AMD already seem to be falling behind in the clock speed race quite badly.
Have you been living in a cave? AMD's chips (for the dollar) have been beating Intel for the last few years. Clock speed has nothing to do with it. See this post (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30456&cid=327 3879) for more insight.
The problem is always motivated. Personally, I believe that apps likes Performer and Finale have had ample time to get "up to par" and as you've mentioned are not there yet. I think a lot of this complaicency is due to the "our customers haven't really upgraded yet" mentality. Once Jobs says OS 9 is done, you better believe software vendors will put more resources into OS X. Personally, I think this is a great move. I'm a PC guy, and there's been similar problems (especially with hardware) in the music/video arena with Win2K and XP. I'm debating switching my "media machine" to a G4, however, I really want to run OS X. I'll end up going with whichever OS get's their act together.
Please mod parent up. People who are so critical of Bill should really respect the man for what he has done with his money. Saying things like "well, a few million is nothing to him anyway" is arrogant and foolish. Relative to the amount of money he's made, he's more philanthropic then any other in the US.
It's a pity that Microsoft doesn't do a little more with their money than sell shit at top dollar.
Insightful? Don't you mean TROLL? First of all, this statement has no intellectual value. Second, MS is known for their relatively LOW prices in commercial software (want to compare Oracle pricing anyone?). You may not like any software that MS does, but others are able to see some of the achievments that MS has made. Sure, one can wonder with all of that money how in the world they have a mail client with a "security swiss cheeze" feature. However, if you'd take your head out of the sand you'd realize that MS SQL server is an incredible Enterprise database, that Windows 2000 is a great workstation and a decent server, and that the newer versions of DirectX are actually pretty elegant to code for (and rock-solid stable too). Finally, all the money put into.NET (the technolgy, not the marketing BS (eg Hailstorm)) has gone quite far. Any reasonable objective programmer will agree that it's a very competetive solution when compared to J2EE - less the fact that it only runs on Windows (for now). So let's put the Facts back into Science and stop being Religious about fricken Technology.
"Screwing over the American public by legally avoiding taxes" would be better.
Then change the laws. Or, critique IBM, Boeing, AOL/TW, Dell, ATT, and every other major corporation that follows these standard business practices. Personally, I agree with your philospohy, and I think that there things that needed to be changed in America. This is nothing unique to MS.
I think we are in complete agreement, it's just our communication is a bit off. Your original statement sounded like you "didn't like the religious right trying to pass laws in congress" but really should have stated, "I don't like what the religious right is trying to pass in congress" - the distinction is subtle but important. Both you and I agree that A) everyone has a right to assert their moral belief and B) everyone has the right to critique said belief. Again, this is much different then saying, "I hate it when the religious right assert their moral belief - because as we both said, they have the right to do so. However, since we may believe that they are wrong, we may critique their cause and promote our beliefs. *PHEW*
When your line of reasoning can produce such bogus results, don't you think that it might have some flaws?
No. Because, at one point in time it was very commonly accepted that having blacks as slaves was perfectly legit, and anyone opposing it was a "radical" and would have fallen into this category.
Here's my point. I don't necessarily agree with the religious right. However, they have a reasonable argument and it behooves them to lobby/fight for the morals that they believe in, jsut as much as we have the right to defend our right to research. This is not about a "crazy" moral standard, like your extreme example of using "toddlers as fertilizer". Even if it was, who is to critisize them for fighting for even a ludicrous law? It should never be "wrong" for someone to assert their moral beliefs, regardless of how crazy it is. If it's silly or stupid and obviously bogus, then it doesn't get taken seriously and won't ever make it into the newspaper, let alone supreme court.
So where do you draw the line? I don't think I'm overdoing my argument at all. How does one determine which "standards" are _OK_ to impose, and which ones are ludicrious? That's why we live in a democracy (ok, a representative republic to be technical). Anyone, can push even the craziest moral standard (like locking kids up in boxes), but they will get voted down because of it's rediculousness. If the religious right want's to try and ban embryonic stem cell research, and if they have a good argument, then the majority may side with them. This is no different then someone standing up against slavery (for example). YOU may completely disagree with the religious right, and that's why you arre a VOTER.
How was I being absurd? My point is as a piece of software becomes a ubiquitous utility it eventually becomes a part of the OS. Windows, or even DOS did not originally come with a Dialup Networking client, a Telnet client, or even a calculator. To bundle simple tools that interface to protocols (such as HTTP) that are very commonly used is an obvious extension of the OS.
re: OEM's and mozilla...but by the time the licensing department hears about it, the idea is shot down.
I agree with you fully here. There's two different issues. It _IS_ anticompetitive and unethical for MS to prevent Dell from packaging Opera or Mozilla via strong-arm tactics. Dell should also be able to put a more robust Telnet client as well. However, this should not preclude MS from bundling IE or a Telnet client either. So, MS, from a technological standpoint decided to use part of the IE rendering engine for other parts of Windows functionality. Big Deal. Deleting the Icon off of the Desktop and replacing it with the Opera icon won't hurt anything.
To summarize, I don't think that the government should be telling MS how to build their products, rather, they should be heavily regulating how MS does business - unless, their product makes it physically impossible (or unreasonably possible) for Dell to install Mozilla onto the machine. However, this is not the case by any means.
Actually, you're completely ignorant if you think that it's trivial to install a VW steering wheel on a Honda. The point is, a VW steering wheel doesn't fit in the first place, and you'd have to do quite a hack job to make it work. The same goes with IE.
Nope... sounds like you don't want to actually seek facts so you speculate. If you actually understood how Windows worked you wouldn't doubt my response. IE is using a (whopping) 28MB for only 3 windows (big/. windows though!). When I close out, that 28MB is returned to the system. When I run Opera, that 28MB does not come back.
I agree, and I'm not personally for or against embryonic stem cells. But to critique someone for fighting for their moral beliefs is hypocritcal if you believe that certain moral standards (eg: rape is bad) should be upheld by government.
Not as far as an Internet Browser is concerned. There's no IEXPLORER.EXE running while I'm using Opera. There IS when I load IE specifically though. As an internet browser it is not running all the time.
forcing MS to open up the system and release the API's that allow the "middleware" (which is the term the courts are using to describe IE) to communicate with other parts of the system is a good thing.
I agree. But forcing MS to open up their API's is different then forcing them to change their product. The government is and should be restricted as to what they can do to you, even if you've commited a crime. There is no law to change. Stealing is wrong, but the government is not allowed to chop off your hand.
im mad at the right(religious right) because they "believe, rightly or wrongly" and then force those beliefs on others.
Ya, I heard that hundreds of years ago they believed that murder and rape was MORALLY WRONG and created laws against such things. The religious right may be overbearing (ok, they ARE!), but it is always important to examine things that may have a severe moral affect on society.
No, the original post got it RIGHT ON. What MS did wrong was strong arm OEM's via very ethically questionable tactics. A monopoloy should NEVER BE FORCED to build inferior products. Packing a common interface to a standardized infrastructure based on consumer demand is not only obvious but silly for the government to question. Get rid of Dialup Networking, so that Trumpet Winsock can come back. And I want a VW steering wheel on my Honda please.
Microsoft argues that they can't unbundle the browser, and it must be included with a Windows installation. This, of course, puts all potential competitors at a loss because a user is not likely to be motivated enough to try a competing product when they already have what seems to be a perfectly good tool.
What about all the competition with the calculator, Telnet clients, PPP clients (Who buys Trumpet Winsock?) etc. The Internet is now one of the most common uses of a computer. Of course MS is goign to bundle or even integrate a browser into their OS since that's what their customers want. Does a consumer even "know" what a PPP client is? Should these be "unbundled" from the OS so that there can be more competition? The competition is in the OS, and what the OS bundles. Maybe IE should be able to be removed (at least superficially, like the win98lite program does) by OEM's. Although, I've yet to see how this benefits the customer. They want something that works, not with 100 privacy settings.
Footprint is the big one for me. If you don't unbundle the IE browser so that it can be replaced with another one, you're drastically increasing the memory and hard disk footprint needed for browsing.
Huh? Opera takes an additional 4MB of space (on top of IE which is not that big either). While I use Opera, IE is not "browsing at the same time" and therefore is not "increasing the memory footprint" for browsing. Your browsing experience with Opera is not affected at all by the existence of another browser on your system. I fail to see any technical merit in your point.
No I'm not a grad student, and thank you for your belittlement;-).
Knowledge is not necessarily truth
I think this is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes Science is treated as a religion in that "since Science doesn't say so, it is the Truth". For example, you mention that no scientist can prove that there is no God, yet, most scientists will say that there is enough scientific evidence to point towards that truth. So, maybe in my uneducated state I don't fully understand what science is supposed to be, but science is used all the time (in my experiences) as the "end all" to seeking truth.
If something is completely unobservable, then there is no possible way it could have any affect on the universe.
You're correct, bt that's not what I'm saying. Our current set of "known constants" and methods of measurement is finite. Just because WE can't observe something doesn't make that something completely unobservable. It just makes it unobservable by US (at least for the time being).
As a student studying Math I agree with your statements. The problem that I have with Science, however, is the following:
(A) Science is a human concept (B) Humans are extremely fallable (C) Science assumes some form of imperical evidence. (D) Imperical evidence can be extremely deceiving (Hollywood, anyone?).
First, please don't get me wrong. I'm a full-time programmer and a part-time math student. However, we can't rely on "Our Scientific Methods" to find something like, say, an Alien lifeform. What if we have no way of measuring the matter in which they exist? Does this mean that it doesn't exist? Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and we can only proove something within our finite means of observations. (Disclaimer: I personally find no compelling evidence that supports the existance of Aliens, it's just an example).
...but luckly we aren't affected since our Exchange server has quarentined each email with said virii.
And for more redundancy, I'm also not affected at home - because I don't use OUTLOOK! I love Win2K, the.NET Framework, C#, WinCE, and my XBox. But who in the world would use such a POORLY DESIGNED email client at home? I've never been convinced about the whole "IE should be removed from Windows" nonsense, but I think that outlook should be considered a TROJAN and removed by virus programs.
You are absolutely right regarding the quality of some OSS. The reason is that good software needs a lot more then programmers. You need good test engineers, technical writers, graphics/UI designers, product designers, product managers (scope creep anyone?), usability and human factors sepecialists, and even some market research to determine what the people want. How many OSS projects study controlled "joe-blow" usability sessions with their latest UI? I think the reason that projects like Linux are so successful is because it's made for geeks, by geeks. Writing an Office Suite or a Consumer Desktop is a totally different ballgame.
The question is, how do we make things better for the consumer, not worse on MS. The real challenge is to create a "fair system" within Capitalism - radicals call the former an oxymoron. Regardless, I don't think that "dual booting to Linux" is going to solve the problems that are inherint in American Capitalism. Nor is figuring out a way to "punish" MS. Don't blame the player, fix the game.
Think about it - I mean, really think about this for a minute or two. I've queried many "non-geek" individuals, and I couldn't find ONE who knew what an "operating system" was within the context of their home computer. Furthermore, when asked if they had an Apple PC, those who did not either replied with a statement regarding an "IBM compatible" (generally the older crows) and many said a "Microsoft PC" or "Windows PC" or something to that affect. My first point is, MS obviously has monopoly, although it's only on x86 hardware (this is forgotten a lot, as Apple is gaining huge marketshare). My second point is, when they buy their "Microsoft PC" from Dell and it boots into Linux, MS is afraid that they will assume that this is a Microsoft created system. And I believe they're right. The user WILL be confused. They WILL wonder where the start menu is, and why "Microsoft moved everything around". So, I say put Linux on all the machines you want, but DO NOT bundle it with Windows as this WILL cause confusion amongst the laymen.
Again, please try to look at this as if you didn't have any clue as to what an OS is. Even Apple's had a bit of a challenge with their "Dual boot" into OS 9 for backwards compatibility. They've recently removed this feature from the limelight partly due to user confusion (of course, there's less of a need now due to more OS X apps).
Slashdot Mirror
Is Bill giving away ten percent of his income?...Sure, among the rich, he's generous.
...
You should actually do the research instead of being so pessimistic and judgemental about BillG's character.
AMD already seem to be falling behind in the clock speed race quite badly.
7 3879) for more insight.
Have you been living in a cave? AMD's chips (for the dollar) have been beating Intel for the last few years. Clock speed has nothing to do with it. See this post (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30456&cid=32
The problem is always motivated. Personally, I believe that apps likes Performer and Finale have had ample time to get "up to par" and as you've mentioned are not there yet. I think a lot of this complaicency is due to the "our customers haven't really upgraded yet" mentality. Once Jobs says OS 9 is done, you better believe software vendors will put more resources into OS X. Personally, I think this is a great move. I'm a PC guy, and there's been similar problems (especially with hardware) in the music/video arena with Win2K and XP. I'm debating switching my "media machine" to a G4, however, I really want to run OS X. I'll end up going with whichever OS get's their act together.
Please mod parent up. People who are so critical of Bill should really respect the man for what he has done with his money. Saying things like "well, a few million is nothing to him anyway" is arrogant and foolish. Relative to the amount of money he's made, he's more philanthropic then any other in the US.
It's a pity that Microsoft doesn't do a little more with their money than sell shit at top dollar.
.NET (the technolgy, not the marketing BS (eg Hailstorm)) has gone quite far. Any reasonable objective programmer will agree that it's a very competetive solution when compared to J2EE - less the fact that it only runs on Windows (for now). So let's put the Facts back into Science and stop being Religious about fricken Technology.
Insightful? Don't you mean TROLL? First of all, this statement has no intellectual value. Second, MS is known for their relatively LOW prices in commercial software (want to compare Oracle pricing anyone?). You may not like any software that MS does, but others are able to see some of the achievments that MS has made. Sure, one can wonder with all of that money how in the world they have a mail client with a "security swiss cheeze" feature. However, if you'd take your head out of the sand you'd realize that MS SQL server is an incredible Enterprise database, that Windows 2000 is a great workstation and a decent server, and that the newer versions of DirectX are actually pretty elegant to code for (and rock-solid stable too). Finally, all the money put into
/RANT!
"Screwing over the American public by legally avoiding taxes" would be better.
Then change the laws. Or, critique IBM, Boeing, AOL/TW, Dell, ATT, and every other major corporation that follows these standard business practices. Personally, I agree with your philospohy, and I think that there things that needed to be changed in America. This is nothing unique to MS.
I think we are in complete agreement, it's just our communication is a bit off. Your original statement sounded like you "didn't like the religious right trying to pass laws in congress" but really should have stated, "I don't like what the religious right is trying to pass in congress" - the distinction is subtle but important. Both you and I agree that A) everyone has a right to assert their moral belief and B) everyone has the right to critique said belief. Again, this is much different then saying, "I hate it when the religious right assert their moral belief - because as we both said, they have the right to do so. However, since we may believe that they are wrong, we may critique their cause and promote our beliefs. *PHEW*
When your line of reasoning can produce such bogus results, don't you think that it might have some flaws?
No. Because, at one point in time it was very commonly accepted that having blacks as slaves was perfectly legit, and anyone opposing it was a "radical" and would have fallen into this category.
Here's my point. I don't necessarily agree with the religious right. However, they have a reasonable argument and it behooves them to lobby/fight for the morals that they believe in, jsut as much as we have the right to defend our right to research. This is not about a "crazy" moral standard, like your extreme example of using "toddlers as fertilizer". Even if it was, who is to critisize them for fighting for even a ludicrous law? It should never be "wrong" for someone to assert their moral beliefs, regardless of how crazy it is. If it's silly or stupid and obviously bogus, then it doesn't get taken seriously and won't ever make it into the newspaper, let alone supreme court.
So where do you draw the line? I don't think I'm overdoing my argument at all. How does one determine which "standards" are _OK_ to impose, and which ones are ludicrious? That's why we live in a democracy (ok, a representative republic to be technical). Anyone, can push even the craziest moral standard (like locking kids up in boxes), but they will get voted down because of it's rediculousness. If the religious right want's to try and ban embryonic stem cell research, and if they have a good argument, then the majority may side with them. This is no different then someone standing up against slavery (for example). YOU may completely disagree with the religious right, and that's why you arre a VOTER.
How was I being absurd? My point is as a piece of software becomes a ubiquitous utility it eventually becomes a part of the OS. Windows, or even DOS did not originally come with a Dialup Networking client, a Telnet client, or even a calculator. To bundle simple tools that interface to protocols (such as HTTP) that are very commonly used is an obvious extension of the OS.
...but by the time the licensing department hears about it, the idea is shot down.
re: OEM's and mozilla
I agree with you fully here. There's two different issues. It _IS_ anticompetitive and unethical for MS to prevent Dell from packaging Opera or Mozilla via strong-arm tactics. Dell should also be able to put a more robust Telnet client as well. However, this should not preclude MS from bundling IE or a Telnet client either. So, MS, from a technological standpoint decided to use part of the IE rendering engine for other parts of Windows functionality. Big Deal. Deleting the Icon off of the Desktop and replacing it with the Opera icon won't hurt anything.
To summarize, I don't think that the government should be telling MS how to build their products, rather, they should be heavily regulating how MS does business - unless, their product makes it physically impossible (or unreasonably possible) for Dell to install Mozilla onto the machine. However, this is not the case by any means.
Actually, you're completely ignorant if you think that it's trivial to install a VW steering wheel on a Honda. The point is, a VW steering wheel doesn't fit in the first place, and you'd have to do quite a hack job to make it work. The same goes with IE.
Nope... sounds like you don't want to actually seek facts so you speculate. If you actually understood how Windows worked you wouldn't doubt my response. IE is using a (whopping) 28MB for only 3 windows (big /. windows though!). When I close out, that 28MB is returned to the system. When I run Opera, that 28MB does not come back.
I agree, and I'm not personally for or against embryonic stem cells. But to critique someone for fighting for their moral beliefs is hypocritcal if you believe that certain moral standards (eg: rape is bad) should be upheld by government.
Not as far as an Internet Browser is concerned. There's no IEXPLORER.EXE running while I'm using Opera. There IS when I load IE specifically though. As an internet browser it is not running all the time.
forcing MS to open up the system and release the API's that allow the "middleware" (which is the term the courts are using to describe IE) to communicate with other parts of the system is a good thing.
I agree. But forcing MS to open up their API's is different then forcing them to change their product. The government is and should be restricted as to what they can do to you, even if you've commited a crime. There is no law to change. Stealing is wrong, but the government is not allowed to chop off your hand.
im mad at the right(religious right) because they "believe, rightly or wrongly" and then force those beliefs on others.
Ya, I heard that hundreds of years ago they believed that murder and rape was MORALLY WRONG and created laws against such things. The religious right may be overbearing (ok, they ARE!), but it is always important to examine things that may have a severe moral affect on society.
No, the original post got it RIGHT ON. What MS did wrong was strong arm OEM's via very ethically questionable tactics. A monopoloy should NEVER BE FORCED to build inferior products. Packing a common interface to a standardized infrastructure based on consumer demand is not only obvious but silly for the government to question. Get rid of Dialup Networking, so that Trumpet Winsock can come back. And I want a VW steering wheel on my Honda please.
Microsoft argues that they can't unbundle the browser, and it must be included with a Windows installation. This, of course, puts all potential competitors at a loss because a user is not likely to be motivated enough to try a competing product when they already have what seems to be a perfectly good tool.
What about all the competition with the calculator, Telnet clients, PPP clients (Who buys Trumpet Winsock?) etc. The Internet is now one of the most common uses of a computer. Of course MS is goign to bundle or even integrate a browser into their OS since that's what their customers want. Does a consumer even "know" what a PPP client is? Should these be "unbundled" from the OS so that there can be more competition? The competition is in the OS, and what the OS bundles. Maybe IE should be able to be removed (at least superficially, like the win98lite program does) by OEM's. Although, I've yet to see how this benefits the customer. They want something that works, not with 100 privacy settings.
Footprint is the big one for me. If you don't unbundle the IE browser so that it can be replaced with another one, you're drastically increasing the memory and hard disk footprint needed for browsing.
Huh? Opera takes an additional 4MB of space (on top of IE which is not that big either). While I use Opera, IE is not "browsing at the same time" and therefore is not "increasing the memory footprint" for browsing. Your browsing experience with Opera is not affected at all by the existence of another browser on your system. I fail to see any technical merit in your point.
No I'm not a grad student, and thank you for your belittlement ;-).
Knowledge is not necessarily truth
I think this is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes Science is treated as a religion in that "since Science doesn't say so, it is the Truth". For example, you mention that no scientist can prove that there is no God, yet, most scientists will say that there is enough scientific evidence to point towards that truth. So, maybe in my uneducated state I don't fully understand what science is supposed to be, but science is used all the time (in my experiences) as the "end all" to seeking truth.
If something is completely unobservable, then there is no possible way it could have any affect on the universe.
You're correct, bt that's not what I'm saying. Our current set of "known constants" and methods of measurement is finite. Just because WE can't observe something doesn't make that something completely unobservable. It just makes it unobservable by US (at least for the time being).
As a student studying Math I agree with your statements. The problem that I have with Science, however, is the following:
(A) Science is a human concept
(B) Humans are extremely fallable
(C) Science assumes some form of imperical evidence.
(D) Imperical evidence can be extremely deceiving (Hollywood, anyone?).
First, please don't get me wrong. I'm a full-time programmer and a part-time math student. However, we can't rely on "Our Scientific Methods" to find something like, say, an Alien lifeform. What if we have no way of measuring the matter in which they exist? Does this mean that it doesn't exist? Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and we can only proove something within our finite means of observations. (Disclaimer: I personally find no compelling evidence that supports the existance of Aliens, it's just an example).
...but luckly we aren't affected since our Exchange server has quarentined each email with said virii.
.NET Framework, C#, WinCE, and my XBox. But who in the world would use such a POORLY DESIGNED email client at home? I've never been convinced about the whole "IE should be removed from Windows" nonsense, but I think that outlook should be considered a TROJAN and removed by virus programs.
And for more redundancy, I'm also not affected at home - because I don't use OUTLOOK! I love Win2K, the
You are absolutely right regarding the quality of some OSS. The reason is that good software needs a lot more then programmers. You need good test engineers, technical writers, graphics/UI designers, product designers, product managers (scope creep anyone?), usability and human factors sepecialists, and even some market research to determine what the people want. How many OSS projects study controlled "joe-blow" usability sessions with their latest UI? I think the reason that projects like Linux are so successful is because it's made for geeks, by geeks. Writing an Office Suite or a Consumer Desktop is a totally different ballgame.
The question is, how do we make things better for the consumer, not worse on MS. The real challenge is to create a "fair system" within Capitalism - radicals call the former an oxymoron. Regardless, I don't think that "dual booting to Linux" is going to solve the problems that are inherint in American Capitalism. Nor is figuring out a way to "punish" MS. Don't blame the player, fix the game.
Think about it - I mean, really think about this for a minute or two. I've queried many "non-geek" individuals, and I couldn't find ONE who knew what an "operating system" was within the context of their home computer. Furthermore, when asked if they had an Apple PC, those who did not either replied with a statement regarding an "IBM compatible" (generally the older crows) and many said a "Microsoft PC" or "Windows PC" or something to that affect. My first point is, MS obviously has monopoly, although it's only on x86 hardware (this is forgotten a lot, as Apple is gaining huge marketshare). My second point is, when they buy their "Microsoft PC" from Dell and it boots into Linux, MS is afraid that they will assume that this is a Microsoft created system. And I believe they're right. The user WILL be confused. They WILL wonder where the start menu is, and why "Microsoft moved everything around". So, I say put Linux on all the machines you want, but DO NOT bundle it with Windows as this WILL cause confusion amongst the laymen.
Again, please try to look at this as if you didn't have any clue as to what an OS is. Even Apple's had a bit of a challenge with their "Dual boot" into OS 9 for backwards compatibility. They've recently removed this feature from the limelight partly due to user confusion (of course, there's less of a need now due to more OS X apps).