Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

14 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. 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 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.
  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. 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.

  5. 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..

  6. 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?

  7. 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.
  8. TAB, dammit, TAB by DrJay · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    ______ This mind intentionally left blank.
  9. 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.