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Why The U.S. Surrendered To Microsoft
hoggardb writes: "The Nation has an excellent column by Eben Moglen, general counsel of the FSF, on why the U.S. has surrendered to Microsoft: because the big campaign contributors like Hollywood and PC manufacturers now want Microsoft to stay a monopoly." Not everyone will agree about the PC makers, but the Hollywood argument is harder to sidestep. The free-marketeer in me especially likes the last paragraph -- Moglen didn't get to be general counsel of the FSF for nothing.
If you're a linux zealot that hates microsoft then don't bother reading and just moderate away as Troll, save yourself a few minutes.
/. with a classic gem like that in there. For-your-information I am using XP now as I type, and there is quite a lot of innovation that went into this product. Quite a lot, I might add, that customers have been bitching about for years and years. For starters, they finally got rid of the hideous Win3.11/Win9X codebase, which BTW they have been trying to do since Windows95 came out. Windows 98 was supposed to be based on the NT kernel, but there was far too much resistance from the consumer base who was claiming that their legacy applications would not run, thus MS had to release another version off their 3.11 base. Windows98SE was supposed to be an indication that they wanted to stop yet again, and WinME was supposed to be called Win98TE (third edition) but marketing thought that it would be a very bad idea to do that again.
The article looked reasonable until I read this:
He can do this by releasing a new operating system even more bloated, slow and enormous than his current excrescences, thus requiring a general round of expensive and pointless consumer hardware upgrading-pointless for the consumers
What type of bull-ass-shit FUD is that? Excuse me, Mr Eben Moglen, but what information do you have to base this claim on? This is hardly surprising that this would up on
In any case, they have finally released a product that is, IMO, much more user friendly, finally away from the Win3.1/9x codebase, which is what people have been asking for for years. Sure, it does take a bit more processing power, however I noticed that on a fresh install, NOT ONLY does it boot in less time than linux does (30s from POWER ON to completely logged in. It's insanely fast), but it also takes LESS memory on boot than W2K did. MS did extensive user testing on their new modifications to their interface to make it much more friendly for Mom&Pop and the traditional Win9X user base, and included the options to turn this off so that you can go back to the W2K style interface. They have also abstracted the user interface layer sufficiently so that it is possible to create your own user interface entirely, as these people have done to give you whatever type of interface you want. They have made the system much more robust and fault tolerant, indeed even more than W2K. They've added driver rollback, system restore and numerous other features to save people from their own mistakes, they've implemented a much more rigerous testing plan to ensure that drivers can't cause a system problem, they've implemented a system where drivers that are known to cause system problems will have the user warned prior to installing (and before you scream foul here, you can not only disable this, but you can edit the list yourself. It will not prohibit you from installing anything that you are determined to install). They have made it very simple to use webcams and cameras and scanners and other devices with very very little effort at all, they have given simple file sharing and networking and firewall and routing capabilities for home networks, and countless other features designed to be nice to the users. Indeed this is one of the largest changes that has happened for the average user since the Windows 95 release.
In addition, the hardware requirements are negligably higher than that of W2K. The memory has been doubled under the "Recommended" arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares? I'm glad they did this too because the memory management algorithms in W2K were far too old and based upon the premise of never having enough memory so swapping was agressive.
My system is much faster now than it was running Windows 2000.
They've added in many new support features like (Essentially) a built in high efficiency PCAnywhere/VNC based on the terminal server system that is fast, and designed in this case to allow other users to connect to your desktop to interface with you and help you out to configure that printer that you just bought and can't figure out how to setup. There's numerous other enchancements that I won't bother to go.
So how do the users respond? Actually most of them like it, but there's always the super-linux-rulez-MS-sucks crowd that is impossible to please and screams foul when MS does what they've been asked to. There is no winning no matter what they do.
If God gave us curiosity
Having been working with and around the Navy's computers for nigh on 6 years now, I've come to realize that the people making decisions don't have a clue. The IT-21 decisions (I'll try to find a link for that...) were based in complete lunacy by people who had to have been paid by MS themselves.
All of the major networks that I played with were Win-based, including several at USNA as well as those on every boat I visited (including, notably, the Seawolf). In virtually every case, the network was a hosed-up nightmare. I can only think of one that was even realistically usable, thanks to an absolutely incredible sysadmin. All of the others had so much downtime (and other manner of problems) that they were barely functional.
To illustrate the point most dramatically, I was in a tactical simulation one afternoon, on a Win-based network. Our ships had run across the enemy in force, and we prepared for the incoming aircraft. Unfortunately, we were unable to fire any missiles, as the system locked up before the first shot was fired. We sat helplessly and watched as our fleet was destroyed. Fortunately, that was merely a simulation, but it isn't hard to imagine a similar problem happening in real life -- and nevermind the problems of fighting with a ship whose network may be under attack!
I shouldn't have to reference the SmartShip failure, either. The Navy's experiment with a computer-based ship started out as a Unix project, but was switched out to MS at the last minute. On one occasion, a null value in a database crashed the entire ship's computer system, disabling the entire ship. It had to be towed back to port. Imagine that happening in battle.
With leadership like this, we hardly need enemies!
is it just me or is that comment about women strangely out of place?
:) I just felt that the previous question warranted some explanation. It was an obvious question and I agree that it really had no place in the comment. As in almost all cases, I simply write off the top of my head.
Okay, I guess I sorta deserved that. The comments I made were a short and conclusive summary of my perspective of the Navy at that time and what significant changes were occuring at the time I left the service. It was not intended to be a linkage of any sort.
That said, I do not support women on combatant vessels but not for any particular desire to protect the "weaker sex." In fact, I would support women on combatant vessels whole-heartedly if they were on sexually segregated vessels. My argument against women on combatant vessels lies entirely on my personal experience in dealing with battle conditions! When navigating through a ship to get from one point to another, we rely not on our familiarity with the ship to find the fastest route from our current location (a) to our assigned general quarters post (b), but on our general understanding of the addressing of where we are currently and how we can get there. I know that it doesn't make sense both because of horrible grammatical construction or a civilian perspective but let me explain:
Women's birthing spaces are GUARDED. That is to say that a member of the crew is posted outside of female crew quarters preventing the entry and passage of male crew members through those spaces. (Interestingly, there is no such counter guarding preventing female crew from entering and passing through male crew quarters.) This, in my opinion, interferes with the general "alternative traffic" flows within a combatant vessel even and especially during a call to general quarters. Getting battle ready at a moment's notice is, in my opinion and probably in fact, a sailor's #1 duty when serving aboard a combatant vessel. The mere presence of women hinder that primary and crucial duty. It's ridiculous but I don't see it changing any time soon.
I love those sci-fi movies that show men and women quartered together under combat situations! They are forward thinking, in that respect, and depict how mature adult fighting personnel can relate to each other. I'll be the first to admit that we're not ready for it yet. But eventually, men and women sharing confined spaces in combat situations will be something I can agree with. But I hold that duty comes before issues of modesty. I will entrust my life to a female doing her duty. That has never been an issue. I think the feeling of being a member of the "untrusted sex" is insulting and degrading and, again, is counter-productive to the purpose of a combatant vessel.
My sincere apologies for drifting so far off-topic. Please don't kill my karma too much.
And if anyone has any doubt, I am STRAIGHT. I just take military duty very seriously. It's life and death out there and petty issues have no place over mission priorities.