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Why Does Windows Still Suck?
RatBastard writes "SF Gate's Mark Morford asks: Why Does Windows Still Suck? After wtaching his significant other's Windows PC drown in a sea of viruses and worms after only 4 minutes on her new DSL connection, Mark Morford wonders why the masses have not stormed Redmond waving torches and scythes in anger over the never-ending security flaws in Windows. Why haven't they jetisoned the foul beast from Redmond and migrated en mass to the Macintosh or even Linux?"
I'm a gamer.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Why would you let your SO attach an unpatched and unprotected PC to the Internet? Would the author let her walk SF's Tenderloin after dark in a halter, leather mini & fishnets?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
They don't know of anything else, and Windows came with the computer.
It's not a problem with Windows! The operating system is okay! It's digitally signed!
They don't care
Sounds like too easy of an answer, but for non-tech savvy people, a computer is just a tool for email, web, etc. If computers were a vital part of people's lives, they might care. Corporations can pay administrators to keep their computers clean, but joe twelvepack doesn't use his computer for anything that he can't do without. QED.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
The worms and viruses are designed to be hard to detect. People have infected machines that they don't know are infected. Out of sight, out of mind.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Perhaps this is just human nature. But as a "switcher" who is approaching his one year anniversary with a PowerMac after almost 20 years of Windows and DOS (starting with DOS 2.0!) I can honestly say: Windows users, it's not your fault. Microsoft should be ashamed, not you. Windows sucks, and there are better choices out there for you. Make them! You'll be happy that you did.
It's the same reason why people don't storm the White House...
It's the same reason why people don't storm the RIAA headquarters...
It's the same reason why people don't storm the *insert whatever you like*...
Sure, Slashdotters might get angry and send off snail mail/email/faxes to whoever they're angry at. But we're a minority.
The MAJORITY are just too complacent with their lives. They're happy within their immediate environment. They may think it's not right, but they'll never take the action against it. It's too much of a hassle.
So instead they just acceot it. Windows crashing is obviously not so much of an inconvenience that they must storm Redmond. It's easier to push the reset button.
Why do people eat at McDonald's? They definitely don't make the best burger in town.
Things like consistency, convenience, perceived value, brand recognition, etc., all play a big role.
Try connecting an unpatched Solaris 2.6 box to the internet. Within a day it will be hacked and much more dangerous than any hacked Windows PC.
Caleb
damn it, i'm sick of all the windows bashing.. it's an awesome OS... comes complete with a calculator and a paint program, not to mention the ability to clean your disk (i don't know how they do it, but they must have some crazy washer/dryer system inside) I hear this grinding sound inside my computer so that must be it. Also, it has the ability to change the background picture... how freakin' cool is that!? I can put up a picture of my cats!!! IT'S RIGHT THERE ON MY MONITOR!!! What more could you ask for in an OS?! Come on people!
Not a very accurate analogy. Wouldn't it suck if the car were to unconditionally burst into flames unless you were sure to also purchase an extra $1000 in "safety features" and have them installed perfectly before ever attempting to drive it? (And without the dealer actually telling you this.)
Get it now? You microsoft apologists should really get a clue.
If all the software that people ran was available on linux and macs, games included, then more people, including myself, would switch. And honestly, I am computer savvy, but I am not even sure if there are still many different versions/releases of linux outhere, where to get them from, wether they are free or I gotta buy them. I know IT guys are all over linux, but I don't think the article, and the question is poses are aimed at IT/programmer types. So in a nutshell, being a regular guy using my computer, if there was more software available for linux, and it was clear how to acquire it, I would be switching. Most people, like myself just want to put a disc in a drive,install and not worry about it any more.
" Maybe if his S.O. was a little more competent, Windows wouldn't suck so much."
Think about it. If it was a TV.
"My SO plugged the brand new TV into the cable system and 4 minutes later it stopped working." You SO is a moron. Why wasn't your SO smart enough to open the back of the TV and rewire the power supply!
Or if it was a car.
"My SO just got a new car and the engine was trashed after driving it 4 minutes."
Why was your SO so stupid to drive a brand new car with out first opening the hood and setting the valve clearance!
You statement is just dumb and insulting. She is not a moron. She is just not a system admin. What is moronic is that people are selling Windows XP boxes that are so insecure that they can not live on the Internet long enough to download SP2.
Maybe every Windows Box should come with the network stack inactive. When you want to connect to the Internet a special super restricted TCP/IP stack pops up and downloads the latest updates for you. Windows is being pushed as a consumer item it should be expected to act like one.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I can already tell this article will find itself in league with the all-time great classic technical-discussion.slashdot.org postings such as:
-Why does Windows still blow?
-Why does my Tux tattoo still itch?
-Why can't I still get a date?
and now back to the fallout shelter...
The whole topic of games development using DirectX vs OpenGL has been discussed to death here. Sure, the game writers could do it in OpenGL instead of DirectX, but Microsoft has apparently made using DirectX extremely easy. Maybe what it will take is someone to write a translation library that will basically translate the DirectX calls into OpenGL calls. Once that's out there, more games can be done for non-Windows systems. While all that's going on, OpenGL must be made friendlier to use than DirectX.
OK, it's a lot... but if you really want to lure the games developers to the side of platform independence, you have to give them a good reason to do so.
OCO is Loco
When you tried to do this, companies would say that you needed to contact Microsoft for the refund. Microsoft would say you needed to contact the computer seller. Once you finished running around in circles, you found out that it only cost the manufacturer about $1.00 to put the copy of Windows on that machine, and that's what you'd have refunded to you.
Of course, if you needed to get Windows back on the machine, now you'd have to pay the $180 for a full copy of it, because you had to return any and all materials from your computer purchase in order to get your dollar back.
Of course, if you managed to convince the manufacturer to sell you a computer without an operating system pre-installed, you had to pay an extra $10-$50 for that choice. Why? In order to be sure the computer worked in the first place, they had to install Windows to test the peripherals and other devices! Oh, did you want warranty support too? Sorry. "We don't support other operating systems."
The whole pre-installation thing was pure genius on the part of Microsoft's marketing department.
OCO is Loco
So I was reading /. when I came across a typical 'OMG Windows SuXors' article..
I casually sipped my afternoon coffee, set it down, and clicked the article link, bracing myself for the deluge of mind-numbing numbers and references to obscure studies.
After reading the article, I looked to the right side-bar for a list of other recent articles by the author. Trying to get a feel for the authors views, I decided to peruse a few of them.
Well, I must say. Mark Morford has to be one of the most rabid, extremist, over-reactive, leftist, tin-foil hat wearing, Moore wannabe's I've had the displeasure of reading.
Now, before the flames begin to rise, please understand the last paragraph was a simple reciprocle example of Mr. Morford's diatribes. Basically take a simple statement, and make it appear so sensationistically over-the-top.
So now to my point. How can this article be used on a news site, when it is simply nothing more than a rant? I use Linux and Windows, and on occasion Macs. I rarely have any problems with any of my systems. I have never had my Windows boxed filled with virii/trojans, nor have I had a crash in as long as I can remember. Am I just one of the lucky ones, or do I simply ignore the little monkey moving back and forth in a feeble attempt to evade my mouse click for a Free iPod
In order to be sure the computer worked in the first place, they had to install Windows to test the peripherals and other devices!
That may have been an excuse in 1999, but Knot anymore.
Fuck, 800 plus comments as of now, and no one with any real insight gets modded up? Perhaps that is the problem, in itself? No one, not one person that I saw, attempted to take the arrticle and make a decent discussion out of it.
Premise 1: We have a computer user, who is a journalist, has been using Macs for nigh on 15 years, is not extremely tech savy (Get to that in a mo') and sees that his fellow computers users, most of them on one of the millions of brands of PC and one of the various flavours of Windows, be it from Win98 to WinXP, have, in general, more problems with their computers than he does.
What does all that tell me?
I am a Mac user myself (well, I use a PC as well with Linux and Win2000 on it and I used to be a Windows shop sys admin). I agree with his OBSERVATIONS 100%. I mean observations because apart from his subjective ranting on why the world doesn't string BillG up from the rafters, which is his OPINION, his article has a good point.
I have seen and expereienced the same problems with Windows machines, until learning better, such as the 20 seconds till being hacked when first going online with WinXP and the numerous bugs in the OS over the years. Yes, I know as well as you that putting a simple router in front of the machine stops 90% of the bugs and being careful about mails and what you download and keeping up with pacthces will stop the rest, but it is a real pain and, in my experience, one has to ask the simple question: why?
In that I agree with the article. Using Windows is more complex than a Mac with OSX. Now on to the tech savy bit. The author writes about the prize that was offered for hacking the webserver Webstar, which was the only real webserver on classic Mac OS. It was never used widely in the server world and thus is not a good example of application security. The guy reveals his lack of expertise because, all those who know that OSX is based on BSD know that the webserver shipped with OSX is Apache, the same one that upsets the numbers game of OSS with respect to commercial offerings when compared to IIS.
Also, the argument that Windows has more software available is a real one, especially for gamers and for CAD and specialised business applications and the situation will stay that way while Windows has such a dominating marketshare.
And that is a reason for staying with Windows, but it isn't the reason why 90% of the world's computer using public uses PC's and Windows. That reason is simply because PC's are more available and most people have no idea that there are alternatives and are only interested in getting a "computer" with which they can chat, browse, mail, write letters, store photos, listen to music etc. Although a Mac arguably, in my experience, does all of this much better than Windows does, most people will simply go to the nearest shop and use what is there.
Ahmen.
In fact I stopped hating Microsoft (for a while) after my first 10 installs of 2000 Server and Active Directory. I fell for the hype, which was mostly true, until I used Novell Netware 6.0 with eDirectory.
eDirectory is the same, plus better and it runs on Linux, Windows and pretty much any place you want to install it. The licensing is a lot more straight-forward, it's better than Active Directory, runs on Linux and it's Novell. We love Novell now don't we?
I say the question is:
Get your Unix fortune now!