Slashdot Mirror
FSF Launches "BadVista" Campaign
FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."
...they included some of these shortcomings. I was expecting a good read, which RMS is usually keen to offer.
Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!! After all, the FSF already hates Microsoft with a passion, and this is just another axe to grind here. I doubt they actually have even seen Vista or used it to know what exactly it is.
Slashdot and its minions seems to hate Microsoft FUD, but shouldn't you people have a problem with FUD on the other side? This site has gone full throttle on the anti-Vista campaign already and it isn't even on store shelves yet. Sheesh.
-b.
I hate negative marketing.
All the effort should be spent on advocating your advantages in a positive manner - and then you can compare yourself to the competition, you have a solution to the problem, you're not merely pointing out the bad stuff.
Negative marketing has been shown time and time again to annoy the people that catch the brunt of it - political campaigns through to Apple adverts. Maybe it will stop a few people upgrading, but it won't make them think of switching another solution unless you present that alternative solution in a wondrous halo of wonder fixing all of their issues.
How about a GoodLinux or something campaign as well?
(I didn't read the article)
This kind of overhyped FUD campaign just makes the FSF look like a bunch of nutty hippies. People don't give a shit about losing a little bit of control over their PC. The care about features. So unless someone can offer a competitive OS that offers the features (not just technical features) that users want and on top of that offer more control over one's PC they're not going to care.
Region encoding on DVDs sucks... but does that keep people from buying DVDs... NO NO NO!
I cringe every time RMS steps out into the scene. It's like trying to tell someone to stop beating his dog, and having PETA step out; or having one of your friends jokingly call you a fag, and having half of Gay Pride suddenly show up behind him; or groping your girlfriend, and having three women from NOW jump up from the next table and tell you how much of an asshole you are and start yelling out into the whole restaurant how guys are all pigs.
RMS is the definition of a modern politician. His campaigns are "XXX IS TRASH BECAUSE IT RAPES YOU OF YOUR FREEDOMS AND KICKS YOUR DOG AND TOUCHES YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER DON'T EVER TOUCH XXX BECAUSE IT WILL CHAIN YOU TO YOUR CHAIR AND GLUE YOUR EYES OPEN AND MAKE YOU GIVE YOUR SOUL TO THE BIG GIANT HEAD!!!!!!!111111111" I'm sick and tired of him, and his GPL (LGPL is a great general purpose license), and his bullshit. The only time he says something nice is when XXX becomes GPL XXX; if you want free marketing, start your new product closed source and get RMS to shriek at you, then open source it so he gives you tons of free positive press for 5 weeks.
Why can't we have someone out to show how great Open Source Software is? Talk about what Ubuntu Linux offers, what RedHat and Novel can do for you, what people like about Debian and Gentoo enough to make them use those over more sophisticated derivatives (like Ubuntu), and the various applications. Don't come out here spewing about how everything else is crap, because ONLY the fanatics care; anyone else either wishes you weren't representing them, doesn't care because they're already using OSS and never actually listen to you talk, or uses something else and doesn't quite get why you're such a nutball over this "DRM" and "proprietary freedom restrictions" crap.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I'm not a dedicated MicroSoft hater, but I do miss the days when I gave my computer "commands" not "suggestions". Nothing is quite so aggrivating as hidden directories and being told that I cannot delete something.
We are all just people.
"This is probably going to be a massive "M$ IS TEH SUX" and "Windoze crashes every five minutes, use Linux instead" religious FUD campaign, except that now it will be officially sanctioned by the FSF."
You should look at the link before posting. The site is based on criticism of DRM-type restrictions.
"Be careful what you wish for, Moglen, Stallman et.al. You just might get it."
The right to freely use the computer I own? Oh, what a horrible, horrible possibility!
This is not specifically directed at you as I've seen this many times before but I'm tired of people being so narrow-minded as to think that anyone who disagrees with them must be a paid shill or astroturfer. As hard as it may be to believe some people just honestly don't agree with you on everything.
Is the FSF seriously backing a "distro" that's just Ubuntu with the logos and useful software taken out and calling it gNewSense (which sounds a /lot/ like gNuisance)? One that requires 35GB of HD space to create and install? Yes, this is a great way to get people to avoid Vista!
I'm not trolling... It is seriously unfortunate that they do not make more realistic recommendations that people might actually consider.
I think that depends on whether or not the claims the FSF is making are true. FUD is caused by the unknown. So if the arguments presented by the FSF are unsubstantiated or nebulous, then I would agree with you.
On the other hand, if they present a clear description of what Vista does and does not do, it seems to me they are only providing people with the information they need to make an informed choice. Given the benefits of a new upgrade cycle to Microsoft and much of the computer industry, negative information is hardly likely to be broadcast widely.
I like linux and prefer it over windows. And i'm not a microsoft fan either. but i must say that i don't like the sound of this particular FSF project. if you have a product (Linux) you should spend your time promoting it and enhancing it. not trying to degrade you'r competitors product (no matter how truthful it might be).
I find the user experience on all these platforms to be greatly wanting! In addition, all user software I have seen on these platforms still sucks big time!
With each new update, M$ is going to continue to release more and more restrictions in their OS,
to the point that before users know it, they end up wrapped in a virtual straightjacket.
Of course, if they tried to do it all at once there would be a huge outcry, but add it in
S__L__O__W__L__Y.........
- Don't exaggerate stuff. Period.
when you were accussing somone who held an opinion different from your own of being a paid shill. Do you think that it's the norm for people who support Microsoft to be astroturfers. Me, I think it's an astroturfer would be a rather extreme example of a Microsoft supporter and hardly the norm.The other side of the coin is that 'signed drivers only' for all that is bad about it is one of the few practical ways to do 'security' in a binary world, and 'protected audio path' is something that media companies are clamoring for (maybe to take away fair use, but they see it as protecting their interests...) before they will release media in some formats.
Call me when a law requiring me to turn in my old equipment passes, until then, it is just a business decision that may or may not turn out to be right. If they are right, people will buy all the nifty new stuff that protected audio supposedly enables; if they are wrong, people will scoff and keep their money.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Okay protected audio path is bullshit but signed drivers was a well intentioned idea. The biggest cause of severe crashes in Windows are due to bad drivers. Microsoft wanted to get tougher on hardware developers who make half assed drivers with no support, in part because it degrades the user experience immensely and Microsoft was probably pretty sick of getting blamed for things they had no control over. The BIG issue that Microsoft ignored was open source drivers since its not realistic to sign those and get them tested by Microsoft on a regular basis. I don't care what people say but requiring signed drivers in x64 Vista was nothing more than a way to increase reliability (something that Slashdotters claim that Windows has an issue with) No I'm not a Microsoftie (they do plenty of incredibly dumb things) but god the hatred of Microsoft is almost religious at this point. If Microsoft abandoned Windows and signed an unbreakable, perpetual contract with Linus to base their new OSes on Linux and to make them open source some of you people (not saying specifically the parent) still wouldn't be happy.
Actually, the campaign's agenda is to promote software freedom. Microsoft Windows doesn't do that, regardless of version. That OS is nothing but non-free software. gNewSense GNU/Linux does that because that OS is nothing but free software.
Also they wouldn't call "Linux" an OS when it's a kernel, denying themselves credit for their own OS project called GNU.
Digital Citizen
I am sympathetic to the FSF's objectives here, but judging by the reaction here on Slashdot this isn't the way to go about it. It's pretty clear what the benefits of a well-funded PR machine are. If they'd done a couple of focus groups or surveys, this might have been shut down pretty quickly, or modified so it didn't irritate people so much. But I doubt they can afford to do that.
On the other hand, maybe the Slashdot crowd is a special case. We have advocates of free software, for whom software freedom is a political issue. We also have technical pragmatists who argue that software should be chosen solely on its technical merit and politics has no place (which is, of course, a political position). We see this campaign in political terms. Joe consumer, on the other hand, with no attachment one way or the other, may simple see this as new and potentially useful information.
Regardless, it seems to me that alienating your natural supporters is not a good approach unless there's the potential for significant gains. I guess have to see what happens.
4. Driver Support
Vista includes thousands of drivers, but most have been created directly by Microsoft. Many hardware manufacturers do not yet have drivers available for Vista.
This is not Vista-specific, same thing happened in e.g. Windows 2000. Or Windows 95. Or other significant upgrades. Trust me, this will become less of an issue or "bad thing" in 2007, and then, once again, competing operating systems are likely to be worse off in the driver area. Unfortunately. The most common OS developer tend to get the best drivers because driver developers likes making profit from supporting the most common operating systems.
And of course MS made most built-in drivers. They always do in the shipping versions of large OS upgrades. If third party devs aren't done in time, MS will ship reduced functionality to give the user at least something to work with until the real driver is done. NVIDIA, Creative Labs and more are currently developing more complete Vista drivers. You can even read up on this on their sites.
6. Memory
Vista loves RAM, but more is better. Plan on 2 Gbytes to meet real-world needs.
1 GB works here on my test install. I can run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Office 2007, Guild Wars.
Can they be more precise about "real-world needs"? Working at rendering industry buildings in 3D Studio?
8. Activation
The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
That's why there are KMS servers to reduce it to only one server connecting to MS every half a year per company with 25+ installs, i.e. "mass deployments".
9. Storage Space
With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Is 10 GB making up a large part of current hard drives? I see similar sizes in competing operating systems.
10. Backup
See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
See above.
11. Urgency
Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
Was suddenly security looking like hell in Windows 9x and XP non-issues? Interesting how they're only issues when it's suitable to complain about them, otherwise not. Vista may still have its share of these issues, but it's way too early to say there are no must-have reasons behind Vista compared to earlier Windows releases. There may not be in case of trouble, but there may also be big ones. They should not make this judgment at this time as it's premature.
12. Learning Curve
Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
Did this stop KDE's first release? Gnome's? Windows 3.0? Windows 95?
Do this author think Windows XP's UI therefore is excellent?
What is the problem exactly, or is the author only stating the blindingly obvious?
13. Cost
Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
Yes, moving to new OS's tend to cost a lot. That's why we're still running even Windows 2000 at places.
And again, I'm not sure of what hardware upgrades they're talking of.
Memory = see above, graphics cards = similar to in XP if you don't need the Aero eye candy which I can't see too many companies really hungering for.
19. Installation
Can take hours on some systems. Upgrades are even slower.
However, note how they conveniently fail to compare to other operating systems, Microsoft's or others.
I'm sure I can find hardware where a full install of Mandriva will take "hours" on as well.
On my 4 year old hardware, Vista install took ~25 mins.
21. 50 Million Lines Of Code
Even with the five years of development and long beta test period that went into Vis
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
>>>"If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do..... My cameras are black boxes, my lights are black boxes, my chroma paint is top secret, I eat proprietary cereal, my car's design is patented, my apartment design is owned by another company, I can't even paint my walls without permission"
Imagine your camera not taking a birthday photo because it detects someone singing happy birthday in the background.... VISTA
Imagine all your light bulbs have a left hand thread and only one shop sells them.... VISTA
Imagine your cereal box detects that you are trying to eat with a new slightly different shaped spoon, and doesn't let you open it.... VISTA
Imagine your car needs an oil change, when you get it back it'll only go on toll roads..... VISTA
Imagine paying to 'upgrade the paint your walls' in your appartment then finding the house has one room that you cannot access..... VISTA
That day you "double click" on that something in Vista, and it does not do what you want it to because 'you do not own it', please think of what you wrote.
I dunno, for me the most important thing about owning a computer is productivity - to be able to do the tasks I want to do. I could migrate to a non-proprietary system, but I would not benefit if it had fewer applications that I find useful. I can't write my own high-level applications. Nor do the Open Source and Free alternatives meet my needs yet. Of course, control is nice, but my proprietary OS (MacOS) gives me more control than I actually use, in addition to great applications. If it stopped me from working with those apps, or locked up the media I used, then it would be an issue.
An analogy might be automatic transmission on a car, or electronic systems in a car. It gives less control and serviceability - but most users find the benefits of automatic transmission and electronics to be worth it. I could buy an old Chevy that I could fix myself - but then I would suffer many drawbacks in actually using the vehicle. Or games consoles - they are not as customizable as a PC system, but most people just want to play games, and a console makes this goal a lot easier to accomplish.
It's rather annoying when people assume what the most important thing is to me.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yeah, I invite my friends over to show off how much control I have over it.
this is just asinine. The most important aspect of ME owning and using a computer is that it does something useful for me. (like letting me post on slashdot or look at porn) If I was interested in control, I would use a pencil and paper.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Locking the users into proprietary software and DRM are not improvements for users.
I am writing this on my Vista-installed laptop, through Firefox. I just checked my e-mail on Thunderbird, and, if I thought it was worth my time, I could intall OpenOffice. I have a few gigabytes of music here, all MP3 without any DRM on them at all.
The only thing that Vista does to "reduce" my freedoms is have better support for DRM-enabled stores. So, if I want to purchase music instead of getting a CD from the store (as I prefer), I can go to someone other than iTunes, and put my music on a device that isn't made by Apple.
Does MS have DRM here? Sure. Can I remove it entirely at will? You betcha. Is this entirely irrelevant to the new features MS put in Vista, like the GPU-utilizing pretty windows or the "press a button and type a command" functionality of the start menu? Yep.
Everyone who cares or will care knows about the FSF, and what "free software" means. If you want to discourage "not-free" software, it's time to start promoting how good free software is -- otherwise, the question is "are those freedoms worth the annoyance"
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The answer in the consumer market will be "Hell, Yes." No one there wants to deal with the internals of the machine on anything but the most superficial level.
And not a word on all the DRM goodness. :-/
Most of the shortcomings picked are fairly irrelevant. The few that could be are not very well addressed. Very lacking paper and poor reporting IMO.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
That leaves a question:
If a human user can only get up to "high," who can get the privileges of "system" or "trusted installer"?
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
ample resources are no excuse to waste them.
There's also no reason not use ample resources. I don't buy computing power to let it run idle, I want to get everything out of what I buy. When I need more I'll upgrade.
The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.
This is pure crap... Anyone with 2 brain cells has heard of UAC, even if why people hate it. The baseline is, running as administrator, you can elevate all the way to the top, this is trusted installer, and what the UAC prompt is all about.
As default, administrator on Vista is not like root on *nix. This is a good thing considering the level of 'knowledge' that most Windows users have about computing. So even if they leave the system running with an administrator account, the system will ask for permission to get to a higher level if a process or application requests it.
The whole post starts off via some idiot's rant about the 'potential' of Vista be 'closed source'. (Truly read what the people are saying, it isn't about Vista being crap, it is about Vista has stuff we don't know what it is and can't see the source code for.)
This is insane, Vista is a closed source OS, and not even the only one in world - there is no story here. OSX and many DVD Players are closed source as well, but that doesn't mean we have to create a conspiracy theory about how they they are phoning ET just because we can't see the source or dislike that they use a non XWindows GUI.
You are saying that you will OWN a computer in the midst of your living room, install a piece of software in it in order for it to work, you are going to do internet banking over it, send and receive private emails to your colleagues, family, loved ones and friends over it, preserve your private documents on it, and yet, you are o.k. with someone in a remote location having more control over it than you do ? To the extent that they can override whatever you want to do on it ?
What kind of over-trustful approach is this ? Are you living in a place where people still can sleep with their doors unlocked at night ?
Read radical news here
No, but I think the general gist of the threads above is that, with this new site at least, the FSF isn't doing a good job of informing people and, inasmuch as it's linking to sites which are full of empty, mostly speculative BS it doesn't really help the cause.
Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open .doc files?
People who just installed the OS and would like to read the stuff they got in e-mail? This is especially pathetic since MS does have a Word viewer and Apple TextEdit at least retrieves basic text and formatting from Word documents.
Computers that have been activated through KMS will be required to reactivate by connecting to your organization's network at least every six months.
Do you really consider this acceptable? I store a notebook in a desk drawer for seven months and then go to attend an offsite lecture where I would like to take notes and where I don't have access to corporate Intranet. What right does Microsoft have to lock me out of my own files on a system with legally licensed software?
If someone else is hosting the service, sure.
Are you content to use bandwidth that's ultimately controlled by someone else (your ISP)? How about email, do you run your own email server?
Someone providing a service is completely different from someone providing a product. If i purchase a product (some software) and use it together with another product i already own (a computer), i don't want to relinquish control over any of my existing products. They are my physical property, and should be under my total control.
On the other hand, if google are providing a server hosted on the internet and allowing me to use it (either for free or by paying for it) i don't expect to have total control of it, because that's not the service being offered. If i want total control, i can buy server colocation easily enough.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I was talking about FOSS in general, but I can focus in on operating systems. Trying to be a better Windows than Windows is a losing game, on which has been lost over and over (OS/2, GeoWorks, etc.). To do that, Linux would probably have to be ten times better. To succeed, Linux needs to redefine the game - and this is what it has been doing.
When Gutenberg produced the first printing press, he felt he needed to compete with handwritten manuscripts. He put a lot of effort into producing multiple variations of each letter, producing full justification, placing dashes in the margins, and so on. The first Gutenberg Bibles are still famous for their beauty. But even then they couldn't compare to an illuminated manuscript. And what happened as print became widespread? The complex fonts, justification, and so on when out the window. Printing took over the world because it allowed for cheap copies.
Linux costs nothing. It runs on many architectures. It is compact. It is flexible and modifiable. It allows organizations to take control of their own future. It lacks the transaction costs of proprietary software (license monitoring, for example). It is based on an incredibly effective model of development and governance. These aren't just variations on what Windows or OS X are doing; they're entirely different approaches. And in many spaces they're winning: embedded devices, servers, dedicated systems. These are areas of growth. Meanwhile, it's slowly catching up on the desktop; in contrast, improvements in Windows have slowed as it appears to be reaching the limit of its development model. Remember when the Mozilla decision to toss the code and start over was a joke? It took a while, but they delivered.
For many people and organizations, Linux is a superior choice right now. Some chose it for the desktop. Not me - I'm running OS X, though I believe the day will come when I switch. As it will come for many others. For Linux, costs will only go down as quality goes up. For Windows, the opposite seems to be true. In the long term, the trends and the benefits of shared development are too overwhelming. Free software will dominate most well-understood domains - including the desktop.
I wish I worked for an organisation that didn't object to my hogging a corporate notebook for 7 months without using it. Frankly, if you only use it to take notes at offsite lectures once or twice a year, why not use a pencil and paper? Or, I dunno, maybe switch it on for five minutes before you go offsite?
BTW, if the license says you have to reactivate every 6 months, then once you go past 6 months without reactivating, the system isn't legally licensed anymore. You choose to have a Vista notebook? You chose to obey the restrictive license. Disobey it and Microsoft has every right in the world to lock you out of those oh-so-important files that are so critical to your business that you leave them untouched in a desk drawer for 7 months at a stretch.
Did you miss the umpteen stories about PatchGuard and the various anti-virus companies complaining and Vista DRM systems and the one about some security researcher finding a way to break the driver security model?
Every single story comes down to the same fundamental point... Vista is designed to be secure against the owner.
What you said about User Account Control (UAC) is totally wrong. User Account Control ONLY elevates you to hand-cuffed-Admin level. You are still locked out of System level. It is impossible for you to install third-party anti-virus software because you are NEVER permited system level access. This is the exact reason for all of the stories about the security companies being pissed at the anti-competitive lockout. Even using User Account Control it is IMPOSSIBLE for an owner to reach the System level access he needs to install security software.
You have SO many things mixed up...
First you go off about DRM and then the 64bit driver security, which doesn't even apply to the 32bit versions, then you go off on UAC and how it is somehow related to the Symantec and McAfee complaints.
You need to get this information straight.
Vista x32 - there is no 'signed' driver requirement. Vista x64 - there is a 'signed' driver requirement - meaning that developers must have their driver signed if it RUNS BELOW user mode on Vista x64. User Mode Drivers are NOT affected.
UAC CAN push the Administrator User all the way to the top of the security chain. This is how admins kill processes, install applications, and can even modify Windows files if they truly are stupid enough to do so. There is NOTHING in Vista that prevents a person from DOING ANYTHING TO THE OS at an Admin level if the administrator is stupid enough to elevate themselves.
The UAC is more in place to prevent 'automated' priviledge elevation, in other words, the user/administator has to specifically CLICK on the UAC prompts, and these cannot be circumvented with keyboard or mouse hooks. So a REAL person has to authorize any elevation.
The part McAfee and Symantec COMPLAIN over in Vista, is that MS created a unified API and security center for Vista for 3rd parties to plug in their anti-virus software for monitoring by the system. THIS PISSED OFF McAfee and Symantec, as they don't just sell anti-virus software, they sell 'security' systems that take over the firewall, the network stack, etc etc...
This is also why their products SUCK, as they are touching parts of the OS no Software vendor should EVER have that much control over. It is also why you didn't see companies that sell ONLY anti-virus software and not 'security suites' complain or even CARE, as they can fully integrate as they always have with Vista, and now there are even stanrdard APIs they can use to report back to the system and get access to information on things they need to. This is a good thing for a 'real' anti-virus company, and not a company what wants to replace everything and turn off the Vista security center.
People like you can complain that Vista secures against the owner, but it is the same fools that bitched that WindowsXP didn't enforce the NT security model far enough and why Windows was left so wide open. A Vista owner can replace anything on their system, hell even boot into the new mini-boot PE mode of Vista and then access your HD and change everything you want.
You can even slimstream the Vista install, all with MS tools to add ANY feature and remove ANY feature from the OS and EVEN replace system files that would make Vista not even run.
This is ALL IN A USER'S CONTROL, just as it was in previous versions of Windows; however, with Vista, from inside Vista, processes do not automatically get root level rights to run crazy on your computer.
Now why don't you write us a great post on how closed OSX is, and why it sucks. Heck even maybe a post on the new Sony 7.1 receivers and how they are closed source and as far as we know they are emailing the pentagon about ever