Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft: The Gatekeeper of the Internet
jeffy124 writes "C|net News.com is embarking on a seven day comprehensive report on how Microsoft is moving themselves into position to be The Gatekeeper Of The Internet through Windows XP. The first installment explains the basics of how this is going to happen: Reminders that last for days encouraging users to sign up for Passport, and how Windows will evenutally resemble services like AOL."
I think that is very optimistic considering the public's history with MS. MS products have repeated proven themselves to be very vulnerable to security breaches and yet there is little consumer backlash. Having the dominant position in the marketplace makes it very difficult for the ordinary user to switch away from MS regardless of any security problems.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
I don't understand Slashdot. Not everything Microsoft does is evil. Hell, I want them to be the gatekeepers of the internet. I find that worrying about things like personal freedom, privacy, and security tax my little mind too much. So I'd rather have a corporation deal with that for me.
Also, my mother still picks out my clothing for me. Decisions like this worry me so much.
Wouldn't it have made more sense for Slashdot to wait for the entire 7 day series to be written and link to it all than to link to the first two articles? What's going to happen now, is Slashdot going to provide a link to each installment daily or revisit the story in a week when all 7 articles have been printed?
BEST QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE "If successful, Microsoft could challenge AOL Time Warner and other media giants for control of the Internet and entirely new industries"
Basically, C|Net is admitting that AOL already practically owns the Internet and Micro$oft is trying to give them a run for their money. I usually don't support Micro$oft but I'd rather there was some competition to AOL's increasingly massive control of how, where and when most people access the 'net and what they see.
Microsoft is in a funny position. Many of the things they do (not all) have a solid basis in user needs or wants. Honestly, I would be/is a lot simpler to have the internet and all its related services (web, mail, chat, identification etc.) integrated seamlessly into the OS so that any application can easily access those services. That's the tech side of Microsoft: they are doing some good. BUT As most people here would agree, their business practices range from sucking to disasterous. Basically, this dichotomy boils down to the issue of "does the end justify the means?" Most people do not think so, and our legal code is set up that way. In fact, if you really get down to it, most of our society is based on the idea that the means justify the end. (That is a whole other discussion...) Microsoft being a gatekeeper to the internet is both a business decision and a technical decision. For many people, it is a way to provide useful services for their operating system and applications. Therefore people will buy it, corporations will buy it (not all of course). But as time goes on, there will be more and more pressure on Microsoft from a legal perspective... because undoubtably, they will not clean up their act on the "means" side of things.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
By ensuring a Windows-only "internet" they are granting freedom to Linux users and people saavy enough not to play along...
I was happy enough with the BBS culture of 10 - 15 years ago - I will be happy to see all of those morons gone. If you can't figure out that you don't need Windows, I'm not sure that I want to know you...
Good riddance to them - For a while, it was as if the football team had joined the A/V club and now they're being shepherded out of the room - let them go... Maybe I'll get less spam and fewer Code Red attacks...
Obviously Somewhat Embittered,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
That word, right there, scares the bejeebies out of me.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Of course Bill & Co. are trying to take over the Internet - they get paid to make as much money as possible for thier shareholders, and the best way to do that for them at this point is to commandeer as much of the Internet as possible. I certainly don't like it either, but it's the reality of a company being too sucessful in a Capitalist economy. Bill Gates is not Satan, he's just a really successful player in the Business Game - he's a symptom, not a disease.
Until we can convince the unwashed masses that the Internet can be a force for world change of the benevolent kind and is not just for businesses and pr0n, crap like this will continue. If it's not Gates, look out for Elliston and/or McNealy - any one of them would co-opt the Internet in a second, given the chance.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
The point is not that the technically adept will possibly somehow be denied access to the Internet (which wouldn't happen for a whole slew of technical reasons), but that Micrsoft will get an unfair headstart on those who aren't technically minded. Your 'average user' may not know that you don't need Passport to use the Internet under Windows XP. But if he/she gets constant reminder messages for days suggesting to them that they get a Passport account, then they may start thinking "if I don't get a Passport account, I may be missing out on something (ie. may not be getting the "best" services)". Especially if, as the article suggests Microsoft might starting including "features" in XP that may only be accessed with a Passport account. Those who know enough about computers will know how to set up their systems under XP using their own software and Internet access. But it's the 'average user', who doesn't know these things, that it's going to most affect.
In this case, education will the key. If people know that they can use XP just fine without a Passport account, then they may be less likely to sign up for one in future (hey, it's yet one more password to memorise). That is, unless MS doesn't in future require users to have such accounts to use key features of the operating system. It's bad enough that it's compulsory to register your copy of Windows XP (otherwise it stops functioning). To say nothing of the fact that even in the face of an (once) impending antitrust suit by the Department of Justice, MS are continuing to "bundle" products and services to their operating systems more tightly than ever.
----------
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
xcuse me, but how does this apply to those of us who don't use windows? are we going to be pushed off of the 'net?
To some extent we already have been. If I made my machine at home boot directly into the Linux partition, my wife would kill me. Not because she cares about operating systems, but because there are a good many mail order sites that do things that either don't work without Internet Explorer (I'm thinking of ActiveX scripting and such) or don't render properly under Mozilla, because the web designers didn't care.
Sure, this is the fault of the companies that design sites like this. But when 95% of all online purchases are made from Windows machines, then from a business point of view it doesn't make sense to worry about the other 1%. How many Linux users are going to buy clothes from L.L. Bean or Chadwick's?
I wouldn't mind Microsoft resembling AOL. It's their right to try and do so. But the big difference with AOL is that with AOL i at least have a choice in signing up.
MS provides an operating system. Fine. MS provides technology for the internet. Reasonable... better than loose products like in the 3.x days. (trumpet winsock etc..). MS providing security. Bad. Given their trackrecord it would be an outright disaster. MS providing content (MSN). Evil. I want to be able to view any kind of content. Not MS controlled. Who is to say that when MS gets a big stranglehold on the Net they won't start censoring content provided by others. If MS doesn't want people to find out about bugs they just block the sites that provide such information.
Basicly MS tries to not only control the Internet on a technologie side. They can (and most likeliy will) also try to control the content. Power corrupts.. whatever kind of power it is.
And when i have almost no control on which provider or technology i want...
Joe Sixpack will probably just click on the yes button, not knowing they give away their freedom and privacy.
Isn't it clear? Microsoft knows they want a subscription buisiness model, but they don't know yet what customers will pay for. I've got news for Microsoft, consumers don't pay for anything very easily. Look at all the failed dot bombs: People like free stuff, when the model switches to a payment model, most customers drop it like a bad habit. I used to work in retail, trust me when I say most people are cheap. I admit, I am.
Do you think for a minute Napster will survive as a subscription service? No way!
How about software? Forget about it!
Now factor in a recessonary world economy, and guess what.....HailStorm, XP, and all the software subscription based models are doomed to fail.
Nate
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
Since c|net started this on Oct. 17th, the 2nd installment is available also.
m l
You can read it here: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-7502765-0.ht
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I'm sick and tired of "Where do you want to go today?" It'll be sweet when they replace that:
Bill Gates, uncombed and speaking an octave below his normal voice: "Are you the keymaster?"
Or alternatively, because the Mozilla developers don't care.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
So I tried using Windows XP a little a few weeks ago.. I quickly went back to, umm, er, '98 after experiencing DNS trouble with my ISP while using it..
But in the day or two of using it I had an application error spawn a process that sent system information INCLUDING personal information like REGISTRATION and whatever NAME you had in the appropriate field. I didnt even have a choice! Well -- you have a choice if you are at the machine when the error occurs. After a minute or so it sends it anyway.
It would be cool if I got a call from a tech support expert with an automatically open trouble ticket, but no.. That isnt what its for.. Its for taking personal information, matching it with your network location, and using it to whatever purpose they desire.
Pretty F***ing sneaky.
AmbientBlue
"All around me still remains, the ambient blue I thought I'd passed."
...why don't we just break through the Windows?
This space left intentionally blank.
I have a mental image of Microsoft as a huge giant, running ahead of the IT pack at top speed. It's moving faster than ever before and most people think it is still easily winning the race. "Look, it's going faster and faster!" But what they don't notice is that it is stumbling forward, waving it's arms trying to stay stable, and at any moment could fall flat on its face.
.NET strategy is complex. Technically it might be, but strategicly it's not. The strategy is simple - try to get as much customer 'lock-in' as possible as quickly as possible. To do this, they need to get everyone moving to XP as soon as they can - which I believe is one of the main reasons they've changed their licensing model. Companies that update their software only every three or four years - for instance, companies using Windows 2000 but probably won't do a complete update until 2003 or 2004 - are customers that Microsoft might loose unless they get them locked-in before then.
I predict this will happen within about three years, perhaps even sooner. Remember when IBM stumbled, in about 1993? Well, when Microsoft does it, it's gonna be a whole lot worse. The reasons are simple. The majority of its profits come from basically two product lines - its operating systems and its office suite. Both of these are under threat from free products. Sure, they're not as good as Microsoft products, yet. But they're improving at an increadible rate - anyone who has assessed Linux for desktop use a couple of years ago, and has done the same recently, will agree with that. One day soon its going to be really hard for a CTO of a small or medium sized company to justify buying Microsoft rather than using a free, similar product.
People say Microsoft's
One of the biggest mistakes that Microsoft has made recently is to make their software more expensive for exactly those businesses they need to get on board quickest - the companies that only upgrade every three to four years. It's exactly those customers that are most likely to move to Linux, and Microsoft has just given them much more motivation to do so. And when they start to move, the development momentum of Linux will increase even more, and larger enterprises won't be far behind. This process is I believe probably more noticable in 'the rest of the world' before it becomes very evident in the USA.
Microsoft is in many ways a pre-Internet company. The internet has caused changes to the way software is developed and distributed. There is nothing Microsoft can do about this. It's demise is inevitable, the only question is when.
Code to standard, not to browser. If it doesn't display, it's the browser's fault.
funny munging
OK, so it's not foolproof. SHe didn't think that that plaid suit & plaid shirt went together, but , really, they did!
hawk
Given that people are now getting conditioned to MS using these 'reminders' to get people to sign into things, not really being aware of what that entails, I'm just waiting for the XP specific virus that comes up with the 'confirmation' reminder, or similar, that asks the user to re-send their details and password as confirmation of the account.
Bingo, how to compromise the financial security of about 50% of the net in one easy sweep.
Of course, MS could head this off by educating users not to keep clicking buttons, but then, they'd start understanding just why they don't need all the Windows add on garbage, and stay with what they have...
Instead, it's easier to let the users risk their money to let MS make a buck, than let MS lose potential revenue by educating people as to what is really going on...
the story mentions something about ie6
automatically directing the user to msn's search
engine when they get a 404 - is this true? If so,
isn't it a bit presumptuous on their part? 404
responses can after all be used to help people
find whatever they were actually looking for on a
site, and redirecting them would prevent this.
Isn't this pretty much the same issue as the
Smart Tags thing?
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Until open source realizes this, they'll never make headway.
Many have realized this, but it's a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't"
If free software follows spec and not Microsoft, then IE takes the cake because it can handle more of the code that's actually found in the wild and users might not understand the details, but they will notice this fact.
If free software follows Microsoft and not spec, then IE takes the cake because we've effectively handed the standards process to Microsoft and they'll do whatever they damn well please with it.
The only real solution is to convince web developers to develop sites to spec, and yes, in many cases that is a very steep uphill battle.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
This is the attitude. You'd rather have a little badge from the W3C that proves it's "not your fault", than have your users able to view half the Web. You don't care.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I'm sure some others have thought of this, but I want to see if /.ers in general might agree with this theory.
Before the open, take all comers internet rose from the DARPA labs to worldwide prominence, all previous efforts at such a wide-spanning network were controlled, pay at the gate affairs that had always planned to remain strictly private. We all remember the early days of AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, MSN, etc. The idea of a free, open network that anyone can get on & use at relatively low cost is anathema to companies like AOL is and MS wants to be, whose bread & butter consists of (or is seen to be consisting of in the future) running networks. As long as the internet remains an open system where anyone can get on & protocols are laid out for all to see, it's going to be a threat to their business. What's needed above all in their eyes is some sort of control of the exchange of information, of how business is conducted, and how money changes hands so they can create and maintain an ongoing revenue stream, making this free network profitable for them since their owned networks & software are fast meeting obsolesence. They wish to be the Visa / MC of the net, only more. They want to interject themselves as a middleman between consumer & retailer and between friends & strangers, between you and information itself, collecting micro or perhaps not so micro payments along the way. In this light, AOL & MS aren't evil as much as they're both cut-throat competitors fighting over which of them is going to eat our lunch.
The problem is, of course, that it's OUR lunch! The internet isn't an MS or AOL invention, it's OUR invention as much, if not more, than it is theirs. Our government funded companies and academics to invent this beautiful thing, and they're looking hard for a way to use software to make it their own.
How can we stop this? I'm not sure.
Perhaps we should seek laws mandating all standards & protocols for internet communication be open, so that no company may control the exchange of information. I'm not sure. But no company should have even partial control of how anyone else uses the internet.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.