Slashdot Mirror
Big Brother Lifetime Award Goes To Microsoft
D4C5CE writes "Microsoft's ceaseless "success" in bringing instability, insecurity and
breaches of privacy as well as a deplorable lack of open standards to
almost Every Desktop on Earth has now earned them an "Oscar" for Data
Leeches, the Lifetime Award for
"outstanding mis-achievement" from the BigBrotherAwards 2002
in Germany. Microsoft's
Data Protection Officer actually attended the ceremony to collect the
prize (probably delighted that unlike the "laureates"
of last year's event in Austria, at least he would not receive live
cockroaches), and this unlucky winner took the opportunity to make some critical
remarks on the company's communications regarding the Windows
Media Player and Digital Restrictions (or, euphemistically, in his words: Rights) Management technologies which he deemed crucial for modern
business models, rather than acknowledging that it's in fact not just the advertising but the approach itself which is fundamentally flawed."
Whatever you think of what he (?) said, that Sascha Hanke has a lot of balls!
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I thought bashing MS was phase newb-h4x0r go through then get over?
Here's business 101.
If MS windows were not a desirable product why would so many people use it?
Hint: You may blame their shady practices but when it boils down to it people [e.g. the mass horde of end users] just like simple point and click setups. As further proof consider KDE, Gnome and all the other WM out there...
And since when is this news? So what? Some dork l33t-dudez thinks that giving a dis-award to MS will prove a point? How about they post decorating patterns for their parents basement. Seems like they'd know alot about that too!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I think Windows is largely a desktop OS, regardless of any "Professional" labels MS choose to put on them. Remember that a "profesional" user is far too often someone who knows how to use MS Office and Outlook with zero security awareness.
:-)
And for a desktop OS, Windows XP is sure stable and secure enough for me. Sometimes I have to wonder if an easy-to-use OS makes people lazy and don't care about firewalls, anti-virus software and other obvious security software that are necessary today, especially if you're going to use an Operating System that's by far the most common on the market. Microsoft's responsibility isn't to provide security to prevent us from spreading trojans. Only education can do that.
But don't get me wrong -- I blame MS if they don't have a patch ready before a virus/trojan/whatever is released. But, to use Bugbear as an example, if a patch is released a year ago and someone didn't care to download it, is it then Microsoft's responisiblity to foresee the problem and have a fix when Windows 2000 went retail or the user's responsibility to keep up to date with security patches?
I guess it all boils down to the fact that we're all human... Since Microsoft has a hard time to keep up with exploits from a huge amount of potential hackers due to the OS' wide-spread use and the end users for not keeping up with security software and patches. Perhaps Windows would be much better of as Open Source since it would help with a larger programmer base, but that's of course impossible as long as Bill Gates has something to say.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Getting the music and movie industry to use Microsoft's proprietary DRM scheme to protect their content is flawed because those of use who choose not to use a buggy, insecure, expensive MS operating systems are left out in the cold. And kind of protection (restriction) scheme needs to be open and licensed across multiple platforms and not under the control of one company, especially not a predatory, anti-competitive company convicted of violating anti-trust law.
I do logout everynite, and leave my computer running on Standby. I clear as much junk as I can out, but can't clear out everything because this is at work. Believe me, I know how to tweak Windows when I can. Even still, I've yet to see a Windows box reliably stay both stable and fast for more than about a week at a time.
However I have never seen a linux kernel panic before and do not even know what they look like. I have used linux for 3 years now. I am aware the recent 2.4x series is not as stable as earlier version or other unixies but I use linux as a workstation and not a server.
Now before we state that ms is finally getitng it, I would like to mention how many years it took for ms to make a good industrial OS. Take a wild guess? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years ? 15 years?
Microsoft began NT work with os/2 back in 1985. They invented the early win32api's in windows386 which was later supposed to be added to os/2. IT wasn't untill 1988 when they hired David Cutley that they officially began what is now NT. This is after ms decided to dump os/2. It took 11 years to make it server ready! Thats right! 1988-1999 when w2k came out! Lets see where linux came in 11 years or how long it took Bell labs to make Unix ready for the mini market? The 2.0 kernel was the first server ready kernel. I admit the smp sucked and some of the features might of been lacking but it was stable, 24x7 ready, and fully posix compliant for server use back in 1996. It took linux 5 years. It probably would of been quicker if Linus decided to make seperate stable and development branches earlier. Now lets look at unix. I believe the first commercial versions came out in the mid 1970's if I am correct. 6-7 years before it became 24x7 ready.
My point is that it took ms a decade with full working win32 as well as os/2 code to base work on! I only imagine how long it would take if they had to write NT from scratch without any os/2 code. An admin told me once that the first version of NT would display os/2 errors whenever a problem errupted. Where as in the other projects, all the code was written from scratch. Linus I believe decided to dump all minux code for the first version of linux even though it was used to write it. w2k still needs some work and that is a bad track record. Reward is deserved indeed regardless of how good w2k is currently.
http://saveie6.com/
Why do you assume he is running Cygwin? There are plenty of commercial X servers for Windows. And why should any of them cause the machine to slow down?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This "childish slander" is highly regarded among the computer science community. It has put questionable data mining or surveillance practices by companies and governments into the public limelight.
The past years' awards were widely reported by the mainstream press, explaining the nominees and winners to the average computer user (face, in post-industrial countries like the US, Canada and most of Europe today, bascially everyone in the workforce is an average computer user now) what happens with their data.
This "negative event" is basically THE best thing that critical computer scientists came up with to put their voice in the mainstream press once a year.
You should better be thankful that this event helps to give a clue to those people out there who use computers but don't think about the consequences.
The fact that Microsoft has "won" and the Linux zealots are saying "so there" is just a result of this year's German award. In 2000, the APACHE web server has won the same award - so there.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
It's hard to constructivly criticise closed source software from a company like Microsoft. To do so you must first waste your time figuring out what the junk does. This is not a trival task but many people do it. Then, what those people find is not so easy to constructivly citicise. What constructive thing is there to say for an operating system that reports all user installed programs, songs and movies played, and now whatever M$ desires? It's kind of like trying to be constructive with a child molester, the leagal system needs to deal with it. The most constructive criticism available is to teach the user why free software is better than what they now own and how to use it. I think these folks do both.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Of course, but Microsoft's current proposal is only the first step down a slippery slope. If people prove to accept restrictions "only on specific types of file", they will likely proceed to the next step. By the time people have realized how much control they've given up, it will be too late. This isn't just paranoia, either -- there are already plans for products that initially allow you to do what you want (so that you'll buy them), but as soon as the products have become indispensable, they can be remotely disabled so as only to play "approved" content. And the whole point of DRM is to make sure that you, the owner of this hardware, have little knowledge and no control over what the hardware does.
Get your hearing seen to. I say "No problem. As long as there is choice". At the moment there is.
At the moment, there is choice. Fast forward a few years, when DRM is standard on all new PCs. Nobody has complained too loudly (because, as you say, they have a choice), and so the RIAA pushes through a bill making DRM mandatory. Suddenly you are unable to buy a new machine that the RIAA can't control.
Firstly, I'll install Linux. Or rather uninstall Windows. I already have another two operating sytems on
my machine.
Linux won't do you much good if it isn't able to read any of your files. It will do even less good if the BIOS prevents it from running because it's "unauthorized software". True, that frog isn't boiled yet, but the water is getting warmer...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I lost two days work (5 GB of data) this morning due to a Windows default setting that corrupts backup files.
I wouldn't entrust a grocery list to Windows.
You both inadvertently failed to mention the most important point, namely:
Regardless of how much MS improves its products' stability, insecurity, and disrespect for privacy, it's still a monopoly with an inordinate amount of control. The bottom line is that no one would give a lick if MS weren't a monopoly, because we could all use something else.
Understanding that a "benevolent" dictator is still a dictator is a point that many seem to have forgotten.
The winners of the austrian BBAs were announced today. For those who care: Microsoft did not win a single one, although they were nominated in two categories. All the awards went to companies and public institutions that invaded the privacy of austrian citizens in a much more direct way than Microsoft is able to.
I do think that giving the award to Microsoft was more of a publicity stunt pulled by the organizers of the german event than anything else. Giving them a "lifetime achievement" for things they will likely do in the future does seem a bit out of place.
The BigBrotherAwards are not totally useless. But at the moment they should mainly operate on a national level and raise awareness of existing intrusions into privacy. I don't know if there is an international version of these awards. If such a thing exists, then two years down the line Microsoft might deserve to be honored, but right now it just is a cheap attempt to get some publicity.
In completely unrelated and off-topic news: I just found out that Richard Harris, among a lot of other achievments known as the actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, died today at the age of 72. Bummer.
Hank! White!