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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."
I love it... another article that's a troll: "instability". By checking out the links, it doesn't look like they have anything at all to do with stability. On top of that, anyone's who's been awake in the past 2-3 years knows that W2K is incredibly stable.
Bad articles are one things, but blatant trolls are another. Who keeps approving these things?
microsoft sends a representative to something that's making fun of them?
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
I don't read German....but this looked funny..... Translation
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Whatever you think of what he (?) said, that Sascha Hanke has a lot of balls!
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Michael's ceaseless "success" in bringing instability, insecurity and breaches of journalistic integrity as well as a deplorable lack of standards to almost Every Desktop on Earth has now earned them an "Ogre" for Pointlessness, the Lifetime Award for "outstanding mis-achievement" from the BigOgreAwards 2002 in Germany. The site's Hype Perpetutation Officer actually attended the ceremony to collect his 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 Microsoft's communications regarding the Windows Media Player and Digital Restrictions (or, euphemistically, in his words: Rape) Management technologies which he deemed crucial for open-source business models, rather than acknowledging that in fact it's not just the desktop that sucks in Linux but that the approach itself is fundamentally flawed."
what a balanced and fair summary
l uation/compare/advantage.asp e r/evaluation/whyupgrade/default.asp
You mean like the documents Microsoft produces?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/eva
http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS2000/advancedserv
Why read a lousy Google/Altavista translation, when the site has an English version?
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
The description of a Microsoft rep criticizing MS's practices was very interesting. But I can't understand any of this. Would someone who types .de care to translate some of the jucier bits?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
It has always seemed to me that it's the outdated business models that DRM is meant to protect.
What's your point exactly? That Slasdot should have no higher aspiration than to be Microsoft?
We've probably reached the point at which our considering of MS as the new evil empire may backfire right in our face, as it becomes a good source of advertisement and brand recog.
Do not forget, if you criticize someone, then you're talking about that someone. If you talk enough about that someone, he won't even need PR reps to have a recognized name (or a "brand image" as they say).
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
ROTFLMAO
Leave it to a translation software to translate the English word brother used in a German text as bread ago.
It makes sense. They probably thought it was Brot her. Which could be translated as bread (=Brot) ago (=her), but just as well as gimmi (=her) bread.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Windows is getting more stable all the time. However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement.
You conveniently chose to ignore the other two points, namely:
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
They did the same thing when slashdot and others tried the Refund trick a few years ago as documented in the fine film 'Revolution OS'. They had a table with free coffee and a banner that read 'Microsoft welcomes the Open Source community' (or some such thing). The Theory is very sound, if you duck an issue you get pissed off people, if you at least greet a attack with some grace it defuses the force of the argument. It's social aikido. You just can't punch out someone who offers you coffee....
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Anyone else read the title and think this was about the women's cable network station Lifetime? I was like, "What are they doing giving a big brother award to Microsoft?", but then my brain was like fart, fart, fart, fart and it totally derailed my train of thought. I had to think up something new about this article and but I did it fast and it wasn't as good... It was kinda, a bummer.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A few quotes come to mind:
:)
Fight fire with fire.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.
If you can't beat them, join them.
And while I'm quoting, I thought these were thought provoking
Choose the lesser of two evils.
Don't set a wolf to watch the sheep.
He loved Microsoft.
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.
What good can possible come from such a negative event? This is just childish slander. Lets try to be more constructive in our criticisms and make a good name for ourselves (I mean linux advocates when I say ourselves) instead of spouting this silly nonsense.
Look, making fun of Microsoft is like hating the Yankees. You can't call yourself a baseball fan if you don't live in New York but still like the Yankees. Just saying "They have to be the best, they win all the time, that's why I like them" makes you sound like a twit.
Similarly, statements like "if windows was so bad, then why do so many people choose to use it" doesn't contribute anything to the discussion, and just shows that you're trying to justify your existance in some way or another, and supporting a winning team seems to do it for you. But I'm not here to judge.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
They do really evil stuff now, when things are still going very well for the company.
You ain't seen nothing. Just wait until they get desperate.
I wish I were kidding.
Actually, the first MS link you offered makes several good points about Linux-Windows interoperability deficiencies. I don't consider these overtly biased.
Sometimes, it's what is not said that raises my brow. For example, Linux comes with thousands of free software applications covering every interest. Windows does not. Linux is and always has been based on industry standard protocols. Not always so with Windows.
Regarding the "straight-forward licensing" claim, they make it sound as if the use of Linux requires that you package up all your source code and intellectual property and send it off to an external server for public consumption. If you used GPL software and improve upon it, then it's not really your intellectual property. You're using somebody else's work to get the job done. What's wrong with giving something back? Don't like it - start from scratch. Whatever was yours before using Linux, remains yours.
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.
Try this one: "The sound of one hand clapping." ...which is exactly what you'll hear here if the editors continue to pander to the juvenile knee-jerk dead-horse-pummeling which is its unthinking MS-bashing. Christ, the way it's done half the time, it's got to be a turn-off for even some of the real Linux-o-philes
Try this:
"OKAY, I *Get* it, you're EVIL!" -- Buffy Summers.
Me fail English? That unpossible!
You forgot the document that summarize Microsoft's opinions best of all. :-)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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/
You are correct in assuming that P2P apps are the reason companies are scared to invest in online entertainment. Especially movies. It is too risky.
However, the real problem here is that MS doesn't just want to make a DRM system for media, but a DRM system that uses proprietary extensions built on damn-near propietary laws. If the CBDTPA (or whatever it is now) passes, not only does MS offer its own incompatible "standard" for DRM technology, but this technology is inherently biased since the big media groups decide on who can and cannot make use of the the digital watermarking...
Anything is possible, and I prefer to be cautious. Anyhow, this is a TROLL article, but the DRM debate is useful, and I welcome more opinions...
Sincerely,
Rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Yes, Microsoft and other DRM advocates will assure you that they have thought of these things, and they have taken steps to insure they won't happen. But to paraphrase Murphy's Law, if anything can be abused, it will be. In the end it comes down to this: how much is control over your own computer worth to you? Would you give it up just for the chance to pay to watch some movies on line?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yeah... I just love the part which lists various Microsoft-invented non-standard proprietary protocols and languages (things like COM, DCOM, and ASP) and says that there only exist "third-party solutions"... obviously, whoever's reading that is supposed to nod away and get mad at the people producing GNU/Linux (misreferred to as Linux) for supporting ever-so-useless IETF, W3C, ISO, and POSIX standards made by stupid, biased third-parties instead of wonderful, proprietary, limited, over-priced WinXP... and as to their complaints about "Linux"'s non-integration, I still chuckle a bit every time I am reminded that they did not use their own "standard" GUI widgets in Office, but, instead, opted to reinvent the wheel... well, that's enough MS-bashing for today. That should last me until, say, tomorrow.
true && more || less
I think the sheep would prefer the wolves to some of the shepherds out there... :)
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Kazaa and Gnutella are both pretty ropey. They have a large number of dodgy videotaped from cinema films. There are also a few DVD rips, but it's not always easy to work out which is which. It is also sometimes rather difficult to get hold of the files from someone with a decent amount of bandwidth in the first place.
But you know what - I agree. The movie industry and the record industry haven't managed to come up with anything remotely as good, which is ridiculous. There are so many ways this could be improved. A far superior system could be produced that has fast reliable downloads of every song ever recorded, with a pricing structure that encourages downloads of more obscure groups. The data could be licenced to other organisations for them to work out how to distribute. The RIAA needs to let go of the reins, and let innovation proceed. But they aren't going to do this unless they beleive they have some control of data after they've sold it.
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Wrong. I work in the MS kernel development world
YOU'RE THE BASTARD?
Why the fuck is an unhandled exception of a fucking printer driver alllowed to cascade all the way to ring zero and blue screen an NT box EVERY FUCKING TIME I print?
Don't blame the printer driver on this one either!
Why do you think Germany's society is repressive in any way? You mean because Nazis aren't allowed to praise what Hitler did? That's because national socialism got criminalized after World War II (by the Allies, btw.), and this is good. Extreme forces are publically dispised, thus leading to less violence on the streets.
And about the game stuff: of course, certain games are not allowed for kids under 18, but that's only for their protection. And that system is not even that hard compared to e.g. the FCC (are you yet allowed to say "fuck" on the radio?). It's often quite funny to see _American_ musicians interviewed on some TV stations, and when they're shocked when the interviewer says something sexually explicit.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
How DRM affects the content of Gnutella or FastTrack depends on how content gets onto those networks in the first place
If a lot of people rip their own content and post it on the networks then making it difficult for the average user to do this could have a significant impact on the content offered on these networks.
If, OTOH, most of the files on the networks have their origins in a small handfull of cracking groups DRM will have no effect. These groups can crack the DRM and post the free versions of the media.
Eventually the media industry groups will realize they will make money and market share by offering a superior user experience and data mining the shit out of their userbase.
If there was a single website/network with the entire RIAA back catalogue available in acceptable quality, clearly labled, easy to find, and easy to use formats (I.E. not proprietary) you could see people flocking to it just for the guarantee that they could find what they were looking for without the hassle of lengthy searches yeilding mislabled mangled tracks and dropped downloads.
They will not be ale to compete by offering inconvenient, limited use, overpriced, restrictive media when someone else is offering the equivalent content in a free format and for a free price. A free format and a low price and a much higher quality user experience and content of a guaranteed level of quality is the only way they will win against the P2P market
they could charge actual cost for the downloads and have the system pay for itself. They could charge the cost of people's conscience (I.E. how much can you charge before the free/illegal option looks more attractive?) and turn a profit on the system alone. But this isn't where you make the money... you make the money on processing all the information about user habits to produce music that you know will be popular.
%PopTart releases an album but only tracks 2 and 5 are being downloaded? Cool, slash your Listening Group budget, and fire your image consultants- you already know what your singles are going to be.
For some strange reason that unpromoted band you signed gets people downloading their tracks in every city they play a concert. Maybe you should put them into heavier rotation nationally?
For some other strange reason this other semi-promoted band is heavily downloaded in Splatsville, IL and Goatshed, WY... maybe we should add those spots to the tour they're planning?
You can sell the service of working the data to the artists and albums. THAT is where the real money comes from... direct 1 of seperation from the buying public and the high quality of trending information possible.
Not that the *AAs will understand any of this. They think of DRM as a way to keep people buying CDs and DVDs.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
That's because national socialism got criminalized after World War II (by the Allies, btw.), and this is good. Extreme forces are publically dispised, thus leading to less violence on the streets.
Did you go to the John Ashcroft school of thought police? "We're going to stop you from saying or thinking some things but that's just for your own good."
In the US, you're not allowed to swear or be sexually explicit on public channels but it's not because those thoughts or acts are illegal. There's a big difference. All those things are still allowed on cable, btw.
Mmmm.. Donuts
"Windows is getting more stable all the time. However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement."
It's acceptable when you have an easy to use computer that everything runs on (including hardware).
For the same reason so many people in India drink arsenic tainted wellwater, they feel they have no easy alternative. Public education is the answer here and there. First people need to be made aware of the what they are doing to themselves. Second they need to know alternate sources are available and how to get them. The worse the consequenses the greater the effort should be. For software the alternatives are easy to come by.
Big Brother is just another voice that has recognized how bad M$'s software and licensing has become.
It is apparent that individuals and companies that use M$ trash will suffer. You might enjoy your mail being under the control of others, not being able to listen to anything but RIAA music, spam, continual format purge, and all the other joys of M$ software. Good for you. Others might not.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Funny how we never see stories like this about Linux."
A friend of mine has Linux (RedHat I think...) on his computer at home. It has an LCD monitor. He pushed one of the buttons on the LCD monitor and the whole screen shifted right like 50 pixels. He had to fly around all over Linux to find the right conf file to get that fixed.
No, horror stories like that don't get posted. However, it is a big screaming deal when decent font support finally happens. Heh.
I bet I lose karma over this post. It'd be a pity if that happened, though. Shedding light on Linux's weaker areas of the UI would, at worst, cause a few developers to react to them. It wouldn't make people flock away from Linux.
In other words: Slashdot could get away with a little equality in the way it treats MS and Linux.
...must have been anti-trust law. Assuming that high market share=good products is a pretty dangerous fallacy that big business would very much like you to buy into. You forget anticompetitive business practices and such that keep their market share where it is.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
You've thought about this a lot haven't you.
You're quite right. DRM is not the best solution, but it seems to be the only *AA approved method. The question remains as to whether it will be consumer approved.
I have a few theories about the RIAA. I believe they believe their own dogma that every downloaded file is a lost sale. I believe they assume that downloaders will download even if there's an alternative legitimate source. I believe that they think that people will illegally upload (via gnutella) all the files they download (from the RIAA).
On the whole, I believe that if you sell people something, they're a lot less likely to want to share it, under the assumption that the people who might want it can get it from the same place that you did. Could it be that people only share files because they feel they owe it to the community for all the files they download? It could be the case. If so, then they'll stop sharing when there's another way to download.
But there's a problem here. Or two problems - Risk and monopolies. Monopolies don't take risks. Their competitors do, but competing with the RIAA on their own music is illegal, and most people ar enot interested in a service that only gives obscure bands.
DRM gives someone else the final say over what your computer allows you to do
No it doesn't, except for with certain specific types of encrypted file. You can still listen to MP3s. You can still run Lynx for Windows, Apache, Winamp and any number of other useful utilities that aren't signed, and there will always be some unsigned apps that people will want to use. Windows will have to run unsigned applications in some way. There are too many startups who can't afford certification.
So, instead of giving someone else control, it should simply add an advisor that I can choose to ignore.
"No problem", I hear you say, "I trust Microsoft not to abuse that power".
Get your hearing seen to. I say "No problem. As long as there is choice". At the moment there is. You don't need to buy encrypted windows media files. You don't get to see the film, or hear the music, but without DRM, you wouldn't even have that choice.
What happens when Microsoft's key generator get hacked, and all of sudden their "security through signed certificates" house of cards falls apart,
Well, if people insist that only a single organisation can and should sign each application, then they deserve all they get. Ideally there will be a number of trusted organisations that it's up to the user to trust. Even if they do only have one certifying organisation, it means that they are in no worse a position than they were before DRM. Windows 2000 will quite happily run a virus or a trojan. At least this way people will be safe before the hack. Plus, there should be some mechanism to revoke certificates.
What happens when your government decides that DRM is a convenient mechanism for suppressing dissent, and pressures Microsoft to remotely disable any program that isn't government approved?
Firstly, I'll install Linux. Or rather uninstall Windows. I already have another two operating sytems on my machine.
Then I'll try to convince the highest court that the government is answerable to that this is a restriction on freedom of speech.
I'll also vote against them, and make sure that I convince a lot of people to do the same. Excessive control over what we do in private is a real vote loser.
Or, I'll storm the winter palace, overthrow them, and establish a democratically elected government under guidance from the UN.
Hell my win98 box can get 112 hours of uptime, that aint shit. I got nix boxes that have been running for 600 plus days.
Got Code?
Its time for a Free Hardware Foundation....
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
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.
Hey, my linux box has a SAK too!
Does it do the same thing that MS SAK does?
my
Did you install Win2K as a fresh install, or did you upgrade from NT4 to Win2K? Doing upgrades with any Windows product is notoriously buggy...try doing a fresh install if you hadn't.
Also, the "30 seconds to 20 minutes" logging in usually means a service failed upon booting. Check your event viewer, and check the System and Application logs to see which service failed. If it's a non-critical one, disable it, or lookup a solution at http://www.eventid.net or http://support.microsoft.com
I'm in awe.
While my winshit uptime record is only two weeks, I can honestly say that I've had a Linux system on for a year and my primary server was once on for 9 months.
There were not stopped by "Evil Hackers" or "General Protection Faults" but by power-company downtime.
Just for the hell of it, we tried to install winshit 2k on our server while the internet connection was out last year. The installer kept crashing because of a ram incompatibility that a single kernel parameter fixed in Linux!
If you can show me a version of winshit that is at least as stable as Mac OS X 10.2(Jaguar(Jagwire)) I will literally eat the packaging. If you can show me a version as stable as Linux, then I will not only eat the packaging but also pay the @#$@$#ing $300 for the license fee.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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.
Senator Fritz Hollings has introduced a bill that would legally mandate DRM. It's called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) More info here It hasn't passed yet.
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!
BoP is MS's middle name? Would that make them MBoPS? Wasn't that an old Hanson song a few years ago...?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Er, I don't think so. Unless Windows suddenly thought the process I tried to kill magically transformed itself from an unresponsive GUI app to a service, that's just not the case.
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Well since your friend had this trouble, he wrote up about it and posted the solution on the net so that others can find the answer easily, didn't he?
After all, we all know that the people that complain are the ones that are the quickest to help out others.
So this is no longer a problem - and neither are any other problems that come up.
Sure, it's no longer a problem if you want to discover the problem by accident, then hunt around the web with (hopefully) the right search patterns, then edit the right conf file (with your monitor acting whacky) because it might be the right solution to your similar problem.
Yeah that's a much better solution than just having the problem fixed so nobody else has to deal with it.
I was assuming that the person wasn't a programmer.
However he could write a _good_ bug report, and send it to the appropriate people, and perhaps file it with say the kde ppl to make a nice gui for it (or whatever the problem domain is)
Actually he is a software engineer, heh.
"However he could write a _good_ bug report, and send it to the appropriate people, and perhaps file it with say the kde ppl to make a nice gui for it."
I think that's reasonable. He may very well do that too. I'll suggest it to him.
... that lets somebody hack your web interface without you even noticing. Good for you. Glad you like it. I'll keep my Linux, thanks. It's not perfect, but it is better - and I don't have to pay an arm and two legs for false security either. Even BillG says that the security is lacking. Of course his front man, Dancing Monkey Boy, probably wouldn't admit it.
...
And don't get me started on Dell Hell
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
Eh. I kinda agree. We're not all that free over here, and we have to make a lot of money to live without going into the red in our checkbooks. Every time I read slashdot I read about something else I'm not allowed to do, and I suddenly remember I don't have the money to change it. It's all the same. If I can ever afford a dvd burner I'm goint to copy my Matrix dvd and give it to a friend just to say that I broke that stupid DMCA law. I'm such a rebel.
And to whoever come up with that stupid 'you people don't do anything original so you can't understand what the authors went through to make that dvd you just ripped' had better think again. I've been a musician for 15 years, a programmer for 5, and I just wrote a pilot episode for a series that George Lucas will never make because a.) he's a selfish prick who doesn't understand that his creation is bigger and more important than he is and b.) he'd be jealous because I write better than he does.
I've been on both sides of the equation for a long time. If I were given the choice of having to force people not to make copies of my work and then not buy it, or not buy it and copy it freely, I'd rather they copied it. I'd rather they listen to/read/run/watch a pirated copy of what I made than pay cash for that crap we've been spoonfed in this country for 30 years.
Wow, that may have to be my last slashdot comment - I'd say it pretty much sums up what I've been trying to get across since I started reading it.
You are all fartheads.
In what way is f.e. SQLServer 'bad software' ?
You say: "Big Brother is just another voice that has recognized how bad M$'s software and licensing has become."
Now, stop crying and tell me, IN WHAT WAY is SQLServer a bad piece of software and IN WHAT WAY is SQLServer f.e. badly licensed, compared to competitors like DB2 and Oracle ?
Ah... the silence is hurting, isn't it?
If you want to talk about what's bad: the moderation on the reactions to the newsposting. You scoring a +4 on an utterly piece of flamebait with words like 'M$ trash'. A great formulation of a non-biased view on the topic, isn't it?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
The only MS product currently filled with holes is Internet Explorer. The rest is patched fairly fast and reliably. Please, give me a list of security holes currently in Windows2000 which can't be patched. I'm sure you have a long list of them, since you say:
"[...]most any MS product is shock-full of security holes! "
Also the BoP issue is well documented on your side I'm sure. Why don't you put up a page where we all can see where the issues are and how MS screws customers over?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
What's really wrong about forbidding National socialism? Don't answer "that's against free speech", because National socialism is basically promoting genocide, with is morally and ethically just wrong. and by not forbidding it you indirectly promote it.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
"DRM gives someone else the final say over what your computer allows you to do "
"No it doesn't, except for with certain specific types of encrypted file. "
So, yes it does then.
My computer does what I say always. If I give it an instruction it obeys. What DRM will do is allow MS to override my decisions about my computer.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
If you tell your computer to play an encrypted file it will not do it. Microsoft is giving your computer the ability to do all it did before, and play an encrypted file.
http://www.microsoft.com/germany/ms/officexp/siche rheit/
Yes.
But I really wanted to answer "That's against free speech." :-)
Seriously, it is against free speech. People often believe certain speech should not be free -- perjury, for example, or religious heresy. The German government includes speech promoting Nazism in the category of speech that should not be free. Would you agree with my characterization of this?
Of course, you haven't said that the wrongness of Nazism is the only reason to forbid it, or that if there are other reasons its wrongness alone is sufficient reason to forbid it. Do you think there are other good reasons?
I think it's safe to say that the widespread condemnation of Germany's actions under Nazism is an important factor. Rhetorical question: What country, once widely reviled for its actions, would not be tempted to simply forbid speech that would be pointed to, every time it occurred, as a sign that the country deserved continuing revilement?
Two factual questions: are people in Germany actively prevented from speaking when the authorities believe their speech will promote Nazism? Or are they simply charged with a crime after they've spoken?
(To me, a prohibition on the Nazi Party implies that the first of those is true.)
More non-rhetorical questions for whoever's interested in answering...
Should everything that's wrong be illegal? Or only some particularly wrong things? Or only some particularly harmful things?
Should it be illegal for someone to say "I don't think genocide is such a bad thing"? Should it be illegal for someone to say "I think people should be allowed to advocate genocide, Nazism, and everything else I believe is harmful, contemptible, or evil"? (OK, that one may have been a little bit rhetorical.)
Should it be wrong, but legal, for someone to say these things?
Does permitting something always indirectly promote it? Or just usually? Or just in a small number of instances?
Should we forbid everything that we don't want to promote? Or just some things?
Questions, questions, so many questions... :-)
Actually no-one ever broke the corperate website which was running on linux/apache.
Just wait until you get an IT job and the sales people say they have to have this sales/mis app - and it only runs on IIS/mssql. Then your boss says they need it. Trust me - you'll be purchasing it.
On the plus side when they did notice it was hacked the company who installed it came and fixed it. I never had to touch it.
Another thing about Windows is that the user profile file (NTuser.dat for WinNT) progressively expands over time, which causes a degradation of performance, as this file is continuously accessed by the OS. Eventually after a couple of years the PC becomes so slow, that you are asking your boss for a new PC. Could it be that MS left this bug in their OS, becuase it's in their interest to make users upgrade?
What's really wrong about forbidding capitalism? Don't answer "that's against free speech", because capitalism is basically promoting free markets, with is morally and ethically just wrong. and by not forbidding it you indirectly promote it.
There is no objective test that determines the wrongness of any idea. Which means that if wrongness is a valid criteria for forbidding 'speech', then who decides? The answer, of course, is those in power. Then, frequently anything that might disturb the status quo is wrong.
I was using Windows many months ago and Outlook bombed on me. The solution? Restart my computer. I mean really, who has fixed this problem? I was using Cakewalk Pro 9 and it caused a GPF for no apparent reason. I had to reboot and lose all my recent work. Why hasn't someone fixed this yet? Just today I was debugging a VBA Macro in Excel, and in step-through mode I tried to view code in a separate module. The result: Excel closed my workbook, the VBA editor closed my file, no prompts about saving, it was all gone. What a horror story! Who is going to fix this?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but rather want to point out that the computing community has a VERY laid back attitude about Windows errors. We always remember the time that linux screwed up the monitor by 50 pixels or how it took 2 hours to get a samba share configured the first time, but objectively, this really pales in comparison to the volume of glitches we face in Windows (ignoring severity or nature). "It's just Windows, it's gonna do that from time to time." Honestly, if IE shuts down because "memory could not be "read"" again today, I'll go nuts. (And WHY does the message put quotes around "read"? It's doubly frustrating; the implication is the IE doesn't even know what it was trying to do when it screwed up. Don't ask me! I was just "trying" to "read" from this "memory" stuff!)
I had a soundcard with drivers that simply would not work right under Windows. I tried everything - updates, drivers from slightly different models, old versions, you name it. Eventually I formatted the drive and installed the drivers on a new Windows installation and they worked fine. Guess what, that blows. A Windows drive filled with cruft requires a format to install new soundcard drivers - but surely we say, "Ha ha, that's just Microsoft, at least you didn't have to edit a configuration file!! "
Secondly, what would Slashdot gain from showing parity between MS and linux issues? The site is by and for people involved in fringe or non-mainstream operating systems and the history of the industry is smeared with zealotry. The competition calls the GPL a "viral license" and slings all the mud it can. The media refer to linux as a "hacker's tool" and imply that it is for criminals. It seems to me that a little righteous indignation is exactly what is called for. I'll surely agree that the cheerleading from the readers is a bit much, but most of the articles are reasonably objective, in my opinion.
And please don't think I'm cheerleading myself. I'm certainly no linux expert and I've had my fair share of challenges running it. I think it is a big deal when decent font support happens, and I think it is a big deal when Windows assaults me with advertising. Alternatively, it is a challenge when my config files are screwed up but it is impossible to fix a blue screen.
There it is. "Open Source Hardware" by the "Bangalore Seven" Simputer Trust.