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Microsoft Withholds Y2K Fix for Win95?
dbrown has sent
us an interesting little ditty over at CNN about
MS Withholding Patches
to Win95 that resolve Y2k issues. The article is kinda sketchy-
it looks like they weren't telling people about said patch,
and it seems to imply that it was a lure to get people to spend
the big bucks upgrading to Win98. Just read it and see what you think.
Microsoft never release bug fixes for Windows 95 in the open. Lots of them were hidden throughout the website. Only time they did anything was when the press screamed out about a security bug. And the new update wizard isn't any better since you cannot download the patches to the drives for saving for later.
I think Bill Gates has been counting on y2k issues to fuel MS profits since the 1980's.
Why? Win NT, Microsoft's flagship product, their über OS, their MODERN OS, still isn't 100% Y2k ready (SP 4 was supposed to be the final fix, but now it's SP 5).
And what was MS's stance on Y2k a few months ago? Get all your boxes on SP4, then consider deploying NT 5. yeah.
Win NT should have been designed from the ground up to not have any y2k issues - Apple got this right in the early 1980's with the Mac.
Gates is a smart businessman. He knows how to make money, and he's been banking of this for years.
But notice what it says right by the Y2K link? "...make your computer year 2000 compliant." Take the heat off Windows and blame the computer. But go ahead and click on that link.
Then you see that the fix takes up 10mb. But wait, you also need IE 4.01 SP 2, which needs 72mb. So, 82 megs for, as they put it, "several minor Year 2000 issues within Windows® 95."
Oh, but never forget:
EACH MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. CONSEQUENTLY, MICROSOFT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. MOREOVER, MICROSOFT DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF ANY MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENT IN TERMS OF ITS CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY,
RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY MICROSOFT OR ITS AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVES SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY OR IN ANY WAY DECREASE THE SCOPE OF THIS WARRANTY DISCLAIMER. IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER REGARDING ANY MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENT INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, PUNITIVE
OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Of course, they bury that in that huge paragraph of all caps text. But in other words, it's not their problem if it still isn't fixed, you lose business, etc from these "minor issues." Enjoy, and don't forget to fork over several more hundred dollars for the latest, greatest, unguaranteed piece of software from your friends at Microsoft.
So you're saying that Windows NT was written to have this issue built into it? I think not, since MS is not paid for distributing SP 3/4/5. In fact, it probably costs MS a lot of money to build the CDs, distribute them, and so on.
Y2K issues with old mainframes, software written in 1950-1970, I can understand as design flaws. Anything after that is a bug, pure and simple.
force massive upgrades to W2k and Win98. It's a profit motive! They DON'T WANT people to fix their Win95... they WAN'T them to upgrade. The Microsoft Rep said it himself - people will spend MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Obviously, Microsoft was selling a broken operating system until June of 1998 - just 1.5 years shy of the millenium. And, you can't tell me they hadn't done any testing at that time to see if Win95 was compliant.
Microsoft's attitude appears to be: Who cares! We'll just sell 'em an upgrade!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Wow. Where to start with this one? Here goes...
Is it even worthwhile patching Win95 if 90% of their users will abandon it by y2k anyway?
This line, and the tripe that came before it, is ridiculous. If they released a product with bugs that make it unusable by Y2K, then they damn well better fix it! People bought that product and were not warned that it would cease to function properly in a few years.
Microsoft gets flamed plenty for "pre-announcing" software it doesn't ship for years, now they are getting flamed for not-announcing software they may or may not ship. Sheesh. As far as the charge of running up win98 sales goes, they may indeed be guilty of that, but planned obsolescence in the marketplace is not by any means restricted to Microsoft.
This is one of the lamest arguments I've seen yet. Microsoft gets flamed for pre-announcing products in order to kill off interest in other companies' products. Microsoft gets flamed deceiving people in order to further line its pockets with cash. Whether they deceive by pre-announcing a product, or by not announcing a fix for their existing product, it's still deception. Whether Microsoft is the only one that does this is immaterial to the conversation. The article was about Microsoft. Perhaps other companies do this too. If so, then point it out. Tell us what company, and what they did. If it is true, then I would condemn that company for it as well.
We have RUMINT (rumour intelligence) that MS may or may not be shipping a win95 patch. That's very thin evidence for drawing any conclusions about MS' MOTIVES.
We've had a really good look at how MS thinks. We've seen tons of email that has been generated by the decision-makers at that company. They are completely devoted to marketshare and profit. Those are therefore the most likely motives. When you look at their actions, they make alot of sense given these motives.
What would you prefer MS did? Offer no Win95 patch at all (they are forcing us to 98!) Develop a win95 patch, but don't announce it until nearly done (ditto) ? Develop a win95 patch, announce it months in advance (they are creating FUD by preannouncing, their old trick. Besides, what if development runs late?) ? Everything Microsoft does here could be construed as greed or guilt (not that MS is not greedy or guilty sometimes ... )
I'll tell you exactly what I would prefer they did. I would prefer that they announce their patch as soon as they are committed to creating it. Then I would definitely prefer that they follow through on their announcement and deliver the goods as promised. People bought Win95 without any warning from Microsoft that it would be broken by the turn of the century. They deserve to have their product fixed or receive a refund.
Call me naive, but I would take Mr Jones' statement at face value until someone gave me EVIDENCE to the contrary.
Ok, you're naive. Don't take anything Microsoft says at face value. They say what they need to say to keep themselves out of trouble. They've been caught in too many lies and deceptions in the past for us to trust anything they say without THEM providing the evidence to make us believe it.
Thank you, drive through.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There was a patch for Win95 for Y2K compliance
that could be gotten at download.com. Odd
that no one in this article seemed to check
for the availability of this patch when written.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The ridiculous thing is that most of these Y2K design flaws being discussed are so incredibly minor compared to the day to day major flaws in say Win95.
Along those lines, what kind of Y2K testing has been done on Open Source/Linux projects? Has RedHat or any of the others setup a Y2K lab to run through the standard testing plans?
That's "the last thing" as in "the last step of my big plan". Not as in "something I don't want to do at all". That's what he meant to say, right? :-)
Amazing how this is 180 degrees opposite the usual MS strategy of pre-announcing products years in advance, or even just making announcements about non-existent products to keep out the competition.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Come 01/01/00 when all those 3 to 4 1/2 year old computers that cost people $1500 to $3000 or more don't work properly and it turns out not to be the hardware but the MS software at fault and the owners of those machines decide that they'll be d****d if they're going to financially reward MS for selling them software that was scheduled to self-destruct in 5 or fewer years, wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if Wall Streets computers were sufficiently Y2K compliant (and able to handle the load) to be able to accomodate the dumping of MS stock as the owners realize that MS is going to be too busy waving those EULA's around in court trying to get suit after suit after suit dismissed to be able to develop new software that nobody is going to buy after having already been burned.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
When MS talks about not wanting to spread FUD, they devilishly twist the meaning around in circles. What causes fear? Having Y2K failures. What causes Uncertainty and Doubt? Not knowing what the vendor is going to do to fix known problems. I know this from experience. I had to certify (or surplus) over 50 computer equipment for Y2K compliance.
Thanks MS. You are still the master of deception and PR. BTW, Muth did get to this employee and obviously trained him well (there is always two, a master and an apprentice).
But, according to M$, Linux doesn't have a "roadmap" either... We better all go back to DOS^H^H^H Windows 98
Linux, in Unixish tradition, won't have a Y2K problem for 3 decades, at which time we should all be on 64 bit systems anyway
That's the sort of thinking that got us into this year-2000 mess in the first place. Someone, somewhere will still be using 32-bit systems for something critical in 2038.
0 1 - just my two bits
(With Windows, that is. I'm using my SGI Indigo2 to type this. I like it a lot).
D
----
Not only does a Microsoft employee acknowledge the existance of FUD, he makes it sound like they are actively opposed to it!
I just found the link to the Y2K package I downloaded a few days back:
http://www.microsoft. com/windows/downloads/bin/w95/y2kw95.txt
Is this what all the fuss is about?
Is is becuase an increment on a long long takes longer than an increment on a long? And, if so, in this day and age of fast processors, does it really matter when compared to the future-proofing this would provide ?
A 64-bit increment takes several times as long on a 32-bit CPU as a 32-bit increment. And yes, even in this age of 500+MHz processors that makes a difference. I'm not that deep into that particular section of the code, but the clock-tick handler is probably one of the most-executed code paths in the kernel. While it's executing everything else on the system comes to a complete halt, so it's one of the hot-spots where cycles do count.
That said, I'm going to have to look to see whether there's a reasonably-low-overhead way of extending the 32-bit time to 64 bits on the i386 kernel. I use date classes that test out up through 31 Dec 9999, I might as well have a system time that's good until then too.
ANSI/ISO C ( and C++ ) doesn't specify the signedness of time_t. However, existing practice uses negative time_t values to represent times before 1 Jan 1970. Switching time_t to unsigned wouldn't violate the standard but it would break lots of existing code ( which is the reason it isn't being done by the serious library developers ).
I'm sure it is way too late to do anything about this, but I'd sure like to see /.ters being smart about this.
Y2K problems are NOT BUGS! A bug is an unintended behavior, when a program or system behaves in a manner inconsistent with design and intent. The Y2K problem is a design flaw. The people who wrote these systems knew full well about the problems of a two digit year and they chose to implement the systems that way anyways. If you intended it, it is not a bug.
I know this is techno-nitpicking. But this bugs me more than "can you borrow me five bucks?" And, hey, now that you mention it...
EvilPenguin (aka Michael Schwarz), grammatically uptight in Minneapolis...
Publish a product in 1995 without Y2K compliance? I guess the road ahead is a short one for some visionaries.
So do I track down the patch, or just delete my Y19C partition to make more swap space for The GIMP? Decisions, decisions...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Lets think about this.. A company has 100,000 seats, maybe just 1000. MS doesn't care what they want? I would be irrate if I had bought all those licenses.
If you had the source code you could make sure that its Y2k compliant, instead of relying on MS or any other vendor for that matter. Or if you couldn't afford the man power on your own you might be able to buy a patch from someone who could code it.
Linux obviously wouldn't have these stupid problems because they'd be fixed.
I'm really suprised corporations aren't really scared of relying on software from just one vendor that does things as poorly as MS.
This should come as no surprise. Microsoft is in the business of *SELLING* software. Nothing else. I would be surprised if MS is the only company who is not being up-front about Y2K issues. It's kind of a sad statement about the way we do business. We are driven by growth and P/E ratios instead of honosty and decency.
The real sad thing is that there is no threat that EDS will tell MS to shove it and take their order for 100,000 desktop OS's elsewhere. MS is holding them hostage. I really can't wait for someone (Linux or whoever) to come in and provide a viable alternative.
This is a logically sound argument...
However, logic does not always factor as the prime motivation in business communication.
I had this same (sortof) argument with the manager over our company's y2k project. He kept referring to the problem as 'infection' and I confronted him that this was not a virus, or a bug, or a glitch, or a coding error but a design and/or convention problem.
He did not disagree with me on factual arguments, he understood the origin of this problem well enough (heck, he was a coder in the trenches with me back in the old days). He said the problem was trying to get the 'suits' to carry the proper mindset about the y2k project.
Calling it an infection or bug was something the PHB's could understand. Trying to use more accurate language just overran their buffers. I suspect Microsoft and others probably use the same terminology for the same reasons.
I'd sure like it if they'd just make up their friggin' minds and say yay or nay on the patch issue. I've got a lot of client machines to upgrade if the answer is nay, and a patch to test (what? trust a M$ patch without testing? not in this lifetime) if the answer is yay.
Kinda funny when you think about it...one of the major FUDballs thrown at open source projects lately is the supposed lack of development roadmaps. Where's the M$ roadmap for this patch, if it exists? Only so many more months left...
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
There's an old saying that goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft."
May the guy at EDS be the first of many...
You sure that they are not trying to make us all use the next variation on NT?
From a financial standpoint they really want to phase out windows as an os altogether because they make more on the NT licencing fees then they do on any Win ** version out there. Therefore, I expect them to try and push for us to all convert over to an NT system. (that and they can get the info and invade privacy even easier on the NT systems)
The ability to sell the information from ppls systems is a temptation, but is unlikely from m$ as I do not believe they want to face that class action law suit. What is much more likely in the end game is: Win95 is so broke it is not economical to fix it. The cost of trying to find all of the bugs in man hours is such that they would have to eat their profits. Show me a company that wants to do that and I will show you one that is going out of business.
"Alt-F4 that's for quitting" quoth Dan_Wood
Actually, you are likely correct. My reading on the company in the Wall Street Jornal and other business realated news type stuffle seems to indicate that you are very much in the right. (irc)
Surprisingly, the WSJ actually treats M$ and Linux fairly in their articles on par. On of the little things in there seems to indicate that the programmers from m$ may actually be looking to bail from the company if they can find another one that is stable and likely to stay solvent. The key there is that m$ is remarkable for it's toeing of the line in the legalities of it's method of competing with other companies. The way m$ competes it by trying to make the tool as simple to use as a hammer, so that the end user thinks that everything is just a nail. An end user that has become accostumed to this then cannot easily transition over to another system. It takes time to learn a system and given the choice, most people want to just know one (and not very well at that) and save their precious time.
Thus, through the use of much simplified user enviroments like win95 and winNT, m$ has a captive audience. It is not too great a stretch then to believe that the company has decided to try to force upgrades onto this audience. This audience really cannot afford a work stoppage. If you were to look in the want adds of any large city newspaper, you would notice that among the secretarial pool and the general office staff the most common need is for some one that is competent in the windows 95/NT user environment and is capable of really manouvering in Office 97.
As a result, I think you are quite right.
--da telkitty
"Alt-F4 that's for quitting" quoth Dan_Wood
This is the second or third time I've heard of MS doing something questionable since the DOJ trial has been on holiday. The thing that I wonder is whether the "powers that be" are watching MS, and whether all these little events are swaying them one way or another. It just makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, once this thing is over, I doubt that any of the states involved will have the money or inclination to fight it out again, so the judge is probably taking things EXTRA seriously, and ever little questionable act that MS commits must leave SOME sort of negative feeling... just my thoughts, but what do I know?
i want to live life, not just go through the motions