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Rivals Upset At Windows XP Features
Beowu1f writes: "Found an AP story on yahoo with a few snippet comments from the Iowa Attorney General, AOL, RealNetworks, Norton and a law professor. The article is relatively plain, talking about how rivals are getting pissed at the snowballing of features into XP, .NET and Hailstorm, saying it's the same as what MS did with IE, etc. etc." The article quotes David Farber, too. I don't mind that most Linux distros come with CD-burning software, IRC clients, a great paint program, etc. -- but then, they're independently written and optional.
from the Real Networks guy about WMP not being "the best". Ugh. What the hell would anyone from Real know about the best?
At work we had a licence crackdown, which meant bye-bye WinZip, hello PowerArchiver.
It's a great program -- 98% UI identical to WinZip, plus more options (view archives in explorer-like trees), more archive-type compatibility, and all around better. And FREE.
Besides, WinZip has been raking in dough for a simple repackage of the MIT info-zip library. The product has been stagnent for years.
As do I with maxed-Karma posts completely devoid of context. Being hit by my three year old neighbour or his 350 pound father are two entirely different things, and it would be idiotic to argue that they both be held to the same account. Microsoft is a 350 pound monopoly and should be held to tighter standards than others.
How wonderful. Microsoft has the gun loaded. I wonder how long it will take for the trigger finger to twitch.
Obviously, anyone who thought that waaay back then was wrong.
That's silly. People's needs differ, and they change. I thought that way back then, when my machine was 1MHz, and I was right. Now my machine is 750MHz, I think OSes are useful, and I'm right again.
Don't use revisionist arguments to prove your points - you have enough ammunition with your common sense.
mIRC is "nice", but compared to BitchX it's really annoying and lacking in functionality. blahblahblah.
--- posting anonymously to preserve the rain-forest.
Tilt your head 90 degrees counter-clockwise for the Eric Cartman effect.
> So it's ok to provide the consumer with the applications he needs as long as they are collected from multiple authors?
It's OK to provide the applications they need as long as competition is ensured. Open Source guarantees that. When Microsoft is the only company that can package up and sell the OS, they alone can decide which apps go in and which don't. Companies competing with the ones that go in are screwed.
With Linux distros, many companies can and do provide their own set of apps. Commercial software vendors can make deals to get their stuff into any of them they want. Consumers can choose the best distro for their needs, taking the included software into account.
The bad part is that it kills competition and gives other companies that make car stereos less reason to innovate.
On average, the price of each new version of Windows or Office doubles. So really, how much more is the consumer actually getting?
Alas, I didn't think ahead and save newspaper clippings of Fry's ads over the last five years. Of course, links to online stores won't exactly accomplish much, so I don't know what you expect other than to claim your memory of the last five years is better, and drastically different from mine.
Sheesh.
Oh, and thanks for the baseless zealot remark. I do enjoy being attacked whenever I say something around here.
Of course, I'm not sure why I should care what you have to say.
but then, they're independently written and optional.
In the eyes of the law anyway, the reason Linux's bundling is legal is that neither Linux nor any distribution is a monopoly. The finding that Microsoft broke antitrust law by bundling IE depends on the notion that Microsoft is a monopoly -- they spent far more energy fighting the monopoly claim than they did fighting the bundling claim.
From a moral point of view, perhaps the most relevant reason that bundling in Linux is not predatorial is that most distributions bundle several of everything. Pick one or more from each category: Netscape/Mozilla/Lynx/w3m, pine/elm/mutt, KDE/GNOME/fvwm, Freeamp/amp/xmms, and so on.
How bad would MS have to get in order to _force_ adoption of alternatives like OSX and Linux, and given that this approach would continue to give them power and money, how do you stop them from just buying Apple and having legislation passed making Linux illegal?
Maybe we're better off muddling through with the antitrust legislation and _not_ giving MS enough rope to hang itself. That is making a big assumption- that it won't first strangle everyone else in the world with that rope, before hanging itself.
There is no reason in the world Microsoft cannot expand into being the only effective source of information, network connectivity, communications, and identification services.
That means you would no longer have a social security number- privatizing would mean you'd have a Microsoft number, and without it you could not buy anything, drive, or vote. This is not unthinkable- look at it as an outsourcing of existing governmental functions.
Don't worry, you'll hear from the consumers soon enough.
:)
I've got a copy of Windows XP Beta 2 from my University, and it annoys me greatly that I can't disable MSN Messenger.
I don't use it, I don't have an account, I don't want it. And yet, it runs on startup. Even if I try to get rid of it. And now msconfig does too, for no apparent reason.
It's bothersome, not helpful. The last thing I need is more crap automatically running whenever I login. Crap I don't use. Crap I don't want. Microsoft.
Good thing I never boot into Windows XP.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
IE is *already* at over 90% market share
Where did you come across this bit of info?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Microsoft is free to do whatever they want, but third parties are free to do whatever they want.
Microsoft is NOT free to do whatever they want. Since they've been determined to be a monopoly, they are NOT free to leverage their OS monopoly to harm their competitors in other markets. Anti-trust laws exist to try to remedy a flaw in our market system. They are there for a reason and they should be enforced.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You consider that site to be some sort of authority? You must be joking.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
My beef with Linux is that the packages that come with the distros can only use their package installers to load them.
Ok, what the hell is this supposed to mean? Have you never heard of alien? I can easily convert packages among RPM, DEB, TGZ and SLP formats with one command using it. And *gasp* the packages, like, INSTALL and WORK. (Imagine it.)
Also, your argument about Microsoft's bundled apps is kind of silly - "so what if it's installed, install what you want and ignore Microsoft's stuff"? Why? Why should I have a bunch of crap from Microsoft installed on my hard drive that I have no intention of using? I have no problem with Microsoft producing competing products - even bundling them with their OS, if they want, I suppose, is OK. My beef is that if it's something they REALLY want you to use, it gets installed - and you don't get a chance to question it, or choose to not install it (or remove it later if you try it and find it unsatisfying).
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Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
IE wasn't embedded in the kernel - just in every nook and cranny of userspace. The day someone embeds a web browser into kernelspace... well, I don't know what I'll do then, but it's gonna be something drastic, lemme tell ya.
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Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Given the OS-installed burner software option (assuming reliability), I would have probably gone with it instead of trying my own installs.
/. will say, that that's an awfully big assumption when you're dealing with Windows. Give me a PPC Linux box, cdrecord and mkisofs, and one (or more - I've been able to burn 3 at a time off one PPC running Linux) CD burner, and then you can get serious about CD creation.
I still say, regardless of what the MS believers who've now begun occupying
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Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Hopefully. Norton and McAfee are shite.
Seconded, esp. in the case of McAfee. What's the point in having virus protection if your virus protection makes an already stability-challenged OS that much worse? (And why does it need a kernel component anyway? Riddle me that.)
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Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Just to throw this in, since most people will think we're commie hippy scum..
Wal-Mart doesn't suck because they provide cheaper goods/services. No one is against that. The customer wins when that happens.
The suck part is that all of the smaller businesses can't compete with Wal-Mart. They go bankrupt. When these businesses made money, they stayed in the community. Their owners live there and spend their money there.
The money that Wal-Mart makes leaves the community entirely. Suddenly, the only place you can find employment is at Wal-Mart. All of the surrounding businesses that don't even compete with Wal-Mart in any way suddenly lose some business because the businesses that do compete with Wal-Mart have closed. Class mobility just became a little harder.
Not only does Microsoft use improper monopolistic business practices, they are more than willing to perjure themselves about it.
fwiw
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Well, the thing is, the OS has never been a product, Microsft made it so. The OS always came with whatever hardware you bought. You paid for the hardware and support, and got the OS to run on your box. Microsoft was originally the only company making money on OSes, selling OSes. This was always given away, as indeed was most software back in the day (you always bought the hardware).
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
This situation has only existed because MS never took the time to write core functionality into their OSes, going back to first DOS versions. Anyone remember the DOS defragger (symantec's?). For DOS 5.2 or 6.2 or whatever MS essentially said, 'you will license us the technology and will pay you pennies per copy, or we will write our own and put you out of business.' We now have the same situation. In Win 3 everyone had their own installer, then Install Shield came out. Good product, but now Windows 2000 (and an update for NT/Win 98) provides the Microsoft Installer. I'm sure you've seen .msi files before. ActiveState Perl comes like that. Now again you have core OS functionality (core because it should be, different installers should not have to exist to step on each others' toes, and I think application installation is a very basic feature that should be provided by the OS), space which was before occupied by 3rd parties, being taken over by Microsoft, putting another partner/competitor out of business. (BTW, I just love how MS calls all their competitors partners. With MS's reach pretty much anyone developing for Win32 is or will eventually be a competitor.) Right now, MSI may be a pretty rudimentary installer development environment, compared to an industry veteran like Install Shield, but in a revision or two it will become very powerful, and if it comes with all development tools (MC VC++, etc) no one will bother to purchase Install Shield anymore. Just like no one buys defraggers for Win 98. (It is beyond me why the MS defragger will not defrag partitions with allocation sizes over 4k).
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
I don't think there is such a limit, or if there is it's not anywhere near this low, I should know, I've seen one of my servers (wunning on W2K Pro) do almost 400 concurrent TCP connections. All you pay for in the server version is a higher CPU count support (Pro only does 1 and 2 CPUs) and bundled servers and some client licenses. You can't (to my knowledge) just download IIS (which does mail, news, web, ftp, telnet and god knows what else) and run it on Pro. In most cases you can just do a straight upgrade from Pro to Server (or the equivalent), and I remember going from NT 4 Server to NT 4 SuperDuperEnterpriseServer (which costs several thousand) required installing some freely downloadable options and turning on a few registry settings, but of course you can't do it because it's illegal and the login banner would say Server instead of SuperDuperEnterpriseServer, and we all know that's worth half the price right there.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
By IP Filter you mean the IP Sec Policies, then a better interface would be most welcome (they can even call it a fiewall). Entering IP Policies is a big pain in the ass, I never know what I'm doing, or if it does what I want it to. Just give me a bunch of checkboxes and drop down lists damnit!
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Oh please, all MS has to do is discontinue shipping other Windows versions (or make it prohibitively expensive), and Dell will give up his firstborn for the priviledge of selling XP for Bill.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
NT 4 users are screwed because the software it runs (and the OS itself) is slowly losing MS support. Ever wonder why there will not be a SP 7 for NT 4? (http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/sp7.asp) It's all for the benefit of the customer if you can't guess without reading the linked page. The real reason of course is that MS doesn't want people running NT 4 anymore.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Well, historically, MS OSes have sold very well when they looked drastically different from the previous version (DOS -> Win 3.1, Win 3.2 -> Win 95, Win 95 -> XP(?)). Win 98 hasn't been a smashing success, and Win 2000 is doing even worse. THe common thread is they both look the same as Win 95, therefore they're not different enough, therefore they're not sellign very well.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Why can I install Netscape and KDE/Gnome when I install RedHat?
/bin /etc on my hard drive and telling me to go find what I need (aka Linux circa 1992), it installs all sorts of stuff that it thinks would make my life as a consumer easier.
Because it makes sense. Instead of Redhat putting a filesystem, kernel, and
So, instead of MS putting just an OS on a machine and telling you good luck, the figure networking is somethign most machines do - lets add it in. Memory management at the OS level is a good thing - lets put it in. When win95 came out, not everyone had mega-gig drives, so disk compression was something the customer still wanted, so they put it in the OS as well.
Perhaps we should be bitching cause Win98 and Linux 2.4 both have USB support built in. Win95 and Linux both have TCP/IP support built in.
They both (using RedHat,Debian, etc...) have a CD player. If not for the DeCSS suit, they'd probably both have a DVD player.
As things become more of a standard, they become part of the base for the simplicity of the end user.
As for the features, I dunno - I never used QEMM or Stacker, however, those features must be like half of MS Word - no one really uses them, otherwise people would be using QEMM and Stacker instead of what MS included.
MS should be able to do whatever they want, and sell it however they want. If they want to give software away, they should be able to. If they want to charge high prices for software that most of their customers don't need, then that should be their prerogative. They are the ones paying the development costs.
If you don't like what Microsoft has to offer, then don't buy it. Plain and simple. Buy from their competitors instead, or write your own software.
Eventually the rest of the software industry will realize that it is impossible to build a business out of competing with Microsoft on their own turf, and they will try something else. If you are in the business of selling software that runs on Windows, and your business begins to do well, you will have one of two options 1) sell out to Microsoft, 2) get crushed when Microsoft bundles a "free" clone of your software with Windows. Either way you take the risks, and Microsoft makes the money.
Microsoft may be chuck full of smart people. But they couldn't compete if the entire software industry was against them. There are plenty of companies that are giving them a run for their money now, and Microsoft essentially controls the playing field. So now Microsoft has released yet another OS, and yet another group of whiners will line up in court to protest, but I personally don't feel sorry for them. Surely they saw this day coming. Microsoft has been stabbing their partners in the back since the beginning of the PC. There are plenty of alternative OSes out their, and any one of them could be a desktop contender if the software industry added their support. Heck, Linux is becoming a fairly useable desktop, and the desktop software companies are doing their best to ignore it. That's fine with me, I am not particularly interested in desktop software, but I certainly get tired of hearing software companies complain about Microsoft when Microsoft's dominance is their own darn fault.
You may be rolling out Windows 2000, but the sales numbers are in, and Windows 2000 has sold exceptionally poorly. That's part of the reason that Microsoft is pushing so hard with Windows XP. They need an OS upgrade that will actually entice customers to switch. Hardware sales are down, and preload profits are not going to be enough to give them double digit growth.
What's especially funny is that Microsoft is probably shooting themselves in the foot. What is your company going to do with Windows 2000 now that XP is going to be released shortly. They are probably kicking themselves now, wishing that they had waited another six months. Those companies that are still in the planning stages are probably holding off to see if they should start testing Windows XP instead. Not that it really matters. Chances are good that they have finally got Windows NT (or Windows 98) working well enough. They probably don't really want to upgrade. They are merely worried about falling too far behind the curve.
Thanks reposter. I couldn't have said it better myself.
I know how much work it takes to roll out a new platform. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that Win2K hasn't done very well. Rolling out Windows 2000 is a lot of work, and the benefits for most desktop users are minimal. The business that I work for already gets perfectly acceptable uptime from our NT desktops, Windows NT runs all of the software that we need. It works well with our legacy systems, and it is (at this point) quite inexpensive to maintain.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, is an entirely new operating system. With new pitfalls, shortcomings, compatibility issues, training issues, etc. However, as a desktop the only real bonus is that it has a slightly different new GUI. Oh, and it supports USB devices (which we are not particularly keen on supporting either).
That's why Windows 2000 hasn't been very successful. It's too much work for too little benefit. It was worth switching to Windows 95, because Windows 3.1 was so crappy. Likewise Windows NT 4.0 was worth the switch from Windows 9X, not because Windows NT was the best OS on the planet, but because Windows 9X was so bad. Windows 2000, on the other hand, gets you very little that you couldn't accomplish by simply upgrading your web browser.
Considering the amount of money spent on Windows 2000 development, and the anemic rate of adoption, I can guarantee you that Microsoft doesn't share your feelings. Microsoft is trying to find some way of maintaining double digit growth, and Windows 2000 is not helping. Windows 2000 is good software, but it hasn't been a very good investment for Microsoft, and it certainly hasn't stopped the growing acceptance of Windows alternatives.
Internet Explorer wasn't nearly as good as Netscape Communicator, at least not until version 3 or so. But Microsoft made sure that every copy of Windows came with IE, and that every copy of Windows did NOT come with Netscape. For the vast unwashed majority of Windows users, IE was good enough; they could live with the bugs, it was easier than figuring out how to download and install Netscape.
The same thing is going to happen with MSN, and with any other software Microsoft doesn't feel like having any competition with. Put it on the Windows desktop on every brand-new PC, imply that it's tightly integrated with Windows, make the customer have to jump through hoops to find/download/install the competition, and voila! No more competition.
As long as Windows is available from only one source (Microsoft), and as long as that source has other products it wants to push, you're going to continue to see those products tied to Windows.
Everyone expects word processing capability from their operating system. Why does Microsoft include that sucky "Microsoft Write" program in Windows? Why don't they give people what people want, and bundle in Word instead?
Why isn't Norton Utilities bundled in with Windows? Or Excel, or Photoshop? People need these tools, people use these tools. It's a rhetorical question, of course -- I know as well as you do why these aren't bundled.
But have you ever noticed that Microsoft Windows ships with a minimalist word processor, a minimalist paint program, wimpy little scandisk and defragmentation tools... and a great big bloated millions-of-dollars-to-develop millions-of-dollars-to-advertise lots-of-bells-and-whistles web browser?
Now, tell me this: Let's say I make you CEO of a company and task you to market a web browser to compete with Microsoft. How will you do it? by the way, any innovative feature you think up will become part of Microsoft Windows within six months.
Some Microsoft exec once said something to the tune of 'the only possible outcomes of competing with us are that we buy you, someone else buys you, or you go out of business.' I'm looking for the exact quote, but I can't find it any more.
The difference is:
(1) Imagine that a single company made 96% of all the cars on the road.
(2) Imagine that company wanted to own the car stereo market, so they dumped loads of money into R&D and came up with a car stereo which was as good as all the aftermarket ones.
They advertise that they are putting this super car stereo in all their cars for free. This kills the third-party car stereo market. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, so the cost is made up for increasing the price of parts for these cars.
If Microsoft shipped a simple, bare-bones, no-bells-and-whistles web browser with their operating system, and then marketed a super-gee-whiz version of their web browser separately, I wouldn't complain. After all, this is what they do with MS Write / MS Word!
Why isn't Microsoft bundling all the functionality of Microsoft Word into every copy of Windows?
This is the world that the Microsoft detractors want to go back to.
/. Linux crowd whines, not because they use Windows, but because they bundle all these features themselves into Linux distributions. If they can somehow make Microsoft go back to the old days of having to buy third party products for networking, etc... suddenly Linux becomes a whole lot more attractive.
It will never happen, but it sure doesn't stop them from whining.
In the meantime the
What is unfair?
How much did Sun Microsystems sink into StarOffice?
Yet they are giving it away for free as a loss leader to sell more hardware.
Isn't that unfair?
I agree, life isn't fair. The aggressive nature of this market has most certainly benefited consumers.
Nobody should ever need more than a 33Mhz processor.
If Microsoft spent as much time and money in making a better product instead of adding half-assed "features" to their existing operating systems, nobody would complain. Instead, we get version after version of insecure, buggy Windows, with even more buggy applications slapped on top.
Whee.
"Really? And what information do you think isn't available?
More than one word, preferably, so we know what you're talking about?"
OK, how about four phrases: WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Novell Netware, Netscape Navigator.
If you have followed the history of any of these products since the mid-1980's, you know that they have all suffered from the same problem. Pretty much since the release of MS-Windows 3.11, every release of MS-DOS or Windows has contained some change in DLL's, API's, or data structures that has broken these applications.
"Oops, sorry about that". "It was always in the standard - you just didn't interpret it correctly" "Change the API? No, we didn't change the API".
This kind of behaviour is very very common in competitive industries, and everyone who works in such industries (a) knows it goes on (b) keeps their mouth shut if their company is doing it (c) also keeps their mouth shut if their competitor/supplier (e.g. Microsoft) is doing it, for fear of being punished further. However, when there is only one supplier of a key product worldwide - I leave the conclusion to you.
Take a look at the history of the FTC's investigation into the breakfast cereal industry, the FTC/DOJ investigations into airline pricing, or the layoff lawsuit against American Can for more details.
sPh
"Norton and Adaptec are part of an entire cottage industry of companies that exist solely off of the increadable failings of the Windows operating system to provide what it should * as an operating system.* "
While I personally have sympathy for your point of view, there IS an alternate school of thought (if not alternate universe) that goes like this: the failings and shortfalls in MS-DOS and follow-on products are exactly what made Microsoft the dominant force it is today. Because there was a hunger for "legitimate" personal computing power, people bought IBM PC's in huge numbers (circa 1982). Because there were shortcomings in the system, a huge cottage industry of enhancements, improvements, utilities, hardware, and software sprang up. Once this cottage industry got rolling, it gave the PC platform the momentum that other attempts (Exidy Sorceror, anyone?) had never had.
Afer the first few boom years, Microsoft could have easily incorporated many of these improvements and utilities into their product. Perhaps they didn't so as not to kill the goose? Not that it makes me happy that, e.g. timesync, is an add-on to NT, but mabye there is a method to the madness.
sPh
What I fear however is lack of support from the hardware vendors. Certain hardware development like nvidia's 3d chips is driven in direct cooperation with Microsoft.
A similiar example is DVD decoding software, Apple's Quicktime, Real's line of products, Sun's Java software.
The Linux community is able to use most of these, by provided binary releases. Platforms, that are not able to make use of these binaries are left out.
OK, I haven't played with XP... but what components are optional? It'd be very nice to be able to uncheck baggage that I know I won't use, like IE. In previous versions, I wasn't allowed to do that without some hacking, and even then, I'd get a dodgy system a good percentage of the time.
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Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Instead of trying to wring blood from a stone, why don't you give all of us some proof that MS is disclosing their whole API?
I've remained unconvinced that MSDN is complete. I've stumbled on various texts that at least show evidence that MS isn't happy with my using others' products.
- Andrew Schulman dissects AARD code
- search for other articles, some containing links to facts, many others which are speculation++
Of course, MS can't do anything when I want to use alternatives, even on their own OS. I'll use what I want, or move on to some platform where it's possible.--
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Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Topic says it all.
If you don't want certain features in a car, you get the stripped model, and only pay for the features you want.
I've bought several cars where I've downgraded the stereo system to just speakers and a face plate, and saved money.
Again, the point isn't that they're including these things. The point is, they're not making them optional.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Actually you CAN get cars without the stereo and they WILL deduct it's value if you really wanted. (My ex did this) You're then free to put in whatever you want and use the money you saved towards a better product. Go ahead and go to a car dealer and try it! They may give you some BS for a while, but if you persist you can. (DISLAIMER: Some dealers are easier to deal with others)
... bash away! :)
What WindowsXP is doing is charging for all theses things without the option to NOT buy them. Meaning that to upgrade there are additional costs on top of the cost of Windows. (Notice the difference between the the Car example and the Windows example!? HINT: In the car example you CAN get money back for your stereo. In the Windows example, you CAN'T!)
What this means is users are MUCH less likely to upgrade to third party products because they were already forced to pay for a simular product. There will always be the exceptions of the really hardcore users who WILL take that hit and upgrade some of their components anyways.
It's not that difficult to see.
OK
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
But WalMart/Eckerds/Walgreens don't have monopolies, not in the least.
What they do have is economy of scale. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and just because you can't compete with them doesn't make them EvileNasty.
There's nothing stopping you from teaming up with all the convience stores in your area, and sharing the bulk orders. You're not in competition with each other: you serve completely different customer bases. So work together as a loose coalition, so that you all can compete against your real competition.
No one guaranteed your father a successful business. If he can't make it work in the face of competition -- even when that competition is a superstore with efficiency levels that'd give your dad wet dreams -- then it's fair and just that his business ceases to be.
Speaking of efficiency levels, your dad's business wastes at least 30% of its costs on inefficiency, rework, mistakes and such. Reducing those costs will pay back to the bottom line something on the order of 100% better than increasing sales. If he really wants to compete, he can: and he can do it by focusing on cutting senseless overhead costs.
That's how WalMart has done it, by the way. They typically don't keep warehouses of inventory: they keep it all on semi-trailers, en route to just-in-time restocking. They use sophisticated computer tracking and modeling. They make manufacturers responsible for maintaining inventory levels. They are, in a word, wickedly efficient.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Ah, but if you don't like what GM is bundling with the car, you can go down the street to a competitor (buy an Acura).
With MS's embrace extend, buy them out and destory them policy, there IS no competitor.
Man, if marketing (just what do you mean when you say marketing, anyway?) were even half as powerful and capable of overwhelming human rationality as you say it was, I'd have gone to B-school and conquered the eastern seaboard by now.
Remember, unless you directly pay the actual physical maker of a product for exactly what you order, you are never paying for "just" the cost of something. There's been an entire complicated process involving your expectations, the going market price of a good, the general social consensus for the value of a good (including the "get what you pay for" psychology when leads many consumers to actually be less likely to buy a given good if it is priced for less than they expect. How much time do you spend shopping in the bargain bin at a music store?)
Even from the simpler model the pretends that we actually pay for cost, the realities of manufacturing are such that it can be cheaper to include something initially than to support making it an option.
Is your 1980s vintage auto still under warranty? Should you be able to return it for a full refund since it's no longer supported and there are new cars that perform the same function? What's the difference then? Chris
Pot...Kettle...Black.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
It's curious that news come when some extremist comments on GPL are published at freshmeat:
"Use of Open Source Software Should Be Restricted"
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/257/
Information should be Free... but what if it's used to take away the freedom of others? The GPL places technical restrictions on the use of the software it protects. Bjorn Gohla believes it should also place political restrictions on it.
So it seems that extremism is todays sign of the equation... For both sides.
Frankly I doubt that courts, government decisions and competition will now do any good to stop M$. That had to be done two years ago. Now it's too late. The sense on how M$ runs forward looks much the same as some people in brown/black uniforms back in the 30s. And people will only react in two ways. Either they accept this new "plague" or they will reject it fully and completely.
Again two champs are formed in a battlefield. Again the future is to be decided between two extremes with the same common denominator - militantism.
Curiosly, again the federal government of The United States of America takes a "wait and see" position. Waiting for the electronic Pearl Harbour?
That's exactly what the policies of M$ lead to. And that exactly what many M$ opponents point to. What is todays third party software on Windows. a good piece of it is patches, turnarounds, features that Windows lacks of. Small brickets that for some reason M$ "forgets" allways to put on its unique "distro". The most popular are the the tons of antivirus programs that "save the day" of millions of users.
People ask why bundlemaniac M$ does not introduce them in some new version and makes user lives easier as it always claim. Some denote that they always cost "almost nothing". Others note that without this stuff Windows always looks much more "pristine" and "clean". Anyway thay are today the base of waht has become software on M$ platform - small pebbles to please the savages...
I can assure that M$ motto "take over the world" was already visible in the beginning of 1987. I know this because I had a very close friend working on some OS/2, PS/2 stuff back then in IBM. And in June or July 1987 IBM got a big kick from M$ that showed their true intentions. Anyway, even after tons of people warned that M$ should be kicked out of the train, IBM bosses kept the belief that, after that harsh episode, it would still be possible to work with them... The result is plainly visible.
So we have some consolation. Even the Emperor wasn't able to see Dart Vader climbing to power...
There is a big difference between having a financial Evil Empire controlling you and a philosophic-nearly-religious like Microsoft trying to show you what you need. Yes, IBM could have taken a big grip on the market. But we know that it was not M$ that saved the world but the mistake of IBM to produce its first PC with a nearly "open" license: OSA. M$ only went after the Taiwanese and Compaq as it was its only way to make money. Anyway they always tried to control this market and the first blow was to stop the production of DOS for non-Intel machines. Did you know that Yamaha produced quite good PCs on Z80? They worked under MS-DOS and even 4 years ago I saw some of these machines still working. Some hackers started their career on them. They had a much better video and sound capabilities rather than the classical Intel PC. However M$ decided to create the Wintel dominion...
This is simply untrue.
When people complain that Microsoft, or any company for that matter, is a "monopoly", they generally mean that it's violatint the Sherman antitrust act. The antitrust act was written specifically to deal with Andrew Carnegie's bastardly ways in the early days of the steel industry. He received no assistance from the government, but rather than trying to come up with better pricing or a better product than his competitors, he would do things like buy the train company near his competitors, then refuse to ship their steel.
The Act doesn't deal with government-regulated monopolies at all; it doesn't have to. If the monopoly is given by the government, it can simply be taken away by the government.
Instead, it was created to make things that are unfair, hurt competition, and hurt consumers illegal. One of the things it makes illegal is for a company with an inordinantly large market share in one market (like Microsoft has with Windows in the operating system market) use that to force out competitors in any other market (like the market for Web browsers, firewalls, or CD burning software). And one of the things that makes a company an abusive monopoly is when it gets large enough that it can do things like this with no consequences from the marketplace.
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(1) SW vendors will just "require" their software be installed and run with administrator right.
Hell, even Microsoft was doing this until a couple years ago, so it's no wonder the OEMs are busy supporting only Win9x. It's amazing how poorly MS has historically supported their own OS (NT).
MS will cave into pressure from developpers wanting unrestricted access to resources and users wanting to run their old programs/games that MS will create "Windows Classic", fourth in the 95/98/ME line of single user OSes.
Wouldn't shock me one bit. Recall that both NT4 and Win2000 were supposed to be the "unified system", and then MS always squeezed out another version of DOSWin.
The other alternative is that OEMs give the finger to MS and continue to ship WinME. If a large variety of crap off-the-shelf software and crap hardware (label printers, business card scanners, that ilk) won't run under WinXP, it will drive support costs through the fucking roof.
Don't forget that Win95 shipped being compatible with 98% of Windows 3.1 programs and compatible with around 70-80% of DOS/Win3.1 drivers. That made the conversion relatively painless. Can't say that's going to happen with WinXP. (Although I really wish MS would go nazi and make it happen.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
* SQL Server (code from IBM and Oracle);
You have any evidence for this? I've heard a lot of accusations against Microsoft, and this one is a first....
BTW, both Caldera and Stac sued Microsoft and settled. Case closed, let it drop.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
WDM (Work on 98, ME, 2000, XP)
Do you know of any hardware that uses the same driver for both 9x and 2000? I think that WDM is still a pie-in-the-sky. There's a huge segment of non-name and low-end hardware that still doesn't run on 2000 and never will.
Windows 95 was specifically designed to be back-compatible with some very old drivers. XP doesn't have that luxury. Microsoft's solution is to market the product primarily for new OEM installs and not upgrades, but that doesn't solve the labelprinter issue.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
1987. That was when IBM was trying force it's POS 286-specific OS (OS/2) and it's proprietary PC hardware (PS/2) down everyone's throats as an end-to-end solution to sell more mainframes.
Thank god Microsoft bucked them. As bad as things are, we're better off than if IBM would have won that one.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Realistically, nobody but Microsoft and The Gartner Group expected mass conversions of corporate desktops to W2K within the first 2 years. And considering the history of NDS, minimal ActiveDirectory adoption isn't a big shock either.
So to say that "hasn't done very well" all depends on your expectations. From my POV, it's done extremely well in attracting power users and frustrated Win9x users. Obviously if you have a stable NT4 network (and most don't), there's little benefit, but if MS was honest they would have admitted that. (As they seem to be doing for WinXP vs. Win2K.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Office was never playing catch up. Both Word and Excel were best of class programs 12 years ago.
In fact, as you mention, most of the new features have made them much worse products for the mid-tier to experienced user. This means that there's a greater opportunity NOW for a challenger (say StarOffice) to underprice and outperform the marketleader than at any time since Microsoft stole market from Lotus and the Perpetually Sucky WordPerfect.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
MS-DOS never ran on Z-80s. Those things probably ran CP/M. Maybe you're talking about MSX machines, but I doubt you know.
BTW, you obviously never dealt with the old IBM. Their "philosophic-nearly-religious" convictions were equal to what you see out of Microsoft today. Shit like OS/2, PS/2, and SAA were the height of their arrogance. Microsoft had the choice to remain as a subcontractor to that death star or move on, and as shitty as they are, the fact that they moved on was a great thing for personal computing in general.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Word for the Mac kicked ass. Agreed that Word For Windows 1.x and 2.x weren't very good.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Considering they amount of money spent on development of NT 3.1, 3.5, and 4.0, and the anemic rate of adoption of those products, Windows 2000 isn't looking so bad.
Nobody in the history of personal computers has successfully sold a "modern" desktop operating system to the public. Xenix didn't sell, OS/2 1.x didn't sell, OS/2 2.x didn't sell, and NT hasn't sold well either, and Linux on the desktop is as of yet a pipedream. Considering that sad history, if I was Fat Ballmer, I wouldn't be sweating the W2K sales too hard.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I think Linux has a real problem, and that is the elitist attitude found among developers. "Why don't they just read the man pages", etc. There is a real market for a distribution which can easily replace a newbie's MS Windows OS, however, it seems that no one wants to build it. Why? The geeks would rather keep it for themselves.
There's nothing wrong with an elitist attitude and wanting to "keep it for yourself".
The problem is the intellectual dishonesty involved in ripping on Microsoft (and Apple) because they make a consumer-level product while steadfastly refusing to adapt Unix to the consumer market.
It's a "Put up or Shut up" situation, and Unix community's reaction is to do neither, even though Unix OSes have the capability to be better than Windows, both technically and in terms of user interface.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There has actually been numerous lawsuits and fed investigations of the car stereo situation. So far, Detroit has gotten away with what they've been doing (for example, the oval-shaped stereo in Tauruses), but don't oversimplify the situation.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
If the next hot gotta have appl comes out commercially for both Linux and Windows, Microsoft and some open source project are going to replace that functionality with free and bundled equivalents. How is either one better for competition? Microsoft develops, bundles, and replaces the commercial app in Windows XX. An open source project will develop, RedHat X.X will bundle it, and the project will replace the commercial app. The commercial app cannot compete under either scenario for > a 1-2 year window to make money before their app is no longer relevant for any platform.
If Linux becomes the dominant platform, how will commercial software companies ever be able to compete with a nebulous group of individuals that can and do work any time and give there work away? How is that scenario any better for competition from an economic standpoint then the Microsoft bundling scenario?
Just about every new feature in 98 was available as a free download for 95. The only real features not downloadable: USB support (already in 95 OSR2) & multiple monitor support (useful to whom? maybe 0.1% of windows users).
I wasn't sure what new features were in Me, so I just checked out MS's top 10 reasons to upgrade. #1 is home movies, #2 is photos, & #3 is music. What?? Those are supposed to be compelling reasons to upgrade an OS? The only significant items of the 10 are #4 which idiot proofs the system files from being deleted & #5 which does a system rollback when the system gets screwed up.
No... being part of the OS means that people somehow paid for them... If they started releasing all their "add-in's" as free downloads, that'd probably be much more easy to prove as being predatory pricing...
But it's tough... Apply rules like that, because it could actually endanger all free downloads. Given their size and dominance, they're likely to get yelled at whichever course they follow, so why not just go down the route that at least guarentees their software gets installed...
That may be the most cogent argument on this topic I've read - good job! Microsoft has sole control of the OS APIs.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Although I agree with your sentiments, the antitrust case only covers Microsoft's actions in the past and is only intended to remedy those past actions. So just as Microsoft's arguments that there is competition in the industry now shouldn't affect their guilt or innocence for past monopolistic actions, any current anti-competitive actions would be grounds for a new suit but not grounds for inclusion into the ongoing trial (which is already in the appeals phase anyway, so no one can really add evidence to it at this point).
Unfortunately, the government actions against Microsoft continue to be too little, too late. It's pretty sad when the only way an OS can gain market share on Microsoft is to be available entirely for free :) Not that Linux is sad, but it's a poor state of affairs for an industry. Microsoft has destroyed the PC OS industry, they've almost destroyed the PC office software industry, and they're about to take a big chunk out of the consumer media and games industries.
In the long run, if you're not working on a truly open OS, you'll be working for Microsoft, or you won't be working. Nothing else seems to be able to stop them, and until the government actually brings some competition back to the commercial software markets, Microsoft will be able to dismantle any other commercial software company it wants piecemeal at its leisure. If that's not harmful to consumers, I don't know what is.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I think Yahoo was about to try "Buy Pr0n" :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Your arguments are crap. You're saying that Microsoft marketing is "good at convincing people that their crap is really good" as a reason for people using the bundled e-mail app (surely you're referring to Outlook Express). So basically you're saying that Microsoft supplies a mediocre product and then uses their marketing to get people to stick with them. Well, maybe you haven't noticed, but Microsoft has this product called "Outlook," which they sell. It's not in their best interest whatsoever for people to keep using the bundled app instead of going out and buying Outlook.
Cheers,
Linux developers have complete source access to everything in a Linux distribution. So why do Microsoft's browsers, office suites, multimedia products, etc., beat the bloody Hell out of their competitors' Linux products? Let's not forget either that this is also the case for the products that Microsoft develops for the Mac, something which they most definitely don't have full access to. Maybe it's time for some people around here to get past the denial stage and admit that Microsoft actually knows quite well what they're doing when it comes to developing software.
Cheers,
Cool, so the Linux market will be flooded with products which weren't good enough to survive on Windows? Um, congratulations? :)
Cheers,
I understand you hate Microsoft and all, but what messenging client do you think is better than MSNM? That is, for those of us that don't want to bog our systems down with the hugeness of ICQ? MSNM and Yahoo! Messenger seem to be as good as anything on the market right now.
As far as freemail goes, why are you so concerned with what people use? It's not like any of them are some great thing. As a standalone system, I'd rank Hotmail a couple of notches below some of the other services that I use, especially because of the paltry 2MB of storage space that they allow. When you combine it with the other features it has — Outlook Express integration, limited encryption, no worries about them going out of business like some other freemail providers, and especially sending alerts to your MSNM client — it definitely holds its own.
Cheers,
Just a correction: MSN Messenger already has more users than AIM.
Cheers,
Microsoft XP ... What crappy software are you stuck with today?
Yeah, don'tcha just pity all them poor users getting stuck with Internet Explorer instead of a Mozilla beta or even that monument to great coding, Netscape? Man, life is harsh...
Cheers,
How many hours does a computer user have to spend RTFM before they can delude themselves into thinking that the Linux versions of software that most people use — web browsers, office suites, multimedia apps — are even close to being as good as those available for Windows or Macs? Because I gotta tell ya, I read all them man pages twice, and the equivalent Linux software is still vastly inferior. And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is apparently what so many people here still don't understand as to why Linux has such a small marketshare.
Cheers,
Excel, yes. Not Word, though. Lotus Ami Pro 3.1 was so much better than Word at the time. They took so long coming out with a successor that a lot of us couldn't take using it anymore while we watched Word pass it by big-time. Just another case of where someone had a better product than Microsoft's and dropped the ball and lost the market. See: Real, Netscape.
I'm not going to bother with a seperate post for it, but I just wanted to point out how ridiculous and completely unobjective the persion you replied to makes himself sound by insisting that Office/IE/Windows Media aren't any good.
Cheers,
One thing is clear, though. Microsoft is in business to make money. If you are naive enough to ask them to start unbundling the operating system, then I think that it's appropriate to start looking at what the competition bundles as well.
Take a gander through any distribution of Linux. You'll probably see even more functionality in a standard RedHat installation than you will in Windows 98. Yet Corel isn't cursing at RedHat because they've chosen to install a "free" office suite instead of making users purchase an alternative. You don't see the folks at Opera cursing RedHat because Netscape is part of the OS bundle. You don't see MetroX complaining because XFree is part of the distro.
And yet, there's a huge uproar because Microsoft elects to include these sorts of things (and less) in their Windows OS's. This shouldn't catch anyone by surprise. Microsoft's aim has always been to maintain a chokehold on the operating system market, and guess what? That's not illegal!
In fact, the very thing that caused the entire DOJ vs. Microsoft case was that Netscape claimed that they were going out of business because Microsoft was bundling a browser for free. Yet the only difference between Microsoft and Netscape was in the way they gave the browser away. And now Netscape is a part of the AOL/Time Warner conglomerate that is cast in the same mold as Microsoft.
Even Jim Clark knew that when he created Netscape that he had a limited amount of time to be successful. He took that as a normal part of being in the software business, and anyone who is involved in software to that degree would be foolish to not be so aware.
I'm a Linux and BSD user myself. I also use Windows because there are tasks that each OS is best suited for. I cannot honestly say that, as a consumer, I have been injured by anything that Microsoft has done in the past. The same holds true for virtually every Linux distribution that I've tried. So the harm, in my mind, is not to me the consumer, but perhaps to some software company that failed to look in the rearview mirror to see what was coming up behind them.
I firmly believe that the entire us vs. Microsoft tempest boils down to the fact that a bunch of people got rich by aggressively pursuing their business plan and everyone else is jealous. Sure, maybe that's painting with a broad brush, but there is a ring of truth to it.
-h-
Another thing that bugs me is that everyone keeps throwing the word "monopoly" around. For the uninformed:
1. The exclusive power, or privilege of selling a commodity; the exclusive power, right, or privilege of dealing in some article, or of trading in some market; sole command of the traffic in anything, however obtained; as, the proprietor of a patented article is given a monopoly of its sale for a limited time; chartered trading companies have sometimes had a monopoly of trade with remote regions; a combination of traders may get a monopoly of a particular product.
Is microsoft the only seller of Operating Systems? Does MS own manufacturers of PCs and other systems and put all its other products on them? Microsoft is no more a monopoly than any other company with a strong presence in their marketplace. Success != Monopoly. Get it straight folks. Just because a company is successful and has a greater percentage of the market share than everyone else does not make them a monopoly. Is GM a monopoly of the automotive industry because they sell more cars in the US than any other carmaker? No. Actually, the autoindustry is more of an oligopoly I believe, but that's something completely different.
What?
If you don't think what you're getting & using (the OS alone without the apps, in your case) is worth $200, then don't buy it.
MS' bundling is merely a business decision. Whether it's a good one or a bad one, remains to be seen. After you've made your decision about whether you're going to buy it, we'll know how good a decision it was.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's been known since the early 90s (to paraphrase/steal the words of the authors of "Undocumented DOS"): Your product may be a DLL in the next version of Windows. If you develop apps for Windows, don't act all shocked when it finally happens to you.
You gambled: take the risk that MS will eventually get around to backstabbing you, and in the mean time, enjoy having a fairly large market. When they finally come for you, don't bitch about it. Where the fuck were you when Microsoft was preloading Windows on everyone's PC and making per-CPU licensing deals? Where the fuck were you when users of the minority platforms cried out for more apps? You ignored them because their market was too small, and you reinforced Microsoft's dominance and legitimized Windows as a desktop product. So shut the fuck up and quit begging the government to protect you now that you've reaped what you've sown.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You can't get the car for less money if you don't want the stereo
Yes, you can.
I don't know why everyone uses this analogy -- I guess most people never try to buy cars without stereos, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it, and if the dealer knows you you'll go to the guy down the street to get it for less without the stereo, he'll give you the price break or lose your business.
The point isn't about the stereo, or the stereo's quality or price -- its about the fact that no car manufacturer requires (or could legally require), as a condition of sale, that the dealer only sell you a factory-installed stereo.
In fact, many dealers have (very) profitable stereo shops as part of the dealership and will replace the manufacturer unit with a superior aftermarket unit. The manufacturers have no problem with this, because it is a great way to keep dealers happy and profitable selling their goods without any extra expense on behalf of the manufacturer.
The point is, they leave the choice to the dealer, because their goal is to sell cars, not control your driving experience.
Microsoft does not, they dictate to the OEMs what they may and may not sell to customers.
Imagine if your car dealer could sell you an upgraded stereo system, but they had to put it in the trunk because only the manufacturer unit was allowed to be placed in-dash. Furthermore, the in-dash unit would occassionally turn on and override the aftermarket unit. Regardless of the quality of aftermarket units, would this make for a pleasant driving experience? Would this damage the market for even superior aftermarket units?
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Linux has an interesting marketing plan. It's free. All you need to do is download it and install it.
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... It has Journalled Files! (or something). Release early and often. You shouldn't have bought the x.0 release, the x.1 will be lots better (usually true, but the excitement is around the x.0 release).
I've bought lots more versions of Linux than I ever did of Windows. Partially to support the distributors, partially because downloading is a pain, partially because
Hey, it's free. You can't argue with that price. And when a new version comes out, everyone gets excited. And there's eight or nine major vendors to choose between each slightly different, better in some way. And
And it's free! Can't argue with that. Even if you run into problems, can't be mad at Linux, because you didn't pay anything for that. Just for convenience and distribution. And this new version is
It's an interesting marketing plan. I LIKE it. But it sure isn't cheap. OTOH, it is entertaining. And Libre! (Free!)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't really even care if they are independently funded, as long as all the api's that they use are honestly documented and accessible to other developers. But then I'm not planning to sell software. If I were, then that would be a real consideration.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This should be modded up. I think that this is the issue; that the majority of MS customers are too lazy/stupid/easily satisfied/intimidated by computers to look for better alternatives than the ones that they have been spoon-fed.
/. would be well to keep in mind that our total population makes up .1% or less of all computer users worldwide and the other 99.9% of folks have resigned themselves to accepting MS' products as "good enough for me".
/. because I can't see the current situation changing.
Most people (think: your Mother) have enough difficulty installing a new piece of software that they surely are not going to replace something they already have, even if it's slow/full of security holes/unreliable/etc.
It has been this way since DOS days, when DR-DOS or QEMM/Desqview (or OS/2) were far superior to MS-DOS, but most people didn't bother to change.
Us folks on
What does this mean for us? That we'll be bitching forever on
GRH
A latter version of Window has more features than
an earlier one? OMG, no wonder 'M$' are so evil.
Damm them to hell.
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users." -Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President
Notice which one still works for Microsoft.
Seriously though.. Microsoft would have excellent software, OSes and apps alike, if it would focus more on creating good software and less on exterminating all current and potential competitors. Microsoft's paranoia about competition is the main problem with its products, since it leads to stupid decisions. Tying IE to Windows created more security problems than any other move in the history of computing.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
I'll allow that more people use unices as workstation machines these days, and thus most network services will be disabled. However, out of the box, Windows is more secure in this area -- just how many default redhat installs have been exploited due to installing (and running) BIND by default when the user selects "everything"? Note that I said "more difficult", not "impossible", and I still stand by that. I grant that your arguments are valid. I just believe that in an out-of-box scenario, Windows (NT/2000) is more secure (as a worksxtation).
You'd be surprised how many people run as root all the time, or make themselves a new user and then change that user's id to 0 or just run su - upon logging in. Too many people do that these days, just as too many people run win2k as Administrator (or with admin privileges). Try to explain to mom or dad why they have to login as a different user when they need to install Office.
Amen.
Meaningless masturbation. Why bother listing all of that? Do any of us really care? Does it somehow make you more knowledgeable about Microsoft or the Windows market?
Uhh ... no. Windows (NT and 2000 -- I'm not even considering Win9x here) can actually be considered more secure than Linux (assuming both machines are properly setup by knowledgeable administrators), as it's more difficult to run code remotely on an NT box. As for the virus problem, the only reason it exists is because Windows is vastly more popular than pretty much anything else. As we've seen in the past few months, even Linux can have "virii" (well, worms, but still ...).
By "system tools", what do you mean? Seems to me like all the Administrative Tools and the Control Panel would be considered "system tools". On top of that, you have standard stuff like ping, tracert, nslookup, and so on. And if you want stuff like perl, python, or bash to do some scripting (and you don't want to use the Windows Scripting Host), you can get them just fine. As for the installer situation, I guess you haven't heard about this nifty little thing called "Microsoft Installer". Released slighlty prior to Windows 2000, and available for 95, 98, NT4, and Me (shipped with Me), the Microsoft Installer gets rid of the whole Installshield dependency (though Installshield has built a tool to make it easier to generate an msi. You should don't have to use it). I won't even bother to mention how fragmented Linux's whole installer systems are.
I agree, to an extent. The low-level I/O functionality should be in the OS. however, that doesn't mean Adaptec can't go and make a nice gui on top of it. If these companies would get their heads our of their asses and start working rather than bitching, they'd see they're not so screwed as they think they are.
And you want to be able to buy all that for $99. Yeah, right. Remember, Microsoft's software is written by professionals, not volunteers writing in their free time. For them to continue to be able to produce software, they need to charge the proper amount for their products (and whether you like Microsoft or not, I think you'd agree that they should be allowed to continue writing software and let the market get rid of them if it will, rather than forcing them out by pricing caps). On top of that, I'd rather pay money for a quality office suite like Microsoft Office, rather than suffer with a free suite like Star Office.
And MY desktop says it isn't. Woah, anecdotal evidence! That's no better than the "Linux is more stable because I had my computer stay up for three years straight, once" argument. Linux may well be more stable, but that kind of anecdotal evidence means less than nothing.
Microsoft's counter-argument is that they are just enhancing the OS (i.e. they aren't going into another market).
Here's an enormous and concrete example: the SMB protocol used for Windows file sharing. Most of the functionality in Samba has been created by examining network traffic, since very little of the protocol is documented by Microsoft, and what is documented is often wrong. Examine the samba-technical mailing list archives for details.
.HLP file format used in older versions of Windows. I was trying to write code to read them a couple of years ago, searched MSDN very thoroughly and found nothing. (Possibly it's here now; I doubt it.) The same goes for .DOC, and other Office programs. People who choose these programs give over control of their own data to a monopolist.
Another example is the
If you can find complete and accurate documentation of these somewhere on MSDN, please post the URLs.
OS X has most of this stuff bundled as well
No one seems to be complaining about it
You see, all these 3rd party programs need an operating system to run on. However if the dependency is on Microsoft which is telling the 3rd party software vendors to "screw off" where do you think that they will go? One possibility is Apple, and even Linux. Most of these people will be in the same boat as the base source inbetween MacOSX and Linux would be portable (GUI enhancements probably wouldn't).
Real, AOL, etc. go invest in Mandrake and RedHat and bundle end user OS'es. Linux is great for us geeks, but we need to evolve it to the user who doesn't want to know everything as well.
I don't think Apple is worse. Back in the early days they bundled in products like MacWrite and MacPaint. When they realized this was hurting the development of better third party products, they dropped these products. Fat chance of Microsoft ever responding in such a manner.
MacOSX can't burn CD's because of a bug,
Not true at all. OS X was not capable of burning CDs when originally shipped because the components were not ready.
Since shipping Apple has supplied several downloadable updates and enhancements, one of which enables CD burning.
remember that redhat did not write all of those little programs, they simply include them. Imagine if windows came with Eudora, and mozilla, an aol client, whatever cd burning software people use... and it was all optional. See the difference?
You are an idiot if you can't figure out how to do something like that with linux. Really. Just because you can't figure it out doesn't mean you need to be a rocket scientist to do it. Jeez.. saying that, it means you assume you're already pretty close to a rocket scientist, but I'm sure you aren't. In fact, I'm not sure I'd trust you to pump my gas.
-Splat
Don't complain about the Sys Reqs for XP. Just check out OS X, which most poeple here support as the "great project", combining Mach and Closed source. Guess what: that requires 128MB Ram too! And it doesn't include even close to as many features as XP does.
So what's this bitching all about?
Real-time Collaboration Consultant
why they're doing this.
I see their side, and many posts here, saying "they have to do this to remain competitive". I use almost exclusively linux, but and almost the only one where i work doing so, and i therefore talk to a lot of windows-lovers. And unanimously, they'll tell me that they hate the instability, but they "have to", because of Word but also because of a LOT of third-party software they need. I just seems to me that Microsoft has all those people in their pockets, but those people want ONE thing from M$: that they _IMPROVE!!!_ their product: rewrite the kernel, make it lighter, get remote display to work natively, make it leaner. And yet, M$ does the opposite, and more and more of the windows'ers are starting to ask themselves (and ask me): "what's missing in linux that prevents me from the doing the jump". That's more people to help OSS, in one way or another, but still: why is M$ adding fat that's already available (FREE!) thirdparty in their OS instead of doing the one thing the third parties can't do and that their users ahve been asking for since 3.11 ???
Greg
> Somehow, getting more for your money is bad for the consumer.
.30 per gallon. Great! Consumers love it, Ma and Pa love it, everyone's happy except for Shell's competition. They have to lower their prices to .30 per gallon in order to sell ANY gas at all. Now everyone knows that Shell is bleeding money because of this practice, but nobody cares because gas is so cheap. Soon, however, when the petro companies that don't have the cash to weather the storm are wiped out, Shell is going to raise the price of gas to $5.00 per gallon to make up it's losses. It's the oldest trick in the book. The company with the most reserves can engage in corporate attrition, knowing that their money will hold out longer than everyone elses. In then end, you will be sorry.
That's an ignorant argument to make. You're putting Ma and Pa's interests before those of an industry's. Think about it:
Shell decides to start selling gas for
Now that Microsoft owns the browser market, how much longer until IE stops connection to anything but IIS?
Matthew
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
QuickTime: A media player, bundled with all Macs and current MacOS versions.
Quicktime can be removed by dragging a handful of files to the trash.
iTunes: A MP3 player, ripper, and audio-CD burner program, bundled with new Macs and Mac OS X, I believe.
iTunes can be removed by dragging a handful of files to the trash.
Disc Burner: A CD burner program, bundled with new Macs and Mac OS versions.
Disc Burner can be removed by dragging a handful of files to the trash.
Cyberdog: Though now defunct, Apple used to bundle the Cyberdog browser with the OS as part of OpenDoc (a really cool idea that didn't quite make it, possibly killed by MS).
CyberDog was little more than an demo OpenDoc container (App). OpenDoc wasn't just a bundled app, it was a whole new way to design "applications".
Mail: A decent email client bundled with OS X.
Mail can be removed by dragging one bundle to the trash.
Apache, FTP daemon, etc, all the usual Unix stuff: bundled with Mac OS X.
Harder to get rid of, but at least easy to ignore...
[snip]
All in all, Apple seems to bundle more stuff than Microsoft does. My conclusion is that we complain about MS because they're the market leader, not because of their actions, and I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do...
It's not simply a matter of what's bundled, it's how it's bundled (i.e. integrated) and the market position of the company doing the bundling. MS has a Monopoly (pending appeal) the rules are different for it.
This, and a lot of other stuff (including the anti-trust situation) could be solved pretty much with a small admendment to the US Constitution requiring all software to include detailed and complete documention of the file formats used to store user data.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Ok, what is a better one then?
-Chris
Shipping Windows XP through OEM sales doesn't mean as much to Microsoft as getting existing users to upgrade. The biggest Microsoft customers aren't people who buy computers from Gateway or Dell, but companies who already have a lot of Microsoft software. These are companies who have agreements, sales contracts, many licenses, etc. with Microsoft. Microsoft wants these companies to upgrade more than they want the average consumer to buy a new computer with Windows XP on it.
Offer them on a CD for the price of shipping & handling. They've been doing that with IE for years.
The same thing can be applied to just about any platform, not just Windows. When the development of the product line has stepped a certain amount ahead of a certain release it becomes increasingly expensive to keep going back and fixing bugs in older versions.. especially when the bugs become even more benign and affect fewer consumers of the product.
Microsoft has a standard "n - 2" policy for supporting product lines, so when 2 more releases of the same product come out they will typically no longer fix bugs the that version. I think that's pretty fair since it means that Windows NT 3.51 is still in this category and was released many years ago.
I wouldn't expect any commercial software vendor to have to keep up with ~ 5 years of support when most bugs for a product are probably fixed in 2 - 3 years. Sure, more bugs always crop up - but that's why you need business justification to fix bugs.
I'm sure that if you went to the mainstream kernel team and complained about a bug in 2.2 that was fixed in a newer release, that they would not go porting it back. Ok so you can change the source yourself but this is not always possible and also not always viable (Linux is special here).
So consider these things when thinking about product cycles. It may not seem like it all the time, but there are valid business reasons behind moving support away from a product.
I bet Winzip will be none too pleased with the added XP support for zip file browsing and file extraction.
well since they've been using the same core for 10 years, maybe some of those people can work on it. Ahh, the joys of selling a product with no production costs.
--
+&x
you're missing the point. Yes, MS has competing programs in many of those areas. The problem is illegally utilizing their monopoly to kill competition in unfair ways. Or even, gasp, use underhanded tactics to gain market share. When you control the OS so tightly it's easy. You don't even have to break stuff, just don't fix specific OS problems other apps have. Then, after they spend the money to include a work around, you can finally get to the problem and gain a few more weeks or months as their fix is broken.
/., who'da thunk it.
It's just happened so many times before, that's why I don't like it. Win2k is fine, I am happy with most of the apps you mentioned, most work pretty well. Forcing people to buy stuff they don't need crosses a pretty hard line in my personal opinion of where the "market" should end. Monopoly is a dangerous thing to our markets, especially when your business is selling bits of plastic (or just electrons) for $100 a pop. Bah, another ms rant on
--
+&x
We're you paying attention? It's not free -- it's included in the cost of the car.
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Believe it or not Microsoft has got to actually SELL copies of Windows XP. If Windows XP is chuck full of stupid "features" that are actually disincentives to the upgrade then people will stick with what they have.
No they won't. Microsoft puts major pressure on OEMs to ship the latest version of Windows. Prices on older versions are typically not cut, and sometimes pricing it set so that older versions actually cost more. 6 months after XP is introduced, it will be virtually impossible to buy a computer from a major OEM that doesn't have it pre-installed. Most people won't know enough to go somewhere else. And it won't even really be a viable option for those few who do; new hardware and software won't support the old OS after a while.
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the like: Stacker from Stac Electronics (remember them?)
I thought Slashdot denizens hated "Stupid Patent Infringement Lawsuits"?
Because that's what this was - patent infringment. On a really STUPID patent.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
If Microsoft came out with a virus checker, do you think Norton and McAfee would lose sales?
Hopefully. Norton and McAfee are shite.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
one word Netscape
Really? And what information do you think isn't available?
More than one word, preferably, so we know what you're talking about?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
OK, how about four phrases: WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Novell Netware, Netscape Navigator.
[rhetoric snipped]
How about specific examples instead of hand-waving rhetoric? Just because 'everybody knows' it, doesn't mean that it's true. I'd like to know specific details, please.
Without specific details, you can't verify a claim or not.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
One nice trick was to upgrade the MS compiler and, err, "extend" the format of the DLLs produced. So suddenly, the Borland-produced DLLs my company distributed wouldn't work with code generated by MSC. Our customers couldn't use our product. And since at this point, MS had a majority share of the PC compiler market (sound familiar?), the natural trend was to go with a compatible solution.
Maybe if your engineers had known enough about name mangling to release their DLLs with proper export names instead of just letting the compiler do its thing, you wouldn't have had a problem.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Instead of beleiving the crap the MS spews to their MCSE's why don't you think for a minute and give me an example. If MS does not use secret OS hooks, then name one piece of software that drastically outperforms the MS alternative on Windows. Just one
How about listing one piece of software that underperforms the MS solution, because apparently there's many.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Got a link?
Si
Coming soon - pyrogyra
They already do.
Try reading up on it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com
Or do you have any specific examples of where they don't?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
120 XP for killing a field mouse? that's pretty tough for a field mouse, was it wearing +4 armour with +50% magic resistance or something?
What is wrong with Microsoft attempting to compete on the desktop they created?
NOTHING.
That is the nature of competition. These aftermarket software companies - like Netscape, Real, AOL, etc - are just that. Aftermarket. If MS incorporates programs into their OS - so freaking what? It's their OS - and their desktop. The aftermarket has just changed. Now, browsers are all free, or IM clients, or audio applications - there's an aftermarket for a different product.
It's that simple.
Now, if these companies want to survive, they need to work on making their products compatible with a cross-OS open standard so anyone can use their programs.
It boils down to the fact that if these companies want their software to survive, they've got to uncouple it from Windows dependencies, because MS can and should expand into those areas.
That's competition, my friends.
HI Mom!
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
OpenDoc used to be necesary, but the latest version of ASIP removed that requirement...
R.I.P. OpenDoc.
I don't see how anyone could compare Microsoft, who has a monopoly, with Apple who has 10% of the desktop market, or less. If Apple ever gets 90% of the desktop market (or even 50%), then people will question their bundling issues as hard as Microsoft's.
That was my point--we bash Microsoft because of their market position, not because of their actions. Reread my post before you accuse me of trolling again. You have flamed me for having a different perspective on the same conclusions, which seems rather oppresive. I know it goes against the Slashdot Overmind to suggest that Microsoft might be being treated unfairly, but I'm hardly being unreasonable. While I understand that it has far more effect on the market when you have ten times as much market share, you can't fairly double standards like that. It's just plain unfair to penalize someone simply because they're the best at what they do (if everyone else is trying to do the same thing).
As for iTunes, Apple pulled a classic Microsoft move there--they bought out another company's product (Cassidy & Green's SoundJam), gave it a facelift, and are giving it away free. iTunes is quite possibly the best-of-class Mac MP3 player, and, even if it weren't, is MACAST enough better to warrant the $15-25 shareware fee? I don't think so...
Conflict Catcher and Disk Doctor used to be important products, but they've been gradually overshadowed by Apple replacements. I find Extensions Manager perfectly adequate, and, ever since Apple built Disk Doctor functionality into the OS (it runs at startup after a crash), I haven't had much need for Norton. For 90% of users, those Apple substitutes are good enough; those competitors have been relegated to a niche within a niche.
Apple has also destroyed competing commercial products through bundling. Remember Symmantec GreatWorks? Apple crushed it by bundling ClarisWorks/AppleWorks with Performas...
Just in case you were going to suggest I'm a Mac beginner and have no clue what I'm talking about, I've done six years of Mac consulting, as well as commercial software development for the Mac.
Hmm... I've just had one person tell me I'm wrong because Apple doesn't bundle anything that's a vital OS component (ala Internet Explorer for Windows), and another person tell me I'm wrong to compare QuickTime to Media Player because QuickTime does provide important OS functionality. Make up your (collective) minds, people.
Yes, you can disable QuickTime, weird things will break, but most stuff will still work. The same is true of Internet Explorer. In fact, it was a major embarrasment for Microsoft when the DOJ expert witness showed IE could be removed, despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary.
You seem to think that the relative excellence or suckiness of an app or utility is somehow relevant to the legality of bundling it with the OS. It doesn't matter whether iTunes rocks or Disc Burner sucks, bundling them is just as wrong (or right) as bundling media players and CD burners with Windows. If Apple can bundle apps that do X with their OS, then so can Microsoft.
As a loyal Mac user, it breaks my heart to say this, but Apple is worse when it comes to bundling. Let's take a look at the list of things Apple has bundled or currently bundled with their OS and computers:
QuickTime: A media player, bundled with all Macs and current MacOS versions.
iTunes: A MP3 player, ripper, and audio-CD burner program, bundled with new Macs and Mac OS X, I believe.
Disc Burner: A CD burner program, bundled with new Macs and Mac OS versions.
Cyberdog: Though now defunct, Apple used to bundle the Cyberdog browser with the OS as part of OpenDoc (a really cool idea that didn't quite make it, possibly killed by MS).
Mail: A decent email client bundled with OS X.
Apache, FTP daemon, etc, all the usual Unix stuff: bundled with Mac OS X.
AppleWorks: a multi-purpose application package, sort of a poor-man's Offfice with a database thrown in. Bundled with new iMacs.
Then there's third-party software like Quicken, which is often bundled with iMacs, and, of course, both Netscape and IE are bundled with the Mac OS (I think IE is the default install).
All in all, Apple seems to bundle more stuff than Microsoft does. My conclusion is that we complain about MS because they're the market leader, not because of their actions, and I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do...
Except that -- as others have mentioned -- you can't turn some of it (MSN Messenger) off, so they're using memory, etc. and opening possible security holes (*cough* IE *cough*).
Everyone knows the apps that will come with Windows XPwill be no better than the ones available now from MS. Everyone will just go and load mIRC instead of using Comic Chat.
No, they won't. The "average" computer user will use whatever comes pre-installed on the computer, if it's good enough. Just like with evolution, a program doesn't have to be the best to survive, it just has to be good enough...
How many people still use OE for newsreading? A lot... and the primary reason is that it's already installed, and it's good enough. Downloading and installing Agent (or whatever) is simply too much effort. (Not to mention you'll have to do it all again when Windows guts itself in six months...).
This is why people complain about MS having unfair advantage in the marketplace... MS doesn't have to compete on quality or price. If they write a new app and incorporate it into the OS, it's going to take over, regardless of how it compares to the competition.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Yes, they would. A lot. The average person isn't well informed enough to judge which virus scanner is the best. All they know is that they need one... any one. If MS bundles one, then that requirement is met.
MS includes a defrag program with Windows, but people seek out DiskKeeper...
Maybe you and your friends do, but the average user doesn't.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Bullshit. I haven't seen a new Windows box in a while that didn't come bundled with Word 2000 - not the rest of the Office suite, mind you. Apparenlty it's enough value for, e.g. Dell to shell out extra cash and bundle an extra CD in even their low-end laptops. Their customers DO want it, so Dell pays extra to get it there. Duh.
There I go again... figuring my sarcasm was obvious...
Let me spell it out for you: anyone who says Microsoft is including Messenger, WMP, IE, etc. for the consumer's benefit is a complete moron. If MS really wanted to do something for the consumer's benefit, they'd integrate Word and/or Office into the OS. Why don't they? Because they already have an effective monopoly on the office suite and word processor markets. They don't need to leverage their OS monopoly to gain more market share for Office or Word. But they did for IE, and they do for MSN Messenger and WMP. So those get integrated.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
You're right... but the "much more" that MS offered wasn't better functionality, but "it's already installed and Netscape isn't".
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Obviously their customers don't want it, and it wouldn't add value for them...
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Bullshit. IE's success had everything to do with bundling, because IE 4.0 had parity with NS 4.0. IE 3.x was nowhere near as good as NS 3.x. Once they achieved (almost) parity with NS, their market share took off...
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
In case you slept through the anti-trust trial, Netscape offered free licences to OEMs for pack-in installs. Microsoft responded by telling the OEMs if they shipped Netscape, they would lose their right to ship OEM versions of Windows.
This is where the problem is. In most cases suppliers cannot dictate anything like this because their customer could simply go elsewhere. (To either another supplier or another reseller.)
Because MS makes the best OS for people who aren't nerds.
How do you explain the error messages it comes up with, the registry, expecting the end user to be a sysadmin, etc?
The other alternative is that OEMs give the finger to MS and continue to ship WinME
Except that they can't, given the way Microsoft supplies them.
Windows might be the lesser of two evils. It is not without faults (in fact, it is full of them) but it is the best choice for a clueless end user.
It may be the best choice for one specific catagory of "clueless end users". The single user dialup home user.
However the exact same things which make it good for this user make it an utter disaster when it comes to corporate networking.
The real reason of course is that MS doesn't want people running NT 4 anymore.
Also they don't appear to want people to use Win2K to serve 95/98/ME clients. A subtle change was make in the SMB protocol negotiation which causes problems. Whilst Microsoft has released an update it's a "telephone, work through a maze and BTW we might charge you" update. Rather than simply being available for download.
Really? Whats so bad about USB? Sure, Firewire might be better (even though most PC's don't come starnard with it). But having a mouse connected to a firewire port is a bit of a waste IMHO, even though you can run multiple devices.
In the vast majority of cases USB appears to be a solution in search of a problem. In a great many cases there is nothing wrong with a serial or PS/2 mouse.
There are lemon laws which protect the buyers of cars, there are no laws protecting the buyers of software.
Such laws being in addition to more general consumer protection legislation. If anything laws such as UCITA are the exact opposite (combined with the ongoing perversion of "copyright".)
I'm curious.. What process is that exactly? I'm curious cause you can check every single process that is running, which DLL's it has loaded etc. and while I see a lot of other stuff like csrss, I sure as hell don't see anything related to IE.
I also don't understand why the hell anyone would like to remove the best web browser on earth from their installation. Maybe it's just me but it bothers me when people spend a large portion of their day hating Microsoft and Bill Gates. Define yourself by what you are FOR, not by what you are AGAINST.
I actually havea the Beta 2 version of XP, it isn't too bad from a consumer viewpoint. It may overall be bad for the computer software industry. However one thing that I see as a possible bonus for those of us who prefer Linux. Vendors that may be displaced by this move, they may be more tempted to produce linux products whre MS is not currently producing competing products. Of course, the only really interesting windows-only software out there are games.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
micro$oft doesnt care about the desktop -- they want to own the computer industry. thats one reason back in the 80s they wrote not only large chunks of the ROMs (pick up any old machine and you can boot into ROM BASIC -- see the copyrights) they also wrote business software (multiplan) to comptere against visicalc/1-2-3 as well as buying up QDOS (the OS). after all these years very few people actually get it -- micro$oft wants to own the industry and it always has. it ensures that they get a continous revenue stream from every single electronic device ever sold.
Here is the solution. How about Microsoft provides it's competitors with the hooks and documentation they need to do the same integration Microsoft does?
Execute? [Y/N] _
I hear that a lot. It's okay when Linux does it, but not when Microsoft does it. KDE integrates its browser into the file manager, but that's okay. Microsoft does it, and they become the root of all evil. As for the independently written aspect, with the exception of IE, most of Microsoft's bundles (media player, MSN messenger) aren't integrated and non-removable. They're just as "optional" as your Linux components, except installed by default. I guess what I'm asking is this: If it's okay for Linux to do it, stop bitching at Microsoft because they do it.
You can't compare the two. Microsoft is a closed system. They don't provide you the "hooks" you need for full integration. This provides them with a competitive advantage in ALL software written for their operating system that no company that produces Windows applications can hope to match. The only reason Microsoft DOESN'T integrate EVERYTHING is because they know it's unethical and that they'll get slapped in the buttocks for it.
On the Linux side, the code is all open. If there are no hooks for deeper integration, you can take the code and do whatever you want with it as long as you release your code as well. If KDE wants to integrate its browser with its file manager, fine! I can see the code, I know how it works, I can replicate it with my own file manager if I want.
That's the difference and thats why it's Ok for Linux to do it.
Execute? [Y/N] _
For an ordinary consumer, a CD-burning software bundled with the OS *is* convenience, as they might not feel confident installing CD Creator themselves. The fact that everything is built in will let these people take advantage of some of the previously unknown features in their computer, while more advanced users are always free to install whatever they want in their computers.
~James
Their customers DO want it, so Dell pays extra to get it there. Duh.
The problem comes when Microsoft, who now has Dell's nuts in a vice, decides to add a surcharge to any manufacturer who *doesn't* purchase that windows add-on, since, of course, it results in more piracy. Then they go into court on another anti-trust violation and talk about how the base price for their operating system is low. Fuck'em. They are as bad for the consumer and the market as any rapacious business I can think of. I'm quite tired of them.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Now if that's not trying to kill the car stereo market, I don't know what is.
--Ben
Here is the difference.
You don't own software you wond the car. You can sell your car to somebody else you can't sell your software. You can buy a used car, you can't buy used software. You can let anybody you want fix your car, you can't let anybody fix windows except MS. The car comes with a warranty the software does not. There are lemon laws which protect the buyers of cars, there are no laws protecting the buyers of software. If cars are defective the govt fill force them to do a recall to fix the car, software comapnies can sell you worthless buggy shit all they want.
I won't go on I hope by now you understand the difference between owning something like a car, toaster or a television and licensing software.
War is necrophilia.
"Ohh, right. You need a B.CS. to even install it, much less configure it, or figure out how everything works"
Not really anybody of average intelligence can install mandrake or redhat. Of course most windows users are below intelligence but that's another story alltogether.
War is necrophilia.
Amen to that. The software industry is like a septic tank. All the big chunks of shit have risen to the top and now they are stinking up the place something awful.
War is necrophilia.
Excellent point.
I suppose that operating systems are a tough business to be in anyway... that is, suppose a lot of the reasons why Windows is an "entrenched" OS (application support, hardware support, brand name recognition, ease-of-use, existing user base, etc.) were nullified by Monday morning at 10am. I seriously doubt that Linux, BeOS, and OS/2 would fill in all the gaps and/or do a better job for most users anytime within the next 2 years. But even more important, I seriously doubt that someone on Monday morning, deciding to seize the opportunity, could make an OS from scratch within the next two years that could compete among the remaining OSes. Considering that a very large user base, several times the size of the MS Windows core development team, has spent the better part of a decade building a better OS from scratch in an open and collaborative process, yet only 5% of the market uses it and most admit that it's not ready for most of the 85% majority OS users, that says something about the sheer difficulty of living up to the expectations set by Windows.
Before anyone adds that MS is anticompetitive and THAT'S why they're entrenched... well, Linux is free, it's been around awhile, and the business world knows about it. With all respect to the concept that people don't like change... I think the expense of Windows licenses would be enough motivation for the majority of the business world and computer manufacturers to jump ship by now. But Windows apparently has enough advantages to keep a lot of people in its tent.
The fact is, Windows, Linux, and now even OS X, constantly set a very high bar for what's expected in an operating system. OS X took YEARS to come around, and GNU/Linux is a very complex system for providing a very complete library of tools and applications that can be bundled as a package (and unbundled, as well). I marvel at innovation that's so speedy and prolific like this.
Microsoft plays unfair? Probably. But in this "business", I doubt that fair could ever win anymore. I think that at some point we have to settle for "unfair" but "pretty damn good". Just like with Intel... they might have a questionable lock on their market (well, AMD has been creeping in on them for a number of years and they're permanently in the game now), but can you really look down on a company that has kept up with Moore's Law for over two decades? If we had 10 processor vendors competing harshly today to sell 33mhz processors, would that be better for the consumer?
Read the court documents. OEMs were prohibited from changing the desktop. Translation: They could not add any icons to the desktop, including Netscape.
It's called free-enterprise. Capitalism.
It's called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Ohh, right. You need a B.CS. to even install it
The majority of users have never installed Windows. It came preinstalled on their computer. Using a preinstalled Linux is no more difficult then using a preinstalled Windows.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
No, they complained , among other things, that MS tied it to the OS and refused to allow OEMs to add Netscape to the desktop. Not only did MS ensure that every new purchaser of Windows had a copy of IE, they also guarenteed that the purchaser would not have a copy of Netscape no matter what inticements Netscape offered the OEMs.
But that is exactly the way the Netscape pushed Spyglass out of the same market.
I agree that Netscape was trying to do the same thing MS was: use their domination of the browser market as leverage to gain greater market share in the server market.
However, Netscape was on an equal footing with Spyglass in that they could only offer inducements to OEMs and ISPs to distribute their browser, trial programs, etc. MS had one advantage none of the other sellers of browsers had: the OS. The could (and did) use their control of the desktop to make sure every user had a copy of their software which could not be deleted and that none of their competitor's browsers would show up on the desktop "out of the box".
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
Nope. The free software movement is about being able to write the code you want without anyone telling you to do it differently. That's what the "free" in "free software" means. That's all it means. It's not about "the consumer" and it's not about "high quality". Those things may or may not happen as side effects, but I seriously doubt that the people actually writing the code are thinking like that. They're scratching personal itches, and just playing in the sandbox.
As far as Windows 9x legendary insecurity goes, you can make a system secure or you can make it convenient. The tradeoffs between security and convenience the Windows team made were probably less than optimal, but hindsight is 20/20. At the time Win95 was being developed, MS was barely aware the internet existed. TCP/IP? What's that?
Developing for Win32 is definitely a minefield. If you get too popular, MS will screw you over with a smile. However, there's a lot of niches that are too inconvenient for MS, but still allow opportunities for profit.
I think the future lies with embedded computing. Not that the PC will go away, but its use will be limited to the subset of people who really understand it. The rest of the world will use TiVo's and various "network toasters". And I suspect the OS and API running those things won't belong to MS. MS' future is tied to the PC, and they haven't been able to move away from it all that much.
RealNetworks general manager Steve Banfield said that Windows Media Player was ``not the best product.''
That may be true, but Real player, the only software that I know of to instantly lock up a computer, is certainly not the best either. I'll take my chances with WMP thank you very much.
I can install nero all day long and XP doesn't mind..
So it's ok to provide the consumer with the applications he needs as long as they are collected from multiple authors?
I'd say this is a case of crack-smoking. Let MS put whatever they want on the CDs. If they piss off partners, that's their problem. It's not a good thing for the Feds to be sticking their nose into. Why make MSFT "play nice?" Let them make their own bed, then lie in it.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Quicktime isn't just a media player, it's a system-level extention that provides a staggering amount of functionality: graphical thumbnail previews, sound management, and video processing for ALL applications and games on the Mac. I can run Premier 1, 2,3, 4, or 5; After Effects 1,2,3, or 4, Media 100 software, Poser, Bryce, Lightwave..... all with Quicktime 1,2,3,4 or 5- and it doesn't MATTER which version of QT I have on my system (though why you'd want less than 3 is beyond me)- these applications don't care and will render to Sorenson, On/2. MotionJPEG or Media100 codecs without complaint. Try doing *THAT* on a Windows system- this is a case in point where "bundling", as it were, is not only a good thing, but a valid REASON to buy a Mac.
iTunes is a free download that works with all USB-Native Macs running 9.0.4 or higher- and it blows away absolutely every other MP3 player on the market. I have 2,777 songs in my playlist and the little wonder hasn't crashed or tanked on me once. I'm using it because it's stable, not because it's an Apple product- they just happened to be the first company to release a useable MP3 player for MacOS.
DiscBurner sucks, but fortunately for anyone with an existing copy of Toast, you'll be happy to know that Toast runs with the built-in Apple CD burners. You just have to hit the burn button before the OS notices the blank media you've inserted. The native burning utilities work great with iTunes, but suck for everything else- speed tanks really bad and it lacks the features of Toast. The built-in CDR drive on my G4 is an 8x- Toast burns at that speed, DiscBurner takes a shit and runs twice as long, at least. I'll give Apple this- they *HAVE* made the process of burning CDs into a transparent element of the OS, which is as it SHOULD be- a blank CD is akin to a floppy, zip, or a syquest these days.
Cyberdog died with OpenDoc, not because of MS pressure, but because CD depended on OD in order to work at all (try running it on MOS 8.5 or higher).... and OD was not exactly the best of ideas.
Truth be told, I've found that about the only things Apple puts on the installer that I never, EVER use are Netscape, Stickies, and the scrapbook. And I've seen a lot of other people use Stickies. The MacOS comes loaded with stuff you're likely going to use, be it for work or fun- whereas, by the same token, have you ever seen an install of Windows that *didn't* have Solitaire and Minesweeper? Sure, MacOS has a solitare sampler on some of the instal disks, but it doesn't go on by default, and you have to run the installer seperately. The iMacs come with games and the like preinstalled because they're consumer-oriented systems... like Windows. In that respect, the average user has enough Gee-whiz under the hood to keep him or her happily occupied for months, before they even really need to think about adding new applications.
So what should not be allowed to be included? Take CD-R/W support. Two years ago that was definately an option that most people added on to their system, but what about today when almost all new systems come with a CD-RW drive? Shouldn't that be in the OS now since almost everyone will want support? If Roxio wants to sell a CD writing app they need to make it better and easier to use than the included support.
Streaming media is now a common thing. Real had their chance to grab that market and failed due to their bloated impelementation. Is that Microsoft's fault? I don't think so.
I don't agree with the whole "bundling IE was a bad thing" argument. If Netscape had been better, we'd still be using it today even though it would be a seperate download. IE2 came with NT at the time and I didn't know ANYONE that used it. Everyone installed Netscape.
Except that it isn't difficult to install an additional copy of a similar program.
For Windows users, there are six different programs that need to be installed to make browsing the web pleasurable: Adobe Acrobat Reader, Apple Quicktime, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Flash Player, and Shockwave Player. Many of those programs have ovelapping capabilities, but, for maximum convenience, all of them need to be installed. There may be fewer, or more, that fall into the "required" category, depending on your needs. Out of those six plug-ins, MS controls one of them, and, no, I can't remove it, but, as it does have some unique functionality, I'm glad that it is there.
The point is, MS does not have the monopoly in all things that many people claim. For webpage design, I don't use Frontpage for anything; I use a combination of Textpad, Dreamweaver, NoteTab, notepad, GoLive, HTML Tidy, and HomeSite. I don't use PhotoDraw, I use Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. I use Word, WordPerfect, and RoughDraft for writing tasks. I use mIRC and ICQ for chatting and instant messaging, and the MS alternatives have existed for a long time.
I use Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera; I use Outlook Express, Free Agent, Pegasus, Netscape Messenger, and Eudora.
I still prefer Winzip to the zip capability built-in to WinMe, and LviewPro for image previewing to the built-in capability.
Out of the 31 programs cited above, 4 are from MS.
What monopoly?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
If MS were selling goods or services that kept people alive, and through their monopolistic practices they knowingly let people die, then I would say MS were doing a Bad Thing[TM]. However, PC's are a purely optional portion of everyone's lives, a convenience rather than a necessity, so MS should have the right to do whatever they fucking want with the product(s) they produce.
Should Coke and Pepsi be sued for pretty much guaranteeing that no other cola manufacturers will ever reach their level of prominence? What about Jif and Skippy?
If I wrote some revolutionary piece of software tomorrow that everyone just _felt_ they had to have (versus really needed like food, water, and shelter), so I sold 50 million copies of it, and then I decided that with every copy of my fantastic software you had to make a contribution to the abortion clinic of my choice, would I lose any sleep over those who complained? Not a single bit. If you don't like my reqirements, then don't use my software. The point is, it is MY software to market as I please, and as long as I am not causing someone physical harm by my marketing strategies, fuck the complainers.
The main reason that there are so many cheap PC's for Slashdotter's to login from and bitch is because there has been largely ONE important OS. It could have been GEM, it could have been MacOS, it could have been AmigaDOS. The fact is, it is Windows. That is a SINGLE operating system without fragmentation made the PC the global seller that it is, and not the competitors. Do you really think that VCRs would have thrived if BetaMax, Philips 2000 and VHS had continued to divide the market? Like Highlander, there was room for only one. In video games, Atari used to reign supreme. Then it was Nintendo and Sega. Now it is Sony. In a while, it might be Sony and MS, or Sony and Nintendo. That is a fact of business; there is only room for a few at the top.
MS has what it takes, and that is a business fact. They might not always play nice, but tough shit. Playing Diablo and flaming on Slashdot aren't legal requirements. We would find other hobbies. Scrabble and Monopoly might become popular again.
So, everyone, quit your whining and use whatever OS floats your boat.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
That depends on how much you're willing to spend on the box. If you bought one of the popular Compaq Presarios, you would get Works 2000, not Word.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
\i{Actually, a lot of those stereos are built by the big-name brands - Sony, Blaupunkt etc - and then rebadged by the car manufacturer.}
True. For a while, Honda used Alpine, and Mazda used Clarion. I think BMW still uses Blaupunkt.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
However, the issue in this case is that Microsoft made it very difficult if not impossible to remove that car stereo and implement a different brand stereo
Have you tried the beta of XP? Does it self destruct if you try to install a third party cd-burning app?
Maybe, but M$ still sees websites that are viewable with other browsers, so they still need to dump it until they can control the server side too.
I personally do think that Microsoft is an evil monopoly and deserves any
punishment it receives from the US government in their recent anti-trust case.
However, the really important thing to remember here is that every company that
is complaining about XP, is just a Microsoft wannabe! SUN, AOL, Oracle, Excite,
Yahoo, etc, if given the chance, wants to become Microsoft.
I speak from experience here. I personally have not worked on proprietary
software in years but have worked for companies that make closed software.
Actually a few big companies that you probably have heard about have hired me to
work on OSS within their ranks.
I don't think there is anything ethically wrong with working for a proprietary
company if *you personally* don't do anything wrong. If you are working on Free
Software and not hurting anyone there is nothing wrong here (they would use your
code anyway).
While there I took the initiative (at multiple companies) to push GNU/Linux,
Apache, etc as far as possible. The main problem is that they have no vision
and even if they did, they don't care. It all comes down to:
- They still think Linux is a toy.
- They don't understand community involvement
- If they can't screw the customer they aren't interested.
If they were *really* sick of Microsoft actions they would back GNU/Linux, hire
some Free Software developers to work on some projects and start shipping
appliances running GNU/Linux.
I think that AOL/Excite/Yahoo would be *very* smart to ship an appliance style
WebTV/Tivo style box that has all the functionality of the alternatives and then
deprecated the Windows code.
This would *really* screw Microsoft and all they are really charging for is the
service anyway.
However this isn't the point. What all these companies are really trying to do
is build up a monopoly and you can't do that with GNU/Linux and a services
model.
Right. suck said it best. Practices that commonly happen (all comps come preloaded with MS OS) are not questioned, and are impossible to get around in most places.
There are only two or there places where I can get a laptop not bundled with the MS tax.
--
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Uhm.. You can already smack the compress attribute for any folder and navigate that compressed archive seemlessly, in NT 4.0 and newer.
As for browsing zipped archives, Aladdin's stuff-it deluxe has been doing this on the Mac for years, and it's far more seemless than WinZip's implementation.
There's a big difference between Apple's inclusion of Quicktime, iTunes, iMovie, SimpleText, DVD Player, Disc Burner, Mail, Stuff-it, Script Editor, etc. and Microsoft's integration of IE into Windows 98!!
I can turn off or throw out every single app mentioned above, and my Mac will happily start up.. I suggest you make up a new extension set, and see just how minimal you can go..
Quicktime is interesting, because a lot of applications rely on it's availablity. For example: iCab uses Quicktime handle images, iTunes uses the MP3 decoder included in the Quicktime API to play music, and even SimpleText allows you open movie clips.. But if you don't like it and want to get rid of Quicktime, it's not an essential to the OS.. Drag it to the trash, then open up extensions manager, and turn off the Quicktime extensions! Done!
If you want to see an example of just how slim the Mac OS can get, take a look at the Mac OS 9.1 system CD. The system folder on there is under 30MB (including Quicktime so that it can display the desktop picture), but very few other frills..
Note: Disk Burner actually uses Toast to access interact with unsupported CD-Rs or CD-Rs sitting SCSI drives.
I guess I'd be more upset if Real Player wasn't such a stinking pile of spyware garbage.
Why on God's green Earth should Microsoft have to demonstrate that the programs are funded differently from the OS? Nothing personal, but that's just silly. Should KDE have to demonstrate that Konqueror or Kedit or any other app was created differently or separately from the rest of the environment?
..... you might learn what really happenend. If this is inflammitory. Sei La Gare. I'm inflammed, and I'm tired of listening to retoric that is repeated without knowledge on both sides of the "battle". Linux is a kernel. Windows is a cludge. Sometimes I wish I still had my trash80 running on pascal (that's right you don't need an OS just a the language thank you).
The easiest way to explain this is that even though Konqueror is a part of KDE, KDE isn't a part of Linux, or X for that matter. KDE is in and of itself a program. I don't use KDE, I happen to enjoy WindowMaker much more and as such use it. I don't even have KDE installed on my box. In other words I HAVE A CHOICE!!! That is all I'm asking for. A choice. I also dislike know it alls like Mundie telling me I'm a communist because I enjoy coding and working in open source. That fscking b#$#@rd was in diapers when I was in the Nam, and I'm damn sure not a commy. I am however one of the people who gave you things like word processors, tcp/ip and e-mail. I've been here since ARPANET and I plan on being here when Micro$oft is gone. I outlasted IBM and I can dang sure outlast gates. Don't hand me this check MSDN network. I have I do, I'm forced/need/want to. I do however know that what is being said is true. The first example would be with Word Perfect. MS refused to give them what they needed to run it under Windows 3.1 until they assisted MS in getting Word 1.0 to work properly. (For those who used that program it was a nightmare we don't want to remember) Oh yes stop repeating the words of the infamous, and believe no one. Not even me, then check and verify a little history. MS learned well at the IBM teat, Now IBM is beginning to show them why they were here first. Watch listen, investigate and maybe, just maybe if you close the big hole and open the two little ones on either side of your heads
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I agree. This is typical of /. to post an idiotic discussion topic in the shadow of a far more relevant topic. Nobody gives a shit about what Microsoft is bundling into XP. What is far more interesting is XP's new featureset.
Encrypted NTFS.
Quick login change.
Remote terminal access.
user/group file permissions.
NAT, IP firewalling (sort of)
etc.
Anyone see anything here that looks familiar. I wonder what they are up to?
Someone you trust is one of us.
This is scary. Microsoft, largely in response to the threat of Linux and *BSD (IMHO), finally made a Windows that's quite stable and performs reasonably well. Sure, they took their time in fielding it, but it is much higher quality than their previous offerings.
What leason will be learned by MS Managers and other MBA types in the software industry?
Field a good, well engineered product and the marketplace ignores you. Field something that's completely new (Win95 vs. Win3.1, NT 4 vs. WinNT 3.5), but that's poorly engineered and rake in the profits.
I can see why Microsoft is going the subscription route... How else are they going to get paid for making good software?
---
[Wow...that didn't take long.]
After first seeing Microsoft's slogan for its upcoming Windows XP operating
system, "it just works", I couldn't help wondering: what were the slogans for all
the previous releases? After thinking about it for a while, they became
obvious.
Windows 1.0: Good joke, eh?
Windows 2.0: Still funny, isn't it?
Windows 286: Yeah, we're still kidding.
Windows 386: Going boldly where Desqview has been for years.
Windows 3.0: It's finally worth buying!
Windows 3.1: It's finally worth using!
Windows 95: Going boldly where the Mac has been for years.\
Windows 98: More usable! Less stable!
Windows 98SE: More stable! Less usable!
Windows ME: Less usable AND less stable!
NT 1.0: Give me more hardware! NOW!!!
NT 2.0: Dammit, I said MORE HARDWARE!!! NOW!!!!
NT 3.0: Which part of "more hardware" do you not understand?
NT 3.5: With enough hardware, I'd work. Honest.
NT 4.0: Does less than Win98 with twice the hardware at one-half the speed.
Windows 2K: Works almost as well as Windows 98! Honest!
Windows XP: It just works.
I also don't understand why the hell anyone would like to remove the best web browser on earth from their installation. The only people that I know that do this are those who use their PCs as home recording studios. They claim that Win95 with IE removed is a very, very stable OS. More and more audio applications are only being produced for Windows. We'd love to use Linux, BeOS, or something else(short of dumping most of our hardware and buying a Mac), but we don't have much of a choice... Kevin
Right. The problem is, though, that the cost/price of hardware components has dropped dramatically though we've recieved more for our money.
The lower price for hardware components makes the relative cost of the operating system higher (even though the price has remained the same).
If I decide I want to use AOL's messenger, is the MSN messenger going to pop up annoying messages that I should use that?
Microsoft is FORCING their software on you. I have the sinking feeling that you're going to have to use Windows XP the way THEY want you to use it, rather than the way YOU want to use it.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Let's see...a Linux distro can come with KDE, Gnome, Afterstep and a few other WM. Maybe 3 FTP programs, a few different IRC programs....
Actually what they need is reliability, stability, and a more reasonable price to sell it to me.
What they need is value. Value Unused Features
Ok, then riddle me this - why do all of these "collaborative groupware" software titles have to have such AWFUL email components? Ok, Outlook isn't that bad. But Notes is bleedin' awful. I haven't used Groupwise since 1995, but back then it was also a horrible piece of software.
True, though, Outlook/Exchange are probably the best of these. And that's really scary.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Getting more for your money can be bad for the consumer, if it isn't *really* more for your money.
If you get, for free, a really mediocre set of tools that are "just good enough" that people generally stick with them as opposed to installing 3rd party tools (even if those 3rd party tools are free), then the quality of the whole system goes down. Look, if Microsoft didn't have such a near monopoly on bundled e-mail apps, there wouldn't be such a unified target for virus authors.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Except that Microsoft marketing is very good at convincing people that their crap is really good, and the IT groupthink mentality is really good at prohibiting people from trying anything else. So mediocre stuff gets perpetuated.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
No. Microsoft marketing/advertising is really good at convincing people that Windows has everything they need built in... except for large corporations, who obviously need to pay large sums of money for crap like Exchange/Outlook rather than using "communist" software like sendmail and a standards-compliant mail client.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Works 2000 has Word 2000 as the word processor.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
Folks, here's the thing:
As long as the govt. doesn't legally prevent you from writing your own code on a PC, there's no way to really claim a company such as Microsoft has a monopoly on a market.
There may be plenty of questionable business practices employed by MS, and maybe some "truth in advertising" laws they've bent or broken. Those are worthy of pursuit in the courts.
The reason MS doesn't look like it's going to really be punished by the Justice Dept. suit is because they've gone after the wrong issues!
Public utilities have regulated monopolies primarily because govt. said "Connecting up all of the homes for this product requires a significant infrastructure. It's not practical, or in the best interest of the public, to let each company duplicate this whole maze of wires or pipes, in attempts to compete with each other."
In the world of software, none of this applies. The bottom line is, Microsoft was there with a product that the vast majority of people were willing to use on their PC, so they bought into it. Most commerical competitors did only a half-assed job of marketing/advertising anything they released to compete with Windows - and in the case of IBM and OS/2, still sold their hardware with Microsoft's product loaded on it!
Linux and other Unix OS's are fine, but until recently, didn't attempt to meet the needs of the average *workstation* user. They were server OS's first and foremost, and have been molded and hammered into home/small business workstation OS's over the years.
I firmly believe in the power of the marketplace. When alternatives develop which truly meet people's needs better, Microsoft will lose dominance. This won't happen overnight though. Even if you succeeded in convincing every PC user in the world that BSD or Linux is their best choice, it would take years to get most of them to switch. People are generally lazy, and/or afraid of change. Until they buy a new PC or their hard drive crashes, they'll put up with what they've already got loaded.
Let's innovate more and litgate less - and let the market forces do as they will. I don't need more of my tax dollars paying lawyers to try to find reasons to punish Microsoft, expecially over a half-baked "monopoly" complaint.
if that's what you want stick with Linux
SQL Server (code from IBM and Oracle)
Actually, MS SQL Server was branched from the Sybase SQL Server codebase. Sybase 11 and MS SQL Server 6.5 are remarkably similar.
-jerdenn
As long as I can get the source and modify it however I want to.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ugh, if this is like Atlas Shrugged, then does that mean we have to sit though Bill Gates rambling on for 30 pages about Aristotle during the next trade show?
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
[Here's my submission of the story that got rejected for some reason]
Ah, Spring! It brings birds, neighbors mowing their laws, and the newly-awaken actions from everyone's favorite monopoly!
That's right, Microsoft's at it again. This time, it's Windows XP, and Microsoft's idea to bundle tons of new stuff into it. The associated press reports that Microsoft is bundling plenty of stuff to keep the Department of Justice busy: MSN Instant Messenger now loads automatically every time you boot Windows XP. A firewall and DVD player are included as well. Of course the firewall will work as advertised, and will never work only to block messages to rivals' network connections while leaving Microsoft open to send anything they want back to Microsoft's servers. Microsoft has never done that, and it's horrible of you to think they would! Look, that issue with the greeting card company in 1999 was just a misunderstanding, not policy.
Microsoft is just trying to give the consumers what they want. As a Microsoft spokes person said, "If people don't find those features compelling enough to upgrade they can keep whatever the heck they want. They're not forced to upgrade."
Funny they should say that.
Microsoft's new upgrade policy basically says that if large companies to upgrade to Windows XP and Office XP by October 2001, they won't be eligible for upgrade pricing after that. ZD Net reports that Microsoft is raising fees from anywhere from 33 to 107%. Guernsey Research analyst Chris LeToq summarized these actions saying that Microsoft is forcing an upgrade.
Clearly Microsoft is no longer concerned about any actions from the DOJ. Lest we forget, according to an article from the Mercury Center in 1999 (sorry, no URL available), they hedged their bets by buying off the presidential candidates early ($18k for John McCain, and they helped finance Bush's gubernatorial inauguration). According to the New York Times, Microsoft hired Ralph Reed, one of Bush's top consultants, to help them during the DOJ trial.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I don't see how anyone could compare Microsoft, who has a monopoly, with Apple who has 10% of the desktop market, or less. If Apple ever gets 90% of the desktop market (or even 50%), then people will question their bundling issues as hard as Microsoft's.
Repeat after me: Companies with monopolies are treated differently than those without monopolies.
Plus, Apple's bundlings are more for giving a newbie user a simple capability. For example, Disk Burner provides basic disc burning capabilities, but a user will quickly outgrow it's capability and go with Toast when they want to do xBook capabilities or multiple sessions. Or iTunes has basic MP3 jukebox capabilities, but advanced users quickly move to the more feature-full options. One could argue that Apple is helping third-party companies by giving users a simple application that shows them the need for the more feature-rich application for sale by a third party. Witness the success of Cassidy & Green's Conflict Catcher or Norton Disk Doctor even though Apple has bundled Extension Manager and Disk First Aid for years.
Microsoft, on the other hand is building applications to compete with their vendors. Microsoft Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, Outlook, etc has the most features of any application in their class. I'm not saying they're better, but I'm saying that Microsoft happily competes with its "partners" in a way far different than Apple.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I'd be fine with it as long as they made these "features" optional and uninstallable.
They can go ahead and make them "recommended" and part of the "typical" (non-custom) install, but give me a CHOICE!!
I'm sure the average (l)user appreciates these extra features but anyone that knows what they're doing would rather not install the resource hogs in the first place.
This wouldn't happen because Microsoft would take a revenue hit on each box sold.
Because they have little or no competition for aftemarket word processors, that's why. No impetus to get that foot in the door when people buy a computer and be the first one on the machine.
I love WordPerfect myself, but I'm under no delusion that it's a major competitor with Word, at least right now in the windows market.
---
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
Everyone knows that you don't get XP for boss fights!
------
I'm not standing up for MS, I'm just sayignt that the example is flawed.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
It increases MS' costs, but historically this doesn't add on to the OS' price.
We seem to be getting on just fine without them.
In the free market, business DO fail, peple DO lose their jobs. Market conditions change. Live with it.
MS made things more convenient for the consumer by bundling components which are necessary for the operation of a modern computer (thus OPERATING system), and unfortunately for Quarterdeck, TrumpetWinSock, Stac, (and some might argue Netscape), they were simply inconvenient. You either used the free bundle MS gave you, which worked fine in most cases, or you could acquire (or sometimes BUY) a 3rd party program to do the exact same thing. Why would you do that?
If anything, this should encourage innovation, because the competitors must add features WORTH switching to, and not giving us the exact same features MS is giving. How does this stifle innovation in any way?
I guess you can choose to customise the OS if you want to e.g. make an Inernet Appliance but then you're talking $$$; you can't simply make a nice install image with all the 'alternative' apps and then use Norton Ghost etc. to install it on machines....
Actually, a lot of those stereos are built by the big-name brands - Sony, Blaupunkt etc - and then rebadged by the car manufacturer. That's why the manufacturers don't complain: they're the ones benefitting!
Yeah. Just like getting long-distance service bundled with your local phone service was a really good thing, and we all love getting Windows bundled with our PCs - oh. Wait. We don't. That's why it's illegal...
The whole point of the anti-trust legislation is that when you have a monopoly in one market (local phone service, OS sales) you aren't allowed to use that monopoly to boost market share in another market (long distance, applications) - that's illegal abuse of monopoly power, which is what AT&T were cut up for, and what MS will hopefully be cut up for...
I personally am delighted to see MS and the BSA shooting themselves in the foot, and this is another instance of it. If MSFT is hostile to its ISVs -- if it is difficult, impossible, or unprofitable to founda business on selling software for WinXP, the ISVs WILL eventually switch to a new platform. My platform, ideally. :>
a.
So, based on that, I'd say about 10 million XP.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
If you don't believe me, I've also heard good things about Opera, but better browser or not, I feel no need to pay $30 for a browser. Konquerer also has its advantages, given that it's a fast little motherfucker. Not as stable, but obviously designed with the end user in mind (lets you save cookie preferences on a per site basis, so you can reject all doubleclick cookies while accepting others, and has a box you can check to prevent popup windows while leaving on javascript for other stuff).
I agree with the earlier poster. IE is good, but it's no longer better than everything else out there. It's superior in some areas, but inferior in others.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
From what the article says, MS is blatently adding this stuff in order the supposidely "Kill" outside software vendors, but thats not why MS is bundling it with the OS
MS is bundling these things in their software because the Computer Industry has evolved to the point where a majority of the Programs (Excluding the IM Of course) is needed to make the majority of hardware work out of the box
For example, when win98 was released, very few people had CD burners to justify adding support for CD burners out of the box. By the time Cd burners got popular to the point that they are bundled frequently with OEM machines, it was too late to incorporate that functionality in Win2k and WinME without delaying the product further. In the case of XP however, they had enough time to incorporate it into the OS.
The same thing lies true with the DVD player. (Which was in win2k and beyond, it just didn't have a software decoder) Theres enough DVD-ROM's out there to justify putting the player in WinXP.
As for the Firewall. It's in there because of Customer demand for more security in windows and the fact that many people today have always on connections to the internet now. Honestly, does anyone here think that Symantec is going to go out of business because of this thing? I dont remember them Screaming Foul when Scandisk was included in Dos 6 and scandisk didn't slow down sales of Norton Utilities. And I doubt that this firewall is going to stop sales of Norton Internet security simply because NIS has more features and Has a Virus scanner, and last I checked, there isn't a (Crucial) virus scanner in XP.
As for the IM, it has no purpose other than the fact that pepole like instant messangers. but just because it's bundled doesn't mean that people will not download AIM. For example. People who use AOL have AIM "Bundled" with Their Internet package. Since millions of people use AOL, and they wont touch MSN IM simply becasue they already have an account with AIM because Of AOL, most likely their Friends who want to talk to them that do not have AOL will get AIM too simply because they want to talk to the friend who is on AOL.
As for Browser Intregreation. If I could put this on a 30 foot blinking sing in the middle of Times Square I would, but since i cant do that let me put it in big words so it will be noticed...
*****MICROSOFT DID NOT KILL NETSCAPE. NETSCAPE KILLED NETSCAPE*****
The Reason Netscape died is because their product was INFERIOR to Microsoft's. They started losing market share way before win98 came out. As soon as IE4 came out and AOL adopted IE as their browser, Netscape share went into the toilet. this was a good three months before win98 was released. And as for "Well Netscape was charging for the Browser but MS wasn't..." Bull then you must have forgotten that since Netscape 3, it was praticially free to everyone except a business. and their share was in the 90's for a good year after the Free IE3 was released. Even today, Linux Distros are turning down netscape in favor of Konqueror and Mozilla so thats got to be telling you something about the quality of the product.
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In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I'd really like to be there when the lights come on for the first time and you can see.
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
watch out, you might trip over
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I really don't understand the argument against bundling IE with Windows -- having a good (and don't get me wrong, IE 5.5 is the best browser for most users on Windows) browser is as essential to a complete operating system as a word processor. How can one complain about an excellent browser that's bundeled for FREE that you don't even have to use if you don't want to. If I had to pay for the browser, I would simply use Mozilla on Windows like I do on Linux.
People drive the Windows car because it's easy to drive and has a consistent look and feel. On my linux box, I normally use three different widget sets and see about five different save/load dialog boxes. Imagine if you bought a car with a dial for a speedometer, a digital fuel gauge, a joystick for a steering wheel, a knob for a gas peddle, and a button for brakes. It wouldn't make any sense.
There is nothing inherently bad in Microsoft putting things in their operating system for free, because it's a free market. Microsoft is free to do whatever they want, but third parties are free to do whatever they want. If third parties can't handle it, maybe its time they pooled their resources and help give Linux, or whatever your favorite alternative OS is, some consistency and good applications instead of whining about what the big, bad Microsoft is doing to put them out of business.
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What is an operating system, though? An operating system is a piece of software that enables a computer to work. It's not just a kernel, or device drivers, or a file system. An operating system is much more; it defines a user's experience.
What are computers supposed to do, though? They are meant for business and entertainment. People want to edit text on a computer, browse the web, check their email, play games, listen to music, and even compose music. If a computer can't do those things, it's not working.
An operating system should come with software to do all that like any Linux distribution. All that Microsoft is doing here is the same thing as RedHat, for example, but I would hate to have to pay for all the extra liscenses to include a hundred word processers, twleve music players, and God knows how many web browsers from companies who need to make money. The important difference is that Microsoft and most companies that develop for Windows make money; Linux-based OSes are maintained primiarily by volunteers who don't need the money.
These companies who are cowering at Microsoft's new products should maybe start making Linux a better desktop OS instead of whining to the government.
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Maybe this is the future of third-party software - stuff that removes preloaded Microsoft crap, just to free up resources for real work.
Ok, lets take a look at Windows. People don't want HTML rendering engines and stuff built in. Fine, so you take out high-level network stuff. What about low-level? Remember the days of Trumpet Winsock, and how you needed third party software to even get onto the Internet? Ok, so we take that out, because it's unfair bundling. What about device drivers? Remember the old days in DOS when you'd install a game, and you'd pick your soundcard and video card from a list? Gravis Ultrasound Max, Sound Blaster Pro or compatible, ATI, S3, Trident, all that? What about windowing environments? In the PC world, they started out as third party addons for DOS; Desqview and the like. So out they go. What about memory management? Quarterdeck got pretty pissed when EMM386 got bundled in with DOS. Hell, what about filesystems? Do you honestly think Sun's incapable of making a filesystem worth having? Of course not. But Veritas would get pretty pissed. Operating systems are including more and more stuff as time goes on, and I, for one, think it's a good thing. I like the fact that I don't have to tweak TSRs and IRQs in Windows the way I had to in DOS. I like the idea of buying a network card and having it work with the OS, and not needing to get a third party TCP/IP stack. I like the idea of software being able to say 'Requires DirectX 7' and that being the end of it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
But with a car stereo the controls aren't really important. The controls interface with the stereo itself. All an aftermarket stereo needs is a way to connect to a power supply, a ground, and speakers. The original stereo needs the exact same things, so I can just snip a few wires, add some connectors and plug it into my new stereo. Yes it will leave all those scattered controls useless, but I can put any stereo I want in pretty easily. This stereo will have it's own interface. At worst I have to run the wiring myself. You might do that anyways (particularly to the speakers)
On average, the price of each new version of Windows or Office doubles
Windows 95 full: $150. Windows 98 full: $150. Windows ME full: $150. The freedoms offered by Free Software: Priceless®.
Windows pricing hasn't doubled; you're just becoming more and more accustomed to free software.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just as logical to ban TCP/IP from windows and make you buy/download the upgrade!!!
Except this is almost what Microsoft does with its Windows 2000 operating systems. Win2K Professional is ./configured at compile time (or perhaps even run time; I forget which) to handle fewer maximum concurrent TCP connections than Win2K Server or Win2K Advanced Server.
#ifdef WIN2K_SERVER
#define TCP_MAX 1024
#else
#define TCP_MAX 64
#endif
This is apparently done to discourage small businesses from running a server on the workstation OS.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Linux has to come bundled with software too. Would you like to run a plain kernel? I would think not. The OS itsself does nothing. It's the software that does the work.
So why can't Microsoft come up with something better than command.com (not nearly as powerful as even old-skool sh), MS Paint (no antialiasing, no filters), or Notepad/Wordpad (no regexp searching, no programmability, no M-x tetris)? Why can't they match bash, GIMP, or Emacs? MS doesn't even include a compiler for Christ's sake.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'd use Winamp, but it doesn't play videos.
The VidAmp plugin for Winamp lets you watch .avi and .mpg (through WiMP's MCI drivers) and .mov (through the drivers in an installed copy of QuickTime).
Will I retire or break 10K?
You don;t have to un-instal the software to use other programs. Just don't use it. It's simple as that really.
Sure, you could say that this is prevented ,by MS chaging the API's (or what ever they are). Making it harder for 3rd party ppl to compete with MS. But that's got nothing to do with MS bundeling stuff.
The most annoying thing I find with /. is that people don't attack what is acctually casuing the problems all the time.
MS including software, intergating apps into the OS is a good thing.
MS slowly chainging APIs, Making it difficult to insatll 3rd party stuff, threating retailers with and the whole OEM thing, is a bad thing, complain about that.
I think it's about time MS included stuff like this. OS's are evolving. I expect an OS to be able to get me on the net, use email, PIM's, whatch DVD's listen to MP3z, and especialy burn CD's, right out of the box.
Really? Whats so bad about USB? Sure, Firewire might be better (even though most PC's don't come starnard with it). But having a mouse connected to a firewire port is a bit of a waste IMHO, even though you can run multiple devices.
I have to dissagree with you opintion on win2k. I'm not a MS supporter, but I've been using win98se for the last 2 years. Just moved to a new PC, with win2k, A few teething problems. But it beats the pants of win98se. But I do see your point. there arn't that many great changes to the OS other than stability (which should have been there in the frst place).
No, mostly... I for was a loyal user of Netscape, until about 6 months ago. When I strated to learn the new HTML4 CSS2 and XML standards. Now I never open up NN, except to seem how badly NN renders one of my pages. And If I will need to make a seperate site for it.
Sure, MS where pigs by forcing OEM's to not sell NN, and they did the have the upperhand because they could bundle it with there OS (no that there's anything wrong with that). But NN didn't exactly try to stay alive, by making a decent browser, the did one or all of the folloing: Support standards, fast and reliable, add new inivative(not inivative in the MS sence) features.
The main point in the case is silly, and should never have been brought up. I like getting an OS and getting a whole lot of usefull software with it. There is nothing wrong with bundeling software. There is also nothing wrong(even though it may no be the best thihng to do) with not providing an uninstall option for the bundled software.
What is wrong, is when MS try to prevent other non-MS software from running on windows. Wheather that may be code in the OS, or threatening retailers, licencing policies etc...
Probably never.
This is a case of companies that are more to be pitied than censured: Real, AOL, and Norton fighting MS. All firms involved are tied to the closed-source, proprietary formats, customer tie-in model of doing business. Who really cares what the outcome of this is? I will either get Microsoft streaming media or Real streaming media... whats the difference?
Real's CEO (Rob Glaser) is an ex-Microsoft VP. His business behavior is classic Microsoft (proprietary formats, octopus-like software that grabs various parts of your PC, spyware reporting to RealNetworks' servers, lawsuits galore.)
AOL is running the closed network, constantly breaking interoperability of Chat, etc.
Norton is marginalized, and basically was making a living off Microsoft's bugs (e.g. disk recovery software.) Eventually, MS manages to produce a somewhat stable product: game over.
While I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I don't see this battle affecting me: I only use Windows for games. It will affect my mom, but only to the extent that the out-of-box OS she uses will have a few more features. My dad (68 years old,) will probably switch to Linux soon, because he needs more automatic task scheduling and customization than Windows gives him.
That's not entirely true. To a limited extent, the OEMs can include software from other companies in their install if they have the proper licenses from Microsoft. While it doesn't allow the fundamental applications of the OS to be replaced by others, it does allow the company to include some other software. I'll admit, though, that Linux does have a great advantage in this area. Whether it is one that will make it more tasty for the consumer has yet to be seen.
Pax Digitalia
So it's ok to provide the consumer with the applications he needs as long as they are collected from multiple authors? Why is a motley collection of applications better than those produced by one source?
Unfortunately, the real issue is the fact that the additions aren't usually optional. Windows may be good for the novice consumer, but it tends to be nothing but bloat for those who know what they want. Couple the rigidity of the platform with the rent/lease model that seems to be looming ever closer, and it seems to me that you have a very developer-hostile platform.
If only BeOS were to catch on more. I still wonder what the computing world would be like if Be had accepted Apple's proposal.
Pax Digitalia
The same tactic Apple uses btw with their OS-es. OK, MacOSX can't burn CD's because of a bug, but it was intended to be able to burn cd's: an iMac has to come with a full blown OS that can do everything the customer wants. End of story. Same with XP.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Far the most Linux boxes out there are running RedHat. Within a niche, that's also a monopolistic situation. We're not far away from the day that the averay John Doe will associate 'Linux' with 'RedHat'.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
When a company determines the retail price of a piece of software they base it on the cost and expected sales. If Microsoft writes it they should have the same cost but by bundling it into the operating system they are guaranteed to sell it to every Windows user.
Assume that the Windows market is 100 million computers and the number of people that will actually use the software is 10% of that. To recover the development costs, the software company has to charge 10 times as much as what Microsoft has to increase the cost of Windows. That also means that Microsoft has forced 90% of the users to buy something they won't use.
Since there is no way for a software company to compete with those economies of scale they go under. As this gets repeated over and over there are fewer and fewer software companies producing less and less software.
How could that be better for consumers???
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
it's a sure bet that as soon as internet explorer acheives a 90% or 95% market share and microsoft succeeeds in forcing the most significant websites to support only internet explorer then internet explorer will stop being a free add-on.
remember back in the early '90s when just about every computer came with the full microsoft office suite for "free"? once microsoft office became established as a monopoly, it stopped being free and became and $500 application suite.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
"Shell decides to start selling gas for .30 per gallon. Great! Consumers love it, Ma and Pa love it, everyone's happy except for Shell's competition. They have to lower their prices to .30 per gallon in order to sell ANY gas at all. Now everyone knows that Shell is bleeding money because of this practice, but nobody cares because gas is so cheap. Soon, however, when the petro companies that don't have the cash to weather the storm are wiped out, Shell is going to raise the price of gas to $5.00 per gallon to make up it's losses. It's the oldest trick in the book. The company with the most reserves can engage in corporate attrition, knowing that their money will hold out longer than everyone elses. In then end, you will be sorry."
in fact, this has happened. or at least a variation of it. at the close of the 19th century standard oil managed to gain control of the delivery infrastructure for oil, eventually forcing nearly all its competitors out of business. that's what prompted the first anti-trust laws to be passed (you know, the ones that are not supposed to apply to microsoft).
if an industry ever got so concentrated as a result of price wars, then the anti-trust laws are supposed to kick in to break up the large companies and return competition to that industry.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
I hear that a lot. It's okay when Linux does it, but not when Microsoft does it. KDE integrates its browser into the file manager, but that's okay. Microsoft does it, and they become the root of all evil. As for the independently written aspect, with the exception of IE, most of Microsoft's bundles (media player, MSN messenger) aren't integrated and non-removable. They're just as "optional" as your Linux components, except installed by default.
I guess what I'm asking is this: If it's okay for Linux to do it, stop bitching at Microsoft because they do it.
Well if the toold are mediocre, they shouldn't be worry about their sales no? if people need "better tools" they'll go buy it, period. This is a market, microsoft is a buisness.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Uhh ... no. Windows (NT and 2000 -- I'm not even considering Win9x here) can actually be considered more secure than Linux (assuming both machines are properly setup by knowledgeable administrators), as it's more difficult to run code remotely on an NT box. As for the virus problem, the only reason it exists is because Windows is vastly more popular than pretty much anything else. As we've seen in the past few months, even Linux can have "virii" (well, worms, but still ...).
As long as we're wandering off topic, I wish you hadn't said this because while most of the rest of your post is pretty coherent and reasonable, this paragraph is rubbish.
It's more difficult to run code remotely on NT? How so? Sure, NT ships with fewer services. It's about the same as if you install Red Hat with the workstation option... no inetd, so no telnetd, ftpd, etc. Surely any good admin will eliminate unwanted services anyway.
Anyway, buffer overruns are one form of remote execution, and NT has seen its share of those.
The virii problem largely has to do with two factors, neither related to the popularity of either system. First, Windows configurations are promiscuous by default. How many Windows users operate with the equivalent of Administrator privileges, so they can write to C:\WINNT, their boot sector, etc? Most of them, compared to Linux users, I'd bet. Second, Windows applications are notorious for macro viruses. That's not a defect of the OS per se but in reality the OS and major applications must be considered together. It's certainly likely that Linux apps can/will be vulnerable to the same, but they are less likely to do as much damage.
I'm not interested in the least just how secure Windows/Linux can be made with extensive customization, I'm more concerned with how they are installed in real life since that's how viruses spread: through the majority of users. And both Windows and Linux have achieved critical mass to propogate a worm or virus quickly, whenever a vulnerability becomes widely known.
We're talking licensing not ownership. I own the car outright, so it's my problem. I paid to license 95 but that software has been replaced, and is no longer supported. Therefore my license is valueless.
So XP has two operating systems running simultaneously? Wow I didn't know that. As far as features goes, I agree OSX doesn't have as much useless bundled in crap as XP does. And it completely lacks the .Net thing wich is quite a benifit.
Excuse me? Who said I didn't use it? Not me. I'm typing this in OE 5.5 right now.
Perhaps you have mistaken me for a Linux zealot, much as my first post was mistaken as being written by a Microsoftie.
It is ever the fate of the moderate to be mistaken as "the enemy" by both sides.
KFG
This point of view is in no way alternative to the one I posted. In many ways they are complimentary.
In fact it comprises *additional* reason to be pissed at MS for not supplying the OS tools they should.
It in no way impacts the point, however, that such functionality should have come with the OS from the start and that Adaptec, Norton, etc., have no leg to stand on in this particular case.
KFG
I wrote every post in the thread in OE running under Windows 98.
I never said I don't use Windows. I will use whatever tool I consider valid for the job.
I have defended Microsoft's actions here on many occasions when I felt they needed defending, as I was, in my own way, defending Microsoft on this occasion.
I'm sorry about the opening display of my second post but there appeared to be some here that felt I was some sort of Microsoft 'shill', much as you now seem to feel that I am some sort of Linux zealot. I am neither. I use Linux where I prefer it, and Windows where I prefer it.
As it happens I think the Windows web enviroment is superior and have no shame in saying so, or using it.
I have, and use, the MS installer, and I'm not sure you caught that the basic thrust of my posts was in *support* of MS making improvements to the OS and that if Norton and Adaptec don't like it they should basically piss off.
KFG
programs is that are virii in their own right.
I hate them, the only way to recover a HD from them is to flaten the whole bloody thing and I'm really not sure which is worse, getting a virus, or getting a virus protection program.
KFG
MS stops bundling all these apps with the operating system and instead makes them available as free downloads.
Is anyone here in favor of banning freely downloadable software?
KFG
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
VW doesn't stop you from going out and putting a different head unit in your car (in fact, some people I know on an owner's board have put in RioCars or whatever they're called these days), but dealers can't run their diagnostic system on the car most of the time if you've done this. The Jetta and Golf (and I suspect the New Beetle, Passat, Cabrio, and Eurovan "suffer" the same problem) depend on the stereo for some of the system functions.
Is that restrictive bundling? Or is it done for a good reason? I personally wonder why the designers didn't better allow for the possibility of aftermarket upgrades.
i am a soviet space shuttle
from the article:
I don't follow the reasoning behind this. If Microsoft's products are functional, don't cause the user hassles, and don't prevent other competitors' products from being installed (and I don't see any allegations of that in this article; interestingly enough, last week there was a whine in the BBC about how AOL's software disabled competitors'), how is competition stifled? Rather, isn't this the measure of healthy competition? Forcing Microsoft to tie its shoelaces together, or hobbling it in some other way, won't help the marketplace. If anything, it will hurt competition, as Real's (as in RealPlayer) data points, er, customers, will be that much easier to come by, regardless of the quality of Real's software.
Somehow, this seems reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged.
- stealing code: SQL Server (code from IBM and Oracle);
- disabling competitor's functionality: DR-DOS (now owned, I believe, by Caldera);
- the like: Stacker from Stac Electronics (remember them?)
Those examples don't even scratch the surface of Microsoft's misdeeds in the corporate arena. And it's all in the name of 'increasing consumer value.'Personally, I think the next MS case should be over the fact that they no longer support versions of their software; if it could be legally proven that one version of windows (let's say Win95) performed the same tasks as another version (i.e. WinME), but was no longer supported by the company, then they should have to purchase those licenses back (imho). Now *that* would make them suffer.
Bren.
Bren.
And that is precisely why bundling of this sort is a problem. The average computer user does not have the interest / time / intelligence / some combination of the above to install additional software.
So the system comes with Microsoft's browser, and they use it. Not because it's good or bad or otherwise, but because it's already there. So they never install Netscape or Mozilla or Opera or K-Meleon.
So the system comes with Microsoft's office suite, and they use it. (Nearly all pre-built systems come with Windows and some version of MS Office or MS Works.) Not because it's good or bad or otherwise, but because it's already there. So they never install WordPerfect or StarOffice or AbiWord or Lotus.
Why do you think companies try so hard to have their products bundled with a system? Because most people will use whatever is force-fed to them when they buy the product, regardless of the quality (whether the product is a PC, the speakers that come with a TV, the stereo that comes with your car, or the couch that comes with your new apartment). Who wants to take the extra time (and usually money) to install a different browser / word processor / stereo / OS then the one they already have? Very few people, and most of them read Slashdot. :-)
Now, when the company with a monopoly hold on the market (as proven in a court of law) is bundling its own software, you have abuse of monopoly power. That is exactly what MS was sued over, and rightly so. Now, they're doing it again. "Why bother using AIM when MSN Messenger is here already?" "Why bother using Java when C# is supported already?" "Why bother using Opera or Mozilla when IE is installed already?" Those are exactly the thoughts that people will have when buying Windows XP, and that is precisely what Microsoft is gunning for, quite consciously and deliberately.
Which product is superior technically is completely irrelevant. If it's preinstalled, it will win in the marketplace, because the typical user doesn't know any better. That is why people are complaining, and that is why MS should be stopped from doing it.
--GrouchoMarx
--GrouchoMarx
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
I agree
The aftermarket products are often superior to the factory installed one. That is why that market thrives. In the Microsoft case, the competition is at best equal in quality to the 'factory installed' one.
There is a reason why MS is where they are now. The whole monopoly issue has a little to do with it, but you got to admit there hasn't been many products that are clearly superior to the MS equivalents. Stop bitching and get your open source punks to write something better.
True enough, in its fashion. But the end consumer isn't who Microsoft is really selling to. Microsoft is selling to computer manufacturers.
Few people who had Windows 95 installed on their machines would upgrade the software on their machines. In the same way, I expect that few people with either Windows 95 or 98 on their machines will upgrade to Windows XP.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
It's definately true that at this stage IE does do a better job at rendering pages, and has a few nifty-o tricks up it's sleave taboot. :)
But It does seem apparent though that if you built your page utilising NN quirks, IE may end up goofing the page too. So what makes one more standard than the other
Take for instance XML. Now I have no Idea anymore if NN will even look at XML. I'd hazard a guess to say that it does not. But I'll be bold and say IE does not either. Really. If I create a xml definition thinger file, guaranteed that as harebrained as I make it , IE will nod it's head and say 'I'll let it pass'. And many of the retarded definitions I've come up with originally did not work at all in a propper validator. It's my take on it therefore that IE does not do 'real' XML.
What's the bet then, that if Netscape/Mozilla does do "real" XML and W3C standards down to the bone, that it'll look great.... . . . And break in a Internet exploder browser.
Now soap is another matter. Kudos to microsoft on that one. Bigger kudos to IBM for puttin' it on Apache. As yet neither are compliant. But it's a damn good idea. (Even if it is just XML-RPC with nutty definition files and variants)
Excuse me waffling. It's getting late
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I understand that the U.S. vs. Microsoft case is still far from over, but Microsoft seems to be very arrogant here.
The recent rulings (in the past year) have been very much against Microsoft - and it would appear that Microsoft is in desperate need for a successful appeal. One of the main points of this case was that Windows was unfairly bundling IE with Windows - but now they've added a media player, cd burner, and instant messenger. No wonder XP requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM.
Microsoft isn't looking to appease the government and survive - they're arrogantly pursuing their desire to dominate every major software type - OS, office package, media player, cd burner, browser, mail, and messenging - by far the most common applications used today. I can't imagine how these moves will help Microsoft in their court case.
Also, if XP is like the installations of 2000 I've done, it won't give you any options as to what components can and can not be installed (but hey, maybe I did something wrong). I also wonder of OEMs could choose to remove these packages from their computers before selling them.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
does it not bother any body else that the newest feature of windows is "product activation"? esentially giving M$ control over when you can perform hardware upgrades... i don't run out and by a new pc very often, i just upgrade my hardware.. i don't want to have to call M$ every month and tell them i got a new board and to PLEASE reactive my computer... it's a bit much for the richest man in the world to worry about piracy that much...
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. - Initial
Unlike MS, Apple paid to have Sound Jam code used in iTunes rather than develop their own MP3 player in house. Similarly, the Disc Burner software was also developed, and licenesed, outside of Apple. Add to that all of the good UNIX tools that have been developed by Open Source groups and you have a very different story than MS does.
I can't think of anything off hand that a third party was paid to develop for Windows. IIS, IE Outlook, WMP, etc. are all MS developed tools that were built to shut down competitors. I don't think you can lump Apple into that category anymore.
Good point. However, the issue in this case is that Microsoft made it very difficult if not impossible to remove that car stereo and implement a different brand stereo.
If Ford, for example, made it impossible to remove the stereos from the car, you would agree that aftermarket stereo manufacturers would in fact not survive.
There's nothing wrong with features. We must look at the definition of 'illegal monopoly.' I would say that when Microsoft "bundles" items and then makes it that difficult to change them or even install an additional copy of a similar program, you've got problems.
I am supposing, however, that with the Republican administration, none of this matters too much. Or is that a misconception? I don't Bush would ever split up MS, but then again it's not just Bush doing the splitting.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It is very easy to click Minimal and not get any games, calculator, terminal programs installed and all Windows's based OS's have always had this feature. Also, if you are a corporate customer or power user you can take the INFs (install scripts) that ship with the Windows installers to create your OWN distribution with your own programs and drivers.
Hope that makes sense.
-Pat
Who are we to tell Microsoft what to put in their own software. It's them that write it. Not us
alright. those of you who say win9x dosen't count, pull your heads out and count again. win9x has found it's way into everyhome and small office. and most big offices. why? supposedly it's easier to use, is backed up by tech support, and looks pretty. if all this is true, then why do most office workers not even know how to switch to the currently working printer in the office? meanwhile, 16,000 jobs are waiting in the print que, and everybody is perplexed. why do all these idiots have forty two icons on their desktop? is the start menu too "technical"? 3 reboots a day under win98 and we considered ourselves lucky. tech support? the top two answers from those helpful fols are: Just Reboot. It's your computer's fault. so much for tech support. as for looking pretty, yeah that's great and all, but explain to me how just starting the word processor with nothing else running should cause the "virtual memory" to disapear. on a 16 or 32 meg system, it's understandable. but a 96 or 128 meg system? that's simply unacceptable. Thats why I run Linux. faster, more reliable, and so customizable, that after the pc leaves the factory, it could be set with giant buttons that do what people do with their home computers: get porn off the net, and try and pick up 13 year old's in msn chatrooms. and does anyone programming for the linux community (thank you) build in security holes, and planned obsolecence? all that and it's free? sign me up yo.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Somehow, getting more for your money is bad for the consumer.
Guess what? Many cars come "bundled" with car stereos. You can't get the car for less money if you don't want the stereo. Guess what else? That stereo was probably built by the car manufacturer under a different name.
Yet, somehow aftermarket car stereo manufacturers manage to survive. I don't here them whining about "monopolistic" policies of the car manufacturers, even that clearly costs them huge amounts of market.
Deal with it. Getting more applications for your money instead of less is a good thing.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Andrea is 25 years old and very male.
Amusing troll, had me going for a bit...
If you don't like the software or you don't like the price, then don't buy it. it's as simple as that. nobody's forcing you to.
it's not like someone's pointing a gun at your head, although that's exactly what'll happen if you're stubborn enough in your refusal to pay taxes. I find it ironic that micosoft's competitors are employing exactly those guns to force their advantage in the marketplace under the pretence that microsoft is tying you into their technology.
You know, as well as I, that's just not the case. Especially now with the meteoric rise of the free software movement, there's not much you can't do without microsoft software. it's just that in many cases, and for most people, microsoft just makes it easier.
is that really so much of a crime?
beware, though. doing this will clearly demonstrate IE's OS integration.
Of course we know why they are doing this, it fits right in with the whole "secure PC" theme. No doubt it will not let you burn MP3s from unknown sources, or backup your games, or eventually probably anything else that may be someone elses intellectual property
What better way to condition people to only make CDs of "legitimate" content than by putting such a program right under thier noses, since we all know nobody would pay for such a thing....
I'm not so sure about usage vs. sales. I have been paid money, as have many of my friends, to remove windows ME and install windows 98 on non-geek's machines. I wonder how many OEM installs will replaced. Microsoft makes this difficult, but it is doable.
The coffee god lives!
Does anyone else think that Jackson should have uped the spinouts to be like 4-6 companies? I would like to see:
Server OS
Server Apps
Client OS
Client Apps
At least, but probably also:
Games
XBox && Hardware
You cannot expect M$ to give up there collusion and 'first son' attituted if you dont really split them up. You want innovation - see what happens if the Office Applications market was re-born...
Jackson didnt go half way to a real solution.
Your complaint with MS then is that the apps that come with it are not independently written and not optional?
If I choose not to use that software, then it might as well not be there, and most of those are optional when you choose whether or not to load them in Windows Update. This argument is tripe.
Everyone knows the apps that will come with Windows XPwill be no better than the ones available now from MS. Everyone will just go and load mIRC instead of using Comic Chat. And so on. People will seek out the better apps from the companies that are innovating. If everyone pulls a Netscrape "let's sit on our laurels and let the freeware stuff even pass us in features" then of course they're not going to be bought to replace the disfuntional versions that comes with Windows XP. I have faith that the industry will further shake itself out, hopefully without the government holding their hands.
My beef with Linux is that the packages that come with the distros can only use their package installers to load them. No one has gotten together to make a common installer across distros. I refuse to even use them and prefer to get the source and make it myself, as 99% of the time it's a quick and painless build, and I have the confidence that I'm using the source that's been reviewed, and not something with a possible backdoor.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I'm trying win XP beta 2 and I think it's an okay OS. Why the hell would I buy Easy CD Creator when it costs as much as Windows XP?
As for Real, it's crap and it pisses me off that so many websites use it for streaming. Can't they use Windows Media Player or QuickTime for god's sake? They're much better.
``If people don't find those features compelling enough to upgrade,'' Cullinan said, ``they can keep whatever the heck they want. They're not forced to upgrade.''
Ahhh, if I follow the news right, and read the signs correctly, under the OEM a business (or personal user) cannot use their old Microsoft software on their newly purchased machines, even if those machines have no software installed, the software licence prevents them from installing it(correct me if i'm wrong on this)..... Not forced to upgrade indeed.
On the other hand, you have fingers
Linux is dying horse. Torvalds is just a sore loser. He will never see in Best Buy or other retail stores, aisles of games or applications for his precious OS.
I'll sit back a couple of years and watch it fade away. When all the dust settles, Microsoft will still be there.
Yes, Microsoft is like a roach and you cannot kill it.
But there is always OS 9 or OS X to keep a person happy. Plus you see aisles of MAC software popping up now. Where is Linux?
http://saveie6.com/
If it sucks so bad, then don't use it! Oh wait, I forgot that MS makes the best desktop OS.
Well, you could use Linux. Oh wait, I forgot that Linux sucks on the desktop.
The main problem here, it occurs to me, is that no one has made a Linux distribution that can easily replace a newbie's Windows OS. That won't happen, because the nerds are too self-rightous - "why doesn't he just read the man pages" etc.
She asked me why someone didn't just make something different that worked on the same computers. I told her a bit about Linux, (which I personally do not use) and then I proceeded to install Windows 2000.
Why? Because MS makes the best OS for people who aren't nerds.
I think Linux has a real problem, and that is the elitist attitude found among developers. "Why don't they just read the man pages", etc. There is a real market for a distribution which can easily replace a newbie's MS Windows OS, however, it seems that no one wants to build it. Why? The geeks would rather keep it for themselves.
So please don't complain about MS - they are the only company (except Apple) that has created an operating system newbies can use - unlike the community of Linux developers that can't be bothered.
Thanks for making my point - the idiot end user SHOULD NOT have to spend hours reading some manual to become a "knowledgeable person!"
Not everyone has the TIME to be 'patient' as you say. It's really as simple as that. End users shouldn't have to spend 30 minutes reading some half-assed 'man' page put together by someone a few years ago to figure out how to compile something. You probably wouldn't give those same people 'root' privileges on your box, so don't expect them to be able to compile and install crap on their own either.
creation science book
Darn, I bet AOL wishes they'd allowed MSN and AOL's userbases to interact with each other now, don't they? Two years from now the shoe will be on the other foot, and I doubt anyone's going to listen to their complaints.
What are you talking about? Netscape 4 was garbage. Not only was it unstable (not that either 4.0 was), its rendering was inconsistent and generally not very good. Meanwhile, IE was not only rendering valid HTML well, it gracefully handled amateur things like closing TABLE tags at the end of documents.
Usability wise, Netscape also lacked any kind of autocomplete. You couldn't arrange the toolbars. Can you write context menu extensions for Netscape yet? I was able to do things like zoom in and out on images, or searching the Web or highlight based on the selected text, and it's worth noting that Netscape didn't/doesn't let you select a paragraph by triple clicking. Exactly what was Netscape 4.0x doing that was so wonderful?
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
I'm not sure if I'm being trolled or if two of the last 10 Windows users with Netscape just happened to find my comment.
/. and nowhere else, the breakdown is like this:
In the stats I've collected on sites that I have linked to from
Netscape: 36%, MSIE: 63%
Unix 16%, Windows 72%
Note the close correlation between Windows and IE. Also note that almost everyone who visits the site reads Slashdot, and I'm inclined to think that even the stupidest of crapflooders have some kind of clue how to install another browser.
One more thing to add to my list of complaints about Netscape -- when it gets updated, you have to download the entire thing all over again. A patch here and a patch there with IE takes a few hundred K, not 15 megs every time.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
IE's success has little to do with the bundling. It's just that it had parity with Netscape at the 3.0 version, and 4.0 (three years ago) completely blew Netscape out of the water. The same will be applicable for all of these other programs.
The people at Real should look at their own product before they go claiming that Windows Media Player is "not the best product". WMP7 is starting to cross the line, but it's still far far removed from the crapware that is RealPlayer or QuickTime. I'd use Winamp, but it doesn't play videos.
I don't care much for MSN Messenger, but it has been my IM for a while, so I may as well use that.
I'm not going to use the Windows DVD player -- I went through all of that before. A regular player that I can run on my larger TV with a remote control is much nicer.
As far as firewalls go... well, it's a security product written by Microsoft. It might be good for warding off tigers and polar bears.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
...i aint gonna buy this crap. xp is a rip off, less than 2 years after win 2k and they try and pawn of this garbage??? just dont purchase it, and if your a sys admin. do your best to keep your employer from purchasing it too. Be a real friend and keep your friends, family and neighbors from buying this crap too. M$ needs to learn a lesson, i hope this is the distro that will teach them it. cheers
Spazdot-1 in 10 insightfull articles, and 1 in 10,000 insightfull comments ain't bad.
I work for a smallish startup (1000 people) that actually produces product, so has been fairly resilient to the recent adjustment of valuations. We got a version of win2k around December of last year, and after a week of poking at it, deceided that the benefits from the installs would negate the downtime of migrating users over. The roll over was pretty painless.
Now we recieved a beta version of winXP in the office a few weeks back, and let me just say that we will not be upgrading to it. Basically it doesn't add anything new. Sure, theres a few little cool features, but honestly it's not worth the effort.
Do I think it's wrong to bundle Windows Media Player with the os? no, not really. Do I think it's wrong to bundle a anti-virus program with winxp? Hell, nobody complained with msav in dos.
Personnally I think Microsoft could do some good/interesting things by instead of licensing the OS to manufacturers and/or users licensing it to distributors who then value add things and resell the OS as their own distribution.
Someone could then actually sell a version of windows with litestep out of the box, or with an installer that lets you choose IE or Netscape or kmeleon or opera or...
Wouldn't that be interesting
Before IE, Netscape was free for students and employees of non-profit organizations, not for business use, not for general home use. (except for a short trial period)
Then IE came out, free for everyone. In fact, just to make things easier for the poor consumer, free and preinstalled.
I did, actually. But was this before Microsoft offered IE for free?
You can walk into your local grocery store and get a cup of coffee while you shop, but it's nasty coffee at their little counter. Or some mediocre meat in the deli-section, yada yada. But if you want good coffee, or some prime cuts of meat, you go to a coffee shop or a butcher. The coffee shop/butcher offer a better product because they specialize in it, like Norton focuses on security and control of your OS. I'll be damned if I'll rely on the built-in firewall of Windows XP...Linux is the butcher for OSes right now, or Macs I guess, but for most of us, it's Linux, but like the premium cut of meat, Linux comes at a cost in the form of a severe learning curve. Geeks are content to spend three days getting a computer working properly and just playing around, but someone who wants to type a paper and check their e-mail will have no patience for this kind of work to use their computer. This is, in my opinion, the biggest drawback to linux right now (but it's getting better all the time, with easier installations, more intuitive interfaces, etc.)
Granted, Wal-Mart doesn't hold a 90% market share, and as is mentioned elsewhere, MS does not make it easy to remove these programs and features. I updated messenger on accident in windows update, and I had to go through three times and remove the registry entries that start messenger.
I dunno...I've never seen MS as the evil others have, but their getting pretty rediculous...getting time to go to linux exclusively for me.
He's dead, Jim. You grab his wallet, I'll grab his tri-corder.
If Netscape did something bad to Spyglass, that does not automatically justify MS to do what they want to Netscape. If I hit you, anyone may not hit me, especially not if it is not in your defence. IANAL
I think that all these jackass software companies should shut the hell up already. This is becoming ridiculous. It's not like Windows is the only OS in the world. It's one of the _worst_ OS's in the world, and all these jackals are fighting over who gets to write software for it...
If I was Gates, I'd be freakin' pissed. He started M$, they came up with Window$, and now people are treating him like he stole Window$ or something. It's his own damn thing!!! I don't care if AOL and Netscape can't make it because M$ bundles Explorer with Windows. It's their own damn product, you buy it if you like it, you don't if you don't. You don't _have_ to use Window$. And M$ is as far away from a monopoly as anybody else. A monopoly means "no choice." You _do_ have a choice in this case. That's why this whole affair is sooo ridiculous.
I'm sick and tired of this deal, and they should leave M$ alone, and Time Warner should go eat shit and realize that they made a bad business decision, and they should move away from the browser/internet messaging industry... Writing a browser for Window$ is an incredibly idiotic idea to begin with.
--------------
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$_='hfflbwfsbhfzp vs';s/(^.{4})(.{7 })(.+$)/$3 $2 $1/
AOL is making the claim that this is just like what happened with netscape and IE. The software that will be bundled with XP is _not_ embeded into the kernel like IE was. And the other companies have no room to complain becuase MS isn't making it impossible for people to install their software on windows XP.
Um, Linux has to come bundled with software too. Would you like to run a plain kernel? I would think not. The OS itsself does nothing. It's the software that does the work.
Yes, yes, I know about how evil M$ is, and yes, I wish they would cease to exist, etc., but our reasons for hating M$ are not the reasons why the case was prosecuted. DoJ might have cited M$'s monoplolistic practices, but the hidden agenda was extortion.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Hmm. Have you tried to kill the Poozer? If you can do that, go find the bush full of trifids, that's lots of XP! =)
I don't think you can kill Windows any more than you can slay the San Francisco fog with a fly swatter. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try tho.
Microsoft is that kinda of monster under the bed, if you don't pay attention to it, it'll eventually go away. I'ven't sent them any money for anything since buying my laptop. Can't seewhere any of that stuff is necessary. Heck, it doesn't even come with a standard language. Linux, at the very least, has shell scripting and gcc.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Computer-adept users like the majority of the slashdot crowd know that if they dont like the bundled MS DVD player, they go out and get another one. Dont like WMP7? Get another.
However, the mass market does NOT know this. I agree to an extent that MS should be able to package their product however they choose, but the Common Joe who views his computer as an appliance will not neccessarily understand that there are alternatives to what comes with Windows. I've seen this time and time again at my job, at home... everywhere.
So, yes I believe Microsoft imposes hardship on other corporations through an unfair advantage and will do so with XP. No surprises there.
Microsoft has three things going for it that keep people locked in:
If signifigant improvements are made which change the look and feel. Human compatiblity problems force excess training expenses. This will eventually be the hardest barrier to Linux desktop adoption. However this also will be MS's downfall because they can not really change.
FUD
Security bugs which must be fixed. The more PC that are connected to the internet the more inportant bug fixes are. If you ignore the bugs, you will eventually fail internal/external audits or be cracked. If this could be ignored, Revenue would dry up quickly and the strangle hold would weeken
I'll have to break it to you on the registry front: you're wrong. So far, I've swapped four different soundcards into my Win2K system, and right now, I'm up to folder 0028 on "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\C lass\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}". I don't know whether it's safe to delete those useless entries or not; I'll err on the safe side just in case deleting those entries ruins something. Still, I wish that regedit would clean up after itself.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
A working ASPI layer that most CD-burning and CDDA-extraction programs use. Microsoft and Adaptec have been at war over ASPI for years.
A smarter registry that will clean up unused hardware entries, thereby saving valuable registry space and processing time during the addition of new hardware.
A truly clean system (once again, Microsoft has decided to force OEMs to use restore discs which install the bloatware and spyware, and XP will come with Media Player 7, the most bloated Microsoft media player yet, pre-installed).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It is interesting that adding "value" in the form of a plethora of features and bundled programs has become a "disincentive" or "problem" for software vendors like Microsoft. It seems to me that this activity becomes problematic when the extra components are not included in "good faith"--i.e., out of a genuine desire to make a better product, rather than to undercut the competition or advance some other goal.
Think of it this way: legislators here in Minnesota have attached an amendment to an appropriations bill introducing a waiting period for abortions. The appropriations bill has to do with funding medical care for the elderly, among other things. Whatever you think about the abortion issue, attaching unrelated amendments to bills in the hopes of advancing unrelated goals feels somewhat underhanded. The legislators are not acting in good faith.
This is the problem I see Microsoft's actions: they are using their ability to bundle software to advance goals unrelated to the functionality of the main product they are selling.
the carnation in my buttonhole / precedes me like a small / continuous explosion. -RS
I don't know about the other stuff but I think CD burning software for Windows is a great idea and necessary. True, Linux provides software by varying companies, but then that software is all free. And I'm sure someone can come up with a more professional alternative to all of Microsoft's programs. Better free, though--I can't afford Adaptec's EasyCDCreator.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
Bundling is good. Fuck you whining idiots and fuck the whining competition. Microsoft rulez! They saved us from IBM remember?
A Canadian is just an American without a gun and a decent health care system. Anon.
even though we're against microsoft and all, that's part of making money: adding new features.
Also since we're a (nearly) pure capitalist country, the object of companies is strictly to make money. Legally, Microsoft is doing nothing wrong. Morally, yes, but when do companies have to act morally?
My dad is going through similar things with his business. He owns a little convenience store, and because we can't buy in bulk, distributors are refusing to sell to us. We end up having to buy our Coke, Pepsi, (and other sodas), milk, and a lot of other items from Wal-Mart, Eckerds, and Walgreens. How can we compete with them if we're -buying- from them? The result: we're nearly bankrupt, and there's nothing we can do about it: Capitalism is good until there's a big company which has a monopoly, which is almost always bound to happen.
It's not that they are bundling it that's the problem. It's that they have a monopoly and choose to solely bundle their browser. Like others have said, you aren't allowed to use one monopoly to get another. While a browser may be expected to come with a new computer, it is hardly an integral part of the operating system (though now MS has decided to make IE it's file browser apparently so I guess that's not the case. Then again, is a file manager even an integral part of an operating system?). In order to make it a fair browser market, they would have to seperate their browser from the operating system. One way to do this would be to sell it seperately and remove its cost from that of the Windows. Obviously, there are other ways to comply with antitrust law, but the basic idea here is that Microsoft is obviously using its OS monopoly to get a monopoly in browsers. This is even more obvious when you see how they petitioned OEMs to solely include Internet Explorer.
Heck, with democrats, none of us would even have to work.
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
I just killed a field mouse for 120 XP, how much do I get if I kill this Windows thing?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
``If people don't find those features compelling enough to upgrade,'' Cullinan said, ``they can keep whatever the heck they want. They're not forced to upgrade.''
Not forced to upgrade, that is, until the non-perpetual licensing crap is in place for business and Microsoft decides to start foisting it on consumers as well.
Then the rapid end-of-lifing of license renewals on older versions of Windows starts. Then the next thing you know, Microsoft is essentially dictating to you when you buy your next Windows PC because you can't renew the license on your existing version of Windows, and your existing PC lacks the horsepower to run the latest version of Windows.
~Philly
Damn it! When will Micro$oft stop it?!
Terrible is the fall of the mighty, for their pain is great to behold [Personal Quote(TM)]
The thing about a Linux distro including tons of software and what Micropuke is doing is that with a linux distro you can DECIDE what you want on or off the system. With Micropuke you either install it or install it.
Great points. Microsoft has to make sure that users have a smooth upgrade to XP, something they failed to do with ME. I'm personally going through with the upgrade....to Windows 2000 Pro. Enough of my games and apps work with it that it's become an alternative to XP, plus its just as stable. Am I going to get rid of my Linux just because XP is supposed to be the be all end all OS from Micropuke? Hell no. They'd have to pry that OS from my cold dead hand. Sure it's not ready for the desktop of oh lets say my mom or grandma but I can use it fine for software development. Most likely though XP will shoot itself in the foot because of pricing, it's intrusive appeal, and negative publicity online.
That is the general perception. However, it is flawed. The DoJ under the Clinton administration seemed more eager to settle with Microsoft that the states which were plaintifs. Where does that leave Bush? As an irritated spectator. He may not like it, but I think that antitrust judgements will come down against Microsoft in some form and then the feeding frenzy wil begin.
I do think that it would be a bad thing to break Microsoft up. An intact but guilty Microsoft would be far more crippled than if they were broken up. Just imagine the hundreds of lawsuits...
anyway, my thoughts.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
And I certainly believe that people who want OS support for these things should pay for it. And people who want their OS to be extended with major applications such as movie players and email clients should be made to pay for those extensions, either directly via higher prices, or indirectly via fees on suitable servers, advertising, etc.
What I don't believe is that anyone else should have to pay for them. You appear to believe that if I go out and get Windows simply to interoperate with other businesses, then I should pay for a Microsoft email client, a Microsoft movie player, a Microsoft web browser, etc.
Well, I shouldn't. I should be able to get a PC that has Microsoft Windows on it, not Microsoft Windows + Thousands of apps.
You may never wear your seatbelt, but in most countries, the US included, that's illegal. To the best of my knowledge, it hasn't been made illegal to fail to view streaming media. The other enhancements are not "seperate apps", the car is still in the business of transporting a handful of people and small amount of luggage from A to B, and they're there for your safety. I was under the impression that in the US airbags are compulsory too at the moment.Curiously, for the most part, Windows does not integrate the operating system equivalents of what you're suggesting. There are no journaling file systems, precious little in the way of software to keep your work safe if your computer crashes, etc.
Now, if GM ever forces everyone to buy a trailer with their car, and makes the car radio a compulsory element, you might have a point.
Which is nice, but it's a little extreme to suggest that everything's ok because while Microsoft have done their best to force you install various applications unrelated to the function of an operating system, you can get a third party application that will assist you in disabling some of those problems. The worst is that 98lite isn't even a perfect tool for the job. The evidence presented in the Microsoft trial revealed that 98lite made very, very, little difference to your hard disk space, such was the extent that MS had "integrated" IE, with DLLs having unrelated functions from two different subsystems being a common tactic to make it difficult for users to simply recover disk space and memory lost to IE. And on this, I think you misunderstand. I don't care how integrated Microsoft makes the utilities. Mail, for instance, has always been well integrated, thanks to MAPI, but until 98 it wasn't compulsory to install the operating system manufacturer's choice of email client.The issue is that everyone is being made to buy and install and run software which is unrelated to the function of the product they're bought, a product bought in many cases solely to be able to interoperate with the rest of the world.
I expect that well over half of the copies of Windows bought in the world actually go to businesses, few of which want Outlook Express installed (at the very least, most will install Outlook or Exchange), virtually none of whom want Windows Media installed, and a fair few for which having a browser installed causes problems because of the difficulty of having a common browser installed across the company at this time where IE5 and IE5.5 can't even reliably show the same content the same way.
I'd rather Microsoft stuck to giving its customers choices. At the very least, not forcably loading up this software. At best, producing two or three distributions, a basic "Windows", and a "Windows Plus" for those who want bundled apps. And I'd rather those who bought basic Windows didn't have to subsidize those who want the bundled apps. It isn't fair, and it's leveraging a monopoly position to gain market share at the immediate and long term detriment to consumers.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But "an effective tax rate of greater than %60 on even the poorest citizens is excessive" would count as some of the more extreme propaganda from the Libertarian Party, if that's something they spout, which it sounds like. America has a progressive income tax system. The "poorest of citizens" end up paying bugger all income tax, and taxes become limited to sales taxes and the kinds of tariffs the LP think should be at the heart of taxation policy.
So it's fair to say that if the effective tax rate for the poorest of citizens is > 60%, it will be also in a "libertarian paradise". Indeed, with income tax abolished, and the poorest of citizens forced to pay for a whole load of things they currently don't, like educating their children, it's going to be a hell of a lot worse.
(Moderators - I've ticked the "No Score +1 Bonus" but feel free to mod this and the parent as off topic if you feel that's not enough)
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Should Windows force you to install a streaming media system so you can view MPEG-4 movies streamed in an encrypted format from Microsoft NT Server systems, just because you want to put a file on a CD, or an MP3, or whatever? F--- no. What the hell does one have to do with the other? Even assuming that there are going to be places where the two can interoperate, CD burning requires nothing more than a handful of codecs.
Which is fine. I respect your choice of alternative operating system, and I even respect your desire to have IE, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media Services all installed on your hard disk and, for the most part, all in memory when you're using your machine.But there's no reason why someone else should subsidise your desire to do this. And there's no reason why competitors should find their products perform poorly and roadblocks are installed simply because the product that the average business needs, if it wishes to remain in business, and employees generally need at home if they want their skills to stay in sync, and which everyone else gets because of the first two and the fact that Microsoft forces companies that offer customers a choice of OSes to pay more per unit than those that force everyone to buy Windows, comes with a whole set of apps unrelated to "being an operating system" preinstalled and loaded into memory.
That's messed up.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Who would buy the gimped version anyway? Why must it be the browser? Huh? Just as logical to ban TCP/IP from windows and make you buy/download the upgrade!!!
The fact is they cannot afford to. Everyone expects internet capability from their operating system. Are we going to tell them what parts of that they can or cannot do? Do you want the government say they can't?
If the government says the cannot bundle the browser but must distribute it separately then why should any other operating system be allowed to distribute one?
Do you get one with most linux distros? What if it HAD to be a totally separate download or on a separate disk and there was no ability to install it when you installed the operating system? For you it might be fine, for mom and dad buying bobby a computer it would be an complete pain!
Yeah, lets all go back to the stoneage.. just the command line please, and hold the convienence.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Netscapes bloat and freaking bugs prevent me from using netscape.
Who really gives a rats ass about browsers anyway? They don't make or break an operating system, hell they don't do anything special in the first place.
If anything built in network support is more important than some silly html viewer.
I really don't understand this fixation with bundling the browser, no wonder why microsoft stays number one, they got everyone fixated on the browser while running off with the real money, the OEMS.
fuck the browser. get over it, it doesn't mean crap. you want to get microsoft, then get them on something meaningful, like oem deals, like forced upgrades for businesses, and other stuff with real importance.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They don't care, never have and never will. I have never met anyone other than a geek who wanted to remove something installed in windows.
Neither my neighbors, my relatives, or some of pc-idiots at work ever asked to help them remove a windows provided product.
Actually I was surprised, but then based on the questions I anwsered for them and the tasks I helped them with I realized something.
they don't care, it works for them, they just want to get X installed (because the developer of product X couldn't even write an install routine), or they wanted to change Y.
If they did a blind survey, meaning randomly mail out questions to a 1000 people asking them what they would want removed from windows, wish it did not install, and then added a section of "would you want this with it?" I bet the results would be.
75% not returned
24% saying they want all those extras listed at the bottom
1% saying microsoft sucks
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
they should have every right to bundle what they want in their operating system. How is that protecting consumers means forcing them to buy more software? How is this preventing users from buying more software if they want to? How is that when features are added to linux distributions its not the same thing? Why? Is it because Linux is free? Why? Is because you can choose to install someone elses version (Guess what, I installed someone elses defragger on my windows - nothing prevent me)
:)
If anything the widespread use of PCs has been because we had someone who made it easy on the "BELOW average person". Thats the key to this whole issue, the majority of consumers want to plug it in and go. They don't want to have to download a web browser, an email program, or even a word processor.
Wordpad has been in windows forever, and do people complain about it? It does 90% of what most people could ever want! Should windows be without tcp/ip support? After all the story goes that some poor third party company is obviously being prevented from thriving because TCP/IP is in the operating system.
What utter bullshit. They can include any software they want in their operating system. It does not prevent me from using WHAT I WANT to use.
So who decides what is acceptable for them to bundle in their operating system??? WHO? You want the government to do it?
Lets see... pick what can and cannot be in an operating system (optional install or not - they put it on the CD)
1. sound card support
2. video driver support
3. cd rom support
4. dvd player support
5. avi support
6. mp3 support
7. mouse support
8. basic networking
9. TCP/IP
10. DIAL UP
11. DSL/Cable support?
12. Word processing (ie word pad)
13. Word processing (ie something like WORD)
14. Database support (I would love at least a standard one, something I can use without having to buy ACCESS)
15. Browser (internet/intranet)
16. Email program
17. FTP program (via a browser interface)
18. Game support via specialty drivers
19. Disk utilities
20. Advanced disk utilities
21. PC Security services
22. encryption
23. Software to customize the operating system
24. auto matic update process
25. uninstall programs
26. support for the disabled (try and remove it - they couldn't even if they wanted to... thats what happens when governments decide what you must have and must not have!!!!!)
27. pretty backgrounds
28. themes
29. cd burning software
30. file management software(explorer - command line should be all they need eh?)
Come on, pick. I bet you can't get an agreement on all of them, hell 90% would be tough. So what to do? Tell them none of it? Would you buy an operating system that could not do half of whats listed? How about only one fourth???
The point is, you do have a choice in operating systems. You can run linux or windows on your PC. You can even step back and run dos or desqview. You can even run OS/2. So if its such a heartache then why don't do it? Hell, its only apple that forces people to run their stuff, they run competitors on their hardware and software platforms out of business... but I guess thats okay, because only 5% suffer from it
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
maybe { Iowa Attorney General, AOL, RealNetworks, Norton and a law professor. }, and everyone else MS is dissing will have to find a new platform to develop under. If all these gather togeather in support of linux, they will be guaranteeing themselves a platform that no one can take away from them.
samrolken
not to mention that the article mentions:
For the first time, MSN Messenger installs and loads automatically every time XP is run.
If it weren't for MS's corner on the OS market, MSN wouldn't have any more of a chance of catching on than some dinky chat program I were to write...
When I talk to non-nerd people and they tell me they have a hotmail account, msn service, or msn messenger service, I ask them why they use that. Their common reply: "That's what popped up when I first got my computer"... now, we all know that MSN isn't the best messenger, and hotmail isn't the best freemail service.
THIS SUCKS!
samrolken
This is truely the most interesting defenition of the word "upgrade" i've ever seen. I always thought an upgrade had something to do with improving the featues that already exist. Here it seems more like an upgrade means more hd-space required and more unwanted programs in your system.
From this moment on I'll have to stop calling Windows an operating system. My defenition of an operating system is more in the direction of 'that piece of software that makes the computer able to use the hardware and run programs'.
When will microsoft start making different distributions? This would make things more interesting. One with a lot of extra features and programms added. One other with a minimal install. Just like you have Linux distributions in different flavours based on the same kernel. Microsoft should do this too. I thing that would make some more friends.
I think one thing that upsets people is that they really have no choice.
"You're not forced to upgrade" is no choice.
---
Privacy is terrorism.
Microsoft is taking efforts in forcing software vendors to reconsider their investment on other platforms, say Linux and OSX.
Microsoft is suffered from serious shortsightness, in my opinion.
Microsoft is free to bundle whatever they want with any of their products, as long as the customer is informed about it. And if someone doesn't like XP they can use something else anyway, gone are the days when Microsoft was an absolute monopoly in consumer/corporate OS business.
And whatever harms AOL is good by default anyway:)
Why should there be any limit on software included in the OS? As long as MS is not blatantly stealing code, disabling competitor's functionality or the like, then why restrict them? Honestly, I don't like MS much either, but let's not hold them to unfairly high standards.
Given that Linux and open software are making it big in places where even the government cannot afford M$'s expensive "pay and upgrade some more" scheme, such as in China, East Europe and South America, why not combine a great holiday with volunteer work à la GNU generation:
All the above is dead easy to do if you are still among those earning a juicy paycheck and have one month or more of vacation per year, ever easier if you are working for a well-know IT company or, better yet, are involved in a famous free software project. In this case, your reputation predecesses you and can open doors.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Don't fight the battle in court, but get your ass moving and show the open source or free source community can do a better job.
This is all about software quality and freedom. If some persons prefer to stick with locked and inferior software, so be it. At least we need to provide a descent alternative.
As some of you might recall, the UTITA, (or however that is spelled), with the remote backdoors to shut down a programs, are qutie the controversy. Now, with WindowsXP, we're seeing this with MS' feature of letting people go on each other's computer's with the troubleshoot feature, which allows one to access another's computer and troubleshoot it. Firstly, this is quite decivious on MS' part, because: 1. They now will know when someone is online
2. They can shut down any XP system remotely with that backdoor
3. Hacker exploits
Second: The MS messenger service. It already loads up when I open ME, but to install and run it every time, its a pain in the ass. I don't use it, I'm sure most Slashdotters don't either.
MS wants to integrate everything into their system, which, had them taken to court a few years ago over IE. What the hell is wrong with our state governments now? This smacks of monopoly, (as if we didn't know MS was a Monopoly already).
Just reading these articles makes Linux look better and better!
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
Netscape whined about Microsoft pushing them out of the browser business by giving away free software. But that is exactly the way the Netscape pushed Spyglass out of the same market. Netscape claimed to be charging for the browser but gave away as many copies as they could to seed the market.
Complaints about dotnet and hailstorm have to be considered in the same light. Sun made an attempt to gain a stranglehold over the development of computing languages. Java is the only 'standard' I know of where one manufacturer has a veto over the languages development.
All in all it reminds me of the Republicans complaints about Clinton's bribe taking while all the time taking even bigger bribes themselves from the tobacco lobby, etc. etc. etc etc.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I don't think so. No sane person can be convinced that getting more for the same price is bad.
As long as they dont include Nautilus we'll all be fine.
I didn't say we had started our implementation yet. We're still in the middle of the planning and design stage. Our first pilots will start in July. By the time we're ready for our full scale rollout, XP may well be what we roll out to many of our desktops.
That's why the sales numbers for 2K are low. It takes a lot of planning to roll out an entirely new platform, and it's only been a year since 2K was released.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
"I don't know of any businesses that have rolled out Windows XP"
No kidding? Isn't it surprising that no businesses have rolled out a product that's not scheduled to release until 5 months from now?
"nor do I know of any that have done a serious desktop rollout of Windows 2000, for that matter"
So what am I doing working on a project to roll out Win2K to over 30,000 users? Many other companies are doing the same thing. They're mostly all still in the planning stages though, since it's a very big job to convert your whole infrastructure.
Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft are pure evil too. However, there's no reason to resort to misinformation.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
he little icon comparing Microsoft to the Borg is a bit much. The borg never force you to pay license fees to get stuck with thier garbage.
I realize you're being facetious, but it's worth noting that articles like this one are exactly why we liken Microsoft to the Borg.: "IM & CDR markets: you will be assimilated. We will add your economical technological distinctiveness to our own. Your customers will adapt to service us. Lawsuits are futile."
Actually, the analogy proabably better represents the philosophy that "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."
--------------------------------
WinXP uses 2000's drivers, which are WDM (Work on 98, ME, 2000, XP) , which mean that they are the common for new hardware.
Practically anything that came out in the last year and a half has it.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
> No more software being able to go directly to the hardware, directly being able to modify other programs memory, etc. I'm sure the anti-piracy software vendors HATE this arrangement more than the game makers.
You mean, like in any other sane OS, such as Linux? Oh, I wonder how games work on Linux, and how *any* software can run without interacting with the hardware directly?
MS broke the Win9x programmer teams, btw. There won't be more 9x, Yeah!
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Is that MS publish an interface for the integrated parts, and a way to switch them.
I mean, say that you don't want to use IE for rendering the help, any compotent that fullify the whole of IE's COM interface will be able to take it place.
Same for the burner, WMP, IM, etc.
I know that Mozilla implements most of IE's interface, so the ability to do this would be really cool.
I mean, you get a control panel applet (or maybe a TweakUI tab, which I think MS would like more) that lets you says: "Internet browser: " and you set it there, and when a program with integrated browser tries to access it, they get whatever program you choose.
Same for the other stuff.
Then all the competition would've to do is to offer something good enough to convince me to buy their products.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Yes.
95, 98, ME sold at about the same price.
NT & 2000 sold at about the same price, too.
Same as Office.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Um, Dell & couple of others used 2K (on production machines) before it was out.
Around Beta 3 time, IIRC.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
So you are *GREATLY* disturbs by ssh, telnet(well, rightly so), remote X, etc?
Win2K & NT (servers for 2K, special version for NT) had this capacity for quite a while.
This is just Terminal Services, and easily disabled, too.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Very easy.
You run MSConfig, go to startup, and remove what you don't want.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
> Can I unload the GUI (from XP and MacOSX) components so my games runs faster?
On MacOSX, yes, but I don't know if any games would run without it.
>Does it have a powerful console?
Yes, they added a lot of stuff.
>Can I trim it down to less than 100mb?
Yes, XP Pro is usually below 100MB as it is, but you can trim it down further.
> Can I strip the OS to it's very essential components to save on diskspace/memory?
Yes, it's called XP embedded
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
No, that is the job of the kernel, an OS is much more than just that.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
No, you just labaled yourself "unabled to recognized sarcasm"
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Yeah right - Microsoft isn't forcing me to buy their product - there are choices - its like a car, it comes bundles with a spare tire, steering wheel, seats etc
Freedom of choice - if you don't want to pay $200 then don't, buy something else....
**Vanuatu or bust**
Oh yeah sure Now a days we are paying $200 for 40000000000000000000 bugs and has memory management that is really bad Windows ME takes up 100 megs of ram JUST to start up
One one hand, MS has to add enough features to get people to upgrade. I think that the UI will attract people to upgrade considerably.
On the other hand, they face charges of monopolization whenever they try to attract these new customers.
The problem is, even if MS made an operating system 5 times more stable, twice as fast, and used half the system resources, the average end user wouldn't be compelled to buy it. Make it look pretty and throw in a DVD player, and they will.
Preach on brother.
If we knew what Micro$oft was up to when they first started, then maybe we wouldn't be in this mess that we are in now.
_____________________________
can you <handle> it?
You are SOOO full of shit.
Listen to the first line in the above excerpt, here I'll repeat it, since you don't seem to have any intelligence:
A customer has no more right to buy an OS without media or chat or web integration
We DO have a right to buy an OS without any integration at all. The OS is simply a program to run on the kernel, which uses the bios (which is an OS in its own right), which controls the processor, which uses logic gates to channel electrons back and forth.
When I want to buy an OS, I want to buy ONLY the OS, not all the extra shit that gets thrown along with it.
And remember that the OS is simply a program, completely unrelated to the kernel, which is what actually does all the work. An OS is simply a wrapper for that kernel, and the UI (you can have something other than a Graphic UI) is simply a candy-coated wrapper for the OS.
Now I know what you are thinking: "Another Linux freak." You are SO wrong. I happen to LIKE Windows 2000. It is not that bad of an OS.
It lets me enjoy features (use of my DSL modem, basic networking/hardware setup) on a 24/7 basis that are hard to configure in *nix environments.
If I want to have those accessories , then I will either:
a) buy them, or
b) download them.
I should not have to pay for products that I don't want and don't need, when all I want is to buy the OS.
(BTW, Linux distros may come w/ a million apps that I don't want or need, but then again, I don't have to buy/install them -- with Windows I DO.)
All I ask for is choices.
_____________________________
can you <handle> it?
If they would ditch the horrid all-in-one desktop metaphor, I would be a hell of a lot more interested in using it instead of MS Office.
All competent OS's today (OS9, some day soon OSX, Linux in most distributions, etc.) include all of these modern features in the box.
And why not? Most mature markets for complex devices are like this today -- take cars for instance. If the argument against MS holds water then Honda should be forbidden from from selling fully loaded vehicles with cruise, electric windows, power door locks, etc. because other vendors sell those parts?
This argument is old, wrong and bordering on ridiculuous.
Much to my sorrow we're planning a corporate rollout of Windows 2000 next year. Hopefully this is going to be a very, very painful experience. I hope the TCO is going to explode right into their agonized faces :-)
Come on: "I don't mind that most Linux distros come with CD-burning software, IRC clients, a great paint program, etc. -- but then, they're independently written and optional."
And the fact that they're "independently written" matters to you why? When Redhat bundles apps you want that's righteous, but when MS does then it's nefarious? I thought we'd progressed past the days that just saying "me too" on a "Microsoft is evil" thread got you moderated up to 5.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
Huh? Apparently Micro$oft wants people to upgrade their operating system by bundling applications. If they really want peope to upgrade their operating system, they would make Windows XP faster, smaller footprint, less bugs, more drivers, etc. Look at Linux. New versions of it (and distributions based on it) are almost always smaller (or just a little bigger), faster, more drivers, etc.
Just my $0.04 (adjusted for inflation)
I mean who really doesn't want to get a bunch of stuff free (more or less)with the op sys?
The people who want to charge you seperately for the stuff are a bit perturbed. Their revenue stream is, umm, endangered when Microsoft puts out a robust system.
Please either provide links to substantiate your claims. I'm not saying this to challange your truthfullness, but because I'd like to see evidence of said problems. I have machines running 95, 98, ME, and W2K on my home network. They all seem to happily get along.
Without links, all your comment reads as is FUD.
You are seriously confused, there is a huge difference between bundling and tying.
Quicktime doesn't prevent other media players from working
MacOS doesn't tie OS level features to the browser, stuff like ActiveX.
Disc Burner doesn't prevent Toast from working.
And most of all, Apple doesn't have the monopoly power to force people to use their products.
Get a grip on the situation and understand the issues. A monopoly is not illegal. Bundling is not illegal. But using your monopoly power to push bundles onto people IS illegal, it is called Product Tying and is specifically prohibited. Go read the DoJ filings. The classic example is Kodak. They lost an antitrust lawsuit over product tying. They sold photo processing machines and forced people to use Kodak chemicals when Fuji sold the same chemicals for less. Their customers revolted and insisted on their right to use the product of their choice. We deserve the same rights in the computer world.
I honestly don't see the problem here people. I mean who really doesn't want to get a bunch of stuff free (more or less)with the op sys? If it has too much, trim it out during or after you install it. The only people who can't are your basic "end-user" (also the worst insult you can give someone) and they don't really matter anyway. I mean if you can manage an unistall of something then you have no place being at the keyboard...
This could be the start to a bad joke.
The Iowa Attorney General, Norton and a law professor walk into a bar.....
"We must continue to add new features and functionality, or else no one is going to want our product."
This kind of mentality bothers me about MS. It shows beautifully the "Upgrade early, upgrade often" kind of mind-set that Microsoft loves. Instead of putting out a product that is known for stability and scalability, something that can last you ten years, they go for "bells and whistles" above all else. Sure, it makes them rich, and they are, after all, a profit-making business, but it still feels wrong...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
No big suprises here. Bundling MSN Messenger is an attack on AOL Instant Messenger, no question. I would stay with AIM just because that's where the people I chat with are. It will be interesting to see if M$ can really chip away at the user base of AOL, which (along with ICQ) pretty much has a monopoly on chat programs. If AIM continues to work under XP, I would continue to use it. If MSN Messenger causes AIM to fail, that's anticompetitive. What worries me much more is the part about having somoene troubleshoot your computer over the internet. If they can get the kind of access to your data over the internet, who knows what they're going to do with it? I've gotten used to the fact that anyone can find out anything they want about me, but I'm still uncomfortable with letting people do it easily. Does anyone know if there are any laws in place that could interfere with software like this? Overall, it will be interesting to see how well XP actually runs. My computer came with WinME, which was awful. I upgraded to Win2k because my computer was crashing 3 times/day, and now I haven't rebooted since April 17. If XP can maintain this stability and include the power of Win2k in an OS that has decent multimedia features and doesn't break my old software, I might take a look. But my goal is still to be able to afford a box that can run OSX :)
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero..."
Just as a helicoptor is a great way to travel for knowledgeable patient people, but don't expect the average Joe to RTFM
/*I happen to like Trolls... They remind me of my lovely Mother-in-law
"Quicktime doesn't prevent other media players from working" Oh, and the Media Player does? "MacOS doesn't tie OS level features to the browser, stuff like ActiveX" For many MCSDs this is a convenience in the job at hand... "MacOS doesn't tie OS level features to the browser, stuff like ActiveX" Oh, again I must have missed where WXP does this... "Apple doesn't have the monopoly power to force people to use their products." Not the brightest arguement.
/*I happen to like Trolls... They remind me of my lovely Mother-in-law
Microsoft XP ... What crappy software are you stuck with today?
... the little icon comparing Microsoft to the Borg is a bit much. The borg never force you to pay license fees to get stuck with thier garbage.
By the way
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.
Can I unload the GUI (from XP and MacOSX) components so my games runs faster? Did anyone ever catch onto adding this feature? Does it have a powerful console? (OSX has this, I don't know about XP) Can I trim it down to less than 100mb? and/or Can I strip the OS to it's very essential components to save on diskspace/memory?
You seem to think that things like media support and messaging integration are somehow unrelated to the OS and therefore people shouldn't have to pay for it. Again, that argument is just silly.
.8 it was a far worse resource hog than IE, so I'm not going to try again until 1.0. Also, I do use Windows Media because a lot of content comes in that format--I'd prefer an MPEG format, but beggars can't be choosers--but I wanted to cleanly install the most recent version, so I installed Windows without Media Player.
I never wear my seatbelt, and yet I cannot go to a dealership and buy a new car without one. Ditto for airbags, anti-lock brakes, and the "black box" electronic integration common on most vehicles of today. All of those things are just as unrelated to being a car as having Windows Media and chat integration are to being an OS. Yet, GM has a right to include them--ignoring seatbelts, which are mandatory on new vehicles, the rest are optional. Yet most new models have one or more of those things, even on the most basic version.
GM has every right to integrate these things into their cars, even though cars will work without them. I cannot for one second understand how you seem to think Microsoft doesn't have a right to do, essentially, the same thing. Their antitrust case wasn't about integrating features into their OS--they have every right to do so. It was about using their dominant market position to threaten and intimidate OEMs into not including a competing product. If MS had just integrated IE, that would be fine--it would have eventually killed Netscape, but it would have been legal; no one ever said a company is entitled to keep making a profit after times and markets change. But they wanted to kill Netscape intsantly, and threatened anyone who wanted to bundle Netscape with a new PC, and that was their illegal abuse.
A customer has no more right to buy an OS without media or chat or web integration than I have a right to buy a mustang convertible without the top. The top isn't completely necessary to the functioning of the car, and yet they do not sell new convertibles without them. If I went to the Ford dealership and said, "But, I don't plan to use the top--I'll only be driving it on clear summer days, and the rest of the time it will be in a garage, so I don't need it"--well, they'd refuse to sell you a Mustang without the top, for no other reason than that it's part of the car. You can say to your heart's content "but it's not fair that I'll have to pay hundreds of dollars more for something I'll never use, it comes right off and I don't want and shouldn't have to pay for it" and they will be well within their rights to tell you to fuck off. You have absolutely no right to buy something on your own terms. Go to a toy store and demand that they sell you a Lego set without all the corner pieces, at a reduced price, since you don't want or need the corner pieces. Sounds ridiculous, right? Just as ridiculous as you saying that customers have a right to buy Windows without Windows Media, messaging, etc.
Second, you write:
> I even respect your desire to have IE, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media
> Services all installed on your hard disk and, for the most part, all in memory when you're
> using your machine.
See, whenever there's a market for something, it will get made. Like, the utility 98lite which I used to cleanly install Win98SE without any trace of OE, MSN, or Windows Media. I did want IE because, well, it works--it's a pig, but it shows everything better than any other browser. I have hopes for Mozilla, but when I tried it at
98lite lets you do things like that. And I'm sure eventually there'll be a similar util for Windows XP. Would it be better if Windows gave you more control over what gets installed? Of course. But Windows' integration is largely an advantage, especially for the sort of average users who want their computers to work for them instead of the other way around. *You* may not like integration, but 90% of users take the other view. We just want our PCs to work, without having to dick around just to figure out how to get a media file to play.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Why on God's green Earth should Microsoft have to demonstrate that the programs are funded differently from the OS? Nothing personal, but that's just silly. Should KDE have to demonstrate that Konqueror or Kedit or any other app was created differently or separately from the rest of the environment?
The problem with the Linux community, and a main reason why I cannot or will not switch to Linux yet, is this sort of idea that everything must be separate, that somehow it is better not to have a GUI and a bunch of apps integrated closely with the OS. Bullshit. End users want ease of use, and ease of use means integration--my file browser works like my Internet browser which is integrated with all the possible multimedia capabilities I might need to view embedded content and which intuitively uses the same layout or widgets as this app or that app or the other app.
You say "bundling" and that things are being added which have nothing to do with the operating system. I say that it is progress and integration and that it is good for the *average* user and anyone who doesn't want to spend time mixing and matching and compiling. I mean, I'm sure there were people decades ago who said, "An 'operating system'? Why would you want that? It just gets in the way of programs' abilities to access the computer, and degrades performance." Obviously, anyone who thought that waaay back then was wrong. And people who think this integration is a bad thing, are wrong. If you don't want to buy it (or burn an ISO), fine. But do not try to take away the choice of people who want EASE OF USE.
The thing Microsoft did about IE vs. Netscape was not adding and integrating it with the operating system, but *threatening OEMs not to include Netscape* and other such abuses of their market power. There is nothing inherently wrong about integrating a file and internet browser functionally into the OS. In fact, most end users want it that way.
The key word here isn't bundling; it's evolution. Average people burn CDs now, so why shouldn't burning software be integrated into their PCs instead of them having to go buy it? Are y'all jumping down Apple's throat for doing the same bloody thing? No? hen I question the motives you're really using. Ditto chat--who cares if AOL/Time Warner, a huge corp, is upset that another huge corporation is going to fuck over their own closed, incompatible piece of shit chat program that they've been kicking clones off of since time immemorial? The average user will like it because he'll have integrated chat without having to download and compare any apps. It will just work. I don't even use chat, but I see the advantages here for people who do.
And, isn't having a firewall ship with the OS better than not having one, or having clueless consumers wondering what a firewall is and why they should use one and how to set it up? And the DVD player business--MediaPlayer has played DVDs for ages now, and though not well, and wouldn't Linux distributions love to have a DVD player ship on their discs?
The article's blather bout stifling competition is just blather. Windows will be jack of all trades and master of none. Meaning, there will be plenty of people who go out and buy better apps for things they do often. I don't think I'm dumping Nero for some MS coaster-maker, for instance, and someone really into chat will get a client that allows more features and use of more servers; people who know anything about viruses will get Eudora or something else instead of Outlook Express, and people who want better security will get a real firewall; and despite built-in imaging capabilities, anyone who handles a lot of images gets and will continue to get products like ACDSee, VuePrint, IrfanView, and any other alternatives that have advanced fatures.
Meanwhile, Windows XP will be an advance for consumers who wouldn't know what to get anyway. The included apps will be a boon to people who just want their damned computers to work, without having to find, install, and configure all these little apps which are so commonly used these days. It's a step ahead towards a future where computers will just make people's jobs easier without causing so many headaches. And that's what most want--something that just makes life easier, and including more functionality does that.
And sadly enough, I say all this as someone who dislikes Microsoft, and many other big companies. I say this as someone who sympathizes with a lot of what the FSF and Stallman say. But I say this as someone who still uses Windows products because Linux isn't producing anything yet that's as easy for me to use and configure--I was hoping Nautilus would be a big part of it, but...
Until I can get a unified distribution where most of the widgets look the same, the shortcuts are all the same, the Internet browser plays almost all content without needing to be coddled and added to, and there's an integrated media application that just works with multimedia without prodding or looking very out of place--I'm going to stick with Windows. I may have to Ctrl-Alt-Del Explorer once a day due to the web browser integration, but at least almost all pages and content work right. See, ease of use trumps my philosophical instincts. I use my computer to do stuff; my computer shouldn't keep requiring me to do stuff for it.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Believe it or not Microsoft has got to actually SELL copies of Windows XP. If Windows XP is chuck full of stupid "features" that are actually disincentives to the upgrade then people will stick with what they have. This is nearly as dangerous for Microsoft as if the user had switched to Linux. Remember, Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Corel, or Oracle, or IBM, or even the amorphous "Linux," Micrsoft's biggest competitor is previous versions of their own software.
Even worse issues like games and compatibility with work also make it more likely that people will stick with what they have. I don't know of any businesses that have rolled out Windows XP (nor do I know of any that have done a serious desktop rollout of Windows 2000, for that matter). They should be making their operating system as attractive to buyers as they possibly can. Instead they are lining up an initiative to treat their customers as copyright breaking thieves. Things like WMA and the new copy protection scheme aren't likely to entire current Windows users to this new OS.
Meanwhile Linux will continue to grow. naysayers have been predicting its imminent demise since it's first arrival on the scene, and they have always been spectacularly wrong. The reason for this is simple, Linux is too darned useful. It's price tag is a siren song for hackers and entrepreneurs everywhere, and the cost of maintaining the infrastructure that keeps Linux alive is negligible. Microsoft can't bankrupt Linux, it can't buy Linux, and it can't intimidate enough Linuxers to make a difference.
This doesn't make Linux better than Windows. I personally don't think that Linux is ready for the desktop, for example. But it does guarantee that Linux will keep growing, and that it will continue to become a more viable alternative every day. If Microsoft continues to misuse their customers they will someday find that most of them are jumping ship.
This latest step from Microsoft is nothing new: re-writing a competitor's application and bundling it with the OS. But it seems to me that the computer industry, and Microsoft's position in it, has changed somewhat since the IE/Netscape fueds. At first blush, I accepted that Microsoft was just behaving like any other (unethical) company faced with the product of dwindling sales: do whatever is necessary to get people to throw away your old product and buy your new one.
But then, I thought about it a little more. People don't buy Windows for its features. They "buy" it because it comes pre-installed on their new computers. They buy new computers because they can't bear the fact that their neighbor has a shiny new Pentium 12, while they're stuck chugging away on a ratchety old Pentium 11. The unholy marriage between Microsoft and computer manufacturers seems to work in this way: MS releases a more bloated OS with a higher number every few months, so computer makers can tell their customers that they have to upgrade; computer makers, in return, install only Microsoft on the computers they sell. Now, I'll grant you that both parties need to be able to talk about "improved features" in the new software to make this upgrade sound legitimate, but the consumers are chomping at the bit for an excuse to buy something new, so they don't need much convincing. All of this new bundled software that Microsoft is talking about sounds like overkill.
It's overkill because all MS really needs to do is release something that wastes more system resources to keep computer makers happy. They could say something about "improved Object Brokering," "better XML support," and add some splashy eye candy and moving icons, and that's all a user needs to convince him to upgrade. But, by bundling all these rip-offs of third-party applications, they piss off one other very important segment of the industry who has been doggishly loyal since day one: the third-party developers. Assuming that Windows has not only bundled their generic HP CD Creator with Windows, but has also made it a "shocking experience" (a la Real Player) for a user to attempt to install the real HP CD Creator, how supportive of MS is HP likely to be in the future? Do you suppose that Adobe is taking a closer look now at their business relationship with MS? Maybe putting together a "Plan B" as we speak? It seems like Microsoft is shooting themselves in the collective foot.
Now, MS has proven itself quite adept at making money, so I have to assume that they have given all of this more careful thought than I have. So, would anybody care to hazard a guess: What does Microsoft know that I don't?
----- Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins say: "It's a fine line between clever and stupid."
Like the stupid case with IE somenone complains about new features in Windows XP . Microsoft is free to add new features to XP , if that is not correct then we have to admit that Windows is the standart OS and another organization must also control Windows realeses . Microsoft keeps compatibility with applications from 1981 because users and companies ask it . No unix runs the applications developed 20 years ago . (linux 2.4 runs applications that came out for kernel before 1 ??).