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US Government Keeping Close Eye on Longhorn
skrysakj writes "CNN/Money has a new article describing the close eye the Feds have on Longhorn and its compliance with the anti-trust settlement. I wonder how discerning their eye will be considering past decisions and lax enforcement. Also, this prompts the question, what is the EU doing to examine Longhorn?" The longer Washington Post piece has more information.
Why this is kinda bad for the operating system:
:-)
1. Feds want Longhorn to be "difficult to change"
This means it will be difficult for people to mod their Longhorn OS and reap rewards from having a custom system, beyond what the OS offers by default (like the ability to hide certain MS apps in favour of your own fare). Microsoft is being forced to be inflexible to some extent, and that means bad news for customers of the software giant. Bugs will be harder to fix, updates will be slower, response to threats even slower. This will be the repeated excuse while many suffer the wrath of virus programmers abound.
2. Justice Department lawyers would visit Microsoft's headquarters next week to discuss a variety of antitrust compliance issues
Okay, they're going to spend a week at Microsoft. How is that going to solve anything or be effective at all? They'll have a bunch of meetings over Shrimp and Wine coolers, get liquored up and talk about golf.
3. When the government is involved in any project, it's subject to major setbacks, not to mention built in spyware.
These three reasons will force many to the Linux model of computing. Yay!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
No wonder it's taking MS so long to release Longhorn.
From the MSNBC article:
"Several industry analysts have predicted introduction of Longhorn in 2006 or possibly 2007, which is when the antitrust settlement is scheduled to expire."
Is it just me or does anyone else find it interesting that Longhorn is delayed until just about the time the M$ Antitrust settlement encumbrances ( such as they are) go away.
I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't be able to mod an article as flamebait. :\
:(
It's a legit read, no doubt, but...okay, so the govt is going to be keeping an eye on the OS. Cue the arguement of "yay!" and "aw crap, here comes big brother".
Listen. Right now on a daily basis I interact primarily with 3 OS's:
MacOS X 10.3
FreeBSD 5.2.1
Some outdated version of Red Hat Linux (7.2?)
I wouldn't mind just going around loading any one of the above on every workstation I come across, except for the irony that I work for a Micrsoft Certified Solutions Provider. Heck, we just acheived Gold status last week.
I run the ISP, which has very little interaction with the above. Anymore, I get called in only if it's a bonified networking problem (one your MCSE can't solve. Wait, that's all of them, isn't it?) or to clean off viruses/virii (choose your term) and spyware.
I carry a cd around with me at all times. It has Firefox + adblock + flashblock, Thunderbird, Spybot, PuTTY, and Clamwin. With that combination, at times I spend up to 6 hours cleaning up a single workstation, between installing the above apps, cleaning off the yuckies, and running Windows update.
It's enough to make one's nerves crack. Seriously. Pick your most braindead install of Linux. I couldn't tell you which it is these days. Red Hat used to be it. I want sooooooo badly to just wipe each system, install that, Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Wine anything that doesn't have an OSS equivalent. But I can't, because Uncle Bill (tm) wouldn't approve.
Someone shoot me.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
You'll recall that after the Bush admin took over the settlement between the govmt and M$ was pretty much turned into a slap on the wrist.
More specifically, the Bush administration removed the lawyers most experienced with monopolies at the DoJ from the case before the official settlements were signed. Junior lawyers were assigned to work the trial. Right about that time Lawrence Lessig was removed as independant council from the case by the judge without any explanation. It didn't get enough press, but there's no doubt that the Bush administration had a huge impact on the end of the trial and settlement.
Developers: We can use your help.
It's possible, although highly speculative, that Microsoft will not call Longhorn "Windows" after they make the final decision to not natively support the Win32 API. If they don't support the Windows API, it's no longer Windows, in one sense. Developers will be forced to use .NET if they wish to target Longhorn. (Win32 might be supported by an emulation layer, but it won't be completely native if they go this route).
However, none of this has been completely decided yet, so Longhorn is still Windows. I wouldn't be surprised if that were to change as we approach its release.
Developers: We can use your help.
If my government won't stop Microsoft, who will?
It's not up to your government to stop Microsoft.
What you should be asking is,"When will my government stop supporting Microsoft?" A large part of Microsoft's monopoly is due to taxpayer revenue being funneled to Redmond through a thousand different contracts, tax credits, consulting fees, etc.
Rather than asking your government to grow to fight the threats you should be asking your government to shrink so it quits creating them.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Maybe the Federales can uncover what's causing this little bugger...
Here at work (:-P) I happen to have MS Access running on Windows. MS Access has registered the file extension MAF. There's a Moz extension called MAF that archives web pages, kinda-like-mht-but-supposedly-better, and it saves with extension MAF.
So I save the archives. WhaddyIget? A file, whose extension doesn't show along with the name in explorer (despite that I have it set to show file extensions) with the icon of a shortcut.
Go into folder options->file types, set these files to open in Mozilla. Click apply, ok, close, refresh window, reopen window, reboot Windows, nothing changes. Files still open in Access upon double-click.
Travelling off-topic, but this year's election IS nothing more than Bush/Not Bush. I propose a nationwide electoral change that puts "None of the Above" on EVERY ballot. If that is the majority, all original offerings are scrapped, and each 'party' on the ballot can offer a new person for that position (within 30 days). All losers would be eliminated from consideration. Days 31-60 would be nation-wide debates, and the vote would be on day 61. Continue until "NOTA" is not the winner. Since the term-limit for a sitting prez is 10 total years, they can be lame-duck until the election is over.