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"Microsoft Killed My Pappy"
theodp writes "A conversation with an angry young developer prompts Microsoft Program Manager Scott Hanselman to blog about 'Microsoft Haters: The Next Generation.' 'The ones I find the most interesting,' says Hanselman, are the 'Microsoft killed my Pappy' people, angry with generational anger. My elders hated Microsoft so I hate them. Why? Because, you wronged me.' The U.S. and Japan managed to get over the whole World War II thing, Hanselman notes, so why can't people manage to get past the Microsoft antitrust thing, which was initiated in 1998 for actions in 1994? 'At some point you let go,' he suggests, 'and you start again with fresh eyes.' Despite the overall good-humored, why-can't-we-get-along tone of his post, Hanselman can't resist one dig that seems aimed at putting things into perspective for those who would still Slashdot like it's 1999: 'I wonder if I can swap out Chrome from Chrome OS or Mobile Safari in iOS.'"
People can't get past MS's sins because MS never really changed. They still bend the rules until they're warped and often just snap. They are still they same company in many ways.
The thing about not being able to swap out IE was, that Microsoft claimed it could not be done - and was a true monopoly at the time, where it basically affected everyone.
With Sarai/OSX, it's a whole different matter - OSX does not have 90% market penetration. And if it did, Apple could not claim you could not swap out WebKit from the system since it's open source that's well documented - in fact you CAN swap in more recent, or custom, builds of Webkit into OSX quite easily.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"People can't seem to get past the antitrust trial"? The one where Microsoft forged evidence and pissed off the first judge so bad that she was replaced on account of the bias they had created? The one that ultimately said, clearly, YES microsoft's business practices are bad for both the individual and the nation?
Yeah, poor Stalin! People never could get past those purge-things he got famous for.
Nobody actually cares about the anti-trust case.
The general public doesn't like Microsoft because their Windows decides to reboot their computer for updates with no warning while they are working or giving a presentation.
The user experience for Microsoft products is generally pretty terrible.
*Fuck*. Why, after apparently 20 years, are we still having to explain this! So-called professional, intelligent people can't seem to grasp the fact that *bundling* is not problem. Bundling AND being in a monopoly position to enforce that bundle *is*. It's a logical AND. We're not talking mental gymnastics here, and you've had 20 years to understand, I would have thought a MS employee would especially be wanting to understand this. Jesus.
And don't think Google are somehow immune from this, Chrome on ChromeOS is fine since it's not in any way in a dominant position on operating systems, but using search monopoly to push their own products does have them currently in trouble with the EU.
I will admit that Microsoft's security is no longer the joke it was back in the 9x era, when they had only ineptly bolted multi-user support onto a single-user OS and suffered from their devotion to software backwards compatibility. But their business approach seems to have hardly altered. They still make heavy use of deliberate incompatibility, backroom deals and promotion via bundling. They are reluctant to support any technology they don't have the patents for (witness the h264 debacle, or the continued lack of native Vorbis support, or their pushing of the patent-encumbered exFAT filesystem, or IE's inability to handle animated PNG) and will support open standards only when they are so dominant as to leave no other option. The company is just very aggressive and underhanded in their approach to business.
Germany and Japan haven't invaded anybody in seventy years. Meanwhile, Microsoft is, even as we speak attempting to ram home an opaque, binary blob document format, OOXML (hilariously called "Open") as a standard over Open Document Format to cement MS Office's lock on office suite software.
Me: distrusting Microsoft since 1990.
Of all signs warning not to trust MS stands out for me the following.
I was at my first job, PC technician and we installed Macs for the graphical sector, and Compaq servers for Netware installation, also for the same.
For Apple and Compaq, I had to follow courses so that the company could get its preferenced dealer status.
In the income of the building, there hung a small plaque, Authorised Microsoft Dealer with Gates' signature. At first I thought that my boss had also done a course for MS to get this plaque.
However, in the course of time I saw that companies did not need to do much to get this plaque from MS. That's the day I realised the extent of Gates' snake oil dealership. Never trusted 'em from that day onward.
Windows 8 shows MS has not changed one bit.
They still try and stuff crap down the throats of consumers and break stuff for developers and call it great.
Hmm wonder is any ex-Microsoft execs work for Dice.
Someone had to say it ;)
The US and Japan aren't still bombing each other. But Microsoft is still pulling the same stunts. In fact, they never stopped. They just kept doing it until it seemed normal and the government forgot why it was angry.
Nailing MS for bundling IE was like nailing an organized crime lord for tax evasion. Nobody with a clue actually cared about the browser bundling. They cared that Microsoft had been engaging in behavior which essentially amounts to bullying and corruption for the entire time they've existed. The Microsoft that exists now is not reformed; it's just a lot less powerful. It's still part of a very backwards tradition of corporate behavior where you get ahead not by making the best product but by setting up obstacles and shutting down everybody else who's trying to make something better. (See also: entertainment industry, fossil fuels industry, car industry, ...) Corporations which behave that way should be treated like the dinosaurs they are, and shown the door to extinction.
Because it just happened... Like... just now.... so... What is this "they did something a long time ago" nonsense? They're still doing it.
Stop dicking with the core operating system, causing our programs to not run, and radically altering the GUI so its practically unrecognizable.
Offer us choices and try to empower users. Stop springing things on people that they might not want and taking away features we enjoyed.
That makes us feel powerLESS. You change things and we have no control over it. That doesn't make your users feel good or in control of their devices.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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As usual, a Microsoft manager is trying to blame its customers for the perception of Microsoft that Microsoft has earned and continues to earn.
Microsoft needs to look within to resolve its lack of public trust and amity.
Microsoft needs to learn how to compete on a level playing field without complaining that it is being wronged by what its customers think of Microsoft.
Microsoft needs to grow up.
I don't think that I know a single person who has mentioned the MS antitrust issue in maybe 5-10 years, except to mention that it might be happening to Google next. Tech people that I know generally hate MS for just abusing the crap out of their customers. Things like pushing out new operating systems to replace perfectly good operating systems. Things like rehashing Microsoft office over and over with their only "innovations" being things like the ribbon bar.
.net desktop/web applications that used IIS and MSSQL. But then slowly but surely I migrated product by product to something Open Source until I realized that I was only using Windows XP because of inertia so I then dumped even that.
.net were bloating as they tried to tie every stupid MS product together in an attempt to trap me in their high priced eco system.
But if anything it would be the cost of licensing and the licenses themselves. I separate those two because just managing the licenses is a pain. The general consensus is that they make it a pain so that you get the all encompassing licenses that are "easier" so that now you just pay MS a tax on being in business.
Nearly 100% of the people that I know who are serious programmers have entirely moved their deployed products to OS solutions such as Linux and MariaDB and their development is generally done on an Apple or Linux PC as those most resemble the deployment platform.
I don't actually hate Microsoft and at one point was using Windows and Visual Studio to program
But for me the Open Source switch wasn't out of some religeous love of Open Source but that each one of the products was just way better than the MS equivalent for my use. Clients were perfectly happy to pay for any license issues so money wasn't even an issue, just a huge bonus. So it wasn't just that Open Source was better but that MS was actively becoming worse. Things like
So I don't hate Microsoft (except for when they lie cheat and steal to prevent opensource from giving them the boot in large customers environment) I just don't have any interest in using any of their products. So even if all MS products were completely free and they stopped being bastards when places like Munich make the switch to OSS, I still wouldn't use them. In the same way that I wouldn't switch to a diet of low quality food even if it were free.
To forgive is foolish. Always be mindful of past actions, as history has proven its tendency to repeat.
I have not forgotten how MS came by its MS DOS, and how it tried to ensure incompatibility with DR-DOS. I haven't forgotten the stagnation and needless standards adoption of IE6 which stalled us on HTML4.01 for half the age of the Internet. I haven't forgotten UEFI, while Coreboot or a simple ability to flash the firmware with an OS loader stub would have sufficed and not required implementation of their patent encumbered FAT systems.
Speaking of which, I haven't forgotten their suits over FAT against companies employing Linux (with and without GNU). I haven't forgotten their extortionist patent threatening and pressuring Android device makers to pay MS for contributing nothing at all but "protection" from the MS threat. I haven't forgotten MS's part in the SCO debacle. I haven't forgotten the terrible anti-progress internal politics of MS which prevented us from having ClearType due to infighting from the MS Office team who wanted to be credited with it themselves -- despite sub-pixel rendering not being a novel thing, and yet MS applying for patents on it.
I haven't forgotten the long look down their noses at us users from MS W8 User Interface designers. I haven't forgotten the MS W8 app store who takes a 30% cut of application maker profits that they never needed before when they were focusing on their core competencies -- A cost which developers like myself will pass onto the users instead of eating ourselves, thus allowing MS to double dipping from their install base.
I haven't forgotten the needless inability for XBox Live games (Like Halo2) to not play online anymore, even though both XBoxes know we have the game in our consoles -- I could see it on the friends list of my peer whom I'm chatting with -- all to force players to move onto newer products and much later repurchase the artful games if they want to keep playing. A doubly needless cost since Hamachi or a VPN allows "system link" across the web without XBL fees, proving the XBL fees and game repurchasing are pointless forced obsolescence. I haven't forgotten the advertizements that showed up in the online non-services and in the OS that users PAY Microsoft for.
I haven't forgotten the bug riddled APIs and the less than helpful MSKB archives wherein users document said bugs themselves in the comments. I haven't forgotten the single constant byte value in Windows that needlessly limits the number of concurrent TCP connections so that MS can sell a Windows Server version. I haven't forgotten MS screwing over device partners over Surface. I haven't forgotten my MSDN subscription becoming worthless as I would not get early access to their OS for testing my products before release to end users -- the better to ensure MS's own software and distribution strategies become further entrenched vs competition.
I won't forgive humans that are actually remorseful, and you think that I'd forgive generations of abuse or that new generations would become instantly ignorant of reality? Go fuck yourself Microsoft, you're just feeling the tip of our ice berg. Have a nice death in obsolescence. Much in the same way the Internet you actively worked against by pushing your own business network protocol instead of supporting sees censorship as damage and routes around it, the market too sees oppressive non-features as damage and routes around such vendors given enough time. Even the most powerful of tyrants die, and when they do we tell tales of their evils ever after as a warning to any upstart of what end awaits evil.
Microsoft hasn't changed its standpoint on trying to take control of everyone's computing experience. I seen to recall the secure EFI mandate where only a signed OS could boot on a PC (e.g. Windows 8). There was plenty of Microsoft hate to go around as people thought that a Windows 8 PC/server could not boot an unsigned OS like Linux or BSD simply because it would be impractical for the open source communities to keep signing new kernels. And of course Windows 8 tried to force everyone to like MS tablets by making your desktop a clumsy tablet.
But here is my take. I have been using Windows since 3.1 on my 486DX 33MHz. Since Windows 2000 came out the stability has improved immensely and Windows 7 is probably the best yet. The bad windows days were the 95/98 and god help you if you had ..... ME. It does what it needs to do and most problems are bought about by bad hardware or bad drivers which, IMHO is the leading cause of Windows butt-hurt. Sure its a virus magnet because of security problems but I have never been infected simply because I know better than to open a random email attachment. Its the clueless folks who contribute to the bot nets. There is plenty of free and opensource software for windows, open office, gimp, Inkscape, kicad etc that enables most people to only have to pay for windows and use free software. If you need professional software then you pay for it. Simple. I mainly use windows for playing games though that is less and less of an issue as I don't play as many games. I also use it for a drafting CAD program, kicad and keeping track of my financials using open office. If I need to quickly work in Linux I can run my Linux VM using Virtual box (I never liked dual booting, last time I did it was in the 90's to play DOS games on 6.22 along side Windows 95).
Do I use operating systems besides Windows? You bet. I run Linux on almost every other system I own: media center PC, laptop, spare PC and development PC. My little home server runs FreeNAS, so that is FreeBSD and my router runs m0n0wall, also BSD based.
So Windows peacefully co-exists with opensource in my home.
People understand that corporations are amoral. The rational position towards a large, powerful corporation is distrust. That's the baseline from which a corporation has to work up from.
On top of that most people don't get a *choice* of Microsoft or something else; Microsoft is chosen *for them* by the corporate IT department or by the IT departments of people they have to work with. That's raises the bar for user experience, somethign MS is not particularly good at. It's like the food you get on a college meal plan. The fact you're forced to eat it means that if you're assigning it a letter grade you automatically deduct two letter grades: an A becomes a C and a B becomes a D.
Now consider Apple. There's a lot to dislike in their trying to position themselves as content gate keepers especially. But there are offsetting virtues: innovation, design, and build quality. On top of that most people who use Apple products choose to do so, which means they get a better evaluation.
Unfair? Maybe; but that's reality.
Now this is not to say that Microsoft has no virtues as a corporation, it's just that those virtues aren't experienced by *users*. Microsoft has consistently provided a mediocre user experience in its core products, and undermined the main value of their products to the user -- familiarity -- by pointless fiddling with user interfaces.
Microsoft's big sin was abusing its market position to achieve a monopoly with a mediocre product. To be forgiven of that sin, they've got to start producing products people love and look forward to, and don't feel let down by.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You can swap it out if you've jailbroken, or simply write your own app with any engine you like (which works fine for personal or enterprise use).
This point I've never quite fully understood - people keep complaining about how insecure Android is (which is a debate for another thread). Yet when discussing shortcomings of iOS, the answer is always "jailbreak" (which might or might not be available, tethered or perhaps not). As it is, at work I've been developing an app for iPad that is HTML5-based. And the performance is worse than what Mobile Safari would offer. If you want your HTML5 app available on the App store, this is a fact you'll just have to accept. This is also the reason you shouldn't expect Firefox on iOS anytime soon.
Better analogy. We've got them pushed back behind a DMZ and there hasn't been any shooting for three years now. But with every change in illustrious leaders, we all wonder what sort of belligerent crap they'll pull next.
There is a lot of software talent and good ideas at Microsoft. And like North Korea, they can't get out and will probably starve to death inside.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, lets see how Microsoft insists on treating me:
-You are a dirty pirate, let us ransack your system and install our rootkits, hope all your software is legal
-Want that update? Let us check if you are 'genuine'
-Not genuine? it's probably our mistake, but lets disable your system anyway.
-I trusted Microsoft in the DOS days, and my trust was not broken. My system did not tattle on me, me software could not be revoked at any time.
-I trusted Microsoft in the early Windows days. Most of my software did not tattle on me. I had to type in keys and stuff, it was a small inconvenience.
-Come Windows XP, my software tattled on me, Microsoft decided not to trust me, Microsoft thought it knew what was best. Microsoft wanted control of my machine, and wanted me to pay for it.
-Its getting worse, not better, so I upgraded to Linux.
Trust can not be bought, it is earned. Break that trust, and it is very hard to get it back again.
Okay, I'll burn what's left of my karma and point out the reason why we can't get along...because Microsoft HAS NOT CHANGED. They are still the price-gouging, competition stifling, astro-turfing, anti open standards, monopolizing enterprise that they have always been. What HAS changed is the rise of Mac OS X, iPad, Google Chrome, etc. that have created some real alternatives to Microsoft.
The U.S. and Japan managed to get over the whole World War II thing
Try picking up a Texas or Japanese high school history textbook some time.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that comparisons to the Holocaust and world wars are in fact quite appropriate when discussing the magnitude of what Microsoft did to the history of computing, and by extension to human history overall.
The reason for this is simple. The effect of the Microsoft monopoly lasted so long and was so stultifying that it meant we will never know what a different word processor might be like. We will never know if spreadsheets or email might be more usable or efficient. We will never know (at least not in our lifetime) what an operating system or software might be like that doesn't use the conventions laid down by a company that had no incentive to make anything better, no need to design anything more than barely adequate, or to listen to its customers. Yet all these things are of fundamental importance to our lives - far, far too important to have suffered under a brutal, money-grubbing monopoly.
Despite (very) small innovations, Apple was not and is not a counter-balance because they were forced to ape the conventions that the Microsoft juggernaut had laid down with it's 95% market share. Jobs knew as well as anyone that it would be suicide to create anything that the market place was not already at least partially familiar with.
In the final analysis, the Microsoft era was a massive failure of free market capitalism that left us all driving Trabants while thinking they were the best that we could have. The blame lies of course with politicians and industry regulators who had no clue what an immense influence personal computing would have on society until it was too late. But it is too late. The die has been cast for personal computing for generations to come, and that is an utter and maddening tragedy for all of us.
The issue is of course far bigger than just one man, but holy mother of god do I hate what Bill Gates did to all of us.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Let's not forget the ODF debacle where MS stacked committees around the world to pass their "standard".
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Antitrust case not even on my list
1. artificial price tiers for various levels of crippling the code
2. bug ridden bloated code with poor source control
3. malware friendly due to constantly repeating the same basic amateur coding mistakes
4. malware and spyware friendly due to design to accommodate marketers rather than end users, the large corporations and marketers are considered the true customers
5. lack of basic functionality that other operating systems have built, money must be spent
6. ignoring user needs while flying off on weird tangents and working in vacuum to produe rubbish UI (e.g. ribbon, metro)
7. ignoring industry standard API, protocols and inventing inferior incompatible alternatives
8. monopolistic and lock-in practices continue in the present
Are they really over it? Japan never had an issue with it. Never botherd them what they did in e.g. China. And the Americans still go on how I should be thankfull, because otherwise I would be speaking German.
I do speak German (and several other languages) and the other alies don't bother me about that. (Thanks to ALL who helped, including later enemies.)
So I would say that was the worst example as people being 'over it'.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's called a "Conditioned Response" and becomes automatic. Hence the term "knee-jerk reaction".
People tend to teach their kids to avoid something that they had to learn the hard way in an attempt to spare them the suffering they had to endure themselves.
"What have they done?", you ask? Pushed flawed OSes out, forced upgrades that slow or break older systems, actively discontinued support for decent hardware (like printers and scanners) to force more purchases, yank support for older OSes that have been working in the industry in some capacity for years in a vain attempt to generate revenue, forcibly downgrade or out-mode existing suites of software that at least work (now that people have been forced to use them for so long) so that they will have to retrain in something completely different so they can simply continue to work, "bundling" software together in ways that make it obscenely difficult to remove without knocking down their house of cards...
Wash
Rinse
Repeat
Windows ME was a seriously flawed OS.
Windows Vista was as well.
Windows 8 has so far shown many of the same trends as it's failed predecessors, but M$ still pushes it out as if everyone never had to break the bank for the last two serious failures on their part, and wonders why people are slow to adopt anything new from them.
Seriously? We need to look at this with fresh eyes?
I'll be checking mine for a M$ logo before I adopt anything like that wetware into my body.
Heck, I don't think I'd want a Google logo on it, either...
Its everyone now. Its every device, every OS except SOME versions of linux. I hate not just Microsoft, but Apple, Samsung, Sony and many many others. In todays software and hardware OVER 50% OF THE BUDGETS FOR EVERYTHING ELECTRONIC, is spent researching and implementing systems and technologies that keep me from being able to use my devices in any way other than a way that generates revenue., They are not even satisfied with one time revenue stream, but now even cripple THINGS so they can sell them back as a service to generate a continuous revenue stream. The days of geeks owning their devices/computers is over and I resent that beyond belief. There really isn't any single place that anyone can go and get rid of this completely, so I can't even truly vote with my pocketbook. I just simply have to buy the electronics that are LEAST riddled with any technology that exists for the sole purpose to limit my capability/creativity in some way. When Microsoft become less concerned about Metro walled gardens or killing the video stream if something looks fishy to THEM on MY computer then I'll go back to using Microsoft or other vendors.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Let's skip over the hilarious hyperbole of comparing a business story to the prosecution of aggressive war (yes, managers love to *talk* about "crushing" opposition and evisceration and all that...all of which is hilarious hyperbole, too).
Taking it at face value - Japan had its whole regime torn down, warmongers mostly shot for war crimes, replaced with a whole different government and became a whole different culture that now votes heavily against any significant degree of aggressive militarization. If MS had *lost* that antitrust case and been broken up, managers scattered, their whole corporate culture changed, that would have been equivalent.
It wasn't just one thing - attempting to monopolize web browsers and make MS products the default choice for any web application was only a part of it. It was MS wanting to see all your product designs under non-disclosure before they'd offer to buy your company...and then the offer would be comically low and if you didn't take it, your general ideas would appear (badly) in a new Microsoft product that automatically took all your market share because...it was Microsoft.
Columnist "Robert X. Cringely" had a good term for it: "sharp trading" - always on the edge of illegal, but hard and expensive to prove as such. Nobody does business with the sharp trader twice....unless they're over a barrel.
Microsoft's *power* to do this has been reduced, but not their business model and inclinations. I have no choice but to use Office at work, and so I'm an enthused Excel VBA programmer, you make the best of what you've got. (And besides, writing a large critical application as a glorified spreadsheet macro is rare; it's just great for one-shot solutions.) But the very idea of basing a larger business system around SharePoint, their various Visual programming languages, their C# ripoff of Java, strikes me as comical; I'd go with platforms they don't control every time. MS has a long and continuing history of using their most-deeply-engaged customers the way shepherds use sheep - by which I mean "keep shearing them every year" of course. Honest.
Why can't we put it behind us? Simple: it's not really behind us. Microsoft is still a corporation run by hyperambitious sociopaths who care only for themselves and their "circle" and nothing for the common good. (I'm not saying MS is unique in this.) That hasn't changed as a result of the antitrust action or anything more recent. Microsoft is still "evil", they just haven't been [i]caught[/i] being evil in a while. It's a natural effect of the human condition that sociopaths rise to the top of all hierarchies, and then the rest of us suffer to degrees.
It realy goes back to the strategy of vendor lock in, Microsoft just can't pull it off like they used to because open source is so readily available and more viable than it's ever been.
The Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt propogated by Microsoft spans generations, and also can't make as strong a case as it used to because people know that there are alrternatives available.
Not so much about having a monooly on the desktop or bundling a browser, so much as it was about trying to leverage that to alter standards and control the source such that other browsers can't render what was made for IE 6, other office suites can't quite display a .DOC file like Office can. It was about making it so that things couldn't interact or be compatable.
Nothing has changed, MS just can't sell their FUD like they used to, and there's enough good open source alternatives that trying to extend something to control it just makes users loose interest. What's really sad is they still try to use this strategy even though it will no longer work, and this is why windows phone can gain no traction.
Best thing to do is use opensource, and let MS continue their downward decline into insignificance.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
When I can buy a PC without Windows, without my supplier feeling pressured to include Windows on it, and the machine costs less...
Then I'll believe that Microsoft are allowing me to do what I want on my computer.
Also, you're a commercial entity. I have no reason to have to forgive you. If you supply a service that I'm not happy with, I have no reason to buy from you again. This is the difference between forgiveness, and actual redemption. I might forgive a mistake, but I don't trust you not to make it again until you proved you've changed your ways.
Judging by things like: I cannot buy a Linux PC. Despite Steambox. Despite Android. I just cannot buy a PC without your junk on it.
You're trying to subvert an open standard in my country with your OOXML crap - that we STILL know is just a crappy writing-down of your crappy binary format without any gestures whatsoever towards an actual, open format.
Samba still hasn't got up to the standard that you can trust it to do simple things, like take over from your Windows server - DESPITE the fact that you have been required by law to help open your formats, open your protocols and you claim to be "helping" them.
When I see a change of actions, I'll think about beginning to "forgive".
"Hey, I only murdered ONE market, a few decades ago, and tried to pretend I wasn't doing that... why won't you forgive me?"
Because, I have absolutely no need to. You're the ones that need to *earn* the forgiveness, not just expect it.
That's really, really reaching. Microsoft's current lineup is more than enough reason to hate them with a white hot hate. No nepotism involved. And this is speaking from the standpoint of thinking a few of their previous products are quite usable. Nope, sorry, blaming on culture or prejudice is at best disingenuous.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
'I wonder if I can swap out Chrome from Chrome OS or Mobile Safari in iOS.
The browser bundling argument was always the lamest attack on MS. No other computing vendor has been forced to bend over like MS to provide browser alternatives. Nobody ever complained that Notepad and Wordpad were anti-competetive either. Microsoft certainly engaged in monopolistic practices (forcing OEMs to buy Windows licences) but bundling IE was a complete red herring.
It's funny how today nobody is up in arms about the "lock in" with bundled Safari, or Chrome, or WAP browsers on dumb phones. Particularly with iOS, Apple has an official policy of prohibiting alternate browsers that don't use the Safari rendering engine. Why aren't they being investigated for such anti-competetive behavior?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
so why can't people manage to get past the Microsoft antitrust thing,
Because Microsoft is still engaged in Anti-free-software, Anti-free-open-standards practices. See Microsoft Circles the Wagons To Defeat ODF In the UK
There's no need to "remember" Microsoft's anticompetitive actions.
They're still engaging in the very same behavior.
I don't hate Microsoft's behavior because of my "pappy" or because
of some judicial order from 20 years ago. I despise their current
behavior.
Microsoft continues to be worth despising. Their astroturf lobbying
and their blogs about how misunderstood they are fool nobody.
E
Hey Microsoft people don't like you coming up and demanding payment for FOSS code that they wrote that you have nothing to do with.
People don't like the fact that you spoke out against software patents when you had none yet you lobby to kill a bill reforming software-patents now that you have a ton of obvious software-patents. now you are one of the biggest supporters of software-patents.
Using the BSA in a draconian manner. See Ernie Ball.
Calling the hard work of people who write open source software a "cancer"
Corruption of standards committees in order to push a standard that not even you microsoft can honor
Constant lying and spreading FUD and misinformation in the marketplace.
Funding and aranging for additional funding for the SCO attack on Linux
Funding a book spreading lies that Linux was stolen from Minix
There is many many many more reasons.
Lack of Blink on Fx OS or Gecko on Chrome OS on is just the consequence of the operating systems' lack of native applications in the first place. The rendering engines are written in C++, and I'm still skeptical that Emscripten (C++ to JavaScript compiler) followed by a JavaScript JIT engine is anywhere near as efficient as actual native binary. But at least the publishers of these operating systems do their best to implement the entirety of HTML5. iOS, on the other hand, has native applications, and in fact native applications are the only way to access certain device features, such as 3D rendering or the camera and microphone. The complaint as I understand it is that Apple's App Store Review Guidelines privilege Apple's own native web browser component over third parties'. So it's impossible to make a web browser for iOS that offers HTML features (WebGL and Stream API) that Apple has deliberately left out of Safari.
The base problem for technologists is that the action perverted the course of future technology, and, having been altered, no amount of reparations will restore it to the course it would have taken had the event never happened.
We always ask ourselves where we would be today, if only...
Copyright was a very minor factor in Microsoft's exclusion of effective competition and suppression of any real innovation in software design.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I read that piece when it came out... uh... last week or so?
My immediate thought was the subject line. Someone has signed up with the Evil Empire and is now miffed that his friends don't talk to him anymore or something like that.
Look: You can't jump in bed with the mafia and then say you're only the driver. Microsoft is evil and always has been evil and the damage it's done to the world of computing is still current. We would be 10 years in the future without Microsoft. The billions of monopoly rent it has extracted from the market are not paid back yet, and never will because it's in the nature of monopoly rent that the damage done is much higher than the profit gained.
No. You just can't come in, shoot the dog, rape the wife and harm the children, and then put your weapons away, put three books back on the shelf as a symbol of helpfulness and demand we love you.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org