You *only* test on beta software (IE6) ?!?
And you do this for a living?!?
Of course not, you dimwit. It goes like this:
1. Implement a feature.
2. Test it on my workstation (Win2000, IE6)
3. Shit, there's a bug.
4. Fix the bug.
5. Test it on my workstation-- better now.
6. Submit change to QA for "real" testing.
Note that the opposite scenario can also occur. (I posted this same basic story under another comment, but what the hell, comments are cheap.)
I have a CGI script that takes a filename parameter, like this:
http://foo/bar.cgi?blah=blah&filename=quux.jpg
When IE 6 on Win 2000 gets that URL back from the server, it ignores the "Content-type: text/html" header that the CGI script generates and instead thinks it's downloading a JPEG image. No other browser I tested does this.
The problem can be eliminated by re-ordering the CGI parameters, like so:
http://foo/bar.cgi?filename=quux.jpg&blah=blah
So it seems that IE just completely mixes up the whole extension/mime-type rules, even to the point of seeing file extensions where it shouldn't (i.e., at the end of CGI URLs).
On the other hand, IE is integrated right into Windows itself. It effectively has administrator (Unix speak--root) priviledges. Hence much more drastic effects when it runs rogue code.
Can somebody confirm this to be true? I run Windows 2000 on my desktop at work, and I choose not to log in as an administrator when I do day-to-day stuff.
Is it true that when I open IE, it runs as a privileged process (or whatever the Windows equivalent of a process is)?
You'll have to forgive (or, more likely, applaud) my ignorance, but I just don't know how to find out for myself. Every time I type "ps" at the Windows command prompt, I get an error message.;-)
Ironically, I ran into this one just the other day, but didn't recognize it for what it was.
I develop software for a living, and one of my tools is a web-based thingy with a CGI interface. A typical URL might look like this:
http://foo/bar.cgi?blah=blah&filename=quux.jpg
This CGI script returns a web page with info about the file "quux.jpg," which exists on the server.
When I serve this URL up to IE 6 under Windows 2000 (maybe other versions; that was the only Windows IE I tried) the browser thinks it's downloading a JPEG image, and asks me where I want to save it.
My script sends a nicely formatted Content-type header of text/html, but the browser is stubborn and won't listen.
So in my case, this wasn't really indicative of a security hole, but rather a pretty dumb design flaw in the browser that should have been caught in testing.
(Oh, and FYI, my "fix" was to reorder the CGI parameters as the URL gets constructed, so the filename never comes last. I'm not happy with this, and I may implement URL-encoding the filename's "." character instead, then decoding it on the server side. But the spec says I shouldn't have to do that, so the whole situation has left me kind of pissy.)
Your statement is, of course, complete bull. In my lab I have several Macs, three Octanes, some Origins, a couple of AlphaStations, an SGI 750, about half a dozen SGI 230s and an RS/6000. All of which are configured as purchased, and none of which came with Windows.
But as for choices, how about electricity? I've been trying and trying, but I can't seem to find a provider that will deliver 50 Hz AC to my house. They just won't do it! It must be illegal collusion!
There's a similar story about the Hawaiian islands. Something about bringing in mongooses to get rid of the rat population, only to find out that rats are nocturnal and mongooses are diurnal. So now they have a terrible rat and mongoose problem....
Microsoft employees gave misleading testimony during the trial...
Okay, conceded. I forgot about that. That's definitely wrong.
I don't know the whole story-- I don't know if that was an organized attempt to deceive or just the misguided work of a couple of idiots-- but that definitely qualifies as a screw-up.
Why do you THINK you cannot buy a computer with Windows and another operating system? [and so on]
I know precisely why this is. As much as you'd like to think that Microsoft is breaking the law left and right, and that everything they do is immoral and wrong, the fact is that their infractions have been fairly limited. If you consider how much business Microsoft does in a single year, you'll see that they're within the law the vast majority of the time.
The reason why the market is the way it is right now is simple: Microsoft is kicking their competitor's asses.
I don't happen to like this, but at least I'm sufficiently realistic to acknowledge that it's true, and to understand that it's not up to the government to step in and sort this all out. If we (the community) want to change this, then it's up to us to do it. But we should do it by improving ourselves and our products to beat Microsoft at their own game, or by cooperating with Microsoft where we can't beat them. If we tried to change the market by hindering Microsoft's legal business practices (as opposed to their illegal ones, which I've said before are bad, bad, bad), then we're doing ourselves, our industry, and our economy a disservice.
On the whole, Microsoft has been more of a good thing for the industry in particular and the economy as a whole than a bad thing. They're ruthless and nasty and I wouldn't want them to house-sit for me while I'm out of town, but they're excellent at what they do, and (I'm repeating myself here) you have to respect that.
Nope. I'm saying that if your objective is to be more successful than your competitors, then you have a responsibility to do whatever it takes except breaking the law.
And if you think the relative merits of your products is the only criterion that defines success in the marketplace, then you're being pretty naive. For better or for worse, that's simply not how the world works.
Well, as long as we're listing qualifications, you outrank me. I'm not 40; I'm 30. So you have experience on your side and I respect that.
I also see the same pattern you describe quite a bit. The markets I work in are pretty rarified-- flight and visual simulation, media, and stuff like that-- so I've never had to compete with Microsoft, either directly or indirectly. I'm lucky, I guess.
But I simply don't believe that Microsoft is unbeatable. Yeah, they have a lot of advantages. But having more money than God is not against the law; it just sucks if you're the other guy.
I don't have the answer to this problem. I don't know how to counter Microsoft's defense. It's just that I get annoyed by defeatists and collectivists who stop talking about how to beat Microsoft in the market and start talking about how to beat them in the courtroom or in Congress.
If-- and when-- Microsoft breaks the law, they should be punished. But we're just hurting ourselves and our society if we-- the smart people, I mean, the people who can do things-- just give up and stop trying.
I have a friend who recently took this idea to a surprising conclusion: he took a job at Microsoft. The company he was working for was on hard times-- because of mismanagement rather than competition-- and Microsoft was hiring, so he signed up. He told me he got plenty of hassle from ex-coworkers about joining the "evil empire" and other hyperbole, but in the end, he did it so he could improve Microsoft's products in some small way.
Hell, there are a lot of talented programmers out there who hate Windows and Office and IIS and all that. That's fine. But most of them seem to channel that into hating Microsoft, too. That's a shame. If enough of them got together to improve the products they hate so much, maybe they could actually make a difference.
Choose whatever path you like; just play within the system instead of trying to legislate Microsoft out of it.
I agree with you: a company that considered their profits to be more important than people's lives would be evil.
I just don't know of any companies like that.
Back to the Union Carbide example: they chose to cut corners, with the intention of being more profitable, and those shortcuts ended up leading to a horrible accident. Whether a reasonable person could have foreseen the consequences of those actions is up for debate, but I think it's fair to say that either way, nobody intended to cause that accident, or to kill anybody.
Likewise, I don't have any evidence that makes me believe that Microsoft, or anybody associated with Microsoft, intends to cause anybody personal harm. They intend for everybody in the world to use their operating system and their applications, you bet. And they intend for all the web sites out there to run on their servers, uh-huh. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
To the extent that they stay within the law, I say good for them. That's exactly what they should be doing.
Step outside the law, get caught, pay a fine or some other suitable penalty. But then get back to work. That's how that's supposed to happen, too.
So, through all this rhetoric, will somebody please convince me I'm wrong? Will somebody give me just one example of Microsoft's doing something that could be considered bad for society as a whole?
Okay, they never killed anybody. Did they ever maim anyone? Did they ever run over anybody's puppy? Did they ever prank-call your house in the middle of the night? Anything?
They produce software that isn't up to my personal standards. I wish, since I have to use it sometimes, that their OS and applications were better designed. But that doesn't equate to personal harm.
All right, let's really reach. Microsoft designed a scripting architecture for Windows that gave malicious users the ability to write viruses that can overload systems and cause the indirect loss of money for companies that use Windows (i.e., pretty much all of them) and users individually. All right, that was a pretty bad idea. But let's remember to put it in perspective: did anybody die because of ILOVEYOU?
I'm no Microsoft fan, not by a long shot. But I guess I just don't think they're as horrible as many people seem to believe they are.
The playing field isn't level because there's something that I'm better at than you are. And there's something that you're better at than I am. And so on.
The individuals that are better at something will succeed at it more easily than the rest of us. In fact, some people are so good at something that it's damn near impossible for the rest of us to even compete with them. The same is true for companies. Some companies are incredibly good at things, and their competitors have a rough time.
This is a fact of life. Even before you figure in things like illegal monopolies and collusion and nasty temper-tantrums, there's always going to be one company that's the best at something. Some companies might even be-- oh, horror!-- the best at two or three things!
Would it be moral to try to level that field by imposing limits on the success of the best competitors in it? Sure, you could put arbitrary limits on all sorts of things. You could make a law that says all computers must be sold without an operating system, and one that said all operating systems must be sold for the same price, and one that said all operating systems must have published APIs. But would even that make it fair? What if one of those equally priced operating systems came in a bright green box with a yellow smiley face on it, and more people bought it because their box was prettier? That's unfair! All operating systems must be sold in plain brown boxes!
See how quickly it can get ridiculous? That's because limiting the successful to protect the unsuccessful-- as long as everybody's playing within the laws-- is morally unjustifiable.
So, to answer your question, society could choose to make rules to level the playing field of the open market. But it would be morally wrong to do so.
Yes, Microsoft did some nasty things in the recent past. Yup, you betcha.
Some of those things were against the law; a court said so. These things should be rectified in some way. If Microsoft and the government can't come up with a compromise that they can both accept, it'll be up to a judge to say how Microsoft should be penalized.
But the rest of the things Microsoft did, mean and nasty and downright unfriendly they might have been, were not against the law. At least, they weren't until a judge says that they were.
My thesis, since apparently I haven't gotten the idea across so far, is that Microsoft was not morally wrong to do the mean, nasty, unfriendly but legal things that it has done. That is how a competitive market works. The executives of Microsoft Corp. have a responsibility to their shareholders to make them lots of money, doing everything necessary to achieve that goal as long as they stay within the limits of the law.
They didn't. As I said, fine. Punish them for that.
But you can't-- we, as a society, cannot-- punish Microsoft for being nasty. Being nasty isn't against the law. Bundling PowerPoint with Word and Excel and whatever else and calling it Office and not allowing me to buy just PowerPoint is nasty. But it's not illegal. And it's not immoral, and it's not unethical, and it's not wrong.
Look, think of it like basketball. Ever play basketball, or even watch it on TV? The players on each team know that they have to do whatever they can to win, but without breaking the rules. So you get in there and you push a little bit, and you shove a little, and you get a little rough, and as long as you don't foul your opponent, it's okay. Better than okay, it's good basketball.
If the other team can't take a little push now and then, a little elbow at the net, then they shouldn't play basketball. They should play tennis instead, or some other game where you don't have to worry about being jostled.
Microsoft is like a really good basketball team. A nasty one with a bad attitude that nobody, not even their fans, like very much, but a really good one. They get out there with their game faces on and they rough it up a little. And when they foul, they get caught and they lose the ball and that's the end of it.
When the Bulls were winning championship after championship in a row and nobody could touch them, did you hear other teams whining that the Bulls were playing too rough? Did anybody complain that they were cheating? No, of course not. Because they weren't. They just happened to be playing the game better than anybody else.
That's Microsoft. They play the game, and when they get a little too rough, they get penalized, but that doesn't make them stop playing the game. They're rough, and they're serious, and they don't have any fans, but if you understand the game, you've gotta respect the fact that they know how to play.
As I've said before, I agree that Microsoft broke laws, and that that's a Bad Thing, and that penalties should be assigned somehow. This is not in dispute.
My gripe is with people who apply the fruit-of-the-poison-tree principle to everything Microsoft produces. I don't like the Passport idea much, but I'm not okay with arguing against it on moral grounds.
I believe this: the playing field is not level, and it never will be. It's okay for society (in this case, the gub-mint) to establish boundaries for just how un-level the field can get, but the purpose of these boundaries is not to make the playing field level. Any attempt to level the playing field by limiting the success of a company that has not broken any laws is, in my opinion, morally unjustifiable, and short-sighted to boot.
Of course, my philosophy can't be applied in a black-and-white fashion; my whole point here is that, while Microsoft has broken some laws and should pay for that somehow, it is irresponsible of us-- people who understand technology, I mean-- to advocate going beyond the socially established guidelines for business behavior in an effort to somehow make the open market more "fair."
If we expect to compete on equal terms with Microsoft which is known to use all possible attacks on an enemy...
I do feel an obligation here to point out that every army that ever "fought fair" has lost the war.
Microsoft has used illegal unfair business practices in the past; the court decided such, and I agree. But not everything that is unfair is illegal, nor should it be.
The playing field is not level, all men are not created equal, and there is no Santa Claus.
My opinion on the subject is this: if I were changed a dime to read a story on the CNN.com web site, I would recognize that I'm not paying for the information itself, but rather the method of delivery. Paying somebody to deliver something to me is a concept that I'm very comfortable with, as my local pizza delivery will testify.
So why are you so convinced that micropayments are bad?
First of all, comparing Microsoft to Union Carbide is a little out of line; say what you want about them, but I am not aware of Microsoft's ever causing anyone's wrongful death.
But to answer your question, no, Union Carbide was not evil. Negligent, sure. In a horrible way, with devastating consequences. But not evil; evil implies malicious intent, and there simply was none then.
Likewise, I don't believe (as you seem to) that Microsoft the company, or any of its board or executives, intends to do harm to any person. They're just doing what they have to do: trying to make big bunches of money for Microsoft's shareholders. That's how companies work.
The question of whether anybody could market a better word processor than Microsoft Word is kind of a double-edged one. On the one hand, of course you're right; trying to convince millions of people to use SurfWriter (or whatever) instead would be tough because Word is so entrenched. But on the other hand, it seems clear that nobody yet has written a better word processor than MS Word, so the whole question is moot.
I'm a programmer, so I don't word-process much. But when I do, I use Word, because I value the ability to exchange documents with coworkers without having to handshake first; this is a boost to my productivity and to that of my company. It seems to me that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in that example.
So, in a very real sense, having most everybody using the same word processor is a good thing. It means I can spend more time feeding my family and less time worrying about whether Phil downstairs in Marketing can open a SurfWriter 2.5 document, or whether I need to convert it to plain text first.
I think the most important thing we have to remember here is that we are in the very earliest stages of the-- for lack of a better term-- information age. I'm writing this on a laptop in my living room wirelessly connected to a high-speed Internet connection. That would have been impossible ten years ago, and unimagined fifty years ago. In less than two generations, our entire world view has changed with respect to information and the role of computers in distributing and accessing it.
In that context, how can you be so arrogant to assume that Microsoft's technologies must be a bad thing? I don't mean bad in the sense of flawed and imperfect; we can poke holes in every idea they've ever marketed, but the same is true of any product in any industry. I mean "bad" in the sense of "bad for society." No one alive now can possibly know what impact Microsoft will have on the evolution of society thorough the next century and beyond. Could you have predicted that the mass production of cars would lead directly to the growth of suburban areas around big cities? To think that we can see into the future is sheer hubris.
I think Microsoft has probably used some unfair business practices in the past, and they probably continue to do so now. And I think that some kind of legislative penalty is probably the right thing, although I don't pretend to know that that penalty should be.
But I simply refuse to jump to the conclusion that a number of relatively minor regulatory violations (minor as compared to the deaths of well over 1,000 people in India; you brought up that comparison, not I) means Microsoft is an evil force out for world domination. That's just... silly.
Okay, with all of that said, I want to send one last passing wave to my karma and conclude with this: people who deride other people's work without having the skill, talent, or tenacity to do anything of merit themselves piss me off. If you don't like MS Word, or Passport, or whatever, fine! Lord knows that I don't, especially. But at least I'm respectful and level-headed enough to see that Microsoft has been very, very successful, and to acknowledge that they have accomplished some things that make my life better, in the same breath that I use to criticize them.
Credit where it's due. Or, in even more appropriate terms, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
My first reaction to this comment was pretty inflamed, but I had a hard time figuring out why.
Then I remembered reading Atlas Shrugged in college, and I understood.
I've looked at your posting history, dfeldman, and find you to be a pretty reasonable sort most of the time. But on this occasion, your post smacked of the worst kind of collectivist rhetoric.
(Sorry about the name-calling. I'm all grouchy now.)
This is, in my opinion, the exact sort of rhetoric that makes the open source community look, all too often, like a bunch of neo-hippie outsiders, forever isolated from the mainstream of society. Not that I'm saying the mainstream is so great, but as long as people assume that you subscribe to weirdo politics because open-source software is your hobby or passion or whatever, you're effectively prevented from making any kind of political comment whatsoever.
Please leave off with the talk of how the government must stop Microsoft. That's ridiculous. Does anybody here believe that Microsoft is actually evil, in the Hitler-Darth Vader-Satan sense? No, of course not. Is Microsoft (personified by Bill Gates) greedy? Of course! So am I, deep down inside, and so are most of you. If you say you're not, then you're either a saint, a liar, or a fool, and one of those is much less likely than the other two.
Does Microsoft make crappy software? A lot of the time, yes. Do I trust Microsoft, with their track record, to design a secure system for conducting business on the Internet? No, I don't.
But I don't think they should be prevented from doing so by the government, or a bunch of hackers as you suggest, or anybody else. What I'd like best is if somebody could come up with something better than what Microsoft is pushing this week.
The rules of the open market are not at fault here. The simple, unvarnished truth is that, for all Microsoft's faults, they do things right (in the business, not moral, sense) most of the time, and nobody-- not Apple, not IBM, not the Open Source Community-- has figured out a way to beat them in the open market yet.
And posts like yours aren't going to get us anywhere closer to that goal.
Don't forget to buy plenum wiring, which does not emit toxic fumes when it burns. It's probably code in your area.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought plenum wiring was only required in airspaces. I though wiring enclosed in conduit did not have to be plenum-rated to meet code.
Am I correct in my assumption that the idea of "pay to speak" is inherently inimical to democracy?
You, of course, are not correct in this assumption.
The US, certainly the world's best known democracy-loving country, has a long history of limited franchise. The Founding Fathers sometimes held the opinion that only the landed gentry (read "male property owners") should have a voice in governance. It was widely believed that the healthy self-interest of that class of society was roughly and usually coincident with the interests of the whole. Therefore the franchise should only be entrusted to those who qualified for it.
The concept of universal franchise for all citizens is really a 20th century concept. I find this to be quite obvious, as the 20th century in the United States was the most prosperous, luxurious time, taken as a whole, in human history. If things were to turn bad, like really, really bad, the whole universal franchise thing might go right out the window.
Now, as to your opinions on speech itself, as opposed to sufferage. It is true that reasoned discourse is the heart and soul of a healthy republic. (It actually has little to do with democracy, but let's ignore that.) But it is absolutely not true that I must pay to give you a forum in which to speak. If you want to take your milk crate to the nearest street corner, go right ahead. But don't try to tell me that I have to buy you the crate and pay your cab fare.
In other words, Salon's (or anybody's) decision to charge a fee for the privilege of posting in a public forum is not a clear and present danger to democracy.
I agree with your complaints about TableTalk on Salon.
I think you misunderstood my complaints. I have no complaint about the software that implements the message board, as it seems you do. Frankly, I never thought about it.
I was just saying that I'm disappointed that evidently many of the smart, thoughtful people who used to post there have decided not to sign up for the new subscription thing.
You know, Salon isn't just leftist news. It's also leftist commentary, essays, reviews, and opinions.
I watched maybe two episodes of the first run of the US version of Big Brother last year. (I was stuck in a hotel room with four channels, two of which were local event listings.)
The show was terrible... but every morning after an episode, Salon posted a new entry in its "Big Brother: The Complete Story" ongoing review. The reviewer were brutal. The show sucked, and everybody knew it, so what was left but to make relentless fun of it?
From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea.
I'm all for improved discourse, and I'd be disappointed if Slashdot had trouble staying afloat, but I don't agree that a subscription-based revenue model would improve the quality of the site.
Not too long ago, Salon's "Table Talk" message board was a great place to find reasonably intelligent talk. There were no trolls, and it seemed that most everybody could spell.
Then, sometime in the past year but I'm not sure when, Salon took their message board to a subscription-only model. Anybody can read, but only paying subscribers can post. It's not expensive, either; something on the order of six bucks a month, I think?
The result? The boards that I used to frequent on Table Talk are now ghost towns. Tumbleweeds and cow skulls, and Yul Brynner wandering around dressed all in black.
I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.
As good as "Barbie Murders" is, I think Varley's best work with gender overtones is his novel "Steel Beach." The entire book is told from the first-person point of view of a protagonist who changes gender halfway through.
Even though the gender-bending isn't a big plot point, merely incidental, it's thought provoking. But not in a homework kind of way.
Slashdot Mirror
You *only* test on beta software (IE6) ?!?
And you do this for a living?!?
Of course not, you dimwit. It goes like this:
1. Implement a feature.
2. Test it on my workstation (Win2000, IE6)
3. Shit, there's a bug.
4. Fix the bug.
5. Test it on my workstation-- better now.
6. Submit change to QA for "real" testing.
Sheesh.
Note that the opposite scenario can also occur. (I posted this same basic story under another comment, but what the hell, comments are cheap.)
I have a CGI script that takes a filename parameter, like this:
http://foo/bar.cgi?blah=blah&filename=quux.jpg
When IE 6 on Win 2000 gets that URL back from the server, it ignores the "Content-type: text/html" header that the CGI script generates and instead thinks it's downloading a JPEG image. No other browser I tested does this.
The problem can be eliminated by re-ordering the CGI parameters, like so:
http://foo/bar.cgi?filename=quux.jpg&blah=blah
So it seems that IE just completely mixes up the whole extension/mime-type rules, even to the point of seeing file extensions where it shouldn't (i.e., at the end of CGI URLs).
On the other hand, IE is integrated right into Windows itself. It effectively has administrator (Unix speak--root) priviledges. Hence much more drastic effects when it runs rogue code.
;-)
Can somebody confirm this to be true? I run Windows 2000 on my desktop at work, and I choose not to log in as an administrator when I do day-to-day stuff.
Is it true that when I open IE, it runs as a privileged process (or whatever the Windows equivalent of a process is)?
You'll have to forgive (or, more likely, applaud) my ignorance, but I just don't know how to find out for myself. Every time I type "ps" at the Windows command prompt, I get an error message.
Ironically, I ran into this one just the other day, but didn't recognize it for what it was.
I develop software for a living, and one of my tools is a web-based thingy with a CGI interface. A typical URL might look like this:
http://foo/bar.cgi?blah=blah&filename=quux.jpg
This CGI script returns a web page with info about the file "quux.jpg," which exists on the server.
When I serve this URL up to IE 6 under Windows 2000 (maybe other versions; that was the only Windows IE I tried) the browser thinks it's downloading a JPEG image, and asks me where I want to save it.
My script sends a nicely formatted Content-type header of text/html, but the browser is stubborn and won't listen.
So in my case, this wasn't really indicative of a security hole, but rather a pretty dumb design flaw in the browser that should have been caught in testing.
(Oh, and FYI, my "fix" was to reorder the CGI parameters as the URL gets constructed, so the filename never comes last. I'm not happy with this, and I may implement URL-encoding the filename's "." character instead, then decoding it on the server side. But the spec says I shouldn't have to do that, so the whole situation has left me kind of pissy.)
Your statement is, of course, complete bull. In my lab I have several Macs, three Octanes, some Origins, a couple of AlphaStations, an SGI 750, about half a dozen SGI 230s and an RS/6000. All of which are configured as purchased, and none of which came with Windows.
But as for choices, how about electricity? I've been trying and trying, but I can't seem to find a provider that will deliver 50 Hz AC to my house. They just won't do it! It must be illegal collusion!
Bastards!
There's a similar story about the Hawaiian islands. Something about bringing in mongooses to get rid of the rat population, only to find out that rats are nocturnal and mongooses are diurnal. So now they have a terrible rat and mongoose problem....
Microsoft employees gave misleading testimony during the trial...
;-)
Okay, conceded. I forgot about that. That's definitely wrong.
I don't know the whole story-- I don't know if that was an organized attempt to deceive or just the misguided work of a couple of idiots-- but that definitely qualifies as a screw-up.
One point for you.
Why do you THINK you cannot buy a computer with Windows and another operating system? [and so on]
I know precisely why this is. As much as you'd like to think that Microsoft is breaking the law left and right, and that everything they do is immoral and wrong, the fact is that their infractions have been fairly limited. If you consider how much business Microsoft does in a single year, you'll see that they're within the law the vast majority of the time.
The reason why the market is the way it is right now is simple: Microsoft is kicking their competitor's asses.
I don't happen to like this, but at least I'm sufficiently realistic to acknowledge that it's true, and to understand that it's not up to the government to step in and sort this all out. If we (the community) want to change this, then it's up to us to do it. But we should do it by improving ourselves and our products to beat Microsoft at their own game, or by cooperating with Microsoft where we can't beat them. If we tried to change the market by hindering Microsoft's legal business practices (as opposed to their illegal ones, which I've said before are bad, bad, bad), then we're doing ourselves, our industry, and our economy a disservice.
On the whole, Microsoft has been more of a good thing for the industry in particular and the economy as a whole than a bad thing. They're ruthless and nasty and I wouldn't want them to house-sit for me while I'm out of town, but they're excellent at what they do, and (I'm repeating myself here) you have to respect that.
Nope. I'm saying that if your objective is to be more successful than your competitors, then you have a responsibility to do whatever it takes except breaking the law.
And if you think the relative merits of your products is the only criterion that defines success in the marketplace, then you're being pretty naive. For better or for worse, that's simply not how the world works.
Why are these things hard to understand?
Well, as long as we're listing qualifications, you outrank me. I'm not 40; I'm 30. So you have experience on your side and I respect that.
I also see the same pattern you describe quite a bit. The markets I work in are pretty rarified-- flight and visual simulation, media, and stuff like that-- so I've never had to compete with Microsoft, either directly or indirectly. I'm lucky, I guess.
But I simply don't believe that Microsoft is unbeatable. Yeah, they have a lot of advantages. But having more money than God is not against the law; it just sucks if you're the other guy.
I don't have the answer to this problem. I don't know how to counter Microsoft's defense. It's just that I get annoyed by defeatists and collectivists who stop talking about how to beat Microsoft in the market and start talking about how to beat them in the courtroom or in Congress.
If-- and when-- Microsoft breaks the law, they should be punished. But we're just hurting ourselves and our society if we-- the smart people, I mean, the people who can do things-- just give up and stop trying.
I have a friend who recently took this idea to a surprising conclusion: he took a job at Microsoft. The company he was working for was on hard times-- because of mismanagement rather than competition-- and Microsoft was hiring, so he signed up. He told me he got plenty of hassle from ex-coworkers about joining the "evil empire" and other hyperbole, but in the end, he did it so he could improve Microsoft's products in some small way.
Hell, there are a lot of talented programmers out there who hate Windows and Office and IIS and all that. That's fine. But most of them seem to channel that into hating Microsoft, too. That's a shame. If enough of them got together to improve the products they hate so much, maybe they could actually make a difference.
Choose whatever path you like; just play within the system instead of trying to legislate Microsoft out of it.
I agree with you: a company that considered their profits to be more important than people's lives would be evil.
I just don't know of any companies like that.
Back to the Union Carbide example: they chose to cut corners, with the intention of being more profitable, and those shortcuts ended up leading to a horrible accident. Whether a reasonable person could have foreseen the consequences of those actions is up for debate, but I think it's fair to say that either way, nobody intended to cause that accident, or to kill anybody.
Likewise, I don't have any evidence that makes me believe that Microsoft, or anybody associated with Microsoft, intends to cause anybody personal harm. They intend for everybody in the world to use their operating system and their applications, you bet. And they intend for all the web sites out there to run on their servers, uh-huh. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
To the extent that they stay within the law, I say good for them. That's exactly what they should be doing.
Step outside the law, get caught, pay a fine or some other suitable penalty. But then get back to work. That's how that's supposed to happen, too.
So, through all this rhetoric, will somebody please convince me I'm wrong? Will somebody give me just one example of Microsoft's doing something that could be considered bad for society as a whole?
Okay, they never killed anybody. Did they ever maim anyone? Did they ever run over anybody's puppy? Did they ever prank-call your house in the middle of the night? Anything?
They produce software that isn't up to my personal standards. I wish, since I have to use it sometimes, that their OS and applications were better designed. But that doesn't equate to personal harm.
All right, let's really reach. Microsoft designed a scripting architecture for Windows that gave malicious users the ability to write viruses that can overload systems and cause the indirect loss of money for companies that use Windows (i.e., pretty much all of them) and users individually. All right, that was a pretty bad idea. But let's remember to put it in perspective: did anybody die because of ILOVEYOU?
I'm no Microsoft fan, not by a long shot. But I guess I just don't think they're as horrible as many people seem to believe they are.
The playing field isn't level because there's something that I'm better at than you are. And there's something that you're better at than I am. And so on.
The individuals that are better at something will succeed at it more easily than the rest of us. In fact, some people are so good at something that it's damn near impossible for the rest of us to even compete with them. The same is true for companies. Some companies are incredibly good at things, and their competitors have a rough time.
This is a fact of life. Even before you figure in things like illegal monopolies and collusion and nasty temper-tantrums, there's always going to be one company that's the best at something. Some companies might even be-- oh, horror!-- the best at two or three things!
Would it be moral to try to level that field by imposing limits on the success of the best competitors in it? Sure, you could put arbitrary limits on all sorts of things. You could make a law that says all computers must be sold without an operating system, and one that said all operating systems must be sold for the same price, and one that said all operating systems must have published APIs. But would even that make it fair? What if one of those equally priced operating systems came in a bright green box with a yellow smiley face on it, and more people bought it because their box was prettier? That's unfair! All operating systems must be sold in plain brown boxes!
See how quickly it can get ridiculous? That's because limiting the successful to protect the unsuccessful-- as long as everybody's playing within the laws-- is morally unjustifiable.
So, to answer your question, society could choose to make rules to level the playing field of the open market. But it would be morally wrong to do so.
Yes, Microsoft did some nasty things in the recent past. Yup, you betcha.
Some of those things were against the law; a court said so. These things should be rectified in some way. If Microsoft and the government can't come up with a compromise that they can both accept, it'll be up to a judge to say how Microsoft should be penalized.
But the rest of the things Microsoft did, mean and nasty and downright unfriendly they might have been, were not against the law. At least, they weren't until a judge says that they were.
My thesis, since apparently I haven't gotten the idea across so far, is that Microsoft was not morally wrong to do the mean, nasty, unfriendly but legal things that it has done. That is how a competitive market works. The executives of Microsoft Corp. have a responsibility to their shareholders to make them lots of money, doing everything necessary to achieve that goal as long as they stay within the limits of the law.
They didn't. As I said, fine. Punish them for that.
But you can't-- we, as a society, cannot-- punish Microsoft for being nasty. Being nasty isn't against the law. Bundling PowerPoint with Word and Excel and whatever else and calling it Office and not allowing me to buy just PowerPoint is nasty. But it's not illegal. And it's not immoral, and it's not unethical, and it's not wrong.
Look, think of it like basketball. Ever play basketball, or even watch it on TV? The players on each team know that they have to do whatever they can to win, but without breaking the rules. So you get in there and you push a little bit, and you shove a little, and you get a little rough, and as long as you don't foul your opponent, it's okay. Better than okay, it's good basketball.
If the other team can't take a little push now and then, a little elbow at the net, then they shouldn't play basketball. They should play tennis instead, or some other game where you don't have to worry about being jostled.
Microsoft is like a really good basketball team. A nasty one with a bad attitude that nobody, not even their fans, like very much, but a really good one. They get out there with their game faces on and they rough it up a little. And when they foul, they get caught and they lose the ball and that's the end of it.
When the Bulls were winning championship after championship in a row and nobody could touch them, did you hear other teams whining that the Bulls were playing too rough? Did anybody complain that they were cheating? No, of course not. Because they weren't. They just happened to be playing the game better than anybody else.
That's Microsoft. They play the game, and when they get a little too rough, they get penalized, but that doesn't make them stop playing the game. They're rough, and they're serious, and they don't have any fans, but if you understand the game, you've gotta respect the fact that they know how to play.
What makes you think I'm a libertarian? ;-)
As I've said before, I agree that Microsoft broke laws, and that that's a Bad Thing, and that penalties should be assigned somehow. This is not in dispute.
My gripe is with people who apply the fruit-of-the-poison-tree principle to everything Microsoft produces. I don't like the Passport idea much, but I'm not okay with arguing against it on moral grounds.
I believe this: the playing field is not level, and it never will be. It's okay for society (in this case, the gub-mint) to establish boundaries for just how un-level the field can get, but the purpose of these boundaries is not to make the playing field level. Any attempt to level the playing field by limiting the success of a company that has not broken any laws is, in my opinion, morally unjustifiable, and short-sighted to boot.
Of course, my philosophy can't be applied in a black-and-white fashion; my whole point here is that, while Microsoft has broken some laws and should pay for that somehow, it is irresponsible of us-- people who understand technology, I mean-- to advocate going beyond the socially established guidelines for business behavior in an effort to somehow make the open market more "fair."
If we expect to compete on equal terms with Microsoft which is known to use all possible attacks on an enemy...
I do feel an obligation here to point out that every army that ever "fought fair" has lost the war.
Microsoft has used illegal unfair business practices in the past; the court decided such, and I agree. But not everything that is unfair is illegal, nor should it be.
The playing field is not level, all men are not created equal, and there is no Santa Claus.
Welcome to the real world. Enjoy your stay.
The very concept of micropayments is bad.
Why?
My opinion on the subject is this: if I were changed a dime to read a story on the CNN.com web site, I would recognize that I'm not paying for the information itself, but rather the method of delivery. Paying somebody to deliver something to me is a concept that I'm very comfortable with, as my local pizza delivery will testify.
So why are you so convinced that micropayments are bad?
First of all, comparing Microsoft to Union Carbide is a little out of line; say what you want about them, but I am not aware of Microsoft's ever causing anyone's wrongful death.
But to answer your question, no, Union Carbide was not evil. Negligent, sure. In a horrible way, with devastating consequences. But not evil; evil implies malicious intent, and there simply was none then.
Likewise, I don't believe (as you seem to) that Microsoft the company, or any of its board or executives, intends to do harm to any person. They're just doing what they have to do: trying to make big bunches of money for Microsoft's shareholders. That's how companies work.
The question of whether anybody could market a better word processor than Microsoft Word is kind of a double-edged one. On the one hand, of course you're right; trying to convince millions of people to use SurfWriter (or whatever) instead would be tough because Word is so entrenched. But on the other hand, it seems clear that nobody yet has written a better word processor than MS Word, so the whole question is moot.
I'm a programmer, so I don't word-process much. But when I do, I use Word, because I value the ability to exchange documents with coworkers without having to handshake first; this is a boost to my productivity and to that of my company. It seems to me that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in that example.
So, in a very real sense, having most everybody using the same word processor is a good thing. It means I can spend more time feeding my family and less time worrying about whether Phil downstairs in Marketing can open a SurfWriter 2.5 document, or whether I need to convert it to plain text first.
I think the most important thing we have to remember here is that we are in the very earliest stages of the-- for lack of a better term-- information age. I'm writing this on a laptop in my living room wirelessly connected to a high-speed Internet connection. That would have been impossible ten years ago, and unimagined fifty years ago. In less than two generations, our entire world view has changed with respect to information and the role of computers in distributing and accessing it.
In that context, how can you be so arrogant to assume that Microsoft's technologies must be a bad thing? I don't mean bad in the sense of flawed and imperfect; we can poke holes in every idea they've ever marketed, but the same is true of any product in any industry. I mean "bad" in the sense of "bad for society." No one alive now can possibly know what impact Microsoft will have on the evolution of society thorough the next century and beyond. Could you have predicted that the mass production of cars would lead directly to the growth of suburban areas around big cities? To think that we can see into the future is sheer hubris.
I think Microsoft has probably used some unfair business practices in the past, and they probably continue to do so now. And I think that some kind of legislative penalty is probably the right thing, although I don't pretend to know that that penalty should be.
But I simply refuse to jump to the conclusion that a number of relatively minor regulatory violations (minor as compared to the deaths of well over 1,000 people in India; you brought up that comparison, not I) means Microsoft is an evil force out for world domination. That's just... silly.
Okay, with all of that said, I want to send one last passing wave to my karma and conclude with this: people who deride other people's work without having the skill, talent, or tenacity to do anything of merit themselves piss me off. If you don't like MS Word, or Passport, or whatever, fine! Lord knows that I don't, especially. But at least I'm respectful and level-headed enough to see that Microsoft has been very, very successful, and to acknowledge that they have accomplished some things that make my life better, in the same breath that I use to criticize them.
Credit where it's due. Or, in even more appropriate terms, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
My first reaction to this comment was pretty inflamed, but I had a hard time figuring out why.
Then I remembered reading Atlas Shrugged in college, and I understood.
I've looked at your posting history, dfeldman, and find you to be a pretty reasonable sort most of the time. But on this occasion, your post smacked of the worst kind of collectivist rhetoric.
(Sorry about the name-calling. I'm all grouchy now.)
This is, in my opinion, the exact sort of rhetoric that makes the open source community look, all too often, like a bunch of neo-hippie outsiders, forever isolated from the mainstream of society. Not that I'm saying the mainstream is so great, but as long as people assume that you subscribe to weirdo politics because open-source software is your hobby or passion or whatever, you're effectively prevented from making any kind of political comment whatsoever.
Please leave off with the talk of how the government must stop Microsoft. That's ridiculous. Does anybody here believe that Microsoft is actually evil, in the Hitler-Darth Vader-Satan sense? No, of course not. Is Microsoft (personified by Bill Gates) greedy? Of course! So am I, deep down inside, and so are most of you. If you say you're not, then you're either a saint, a liar, or a fool, and one of those is much less likely than the other two.
Does Microsoft make crappy software? A lot of the time, yes. Do I trust Microsoft, with their track record, to design a secure system for conducting business on the Internet? No, I don't.
But I don't think they should be prevented from doing so by the government, or a bunch of hackers as you suggest, or anybody else. What I'd like best is if somebody could come up with something better than what Microsoft is pushing this week.
The rules of the open market are not at fault here. The simple, unvarnished truth is that, for all Microsoft's faults, they do things right (in the business, not moral, sense) most of the time, and nobody-- not Apple, not IBM, not the Open Source Community-- has figured out a way to beat them in the open market yet.
And posts like yours aren't going to get us anywhere closer to that goal.
Don't forget to buy plenum wiring, which does not emit toxic fumes when it burns. It's probably code in your area.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought plenum wiring was only required in airspaces. I though wiring enclosed in conduit did not have to be plenum-rated to meet code.
Am I correct in my assumption that the idea of "pay to speak" is inherently inimical to democracy?
;-)
You, of course, are not correct in this assumption.
The US, certainly the world's best known democracy-loving country, has a long history of limited franchise. The Founding Fathers sometimes held the opinion that only the landed gentry (read "male property owners") should have a voice in governance. It was widely believed that the healthy self-interest of that class of society was roughly and usually coincident with the interests of the whole. Therefore the franchise should only be entrusted to those who qualified for it.
The concept of universal franchise for all citizens is really a 20th century concept. I find this to be quite obvious, as the 20th century in the United States was the most prosperous, luxurious time, taken as a whole, in human history. If things were to turn bad, like really, really bad, the whole universal franchise thing might go right out the window.
Now, as to your opinions on speech itself, as opposed to sufferage. It is true that reasoned discourse is the heart and soul of a healthy republic. (It actually has little to do with democracy, but let's ignore that.) But it is absolutely not true that I must pay to give you a forum in which to speak. If you want to take your milk crate to the nearest street corner, go right ahead. But don't try to tell me that I have to buy you the crate and pay your cab fare.
In other words, Salon's (or anybody's) decision to charge a fee for the privilege of posting in a public forum is not a clear and present danger to democracy.
Sincerely, Demosthenes.
I agree with your complaints about TableTalk on Salon.
I think you misunderstood my complaints. I have no complaint about the software that implements the message board, as it seems you do. Frankly, I never thought about it.
I was just saying that I'm disappointed that evidently many of the smart, thoughtful people who used to post there have decided not to sign up for the new subscription thing.
You know, Salon isn't just leftist news. It's also leftist commentary, essays, reviews, and opinions.
I watched maybe two episodes of the first run of the US version of Big Brother last year. (I was stuck in a hotel room with four channels, two of which were local event listings.)
The show was terrible... but every morning after an episode, Salon posted a new entry in its "Big Brother: The Complete Story" ongoing review. The reviewer were brutal. The show sucked, and everybody knew it, so what was left but to make relentless fun of it?
That hoot alone is worth the price of admission.
From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea.
I'm all for improved discourse, and I'd be disappointed if Slashdot had trouble staying afloat, but I don't agree that a subscription-based revenue model would improve the quality of the site.
Not too long ago, Salon's "Table Talk" message board was a great place to find reasonably intelligent talk. There were no trolls, and it seemed that most everybody could spell.
Then, sometime in the past year but I'm not sure when, Salon took their message board to a subscription-only model. Anybody can read, but only paying subscribers can post. It's not expensive, either; something on the order of six bucks a month, I think?
The result? The boards that I used to frequent on Table Talk are now ghost towns. Tumbleweeds and cow skulls, and Yul Brynner wandering around dressed all in black.
I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.
Right up there with, "Our product is cross-platform. It runs on 95 and NT!"
As good as "Barbie Murders" is, I think Varley's best work with gender overtones is his novel "Steel Beach." The entire book is told from the first-person point of view of a protagonist who changes gender halfway through.
Even though the gender-bending isn't a big plot point, merely incidental, it's thought provoking. But not in a homework kind of way.
One of my favorite books, actually.