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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.
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.
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
...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
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.
they decided the best way to get the tabletpc going was to mount it on the wall of a port-a-potty and call it iLoo
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();
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.
They disabled last access time updating under windows. They didn't under Linux. This is enough to account for these differences, I suspect.
Before I get ripped into for this, I will point out I use Windows 2K at work, write programs for .Net framework but use Red Hat at home for my deskto and server.
The 'cost' of Windows is not as straight forward as 'buying' a Windows 2K server license or downloading Red Hat. I know in my area that someone who is a real expert in W2K will cost around £30k/year and I'd have a choice of them, yet the cost for a Red Hat specialist is -far- more expensive. It's more in the £40k region at least, and I'd not have many to choose from. Therefore, the cost of the software is beset by the personnel costs.
Support wise: I agree that there's enough information on the web for RH but also Windows. However, unless your a large organisation you shouldn't rely on a support contract. I'd not hire a £45k Red Hat expert to run the servers and expect him to rely on a support contract.
Documentation? You don't need it really do you? Do I need a manual for C#? SQL Server? Notepad? IE?
Source code: Ok, you get the source code. For me, that's not a selling point. For some it is though, I conceed.
Patches: 2K server is very stable. If you secure a 2K machine and make sure that it's properly patched you're not likely to get into trouble. Sorry, you might not like to hear it but it's true. Badly patched machines - whether Linux, Mac or Windows boxes are badly patched machines.
I don't think that the RH vs Windows is as simple as you make it. I am not a great fan of MS but some of the stuff they are doing is damned impressive - and I use RH.
...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
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!
I am a windows dev for past 4 years.
Documentation:
Windows: None
There is more documentation for windows than i can shake a stick at. To this day, i haven't met one issue that i didn't resolve via MSDN, KB or Google/Newsgroups.
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.
Considering you rarely need any support with Windows, and setting up the simplest things on Linux is a torture. Do we also want to spend the time figuing out something that the program creator should have?
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.
This is just pure FUD bullshit. MS is very responsive to bugs, especially nowadays. Fixes are released sometimes hours after bugs are found. Subscribe to the security newsletter and find out for yourself.
Windows also reports less annual bugs than Linux, this is an old article, but the pattern continues to this day. A little search on SecurityFocus will show you.
Hmm.... Windows is better than RedHat?
Depends on your background. Don't be a stupid troll.
It's nice to hear some reason within the millions of MS bashing posts. The security and reliability of any server lies squarely on the administrator. There are millions of Windows machines in the wild that can be exploited at the drop of a hat; same true for *NIX. Not because the OS sux, but because they have not be properly configured and secured. Win2000 and WinXP are very reliable products. Almost to the point that I will agree that MS might have shot themselves in the foot to some degree; but me being the consumer, I only see a benefit to that argument.
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
With all due respect, bullshit.
I test drove two tablet PCs recently (one from Motion Computing, the other I can't remember) for about a week each. They were certainly cool, and they invoked much drooling and exclamations of "ooh, shiny!" from my co-workers, but boy did they suck for daily work.
Here's a brief summary of my testing:
Pros:
Cons:
Of course, they don't run Linux (there is some testing going on, and I found one person who got a kernel to boot, but no usable distros yet), but that's not that big of a deal for me. I'm concerned with usability primarily, and tablets failed that test.
They will not replace laptops anytime soon. What might replace laptops are those laptops that double as tablets (where the monitor rotates, and then folds, so the laptop is closed, but the monitor faces out). Those might catch on. But laptops will not be replaced by tablets until handwriting recognition becomes just as fast (if not faster) than typing, with reduced errors.
What tablets will replace are notepads (the dead tree kind, I mean) and legal pads and the like. The one use I found for the tablet was for taking notes in meetings. I can go back and write on the upper part of the screen, if there's something I missed, rather than having to PgUp and delete and re-type. I can then digitize the notes later, or print them out as images. Tablets are great for that. I predict they'll be used mostly by PHB types or folks who attend lots of meetings and need to take notes. They will not replace conventional laptops for a long, long time, if ever.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
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..
"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)
- People dont get Tablets to run Photoshop.
They are currently a niche product, sure, but they're great on a sales floor or to take quick notes in the field.
The home inspector who did my walkthrough had a tablet PC, and it suited him fine for checking off boxes, jotting a few notes, making some quick sketches, and then printing me a hard copy.
This is the hardest thing for computer geeks to understand: not everyone has the same demands of a computer that they do.
For many people, a tablet PC is a much better fit than a laptop. Comparing the two is like comparing a PDA with Gameboy Advance.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!