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."

Comments

800lb Gorilla

[erick99]

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?

Re:800lb Gorilla

[TheSpoom]

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."

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Osrin]

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".

Re:800lb Gorilla

[MoThugz]

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.

If they are really are the ones who know the most about protecting Windows from spyware, then almost every Windows user is doomed.

Heck, Mr Gates himself faces the very same spyware problem.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[gregduffy]

Before I worked at Microsoft as an intern last summer (I'm a college student), I was under the same impression about the amount of brainpower they had.

I worked specifically for MSN Ads, and everywhere I looked (I also talked to my friends in other departments) I found sloppy coding practices, FUD, and general CYA-motivated B.S.

9/10 people I met didn't know what they were doing, but they were too good at political maneuvering for it to matter. The people that knew what they were doing were extremely cynical and didn't think things could change. Oh how I wish I could comment on specifics. Damn NDA.

I was really hoping Microsoft would be a cool place to work, but I was severely disappointed. Behind closed doors, I couldn't find a SINGLE person who would actually recommend taking a job there.

When they made me an offer to join after my senior year (this year), I turned it down. I just can't deal with companies that are too laden in management and politics to even attempt agility and quality of work. Maybe it's just the idealism of youth, and I'll learn my lesson the hard way some day.

I'm sure there are specific people and groups in Microsoft that do a bang-up job, but I think they are much fewer in numbers than they were 20 years ago (before I was born).

g

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Firehawke]

'Badly written' might be taking it a bit far. As far as I understand it, SP2 totally removes or largely changes an API call that was commonly used in all sorts of applications, including a number of MS's own products-- it was an ACCEPTED PRACTICE.

I think that's probably the biggest complaint about it outright.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

That's the least of their problems. The big problem is when the 800lb gorilla will patent anti-spyware software. How will the other simians react to that?

Re:800lb Gorilla

[NanoGator]

"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.)

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Zemran]

Eeerrrr, if they really wanted to do something about it why not change the way the write software so that it is not so easy for outsiders to hack into their products and dump unwanted code onto their clients machines? This would efectively cut down on virii as well as spyware, trojans etc... Why do they chose to leave so many doors open? I believe it is because they are more concerned with leaving the doors open for themselves than they are worried about the effect of the abuse of those doors. Why does a Windows users email need the power to format their hard disk etc?

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Zorilla]

Sisco? Is that a brand like Sorny, Panaphonics, and Magnetbox? I guess you're lucky it still works.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[wayoutwest]

erm, excuse me, but OSX panther is infinitely more easy to use than windows and without the headaches, virus and malware. And it comes free with the purchase of any new mac you desire.
Also, it doesn't require activation, a real "big brother" feature I dislike about XP.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[killjoe]

Sounds like every other large corporation in the world.

My advice as a veteran is to stick with smaller companies. Not only will you make a bigger impact but you'll also be appreciated. You definately wait till you are married and have kids before you get your soul sucked out by a large company. Of course by then you'll have lost the will to live anyway so it won't matter so much :)

good luck.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[DeltaSigma]

Heck, Mr Gates himself faces the very same spyware problem.

Hell, I can fix that problem. Set up XPde on a Gnu/Linux box when he's not looking. He'll never know the difference!

Re:800lb Gorilla

[dlelash]

You should close your tag, or it might get you into trouble out in the real world at some point.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[GreenKiwi]

Heck, Mr Gates himself faces the very same spyware problem.

Nahhh... He runs OS X and doesn't have to worry about it.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[shaitand]

Actually people were complaining that the firewall was worthless and that it caused problems if enabled in exchange for absolutely no protection of any kind.

It was enabled by default about 30% of the time already, it seemed to be a pretty random thing.

Thanks to SP2 we have a worthless, buggy, problematic firewall which yields no benefit whatsoever, turned on all the time by default! yay.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[godglike]

Natural consequence of monopoly unfortunately and one of the reason they're so dangerous. There is no need for them to be good so they aren't. What really matters in a monopoly is maintaining your job for life, not actually doing anything. They also accumulate crud as smart people, like yourself, have better things to do with their time.

On another topic, Gates is living in a dream world. In ten years, there will be Linux, Symbian, and Mac OS XI. People will be saying "Microsoft what, Microsoft who?" Linux has got traction, the mobiles have rejected MS, and Apple is revitalised and being imaginative again.

MS is losing credibilty, losing friends in high places, and people who shouldn't know anything about computers are appalled at the consequences of using Windows.

At this point, I would like everyone to rush off and contribute to an open-source project to finish them off.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[julesh]

Thanks to SP2 we have a worthless, buggy, problematic firewall which yields no benefit whatsoever, turned on all the time by default! yay.

Are you saying it doesn't work? 'Cause in my tests, it seems to consistently deny connections from externally, which is, after all, the point. It will prevent pretty much any external worm attack, in fact. I think that's hard to describe as "yields no benefit whatsoever".

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Jesrad]

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.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Kaotiq]

I could not agree more.

Worked for start ups, worked for companies that have been taken over by large companies, call me crazy but the larger the organisation the worse it gets, I read somewhere they compared multinational corporations to vampires, they take over smaller organisations for their fresh blood, they like vampires couldn't live without it.

K.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Ender Ryan]

No, not at all. If bridge engineers were forced to call their bridges "done" when they weren't, THEN we'd have serious problems.

As it is, serious mission critical software developed by honest companies generally works well, as do bridges. Software sold by sleazy business folk is sold before the engineers are satisfied with its quality, and it always "collapses."

All that is to say, engineers aren't the ones releasing unfinished software that doesn't work right.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[Curate]

To make a firewall that 'keeps people from breaking into my machine' is asinine.
Um, no. That is the primary purpose of a firewall. It is your first line of defense. It won't necessarily (shouldn't be) your last though.

If you don't want someone accessing a service, you turn it off or change it's configuration to deny specific external hosts.
Yes, turning it off is recommended if you don't need it at all, but if you need it (e.g. for local machines) then it's not a solution. Most services aren't configurable enough to allow/deny specific hosts. If they were, they would essentially have their own mini firewalls builtin. You think that's better than having one centrally managed firewall?? Also, denying specific hosts is not the same as dropping packets. It's generally preferable to drop packets so as to appear "invisible" rather than deny connections, which not only confirms your existence but allows for straight denial of service attacks against your machine or even reflexive denial of service attacks against another machine.

If there are holes in the OS that a hacker can exploit, then a firewall is only a band-aid, that may or may not work.
The most secure setup involves layers of security, and that is what Microsoft has been preaching recently. It's pretty hard to argue that removing layers of protection is better. Don't you wear your seatbelt even though there's also an airbag?

Re:800lb Gorilla

[BurritoWarrior]

Heck, Mr Gates himself faces the very same spyware problem.

He uses Firefox.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[nege]

Simple - its not about building a better product at all. You have to see that there is no correlation between good software and successful software. MS can make more money writing bad software. It would cost them a lot of money to actually do a re-write of the system, which is really what they need at this point. Also, as a sweet little side benefit a mini industry has come about as a result of their insecure OS - the spyware / anti-spyware and virus / anti-virus mostly revolve around the Windows OS. Sure, a lot of it has to do with number of users, but you have to admit that its just plain easier to write virus code for a system that lets you execute it via the web browser!

Re:800lb Gorilla

[dmaxwell]

the only hassle was that it'd take a few days to get specific software and hardware.

That's a hassle?!?! Sheez-Ma-neez! friend. A few days.... Wow. Where is this heaven on Earth you're working at?

Re:800lb Gorilla

[justins]

Eeerrrr, if they really wanted to do something about it why not change the way the write software so that it is not so easy for outsiders to hack into their products and dump unwanted code onto their clients machines? This would efectively cut down on virii as well as spyware, trojans etc... Why do they chose to leave so many doors open?

Perhaps it's because they realize that whatever doors you're talking about do not matter, and that most users install malware on their computers themselves, often after clicking through the EULA for it.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[justins]

I worked specifically for MSN Ads, and everywhere I looked (I also talked to my friends in other departments) I found sloppy coding practices, FUD, and general CYA-motivated B.S.

You expected the ad department to house the really competant and moral people in the organization? Besides, you're talking about the ad department of a branch of Microsoft that is essentially an afterthought. You were working with the losers.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[ajp]

First problem: you worked for MSN Ads. Can you think of a more bullsh*t division at Microsoft? You talked to your friends in other departments. Where? MSN Gaming Zone? X-Box? Maybe even Microsoft Money?

Microsoft has some solid coding divisions just like any big company. And Microsoft has some BS departments just like any big company. Is it any surprise that a division which "ships" every month is filled with sloppy coding practices, FUD and general CYA-motivated BS?

My area of Microsoft happens to be filled with people who could code the smirk off of almost any slashdotter. I work with people who have been in the business longer than most of the MSN Ads people have been out of diapers. And they are at Microsoft primarily because they are brilliant.

I'm sorry your experience at Microsoft was so disappointing and wish you well elsewhere but I can assure you that my time at MS has been quite intellectually fulfilling.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[ecko3437]

I have used OS X Panther. I don't find it any easier to use than Windows XP is.

OS X comes free with any new Mac? I should hope so, with the outrageous prices they charge for hardware. It's my belief that what's holding Apple back from real mainstream use in the PC world is that it's just too expensive. When I see a decent Apple for $800 who's model series isn't four years old, I'll buy.

Re:800lb Gorilla

[DuctTape]

9/10 people I met didn't know what they were doing, but they were too good at political maneuvering for it to matter.

Gee, sounds like Dell. Most of the business cards people there had that I ever saw during my short stint at Dell were from fellow Dell employees. I think they traded them like baseball cards. I would have gotten promoted there before I left, but I didn't have enough Dell business cards.

Seriously, tho, not enough people that mattered knew me. At least I got out before the first layoffs came.

DT

Mac OS?

[tuxlove]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[bladx]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[Money for Nothin']

People have been predicting the death of MacOS and Apple for almost 2 decades now. That "wizard" over at PCMag, John Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at where that prediction has gone.

*tears out another Dvorak article, wipes, and flushes it down the toilet*

Re:Mac OS?

[heptapod]

If Longhorn is going to be a copy of OSX then won't it be a BSD clone with a pretty interface? The options would be reduced to Linux and a variant of BSD.

Re:Mac OS?

[mini me]

Maybe he is planning on buying Apple? Which would mean that MacOS would become Windows.

Re:Mac OS?

[GFLPraxis]

" People have been predicting the death of MacOS and Apple for almost 2 decades now. That "wizard" over at PCMag, John Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at where that prediction has gone."

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. lol

Though your point is correct (above is just a nitpick)- people have been predicting the death of MacOS for a while, and Apple's stocks have been shooting through the roof since OS X came out. lol.

Check out the Apple Death Knell...
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.s html

Re:Mac OS?

[belmolis]

As hardware gets cheaper and more powerful and becomes a commodity, Apple is likely to have an increasingly difficult time selling its own line of expensive machines. With the Mac OS now a layer on top of Unix, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually gives up reserving its software for its own hardware and begins to sell Mac OS as a GUI and software bundle on top of Linux, essentially a commercial counterpart to Gnome or KDE.

Re:Mac OS?

[tuxlove]

That "wizard" over at PCMag, John Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at where that prediction has gone.

I met Dvorak recently, and I have to say, he's very difficult to talk to. He's one of those guys who has no ability to just listen. A poor quality in a journalist. I found it very frustrating. His opinions aren't total crap, though. I think he's wrong WRT Mac OS, but he would have been right if Apple hadn't finally gotten a real OS by now. Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows. Now it's for real, and it's serious. Microsoft has a long way to go if they hope to rival it.

Re:Mac OS?

[Amiga Lover]

> People have been predicting the death of MacOS and Apple for
> almost 2 decades now. That "wizard" over at PCMag, John
> Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at
> where that prediction has gone.

Almost? He's been there right from the start with his way off base 'predictions'. He's a troll, and it gets him paid.

"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.

Re:Mac OS?

[WiseWeasel]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[TheLittleJetson]

As hardware gets cheaper and more powerful and becomes a commodity, Apple is likely to have an increasingly difficult time selling its own line of expensive machines.

Rolls Royce still manages to sell cars.

Re:Mac OS?

[tonywong]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I got my 17" powerbook, I priced out a comparable dell - with you added all the things that apple included (wifi g, dvd burner, bluetooth), the apple was cheaper. Plus, I get 4 hour battery life, kick-butt looks in a smaller package, and a light-up keyboard. Please, put an end to the myth that it's more expensive!

Re:Mac OS?

[LochNess]

Mac OS X is NOT based on Debian, or any other flavor of Linux. It is based on BSD, a flavor of Unix.

Re:Mac OS?

[setagllib]

Quite a clueless thing to say. As the sharp knife above me pointed out, it's a BSD fork, specifically of FreeBSD 4.x some time ago. It imports fixes from FreeBSD, and FreeBSD imports fixes from it. Apparently the core kernel was replaced by Mach instead, but the userland is all still there, and they make no attempt to hide it. They couldn't have sprung for GPL'd software (would they want to, anyway? The FreeBSD base is much more solid, already a Complete Operating System, no more hacking-together needed) because of the restrictive licensing it imposes, wheras the BSD license only retains author recognition.

Why would it be based on Debian? Not only is its kernel not Linux (so no, MacOSX is not Linux either, again), and not only does the GPL make it impractical, but it wouldn't really make sense anyway, since Debian's real unique functionality is apt*, something completely useless in this case since no Linux binaries would run under MacOSX.

They could also have sprung from NetBSD (or OpenBSD?), which would probably have been easier since it already supported their architecture pretty well, but I'm sure they had their reasons.

Re:Mac OS?

[atlasheavy]

I know this is off-topic, but... The Supreme Court of the United States Box? What in the world is that? Some sort of large wooden crate filled with nine elderly law-wranglers?

Re:Mac OS?

[DunbarTheInept]

But he's right about the death of MacOS if not the company that produced it. Now Apple is selling a fork of BSD with a lot of their custom application code on top of it. That they call it version 10 of MacOS is a lie. It would have been more honest to call it by a totally new name, and reset the release number to 1.0. If OSX on BSD is a release of MacOS than Wine on Linux is a release of Windows.

There were very good reasons to predict the death of MacOS. It had a *LOT* of problems that were not fixable such that the only real fix was to start over with something new - which is exactly what Apple ended up doing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great product, and the magnitude of the task they did proved that people at Apple do in fact know how to do more than just make pretty interfaces that impress artists, and that they really do have people with impressive skills on staff (which surprised me, frankly). I like what they've done in their new OS. I just don't like that they did a marketing lie by calling it another release of MacOS.

Re:Mac OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[Fulkkari]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[killjoe]

I once read an article about the CEO of harley davidson. In that he said "harley davidson is not a motorcyle company, it's a fashion company".

Apple is the same way. Apple sells products that people buy because they want to be "cool".

Now just because something is cool that does not mean it sucks. Both Harleys and Macs are great products that just also happen to be very fashionable.

AS long as apple can define "cool" it will do just fine, whether it's selling computers or earphones does not matter all that much.

Re:Mac OS?

[FireFury03]

os x has, by far, been the most stable OS i have had to use in the workplace.

Does that include Linux? I use Linux exclusively at both home and work and I would struggle to make any stability comparisons amoungst any OSes that stay up for such long periods of time. In my (limited) experience, OS X and Linux seem to be on par with eachother when it comes to stability. Obviously OS X is easier for the average user to use, so that where it wins.

I'm a big fan of *nix based OSes and I think Apple have made a good call with moving to a BSD-based platform. I agree that Microsoft seem to be overlooking Apple if they think they'll be gone in 10 years - it has seemed to me recently that OS X is rapidly gaining popular support.

Re:Mac OS?

[FireFury03]

With the Mac OS now a layer on top of Unix, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually gives up reserving its software for its own hardware and begins to sell Mac OS as a GUI and software bundle on top of Linux, essentially a commercial counterpart to Gnome or KDE.

I think they would be completely missing their target market if they did that. People who buy Macs are getting them because they "Just Work". One of the big reasons why they "Just Work" is because Apple has complete control over the hardware they're using, they can test the software on exactly what the end-user will be using it on and make sure it all works. Furthermore, they can test upgrades on hardware identical to what the end-users are using.

Whilest it's possible that they may eventually ditch BSD in favor of Linux if it looks like Linux will be beneficial for them, I doubt they will ever start shipping it as a stand-alone piece of software rather than a soft/hardware combo.

Re:Mac OS?

[r_j_prahad]

*tears out another Dvorak article, wipes, and flushes it down the toilet*

I can't believe any knowledgeable human would risk almost certain death and disfigurement by intentionally allowing a Dvorak article to come into direct physical contact with their anus. The only other person believed to have done this was a gentleman by the name of Goatse, I think. You might be able to find him with a Google search....

Re:Mac OS?

[FireFury03]

Additionally, a large market of open-source software would take some of the focus off x86 processors. We all know that x86 is an aging architecture, and it's a pain for the chip manufacturers to keep the backward compatability. With open source software, pretty much all the userspace software, and a large chunk of the kernel can be quickly recompiled for new architectures and you can ditch the backward compatability. This would make CPU design simpler, cheaper, and more efficient.

Look at the PDA industry - they aren't goverened by a single big software company only supporting one architecture, if a PDA manufacturer sees a better architecture then they usually have no significant problems with dropping their current one in favor of it without worrying about hardware compatability. I'm sure that if the desktop computer industry was able to pick and choose their architectures we would be in a much better position.

It's also worth noting that different CPU architectures suit different problems, and having the choice allows you to pick the best hardware for the job.

Re:Mac OS?

[Graymalkin]

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.

Re:Mac OS?

[HyperCash]

Well, it sounds like it was one that came with a Mac.

Re:Mac OS?

[mwa]

"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.

Re:Mac OS?

[StupidKatz]

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.

Your opinion depends on the assumption that all computer users would know about the shortcut keys from the get-go. Admittedly, I don't like using the mouse PERIOD when it comes to anything application related (I was losing hair rapidly until I discovered SHIFT+F10)... but having access to decent menus and a mouse cuts the learning curve dramatically. A user with a mouse can still still be vastly more productive than a user without a computer (or the knowledge to use one).

Let's not even start on the REAL reason I use a mouse: games.

Re:Mac OS?

[Zen Punk]

Damn, I wish I still had my mod points. I know the frustration of watching people laboriously execute commands with a mouse that would have taken a quarter of the time with a keyboard.

Still, I use a mouse, and have no disdain for it. Each device has it's strengths and weaknesses. If I want to open a console, I don't navigate through menus, I hit Ctrl-F12. But I wouldn't dream of using only a keyboard to navigate through all the myraid links and menus of the web.

Re:Mac OS?

[NatasRevol]

The fallacy in your argument is that Macs last longer than PCs. I'm sure there will be a few who will say "But I had my 386 for 12 years and it still runs Typing Tutor great!". However, most Mac users replace their computers every 4-5 years*. Most PC users replace theirs every 2-3 years*. Over a lifetime, I'd say owning a Mac is much cheaper.

* Based on everyone I know.

YMMV

Re:Mac OS?

[Brendor]

It is important to remember that before Windows 95 (some would say 2000) all of Microsofts' OSes were less than toys . . .

Re:Mac OS?

[kryptkpr]

All well and good, but you forgot the #1 reason I love my mouse: the scroll wheel. The single greatest innovation in input devices.. I've seen multi-directional scroll wheels now (tilt left and right)... mmm.

Re:Mac OS?

[ProfFalcon]

Now, see, "TAB to the button and hit ENTER" is not the best way either. Hitting enter sometimes will choose the "default" button, not necessarily the current button. If you want to hit the current button consistently, you should change your statement to "TAB to the button and hit SPACE."

Hitting enter has resulted in some of the most irritating calls my service desk has had to deal with. The people who are smart enough to use the keyboard are the ones less likely to listen to the responses from the service desk because they are obviously smart enough to know better.

If you're going to preach using the keyboard (like I do), preach it right.

OK, I feel better now.

Re:Mac OS?

[Jesus_666]

Meh. Until OS X those were just toy revolutions in toy industries, inferior even to cave paintings.

Re:Mac OS?

[jkujawa]

Yeah, that's funny, isn't it?

MacOS Classic was, technically by the standards of modern operating systems, a toy. But damn if it didn't win in a lot of respects *despite this*.

I came from the Amiga. Watching a Mac attempt to multitask was _so painful_. But it was certainly pretty.

Now, I've got a windows machine for doom and half life, and a linux fileserver, neither of which I love -- and two macs, which I spend most of my computing time on. I even find ways to use my PowerBook at work (I write code that crunches weather data. It runs on linux, but my visualization and debugging stuff runs on the mac.)

Re:Mac OS?

[Peter Cooper]

Isn't it ironic that Macs are "throwaway and buy a new one" computers while in the real world it's exactly the opposite and expensive stuff is made to last?

Macs are clearly made to last. One of my clients still runs its business off of Macs that are 6 years old. They've upgraded the memory and the peripherals over the years, but those workhorses are still plodding. Admittedly, they are now starting to look at new stuff which can run OS X ;-)

I hate to say it

[OverlordQ]

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.

Re:I hate to say it

[timeOday]

but if Bill Gates says it too, it must be true: *BSD is Dying!

It's already a nonfactor as far as BG is concerned.

That said, Linux fills a niche that could otherwise have been filled almost as well by a free / open BSD. (I say "almost" because the license of BSD has lead to fragmentation that created an opening for Linux).

Re:I hate to say it

[iCEBaLM]

Actually Microsoft is, they use BSD code in all of their OS's, including Windows.

Oh the cosmic justice...

[rune2]

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!

No Mac OS? What will the Mac Business Unit Think?

[thedbp]

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...

OS X and FreeBSD

[ValiantSoul]

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.

Re:OS X and FreeBSD

[WinterSolstice]

Ok, in the spirit of the parent, I present my shocking theory:

In 2014, Linux will be the Unix of the 21st century. OpenVMS will run on every moderate sized box, and MS Windows 2012.L (linux version... AIX admins will get this one) will be an X client/server for remote control of all the other boxes.

-WS

Re:OS X and FreeBSD

[ValiantSoul]

FreeBSD may be "dying" if by dying you mean not gaining very many new users. None the less, even if it is dying, that does not deny it of currently running quite a few servers including Yahoo and many more.

FreeBSD by the way is gaining more users, just at a slower pace than linux. Take a look here[netcraft.com]

Re:OS X and FreeBSD

[vettemph]

Well, I predict that competition itself will be dead 10 years from now. Mac and linux will co-exsist in a peaceful rainbow filled future.

PS. I also predict that Mac OS X will be dead 10 years from now, but before you get your aqua colored panties in a bunch, Mac OS XV will be going strong.

Optimistic Gates?

[chrispyman]

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.

Re:Optimistic Gates?

[belmolis]

Evil intentions though he may have, Gates isn't an idiot. He may not like it, but he can see that SCO has made a complete cock-up of its anti-Linux scam.

...and

[Anonymous Coward]

those two operating systems will be running on Tablet PCs with 64k RAM and DRM. Oh and BOB.

Nuclear Reactor Market??

[civilengineer]

"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)

Re:Nuclear Reactor Market??

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the leader in the Nuclear Reactor Control market right now ?

Mainly human beings..
The "computers" are used for monitoring and for safety functions, they are embedded systems. I know the plant I worked at had a protection system that ran on a three channel redundant system built around the 8088. We actually did troubleshooting with a signature analyzer to compare to known good values. Of course I've been out of the field for 6 years so maybe computers have been retro-fitted into the systems but I doubt it.

oh god ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... here come the mac zealots ...

Re:oh god ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What?
You got something aginst Macs?
Well do you punk?!

Re:oh god ...

[LoadWB]

Could be worse... a bunch of us Amiga-zoids could start preaching about the release of OS4, and how AmigaOS could only get better in the next decade.

Now, please excuse me while I go cry a little...

Re:oh god ...

[maximilln]

Could be worse... a bunch of us Amiga-zoids

I miss my Amiga 500, with its startup-sequence, and it's MagicWB (was that really just an icon set?), and it's NeXT-like toolbar, and my Supra28 accelerator (which burned out), and it's 1.3/2.04 ROM switcher (which also burned out), because Pirates! didn't work under 2.04, and the Guru meditation errors, and my side-mounted hard drive controller with 8 mb of 1x8 SIMM memory, and the Fat Agnus 1 mb vid mem expansion, and it's standard RCA-out jacks for stereo sound, and its 1024x768x24 video resolution for high res IFF images, and... and... and...

Re:oh god ...

[Binky The Oracle]

Funny... the Mac folks probably think of themselves as the troopers... a small, elite, well-equipped group with expensive gear hopelessly defending themselves against the onslaught of a giant, expendable, (spam) zombie horde with better market share.

When you then factor in how the brain bug sucked all of the knowledge out of the humans... well, I guess the question becomes who among the MS management is the brain bug?

STOP ME BEFORE I CONTINUE THIS HORRIBLE ANALOGY ANY FURTH....UNNNGGGggghhhaaaaaaa!

Seems to be the american way

[Anonymous Coward]

Why spend the man power fixing his faulty product when you can use 1/2 the time time and just create a bandaid fix!!

prostoalex

[Anonymous Coward]

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??

spyware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so MS is going to release a program to erase Windows from my system?

Anti spyware?

[News for nerds]

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.

Just Linux and Windows???? Not likely

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Just Linux and Windows???? Not likely

[SwellJoe]

OS's make their real money (except for MS's) after it is put into maintence mode.

For me to buy this, I'm going to have to see some concrete examples. Got any links?

Seems like Solaris has made money for Sun without being in maintenance mode. Same for MS. Same for Red Hat, Wind River, QNX, Palm, IBM (who have made more money and lost more money on operating systems than just about anybody), etc...

I have nothing to back up my statements other than vague assertions but then you haven't presented anything other than vague assertions either, so I reckon that's fair.

RTFA!

[kcarlile]

He doesn't (at least as mentioned in the OSNews piece) say that there will be ONLY two OSes left. I quote:

He did say though that "fast forward 10 years, the two leading OS technologies will be Linux and Windows" hinting that most others (Sun, Mac?) will be eclipsed from the main business scene.

That's not saying that MacOS or *BSD or Sun or anything else will be dead and gone. FUD (unintentional or not) from the poster, methinks...

Too much control?

[Kenja]

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.

Re:Too much control?

[rincebrain]

Submit one meeellion dollars, USD.

Duh.

Re:Too much control?

[spectecjr]

Plug into a published (long before beta1) API, using WMI/WBEM. Even Symantec still haven't got it fixed for some versions of their pile of poo scanner.

They do have it working. The really scary thing is that they actually explicitly PREVENT it from reporting to Windows the status of the AV software. If you try to change that, it pops up a window which says (something along the lines of) that "Norton AV is monitoring your system", and there's a check box which says "Report status to other systems (recommend that you DO NOT do this)".

Kind of shitty of them really. Especially as you have to go through hoops to get their LiveUpdate system to automatically download AV signature file updates - it's not enabled by default.

Lame lame lame lame lame.

Re:Too much control?

[FortranDragon]

I can see the reason why they prefer you not let Windows know. It could be possible for a virus to check on this (through Windows) to see if NAV is running or not. Knowing if NAV is running would be helpful. Not knowing leaves the virus writer guessing.

Sounds bad to me.

[rincebrain]

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.

Re:Bill Is ALWAYS Right

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

Re:640K is enough....

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Actually, if you did your research, you'd find out that he never said that. He's not an idiot, and only an idiot would make a definate statement about the evolution of tech.

I'm too tired to find the links right now, but a minute or 5 of google should clear it up for ya.

Finally, Microsoft is thinking clearly!

[Ride-My-Rocket]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[pmazer]

You should patent it before they get the chance

Same old Bill Gates.

[khasim]

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

Re:Same old Bill Gates.

[hacker]

"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."

The easiest analogy to use to explain this is "disease". It actually fits pretty well in the Windows environment, with "infections" from trojans, viruses, worms, and malware.

There are two approaches, depending on whether you are utopian-driven (Free Software and the likes) or profit-driven (large corporate pharmaceutical companies):

1. Do you spend your time, effort, and dollars trying to prevent disease from the start? This has the longer-lasting effect and fosters more good will in the rest of the community. Or..
2. Do you spend your time, effort, and dollars coming up with a "pill" that will reduce the symptoms you feel after you've been infected with the disease.

Most pharmaceutical companies choose the latter, because it keeps their revenue coming in strong, as long as the disease continues to exist and affect people.

Most Free Software people (and other utopians) have the opposite view. Cure the problem by treating the cause, and you won't have to worry about treating the symptoms.

I don't even have to remind you where Bill Gates and Microsoft stand on this issue. Any time they see some way to edge in a few more profit margin points, they go for it:

• System diagnostics (edging out Norton years ago)
• System defragmentation
• File compression software (lost suit against Stac Electronics)
• Firewall software
• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• ...and so on

They will do whatever it takes, to keep people putting their dollars behind Microsoft products, even if it pisses off one of their own partners in the process.

He's right

[SilentChris]

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.

Re:He's right

[DunbarTheInept]

By "unix", do you mean it the way people in the computer industry normally use the term, or do you mean the way people talk about it when they know lawyers are listening? I ask because your statement only makes sense if Linux isn't included in your term "UNIX" - and really the only people who view it that way are the old guard who don't want to let go of the old days, lawyers who have to watch out about the use of trademarked words, or people trying to spread fud about the death of unix, which is easier if your stats don't include linux.

Re:He's right

[node 3]

The battle for desktop supremacy, however, is already won.

There is no 'won', there is only 'winning' (or if you really want, 'won for now'). Windows might be king forever, but it's not likely at all.

Hardware and OS's are going to continue to evolve and as time goes on, I think the specific OS you chose is going to become less and less important.

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.

Who are these 'people' you are talking about? I guarantee you that more people today use Unix as their desktop OS than have ever in the past, and that number is growing.

Whether it's Windows or some other windowing system that wins the crown, I'm not sure, but classic UNIX is pretty much finished.

What do you mean by 'classic UNIX'? Solaris, Linux, OS X and BSD are modern Unices. I could just as easily say 'classic Windows' is pretty much finished, and be just as correct.

Re:He's right

[Kethinov]

There's just too much breadth of software to shift away from the platform.

If you are speaking about your own situation, what software are you talking about? If it's software in general, I disagree -- as far as personal computing is concerned, the only area in which Linux and Mac OS are not viable platforms is gaming.

Exactly. Windows has been obsolete for me for a long time. I only maintain a Windows install for the same reason most people don't switch. Legacy applications which translates mostly to games.

Even then, more and more I find myself not needing to reboot into Linux. ZSNES works better in Linux than Windows with its native OpenGL support. ePSXe works just as good in Linux as in Windows. Mupen64 emulates many n64 games. Not as good as Windows/PJ64 but still damn good.

If I could WINE Subspace/Continuum and FUO, I'd never touch windows again. A few years ago, my list of apps would have been much bigger.

In other news...

[Binky The Oracle]

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.

Re:640K is enough....

[PopCulture]

To be fair, Tom Watson was born in the 1870's :)

Note that Bill Gates got hit by an adaware...

[antdude]

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!

Sif

[higgo6]

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!

MS doesnt need to make anti Adware products...

[Viceice]

Although progress is being made against spam and viruses, Gates said the adware and malware problem is getting worse.

"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.

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.

What an endorsement

[quax]

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.

Re:What an endorsement

[InfiniteWisdom]

building up the OS to do everything short of singing and dancing for you

True. You have to install not just the OS, but MS Office to get clippy.

Re:What an endorsement

[thebatlab]

I'm sick of seeing this Ghandi comment. Who ever said it works all the time? It's not a divine decree or anything. I mean, have we forgotten the other part of this?

First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then they crush you

How's it any different? Oh right, his shows that the little guy gets ignored, laughed at, then fights and wins the day. "Oh, those evil bastards will rue the day they ever laughed at me!"

It's good to keep up the hope but don't live by someone words as if it's already shown the outcome and we're all just waiting for it to come true.

Get your facts correct

[poohsuntzu]

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.

What a politicaaly contrived statement

[microbox]

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.

My prediction...

[JeffTL]

...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.

Actually, Google Vs Microsoft more likely

[nounderscores]

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).

Keep it updated, eh?

[HungSquirrel]

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?

What's left in 10 years

[Quiberon]

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.

Re:What's left in 10 years

[hacker]

"Don't be an imbecile. People were saying the same thing ten years ago, and Linux is still nowhere near ready for the desktop."

And exactly what code, dollars, or time have you contributed to that effort?

Linux is, and has been ready for the desktop for at least 5 years or more. I've been using it full-time on my desktops and workstations here for at least 7 years.

Don't blame the kernel for the lack of userland applications. The peripherals, ports, and external devices are all supported (and in fact, more devices and peripherals are supported under the current 2.6.8.1 Linux kernel than on Windows and OSX combined).

Linux was never "meant" for the desktop. That is the job of distribution manufacturers and userland application authors. Talk to them. The rest of us "desktop Linux users" are waiting for them to catch up.

This isn't a race against Microsoft. Linux solves my needs, and gives me much more flexibility and power and choice than the alternative OS that might run on my hardware.

Incidentally, Windows and OSX don't support 90% of the hardware out there that Linux has happily been running on for several years to over a decade. See my previous post for a more-complete list.

Mac-Tel?-Apple Dreams and x86 Nightmares.

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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.

Paranoia

[Stormy Dragon]

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.

Re:Paranoia

[shaitand]

"Symmantec and McAffee"

While there is no shortage of people who believe just that, those aren't exactly companies with a rock solid history of nothing but underhanded, slimy, and unethical practices like MS.

There are few universal truths. But here are a couple. If there is something bad that could be done, people will accuse Microsoft of doing it, whether there is evidence or not. 99% of the time, those people are right ;)

Re:Paranoia

[Spy der Mann]

Yeah, and Symmantec and McAffee are secretly making all the computer viruses so they can sell anti-virus software.

Believe it or not, this was common knowledge 10 years ago even before NATAS (first true polymorphic virus) came out. Just skip the Norton part. Norton was a hardware hacker who wrote excellent IBM PC books. Maybe you don't know, but at the time, McAffee was an antivirus MONOPOLY. And there were about 50 new virus strains appearing EACH MONTH. Don't you think that's a little *suspicious*? Think about it. Creating your own market. This ain't new at all.

Of course, in those times, you couldn't get infected by opening a normal document. Viruses were only the result of doing some "unhealthy" activity (warez). So if a company did something such as writing viruses, they might have (secretly) be appraised by governments.

Things are different now. Viruses are written by either anarchists or script kiddies, and against specific targets (Outlook, IE6, etc). Writing viruses is now no longer profittable for a company.

But please remember: There WAS a time...

FreeBSD

[kiwirob]

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!!!

Gates on spyware

[gamekeeper]

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.

Bill knows he's lying, and heres why

[argoff]

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.

Re:Bill knows he's lying, and heres why

[Grizzlysmit]

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.

I'm sure this is true, but open sourcer's need not worry, so long as you have a strong FOSS community about your OS, it will live, so despite the periodic articles *BSD, and all the other non-linux open source OS's look plenty strong to me.

But don't worry we should still see lots of X is dying stories :-P.

Message to SUN

[flibberdi]

>>
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.

Windows?!?

[linolium]

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..

Re:Windows?!?

[Epidemical]

Isn't that what Microsoft's business model is all about?

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[westyx]

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.

I thought the Persidential debates would be Dumb

[gamekeeper]

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 future is uncertain... Thank goodness

[whistl]

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"

Re:No Mac OS? What will the Mac Business Unit Thin

[NanoGator]

"I dunno, I'll consult my Magic 8 Ball."

Hey! It says Outlook not so good! Amazing!

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[Anonymous Coward]

>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.

Apple DOES have a hard time selling its machines.

[solios]

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. :(

Windows kills jobs now?

[ion_]

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?

Reason is obvious if you translate it to cars

[SmallFurryCreature]

Say you buy a new car, drive it out of the shop down the hill only to find that the brand new car with all the shining new features is missing steering and brakes. Then after you have crashed, your kids have been buried and you have after 2 years of legal battles and medical recovery the car company comes around and fixes the brakes. Would you then still feel you have something to complain about?

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.

Re:Reason is obvious if you translate it to cars

[kantai]

Horrible analogy.

Re:Reason is obvious if you translate it to cars

[argent]

It is like with IE, geezus MS how long is it going to take to get proper PNG support

I don't care.

I wanna know how long it'll take before they realise that routing all the controls through the radio and having the car stop and open all the doors if a hitchiker in a blue shirt and trousers flags you down is a bad idea. And that requiring the hitchiker to be wearing a police jacket and nice shoes as well isn't much of an improvement.

Spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if we could get the ISV's to put spyware under one tree:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windo ws\Curr entVersion\SPYWARE\Run

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[g0qi]

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.

Damned if you do...

[fitten]

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.

Crap

[melted]

If _BillG_ has to run anti-malware programs, everyone else is in _deep_shit_.

Is OS X really not worth mentioning

[pearljam145]

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.

Linux:Microsoft::Kids:Establishment

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:Linux:Microsoft::Kids:Establishment

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

I take you meant more than a kernel when saying 'Linux', because otherwise you're delusional, dude. Try subscribing to netdev mailing list and you will see a hierarchy in all its glory and that ..

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.

Dvroak = professional troll

[mrklin]

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.

There is always a plan

[antibios]

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?

In other words...

[Linker3000]

Let me translate for you: "Our software leaks like a sieve....so we're going to start selling corks..."

It's worth RTFA, folks

[hopethishelps]

Bill Gates' comments as reported are insightful. He may be a bad person, but he is certainly not a stupid person.

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.

Re:It's worth RTFA, folks

[Malor]

By and large, it doesn't matter.

Linux and other free software does not depend on the destruction of Windows to survive. It is not driven by a profit motive and cannot be attacked on that front. Windows' market share is irrelevant. On an economic basis, free software is unkillable.

The only real threat is legislation and/or patents. Keep that under control, and free software will prosper.

So mamy people get into this 'Linux versus Windows' thing, and get emotionally invested in it... but really, it doesn't matter. What free software is doing is changing the nature of the game, so that Windows has to play on free software's turf, rather than the other way around.

Microsoft is a smart company. They have more money than God. Windows isn't going to go away EVER, at least not in our lifetimes. But, aside from legislation, there's nothing they could really do anymore to lock out free software; the hue and cry if they tried would be vast. People just aren't going to buy DRM-enabled hardware unless they control the keys. If they'd done this kind of thing five years ago, it might have worked, but at this point Linux et al are too entrenched, and cannot be killed at a system or hardware level.... any attempt to do so would be a commercial failure.

Microsoft has to adapt to a world with a lot of great free software, not the other way around.

Did everyone miss the critical point?

[Syre]

Bill Gate's critical point in this interview, and how he intends to compete against Linux in the server market is actually something to be concerned about.

From the OSNews article:

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.

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).

Re:Did everyone miss the critical point?

[argent]

Microsoft has a long way to go to make Windows as low-maintainance as UNIX, whether that UNIX system is built on a Linux kernel or not. When they converted Hotmail to Windows it took them a couple of tries, and they ended up using UNIX tools to support and maintain the server farms via their Interix "BSD on NT" product. Their internal white paper on the process makes the point that if it were anyone but Microsoft doing it the license fees they charged for Interix at the time would have been significant. They later re-released Interix as a free download (as of Services for UNIX 3.5).

Red Hat and the Linux companies have little incentive to make products which require less support

I called Microsoft for support once. They asked me for my credit card number first thing. I've already ranted on /. about what their "support" did after that, but if anyone wants to convince me that Microsoft has any less incentive to make support a profit center than Red Hat they've got a lot of work ahead of them.

Re:Did everyone miss the critical point?

[phillymjs]

From the OSNews article:
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.

Someone has already created software that needs little maintenance and support. It's called Mac OS X (frankly, even the old Mac OS was much more reliable compared to then-current incarnations of Windows). Corporate IT departments ignored it, partly because it required the purchase of new hardware, but mostly because it makes having a large IT staff superflous-- and IT managers like the empires they build and the power they wield over an organization that depends on rickety shit like Windows that always needs an army of admins to keep it running.

Anyone who has admin'd a mixed network of decent size will tell you that the number of Windows problems they saw dwarfed the number of Mac problems, even when the Macs were years old and the PCs were brand-new, and even when the Macs outnumbered the Windows machines. I've seen it myself. At my last job, the company went from being an all-Mac shop to running Windows everywhere but in the design studio. For a period of time when it was all-Mac, I was the sole admin of over 100 machines and my biggest problem was finding a good book to read between help calls. As soon as some 98 and NT machines landed on users' desks, we needed to add two more people to the IT staff and we could still barely keep up.

Even if it's coming from Microsoft (and that's making the hefty assumption that they can actually produce a Windows that is low-maintenance), I have a hard time believing that these corporate IT guys will willingly buy something that will effectively lessen their power within the corporation.

~Philly

Re:640K is enough....

[CrazyMalaysian]

Here you go: http://tafkac.org/celebrities/bill.gates/gates_mem ory.html There are far too many misinformed people out there.

Microsoft's security reputation

[kholburn]

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?

Well...

[pab89]

I asked BonziBuddy and he says not to get an anti-spyware solution.

...something different with this competitor

[16K Ram Pack]

He also said that MS has seen many other competitors, including IBM & OS/2, Borland, Apple etc and have survived them all, and he doesn't see something different with this competitor

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.

You, Sir, are a Fuckwad

[Zen Punk]

Who are you, Cheif Asshole at the Global Ministry of Jobs?

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.

Welcome to Slashdot.

[Zen Punk]

Home of the Bad Analogy.

The Mouse

[daviddennis]

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

TAB, dammit, TAB

[DrJay]

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

eh?

[Ender Ryan]

Please, put an end to the myth that it's more expensive!

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

Re: more obvious if you translate back to software

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[fmaresca]

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.

My OS predictions

[plopez]

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).

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[lubricated]

very few employees actually see ALL the source code for windows.

Former Microsoftie Perpsective

[einhverfr]

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.

Re:Windows itself _IS_ Spyware !

[killjoe]

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.