Windows in 2020

sasha328 writes: "I came across this article on LA Times while I was reading the LinuxToday news site. It is very funny, and points out the in layman's language, the problem with homogeneity in computer OSes. Well worth reading."

Comments

Homogeny isn't a bad thing.

[Bowie J. Poag]

I'm sure the resulting discussion about how evil-evil-evil OS homogeny is would be totally different if it were our OS that "won" the great battle for the desktop. We'd all be proudly singing the virtues about how Linux did away with the confusion inherent with supporting multiple platforms, and how it was Linux that prevailed in its design and implementation.

But it's not Linux's supremacy that's being talked about here. It's Windows..And that makes you angry.

Now, before you call me a turncoat, i'll underscore the fact that I love Linux -- I use it on the majority of systems I own, and couldn't live without it -- Regardless of that, I cant help but notice that I've grown increasingly disappointed with the Linux community's almost blind willingness to look down upon Windows as a platform et al, regardless of the fact that for most things, Windows is (nowadays) far easier to deal with from a user's standpoint than Linux us. To some degree, I myself am partly to blame -- I used to hate Microsoft simply because it was fun to, and not based on any real concrete observations. Regardless of how much I like Linux, i'd be lying if I said Microsoft hadn't come a long way in the past year or two in improving the stability and usability of their OS offerings.

The Linux community itself is partly to blame for Microsoft's domination. Its our own partisanship and internal bickering that has prevented Linux from showing a unified face to the world when it came to the desktop -- Had KDE and Gnome merged for the common good, and challenged Microsoft's stronghold on the desktop, we would have probably made it...But instead that challenge ended up being more of separate Gnome vs. Microsoft, then KDE vs. Microsoft battle. We got squashed, and sent home with our tail between our legs. That was our fault, not theirs.

OS homogeny is a wonderful thing if it's your OS they're talking about. Its only when that homogeny is achieved with an OS you don't like that homogeny becomes on par with communism. Ask yourself if your opinion on OS homogeny would be the same if Linux were king of the hill versus Windows. How you answer that question will dictate wether or not you need to re-evaluate your view of the competition.

BTW, thanks to all who visited the site earlier today. It was a good stress test!

Cheers,

The Great Microsoft Problem

[$uperjay]

To me, the great Microsoft problem seems to be part of a larger, greater problem: capitalism bogging down.

The basic tenet of a capitalist, free-enterprise system is that through competition and the invisible hand of supply-demand, products and productivity will constantly improve and thus society as a whole will prosper.

This, obviously, isn't happening.

Microsoft has no strong commercial competitors. AMD and Intel are the only major processor makers for PCs. Nobody can touch Rambus' stuff. No one sells cola at the same price as Coke or Pepsi that is any better. Wizards of the Coast has the only big CCG. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the large new corps have managed to warp the capitalist system with their own money. Theorectically no one in one of the modern capitalist countries, especially a hardcore capitalist one like America, should be able to strangle the market for their goods like Microsoft does or Rambus almost did - what needs a patch for our problems is not M$ but modern capitalism, and I don't like the way things are going, because in that path the only major wake-up call may turn out to be...

Hacked by Chinese!

{/rant)

Re:The Great Microsoft Problem

[Nicolas MONNET]

"firstly, microsoft does not have a stranglehold on the market. linux exists, mac exists, that is enough to dispell the idea that microsoft will win in the end. there are alternatives - not big ones - and that is all that capitalism can "guarantee". "

This is completely hypothetical competition. Linux only "exists" in the server market, the Mac only "exists" in the DTP market. Everywhere else ... there's Microsoft. You can claim as much as you want that a competitor might come up, it's just NOT happening.

By NO competitor, I mean: there is no concurrent product with a non-marginal marketshare, that Microsoft has to compete with, that forces Microsoft to lower prices, or add new features, or improve quality ... which is the point of the "free market".

Re:The Great Microsoft Problem

[TypoDaemon]

firstly, microsoft does not have a stranglehold on the market. linux exists, mac exists, that is enough to dispell the idea that microsoft will win in the end. there are alternatives - not big ones - and that is all that capitalism can "guarantee".

secondly, microsoft, coke, wotc, rambus, intel - they're all at the top of their respective markets because they give people what they want. they answer demand. in some cases, they create demand through hammering their product over any media outlet 24/7. the point is, however, they give people what they want. i firmly believe that if microsoft was a worse company, it could not retain its hold, nor could it have gotten there in the first place. linux fails in this regard, totally. this is why, until there is a major revision, linux will be by geeks and for geeks. linux does not answer the demand of a large enough audience for it to rival microsoft, but it has been a success in that, i'd guess, at least 80 % people who it is geared for use it.

that point is one i cannot hammer home enough. microsoft provides software that is easy to navigate, an os which is unparallel in simplicity, and the best web browser that i can think of offhand. amd and intel make beautiful chips at low prices. coke and pepsi have good pop. wotc knows how to make games. that is why the list goes on and on, because those companies are unrivaled in the quality that consumers want.

thirdly, the us is not a pure capitalist state, nor is it enough of one to accuse capitalism for bogging us down. the problem we have is government interference - the ability to destroy competitors who improve on your product, for example, is a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to protect businesses by stifling innovation.

so, all in all, i don't see a problem from here, unless it's the government. the kind of doomsday scenario given in the article will only happen when linux is wiped off the face of the earth, and it won't be. until then, keep using it, keep improving it. ms does not need a patch - it will die, eventually, if it's not what the people want. and if it is what the people want, then who are you to deny them that?

after all, i personally favor letting idiots not wear their seatbelts so that when they crash into something going 60 mph, their stupidity will be removed from this earth.

Funny or not, it really makes you think...

[c.r.o.c.o]

I wish I could come up with a joke after reading this article, but I simply cannot. It hits too close to the heart of the problem, and it's a huge one. Because aparently this is where the world is going right now, and there is no going back. The problem is that everything, not only computers, is becomming more and more the same.

I was going to write a longer post, but then I realized one thing: There is no way that this can be stopped. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, or maybe not. But then look around you! Even though in the early 1900s there were cars running on gas, steam and electricity, only the gas cars remain. Why? They were the most feasible to build. Now the technology has evolved to a point where we might see some other kind of car using maybe H2, solar or some other energy source, and all the new cars will use that new, better source.

Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.

The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good. Maybe all computers will run M$ software, although I doubt it! (I would never trade Linux for Windoze). So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.

But it's 5am where I live, and I think I'll solve it tomorrow. :P

Re:Funny or not, it really makes you think...

[dair]

Another example is the cell phone. In the beginning all were analogue (at least in the US). Go to Europe now, and most people don't even know what that is. Why? All cells there are digital, and most of the ones in the US are the same. And how many digital protocols are there? GPM is only one of them, but soon 3G is comming, and that will be the world standard.

The point I'm trying to make is that maybe uniformity is good

Uniformity in protocols is good, uniformity in implementation is bad.

This is exactly why cell phones are so popular in Europe/Asia - there's an incredible diversity of handsets available, all of which have different features and trade-offs between (say) battery life and weight.

But underneath they all talk the same language - you can send an SMS message from pretty much anywhere in Europe and you know it'll get through to a handset thousands of miles away. The fact that it 'just works' is testament to how useful it is to have standardised protocols for communicating between different implementations.

So the problem is not that every computer will run the same OS. The problem however is finding the best OS to use on all computers.

I don't think it is - the problem is finding the best protocol to use to let computers talk to each other. The OS is several levels above this, and standardising on the OS is like standardising on a singe type of cell phone.

Case in point, the net - since every system converged on TCP/IP, life has gotten a whole lot easier. Standardising on a protocol like that allows you to pick the OS that's best for the job, and not be forced into one particular OS just because it's the only one you can use to communicate with everyone else.

-dair

That's what I said about 95

[twitter]

It did take a little forcing. It was so much easier to install that 98 update when 95 was failing on my machines. Like you, I had my eyes open and it was a good thing. The force was an old FORTRAN program. Thank God for G77 and Red Hat, they saved my but in that CFD class.

The more I used, the more I learned and the easier linux became, and the harder MS looked. Looking back on things, it's amazing to me that anyone would trust configurations to anything but a human readable text file. The amount of trust required of MS to do anything is amazing. Good grief, just look at that sloppy NetBIOS. Look at all the hidden stuff. How does anyone memorize that awful pile of symbols that are the ever shifting MS interface? Work, with NT desktops, it painfully constricted and limiting. No compilers, how can people stand it? Only a single window manager with a single virtual screen? Only one crippled shell? I have no regrets as 98 dies on it's last machines in my house. It sucked, then it died. Win2k? No way!

The sooner you move, the happier you will be. The things you learn from MS are either counter productive or plain useless. Want stability, get Debian potato. Want privacy, get ssh.

But what happens *after* the exploit?

[dpilot]

After Code Red, the WinBox is rooted.

Even when the next Apache exploit is found, it only gains access as the user "apache", and even that will frequently be in a chroot jail.

Security is not a firewall.
Security is not a bug-free program.
Security is not even a set of procedures.

Security is a process, and encompasses all of the above. Security also realizes that accidents happen, and attempts to minimize the aftereffects.

That is one place Windows falls down, there is inadequate system partitioning. IIS and its bevy of extensions run with Admin authority. No dedicated accounts, no chroot jails, etc. At least not by default.

Default security has been pretty bad on Linux, but gets better all the time. Furthermore, there are releases geared toward the server business that are much tighter, by default.