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Microsoft's Martin Taylor Responds
We passed on your requested questions for Martin Taylor, Microsoft's global general manager of platform strategy, and we got a slew of them. Instead of emailing your questions to Martin, we did this interview by phone and added in a few follow-up questions. You can listen to an MP3 of the call, read the transcript (below), or both.
Roblimo: Ok, this is Robin 'Roblimo' Miller of Slashdot. I'm on the phone with Martin Taylor of Microsoft. How are you doing today?
Martin: I'm doing great. I'm very excited to have a chance to talk to you. I know that we've been trying to get together for quite a few months now. So I apologize if my schedule has made it difficult. But I'm glad that we're finally getting it done.
Roblimo: Me too. At long last. (Martin laughs) We have questions which are all from readers. The first one is from Greyfeld - Slashdot user 521548 - and he asked, "Have you ever used Linux? For what purpose and what was your personal experience using Linux?"
Martin: I actually have a couple of machines here in my office that are running Linux. It's mostly just to take a look at what works and doesn't work. We also have probably about a hundred or so servers running, you know, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, you name it. So, you know, we can take a look at how things work and do some comparative analysis and things of that nature.
My personal experience? I use some earlier versions of Linspire and Xandros, and as an end user that is not as technical as some other people, I would say I found it somewhat challenging, downloading and installing some applications and getting Internet access through our proxy server and some of those things.... device plugging in and plugging out was not quite as seamless as I thought they might be. However, I would say the basic user experience of clicking and moving around and things like that, you know, was fine.
Roblimo: Ok. This is a follow up. Askadar asked what is Linux doing right? "I assume that you must have evaluated Linux. While doing that, what did you find about Linux that you think is good?"
Martin: I think a couple of things. One, you know, for the user who really wants to really tear things apart, do things on their own, build their own distribution, they really have, obviously, that level of source code access where they can do things like create a customized distribution with a very, very small footprint with only what they want and not a bunch of other things. You know, Linux is attractive to that class of a user. Linux is attractive to, let's say, Google - a large company that really wants to build a big server farm. They want to hire quite a few very talented engineers to really tune that on a daily basis and things of that nature. So I think that when you get to like specific niche areas and those areas where people really want to get deep on their own and take on a lot of that responsibility on their own, you know, I think Linux is attractive on those scenarios. And obviously that's where you see a lot of the market pick up on Linux on that basis as well.
Roblimo: OK. Lets move on to a different question. This is from your favorite Slashdot poster and mine, Anonymous Coward. This is a question that didn't make the cut, but, I assume... Do you read Slashdot?
Martin: I do. I probably go to Slashdot at least a couple of times a week, but depending upon the news of the day, the news of the week I might be on it multiple times a day. (Roblimo Laughs) Because it depends on what's happening in the world in same way that I would go to MSNBC on big news days and small news days, lets just say.
Roblimo: I understand. This is an Anonymous Coward's question. When Microsoft seems to tout its desire to facilitate interoperability, do you mean interoperability seamlessly between your operating system and environment with alternative systems such as Mac OSX, Linux, Sun Solaris, etc? Or, do you mean interoperability between Microsoft products?
Martin: Yeah, I actually look at two things. I actually call Microsoft products working well with other Microsoft products, firstly, I call that integration. A little bit. I don't know if these are defined terms in any Microsoft textbook or Slashdot glossary. I don't know but...(Martin laughs).
Roblimo: We don't have a glossary. We're not that formal.
Martin: But personally, you know, I say hey, you know, when I think about Microsoft products work with another Microsoft product - I look at that as more integration. How well those things work together. And then I look at interoperability as Microsoft products working with non-Microsoft products. And, I think we work really hard to facilitate something. You can go all the way back, let's say, to integrating with Novell days where we wrote our own Novell client, we wrote our own IPX/SPX stack to allow us to integrate with Novell servers.
Roblimo: What about now though?
Martin: And then, bringing it all the way forward. Even now, with SMS... to allow us through OpenWeb ... to get to Unix and Mac clients and Mac servers and Unix to Linux servers to manage those things, distribute those things. I look at the work that we've done with Services for Unix that allows us to integrate with Unix to Linux environment - NFS gateways, NFS hosts, NFS clients. So I think that we can really look around and say, what are the things that we need to do to either partner with our clients like in the (Gnutella - not clear) case or like in the services for Unix case... find a way to interoperate in different scenarios.
Roblimo: Another question none of the readers asked but really dovetails here. Are you willing to cooperate more closely with the Samba project than you have in the past?
Martin: I think that we're always open working with people in a variety of different levels to make sure that, again, that we can work well together. Now, I would say that most of the things that we do from an interoperability perspective are driven more by customers and less by industry, meaning that when we have customers say, "Hey, we need these two things to work together and then," you know, that's where a lot of our (Gnutella?) projects and channel partnerships come to play with that Unix to Linux integration. That's the work that we're doing with Services for Unix and some of those other spaces. We won't say no to discussing things to anybody but at the end of the day we're gonna really work hard to do what the customer asks us to do.
Roblimo: Next question, from ProteusQ, Slashdot user no. 665382. He's asking about protection against malware and he's asking you Martin Taylor, "What applications do you run to protect your windows license from malware (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) and what do you pay for this protection for a year? How does this cost compare to the costs incurred by other Windows users and compared to what you would pay for the equivalent protection offered in Debian?"
Martin: Got it. So first of all I actually run, obviously, Windows XP. I run XP SP2. I also have downloaded the beta of the spyware product that we recently, one of our recent acquisitions, into a combination of XP SP2 and spyware product that I downloaded. That's pretty much how I protect in running both my desktop pc or my laptop I use here at Microsoft as well as the 3 PCs that I have in my house - a very similar configuration.
Roblimo: How much would these add-on programs cost you? People like you and me, lets say, as a journalist, I too can get free software from anybody. What would it cost you as a regular user?
Martin: Well today, XP SP2 is free if you're a genuine or a valid Windows XP user. It's just a matter of downloading. And today the spyware product that I've downloaded is also a free beta and we've not announced any pricing terms or plans for the product as of yet. So everything I'm using today is free.
Roblimo: Ok. And this is all the protection you need?
Martin: It's all that I have today and it has served me pretty well so far. But I'm hesitant to say its all that I need because I feel, I would be honest to say, that I'm probably not as deep in terms of really analyzing everything that I need but today I have not had any major problem in any shape or fashion with the current configuration. The spyware technology or the anti-spyware technology, I should say, helps me a lot and that was one of the biggest gaps, I would say, in my desktop profile. And, you know, in the spirit of full openness, before we had the spyware technology when I bought a Dell machine for at home for my wife, we actually had, I think, there was some Norton tools that shipped with that PC and again there was no extra charge for that, you know, maybe Dell bundled it into the price, I'm not sure. But I have not personally had got to go out and purchase or download and pay for any additional security product at this point.
Roblimo: Ok. Question that I'm gonna have to ask you personally. This is not from a reader that will segue into the next reader's question. Obviously I run Linux.
Martin: Real quick, what do you run? What version do you run now?
Roblimo: I run MEPIS, which is essential Debian. And right now the browser I have open is Firefox.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So I don't have all those popups and things. How do you keep from seeing popups?
Martin: Windows XP SP2, we have a popup blocker, part of that update to Windows XP that allows me to, you know, deny popups, but also give me a pretty functional bar where I can right click on it when it tells me something has been blocked if I need to see that popup because then, as you know, mini web sites might have the type of transaction engine where they do have something that might appear to popup that you need to get the information to continue whatever transaction you're driving on that website and so...
Roblimo: Firefox has that too.
Martin: Yeah but I'm saying that's what I use - Windows XP SP2.
Roblimo: Here's a related question from Doug Dante. He's asking about open source applications helping Windows compete. "To what extent are open source applications on Windows helping it to be more competitive versus Linux? For example," he says, "I immediately install OpenOffice or, Firefox, and Thunderbird over a virgin Windows install?"
Martin: Yeah, I'm sorry, I heard the initial point saying, "How do open source projects help Windows compete?" I'm not quite ... Repeat the question again. I missed that ...
Roblimo: What he's saying... I'll turn his question around from the way he wrote it.... He's saying when he installs Windows, he takes a virgin Windows install and immediately adds OpenOffice.org Firefox, and the Mozilla based Thunderbird email programs to it. And he's asking, How are these helping Windows to be more competitive versus Linux?"
Martin: Yeah, I guess I don't look at it that way necessarily. I don't look at it saying, "Hey, are there great open source projects that are available on Windows?" I think, let me try to paraphrase it and answer it. I think what he's saying is hey, the new breed of applications available on SourceForge(.net) and open source application, you know, are they making windows become more relevant or helping it compete against Linux, because at the end of the day Windows and Linux are just operating systems and the application stack above that that allows them to be for people to choose. Is that a fair way to look at it?
Roblimo: I would say yes.
Martin: I would say I don't see from that perspective anything different today than yesterday. We've always had a pretty good, let's call it, an application catalog some written by us, most written by everybody else. And so in some way you can say open source as a development model just created a bunch more applications that all can run atop of Windows. And so, you know, people are always shocked by this. They don't know that there's literally over 10,000 projects up on SourceForge for the operating system alone - just for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. And, you know, you can go to SourceForge and browse around and you'll see quite a few applications out there. And that's actually, you know, I'm gonna extend the question a little bit if you don't mind.
Roblimo: Go ahead.
Martin: One thing that really frustrates me a little bit, and you can say this is partly because of us at Microsoft and hopefully we're getting better here, is that people try to position us as Microsoft versus open source. I really don't view the world that way and I know that we don't view the world that way. I think that we view the world saying, you know, take OpenOffice. We think Office, the product that we have, is a great product and we want to make sure that we can show that product in a value offer over OpenOffice.org. Or over OpenOffice or StarOffice every chance that we get. That doesn't mean that we are anti-open source. It means that we think we get a better product compared to that one. Whether that came from open source model or proprietary development model. The same way that we look at Corel or what you still look at - AmiPro or WordPerfect or whatever. And so, you know, to close outthe question. So, yeah, there's application code written for Windows, you know, and underneath the open source model if its licensed underneath the GPL, the, you know, different types of licensing models and open source, then great, God bless them and Godspeed, and that increases the application platform availability that we have.
Roblimo: I'm gonna ask you sort of a question in here that's not in my original list. And I'm actually looking on Slashdot right now. For, again, that you just really led me into, and even if I don't find the exact question I can paraphrase it.... There were over 1,000 comments, you know, on this interview call for questions.
Martin: About midnight last night I was anxiously reading Slashdot. And I was wondering where you're gonna take me, Roblimo. And so, yes, I read everything as of midnight last night, I read every single thing. I think 1,096 was the number I saw at about midnight.
Roblimo: Crazy, crazy. See, you're loved. Everybody loves you.
Martin: But I love everybody. (both laugh)
Roblimo: Anyway the gist of the question is... I can't seem to find it... there are so many. I've got to cut to just plus five questions but there's fifty-some of those. This one was asking about the chronic Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt thing, if it's true that Windows and Microsoft products are that much better, why do that? What's the point? Isn't that like Ford spending their time knocking GM rather than just using Ford?
Martin: I think I know what you're referring to based on some of the stuff that I read last night. And so if I can and you can say I'm cheating, I don't know. But let me kind of, sort of, aggregate about eight or ten different postings I saw last night that kinda speak to that. I think the real...
Roblimo: That's what we're trying to do here.
Martin: They're fresh in my mind, I remember them all, so let me tell you kind of what I heard or what I read last night in aggregate. Pretty much saying, "Hey, why have this get the facts campaign if your products are better as you suggest they are in different categories and why do you feel the need to tell people that they're better...
Roblimo: No, that's not the question.
Martin: Ok.
Roblimo: Why do you, not from you per se but from some of your co-workers, from Microsoft executives, seem to lash at virulently with anger against Linux and open source?
Martin: You know, on this one, I actually think that we've made a lot of progress and so let me be very open with you and kinda give you what I feel is history and I love your read on this as someone who watches us and watches the industry and the things that you do over the length of time you've had. I would say years ago we did not fully understand - I'm speaking aggregately as a company - did not fully understand Linux and open source and so whatever you're dealing with something that is a bit of unknown, I think it's natural to have somewhat of an emotional reaction to that. And also if things didn't quite make sense to you, when you thought people might be acting somewhat irrational, then again it led to somewhat of an emotional response in some ways. And so I think that was the early view. I would also say, you know, that it's a shared responsibility issue because, again, as an avid reader of Slashdot, I would say that many of the folks who participate on Slashdot are somewhat... viceral.
Roblimo: Really! What might have led you to that belief, sir? (laughs)
Martin: And their feelings towards us. And so I think that there was a point where we both maybe kinda at each other a little bit. I think that we need to get past that to the point where everyone benefits from a more constructive, pragmatic dialogue to the point where, you know, it's not an emotional thing saying Linux is bad or open source is awful or those types of things, but it's a more pragmatic customer oriented thing that says "Hey, here's why I think we've got great value added here, here's why I think we have a better TCO story. Here's why I think that our integration ..."
Roblimo: Let's move on to a TCO question. It's where you gonna go anyway..
Martin: No, no, no. I was basically gonna say...
Roblimo: No, no I have a question about TCO.
Martin: Hold that for one second.
Roblimo: Ok.
Martin: So I think that we've come a long way from where we were years ago. Can we handle everybody on every comment everyday? No, but I think in aggregate, and I hope you would agree, what you hear coming out from Microsoft is a the different tone than you heard three years ago.
Roblimo: A compassionate, proprietary software company. (laughs). Alright let's talk about ...
Martin: (Laughs). That's a good tag line, I have to pay you if I use that in my next PR speeches?
Roblimo: Absolutely, pay me what it's worth, namely zero. (laughs) Here's RailGunner who's a registered user no. 554645, he wants to talk about Windows TCO versus Linux TCO. And he asks, "Why do you claim Windows has a lower Total Cost of Ownership yet you do not add the cost not incurred by Linux and FOSS beyond open source software of a Virus Scanner, Microsoft Office on the desktop or IIS/SQL Server on the server, plus the damage that is done by such worms as the Blaster and Slammer?
Martin: Yeah, so it's kind of a two-part question. The first thing I would say is, you know, when you go take a look at the Total Cost of Ownership of studies that were done both by Forrester, by Giga, by IDC and by some of the other analysts, they go to the entire solution. Some of those solutions do have some level of Web server and application server as part of it and some are more than just simple workload scenarios. I think that rarely do we say Microsoft gives you lower Total Cost of Ownership." I think what you'd find us really saying when you get to the next level is "Hey, for this solution, for this scenario, this set of products compared to these other set of products, Microsoft can deliver lower Total Cost of Ownership." So it's really more of a product and a scenario based thing to take a look at, and then all those elements that come into play there. So that's the first thing that kinda covers the first part. The second part you mentioned was the notion of how you account for, let's say, some of the security issues from that perspective.
Roblimo: They never seem to be included, right. In the studies that I've read - believe me - I've been to all the Microsoft market materials and independent studies. Independent studies done by companies which are supported at some point by Microsoft, however, I must put a disclaimer that Microsoft is a major advertiser on OSTG - and we thank you for your support.
Martin: And these kinds of companies are also supported by IBM and HP and Red Hat and other companies as well because of kind of the way that our industry moves. All that being said, so, on the second part, we've been looking for way on how you model that out. Yeah, how do you model out what you do about security. Yeah, you could always do, let's say, the analysis post-hurricane, and take a look at, "Ok, what were the damages based on this scenario?" But that really doesn't give you a view of Total Cost of Ownership or anything like that, so we've been trying to find a way to model out, let's say, Total Cost of Security, or something like that where you can be somewhat predictive. But it's incredibly hard to do and so, you know, I'll ask our wide community of Slashdot users - if someone out there has a model where they can do some type of predictive modeling, because that's really what it's about, it's about predictive modeling on what will the cost be over the next three to five years. How does that look? You know, I'd love any input and guidance, but I know some of the analyst firms are also grappling with this idea, as well.
Roblimo: And most of these people read Slashdot too...so you will get answers.
Martin: So,you know, we'll figure this out at some point in time but the way to do that is not to say, "Look, we spent X amount of money to due to Blaster, you know, so now I think now the right thing to is ask, "Hey, what does it cost us to design a secure environment? What does it cost us, you know, to innoculate our environment? What does it cost us from a people resource perspective to build the right redundancy required should something happen?" So those are the costs that... I think you'd want modeled out and look into when looking at Total Cost of Security from that perspective. But I could be wrong and I'd love some feedback.
Roblimo: You'll get it. And here's sort of a question that I pulled out of one of the thousand-worders that was cogent... This is a theme that runs throughout the TCO studies that Microsoft boosts. He asks us, "Do Linux geeks really pull in that much more money salary-wise than Windows geeks?" That's a common theme - that it costs more to hire a Linux admin. And he says, "I find this claim hard to swallow especially in today's economy."
Martin: OK, well. This is kind of a my-word-against-your-word thing that I don't want us to get there. But I just hired 16 Linux consultants for a project I'm doing. And I asked the company that was doing the hiring to actually - I also had to hire 16 Windows and .NET architects as well. No question that 16 Linux guys I hired cost me a lot more. And it's just a matter of, its just economics - its simple economics. There's way more people out there that I know that might be unsettling for our friendly Slashdot readers.... I don't mean this a bad way... But in all honesty, there's way more guys out there that know Windows than know Linux. That's just the reality.
Roblimo: Is it possible that it was just hard to find Linux-skilled people who are seriously into it... skilled people who are willing to work for Microsoft?
Martin: It wasn't a, it was a third-party. They didn't know that they were working for Microsoft.
Roblimo: Ahh. Ok.
Martin: I had a third-party go out there to hire 16 topnotch Linux developers/architects and 16 topnotch Windows architects so I could do some comparative studies on some work that we're doing. And no one knew that Microsoft had anything to do with this in terms of hiring people to work on this.
Roblimo: Interesting.
Martin: And so anyway, again, its less about that. It's more about the fact that, hey, there's just less skilled people out there, you know, in aggregate, in our IT population. And so, I think, that's the big issue.
Roblimo: Ok. The salary thing does contradict what I see here in Florida. But aside from that, again like you say, you know, I've seen two thousand salary surveys and three thousand answers.
So, here's another question - very different - about Microsoft - breaking it's own software from Aim Here (765712). "All these serial number checks, dial-home schemes, registration schemes, digital "rights" management schemes, crippled 'starter' versions of Windows, and now all sorts of anti-piracy checks whenever someone wants to patch their Windows box - Microsoft spends an awful lot of time and effort deliberately making sure their software doesn't work unless the customer jumps through the appropriate hoops. Aren't you worried that this continual (and increasingly intrusive) process of deliberately breaking and/or crippling your own software is going to alienate some of your customers and make them feel like criminals, particularly since the makers of the free software operating systems that you're now competing against have no need of any of it and can concentrate all of their resources on trying to make their software work?"
Martin: OK. You said a lot there. I won't cut and parse through that early part.
Roblimo: Bottom line is, here I am running Debian and if I decide that I want to add three more computers, I will take the CD and slap it on, end of story. And my net cost for a complete desktop is zero and I don't have to register it. I can't do that with the one instance with Windows that I do have, I can't slap it into another computer.
Martin: A couple of things. One, I would say when you look at commercial companies now they adopt and deploy Red Hat and the commercialized distribution.... There is a registration process if I want to install Red Hat on another server and has support for that server. Yes, I can go freely copy it wherever I want, but if I want to have supported servers as most organizations do and/or supported desktops, there is a registration process. So I think that we don't look that dissimilar in our model of, you know, asking people to register or at least, you know, fill out/verify the legal copy that they are using.
The second thing I would say is, one thing that I wasn't sure from the statement that was made by, I think, Aim Here, was that "we require people to go through hoops in order to patch those systems." That is not the process today. Today if you're running on Windows and you need a security patch, you know, there is no additional hoops or things you need to go through in order to install a security fix for your technology today. So that was a little bit weird as well. And again, and lastly, I think we're working super hard to make whatever this process is incredibly seamless. You know, I, again, I recently bought a Dell computer for my wife at home and it was literally seconds that it took it to go up to Microsoft.com, verify its ID and then come back down.
So I think that, you know, what you're going to begin to see is the continual evolution of kind of a community-to-commercial approach that's happening in the Linux, or, let's call it, really, the distribution world. Because, yes, you'll always be able to install, you know, Debian or something like that on a million machines if you'd like. But again, as things become more commercial as they are with the Linux distributors, you'll see similar processes in place because that's the only way that they can verify users so they can offer them a support model.
Roblimo: So what you're saying is that you have to register for support with Linux.
Martin: I mean, I'm not an aggressive Linux user as some of our Slashdot audiences are. But the servers I have running and the desktops I have running here, I do have to register those with Red Hat to be in agreement with my Red Hat support agreement.
Roblimo: OK. Not everybody uses Red Hat.
Martin: No... Most commercial customers that I've talked to primarily use Red Hat or SuSE as their distribution for commercial customers.
Roblimo: OK... Let me ask... Let's move on here. We have, really, two more questions and this is the last long one, from JimmytheGeek ... (laughs)
Martin: I'm worried already.
Roblimo: He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805. And he's saying, "One of the myths about Windows is that there is a company behind it you can hold responsible for flaws that impact an organization." "But," he goes on, "if you read the EULA, the End User Licensing Agreement, of any Microsoft product, even an update, it disclaims any responsibility whatsoever. They specifically avow that they are not fit for any purpose. So what's up with that?"
Martin: Yeah, this is a broader conversation, a broader question. I actually read this question last night as well from Jimmy.
Roblimo: I've read the EULAs. I'm the only person you've ever met who's probably read every single licensing agreement for every piece of software he's installed.
Martin: There's a couple of lawyers that we have here that read quite a few EULAs as well.
Roblimo: They are sick, too....
Martin: (laughs) Nevertheless, there's a couple of things. First of all, I would say, really when we talk about the kind of accountability and standing behind it, there's a few things that we reference there and where we spend our time. One is, for commercial customers, you know, how we can provide this level of roadmap, this level of ownership and all these types of things today on that perspective, let's just call it from the general support perspective, and how that works. I mean anyone will agree that Red Hat or IBM or even Novell with SUSE, they can only take, you know, things to a point at the end of the day, because at the end of the day they don't own the kernel, they don't take the final decision on what's in or what's out of 2.6...
Roblimo: Well, no, they can modify it however they want.
Martin: No, of course but when they do, then you could be on a different path, or you can be on a different path or fork on a different tree, but essentially they start with what level of mods that they do. And so the point of that is to say, "Hey, we have that all the way in the end level of ownership where we can deal with that."
The bigger issue that comes up of this accountability issue is around this notion of indemnification and protection. This notion of "Hey, I can tell any one of my customers, if there's any issue from an IT perspective, you know, patent, copyright, trade secrets..." Microsoft fully takes care of you and we extended all the way down to any end user where that wasn't a part of our normal EULA. As of November we made that change as well - EULA being in the End User Licensing Agreement. And so I think that's the issue where a lot of accountability come into play. But how do the vendors, or how do the distributor or software provider fully protects and indemnify any customer that is using their software from ...
Roblimo: I don't think that's the question that we're trying to ask. He says, and I can give you the full thing.. "Open source licenses usually have the same thing, but those are generally free products. You guys have taken in a couple hundred billion. Plus, we can use the code as we like. So you can't claim any kind of equivalence." So I think what he's talking about is the one big glaring thing - that Microsoft in those EULAs does not claim the software is fit for any particular purpose or that it will work, essentially.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Roblimo: No, for any given purpose.
Martin: C'mon Rob, I know that's the broad surface. Go read Red Hat EULA and Red Hat will pretty much say, "Hey,we can't guarantee anything with the software either." I've read it. Read their filing statements. It's the same thing, right?...
Roblimo: Well I use a different variety of Linux, perhaps...
Martin: Right, so I think it's impossible for any software provider to say categorically their offer can do any single thing that you ever want to do in the world. Right?
Roblimo: Mmmmm, yeah, but it's always been an amusement part, you almost have to laugh...
Martin: Fine, so it's fine that people can have good sport with it, but when you get down to the kind of the brass tacks at the end of the day, again, I don't know any software provider that says, "Hey, our software can do anything in the world that you want to do, so go do it."
Roblimo: There's implied fitness in most products, like, if I were to go buy a Jeep Cherokee - I have one - there is an implied fact both by their (being on) sale and the FTC forces them... and other government agencies force them to imply that it's safe to drive on the road, or reasonably. Not that it's safe for me to drive drunk with no shoulder harness and go crazy at 120 miles an hour, but that it's fit for the purpose of being, you know, a transportation device.
Martin: Right.
Roblimo: And this is something that, you know, again, maybe the software industry in general needs to work on, wouldn't you say?
Martin: Yeah, I would actually take us up on that. This is not a Microsoft specific issue, because I don't think we're that unlike any other commercial software provider, you know. And with regards to that, it's probably easier to make fun with us than anybody else. But nevertheless...
Roblimo: One last question that you sort of touched on earlier... Augustz - with a "Z" on the end - asks this very bluntly: "Are Google morons given that TCO is significantly less for Windows than Linux?" and his reference is the Microsoft advertising and "Get the Facts" literature. "Are the folks at Google morons for using Linux? They use a lot of computers, and TCO has got to be important to their environment."
Martin: That's one of those, let's call them niche environments where I would say, I'd personally... Well, let's be honest. Your average commercial company will not pay for the staff that Google has to run their engine. I mean, they hire quite a few very senior, very technical people to do a very specific function. And from that perspective, they're very different from your generic IT scenario. Most companies, I mean, given that most companies are not technology companies, most companies that I talk to, they're not in business to hire a whole bunch of people to drive a stack of servers. They're in business to, you know.. they are airline companies that put people on planes. They are soda companies that to get people to drink. They are news companies like Slashdot to get people news. And so, anytime that they can reduce the complexity of their environment and not have to hire people to manage or maintain that, that's a good thing for them. And so, I can tell you that again that's a different usage scenario in terms of how they've optimized around that based on a more general purpose scenario.
I'm not gonna go and say "Oh my God, they're crazy, they're gonna have an incredibly high cost of ownership because of what they've done. I also not going to go on record to say that they could go to Windows servers and their TCO would drop in half. Again, as I said earlier, when we look at Total Cost of Ownership it's by solution, by scenario - not a broad, sweeping all-things-are-made-of, all-people-type-of-statement.
Roblimo: That's all the questions I have planned. Are there any we failed to include but we should have?
Martin: No, I'd say as I read last night, there were some that we probably can never talk about publicly because... (both laugh) which was fine. But I have their names and emails myself so I can answer them. And then there's some kind of around this whole "get the facts" thing and I do maybe, in closing, want to talk about that a little bit, if that's ok.
Roblimo: Go right ahead.
Martin: Let me give you a little bit of history on kinda why I'm doing what I'm doing the way that I'm doing it. You know when I joined, I tried to go figure and work on some of this, I was amazed at reading Slashdot and reading some other things... just how aggressive people were on Microsoft isn't this, Linux is this. But it was (usually) grounded in one instance meaning, "Hey, I did this one time and here's why I think one or both or neither are better or good or bad," or it was just not grounded at all on any level set of data.
And so a big push that I wanted was to just get the facts, and say "Hey let's move this out of an emotional, aggressive discussion and let's really kind of have it based more on a practical, pragmatic discussion." Actually I even got that from customers.
I'm not a deep, deep technical guy, I'm not a deep, deep industry guy. I spend more of my time talking to customers, trying to structure the work that I do based on what they ask. And customers are asking, "Hey, can you help me understand TCO, Microsoft versus Linux for this scenario in the work that we do? Which of these technologies... help me understand this or that..." And that's the kind of work that we do.
And so, if you read the details, which I'm sure you have, if not, we're not 100% favorable to Microsoft. There are some things in there that say why Linux is good, there are some things in there that say why the Web work load, one of our older studies, you know, gave good TCO for Linux and Apache against IIS 5.0. So there are things out there, and I try to be as transparent as possible on all of those types of things. I mentioned earlier about another company, I used another company to hire these people, I didn't want to bias the study in any way by people knowing Microsoft was hiring these engineers, so I had a third party hire them. And, of course, once everything is done, everything is transparent, so you can see everything in terms of the server configuration, who we hire, you know, how the whole thing works, but there's a deep level of transparency that I try to provide.
But again, on that one that I mentioned, I wanted to make sure that they weren't biased because I was hiring them. So I work really, really hard to make sure we don't bias these things and they're aa pragmatic as possible. And so, if there are topics that, you know, people think we should undertake... again, I hear from customers all the time, and that's what we spend time on but, you know, I'll keep reading Slashdot, and when people post stuff and issues into them, then we'll take on some of those discussions and challenges as well.
Roblimo: I'll tell you what, here's an open invitation that's a good idea. When this is posted, there will be discussion. Do you have a Slashdot login?
Martin: I do not have a Slashdot login but I feel bad about that, and so as of tonight I will have one. Will it cost me any money?
Roblimo: It will cost you just as much as Debian Linux and all the software on my desktop.
Martin: Oh that'll cost me a lot of money to manage and maintain but... Robin, Oh no, no, you can leave it alone. It just works (laughs) In other words it will cost you nothing.
Martin: No problem. So I will get a Slashdot account tonight.
Roblimo: I'm saying you're absolutely welcome to jump into the discussion, and I think your participation will be very valuable.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So, thank you so much for your time. This has been, as always, a pleasure.
Martin: Ok Rob, thank you so much, and I apologize for taking so long to do this and I look forward to maybe doing it again. Ok?
Roblimo: I love it.
Martin: Ok, thanks. END
Roblimo: Ok, this is Robin 'Roblimo' Miller of Slashdot. I'm on the phone with Martin Taylor of Microsoft. How are you doing today?
Martin: I'm doing great. I'm very excited to have a chance to talk to you. I know that we've been trying to get together for quite a few months now. So I apologize if my schedule has made it difficult. But I'm glad that we're finally getting it done.
Roblimo: Me too. At long last. (Martin laughs) We have questions which are all from readers. The first one is from Greyfeld - Slashdot user 521548 - and he asked, "Have you ever used Linux? For what purpose and what was your personal experience using Linux?"
Martin: I actually have a couple of machines here in my office that are running Linux. It's mostly just to take a look at what works and doesn't work. We also have probably about a hundred or so servers running, you know, Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, you name it. So, you know, we can take a look at how things work and do some comparative analysis and things of that nature.
My personal experience? I use some earlier versions of Linspire and Xandros, and as an end user that is not as technical as some other people, I would say I found it somewhat challenging, downloading and installing some applications and getting Internet access through our proxy server and some of those things.... device plugging in and plugging out was not quite as seamless as I thought they might be. However, I would say the basic user experience of clicking and moving around and things like that, you know, was fine.
Roblimo: Ok. This is a follow up. Askadar asked what is Linux doing right? "I assume that you must have evaluated Linux. While doing that, what did you find about Linux that you think is good?"
Martin: I think a couple of things. One, you know, for the user who really wants to really tear things apart, do things on their own, build their own distribution, they really have, obviously, that level of source code access where they can do things like create a customized distribution with a very, very small footprint with only what they want and not a bunch of other things. You know, Linux is attractive to that class of a user. Linux is attractive to, let's say, Google - a large company that really wants to build a big server farm. They want to hire quite a few very talented engineers to really tune that on a daily basis and things of that nature. So I think that when you get to like specific niche areas and those areas where people really want to get deep on their own and take on a lot of that responsibility on their own, you know, I think Linux is attractive on those scenarios. And obviously that's where you see a lot of the market pick up on Linux on that basis as well.
Roblimo: OK. Lets move on to a different question. This is from your favorite Slashdot poster and mine, Anonymous Coward. This is a question that didn't make the cut, but, I assume... Do you read Slashdot?
Martin: I do. I probably go to Slashdot at least a couple of times a week, but depending upon the news of the day, the news of the week I might be on it multiple times a day. (Roblimo Laughs) Because it depends on what's happening in the world in same way that I would go to MSNBC on big news days and small news days, lets just say.
Roblimo: I understand. This is an Anonymous Coward's question. When Microsoft seems to tout its desire to facilitate interoperability, do you mean interoperability seamlessly between your operating system and environment with alternative systems such as Mac OSX, Linux, Sun Solaris, etc? Or, do you mean interoperability between Microsoft products?
Martin: Yeah, I actually look at two things. I actually call Microsoft products working well with other Microsoft products, firstly, I call that integration. A little bit. I don't know if these are defined terms in any Microsoft textbook or Slashdot glossary. I don't know but...(Martin laughs).
Roblimo: We don't have a glossary. We're not that formal.
Martin: But personally, you know, I say hey, you know, when I think about Microsoft products work with another Microsoft product - I look at that as more integration. How well those things work together. And then I look at interoperability as Microsoft products working with non-Microsoft products. And, I think we work really hard to facilitate something. You can go all the way back, let's say, to integrating with Novell days where we wrote our own Novell client, we wrote our own IPX/SPX stack to allow us to integrate with Novell servers.
Roblimo: What about now though?
Martin: And then, bringing it all the way forward. Even now, with SMS... to allow us through OpenWeb ... to get to Unix and Mac clients and Mac servers and Unix to Linux servers to manage those things, distribute those things. I look at the work that we've done with Services for Unix that allows us to integrate with Unix to Linux environment - NFS gateways, NFS hosts, NFS clients. So I think that we can really look around and say, what are the things that we need to do to either partner with our clients like in the (Gnutella - not clear) case or like in the services for Unix case... find a way to interoperate in different scenarios.
Roblimo: Another question none of the readers asked but really dovetails here. Are you willing to cooperate more closely with the Samba project than you have in the past?
Martin: I think that we're always open working with people in a variety of different levels to make sure that, again, that we can work well together. Now, I would say that most of the things that we do from an interoperability perspective are driven more by customers and less by industry, meaning that when we have customers say, "Hey, we need these two things to work together and then," you know, that's where a lot of our (Gnutella?) projects and channel partnerships come to play with that Unix to Linux integration. That's the work that we're doing with Services for Unix and some of those other spaces. We won't say no to discussing things to anybody but at the end of the day we're gonna really work hard to do what the customer asks us to do.
Roblimo: Next question, from ProteusQ, Slashdot user no. 665382. He's asking about protection against malware and he's asking you Martin Taylor, "What applications do you run to protect your windows license from malware (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) and what do you pay for this protection for a year? How does this cost compare to the costs incurred by other Windows users and compared to what you would pay for the equivalent protection offered in Debian?"
Martin: Got it. So first of all I actually run, obviously, Windows XP. I run XP SP2. I also have downloaded the beta of the spyware product that we recently, one of our recent acquisitions, into a combination of XP SP2 and spyware product that I downloaded. That's pretty much how I protect in running both my desktop pc or my laptop I use here at Microsoft as well as the 3 PCs that I have in my house - a very similar configuration.
Roblimo: How much would these add-on programs cost you? People like you and me, lets say, as a journalist, I too can get free software from anybody. What would it cost you as a regular user?
Martin: Well today, XP SP2 is free if you're a genuine or a valid Windows XP user. It's just a matter of downloading. And today the spyware product that I've downloaded is also a free beta and we've not announced any pricing terms or plans for the product as of yet. So everything I'm using today is free.
Roblimo: Ok. And this is all the protection you need?
Martin: It's all that I have today and it has served me pretty well so far. But I'm hesitant to say its all that I need because I feel, I would be honest to say, that I'm probably not as deep in terms of really analyzing everything that I need but today I have not had any major problem in any shape or fashion with the current configuration. The spyware technology or the anti-spyware technology, I should say, helps me a lot and that was one of the biggest gaps, I would say, in my desktop profile. And, you know, in the spirit of full openness, before we had the spyware technology when I bought a Dell machine for at home for my wife, we actually had, I think, there was some Norton tools that shipped with that PC and again there was no extra charge for that, you know, maybe Dell bundled it into the price, I'm not sure. But I have not personally had got to go out and purchase or download and pay for any additional security product at this point.
Roblimo: Ok. Question that I'm gonna have to ask you personally. This is not from a reader that will segue into the next reader's question. Obviously I run Linux.
Martin: Real quick, what do you run? What version do you run now?
Roblimo: I run MEPIS, which is essential Debian. And right now the browser I have open is Firefox.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So I don't have all those popups and things. How do you keep from seeing popups?
Martin: Windows XP SP2, we have a popup blocker, part of that update to Windows XP that allows me to, you know, deny popups, but also give me a pretty functional bar where I can right click on it when it tells me something has been blocked if I need to see that popup because then, as you know, mini web sites might have the type of transaction engine where they do have something that might appear to popup that you need to get the information to continue whatever transaction you're driving on that website and so...
Roblimo: Firefox has that too.
Martin: Yeah but I'm saying that's what I use - Windows XP SP2.
Roblimo: Here's a related question from Doug Dante. He's asking about open source applications helping Windows compete. "To what extent are open source applications on Windows helping it to be more competitive versus Linux? For example," he says, "I immediately install OpenOffice or, Firefox, and Thunderbird over a virgin Windows install?"
Martin: Yeah, I'm sorry, I heard the initial point saying, "How do open source projects help Windows compete?" I'm not quite ... Repeat the question again. I missed that ...
Roblimo: What he's saying... I'll turn his question around from the way he wrote it.... He's saying when he installs Windows, he takes a virgin Windows install and immediately adds OpenOffice.org Firefox, and the Mozilla based Thunderbird email programs to it. And he's asking, How are these helping Windows to be more competitive versus Linux?"
Martin: Yeah, I guess I don't look at it that way necessarily. I don't look at it saying, "Hey, are there great open source projects that are available on Windows?" I think, let me try to paraphrase it and answer it. I think what he's saying is hey, the new breed of applications available on SourceForge(.net) and open source application, you know, are they making windows become more relevant or helping it compete against Linux, because at the end of the day Windows and Linux are just operating systems and the application stack above that that allows them to be for people to choose. Is that a fair way to look at it?
Roblimo: I would say yes.
Martin: I would say I don't see from that perspective anything different today than yesterday. We've always had a pretty good, let's call it, an application catalog some written by us, most written by everybody else. And so in some way you can say open source as a development model just created a bunch more applications that all can run atop of Windows. And so, you know, people are always shocked by this. They don't know that there's literally over 10,000 projects up on SourceForge for the operating system alone - just for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. And, you know, you can go to SourceForge and browse around and you'll see quite a few applications out there. And that's actually, you know, I'm gonna extend the question a little bit if you don't mind.
Roblimo: Go ahead.
Martin: One thing that really frustrates me a little bit, and you can say this is partly because of us at Microsoft and hopefully we're getting better here, is that people try to position us as Microsoft versus open source. I really don't view the world that way and I know that we don't view the world that way. I think that we view the world saying, you know, take OpenOffice. We think Office, the product that we have, is a great product and we want to make sure that we can show that product in a value offer over OpenOffice.org. Or over OpenOffice or StarOffice every chance that we get. That doesn't mean that we are anti-open source. It means that we think we get a better product compared to that one. Whether that came from open source model or proprietary development model. The same way that we look at Corel or what you still look at - AmiPro or WordPerfect or whatever. And so, you know, to close outthe question. So, yeah, there's application code written for Windows, you know, and underneath the open source model if its licensed underneath the GPL, the, you know, different types of licensing models and open source, then great, God bless them and Godspeed, and that increases the application platform availability that we have.
Roblimo: I'm gonna ask you sort of a question in here that's not in my original list. And I'm actually looking on Slashdot right now. For, again, that you just really led me into, and even if I don't find the exact question I can paraphrase it.... There were over 1,000 comments, you know, on this interview call for questions.
Martin: About midnight last night I was anxiously reading Slashdot. And I was wondering where you're gonna take me, Roblimo. And so, yes, I read everything as of midnight last night, I read every single thing. I think 1,096 was the number I saw at about midnight.
Roblimo: Crazy, crazy. See, you're loved. Everybody loves you.
Martin: But I love everybody. (both laugh)
Roblimo: Anyway the gist of the question is... I can't seem to find it... there are so many. I've got to cut to just plus five questions but there's fifty-some of those. This one was asking about the chronic Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt thing, if it's true that Windows and Microsoft products are that much better, why do that? What's the point? Isn't that like Ford spending their time knocking GM rather than just using Ford?
Martin: I think I know what you're referring to based on some of the stuff that I read last night. And so if I can and you can say I'm cheating, I don't know. But let me kind of, sort of, aggregate about eight or ten different postings I saw last night that kinda speak to that. I think the real...
Roblimo: That's what we're trying to do here.
Martin: They're fresh in my mind, I remember them all, so let me tell you kind of what I heard or what I read last night in aggregate. Pretty much saying, "Hey, why have this get the facts campaign if your products are better as you suggest they are in different categories and why do you feel the need to tell people that they're better...
Roblimo: No, that's not the question.
Martin: Ok.
Roblimo: Why do you, not from you per se but from some of your co-workers, from Microsoft executives, seem to lash at virulently with anger against Linux and open source?
Martin: You know, on this one, I actually think that we've made a lot of progress and so let me be very open with you and kinda give you what I feel is history and I love your read on this as someone who watches us and watches the industry and the things that you do over the length of time you've had. I would say years ago we did not fully understand - I'm speaking aggregately as a company - did not fully understand Linux and open source and so whatever you're dealing with something that is a bit of unknown, I think it's natural to have somewhat of an emotional reaction to that. And also if things didn't quite make sense to you, when you thought people might be acting somewhat irrational, then again it led to somewhat of an emotional response in some ways. And so I think that was the early view. I would also say, you know, that it's a shared responsibility issue because, again, as an avid reader of Slashdot, I would say that many of the folks who participate on Slashdot are somewhat... viceral.
Roblimo: Really! What might have led you to that belief, sir? (laughs)
Martin: And their feelings towards us. And so I think that there was a point where we both maybe kinda at each other a little bit. I think that we need to get past that to the point where everyone benefits from a more constructive, pragmatic dialogue to the point where, you know, it's not an emotional thing saying Linux is bad or open source is awful or those types of things, but it's a more pragmatic customer oriented thing that says "Hey, here's why I think we've got great value added here, here's why I think we have a better TCO story. Here's why I think that our integration ..."
Roblimo: Let's move on to a TCO question. It's where you gonna go anyway..
Martin: No, no, no. I was basically gonna say...
Roblimo: No, no I have a question about TCO.
Martin: Hold that for one second.
Roblimo: Ok.
Martin: So I think that we've come a long way from where we were years ago. Can we handle everybody on every comment everyday? No, but I think in aggregate, and I hope you would agree, what you hear coming out from Microsoft is a the different tone than you heard three years ago.
Roblimo: A compassionate, proprietary software company. (laughs). Alright let's talk about ...
Martin: (Laughs). That's a good tag line, I have to pay you if I use that in my next PR speeches?
Roblimo: Absolutely, pay me what it's worth, namely zero. (laughs) Here's RailGunner who's a registered user no. 554645, he wants to talk about Windows TCO versus Linux TCO. And he asks, "Why do you claim Windows has a lower Total Cost of Ownership yet you do not add the cost not incurred by Linux and FOSS beyond open source software of a Virus Scanner, Microsoft Office on the desktop or IIS/SQL Server on the server, plus the damage that is done by such worms as the Blaster and Slammer?
Martin: Yeah, so it's kind of a two-part question. The first thing I would say is, you know, when you go take a look at the Total Cost of Ownership of studies that were done both by Forrester, by Giga, by IDC and by some of the other analysts, they go to the entire solution. Some of those solutions do have some level of Web server and application server as part of it and some are more than just simple workload scenarios. I think that rarely do we say Microsoft gives you lower Total Cost of Ownership." I think what you'd find us really saying when you get to the next level is "Hey, for this solution, for this scenario, this set of products compared to these other set of products, Microsoft can deliver lower Total Cost of Ownership." So it's really more of a product and a scenario based thing to take a look at, and then all those elements that come into play there. So that's the first thing that kinda covers the first part. The second part you mentioned was the notion of how you account for, let's say, some of the security issues from that perspective.
Roblimo: They never seem to be included, right. In the studies that I've read - believe me - I've been to all the Microsoft market materials and independent studies. Independent studies done by companies which are supported at some point by Microsoft, however, I must put a disclaimer that Microsoft is a major advertiser on OSTG - and we thank you for your support.
Martin: And these kinds of companies are also supported by IBM and HP and Red Hat and other companies as well because of kind of the way that our industry moves. All that being said, so, on the second part, we've been looking for way on how you model that out. Yeah, how do you model out what you do about security. Yeah, you could always do, let's say, the analysis post-hurricane, and take a look at, "Ok, what were the damages based on this scenario?" But that really doesn't give you a view of Total Cost of Ownership or anything like that, so we've been trying to find a way to model out, let's say, Total Cost of Security, or something like that where you can be somewhat predictive. But it's incredibly hard to do and so, you know, I'll ask our wide community of Slashdot users - if someone out there has a model where they can do some type of predictive modeling, because that's really what it's about, it's about predictive modeling on what will the cost be over the next three to five years. How does that look? You know, I'd love any input and guidance, but I know some of the analyst firms are also grappling with this idea, as well.
Roblimo: And most of these people read Slashdot too...so you will get answers.
Martin: So,you know, we'll figure this out at some point in time but the way to do that is not to say, "Look, we spent X amount of money to due to Blaster, you know, so now I think now the right thing to is ask, "Hey, what does it cost us to design a secure environment? What does it cost us, you know, to innoculate our environment? What does it cost us from a people resource perspective to build the right redundancy required should something happen?" So those are the costs that... I think you'd want modeled out and look into when looking at Total Cost of Security from that perspective. But I could be wrong and I'd love some feedback.
Roblimo: You'll get it. And here's sort of a question that I pulled out of one of the thousand-worders that was cogent... This is a theme that runs throughout the TCO studies that Microsoft boosts. He asks us, "Do Linux geeks really pull in that much more money salary-wise than Windows geeks?" That's a common theme - that it costs more to hire a Linux admin. And he says, "I find this claim hard to swallow especially in today's economy."
Martin: OK, well. This is kind of a my-word-against-your-word thing that I don't want us to get there. But I just hired 16 Linux consultants for a project I'm doing. And I asked the company that was doing the hiring to actually - I also had to hire 16 Windows and .NET architects as well. No question that 16 Linux guys I hired cost me a lot more. And it's just a matter of, its just economics - its simple economics. There's way more people out there that I know that might be unsettling for our friendly Slashdot readers.... I don't mean this a bad way... But in all honesty, there's way more guys out there that know Windows than know Linux. That's just the reality.
Roblimo: Is it possible that it was just hard to find Linux-skilled people who are seriously into it... skilled people who are willing to work for Microsoft?
Martin: It wasn't a, it was a third-party. They didn't know that they were working for Microsoft.
Roblimo: Ahh. Ok.
Martin: I had a third-party go out there to hire 16 topnotch Linux developers/architects and 16 topnotch Windows architects so I could do some comparative studies on some work that we're doing. And no one knew that Microsoft had anything to do with this in terms of hiring people to work on this.
Roblimo: Interesting.
Martin: And so anyway, again, its less about that. It's more about the fact that, hey, there's just less skilled people out there, you know, in aggregate, in our IT population. And so, I think, that's the big issue.
Roblimo: Ok. The salary thing does contradict what I see here in Florida. But aside from that, again like you say, you know, I've seen two thousand salary surveys and three thousand answers.
So, here's another question - very different - about Microsoft - breaking it's own software from Aim Here (765712). "All these serial number checks, dial-home schemes, registration schemes, digital "rights" management schemes, crippled 'starter' versions of Windows, and now all sorts of anti-piracy checks whenever someone wants to patch their Windows box - Microsoft spends an awful lot of time and effort deliberately making sure their software doesn't work unless the customer jumps through the appropriate hoops. Aren't you worried that this continual (and increasingly intrusive) process of deliberately breaking and/or crippling your own software is going to alienate some of your customers and make them feel like criminals, particularly since the makers of the free software operating systems that you're now competing against have no need of any of it and can concentrate all of their resources on trying to make their software work?"
Martin: OK. You said a lot there. I won't cut and parse through that early part.
Roblimo: Bottom line is, here I am running Debian and if I decide that I want to add three more computers, I will take the CD and slap it on, end of story. And my net cost for a complete desktop is zero and I don't have to register it. I can't do that with the one instance with Windows that I do have, I can't slap it into another computer.
Martin: A couple of things. One, I would say when you look at commercial companies now they adopt and deploy Red Hat and the commercialized distribution.... There is a registration process if I want to install Red Hat on another server and has support for that server. Yes, I can go freely copy it wherever I want, but if I want to have supported servers as most organizations do and/or supported desktops, there is a registration process. So I think that we don't look that dissimilar in our model of, you know, asking people to register or at least, you know, fill out/verify the legal copy that they are using.
The second thing I would say is, one thing that I wasn't sure from the statement that was made by, I think, Aim Here, was that "we require people to go through hoops in order to patch those systems." That is not the process today. Today if you're running on Windows and you need a security patch, you know, there is no additional hoops or things you need to go through in order to install a security fix for your technology today. So that was a little bit weird as well. And again, and lastly, I think we're working super hard to make whatever this process is incredibly seamless. You know, I, again, I recently bought a Dell computer for my wife at home and it was literally seconds that it took it to go up to Microsoft.com, verify its ID and then come back down.
So I think that, you know, what you're going to begin to see is the continual evolution of kind of a community-to-commercial approach that's happening in the Linux, or, let's call it, really, the distribution world. Because, yes, you'll always be able to install, you know, Debian or something like that on a million machines if you'd like. But again, as things become more commercial as they are with the Linux distributors, you'll see similar processes in place because that's the only way that they can verify users so they can offer them a support model.
Roblimo: So what you're saying is that you have to register for support with Linux.
Martin: I mean, I'm not an aggressive Linux user as some of our Slashdot audiences are. But the servers I have running and the desktops I have running here, I do have to register those with Red Hat to be in agreement with my Red Hat support agreement.
Roblimo: OK. Not everybody uses Red Hat.
Martin: No... Most commercial customers that I've talked to primarily use Red Hat or SuSE as their distribution for commercial customers.
Roblimo: OK... Let me ask... Let's move on here. We have, really, two more questions and this is the last long one, from JimmytheGeek ... (laughs)
Martin: I'm worried already.
Roblimo: He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805. And he's saying, "One of the myths about Windows is that there is a company behind it you can hold responsible for flaws that impact an organization." "But," he goes on, "if you read the EULA, the End User Licensing Agreement, of any Microsoft product, even an update, it disclaims any responsibility whatsoever. They specifically avow that they are not fit for any purpose. So what's up with that?"
Martin: Yeah, this is a broader conversation, a broader question. I actually read this question last night as well from Jimmy.
Roblimo: I've read the EULAs. I'm the only person you've ever met who's probably read every single licensing agreement for every piece of software he's installed.
Martin: There's a couple of lawyers that we have here that read quite a few EULAs as well.
Roblimo: They are sick, too....
Martin: (laughs) Nevertheless, there's a couple of things. First of all, I would say, really when we talk about the kind of accountability and standing behind it, there's a few things that we reference there and where we spend our time. One is, for commercial customers, you know, how we can provide this level of roadmap, this level of ownership and all these types of things today on that perspective, let's just call it from the general support perspective, and how that works. I mean anyone will agree that Red Hat or IBM or even Novell with SUSE, they can only take, you know, things to a point at the end of the day, because at the end of the day they don't own the kernel, they don't take the final decision on what's in or what's out of 2.6...
Roblimo: Well, no, they can modify it however they want.
Martin: No, of course but when they do, then you could be on a different path, or you can be on a different path or fork on a different tree, but essentially they start with what level of mods that they do. And so the point of that is to say, "Hey, we have that all the way in the end level of ownership where we can deal with that."
The bigger issue that comes up of this accountability issue is around this notion of indemnification and protection. This notion of "Hey, I can tell any one of my customers, if there's any issue from an IT perspective, you know, patent, copyright, trade secrets..." Microsoft fully takes care of you and we extended all the way down to any end user where that wasn't a part of our normal EULA. As of November we made that change as well - EULA being in the End User Licensing Agreement. And so I think that's the issue where a lot of accountability come into play. But how do the vendors, or how do the distributor or software provider fully protects and indemnify any customer that is using their software from ...
Roblimo: I don't think that's the question that we're trying to ask. He says, and I can give you the full thing.. "Open source licenses usually have the same thing, but those are generally free products. You guys have taken in a couple hundred billion. Plus, we can use the code as we like. So you can't claim any kind of equivalence." So I think what he's talking about is the one big glaring thing - that Microsoft in those EULAs does not claim the software is fit for any particular purpose or that it will work, essentially.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Roblimo: No, for any given purpose.
Martin: C'mon Rob, I know that's the broad surface. Go read Red Hat EULA and Red Hat will pretty much say, "Hey,we can't guarantee anything with the software either." I've read it. Read their filing statements. It's the same thing, right?...
Roblimo: Well I use a different variety of Linux, perhaps...
Martin: Right, so I think it's impossible for any software provider to say categorically their offer can do any single thing that you ever want to do in the world. Right?
Roblimo: Mmmmm, yeah, but it's always been an amusement part, you almost have to laugh...
Martin: Fine, so it's fine that people can have good sport with it, but when you get down to the kind of the brass tacks at the end of the day, again, I don't know any software provider that says, "Hey, our software can do anything in the world that you want to do, so go do it."
Roblimo: There's implied fitness in most products, like, if I were to go buy a Jeep Cherokee - I have one - there is an implied fact both by their (being on) sale and the FTC forces them... and other government agencies force them to imply that it's safe to drive on the road, or reasonably. Not that it's safe for me to drive drunk with no shoulder harness and go crazy at 120 miles an hour, but that it's fit for the purpose of being, you know, a transportation device.
Martin: Right.
Roblimo: And this is something that, you know, again, maybe the software industry in general needs to work on, wouldn't you say?
Martin: Yeah, I would actually take us up on that. This is not a Microsoft specific issue, because I don't think we're that unlike any other commercial software provider, you know. And with regards to that, it's probably easier to make fun with us than anybody else. But nevertheless...
Roblimo: One last question that you sort of touched on earlier... Augustz - with a "Z" on the end - asks this very bluntly: "Are Google morons given that TCO is significantly less for Windows than Linux?" and his reference is the Microsoft advertising and "Get the Facts" literature. "Are the folks at Google morons for using Linux? They use a lot of computers, and TCO has got to be important to their environment."
Martin: That's one of those, let's call them niche environments where I would say, I'd personally... Well, let's be honest. Your average commercial company will not pay for the staff that Google has to run their engine. I mean, they hire quite a few very senior, very technical people to do a very specific function. And from that perspective, they're very different from your generic IT scenario. Most companies, I mean, given that most companies are not technology companies, most companies that I talk to, they're not in business to hire a whole bunch of people to drive a stack of servers. They're in business to, you know.. they are airline companies that put people on planes. They are soda companies that to get people to drink. They are news companies like Slashdot to get people news. And so, anytime that they can reduce the complexity of their environment and not have to hire people to manage or maintain that, that's a good thing for them. And so, I can tell you that again that's a different usage scenario in terms of how they've optimized around that based on a more general purpose scenario.
I'm not gonna go and say "Oh my God, they're crazy, they're gonna have an incredibly high cost of ownership because of what they've done. I also not going to go on record to say that they could go to Windows servers and their TCO would drop in half. Again, as I said earlier, when we look at Total Cost of Ownership it's by solution, by scenario - not a broad, sweeping all-things-are-made-of, all-people-type-of-statement.
Roblimo: That's all the questions I have planned. Are there any we failed to include but we should have?
Martin: No, I'd say as I read last night, there were some that we probably can never talk about publicly because... (both laugh) which was fine. But I have their names and emails myself so I can answer them. And then there's some kind of around this whole "get the facts" thing and I do maybe, in closing, want to talk about that a little bit, if that's ok.
Roblimo: Go right ahead.
Martin: Let me give you a little bit of history on kinda why I'm doing what I'm doing the way that I'm doing it. You know when I joined, I tried to go figure and work on some of this, I was amazed at reading Slashdot and reading some other things... just how aggressive people were on Microsoft isn't this, Linux is this. But it was (usually) grounded in one instance meaning, "Hey, I did this one time and here's why I think one or both or neither are better or good or bad," or it was just not grounded at all on any level set of data.
And so a big push that I wanted was to just get the facts, and say "Hey let's move this out of an emotional, aggressive discussion and let's really kind of have it based more on a practical, pragmatic discussion." Actually I even got that from customers.
I'm not a deep, deep technical guy, I'm not a deep, deep industry guy. I spend more of my time talking to customers, trying to structure the work that I do based on what they ask. And customers are asking, "Hey, can you help me understand TCO, Microsoft versus Linux for this scenario in the work that we do? Which of these technologies... help me understand this or that..." And that's the kind of work that we do.
And so, if you read the details, which I'm sure you have, if not, we're not 100% favorable to Microsoft. There are some things in there that say why Linux is good, there are some things in there that say why the Web work load, one of our older studies, you know, gave good TCO for Linux and Apache against IIS 5.0. So there are things out there, and I try to be as transparent as possible on all of those types of things. I mentioned earlier about another company, I used another company to hire these people, I didn't want to bias the study in any way by people knowing Microsoft was hiring these engineers, so I had a third party hire them. And, of course, once everything is done, everything is transparent, so you can see everything in terms of the server configuration, who we hire, you know, how the whole thing works, but there's a deep level of transparency that I try to provide.
But again, on that one that I mentioned, I wanted to make sure that they weren't biased because I was hiring them. So I work really, really hard to make sure we don't bias these things and they're aa pragmatic as possible. And so, if there are topics that, you know, people think we should undertake... again, I hear from customers all the time, and that's what we spend time on but, you know, I'll keep reading Slashdot, and when people post stuff and issues into them, then we'll take on some of those discussions and challenges as well.
Roblimo: I'll tell you what, here's an open invitation that's a good idea. When this is posted, there will be discussion. Do you have a Slashdot login?
Martin: I do not have a Slashdot login but I feel bad about that, and so as of tonight I will have one. Will it cost me any money?
Roblimo: It will cost you just as much as Debian Linux and all the software on my desktop.
Martin: Oh that'll cost me a lot of money to manage and maintain but... Robin, Oh no, no, you can leave it alone. It just works (laughs) In other words it will cost you nothing.
Martin: No problem. So I will get a Slashdot account tonight.
Roblimo: I'm saying you're absolutely welcome to jump into the discussion, and I think your participation will be very valuable.
Martin: Got it.
Roblimo: So, thank you so much for your time. This has been, as always, a pleasure.
Martin: Ok Rob, thank you so much, and I apologize for taking so long to do this and I look forward to maybe doing it again. Ok?
Roblimo: I love it.
Martin: Ok, thanks. END
His Windows PC crashed.
What special technology do you guys use to get IE to render Slashdot properly (and consistently?) I'm sure the guys at Mozilla would love to get their hands on that.
He is a really funny and brilliant guy. He does have a really nasty habit of picking his nose in public and eating the booger. This really grossed people out at meetings. Still a wonderful guy!
I think you should have made the file an AAC out of spite. Or, maybe a WMA out of deep admiration for Microsoft.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Does the very fact that you can't talk publicly about some of this stuff not strike you as odd? Are Microsoft so unsure of their stance on particular subjects that they can't discuss it in a public forum?
Anyway, since you're apparently going to be reading this, can you answer my question?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
On my (well, almost) 100Mbit/s connection slashdot gives me 20KB/s!
Slashdot slashdot!
I had a doubleedge sword question that never got asked.
How long did you run Linux in the office? If he said temporary then he's not in a position to judge Linux, since he's a noob. If he said a long time, then it's got to be better than windows.
Do you think what Gates did was blackmail, extortion, cohersion, or all three?
It was a compromise. Microsoft would say WMA, the Slashdot OS purist would say Ogg Vorbis. So they went with mp3.
I for one hail our new overlord Martin Taylor.
Oh come on....somebody had to say it.
Instead of emailing your questions to Martin, we did this interview by phone
What, Outlook acting up again?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
He basically is saying that MS backs Windows, and when given the example from the EULA that says they don't, he just starts trolling on linux, saying the 'makers' don't back it. He's never posted on usenet or used irc, has he?
Video Production Support
I admit I only skimmed, but I'm actually pretty impressed about how Martin Taylor handled an interview with the world's greatest mass of Microsoft-haters - specifically, without lying or resorting to their usual business tactics to justify themselves. Good interview!
(Except, seemingly, for the answer about TCO. I didn't get that one)
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
"And today the spyware product that I've downloaded is also a free beta"
;)
Most spyware is free
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I thought Martin would be far more ...er... Microsofish than he was. He seem quite honest about most of his answers.
Are people actually reading the article?
Could he, you know, say 'you know' any more frequently? An interesting yet infuriating interview, simply because of his stupid speech impediment.
Featuring Martin Taylor, Bob Scoble and their "dialog" with the Open Source community. While the executives who really want to get ahead in MS have to pull some macho stunt bashing open source developers in the press.
"I look at the work that we've done with Services for Unix that allows us to integrate with Unix to Linux environment"
You mispelled assimilate....
for true geekdom. Would sound better, I guess, too.
It was a pretty good interview. But one aspect of the whole thing distresses me - Martin admits he's not a very technical user. Yet he is in charge of directions to probe and determining what facts to spread.
I just really think that if you are going to have someone in a role to do a comparison right, you really want a person with deep technical understanding in that role to really understand any comparison at a deep level.
And more fundamentally, I just have trouble believing that anyone working for a company can produce a study that is truly useful to external companies for evaluation. At some level you are subconsciously supporting your company, and that comes into documents you produce... also I think it would tend to lead to a slant of trying to find the weak areas in your own products that could be addressed more immediately than long-term.
An example of that is the whole spyware scene. Microsoft sort of addresses that by saying "Look, there is a free solution now in terms of patches and this other spyware program we bought". But it really doesn't answer the deeper question as to what a roadmap might look like to take people to a world where lots of people do not run as admin, and things like ActiveX are simply turned off to start with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The guy has a point, it is a sad state of affairs when we're suprised (at least I was) to see such reasonable responses and banter from a Microsoft employee. I don't know if it's because we want to hate them, but certainly there is a sort of pervasive feeling that they are a bunch of ignorant assholes. This is probably primarily because of their bullshit TCO studies that set up straw men in order to make nonsense assertions. I don't care WHAT he says about his TCO comparisons, it's a bunch of horse crap. Assuming you didn't get hit with all kinds of malware, it's either because you have your systems locked down so far it's hard to do real work, or because you spent a bunch of time and money locking down your network and everything that comes into it. With Linux or any other non-Windows OS, it's a non-issue. You just don't have the kinds of problems you have on Windows. Whether that's technical or simply because there are more Windows boxes and thus more interest is a matter for debate which cannot be solved without a thorough look through the Windows sources, but it's probably technical, and so the whole TCO thing is a bunch of crap. Talking about a total cost of security as if it were a separate thing serves only Microsoft.
Probably the best thing in the interview is when he talks about the ability to make what you want from Linux as a strength, and not a weakness. In the past there have been attempts to portray the fragmentation of Linux as a weakness but the fact is that the niche uses of linux do not devalue it any more than the niche uses of Windows, such as the Xbox.
I really hope that Mr. Taylor becomes a frequent slashdotter, at least insofar as he is capable of making comments that he doesn't have to clear with legal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't get that SNL Arnold impersonation out of my head lol
--
Can we please have a single character token for "You know".
people try to position us as Microsoft versus open source [...] we don't view the world that way
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Martin: But I love everybody.
Actually, these were exactly the same words that Erich Mielke used right before the Berlin wall fell. He was head of state intelligence and secret police in the German Democratic Republic. Being questioned about his actions by an angry crowd, he said:
"But I love, I love everybody..."
to scroll all the way down here. Good thing I've go "Turbo"
--- What?
Martin: Ok Rob, thank you so much, and I apologize for taking so long to do this and I look forward to maybe doing it again. Ok?
Roblimo: I love it.
Martin: Ok, thanks. END
Roblimo: And... we're off.
Martin: I love you, too. Rob.
Roblimo: I know. I know, Martin.
Martin: Kiss me, you magnificent fool!
Roblimo: Yes! Yes! Place your hands upon my heaving bosom.
(Smoochy and slippery sounds)
Chorus: Oh, my! This can't be good.
Dr. Lector: At this point, I shall make my escape. Mr. Talyor's liver will have to await my culinary skills another day.
Indiana Jones: Not so fast, Lector. I've got you covered. Hey! My revolver turned into a walkie-talkie!
Jar-Jar: Meesa tinkin dis universe not so well thought out. Laws, yes! M-O-O-N, that spells thought.
Meanwhile, the Xaat Fleet Of The Dead, a vast cluster of fifty thousand ships shaped like heiroglyphs that can drive sentient beings insane, drifted in orbit above the unknowing Earth. The Lord Commander Of Time Apocalypses sat brooding in his command cocoon as, pondering the planet's fate...
Roblimo: What do you think about the big boss?
Martin: You mean Cthul--errr--Mr.Gates?
I kinda wish one of the questions drilled him on Microsoft's DRM strategy. I'd like to know what their 'official' motivation is for pushing DRM onto their customers, and whether they believe that intellectual property is more valuable than fair use...
.. maybe he'll email me! ;)
*sigh* Maybe I'll hold my questions for the next 'ask slashdot'.. or
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
He is simply spouting the same stuff that Microsoft has been saying for quite a while.
Also I don't think the questions were hard enough. Not enough questions about their monopoly.
eg
1)If you went to a car dealer and bought a car for $30,000 and you found out it only cost the dealer $3,000 would you feel ripped off? If yes - isn't that what MS does with MS Office?
2) How do you feel about governments spending hundreds of millions of dollars on software in countries where a large percent of the population is homeless and hungry (eg Brazil). Wouldn't the governments be better off spending the money locally on support than importing software from the US?
3) What companies/products are highest on the MS radar? Oracle/IBM/SAP. If you could grind one competitor into the dust which would it be?
...down to here. Good thing I've got my scroll wheel set to quintuple speed - a must have setting for any red-blooded slashdotter!
--- What?
"Martin: I do not have a Slashdot login but I feel bad about that, and so as of tonight I will have one. Will it cost me any money?"
:)
Charge for Slashdot? Only someone from Microsoft would think you could charge for a slashdot login
"Martin: Oh that'll cost me a lot of money to manage and maintain but... "
I have to had this if Martin is reading. We have both Linux and one Windows server and a bunch of XP desktops. The amount of time dealing with the Windows server vs the Linux servers is about the same. The difference is the Linux servers run our mail system, firewall, database server, and Subversion. The Windows box runs the accounting system. We find the Linux boxes to be a lot more useful and a lot more secure than the Windows boxs. We are a small company and not Google. Our next big dive into Linux will be for our new phone system. Not saying you are wrong but you do not have to be a Google to make Linux work well for you.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I really applaud his obvious patience. After reading the questions and his anwsers it seemed that the pettiness was very one sided. It got to be a little silly when it came to the portions about malware/spyware/etc
As for the part about the TCO when looking at malware, virus, and trojans, too many people here ignore one major fact.
If you get enough people to use a product your going to have a large number of idiots in that group. It works this way in any large group of unrelated people (unrelated by trade/social group/etc). An example I like to use is a MMORPG. You can find many people who are great to play with but at the same time you are constantly having to deal with the effects the idiots and the exploiters have on your enviroment.
Simply put, with the widespread availability of Windows you are going to have many people who are too stupid to own a computer let alone use it.
I found the portions explaining integration versus interoperability a little light. While Martin made good in his replies I don't think the questions were phrased well enough to get the response that was hoped for.
The EULA comparison to cars was where I found Rob being truly petty. Apples and Oranges. Exceptions have to be made. When you sell something commercially you pretty much have to exclude yourself from claiming what it can do as someone will attempt to extend that meaning into realms it does not belong. This works the same in cars. That Jeep might imply by the fact it has 4-wheel drive that it would work in situations without roads. Yet I guarantee that the manufacturer has all sorts of warnings about how that isn't true. Again, people as well as corporations must protect themselves from idiots. Can we truly blame a corporation that doesn't try or are we to blame them for the fact they didn't try hard enough?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
...but his replies on these two major questions (IMO) were very strange. I'm going to try to summarise his replies, please correct me
Q: Why do you never include the costs of fixing Security Problems in TCO studies?
A: We don't know how to calculate that cost. We would like suggestions.
Q: You claim an advantage of MS over Linux is accountability, but your EULAs say otherwise
A: Everyone does it. We're no different.
Although I applaud him for actually requesting suggestions from "the enemy", I was expecting better-informed answers(especially since he said he had read all the questions earlier.)
StrayByte.Net
That's one of the straightest interviews from Microsoft that I've ever read. Good job to everyone involved.
One comment on the TCO... yes, the studies examine one particular scenario. But the ads that trumpet the TCO studies sure don't make that clear (that the study is for a couple specific scenarios and leaves out a large part of 'real ownership costs' that you'd run into in the real world).
Martin apparently doesn't use anti-virus software (I'd bet he simply forgot about it though). Also, he dodges the "annual cost" part of the question: Roblimo: Next question, from ProteusQ, Slashdot user no. 665382. He's asking about protection against malware and he's asking you Martin Taylor, "What applications do you run to protect your windows license from malware (viruses, trojans, spyware, etc.) and what do you pay for this protection for a year? How does this cost compare to the costs incurred by other Windows users and compared to what you would pay for the equivalent protection offered in Debian?" Martin: Got it. So first of all I actually run, obviously, Windows XP. I run XP SP2. I also have downloaded the beta of the spyware product that we recently, one of our recent acquisitions, into a combination of XP SP2 and spyware product that I downloaded. That's pretty much how I protect in running both my desktop pc or my laptop I use here at Microsoft as well as the 3 PCs that I have in my house - a very similar configuration. Roblimo: How much would these add-on programs cost you? People like you and me, lets say, as a journalist, I too can get free software from anybody. What would it cost you as a regular user? Martin: Well today, XP SP2 is free if you're a genuine or a valid Windows XP user. It's just a matter of downloading. And today the spyware product that I've downloaded is also a free beta and we've not announced any pricing terms or plans for the product as of yet. So everything I'm using today is free. Roblimo: Ok. And this is all the protection you need? Martin: It's all that I have today and it has served me pretty well so far.
He seemed reasonable to me. I agree that the aggressive, emotional discussion should be done away with. Linux wants to be something more than a hobbyists' passion, but it's still treated like one by its own users.
Some of the questions were rather silly. Rob asked him what he does about popups? Come on, SP2 has been out for what, over half a year now? When it came out, Slashdot ran about two articles a day on it. And he still didn't know it came with a built-in pop-up blocker?
I would have liked some meatier questions. Like what the guy thinks of some specific cases of Microsoft "business strategy" from the past or what weaknesses he sees in the Windows GUI.Instead, it was EULA this, EULA that. I think Slashdotters are the only people so worked up over EULAs, and it just bores me! Where are the questions on Longhorn and what they plan to accomplish with it? I don't care what Linux distro Rob uses or how his software didn't cost him anything, you know?
Martin: I think a couple of things. One, you know, for the user who really wants to really tear things apart, do things on their own, build their own distribution, they really have, obviously, that level of source code access where they can do things like create a customized distribution with a very, very small footprint with only what they want and not a bunch of other things. You know, Linux is attractive to that class of a user. Linux is attractive to, let's say, Google - a large company that really wants to build a big server farm. They want to hire quite a few very talented engineers to really tune that on a daily basis and things of that nature. So I think that when you get to like specific niche areas and those areas where people really want to get deep on their own and take on a lot of that responsibility on their own, you know, I think Linux is attractive on those scenarios. And obviously that's where you see a lot of the market pick up on Linux on that basis as well.
Most of us here fall into this "niche". But I really don't think it's much of a niche, but more a growing segment of the IT industry. I would even go so far as to say the common home user. My current exploration of AMD Opterons for 64 bit computing in addition to clustering and virtualization with projects like Xen prove that the average home user is moving in this direction. People aren't interested in having plain old PCs that only have a two year lifespan at home anymore. It's inefficien[tt], expensive and limiting. Most home users want clusters with a centralized home application/file server that can suspend and restore virtualized sessions for high availability (HA). HA is not just for "geeks" anymore. After all, I'm not a geek, I'm a musician/artist and I'm working heavily with this stuff because it applies directly to my main interest which is using computers to make music and visual art. There aren't too many people these days that just want to buy a PC that can only run a handful of applications and wastes a lot of CPU cycles doing nothing. For the people who ARE interested in that, there is the Mac Mini (which is the best way to go in terms of being efficient).
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You can listen to an MP3 of the call, read the transcript (below), or both.
What no Ogg? Oh, I get it, proprietary software vendor -- proprietary software codec.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Was it just me or... wait, y'see, here's the... because... yeah, because I think... Was I the only one who found the replies hard to parse in places? I get the feeling the MP3 will make more sense to me :)
This is one of the very few areas that IE is better at than Firefox: handling broken code. IE does a very good job at figuring out what someone actually intended with the broken code and rendering it well. It's one of those thigns that ought not to be necessary, since veryone ought to check their code, but is quite nice in reality.
I still recommend Firefox over IE, since broken code that screws up isn't that big of a problem and teh other benefits of Firefox more than make up for it, but it is something that IE genuinely does a better job of.
Wow - you mean all Microsoft employees aren't corporate drones out to steal your money? Here's your proof, Slashdot.
And most of the thing that Martin says make a lot of sense. I definitely agree that Linux is still a niche product. For web servers, research institutions, and hardcore geeks, Linux may be the flavor of choice. Like it or not, though, Windows is still easier to use for most people.
This is partially due to market share (it's what people are used to) and partially because they've simplified and hidden key components that 90% of people will never touch. MS has also shown a lot of responsiveness in their efforts to get standards-compliance built into their browsers and their focus on increased security lately (now that the market demands it).
I sincerely hope that Linux becomes user-friendly, more widely adopted and makes a run at the market. I absolutely believe that free (as in speech) software is better. I just think Microsoft takes far too much crap around here for doing what all businesses do - playing the market and trying to make money.
Oh sure, Microsoft is now going to take care of you with regards to patent issues.
Meanwhile, they're still trying to patent everything in sight, and they'll still try and smash the (Linux) competition with patents.
And he says he wants everybody to stop being so visceral about the FUD thing.
Who cares about the TCO question, when they're still pursuing their same old tactics.
There's nothing in any of the linux licenses that says you can't take the license you're using, shut it down, decomission the system, format the drive, throw it out, and re-use that license on another system. You still have the same number of licenses for whatever linux you were running.
Now, I seem to recall that if a company bought a windows PC, and then wiped the drive and re-installed their windows build, which could have exactly the same or less software on it, MS demanded that they pay an additional license fee on top of the one that was paid for with the system, even though the net number of licenses in the organization had changed by excatly zero.
Is this guy aware of that?
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
You dodged the question about suitability for a particular purpose. The EULA specificall disclaims suitability of any purpose and you asked essentially, who would warrant suitability for every purpose? So here again is the question, in a different form.
Is there any single task for which you will claim that Windows (any flavor) is suitable? Will you warrant that in a legally binding manner as a paragraph in your EULA?
This is from your favorite Slashdot poster and mine, Anonymous Coward.
... please ... I'm just doing my job ...
No, no
Oh what, the heck; you guys love me! You really love me!
Interereresting, Where can normal people get that?!
For a long time my biggest problem with American politics is the fetish most American political pundits have with analogies, regardless of whether they fit. Analogies are easy because they allow someone to be a complete and total sophist, but do a fine job of concealing that point. Case in point: comparing cars to computers. They are different industries and have different needs. What works beyond the base level of "tends to work" for all industries is usually very different. For example: modern IT is built on near total interoperability. We need the ability for example to take a Windows file server and give file services to non-Windows clients or vice versa. With a car, unless you know what you're doing, there is absolutely no reason to mix and match car parts from several different vendors.
Protocols and file formats should belong to the customer, not the company that makes them. Instead of Microsoft having legal control over the Word format, I as a paying customer who has data in the format, should have total legal control over how I use the format. If I want to pay Sun to support OpenOffice to create a filter capable of moving my data around, Microsoft should have no legal say in this. File formats and network protocols are not products, they are amorphous ideas that define how we send and receive information from one computer or part of a computer to another.
And to be fair, yes I believe that if Microsoft wishes to they should have a legal right to reimplement the entire Flash file format for Windows Longhorn. My gripe isn't so much with Microsoft, but with the legal system that has effectively introduced and then systematically reinforced aggressive, nigh sociopathic behavior in corporations.
Let's face it, if Ballmer wanted to open up all of Microsoft's protocols and file formats, Microsoft would easily face a shareholder lawsuit. Why does the system give standing to a lawsuit over something so petty? The system should not only zap all control corporations have over their file formats and protocols, but shield them from shareholder lawsuits when the company freely lets others compete based on merit, not litigation-dodging finess. I am sick of these lawsuits where some pipsqueek sues a company under such pretenses. Do you own even a percentage point of the stock? I own stock in Wal Mart, but I don't lord that over the greeters.
It has generally been my experience that those who support software patents are willfully ignorant about the differences between software development and most other industries. They want to have it both ways, get to hold up the fast pace of innovation as a sign that capitalism works (and it does), but then they want to impose a legal regime that they know runs counter to the nature of that industry. Software patents would work if we weren't held by our balls by WIPO and had to give such large, "fair" patent durations to every industry, but instead could give them out based on the nature of the industry. And people wonder why I think the Senate needs an enema, the 17th amendment revoked and the every treaty (and the treaty ratification power itself) in the last 20 years revisited. More than 3 years for a software patent is a guaranteed way to make sure that the only innovators are lawyers whose rhetorical innovations keep the courts flooded with useless drivel and every would-be small company founder sleepless at night worrying that several years of hard work could get stolen by several months of frivolous (but well-financed) patent litigation.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Right here is everything you need to tell me about Microsoft's views on interoperability, fair competition, OSS software and "I'll break your face" business incentives.
I don't know whether it was intentional, although I suspect so, but it gives the impression that the answers aren't being filtered by a crew of PR specialists.
Worthless.
Did you hit him up for a subscription?
.
Is all I ever hear from windoze fan boys. There are some problems with linux, and there are some problems with windoze. The only difference is that one is free and open and the other has a huge price tag. I think it's funny how windows fans always seem to forget how much that software costs.
whey they hired that guy. He gave a rather good interview, and adressed everything that he was asked. Good on him, considering we slashdotters aren't the most sympathetic audience.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Martin kind of ran aground on that question, but I don't think there is any good way to answer it. This is a real problem (most) software companies have. They refuse to accept (in writing) any level of responsibility for their product once you install it.
Rob's analogy is a good one. No car maker could get away with making customers sign a form relieving the maker of any responsibility. If the brakes fail 100 meters from the dealership, you can bet they will have to make it right, and consider a recall if the incident isn't isolated. Yet software companies (not just Microsoft) routinely act like you are being reckless for trusting their software to do anything.
This problem isn't going to clear up soon, either. If anything, it will get worse before it gets better. Look at the constant debates we've had here on /. about who is to blame when you get infected with trojans / malware / spyware etc. Some say Windows should be more secure. Some argue users should be more careful, or be armed with more knowledge. If MS made even the slightest promise that their software was fit for use, then one of these malware-infected idiots would drag them into court and try to hold them accountable for what happened to their computer.
I honestly don't know how I'd like to see something like THAT turn out, unless there is some way they can BOTH lose. :)
--This sig is in beta. Please let us know abut any errors you find.
Slashdot shall have arrived when it has spoken with The Man.
And, if you can't get Gates, go Gibbons! Let's hear about how that six-legged boogie-band plays the Open Source Blues.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
No matter how nice the guy comes off as being, he isn't going to "kill me with kindness". His demeanor means fuck all, since I don't personally know him or work with him.
/. decide how a doctor with similar claims as Martin would last in the medical field.....
I am looking past his emotional display (all the laughing interrupts), and trying to look at the cold hard facts.
This guy is a MS biggie, and goes on to state that he isn't a technical savvy person. I find that to be preposterous! MS has a lot of power in the corporate world, and here is a man stating that he "isn't too technical". What if a lawyer went on record saying "well I don't know the law too much"? Would you want that lawyer to represent you? Of course not, you want the people in power (the people whose salaries you pay) to know their product/service inside out and backwards. I'll let
He seemed to get pretty bothered about the EULA question - i agree it's not microsoft focused, but maybe he was digressing into that "emotional response" he kept talking about...
Taylor deflected this by saying that no software provider can promise that their software is able to do everything, etc. And interviewer let this slide.
The question is whether MS has any business FUDding the world to death over Lx's "lack of indemnification" when they also provide basically none.
Thus:
MS: There's no company to stand behind Linux!
/.: You don't stand behind windows
MS: You can't expect companies to stand behind software!
/.: True. Okay.
What gives?
Martin, if you're out there, and you have any pull at all with Microsoft, tell them they should open-source Windows. I don't mean putting it under the GPL or BSD licenses, I mean including the complete source code, still covered by your proprietary license, with every Windows CD. You would kill Linux in a day. The company I work at (non-American mining manufacturing) was stung (in our minds at least) by the NSA backdoor in LotusNotes. Since that time, we have not used anything we didn't have the source for and we will not bend on this issue. As long as Windows is closed, there are serious doubts about Microsoft's ethics, and we will never use a single piece of your software. Worse for you, we end up contributing to the open-sourced software that we use, and we have a few hundred people submitting bug and crash reports. If you open Windows, the big downside is that you allow better interoperability; MS obviously doesn't like that because you're the bad guys right now who don't win by being better, but by preventing the other guy from improving. Have faith in yourselves and your 95% market share -- you can still win AND play fair if you hustle. At worst, you will win where you are the best product and lose where you suck. But at least you'll be respected again. Think about it. That's capitalism; your competition gives the masses something you don't, so you match them and raise the bid and see if they can compete at your newer higher level. If you don't open yourselves up to your customers soon, Linux will get to the point where they will be "good enough" AND open, and you will be obsolete because you're afraid to match their bid.
I mean i'm not, we all know why he is pushing it but beta? My experience with beta anything has never been a good one......
Here is another mirror for people who want to max their line... http://www.k33bz.com/slashdot_come_kill_me/martin_ on_slashdot.mp3
What is his new login?
Never argue with an idiot. They will just bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I'm not a programmer, just a heavy user of PCs, to design plastic parts, and all the other reasons people use PCs. Questions to Martin and answers from him were much about "competition" in all sorts of ways. I used only Macs for over a decade until SolidWorks for product design on the Wintel side became viable, and have use Win2000 and now XP Pro for SolidWorks. But keeping Windows running 100% with minimal problems means I use the Mac for everything else including the Internet. I can't believe the lower level of intuitive or consistent use features in Windows, and any user of both Macs and PCs understands what I mean. I'll give only two examples. 1. The OS keeps adding networking icons in the Task bar and attempts to Delete them crash my Dell Laptop. 2. Dialogs which interupt and note attempts to automatically install software (which can't be cancelled many times) for newly added hardware (BlueTooth), in spite of the fact that the Dell PC has NEVER had any hardware change since it was bought. The Mac OSX has not had a glitch like any of these in over a year of use. In fact it has been nearly glitch free for a common user who doesn't "play around" with shareware or other strange programs on either computer. The average user just wants his computer to work without becoming an IT technician, and when it doesn't to provide a known way to either automatically get reconfigured to work or provide clear concise detailed instructions on how to "fix" it. MS fails in this big time in my personal opinion...but I have to use its products anyway...but only when I absolutely must.
1.) Thanks Martin for participating in this interview. Not all of us readers are mindless Linux drones.
2.) Reading the phone interview verbatim is really hard. I much prefer the email interviews, or an edited text from the phone interview, or at least the appropriate use of punctuation. The interview was very hard to parse, Roblimo.
3.) To all the folks who complain that Windows is hard to protect against malware: you're clueless.
Here's how you keep your network safe:
1. Install and properly configure a firewall.
1a. Maybe install a web proxy server that blocks access to spyware/malware sites.
2. Create an AD domain
3. Join your clients to the AD domain
4. Install Software Update Services
5. Configure all clients to update off of your SUS server via GPOs
6. Install anti-spyware software via GPOs
These steps are not hard, and provide for stellar enterprise management capabilities.
On a network of over 5,000 machines, we have had exactly ONE (1, uno, etc) problem, and that problem was on a rogue machine (a personal laptop) and employee plugged into our network.
4.) The Slammer/Blaster/FooFoo were released a great deal of time after Microsoft released a security patch for the problem. Most of the time, these things infected machines that were heavily unpatched.
5.) Yes, Microsoft's software is still too bloated, too complex, too insecure and too extensible, but they're seeing the big picture. They're getting better, getting smarter.
Look at Windows Server 2003, look at IIS 6.0 (which stomps on Apache imho, something I never thought I'd say)
Most of the naysayers hate Microsoft so much, they'll blather any lie about them. They hate MS so much they don't even know the products in-depth themselves, recycling garbage from the Win95/Office 2000 days. Please, just STFU.
While you all are bitching and spreading FUD, Microsoft is slowly and quietly getting better and better. They're watching OSS and learning.
Where's your enterprise directory? (don't even start on about Novell, nor OpenLDAP)
Where's your web development environment that even comes close to ASP.NET? (don't say PHP, it isn't. don't say Mono, they're far from MS's ASP.NET implementation, although Mono rocks bigtime)
You're behind the curve, and getting farther behind by yapping and attacking.
How do you get to be the richest software company in the world by having the lowest TCO?
HMMM!
stuff |
You Know?
Like..
You know?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Something that doesn't need to make money to survive can't die, by definition. Proven by Netcraft and BSD.
Is it just me or did the anyone else notice Mr. Taylor's fake good humor and comraderie with a community of Linux users who'd enjoy cutting the throat of Microsoft forever?
:)
Reading him tout the virtues of Windoze and their crapware sounded a lot like asking a North Korean diplomat how much he loves Communism!
The "interview" was illegitimate by default...kinda like Windoze.
I also not going to go on record to say that they (meaning google) could go to Windows servers and their TCO would drop in half
You'd better not. I'm sure they've already done the math.
How do you get to be the richest software company in the world by having the lowest TCO?
;)
Volume?
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I had a third-party go out there to hire 16 topnotch Linux developers/architects and 16 topnotch Windows architects so I could do some comparative studies on some work that we're doing. And no one knew that Microsoft had anything to do with this in terms of hiring people to work on this.
I hear the sounds of hundreds of hard drives spinning up right now as some rabid Linux fans scour their resumes with sweat dripping off their faces to see if they inadverdently ended up working for the the 'man'.
I'm not, you know, a native speaker, and I don't, you know, come to read english interviews, you know, really that often, you know, but in all, you know, honesty, I've NEVER EVER before, you know, heard someone, ANYONE, you know, say "you know" so fscking, you know, often within such a small amount of, you know, time... :/
This truly trashed my mind somewhat more.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
How can we help Microsoft come up with a foolproof way to prevent all piracy of their software?
Seriously. I can't think of a better thing to do for Linux, and apparently it is something Microsoft thinks it wants. Let's do it, ASAP.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
In a word: no. Nobody outside of Microsoft "knows" Windows, or is even legally allowed to know Windows.
Not for any reasonable definition of "knowledge", at least.
He made no mention of how he got by BEFORE the microsoft antispyware beta came out.
I'd like to hear THAT instead of the "canned" answer. Things like Spybot S&D, Spywareblaster, Hijackthis.
All your base are belong to Google.
The real question is what would have you answered, if you worked for Microsoft (but preferred not to get fired)?
Martin is a much better statesman for Microsoft than Bill Gates or that sweaty clown Steve Balmer.
Can I have my XP activation back now please?
I would've like to hear his take on it.
it is open source now, and they do garantee it to be safe from ip lawsuits.
... is to kill this guy's productivity by encouraging him to get a Slashdot account.
Devilishly clever.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Isn't it likely that the reason that getting Linux working from behind Microsoft's proxy server was because they use the closed NTLM authentification mechanism?
This is something that was only added to Firefox 1.0PR1 ..
Still installation applications should have been fairly straightforward using Yum, Apt-get, or emerge. I'd be interested in knowing which distributions he'd personally tried.
Still I thought most of the questions were maturely chosen given some of the flamebait submissions, and the answers were generally interesting and informative.
Nice job - and if Martin wants to email me the response to my question he's entirely welcome to do so :)
... when do the Vogons get here? I have an essay due on Thursday ...
DISAPPOINTED!
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
is that I was shocked by just how long I've apparently been Slashdotting. When Rob said:
/. was "in the old days".
"He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805."
It stopped me in my tracks for a second. I have apparently become a member of the Old Guard and never realized it. I suppose I should start waxing poetically about how great
1. Get (hijack) a Martin Taylor login name on slashdot.
2. Reduce Slashdot TCO by applying Windows servers,
after all it is a news site, not a linux company.
I wish this hadn't been a phone interview. It seems Roblimo wasn't mature enough to conduct it in person, and as such email would've been a better medium. As an interviewer, your goal should be to get answers. The second you start mocking your subject, you lose objectivity, and fail at your goal.
A few examples:I'm no Microsoft fan, but if they have the good grace to agree to an interview, at least treat them with courtesy and respect when conducting it. You screwed up a pretty good opportunity with your childishness. Way to go.
without lying
Yeah right
Not only that, but I don't think Roblimo nailed him quite enough on the fact that, okay, no company can really back their software, but MS is the one making the claim, linux isn't. It's another instance of one of MS's promises not standing up to mean anything. It was Roblimo's basic point, but he let the MS guy confuse the issue there and wriggle off the hook.
Also, with the issue of indemnification, who would be a potential litigant against linux when SCO's dead? Novell, who owns SuSE? IBM, who has banked a lot of their business on linux? Pretty much leaves MS. So that could be interpreted as a threat, in the style of mob racketeering/fire insurance. Would have loved to see Roblimo follow up there - would MS consider pursuing legal action against linux? Would MS promise not to?
That said, it was a good interview by Roblimo. Overall did a good job of avoiding the guy's spin.
He said in the interview that he'd create a Slashdot account and participate in the follow-up discussion. Has he? Where are his posts?
:)
Maybe he's lost and can't find the setting on the MS Fog Machine!
That's like saying "oh how wonderful, tires developed and tested on a Ford.. works ON A FORD".
.Net web forms.. Office.. IE "save as".. Documentation..
IE was top dog in 2001. All changes since then have been security fixes.
Safari/Konq, Mozilla and Opera are all easier to develop for (in 2005) if you develop for multiple platforms.
And another thing.. No other company produces more broken HTML than Microsoft.
Their websites, their tools..
Yes, do you really think your concerns are going to be addressed if you talk like that? Get over the emotion will ya. Otherwise, you're just put into the zealot catagory and ignored.
So do you guys just not do any research at all before interviewing people or do you only skip it when interviewing people from Microsoft since they're presumed evil?
Come on - what do you use to block popups? How long has SP2 been out - months? What was one of the most publicized features of SP2 - popup blocker?
Yeah, Firefox has a popup blocker - big deal. If you're actually going to waste this guy's time and ours with a question like this, as if that were an important issue in the Linux vs Windows fight - man, we're in trouble.
2 things.... 1- when you are adding up the costs of the actual price for any product, you also factor in the cost of the downtime for running the product...thereby...running the most vulnerable os out there, you have to add the cost of msblaster worms downtime for all employess at the infected company site. this is not a "business model" , it is common sense, of which this guy has none... 2 - when he talks about the cost for support for red hat enterprise per registration, he forgets that the registered version gets you the support that can be split as they do not check the machine it is on. this is a one time cost. Microsoft not only has no such ability to install legal version multiple times per license, unless paid for each license...but you also have to pay per incident if it is beyond the install of the software..compatibility issues and such.Not acceptable! I hate seeing someone snaking their way out dealing with the facts!
"My personal experience? I use some earlier versions of Linspire and Xandros, and as an end user that is not as technical as some other people, I would say I found it somewhat challenging, downloading and installing some applications and getting Internet access through our proxy server and some of those things.... device plugging in and plugging out was not quite as seamless as I thought they might be. However, I would say the basic user experience of clicking and moving around and things like that, you know, was fine."
no god is good
Reading this fellows answers, he sounds like the lawyer who was squashed along with his wife by the RAF plane that erupted out of Dirk's house since Thor had turned it into an eagle.
The lawyer's sin was for setting up the deal that swapped an immortal soul (Odin's) for unbounded stays in a health care facility, "you know".
Gerry
it has to be, in order to display pages made with frontpage.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
His answers weren't half bad at all. They were thoughtful and insightful. Can we petition for him to replace Bill?
don't be fooled. He wouldn't be in the position he's in if he couldn't spin politics around his finger at a whim. As several people above already noted, he squirmed out of a lot of tough questions (FUD campaign, EULA, etc.), even resorting to repeatedly finger-pointing at Red Hat as an "answer" (TCO, crippling software issue, etc.).
/., so of course he's gotta defuse some things, like the MS vs Open Source (i.e. /. crowd) thing -- something which he tried to do in the interview.
That he's done all this but still made things seem congenial is why he's in the position in the world he's in.
To take a different approach: he did agree to this interview, which either makes him a good sport, or maybe it shows that Microsoft is now wary of the slashdot crowd, which is very vocal about MS's tactics and weaknesses. And any person in the IT industry worth his salt reads
Doubtful? Count the number of times he goes off track, pauses, says "you know", etc. Honest answers are direct and come right away. Evasive answers take time to work in/set up.
I am a former Microsoftie. I am also a long-term Linux user and my parents have been using Linux starting with Red Hat Linux 6.1
First, the biggest hurdle to Linux in every market is the fact that the practice of solution building on Linux are fundamentally different from Windows. This leads to disorientation and a feeling that Linux is less capable than Windows when in reality it is far more powerful and far less expensive to maintain when properly used. However when improperly used, it is true that they are more expensive and more limited than their Windows counterparts. But then imitating Windows with Linux is like putting a square peg in a round hole anyway, so....
From a home user perspective, imagine that your parents could hire someone to come over and set up a solution for them to do whatever they want to with their computer. Lets say they want sound studio software, etc. No problem. And this would likely cost less than the software on the market today. This also makes it extremely powerful on a corporate market.
Now open source support is similarly different than proprietary support. But again it works well when it is properly used.
In other words, Linux will change the way we use our computers. It does not require that all users are geeks. Also when people are more comfortable using it at work, they will be more likely to use it at home.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I didn't think it'll go that high when I started counting, but it just went up and up! I am surprised you didn't notice.
Gee Martin Taylor and John Dvorak both do the same thing. That's weird. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=139536&cid=116 78015/
I first saw the term "Freak Mainstream" in The Reg: Desktop Linux cracks Freak Mainstream
The term refers to users that fall into the gap between mainstream and earlier adopters and visionaries. For example, I believe that non-Linux-freak MythTV users fall into this category. Also see Crossing the Chasm for a better description of this technology gap that Linux may finally be crossing.
Mars
----
I run Windows, and I do not have the moronic problems of the above posters probably poorly configured computer with probably even worse shortcut schemes.
Say it, you know you want to: touche.
I believe you.
But what about the 12th commandment, you know, right after "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", where I heard that applications should "Fail gracefully"?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Martin said that he used the Microsoft anti-spyware (free) and SP2 for firewall (integral to SP2). What about anti-virus, which we all pay for from McAfee or Symantec. Does he get it for free or does he cleanly reload his XP machine, whenever it gets sick.
Now we skip ahead to Windows XP and the windows product activation. My question is how are you differentiating this from what Intel did, to make it more palatable? Yes I know that there are several different numbers involved including MAC addresses, and the serial number, all tied up neatly into a hash. If you reduce this down to its pure binary it still boils down to a number. This is exactly what Intel was crucified for and for me personally, it is unacceptable.
I personally purchased a Windows 2000 license even though I was once given the opportunity to pirate it because I am a firm believer that those who create should indeed be paid for their work. But with the current state of the Windows Product Activation I will never be using XP. I am also an avid Linux user but it is far easier to run certain programs on my Windows 2000 machine. As time progresses and my Windows 2000 machine becomes more and more outdated, I will be porting more and more applications to the Linux+wine environment, since I'm being prevented from upgrading to Windows XP by the WPA.
I'm hoping he'll read all of the responses. I've never had an account, and in fact, I take a little pride in getting "modded up" under the more difficult scrutiny of posting as an AC.
First, some history. I always loved Windows. I used to recommend it over Macintoshes all the time. Sure, Macs might have been somewhat easier to use, but the problem was that from the perspective of a technologist whose job it was "just to get things to work", Windows was far superior. You could always go in and tinker with win.ini, system.ini if something was messed up instead of getting some bomb icon on the screen with "System Error has occurred".
I was working at a tech company in high school, one of three kids under 16 in the company, and I remember my first experience with Linux. This was before I understood anything about economics, business models, proprietary/open source, etc. I compiled one of the first linux kernels on an old 386 and it took almost all day. But to me, I absolutely loved it. It was the same type of operating system that existed on all those huge Sun boxes in the data center, that I could not only run on my x86, but that I could completely control. From that point on, I made the analogy to myself that Linux would beat out Windows for the same reason Windows beat out the Mac: openness. It gave people more control. Eventually Windows caught up in terms of usability/GUI integration that the Mac had always had, but the important thing was that in the process, the computing experience was one where I felt as an end user more EMPOWERED. Linux, I thought, would bridge the same usability gaps.
Then something else happened. As Linux kept getting better, I realized just how horrible it was to try to get away from Windows. I experienced the concept of lock-in. Until you've really faced it as an end user, you don't know how horribly humiliating an experience it is, especially as a technology-oriented person. This was *my information* that I had created, that I couldn't get out of these proprietary formats. I felt like a share cropper. I understood the power game of control that was being played, and I loathed almost everything about Microsoft overnight. I realized that they would be able to use this artificial advantage and keep people on their platform not entirely on the basis of how good their product was, but primarily from the standpoint of making it too difficult to move to anything else. What a negatively constructed computing experience.
The thing is that Microsoft and their executives including Martin Taylor can't see what it feels like to be on the outside. To them, it's as if they do have the source code to their operating system. It's very very similar to how Americans don't know what it feels like on the outside of American power, hegemony, and control. You kind of admire it, you're kind of afraid of it (from a business/career perspective in the case of MS), but you know that since you can't really be a part of it, you will never share in it. As it increases its scope and power and control, it will always somehow feel like it's coming at your expense. Even if it isn't directly aimed at you, because you don't share in it, you don't feel like it's advancement is your own and therefore it necessarily means that it is somehow against you.
Where is all of this going? Well, Linux makes you feel like you're a part of it. It's not a development model as much as it's a social paradigm. We have gotten to the point where information techology is so entertwined with everything that issues related to politics and technology are purely relevant to one another. The future with biotech, transhumanism, etc. means that this need for greater collaboration across all sectors of society will increase. I read that Belgium struck a deal to have it's national id compatible with MSN messenger. Holy smoke. You have the future of identification itself, not just digital identification, but human identification, inheriting all of the same negative characteristics of the relationship between Microsoft an
I wish I had mod points. I donate my karma to the parent post. He hits the nail on the head. While it was great to have an interview with Martin, Roblimo totally borked it by imparting his own biases.
> Martin: One thing that really frustrates me a
> little bit, and you can say this is partly because
> of us at Microsoft and hopefully we're getting
> better here, is that people try to position us as
> Microsoft versus open source.
Read an example EULA that seems to prohibit anybody from using the MSFT technology in question in a project that uses the GPL (or any license that requires the source to be included in the distribution).
To Mr. Martin: look, you can't have an EULA like that and say you're not against open source. This is not the first EULA that stops people from choosing whatever license they like to cover their IP.
It's strange, too, that MSFT made this business decision. There will consequently be fewer projects released into the open with this technology, and possibly fewer people paying for OS and development tools. All because the EULA says (IANAL) to me "you cannot distribute the DLL if your project distribution must include source code."
That just doesn't make sense. It's almost like MSFT is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I continue to struggle with this, just in my own opinion. Linux does not need the n00b opinion. I think that dumbing down the Linux desktop will kill it. However, what it does need is more of a non-geek opinion. I want USB devices to "just work" under Linux out of the box, but I still seem to have problems with them. I am not a n00b, but I don't want to have to futz with EVERYTHING on my system. I want to be able to easily configure things, and still be able to get into the guts if I so choose. Configuring X comes to mind. I am glad that most distros have good hardware detection and I can configure my desktop resolution via the GUI. I think that true n00bs will still have a problem with that in any OS.
Enough of this "I want it simple enough my mother can use it" stuff. I don't want it that simple, it will kill the flexibility - only because I don't think it can be done right. Maybe I am wrong. Everyone points to Apple when touting simplicity, but there is a good reason that their stuff works so well - they control it all. Linux supports way too many "unknowns" to be able to do that. I don't want Linux to take over the desktop, I just want to be able to use it as the awesome tool that it is. Part of me selfishly wants it to stay small in terms of market share. It almost seems that the best things, not just in computing, are tainted when they hit the big-time. So far companies like Google have seemed to buck that trend, but time will tell.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Let me be the first to say welcome.
After reading that interview, its my opinion that Mr. Taylor is one of the most honest corporate figures to ever talk to /. His willingness to get across certain messages and to try to show improvement with in his organization was very pleasing for my eyes to see. So many people are willing to judge quickly and forget slowly, and that doesn't work well in such a fast moving industry. I mean, its 2005. IBM is a new sort of hero. Real has turned a 180 from its position in the 90's (as THE most bloated and crap infested program of that time), and has given the Linux community an excellent, free player that even includes legal MP3 support on their dime. Microsoft can change to. That seems to be the major theme.
As the environment of the industry changes the corporate environment must change as well or perish. Sure maybe now to many people Microsoft is the enemy, the creator of bad licensing and DRM. But this interview proves that at least the company has some sense to hire some sense which means it has a good chance to survive. I mean.....if it grows to the point where it is superior in every respect, what prevent Microsoft from releasing a Linux or a BSD a couple of years down the line?
Open Source Sushi
Rob's analogy is a good one. No car maker could get away with making customers sign a form relieving the maker of any responsibility.
Typically, most cars are not modified straight off the lot. Some have add-ons, but most of these do not affect the functionality of the vehicle. An OS, on the other hand, is almost never used as is, a raw, uninstalled CD, suitable only for use as a coaster. There is a computer it gets put on and usually some other software added to get the functionality you want, word processor, spreadsheet, etc. With a car, installing other items ofen voids the warranty. Since an OS, almost by definition, requires installing other items, why should any warranty by the OS include untested and often unforseen combinations of software and hardware? If you buy a computer with OS preinstalled, that warrantee should come from that manufacture.
A more appropriate analogy would be buying a engine (just the engine) from a manufacturer. You then put it in your own chassis, add on your own body, engine, transmission, interior, etc. If you did this, it is highly unlikely that the manufacturer will warrantee the final product. This combination is more like an RV than a car and an RV will often have different warrantees depending on the manufacturer of that piece is.
Please feel free to rape the bandwidth; I have about 100 gigs of bandwidth to burn between now and the 21st (I changed web hosts and my domain)._ slashdot.wma _ slashdot.mp3 _ slashdot.ogg _ slashdot.wav _ slashdot.mp4 _ slashdot.flac
In order of size:
WMA (small at 1.32MB): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
MP3 (original encoding): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
OGG, just because: http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
WAV (for the ultimate compatibility (©): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
MP4 (AAC): http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
FLAC: http://technicallyincorrect.org/mirrors/martin_on
And yes, I AM bored.
Just guessing here, but maybe all of those comments about "communists" from the Chairman of the Board and the CEO might have something to do with this.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If you think that only people who read Slahdot are the only ones who care about EULAs, you are obviously deluded and have never worked for a large corporation's IT structure.
Not only that, the obviousness of the hypocrisy of Microsoft's "Who's Going To Indemnify You If You Use Open Source" chant versus the fact that they don't and will not indemnify you (thanks to their precious EULA) certainly makes it relevant to the discussion.
The interviewer mentions that Firefox has a popup blocker, and the interviewee also mentions that IE has one as well. I use Firefox and it's treated me well in terms of blocking popups, but it looks like some websites are getting smart to both browser's ways.
Check out http://entensity.net/ (NSFW) and click on some of the pictures. They lead to a (desired) popup of the full size image, but also another popunder advertisement. This happens in the latest Firefox as well as the latest IE.
Guess no one's perfect.
Yes he is there to deal with "Customers".
However we are talking about the specific case of comparing Linux to Windows, not just any general mid-level manager.
In order to speak intelligently to the subject at hand and crowd he is trying to address, he must be at least as technologically conversant as the most technological of his customers - which could be low but could also be quite high as some people running IT shops come from a very heavily technical background.
Think of it as a sort of downsampling problem. If you want a clear set of data, it's often better to work with sample resolutions much greater than the final output. It's better to generate an 800x600 image from a 1024x768 original than a 340x280 postage stamp. Similarily you'd want a leader in this position that would be able to produce a document for comparison that rested on a foundation of much deeper knowledge.
Also on a sidenote, I do think that a CTO should be very conversant in technology. I don't believe that managemnet skills alone can get you by in trying to make an IT department work... I have seen a fair number of CTO's and in my experience every time the CTO was not really conversant in technology it spelled disaster for the whole department.
Leadership is partly about vision - how can you possibly be a technical leader without being able to really see what different technologies can do for (or to) you? Sure a guy stumbling around in the dark can get lucky, but I'd far rather be working for someone who would be able to follow ANY technical conversation at least at a high level. It's not even that hard really, it just requires a fair amount of reading which is what a CTO should be doing anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> I'm no Microsoft fan, but if they have the good grace to agree to an interview, at least treat them with courtesy and respect when conducting it. You screwed up a pretty good opportunity with your childishness. Way to go.
If he "screwed up" why is the guy making a slashdot account? It seems a bit more amicable to me than you seem to be reading it as. What's "immature" about phone interviews? What's wrong with letting him use that line for free? Many of us here don't consider simple things like that to be worth anything--it was nice of him to offer, I guess, but it does highlight a difference in the values we have. He looks at things in terms of cost, Slashdotters often see things in terms of freedom.
C'mon, you're awfully eager to pick this interview apart--why? It's not that hard to pick apart your picking it apart, either... what point, if any, was there to all this?
Is this a comic book guy thing, like when he said "needless to say, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust worldwide!" or what?
I think you're reading way too much into most of these.
:P
For instance, "Will it cost me any money?" sounded like Martin was joking with Rob, and Rob joked right back with "just as much as Debian."
Maybe you're just too used to IM to realize that professional interviews don't included smileys for the humor-impaired.
>>> This is from your favorite Slashdot poster and mine, Anonymous Coward. This is a question that didn't make the cut, but, I assume...
Ugh. I just hate this.
For some time, someone keeps STEALING my identity and keeps posting articles in MY NAME that I completely disagree with! Please, PLEASE don't listen for these guys!
Roblimo: 4, Martin: 47
It is a shared understanding that versions of windows and the development model of MS packages are akin to an incomplete product. Further experience in using these products gives the user the notion that features are really appendages or afterthoughts of the separated personal goals from the various programers who wrote it. To add to this, revisions and modifications of key features and functionality are very evident to the user's experience. "layers" in ideas and integrated features show that the product was not only incomplete when I was release, but that there was little planning done before a team was assigned to develop the product. Patching a leaky boat sometimes means you have to get a new boat. When Apple abandoned OS9, they did it with great planning. A migration from one kind of environment to a completely different one takes planning and vision. Why doesn't MS give up the Windows thing all together. It's not like all their versions of windows is compatible with each other anyway. Why do they insist on selling a product that has "5 prongs" requiring the customer to adopt their complete line of "solutions" just to function? Are they so scared that if they opened up their horizons that the sloppiness of their work will be exposed by rival products? Take the plunge! Start working on a Unix foundation. And stop the sloppy misguided programer with clear vision and planning. MS and Apple can be compared to and Audi A8 and a 1976 Lincoln: The Audi would have large wheels and get good times at the track. The Lincoln would have large wheels, but only in the back. It would get good track times with the aid of 6 small engines under the hood red-lining at 9000 rpm. The Audi would be sturdy and strong from a well planned chassis. The Lincoln gets a roll cage. The Audi would be quiet and smooth. The lincoln has seats made by lazy-boy and comes with a free pair of sound proof head sets. The Audi would display a refined harmonized gauge cluster with the less important features out out of the "business" view of the driver. The lincoln would have the appropriate oil, water temp and compass gauges screwed into the top of the dash with a very large boost gauge in front. The Audi would have all-wheel-drive. The lincoln would have a bumper winch with an "AAA" sticker on the back. The Audi would have a nice integrated sound system. The Lincoln would offer to upgrade your headset with a pair of headphones - that would attach to a cassette deck with a 3 mile power cord. The Audi would accommodated 5 people and a lot of luggage. The lincoln would be stretched 4 feet and have 2 park benches installed inside (trailer hitch extra). The Audi would have the on-star emergency service. The Lincoln would come with a flare gun (not to be used on passengers). The Audi would be rain tight. The Lincoln comes with a bucket. The Audi could drive to any destination and park in any parking lot. The Lincoln could only be driven on MS certified roads where available (or as far as the power cord on the radio would reach). The Audi would cost a lot up front. The Lincoln would be half the price, but requires you to change one of the 6 engines every 6 months. The Audi has rain sensing wipers. The Lincoln's wipers are always going. The Audi only needs two tools to change a tire: Jack and a wrench. The Lincoln needs a specialist to remove side panels and gear to get at the 9 studded 4 bolted wheel with a special 3-sided wrench.
"Roblimo: He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805."
Man! I feel old!
What I find mildly amusing is the statment that the Linux Consultants cost Microsoft more money than the Windows and .NET architects. The problem I have with the statment is not that it could never be true, but the belief that the 2 groups have equivilent skillsets. Most Unix consultants I know are also skilled at supporting and capable of developing on Microsoft products as well as on unix environments, though the converse is most oftem not true.
Excellent interview. There's two places where I'd have liked to see you hold his feet to the fire:
(1) at the beginning, Martin apologized for taking so long to do the interview. In so doing, he implied that his "busy schedule" was the reason. Later in the interview, we find he's quoting very recent things in MS's defense: IE's popup blocker, the anti-spyware program, an SP2 that is mature and accepted. It would have been good to see his response to a suggestion that he had waited till it was in MS's interests to do the interview.
(2) on the FUD question, Martin says that up till recently MS "didn't really get" Linux and Open Source. What does it say about the biggest software company on the planet that they didn't get it for so long? What does it say about companies Google and IBM and Apple that they got it a long time ago? He's dodging the question here, and really shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
Overall though, an enlightening interview, thanks for doing it.
-Pete
Pete Forsyth
but I believe firefox had a popup blocker figured out far before IE and XPsp2 did. You, Mr.Intelligent Reviewer of all Journalism, are thinking of your google toolbar.
why does everybody have to have such venom?
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
DISCLAIMER: I know some people will take this very offensively, so I apologize to them in advance because it's not intended that way. And this is not a flame or a troll. If you do not like it, please at least bother to read the moderator guidelines first before marking me down.
I for one hail our new overlord Martin Taylor.
Overloard? he is more like a "house nigger"
The term "house nigger" comes from the early 1800's were some slaves would strongly support the oppression of slavery in order to gain favor with their masters and win a position in the estate house which was often far more comfortable and safe than taking a beating out in the fields.
Unfortunately, there are allot of people out in the software/media industries that have this exact same mentality. They know what MS is, they know how MS acts, they even know that Linux is better and respects their freedom more, but they sell out anyhow for the short term cash and benefits.
IMHO, Martin Taylor was almost too gracious to MS's #1 competitor in this interview. Maybe it's because he knows that Linux *is* better - and that he's working for the *WRONG* side.
Now if on anything, MS is right on the TCO thing. Consider... Consider a standard "up-scale" business, say a law firm. The opportunity cost of a partner might be $200. So training the guy on a free software product shouldn't last more than (cost of MS product)/200$ hours in order to be profitable.
Similarly, hiring an admin for some MS product X might be $Y cheaper per month than an open source guy. On a 3 year time span (36 months), the ms product could cost slightly less than 36Y in order to be profitable.
In plain English, costs of less than 1k$ per seat are nada for many corporations. Two nights at a hotel plus extras.
Those elusive $-s... cheers all
I don't mean this a bad way... But in all honesty, there's way more guys out there that know Windows than know Linux. That's just the reality.
One reason there's a whole lot more windows 'guys' out there is because backyarders can now get paid $50/hr to install anti-spyware on the average joes 'slow' computer. A friend of mine has been doing this for over a year.
Walk in, install Adaware and AVG Anti Virus (both free for non-corporations), run them, have a coffee then walk out $50 (or more) richer.
Easy money baby.
Geek of the Week (845): My only comment... is that I was shocked by just how long I've apparently been Slashdotting. When [Robin] said, "He's been around for a while on Slashdot user number 180805."
It made me wonder, "what if I had a question in there?" My UId is lower than Roblimo's.
But yeah, I guess it has been a long time. I wish, though, that Slashdot would join the moddern era in terms of html/css. I mean the 1995 style tables are nostalgic and all...
Anyhow, cheers.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Your original post and this reply were well-written and reasonable (not sarcasm, I really was impressed with your take).
I think your statement is horrible to say.
When producing content, you should adhere strictly to the standards.
When interpreting/consuming content, you should do everything you can to handle it, if there is a reasonable interpretation.
Do you think ECC memory is a bad idea? Or parity bits in transmission protocols? If there is an error in transmission... if the value received is not exactly what you expected.. you should just shut down or ask for a resend every time? Even if there is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the flawed data?
since I felt I had to wait too long to download the mp3, I created a magnet-link, via which you can download it with (hopefully) higher speed.
L 7VX7JG3VX NY&dn=2005-02-15-martin_on_slashdot.mp3&xs=http:// edrikor.dyndns.org:9845/uri-res/N2R?urn:sha1:O2VKJ MYGJAG7ABSEXQX2L7VX7JG3VXNY&xs=http://217.227.153. 86:9845/uri-res/N2R?urn:sha1:O2VKJMYGJAG7ABSEXQX2L 7VX7JG3VXNY&xs=http://images.slashdot.org/articles /05/02/martin_on_slashdot.mp3
t .magma
You need a magnet-capable program like http://limewire.com , http://phex.kouk.de or similar to use it. ( more to be found on http://magnet-uri.sf.net/ )
As soon as you have those installed, just click the following tiny-url, which expands to a magnet-uri (slashdot broke the magnet):
http://tinyurl.com/55t4z
This is the original magnet:
magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:O2VKJMYGJAG7ABSEXQX2
For those, who have the Phex cvs-version installed, there's also a magma-list (MAGnet MAnifest) with the magnet to the mp3 avaible here:
http://gnuticles.de/magma-lists/martin_on_slashdo
Arne Bab. http://draketo.de/
If IE would refuse to handle broken code, the site admins creating it would realize it more quickly and fix the darn things rather than go on blissly thinking it's working for everyone..
Not only that, it can paint Microsoft into a corner as well-- if zillions of pages are dependent on microsoft's handling of certain broken sequences, even Microsoft can't modify their browser in certain ways that would change that behaviour without zillions of people screaming about it and blaiming MS for breaking the browser...
Please post bandwidth graphs :)
Yup, statically typed languages are superior because nobody would *ever* cast anything. They especially would never cast from one type to an unrelated type.
I agree that there is some use to the "sanity checking" that statically typed languages give you, but that type checking can easily be rendered useless when someone casts from one type to another. Believe me, that can be a royal PITA. I've had to spend hours trying to understand why I was seeing meaningless results coming out of a program before discovering that someone was doing a cast from a foo_response_t pointer to a struct foo_response pointer. The two were similar, but not identical, and the results were completely evil. Of course, most statically typed languages are weakly typed (i.e. the variable defines the type, not the object to which the variable refers). Because of that, I wasn't able to look at the object and say "hey, that's not really a struct foo_response!".
As for web pages, I think interpreting broken pages in the way that the author probably intended is the right behaviour, with two caveats. First, obviously, is security. The browser can decide that an unclosed table tag was probably supposed to be closed at a given point in the document without risking any security issues, but the same can't be said for Javascript code. Secondky, I think the user should be warned that the browser is interpreting broken code, so that if the browser guesses wrong, the user has some notion of *why* things are not working right.
... but will Microsoft walk the walk?
* I am hearing you saying that you will aim to cooperate with projects like Samba. I want to see it happen. Document the custom extensions to SMB. Similarly, open up document formats for Office. In both cases patented formats, even if open and documented cannot be considered open formats. If you are serious about interopability then these are logical steps. You cannot tell me that this will be a lot of work for Microsoft (you mention that you are working hard to do this), as this must be documented for internal purposes.
* FUD, studies etc. I want to see Microsoft publish a study that acknowledges Linux has a lower TCO. The studies I have seen proving a lower TCO for MS take one situation and expand this to apply in all cases. Conversly, even if Linux is not cheaper in general, there are some places where this is true (google being one, read below for another). Micrsoft has published a lot of misleading studies, I would like to see the balance redressed, or at least an even handed approach taken.
* If microsoft is not hostile to Linux, why not look at porting some applications to run on Linux? SQL Server would be a favourite. Just to point out here that I have read Inside SQL Server 2000, and do understand that SQL Server is very tightly tied to the OS. Nonetheless, there is a demand for this and it would sell licenses.
* Regarding hoops to jump through for OS/App activation. A PC at my house tends to get partially or completely replaced at a regular intervals. I build my own. I also format any of the boxes I personally own pretty much every 12 months or so. Product activation is a huge headache for me. For example a box that I have actived with WinXP might have every part except the case replaced in the case itself. The headaches are such that for personal use I am more inclined to either use a version of OS or app that does not require activation, or look as some means for working around it. I should add I am scrupulously carful for have licenses for what I run.
Just to put this in context for me I am speaking here as someone who writes code on a Microsoft platform for a living, however in general I use what works. I really like some MS stuff. 2K was a great step and XP was a slight improvement on that again. I also particularly like Excel and SQL Server, and I am looking forward to the release of Yukon.
Aside from that I run a debian file server @ home ($150 AUD for the box) and I am planning to install a web/mail server (debian, also anticipated to be ~$150 AUD for the box). I'll just point out that the cost of the software on those two boxes in a MS environment would be thousands of dollars (AUD).
Incidentally if you want to contact me directly to respond my email address is david [ at ] uberconcept.com.
meh
Heh, will do.
I was listening to the interview and Martin, who did concede that Linux has a good TCO when run in a large enviornment with skilled administrators. He agreed that it works well for Google. So I suggest we learn from his comments make some money doing what we all love. I understand both Windows AD, Exchange, SQL 2000 and IIS really well, but I love to run Linux (RHEL, Fedora Core) with apache, mysql, sendmail, and samba. Seems that while Linux may not be worth while to the small business, why not establish a company that outsources the entire IT department to remote managed cluster of Linux servers, but keeps Windows on the desktop. Basically the company could have a few Windows geeks to run around and do onsight for the customer and image machines and get feedback for new services back to the Linux geeks working remotely and managing e-mail, web and file servers. It would keep costs low, while still letting the customer have the comfort of using Windows on the desktop. Could use GAIM, OpenOffice and other software on the Windows machines as well. It's just a thought for some of you to consider. I live in Austin, but we could run the server farm from anywhere. Thoughts, e-mail ericmjackson AT gmail DOT com or post online. To do this venture well, you cannot be basised either way, you have to understand both Windows and Linux have advantages in different areas for different roles.
Respect the Constitution
3.) To all the folks who complain that Windows is hard to protect against malware: you're clueless.
Oh come ooon -- I challenge you to repeat this statement and your instructions to any of the 50+ million "average home users" out there to which Microsoft Windows is marketed without sounding like a fool.
Or are you really just admitting that although Windows is a usable solution for controlled corporate environments where experts can be hired to secure the desktops, but an abysmal solution as a home OS? (I'm sorry, but even if the steps aren't as complex in a limited home setup, they're still way too complex for Joe Public, so you can skip the straw men already thanks.)
ASP.NET is nice for some things, but I often find myself wishing I'd tried some other solution.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
If common web browsers interpreted HTML and CSS rigidly, users wouldn't see any errors because web developers simply wouldn't upload broken files in the first place.
... and the web would be about 0.1% of the size it is now.
No, really, this is a vital point. You want to know why the web got so big, with so many people coding web pages?
Hello my name is <b>Fred</b>
90% of web builders started this way. If they'd had to create fully valid HTML before the browser gave them the time of day, they'd probably have fallen at the first hurdle. But they didn't, they went on to create web pages, which is why the web is as huge and popular and useful as it is today.
"But it's full of malformed crap!" you say. Frankly, who gives a shit? The fact that browser authors have to create nasty code to handle this stuff is a tiny price to pay for something as fantastic as the World Wide Web. Yeah, so it's not 100% XHTML compliant. Big Fat Hairy Deal. If you're writing executable code, you want it to be completely valid, but HTML is not executable code (and before you jump on it, Javascript gets treated differently). HTML is document markup, and half a document is better than no document at all. (And the security problems you mention above are not due to liberal parsing.)
But, hey, if you want to make a web browser that treats everything fully strictly, go right ahead. If you want to make a new hypertext network where everything has to be 100% valid to work, go right ahead. No one's ever gonna use 'em, because the world doesn't work that way.
In other news, Condi says Iran is a "totalitarian state trying to get nuclear weapons..."
Well, this guy can join the other lying bitch in my trashcan...
Real tough questions tossed at him, Rob..."How can you say Windows TCO is lower than Linux?"...Way to go...
How about "When are you fucking monopolists going to start sueing everybody with your patents - maybe when FireFox has ninety percent of the browser market...?"
How about "How many MORE 'security initiatives' is Bill going to launch this year alone?"
And how about "Is WinFS the same file system you guys were planning about ten years ago...and you still can't do it?"
Fucking crap interview - I get more insight from Scott McClellan...or maybe the "fair and balanced" sex freak O'Reilly...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
LOL! A very funny jab indeed!
When asked about Windows interoperability...and I quote: "You can go all the way back, let's say, to integrating with Novell days where we wrote our own Novell client, we wrote our own IPX/SPX stack to allow us to integrate with Novell servers." The Microsoft novell client for windows BROKE the Novell company from the market leader into the niche (albeit good quality) player we see today. And he uses this as an example! Thats obscene!
-- Sig meltdown immine...
Like others did point out, the text is unedited (not 100%, if you listen to it you see the text misses some words that are too hard to make out). So to get the proper tones in voice and context you need to listen the audio version.
I have to say though I had to use lot of EQ to get the voices sound bearable. A broadband version of the phone conversation would have been apprectiated.
I wasn't sure about the usage myself, I admit. However Dictionary.com agrees with me, which argues for common usage at the very least.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I think it's where M$ and some of you geeks differ.
:(
No let's say you develop some app with security in mind from the very start, in theory it doesn't cost you a thing, but keeping up to high standards slows you down, let's say this is the case with unix/linux, it's been here for a while.
Now there was win3.1, win95, win98 and it goes on, which are totally unsecure but usable.
In the meantime there were some other totally secure environments, such as QNX (?), but totally unusable for an average user.
So what you end up with is M$ that can charge even more money because security is a new feature, so one has to pay for it.
I can't help but to see the communism analogy that Bill the Magnificent has recently stated, philosophically, the communism is a much better system, it removes inequity etc
In practice capitalism simply work better.
So: as far as theory goes OSS is a much better solution in the long run, but the market sort of contradicts common sense and we the dominance of M$.
Personally, I'm anti-M$, I have always been, but it's only recently that I've found out that if you want a windows network you have to pay for software:
a)server
b)client's OS
c)licenses to use the server for every client!!!!
vs
$0 using linux
In US it's not so drastic, but where I live such money can get me by for an entire year, if we're talking about 20 computers!!!
If by any chance some big company gave me the budget to deploy the network for more than 1000 computers, I'd probably could live the rest of my days just using the money saved on M$ software!
I guess I'm talking crap by now and should stop, but I'll tell you about my specific issue, that is education in Poland.
The Ministry of Education has chosen to deploy school networks based on Win2003SBS + XP Clients, that's countrywide. It's meant to be for pupils to use the Internet and stuff, it's not mission critical or anything.
In the default installation the server is only used to authenticate client accounts. If power/network/servers fails, you can't use the client at all. To me it is clear that Linux could be an equal if not better solution, tho I can't use it even if I wanted to. People at the ministry aren't computer experts, I think M$ didn't even have to bribe them, though they could just in case (after all it's a multi billion dollar deal), it's just that no one has approached them with an alternative.
And now we're doomed for the future cause all the students will use M$ at school and some of them might become govt officials one day
respect is important, not just for ego and brownie points, but because only when you respect can you learn from; and only when you learn from can you server
ms has generally never repsected the hackers; the techie; the pizza guzzling unixheads; and, because of that, ms has never been able to learn from them. their roots are in consumer oriented software, expanded to mac style revolutionary vision, and segued into buisness. but they've never had a strong background in cold, hard, deep tech. and the expertise that brings: code quality, standards, transparency, configurability, interop. they've never respected the user - its our computer and well tell you what to do with it. that works well for consumers, may work for some businesses, but flops for servers (not to mention techies). and even for end users, it opens up to spyware, etc., and makes debugging real hard
so, showing respect, even if it means just shmoozing with a bunch of slashdotters, is really a significant event - it means that ms can take the techies experience & wisdom, and integrate it (that's exactly what they plan to do in one of the longhorn pillars, if it ever happens)
What a load of nonsense. There's more real hackers working for Microsoft than you think, Slashdot poser.
Martin says, ...Total Cost of Ownership it's by solution, by scenario...
My too late question, what "niche environment" does Microsoft provide the best TCO solution?
IMHO, Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition at $299.99 BestBuy.com does not provide a better TCO than OpenOffice for any adverage user I've met. OpenOffice may not be able to do a super complex spread sheet, buy what percentage of end users need to do more than basic cell placement and spell checking of documents? No me, my mom, or my grandma.
Of course, OpenOffice doesn't provide a database application like Access, but I'll bet CowboyNeal's left nut only a very small percentage of users need it.
--- Just say no to negativity.
Martin said, "you know," 48 times to Roblimo, whereas Roblimo only said it 3 times to Martin. So according to these statistics, Martin thinks Roblimo knows 16 times as much as Roblimo thinks Martin knows. And thus, one can draw the conclusion that Linux geeks know 16 times as much as Microsoft geeks, according to a Microsoft representative.
"I would say years ago we did not fully understand. I'm speaking aggregately as a company - did not fully understand Linux and open source and so whatever you're dealing with something that is a bit of unknown, I think it's natural to have somewhat of an emotional reaction to that. And also if things didn't quite make sense to you, when you thought people might be acting somewhat irrational, then again it led to somewhat of an emotional response in some ways."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4021775.stm
Years ago, like last year, 3 months ago? At any rate, It was an awesome interview, keep up the good work!
rochelle brief physiatry rehabilitation
You want a track record...
.JS files into a web page it locks up hard. I wrote and debugged the pace in mozilla because of the better debugger and it took me ages to figure out the real problem.
Excel 4.0 exporting to csv took the format and exported #### displayed on the screen instead of the underlying numbers and lost me the data. I had to rebuild from scratch.
Contacted MS they were very sorry, we note the problem and will give you a free upgrade to 5.0 when it comes out. Still waiting... I have no idea if the bug still exists.
IE recently V5. If you include two
Contacted MS after figuring out the problem and gave a detailed description of the problem and the fact that I no longer needed to solve the problem. In order to submit a detailed bug report I had to pay a fee ($135 springs to mind) and MS would refund it if they agreed that it was their problem. I politely declined and argued over 4 emails that I no longer had a problem however it shoudl be a documented bug in MSDN and preferably it should be fixed so that others did not have to search for the problem. Net result, I have no idea whether my bug report went to the developers nor whether it will be fixed. I kind of doubt it.
I agree look at how they (don't) stand by their EULA.
Lets compare...
Borland removed their bug reporting software off the web entirely. Last time I checked I could not figure out how to report a bug to them.
gcc patched 1 problem overnight, 24 hours. second problem took three days from report to fix.
Reporting a useabilty bug on evolution. Hey my bug has been there a while, pretty minor problem but any developer can find the bug so one day it will be fixed.
mp3 is okay (I'd prefer an open format like ogg), but can you do anything about quality of the recording? (You did say you were bored ;-)
I mean, couldn't they have recorded it with a slightly higher quality? Please??
I'm sure that they could find someone (oh look... you!) to host a bigger file, and it would have really been nice to be able to concentrate on what they were saying rather than trying to screen out the fuzziness.
coding is life
I can't do anything about the quality, as I can only work with what I have. It has used quite a lot of bandwidth on my old web host already (over 6 gigs in 3 days, a lot considering I usually don't use that much in a year).
If you can persuade them to produce a higher quality, then what you want might be possible.
Dear Martin Taylor,
Microsoft makes a number of software applications including Microsoft Office -- applications that store user data in many different file formats. Recently Microsoft announced that it had made several of its MS-Office XML file formats open. But it is unclear how "open" these file formats are.
Could you please answer the following?
1) Which file formats are open?
2) When there was a clarification about the licensing of the microsoft formats, Jean Paoli said "We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license." What does that mean? Can OpenOffice.org create files in these formats?
The licensing terms for these formats are really confusing. Could you please release them under something simple like the Distribution Terms on the Xiph codecs like Ogg Vorbis[1] ?
3) Does Microsoft agree that storing data in non-proprietary, open file formats is beneficial?
I've heard that open file formats would make interoperability between different programs on different operating systems much easier. I've also heard that open file formats would mean that it would be easier to recover archived data in the future -- because all you'd need was the file and the file format. Would you agree that this sounds like a good idea?
4) On the website for the Office 2003 XML Schemas, you state "The Schemas provide developers and representatives of business and government a standard way to store and exchange data stored in documents."[2]
But unfortunately only certain versions of Microsoft Office support the XML formats. In fact, many people out there are using Office 97, Office 98, or Office 2000 -- none of which support your XML format. In order to make your formats viable for information interchange, would you:
--- --- ---
To be honest, I don't believe that Microsoft will answer these questions. But this is what I think needs to happen so that the Microsoft XML formats can be open standards for office formats.
Because if Microsoft doesn't want to step up to the plate and make the their formats the defacto standard, the OpenDocument/OASIS formats are ready to take that place.
[1] http://xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/
[2] http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
coding is life
Martin is referring to vintela which is a partner of Microsoft that authors SMS clients for non-Microsoft operating systems like linux. This allows SMS to manage non-Microsoft clients.
Depending on GPO to install software updates is foolish. The manually running Windows Update results in silent failure for some patches - I've seen it myself. And you trust that a policy will be better?
And what about all the breakage patching can do? Do you have the staff to test every one of a dozen patches in isolation and the wherewithal to set them up separately?
And Step 2) Install AD is easy? STFU
"Where's your enterprise directory?(don't even start on about Novell...)" STFU! AD is novell-lite, you fuck wit. AD is the equivalent of those star trek episodes filmed by fans, compared to TNG. (How's that for a geeky analogy?)
Most of those unpatched boxes had vulnerabilities that were predictable YEARS before the OS was released. How far back do you think you'd have to go to find the first advice to "turn off unnecessary services"? I will leave it as an exercise for the reader, but you know it was before they were deep in the design cycle for win2k. It was a knowable thing that UPnP was a bad idea. etc. Did they open more ports, or fewer? Ick.