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Ballmer on Windows Server 2003, Linux
no_demons writes "Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, has given an interview to CNet about Windows Server 2003 and Linux. He claims that 'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'. Discuss." Also in the news: two critical security vulnerabilities (MS03-014, MS03-015), and this piece about Windows 2003 mentioning that Microsoft is trying to develop a command-line only server.
In typical parlance this means make money go further, however in this context it means 'spend money, spend more money, keep spending money', until the budget snaps like an rubberband when its elasticity has been exceded.
Well, our budget has already snapped, like the rubberband. Funny how budgets these days aren't elastic and don't stretch. Perhaps setting up a demo MySQL or Postgres Linux server might be in order to convince the powers that be that we can get along just fine without.
BTW, I love how Steve blathers on about having a corporation behind their product. Like support from that has not pricetag. We're doing without MSDN because we can't afford that. Google is my friend. Lastly, a customer can go to Microsoft and request a feature? Really? Even one as small as us? Yeah, right. Time for a little off the end?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd be very impressed if Microsoft actually came out with a command-line only version. The fact that "it's a very tangled subsystem" makes me wonder how possible that would be.
.NET CLI. But if they shipped an OS based on just the CLI, it couldn't very well be called "Windows," now could it?
I could see a version of Windows shipping without the GUI enabled, allowing administration only by remote desktop. But for the entire OS to ship with no GUI libraries would be very unlikely.
On the other hand, they've already done it (sort of), look at the
Mirrors:
com.com link
zdnet.co.uk link
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
So, this command line server, let me guess, the name will be MicroSoft Disk On Server V1.2?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
So just because the basic design is old, it's not "innovative?" I think this guy needs to spend more time with his programmers!
Open source is based on the very principles of communism...
But the biggest difference is that Linus isn't going to send you to N. Finland and have Alan Cox shoot you if you whine on /. about your latest/greatest kernel patch...
;)
He claims that 'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'.
Microsoft is trying to develop a command-line only server.
Isn't this a little backwards?
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Yep, Microsoft has definitely made advances in way to snatch away the rights of those who use their products. Well done guys! Can't wait for palladium....
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
They're Microsoft's customers, of course they've seen more innovation from Microsoft. That's because they haven't tried something else. Anytime something starts with "our customers" what follows is not a valid comparison. You need a better sample.
What I think, is the open source community needs to work more on marketing, documentation, and support. I believe that's the area that is lacking the most. Probably one of the best ways to education people on linux and open source is to get it in the schools. Kids usually tech their parents how to use computers.
Go calculate something
Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition.
Gee, so 5 years down the road when M$ is integrating open source software to maintain value in the consumer market, I wonder where this guy will be...
That aside, generally don't things get better with age? With more time on the open market, would that not imlpy 20 years of innovation and development? If not, why is it still alive and more popular than ever? Would that explain the relatively small number of security holes and bugs of the 20 year old system, compared to the "modern" Window$ core?
Ballmer's right -- stability isn't an innovation. Good design isn't an innovation. These are all concepts that existed years ago.
And the best part is, it's so simple to use! It has only one command: "reboot."
Forgetting RedHat, Mr. Balmer?
Gosh, could that be because any not found address put into an IE browser redirects to an MS search page? Could that drive up traffic? Is that innovation? Like Arthur Anderson innovation?
If you compare the 20+ year history of Microsoft to the much younger open source movement, I think it may be fair to say that there's been more technical innovation from Microsoft. Of course, the whole open source model is quite an innovation in and of itself.
The first 5 years or so of Linux were mainly focused on replicating funcationality that already existed in non-free Unix OSes. Likewise with the apps. It's only in the past year or two that we're starting to see a good deal of innovation in the form of apps that aren't just clones of non-open-source apps.
Open source is starting to really move, and we're starting to see some truly novel apps and innovations, but I think it's completely understandable that the first decade or so of open source was devoted to bootstrapping our tech to be equal to or better than closed source stuff.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but they *have* introduced some real innovations. Cheap, shared-SCSI-bus clustering comes to mind, as does Active Directory (although AD is certainly inspired by NDS). While Microsoft certainly followed Apple into the era of the GUI, they've made notable improvements to the GUI. There are others, of course; only the most rabid anti-MS zealot could claim that they've *never* done *anything* innovative.
Of course, it says something about Microsoft's insecurity that Ballmer is playing the "Historically, we've done more than open source." Open source is still snowballing -- if Microsoft had a new closed-source competitor that was starting to gain market share, everyone would laugh at marketing material that said "Historically, we've done more than this new competitor."
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Because direct implementation would require a complete rewrite of the codebase, anyone suspecting that the command lines you type will actually move a cursor and click on GUI elements internally, just without video output?
Then in response to the XBox,
Remember, we brought Windows 1 out in 1983...
I love interviews with Balmer.
I've always been impressed with descriptions of Window's technologies while they're being developed. Like it or not, Microsoft has -- and can afford to pay and retain -- some of the smartest minds in the field. I'd love to work with these guys, who seem to be open to using standards and who don't have so much FUD in their eyes or are so egotistical they can't learn from the *nixes.
The problem is that all these bright ideas go through Microsoft's "profit maximization machine" at some point and we get "embrace and extend" and other fun phonomena. I'll stop before I get back into that tired rant.
At any rate, here are two lessons learned -- by MS -- from *nixes, quoted from the article on the command line server. "Windows core technology guru Rob Short" says...
We'll be able to patch probably two thirds of the components without shutting the system down. That's an area where the Unix guys are ahead of us, because of the way they do redirection -- they can patch a file and then change the symbolic link. That's an area where we've got a problem, and we'll fix it in the near future when possible.
Later a quote on Linux:
[Question] Why is there no command line only version?
[Short's answer] We're looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the layers and what's available at each layer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have -- having only the pieces you want running. That's something Linux has that's ahead of us, but we're looking at it. We will have a command line-only version, but whether it'll have all the features in is another matter.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Example:
We created the SMB file server specs, and we didn't have the fastest one around, which was embarrassing. So we took our performance team and said "your mission is to make ours twice as fast as this other one on the market."
I understand this to be the admission that Samba was faster than any SMB server MS had in the past, right? See, this is competition at work. Granted, Microsoft tried to discourage people from competing (in the SMB case, by making small changes to the protocols with each release, I believe. Correct me if I my wrong, please) but the Samba team still came out with a better product.
I expect that by this time next year the Samba team will be saying "yeah, we got a faster SMB server than the one in Windows 2003, but hey, they ASKED for it! Do you remember that S Ballmer interview?"...
We created tools that run across the code and understand almost all the attacks. Microsoft Research built a tool that can find almost all the buffer overflow problems
Yeah, that tool is called "a non-firewalled internet connection."
They're willing to take ten YEARS to let something come to fruition; they have no problem 'waiting for fullness.'
This is a HUGE advantage that a lot of OSS people simply don't have; whoever's coding NiftyApp gets bored around version 0.64 and drops it, and meanwhile, some other guys is making GniftyApp 0.4 because he doesn't feel like working with the first guy.
On the other side of the pond, Microsoft will let something fail, and fail, and fail, tweak, twist, fix, and then they have something worth having.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
There are no Linux infidels is in any of the data centers, some of them. They are not within 100 miles. This is an illusion. They are trying to sell people on an illusion.
They tried to bring a small number of web and print servers through the backdoor but they were surrounded and most of their infidels had their links cut.
I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Redmond. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.
You can go and visit those places. Nothing there, nothing at all. There are DRM checkpoints. Evrything is okay.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"I will no longer be performing the monkey dance," said a sweaty, flatulent Steve Ballmer on Friday morning to a confused crowd at a Redmond Dunkin' Donuts. "I have decided to adopt the 'Iraqi Two-Step' as my favorite mode of expressing my inner funkitude." He then proceeded to bounce up and down, slap his chest and slice his head with a small sword.
"It his outer funk that worries me," said Randy Jarvis, a FedEx deliveryman who stopped a moment to watch the early morning spectacle. He held his nose against the olfactorius assault. "Geez, my eyes are watering. Does this count as a chemical weapon? Will I need to be decontaminated?"
Neither Geroge Clinton nor Tarik Aziz could not be reached for comment.
PS: I love how he said, "This is an interesting time." You think he knows that's a curse in many cultures?
--- Ban humanity.
Ballmer says "The fact is that if you want to do some kind of integrated innovation that touches the kernel, that touches the user interface--there is no way.", because of the way Linus controls the kernel and someone else controls the user interface.
What he doesn't point out is that if you want to do anything - *ANYTHING* - with the Windows kernel or the Windows luser interface you either have to work for the company or sign your soul to them.
And he's also plain *wrong*. If you want to change the kernel and the user interface, and ooh, lets add, integrate the filesystem into your new UI/kernel integrated innovation, you can. Just do it. You've got the source. Do it, release it, its done. Linus might not like it, and you might not be able to call it Linux, but call it 'Xinul' or something. Freedom - aaah, smell it.
Baz
For example, Microsoft was notified of the issues, concerning only Microsoft implementation of its JVM, on September 2nd 2002 and after SEVEN MONTHS on April 9th 2003, Microsoft have issued an update to fix the problem.
Such a delay with such a serious vulnerability is so abysmal that it borders on the absurd.
Quality and security are measures which only mean something when compared relatively to another.
There is no absolutely secure, therefore you must expect, that once a vulnerability is made known to the vendor, the vendor should do their utmost to close the Window of Exposure ( http://www.counterpane.com/window.html ) as soon as possible.
For example, with the lastest SAMBA vulnerability, once notified, the SAMBA developer owned up to the mistake and the SAMBA project released a patch within 48 hours. Within aother 24hrs, redhat had already backported the patch into their distributions RPMs. Similarly any major security issues in Mozilla and Netscape browser are also fixed and updateable within a couple of days
Meanwhile, there are currently 13 KNOWN unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer ( http://www.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/ ).
Some DANGEROUSLY EXPLOITABLE had not been fixed in over a year ( http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm002-ie/ ). That Microsoft has not rewritten the scripting system embedded with IE so that it is sandboxed by default is bad enough, but to have such major unpatched vulnerabilities exposed for months is abysmal.
Other inherent vulnerabilities, such as the Shatter attack ( http://security.tombom.co.uk/moreshatter.html ), Microsoft has known about since 1994!
Even if the API/call flaw is inherently unfixable, that is plenty of time for Microsoft to implement a safer methord/systemcall/API, adapt it's own applications to use the safer methord and depreciate the unsafe API.
It also appears that Microsoft 's own implementation of SMB is vulnerable and Microsoft has known about it for over eight years ( http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=599 60&cid=5681769 ), but Microsoft either choose not to, or cannot fix the problem themselves.
Microsoft is clearly not closing the vulnerabilities they are aware that exist in their products and services.
A year after after Bill Gate's Email promoting securtiy over functionality, Microsoft by choice, remains neither secure or trustworthy.
Microsoft's attitude towards the security of it's products, service and customers is abysmal.
From Jason Coombs' A response to Bruce Schneier on MS patch management and Sapphire ( http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/315158 )
The core of NT is based on the ideas from VMS, a 20-plus year old operating system.
Rough translation: "We have used our monopoly status to unjustly defeat competition before, even those that were forced to release their software for free. We haven't figured out how to do that to Linux."
2. "Innovation is not something that is easy to do in the kind of distributed environment that the open-source/Linux world works in."
A distributed environment of thousands of creative developers, from volunteers to huge corporate contributors like IBM and Sun can't innovate? Ballmer is confusing innovation with "buying companies that made something new and then calling it ours, and then crafting the software in a manner that insures customers continue spending money (and in greater lump sums)."
3. "Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old."
I thought Ballmer was done using that blatant untruth. It is clear that Linux is a completely different operating system then UNIX, and is developed in a completely different way, with entirely different strengths. Ballmer is still a FUD afficianado.
4. "The Linux world in some sense is a lot like the Unix world. There is not much communality. There is this distribution; there is that distribution. There is this user interface, there is that. Some people might see some advantages to that."
Ballmer still clearly doesn't understand the concept of the open source development model, is still not used to the concept of competition.
5. "If you want a fix now, we may need to perform better, but you know where to go. There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer...."
That statement is truly laughable. Even people that are only vaguely famailar with the consistency of Windows and Linux software upgrades, patches, and hot fixes would scoff at that claim.
Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition.
20+ years old hrm, Windows 1.0 was released on November 10, 1983, making windows just 6.5 months short of being 20 years old.
Of course, the internals are totally different now, but then so are the internals of Linux to the original UNIX code...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, that HTTP.SYS thing sounds quite similar to the TUX in kernel web server switch. Innovation? Not sure. Check out Slicker. UI research. Is the GNOME2 "less is more" philosophy innovative? ReiserFS is really doing some cool things with filing systems.
The problem with "innovation" is that it's so badly defined. Everybody operates under a different definition. So, I don't see much coming out of the computing industry as a whole that I'd class as innovative right now. There are things. Just not many.
I don't think you can make arguments about whether open source is more innovative than proprietary software. I believe innovation is a function of the individual. Sure, there are innovative environments, but for every argument I've seen saying "open source isn't innovative" there are plenty of good counter arguments.
For instance, I would disagree totally with the idea that paid employees are more innovative by definition. The corporate environment is focussed on increasing the value of the company for shareholders - if you have no need to justify profit, you can work on all kinds of things that traditionally probably wouldn't get the green light, and who cares if you fail?
There are also examples of MS innovation, I mean, really innovative stuff like some of the IE bookmarking enhancements that MSR produced a few years ago, that simply never got into the main product. The researchers attitude was, "well we send the product team a report, but we don't know if they read them or not" which stunned me. At least with open source, if somebody doesn't want to implement your innovation, you can fork.
So I haven't seen any convincing arguments that open source isn't innovative. The majority of open source probably isn't, but then the majority of stuff is not innovative, that's part of what makes innovation special and prized.
Thinking about this, he seems to be accurate on one point - there hasn't been much UI innovation in the open-source community. (And after all, everyone knows that's all that matters!) There has been a lot of innovation in other areas, mostly places the user doesn't see but which improve the overall experience. Things like operating system internals, file-distribution protocols (BitTorrent), server architecture (look at Apache, and all the stuff they do!), build tools, programming languages, software packaging/installation, software frameworks, compression algorithms, file formats, system administration tools... And that's just off the top of my head.
There's definitely room for improvement. Look at the noises coming out from Microsoft about their next-generation database filesystem. Coders who are interested in filesystems should be looking at that and thinking "how can this be done better?" Or .Net - instead of marching to Microsoft's drum, "we" should be asking "how can we do this better?" And there's always the UI and graphics infrastructure issue...
One problem is that a lot of OSS projects (UI ones, mostly) have moved away from the Unix philosophy: small, simple, dedicated programs that do a job well and can be connected with simple tools to perform complex tasks. Sure, you can feed data from one program into another with modern GUIs, but it typically requires a lot of user intervention and the programs are usually monolithic blobs of functionality. Find a way to escape from that limitation, and develop a graphical equivalent to pipes and I/O redirection, and you'll have some real innovation.
Oh yeah, and there's one little open-source innovation he seems to be forgetting about. Its this minor, inconsequential technology that no-one cares about or uses, called "the Internet".
We'll be able to patch probably two thirds of the components without shutting the system down. That's an area where the Unix guys are ahead of us, because of the way they do redirection -- they can patch a file and then change the symbolic link. That's an area where we've got a problem, and we'll fix it in the near future when possible.
You can patch a file in use on UNIX without shutting down because you can delete an open file and the applications will still be able to map/read/write to that inode, which will magically disappear when the last application closes it.
Example:
Symlinks are cool, and it would have been nice if Microsoft implemented Shortcuts at the file system level, but they aren't what save us from rebooting.
I think you might be surprised to find that most OSS and FS developers do their work because they want to create software that fits needs. "Beating Microsoft" may or may not be a side effect.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Wouldn't it be funny if he had then said:
Then we're going to go totally nuts, plug in the network cable and run something on it. Oh shit, I wasn't talking out loud just now, was I?
Sigs are bad for your health.
According to this news story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the local Seattle paper, the Seattle Times is for the suburbanites), Microsoft is in severe danger of losing their shorts to Linux with their release of Windows 2003.
...
Maybe Paul Allen was right in diversifying out of Microsoft stock
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Oh come on. The GPL is about as close to communism as you can get in the software world.
"I've written this software. It's free to use, it's free to modify, but you have to give back any changes to the community".
I want to requalify that slightly because the community isn't necessarily why some one licenses their code with the GPL (except RMS, maybe).
"I've written this software. It's free to use, it's free to modify, but if you are going to distribute it make sure I can get your changes too."
This is how some one writing GPL software gets economic benefit from the software by receiving the benefit of programming by those who use his programming.
Note, if you modify GPL software and never distribute it, your changes never have to be revealed. Although there is benefit to revealing those changes in order that you don't have to keep adding them in when some one else makes a change that you want.
Commnity tends to develop from this as a means of preventing anarchy and excessive forking.
Dastardly
"Innovation" is coming up with something new and useful. None of these things you have listed qualifty as either; they have been done to death, and Microsoft is just catching up 20 years later. (Java was hardly the first VM. And yes, other VMs have attempted this at the OS level, including Java, and even non-VMs, like Lisp.) "Catching up" and "doing things you haven't seen from us before" seems to be the MS definition of "innovation," but it's not the well-accepted one.
Perhaps, perhaps not. We see the fact that people do not comprehend the reasons for X and its design, and rather look to things like having transparent windows as a more useful "feature" than network transparency. Standards like X and OpenGL are misunderstood; there are mechanisms for extending them with the fancy new features. There is no need to replace them, particularly with poorly-thought-out designs by people who don't truly understand windowing systems.
People who do understand them realize it's a lot easier to extend X than implement a new system. ;-)
It's better to stick with X than be subjected to an inferior attempt at a windowing system.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Keep in mind that Ballmer holds a Senior Management position at Microsoft, and that everything that's being said from the top level PHBs has to be translated first (top level management lives in a different universe, and possibly in a whole different dimension as the rest of us). Since my job at $BIG_CORP unfortunately involves contact with higher management levels, I can offer you the following helpful translation of some of Mr. Ballmer's quotes. This is not Microsoft-specific BTW, we just dissected a message from the CEO of our employer today and it wasn't any better.
Quote: "I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition."
Translation: "It's a big fat blimp on our threat radar. We're out to fry their asses before they get ours."
Quote: "On the other hand, in terms of putting a clear, simple proposition in front of the customer, I think we have a leading edge proposition."
Translation:"We'll make them an offer they can't refuse."
Quote: "I do think there are things that people don't understand very well about the new alternative, where it is important for us to help customers understand the issues."
Translation: "Our FUD tactics worked well in the past and I don't see why they shouldn't work as well in the future."
Quote: "[...] some people are choosing Linux. I don't think that is going to continue to be the case."
Translation: "Yeah, we're pretty scared about customers considering a switch and haven't really figured out how to counter that threat yet, but why admit it?."
Quote: "If the lead developer for this component chooses to do something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that?"
Ballmer's thoughts: "Let's hope the interviewer doesn't ask what happens if we decide to discontinue a product."
Quote: "There are still challenges in parts of Asia. We have seen improvements in Latin America."
Translation: "In Asia, they steal our software like there's no tomorrow. Latin America isn't really much better."
Quote: "By hook or by crook, so to speak, there will be 5-plus million servers, roughly, sold in the next 12 months."
Translation: "If this server consolidation thingy that's been going on lately is just a fad, we'll be doing fine. Otherwise, well..."
Quote: "everybody likes to talk about Google, which is fine. They are doing a good job as a company. But for traffic, Yahoo is doing quite well and we are doing quite well."
Translation: "Google is kicking our collective pasty white rumps so hard you woldn't believe it. Let's just hope they go public so we can buy them out."
Quote: "No, I don't anticipate making a change of that ilk [Licensing 6] in the foreseeable future."
Translation: "Our vendor-lock-in strategy worked, and now we have them by the balls."
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
And they can fsck themselves, because I never ASKED them to look at us (or me in particular) as a competitor to Microsoft. I (and many others like me) write code 'cause it's fun, because we can fill a niche, or because we just need to scratch some itch we have. Taking down the Microsoft was never a primary goal...
Frankly, with all this poiticization of "Open Source", I feel a strong desire to distance myself from this "movement". I much prefer the days when Linux was just Linux and people used it 'cause it was useful, not for some ridiculous philosophical or political reasons.
Last time I checked, many different entites controlled the remaining parts. Such entites include those who own Red Hat, those who own Debian, those who own Mandrake, etc. In respect to the parent, it is filled with garbage, and therefore should be ignored. Besides, there isn't any re-education being done by Linus, nor has there been such activities.
Thank you, good night
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
In case you were trying for a complete list, here are the ones you forgot:
Windows/386
Windows 3.0
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows 95 OSR2
Windows 98 SE
Also, what you list as "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" was officially titled "Windows for Workgroups", but internally it was actually Windows 3.11. And Windows NT 4 didn't come out until 1996, after Windows 95. And "Windows 1" was just called "Windows" at the time.
Finally, ME is an acronym for "Millenium Edition", and XP is a contraction of Experience.
It seems to me that the interview contained some very interesting questions and got fairly lame answers.
1. The cost of systems is going down, and Office can cost 1/3 the cost of a physical system.
It seems crazy to me that consumers are willing to pay $800 for a $300 computer with Windows and Office. Eventually consumers will figure this out too. Ballmer basically sticks his head in the sand and claims the two things aren't related. But when the price ratio of going Linux/OSS + PC vs. Windows/Office + PC goes up and the utility of the systems approachs par, this has to be bad news for MS.
2. People selling Linux-based PCs in developing nations and installing pirate copies of Windows...
Obviously, this is an ongoing problem for Microsoft. The real problem will be when the users don't immediately install Windows on the computer, and are happy with Linux. Indeed, this is the acid test for desktop Linux.
Actually, OSS is very much based on capitalism in it's truest sense. Capitalism is based on the inalienable right of ownership. If you contribute to the kernel, you own your contribution and nobody can take that away from you. There are rules dictating what you can DO with your contribution but you are still very much it's owner.
By contrast, communism is based on the lack of ownership. The BSD license is a borderline example of this since it makes it very easy for someone to revoke your right of ownership with even the slightest modification to the source code.
On the other hand, Microsoft is a good example of fascism since you never own but rather license their software under their strict terms. Your are forbidden from doing anything with their software without their express consent.
There's your politics lesson for the day, now go troll elsewhere.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Microsoft Bob.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Wrong. Cummunism is the result of a cycle beginning with Fuedalism. Then capitalism, socialism and finally communism. At least that is what Marx and Engel wrote in their manifesto. Capitalism is the state of economic affairs where there is two classes (proletariat and bourgeoisie) and the people are detached from the government. Socialism combines the two classes but leaves the government seperated from the people. Ideally, communism would have the state dissapear completely because the people would not need any centralized control (they are obviously happy according to Marx).
For the record, Fascism is when the state controls the means of distribution, socialism is where the state controls the means of production.
In this case Microsoft, the convicted monopolist, is closer to the central state than the any of the GPL hordes. [conspiracy] I even think that the GPL will ensure that, once Microsoft does control everything, the transition from central control to responsible individual control will be forced to occur where it failed in the past. [/conspiracy] Still, this is more anarchism or libertarian than communist as history defines it.Microsoft is the epitome of capitalism turning into socialism. As Microsoft completes its domination of the software market, it will control the means of production. Since the people have no purchasing choice, they are controlled. Open Source is, as the parent poster points out, close to ideal communism. Communism as a model is too flawed for practical use because it is the nature of man to be selfish. Hobbes and Machiavelli trumps Marx and Sir Thomas More every time.
Also, motivation [to] do what you want vs. money earned to do what you hate is far more of an incentive for most.Motivation is important, but motivation to survive is supreme. I would rather code for Microsoft and feed my kids than code for free and enjoy it!
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Well Steve, considering that Windows/Office can generally make up about 50% of the PC's price...you're right. They haven't budged at at all.
Pretty amazing what a monopoly can let you do eh?
-brain
Okay, maybe I'm just missing the big pic here, but what exactly has MS innovated again? (Apart from massively restricitive licensing, anti-competitive "bundling", etc.) From what I can see:
MS has a GUI. Apple and Xerox did it first.
MS has multi-tasking. OS/2 had it before MS did, and many OS's did/do it better even after MS finally got around to it.
MS has Word. WordPerfect, among others, did it first.
MS has Excel. Anyone heard of Lotus 1-2-3? Or VisiCalc?
MS has IE. Netscape, Mosaic, et al. all came first.
MS has Outlook, and I know for a fact I got e-mail on various clients long before Outlook was a glint in the e-postman's eye.
MS has "Age of Empire". Microprose already did Civilization.
MS has X-Box. Sony and Nintendo already had products in this area.
MS Money is a Quicken clone.
Visio was already Visio before MS purchased them.
MS NetMeeting was innovated by another company (Databeam) and purchased by MS.
MSN Instant Messenger comes from IRC by way of AIM and ICQ.
For that matter, MSN is basicaly a value-added ISP, essentially AOL with butterflies.
Windows NT was really IBM's OS/2 technology for the most part.
DOS was purchased, and was, in any case, basically CP/M.
Windows post 95(b) provides Internet Access via TCP/IP, but they were probably the last player to enter that game.
Media Player is basically just RealPlayer.
Someone please enlighten me . . . apart from legal and marketting ploys, what has MS actually innovated? What technology did they come up with themselves? (As opposed to either buying someone else's tech and rebranding it, or cloning someone else's idea.) So far, only ones I see as possibles are MS Project and MS PowerPoint, but I have a feeling that these are purchased technology also. (I seem to recall reading as much, but can't find the reference at the moment.)
Any MS apologists care to give us a list of MS innovations?
Raoul Mitgong: Unhelpful.
Forget all of Ballmer's statements. I'm more interested in the questions asked by the "reporter."
Did it seem odd to anyone else that these were all predicatable, softball questions? "How come you're going to beat Linux?" doesn't lead to an answer that qualifies as news. A real question would be something like "If an organization is moving an app from a Sun/SGI/HPUX server to x86 equipment, why would they move it to Win2003 Server instead of Linux?" Make him think and/or squirm.
Down with the Press-Release-As-News publishing paradigm.
There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer says, 'I need this.' You can't turn to IBM. They don't write the thing. It's not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the mainframe operating system. They don't write the code for it.
Of course, because they need access to the source code before they would be able to do any improvements... :-P
Sig ?
Open source software has a much longer history than 20 years. Software, in a sense, started out open source as hardware companies didn't view it as being very valuable.
I think it may be fair to say that there's been more technical innovation from Microsoft.
And what would that "technical innovation" be? Just about every single product category, UI idea, feature, or technology Microsoft is using and touting was invented elsewhere: the GUI, the spreadsheet, WYSIWYG word processing, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, databases, networking, web browsing, etc.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but they *have* introduced some real innovations. Cheap, shared-SCSI-bus clustering comes to mind,
I'm sorry, I don't get it. People have been sharing disks via disk interfaces since the 1960's. Microsoft puts a feature into their system that allows this to be done over one specific disk interface (which, not coincidentally, was actually designed to support this). Where is the innovation here? Sounds like engineering to me, driven by marketing ("hey, guys, we need to compete with the mini computers and mainframes on this disk thing").
as does Active Directory (although AD is certainly inspired by NDS).
Again, where is the innovation? We had Kerberos, YP, and NIS, and before that, we had generations of directory services on mainframes.
While Microsoft certainly followed Apple into the era of the GUI, they've made notable improvements to the GUI.
Like what?
There are others, of course;
Please keep going--you haven't named one yet.
only the most rabid anti-MS zealot could claim that they've *never* done *anything* innovative.
Oh, I'm sure they must have done something "innovative", but whatever it was doesn't seem to be related to their bottom line or have had much of an impact on their products.
Rumors are that the US goverment is going to appoint Balmer as the new Information minister for Iraq. "We need someone to match the format of former information minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf in his formidable communication of current events" a spokesman for the Bush administration comments...