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Gates on Spyware and OS Competition

Posted by michael on from the phear-the-penguin dept.

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."

28 of 690 comments (clear)

  1. 800lb Gorilla by erick99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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/
    1. Re:800lb Gorilla by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      MS Engineer 1: "Hmm, here's a security vulnerability."

      MS PHB: "Well, let's get to work on patching it."

      MS Engineer 2: "Wait, couldn't we not patch it and instead sell the patch together with others as a piece of software with an annual update fee?"

      MS PHB: "Congratulations, you just got promoted."

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    2. Re:800lb Gorilla by Osrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It will be the same response that Microsoft always seen to get when they introduce something like this... lots of people complaining that they're not doing it, then they build something and lots of people complain that they've made a change.

      "Microsoft need to do something about security" - Microsoft release XPSP2 - "Microsoft changed a bunch of securty settings and now my badly written app does not work anymore".

    3. Re:800lb Gorilla by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "MS Engineer 2: "Wait, couldn't we not patch it and instead sell the patch together with others as a piece of software with an annual update fee?""

      I've met quite a few software engineers, and none of them would suggest that. (Nor would a PHB promote them, they'd take credit for it instead.)

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    4. Re:800lb Gorilla by Jesrad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not every corporation.

      I've worked in a 120,000-employee corporation in 2002, and almost every single person I met there actually had a clue. There was no political bullshit, we had clear objectives and reasonable timelines, the only hassle was that it'd take a few days to get specific software and hardware.

      A colleague of mine worked for a subsidy of IBM last year, and told me it was the same way there, no bullshit, no slacking and no sloppiness, of course that makes only two small examples, but that's just to say such generalizations are bad overall.

      --
      Maybe we deserve this world ?
  2. Mac OS? by tuxlove · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Mac OS? by bladx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yeah, i agree

      what's the deal? my summer internship (a school district) uses macs like crazy.. of my experience (and i know, it is not very much) mac os x has, by far, been the most stable OS i have had to use in the workplace. i'm not sure why it would go away so suddenly.

    2. Re:Mac OS? by WiseWeasel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The falling price of components will also drive down the prices of Macs. There will always be a market for higher end computers, with actual though put into design and implementation, with the unified vision of a central authority. In fact, the rise of Linux and other open-sourced operating systems will only help Apple integrate Macs with other common OSs, as standards will be truly open. If Linux had the marketshare to define standards, that would open the door to any number of competitors who could make inter-operative software. A rise in the Linux platform's popularity (at the expense of Microsoft's marketshare) would only help smaller players gain traction. While the future of PowerPC is uncertain, depending largely on IBM's dedication to it, Apple and the MacOS are bound to have markets well into the future. If a company can assure tight integration and thoughtful design of hardware and software, there will always be those willing to pay a premium for a premium user experience.

      --
      "I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
    3. Re:Mac OS? by tonywong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's because Mr. Gates doesn't perceive Apple as being an OS vendor unto themselves. He looks at Apple as the premier research division of Microsoft.

      I'm only semi-kidding.

      OK. I'm not.

    4. Re:Mac OS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows.

      And from that toy sprung forth revolutions in photo, print and video graphics. The toy seems to have served many industries very well.

    5. Re:Mac OS? by Fulkkari · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, right. Just because you only buy low-end machines doesn't mean everyone do the same. Macs are pretty popular in the media industry and have a group of very loyal fans. Unless they are going down, I doubt Apple is going down either.

      I don't see any reason for Mac OS to be a GUI on top of Linux either. First of all, it would be yet an other transition. Secondly, they wouldn't win anything at it. Linux kernel doesn't have all the stuff the Darwin kernel has. I think it's ridiculous that you are suggesting that they would switch a nice kernel that they have complete control over to a third party kernel they don't have control over which doesn't even have the same features.

      Don't get me wrong. Linux is okay and I use it too, but the truth is that it's being hyped way to much. Linux is not superior in any way as some people (like you) seem to think. Soon these people will learn that there are alternatives to Linux also. It isn't just Windows or Linux.

      --
      I demand the Cone of Silence!
    6. Re:Mac OS? by Graymalkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      MacOS X is "Darwin plus Apple UI magic". I suppose maybe you meant to say Darwin x86 plus Apple UI magic. The point of Apple selling MacOS on Mac computers is that they get to control the whole widget. As such Apple gets to add all sorts of nice little features into the OS that they know specifically will work in x number of machines.

      Quartz Extreme is an excellent example. By the time Jaguar was released most of the current Macs would support it out of the box, by 2003 all Macs sold supported QE. Since Apple was deciding to replace their long used Rage 128s with Radeon and GeForce GPUs they were able to add a very useful feature to the OS that all shipping systems would be able to utilize. Tiger is going to utilize the advanced shader programmability of newer Radeon and GeForce GPUs in two systems called CoreImage and CoreVideo. By the time Tiger ships most if not all Macs being sold will support these features out of the box, many systems sold right now can support these features.

      Writing their OS for commodity PCs would pretty much remove that ability. When it wouldn't be guaranteed all of their customers would be able to see the new features it wouldn't be worth while to even add such features. It took Microsoft a long time to get USB and hot plugging working right in Windows. Since so few people had USB ports on their computers there was little impetus to fix USB functionality in the OS. Apple on the otherhand was replacing ADB on their systems with USB and their USB support was pretty exceptional. It's taken Microsoft a long time to get their WiFi support up to a moderately useful level because for long time no PCs were really shipping with WiFi capabilities. Apple however rolled out with extremely good WiFi support because their systems were shipping with WiFi capabilities built in.

      When a single company builds the hardware their OS is going to run on they tend to have excellent support for their hardware. Linux from any particular distribution is very hit-or-miss with hardware from particular vendors. Even HP doesn't support every bit of hardware in their laptops that have Linux as an OS option. They only support what SuSE and Red Hat support. Apple supports every piece of hardware on any Mac capable of running the OS.

      OSX for commodity PCs would not be the same OSX that runs on Macs. Without spending hundreds of millions of compatibility testing it would be exceedingly difficult for Apple to support the range of hardware that Microsoft does. As we've seen with Linux, hardware vendors do not want to write drivers for any OS but Windows and they're usually none too cooperative in releasing specs for their products.

      As such Apple would have to pick up the slack or hope they could get thousands of programmers to contribute homegrown drivers. In the first case they would have to spend lots of money to make sure a huge range of hardware worked properly and in the second they would have a slew of half-complete drivers shipping with the OS. Spending a lot of money supporting the menagerie of PC hardware would make selling OSX for PCs unprofitable in the extreme and shipping half-complete drivers and only offering partial functionality for people's hardware would kill their sales and make the whole enterprise unprofitable.

      No one is going to switch to MacOS X-x86 if their hardware isn't likely to run properly. Developers aren't going to bother supporting an OS on another architecture that only a few people use, fewer of which even want to buy their products. You don't see many commercial Linux applications for Linux/PPC or Linux/MIPS. Microsoft killed their Windows NT ports because few third parties bothered porting their applications to non-x86 archtectures even though the OS environment was the same. Vis à vis don't hold your breath waiting for Apple to release OSX for PCs.

      --
      I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
    7. Re:Mac OS? by mwa · · Score: 4, Insightful
      "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
      -John C. Dvorak, SF Examiner, Feb. 1984.

      If you're trying to discredit Dvorak, this is a bad example. The mouse has become the single most non-productive enhancement to computing in history. People used to fly through applications using TAB and function keys. Although they usually still can, they don't.

      Try waiting for a bank teller, loan processer, application taker, or yout typical computer user to do anything now and it's tap, tap, tap, reach, slide, click, tap, tap, tap, reach, slide, click, tap, tap, tap, reach, slide, click, .... just to move focus to the next text box. I find myself silently screaming TAB, dammit, TAB! TAB to the button and hit ENTER!

      What's worse is I'm finding applications that no longer implement focus shifting with tab. "Web apps" are notoriusly bad. Worse yet is where most workspaces "have room" for the mouse. Mousing literally causes in pain in my neck in my workstation.

      AFAIC, there's still no evidence that people actually want to use a mouse. They simply don't know of any other way.

  3. prostoalex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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??

  4. Anti spyware? by News+for+nerds · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Sounds bad to me. by rincebrain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  6. Same old Bill Gates. by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  7. He's right by SilentChris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. What an endorsement by quax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Actually, Google Vs Microsoft more likely by nounderscores · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

  10. What's left in 10 years by Quiberon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Mac-Tel?-Apple Dreams and x86 Nightmares. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    " 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.

  12. Paranoia by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Windows?!? by linolium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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..

  14. Windows kills jobs now? by ion_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article (emphasis mine):

    As to how Microsoft is going to beat Linux according to Gates, it seems to be via its software's value, rather than the price. Bill Gates is trying to create software that needs little maintainance and little support. By doing so, he hopes to cut down the number of IT administrators needed on companies (a good admin costs overall up to $200,000 per year for a given company here in the Bay Area, for example). On the other hand, Linux rivals (e.g. Red Hat) are making money primarily by support calls and require capable administrators. Gates hopes to elliminate this need.

    Wasn't it supposed to be Linux that kills jobs?

  15. Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware ! by g0qi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  16. TAB, dammit, TAB by DrJay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'cause Tab is really helpful in Photoshop....

    --
    ______ This mind intentionally left blank.
  17. Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware ! by fmaresca · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Ok. But:
    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.