"REIMBURSEMENT - Repayment thin, but has great symbolic value: 90 euros for Windows XP and 50 euros for Works 8 which is obviously accodano legal costs."
Hey if I got even *semi*-accodano legal costs, I'd be celebrating on the Via Dolorosa with pizza in my Ferrari!
As a non-employee of Microsoft who does not live in Redmond, WA, and who, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, has not sunk his entire life savings in Microsoft, in the vain hopes that even though Vista barks like a dog, rolls over like a dog (etc.), it is in fact "the next big thing" and not a mangy Schnauzer, I must take exception to the tag "asshats" in the story header.
"APC has passed all this feedback back to Microsoft, which, to its credit, is taking the situation very seriously and has Vista developers working on a solution."
So they're working on it, and everyone can just relax: problem solved.
Microsoft would never do anything to make their software more intrusive. Would they?
I mean, they just don't have the technical capacity to do DNA scans if you want to upgrade your graphics card.
Nigerian dude has a big problem with power/weight ratio.
I spent a couple of weeks one summer being flown around in a Bell Jet Ranger, doing survey archaeology.
That thing had a gas turbine engine with sufficient power to lift four people (plus gear) and fly at 200 kph at 2000 m.
The engine was the size of a Honda four-cylinder.
An automotive engine is not going to cut it, unless he boosts the compression ratio to about 40 to 1 (which will have instantaneous and messy consequences).
Microsoft is thrashing because while VISTA gets reamed by reviewers and pissed on by consumers, Open Source operating systems and applications are cleaning up (400 million Firefox downloads).
MS may be changing the focus of the companies they buy out, devour, and make part of their hideous corporate culture.
But they're going to get resistance with Open Source that's not just economic.
Check this quote from Shuttleworth of Canonical, the company that does UBUNTU:
----If Shuttleworth is, in fact, not abusing cute animals, then he's been busy denying Microsoft's advances to sign a Novell/XenSource/Linspire-like intellectual property and collaboration deal.
"They have approached us, but there is just no way we would accept the terms," he said. "Everything suggests those deals were entered into on terms that would be unacceptable to our community and to us."
Shuttleworth urged that it's crucial not "to paint a company as evil." However, he did say that Microsoft has an "extortion habit that simply won't go anymore."
It's Shuttleworth's vast wealth that, in part, lets him ignore Microsoft's overtures. And it's that same wealth which inspired Shuttleworth to take on the languishing Linux desktop in the first place."----
I agree that the underlying culture of "let someone else deal with it" is endemic.
That's intolerable: it leads to people becoming sheep:
"Nah, that's not the slaughterhouse, it's Microsoft's new VISTA 2010, which will solve all your problems."
Think what a different model is provided by Open Source:
"A bunch of people who use this stuff all the time, and who know how to write code for it, built this. Because they want better software, not because they want a $30 billion bank account. And it works."
"Some people feel that stealth updates and pushing WGA to users under the guise of a security update is paving the way for all sorts of nasty and restrictive DRM mechanisms to be pushed down the system. While I personally don't take this view, it's easy to see where these extreme ideas come from"
Yeah, anybody's experience with Microsoft's increasing paranoia, intrusiveness, and FUD is where such non-extreme and very sensible ideas might come from.
Everyone knew SCO was going tits up when its main asset was a lawsuit.
Microsoft is also turning into a litigation company instead of a "software company".
Not even Billy Gates' $30 billion can save a company that writes shitty software.
So, yeah: there'll be a lot of legal thrashing from Microsoft.
In Canadian law we have a phrase that's a legal term of art to describe lawsuits that have no merit: "frivolous and vexatious".
I think that describes quite nicely what to expect coming down the pipe from Microsoft, as OSS continues to prove the superiority of its software *and* its business model.
"We say show us the patents," he told vnunet.com. "This has been the strategy against open source all along. It's precisely the same tactics as SCO used: implied threats and mafia techniques. This is just FUD. It's smoke and mirrors. "
Taylor added that Microsoft is sorely mistaken if it hopes that its actions will slow down the spread of open source.....
M$ has a history of trying to protect and extend its domination over the software market with legal wars and threats of legal wars.
With the failure of VISTA, and IE getting serious competition from Firefox, M$ isn't so much a software company any more so much as a litigation company.
I say they have richly earned the thumping they will receive at the hands of Open Source over the next few years.
Well I guess that's the end of Win-doze on this machine.
I couldn't write source code to save my life, but I'd take an open source OS or app any day if it had even 80% of the capacity of a similar M$ OS or application.
Well, this, from the article seems like typical Microsoft spin and FUD:
>Windows Vista, with all its overcriticized faults, evolved from 0.16% in December 2006 to 7.38% at the end of the last month. During the same period, Windows XP dropped from 85.30% to 79.32%, a percentage slips which makes it obvious that XP users upgraded/migrated to Vista and not to Mac OS X and Linux. While of course there is also a small segment that did in fact made the jump to the two alternative platforms, it is clear that the vast majority of XP users remain loyal to the Windows brand.
"Overcriticized faults"?
Ha! Vista is a buggy bloated piece of poo which it took them *7 years* to come up with.
I got booted from a MS friendly site for saying so.
Example 1: Firefox is cleaning house in the browser biz.
Example 2: My local computer store can't keep up with the demand for free UBUNTU CD's.
Example 3: "Songbird" is an elegant and good looking open source media player which even in the current developer version release works better and has far more interesting features than WMP.
I'd say MS is running scared, and for good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
"REIMBURSEMENT - Repayment thin, but has great symbolic value: 90 euros for Windows XP and 50 euros for Works 8 which is obviously accodano legal costs."
Hey if I got even *semi*-accodano legal costs, I'd be celebrating on the Via Dolorosa with pizza in my Ferrari!
West Coast latte swillin' tofu gobbler!
Me and the boys up Cape Breton way have been "launchin'" for years, 'cept on Newfie Screech not yer fancy new fangled liquid oxygen an' stuff!
Ye'll be laughin' out the other side o' yer face when we're breakin' the sound barrier over yer 200 square foot $1 million West End condo!
Slainte!
128GB is what you'll need just to load Vista's successor "Microsoft ReVista, Now With Extra-Intrusive Auto Update and Ultra-Annoying DRM!".
So you'll be able to play Windows Solitaire on your Zune.
That's so cool -- these guys are way ahead of the curve!
As a non-employee of Microsoft who does not live in Redmond, WA, and who, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, has not sunk his entire life savings in Microsoft, in the vain hopes that even though Vista barks like a dog, rolls over like a dog (etc.), it is in fact "the next big thing" and not a mangy Schnauzer, I must take exception to the tag "asshats" in the story header.
FYI: I have never worn an ass on my hat.
And this is not FUD.
Thank you.
Bullwinkle!
It's the end of the world, dude!
Next I'm going to open up Firefox and see the Microsoft logo on the fox's forehead!
Aiyeeee!
Now would be a good time to panic...
From the story:
"APC has passed all this feedback back to Microsoft, which, to its credit, is taking the situation very seriously and has Vista developers working on a solution."
So they're working on it, and everyone can just relax: problem solved.
Microsoft would never do anything to make their software more intrusive. Would they?
I mean, they just don't have the technical capacity to do DNA scans if you want to upgrade your graphics card.
Yet...
Nigerian dude has a big problem with power/weight ratio.
I spent a couple of weeks one summer being flown around in a Bell Jet Ranger, doing survey archaeology.
That thing had a gas turbine engine with sufficient power to lift four people (plus gear) and fly at 200 kph at 2000 m.
The engine was the size of a Honda four-cylinder.
An automotive engine is not going to cut it, unless he boosts the compression ratio to about 40 to 1 (which will have instantaneous and messy consequences).
I wish him good luck.
But also: good engines.
CBC just did a program on this last night:
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/hurricane.html/
The linked page includes a program excerpt.
Conclusion: none of the *nine* different methods considered will work on their own.
Used all at the same time, they might make a difference.
I find the brevity and eloquence of your analysis to be admirable.
As a proud, music-loving Canadian I must agree.
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/16/barenaked-ladies-rel.html/
Microsoft is thrashing because while VISTA gets reamed by reviewers and pissed on by consumers, Open Source operating systems and applications are cleaning up (400 million Firefox downloads).
MS may be changing the focus of the companies they buy out, devour, and make part of their hideous corporate culture.
But they're going to get resistance with Open Source that's not just economic.
Check this quote from Shuttleworth of Canonical, the company that does UBUNTU:
----If Shuttleworth is, in fact, not abusing cute animals, then he's been busy denying Microsoft's advances to sign a Novell/XenSource/Linspire-like intellectual property and collaboration deal.
"They have approached us, but there is just no way we would accept the terms," he said. "Everything suggests those deals were entered into on terms that would be unacceptable to our community and to us."
Shuttleworth urged that it's crucial not "to paint a company as evil." However, he did say that Microsoft has an "extortion habit that simply won't go anymore."
It's Shuttleworth's vast wealth that, in part, lets him ignore Microsoft's overtures. And it's that same wealth which inspired Shuttleworth to take on the languishing Linux desktop in the first place."----
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/07/27/shuttleworth_oscon_ubuntu/page2.html/
That's going to be a tougher nut for MS to crack than merely throwing money at it.
And I have a feeling, backed up by mission statements at Open Source sites, that Shuttleworth's far from alone in that.
Ever heard of dual boot?
Use whatever hideous bloated version of Windows you have to to run your games, and everything else on Linux.
That way you support OSS, keep familiar with the apps, and can contribute to Open Source by simply using it.
The main thing I got from the review is that UBUNTU is good, and catching up fast in everything else except gaming and maybe some media.
I guess serious gamers are probably the most demanding of hardware *and* software users... so you're probably down in the queue...
But guess what?
The people writing UBUNTU are probably serious gamers too.
Well, there's that.
But also, to put it as simply as possible OS X works; VISTA is a bloated buggy nightmare.
Seeing as how Apple has around 6 percent of the market and climbing
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/10/18/apples_share_of_us_pc_market_jumps_to_61_percent.html/
they might want to keep pointing that out.
I agree that the underlying culture of "let someone else deal with it" is endemic.
That's intolerable: it leads to people becoming sheep:
"Nah, that's not the slaughterhouse, it's Microsoft's new VISTA 2010, which will solve all your problems."
Think what a different model is provided by Open Source:
"A bunch of people who use this stuff all the time, and who know how to write code for it, built this. Because they want better software, not because they want a $30 billion bank account. And it works."
Night and day...
From the article:
"Some people feel that stealth updates and pushing WGA to users under the guise of a security update is paving the way for all sorts of nasty and restrictive DRM mechanisms to be pushed down the system. While I personally don't take this view, it's easy to see where these extreme ideas come from"
Yeah, anybody's experience with Microsoft's increasing paranoia, intrusiveness, and FUD is where such non-extreme and very sensible ideas might come from.
I was a pathetic loser of 42, still living in my Mom's basement and writing software for DOS before Facebook.
I had like zero friends.
Now with Facebook, I have 1723 "friends"!
Of course I'm still a pathetic loser living in my Mom's basement, but I bet have more "friends" than you!
So, it's all good, eh?
Everyone knew SCO was going tits up when its main asset was a lawsuit.
Microsoft is also turning into a litigation company instead of a "software company".
Not even Billy Gates' $30 billion can save a company that writes shitty software.
So, yeah: there'll be a lot of legal thrashing from Microsoft.
In Canadian law we have a phrase that's a legal term of art to describe lawsuits that have no merit: "frivolous and vexatious".
I think that describes quite nicely what to expect coming down the pipe from Microsoft, as OSS continues to prove the superiority of its software *and* its business model.
Because they were beta testing it?
http://www.red5.co.uk/RC-Dragonfly-pr-226.html?gclid=CNWvnrLVh48CFSA4hgodriUfuQ/
How dare you defend this kid for not seeing that Vista is the Next Coming?
I *want* swooshy 3-D graphics stolen directly from OS X!
I *want* the Blue Screen of Death in 5.1 surround-sound!
I *want* to play solitaire on an x86 box that has 8 gigs of RAM and a 200 gig hard drive!
You sir, are an anti-Windite!
Yeah, I can remember, I'm sure, when me and goatse were the only people posting on /.
Good times...
I'm looking forward to those guys finding a hack that will turn an XBox 36O into an iPhone...
That's the whole point.
...Mark Taylor, president of the Open Source Consortium [...] described Microsoft's tactics in damning terms.
....
They *aren't* saying, they're just FUD-ing.
From a linked story at vnunet.com:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2200498/oin-calls-microsoft-bluff?vnu_lt=vnu_art_related_articles
"We say show us the patents," he told vnunet.com. "This has been the strategy against open source all along. It's precisely the same tactics as SCO used: implied threats and mafia techniques. This is just FUD. It's smoke and mirrors. "
Taylor added that Microsoft is sorely mistaken if it hopes that its actions will slow down the spread of open source.
M$ has a history of trying to protect and extend its domination over the software market with legal wars and threats of legal wars.
With the failure of VISTA, and IE getting serious competition from Firefox, M$ isn't so much a software company any more so much as a litigation company.
I say they have richly earned the thumping they will receive at the hands of Open Source over the next few years.
Well I guess that's the end of Win-doze on this machine.
I couldn't write source code to save my life, but I'd take an open source OS or app any day if it had even 80% of the capacity of a similar M$ OS or application.
Microsoft sucks *and* blows...
Thank you.
Well, this, from the article seems like typical Microsoft spin and FUD:
>Windows Vista, with all its overcriticized faults, evolved from 0.16% in December 2006 to 7.38% at the end of the last month. During the same period, Windows XP dropped from 85.30% to 79.32%, a percentage slips which makes it obvious that XP users upgraded/migrated to Vista and not to Mac OS X and Linux. While of course there is also a small segment that did in fact made the jump to the two alternative platforms, it is clear that the vast majority of XP users remain loyal to the Windows brand.
"Overcriticized faults"?
Ha! Vista is a buggy bloated piece of poo which it took them *7 years* to come up with.
I got booted from a MS friendly site for saying so.
Example 1: Firefox is cleaning house in the browser biz.
Example 2: My local computer store can't keep up with the demand for free UBUNTU CD's.
Example 3: "Songbird" is an elegant and good looking open source media player which even in the current developer version release works better and has far more interesting features than WMP.
I'd say MS is running scared, and for good reason.
With w2k I *have* to use IE to get the miserable Windows updates...
They'd have to pay me a Congressman's salary to abandon Firefox.
You're right.
Sarcastic but right.
Too bad you posted anon: your post needs a higher mod than zero to stay visible in the thread.