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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.
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)
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.
According to the article, They mention the Treacherous Computing nature of the OS and that the Genuine checks cause problems with upgrades. Though more details would be helpful.
Eventually MS and others pushing [Un]Trusted Computing and Digital Restrictions Management will find out that the strangle grip is not the best way to hold and attract costumers.
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).
You are aware that the FSF is behind the Defective By Design campaign, which is specifically targetting Apple at this point, right?
How we know is more important than what we know.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I went in wanting to be convinced, but instead it comes across as a Fanboi site like many others pointed out. The main page should have the juice straight away. You get in and you read the bulletpoints: Windoze is teh sux because a) It will take away your freedom to copy your legally owned music (insert link)
b) It will spy on you, reporting your every move back to the corporations (insert link)
And so on. They really don't have a clue how to present the information, they are overly verbose for the intended audience which it is very clear they don't understand, the design is so ugly that it takes away much credibility, their claims are not backed up by concise facts, they constantly appeal to emotion, and they don't offer clear-cut instrucions for the alternative.
Also their choice of gNewSense as an alternative OS is weak because it lacks in the same departments: null communication skills, poor design, ZERO instructions. They could at least have picked Ubuntu, which looks much more professional and at least would make an unexperienced user that the thing may actually work.
Why the FSF and other antimicrosofites can't get it through their heads that the average windows user is not stupid but they are also utterly unconcerned with the technical side. From the few distros that I've seen, only Red Hat and Ubuntu seem to have picked up on this fact. If it looks ugly it breeds distrust, and if it is complicated it's deemed not worth it. Free as in Gratis is not enough. In fact, it's no different from a cheap knockoff in their minds. Don't take my word for it. Talk about it to people around you that are not tech fans and you will see, they are not idiots, they simply have different interest and this is a very, very bad attempt at interesting them and it will backfire.
Unless they completely revamp the site and make it look as serious and well presented as the marketing sites for Vista are/will be, offer sensible, to-the-point arguments, and a clear and easy guide to upgrade they would appear to the uninformed like a National Enquirer next to a Wall Street Journal.
I'm registering at the site to tell them this now, if many of us do the same maybe they will listen.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Has he used the RC? I'm finding it a huge upgrade on just about every front. A welcome improvement that will increase my productivity. Of course I'm going to need to upgrade my system to get the most out of it, but I was planning on doing that in February anyway.
This is nothing more than a giant pile of FUD. Accountability in drivers is a huge upgrade, not some soul sucking attempt to steal your humanity. Besides... since when did 'freedom' apply to our computers and operating systems. What's next? My office chair needs the freedom to vote? If I double click on it, it does the job I want it to do, I don't care if Stalin programmed it and titled it "3D Studio Max for the advancement of the Social Utopia and down fall of Democracy." It works it works. Vista works very well. Windows XP hasn't let me down yet, and I'm looking forward to some new glitz and sparkle.
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. but wait... my Operating System... THAT's a holy grail of democracy and freedom. I use almost 0 Open Source software day in and day out, because in my field, it's all worthless except for linux. Gimp? Pfff... yeah why don't I just use MS Paint?
If the author drives an open source car, lives in an open source house, uses only open source hardware, only eats food from freely available recipes and sleeps on a mattress with a freely available design I'll give a shit.
Driver signing isn't required for 32bit vista, only 64bit. It can also be bypassed.
Gone!
Vista is Bad. Use Linux. Use GPL software.
Forget Linux, I'm waiting for GNU/HURD. Any day now...
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.
This page says something about the nature of Vista. It shows the six privilege levels:
The owner of the computer, even with root ("Administrator") status, can have at most only the third privilege level.
Are you content to be only a tenant in a system where someone else retains ultimate control? If you prefer to own your own copy of an OS, you will have to choose free software over Vista.
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"
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
Purely speculative.
More guesswork.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
Also, #18:
Funny, some might have said the same thing in WinXP, until they realized there is a classic view. Vista also has this classic view.
And, #25:
Are they serious? Who the hell uses WordPad to open
#8:
I suppose the author of the article missed the article on their own website about key management servers, and also on the Microsoft support website, which states:
Last but not least, #6:
No... just, no. Vista does use more RAM than WinXP, but why do you think that is? That's right, Aero and the Windows Sidebar. Between those two, I'm using a whopping 48 megs of RAM. You can always turn them off if your system is strapped for RAM. Right now my system is sitting at 696MB usage, which might seem like a lot, until you read that 452MB of that is for cache. So, I'm really only using 244MB.
Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.
But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.
This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.
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 ?
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