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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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; }
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 !
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%.
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
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.
Way to totally ignore what he said. There is nothing inherently illegal about having a monopoly. If you really have the best product and everyone buys it, that's not something you can be held responsible for.
All of those things you mentioned are illegal methods of maintaining a monopoly, which is what MS should have gone under for.
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.
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.
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 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.