Slashdot Mirror
Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft?
vd writes "Given most comments on Slashdot, it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft. An article on CoolTechZone, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss Microsoft outright. According to Varun Dubey, Linux is over-rated, Macs aren't worthy and Windows deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has Microsoft given us? It has given us Windows, sure, it was buggy earlier and a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort. No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered. Sure, Mac OS was a lot prettier but then it cost the moon and the stars along with both your arms and legs.'"
Sadly they are right, even though i dispise Microsoft all together there is no way to get around them. Because almost anyone that uses a computer learned how on Microsoft. They are the main platform in most business's these days. As a Networker if i don't know windows there really is no way of me making any money at all. I love linux and Mac's are only good for video editing, music editing, graphic's and i think thats pretty much it. But try teaching someone to use linux or mac when they have been in elementary, middle, and high school and only used Microsoft products. Its not easy. So yeah Microsoft is great for business's but if you do know more than the average person stick with what you know and you like.
It had all the features it took Microsoft ages to nearly get working many years before and at a far lower price. Shame Commodore were morons.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered.
In what universe is that true?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What a worthless article. If it were a Slashdot comment, it'd be moderated to -1, Overrated.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
First of all, the writing is less than stellar. Second, all of it is opinion based without any sort of facts to back it up, or in depth explanation of his point.
And then there's this: Lets be fair and honest about this. Here is a company that single handedly created the market for Personal Computers, brought computing to ordinary folks like you and me, made it affordable by encouraging mass acceptance and constantly strives to provide us ease of use in every sphere it touche
Gee, I remember something called the Apple II doing this long before microsoft was the force it was. What a maroon.
It's in the Apple section because Zonk is trying to get a knee jerk response from "Apple Zealots", either for commercial purposes, scientific research, or to settle a bar bet.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Plug and play was by no means a pioneering effort by Microsoft, the Macintosh has had it forever, so long in-fact that it had no name on Mac OS, not until it was a new feature in Windows did Microsoft give it a name. We Mac users just knew it as "stuff working when I plug it in just like it should"
Also I would argue (and I know there are many on both sides) that the Mac OS was prettier, cost more, and was easier to use as well.
He's full of fertilizer. So much fertilizer in so few lines of prose. "Noone was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered." the text asserts.
I dislike Microsoft. They're convicted monopolists. They produce the lowest quality of software and use their illegally obtained market dominance to shut out any alternatives.
Good things cost more, it's a fact
If you want a good car, you'll pay more than if you just want a cheap car...
...that was some god-awful writing. I think cool tech zone needs some editors.
What they "pioneered" was using feedback and network effects to force a marketplace to accept an inferior product at monopolist prices, costing the world trillions in lost productivity and lost opportunities.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Dubey doesn't get why MS is hated, that much is obvious from the "article". Rather than providing arguments, he publishes a load of fanboy drivel that's as inane as any Linux or Mac zealotry I've seen.
IOW: Nothing to see here, move along.
Okay, if you insist:
FTA: It is about time we stopped being hypocritical and appreciated a job really well done.
But it isn't. Popular or not, most of their products are mediocre hack-jobs that thrive despite their quality, not because of it.
Good lord, it's a troll article.
To say that Windows was a "Pioneering" effort is like saying Columbus "Discovered" America, when there were already people living here.
Give me a break. Why do people insist on re-writing history?
kulakovich
Is this just me? I really think he's missing what Linux is all about. It's not supposed to be the most user-friendly environment. There are people that WANT to have to "recompile the kernel if [they] want to so much as change your modem" because they're looking for that kind of option and flexibility.
I'm not even a hardcore Linux user (I've had Fedora Core for only a few months now) and even I can see this. Am I entirely wrong?
The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river.
Exactly...
Most of the people developing Linux couldn't care less about windows, so why bother writing up malicious code for it when they can spen that time (if coding) coding to improove the tools they use and learnt to love?
This article is written by someone who doesn't know nothing about OSS, and that quote shows it well.
Mind Booster Noori
This isn't an "article," it's a blog entry. And a really bad one at that. I say this as someone who uses Windows almost exclusively.
Having said all that, there is nothing wrong (as such) with loving Microsoft. If you like a product, find it easy to use and it allows you to do what you want to do, spend less time doing boring stuff and generally make the time you spend with it enjoyable then good for you. Some people can't stand it, some people love it.
Personally, I don't have a problem with Windows. I know it inside out (well, reasonably), can troubleshoot the few problems I have and so I'm reluctant to change to something else. Yes, the shell is a bit crappy, but XP+Cygwin in my mind is better and easier than Linux especially when under the latter my modem, sound card and network all fail to work.
Finally as for the "loving" comments, I find it odd that anyone could love an operating system. For me, the majority of the added value are the applications than I run on top of it. Sure the OS may have some neat tricks and features but I spend more time tinkering and using the apps than the OS directly.
But then I'm probably not your average Slashdot reader.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
People don't hate Microsoft because of their products; they hate Microsoft because of their business practices.
;)
Microsoft isn't buggy, it's evil!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They're convicted monopolists
I've never understoond slashdot's affinity for that line. There is nothing illegal about a monopoly. MS was convicted on illegally USING that monopoly.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
and this article is an absolute disgrace to our cause.
Clearly there are flaws in windows, including security, which this guy just brushes under the carpet. And he clearly hasn't used linux in a while -- I can't remember having to recompile my kernel too recently to get things working.
This isn't even an article! I've seen slashdot posts that are more insightful (and better structured).
There are pros and cons to both OSes, and I personally feel there are more pros on the side of Windows. But this article is the kind of drivel that gives us windows fanboys a bad name.
most of the people that I know who develop linux software (myself included) don't know jack about writing windows software, let alone the ins and outs of writing anything more complex than a "Double Click for Pr0n.exe" trojan that simply wipes the HD.
i tried to port one of my programs to windows, and it wouldn't even compile. I toyed around with it in visual studio at my friend's job and nothing I did would get it to compile. it kept complaining about compiled headers or something. and I was only using the standard library in C. It wouldn't even compile in cygwin without the help of someone contributing a patch to my project.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
And ironically, it's the most user-friendly piece of crap that has ever been made.
:-(
Linux is no piece of crap, but it's not user friendly
Those are valid knocks against MS, and I'm no big fan of Gates and Friends. However, it is a historical reality that without MS windows, desktop computing would still be a idiosyncratic little community typing out cryptic strings to a command line OS to do computing. Windows brought computing to the masses. Command line OSes were just too abstract for casual, low-tech users and MACs were (and are) prohibitively expensive.
Yes, MS has done some very evil things and some very incompetent things. But MS Windows gave rise to our industry's explosion, and they deserve a small amount of positive affirmation for that.
Just as it is impossible to quantify how much development hasn't occurred because of MS competition stifling, it is equally impossible to quantify how much of the last decade's content would not have been developed if MS hadn't developed an affordable GUI OS where any monkey could launch an app by clicking an icon. So maybe we are 5 development cycles behind where we would be if MS had published Windows in a perfect and altruistic world, but we are many development cycles ahead of where would be now if Windows hadn't been developed at all.
"In a nutshell, it's not so much as that the software is secure; it's simply that no one is interested in spending sleepless nights writing a virus that won't give them the satisfaction they get from causing havoc. "
From the latest Netcraft survey I've read, Apache still show's %70 Market Share. So according the the Author's logic, we should be seeing CodeRed, et al. for Apache NOT IIS. According to the authors logic why would someone spend "sleepless nights" focusing on the %29, instead of the %70?
How come we don't see the same type of devestating worms that we've seen directed at IIS, being written and directed at Apache?
Seriously, I would like to see such authors as these explain that to his readers.
Awesome!
Wow. Talk about your flamebait. Posting a pro-MS story on /. is just asking for trouble. But posting it in apple.slashdot.org is really over the top.
Now... addressing the , "is it OK to love Microsoft" question. It all depends on who you are and what your point of view of technology is. Let me explain:
1. There are people who love certain company/technology just because they are told the technology is good. Non-technical Sun Microsystems fans tend to be an example of this. They are told that Sun Microsystems is a good company to buy stock in, so they assume that the products Sun produces are good. But this is not the case. Trust me, I've worked with a few really bad Sun products for the past five years and I welcomed HP-UX with open arms where support and reliability are concerned.
2. There are people who love a technology because of it's status symbol ranking. Notable in this arena is Apple. Apple produces decent products, to be sure. But they are extremely expensive for what they are. They've been making a break with this as of late, so this isn't the ideal example, but there are plenty of products out there that fall into this realm. Think Adobe Photoshop vs. everyone else. Depending on your needs, Adobe Photoshop might be financial overkill. In many cases Paint Shop Pro or even GIMP might be enough. Especially where you don't need professional print features. But there are people out there who won't touch anything but Adobe Photoshop even to the extent of pirating it.
3. There are the people who actually know technology well. They might be programmers or engineers. To them, there are two possible divisions. The first one are the people who came up with the technology first. I know quite a few people who worship the DEC Alpha. Even to the extent of passing around unsubstantiated rumours that Itanium 2 is really a DEC Alpha in disguise. They hate everything else that has come along since the Alpha because their battle cry is that they had 64-bit RISC processing back in 1992.
4. The second group are those who know even more about technology than the people in example 3 above. These people usually have a really good clue about what constitutes good technology. They've usually been around a long time and have seen fads come, go and return as "new" again. They usually quitely shake their heads and take the more pragmatic view of choosing the most well designed technology. (They tend to be OpenVMS and Unix users)
5. Then there are the retarded suits who base what makes a technology company good on their stock portfolio. This group is the least well informed and are the most likely candidates to love Microsoft. When they get mailings from various tech companies, they'll ditch anything from smaller companies (even if the technology is superior to larger companies) and only go with big name brands. Dell, HP, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc... To them, these are the only options. They even tend to eschew companies like Epson, Gateway, Corel, Redhat even though there might be some very good technology coming out of these companies.
So, the question, "is it OK to love Microsoft" is really a non-starter. Security and reliability issues aside, Microsoft has done very little in the way of creating new and useful technologies. They just buy up technologies rather then developing them from the ground up. The company is not run by engineers, it's run by businessmen. The approach is to do just enough to make their technology usable, but not to make it superior. Where they want real performance is in their profits. And that is completely counter to excellent software engineering. For someone like me, I can't love a company that doesn't engineer things properly. Of all the companies I've had to deal with, DEC was probably THE best technology company out there with a real eye on great engineering. When they got taken over by Compaq, a good deal of that got shitcanned. When HP took over Compaq even more got given away, sold off and
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Because Netscape and Stacker are dead and forgotten and can't defend themselves. Sure, Microsoft has created the Internet Browser market: just look at the competition!
I wonder how this guy can praise Windows for its ease-of use when you can't even connect a Windows Mobile 2003 Pocket PC to a Windows XP SP2 PC via bluetooth. If you ever make it work, Windows will automagically break everything apart.
Or the need to reinstall the OS at least once a year just to ensure it's fresh and clean. Otherwise Windows with the help of third-party products will commit suicide, rendering the PC useless.
I can write the list forever. When I get to use a Windows machine, I can't help the habit of opening another desktop. Or a proper file extension manager.
Oh, and has this guy seen kernel modules like ATi's or nVidia's? Has he ever seen someone "apt-get install nvidia-glx"?
This is an infalmmatory, trollish, childish article. It is not news. It rehashes tired old claims that have been dissected to bits in previous discussions here. The grammar is poor, the points are weak, the article is unconvincing.
Now how the hell does this get to the front page of Slashdot?
-phozz
I remember when I first saw Windows in action. After playing with it a bit, I thought to myself, "What a klunky GUI Interface". GEOS on my old Commodore 64 was better, except that this has a lot more screen real estate.
Most of you've probably never heard of GEOS or Geoworks (and there was an IBM PC version that came out around the same time as Windows). Before windows made the switch to 32 bits, I'd say the IBM PC version was almost in every way superior to Windows. Both from a UI standpoint, and from a programmer's API standpoint. Why didn't it succeed? There's two reasons:
1. Marketing power. Berkeley software, the sellers of Geoworks, while they were brilliant at selling Geos on earlier platforms, like C64, really screwed up marketing their product for the PC.
2. Microsoft used the fact that they held the keys to MS-Dos as leverage. It is well documented that Microsoft steeply discounted MS-Dos to vendors that sold Microsoft operating systems. Any other OS, or windowing evironment, was forced to sell in non-mainstream channels.
It wasn't until 1995 and windows 95 that I feel that Microsoft caught up in user interface design to some of the other early forerunners. Those forerunners however, were 10x more innovative then Microsoft has ever been.
People think Microsoft Windows is special because it was their first experience with a windowing operating system, and it sure seemed better than DOS. They know that Macintosh came first, so they feel inclined to find some reason to say why it was inadequate--and that's usually by saying (justifiably) that it was too expensive. What they don't realize is that there were quite a few graphical windowing environments that also predate windows (for various platforms). A lot of them ran on expensive machines (such as the Amiga, the Atari ST, and the Macintosh), but a few of them were very cheap and ran on PC hardware.
I dislike Microsoft because, at a time when computers were a hodepodge of competing standards, it marginalized the tools I loved and used. I was forced to use it, and it felt clunky, and was buggy. I took Microsoft almost 10 years to write an OS that had enough UI improvements, and was stable enough, for me to feel like it would be technologically competitive with some of the best of those early systems.
In other words, I feel that the industry got set back 10 years.
By the way, I've been using Linux off and on since 1995. I used Linux because its stable and powerful. However, Linux really does suck too. Especially as a Graphical operating system. It's built on all the cruft of good old ancient UNIX.
Dossey's Rule #1: If an OS is good, it will be marginalized.
What a load of tosh! It would appear you get a
:-) Lets see...
story submitted on slashdoty now simply by stating
an option which is controversial!
What's next?
"SCO's a really great company!"
"Osama bid Laden's a really nice guy!"
"The Twin Towers needed to be demolished!"
"Windows Viruses are a good thing!"
Anyway, as a Windows programmer... the reason why Microsoft should be hated is because:
1) Microsoft's anti-competitive (illegal) practises.
2) Windows over complicated and badly designed architecture(s).
There's no doubt that Microsofts office suite is currently unriveled (Sorry OOo lovers!), but that's mainly becuase Micosoft have squashed all the opposition.
P.S. I recently bought a Mac mini for my mother-in-law. Wow! What a really lovely little computer! And MacOS X is _really_ nice. I've just bought some books on programming Cocoa... just got to buy a Mac now
return 0; }
Where's one's sense of history and perspective?
Berkeley Systems' GeoWorks was in many ways much nicer than Windows, ``run(ing) with a crispness Windows can only dream of on a 386'' (and was quite usable even on a lowly 8086).
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/geos.htm
VisiOn was tracking quite nicely as well, but was undone by MS FUD.
PenPoint was way cool as well.
and of course, while MS was busy w/ Windows 3.1, NeXT had NeXTStep.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
what a load of hooey, there's plenty of easy to use GUi based OS in the last 15 years that were superior in every way to windows and even easier to use. How many commercial desktop OS have you used besides Wnidows. OS/2 was superior. IRIX was superior. MacOS was superior. NextStep was superior. Microsoft OS (really glorified program loaders since a true Operating System fully manages the resources of the computer) are buggy, insecure, bloated, hard to use garbage in comparison, get on a REAL operating system sometime !
Mac's are only good for video editing, music editing, graphic's and i think thats pretty much it.
This is a big misconception many people have about Macs, Mac are for more than just these. Macs can pretty much do everything Windows are tasked for. There may be specific apps that are only ported to Windows but more than likely there's a Mac app that can do the same or similar things. Database, there are dbs for Macs, same thing with wordprocessing and spreadsheets. Afterall Microsoft has MS Office for Macs, Office 2004 for Mac - Professional Edition. Financial and accounting software, there's Quicken 2006 for Mac. And not only can you run Mac software on a Mac but you can also install and run Windows and Windows software as well. By using virtual machines such as Virtual PC, the one below comes with Windows XP Home, Macs can run more software than any other computer. Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 - Windows XP Home Edition It may run as slow as molasses but it can run them. Try that on a PC.
Falcon
Written on an HP PC running Windows ME.Should there be a Law?
Nope. IBM's negligence allowed the likes of Phoenix and Compaq to make the PC a "standard platform".
Without Microsoft, the same thing would have happened via Apple, Atari, Commodore or someone else either through a primary platform or through cloning one.
Microsoft actually stunted the saturation of the home computing market by supporting the dominance of a dull, overpriced "business only" machine.
It took the PC a good 10 years to catch up to the basic standard features of a 1985 era non-PC home computer. This includes the GUI.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
While 95% of the world runs a MS OS, that is purely because Microsoft has the PC industry in a strangle hold in terms of licensing agreements. Half of users could give two shits about whether its windows, mac, or linux. All they care about is what they can get done with it. You can't get much done when your computer is constantly plagued by viruses and spyware....can you?
While it is true that part of why Windows is insecure is because of its being so widely used, UNIX like operating systems are more secure due to their structure, and the fact that their authors and users are constantly looking at the OS under a microscope, picking out the vulnerabilities, and releasing patches. Even if UNIX based OS's were more widely used, there would still be fewer security concerns and fewer flaws. The flaws in windows go way beyond security.
Also, USB plug and play is actually pretty good on Linux. Also, using tools like yum, you can install software and all dependancies with one command.
If I recall, Apple was to market first with their personal computer (Apple II) while Microsoft was was still kissing IBM's feet, selling them an OS they didn't have. I myself still have my Apple IIe.
Also, from a programming perspective, Win32 is a monster. I have to modify perfectly good standards based C code to work on windows, where it will compile with very little modification whatsoever on Linux, and the BSDs, and the MAC. Standards exist for a reason.
Perhaps windows is easy to use, but it still presents way too many problems to be worthy of my respect. This article also puts everything else down waaaay tooo much (its just a tad biased.....like all of us I suppose).
Microsoft is a good business....not a good software maker.
izm
But MS Windows gave rise to our industry's explosion, and they deserve a small amount of positive affirmation for that.
No it didn't. MS Windows was a result of the IT industry growth, not a cause. The PC was already cheap and widely used (in the UK, Amstrad PCs running DR-DOS and GEM were selling well) before Windows turned up. There were many alternative GUI systems that could have become dominant on the PC.
What a dellude moron you are.
EVERYONE else had GUI's 10 years before Microsoft. This even includes UNIX.
It was Microsoft that was the last lone holdout in this area. It was Microsoft that subjected it's captive audience to user hostile command line crap.
Infact, Macs were really never much more expensive than brand name PCs. PCs just gave you the option of el-cheapo brands or completely generic hardware.
ST's and Amigas were dramatically cheaper than either, just as easy to use as Macs and far better than either PCs or Macs in terms of multi-media hardware.
Microsoft is the great sandbagger.
Dragged it's feet 10 years for a real 32-bit OS.
Dragged it's feet 10 years for a usable GUI.
Even then, the usable GUI was dependent on outside price pressures to give the common consumer the ability to buy enough RAM to run the pig.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In my take, Linux is good for running a dedicated process. If I were to set up a web/database/mail whatever server, Linux is my first choice. If I want to browse the web and fire up office apps, I would look toward using a Mac. But for workstation-level general computing (for me, video/audio conversions, Photo creation/editing, gaming) Windows it the king. None of these OSes are perfect. I have a lot of trouble memorizing useful shell commands in Linux and that makes daily use a hassle. If I only had a Mac I'd be terribly frustrated by my lack of software options (ok, ok, I'm mostly talking about gaming here). Windows is the target of nearly every attack on the web and requires extra care to use safely.
If people would quit arguing over one general point, namely which OS is "best", we could all realize they are tailored at different uses and get on with our lives.
I'l agree with you on your first point: I don't trust Microsoft as a company, I think that its policies have been illegal and unethical in the past and, probably, still are right now. It is, of course, a gigantic corporation; it's interests are in making money, not in making the world a better place or even making my life easier. I cast a skeptical eye on just about anything they do because my interests and theirs aren't likely to be aligned.
However, I also use Windows 2000 and am reasonably happy with it. It's stable to the point where my uptime is easily measured in months (and reboots only really happen when I decide to install some new graphics card drivers or new hardware), it runs just about everything I need, and it works well on computers ranging from six or seven years old to brand new. It's a good product for my purposes (PVR, games, Internet).
The reason I use Linux as well is that Linux gives me a much greater degree of transparency in what's going on behind the curtain; I can use it both as a productive working environment and to tinker with settings and configuration files to my heart's content. Linux offers a greater degree of freedom in allowing me to use a computer as I want.
Apple can move fast and change directions faster because they don't have an installed base that would hate them because they twist and turn. In PC land this can't happen because too much money is already invested in hardware and software. What do you think would happen to the world economy if Microsoft only would release longhorn for PPC?
No, for the most part the PC isn't the early adopter but it does save lots and lots of money even if the system as a whole isn't as clean as Macintosh.
Don't you think MS and everybody else would have liked to change the 8.3 filenames faster then what was happening. It couldn't be done becuase there was millions of programs people relied upon that wouldn't handle the change. Apple whipes the slate clean from time to time and start over. That wouldn't be possible if Apple had 95% of the market insted of 3%.
"Business is war."-- Commodore founder Jack Tramiel.
It's a shame we couldn't have rounded up Microsoft's employees early in the game and gassed them.
Hardware compatability.
How many different kinds of hardware can Windows plug and play these days? How many different chipsets?
Sure, its just drivers..but the ability to run out of the box without issue for millions of people with vastly different configurations, I feel, is a very strong aspect of MS Windows and something no other OS can claim.
It's how they abused their monopoly to wipe out future competition and to screw over their customers that got them in trouble
that should have got them in trouble... unfortately they seem to be able to get away with it.
I'd say this guy is merely a pro-MS zealot, exactly like the anti-MS zealots here on Slashdot that he bashes.
Let's look at the article piece by piece:
Recap on alternative/joke names for MS.
States explicitely that "I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!". He's clearly already marked out his opinion as essentially content-less uninformed flaming, exactly what he complains about when it happen to MS.
Calls Windows a "pioneering effort". Now, I'm no Linux or Mac fanboy, but I was under the distinct impression that Windows had very little innovation compared to the Mac. IIRC various Microsofties have even admitted as much before, albeit off the record.
Regurgitates the long-disproven "popularity => more successful breakins" argument. More popularity equals more cracking attempts, I'll grant you, but that's not the same as successful security breaches. And anyway, haven't we already disproven this whole argument?
"Considering the fact that everyone who knows how to write two bits of code dreams of hitting windows with a virus, the guys at the "Redmond Giant" are doing a spectacular job."
Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaaa! As everyone knows, the two main groups who write viruses are security professionals offering a "proof of concept", and script kiddies. The overwhelming majority of coders/developers have never written (or certainly released) a virus in their lives.
In addition, given it's mostly VBScript kiddies - who are almost universally poor programmers - the runaway success of most Windows viruses is even more damning.
"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it."
Dunno what version of windows he's using, and not to deny Windows has got better over the years, but I still have plenty of issues even these days with unrecognised hardware, pieces of hardware detected twice, crashes due to dodgy device drivers, etc.
"In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem!"
Now, I'm not that au fait with the low-level Windows or Linux processes, but I understood that they both used monolithic kernels (ie, drivers not in userland). Surely this means that Windows also has to "recompile" the kernel when the device drivers change? If so it might be hidden behind a pretty user-interface, but it's the same damn architecture and the same design problem.
Tackles the anti-trust cases. Totally ignores Microsoft's documented illegal behaviour and instead blames it on jealousy from competitors. Riiiiiight...
Suggests Sun and Oracle's business models are based around sueing Microsoft. Is he confusing "Sun" with (the Microsoft-backed) SCO, and "Microsoft" with Linux?
He's actually suggesting these companies sue Microsoft because they see it as an easy revenue-earner, rather than a highly risky attempt at redress against the richest organisation (with the most expensive and persuasive legal team) in the world. Mind-boggling.
"Microsoft made some products which it would like to ship together with its OS, no where in the EULA does it say that "you are not authorized to install other software" If Mr. John Doe thinks media player is the worst piece of software he has ever used, he is free to go and download Winamp or Musicmatch Jukebox (neither of these offer free full versions)."
Yeah, they don't write it into the EULA where anyone could see it, but you don't need to do that when you've got the CEO of Dell's balls in your office drawer. It's harder to prove, and leaves less obvious marks for the next lawsuit.
Oh, and the key thi
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Why do you trust our corporate masters?
To maintain that monopoly your company will have to lock out potential competitors with patents, laws, or failing all that good ol' threats and intimidation.
Your point, "there's nothing wrong with a monopoly" strikes me as naive. Capitalism, like a game or sport, only has a chance of half-way working when there's a somewhat level playing field. Monopolies are broken like the Black Lotus and Mox cards in Magic the Gathering, and they must be regulated as such. Please go crack open a history book and look up trust busting.
Sometimes the government will allow a monopoly to continue to exist provided the company is willing to allow itself to be regulated by the government. It's my understand that this is how Southwestern Bell worked at one time.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
A timely case in point is how it broke into and gained dominance in the web browser market: it is a fact well documented in court records that this was purely because of being able to leverage it's desktop monopoly into control of the newly established web browser market. Yeah, both MSIE and Netscape sucked, but MSIE wouldn't have gone anywhere without the desktop monopoly and, oh yeah, ripping code from Mosaic.
Then there has been the strong arm tactics it has used, and still uses, with OEMs and partners. BeOS fell to that one. It won the right to distribution, but MS ensured that even when it came on OEM machines, it was not in the boot loader.
There has been sabotage. The AARD code against DR-DOS was one, but broken implementations of HTTP, TCP/IP and Kerberos make problems, too.
There have been smear campaigns spreading misinformation about competitors and their products (esp. Novel Netware) MS has also used its partner the BSA to raid businesses using competing products and negotiate contracts with an MS-only infrastructure in their place. There have been forged video evidence in US courts, but no charges of perjury. There were cases where the executives either perjured themselves or committed treason, no middle ground: they did this by swearing in court that their products were so shoddy that national security would be threatened by releasing the source code, yet they turned around and showed the source code to China.
Currently, there are problems with MS trying to use the WMA and WMP formats to break into the audio and video market. The EU has found them guilty of illegal, anti-competitive behaviour, but has been waffling on actually enforcing any punishment.
Currently, the licenses for 2000 SP3, XP SP 2 and later even give MS administrative rights to the machine. That's a back door by another name.
The list of ethical / legal problems could go on for pages. Why is Slashdot suddenly pushing so much stuff from MS apologists? How about more article about companies with a future, like Opera, Apple, IBM, etc. Or tools like OpenOffice, or codecs like Vorbis, Dirac, or Theora, which anyone could use. Shoot, such a big deal was made about Greasemonkey having some minor flaws, yet nothing has been said about greasemonkey being patched. How about an article on that and a moratorium on doing marketing for MS?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
It's not wrong to love an abusive spouse but that doesn't mean you shouldn't leave them for beating you up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What really gets me is that we all pay for this activity. Every time you but a new PC with Windows you are paying MS developers to lock you in and break competing applications.
Not to mention paying for the lawyers to defend them when it comes to court.
But the criteria for what makes a good coder have changed over the years. Back then, you were good if you could squeeze lots of features into limited memory. Now, that would be regarded as bad code, because it is unmaintainable. Good code now is code that is secure and robust. But Microsoft are still going for "as many features as possible" instead.
Are you kidding?
Survey the thousands upon thousands of citizens of India who either lost loved ones or are still living with the aftermath of Bhopal about what they think of Union Carbide.
Survey the thousands of people whose retirement was wiped out by the burnouts of Enron about how their medical bills may drive them into poverty.
Survey environmentalists around the planet about what they think of the parent company of the Exxon Valdez (and countless LARGER accidents" and the damage done to the environment.
The most hated? Maybe the company most expected to abuse their leadership position in the industry, but the most hated?
Maybe by many vocal slashdotters, but Microsoft doesn't hold a candle to how other companies have (intentionally or not) caused millions of people around the world to associate hate with a corporate entity.
Microsoft has done many baaaad things. But when it comes to causing environmental damage, wiping out people's savings, or just plain killing innocent people, they are just plain amateurs.
methinks thou just wants another reason to trash them
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Do i really care for someone who can't notice the diffrence between Mac and MAC?
The remaining being divided between Linux, MAC etc. now lets say MAC has 1 percent...
Also another point:
The question is why do they? I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!
The guy obviously loves GUI, and his WindowBlinds themes... fine Linux desktop enviroments are not up to play with the big boys yet, no reason to dismiss a whole OS on a few faults when your never going to come into contact with the real power. Its like saying AS/400 is crap at running games... therefore its crap full stop.
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
Er, not really. Microsoft ran on IBM hardware, which was not cheap. You can thank Compaq and people like Albert Clark for commoditizing the PC, not Microsoft. Microsoft got lucky in that they were the default OS on expensive hardware at the time it got commoditized by other innovators.
1) You don't know the meaning of monopoly: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service" -- in other words, creating a product that noone has is NOT A MONOPOLY; this is "first mover". If a company possess a CONTROL over the "supply or trade", then that is a monopoly.
2) The way a monopoly is defined by the law, Microsoft's monopoly is illegal. Microsoft "owns"/"controls" 90+% of the desktop computer software market; Microsoft uses that control to keep competitors from fairly competing. That is the definition of an ILLEGAL MONOPOLY. Microsoft was found to have violated the law regarding ILLEGAL MONOPOLIES. Unfortunately, the government did not server the same kind of medicine on Microsoft as they did to AT&T.
Sure, occasionally they break a few kneecaps, and torch a few buildings, but most of them are probably real good to their faimlies, and to winows and orphans, even the ones that they helped create. Your honest, local, neighborhood business man is highly over rated anyway, and mostly exists to spite the mega corporations.
Its a survival response I guess. I've loved every computer that I've used as a desktop except for my Windows computers.
Some of my Windows computers were adequate but I just never could warm up to them. Unlike some of my other machines the passion of Microsoft craftsmen never seems to shine through. Maybe they don't care enough or maybe their designs are too constrained by the requirments for incremental increases in market control with each new version. In any case, by and large I find their products to be of low quality and buggy-geek-feature-laden compared to the competition in categories where competition still exists. Unfortunately they produce the operating system and every product that runs on that operating system suffers from their lack of vision and passion and their drive to incrementally increase their control of the market with each new release. The only time they care about quality is when there is a threat of revenue loss or a reduced rate of growth.
I love computers and computing technology. Its been my job, my hobby and my passion for many years now and when possible, I buy machines and software from people whose similar disposition shines forth in their quality products.
I don't believe that Microsoft leadership is creative, visionary or passionate about their products in anything remotely like a constructive way. Even their passion is a marketing ploy. As soon as the competition in a product area goes away they no longer have direction (nothing to copy) in the evolution of their product and they lose the incentive to make it better and it shows. Microsoft only makes pretty good products in an area until the competition is dead and then the quality sinks and the hostage users pay and come to love their abusive master and their "quality" products.
After Microsoft's external competition dies in a category the only competition left for their product comes from the previous version of their own product. This eliminates any incentive for support and backward compatibility. Ironically compatibility remains the main selling point of Windows systems.
I have nothing against Microsoft and people who love them for whatever reason as long as they don't systematically obliterate my access and option to use quality products crafted by people who give a darn. I'd willingly pay Microsoft for great products if I ever thought that they produced one. As things stand I am essentially forced to buy and use their products in a way that is shutting the door on quality competition. It isn't right.
I guess it's kind of like the Monty Python spoof of the Jewish Zealots' rebellion, as portrayed in _The Life of Brian_....
zealot: "How _much_ do you hate the Romans?"
Brian: (trying to gain approval) "A lot!"
zealot: "Alright. You're in!"
You have to hate Micro$oft in order to have credibility, because for anyone to understand computing (technology and/or culture) and like Micro$oft is, well... incredible!
Sure, Mac OS was a lot prettier but then it cost the moon and the stars along with both your arms and legs.
...and I think, hey, if MacOS puts an end to that sort of bullshit, I'm actually coming out far ahead of the game.
Macintosh cost more in initial cash outlay, but did it increase productivity?
I think back over the endless days I've spent fixing Windows problems, the loss of data when Windows has bluescreened, the loss of billable time and the loss of my hair...
The cost of an operating system and applications is one helluva lot more than merely the sticker price.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I've posted this before, but this story makes it particularly apropos:
Microsoft has Billions of dollars, and yet they can't deliver products that are well documented, well-architected, stable and secure? If they could do that, they might get more respect.
I think that quote from your article says almost all. You adore Microsoft. Good for you. You hate [L]inux (it's not capitalized). Good for you. That's really about the only objective part of you article. You don't think linux is good at doing something? You're opinion... It's misguide at best, but it's really wrong. Did you know at Microsoft for the longest time their e-mail servers were Unix machines? That was because their e-mail applications weren't up to the task. This I know because I worked there. Haven't checked recently, so I don't know if they're still using unix for e-mail.
Also, some of the world's largest, most complex, and savviest applications are running on linux platforms. Do you ever use Google? Google (last time I checked) is up over 40,000 linux servers running the show. Ever shop at Amazon? Amazon runs almost exclusively on linux and Solaris (Sun) boxes under the covers.
Sad, unfair and uncompetitive? Maybe you're only fifteen years old. If you were older and had any sense of history and knew what Microsoft has done in the past you'd understand better. Microsoft has gotten where it is, become what it is, with blatant disregard for fair and competitive business practices. (Not sure what "agreeing on a constitution" has to do with anything in your thesis.)
Continue to love Microsoft, it's a warm fuzzy world from your view. You obviously are part of the target demographic.
You're probably going to get hammered for your column. You deserve it.
I'm hoping that everybody realizes that they're responding to three high school students, of which only two seem to have enough grasp of the English language to passibly write in it. The other one is a "tech news analyst", whatever that means.
And you know what? Y'all (and me too...) just got pwned. They've managed to get a website going with minimal content, and seems to be over 50% ads, with crappy writing. Normally, this would be a bust. But, get your site on slashdot with a controversial subject and.... forgive the cliché:
At least you can feel good about getting Sandeep and Ravdeep money for college.
Ah, what the hell. Give the kids a break. We were all kids once too, and probably thought a bunch of stupid shit like "Microsoft is teh inovator!" But this definitely doesn't belong on /., it's pure flamebait. (not to mention sneaky devious, just like the guys in the black van outside... but they can't fool ME!!!)
No. Not really. Apple had long (33 chars) file names in the Apple II since its earliest days, but not in MS-DOS floppies. ProDOS filenames were shorter, IIRC.
It was not until the first SuperDrive (the manual insertion 3.5" floppy, not the DVD writer) that Apples started reading MS-DOS disks and until MacOS 8 or 9, no Apple OS would see long file names in FAT floppies unless while using a third-party tool.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I use both a PC and a Mac. After some time with the Mac I could nail down the main difference in philosophy and user base between the two. PC's are like a home built car. You can buy pre-made kits but it's still a kit car. You can customize it out the wazoo to have something utterly unique and you can make it do what you want. Want a sport car, make it low and wide. Want an offroad car, make it big and beefy. The PC approach means high flexibility but some reliablilty issues and it means some parts don't always want to work together and when it breaks you fix it. Mac is more like a production car. Sure it's not going to beat a high performance kit car in price or in performance, but everything fits properly, all the pieces work together and offer you simplicity. You turn the key and it goes. It breaks, the dealer fixes it. But, it looks like every other car from that same model, has the same performance as anyone else who bought that model, the same factory colors etc. You sacrifice flexibility in the design and it takes more effort to customize it to your needs. Apples are great. You take it out of the box and turn it on and your done. Want to add an Apple upgrade? Just plug it in, your done. PC's are an open architecture with parts made everywhere. You get to pick and choose what you want but there is no garauntee that everything is going to work together. Some people want to just put the key in and go. Some people want to pick and choose. Different people, different philosophies. Both valid.
This is the most unfortunate aspect of operating system expectations to date. Barring a genuine hardware problem, all users should expect that their operating system will never crash.
Now the vast majority is so well conditioned, that halving the frequency of crashes on their system is seen as a benefit, when they shouldn't have been allowed to happen in the first place.
I've worked with someone who has high praise for SGI. I've not played with their OS myself, but from what I've heard they're a company that takes responsibility for it. As I understand it the bug policy is along the lines of "If your application can cause a problem with our OS, it's our fault, and we will fix it, at no cost to you." They believe in your right to trust that their OS is bullet-proof, providing of course that the hardware is maintained.
When will Microsoft and other commercial vendors to offer that kind of stability? When can we expect a crash-free OS to be the norm rather than the exception?