There's really no debate on the matter. Legally, MS is a convicted monopolist. Additionally, you won't find market analysts who would qualify Microsoft as anything but a monopoly. Furthermore, one can statistically demonstrate Microsoft's collection of monopoly profits. And the courts have repeatedly found (including appeals) that Microsoft abuses its market position.
Once again, I love Microsoft trolls. However, it'll be more fun if you try and make arguments, rather than simply using your Authority as an Anonymous Coward. So please, discuss.
Cheer for Monopolists. Cheer for high market barriers to entry. Cheer for Government regulation (copyrights).
This is beautiful. Pure genius: That means, after the DoJ finished parading lying whiner after lying whiner the judge tosses a coin and decides which lawyer had the nicer hair-do. The DoJ trial, like the current EU fiasco, caused more harm to more people than Microsoft ever has.
I That means, after the DoJ finished parading lying whiner after lying whiner the judge tosses a coin and decides which lawyer had the nicer hair-do. The DoJ trial, like the current EU fiasco, caused more harm to more people than Microsoft ever has.
Booting another OS from the NT boot loader is significantly more difficult than using a Linux boot loader GUI setup tool.
The difference is quite extreme. Using tools like DD to generate copies of boot sectors, and then learning the NT boot.ini conventions is beyond most power users.
The MS Zune will combine the profitability of the Xbox with the marketshare of MS Origami.
Just my 2 cents.....
Does anyone feel like watching MS and the music business is like watching a bad fantasy drama? MS's henchman/proxies (WMPlayer devices) have failed to defeat the hero, iPod, and the balding, fat, but still competent with a rapier evil king gets up out of his throne huffing and puffing, yelling, "Not this time! I'll deal with you myself!"
Of course, we know how this swordfight ends in the movies. We'll see how it plays in the MP3 market. With any luck, we'll see the EU bust open Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, similar to what it did with FairPlay.
Responsibility would be on the OS manufacturers to ship easy-to-use, no trouble, no options install disks for usage on the first install. These would have a standardized, regulated procedure that would be open to any OS company.
No kidding. While as an interm measure we are running the company on rebuilt Linux desktops, we're planning to switch everyone to Intel Mac Minis, purchasing the systems using those nify $599-699 LCD+MacMini packages some local retailers have been running.
At that point, whoever wants Linux can keep it, and whoever wants OS X can have it. All on new hardware, with new monitors, at a minimal cost per desktop.
SuSE is by far the most user friendly linux distribution?
Why? Because SuSE understands that user friendly is a combination of easy-to-use and consistent. Things don't break randomly; and random breakage is the worst possible thing you can do to an unfamiliar user.
This is why I'm not a big fan of Mandriva. Debacles like putting KAT into the default install come to mind (and KAT is 100% broken, as much as I like the idea; the implementation needs a ground up redesign, and the OpenSuSE people did the right thing in using kio-beagle, kerry, and beagle in their KDE desktop search setup).
Simple. You're really not thinking like a PHB. Stop thinking like an engineer, and start thinking like a moron!
You receive said PowerPoint. You immediately set out to install a special PowerPoint Viewing Cart, complete with portable generator, portable PC, portable projector, and portable screenbooth (think 4 Chinese folding wall screens with a roof). Even though you've created a special system to "isolate" your PowerPoints, you make sure it's got full network access via 802.11, with RW support on all shares, globally.
If you can't build this setup by stealing the parts from a coworker's desk or the conference room, order them all. Better yet, setup an auction website where suppliers can bid on the various parts of your setup. You, of course, send money before you receive product; after all, you've gotten the lowest cost option, so you can risk the capital.
Then, watch said PowerPoint on the PowerPoint Viewing Cart. Proceed to tell boss that you thought this high priority PowerPoint was, indeed, from him, and that since it blew away the PowerPoint Viewing Cart, you now need to spend the rest of the week repairing it. If he asks you why you are repairing it, make sure to make it clear that you want him to be able to view the high priority PowerPoint he had just received, "ReadThisNowOrYourStockOptionsWillExpire.ppt" . Explain to him the virtues of private viewing environment, portable generator, and dolby surround sound.
Voila! Much like any MSCE, you've turned a Microsoft Product into a never ending source of contract work, all without quitting your day job.
Linux for the Macbook is fairly easy if you are distribution agnostic.
It is drop dead easy if you use the Mactel-Linux Ubuntu Live CD.
I haven't had many problems using OpenSuSE 10.1, but I did have to recompile my kernel at one point.
The FGLRX drivers finally work properly. They aren't as fast as their Windows or OS X counterparts, but they are fairly easy to install and get the job done. I expect significant performance improvements in the future. The X1600 256 MB (which is the Macbook Pro) graphics isn't bad at all.
The standard MacBooks come with Intel's Extreme Graphics, which suck; however, the Linux drivers are opensource and directly built into X.org (installation is drop dead easy).
Why would you consider a Dell? Get a MacBook Pro, install Linux, Windows, and OS X. It's fast, light, and easy to use. Plus, it looks good.
It's funny how people like to sit behind their computers and criticize the business tactics of the most powerful corporation on the planet. I am not implying that I agree with their methods, but to assume a "lack of understanding" from a company that generates more than $40 billion (billion with a "b") in annual sales, and whose executives are among the richest men and women in the world...that shows a lack of understanding. Arrogant...sure, ignorant, FAR from it. You can afford some arrogance when you can buy and sell half the world's countries with your annual sales.
If anything, Microsoft's arrogance will contribute to their downfall. You can't flout a Government forever; they come for you, eventually. With pitchforks.
Not to mention that Microsoft did not rise to power on arrogance; Microsoft rose to power based upon imitation and brilliant (aggressive?) marketing. Look at sectors driven by Microsoft's "arrogance".
Is the Xbox making money, or gaining marketshare proportional to MS's investment? Is MSN making money, or gaining marketshare proportional to MS's investment? How about Windows Defender? Or Microsoft Passport? How about the variety of MS Home Entertainment (Media Center, Media Keyboard, MS Remote control, WinCE for DVD players, etc . ..) offerings?
MS has tons of money; but they aren't generating revenue on their "new businesses". They rake in monopoly profits using unfair marketing tactics (and they've been found guilty of these actions in court, domestically and internationally), and plow that into other sectors of the market, hoping to distort them the same way they've managed to distort the OS and Office markets. This does not demonstrate business acumen; on the other hand, it demonstrates that they suck, real bad, at developing new markets. If Microsoft didn't have billions in the bank its new product offerings would not even blip on the radar.
Make no mistake; Microsoft is doing something wrong, and me, the GP poster, and the stock market know this. Why do you still have your head stuck up your ass?
Previous financial success does not guarantee future success. It certainly helps, and can be a necessary condition, but is not sufficient. Making statements on how you "own" a market (enterprise search) in which you have no product offerings versus established competitors implies that your delusions are growing worse, not better. These coarse statements by a policy maker at Microsoft should not, and will not, make shareholders comfortable.
I think he means "audit", the same way Scientologists "audit" your body for thetans. The leet WhiteHat HaXors "audit" the bugs right out of the software using an e-meter.
As for not matching the GUI, speak for yourself. It fits in just fine on my Gnome desktop.
Really? It doesn't fit in well on mine: http://img153.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=38652_S creenshot_364lo.jpg They're both brown, but all the controls behave and look differently..
The only visual "difference" that I can see is that Tabs on OpenOffice.org fade out the text on non-active tab items, while they remain black on KDE/QT/GTK2. For me, this is a minor enough issue that I don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. It's certainly no where near as bad as the issues on your screenshot.
Suggestion: PDF everything (as you noted), and for Presentations, use Quicktime.
A presentation created in Keynote using the Quicktime format is easy to distribute, plays everywhere, and is vastly more "visually" appealing than a PowerPoint.
PowerPoint is fugly. It is only very, very slightly better (aesthetically) than OpenOffice.org Impress. Either use Keynote (which is usuable by people with very limited computing knowledge, and can generate easy to distribute QuickTime presentations), or put together a moderate budget and create an honest-to-god animation/video.
PowerPoint is overused, and is totally inadequate for most situations. Keynote outperforms it by a huge margin; and you can get Keynote+a Mac Mini for not much more than the price of Office Professional.
All other tasks that you wouldn't use Keynote for can be handled by OpenOffice.org Impress (i.e. the absolute most basic slideshows that don't matter if they are fugly).
Run EVE on Cedega. It runs beautifully, and as fast as Windows. Make sure you're using a high-responsiveness kernel.
As far as graphical artifacts, I've only ever seen minor texture corruption on some transparencies, and only very, very occasionally. To me, it looks more like a heat related problem (I'm big on quite computing, so my fans aren't 50000 RPM monsters) than a code problem.
As for Wine (free) versus Cedega (nonfree), I sleep soundly at night, because although Cedega is nonfree, I'd rather pay money to Transgaming, a small company that is pretty friendly, than Microsoft.
For incremental updates, staggering automatic downloads a 2 through 6 am should work.
For service packs, download to cd. He already does that. The real problem is the reinstalling, and frankly, you shouldn't need to.......
Locked down permission, draconian install policies, or switch to Linux. You should not need to reinstall unless you experience hard failure, and in that event reinstall, turn on automatic updates, and let the thing start sucking on your dsl at 6 pm on a sunday, or whenever you go home.
It's only capable of hiding itself if it is in the running environment. One solution is to boot from known-good, read-only media. Then you can search from known rootkit signatures.
In my opinion, however, once you get a system that badly infected, you should give up and wipe clean. You'll never know if you've succesfully closed all the holes, and not even an expensive forensic analysis could guarantee such a thing.
Not to mention that if they have to implement double-digits worth of patches a month you have to suspect that there are, indeed, unknown (by the public) security holes to be found, and which may have already been found by blackhats.
Antimalware tools are akin to snake oil and herbal remedies. No sane system should need that kind of overhead, and I've said it before: once you're infected, the only way of going back to a "known clean" configuration is a wipe and restore from "known good" media, or a complete checksum of binary signatures from a read-only known-good boot medium. The only thing antimalware does is make you feel safe, much like the Windows Security Center logo. Once your system is infected, a good root-kit is unremovable, and even garden variety uncommon malware may not be detected by the popular virus scanners; this is exactly what happened to Valve with the Half-Life 2 code theft. Someone designed a custom worm to penetrate their network and e-mail out important corporate files, and they got away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Put simply, your using the wrong distribution. The quality and easy-of-use/learning curve for different distributions vary markedtly.
Try SuSE. You won't be sorry.
Why? The term "convicted monpolist" is correct. Feel free to browse the DOJ website
There's really no debate on the matter. Legally, MS is a convicted monopolist. Additionally, you won't find market analysts who would qualify Microsoft as anything but a monopoly. Furthermore, one can statistically demonstrate Microsoft's collection of monopoly profits. And the courts have repeatedly found (including appeals) that Microsoft abuses its market position.
Once again, I love Microsoft trolls. However, it'll be more fun if you try and make arguments, rather than simply using your Authority as an Anonymous Coward. So please, discuss.
Meh. Slashdot ate my comment.
& q=Microsoft+convicted+Monopolist+site:usdoj.gov&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I love Microsoft trolls.
Keep it real, brother.
Cheer for Monopolists. Cheer for high market barriers to entry. Cheer for Government regulation (copyrights).
This is beautiful. Pure genius:
That means, after the DoJ finished parading lying whiner after lying whiner the judge tosses a coin and decides which lawyer had the nicer hair-do. The DoJ trial, like the current EU fiasco, caused more harm to more people than Microsoft ever has.
I love it.
Just for reference perspective, for those that might be interested in believing our furry trollish friend, take a look at this: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en
Convicted is indeed the correct word.
I That means, after the DoJ finished parading lying whiner after lying whiner the judge tosses a coin and decides which lawyer had the nicer hair-do. The DoJ trial, like the current EU fiasco, caused more harm to more people than Microsoft ever has.
I love it.
Booting another OS from the NT boot loader is significantly more difficult than using a Linux boot loader GUI setup tool.
The difference is quite extreme. Using tools like DD to generate copies of boot sectors, and then learning the NT boot.ini conventions is beyond most power users.
The MS Zune will combine the profitability of the Xbox with the marketshare of MS Origami.
Just my 2 cents.....
Does anyone feel like watching MS and the music business is like watching a bad fantasy drama? MS's henchman/proxies (WMPlayer devices) have failed to defeat the hero, iPod, and the balding, fat, but still competent with a rapier evil king gets up out of his throne huffing and puffing, yelling, "Not this time! I'll deal with you myself!"
Of course, we know how this swordfight ends in the movies. We'll see how it plays in the MP3 market. With any luck, we'll see the EU bust open Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, similar to what it did with FairPlay.
If the EU forced OEM vendors to ship "clean" PCs.
Responsibility would be on the OS manufacturers to ship easy-to-use, no trouble, no options install disks for usage on the first install. These would have a standardized, regulated procedure that would be open to any OS company.
No kidding. While as an interm measure we are running the company on rebuilt Linux desktops, we're planning to switch everyone to Intel Mac Minis, purchasing the systems using those nify $599-699 LCD+MacMini packages some local retailers have been running.
At that point, whoever wants Linux can keep it, and whoever wants OS X can have it. All on new hardware, with new monitors, at a minimal cost per desktop.
SuSE is by far the most user friendly linux distribution?
Why? Because SuSE understands that user friendly is a combination of easy-to-use and consistent. Things don't break randomly; and random breakage is the worst possible thing you can do to an unfamiliar user.
This is why I'm not a big fan of Mandriva. Debacles like putting KAT into the default install come to mind (and KAT is 100% broken, as much as I like the idea; the implementation needs a ground up redesign, and the OpenSuSE people did the right thing in using kio-beagle, kerry, and beagle in their KDE desktop search setup).
Simple. You're really not thinking like a PHB. Stop thinking like an engineer, and start thinking like a moron!
You receive said PowerPoint. You immediately set out to install a special PowerPoint Viewing Cart, complete with portable generator, portable PC, portable projector, and portable screenbooth (think 4 Chinese folding wall screens with a roof). Even though you've created a special system to "isolate" your PowerPoints, you make sure it's got full network access via 802.11, with RW support on all shares, globally.
If you can't build this setup by stealing the parts from a coworker's desk or the conference room, order them all. Better yet, setup an auction website where suppliers can bid on the various parts of your setup. You, of course, send money before you receive product; after all, you've gotten the lowest cost option, so you can risk the capital.
Then, watch said PowerPoint on the PowerPoint Viewing Cart. Proceed to tell boss that you thought this high priority PowerPoint was, indeed, from him, and that since it blew away the PowerPoint Viewing Cart, you now need to spend the rest of the week repairing it. If he asks you why you are repairing it, make sure to make it clear that you want him to be able to view the high priority PowerPoint he had just received, "ReadThisNowOrYourStockOptionsWillExpire.ppt" . Explain to him the virtues of private viewing environment, portable generator, and dolby surround sound.
Voila! Much like any MSCE, you've turned a Microsoft Product into a never ending source of contract work, all without quitting your day job.
And China is simultaneously experiencing rising wages and labor shortages.
I don't know why labor protectionists are determined to raise trade barriers (fair trade?), but I think it is rooted in racism.
Linux for the Macbook is fairly easy if you are distribution agnostic.
It is drop dead easy if you use the Mactel-Linux Ubuntu Live CD.
I haven't had many problems using OpenSuSE 10.1, but I did have to recompile my kernel at one point.
The FGLRX drivers finally work properly. They aren't as fast as their Windows or OS X counterparts, but they are fairly easy to install and get the job done. I expect significant performance improvements in the future. The X1600 256 MB (which is the Macbook Pro) graphics isn't bad at all.
The standard MacBooks come with Intel's Extreme Graphics, which suck; however, the Linux drivers are opensource and directly built into X.org (installation is drop dead easy).
Why would you consider a Dell? Get a MacBook Pro, install Linux, Windows, and OS X. It's fast, light, and easy to use. Plus, it looks good.
As crappy as they are, your best bet is Intel's Extreme Graphics.
Intel actively supports the DRI drivers. It's really too bad that the performance is so amazingly bad.
As far as I'm concerned, your best bet is Nvidia, followed by Intel Extreme Graphics for non-gaming.
Suggest that Linux fails to meet UNIX specifications, for example, and watch the apologies flow in.
We're sorry, but LINUX is not Unix. That's what the acronym Linux stands for.
So not, it doesn't bother us Linux apologists.
It's funny how people like to sit behind their computers and criticize the business tactics of the most powerful corporation on the planet. I am not implying that I agree with their methods, but to assume a "lack of understanding" from a company that generates more than $40 billion (billion with a "b") in annual sales, and whose executives are among the richest men and women in the world...that shows a lack of understanding. Arrogant...sure, ignorant, FAR from it. You can afford some arrogance when you can buy and sell half the world's countries with your annual sales.
.) offerings?
Oh, really?
If anything, Microsoft's arrogance will contribute to their downfall. You can't flout a Government forever; they come for you, eventually. With pitchforks.
Not to mention that Microsoft did not rise to power on arrogance; Microsoft rose to power based upon imitation and brilliant (aggressive?) marketing. Look at sectors driven by Microsoft's "arrogance".
Is the Xbox making money, or gaining marketshare proportional to MS's investment?
Is MSN making money, or gaining marketshare proportional to MS's investment?
How about Windows Defender? Or Microsoft Passport? How about the variety of MS Home Entertainment (Media Center, Media Keyboard, MS Remote control, WinCE for DVD players, etc . .
Take a look
MS has tons of money; but they aren't generating revenue on their "new businesses". They rake in monopoly profits using unfair marketing tactics (and they've been found guilty of these actions in court, domestically and internationally), and plow that into other sectors of the market, hoping to distort them the same way they've managed to distort the OS and Office markets. This does not demonstrate business acumen; on the other hand, it demonstrates that they suck, real bad, at developing new markets. If Microsoft didn't have billions in the bank its new product offerings would not even blip on the radar.
Take a look at their 5 year share price
Make no mistake; Microsoft is doing something wrong, and me, the GP poster, and the stock market know this. Why do you still have your head stuck up your ass?
Previous financial success does not guarantee future success. It certainly helps, and can be a necessary condition, but is not sufficient. Making statements on how you "own" a market (enterprise search) in which you have no product offerings versus established competitors implies that your delusions are growing worse, not better. These coarse statements by a policy maker at Microsoft should not, and will not, make shareholders comfortable.
They already did this in South Korea. They were ignored; basically, S. Korea called their bluff.
http://bink.nu/Article5163.bink
I think he means "audit", the same way Scientologists "audit" your body for thetans. The leet WhiteHat HaXors "audit" the bugs right out of the software using an e-meter.
Or something like that.
As for not matching the GUI, speak for yourself. It fits in just fine on my Gnome desktop.S creenshot_364lo.jpg They're both brown, but all the controls behave and look differently..
Really? It doesn't fit in well on mine: http://img153.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=38652_
Yet another reason to use SuSE. Take a look at mine:
http://www.energy-chicago.com/oowidget.jpg
Everything matches up beautifully.
The only visual "difference" that I can see is that Tabs on OpenOffice.org fade out the text on non-active tab items, while they remain black on KDE/QT/GTK2. For me, this is a minor enough issue that I don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. It's certainly no where near as bad as the issues on your screenshot.
Suggestion: PDF everything (as you noted), and for Presentations, use Quicktime.
A presentation created in Keynote using the Quicktime format is easy to distribute, plays everywhere, and is vastly more "visually" appealing than a PowerPoint.
I feel the same way about PowerPoint.
PowerPoint is fugly. It is only very, very slightly better (aesthetically) than OpenOffice.org Impress. Either use Keynote (which is usuable by people with very limited computing knowledge, and can generate easy to distribute QuickTime presentations), or put together a moderate budget and create an honest-to-god animation/video.
PowerPoint is overused, and is totally inadequate for most situations. Keynote outperforms it by a huge margin; and you can get Keynote+a Mac Mini for not much more than the price of Office Professional.
All other tasks that you wouldn't use Keynote for can be handled by OpenOffice.org Impress (i.e. the absolute most basic slideshows that don't matter if they are fugly).
Run EVE on Cedega. It runs beautifully, and as fast as Windows. Make sure you're using a high-responsiveness kernel.
As far as graphical artifacts, I've only ever seen minor texture corruption on some transparencies, and only very, very occasionally. To me, it looks more like a heat related problem (I'm big on quite computing, so my fans aren't 50000 RPM monsters) than a code problem.
As for Wine (free) versus Cedega (nonfree), I sleep soundly at night, because although Cedega is nonfree, I'd rather pay money to Transgaming, a small company that is pretty friendly, than Microsoft.
He's talking about 20 light use machines.
For incremental updates, staggering automatic downloads a 2 through 6 am should work.
For service packs, download to cd. He already does that.
The real problem is the reinstalling, and frankly, you shouldn't need to.......
Locked down permission, draconian install policies, or switch to Linux. You should not need to reinstall unless you experience hard failure, and in that event reinstall, turn on automatic updates, and let the thing start sucking on your dsl at 6 pm on a sunday, or whenever you go home.
But doesn't Google reliable obey Robots.txt ?
Seems like a DotBomb business plan....
It's only capable of hiding itself if it is in the running environment. One solution is to boot from known-good, read-only media. Then you can search from known rootkit signatures.
In my opinion, however, once you get a system that badly infected, you should give up and wipe clean. You'll never know if you've succesfully closed all the holes, and not even an expensive forensic analysis could guarantee such a thing.
Now, there are currently no unpatched remote exploits or program-runs-crap-by-itself bugs I'm aware of. In other words: You have to start it!
Oh, really?
Not to mention that if they have to implement double-digits worth of patches a month you have to suspect that there are, indeed, unknown (by the public) security holes to be found, and which may have already been found by blackhats.
Antimalware tools are akin to snake oil and herbal remedies. No sane system should need that kind of overhead, and I've said it before: once you're infected, the only way of going back to a "known clean" configuration is a wipe and restore from "known good" media, or a complete checksum of binary signatures from a read-only known-good boot medium. The only thing antimalware does is make you feel safe, much like the Windows Security Center logo. Once your system is infected, a good root-kit is unremovable, and even garden variety uncommon malware may not be detected by the popular virus scanners; this is exactly what happened to Valve with the Half-Life 2 code theft. Someone designed a custom worm to penetrate their network and e-mail out important corporate files, and they got away with it.