in the real world, no such thing happened. What happened was that Microsoft inserted code into a beta version of Win3.1 that displayed a warning. That's right, not only did the evil code not stop Windows working at all (it just displayed a misleading message and waited for a keypress), it was removed after the beta and never existed in any version of Windows that was sold to the public.
The damage was planned to go along with another fud campaign, and most certainly made it to public release. Even if it was only a "warning" like you say, the damage was enough to destroy DR-DOS and the competition M$ so worried about. The records for that suit were destroyed as part of a deal between the Soft and Novel so the best synopsis by an unbiased observer I know of is here. The most important bits are:
Microsoft's David Cole emailed Phil Barrett on September 30 1991: "It's pretty clear we need to make sure Windows 3.1 only runs on top of MS DOS or an OEM version of it," and "The approach we will take is to detect DR DOS 6 and refuse to load. The error message should be something like 'Invalid device driver interface."
Microsoft had several methods of detecting and sabotaging DR-DOS with Windows. One was to have Smartdrive detect DR-DOS and refused to load it for Windows 3.1. There was also a version check in XMS in the Windows 3.1 setup program which produced the message: "The XMS driver you have installed is not compatible with Windows. You must remove it before setup can successfully install Windows."
Brad Silverberg, the Microsoft exec who had been responsible for Windows 95, emailed Jim Allchin... on September 27th 1991: ""after IBM announces support for dr-dos at comdex,... they will offer dr-dos as the preferred solution for 286, os 2 2.0 for 386. they will also probably continue to offer msdos at $165 (drdos for $99). drdos has problems running windows today, and I assume will have more problems in the future." Jim Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future.:-)".
The emails then go on to detail how they Fudded Compuserve to blame DR-DOS.
Anyway you look at it, M$ treated their customers with contempt and still does. Your defense of such tactics in defense of "the truth" is disturbing. Do like it when people lie to you so they can take your money?
Ignore the corpse, people die everyday.
on
Vista - iPod Killer?
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Windows gets an update, and some stuff breaks.
Like that's the way things are supposed to be? There's a valid technical reason for that kind of shit that never seems to happen in the free software world?
Now, tell me that iTunes not working on Vista is not big news. People are fed up with M$ shit in general, now someone breaks their favorite toy? The most popular music player ever, that millions of people care for like an egg every day? Which do you think people are going to ditch first?
Because things should work. iTunes = Vista killer.
on
Vista - iPod Killer?
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Everytime there's an OS upgrade your peripherals often don't work until the drivers etc are upgraded as well. What's so damn sinister about that?!
It's amazing, but you can "upgrade" a kernel without breaking the drivers and device support. OSS/ALSA compatiblity is a case in point. The obsolescence of hardware in the M$ world is completely artificial and is one of the biggest betrayals of non free software.
In any case, this is detrimental to M$ regardless of who's fault it is. If M$ did it on purpose, they are crazy. iPod users wouldn't use Zune if M$ gave them away, so iTunes damage will guide millions of wealthy and influential buyers away from M$ right when they need such "enthusiast" to say nice things about Vista.
Not even the rhetoric from a "Women's study" class can prepare the reader for the contents of those letters. All the diabolical "power" talk is like a script from a bad movie. Start anywhere and you get there fast. They really are sick.
To gain power, IBM's got to take it away from Microsoft, and our power starts with DOS.... We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the [DR-DOS] bugs.
You might recall later evidence from the Novel DR-DOS lawsuit, where Microsoft later killed DR-DOS off by making Win3.1 not work with it and then blaming DR-DOS in BBS postings. Nice.
The next random look has more opinion manipulation trough astroturf:
User story placement - developing and placing MS-DOS related stories in key publications, both trade and vertical, to communicate that corporations have a large investment in MS-DOS and will continue to trust in it. Develop user profiles?
And it goes on and on. The targets today are the ones that survived, IBM, Novel, and friends but now include the free software that everyone but M$ has agreed to use because it's better. Instead of fudding BBS, they are here and in the newspapers and TV networks they purchased for the purpose. If these dorks spent half the time wasted on improving their product, they might have a product that works. Instead, they have focused on marketing, "power" and other crap that's ended in DRM and botnet hell. No one should trust M$ for anything and everything they touch is suspect.
Thanks to this Microsoft funded and approved converter, I won't have any problems working exclusively in ODF now will I? OK, you can stop laughing but the last time I tried to open the crappy new.DOCX with Open Office, it did not work. The save as dialog was difficult to find on Word and confusing when you did find it. Chances are, this converter will be just another trap like Windoze itself.
Then GIVE THEM an Ubuntu livedisc or install Debian/Fedora/Mandriva/whatever for them. No, don't tell them "go download it", that's not going to work.
That's true. M$ has made it very difficult to burn ISOs lately. The last time I tried was two years ago using a friend's Sony Viao laptop. All the burning program would do is make a "data CD", there was no ISO option and Google searches turned up about an hour of frustration and bullshit. This, with a premium laptop! Having a CD ready is much easier. Tell them it may not work for various easy to fix problems and that you can help them if they want.
Just make them aware of the learning curve and sell them on the real benefits.
That's funny, because I've never seen you say the first positive thing about free software. It's nice of you to think of me again, but really I wish you would go away instead of FUDing people about learning curves and other bullshit shortcomings of free software. Either way, I'll use you to the advantage of free software, so you might as well be nice. Every time you link to my page people get a chance to visit my class, which is full of good advice for newbies. The inordinate time you waste fucking with me is just more evidence of how scared M$ is running. How much time does M$ spend on Twitter alone?
Most of the time all they do is do simple spreadsheets and documents. Tell them about OpenOffice. Tell them about other stuff like Amarok or whatever. And (if you're recommending Ubuntu, like you should) explain to them how Synaptic works. I've had people look at me funny when I tell them about all the software in there, as if it couldn't possibly be true.
Well, that's not a bad start - find out what they want and tell them there are programs that do it. In a short talk, I would not get bogged down in the details of any package manager. What counts is that they exist and are easy to use and often easier than staring at boxes in CompUSA. Ubuntu is not a bad distribution, but Mepis, Xandros or kbuntu have a more Windoze friendly package selection and interface.
Don't overdo it though... claiming that Linux is "inherently superior" to Windows and blabbing about how "evil" Microsoft is will do more harm than good the moment they have to deal with a problem that doesn't exist in Windows,
People do need to hear that GNU/Linux is better than M$ because it's free and what it means to be free. Quality issues can only carry a user so far, they ultimately need assurance they are not wasting their time on something that's not going to be any different in the long run. The root cause of M$ problems is not technological, it's M$'s anti-social business methods. That in turn is the root cause of most "Linux problems."
Of course, there is too much of a good thing, just as there is too much of a bad thing. Because you can't really migrate someone in five minutes, I've been teaching people how to do it right for two years now, as you can see from the linked page above which comes complete with slide shows anyone can use for their own purposes. It takes about six contact hours to get a user up and running. Those hours should be spread out over a period of months, but always be available to answer questions. After that they don't look back.
Some of these five are easier to address but some reflect deeper realities about being human.
And all but one of them have the same solution, Education.
Incentives. This is the odd man out because punishing the victim does nothing for anyone. Disconnecting an identifiable problem on a public network, should not be thought of as punishment but can serve as an incentive to fix the problem.
Rarity. Bullshit. One in four computers is part of the botnet.
Hubris. Bullshit. This attitude was created by commercial software vendors who have also made it impossible to secure computers by closing their code off.
Boredom. Bullshit. The user should have a trusted repository of community verified software, like the Debian community provides. Being bored should not kill your computer.
Sociality. Bullshit. People are nice and should be. Mouse links should not kill your computer. Proper training in the workplace makes employees not only more helpful but less likely to help out your mythical intrusion expert. See Bullshit #2 for why intrusion is stupid - why break in when you can remotely own the company's desktop.
With proper education people will get rid of their insecure operating systems and the net will be a safer place for all of us. As the millions of happy Mac, Linux, BSD and other OS users can attest, It's not the user's fault. They have to be given the correct tools, correctly configured in an easy to use way instead of the booby traps that M$, Dell, HP and others sell.
"If you can understand you are just reacting from fear, you have a better shot atunderstanding these human biases. Hopefully you can short-circuit them and improve on them and make it so we are not slaves to this," he says. "Fear is brain chemistry, but so is reason. We have to figure out how reason can trump fear."
People react to what you tell them. As long as commercial vendors continue to bullshit people, bullshit will come out.
Imagine a computer with all the restrictions turned on. The user gets a single unmovable 640x480 window and 300 Baud of bandwith from any device. It would run forever if it were not for the DRM trip bits and checks that require 4GB of RAM and a quad core processor to make the magic happen.
The AMD strategy to increase the price of corn by burning in automobiles has worked. That's nice for them but not for people who can't afford to eat anymore. I'd rather directly subsidize farmers and send the result to people who are hungry.
[a public library] were prohibited from running anything except what they bought from a MS site. It was deeply discounted software, IIRC, the OS was something like 50 and top office package was 150.
Wow, what a great gift, having to forever purchase their product and run it in a prominent public place. Given TCO, they probably lost money in the bargain.
No, most people still think M$ is sleaze. As the article put it.
The corporate world's overall reputation remains dismal, with new scandals emerging, such as the improper dating of stock-option grants to business executives. About 69% of respondents graded corporate America's reputation as either "not good" or "terrible," just slightly lower than the 71% in 2005.
It's disturbing that M$ could lead the pack, but overall people don't trust them. The lesson learned is that the bad behavior of some companies rubs off on all.
Also, the methodology can lead to funny business.
For the first part, 7,886 respondents were contacted online or by telephone last summer and asked to name the two companies they believe have the best reputations and the two with the worst. The 60 companies mentioned most often were then rated online last fall by a second group of 22,480 Americans, and each company was assigned a score and ranking based on those evaluations.
The first question is asking people to rate what their neighbors think, not what they think. That's a bad idea if a large portion of people think everyone else is sheepish. The whole study, of course, is tilted towards the opinions of people who would actually participate in a study. My wife and I think very poorly of big dumb companies and are highly unlikely to pay attention to phone or online spam. If you look at it like that, it's not surprising that M$ came out on top of an online study.
It's hard to tell without details, but the general population is less sheeplike than you think.
you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.
I can argue with the way he uses his riches. If you do more to know about it than listen to advertisements, you find Mr. Gate's heart is the same as it ever was. He has used foundation money to purchase newspapers critical of his company, the San Jose Mercury News and The Contra Costa Times, arguably to silence them. His spending on schools, as most of his deals are, is just another lever for control. At the local Gates high school, the state is spending nine dollars for every one he gives but he ends up with complete control of the results. His moves into medicine are backed by his "IP" propaganda, which has been a disaster for medicine itself. A truly cynical person would say that his foundation is just another tax shelter for his continued diversification and attempts to control even more of the US and world economy. Philanthropy is about helping people, not telling them what to do for your own good.
do you usually find yourself agreeing with Dvorak, or is this just a one-time thing?
When M$ boosters like Dvorak and Mossberg say Vista is bad and curse it for weeks, you know that it's bad even by M$ standards. That's colossally bad and there will be more of this kind of review.
didn't you say this when Windows 95 came out? And then with Windows 98 and 2000? And then again with XP?
No, I did not. I was shocked by the poor quality of XP when I first had to use it. At it's release time, however, I was taken in by all the NT mumbo-jumbo about stability and security of the best Windoze ever. Not taken in enough to purchase or use the garbage because I had moved everything to GNU/Linux by then, but I was hopeful they had paid more than lip service to improving their junk.
Vista is colossally bad that it's going to suck them down. Mosberg cursed it for weeks, Dorvak and is rooting for Linux. Could it be more over for them? This quarter's 10% downtick will be followed by many more once the fanboy sales squirt is over.
Walmart.com has thirty OEM Vista systems on sale beginning at $498 for a Vista Basic laptop. Vista-Preloaded Computers Thirty times it's OEM Linux selection.
That ratio will change when the $100 GNU/Linux laptops are considered normal. At that point the $500 Vista box will be something for specialists with legacy data they are unable to extract.
What, you think hardware makers are going to start including USB disks in the box instead of floppies? Could be but every version of non free software that requires a floppy for device drivers is going to be that much more difficult to install as it becomes harder to find floppy drives and motherboards that have the header for them.
Three of my computers went down in November. So, putting one Debian together from the leftovers still won't play my children's large collection of Windows-based games, in part inherited from me. So, forgive me, I'll buy Vista.
When you see the cost of buying a new computer with Vista on it, you might think better of buying a $200 used system or a sub $400 fire sale XP machine, to play those Windoze games. You might even buy a game console. For the price difference, you can have both.
"It's crucial for corporate reputation and revenue that Vista proves more secure and stable than XP,"
I'll further qualify it for Mr. Gates. In the M$ world, "proves" means you convince people it's true more than it means make it so. If actual performance is what's important, they are gonners.
The company has already felt the ill effects of launch delays: last week it announced a 10% drop in earnings for the six months to December.
I doubt anyone trotted out last night to give M$ money and that's a sign of things to come. It's safe to predict that 99.99999% of Vista sales will be OEM installs. The low price of new computers combined with the high price of Vista will kill over the counter sales. For the price of new software that won't work well with what you have, you can buy a computer with the same. For the immediate future, forcing Vista will hurt computer sales because no one wants it. As the price of computers continues to decline, M$ is going to have trouble gettin money out of OEMs. The margins don't allow it. The end of the M$ monopoly is here.
No, but even if he looked good, he'd still be that asshole talking about "fucking killing" people and companies.
Windoze, like it's makers, is more like it's caricature each day: bloated, buggy and controlling. In most ways, the more things change them more they are the same.
If all Windows users have to boot their PC daily, can you please explain my Windows box being up for well over a month so far without needing a reboot?
The only consistent explanations for your claims are denial or dishonesty. Given the way you insult people in your defense of a company and it's products, dishonesty is the most probable way to explain why your experience is different from the other 9999 of 10,000 user experiences I've seen or read about. Next you will tell me Vista is better and finally solves the stability problems every other version of Windoze was promissed to solve before the daily reboot recommendations inevitably roll out.
of course, Windows has absolutely no way of hiding all those tasks, or the taskbar, or anything else. Of course, there are also no programs or add-ons straight from MS or anyone else that give you more than one virtual desktop for WinXP, and have been since 2002. I could go on but you get the picture - you, as usual, have no idea what you're talking about. Desktops are only as cluttered as the people who use them.
I'm well aware of those silly "power tools" and addons and their performance relative to free software offerings all the way back to 1998. The most useful multitasking comes from others in the form of virtual machines that restrict and tame Windoze itself. Magic Twin is one successful means of sharing a single instance of Windoze that I saw demonstrated back in 2002. I consider these methods beyond the ability of casual users. I've also seen nVidia virtual desktops, which simply sucked on hardware free software ran well. The bottom line is that M$ has been slow to offer what free software has had for a decade and what they finally came out with is inferior to the point of being useless. There is still no easy and reliable way to lay your work out on a Windoze desktop.
My the 45 virtual desktops on my laptop are laughing at your pathetic taskbar and the supercomputer needed to run your five or six dinky programs, botnet and adware load.
I applaud you for having no idea how the Canadian telecommunications field works. From a Canadian perspective, the idea of porn is a minor issue, and the media issue is a non-issue. It's a completely different game up here, bucko.
I don't need to know how Bell Canada operates to know that the new US Ma Bell should not be given this kind of business to monopolize.
If you look at the adjacent screenshot, you'll see a completely cluttered desktop filled with distractions. I find it amusing that out of all the images, this one has the most clutter.
The "clutter" you see is her work and play. She could have hidden those tasks, but it was nice to see how a couple of programs looked. Chances are, there were many more programs you did not see. That's what happens to your desktop when you don't have to boot it daily.
The Linux desktop probably has more running as well. For instance, the 1.2 GHz PIII laptop being used to write this post has some 30 programs running over five virtual desktops, each with nine virtual screens. I've only had it running for the last 12 days, but place keeping rocks. Under Enlightenment, switching between desktops is nearly instantaneous despite the relatively modest processor and 512 of RAM. If I wanted to take a screenshot, I'd cover up most of the clutter by moving to an open virtual screen.
The clutter free nature of both Mac OSX and most free window managers puts Vista to shame. The M$ entrance into virtual desktops is both late and clumsy - even KDE does it's pagers better. The "3D" flip feature is some kind of bad joke.
It's an amazing OS. I really think that this one's going to give Apple Macs a run for their money.
It's funny they would even be worried. Their real fear is the free software that works like a charm on 1/10th the hardware Vista wants. Still, I like the transitive property of the statement for allowing the following to also be true:
Apple is going to give them a run for their money.
Slashdot Mirror
in the real world, no such thing happened. What happened was that Microsoft inserted code into a beta version of Win3.1 that displayed a warning. That's right, not only did the evil code not stop Windows working at all (it just displayed a misleading message and waited for a keypress), it was removed after the beta and never existed in any version of Windows that was sold to the public.
The damage was planned to go along with another fud campaign, and most certainly made it to public release. Even if it was only a "warning" like you say, the damage was enough to destroy DR-DOS and the competition M$ so worried about. The records for that suit were destroyed as part of a deal between the Soft and Novel so the best synopsis by an unbiased observer I know of is here. The most important bits are:
The emails then go on to detail how they Fudded Compuserve to blame DR-DOS.
Anyway you look at it, M$ treated their customers with contempt and still does. Your defense of such tactics in defense of "the truth" is disturbing. Do like it when people lie to you so they can take your money?
Windows gets an update, and some stuff breaks.
Like that's the way things are supposed to be? There's a valid technical reason for that kind of shit that never seems to happen in the free software world?
Now, tell me that iTunes not working on Vista is not big news. People are fed up with M$ shit in general, now someone breaks their favorite toy? The most popular music player ever, that millions of people care for like an egg every day? Which do you think people are going to ditch first?
Everytime there's an OS upgrade your peripherals often don't work until the drivers etc are upgraded as well. What's so damn sinister about that?!
It's amazing, but you can "upgrade" a kernel without breaking the drivers and device support. OSS/ALSA compatiblity is a case in point. The obsolescence of hardware in the M$ world is completely artificial and is one of the biggest betrayals of non free software.
In any case, this is detrimental to M$ regardless of who's fault it is. If M$ did it on purpose, they are crazy. iPod users wouldn't use Zune if M$ gave them away, so iTunes damage will guide millions of wealthy and influential buyers away from M$ right when they need such "enthusiast" to say nice things about Vista.
Not even the rhetoric from a "Women's study" class can prepare the reader for the contents of those letters. All the diabolical "power" talk is like a script from a bad movie. Start anywhere and you get there fast. They really are sick.
The first thing I looked at had this nonsense:
You might recall later evidence from the Novel DR-DOS lawsuit, where Microsoft later killed DR-DOS off by making Win3.1 not work with it and then blaming DR-DOS in BBS postings. Nice.
The next thing seems to indicate witness tampering in the same power struggle.
The next random look has more opinion manipulation trough astroturf:
And it goes on and on. The targets today are the ones that survived, IBM, Novel, and friends but now include the free software that everyone but M$ has agreed to use because it's better. Instead of fudding BBS, they are here and in the newspapers and TV networks they purchased for the purpose. If these dorks spent half the time wasted on improving their product, they might have a product that works. Instead, they have focused on marketing, "power" and other crap that's ended in DRM and botnet hell. No one should trust M$ for anything and everything they touch is suspect.
Thanks to this Microsoft funded and approved converter, I won't have any problems working exclusively in ODF now will I? OK, you can stop laughing but the last time I tried to open the crappy new .DOCX with Open Office, it did not work. The save as dialog was difficult to find on Word and confusing when you did find it. Chances are, this converter will be just another trap like Windoze itself.
Then GIVE THEM an Ubuntu livedisc or install Debian/Fedora/Mandriva/whatever for them. No, don't tell them "go download it", that's not going to work.
That's true. M$ has made it very difficult to burn ISOs lately. The last time I tried was two years ago using a friend's Sony Viao laptop. All the burning program would do is make a "data CD", there was no ISO option and Google searches turned up about an hour of frustration and bullshit. This, with a premium laptop! Having a CD ready is much easier. Tell them it may not work for various easy to fix problems and that you can help them if they want.
Seeing is believing.
Just make them aware of the learning curve and sell them on the real benefits.
That's funny, because I've never seen you say the first positive thing about free software. It's nice of you to think of me again, but really I wish you would go away instead of FUDing people about learning curves and other bullshit shortcomings of free software. Either way, I'll use you to the advantage of free software, so you might as well be nice. Every time you link to my page people get a chance to visit my class, which is full of good advice for newbies. The inordinate time you waste fucking with me is just more evidence of how scared M$ is running. How much time does M$ spend on Twitter alone?
Most of the time all they do is do simple spreadsheets and documents. Tell them about OpenOffice. Tell them about other stuff like Amarok or whatever. And (if you're recommending Ubuntu, like you should) explain to them how Synaptic works. I've had people look at me funny when I tell them about all the software in there, as if it couldn't possibly be true.
Well, that's not a bad start - find out what they want and tell them there are programs that do it. In a short talk, I would not get bogged down in the details of any package manager. What counts is that they exist and are easy to use and often easier than staring at boxes in CompUSA. Ubuntu is not a bad distribution, but Mepis, Xandros or kbuntu have a more Windoze friendly package selection and interface.
Don't overdo it though... claiming that Linux is "inherently superior" to Windows and blabbing about how "evil" Microsoft is will do more harm than good the moment they have to deal with a problem that doesn't exist in Windows,
People do need to hear that GNU/Linux is better than M$ because it's free and what it means to be free. Quality issues can only carry a user so far, they ultimately need assurance they are not wasting their time on something that's not going to be any different in the long run. The root cause of M$ problems is not technological, it's M$'s anti-social business methods. That in turn is the root cause of most "Linux problems."
Of course, there is too much of a good thing, just as there is too much of a bad thing. Because you can't really migrate someone in five minutes, I've been teaching people how to do it right for two years now, as you can see from the linked page above which comes complete with slide shows anyone can use for their own purposes. It takes about six contact hours to get a user up and running. Those hours should be spread out over a period of months, but always be available to answer questions. After that they don't look back.
Some of these five are easier to address but some reflect deeper realities about being human.
And all but one of them have the same solution, Education.
With proper education people will get rid of their insecure operating systems and the net will be a safer place for all of us. As the millions of happy Mac, Linux, BSD and other OS users can attest, It's not the user's fault. They have to be given the correct tools, correctly configured in an easy to use way instead of the booby traps that M$, Dell, HP and others sell.
People react to what you tell them. As long as commercial vendors continue to bullshit people, bullshit will come out.
Imagine a computer with all the restrictions turned on. The user gets a single unmovable 640x480 window and 300 Baud of bandwith from any device. It would run forever if it were not for the DRM trip bits and checks that require 4GB of RAM and a quad core processor to make the magic happen.
Vista is going to sink M$ for good.
The AMD strategy to increase the price of corn by burning in automobiles has worked. That's nice for them but not for people who can't afford to eat anymore. I'd rather directly subsidize farmers and send the result to people who are hungry.
[a public library] were prohibited from running anything except what they bought from a MS site. It was deeply discounted software, IIRC, the OS was something like 50 and top office package was 150.
Wow, what a great gift, having to forever purchase their product and run it in a prominent public place. Given TCO, they probably lost money in the bargain.
No, most people still think M$ is sleaze. As the article put it.
It's disturbing that M$ could lead the pack, but overall people don't trust them. The lesson learned is that the bad behavior of some companies rubs off on all.
Also, the methodology can lead to funny business.
The first question is asking people to rate what their neighbors think, not what they think. That's a bad idea if a large portion of people think everyone else is sheepish. The whole study, of course, is tilted towards the opinions of people who would actually participate in a study. My wife and I think very poorly of big dumb companies and are highly unlikely to pay attention to phone or online spam. If you look at it like that, it's not surprising that M$ came out on top of an online study.
It's hard to tell without details, but the general population is less sheeplike than you think.
you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place.
I can argue with the way he uses his riches. If you do more to know about it than listen to advertisements, you find Mr. Gate's heart is the same as it ever was. He has used foundation money to purchase newspapers critical of his company, the San Jose Mercury News and The Contra Costa Times, arguably to silence them. His spending on schools, as most of his deals are, is just another lever for control. At the local Gates high school, the state is spending nine dollars for every one he gives but he ends up with complete control of the results. His moves into medicine are backed by his "IP" propaganda, which has been a disaster for medicine itself. A truly cynical person would say that his foundation is just another tax shelter for his continued diversification and attempts to control even more of the US and world economy. Philanthropy is about helping people, not telling them what to do for your own good.
do you usually find yourself agreeing with Dvorak, or is this just a one-time thing?
When M$ boosters like Dvorak and Mossberg say Vista is bad and curse it for weeks, you know that it's bad even by M$ standards. That's colossally bad and there will be more of this kind of review.
An annoying pest asks:
didn't you say this when Windows 95 came out? And then with Windows 98 and 2000? And then again with XP?
No, I did not. I was shocked by the poor quality of XP when I first had to use it. At it's release time, however, I was taken in by all the NT mumbo-jumbo about stability and security of the best Windoze ever. Not taken in enough to purchase or use the garbage because I had moved everything to GNU/Linux by then, but I was hopeful they had paid more than lip service to improving their junk.
Vista is colossally bad that it's going to suck them down. Mosberg cursed it for weeks, Dorvak and is rooting for Linux. Could it be more over for them? This quarter's 10% downtick will be followed by many more once the fanboy sales squirt is over.
Walmart.com has thirty OEM Vista systems on sale beginning at $498 for a Vista Basic laptop. Vista-Preloaded Computers Thirty times it's OEM Linux selection.
That ratio will change when the $100 GNU/Linux laptops are considered normal. At that point the $500 Vista box will be something for specialists with legacy data they are unable to extract.
What, you think hardware makers are going to start including USB disks in the box instead of floppies? Could be but every version of non free software that requires a floppy for device drivers is going to be that much more difficult to install as it becomes harder to find floppy drives and motherboards that have the header for them.
Onward moves the upgrade train.
Three of my computers went down in November. So, putting one Debian together from the leftovers still won't play my children's large collection of Windows-based games, in part inherited from me. So, forgive me, I'll buy Vista.
When you see the cost of buying a new computer with Vista on it, you might think better of buying a $200 used system or a sub $400 fire sale XP machine, to play those Windoze games. You might even buy a game console. For the price difference, you can have both.
The same article qualifies that promise:
"It's crucial for corporate reputation and revenue that Vista proves more secure and stable than XP,"
I'll further qualify it for Mr. Gates. In the M$ world, "proves" means you convince people it's true more than it means make it so. If actual performance is what's important, they are gonners.
I doubt anyone trotted out last night to give M$ money and that's a sign of things to come. It's safe to predict that 99.99999% of Vista sales will be OEM installs. The low price of new computers combined with the high price of Vista will kill over the counter sales. For the price of new software that won't work well with what you have, you can buy a computer with the same. For the immediate future, forcing Vista will hurt computer sales because no one wants it. As the price of computers continues to decline, M$ is going to have trouble gettin money out of OEMs. The margins don't allow it. The end of the M$ monopoly is here.
Can Steve Ballmer look Cute?
No, but even if he looked good, he'd still be that asshole talking about "fucking killing" people and companies.
Windoze, like it's makers, is more like it's caricature each day: bloated, buggy and controlling. In most ways, the more things change them more they are the same.
If all Windows users have to boot their PC daily, can you please explain my Windows box being up for well over a month so far without needing a reboot?
The only consistent explanations for your claims are denial or dishonesty. Given the way you insult people in your defense of a company and it's products, dishonesty is the most probable way to explain why your experience is different from the other 9999 of 10,000 user experiences I've seen or read about. Next you will tell me Vista is better and finally solves the stability problems every other version of Windoze was promissed to solve before the daily reboot recommendations inevitably roll out.
of course, Windows has absolutely no way of hiding all those tasks, or the taskbar, or anything else. Of course, there are also no programs or add-ons straight from MS or anyone else that give you more than one virtual desktop for WinXP, and have been since 2002. I could go on but you get the picture - you, as usual, have no idea what you're talking about. Desktops are only as cluttered as the people who use them.
I'm well aware of those silly "power tools" and addons and their performance relative to free software offerings all the way back to 1998. The most useful multitasking comes from others in the form of virtual machines that restrict and tame Windoze itself. Magic Twin is one successful means of sharing a single instance of Windoze that I saw demonstrated back in 2002. I consider these methods beyond the ability of casual users. I've also seen nVidia virtual desktops, which simply sucked on hardware free software ran well. The bottom line is that M$ has been slow to offer what free software has had for a decade and what they finally came out with is inferior to the point of being useless. There is still no easy and reliable way to lay your work out on a Windoze desktop.
My the 45 virtual desktops on my laptop are laughing at your pathetic taskbar and the supercomputer needed to run your five or six dinky programs, botnet and adware load.
I applaud you for having no idea how the Canadian telecommunications field works. From a Canadian perspective, the idea of porn is a minor issue, and the media issue is a non-issue. It's a completely different game up here, bucko.
I don't need to know how Bell Canada operates to know that the new US Ma Bell should not be given this kind of business to monopolize.
If you look at the adjacent screenshot, you'll see a completely cluttered desktop filled with distractions. I find it amusing that out of all the images, this one has the most clutter.
The "clutter" you see is her work and play. She could have hidden those tasks, but it was nice to see how a couple of programs looked. Chances are, there were many more programs you did not see. That's what happens to your desktop when you don't have to boot it daily.
The Linux desktop probably has more running as well. For instance, the 1.2 GHz PIII laptop being used to write this post has some 30 programs running over five virtual desktops, each with nine virtual screens. I've only had it running for the last 12 days, but place keeping rocks. Under Enlightenment, switching between desktops is nearly instantaneous despite the relatively modest processor and 512 of RAM. If I wanted to take a screenshot, I'd cover up most of the clutter by moving to an open virtual screen.
The clutter free nature of both Mac OSX and most free window managers puts Vista to shame. The M$ entrance into virtual desktops is both late and clumsy - even KDE does it's pagers better. The "3D" flip feature is some kind of bad joke.
It's an amazing OS. I really think that this one's going to give Apple Macs a run for their money.
It's funny they would even be worried. Their real fear is the free software that works like a charm on 1/10th the hardware Vista wants. Still, I like the transitive property of the statement for allowing the following to also be true:
Apple is going to give them a run for their money.