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Gates Provides Windows Crash Statistic

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fasten-seat-belts dept.

cybercuzco writes "In an otherwise innocuous article at they NYT (FRRYYY) Bill Gates says that according to error reporting software in windows, 5% of all windows installations crash two or more times every day. Gates goes on to state that Microsoft is looking at charging for some of its software updates that it now distributes for free."

20 of 984 comments (clear)

  1. Cash for updates? by Burlynerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bill is becoming the world expert on increasing revenue without providing value to his customers.

    1. Re:Cash for updates? by Laur · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Bill is becoming the world expert on increasing revenue without providing value to his customers.

      I'd have to say that SCO has him beat. At least Microsoft sells products, SCO posted a profit for the first time in years based solely on licensing 20+ year old technology!

      --
      When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
    2. Re:Cash for updates? by Microsofts+slave · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What Mr.Bill wants us to do is to pay for the updates that are technicly a result of his own screwups. HOw many of you out there think that this is a cash grab? If this backfires, it could end up with thousands of users migrating to somthing that is less costly to keep "Up to date" I personally am a big fan of FreeBSD, however i have tried out windows xp and found that for the most part it is sufficent for the average user. But if this happeness that i have to pay to uppgrade, i dont think there will be many who pay, just pirated copies that will circualate.

      --

      Tragek

    3. Re:Cash for updates? by archen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      heh, I haven't messed with Visual Studio in 2 years, but I find that rather interesting. It's the exact opposit of what MS should be doing in my opinion - which is giving VS away for free. If MS wants to see how it's going to be losing mindshare to Linux, it's going to be at the developer level where a lot of people get to play around with Linux tools for free but MS charges way to much to even consider actually buying. And PAYING for an MSDN subscription? That should be free as well if they really want to encourage more development.

      It's interested that MS is so blinded by dollar signes that they can't see that keeping people on windows is more important, and the easiest way to do that is to give everyone the chance to make stupid little apps that ONLY work on windows. Those people that start out developing on windows will probably stay on windows, and each app (big or small) that they create that people like, encourages users to stay on windows as well.

    4. Re:Cash for updates? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


      I fail to follow your so-called logic.

      1. It's hard to write software.
      2. Even the best programmers have bugs in their code.
      3. There are multiple ways to do things.

      Therefore mistakes in programming (bugs) are not "screw ups".

      Did I get that right? Yes? Well I have a news flash for you, difficulty and other programmers having bugs in their code, and yes, even there being more than one way to do things, do not mean that bugs aren't screwups!

      You can argue that screwups, er bugs, are understandable, but if you have a mistake in your code you've screwed up.

      Touchy git.

    5. Re:Cash for updates? by rusty+spoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The biggest cause of bugs, IMO, is complexity. We continually add more features to our software and this adds to the complexity. We quickly get to a point where the number of interactions of the inner workings far exceed our ability to visualise them...and then bugs creep in because we fail to realise some of the interactions.

      Every keystroke can cause a bug and every line of code is a liability.

      Whatever else can be said about it one thing is for sure; Bugs are mistakes, screwups, errors, ommisions, or general failures caused by one of the software developers/designers in the chain.

      Failure to accept this is just admiting that it is OK to have bugs. And when you accept this you lose all hope of fixing the bugs.

      (Bias note: I've written commercial/consumer software for a *long* time)

    6. Re:Cash for updates? by mkldev · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?

      1. You could do only one color of bricks with each row shifting by half.
      2. You could do longer bricks and shift by a third the length.
      3. You could put a brick of a different color in place of every third brick.
      4. You could turn every other brick sideways so it would stick out the front.
      5. You could tile the bricks alternating between two colors.
      6. You might add a column of bricks, in which case you could have some of the bricks in a vertical orientation.
      7. You might do a pattern of bricks on the ground consisting of two bricks sideway followed by two bricks turned 90 degrees.
      8. You might use a short brick for every fourth brick, and you might lay every other row in opposite directions so that you would form a zig-zag pattern.
      With all of these, you might use a light mortar or a dark mortar.

      With all of these, you might choose to use a smooth brick or a rough brick.

      That's 8 * 2 * 2 = 32 ways to lay bricks. Those are just the first few off the top of my head.

      Just as there are infinitely many ways to write most non-trivial pieces of software---indeed, as with any art form---there are certain rules that must be met in order to get something that resembles usable output, but there are infinitely many ways to lay bricks. That having been said, no matter how complex the pattern, if you put the wrong brick in the wrong place, it's still a screw-up.

      The only real difference is that screw-ups in software (i.e. bugs) are generally somewhat easier to fix. However, this in no way excuses the apathy that many programmers seem to feel about the existence of such mistakes.

      --
      120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
  2. Charging For Updates by webguru4god · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft charging for Windows Updates is analogous to Ford charging their customers extra for basic safety features which should be free in the first place! What if Ford told you that there was a fatal flaw in your seatbelt system that could allow you to be thrown from the car in a crash, and that the problem was a result of poor engineering on their behalf, and that you had to pay out of your own pocket to fix it! If that happened the government would surely intervene and force Ford to provide the fix for free. I can't belive that Microsoft has the gall to even consider charging us to fix the holes in their systems that are there because of their own fault!

    1. Re:Charging For Updates by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Probably not. See the article mention MS charging for "some" of the updates. I bet the security fixes would be free.

      I can't belive that Microsoft has the gall to even consider charging us to fix the holes in their systems

      That's good you can't believe it, because nobody said it.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  3. Re:So? by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It doesn't matter what "causes" the crash. The OS should be essentially crashproof. That's what an OS was for, and it was why Apple got such a drubbing before OS X finally came out (twelve years later).

  4. Re:So? by KrispyKringle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And of course there are plenty of people who choose not to send the crash report to MS, or, even more likely, do not (*gasp*) have always-on-connections and cannot send the report to MS. The vast majority, for all we know, go unreported. This is, after all, hardly an accurate means of statistical sampling.

  5. Cool... by Jaysyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing to push the masses to Linux/Mac like charging for updates & bugfixes.

    Jaysyn

    --
    There is a war going on for your mind.
  6. 5% seems a bit low... by kgarcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that according to error reporting software in windows

    yeah, but how many people actually use the "report this error to microsoft" feature?. I know everytime I get a crash, I opt to not send the report, and I know i'm not the only one that does this. Also, the only time this method for reporting error is used at all is when customers are on broadband connections, or in office networks (can you imagine wating for your modem to dial to report an error or a crash?), and what about those times when the crash is so bad your entire system needs to be restarted?. From what I can tell, this error reporting software only sends error reports regarding programs that crash, not the OS itself. So... 5% of windows users, who are on persistent connections, who use the error reporting software, who had a crash on an application that doesn't freeze the entire system, are crashing at least 2 times a day... The real number has to be much higher that that.

    -K

    -K

  7. Now another question to ask is by falcon5768 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Damnit I was beat submitting this story :-P

    But on to my topic,

    Now how many people crash ONCE a day??? It seems odd that he would pick just twice a day to report, what would have looked more impressive would have been Bill saying "Only 5% of our users crash once or more using all of our operating systems."

    I know as all you do it would have been a much more staggering figure since just about any Windows PC I see at work crashes once a day, so I can see why he didnt say it.

    Glad my linux and OSX boxes crash on an average of once every 6 or 7 months or so.

    --

    "Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."

  8. Bounty for Every Bug by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think Dilbert had one (rumored to be based on a true story) where the company decided to offer a bounty for every bug fixed. As usual, Wally decided to "write himself a minivan." I can already see bugs been inserted proactively by employees to boost their stock option value...

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
  9. Re:skewed statistics. by Cali+Thalen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're also assuming that the people who get the crashes actually SEND the error report...I crash multiple times daily, and have stopped bothering to send the reports at all (mostly because it's the same app that usually crashes...Internet Explorer)

    --
    Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
  10. waitaminute by Wordsmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    wait just a gul darn minute ...

    I was under the impression the error reporting tool didn't send any personally identifiable info back to MS. How, exactly, is he figuring out the frequency with which individual machines crash?

  11. Re:App Crash (usually) = Windows Crash (sorta) by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't care what kind of application you're using, the job of the OS is to protect the hardware from access by individual programs, and to protect programs from each other. No app should EVER be able to crash an OS, game or not.

    Device drivers are another matter, but still one within MS's control in a way; MS is the one that created the culture of every device having its own drivers, instead of the linux way where drivers are included in the kernel distribution and are written for devices generically. For instance, if you download the newest kernel, there's a driver in there for the RTL3019 NIC chipset. So all cards based on this chipset (which is a lot; it's a common low-cost chipset for NICs) use the same driver, unlike the Windows world where all those cards are about the same from a hardware POV, but the drivers are all different, and some may be better than others. Also, in Linux, the drivers are open-source just like the rest of the kernel, so people are able to file bug reports against them, debug them themselves, etc., unlike the Windows world where each driver is a little black box from the manufacturer, and may not even be supported anymore (common when the manuf. goes out of business). Admittedly, MS has finally, after all these years, started to recognize this problem, and is now trying this "signed" driver scheme to improve their situation.

  12. Not quite correct. by Population · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problems with Windows are as follows:

    #1. The core OS was not sufficiently protected from being "upgraded" by any application that was installed. Microsoft was the biggest offender with Office.

    #2. The binary registry has all of the information for everything, users, applications, hardware, security, etc stored in it. If something goes wrong it is a major pain to fix it.

    #3. The uninstall feature of Windows does not clear out everything. If I do install a buggy driver for a scanner and I want to remove it so it doesn't affect my system anymore, uninstalling does NOT always clean it out.

    That is why, over time, Windows installations become less stable. Crap gets stuck in the registry and drivers get stuck in the OS directories and bad things start happening.

    And don't give me any crap about that being the fault of the user. The OS should be able to control itself. Look at Debian's uninstall feature. Debian even has multiple levels of uninstall.

    The problems with Windows are because of decisions Microsoft made. Not because of end-users.

  13. Because it's hard they're not mistakes? by whjwhj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hey I've been programming for 20 years and you're quite correct -- programming is hard. But I must disagree with your assertion that just because it's hard means that bugs aren't mistakes. They ARE mistakes. And yes, it's generally somebody's fault when they occur. Level of difficulty doesn't let you off the hook here ... sorry.