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."
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?
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
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.
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
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.
Firstly - you're missing a key factor in the business model - Just about nobody wants MS Windows. I don't mean that most people don't want it - I mena that nobody wants it. Windows itself doesn't do anything except give you a file browser.
What people do want is Word, or Excel. Possibly Quake, or Kazaa, or maybe Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Windows is just a neccesary evil if you happen to want to use these other products.
Anyway, they didn't say that Windows was a lousy product, just that it was a "Big brother" product.
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!
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.
I think the sheep would prefer the wolves to some of the shepherds out there... :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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.
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!
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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)
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.