the use of that which most people are comfortable. So not only are we asking them to try a new system but were asking them to leave behind everything they know and relearn because a "we" say that its better. The person is smart but the "people" are not. The people have no concept of longterm goals. So until you can make the prize as enticing as microsoft in the short term and the long term there is little hope. The only other way is neccessity, but that implementation seems extremely farfetched....

Coincidence that economy dove over M$ antitrust?

[cworley]

"Surely it's not coincidence that the American economy has taken a nosedive just as the Microsoft trial came to fruition."

While I'll agree that the current US administration will (in essence) drop the antitrust case against M$, I disagree that the courts conclusions brought the economy down. If that were true, the economy would have come back the day the Supreme Court decided not to "fast track" the case -- everybody knew at that point that Microsoft would never be stopped.

Fuel prices were on the increase at the same time. That's why the economy flatened.

It's no coincidence that two oil men are in charge of the US one year after the oil companies started putting pressure on the country's oil supplies!

Give me a break

[F.Prefect]

For the longest time I've been holding off on checking the little box in my /. preferences that'll get Jon Katz off of my page forever. I ha always held out hope that perhaps he'd come up with something more insightful than a FUD-filled, superbiased, three-page rant.

So much for that hope. Good bye, Jon!

*plonk!*

Was brought down ?

[dingbat_hp]

"Microsoft was brought down"

Damn, I must have blinked and missed it !

Stalin died in '53. The Berlin Wall didn't go up for nearly another decade, let along get torn down. It's a bit early to be predicting the Death Of Microsoft, no matter how much wishful thinking is behind it.

Re:Hmmm

[Sc00ter]

Why am I an idot?
--

Re:Hmmm

[Sc00ter]

I said to some. I could care less. but some weird people think Communism is the most evil thing ever.
--

Hmmm

[Sc00ter]

For years, programmers perceived Microsoft as nearly satanic because of its staggering monopoly, questionable products and ruthless practices.

I don't know if this is totally true, they did have to get people to work for them, and I know programmers that think MS is great. They also do turn out a few good programs. SOME programmers might thing MS is satanic, but I know others that think Linux is communistic, and many think that's worse.

--

Re:Hmmm

[HalfFlat]

Communism, an ideal promoting fairness and equality, is worse than the Satanic, being associated with all that evil. Ooookay,

Re:Hmmm

[cyber-vandal]

But that's Microsoftie logic. Communism is having lots of choice in a marketplace (several Linux distros, AtheOS, *BSD etc) and the right to do whatever you want with it (with trivial limitations under the GPL), and capitalism is only having one choice and only being allowed to use it in the way the producer says you can use it.

Re:Hmmm

[MonkeyBrains]

Let me know what an IDOT is and I'll try and do a bit of research...

Re:WTF?

[Error27]

On the other hand it looked like Steve Balmer was deliberately driving down the stock price. Him and his talk about, "Tech stocks are over valued including Microsofts."

There is a theory he did it to hurt start ups that rely on venture capitol more than Microsoft.

Perhaps Microsoft isn't as worried about the $60 shares as it might seem.

Re:Ancient History

[cybercuzco]

200k votes is hardly in the margin of error. in FLA yes, it was within the margin, but overall, Gore won by about 2% of all people who voted, wheras the margin of error for vote counting is half a percent.

Support the office and the institution, even if you don't support the person

where were you when Clinton was president?

Re:Ancient History

[cybercuzco]

Support the office and the institution, even if you don't support the person

I think the author of th previous post was implying that since Bush's brother runs the state, and is therefore responsible for seeing that all the votes are counted, and in a propper manner, may have been a bit lax in enforcing the rules when it would have helped gore, and strict in enforcing the rules when it became clear that that was the only way for gore to lose.

How much do you value these methods?

[John Carmack]

The article lays out all the things Bill should have done:

He should have compromised what he really thought.
He should have "played the PR game".
He should have coddled bureaucrats.
He should have paid attention to "political sensibilities".

From the perspective of Fortune or Business Week, that all sounds right and proper.

But from a hacker perspective?

I'm not saying Gates is a hacker (although he is indeed really damn smart), but if you align yourself with those ideals, is it really correct to deride someone for being forthright and stubborn in the defense of their position?

John Carmack

Re:arrogance is relative

[ClarkEvans]

Bill Gates thinks he is inhuman and above the law beacuse the media tells him that he is inhuman and above the law, a "supra-geinus". Perhaps a few books and articles like this may help to change some popular opinion about gates, and this, more than anything else may make the fella a bit less arrogant and a more responsible citizen.

A slight modification.......

[Bill Daras]

John Heilemann explains how Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder, a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world.

You can easily replace "Microsoft" with "Apple" and have a quite accurate description of future events. (In my opinion anyway)

Misuse of the term "literally"

[Mantle]

Why is it so hard to use this term properly? When something literally happens, it really happens. Can you ever say it's literally raining cats and dogs? Not unless there's a hurricaine and cats and dogs are falling from the sky.

Katz, if you say you literally could not put down the book then there was something physical preventing you from doing that. Does the book come with a coating of superglue on the cover?

Mantle

Re:Come on Jon....

[Stephen Samuel]

Well, If I thought that Bill Gates was out to get me, I'd be worried about a lot more people than him, walking up to me and whacking me with a blackjack.

Half a billion dollars can buy an awful lot of treachery. For Mister G, it's just a really big cheque.
--

Re:Come on Jon....

[Stephen Samuel]

I think that going from a near demigod to an over-rich, nasty schmuck is a bringdown.

A 20 foot fall, and a 200 foot falls can both be considered "being brought down". This was a 20 foot fall (should have been jolting, and a warning of what may be to come, but Mr. Gates is a bit too well padded to notice anything more than some temporary discomfort).

The 200 foot fall may be on it's way -- A "bringing down" of another magnitude.
--

Re:arrogance is relative

[kaoshin]

Bill gates created DOS?

Re:Arrogance is relative, indeed-hierarchical even

[galego]

Well...I would be the lowest troll on this totem post if I took a random stab at you, right?

Galego

Re:WTF?

[garoush]

You are right about what you say about MS. It is a fact that if you ask anyone anywhere what is "Coca-cola", "GE" or "GM and what is "Microsoft" they will not be able to recognize MS.

However, if time is of any indication, than you should see that MS has been around of a little over 20 years while GE, GM, etc. have been around for at least 50 years.

In addition, IBM has been around for over 70 years and believe it or not, they are less influential than MS is.


---------------
Sig
abbr.

Re:WTF?

[thetbone]

It is a fact that if you ask anyone anywhere what is "Coca-cola", "GE" or "GM and what is "Microsoft" they will not be able to recognize MS. What do you mean? What is this Microsoft you refer to in your post? I don't recognize it. aaaahhhh ahahaha hahahhaaaa What did you really mean?

Re:Yen? Canadian Dollars? Real dollars? Puppies?

[thetbone]

Maybe try using your head. You must really have trouble in day to day life it that post confused you.

Magic books

[andy@petdance.com]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

Why's that?

Is it covered with glue?

Will it bond to my flesh and become one with my body?

Or do you not know what "literally" means?

--

the PC is not the be all and end all though.....

[TuRRIcaNEd]

....much of today's Linux illuminiti wouldn't have heard of Operating Systems, let alone computers

Ouch.

I'm going to state something first, prattle on like an idiot for a couple of paragraphs, and then try to return to my original point.

I'm sorry, but I have to call you out there. When I was cutting my teeth (Around the same time as MS was gunning for pre-eminence, circa 1990, to paraphrase Andy Grove). MS-DOS hadn't even entered my lexicon. Granted it was easier for me, being European, but I started on the C64, and found my home on the Amiga.

"Ho!", you cry, "An Amiga zealot with revenge on his mind. He shouldn't have bought into inferior technology". Again, although I (and I freely admit this) do have something of an axe to grind with MS over the Amiga issue, it isn't that which makes me hope that their days of pre-eminence are over. It is the simple fact that the One Microsoft Way almost became reality across computing. If they'd been allowed to continue as they were before the proceedings, the nightmare reality of Microsoft products being the only viable solution in the world could have come to pass. Doesn't that scare you in the slightest?

The thing I like most about geek culture is that it makes a virtue of diversity. Not 'fitting in' is the norm. Through our computers we can express ourselves, and I only like working with a computer I can truly express myself with (And no, I don't mean through desktop wallpaper and movable icons). When there's only one candidate for what you can run on your machine, it smacks of a frightening level of digital totalitarianism that flies in the face of everything I love about computing and technology in the first place. Microsoft's eventual goal was (and still is, in many ways) to make sure that it is the only option. If I want to use *NIX instead of Windows, Navigator instead of IE, even DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS , that's my prerogative. MS were all in favour of taking that away, therefore I was, and am, willing to fight them using any and all means at my disposal. .NET frightens me, and I hope that if it does succeed, it doesn't stop those that don't like or wish to use its model from enjoying technology to the fullest.

OK, rant over. I'd just like to state that I do have friends who did grow up with MS-DOS, and will defend it and the PC architecture to the hilt. But I find that, thanks largely to MS, I'm shackled to an architecture I hate programming for (Extended AT) and frequently using an OS which I find painfully counter-intuitive and lousy to code for (and it ain't Linux :).

Microsoft helped make computing a far less exciting and enjoyable pastime for me, and I certainly feel that I owe neither them, or Bill Gates anything.

Re:On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[TCaptain]

but did you ever consider that the big reason that Microsoft is a half trillion dollar company is precisely because of the actions that they are in trouble for?

That's true, BUT, here's the rub, even IF they get nailed and hard, they're STILL a HUGE company with gobs of money and power. Even if they get punished, even if they can't resort to their old ways...half a trillion is still a LOT of momentum to overcome before you can say microsoft is dead. I mean doesn't that much solvency practically guarantee that its going to stick around for a long time even if they are FORCED to play fair from now on?

M$ not a monopoly, but

[Stalcair]

it definitely is trying to be one, and THAT is the real problem. While the computer industry bears the largest blame for this, many within have attempted to divert their own guilt like they initially did their responsibility by blaming the end users or M$ itself. Well, they are partly right, M$ is trying to take over the world, but since that has always been a given it does not admonish their own behavior and lack of ethics when they would sell out (whether actually selling their company or just breaking down and going M$ only).

Perhaps if these smaller companies would stop selling out, the problem would go away. Competition is definitely needed, and while Linux and BSD are slowly creeping into the general publics awareness, they do not have the marketing clout (nor, fortunately, the complete lack of soul) that M$ does. I think we all know how M$ likes to take the R&D of others and steal it. Sometimes they actually buy out the company. Sometimes they actually copy the innovation of the other company thus drowning the market once again (forcing the company to go out of business and then buying them). Or they just lock out the protocol, API, application, etc. with their latest patch (keeping in mind that I consider 95 part 2, 98 and 98SE to be mere patches to the original 95). This forces the other company to go out of business (then M$ buys the patents and such) or just sells out to M$. Then we have Neanderthal Technology (NT or NoT) at ummm, well I wanted to say at work but it just doesn't fit. NT is great for outsourced network engineers, on call ALL the time for the constant problems with NT.

Back to the central point, since M$ likes to use other's work and research for themselves, perhaps the Open source community should allow ourselves to partake in that bit of market strategy. I don't mean copy work, but if you notice a movement that is working (people seem to be adopting it and it spreads like wildfire) then by all means let Linux et al. jump on the bandwagon. I don't understand why people HATE m$ to the degree that anything even remotely associated with them is automatically shut out. That is childish behavior that is in essence self destructive (most illogical and emotional behavior is).

I also think that the software industry needs to mature and develop a steady professional association both on the individual and market level. If done right, and it is done so in many other areas, then if any one group like M$ tries their crap like before, I will specifically target the guerilla marketing and intimidation, then I believe that the threatened companies should be able to safely tell M$ to blow it out its respective arse. Some might say this is already the case with the open source movement, but remember that the open source movement has all the signs of being a fad. Which means that many "supporters" will all drop out when it becomes trendy to leave. On the other hand, since more businesses everyday are adopting Linux and BSD for mission critical systems (I personally and bucking for some more DoD servers running on SecureBSD and Linux) I think that this might not happen soon. People are fickle and very silly, but maybe we can hold off the stampede until later. I could be (I hope I am) wrong, and maybe this is just my cynicism rearing its ugly head.

To summarize my rant, we need to police ourselves. Dont adopt the same unethical tactics, however we should keep our eyes open to things that work. Like Balmer goofily admitted (as if we didn't already know) M$ is commited to closing protocols and locking down ideas to only run on their systems. That pisses everyone off, even many traditional M$ supporters. If we give them what they want, CHOICE we win no matter what.

Re:If it wasn't for Gates......

[HalfFlat]

Apple is no saint, but if anyone made the computer an acessible device, it was they, not Microsoft. Don't buy their hype. Windows and MS Office is ubiquitous now because of their abuses of the industry which led to their monopoly position; they didn't get that position by having superior software at the time.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Ashcroft lied under oath in his Senate confirmation hearings. And lied in Ronnie White's confirmation hearings.

Re:WTF?

[donglekey]

Nintendo has been around for around 100 years

Real Audio interview with John Heilmann

[ayden]

The Connection, a nationally syndicated call in show from WBUR in Boston, ran a radio interview with the author this morning.

Click here for The Connection's Pride Before the Fall web page.

Click here for the Real Audio interview.

Re:Gates Is One Of Us

[AnarchoFreak_00]

You say his OS is crap. It's not designed for the proto-geek. It's designed for the main stream

Yes.. it is designed for the main stream. But it still dosn't excuse that fact that it is crap. It still dosn't change the fact that is has poor UI/GUI (which i thought would be more important in the main stream). Is still dosn't change the fact that it is slow, and unrelible.

Gates is evil you say? How many other corporate mogals donate billions of their cash to charity?

That's irrelivent. Just becasue he dose give money to charity. dosn't mean he isn't "evil"(what ever is mean by that anyway). Why dosn't he more? Is he just donating enough $$ to not feel guilty about his wealth?

This man had ideas and passion. And such his empire was founded upon. Not his years attending Yale, Dartmoth, Harvard, or any other worthless Ivy league school. Call this man evil, and you call the typical geek evil.

Just becasue someone has ideas and passion, dosn't make them a good person! Any intelligent person can figure that out a mile away.
The man, what ever his passions and ideas are, wants to dominate the marketplace. I personal thing that he want to be part of something big. And that meybe he is a bit selfish in that thought. He just want to have HIS internet, and HIS software, and HIS future. that's his problem. He isn't truly innivative. except for himself.

world-smart but tech-dumb

[The Cookie Monster]

The phrase "tech-smart but world dumb" is sometimes used to describe even brilliant programmers and computing executives. It captures Gates perfectly. In fact, he embodies it.

I would have put Gates in the "world-smart but tech-dumb" category.

He acted much like a middleman with DOS and from that deal managed to leveraged his way to controlling the OS market. He was a business genius (if somewhat immoral, but that's hardly uncommon in business) but not exactly an innovator.

I hear he wrote a basic interpreter once? Anyone know of anything else he wrote or built? What about designed? I imagine he always got his way with the Windows design but does anybody know if he contributed anything useful to GUI OS design?

I suppose he was tech smart in the sense that he could recognise something good when he saw it - like the Macintosh.

Basically, I imagine there are many people here who can match Gates' personal technical achievments, but I doubt there are as many who are capable of building an empire out of it.

(VisualBASIC is the closest thing to innovation I can think of from Microsoft, and I don't know if it was the the first, or merely the first well known GUI/RAD language)

What puzzles me...

[tralung]

...how old is Gates? I mean, normally you see this kind of behaviour with 60-year olds. Or is it because he started his business so early?

Re:It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[pjrc]

It may seem like distant history, but let's not forget that Microsoft hasn't always had a monopoly. They've been excellent at competing against other software. In recent years, they've had monopoly power on their side, which makes them only toughter, but that wasn't always the case.

Word and Excel each eventually displaced Word Perfect and Lotus 123. They created better applications and marketed them very competitively. Admittedly, some of that success was based on good Windows 3.0 support, as their application developers had experience on the Macintosh platform when other PC software vendors were struggling to shift their paradigms.

If .net turns out to be a major new platform (this time reinventing Sun's wheels instead of Apple's), perhaps they will once again have a similar platform-shift advantage as they did when their windows 3.0 based apps were much better than poorly converted dos ones.

I hope it doesn't turn out like that. I use linux about 95% (most CAD software only runs in windows), and I really want linux to "win"... total world domination, or something like that.

It's easy to underestimate Microsoft. Many have before.

Do Not Underestimate The Power Of The Dark Side

Re:WTF?

[null_session]

Microsoft made it's Q4 2000 numbers by selling off many of it's stakes it "other" businesses, for instance Web TV. Add to that the fact that Microsoft is STILL considered to be overvalued at ~$60 and I would say that yes, it is on the ropes. And 10 billion in revenues is not huge, as has been previously noted.

Two other reviews

[Sara Chan]

This week's edition of The Economist has a review of the same book, with similar conclusions. So stop complaining about the review by Mr. Katz.

The Economist also includes a review of World War 3.0: Microsoft and its enemies by Ken Auletta. In comparing the two books, they say that "Mr Auletta gives a top-down view, placing the Microsoft trial in the broader context of the telecommunications, technology and media industries, [whereas] Mr Heilemann ... gives the bottom-up view from Silicon Valley ... Anyone looking for the behind-the-scenes story of the Microsoft trial will have to read both books to get the full picture. Mr Heilemann's account is the more entertaining and faster-paced of the two, whereas Mr Auletta's is more substantial."

The conclusion from the twin reviews is worth quoting:

[Both books portray] Microsoft officials as arrogant, foolish and politically naive in expecting to be able to best the American government in the same way that they crushed so many of their competitors. ... Whatever happens next ... it is clear that Microsoft should have settled the case years ago, when it had the chance. Ultimately, Microsoft's worst enemy proved to be neither the Department of Justice, nor its rivals in Silicon Valley, but itself.

_________________________________________
"Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" --prosecuting lawyer, for the British government, arguing against permitting publication of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" (1960)

Satanic?

[jsin]

I don't understand the use of "satanic" in this article, is this some figure or speech or just a condescending comment on a religion you don't understand? In that case you might as well say "Microsoft's Jewish business practices" because they make money...nice Katz.

*This* is stuff that matters...

[f5426]

> Microsoft was brought down

And I thought it was a slow news day ! The submission queue must be full. I'm ready to yell "duplicate!" when it'll be posted in a few minutes..

Cheers,

--fred

Re:WTF?

[cyber-vandal]

But IBM had to make a $7 BILLION loss before the other shoe dropped. They survived because they got rid of the egomaniacs that brought them to that position. Having been in IT when IBM were the all-powerful monster I can see Microsoft making the same mistakes: the shoddy products (Windows 2000 excepted, but it took over 4 years to arrive and the upgrade path is a great deal more than just 'log on to WindowsUpdate and reboot when it's done'), the arrogance, the disinterest in customer complaints unless the customer was a major corp.
Even then, IBM was still a great deal better than Microsoft is now. I think this guy is a bit premature in his assessment, but I can see Microsoft taking a very nasty fall because
they don't realise that keeping the customer happy takes a lot more than just lying about the alternatives, and just like IBM did they've made some bad enemies, like, ironically, IBM.

Re:WTF?

[woody_jay]

"The fact that Microsoft's stock price has dropped from a high of $120 per share in December of 1999 to around $58 per share today is a pretty good indicator of a company on the ropes, if not dying" What does it say for Red Hat going from somewhere around $140 a share to the $7-$8 a share today? Not picking a fight or anything, cuz I am an RHCE myself and love the product, just found it interesting.

Re:WTF?

[ave19]

Are you smoking crack again? The most power, influential company in America? Maybe if you work on computers all day... I think GE, GM, AT&T, IBM, AOL Time Warner, just to name a few, have far more sway than Microsoft. ...but JonKatz is still a Troll.

Note to Katz

[GenChalupa]

In his new book Pride Before The Fall, John Heilemann explains how Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania...

Note to Katz: Microsoft hasn't been "brought down" yet.

They still dominate every market they compete in. (excluding Bob and handhelds.) They still dominate the browser market. They still dominate the office product market. They still dominate the OS market. They still dominate the general software markets. Hell, they're even beginning to dominate the *video game* market.

They have not been broken up. They have not been penalized in any way by the anti-trust suit, (and it's becoming increasingly unlikely that they will.)

Therefore, your premise in invalid, and your article is not worth the bandwidth it's transmitted on.

You are hereby banished. Hows about you write "Voices from Hellmouth, Part XXVI?"

GenChalupa

Re:WTF?

[big_cat79]

The fact that Microsoft's stock price has dropped from a high of $120 per share in December of 1999 to around $58 per share today is a pretty good indicator of a company on the ropes, if not dying

Using stock price as indication of a dying company is utter crap. If that was the case, I guess Yahoo, Qualcomm, Cisco, Amazon, Red Hat, et al are all going away because their stock prices are only a shadow of what they once were.

BigCat79

Re:NetHack nitpicking

[Guignol]

You can drop cursed books
Yeah, but in this case, the only use for this book would be to crush bugs, so that could actually make it a cursed weapon...

ah, truth

[nycdewd]

it's so nice when you hear it or read it... and NOTHING that MS has EVER done has 'saved Apple from bankruptcy"... Apple, in its inarguably darkest days BEFORE Jobs came back, had FOUR BILLION DOLLARS IN COLD HARD CASH RESERVES, you chump.

the more you induce cognitive dissonance...

[nycdewd]

the more you induce cognitive dissonance by positing facts instead of fiction (facts, like vizshun67 did), the more that MS dupes and sycophants will scream and rant and rave hysterically and hurl epithets at you... QED. no way these MS mythologists/apologists/bootlickers can admit or even see they are in denial, it would wreck their little world inside the box.

Re:WTF?

[joshsisk]

Could easily bring our economy to it's knees? How? Unless they have some sort of backdoor built into Office 2000, I don't really see how they could do this. People in the tech industry commonly overestimate the size and importance of Microsoft to the world as a whole. I think you are falling prey to this.

Josh Sisk

Re:WTF?

[joshsisk]

Actually, I'd say it was mainly the folks outside the tech industry that overestimate Microsoft's importance.

You are probably right, actually. But the average slashdotter also sucumbs to this illness.

Josh Sisk

Re:WTF?

[Suidae]

With that said you are correct in saying that switching databases is not an easy task. Each implements its own subset/superset of whichever SQL standard(92, 89). Plus, to get top performace you usually tweak database specific things, such as giving the query optimizer hints on which index to use. These tweaks are very database dependent

Absolutely correct, plus, most databases have a bunch of annoying design flaws (and more often that not, one or two critical flaws) that make them even harder to move. Particularly big, fat, established business databases.

You should see the amazing, steaming piles of crap that some of those AS400's have to push around.

Re:Agreed

[SquadBoy]

Ok I'm going to feed the troll. Desktop sales are in the tank and have been for a long time. Servers is where it is at and servers are where M$ can not compete without using monopoly power. M$ is losing in the server room and with the exception of Sun Linux is beating everything else hands down. And Sun is working to keep ahead. Pretty damn good for a "hobby"

Come on Jon....

[SquadBoy]

"was brought down..."
While I *do* think that good and economics will win in the end and Microsoft will at best exist as a shadow of what it is now it is *really* early to talk about their decline and fall in the past tense. It would be better to say that this will be one of the factors that will bring balance to the market and cause everyone to have to compete based on merit instead of marketing buck and monoply power. But don't go using the past tense just yet.

Re:Come on Jon....

[Golias]

I was a little stunned by this as well.

Microsoft was brought down? When did I miss that!? Just this morning it was one of the biggest tech companies in the world... right up there with Oracle.

Also, when was Lyndon Johnson "brought low" by his hubris? He might be my least favorite president of the 20th Century, but he served as president from 63 up until 68... nearly two full terms, and remained a highly-esteemed ex-president ever since.

One final nit-pick: In the article you said, "This book and story give credence to the old saw that has it that just because you're paranoid about somebody doesn't mean you're wrong."

That's not quite how the "old saw" in question goes. It should read, "just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), but I don't think you can be paranoid "about somebody". Paranoia is a mental state of delusional grandeur and persecution in which you are irrationally suspicious of others. Fear of one person being after you is not paranoia, it's just worry.

Re:Come on Jon....

[Golias]

But technically, that would not be classified as paranoia.

An average, unimportant Joe who thinks that a multi-national corporation has marshalled all its resources to destroy him, personally... that would suggest delusions of grandeur, and could be called a type of paranoia, I guess.

People who set their browsers to refuse all cookies out of fear that the "corporatocracy" wants to know everything about them, down to what color underwear they are wearing... those guys are paranoid! Oh... Uh... Sorry Jon, I didn't mean you. Really.

Re:Come on Jon....

[Gibbys Box of Trix]

Try reading "The First $20 Million is Always The Hardest" by Po Bronson. It's not exactly what you're after, but it's close enough to amuse and the 'bad guys' are quite obviously Gates and M$...
--
01 13 19
TVDJC TDSLR AZNGT NWQSH KPN

You still can not buy a multi-boot PC

[snarfer]

Anyone who says the anti-trust trial has had any effect or that Microsoft's power is diminished should note that you still can not buy a multi-boot PC, booting Linux and Windows, or BeOS and Windows.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[snarfer]

Bush is an alcoholic in denial.

Re:Ancient History

[snarfer]

"Gore won the popular vote by such a scant margin that it's statistically a tie."

The national count has Gore up by over 700,000 votes now.

And the Floria count has him up by over 900, and they just started counting.

arrogance is relative

[streetlawyer]

hrrrrm ..... let me get this straight ... some hack journalist, on the strength of one or two interviews and a bit of desk research, presumes to go out to Redmond and tell the creator of the operating system used on 90% of the world's computers, a guy who is a billionaire, and who is advised by geniuses, exactly where he screwed up and how he could have played it better.

Sorry, who was the arrogant one here?

Re:arrogance is relative

[GMontag451]

presumes to go out to Redmond and tell the creator of the operating system used on 90% of the world's computers...

Wait! Who was this reporter talking to? The founder of the Seattle Computer Company (the guy who invented DOS), the researchers at Xerox PARC (the guys who invented what would become Windows), or the programmers at Microsoft (the people that modified the programs that the previously mentioned people wrote to create all the different versions of the Microsoft operating systems)? I may have read the article incorrectly, but I got the impression that the journalist was talking to Bill Gates. The last thing that Bill Gates programmed was BASIC. And even that he just modified (read "pirated") from a PDP-11 program that he used at college.

Re:arrogance is relative

[blamanj]

Can someone please explain to me the rating system in place here? A 5 for a comment completely ignorant of the development of the industry? Microsoft did not invent DOS and its primary innovation was to bring the predatory practices of long-established industries like oil and steel to the personal computer. Those who do not learn their history are doomed to spout drivel illustrating their ignorance.

Re:arrogance is relative

[MikeySquid]

Not that this hack journalist doesn't have his own shortcomings, and not that the MS empire hasn't actually fallen yet but... This guy is right about how Gates screwed up.

Re:WTF?

[gammoth]

No one claimed any of the Linux companies were of the most influential corporations. Furthermore, there have been many posted articles on the bleak out look for many Linux companies.

Pandering :)

[Fervent]

the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder, a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world

Flattery will get you nowhere here. :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Some onerous EULA?

[jmoloug1]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

Wow. Microsoft must have had a hand in the licensing agreement for that book!

Re:FIRST NAZI

[PyRoNeRd]

Henry Ford was a notorious anti-semite before WWII.

See this page for more information about Ford's hatred for jews.

Although Ford recanted his anti-semitism after the second world war (and the unique horrors of the Holocaust became apparent) his legacy is still tainted because his virulent anti-semitic work "The International Jew" continues to be distributed on the web by anti-semitic haters.

Americans like to see themselves as the soldiers who stormed the beaches in Normandy as a pre-cursor to the liberation of European jewry, but there is a much uglier side of American contribution to the Holocaust. Many U.S. industrial companies like Ford, GM and IBM played a two-faced role, on the one side cooperating with the allies, but on the other side they supported the Nazi's through their trade.

It is about time the Americans people came to admit that their role wasn't as only a glorious one as portrayed in movies like Saving Private Ryan but also one of war-time collaboration and profiteering. The same is true for most other countries. Jews were unwanted in all European nations, in Britain and in the USA. They were turned away back to a certain death.

Ironically the country with the best war-time record regarding the jews is the country that was most vilified by the Americans after WWII. The Russians did the bulk of the liberation of European jewry and they lost far more soldiers than Great Britain and the USA combined (well over 20 million). This fact is remembered by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, which proudly flies the flags of the Red Army brigades who liberated the camps. Something to remember.

Re:FIRST NAZI

[PyRoNeRd]

Of course Slashdot didn't bring this story, even though it is highly interesting and on-topic. Why? Reason is simple, IBM spent $1 billion on Linux last year, so they can do no wrong. Even if some of that $1 billion is part of IBM's war-time profits, which enabled Hitler to murder the jews more efficiently than thought possible, resulting in the sole largest mass murder in history. $1 billion, that is $166,67 per victim. Judas Iscariot only accepted 30 pieces of silver for betrayal, Slashdot' betrayal of the memory of the dead comes at a much higher price. Of course had Microsoft been around during WWII and had the Nazi's used Windows 42 to count the jews for destruction then you would have heard no end of it. It would be the subject of at least 10 John Katz stories.

Woah!?

[glowingspleen]

Holy crap! Microsoft is evil? And someone wrote a book about it?

Thank God that someone brought this to my attention!

Grammar Nazi

[Dan Jagnow]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

So they coat the jacket with Superglue?

Re:Agreed

[CyberKnet]

could have been a whole lot better with a lot less "dude"'s....

1) Dont forget that "the dot in dot com" *doesnt* say "the www in world wide web". Netcraft is a ... tangible ... guage, but not a definitive answer.
2) Microsoft *does* have to compete against every linux distribution. Just like it has to compete against every BSD distribution, Be, *n*x...
3) Linux based companies on the *stock market* are riding high. I do not believe that the usage of linux is "riding", let alone on hype.

Yes I like microsoft operating systems, yes i like linux, yes, I use both on a daily basis. But broad sweeping statements dont constitute truth just because you say so.

---

Antitrust

[makaera]

It seems that the Bill Gates of real life is becoming more like his clone in Antitrust. Or is it the other way around...

Re:Ancient History

[Abcd1234]

Just curious, but... wasn't it the states that were mounting the offensive against Microsoft? If this is the case, then litigation will still move forward, since the states themselves are still committed to bringing down MS. Granted, GWB might try to influence the Supreme Court (again, I'm a Canadian, so my knowledge of the way this works is limited... but doesn't GWB appoint the justices?) to control the outcome, but the actual trial will likely move forward, AFAIK. Please, correct me if I'm wrong here. :)

Re:Gates Is One Of Us

[jonnystiph]

Alright I understand that if a M$ HR person wants to get a /. account there is not much that can or should be done.

For god sakes when they insult all of the people on here that call themselves geeks, don't mod them up. :)

Imminent End of Microsoft!@#$

[ichimunki]

Microsoft brought down? When the flipping heck did this happen? Last time I checked they still had the only preinstalled OS available at Best Buy, Computer City, and other major consumer grade PC retailers.

Re:Imminent End of Microsoft!@#$

[The Blackrat]

In the magical land of Open Source fantasy land, Microsoft now makes laundry detergent and your choice of *nix is available preinstalled at bestbuy....Now in the REAL world, things are a bit different, but damnit man, can't they dream!?!?!

Fall?...

[z-axis]

...what fall?

Need a migration path to eliminate Windows

[Dukhat]

Microsoft is nowhere close to being dead. Hopefully it's monopolistic practices will be curbed, but the majority of the software industry revolves around them, and you are not going to be able to pick them up and move over to a new OS with any kind of simplicity. Even if Microsoft can't force computer manufacturers to only install Windows or lose special pricing or can't make their browser permanently stick to the desktop, they will still maintain the vast majority of the marketshare for desktop users.
As a server OS, Windows NT/2000 offers very few benefits, the main one is having a familiar windows interface. Since most servers will require a system administrator that understands the technical aspects beyond what can be made self-explanatory in a GUI, Linux & FreeBSD are much more attactive since not only is the OS free, but you can also use very powerfull free web servers, mail servers, SQL databases, etc. You can often install these free servers on NT, but what's the point of paying for NT then?
On the desktop, Linux still has a lot of holes to be filled, and this is going to take a considerable amount of time, and what people tend to forget is that Microsoft will have ample opportunity to improve Windows and make the change that much less compelling.

Things that Linux needs:
- Easy configuration and administration. Nautilus, Gnome, and KDE utils are nice, but they still don't all tasks as smoothly as windows.
- Better GUI performance. XFree86 4 is quite fast but I have yet to see it eat up less than 80 megs of memory, and I don't think I should need 256 MB of memory just to run netscape without swapping. Of course, as ram gets continually cheaper, the ram issue will become negligible. Maybe the GTK widgets that write directly to the video frame buffer and don't need X will be the solution.
- A no-compromise web browser. Mozilla is still a little slow, and it still chokes on some pages. It will probably be running smoothly within a year, but new plugins still surface on windows first, so this will keep it behind the curve.
- MS Office. Either run under Wine, or a competing product that doesn't sacrifice features, interoperablity, or performance. Running MS Office under Wine also keeps MS a long way from being dead, although it would tremendously reduce the need to use their OS.
- Outlook, Eudora, etc. People who write a lot of email are very attached to their email clients. Once we get acceptable options for email clients, and the points above, Linux will be very viable as a business workstation.
- Lots of Games/Tremendous game performance. There are actually people out there who are annoyed and not enchanted by the geeky accomplishment of dual-booting.
- Some huge percentage of every piece of software imaginable to compete with Windows gargantuan software market. Look how much good desktop software their is for the Mac, and still people complain about what's missing. It will probably only be possible to overcome this using Wine or some very quick emulator.

What Windows can improve on the desktop:
- Reliablity. I have heard that Win2k is a huge improvement over NT4, and if they can put this into a reasonably priced desktop version, they will be very hard to beat.
- Performance. The ram usage is too high, and there is rarely a benefit from dual procs.
- More affordable. Not likely to happen, although free OS competition might put on the pressure.

In the lists above, I am trying to show that MS has a lot less ground to cover even if they might be at a disadvantage when it comes to trying to improve their codebase without becoming incompatible with old software. The Windows software market is basically a huge mass whose inertia is going to keep it from moving unless a lot of energy is expended, and lots of energy will be wasted pushing in different directions.
As long as I can remember, I have heard people say that you should choose your software and then buy your computer. Well the OS kinda fits both into the software and the underlying platform category. You might choose your hardware for what OS it can run, but you will need to choose your OS by what software it can run. The OS (kernel + GUI) is nothing without applications.

Bill Gates

[Daffy_Human]

Don't get me wrong, I think Bill Gates is the anti-christ, but I think books like this are of dubious quality at best. Whether or not we approve of how he runs his company, it is HIS company (or at least most of it is).

At some point we all learn to compromise because we have to, not because we want to. In the beginning so did wild Bill. Things have changed, it's now his game, he has more money than all of us combined. He DOES (did) run the biggest company in the world, and he, through his own manipulation (be it good or bad), created from scratch his own wealth. He is walking proof that "the system" works for those who know how to use it. He's not some rich boy who took Daddy's money and added a little more to it. He was a middle-class boy who took some of daddy's money, and his own skills (even if not technical) and turned it into an empire.

It is HIS empire to destroy if he so desires it. He's a smart boy, he knows what would be the BEST way of preserving his company, but maybe he doesn't want to. He built that company from nothing and it's being taken from him. If he can't run it his way, he'd probably rather not run it at all. Even if this process "ruins" him (maybe only a few hundred million left), he will always live comfortably. He's merely standing up for what he believes in and for that I admire him, it's a sign of character and backbone.

It irks me (but doesn't surprise me) that Katz of all people will assist in villifying Gates for doing nothing more than standing up for his beliefs. We all do the same for the opposing side, and most of us fall on our own swords, but we do so freely for our cause. It does not make Bill Gates a bad man to fight for his cause. What makes him a bad man is what his cause is. Unfortunately this book is little more than glorified name calling. "He shoulda done this or that" is NOT useful reading. I'm not going to pay any money to hear someone make fun of someone else.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[Usefull Idiot]

> Since George W. Bush has been elected (fair and square mind you), and since he realizes just what Fortune 10 company has been driving the
> American economy in the last 10 years, he's going to ask Ashcroft to ignore his fundamentalist leanings (I mean, MS does write
> software for infidel languages, like Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew) and lighten up on MS. My prediction, a fine of a few million dollars, a slap on the wrist,
> and MS is given carte blanche to compete as only they know how to compete.

First, George W. Bush hasn't lightened up yet, and he's been president for over a month. Second, the states involved already said they weren't going to give up, even if the US DOJ does. Third, the thought that MS itself has driven the economy for the last 10 years is rediculous (Let's see, could Personal Computers be driving the economy? Transistors? I believe hardware development might be a slight bit above microsoft in driving the economy).

> Surely it's not coincidence that the American economy has taken a nosedive just as the Microsoft trial came to fruition.

So the downturn had nothing to do with all those internet companies going out of business, and the overall realization that technology companies were overvaluated? I realize Microsoft does have some impact, but give me a break.

> You would think that the American government would learn from the mistakes of all the nations in the world that try to overregulate thier economies:

So we should completely deregulate, and become like Mexico, just to bring all the businesses to America? (Who cares about human rights or the constitution)

> Please, let's free up Microsoft to compete

Compete with whom?

The book IS way too early and pesumptuous. Only because the trial is not complete, and even they did break up microsoft, there would only be two monopolies instead of just one.

Re:WTF?

[ScuzzMonkey]

While I agree that a particular file format is not necessary in order to run a business, and even that you could run most businesses without them, I'd like to point out that in all likelyhood, these businesses probably wouldn't be able to run without them. Business in the information age is about moving paper--electronically or otherwise. Any company that disregards the importance of the infrastructure that this stuff moves across is asking for trouble. And if you've ever been through a platform migration at a company of any significant size, I don't think you'll lightly say that this stuff can "just as easily be ported over to (name you package)". It's a lot of time-consuming, costly work and training.

Cursed

[H3lm3t]

This is a book you literally will not be able to put down.

Darn storyteller.. it must be cursed then. Is there a priest with the 'remove curse' spell around?

-Helmet

Re:FIRST NAZI

[rodmunch]

What is even worse is that Ford has tried to pass off his son as part Jewish.

I mean, I've lost count at the number of times I've watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and seen Harrison fighting the nazis and commented about the hypocrasy of it all. He's as bad as his father and IBM put together!!!

Microsoft: the world's biggest utility

[Cat Mara]

The problem Microsoft has is, sure, 90% of the world runs their stuff, but that 90% doesn't give a toss. Your average Microsoft user is an office worker who sits down in the morning, turns on their computer, fires up Word and Excel or whatever and gets on with their job. To them, the computer is just a tool; a tool that is handed down from above to them, and, while frequently balky and unreliable, works sufficiently well to get their job done. If there were no computers, their job would be exactly the same, except they would be using typewriters and paper spreadsheets or whatever.

In other words, Microsoft is successful, but it's not the sort of success that Bill Gates or his executives want. Microsoft occupies the same space in the minds of its customers as a traditional energy utility, rather than the bringers of hacktastic innovation to the masses that Bill and the boys would like to be seen as. Electricity? Plug your appliance into a wall socket; it's there. Water? Turn on the tap; it's there. Microsoft software? Switch on your machine; it's there. Ho hum.

No wonder poor Bill and Steve and the rest are so mad! They've very nearly realised their original goal of a computer on every desk running Microsoft software, but practically no-one cares they're running Microsoft software. The only time anyone cares is when it bluescreens for the nth time that day and come 5pm they clock off and go home. No, the only ones that do care are long-haired leftie weirdos who read Slashdot-- and they hate Microsoft and bitch about the technical inelegance of their products! The one segment of the computer-using population that still cares about OSes and APIs and gnarly hacks thinks Bill's software sucks! That's gotta hurt. Bill wants to be a Thomas Edison; not the faceless CEO of some electricity or gas utility. If not, then why all the endless carping about `innovation' during the trial?

Microsoft had better admit this truth pretty quickly-- that their perception of themselves is grossly out of kilter with how they are perceived in the Real World by their customers. C'mon, Bill, there are worse things than being merely adequate; not everyone can be a trailblazer. If they don't wise up, the whole Microsoft edifice will disintegrate, with Bill screaming to the end about `innovation' and the `right to compete', even as the orderlies from Happy Acres Home for the Incorrigibly Bewildered bust down the door of his office, restraints and tasers in hand. Because remember, kids, the paranoid do survive, but only because we lock them up so they can't hurt themselves.

Here endeth the lesson.

Re:Microsoft: the world's biggest utility

[arfy]

Nice try, but not a good reflection of reality.

Joe Six-Pack User at the desk using the tools given by his company cares intensely about Microsoft because the perception has become that the software is not adequate, and Microsoft gets the blame even when it's not the blue screen of death. Six years ago what you said held true, not now. Whether it's hardware, network policies or stupid sysadmins that don't run their networks properly, the users increasingly blame Microsoft for their problems. And that may hurt Microsoft much more than anything done by the U.S. government.
The really interesting thing about this is that the employees who attain a sufficiently high position are pretty consistently demanding applications other than those crafted by Microsoft. The pressure is starting to mount from some of the other users; it's almost a status symbol not to have to use Microsoft software...

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[kurioszyn]

Bombing ?
Nah , that's so Clintonian...

Re:Ancient History

[kurioszyn]

Still crying ?

Get over it, your handouts will not end any time soon. There are still bunch of Democrats in the congress and they will "fight" for your right to be on welfare.

Re:Ancient History

[kurioszyn]

No he did not.
Show me some official paper that says so.

Re:It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[kurioszyn]

To use a quote from "Braveheart":

It matters not.
He is your president.

Re:Anyone one else...

[kurioszyn]

"The Unix community didn't restrict their OS to a single platform or tie it to the eccentricities of a 20 year old piece of hardware"

Yeah, instead they went out of their way to make their products incompatible with each other.

"Jobs and Wozniak did not keep their OS trapped on obsolete CISC technology and did not stunt the development of easy to use end user interfaces (both hardware and software). "

Apple products suck. Their kernel is stuck in where Windows was in 80s. They rely on user base, which is even more clueless than your typical Windows user.

I literally loved his use of "literally"

[tenzig_112]

I literally cannnot understand why people don't like it when I over-use that word. It's as though people can't literally get around the idea that I'm a user of the English language just like them.

Actually, I know why you can't "literally" put the book down. Its cover has been soaked in superglue. Beware - literally beware!

Whose pride? Who's Fall?

[tenzig_112]

If martial arts movies have taught me anything it is to not stand over a presumably dead guy and gloat.

[insert bad lip-sync here] "Aha, you had no honor and I had to put you down." [gloating man turns away as "dead" guy rises slowly]

Not to give the guy too much credit, Bill Gates has more business accumen (translation: "evil") in the tip of his colon than all of us have together. Katz, I presume, never went to business school. But it seems they make a big deal there about making money, marketing products to actual customers. And I know this sounds weird, but they say that giving your stuff away to a restrictive, insular market might be considered "bad for business" and might force the company to "file for bankruptcy."

Go figure.

With the recent round of Linux company layoffs (correl for one) I begin to wonder ... who's pride? Who's fall?

Marc Rich Declared Clinton's "Customer of the Year"

Bush won't have Microsoft broken up . . .

[u2zoo]

. . . end of story . . really. examples you ask?

Let's start with the Jim Lehrer interview with Bush. He (George) states clearly that he favors Microsoft and what they have done for the technology movmement.

George W. Bush: I hope, though, that whatever settlement is done it won't ruin this company because this company has been a very interesting innovator, and so I hope the judge would keep in mind that this company is an important part of the technological revolution taking place in America.

yawn . . the interview then turns to Bush advisor Ralph Reed - who was on the Microsoft payroll. Bush tries to wiggle out the issue, etc. . but the damage is done there. What do we learn from this encounter? Bush likes Microsoft, would prefer to not see the company broken up, and has a close advisor who is paid by Microsoft. Brilliant.

This quote from Salon.com:

Texas governor has gone on record strongly defending the software giant against the federal suit. "What I am worried about is if this company were to be broken up, this engine of change and this engine of growth," Bush said in February. "I am not sympathetic to lawsuits. Write that down."

Next,we have this article and this one and this one (which states Bush owns sares of Microsoft . . . ugh.

Of course the deal closer is the fact the www.georgewbush.com is running Windows 2000 (According to NetCraft). Heh,heh.

ok so what is my point (i have the flu . . just hold on for a second) . . Bush clearly has postive feelings towards Microsoft. I think Aschroft does too . . in the end these two hold enough strings to probably pull the case in their favor.

Anyone one else...

[vinnythenose]

Almost anyone else in Bill Gates' shoes would have done the same thing. Microsoft turned into a money making machine, this is what happens when a company gets large. Bill Gates was a good business man and did what was right for his business. But remember, it's been a while since it was entirely his business, he also had to please share holders. And what to share holders want?? More income for the coming so their shares go up! It's a bit of a self defeating cycle, but this is what happens to business. The bigger they become, the more investors they need, the more investors they need, the more profit they need, the more profit they get, the bigger they become, the bigger they become, the more investers they need. And so on. The problem is, that once you get to the top, to stay on top you must build a better product and swallow up anything that comes close (otherwise you won't be on top for long).

As for Bill Gates himself, I somewhat respect the guy. I saw an interview with him and he said the when he died his family wouldn't get copious amounts of money. They would have to earn it themselves if they wanted it. The bulk of his money was going to charity. Does that sound evil? He's already donated millions to charities.

But before people think me pro-microsoft and start bashing the hell out of me. I am a Linux lover. But I grew up using DOS and Windows. I use them, at home I use them a lot right now (at least until I get Linux up and running, I just need to find the time), at work I use Solaris. I'm not a hacker, I can solve problems when they crop up, but I don't go around recoding my kernel on a whim. I don't like Windows, I have issues with it, but you'll find that you have issues with any operating system that you didn't make yourself. And when you did make it yourself, you'll probably have even more issues, but at least you can try to fix them.

In short, Microsoft != Bad, Microsoft == Money Making Corporate machine, well hey, that's what every corporation does!! They're just not all on top of the world. Bill Gates (although I don't know him personally), seems like a decent guy, a decent guy who loves the company he built (wow, no one ever does that do they?).

If you're going to bash Microsoft for their practices, bash every corporation and every small company that wants to become the #1 corporation. They're all the same.

My 4 cents work (CDN funds, so 2 cents US)

Re:WTF?

[b1t r0t]

The fact that Microsoft's stock price has dropped from a high of $120 per share in December of 1999 to around $58 per share today is a pretty good indicator of a company on the ropes, if not dying.

This was modded (Score:5, Insightful) ??? Someone must have found a new supply of three-dollar crack. It sounds more like a troll to me.

Cisco has gone from a high of 82 in March 2000 to a low of under 30 last week. That's a much faster and deeper plunge, and they're hardly "on the ropes".

Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes

[lgeeko]

2 comments: * Remember when Ballmer said that under no circumstances would Microsoft ever consider relocating to Canada? Makes the news about Corel a little more interesting, eh? * I haven't read Heileman's book, but the Wired article was one of the few places that drove home the point that Microsoft's crime wasn't bundling IE into Windows, it was threatening Compaq that they would lose their Windows licensing deal if they continued to promote Netscape.

is this book......

[canning]

a fantasy? As much as some of us like to hate Windows and the domination of Gates, there will always be people using this operating sytem. Microsoft will not dissapear, whether it be as one company or ten.

I believe that if Gates is forced to break up Microsoft, it will become stronger. He will have no choice but to move in a drastically different directions and because he has the money and the resources, he will succeed, period.

This book is based on opinion, arrogance, and fantasy, but no doubt good casual reading.

Another take

[RandomPeon]

If you take a look at Barbarians led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside (ISBN: 0805057552), which is now a couple years old, you'll see the same thing. It's a great book about Microsoft written by one of their of their former top coders. It explains how Windows managed to be as poor as it is - Gates constantly changes his demands for what Windows should be, there's no long-term plan, ans so forth. The book does lose a lot of detail around the time the antitrust case begins because the author leaves MS at that time but its description of Microsoft up to 1997 is a great read.

Same story, different take. Parts of it are hillarious, others are downright scary.

On the subject of hubris, Jon...

[American AC in Paris]

...one may wish to reserve statements such as "Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder" until such a time as Microsoft is actually brought down. As it stands, he still has a fair chance of wriggling out of this...

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[GMontag451]

Don't attack Mr. Bush without foundation - wait until he does something bad before beating him up.

You mean like showing his complete distaste for the separation of church and state by using his first act as president-proper to dedclare the next day a "National Day of Prayer"? Or how about imposing a double standard by removing federal funding to any and all international groups that provide abortions or abortion counseling, but keeping funding for many faith based organizations? Or maybe his sabotage of the federal budget to give the richest 1% of the country a tax break? Or his appointment of an attorney general that has a history of not upholding the law? Just how much bad stuff to you want him to do before we start beating him up?

I admit that Bill Clinton did some things I thought were reprehensible, such as getting us involved in a civil war we had no business in. But Bush has done stuff to rival Clinton's misdeeds, and Clinton had a full 8 years to mess up. Bush has had less than a month. If Bush continues his current course, I sure hope he is impeached before he has a chance to be elected again.

Re:"Arrogant, delusional monomania"

[GMontag451]

Um, no. Those statements are not libel because they are opinions, not facts. You can write any opinion you want to about any person, you just can't write something factually false, and present it as true.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[GMontag451]

Separation of church and state is violated by declaring a national day of prayer? This is something which has been done many times in our nation's history with no outcry of violation of church and state.

I've never heard of a single time when any president declared a National Day Of Prayer. A national moment of silence, maybe. But that is something completely different.

This concept was developed by people who wanted to protect the common man from an oppressive national government forcing them to have certain religious beliefs. (eg, what is happening with the religion of atheism today in the PRC.)

First of all, atheism isn't a religion. It is an absence of a belief in a god. Secondly, the "beliefs" of atheism can never be force on you against your will because they don't exist. Atheism has no, I repeat, no beliefs, period. And finally, declaring a national day of prayer is forcing beliefs on me. It is forcing the belief that prayer is anything more than just spiritual masturbation.

There's no debate in the scientific community about when life begins - it's at conception - so Mr. Bush apprently believes in protecting the rights of the unborn child.

There's no debate in the scientific community about when life begins because you can't have a scientific debate about something that is arbitary. The point at which life begins is a matter of definition, and cannot be influenced either way by the scientific method.

Many faith-based programs work where "secular" ones fail. For example the rate of recidivism in drug rehabilitation programs is much lower in faith-based programs than in ones that have no faith component.

Please show some statistics.

People who have historically paid more should get more of a break! It's a precentage thing - and it's fair!

This has been addressed by other replies.

Tell me one case where Mr. Ashcroft has not upheld the law.

He lied under oath in his confirmation hearings. There was also a case while he was still governor where according to a new state law, all money from police seizures had to go to the state fund for education, instead of funding the police departments as it used to. Ashcroft is on record telling the police chief that he would "look the other way" if the law wasn't followed.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[GMontag451]

A separation of church and state implies a separation of god and state. This is because endorsing a god necessarly favors certain religions over certain other religions. And the "so help you God" bit was added in the fifties, the same time they illegally placed "In God We Trust" on our currency and "One nation under God" in the Pledge of Alliegance.

Atheism is not, has never been, and will never be a religion. It is not a belief system. It isn't even a belief! It is, pure a simple, an absence of a certain catagory of beliefs, namely those that involve the existence of one or many gods of any sort. And separation of curch and state guarentees Freedom of Religion to everyone except public officals on duty. Public officials off duty can believe whatever they want to. Public officials on duty are supposed to act as if they don't believe in any one religion.

As for your tax comments, getting all the tax money through a tax on consumption will inevitably produce a recession, if not a depression. It would provide a great incentive to consume less and less, and in a consumer based economy, this is disastrous. And about the flat tax, even if the flat tax scheme you propose takes into account interest and capitol gains (which most of them don't) how has a millionaire EARNED his money from interest? He/she hasn't contributed to production in any way, shape, or form. In essence, interest is the result of using your money to steal money from the people actually producing stuff. And BTW, it is most definately the job of the government (at least the tax code setting portion of it) to decide who can afford to give what. That is the whole point in setting a tax code.

I don't know enough to comment about the tax cuts by JFK, but the economic upturn created by Reagan's tax cuts was a mirage supported by the government's deficit spending. When the deficit finally caught up to Reagan, he was gone and Bush Sr. had to deal with the resulting recession. Plain and simple, trickle down economics and deficit spending doesn't work.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[GMontag451]

Well, I obviously didn't know about the National Day of Prayer every year. But that doesn't diminish the argument

Well then dictionary.com is wrong. Dictionarys only record what words are used as, and are very often either out of date or wrong. Strong atheism asserts that there is no god. Atheism as a whole just denies certain beliefs, and as such, has no beliefs.

Life's beginning is arbitrary because the difference between life and non-life is a matter of definition. As there is really no consistent definition of life, then the choice between life begining at conception, and life begining at birth is arbitrary.

WRT your statistics about drug programs, please post some impartial statistics. Statistics about a program coming from a programs own website are not impartial.

Don't make blanket statements. I am an atheist, as well as many of my friends. I do not know a single person that considers narcotics anonymous a religious program.

Re:Ancient History

[DeadMeat (TM)]

If anything, Bush's administration might push the case even farther. Remember that Bush appointed John Ashcroft to attorney general.

When Ashcroft served as attorney general for Missouri, he wasn't exactly a fan of big business. And supposedly he's also strongly opposed to Microsoft's monopoly.

I'm not exactly sure what evidence anyone has that the Bush administration will "return to a policy of ignoring Microsoft's little shortcomings". Not only is there no evidence in Ashcroft's past performance that he would not pursue the case (if anything, the opposite is true), but I'm not exactly sure when the government "ignored" Microsoft's illegal activities, either. (The Justice Department had been waving the anti-trust stick at Microsoft long before the Clinton administration -- that's why Microsoft stopped licensing Windows so that computer manufacturers had to buy a license for each computer, regardless of whether or not Windows went on it.)

I'm not a huge fan of Bush (or Gore for that matter), but I'm confident that Ashcroft will keep the Microsoft case going through the Supreme Court.

Re:far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[arfy]

Try www.opensecrets.org and search. Both William Gates of Microsoft and Microsoft are there for hundreds of thousands, leaning Republican for the last election cycle.

Ummm,,, Okay

[AKAImBatman]

But when someone installs WindowNT/2000, isn't IIS installed by default and thus counted by Netcraft?

Re:Ummm,,, Okay

[tristan f.]

No, as a matter of fact, it isn't.

its just a big HUGE successful software company!

[PIPINO]

and its not the only one makin OSes too
we have a bazillion linux distribution make
apple
beos
UNIX
BSDz

i dont like what jealousy can make of people
i wonder if bill gates wasnt the richest man in the universe
would people have hated him as much
and ...windows is gettin more stable , linux more user friendly ...and the software market was never as cool as these days

people who complain are mostly home user who think its cool to bash MS and take linux side
cause its cool to be minority these days
may GREEN DAY rox you

have fun

Re:Ancient History

[Orifice]

I think this is where Microsoft's investment in Ralph Reed is going to really pay off. I'll be really surprised if Microsoft doesn't get off scott free.

Ruling to be Vacated!

[BFOM]

This author is wrong. The case has not even been tried yet. The appeals court will vacate the original ruling without prejudice. This means it will have to be re-filed. This time the DOJ will actually have to state in advance what they hope to do in court in the filing. And the new judge will actually follow the rules when it comes to things like trial law.

far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[lyapunov]

but...For all of gate's billions, I understand that he has never once contributed any money to republican or democratic parties. We all know that this is a standard practice for many of the large corperations to ensure an easier time regardless of the election outcome. I am curious if he has experienced extra flak because of his unwillingness to "play ball" like the rest of corperate america.

I do not like gates or his shitty products, but if it is true that he has never contributed to the political parties, then that is worth some kudos and maybe even a little admiration

Re:far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[lyapunov]

He is not trying to bribe himself into having an easier go of it. Why else would a vast majority of companies contribute to the major political parties. I don't think that they do it because they are feeling generous or to help their social conscience.

Re:far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[lyapunov]

Sorry, my bad. Would you happen to have a source for this information?

Thanks

Re:far be it for me to defend mr bill...

[Wilbur Whateley]

For all of gate's billions, I understand that he has never once contributed any money to republican or democratic parties.

This is about as incorrect as it gets - Microsoft gave money BOTH to Republicans and to Democrats in the last year or two.

I wish ...

[GreatBallsOfFire]

... I was "brought down" the as reported by this book. Gates will still make more in one minute than I do in a year.

BTW -- it is pandering to slahsdotters; there's a lot to go before Microsoft is really brought down or threatened by anyone or anything else, linux included.

Re:This book is too early and presumptous

[mvdwege]

Germany, BMW and Mercedes are building plants in the US as fast as they can, to flee teh confiscatory tax rate

Sorry to interrupt your nice little US-centric line of thought, but wasn't Daimler-Chrysler scaling down its US operations in favor of their European (read German) arm?

Mart

Re:Gates Is One Of Us

[kgutwin]

No, you don't get it. One of the main reasons why he hasn't done so well is because he didn't make it through college. College is the time when you learn all the stuff you don't want to learn. Yes, it sounds dumb - but just listen. Having the patience to finish school says a lot about a person. It is obvious from just reading the descriptions of Gates and his personality that he is not a very patient or methodical person. This isn't to say that everyone who goes to college somehow magically becomes patient... it's just that it speaks highly towards that person's patience and determination.

Bill Gates was a shooting star. Yeah, he was brilliant - perhaps not in coding, but certainly in winning people over to his side. But he lacks the strength and determination to do the job right.

I'm sure all you coders out there know what I'm talking about. There's a big difference between doing the job fast (ie. what Gates did - build up an industry in an incredibly short time) and doing it right - with stability and a support structure.

Just imagine what the personal computer industry would have been like had it been given forty years to mature - slowly, and carefully.

-Karl
------------
[root@kgutwin /dos]# file msdos.sys

Arrogance?

[Rune69]

Microsoft was brought down by the arrogance of its founder? Whenever I use a Microsoft product, I always get brought down by a 'fatal exception occurring in 0:675460;;56566557.678600012020er'

Re:Microsoft Breakup

[leviramsey]

I agree with you 100%.

The only two break-ups to rival a potential MS break-up are Standard Oil and AT&T. In both cases, the broken up companies became worth more separately than in the unified form.

Agreed

[Captain_Frisk]

Please, let's free up Microsoft to compete, all of us geeks will be rewarded when the NasDA shoots up again, and we'll have lots of discretionary income to buy Linux boxes and work on our Linux hobby.

Well said. Linux is mostly that, a hobby. It won't rise above that until its accessible to the common user. The common computer user is a retard, and doesn't want to use the command line. For geeks like us, its the way go, allowing us power and flexibility. For everyone else, Windows is probably the right choice.

Crippling MS may sound like a good thing in our eyes, but think about what impact it would have on the average computing public, and then our economy before you cheer that MS is going down.

Captain_Frisk

Re:Agreed

[Captain_Frisk]

What point are you trying to make here? I'll agree that Linux is where its at for running a server.

Does this justify breaking MS up?

Regardless of the fact that desktop sales are going downhill, I can't believe that more servers are sold than desktop machines (could be wrong... don't have any figures in front of me).

This whole trial got started because MS integrated internet explorer into Windows. And internet explorer is good. (Don't even talk to me about netscape).

Captain_Frisk (not a troll)

Re:Agreed

[RavenLrD20k]

True...over what MICROSOFT put out previously, W2k is substantially the supirior of WinNT, and it may be even more stable than SOME distributions of Linux. However, Linux isn't M$'s ONLY competing OS. You have IBM's OS/2 out there, which I have not very much knowledge about I admit. But what about UNIX? Microsoft as Leaps and bounds to go before it achieves the stability of a full UNIX machine.

I give an example. My school is running two different webservers. Both are roughly equally used, as depected by Sniffer analisys. They are run on the same type of hardware. The only difference? One is running Win2K Advanced Server, and the other is running IBM's Version of UNIX. Guess which server requires a weekly reboot? Guess which server has been running for roughly three months non-stop?

M$ never innovated anything. They just come up with their own version what has already been done more efficiently by another company 20 years before, and slap on an "Spanking New" Label.

The only thing that has put M$ on top are the non-tech masses that own a computer at home and use it to do the natural stuff like surf the web, check their email, and write letters / reports. Those that need more robust remote administration, multi tasking, along with support for Telnet and a reliable server usually turn to a UNIX Machine or variant. --- It is the smart man who can quote others, and it is the wise man that can come up with his own, but it is the wise @$$ that came up with this one.

Re:"internet explorer is good"

[Captain_Frisk]

internet explorer is good" so it is ok to be forced to use it. damn good thing you said you were not a trol...

I do think Internet Explorer is good. I personally feel that browsing the internet should be something that is built into the system, especially given the current rise in the availability of high speed internet access.

Captain_Frisk

Contrary to popular belief...

[megaduck]

Mr. Katz may be right. Unlike a lot of the people here, I agree with Jon and Mr. Heilemann on this one. Microsoft is pretty much screwed from this point out. Not only will the company probably be broken up, but they have absolutely no allies anymore.

Intel and Microsoft were working on some joint software development ventures before the trial. Intel testified, and Microsoft pulled the plug. Microsoft may be powerful, but they can't exist without hardware. Cold relations with Intel will hurt them A LOT. Not only that, but the .NET framework depends on a tight integration of applications with the Microsoft server on the back end. Splitting the company up may very well trash their plans for .NET, which Bill Gates himself has said is a "bet the company" strategy.

This may be the beginning of the end, folks.

Grab him by the threat

[schnacky]

"At every critical juncture when a friend, colleague, attorney or ally needed to grab him by the threat and force him to come to his senses, nobody did..." I hate it when people grab my threat.

good review, but should've been proof-read...

[epicurus]

Great review Jon, but shouldn't you have somebody proof-read before it's put up? Some of the typeos got me confused for a bit...

wow

[SGDarkKnight]

good god, i didn't think i'd be reading the book in the slashdot posts.... ah well....

Microsoft Breakup

[BEHiker57W]

I think a breakup of Micros~1 is probably best for the shareholders. But it's not best for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Remember the 1960s and 1970s conglomerates. Every exec wanted to run a bigger division of a bigger company so we saw consolidation everywhere. It turned out to be bad not just for quality and innovation, but for the profits of shareholders. In the 1980s many of them shrank or were broken up by leveraged buyouts. Well, LBOs require that the shareholders find a way to get more money for the broken up parts than the conglomerate execs were making with the huge whole. Part of the recovery from the stagnation of the 1970s was the fall of those big multi-industry firms and the rise of medium sized focused firms. And the computer industry propspered as just-in-time production and the integration of those firms was aided by IT.

Now we see Micros~1 is really two companies, Operating Systems and Applications. Micros~1 has made more money off the applications sold to the average Mac user than in OS plus applications sold to the avarage Wintel user for fifteen years now. In servers and applications, Micros~1 has been held back by the need to keep the desktop monopoly proprietary. Surely the server developers at Micros~1 would love to be developing on Linux or FreeBSD or Slowaris (I've been on both sides and I know that the desktop side of NT servers is a major hassle). The application developers want to run the latest IE and Active/.NET whatever on *nix and Macintosh machines, too. Why give up 15% of a multi-billion dollar market?

Remember the VC++4 Macintosh cross compiler that made Mac programs look just like MFC programs in Win95/NT3.51? When Word 6 was rejected under that piece of garbage, the application folks had a Mac specific port up their sleeves. The OS divison made them do something stupid and they were ready to stop.

Now consider the possibilites if the OS division is separated from the Applications division. Real OS innovation and a real chance to capture new markets will provide the application division with chances to grow. A small device strategy that doesn't revolve around some nasty WindozeCE thing will be a chance to really embed the world. And the industry will benefit along with Micros~1 Applications Co.

The OS division would be freed, too. The internals of NT are a fine OS and 9X is a piece of work but the application monopoly has been making those guys complascent. Where is the innovation? Without the management knowledge that applications make the money, MS/OS could really try to change our paradigm with a .NET the redefines the way data interoperates around the world. Sun tried with Java, but few people took up their slooow toolkit for client side because of a few bad design decisions (though it prospers as a server rapid development environment). There area lot of bright folks focusing their energy on creating incompatibilities to harness you to Windoze and MS Apps (do your really want Outlook Server???). What if those folks could try creating a real internet services environment focused on usability and creativity and interoperatbility and simplicity and transparency rather than simply extending the MS/OS monopoly? They really could change the world.

Micros~1 might be richer split. The shareholders would be better off with the opportunity to invest in the companty they want. The whole world would be better off with two Micros~1's.

But what about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer? They would have to really work again and probably they would have to work against each other in different companies. Why should decabillionaires have to struggle like nimble little kids again with only half the power and prestige?

Of course, the secret ebenfit for Gates is the opportunity to prove that he can do it again at 40.

But it's not really an antitrust case; Micros~1 should be broken up beacuse it's good for the shareholders.

-Brian

Sun is evil?

[BEHiker57W]

The way I recall it, Sun releases the source of their key operating system (Slowaris) to everyone with a license, almost like GPL.

And Sun supports open standards. They pour money into Java and OpenOffice and various other initiatives.

The hardware is expensive, sure, but it's really good, too.

And Sun's business model is the classic open model. They sell hardware and make money doing support for the software.

But I'll agree that I want to see an even more powerful Micros~1. I'd just like to see it in two or three pieces.

-Brian

Cure for Cursed Items

[Databass]

Maybe what you could do is hold more than one magical book in your hand. If the limit for magical books in hand is two, and you hold a third magical book, the auras temporarily cancel out and the first book briefly loses its magical cursed properties. Then you can set it down as if it were an ordinary book, waiting for some other unlucky soul to pick it up. Of course, where you do you get more magical books? Amazon's Rare and Out of Print Section? No- O-Reiley ; -)

Re:It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[baptiste]

Why is President in quotes? He IS the President.

He may be yours, but I'll never accept him as mine until a true and fair recount is performed - which is currently getting underway.

If the quotes bother you, I can always write it President*

LOL

--

It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[baptiste]

No Microsoft is not on the verge of insolvency, but Microsoft has fallen. They are no longer viewed as invincible. Sure they still dominate desktops, etc. But last year punidts expected Microsoft to rule everything. Notice how more and more 'set top boxes, etc" are running Linux? This was supposed to be Microsoft's next big thing.

I don't think Micro$oft will be broken up. I think our "President" will work to ensure the anti-trust suit is given 0 attention. But Microsoft is hurting. Windows 2000 is NOT taking the world by storm like folks expected. Linux IS making inroads into Microsoft's high profit server market. The desktop scene remains a cash cow for them, but I believe Linux WILL become a strong competitor to Microsoft in the coming years.

We geeks all talk about how 'the average user doesn't have a clue and uses Micro$oft/Intel because - they rule" While true to a point, at some point IF Linux desktop installs become more mainstream and easy to use, the box makers can't ignore it for long. It can wipe off a significant cost for each box (not just hte OS which Micro$oft sometimes gives away practically, but the other things like Office suites, anit virus (on Linux - NOT! :) 0, etc. If htis starts to happen - look out. The only catch here is games - but I see that changing soon too.

Will this result in Microsoft imploding - no way. But the might this giant once held is slipping away and they will soon become just another large software company hawking its wares. Sure they'll use every trick in teh book to stay on top, but instead of the straight up trajectory they are used to, I expect Microsoft will now have to 'work' for good earnings and market share - Just like Intel has since AMD started whipping their butts.

--

Re:It Depends How You Define "Fall" :)

[GRBCGlover]

Removing a load-bearing wall from a structure causes that structure to crumble. Sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, but inevitably and inexorably it becomes rubble.

Microsoft is crumbling. It is slowly losing face to a world of Open Source software, and increasing freedom of information. The traditional conservative capitalist mentality of the United States is facing an increased threat that comes by way of the libertarian principles of freedom, particularly the freedom of information. RIAA v. Napster, MPAA v. 2600, etc. etc. etc. The rallying cry has long been "Information Wants to be Free" and we're hearing it more and more. This, I think, indicates the direction of my generation as a whole. We will not sit idly by and let people take from us those things that we feel are ours by right.

Microsoft has taken these things for the past 20 years.

Microsoft is dying because new seeds have been planted. Microsoft crumbles because of the underlying ideological shift. Microsoft will fall because the world will eventually shun and reject those who are devoted to masking innovation, and keeping the product away from the users.

The proof that this is true: Microsoft has been struggling with antitrust investigations since roughly 1994. In the same amount of time, Linus Torvalds and Linux have become household names...bringing "Unix" into mainstream vocabulary. This isn't a fad or fleeting media hype. People know, understand, and care because this is a potential alternative, and a historically significant paradigm shift. As the Open Source movement continues to gain momentum, the user interfaces for these platforms will become increasingly friendly. The desktop environments will become faster, and more efficent. The software will be ported, distributed, used, and improved, because of the user and not because of the business. We'll be oriented once again toward the idea of filling a demand, rather than supplying what we think the average user needs because we assume they're too stupid to understand what they want.

Microsoft fails at this very endeavor. This is the load-bearing wall of future economic advancement in the technology industry. Without a radical paradigm shift in Redmond, Microsoft will crumble. The Open Source movement is the sledgehammer.

"Arrogant, delusional monomania"

[TDScott]

Ummm... can you say "libel"?

This book is too early and presumptous

[typical geek]

Since George W. Bush has been elected (fair and square mind you), and since he realizes just what Fortune 10 company has been driving the American economy in the last 10 years, he's going to ask Ashcroft to ignore his fundamentalist leanings (I mean, MS does write software for infidel languages, like Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew) and lighten up on MS. My prediction, a fine of a few million dollars, a slap on the wrist, and MS is given carte blanche to compete as only they know how to compete.

Surely it's not coincidence that the American economy has taken a nosedive just as the Microsoft trial came to fruition. You would think that the American government would learn from the mistakes of all the nations in the world that try to overregulate thier economies:

• Japan, stuck in a recession since the '80s.
  
• Germany, BMW and Mercedes are building plants in the US as fast as they can, to flee teh confiscatory tax rate.
  
• Malaysia, another paper tiger who's state run econonmy has collapsed.
  

Please, let's free up Microsoft to compete, all of us geeks will be rewarded when the NasDA shoots up again, and we'll have lots of discretionary income to buy Linux boxes and work on our Linux hobby.

Thanks!

Re:Mr� Katz

[bryanbrunton]

You seem to have almost zero understanding of the Linux/Open Source phenomena©

The longevity of the Linux movement is based purely on: ¥1 existence of the Internet ¥2 existence of people who want to code©

Now, if MS can only dispose either of these two elements, they can ensure that the Linux movement will die©

Also, the simple fact that you used a term like "product line" in relation to the Linux movement exposes you as a probable MS brainless marketing-droid©

So this is the Hellmouth

[slaytanic killer]

Well, now I know why people have such a strong dislike of Katz. This really is an embarassing article. A very high-profile geek gets an article on Slashdot front page, making us all seem like idiots.

Re:Gates Is One Of Us

[jotaeleemeese]

Who is blaming Gates for leaving college? Nobody.

And about his honesty not hiding his money you don't know, I don't know, and anyway his wealth and how he decides to use it is beyond the point. what is under discussion is why MS is in problems today and if perhaps the obvious stuborness of Gates could lead MS into the abyss.

Who said he his evil? Megalomany, although not a desirable part of anybody's character is not evil, just undesirable.

You say "he gave the old aristocracy the finger": which old aristocracy? MS predatory bussiness practices are aimed to put out of bussiness or control companies owned mainly by people of Gates' generation, other geeks, as you would put it. The old aristocracy in more traditional industries either do not care or is unaffected (oil industry and banking rely in non MS software for most of theri bussiness) and the aristocrats of the World are more worried about not being harrased by paparazzis than about anything MS and Gates do or don't do.

You say Gates has ideas and passion. I said they are the wrong ideas or other people's ideas and that passion that clouds your common sense and judgment is of no use and is more a liability than an asset.

If the typical geek believes that the way to fame and fortune is by being arrogant, bullying your bussiness partners and clients and who knows what else then yes, Gates is one of them.

Re:If it wasn't for Gates......

[Glanz]

"I don't fault Gates et al. for making huge sums of money. I fault MS for making any innovation in the field of computer science the life-long propriety of one company." I agree with you there: 999%. I use Windows Me (of all things) and Open BSD, so I am not at all trying to criticize the Open Source philo at all et al. I have done much research within the Genome Project and I wouldn't have done it for a drug company. (BTW BSD was the only OS that could handle it). The idea of propriety and property bothers me very much too. It's like taking the attitude (as a MD): No, I won't tell you how to cure that patient because the treatment is my "intellectual property." I've got a problem with the "$$$ pig" side of things in general. There's more to life. I have noticed that the philosophy upon which Open Source is based is indeed a sharing concept much like the sharing upon which all knowledge and information discovered, uncovered, or stumbled upon by the scientific community should be idealistically. Open Source needs a "Walt Whitman" as much as Microsoft needs to get rid of Gates. He's rich enough. Let him look for "power" somewhere else. In a way, his attitude reminds me of those drug company A-holes who wanted to "patent" life itself.

The fact IS...

[Glanz]

....That although Gates possesses some rather autocratic personality traits, such as his general "if you don't like it you know what you can do," attitude he still hasen't yet raised himself up to the level of the "look at me who created MacOS for "everyman" " mentality of the "holier than thou" faction of the boomer generation of which, I must add, I am an unwilling member (Karmic reasons). As far as ego goes, I prefer the money grubbing, power-hungry, attitude of Gates to the slimy, slippery saintlike, politically correct, "power to the people with sugar added" attitude of our illustrious saint-like aforesaid guru of the enlightened generation.

Good points...

[Glanz]

I have a certain "nostalgia" for what Microsoft could have been. It pleased me to see the first Macs come out for the same reason. I just knew that the avenue of communication opened by the accessibility of PCs would have a profound effect on the world, but for getting "things" done, I prefer BSD (UniX) based systems. Once you get pass the language and realize that you can make BSD do just about anything concerning enormous file systems containing updatable statistical data (non-static), the feeling of power is enormous. I admit being an "iggy" concerning Linux, but I imagine that with the new kernel, one might be able to do the same things because Linux comes from the same neighborhood. In scientific research that would be great. Too bad for Microsoft. Their stuff works, but so does an old 55 chevy, duct-taped together so that the doors don't fall onto the road. ("Fill it up Clide, A gallon of gas and two gallons of oil please.") I am disappointed with MS because it could have been better and more "Open" (as in "Source").

If it wasn't for Gates......

[Glanz]

....much of today's Linux illuminiti wouldn't have heard of Operating Systems, let alone computers. They just weren't cool. Gates made the PC accessible to everyone who could buy one. Today, most of the "virtual world" prefers Windows: writer's who have something to get out to the publisher, businesses which do not want to jump through coded flaming hoops to set up networks or hire specialized geeks to do it for them, people who use the Web as one would use a communication device or the greatest library of knwledge History has ever seen...., in short, people who do not wish to spend half their valuable time typing paths, correcting flawed code, looking for doubtful updates written by high school students, etc. In other words, people with a life which doesn't revolve around the deliberate technical esoterism and infantile egoistic attitudes of Linux freaks who have more interest in keeping themselves in a closed club. Of course Open Source isn't like that, just some interested parties who do not understand the philosophy behind it. It's nice to "be in the know" enough to denigrate those who simply wish to accomplish the task facilitated by the computer they happen to be using at the time. Gates has made the PC a universal tool. There's no getting around that. Linux is trying, but it must crush the seed of its own destruction first. Instead of freaking on and dissing easily installed "distros" the Linux community should be encouraging them.

I think Slashdot is mistaken...

[Meorah]

Ok, somehow along the line, people have made some mistaken assumptions about the major NOSs out there. Everyone assumes that all sysadmins are a bunch of developers. This just isn't the case.

You want to know why I think Linux has done so well as a web server and not quite been fully accepted as a file server et al? IMO, its because web developers, coders, and "nerds" all have at least a small bit of experience with CLIs and basic programming principles. However, even though these people CAN be great administrators, they're usually quite cost prohibitive and/or developing stand-alone or web-embedded apps, scripts, etc. They're a minority; an elite level; driven to learn more; unable to just play admin for a mere 25-100 users.

However, there is entirely too much technology in the world for those people, the cream of the crop, to administer everything! So here comes your generic NTA-level Administrator. He doesn't understand what every DLL file is used for; doesn't have the faintest notion of what root means, and for all intents... really doesn't know what anybody would use a perl script for.

However, this level person has a different skill-set: Managing users, troubleshooting network problems, flying through wizards that he has memorized, and restructuring directories through his GUI. He knows most administrative functions, and performs them well. He has basic management abilities, and gives his opinions and consultations to his superiors freely, while explaining what he wants in a language they can understand. He does everything that is required to keep his workstations up and running, 24/7.

What is the difference between these 2 people? Well, I'd say that the first person's raw talent and efficiency is compensated by the second person's raw effectiveness and personability.

The short version of this mini-rant is... Developer=CS=Linux while Administrator=CIS=NT. They're most definitely not mutually exclusive, but experience has shown me which groups prefer which operating systems.

THAT is the reason that I think Linux "makes a great webserver"(as well as mail server, less Exchange), while "Windows is preferred in the mid-sized corporate environment"(where most admins just don't know enough about Linux).

Protector of Capitalist views,

MSDN?

[Meorah]

Technet and Knowledge Base.

No, you can't type in "THIS COM OBJECT WONT WORK WITH YOUR DATABASE! WTF?", but with a little bit of effort, you can find EVERY error. It gets easier as you get used to it.

If all else fails, just call up MS and explain your error. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to explain all the "ins and outs" of your error, including causes and resolutions. No, you don't get their source code, but its their software. They support it, but they don't want you to hose it up.

Protector of Capitalist views,

Gates and Nicholson

[banuaba]

With all this talk of megalomania, all I can see is Bill Gates talking to Tom Cruise:
You want my OS on your box;
You need my OS on your box;
And somewhere, deep down in places you don't talk about at dinner parties, my OS on your box makes you feel better.

Mr. Gates, I want the truth.
Tom, you little pussy, you can't handle the truth
Mr. Gates, did you order Linux put on your Webservers?
You're goddamn right I did, and I'd do it again.

Well, I suppose that the defense rests. I shouldn't be at work this morning. Blea.

Brant

Re:WTF?

[EastCoastSurfer]

You may have to explain what a stored procedure is to most of the "I think mySQL is the greatest database in the world people". From what I have read on /., that would be a significant amount of their readers ;-)
With that said you are correct in saying that switching databases is not an easy task. Each implements its own subset/superset of whichever SQL standard(92, 89). Plus, to get top performace you usually tweak database specific things, such as giving the query optimizer hints on which index to use. These tweaks are very database dependent.
I have looked a few times at moving from MS SQL Server to Oracle on *nix in hopes of gaining performance, but the work to move always outweighs the benefits(I am not excited about converting 25k lines of stored procedures). Before everyone starts bashing SQL server it has worked fairly well for our environment. We have about 25GB of data running on a Dual P2 400 w/ 2Gigs of RAM. The system runs a couple of real time data entry apps, batch processing work, and is the backend to the company intranet(provides reports, security, etc...).
Of course there are things that I don't like about MS SQL Server, but that happens with any product that you spend alot of time with.

John Heilemann on the radio

[bananapeel17]

John Heilemann, the author of this book, is on the NPR talk show The Connection today. The website lists times and stations.

Micrsoft Windows is proprietary, unstable, etc.?

[jeholman2003]

Proprietary?

Microsoft continues to be called proprietary, but I fail to see where such an opinion is derived from. Yes it is true that their OS is not open source, but the same is true for many other commercial operating systems. An OS's level of proprietaryness is not rated on its availability of source code, but on its documentation and 3rd party extendibility. Yes they use APIs that are sometimes not published and available, but for the most part, Windows and its respective APIs and technologies are better documented than any other operating system in the world. The few proprietary APIs that Microsoft uses in Office could be recreated with other APIs by any third party. The number of books and documentation from Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN sites is in a league of its own. It is something that Linux truly will need to become a mainstream OS player. Well what about all that application integration? Is it not true that consumers want integration? Don't they want their word documents to embed a clip from a video or their file manager to be able to browse a web site or an FTP site? I think so. If it was not the case, then why are KDE and Gnome creating the exact same integration in Linux with component architectures like KParts and Bonobo.

Unstable?

Microsoft is constantly referred to as unstable and unreliable. Yes that may have been true in the past, but today, it is no longer a valid argument. Windows 2000 is built off of the same core technology as OS/2 (a beautifully designed OS I might add). It even contains POSIX compatibility in kernel space. It is true that if the user environment goes down, the computer is inaccessible without a reboot. Linux is nice because if X goes down, then I can just to a shell and start it up again. But in the eyes of the consumer, X dieing will be a crash. I have had X crash and burn way more than Windows crashes in burns. Plus with faulty drivers from Nvidia, X sometimes brings down my entire computer. With a good set of drivers, I can keep running Windows 2000 without a glitch for months. If I feed a faulty driver to Linux, or load a wacky kernel module, Linux is just as unstable as Windows with some faulty software or drivers. Plus I am sure if Linux does move into the mainstream and starts to support the millions of devices that are out there in the world, they will begin to suffer from stability issues as well. I have seen a lot of crappy programmers graduate from school. I am sure that they will land a job at some company, developing some driver with horrific C code that will bring down Linux just the same as that same bad programmer making a bad driver that brings down my Windows. An operating system is only as strong as its weakest piece of kernel code.


Microsoft has done a lot of good for the PC industry as a whole. They brought with the help of PC companies, computer to the masses. I think that this book forecasts something about Microsoft that is just not true. Just because some author says that Microsoft is dead doesn't mean that it is the case. They have a strong product line, they have great people who love software working for them, and they are fixing issues with their software like any other commercial company has to do. It seems that whenever a company is extremely successful and has a large market share, the first thing people like to do is start looking down on them and telling them everything they do wrong. Maintaining a couple hundred million lines of code at a software company with over 40,000 programmers is no easy task. What I would like to know is that if Linux is successful and takes off, will you condemn the beloved open source OS as well.

Ummm WTF did you want him to say??

[SmileeTiger]

Gates was unwavering. The company had done nothing wrong, the judge's findings were baseless, he had made no mistakes of any kind. He and Microsoft would be fully vindicated by the appeals process.

Gates:Yes we did everything wrong PLEASE break up Microsoft.

The guy who wrote this book doesn't seem to have a click (and there are 10 clicks in a clue).

Didn't MS try to settle?

[CargoCult]

What I heard was that the arbitrating Judge (Posner) said that MS & DoJ gave a lot of ground and the case was very close to being settled until the State's AG's got their egos in the way.

I hate hack reporting jobs - maybe he should have taken a bit more time to research before writing his book?

Re:WTF?

[Patrick McRotch]

I would be willing to wager that each of the organizations you mentioned use MS software to run their business. ~90% of businesses do not rely on AOL-Time Warner for their day-to-day operations. Let's face it, M$ has a stranglehold on corporate America and could easily bring our economy to it's knees.

WTF?

[Patrick McRotch]

"Heilemann is dead on when he says the Microsoft era is over"

Now I know JonKatz is a troll. Regardless of hom much you people like Linux and hate Microsoft, that does not change the fact that Microsoft is the most powerful, influential company in the United States. This article is pure FUD. I would challenge any one of you to prove that Microsoft is dead or dying, because the way I see it, they're at least as strong as ever.

Re:WTF?

[Mike The Plumber]

"Microsoft's stock price has dropped from a high of $120 per share in December of 1999 to around $58 per share today is a pretty good indicator of a company on the ropes, if not dying."

You're kidding right? This is a joke right? Give me a fscking break. Or a twix, your choice!

---

Ancient History

[Robert A. Heinlein]

Published 12/2000 and obviously written before that. The author bet on Gore to win.

The new administration will quickly return to a policy of ignoring Microsoft's little shortcomings, and may try to correct the anti-business judgement pushed through by the prior administration.

Re:Ancient History

[Dolorous One]

To answer your question, Bush II's going out of his way to work with the Democrats. Clinton did nothing of the sort with the Republicans when he was in office.

As for your first comment, I ask you: does the belief that the laws of this country should be respected and followed by everyone, regardless of his or her position, make one "rabid?" With that attitude, maybe you should "non-rabidly" be defending Microsoft.

Here's a thought: Maybe the pro-Clinton Democrats should also have defended Microsoft. After all, the two have a common philosophy: do everything for you, prevent you from learning enough to do anything effectively on your own, force you to do everything their way or not at all, and slander and threaten you if you oppose them.

Not about Windows

[Doom Ihl' Varia]

The post I made originally, and the book discussed by Mr. Katz is not about XXX operateing being better then Windows. It's about Bill Gates the man. Not some piece of software, but a person. If you believe Windows is a bad OS, then use another one. To every man his own, do as you please. But making a bad OS doesn't make a man evil. It's not even the point. So, please, stop discussing how much better Linux or some other OS is, and how much Windows supposedly sucks, but talk about Bill Gates and his company/empire.

Gates Is One Of Us

[Doom Ihl' Varia]

I'm some what ashamed of the stance taken against Bill Gates by my fellow geeks. In case some of you have forgotten, once upon a time Bill Gates was a college drop out. Who could blame him for leaving college? We know how useless education in America is. Especially in the IT field. Learning things on your own is always a better method. He was once a nobody like most of us and rose to be the supposed richest man in America. The richest man bit is questionable. Simply because he is honest enough not to hide all his money in over seas bank accounts. I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest if David Rockefeller had 5 times what Gates has in the bank. Gates is evil you say? How many other corporate mogals donate billions of their cash to charity? Most of them hoard it or use it to make more. You say his OS is crap. It's not designed for the proto-geek. It's designed for the main stream. And if you stop and think, this is what is for the sheep, you'll see it's not half bad. If you want to hack the Linux kernel, more power to you. But the sheep can't handle Linux. This whole anti-Gates stuff is crap. Compare him to other men with corporate empires. They ruin lives for their own amusement. They are a bunch of cut throat ruthless bastards. You know all the people who helped Gates from the start are nearly as rich as he is. You want to know what friends of other leaders of corporations got? Stabbed in the back when it became profitable. Gates is one of us my friends. Don't hate him. That's what they want us to do. Gates has some guts. He basically gave the old boys in the aristocracy the finger. It wasn't exactly a good idea to do so but still, he is against them. He is against this evil corporately owned nation of ours. This man had ideas and passion. And such his empire was founded upon. Not his years attending Yale, Dartmoth, Harvard, or any other worthless Ivy league school. Call this man evil, and you call the typical geek evil.

Gates should have been more paranoid about himself

[Fidget666]

It's funny. Gates claimed that he and Microsoft followed the maxim that only the paranoid survive, and that you have to keep track of every possible enemy, even two guys in a garage. Unfortunately, he forgot that sometimes the greatest enemy is yourself.