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Competitors Cry Foul At Windows XP, 2K Service Packs
caudron writes "According to an article at ZDNet, a trade group partly funded, not surprisingly, by Microsoft's competitors is claiming that WinXP SP1 and Win2k SP3 contain 6 separate violations of both the letter and spirit of the proposed DOJ Settlement. Equally unsurprising, Microsoft disagrees with them. And so the Case-That-Wouldn't-Die drags ever onward."
the problem is that MS (as part of the deal) was to start operating as if the deal were approved right from the get-go, and not wait for the judge's seal of approval.
This could be used show the judge that the deal proposed is not sufficient in controlling MS's behavior.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
The Register covered it this morning, here.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
The Registers article gives a bit more information, including links to the ProComp PDF document about the issues (ProComp being the "Sun/Oracle lobby group")
I found this charge to be very interesting:
The .Net runtime does not even come included with Windows XP and Windows 2000. Why would they need to include an option to disable the .Net runtime, if it's required that the user of the OS to have downloaded and installed it?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
No user should be without the handy-dandy Linux boot disk for Administrator Password recovery: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd
Sig? What's a Sig?
If *you* can do *your* work *without* Microsoft Windows, then none of this stupidity about their service packs, EULAs, etc, etc, needs to bother you.
On the other hand, if Microsoft continues to expand its monopolies into new parts of the computer industry, that may jeopardize *my* ability to do *my* work *without* Microsoft Windows. For instance, if the CBDTPA (or whatever Hollings is calling it this week) passes, requiring all computers to have a digital restrictions management operating system (which, incidentally, M$ has a patent on), M$ will have a federally sponsored monopoly on computer operating systems. Moving out of the United States has its own drawbacks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hate implies ignorance. Most of the people and companies (not to mention consumer groups, state legislatures, etc.) complaining about Microsoft's predatory and illegal business practices are VERY well informed as to the legality of Microsoft's actions and the degree to which these actions affect the public.
I'd say this is just another case of the chickens coming home to roost, and not a blind case of bashing.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
...My impression of the Service Pack's "Set Program Access and Defaults" was that it offered an easy, centralized way for users to make MS products their defaults. Your choices for each item (Browser, email, ect) are something like
... A single place to change to ALL MS. The "Non MS" button would only work if you have 3rd party programs already installed, right? So if you choose it and things get fucked-up, you'd probably want to revert to "MS." The "Custom" option is the Advanced one, and it includes a check box "Enable Access to this Program " which seems to mean that even though you're disabling IE, you have to take an additional, criptic step to really disable it.
Use Internet Explorer
or
Use Your Current 3rd Party browser
The easy, inviting option is the MS ones. The use of "Your Current 3rd Party Brower" instead of "Mozilla" or "Opera" or whatever is detected, lends an air of complexity. The 3rd Party choices aren't laid out, but the MS choice always is.
But before you can choose your specific programs, you need to first choose whether you want to use "MS Windows" "Non MS" or "Custom"
Compared to the process of, say, the "File Types" config, where you choose a program for any file-type, this interface privilages the MS products. But of course, setting a File Type no longer means that a certain program becomes the default...
"As a last minute attempt at corporate sabotage, he decided to change all of the Computer Administrator passwords on a few of the XP Professional boxes sitting around in the server room.
[...]
It is strictly because of Microsoft's poor implementation of a multi-user computing environment that our company lost three days of productivity."
Let me get this straight... One of your employees gets canned, the rest of your IT team is too incompetent to change the administrator passwords and revoke privledges for said employee before giving them the news... (You guys do realize employees quite often go off the deep end when being let go) And you blame MS for "poor implementation of a multi-user computing environment" rather than blaming your company's IT team for lack of pre-planning...
Please... Excuse me for defending Microsoft, but you've also just realized how secure Windows NT/2k/XP are locally, tho they're full of exploits remotely.
It's because of your own company's poor judgement, and questionable security policies concerning administrator passwords (not to mention getting new systems, NOT recieving admin passwords from Dell at that time, and NOT contacting them immediately) that lost you 3 days of productivity, not because of MS.
Actually it is a pain in the ass to get, even over broadband. It's huge and Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, rarely chooses to setup mirrors. Everything comes from one connection, one group of servers, and that's super inefficient. My download squeaked by at about 10KB/sec or so, ebbing a flowing just a little for a long long time. My connection supports 150KB/sec sustained so you could imagine it was frustrating.
From time to time they have CNet or someone mirror important updates (like this one should be) but not this time.
Every day I see newer and more valuable benefits to linux distros like Mandrake. If Ibiblio is slow I can hit secsup.org or a dozen others.
Why does Microsoft need a separate control panel to do the same thing? Why can't they just put shortcuts (aliases/soft links) to the programs on the desktop so you can just delete them?
Also, it's too bad they can't make the fix smaller than 30,000,000 bytes, too ... I thought all those DLL's allowed you to not rewrite the whole OS every time you wanted to put up a couple radio buttons, but I guess not.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We are also crying: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
Following isn't a problem, it's actually getting it to work that is the problem.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain