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Dear Microsoft Windows ...
SpaceCanary writes "I recently read this open letter to Windows and I think it's pretty funny. The guy writes a letter to his OS as if he was breaking up with it. It's a bit strange, but finally more people are starting to see the light and moving away from Windows. The writer chronicles his relationship with the versions of Windows and finally is able to move on in the end."
You let me run the games I want to play, the industry-standard word processing and publishing software I need to use in my job, and haven't crashed on me in months. While your security is questionable, at least I know that there is some accountability in your design.
I'll be home by 5.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Of a readers letter I really enjoyed from The Register UK IT mag. It was an answer to an article about Microsoft saying basically they get too much stick. Managed to track it down via Google: Enjoy, if it's your thing.
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"Microsoft simply makes some fairly mediocre software and charges a lot for it."
No.
Microsoft deliberately designs software that is inherently insecure and refuses to fix the fundamental design flaws no matter how bad the outcome is.
When Microsoft merged IE and the desktop, almost ten years ago now, I immediately acted to get IE and Outlook banned at work. Why? Because using the same APIs to operate on trusted (local) and untrusted (email, internet) objects makes every program that uses those APIs responsible for determining, independently, whether an object is trusted or not.
I and every security administrator I knew wrote Microsoft telling them this was a horrible idea. Nothing. They ignored the security community and went on to actually build IE in to the next release of Windows so you couldn't leave it out, as part of their game-plan to try and outflank the DoJ.
I didn't know what the result would be, but I knew it would be bad. I did what I could to discourage our users from running IE and Outlook, and waited.
We didn't have long to wait.
When the Melissa virus showed up, I thought, "OK, this should let them know they've got a problem. They'll pull out IE and settle, and we'll be able to secure Windows again". Boy, was I naive.
Here we are, it's 2004 instead of 1996, and there are still weekly exploits found in IE, Outlook, Windows Media Player, programs that use the MSHTML control. Get rid of that and you'd cut the virus problem by a factor of 10 or 100. 90-99% of the time spent fighting and cleaning up after viruses should be billed directly to Redmond, and because they did it to illegally avoid complying with the agreement they had with the DoJ, there should be criminal charges on top of that.
Microsoft doesn't merely charge a lot for mediocre software, they deliberately and knowingly force people to chew up lifetimes fighting a problem that should not exist, and they do it to win a little extra market share for a secondary product that they don't even charge money for.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Seems to be /.ed
But I'm making the change at home. I have a family, so I have to consider non-geek computer needs. I've ordered the imac G5.
Now, for the mac users out there, what would you use in place of virtualpc?
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
In retrospect, this letter should be of no surprise to you. For years now I have stood by you despite the terrible things you have said about Microsoft. We have always managed to work through our serious problems but too many things have been swept under the table. I do not think I can stand (idly) by you any longer.
What's that? No, another DOOM3 review will not help, not this time.
I remember when we met, a warm April day, in 1999. For years I had been hearing about you, about your terrible green HTML of death, Open Source advocation, poor social skills, web server obliteration, and problems raising money... I had seen you here and there, but it was not until that fateful day, April 6, that our relationship became serious. I was almost knocked off my feet when I first saw you. Right then I knew it, you had to be mine. Who else could offer me what you could? I wanted, no, I needed, your Cowboy Neal polls, your Insightful comments, your great techno music...
As time progressed so did my needs. Our affair took its next serious step on August 24, 2001. At the time I thought our happiness would never end. You brought me places I never thought possible. How could I refuse your IOCCC results or your Napster articles? I mean, you gave up your best friend, financial independence, so our relationship could progress unhindered with OSDN. It hurts me to look back at us, two starry-eyed lovers wanting nothing more than each other's first posts.
Well, like I wrote, I have reached my limit. Its going to take more than mod points to fix our relationship. I just don't feel like I know you anymore. For example, do you know what I found on the site a few days ago? A dupe! I wonder who let that in...
Slashdot, I know you will try to change, but I have been hurt too many times. You should know that I have been seeing someone else for a few months now. She is fun, easy going, and will do something for me that you never even considered, oust the president.
I don't know what else to say- we had a good run, but now its over. Pack up your Beowulf cluster, your SCO stories, hell, take slashcode if you have to. I am sure we'll see each other from time to time but I know one thing, I'll never again have to depend on you.
Yours no longer,
N I
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
Check out the amazon computer top sellers - 8 out of the top 10 are Macs. I was pretty surprised to see this a few days ago, and it's been like this since then. The new iMac is a hit, and that's no surprise - look at what the x86 competition is offering - an iMac look alike, priced about the same. Seems nice from this angle, but then look at it from the side. Bulk.
I work with UNIX full-time at work, specifically Solaris and HP-UX. I have been "driven up the wall" by the various errors Solaris and HP-UX have caused me, which includes not sleeping all night to fix a problem that I felt was a UNIX-only issue. I've also had problems with Windows, but I usually delegate the task of fixing Windows boxes to someone else. My poiint is every OS when used extensively can and will give you some pain. Sometimes I feel like the whole Windows vs. Linux thing is like the republicans versus the democrats.
Just a rant with karma to burn..
Yup, after 10 years of puppy-like devotion to Microsoft, I've decided that Macs live up to their promises so much better than Windows PCs do. They have a modern, powerful operating system. I just don't get the same feeling using PCs.
I have always looked out for quality - using Firefox at the moment, and it's come to the point where the Mac is the only quality package out there. I don't want to have to wait 3 years for another buggy OS.
Sorry Microsoft. We had some good times.
Now internet explorer, on the other hand, I wouldn't touch with a 10 pica pole. I switched to Opera a few years ago and have been *much* happier.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
"when everyone I exchange files with uses Windows, I need to use Windows, too"
This is demonstrably untrue. Several Windows computers in my office print through my Samba shares. I exchange Word and OpenOffice files with people running Windows, OSX, and Linux daily.
Were you using Office on OSX, those files would interchange easily between OSX and Windows. Similarly, were you using OpenOffice, you could exchange files between Windows, OSX, Linux, xBSD, Solaris, etc. Photoshop files created on a Mac open just fine on a Windows PC. Jpegs are jpegs, ditto pngs, GIFs, etc. PDF works great in the rest of the computing world.
If the boss says "Use Windows," you use Windows. Reason goes out the [ahem] window. But you, personally, present reasons which simply aren't correct.
Am I saying you should use Linux? No. What I'm saying is that all the reasons you keep reciting why you CAN'T are wrong.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
AE expected the weapons to change, but not the way of warfare. In fact we are in the midst of World War III right now. And the weapons have actually become more crude than they were during World War II and the extension called the Cold War. The weapons of World War III are:
I hadn't considered this until reading your .sig. Now that the super-weapons have made state-to-state warefare unwinnable by any rouge state the way of warring has changed.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello