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Gates on Spyware and OS Competition
Ant writes "CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software." prostoalex writes "Both OsNews and InfoWorld talk about Bill Gates' speech at the Computer History Museum in California. Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."
It would make sense for Microsoft to make an anti-spyware product, after all, they should (but may not) know the most about how to protect Windows from spyware. I would also think that given the sheer amount of brainpower that they could apply to the task that they would put forth a good product. But, they have not been known as innovaters in the application world (I know, some would say in the OS world as well). Anyway, I wonder how the other folks who make and sell (or give away) anti-spyware software will react to the 800lb gorilla's entrance into their domain?
http://www.busyweather.com/
Gee Bill, what about Mac OS? Considering how good that OS is these days, not to mention the Mac hardware, you probably shouldn't turn your back on it in a dark alley. I think it'll be here 10 years from now.
but if Bill Gates says it too, it must be true:
*BSD is Dying! (And will have died in 10 years)
Just had to get that out of the way.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Hit by his own security vulnerabilities! I can just picture Gates running Ad Aware... heh maybe someone should suggest that he switch to using Linux and Firefox!
THis is the same man (Borg?) that said 640K is enough for everyone. and now hes claiming 2OS is enough for the whole world...
I just lost faith in humanity...
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
Is Bill telling his employees in the Mac Business Unit that all their hard work is going to be for nothing? Is he planning on shutting down the MacBU, an that's why he's saying Mac OS won't be around?
man, that's really f-ed up. Maybe the Windows Office team are getting jealous of how good the Mac version of Office is getting and are planning on burning the MacBU to the ground...
If Apple ever releases a PC version of OSX, M$ is screwed. But that won't happen now, will it?
claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market
Um...Mac OS X is only getting better and more switchers from Microsoft, and FreeBSD is still running a lot of servers around the world (and ones that don't go down).
I predict that in 10 years from now, Microsoft will be dead, linux and FreeBSD will feed off of each other making both extremely good choices (FreeBSD for server, linux for desktop). Then the competition will be between Mac OS X and linux for the desktop.
I predict that the only OSes left in 10 years will be MacOS an Linux!
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
anti-spyware software? Does this mean that when it's run that it will offer remove Windows? If so, this will be the first good thing to come from Microsoft.
That's quite interesting that he expects Linux to still exist 10 years from now. I thought that he expected that his SCO henchmen would actually be able to succeed in killing Linux.
but I thought windows was spyware before anyone was even using the term for other software.
I don't know if the registration system could fall any other name....
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Just yesterday I was thinking, "It would be a good thing if Microsoft would stick an anti adware/spyware thing in Windows and have it run by default". Lo and behold, they seem to have taken my mental suggestion.
those two operating systems will be running on Tablet PCs with 64k RAM and DRM. Oh and BOB.
"We ourselves are not going after the e-voting market or the nuclear reactor control market," Gates said.
Who is the leader in the Nuclear Reactor Control market right now ? (I mean, what OS is running in nuclear reactors? I for one hope it's not Windows ME)
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
However, it is better to have such technologies around and hope for the best, rather than not publishing online music or movies just out of fear that someone will crack their security. In the first case you have some piracy and some sales, on the second case you only end up with piracy.
Yeah, because piracy has pretty much eliminated the sale of music and movies.
In fact, there is only one sale of any given title anymore and that person just uploads it to the net.
... here come the mac zealots ...
Large, under-regulated corporations pose a challenging contemporary threat to civil privacy interests --- esp on the net. Its confusing --- maybe even a little orwellian --- to contemplate Microsoft as some kind of champion of privacy interests. Isn't the MS drive for market share and support of the proprietary software as dangerous to civil liberties as spyware?
I'm laughing at clouds.
Why spend the man power fixing his faulty product when you can use 1/2 the time time and just create a bandaid fix!!
Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market.
The only thing I see is in the OsNews article where Bill Gates is quoted to say "fast forward 10 years, the two leading OS technologies will be Linux and Windows." But "leading" is very different from "only". Nowhere does it say all other OSs will disappear.
prostoalex, YOU must substantiate your statement NOW. Or are you spreading more anti-MS FUD??
Oh, so MS is going to release a program to erase Windows from my system?
Steve Jobs must be laughing his ass off right now... ;)
If MS just a bit disclose the hidden places of OS to the very owners of OS/PC, spyware will be immediately found and killed. Just make those HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run keys and other obscure parts more open and clear to users. Make non-technologically-competitive pieces of OS components open source. Don't lie to your own consumers.
There will be a number of OSS which will be around. In addition, ALL of the closed source will be sold to others. OS's make their real money (except for MS's) after it is put into maintence mode. Good example was hp-3000. Lost money at the OS level until it was put into mainence mode. Then it made big bucks for HP. Likewise, vms makes a lot of money for HP.
Apple, by being based on OSS, may be spared that death, but hard to tell.
All most certainly all the the closed Unixs will be in maintence mode or dead. What ever aspects of them that were interesting will be done in Linux.
While BSD will almost certainly be around, I doubt that it will capture a big market. Nobody can really take the chance of MS swooping in and killing them.
But Linux and Windows will probably be the 2 gorrillas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
While I tend to be that last one to state that Microsoft has too much control over ancillary markets, I was rather disturbed by XP SP2s inability to recognize several third party Anti Virus products and cotinue to warn about the vulnarbility of the system. One wonders what F-Prot and Command-com antivirus need to do to get on the "trusted" AV list at Microsoft.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Is it just me, or does this sound like a revenue service waiting to happen?
I submit that Microsoft will only judge as spyware products which either install themselves without explicit permission, or products which are not owned by companies who pay Microsoft.
I hate to be so cynical, but I've been burned by too many Microsoft "features" [in recent memory: IE upgrades only available to XP users, and a Windows ME setup CD refusing to install to a FAT16 partition formatted by its own boot disk] to believe much of what they say.
Just my $0.02 USD.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
You guys are all still using >64k of RAM right?
I think that is quite a safe assumption. Not too many PCs ship with 32kb of RAM these days. Heck many pocket calculators probably have >64k RAM.
Gates said Microsoft will offer software to detect malicious applications and that the company will keep it up-to-date on an ongoing basis.
I don't think people need software to detect these malicious applications; when their home pages get set to http://www.pornomonkeysonmeth.com and their 3.2 Ghz processor is pegged at 100% trying to open up Notepad, I think they're already well aware that malcious applcations are present on their system.
CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software.
Microsoft has also gone public with their newest strategy: develop software that will prevent maltware from being installed in the first place, instead of merely detecting its presence. They have codenamed this software "Linux", and it will be offered free of charge to all existing customers.
Or at least, that's what he would say if he were honest.
Um... You meant 64k right?
My favorite quote from the InfoWorld article: "We ourselves are not going after the e-voting market or the nuclear reactor control market," Gates said.
Only linux and windows eventually? Of course. What else is there...mac, which we all know is becoming a less unique os(not a bad thing, tho)...and what, suns os? I just dont see any other major os besides linux and windows at the moment...its an easy prophesy to make.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
Did not have Internet.
Enough said.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Rather than look at how the crap gets installed and dealing with THAT, let's talk about software to remove the crap AFTER it gets installed.
Here's some advice, Bill. It's easier to prevent the stuff from being installed then it is to clean up all the millions of variations that will be out there.
Not to mention this will be another DAILY download update along with:
#1. Security updates
#2. Anti-virus signatures
Dispite my dislike for the Mac OS, I must say that the Mac itself has quite a following and i seriously doubt it will taper off into oblivion in 10 years.
Unless Steve Jobs dies sometime in the next 10 years and his sucessor is a total idiot.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Gates makes the point, which is correct, that UNIX is losing marketshare, not Windows. If anything, scientists/network admins are moving to a combination of Linux and Mac just because UNIX-creators (*cough* Sun *cough*) haven't innovated in years.
The battle for desktop supremacy, however, is already won. I like the fact that I can run UNIX apps on my iBook, but I just built a tower for Windows. There's just too much breadth of software to shift away from the platform. MS has also come up with some good stuff recently (.NET, which in some cases is what Java should've been) that cement their hold.
Also, one would think UNIX refugees coming to Mac would boost the platform on the desktop. Not happening. I think people are finally settling on the fact that UNIX is a rock-solid server, but that doesn't necessarily make it a great desktop. Whether it's Windows or some other windowing system that wins the crown, I'm not sure, but classic UNIX is pretty much finished.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Association of Wolves, Foxes, and Stoats today announced that they would be launching a new initiative, providing security services for hen-houses and rabbit hutches nationwide.
"We're pleased to be able to expand our influence and provide this much needed security," said B. B. Wolf, the association's president-elect. "It's important to recognize that a crisis does exist, and who better to determine appropriate measures than us?"
In a separate interview, Mr. Wolf, accompanied by some of the association's external board members, forecast that given the popularity of coyotes in the western states, wolves, foxes, stoats, and coyotes would be the only mid-range predators in ten years. "Sure, you're gonna have your bears for the big stuff, and we might get some insignificant competition from barn cats and raccoons," said Wolf, "but I don't forsee any other real competition in the field other than the coyotes. And frankly... well, the coyotes show some innovation, but we really don't think they can compete on our playing field. Plus, they have fleas."
For more information on the National Association of Wolves, Foxes, and Stoats, please contact Jack Valenti, press secretary.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
in the CNET's News.com article:
"This malware thing is so bad," he said in a speech at the Computer History Museum here. "Now that's the one that has us really needing to jump in."
It's also a problem that has affected Gates personally. He said his home PCs have had malware, although he has personally never been affected by a virus.
"I have had malware, (adware), that crap" on some home machines, he said.
--
Heh!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"We ourselves are not going after...or the nuclear reactor control market..." Ahh, so even the great Bill Gates doesnt trust the stability/security of windows THAT much. I'd trust my slack box to run my reactor...now where are those dilithium crystals...
I would cry if mac os x died. While I think it's rather silly since more people are turning away from ms. Mac os X and linux are the OS's gaining grounds. Lest Not Forget Firefox's impact on everything!
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
-- Ken Olsen (1926- ), President, Digital Equipment, 1977
I have a 21066 myself, I want to get another newer model though. Here's another good one...
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 18 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons"
-- unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Maybe somebody ought to introduce him to Mozilla. I can say for certain that 99.99% of all Ad and MalWare infections are because of IE and ActiveX. I've not seen a pop up of a piece of crap ware for more then a year now, ever since I started using Mozilla.
Microsoft doesn't need to make anti adware products. All they need to do is either replace IE or make IE as secure as Mozilla, then keep updating it and the problem will go away. An Adware program will only add to the bloat.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
You can pretty much spin this as "see even Bill Gates says Linux will be around ten years from now".
This should give pointy hair bosses pause in claiming that Linux is just too risky.
What a huge step to be so publicly recognized as the most prominent threat to MS for an OS that is not controlled by any one cooperation.
In the end it will be inevitable that an OS becomes a commodity. MS tries to fight hard against this by building up the OS to do everything short of singing and dancing for you but I don't think that will save them in the long run.
None of you have got it right........... in 10 years Gnu/Hurd will be the only operating system ;)
Just to nitpick your nitpick...
:-) ).
You wrote: "Uh...this year is the twentieth anniversary of MacOS. I don't think they were predicting the death of MacOS and Apple 2 decades ago...unless they were predicting the death of MacOS the instant it came out. "
I wrote: "People have been predicting the death of MacOS and Apple for almost 2 decades now. "
Note: "almost 2 decades" < 20 years. There's nothing *factually* or technically incorrect about what I wrote; technically, I didn't say people were predicting Apple's demise upon MacOS's release (although, probability states that there likely were still one or two people doing so. I think we can ignore those loonies though
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Bill never said that (the 64k bit). A simple google search will solve that. Stop spreading a myth that you never took the time to research.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market
What a politically contrived statement. He can't say "only windows" (read monopoly), so their must be at least 1 other OS, and people would laugh if an open source operating system wasn't included.
Now all of a sudden he takes the wind out of the sails of the Linux zealots, and appears all controversial. Yep... in 10 years it there will be Windows and *nix, just like today.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
...is that everything will basically be Unix by then. Yes, even Windows, if it still exists as such. Hey, even Apple is using BSD anymore -- the handwriting is on the wall for nonstandard systems like Palm OS ...and Windows... in anything bigger than a basic cell phone, as embedded Linux in such devices as TiVo becomes more commonplace.
But on a more article-based note, as has already been said, it seems that the OS comment is a basic "*BSD is dying" troll.
Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market.
I have quite another vision of future. 10 years forward, there will be 11354 variants of Linux only on the market, all the same. Or perhaps he did mean a flea market? That's where I would seek for Windows then.
There you are, staring at me again.
You meant you meant 640k right?
And Syllable
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
See, he's saying that OS X will be Linux instead of BSD in ten years.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1144882004
The above link has three pertinant quotes.
"Microsoft's fortunes grew with personal computers or, more specifically, supplying the software for what used to be called "IBM-compatible PCs". It is easy to forget that 20 years ago there were a number of standards competing for dominance. (Of the others, only Apple survives.)"
"Google knows it cannot remain just a search engine company, because that leaves it vulnerable if someone else comes along and does it better. That is why it keeps adding services. The best publicised has been its proposed e-mail service, Gmail, which has upset privacy activists because it will include advertising based on the content of the e-mails. But it is likely to prove extremely popular because it will make searching through e-mail much easier and quicker, and because it offers a gigabyte of storage. For most users, that means they will never have to delete another e-mail. "
"But Microsoft is vulnerable if a competitor shifts the focus away from the PC and on to the internet. And we all know the company most capable of that."
Take that all to the extreme - If network centric computing and a company like google go to the logical conclusion of their efforts, subsuming encyclopedia software (remember encarta?), email, games and eventually word processing and other applications into an always on, globally available internet technology that would free you from not just your desktop but from even needing a permanent computer of your own, wouldn't the most logical thing to beat be problems with privacy?
After all, if you can eliminate "spying" on a distributed system like that, then you've aready eliminated spyware as a matter of course (maybe by using thin clients and making all the intelligence and security reside in the server and communication layers).
Gates said Microsoft will offer software to detect malicious applications and that the company will keep it up-to-date on an ongoing basis.
Now the only question is what Microsoft feels to be a good update schedule for their anti-malware software. Are we going to see once a month release cycles that detect spyware that has been out for six months the way they wait six months to release patches for known vulnerabilites on Windows Update?
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
A free one and a non-free one. What they're called, who knows. The free one will successively drive out the non-free one, though.
" If Apple ever releases a PC version of OSX, M$ is screwed. But that won't happen now, will it?"
This sems to be a common wet dream amoungst x86 PC users (you never hear Apple users lusting after a x86 machine). I recommend you buy an Apple and just get it over with. You'll be happier. Apple will be happier. The only ones who wouldn't be happy is those with a heavy investment in all things x86.
Yeah, and Symmantec and McAffee are secretly making all the computer viruses so they can sell anti-virus software.
Sounds like you need to get your tinfoil hat resized again.
In 10 years from now I predict I will still be using FreeBSD on my desktop and probably MacOS on my Powerbook.
Apart from the Dell machines I have reciently purchased for my company for a web developer who needed photoshop dreamweaver etc I'd not have a single windows pc in my office. With the speed in which Eric Laffoon is pushing along Quanta and having it built into base KDE I can see a time very soon when I will make Quanta my only development platform, intergration with CVS etc just makes it a great choice for PHP and web development.
For mail I use Evolution and simply love it. Forget about all the virus problems that Outlook has.
In fact the only thing I think windows has going for it is Photoshop. I've tried the gimp and sorry but it just isn't there yet for me, but in 10 years time I'm darn sure it will be!!!
Say good night Bill, you are history!!!
Now wait a minute,,
in the article, Gates states "Operating systems like Linux (Red-Hat) require capable system administrators to maintain.. I want to do away with that"
Does that mean that Windows sysadmins are less capable or will be less capable in the future??
Doesn't that say alot for their fearless Leader??
Doesn't that say alot for his Great intelligence( or lack thereof).
You tell me what you derive from this statement, much less the article..???
Gk.
I wonder if theirs will detect alexa like most others seem to.
Good example was hp-3000. Lost money at the OS level until it was put into mainence mode
I don't think it's about maintenance and service, but more about controll of the market. MS knows damn well that Linux will not be the only other one out there - but they want to get everyone else ganging up on Linux. It's a classic divide and conquer strategy.
"MS PHB: "Congratulations, you just got promoted.""
So in other words the MS engineer keeps his job even in difficult outsourcing times. While everyone else is... Who's the stupid one again?
As I said in another post, I think he knows darn well Linux isn't going to be the only other arround. He's just trying to get everyone else to gang up against Linux. It is a brilliant strategic move on behalf of MS, and a classic divide and conquer strategy. He's trying to do the same thing between redhat and novell too.
>>
;)
10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market.
>>
stirring the pot are we?
He can't say "10 years forward Windows will be the only OSs left in the market." now can he?? (remember the european court has a ruling coming soon). He could say "10 years forward Macintosh and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market." but that would send too many to the mac sales rep. Whatever he puts in the "[any-os] and Windows will be the only OSs.." the "Linux" choice is the smartest, it will push (further) Schwartz and McNealy to launch their attack on RedHat . My guess is that he had those brainwashed to belive that LINUX is the threat to them, and if they would get back to former greatness, they could still get the high-end server market - "and between us [he put his arms around them, tilts his head and smiles], we don't plan to pursue the server market, we belive the desktop is our thing, you know, china and the expanding market" As they embraced the idea, he padded them on their backs and forwarded a bunch of cash as a part of a "bigger deal" and laught to himself.
Don't you think they should improve their operating system's security before they sell additional anti-spyware software? This just seems like another way to coax more money out of consumers..
uhuh. which is why microsoft is opening up the source code to windows to said countries (like china).
backdoors don't work too well if the target can see them.
Um, that's not why you'd be modded troll.
hey slashdot people. the mindless masses are just UNINFORMED and dont know better. look at the things MS has forced people (included in the OS)to use over the years:
- defragger (do you think people would actually LOOK for one?!?!)
- firewall (SP2)
- backup
- disk cleanup
- anti-virus
just think of MS as a distribution channel where %80 of people are tuned into it.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
Yeah, I use a lot more than 64k of RAM. What's your point?
Hell, there are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something. - Thomas Edison
"Yeah, because piracy has pretty much eliminated the sale of music and movies."
All P2P pirates better get down on hands and knees and, pray that doesn't happen. Wouldn't want you all to have a Black Tuesday, now would we?
One other thing,, If Gates says he wants to do-away with capable sysadmins. Does that mean he wants a bunch of Zombie/Drone/Cookie Cutter type people to follow his lead BLINDLY? If so, what does that say for the people inventing the Next Generation of MS products?? Will they also be like the type of peole I described above, if so what would that mean about the quality of products that come from MicroSopht? Not to mention if ther are some pretty capable people out there to which Bill says he will not cater to, or "He wants to DO-away with." Whats going to happen to the state of security to which Microsopht employs within their products? From an IT point of view I would be scared to think that My skills may be done away with to use these products.. does this mean that only a handful of MS employees will eventually control the enterprise?? Since Bill wants to do away with US. Does that mean that MS will be outsourcing it's admins in house.. Meaning if an issue arises, an exec or Admin assistant would call Microsopht's Helpdesk?? Would a Microsopht Desk top support engineer come to the desq in a day or so to resolve the situation?? If so how capable would he be,, truly?? According to Bills statement probally not verry.. makes ya think.. gk.
The link is to:A %2F%2 Fwww.aderkach.org%2F%3F=sch
http://www.google.com/url?surl?sa=D&q=http%3
Which of course resolves to:
www.aderkach.org/?=sch
which along with the usual imagery also causes my Firefox to spaz around the screen effectively requireing a crash out of Firefox to end.
Interesting how its does that.
It's particularly interesting to see the damage that page does to IE, even with Googlebar & Proximitron on full alert...
I have news for you. Slashdot isn't about News for Nerd, or things that matter. Slashdot is about entertainment. We come here and grimace and groan, and make funny faces at each other. That's ALL.
Reminds me of when the head of DEC said (a long time ago) that in the future, the world would only have something like 10 (mainframe) computers. He never foresaw microcomputers.
10 years ago, we were all cursing Windows 3.1, because it was so unstable. Very few of us even heard of Linux. No one, at that time, thought it would be as critical to our lives as it is today.
I predict that in 10 years, "personal computers" won't be the center of our computing universe, like they are today. We'll all have moved on to something completely different. WHo knows what that will be?
Nobody today can possibly guess what our future computers will be like. But I sure hope whatever they are, they don't ALL come from the tiny little imagination of money grubbing jerks like Bill Gates. And if it does, God help the rest of us.
--
Patrick Wolfe
"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet"
Is Bill telling his employees in the Mac Business Unit that all their hard work is going to be for nothing? Is he planning on shutting down the MacBU, an that's why he's saying Mac OS won't be around?
We are after all talking about the same mac that made the switch from the 680x0 to power pc and then an os switch to BSD. Not that these were not good choices, but they sorta expect the mac users to be buying new computers, macs or otherwise every 3 years.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"Is Bill telling his employees in the Mac Business Unit that all their hard work is going to be for nothing? Is he planning on shutting down the MacBU, an that's why he's saying Mac OS won't be around?"
I dunno, I'll consult my Magic 8 Ball.
"Derp de derp."
Good example is Intuit. Intuit is losing money and customers on its' Quicken. Money is offered for free on MS to compete against Quicken. In addition, MS recently bought another company that is about business book keeping (forget it's name). From below, there is gnucash, kmoney, etc who put some pressure but not really. But they are getting better and most likely in the next year will be offering competition.
The only thing that keeps Intuit alive is TurboTax. The problem is that about 1/2 of the tax programs out there are owned by BG and are designed to eat away at TurboTax. My understanding is that they are succedding.
Once Intuit feels pressure, they will move to quit supporting platorms as that is expensive. At that point, they will drop Mac, ignore Linux, and support MS only. At that point, Intuit is dead. MS will be able to target just them. And mac will be out a good program.
Of course, some amount of customers will have to leave the app space unless Gnucash has succeeded in coming up. In addition, it will require a company to support the turbotax portion that is now missing. I am guessing that the company will not be from the USA, but will get the job done right. By the time that Intuit realizes that they have a real competitor in space other than MS, it will be too late.
Likewise, the same for adobe. They are being hemmed in and do not recognize it. They will shortly have no choice but to pull products from Mac OSX, but every time they do, MS just undermines them.
The best bet for these companies is to expand to Linux while they have a good name and they do not have huge competition. If they do not, the apps space will get filled up and prevent them from moving. In the end, each of these apps will wether and die as a MS only apps
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"I dunno, I'll consult my Magic 8 Ball."
Hey! It says Outlook not so good! Amazing!
"Derp de derp."
We do have Bill Gates on record as saying he cannot see how anyone will ever need more than 2G RAM. So, let's wait another ten years and see if he says he never said that either?
If he expects M$ Windows to be still be a viable choice in 10 years than he had best get his gang of coders to fixing all the security holes in M$ products. Otherwise within five years the script kiddies and spammers will totally own the M$ environment, enough major corporations will follow IBM and other IT shops in converting to the Linux desktop that ordinary users will start to clamor for preloaded Linux boxes so they can be compatible with their work environment. There will always be enough of us dedicated Contraians that UNIX(tm),the BDSs, and other alternatives will still be there "just because".
Another prediction (from the pecking chickens) is that in five years Longhorn will have so many delays that the features will be scaled back even more to get to market that someone at M$ marketing will name the next version of Windows(tm) "Shorthorn".
Too lazy to create a sig...
Unless I'm mistaken, that was one of China's conditions for buying - and then they decided not to use Microsoft's software.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
>It is a well known fact that all versions of MS-Windows
>have backdoors built in, allowing US spy agencies to
>heck into, do something funny, and/or sabortage the
>"enemy system"
Uh. It's not a fact, well-known or not. It's speculation promoted by the paranoid masses.
Stop being a tard.
Look at the problems with powerbook displays and iBook logic boards. Apple CAN'T compete on price so they HAVE to slash QUALITY to get even CLOSE.
:(
I own and admin a shitload of macs- ranging from a quadra 650 to G5s. The only macs I have that have BROKEN are one of the two G4s I admin, thirteen of the fifteen iMacs I admin, and BOTH of the G5s I admin (one blew a hard drive, the other the logic board and video card).
All my beige Macs are rock motherhumping solid. Never had a problem with any of them, ever. This candy colored aluminum crap, on the other hand, is- at BEST- consumer grade.
From the article (emphasis mine):
Wasn't it supposed to be Linux that kills jobs?
There are two kinds of people who complain about MS. Those with somekind of hatred towards MS for whatever reason and those who of us who are tired of the constant delays, promised features that are moved to the next version and just plain shoddy code.
It is like with IE, geezus MS how long is it going to take to get proper PNG support. Or with AMD, exactly what is taking so long to get 64bit support out? Linux and BSD got it now for ages, are opensource developers really that much better and more motivated?
The list goes on, Longhorn? The next big thing? Well not really, features and improvements are being dropped left right and center until what is left over is still just another point upgrade and not the much needed rewrite that windows needs.
If I need something done and you do it without being asked then I will be gratefull. If I ask you to do something and you do it then I will thank you. If I have to keep nagging you for years to do something and then finally you do it in a half-assed way then I am going to think your a fucking asshole.
Get married and you will find that this is pretty normal human behaviour.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now if we could get the ISV's to put spyware under one tree:o ws\Curr entVersion\SPYWARE\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Wind
MS wants to build up linux as a threat, while ignoring Macs. That way when they get pressed for anti-competitive behavior again they can hold up linux and say "look, look!" Its very much in their interest to pretend linux is some big desktop threat (its not.) They also do not want to do free advertising for Apple so they avoid mentioning them. Smart, but evil. Sadly, the linux crowd buys this hook, line, and sinker.
Maybe it was just a ploy so they could get a copy of the source for their cyber warfare department.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It is a well known fact that all versions of MS-Windows have backdoors built in, allowing US spy agencies to heck into, do something funny, and/or sabortage the "enemy system".
Listen to yourself, you sound like an idiot. I know Microsoft Windows code is closed-source. But here's a fundmental fact that nobody understands- it's open-source to every employee working under windows in Microsoft. That's about 14000+ employees mind you, and they belong to every nationality you can think of, even those you can't spell. Maybe their livelyhood depends on them keeping quiet, but I'm sure you are the one spreading FUD around.
Stop scaring the people. Stop this nonsense. I'm surprised you didn't find a place for terrorists in your comment somewhere.
Yea. I know.
You might want to check some of those well known "facts" Before they make you seem like a runner up for the tinfoil hat of the year award. No matter what you feel about Microsoft, if the NSA is going to have MS and other US corporations add backdoors to their code, are they really going to be dumb enough to leave it named NSAKEY in plain sight in the registry? Incidentally, how many believe this 'theory' also install the SELinux additions to make their Linux more secure. You might want to go ahead and check who puts that together.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
BSD is dieing, Bill Gates Confirms!
The BSD license is liked by MS but hated by most other businesses. After all BSD is a license to take my/the companies work without ever having to give back. The GNU license wich Linux uses forces you to give back. Sure you can work from my work but in turn I will benefit from your work on my work. A giant communist or at least very socialist developement.
BSD is not to be ignored and its license makes it less of an obstacle to get bits adopted. BUT it cannot be used for shared developement as it invites for anti-social behaviour with people only taking.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well... here is something else that people say:
a) Windows should provide it because it's their responsibility to be secure
b) Windows bundling anti-spyware software puts anti-spyware folks out of business because no one will buy it because the bundled is too easy to just use it.
So... yet another case where Microsoft will be damned if they do it and damned if they don't. I'm sure it will be feed for all the "M$" bashers no matter which way it goes.
"Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."
Is this along the same line as when Ballmer said i 1995 that "Apple and the Mac OS is irrelevant from now on"? (paraphrased)
Oh, the powers of the oracle!
From the man who failed to predict the Internet revolution half a year before it happened, we now get a 10-year prediction...
If there is one thing Microsoft is good at, it is running AFTER the facts, and throwing a lot of money at them to catch up.
In ten years time, I predict Windows will be just a bad memory.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
It would appear to be a straightforward admission that M$ is incapable of delivering technologies embodying "a high degree of certainty".
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Could you imagine A REAL PRESIDENT (BUSH DOES NOT COUNT). Saying something like this?? If we put great policies in place, why would we need our tallented millitary to enforce them?? Thats like (scratching head) "lets just drop an A-bomb and get it done. Therefore, why would we need ground troops to fight? Forget the rammifications of our actions. Our resolve is great and absolute. No need to have the tallent and intelligence to back it up.. It's the final measure, the only measure, and the best measure.. After this look at all the money we can save by not sending in the troops, the cleanup's and the loss of OUR lives.. " Verry powerful application of Bills statement in a real world situation. Ya, sure it makes sense.. RRIGHT. Not.. Gk.
If _BillG_ has to run anti-malware programs, everyone else is in _deep_shit_.
"Stop scaring the people. Stop this nonsense. I'm surprised you didn't find a place for terrorists in your comment somewhere."
May be one of those thousands of employees belongs to al-quada and wants to slip in some malicious code. It would be difficult but I would not say that it's impossible.
evil is as evil does
If any of you did look at the WWDC keynote by Steve Jobs, I am sure you guys would have realized by now that this entire discussion is unnecesssary. Come on, the next version of OS X (Tiger) that releases NEXT YEAR has features that Bill Gates still plans to implement in his version of Longhorn. I was astounded to hear that the OS X API would support calls that would process stuff directly on the GPU. Searchlight will deliver what everyone has been waiting for. Even today, almost a year after Panther was released, when I show a Windows user Expose', they are amazed to see such innovation. Microsoft is a company that heralded COM and DCOM as the best thing that happened to mankind since computing was developed. But today with .NET, MS says that COM is for losers. How long will be be before they do the same with .NET? I agree change is the only constant, but come on this is taking it a bit too far.
Fedora and Debian will rule the market. With BSD ruling the server market.
Who moved my sig?
"I have had malware, (adware), that crap" on some home machines, he said.
...?
i would like to know, did he reinstall the os or
use regedit and/or use some free antispyware
software or buy a mac
the Mac OS will be code-named after. I mean - there's only so many cats. Next one's Tiger and we're doing about 1 per year, that's 10 more cats!!
Lessee... Lion, um - Leopard, Cougar, Gepard... uh.. Thundercat?
Jobs better hope for divine intervention.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
There's nothing that someone who has been working at a large company worries about more than a bunch of new fresh, stubborn, idealistic faces who is willing to devote all their time to work coming in and taking over. That's true even in the existing system.
Microsoft is a very large company. It has an established hierarchy, and people who have worked for years to reach their positions, and now have guaranteed status. They're concerned about someone walking in and taking what they've spent a long time getting and rely on.
Linux is a loose network of some of the most devoted-to-work people, who want to stir things up and change the world, even if it results in a lot less money for them. It is a hypercompetitive meritocracy -- you can't work up any type of "status" that you can live off for years (well, maybe if you work at IBM).
Microsoft/Linux is just another example of a neverending struggle. It's just a little more blatant than most.
May we never see th
That's your fault for getting upset by Dvorak. He is a professional troll. His job is to get various groups riled by his words which generate readership ("What will that idiot say next?") and thus generate revenue (subscriptions, magazine sales, ad revenue, etc). Dvorak is very good at what he is being paid to do. You provided a perfect example.
The bad news for him is that Windows probably won't be one of them.
Windows is already the most expensive component in a low-end computer system. When Linux is "good enough", vendors will be happy to bundle it instead of Windows on their new computer systems.
Just about every major vendor except MS is throwing billions of dollars a year at the problem of making Linux "good enough", in addition to the efforts of Open Source developers.
Anyone who's tried, say, RH9 followed by FC2 knows how far Linux has gone in just a year. I see no reason why this progress shouldn't continue.
We will see "good enough", and I'd be very surprised if we were still asking "when will Linux be ready for the home or SOHO user?" even a year from now.
Tech Public Policy stuff
An easy way to see where we're going is to see where we've been. 16 years ago, I loved the mac for it's graphic interface and hated DOS for it's lack of intuitive commands. Eight years ago, I hated Windows for it's cheap user interface and loved the mac for it's ease of use, and was intrigued by BeOS as a fast, graphically-savvy OS. Nowadays, I hate Windows due to the fact that my favorite software is as buggy as you can possibly imagine, it's command-line lacks any real umph forcing me to resort to cygwin, and the UI is still cheap looking. The Mac is better than ever, not to mention more stable and more technical than ever. Linux is also a favorite system and I can get massive amounts of work done on it. QNX also has recently crossed my path with an amazing stability that puts even Debian Linux to shame. BSD is included as well as a great server OS. On a day-to-day basis I use several Linux distros. In the next few months I may find myself jumping between 10 different Linux distros every day, running them simultaneously on the same system as virtual machines, etc. So - 16 years ago (2 OS's). 8 years ago (3 OS's). Now - depending on opinion, 5 OS's. Then I could say that based on the sequence, in eight years I will be using 13 different OS's.
Who moved my sig?
At first it seemed like an odd thing to say. Here is the owner of Microsoft not only admitting that Linux was going to be around in 10 years, but that it was going to be a leading OS. It struck me as kind of strange, and very unlike the MS FUD that I am used to. So why? What is the motive behind this? After a little thought it seemed obvious. Out of all the other OS's around Linux is the only one that they think that they have got a full proof plan to defeat. When it comes to MacOS and Sun they have trouble with a definite plan, but when it comes to Linux it is simple. So here are my thoughts. We all know the rule that there are only ever two options in computers, the first and second place in the software chain for any application are the only two real opportunities that a majority of companies look at. Now we are seeing that the two major players in the future are going to be Linux and Microsoft. So what does this mean? It means that Linux is going to help MS crush Apple and Sun, (especially Sun) and then when it comes down to the crunch, it will be Linux and MS as the major players left standing (I'm not trying to write off the other OS's, I'm just pointing out where we seems to be going now). So in my opinion what is going to happen is that MS is going to promote Linux as the alternative, MS is going to quietly and discretely push Linux as a serious threat and make people look closer at it and hopefully convert the MacOS and the Sun crowd across. When Linux starts to take a major foothold in the MS fort and starts to force other OS's out of the market they then turn around with a massive amount of patents and slam Linux into a legal nightmare, leaving users in limbo and scared. They then have no alternative but to turn to Windows, and the master plan has all been played out. Now am I being too pessimistic?
Anyways, in 10 years Linux will probabyl be there, and hardware will be cheap enough that a $100+ (or even a $45 OEM bundle) Windows license will be too large a % of total cost that a free Linux will look very, very attractive (again, already there, for a lot of us).
There will always be those who want something super easy to use, maintain, configure, not to mention soemthing pretty and chic. OSX or whatever Apple will be calling it then will be there to fill that need and sell expensive albeit very nice computers that practically run themselves.
MS will be around of course, but Windows will be gone, at least as a packaged product. They will sell licenses to companies to develop DirecX games, and will still sell Office except it will be Microsofts GOffice, and be an internet based office suite hosted up by Google (the only way they could compete with OpenOffice). Also they will give away an XWindows manager that has the MS name all over it, just to help keep the brand in people's minds. They will still make very nice mice and keyboards, and be a financially healthy company, diversified into home entertainment products like XBox and Ultiamte TV, etc, but Windows will be gone.
I can hope any ways. :)
Amazing how many people would give up control of their data and apps just to avoid spyware. Come on! I remmember some years ago when the net was a geekier place, and Oracle's net computer idea dropped on the floor with blood comming out of its jugular vein... But now, people think it's a good idea. Why?
Hardware has continually gotten cheaper for many years now, and Apple's market share has actually grown over the last few. People actually do want to buy those $3000 cinema displays, or a $3000 dual-G5 box. Now I personally don't, but even I ended up buying a $1300 (with student discount) 12" powerbook, because even for the money it's one of the best laptops around. Frankly I've yet to find a PC laptop that wasn't at least one of: 1) heavy; 2) unreliable; 3) ugly. The few PC laptops that can hold a candle to powerbooks in reliability (some of the IBM Thinkpad stuff, for example) aren't any cheaper anyway.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hey I have a better argument. Suppose there is a secret 'back door' in windows for the CIA/FBI/NSA to come in and spy on you in your parent's basement downloading Brittney Spears pr0n. Given that fact, why would they them use it themselves? Most government agencys use some flavor of Windows. Do you really think that the NSA, for example, is going to use an OS that is known to have a backdoor built into it?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Password technology, meanwhile, needs to be succeeded by smartcard or biometric technology, Gates said.
no not really. the password solution is already developing:
all your passworded accounts point back to a central email address whose password you control.
effectively, this is just making things go in the direction of "one password for everything".
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
And if I were China, I would want to compile that source and then those are the binaries I run because I would anticipate a shell game of some sort.
I suspect that what actually happens is that MS reveal portions of the code, without the supporting infrastructure to compile it successfuly.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Let me translate for you: "Our software leaks like a sieve....so we're going to start selling corks..."
AT&ROFLMAO
Yep in one of the articles referenced Gates says that their investigations into grid computing are using Beowulf clusters of windows machines. Ugghh! Shudder. The thought of it makes me wanna puke.
Bitter and proud of it.
Heh. What part of that was supposed to be offensive?
He understands the history of Unix better than most Unix companies did, and the anti-Linux strategy he describes makes business sense. (Of course, he also has anti-Linux strategies based on barratry, manipulation of legislatures by thinly-concealed bribery, etc but you can't blame him for not discussing those.)
One thing that worries me about the Linux vs Windows scene today is that there are too many Linux cheerleaders who loudly proclaim that Linux' victory is inevitable. Gates is smart enough to take the threat seriously, and his team may be smart enough to beat it. He's certainly one hell of a lot smarter than the Linux cheerleaders.
A good start for Linux advocates would be to do what Gates has clearly done: understand the opponent's strategy.
Well....I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it. :) Seeing how easy it is to hack windows boxes to begin with I don't think that any of the US's spy agencies would have a hard time doing so.
--HC
So I'm jump'n up and down screaming show me the money.
And let me tell you about OS Competition now. you see kids, OS Competition's bu-aaad.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
From the OSNews article:
This is a real issue. Red Hat and the Linux companies have little incentive to make products which require less support, because this could cut into their support contracts.Microsoft then can show a lower TCO by putting lots of resources into making management easier and do-able by lower level cheaper employees.
They could win (at least temporarily) with this strategy if we aren't careful (and don't get administration on Linux to be as easy and automated as possible).
Wrong, a reminder. Doubt Windoze will ever catch TRON,http://web-japan.org/trends/science/sci030522 .html and wouldn't discount QNX going 10 yr either. Windoze is already the pimple on the hardware gorilla's rear. Linux/*BSD is just going to pop it.
It only takes a geek level imagination to imagine someone comes out from the dark and buys the communities like KDE, GAIM, GIMP, XMMS and couple of other Kool opensource apps and build a linux distro for sell! Man just imagine that! What we need is a guy with too much cash in the hand here. The gorilla sense of Bill Gates is really really getting off hand.
If the NSA/FBI had enough power to force a back door into the Windows code, wouldn't they have enough power to force a special version without back doors for them?.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
so now their gonna make money off the holes in their own system. hmm great idea. "hey, what are you doing man? - im making hte new patch for itnernet explorer! - Why? Stop doign that and make anti spyware programs instead, so we can make money off it!"
My reaction to Microsoft offering its own anti-spyware is the same as my reaction to the MS firewall in XP SP2: Would you trust Microsoft for your security?
I asked BonziBuddy and he says not to get an anti-spyware solution.
Seeing how easy it is to hack windows boxes to begin with I don't think that any of the US's spy agencies would have a hard time doing so.
Given the amazing incompetence they displayed over their treatment of 9/11, the anthrax attacks that followed, the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan, and the whole WMD issue in Iraq, I can only say that I don't share your confidence... frankly we'd probably do better to fire the whole CIA and hire script kiddies instead.
Great, just in time for the release of Longhorn!
*Ducks*
Has Gates lost it? Nothing different with this competitor? Except that it's more about a movement. People will spring up to replace others and build on the work done before.
Just what is your vendetta against this kid? Why are you resorting to name-calling over some performance reviews?
Methinks you are the one bullshitting Slashdot, although I can't imagine why. This guy actually showed his badge. Why should anyone beleive that you are HR at Microsoft?
Hmmm...well, actually, the readings on the asshole-meter match up quite nicely with the levels for "Microsoft Administration"....
I guess you're the real deal.
Sleep is futile.
Home of the Bad Analogy.
Sleep is futile.
I noticed that one of Gates' most interesting points references the value of the software if you consider piracy.
Considering that, he says, it truly comes down to the worth of the product, and that is something I greatly dispute.
As a long time linux and windows user, I've gotten past the flash of geek 'pride'. I dislike MSFT intensely, but yet I still use their OS willingly, despite the numerous flaws (and yes, shoddy code). I have an iBook, which I love immensely, and I have two various Linux boxen. However, WinXP is still my primary OS. Why?
Games. Argue all you like, but until I can pop a copy of any brand-new game I want into my Linux or Mac machines, I'll keep XP. I'll even -pay- for it (not that I have to worry about that for a while, thank you Longhorn), but from what I see in the people I know, that's often the sole sticking point.
Make that easy, and people will forget (or at least be a lot less critical) of a lot of Linux's other problems.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
How could he say this after Sun has made all nicey nicey with MS and started attacking Red Hat? (for MS or for themselves or a combo?)
Oh, wait, the sun also rises doesn't it?
A Nony Mouse
It would make sense for Microsoft to make an anti-spyware product, after all, they should (but may not) know the most about how to protect Windows from spyware.
gosh, all you have to do is uninstall the messenger programs on your computer & wala, no more spyware but we already knew this didn't we.
I would also think that given the sheer amount of brainpower that they could apply to the task that they would put forth a good product.
they did but the cx base is brain dead, not microsoft.
But, they have not been known as innovaters in the application world (I know, some would say in the OS world as well). then you design a better os with app's as well, but no, you would rather complain.
Anyway, I wonder how the other folks who make and sell (or give away) anti-spyware software will react to the 800lb gorilla's entrance into their domain?
like it matters. damn people, grow up!
We can't predict the future, but we can still guess. The most likely scenario is that we try to fix some of the problems with personal computing today, and evolve some of the newer technologies. One problem is that while we have access to the internet everywhere we go, we still don't have access to our personal data unless we drag them around on laptops, CDs, iPods, or run sshd or ftp on our personal computers (too 1337 for most lusers).
So we can imagine that networks are still going to be important, and portability of some sort. Mobile phones and PDAs can't be used for many of the most common computer tasks (word processing, photoshop). How about pseudo-dumb terminals? Plug you smartcard into a computer in New New York and read the email stored on your computer in New Los Angeles. About the same as Sun Ray terminals, but on a global scale. Windows would probably not play a major part in this future.
Or maybe you can use the phone as a "storage device" (either directly or using the phone company's server, or your own), and get your $HOME from that via Bluetooth v.12 when you use the terminal at the library.
Or we can continue using what we use these days. It's "good enough", so why upgrade?
They are a marketuing company first and formost, a software developer second or third (law might be their second, as it applies to marketing).
Who do they market to?
Anyone and everyone who can either make them money or influence their incomming finances.
We all know truth in advertising is lacking at MS.
>In fact the only thing I think windows has going for it is Photoshop.
I am using Photoshop 7 on Linux without any problem. Try Wine.
... and study ... because if there's anybody who knows about spyware, and has LOTS of access to it ...
"but I just built a tower for Windows. There's just too much breadth of software to shift away from the platform."
Yea, and you'll pay for every bit of it too, right?
I've noticed that a lot of retail companies still use ancient mainframe and SCO Unix-based applications. Seeing a well-trained sales associate look stuff up on one of those systems in microseconds is quite a joy.
It's especially interesting because the user interface looks clunky -- but well-trained people with experience on the system can still use it far faster than anything new.
I remember thinking the same thing when I saw my company's old accounting system, which we had to dump for a Windows-based solution because it wasn't Y2k compliant. It took about 10 times as long to enter data on the new system than the old.
It should be profoundly embarrassing to us that we have largely regressed in the speed in which an experienced user can work.
D
'cause Tab is really helpful in Photoshop....
______ This mind intentionally left blank.
For MOST people, Macs are indeed far more expensive. I just got my wife a laptop(... running XP, *sniff* -- she was running Linux up to now...), and a comparable Mac would have been 50% more expensive, with less memory and a smaller display.
In fact, in her situation, the Mac offering didn't even include a DVD burner or wifi, while the PC included wifi.
Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that Macs are terribly overpriced, just overpriced for the majority of people. There's nothing wrong with that, and indeed, I would recommend a Mac over a PC in a lot of situations.
Just as examples... I'd recommend a Mac for people who aren't saavy enough to keep a clean 'doze machine, or people who ARE saavy enough to take advantage of the nice Unix underpinnings of OS X.
In fact, considering that something insane like 50% of all Windows PCs connected to the 'net are acting as spam relays... Maybe Macs ARE comparatively cheaper! :D
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The problem you analogize is a direct result of an illegal monopoly. It is not THAT M$ drags its heels, it's that M$ CAN drag its heels and still extract a premium from the market. This is a key difference between monopoly and free market.
It's not that they do evil, but that they are in a position to do evil without consequence as a monopoly. There is no material reward for them to play nice, because material rewards flow ONLY from maintaining the monopoly. An employee who figures out a way to make it harder to defect from M$ deserves a promotion, but an employee who figures out a way to ease the customer's experience is just eccentric, irrelevant to the actual business of making money.
This is distinctly different from a free market where easing a customer's experience improves customer loyalty and increases the likelihood that you'll make a profit.
The only way you can help M$ to do a better job is to bring them back into the free market by breaking their monopoly. Don't buy computers with M$ products pre-installed. Don't let your boss do so. Make sacrifices to break the monopoly and your children will inherit a better computing experience.
Maybe MS's chairman is not so money conscious after all if he wants to see Mac OS X die. Consider this: Microsoft writes, sells and generates a tidy sum of money from their software on a Mac, immeasurably more than the money they make from Linux, for which they write and sell no software.
In fact, some estimates put it that when an iMac is purchased along with the Mac version of Office, Microsoft actually makes more on the sale than Apple. The reason? Even though the iMac is $1000 and Office is $300, the margins on hardware manufacture are about 20% but for software they are 80-90%. (That's also why Microsoft is worth more than any hardware maker in the industry.)
In essence, Bill G is saying he doesn't care if this Mac revenue dries up. But that's a rather expensive way of putting an end to those thorn-in-the-side zealots who are always saying Mac OS X is better than Windows. Why should he care about those under this "delusion" if MS still makes $$$ when a "competitive" product is sold? Even if by some miracle Mac OS X got to 10% of the market, that's 4x more healthy Mac revenue for Microsoft.
Financially, it would be in Microsoft's interest to eat humble crow and ensure Mac OS X does survive - after all, they make more money out of it than a PC running a ripped off copy of Windows + Office, even if the latter does swell the marketshare numbers.
He really doesn't like Steve Jobs does he...
Maybe he should talk to his psychiatrist about this?
realkiwi
I sell Macs, and the damn things are too expensive.
Let me put it to you this way: I have a $1350 emachines laptop that processes more audio plugins than a dual 2 ghz G5 tower. There's something seriously wrong with their architecture, and no one is admitting it.
Having said that, I still prefer to sell the Macs because of the OS. Simply put, I get less tech support calls. I know a reason it's so stable is because their hardware platform is very specific, so I see them partnering with HP or more likely IBM and selling x86 boxes with the apple OS installed. You could charge $300 for the OS and still be cheaper (and faster) using an Athlon 64 or dual opteron.
I'll admit that I'm posting from a BSD device, and that I have purchased 6 BSD devices for my organization over the past few years, but I am painfully aware that it is dying.
What's my proof? I have a scrapbook of clippings of articles dating back to the dawn of time saying so. It's on my shelf next to the scrapbook of clippings about how Macs must die because they are more expensive than PCs.
It's not that I can afford more expensive shit, it's that I can't afford the consequences of cheap shit.
Bill Gates' [...] understands the history of Unix better than most Unix companies did
/.).
I'm sure he does, he's responsible for a lot of it. But he never actually talks about the history of UNIX as it really happened, either back in the early '80s when Microsoft was the biggest UNIX vendor in the market, or the '90s when independent UNIX implementations really started taking off. I've been to Microsoft's own museum, and there's nothing in it about Microsoft's own UNIX... even though at one point there were more people using it than all the other implementations combined.
So... he's personally responsible for a lot of the fragmentation he's complaining about.
Another thing he glosses over is this "Linux versus UNIX" competition: it's nothing of the kind. Linux is not something different from UNIX, it's just a popular and really quite traditional implementation of a UNIX kernel. He's just taking the "Linux cheerleaders" slogans and twisting them to his own use. This isn't deep understanding, it's denial.
Speaking of denial: "Spam is down from a factor of 10 from where it was a year ago," Gates said.
What this means is "Microsoft put in a spam filter a year ago, so I quit seeing as much." Microsoft's internal spam filter isn't very deep (there's been discussion about it on Microsoft's blogs, and it's been referenced in
Spam is definitely up from a year ago. I've recently had to add another layer of filtering here because the RBLs I've been using aren't good enough to keep out the botnet-sourced spam. If you use qmail, look up my "amberlist" program on Freshmeat.
And: Technologies that have been surprising in that they have not had wide adoption include speech recognition and ink-based computing
They were cheerleading this stuff in 2000 when I visited the Microsoft campus for the first of what became their annual "Mobius" shindigs. It wasn't compelling back then, and I don't anticipate it taking over any time soon.
Finally: Microsoft will provide a malware cure to address issues such as adware, he said
Bill: putting the browser in the center of the GUI and making it responsible for security is a bad idea. It was a bad idea in 1997, it's a bad idea now, it'll still be a bad idea in 2007 (or whenever) when Longhorn comes out. Give it up, split IE up into isolated components that can be called safely from applications, please...
We're shooting for Linux to be the only operating system in existence. See, we're looking to eradicate your entire way of life. It was personal when it started, but now it's just good business. It's just good business for us to utterly crush what's left of you.
Anyways, back on topic, Macintosh is still going to be around. Dunno how much longer Jobs is going to be, but I think Apple still does some actual innovation; man, they do some FUNKY shit over there.
---
So, to recapp:
1. Crush MSFT.
2. Revamp the world.
3. Evolve.
In ten years, I'll have a server running something named after some type of hat (straw boater, watchcap, sombrero, pillbox, ...) and a laptop (at least 17" screen) running an OS with a numbering scheme like the Superbowl. Those will be the OSes for work.
If Windows fits in at all, it will be to run my television at home, which may be incompatible with Deerstalker and XXVIII, because ABC-NBC-CBS-TimeWarner-Sony will ONLY allow their DRMed content to be run on M$ - approved devices.
M$ has only one chance for long-term survival: force you to use their product by making it impossible to get something you want without it. This is ALL they're really thinking about. Public statements by Gates are caca.
I just want to chime in here. I'm NOT one of the 'OS X on x86!!!' fanboys, but I have a few points of the matter:
1. Maintaining x86 compatability in-house is trivial if done from the get-go. This is essentially insurance in the case of...
PowerPC vendors (motorola and IBM) stop being friendly or providing adequate product.
or
commodity prices on x86-64 hardware drop to such low levels that Apple has to jump to AMD to remain at all viable.
If Apple DID switch to x86-64, you can bet that they'll sell an OS that only works on Apple-branded open-firmware-based AMD x86-64 boxes. Just because Apple switches to x86 doesn't mean you can go out and buy a copy to slap on your Dell. Features like the seamless audio support, quartz extreme, single-image-fits-all, and boot options from open firmware (read: target mode/netboot) are all things that will nescesitate specific hardware.
Apple saves a LOT of money and time by not having to have drivers for every chipset out there, they can only have a great OS at this time if they control the hardware it runs on.
Overall, I don't really mind what architecture the OS runs on. I really do like PPC for the cool-running CPUs, but the recent stuff out of AMD seems to do just as well in that department.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
He probably had Dave Cutler come to his house and clean it up. Billionaires, even ones that once had technical knowledge, don't much with REGEDT32.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
There will be more then 2 in 10 years.. But he might be right about the 2 MAIN desktop OS's..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1- 14K+ employees workin in the OS? I don't think so.
2- 14K+ employees can read and understand the code? Again I don't think so.
2- With only two or three hackers working in the compiler(s) is enough to make a backdoor that is not visible in the source, and present in every OS.
But will it protect against MS' own spyware?
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
That is complete bullshit. I priced it out too. The 17 inch powerbook, with its lower quality screen, and slower CPU was $1500 more expensive than a dell with a similar config. The dell had a faster CPU and much better display, as well as a better video card. The powerbook had a longer battery life, and didn't way as much, but apart from that was less than or equal to the dell in all ways but price.
At the same time, poor little me has no problems using Linux. That's with my crap hardware and free software and zero staff or commercial support. The default Mepis install has built in spam filtering for Kmail and Kmail is bright enough to not load binary crap sent through the internet. The biggets and bloatiest of crap, macromedia's non free garbage and real player 8, have yet to get me owned though they work seemlessly through Konqueror and Mozilla, which are both more feature filled than IE. You would think a set up like that would be raped regularly, but there have been no problems in more than a year of use like that. While apt-get upgrading is a chore with unstable, especially with all that customization, it's worked and continues to work. It never crashes and I only have to turn it off when the electricity to the house fails. If I had 1/100th of Bill Gate's money, I could hire someone to filter my spam folder and administrate the box after hours so that what little pain there is to using it would go away.
What he's admitted is that Windoze is a pain in the ass. Can you imagine trying to do tech support for big dogs?
"Mr. President, there are some things you can't click in your email. There's a list here to help you remember ...."
"Your honor, I'm afraid something from a web site you visited has infected your computer and I'll have to fix it today. It should only take an hour or so ...."
"Your patented hair cut looks good today, Mr. Trump, but I'm afraid that something is wrong with the LAN ..."
One thing I can't imagine telling them is that they will have to run anti-virus and anti-malware software or why their new fancy computer does not run as fast as the 468 they had ten years ago.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
May be one of those millions of open-source developers belongs to al-Quaeda and wants to slip in some malicious code. It would be difficult but I would not say that it's impossible.
So there. Your argument does not work.
And besides, can we please cut this completely off-topic terrorist paranoia crap?
in 2014 we will be running Windows XP, SP7.
Seriously, they are having problems writing Windows for AMD64. While open source OSs chug along. Will linx run on mainframes? It already does. Will windows run on mainframes? It probably will never make it. As long as there is a spectrum of hardware Windows with its sloppy architecture, coding and design will be locked into to the low end of the market. billg is out of touch, or just plain doing market speak (same thing really).
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Such a backdoor wouldn't be obvious. If you were trying to slip a backdoor into anything, you'd do it as something that appears to be a mistake, like the vulnerability that made MSBlast possible. Nothing looks intentional, by the code, so it's easy to deny if anyone makes accusations.
If the NSA uses Windows--God help us--they could patch that particular vulnerability by use of a simple firewall.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's called "The Limited User."
At least current and supported versions of Windows have this. Even home users with XP Home can use this powerful safety guard built into Windows since Win2K effortlessly. It's all the other software vendors, who write apps not designed for current versions of Windows, I'm worried about!
http://www.pan-am.ca/newsletter/
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
it's good advice.
very few employees actually see ALL the source code for windows.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I worked at Microsoft for three years, and the intern got it about right. I will comment on specifics to the extent I am able.
I worked as a Developer Support Technical Router and our job was to triage, route and/or resolve technical support incidents relating to a wide variety of products ranging from IIS and SQL to Visual Studio, Windows API issues, etc. We also handled misrouted calls from other departments in the same fashion. I was told going in that it was easy to get hired into other departments, but of my 100 or so co-workers, I think only 3 or 4 got hired out to other departments within those three years (I am not counting pilot programs that ended up being sort of lateral moves, etc). It is very likely that this change was due to changing economics (.com bubble bursting) but this meant that there were a number of highly overquallified people working in this department.
Like any other large corporations, all performance is based on numbers relating to work done with respect to your job. I ended up doing some competitive analysis work for other departments and then being told that this was a "a distraction from my core goals" because although I met these goals I did not do so by more that other people on my team. Among my accomplishments:
1) I helped frame the discussion which lead to the inclusion of a POP3 server in Windows Server 2003.
2) The suggestion for taking SFU to Linuxworld was mine, though other parties funded it.
3) I provided other advice on how to compete with Linux, including the arguments that SFU needs a fully kerberized Telnet or SSH client capable of encrypted sessions, and that it needs to be bundled with the server OS.
But this was not appreciated because it was "not my job."
I would not go back there if offered another job.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The solution is simple. Apple doesn't port to PCs. PC vendors do. Apple licenses the OS to, say, HP. They do the port to their own hardware and provide all the capabilities Apple does. Plus, if they want to provide something new they can.
Would HP do it? Well, it isn't a hard job because the OS uses the Darwin kernal for "hardware". So, they just have to port Darwin, and prototypes of that are done. HP would need to provide tech support and stuff. But, as a licensee of a port of the OS and key technologies they would have much more freedom to innovate and differentiate if they wished.
Same old Microsoft.
They sold you the disease (an OS highly susceptible to malware), now they want to sell you the cure (anti-malware software).
They sold you the disease (an OS that requires tons of maintenance, and ballooned your IT staff and budget), now they want to sell you the cure (a new OS that requires much less maintenance, and will put people out of work and save you money).
They sold you the disease (the current/previous version of Windows), now they want to sell you the cure (the next version of Windows).
Anyone else see a pattern here?
You sez:
:
"Recommend the good guys for jobs where
you work and you will slowly squeeze out
the back stabbers"
The one thing I've learnt all these years in office politics is this
For good guys, find good jobs for them inside
or outside of the company.
Jobs that can tap into and treasure their
talents.
For back-stabbers, get them very high-paying
job, outside of the company.
Jobs that pay high, but you know they
won't last.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well, at least he is starting to admit the linux is a big player. No wonder he is dumping core in his pants. Could this be Mr.Gates has been going to one too man AA meetings, following the 10 steps and re-evaluating his life? What a joyous day. BEER FOR EVERYONE!
They probably have no idea of what I've seen happen with apple over the last few years in our IT dept
:)
They said I got to choose my OS when I started in 2001... and of course "mac" got me rediculed prety bad, as I expected anyway
Now in 2004, in a deptartment of 12 I know of 5 people that bought powerbooks, and two more with imacs.
I don't think I trust Bill Gates' assessment of the future here....
Nah. It's not like Windows source is at all difficult to come by. If they wanted it for cyber-warfare they'd have done so covertly.
Also everything is not text based, try doing some Cad work. You can do it with only the keyboard, but then the person standing behind you will be silently screaming MOUSE, dammit, MOUSE! MOUSE to the line and Click it!
Slashed quality? How so?
The iBook problem wasn't even found until users had the product for several months, if not years. Apple is good enough to admit problems like this and fix any one they see. This is costing them money, not saving them anything, and it wasn't due to them slashing quality in the iBook.
The Powerbook display issue was out of their control too. The company who assembled the screens was putting the spacers in the wrong place, causing pressure on the screen over time to form the white spots. Once again an issue that takes time to show up, so Apple has once again of their own free will decided to fix any they see with that issue.
All in all, the new Powerbooks are built way better then the Titanium ones. No flimsy screen hinges to break, no paint to chip and overall a better build then the old.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/02/1 920230
Yes but millions of other people look at the open source code. It just has be caught by one person and it's over. In fact every patch gets posted on the listserves.
evil is as evil does
"Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows."
Because:
It was so easy to hack over a network...?
It had so many viruses, numbering possibly even into the double digits after 16 years of development...?
It suffered from DLL hell...?
The "Desktop Database" and type/creator code was so much more prone to file-type spoofing than the "three letters at the end of the name" approach...?
You needed to re-install it every 6 months to keep it stable...?
It was prone to spy/adware that needed risky registry editing to remove...?
You couldn't add or remove device drivers by simply dragging a file into or out of the system folder...?
Said extensions didn't have human-readable names for easy identification, and therefore easy system optimization...?
The HFS+ disk format couldn't handle large volumes...?
It was prone to buffer overrun exploits...?
I could go on, but the only real issues with the old OS were the use of co-operative rather than pre-emptive multitasking (and that was only a problem with programs that didn't multitask at all), and the lack of protected memory (but then, in reality it doesn't matter whether its the OS or an application crashes if I've still lost the last half hour's work. Rebooting just adds an extra 2 minutes. Big deal).
Macs have always had less down-time, and a lower total cost of ownership than Wintels, which has made them the platform of choice in production work for many years. Avid/Digidesign didn't even bother attempting to use the PC as the basis of their systems until quite recently, yet there are Avid systems based on 68040 proc Macs that have been and still are in constant use. ProTools thrived on the Mac, but the PC-only TripleDAT died a miserable death: coincidence, or a measure of reliability?
The old MacOS is a toy if you believe the only use for computers is the study of computer science. But for production work, even the obsolete OS is still a potent platform.
This sort of thing is just asking for trouble. I prefer to just routinely monitor my registry keys manually. If I did what you suggested, my mouse wheel would cease to function, plus my anti-virus would not start up. And that's only a couple keys. I'd hate to think how much trouble that would cause on some of the newer PCs these days....
Calling Bill Gates a "money-loving jerk" is far from fair. He and his wife give away billions every year. It's fine to not like Microsoft's business practices, but not Gates.
Does this mean we finally can get rid of Mediaplayer?
(it sends home info on what DVDs etc. you watch - ie. spyware)
Yes, Linux (or it's successor) will be a dominant OS in ten years time. Windows will not.
Engineers quite often do release software that they're "happy with" which shortly thereafter turns out to be a buggy POS.
Sometimes they just don't have the skill to test it properly, or are bored with the project and don't mind just handing the problem on to QA/Support because it "kind of works".
While a lot can be lain at the feet of the PHBs of this world, not everything is managements fault.
Our spyware detection system shows that currently you have 43 spywares installed on your computer. (Click to remove)
Oh, by the way. We also detected you running 23 illegitimate copies of commercial software.
(Click to remove)
Ah, forgot! We also detected you having watched some illegal pr0n / downloaded illegal warez.
(Click to surrender, we already called the police)
Don't be silly. Microsoft wouldn't charge for its antispyware software. This is just their way of working out their problems.
Which do you think takes more development time/dollars? Writing a spyware cleansing program or rewriting an operating system so it's less venerable to begin with.
It's just a band-aid for an open wound.
Plus, now how about some passing the buck on the responsiblity dept?
MSExec: "What? The customer's Windows XP was overrun by spyware? That's horrible! Why weren't they using our free anti-spyware program we provide on our website? Sounds like a lack of proper PC maintenence on their part."
ooooooooh, burn... good stuff.
So basically, MS has been studying OSS for 5+ years, and all they have come up with is "FreeBSD is dying"? They are so out of touch it's not even funny anymore.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
There'll still be Unix (tm) based systems and Mainframe/OS390 stuff lying about.
The amount of spend required to redo all the m/f stuff etc won't be done, esp for all t he big boys with terrabyte size DB's...
Last accurate figures we have date from late 2000 and suggest there were 5000 odd people working on Windows (that includes testers and documenters, iirc). They hit management limits at that point, but apparently since then were able to scale the project up even further meaning there's probably about 6000-7000 full time employees working on Windows now.
No. We have very defined Chinese Walls between divisions in order to keep the code "pure". IE guys aren't given access to Notepad.exe, for example unless it's okayed by managers higher up in both divisions. That way if a backdoor or a virus is put into Notepad.exe, we have it narrowed to 5 people at most and problems will not spread to other areas. It's basic QA.
And if you're worried about backdoors, you REALLY should look into Apple -- just a hint from a guy who's been on the inside.
Bill: What are you guys working on today? MS Engineer #1: We are working on more bug fixes for our beta OS, er I mean XP. MS Engineer #2: Yeah, we have an idea how to fix everything for good, but we will need some help from the guys down in legal. Bill: Will it make me lots of money and squash more competition? MS Eng #1: Sure thing Bill! We're going to make a proprietary version of linux that works with all our MS apps. MS Eng #2: Yeah, Linux is the answer to all our prayers. We will finally have a product that works. Bill: Hmmm, sounds interesting. I think if I have legal work on it we can probably eliminate all the open source versions as copyright infringment on our patented version. Get to work on it now. I have to return to the Bat-Cave to write my next prophesy.
Why is the analogy so horrible? Sounds logical to me. And to the fool who moderated the comment "insightful", could you explain where the insight is in the parent post's two-word assessment? I see no insight at all--only opinion.
/.ers will never have a good thing to say about Microsoft. However there are good reasons to be critical or pessimistic about everything MS does right now because they have an abysmal track record of late. MS had to be dragged kicking and screaming into addressing security issues that the Linux distro companies were pushed to address FIVE YEARS BEFORE (open ports, services enabled by default, etc). And when they finally address these issues, they did it in a half-assed, slapdash way in releasing SP2. It butts heads with other firewall and anti-virus software. It changes a whole pile of default behaviours all at once. It alters APIs that MS used themselves and published as OK for other developers to use.
In my opinion the automotive analogy is accurate, if not boring and unimaginitive (we must be well in our second decade of comparing software with cars by now--oh well I can be accused of the same thing at times). Anyways, Windows XP SP2 really is a lot like the foot dragging and secret recalls of the automotive industry. It is fortunate that the resulting incompetence in the software industry does not directly result in grave injury or loss of life.
Honestly when thousands of Ford Pintos and GM Trucks were put out on the road that could explode on impact in what would otherwise be non-fatal accident, and Ford and GM KNEW about these flaws for months and years and DELIBERATLY avoided fixing thr problem on the advice of bean counters (more money to fix than to settle lawsuits), how do you think that helped their reputations?
Hell, when you think of it, if Microsoft Windows was a car it WOULD be the Ford Pinto. It would be "good enough" to get the job done, but not all that reliable and if you were a bit reckless it could prove more hazardous to your life than other cars. It took may years--maybe over a decade--for Ford to recover, and people still remember the flammable Ford Pinto. Resale values of Ford cars largely stink to this day mostly because of reputation (Escort, Tempo and Crown Victorias are comparatively worthless when matched up against other makes). Is it any wonder Toyota and Honda largely displaced Ford in that market? Even when Ford tried to learn from their mistakes consumers remained skeptical.
Yeah, a lot of
The problem is that at this point, it is all MS can do until Longhorn. It was a colossal screw-up on their part--The stuff implemented in XP SP2 should've mostly been in place in the initial release of Windows 2000. Security issues should've been addressed promptly as they were encountered, rather than all at once. MS should've kept ISVs in the loop throughout the process, to make sure they do not write "bad software".
Ignorance is no excuse--the early signs of a looming security crisis were there five years ago and as I said before, Linux distros were addressing security already by then. The first article I heard the term "spyware" in was one I read in the SPRING OF 2000. And Microsoft is only addressing the problem NOW?
Shame on MS for sitting on TENS OF BILLIONS in cash for years, and ignoring such problems until they become crises.
A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" [Local Link] trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.
Full text here
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5 263/1.html
But here's a fundmental fact that nobody understands- it's open-source to every employee working under windows in Microsoft. [Emphasis added]
Under Windows. Interesting choice of preposition. Some of those countries have a bit of appreciation for what it means to be under some regime.
If Microsoft is at all concerned with its "Intellectual Property", I cannot image that the source, all of it, is always available to all employees all the time.
It's hardly incredible that, in cooperation with some three-letter agency, there are some built-in back doors which are known only to a select few.