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Bill Gates Speaks Out
neoform writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting interview with Bill Gates." In the article Gates comments on Vista, Google, and a few other pertinent topics. In an amusing bit of related news, an anonymous reader let us know that CNET is also running an interview with Gates. In the CNET interview Gates gives a very interesting response to one of the interview questions. "CNET: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."
With the latest pre releases of betas, including 64 beta, and trying not to be evil, etc., gates is going after the one market he never had, computer geeks. We all like linux. We hate evil giant copy-right suing corperations. He's trying to change his ways, and wether it works or not, it will help there PR, CS, and will let us try out and see new products to make us happy. I am all for it. Go bill! Join the force! Leave the dark side!
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
According to an inside source ("The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management" by David Thielen), Microsoft's motto actually is "Total World Domination".
Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not. As we use the Internet to connect everyone up, then the need to essentially have suspicion and only listen to certain other systems, and if flaws come up to have those updated very quickly, that became a new requirement.
Of course software was set up for networked communication. Most UNIX (including *BSD and Linux) systems since the late 1970s have been network-aware in some form or another. And they have experienced nowhere near the problems that Microsoft's software has.
Now it's intriguing that he's suggesting that it might be necessary to "only listen to certain other systems". That sounds an awful lot like a DRM-style situation for the Internet. Imagine not being able to connect to an FTP server running on Windows, only because you're using Mozilla or the FreeBSD ftp client, and such non-Microsoft products are deemed "insecure".
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In Summary:
Google slogan: "Do no evil".
Microsoft slogan: "Resistance is Futile".
(Our slogan is that) we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
Yeah, right. My guess is that it would be more like:
"we are going to sell or rent people tools and tell them how and when and for how long and under what restrictions the may organize some information."
This isnt a troll (I swear), but perhaps they are finally competing because they cant buy the competition?
You cant buy an open source project (at least not to stop it), and Apple is going to do its own thing regardless of MS (this is how it has always been).
MS bought Visio and plenty of other apps. I if an open source project created an office productivity application, would MS suddenly have their own version out soon?
That is an interesting comment (real quote or no), since it could either be interpeted as correct or incorrect; depending entirely on context.
:)
In the context of *all* software, that is probably true originally. Early big iron certainly did not like to talk to other machines. It was a bit of a hack, if I recall correctly. Early micros were totally independant.
On the other hand, by the time MS was on the scene (the CPM days) there were quite a few machines written from the ground up to talk to each other. In which case the quote would be wrong.
Of course, I'm sure many will disagree with me on both counts
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I know most people here have an allergy to corporatey stuff, but a mission statement is different from a slogan. Here's M$'s mission statement:
Our Mission
At Microsoft, we work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. This is our mission. Everything we do reflects this mission and the values that make it possible.
I'm not so sure what their slogan is: You will be assimilated?
In any case, it's clear that the only thing most of us thought as a slogan for google was Do no eviiil. The bit about organizing the world's information and making it useful- well, that's their mission statment.
With a CEO that throws chairs around and a tech with both-feet in mouth disease, I'd be selling M$ shares right now.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I'm thinking this is some lame attempt to pump up the stock.
Bill Gates puts the psycho Ballmer in charge. Ballmer would be great if his only job was to crush little, cash-strapped companies run by twitchy VCs.
But when MSFT has to compete with a real company, that has real money, and can hurt them, the psycho stuff doesn't work -- chair throwing. It makes them look bad in the press, like they are desperate.
In earlier times, Ballmer could throw the chair, say "fuck" and "pussy" all he wanted, and nobody would really talk about it, because they'd be thinking --- jeez, if I blab about this, who knows if it will bite me in the ass.
Now that the emperor has no clothes, that shit doesn't work.
So then they have to trot out the Nice Bill to give interviews that dispute the "we are evil" tag, and try to make things look like it will all be OK.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
"At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something," Gates said
:)
And still are, I'd wager, even the defunct ones...
Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not.
Solaris, 'Network is the computer', most other *nix's, Linux...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information
Question is, after you let me organize it all, will you allow me to access it and how much will it cost?
...how can we capitalize on what *could* be a nice bit of PR disaster for M$, showing that Gates is off his rocker, not to be trusted around children, etc. It's simply wrong that he should think M$ came up with everything and let it stand at that; think of the readers who *don't* know better and are that bit more lulled into thinking computers were invented by M$.
It's sort of a bizzare reversal of the phrase: every time Bill lies, a cash register goes "ring!"
... except Gate's point is still valid. They aren't getting paid to code, they have to support themselves to code. He believes in selling a product instead of selling support. It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
-everphilski-
Thanks for asking :) I'll take a stab:
/GS (which does stack canaries, basically) We examine every binary that leaves the building and can tell if the cookie_init() stuff is in there or not. There may be special exceptions, but this is a "requirement" to ship.
:) I mean, i can get NIS/NIS+ and NFS working right on a variety of platforms. Seems like i ought to be able to troubleshoot home networking.. :)
A secure computing environment. That is, not just secure applications,
we compile all code now with
closed ports
The firewall is on by default in XP SP2. This caused a lot of people to be unhappy, but customers (and people like yourself, if you dont happen to be a customer of ours) are clearly asking for it.
stringent remote access requirements
I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind here, but i'd say i understand better how to control who can connect and in what ways on most unixes than i do on windows. That in and of itself is a problem - nothing should be easier to understand on unix that windows, because no part of unix was designed for casual ease of understanding (a lot of it is easy to understand once you get the right mindset, or if you're a developer/whatever.. but thats more by side effect of the simple design than any real effort at accessibility, IMO)
I'm not sure what is going on this space. There are lots of individual peices in this picture that are getting better but i dont think there's anything like a unified administrative console that controls or answers "who can access this computer, and how". I admit that when i try and connect my work laptop to my home network, CIFS is busted badly and after 5 minutes or so times out, and i get a security event on the home-machine i'm trying to access. There are a lot of things going on on my work laptop (wpa, ipsec, routed use of non-routable networks, and obvious domain membership) but it seems like this is a pretty fundamental scenario to have "just work" and for the life of me i cant get it working at home.. so that indicates that we've got more "opportunity" in this space
disabled unnecessary services
Well, it still seems like there's always more stuff than I want running, but in Server 2003 we've made some progress towards that via Server Roles. Out of box, the attack surface is pretty small, and you turn on stuff like "web server", "application server", "file server" etc.
privilege separation
This has been a peeve of mine since i started, since i came from the *nix world. When i started, i complained to the VB6 team that it was impossible to debug COM Dlls in VB6 without admin rights, and that debugging seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do. The response from a VB6 PM at the time was "the NT security model is too hard, so its not our problem". The response today is different - even if you still need elevated privs to do certain things with VS7, 7.1, and 8.0. There is a ton of work in Vista to try and enable more things to work as non-admin, but unfortuneately there isn't a huge non-admin religious movement inside the company yet - most people still run as admin on their development machines and laptops... although there are some people that are really religious about no-admin and are pushing everywhere they can across all products..
and in general the ability to let people run applications on your computer while restricting access to computer resources that they shouldn't access (listening on privileged ports, for example).
Yes, there's effort happening here. Some specific things in IE, i think, and the CAS / appdomain things you can do with managed code will help here. These are things that partially exist today, but aren't well used for reason #2..
A secure development environment. That is, providing the tools and documentation needed to allow third-party developers to write secure applications. I
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I stopped using Microsoft products a few years ago and it has been a wonderful experience. The reason I stopped was to get away from the awful file formats that are pushed on you all the time, from Word to Windows Media they are awful. However the true pleasure has been getting away from the lousy software features that are always trying to guess what you're about to do and always guessing wrong ... perhaps best signified by that paper clip from Office. I don't know what the reasons are to use Microsoft products but I have definitely seen the reasons NOT to use them. With other software, the experience is better and the results are better.
... you have to see their stuff to believe it. Part of what makes them great is the open source stuff they're incorporating wherever possible and I'm very thankful for all the open source programmers. The standards, the interoperability, the parts of computing where it makes sense to collaborate widely and share thoroughly. I can't push Firefox enough even though I use Safari myself ... it is great to develop for a Web with two big browsers that have two big open source rendering engines competing for who can be the Most Standard. It's like a dream I had once in 1998, actually. Lots of people had it ... it's great to see it coming around now.
Apple's software people are incredibly good
I've always liked Google but after I used Google Maps I really understood how great their work is. I used MapQuest for years and it hasn't really changed and then boom one day I used Google Maps and now I keep going back. The experience is better and the results are better.
It's interesting to see Apple, Google and Open Source cited as Microsoft's main competitors. If there are two companies who are using open source better than Apple and Google I don't know who they are. Apple and Google spend their time doing what they do best because they're building on an open source infrastructure.