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What's Microsoft Up To?
So, today's one of those days when every bit of news is dominated by Microsoft. To spare you six different stories about the Borg, we'll assimilate them all into this one. You have seen the stupid Passport hole in an earlier story; also the iLoo, although that hasn't stopped you from submitting stories about it, oh no. New news: a report paid for by Microsoft shows that Windows is a better server than Red Hat. A class-action suit has been filed charging that MSN and Best Buy combined to scam customers. The WINHEC conference is ongoing - Steve Ballmer says DRM is an opportunity, not a prison, the Xbox is going to be your home communications center, Wired talks about how hardware will be changed to imprison users, and once you're locked in to Microsoft you get to pay more each year. An article describes why user desktops are locked down. Oh, and here's another on DRM, just because.
...although that hasn't stopped you from submitting stories about it, oh no
:)
We know you're easily tricked
Is WINHEC where you go if you're darned for all eternity after pirating windows?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
"You have seen the stupid Passport hole in an earlier story; also the iLoo, although that hasn't stopped you from submitting stories about it, oh no."
;)
With all due respect, it never stopped you posting stories about them either
Henry
i don't do sigs. oops.
6 months ago everything you heard from MS was about tablet PC's and how they were going revolutionize everyone's computing experience. Maybe MS figured out that not everyone wants to use a stylus with their computer or has a need to work standing up? I wouldn't mind having stylus functionality on my ultraportable laptop screen but the idea that tablets are going to create a whole new mainstream sector of computing is far fetched.
Anyone see this new Microsoft robot crawling their websites? It's apparently legitimate, or at least acknowledged by Microsoft. Competition for Google?
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
to the iLoo?
From another CNN article released yesterday, Gates says this of DRM:
"Consumers shouldn't be worried that Microsoft Corp.'s new security technology will wrest control of their PCs and give it to media companies, Bill Gates said this week. They can always choose not to use it, he said."
Holy poopy-poop, that's misleading. People are going to read this and think "they" means "them." As in "the consumer can always choose not to use it." It, of course, doesn't. It means the creators of the content. And there goes fair use. And while I'm on it, can someone who is a lawyer tell me if we have a right to fair use or is it merely a thing that we've enjoyed because copyright holders couldn't ever get such a firm grip on it enough to effectively control it?
But anyway, back to the issue. In the same article further down, we see:
"Gates said the format of digital content is up to their creators, and Microsoft is only providing a platform on which record labels and movie studios -- as well as others -- can build."
This is a fairly reasonable argument, not so different from the people who run Kazaa saying "hey, we're just an indexer, blame the end-user." Perhaps Microsoft isn't culpable here, either. What they're creating here is a valid tool, one that can allow people a strong form of encryption. The blame for the abuse of that tool, I think, does not rightfull belong in Microsoft's lap.
You might correctly argue that MS is doing this knowing full well that abuse is going to occur and stands to profit from it. Again, Napster et al. We cannot play both sides of the fence here.
My
Limekiller
Hmm... let me see if I can make this argument valid...
:P
Cost:
Windows: Expensive (especially if you count licenses)
RedHat: You either pay or don't (download). It's Linux.
Support:
Windows: Support costs you hell a lot of money
RedHat: If you can't afford to pay RedHat, it's Linux for God's sake. There're thousands of people on the net willing to help you.
Documentation:
Windows: None
RedHat: It's Linux, damn it. RTFM
Source code:
Windows: None
RedHat: It's Linux. You get the source code.
Patches:
Windows: Waiting for patches if Microsoft has the time and mood to fix it. Service packs come out once in a blue moon.
RedHat: It's Linux. Thousands of people have access to the source code. Bug fixes come out rapidly.
Hmm.... Windows is better than RedHat?
...they're running SAMBA. For balance I think they should test Windows 2003 throughput of NFS.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Microsoft pays for a test that shows that Windows 2003 is twice as fast. That's nice. But not very productive.
I see nothing in the report that they had a Red Hat guru optimize the Red Hat server. It is easy to get the results you want. If I don't see proof that Red Hat was configured by a Red Hat guru, as I am sure that Windows 2003 was optimized by a Microsoft guru, then the tests are bunk.
-Brent
287th Rule of Acquisition, "DRM is an opportunity, not a prison."
Proof.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Now I'll be the first to note that the man should have paid closer attention to his receipt, but this is definitely not uncommon at many Best Buys.
The Best Buy corporation likes to make a marketting bullet point about how their salespeople are not paid commissions and therefore aren't going to pressure you into sales you don't need. However, they conveniently forget to mention that the sales records of these employees are carefully tracked and while they don't get the positive re-enforcement of a commission income, they get plenty of negative re-enforcement for failing to push MSN, Netflix, service plans or anything else the corporate HQ wants customers to buy into.
Besides seeing such happen as a customer, I worked myself at a Best Buy for an entire eight hours in their computer department a year back and watched one the saleskids first try to push the MSN subscription on a customer who refused it the eight times it was asked, and then had it put on his credit card by the worker anyways.
When I asked the sales manager about the legality of this he merely muttered something about it being the customer's responsibility to keep track of their receipt and that he rewarded such agressive tactics.
I quit that job right then and there.
More horror stories for those look for an entertaining, though depressing read.
For those that haven't read the MSN scam ariticle, let me summarize it. A guy bought some stuff at Best Buy and paid with a debit card. The check out person scanned an MSN CD and dropped it in the bag as well, saying the scanning was for inventory purposes. The debit info is sent to MS who then starts billing the customer's debit card for MSN service. Now that is a shitty deal. That would be like having a car dealer send your credit card or bank account info to a local garage, AAA, OnStar, and the LoJack folks for you and they all start billing you automagically. I hope he wins. This suit certainly has merit IMHO. I hope he doesn't back out on the suit and doesn't settle. Best of luck to him.
It's called chmod!
Slow down there, cowboy. Wait till Stallman comes out with GNU/DLM - Digital Lefts Management
getSexySig();
Because the test was commissioned and paid for by Microsoft. They knew the results before they paid for the test - the test was ordered in such a way as to make the results a forgone conclusion.
If you were going to contruct a biased test of Linux vs. Microsoft, wanting Linux to prove better - you'd choose products and tests that would favor Linux... just as Microsoft did here. Take a native protocol to Microsoft and stack it up against a re-implementation on another operating system... sounds pretty weighted against Linux to me.
Of course there are lots of ways to make an unbiased performance comparison - such as using multiple protocols, etc... but why would Microsoft pay for that? I'm not saying that either system was better or worse than the other - just that this particular test doesn't prove anything except that Microsoft know how to spec a test so that their products appear faster.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
I suppose if you try and bypass DRM, the DMCA will provide you an opportunity to go to prison.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
No, eternal damnation is reserved for those who pay money for Windows and hence support evil. Duh.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Microsoft commissioned VeriTest, a
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
Okay, so it is rather redundant to say, but any benchmarking / testing paid for by a party is pretty much guaranteed to be biased in favor of that party.
Anyway, what is up with all the (ONLY 3?) testing systems being PIII Xeons? Where are the AMD chips for comparison? Sounds like Microsoft made sure the systems and benchmarks were very thoroughly optimized in their favor.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Found this, and was quite amused. Perhaps its going to be spookily accurate?
Yes, we all know that it's true.
And they're certain to want to rope off pieces of pie for themselves.
Despite all this, though, I think the general idea of a PC with the functionality of "Athena" is a good idea. If MS uses it's big cudgel to bring down the PC decibel level (you can hear `em whining already - "but we gotta cool our 4 GHz chips!"), increase the reliability (go ahead and use cheap capacitors - we won't let you put a quad-color sticker on the outside), and standardize hardware interfaces for telephony, then that would be a largely positive move.
Of course, as Linux user, I'd like to see all these new standards published openly and available for free to anyone who thinks they could implement them.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They disabled last access time updating under windows. They didn't under Linux. This is enough to account for these differences, I suspect.
...With regard to IT's (real!) need to lock down desktops...
We need a new definition of OS stability.
Today, "stability" basically refers to the ability of an OS to run without crashing _in the absense of configuration changes_.
In the real world, there are ongoing needs to install new software, apply patches, updates, etc.
In a system that had proper modular design, it should be possible to install something new or change a legitimate setting without feeling that you're playing Russian Roulette.
CERTAINLY it should be possible to install vendor-recommended updates with a high level of confidence that it's not going to break something.
Remember all that stuff a few years back, that implied that the problem with stability was that people weren't keeping their systems properly updated and that "self-healing" systems would fix that? Well, now, we all but have them, and, in fact, it's made things worse.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That's so... 1996. This is one of the tactics Novell tried to use to keep corporations from replacing NetWare with NT. What Novell found out is that no one cared about file server performance. As long as the performance was "good enough" and Windows had more gizmos, they were screwed.
Of course, this is just one part of Microsoft's strategy against Linux and OSS. But I'm pretty sure that this salvo will fall on deaf ears.
the no
Its so horrible to see a company like this doing dirty business everywhere, getting sued like mad, and yet, their stock is UP!!!!!
But no, this company is not a monopoly at all.
Get paid to code OSS
From what they say in the wired article I can see DRM being extremely dangerous. If you can sign an email, making it only viewable by the intended recipient and stopping them from print/forwarding/saving, then you could very easily mount a campaign of e-stalking, sendingv vulgar and/or threatening emails and the person receiving them unable to remove them or forward them to anybody who can help.
And while I'm on it, can someone who is a lawyer tell me if we have a right to fair use or is it merely a thing that we've enjoyed because copyright holders couldn't ever get such a firm grip on it enough to effectively control it?
I am a lawyer. I am not completely sure on this issue, as I have not had a lot of time to research it. It appears as though the issue is split. Some courts refer to fair use as a right, some as a privelege.
Fair use is provided by statute, not the Constitution:
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
The Supreme Court has described it as follows: "Any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a 'fair use'; the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use." Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 433, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574, 104 S. Ct. 774 (1984).
I don't think the issue has been presented to the courts in this manner (there haven't been many copy protection schemes for thinks like books, e.g., they aren't printed on red paper to stop photcopying). I would say that a court would hodl a content producer can use DRM, but if you hack the DRM, thus allowing you to make copies, you can make copies for various fair uses. However, the hacking itself (i.e, bypassing the DRM) may be illegal under the DMCA. This probably trumps the fair use right (remember, its source is statutory -- not constitutional) in that if you can't make copies legally, you can't exercise your fair use right/privilege.
Alas... the problem is that the various statutes are either out of date (e.g., Copyright Act) or responses to an uncertain environment, goaded by lobbyists (e.g., DMCA).
D'oh -- the stuff that buys me beer! Ray -- the guy who sells me beer!
Now having said all this, I'm not surprised, I've been reading performance comparisons for 25 years and strangely enough, the sponsoring company's hardware/software/operating systems always seem to come out on top. This started with comparing the 8086 to the 68000 and has continued on to the present day.
The important/best thing about the review is that it states very clearly at the top that the test was sponsored by Microsoft.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
So their stock price is up ~20% over the last five years? Is that supposed to be bad?
I used to work for Best Buy. We were given the whole deal about getting out as many MSN disks as we could. The thing about that is, MSN kicks back a good amount of money for each free account that someone signs up for. Whether or not it's the 30 free days, 2 months, or 9months (or whatever). Heres what happens. Say a customer buys a computer at Best Buy, they automatically get 6 free months (if they pay with a credit card or major debit). If the customer doesn't sign on and activate that account, they never get billed. However, even if they sign on just once, even for just 30 seconds, they have to call and cancel the account.
Now, if a customer signs up for the 30 day free trial, yes they have to give a creditcard number, but they have to call and cancel the account even if they don't sign on. I had that problem but I called MSN and got this resolved and my money refunded immediately.
Now, the problem is that some bestbuy clerks don't bother to tell the customers this. I've had customers outright refuse the msn and i said that's fine and just don't go through with ringing it up. I always mentioned it to all the customers I talked to, and if they just didn't want it, I never scanned it. This class action probably won't work, but I hope this guy gets his money back.
Anyway that's my piece!
I only skimmed the "benchmark" document, but I immediately saw a couple of fundamental flaws in their methods.
o nb ridge_microsoft.asp
_ 02 -06-27.asp?visitor=X
3 16 1
2 80 1
First, they said they conducted each test twice to ensure the "repeatability" and "accuracy." First of all, running a test only twice in no way gives you enough data to claim accuracy. Second of all, "repeatability" is meaningless in terms of determining statistically significant results. The terms you want to claim are *reliability* and *validity*, not accuracy and repeatability.
Simply averaging the results of two tests is idiotic in terms of sound scientific methods. That's the kind of testing I would expect from a grade school chemistry experiment, not an expensive "commissioned" test of a real-life installed system of this kind of complexity.
The other thing they said, which directly contradicts what they said in the main highlights in the beginning of the report, is that "Our investigation showed that, with some minor tweaks, the default configuration values set for SAMBA generated the best overall performance in our configuration." I'm not sure if this means just their linux configuration, or if they tuned linux and discovered that it was faster and just published the slower non-tweaked numbers.
Here are some interesting URLs that help to reveal the obvious conflict of interest here:
http://www.etestinglabs.com/about/news/press/li
http://www.etestinglabs.com/about/news/press/pr
These two show how LionBridge, the parent company of VeriTest, has a long-standing and EXTREMELY lucrative contract with MicroSoft.
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/137
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/148
Here's some more interesting info:
Fidelity Management and Research Co. is Microsoft's top institutional shareholder, and is LionBridge's 6th largest institutional shareholder.
Barclays Global Investors Int'l is #2 for Microsoft and #9 for LionBridge.
Morgan Stanley Investment Mgmt is #13 for Microsoft and #3 for LionBridge.
State Street is #3 for MicroSoft, #8 for LionBridge.
So, the top 3 institutional shareholders of Microsoft own a very significant chunk of LionBridge, which shows lots of common interest between the two.
I could probably go on, but this should be enough..
What's more pathetic? An obviously overworked Slashdot editor with a chip on his shoulder or a bunch of malcontents who can't take a joke? The Bord-implanted Bill Gates has been the Microsoft icon for years...to call Microsoft the Borg and crack an assimilation joke seems logical enough.
You position, assuming that he's attacking Microsoft and that therefore he's making Linux users look bad, speaks of the worst sort of arrogance. The articles have not been misrepresented. When he says "although that hasn't stopped you from submitting stories about it, oh no," that strikes me as a jab at all those who grumble about dupes. Sure, an editor posted it, but someone submitted it in the first place. That someone probably has more time to check for a dupe than the editor. Personally, I always do.
I see references to Seth Finkelstein appearing already. With any Michael thread this is no surprise. I don't know who was right or who was wrong, but I do know that it has no bearing on Digital Rights Management. It's a private spat, let it stay that way. Taco clearly feels confident in Michael Sims and frankly, it's Taco's call.
Finally, I'd mod you down too. Why? Because I've seen this rant far to often. It's the ultimate meta-dupe, and a troll to boot. Given the responses you've provoked, I'd say it's a fair bet to call it flamebait. Finally, you've added nothing useful to the discussion. If your post were exorcised from the site nothing would have been lost.
If you don't like what the editors do, vote with your browser and go somewhere else. You aren't locked in to Slashdot. I'm sure Kuro5hin would welcome another Slashdot hater...
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
Quote: "Any government department is quite at liberty to run only Windows 2000 server. There's nothing forcing them to upgrade to Server 2003," [Microsoft senior consultant Alex Balcanquall] said.
Translation: We haven't quite figured out how to break compatibility yet... but we should have that ready for SP1.
I take drugs seriously.
"There are no hacker infidels in Hotmail. Never!"
... stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies."
... They have started throwing those emails, but they are not emails, they are booby traps to kill the children."
"My feelings - as usual - we will kill them all"
"Our initial assessment is that they will all die"
"I blame Slashdot - they are marketing for the Linux kernel!"
"God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Microsoft."
"They're coming to surrender or be burned in their computerr rooms."
"No I am not scared, and neither should you be!"
"Be assured. Passport is safe, protected"
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!"
"We are not afraid of the hackers. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid" (dramatic pause) "and they are condemned."
"The hackers, they always depend on a method what I call
"I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Hotmail. We will encourage them to commit suicide more quickly."
"I can assure you that those villains will recognize, will discover in appropriate time in the future how stupid they are and how they are pretending things which have never taken place."
"The authority of the Microsoft... issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those Linux Distrobutions because they are booby traps," he said, adding that Hackers were "immoral mercenaries" and "criminals" for such behavior.
"I am not talking about the American people and the British people," he said. "I am talking about Hackers.
"We have them surrounded in their computer rooms"
"Muhammad Faisal Rauf Danka is all about lies! All he tells is lies, lies and more lies!"
"I have detailed information about the situation...which completely proves that what they allege are illusions . . . They lie every day."
"Lying is forbidden in Microsoft. Microsoft lawyers will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as they are men of great honor and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts."
"Now even the Hacker command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us."
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
Microsoft Information Minister
:)(smile)