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Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?
MrSplog asks: "I'm doing a short project on Microsoft and its impact on society. A considerable part of this project has been looking into people's perceptions of Microsoft and the heavily negative bias of that perception. Since Slashdot is one of the world's forefront leaders on Microsoft hatred, I wanted to know: just why do you hate Microsoft? Please be as descriptive and as thorough as you like. Counter arguments and positive comments are also appreciated."
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Tieing the web browser to the operating system and creating Active X controls, and then putting no security on them, ushered in the era of spyware and caused tremendous suffering for users and the tech support people scrambling to try to stamp out the spyware.
one could argue Microsoft products are shoddy because they support a mind blowing number of hardware configurations. Apple's job is much easier...but do you want to be restricted in what kind of computer you want? If it was up to Apple, they would be still on slow powerpc chips but it was the competition in the PC world that finally made them see the light. And you have to thank Microsoft for at least part of that.
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
Monopolies produce poor quality products at high prices - that's what monopolies do. So yeah, no reason to hate Microsoft anymore, we know what they are.
Yeah, that makes about as much sense as saying "murderes leave a hell of a mess - that's what murderers do. So yeah, no reason to hate OJ Simpson anymore, we know what he is."
It must have escaped my attention when it became the case that the simple realization that a person or company has committed a crime somehow excuses it.
Microsoft is a convicted monopoly. There is no more reason to hate them required. They will always be a convicted monopolist; you don't somehow get un-convicted after a couple of years. The penalties they had to accept (at least in this country) may have been little more than a slap on the wrist... but that doesn't change what they are. And it's something they only share with a few other companies in the history of this country.
I mean, why hate Enron? Why hate the tobacco industry? Why hate any company?
When it's not just your opinion that they've hurt people, but when it's in fact been proven that they hurt people, then I'd say that's a pretty good reason.
(That doesn't mean I hate Bill Gates; I think he's done a lot of good things. But he has not surrounded himself with the most scrupulous people, and he himself has not always acted scrupulously in business.)
Embrace, extend and extinguish, is only a symptom of the real issue. The real issue is that Microsoft fails to subscribe the culture that most geeks subscribe to which is simply: Technical freedom. We want to be able to do whatever we want with technology, and we dont want anyone getting in our way. Microsoft is constantly getting in the the way of technical freedom as it tries to bully its way into being important instead of innovating its way into importance... Microsoft refuses to be in a support role and wants to be the center of the technical world regardless of technical merit. That getting in the way and self centered attitude is the reason everyone *I* know hates Microsoft.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
MS conducts themselves as a bully.
Nobody likes a bully.
They became a giant by stealing other people's ideas, establishing a status quo of mediocrity, and squashed innovation.
It is frustrating knowing that better products exist that will never get a chance because of their hegemony.
However, I do really like certain Microsoft products. I think Defender is a great idea, perhaps a few years late in the game. MS Office is a great product. Their development tools are good.
And Microsoft has become considerably less evil in recent years, but they have no regards for standards and make life unduly difficult for a great deal of people. Sometimes it doesn't even serve a financial purpose.
Look at their history with Sun and Java. Microsoft clearly has no respect for other's rights or licenses. And they want the internet to be something proprietary that they control, again even if it costs them money, and they don't gain anything from it. They just want to control things. By pushing for browser-specific tags, and refusing to conform to web standards, every webmaster on the planet is put out to design around both standards and Microsoft.
Does Microsoft make money of IE? No. They give it away for free, while throwing butt-loads of money developing it. So why continue to spend money fucking the entire internet over? Because they are bullies who like to remain the king of every hill they can find, even if it means forcing customers into inferior products.
That's why.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist.
Microsoft was let off the legal hook by a fortunate change in administrations - more like a fortunate failure to honor the democratic will of the people.
Microsoft spends billions of dollars around the world lobbying for initiatives that restrict and suppress open standards and free software, guaranteeing expansion of its monopoly worldwide and into emerging and developing markets.
Bill Gates may be attempting to use his money to make a positive impact in this world in order to whitewash his legacy in his old age, but had governments and businesses and people invested in open standards and free software instead of the monopolist's products, we would still have Bill's money in our collective pockets, developing our economies, educating our children, and feeding our families.
The insecurities of an aging robber baron are little consolation for the great human and natural resources he has squandered through ruthless malice, contempt for law, personal aggrandizement, and cronyism.
How'd I do?
if several other OS's didn't exist which run perfectly fine on tons of hardware (*BSD and Linux). And the sad part is, M$ has all the vendors producing drivers SPECIFICALLY for their operating system. All they have to do is provide a stable kernel and easy/efficient module system for these drivers, and they'd be golden -- every advantage is on their side there. This opposed to Linux and *BSD, who are still more or less reverse engineering many of their drivers.
I don't hate Microsoft. I think their products are often very good, given that software from any vendor tends to suck in various ways.
I *oppose* Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in markets with high barriers to entry. In this situation, competition suffers, and without competition we get stagnation. It is a good thing for me to spend my efforts towards increasing competition rather than decreasing it, which generally requires opposing Microsoft.
How we arrived at this situation is not very relevant. It's partly Microsoft's doing, partly not. The computer industry suffers from structural network effects that drive the marketplace towards monopolies; that's not Microsoft's fault. But Microsoft certainly did (and does) many ethical and unethical things to reach and maintain its position.
People tend to think that if you oppose Microsoft, you must also hate them, but it's not so.
While we're arguing hypotheticals, I'll point out that if it were really up to Apple, IBM would have put the necessary resources into developing low-power and high-speed PowerPC chips, the lack of which being what drove Apple into the Intel transition. If there were no Microsoft, and as a result, the same level of R&D going into today's x86-derived processors were instead used to develop the PowerPC line powering Apple's presumed monopoly, then the Intel transition would not have been desirable.
You're right in that competition is a good thing; I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one. But I think the parent was saying (and I agree) that they are Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors which earn that company such widespread disapproval.
Basically, my "hatred" (*hate* is such a strong word... i would prefer disgust) stems from several different things:
-stagnation: Microsoft is responsible for a stagnation of innovation on the pc. Ranging from the _very_ late adoption of technologies (example: USB) to the complete ignorance of standards(html, css), they have hurt innovation
-interoperability/lock-in: the small changes in the SMB-protocol from version to version are jsut there to block interoperability. same goes for NTFS.
-sucky products: none of their releases are good. Almost every single product they have released begins to get useful a year after the release, when the most annoying bugs have been fixed. I could tolerate that with a small software-hut which _needs_ the money NOW, but Microsoft as enough money to wait till the product is really ready for the market.
-sucky products/bloat: I don't think that luna should eat away 140Mb of my RAM. I don't think that Word 2004 offers enough new features to warrant a tenfold increase of RAM-usage compared to Word 97
-lies: Microsoft lies. See their FUD about linux. See what the "great business deals" and "alliances" have gotten the companies Microsoft partnered with: every single company that worked with Microsoft lost.
-Content industry's bitch: DRM in every format, downscaling of videos, etc. _I_ am the customer, not the MPAA.
-arrogant CEO: Balmer must go.
-arrogant company: A company that want's to crush and kill everybody else is mad. Competition yes, killing for the killing's sake: NO.
I'll admit Microsoft products aren't perfect, hell they have a lot of problems. But I mean, claiming that every alternative you've used is better? I think that's complete bullshit.
I know a lot of people on here look at Linux with adoring eyes, but come on, it's not ready for the desktop. I want to install an OS, and have it work. My printer. My camera. My weird NIC. My DVDRW burner. My 2 month old Video Card. Maybe I should go Mac then? That really doesn't solve the problem because it's hardware controlled (though I do have a Mac and love it). But Mac's office suite is - surprise! - Microsoft Office. Open Office sucks, period. Make it fast on OSX and maybe i'd say otherwise.
Anyways, the whole point of this is that claiming that all alternatives available are better is a pretty broad and stupid statement. I would say I even enjoy Office 2007 quite a bit.
Dude, no. Microsoft makes shit software because they can. Period. The market will tolerate it, so Microsoft has absolutely no need to put any more effort into it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
For those of us old enough to remember writing VxD's in C in Windows 3.1, the only 32-bit flat compiler available was Watcom, which suited us just fine as it was far superior to the uSoft compilers if its day. When Win32 came out (mandatory in Win95), Microsoft wanted that market and had their own barely operable 32-bit compiler. They required "Dynamically loadable" VxDs for all 32-bit apps. The new Microsoft linker (required to build VxDs from already-compiled object files) accepted the same COFF object files as the old linker as well as the new proprietary object file format produced by Microsoft's compiler.
"Somehow," the new linker had all sorts of bugs in its handling of COFF but handled the proprietary format just fine. EVERYONE writing windows drivers had to switch. Don't forget that writing drivers usually requires a lot of compiler pragmas that have to be redone to port from one compiler to another.
Now, perhaps this was a mistake rather than an abuse...
1. Up to that date, even Microsoft had been using the Watcom compiler. (You don't really think they wrote all their drivers in assembly)
2. The choice to make the old VxD format inoperable in the new systems was totally elective and synchronized to their theft of the compiler market. In fact, for a few product releases, we actually had a Watcom-based driver with 90% of the code and a "proxy" built with the Microsoft compiler just to trick the system into allowing it to work.
This is one of many many stories where Microsoft has used their dominance to bully their way into a business, notwithstanding the competitors who were cleaning their clocks on a previously level playing field. They did this to the detriment of their customers for sure as well as to the people that had built a legitimate business with a superior product.
OpenOffice.org isn't the best alternative to MS Office. It's the most similar alternative.
The alternative to MS Office is a whole bunch of different programs, depending on what you want to do. Scientific papers? LaTeX. Newsletters? Scribus, PageMaker, etc. Ordinary business documents? Wordperfect. Photo editing? Photoshop. The list goes on.
As for this statement:
I want to install an OS, and have it work.I'm totally amazed that you have the audacity to say that, in reference to Windows, here. One of people's biggest complaints about Windows has been that you can never be sure that it'll work, even if it did before.
http://outcampaign.org/
Atleast you got Halo for your Mac( or are getting it ). A similar exmple is when Netscape was kicking ass in the browser market. There was this little company called DimensionX who had a cool development system for multimedia applications written in Java. IIRC, they were doing something with Netscape too and it had to do with developing Java applets or something. Well, Sun Microsystems wanted to purchase them to help show what Java can do but Microsoft wanted them too. Only Microsoft wanted them to kill them and stop Java from getting recognized as a useful tool. The bidding war was on and when all was said and done, Microsoft ended up with DeminsionX for millions and terminates its Java products. They did the same with a company called Coopers & Peters.
So if a technology is growing which is outside of complete control my Microsoft, they go out and purchase and terminate those companies leading the way.
Heard of OpenGL? Well Microsoft can't have a cross platform 3D tool getting developers excited. They must come up with another 3D system which will ONLY RUN ON WINDOWS.
Got 80% marketshare in handhelds( PalmOS ). Microsoft start seeing all the other dbase vendors shipping dbases clients for PalmOS so Microsoft releases MS Access lite for WindowsCE, which nobodies heard of. Fast forward 10 years and you find that Microsoft has lost over $8 billion on WindowsCE just to dominate the handheld market. Ie, they bought their way into the market with $10's of billions over about 10 years.
This guy wants to know why people hate Microsoft? He/she should look at how Microsoft pretends to "compete" in the market. Hint, they don't compete and do EVERYTHING they can legally and sometimes illegally to stop the reall innovators from making their product sucessful.
And lets not even go into how they steal other companies IP and then after 5-10 years when the company has no more customers and exists only as an owner and a lawyer, they pay out a few million in a "settlement".
IMO, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and the rest of the crew are snake oil salesmen. They use Microsoft to crush anybody and everybody they decide is a threat to the money train called the Microsoft Windows monopoly.
You are very lucky to even hear of Microsoft doing a Mac version of a product they've purchased. Given how they hate that Apple is making a sucess out of the iPod, I wouldn't doubt that EVERY Microsoft product for the Apple is heading for the chopping block. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Without a dominant OS, issues of compatibility would be a thing of the past. Even different versions of Word have incompatibilities. If different OSes ran different software, they would all have to decide on a common format, like ODF, and the documents would be interchangeable. As it is now, MS changes things around in it's proprietary Word format and doesn't let anyone else in. MS stifled web development over the past 5 years because they stopped developing Internet Explorer. They beat the competition (Netscape) and then had nothing to push them (or copy from). Now that Firefox has revitalized the browser wars and Google is fighting on the internet front, we are suddenly coming upon Web 2.0. Applications online are the beginning of an OS agnostic web, which is should be.
MS has been declared an abusive monopoly by the US government. Yet, they are still continuing the same business practices pushing their way into markets based on power, not good products. This is the main reason I stay clear of all MS products. I will not give my money to a declared abusive monopoly. I try to push alternatives in every case I can in the hopes that one day, MS will not be able to abuse it's monopoly because it will no longer be one.
I wasn't going to post in this "discussion", mostly because the original question is blatanly biased, and assumes a particular position is held by the reader, and then asks them to explain it... "So, sir, what would it take to get you to stop eating children?".
However, you're such a blatant appologist that I have to say something.
A corporation is called a "corporation" - and has been "incorporated" - because it has been "given a body" under the law to operate on behalf of a group of persons, and has certain rights AND RESPONSIBILITIES, just as any member of society.
The idea that a company, or its officiers, should put fiduciary responsibility on a pedestal, far above any other responsibilities to the society that permitted its incorporatinon, and on whose sufferance its continued existance depends, is relatively recent. Adherence to a specific duty above all other duties or considerations is the moral equivalent of the "Nuremberg Defense".
If a person can sell their soul, and if a corporation is a person under the law, then surely there are also many recent examples of corporations selling their souls.
-- Terry
This article and many others on Groklaw might give you a clue. Microsoft has:
- Destroyed Netscape and BEoS.
- Bribed government officials in India and other countries to use their operating system.
- Funded SCO's litigation against IBM and Linux in general.
- Bribed Novell into betraying the Linux community.
- Forced entire school systems to audit their computers and pay "non-compliance" fines.
- Profited off of Linux and Mac installations without paying royalties by forcing a per computer "tax" on all Licencing 6 customers.
- Slowed down the Internet with their virus ridden software.
- Made it impossible for me to buy the laptop I choose without paying them, even if I do not use their software. (The guy at the store laughed at me when I asked if I could just get the hardware.)
- Supported software patent legislation in Europe.
- Created the most DRM restricted operating system in existence with plans to extend the DRM to MY hardware and encrypt MY information on MY hard drive and give control of all that to someone else (read: Hollywood).
. . . and those are just what I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure I missed more than half, and no, I do not have time to provide links to all of those. You are on your own.All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I do not "hate" MS, but I will rather not use their software.
1) Proprietary software is not transparent. It is therefore intrinsically less trustworthy than open source.
2) Using MS tends to lead to dependance on MS.
3) MS's business practices suggest they in particular are not trustowrthy, and more likely to exploit dependence on them to my detriment.
4) I resent the fact that their software is bundled by everyone - I want to be able to walk into a shop and have a choice of PCs with different OSes installed.
5) I have found most of their software to suck (with the exception of Excel which is very good) and the OS hard to administer (lack of a single auto update mechanism for all, or almost all, my software in particular).
6) Their security track record, and their other shortcoming, sugggests that their attitude to theis custoers is "the sucks will buy anythings".
Let's say that all the restaurants and supermarkets in your neighborhood are taken over by, not only fast food chains, but McDonalds. That's the only place where you can eat. To you, it tastes bad, it's bad for your health, there is little selection, but you don't have a choice: you gotta eat. But you have actually eaten good food in your life and know that better food exists. Wouldn't you be kind of annoyed? Wouldn't you start cooking for yourself and try to create alternatives?
Well, that, in a nutshell is why many people don't like Microsoft and why they are looking for alternatives. It's also why many other people don't mind Microsoft; they don't know anything else.
Office is just cluttered. Too many things most people don't use. [...] A simple setting in options for "Basic", "Intermediate", and "Advanced" layout would allow people that want basic use (my Mother) to find what they want quickly, but I change a setting and get the Advanced user interface when I use her PC, then I can put it back just the way she's used to.
This is possibly the worst solution I could imagine to the problem of complex software that is intended for normal users. Can you point to any examples of general-use software (open or closed source) that have successfully implemented a basic/intermediate/advanced toggle switch for its main interface? This idea gets brought up frequently by those with technical experience but who don't design software interfaces for a living (or in their free time, as the case may be). It's an awful idea that only serves to promote the notion that the more complex functionality of the software should be locked away from all but the lords of technology, unavailable to the unwashed masses who are just too unskilled to touch the powerful resources of truly great software.
The reason this idea is bad is that it's impossible to define the subset of software functionality that will never be used by the users you brand as basic or intermediate. While everyone needs the core functionality (for a word processor, things like open, save, copy, paste, print), a large number of basic users need to regularly use functionality you might logically put in the intermediate bucket (headers and footers, tables of contents, tab stops, tables), and a not insignificant number of basic and intermediate users occasionally need the most complex features (mail merge, document comparisons, tracking, and versioning).
By removing these features from the software interface when in intermediate or advanced mode, you're not solving the problem at all. You're postponing and worsening it. As soon as Grandma Mae wants to send out her Christmas letters, or Nephew Ted wants to type out his term paper, you have to preface all your instructions with "turn on advanced mode" at which point they're presented with the mind-boggling array of features that is ostensibly causing the problem in the first place. All of the sudden, the software is unfamiliar again; it's like a whole new program. One can get to insert picture or number pages all right, but where the heck did copy and paste go? And you're back to square one, having accomplished nothing but turned a single software program into three.
If complex software is to be used by inexperienced users, we as software designers must first accept the fact that the users are neither dim-witted nor incapable of understanding complexity. They are simply not intimately familiar with its every nook and cranny. The duty of the software designer is to make complex functionality usable. Be smart about context: only display options that are relevant to the situation. Choose smart defaults and explicitly highlight common configurations. Help shouldn't be an afterthought or even solely contained in an external help file; the software be clear what will be the result of a particular choice. Account for bumbling or exploring users and mistakes: make every action reversible. Error messages should be descriptive and actionable, suggesting probable resolutions.
We have so far to go in software design. Let's not simply route around hard problems, dismissing common users with a switch. Our goal should be to make software accessible to everyone. This is often a very difficult task to design and implement effectively. Accept that this difficulty in software development will always exist, but will pay off many times over in the form of productive and satisfied users. But don't simply turn away common everyday users, they by definition greatly outnumber the skilled technicians, and they deserve the absolute best experience software can deliver.
While people complain that microsoft lacks functionality and treats its users like idiots, they miss the fact that they're successful *because* they lack the functionality that will confuse users. We technocrats have a tendency to think that just because we can manually configure network settings everyone else can too. Microsoft makes a product that does what everyone needs it to and they keep the market cornered because of it. The 80% that still use IE use it because they don't have (or don't believe they have) the technical skills to use firefox.