Those of you calling Gates "evil", "villainous", etc, in order to belittle his philanthropic activities, consider this: The companies that Gates "crushed" were rich companies whose execs had become rich themselves. So Gates took from those rich fat cats (through unethical means, according to the Gates haters), and is now giving to the poor. That makes him a high-tech Robin Hood. And just like the government tried to bring down Robin Hood, they tried to bring down Gates. What say you to that?;-)
No. Microsoft isn't dying and will do fine without Gates' daily activities. They might even do better. Microsoft isn't a cult-of-personality like Apple is with regard to Jobs (and we have historical proof that Apple flounders without Jobs at the helm).
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating", so we'll see if Microsoft's claims hold true when the OS is released. But even if it's not "the most secure OS" (if Microsoft really claimed that), they're making progress (which can only be denied by the most biased anti-M$ fanboy lol).
Of course, given the choice, most slashdotters would prefer that Vista be insecure so they have something to bitch about. They lost the stability ammo (although they do continue to talk of BSOD, which are as rare as kernel panics these days), and they desperately don't want to lose the stability ammo. For if the stability ammo goes away (or is sufficiently diminished), all they have left is price.
If the iPod were a "cheap consumer electronic good" you might have a point, but the iPod is very expensive for what it does. Apple is making money hand-over-fist due to the huge profit margin on each iPod. Apple could easily afford to reduce the iPod profit margin by N dollars and pass those N dollars per iPod to the workers by way of increasing pay and/or improving working conditions. Either that, or Apple could continue exploiting sweatshop labor but lower the prices of iPods so that they are indeed "cheap". I'm sorry, but charging luxury prices for a sweatshop-produced good is not something to be dismissed lightly.
"And don't just think it's Apple doing this, it's all the big electronics companies. Hell it's not even just electronics, take the dairy industry."
But Apple is the company that's been placed on a pedestal by it's fanbase and the mainstream media as an enlightened, progressive, cool, hip company, above reproach, and Apple has only played into that. Apple's on the pedestal, so they have to risk falling from it.
"The 1984 commercial was aimed at Microsoft, but Apple identified themselves in that with the counter-culture movement, pitted against a totalitarian, conservative regime. They've always targeted the intellectual, liberal elite market. True, being Apple, they don't -- as a company -- actually act like progressives, but they've always branded themselves as the progressive company."
I agree with your point, but I'm pretty sure that the 1984 commercial was aimed at IBM, not Microsoft.
"I would like Windows to do is something like my Mac - Every critical release being a new version number for my OS - I really love the feeling-of-security when my OS goes from 10.4.5 to 10.4.6"
Mac Security Updates don't change the OS version number. If you examine Apple's Security Updates here, you'll see that the updates that are called "Security Updates" don't change the OS version number. The updates that do change the version number are called "Mac OS X Update" (e.g. "Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update").
LOL You had no idea what the "ribbon" is (you still don't, BTW), and yet after 5 minutes of reading about them, you feel prepared to make all sorts of pronouncements about how useless they are. Typical know-it-all slashdotter. LOL
Of course, if the ribbon had been invented by Apple, Google, OO.o, or any other of the companies about which you have wet dreams, you'd be praising them to high heaven. Too funny!
I find it sad that you and slashdotters in general support the idea that a product with 2% of the functionality of a richer product should "kill" off the richer product. If that's the future of software, then society is in for a world of crapware. Sure, the crapware will be "free" (as in beer), but that's because the crapware will be so primitive that a developer has no choice but to give it away for free (and support it with ads and whatnot). You support the idea of society being without rich products for the sake of your ideology (or your Microsoft hatred)? Very sad indeed.
Also very hypocritcal on the part of the typical slashdotter. Google's web apps are free as in beer, not as in speech. Google does not release the code of their web apps, so the community is not allowed to "redistribute" the web apps (i.e. host them on other sites for free), nor is the community allowed to derive works from Google's code and "distribute" the derivations (i.e. host them on non-Google sites for free). Also note that the GPL doesn't cover web apps (allowing Google and others to use GPL code in their web apps and distributing those web apps to the public without releasing the code), so as software development moves more and more to feature-deprived web apps, the GPL loses more and more power. In a world where virtually all software is feature-deprived web apps, the GPL is completely irrelevant.
Seems that when it comes down to it, slashdotters are much more concerned with free as in beer than free as in speech.
It's true that most of Microsoft's developers' blogs are at blogs.msdn.com (and related Microsoft-hosted sites), but not all of them. I know two MacBU devs whose blogs are on external sites like Scoble's is.
Well, I'm sure that OS/2 and Amiga would be perfectly safe to run on the internet.:-) (Not because those systems are secure by any stretch (OS/2 was essentiall IBM's version of Windows (similar design), so it's likely filled with security flaws), but because the userbase is too small for the baddies to target.)
Microsoft seems too dense to realize that they've squandered trust, and need to be above reproach like Caesar's wife (see Shakespear's "Julius Caesar";-)). That means that they need to make sure to disclose these kinds of things; failure to do so (before a third party does it for them) just makes them all the less trustworthy. This episode demonstrates sheer idiocy on their part.
The stories regarding this matter keep referring to "data theft" and "stolen data". But while the laptop and external harddrive were stolen, the data itself was not. "Stolen" and "theft" only apply to cases in which the rightful owner no longer has possession of the item in question. So we cannot say that the data itself was "stolen", rather we must say that the rights of the righful data owners were "infringed", right? Indeed, if someone had obtained this data without authorization by hacking into the VA's computers (rather than by stealing a harddrive), then "stolen" and "theft" wouldn't apply at all. Am I right? No? I didn't think so either.;-)
Consider this: 1. Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs. Therefore, one could argue that Adobe has a "monopoly" in pdf creation software (not 100% share, but nearly so). But to keep some of you from bitching about the use of the term "monopoly" in this case, I'll use the term "quasi-monopoly".
2. Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software. In other words, Adobe wanted to engage in price-fixing with Microsoft in order to protect Adobe's quasi-monopoly. That is what you guys are supporting! Do you really want to go down that road? Surely you'll want to rethink your position, or does your hypocrisy really go that far?
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
4. If you want to see an example of the PDF produced by Office 2007, try Office 2007 beta 2. Or you can read the PDF version of the latest draft of the OpenXML ECMA spec, a PDF document that was created by Office 2007 beta. Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
5. Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML, but includes many advances over the current PDF spec (though future PDF specs may add such advances). XPS is part of Vista; XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years. Now Microsoft, bending over backwards to allay Adobe's hypocritcal paranoia, is removing from Office 2007 built-in support for both PDF and XPS. Furthermore, Microsoft is leaving it up to OEMs as to whether they want to include XPS support in Vista itself (except for XPS's role as a spool file format for Vista's printing enhacements).
6. Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins. Adobe's still pissed about this because they want Microsoft to charge for the plug-ins (more of the price-fixing scheme that you guys are supporting).
So every other office suite should be allowed to export to.pdf except Microsoft Office? And you'd probably be one of the first to point to Microsft Office's lack of such functionality as evidence that it sucks compared to OO.o and the like, am I right? Well, at least you're admitting your hypocrisy.
The funny thing is that those of your ilk were applauding MA's blessing the use of.pdf as an open format, well I guess it's not open at all, now is it?
"There is no "lack of Linux adoption"; at this point, Linux is the most common OS after Windows, with OS X trailing a distant third on servers and a closer third on desktops. Linux supports far more hardware than OS X, and far more hardware out of the box than Windows."
I see many here saying that only those that sell software should be liable, while those that give it away for free should not. If such a law were passed, you can bet that FOSS would be killed off in the corporate world, as corporations would gadly rather work with software vendors that can be held liable than those that cannot, as the former have something to lose for having bugs while the latter is free to produce bug-infested crapware. It makes no differnce if the "free" software is actually good; corps would feel safer using software produced by someone that could be held liable.
And as I said in another post, large commercial vendors would survive, as they'd simply buy software liability insurance (ala medical malpractice insurance). Smaller vendors would be hurt if they couldn't afford such insurance.
So FOSS is hurt (corps won't use it because FOSS "vendors" can't be held liable for bugs), small commercial vendors are hurt (since they can't afford software liability insurance), and large commercial vendors thrive since FOSS and small vendors are eliminated.
Too bad inhose software is mostly database manipulation programs in VB, Java, or Perl that are very tedious to write compared to software "products".
Also, much in-house software is based on customizing software "products", so killing off the software "products" industry would have a major effect on in-house.
All this proposal would do is to create a software vendor liability insurance industry. Software vendors would buy liability insurance policies (just like doctors buy medical malpractice insurance policies), and pass the costs on to the customers.
You give yourself too much credit. Slashdot's not a tough crowd at all. Slashdotters generally hate Microsoft, that's all. Those companies that Slashdot favors can put out utter crap and get unqualified praise from slashdotters.
First, if the user feedback compels it, then you *do* make design changes in beta. I don't care what wikipedia has to say about it, beta != release candidate.
Second, you clearly didn't bother to read the article, since the underlying design isn't going to be changed anyway.
LOL Your post is spot-on, but what do you expect from a site that uses a broken windows icon for Windows stories and a Gates-Borg icon for Microsoft stories? These are the only topics on this site whose icons contain editorial spin of any kind (and that spin is derragatory, of course). This site really doesn't have any credibility whatsoever when it comes to Microsoft stories. Sad, but true.
You do realize that you can turn off UAC (maybe only if you're an admin, I'm not sure), don't you? Or just use Linux (and be sure to run as "root", since you want to be free to do anything and everything at a whim). Be sure to stay away from Macs, though, as OSX also prompts for operations that Apple thinks are dangerous.
Slashdot Mirror
Those of you calling Gates "evil", "villainous", etc, in order to belittle his philanthropic activities, consider this: ;-)
The companies that Gates "crushed" were rich companies whose execs had become rich themselves.
So Gates took from those rich fat cats (through unethical means, according to the Gates haters), and is now giving to the poor. That makes him a high-tech Robin Hood. And just like the government tried to bring down Robin Hood, they tried to bring down Gates. What say you to that?
No.
Microsoft isn't dying and will do fine without Gates' daily activities. They might even do better.
Microsoft isn't a cult-of-personality like Apple is with regard to Jobs (and we have historical proof that Apple flounders without Jobs at the helm).
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating", so we'll see if Microsoft's claims hold true when the OS is released. But even if it's not "the most secure OS" (if Microsoft really claimed that), they're making progress (which can only be denied by the most biased anti-M$ fanboy lol).
Of course, given the choice, most slashdotters would prefer that Vista be insecure so they have something to bitch about. They lost the stability ammo (although they do continue to talk of BSOD, which are as rare as kernel panics these days), and they desperately don't want to lose the stability ammo. For if the stability ammo goes away (or is sufficiently diminished), all they have left is price.
"You want cheap consumer electronic goods? That's what happens i'm afraid. "
If the iPod were a "cheap consumer electronic good" you might have a point, but the iPod is very expensive for what it does. Apple is making money hand-over-fist due to the huge profit margin on each iPod. Apple could easily afford to reduce the iPod profit margin by N dollars and pass those N dollars per iPod to the workers by way of increasing pay and/or improving working conditions. Either that, or Apple could continue exploiting sweatshop labor but lower the prices of iPods so that they are indeed "cheap". I'm sorry, but charging luxury prices for a sweatshop-produced good is not something to be dismissed lightly.
"And don't just think it's Apple doing this, it's all the big electronics companies. Hell it's not even just electronics, take the dairy industry."
But Apple is the company that's been placed on a pedestal by it's fanbase and the mainstream media as an enlightened, progressive, cool, hip company, above reproach, and Apple has only played into that. Apple's on the pedestal, so they have to risk falling from it.
"The 1984 commercial was aimed at Microsoft, but Apple identified themselves in that with the counter-culture movement, pitted against a totalitarian, conservative regime. They've always targeted the intellectual, liberal elite market. True, being Apple, they don't -- as a company -- actually act like progressives, but they've always branded themselves as the progressive company."
I agree with your point, but I'm pretty sure that the 1984 commercial was aimed at IBM, not Microsoft.
"I would like Windows to do is something like my Mac - Every critical release being a new version number for my OS - I really love the feeling-of-security when my OS goes from 10.4.5 to 10.4.6"
Mac Security Updates don't change the OS version number.
If you examine Apple's Security Updates here, you'll see that the updates that are called "Security Updates" don't change the OS version number. The updates that do change the version number are called "Mac OS X Update" (e.g. "Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update").
LOL
You had no idea what the "ribbon" is (you still don't, BTW), and yet after 5 minutes of reading about them, you feel prepared to make all sorts of pronouncements about how useless they are. Typical know-it-all slashdotter. LOL
Of course, if the ribbon had been invented by Apple, Google, OO.o, or any other of the companies about which you have wet dreams, you'd be praising them to high heaven. Too funny!
I find it sad that you and slashdotters in general support the idea that a product with 2% of the functionality of a richer product should "kill" off the richer product. If that's the future of software, then society is in for a world of crapware. Sure, the crapware will be "free" (as in beer), but that's because the crapware will be so primitive that a developer has no choice but to give it away for free (and support it with ads and whatnot). You support the idea of society being without rich products for the sake of your ideology (or your Microsoft hatred)? Very sad indeed.
Also very hypocritcal on the part of the typical slashdotter. Google's web apps are free as in beer, not as in speech. Google does not release the code of their web apps, so the community is not allowed to "redistribute" the web apps (i.e. host them on other sites for free), nor is the community allowed to derive works from Google's code and "distribute" the derivations (i.e. host them on non-Google sites for free). Also note that the GPL doesn't cover web apps (allowing Google and others to use GPL code in their web apps and distributing those web apps to the public without releasing the code), so as software development moves more and more to feature-deprived web apps, the GPL loses more and more power. In a world where virtually all software is feature-deprived web apps, the GPL is completely irrelevant.
Seems that when it comes down to it, slashdotters are much more concerned with free as in beer than free as in speech.
It's true that most of Microsoft's developers' blogs are at blogs.msdn.com (and related Microsoft-hosted sites), but not all of them. I know two MacBU devs whose blogs are on external sites like Scoble's is.
"Exactly. It's the same as when they went from Word 2 to Word 6 because of the release of WordPerfect 5."
Idiot, Microsoft went from WinWord 2 to WinWord 6 to get in sync with the version number of MacWord (MacWord was introduced well before WinWord).
I guess when your product isn't good enough, you need other ways to get it sold.
Or Microsoft could just give away their product for free, like other vendors who make products that aren't "good enough" to sell to the public.
The media (and slashdot) would rip Microsoft to shreds if they charged to fix OS flaws in a *supported* OS.
;-))
(And before anyone flames me, charging for anti-virus software is completely different from charging to fix genuine OS flaws, so save it.
Well, I'm sure that OS/2 and Amiga would be perfectly safe to run on the internet. :-)
(Not because those systems are secure by any stretch (OS/2 was essentiall IBM's version of Windows (similar design), so it's likely filled with security flaws), but because the userbase is too small for the baddies to target.)
Microsoft seems too dense to realize that they've squandered trust, and need to be above reproach like Caesar's wife (see Shakespear's "Julius Caesar" ;-)). That means that they need to make sure to disclose these kinds of things; failure to do so (before a third party does it for them) just makes them all the less trustworthy. This episode demonstrates sheer idiocy on their part.
The stories regarding this matter keep referring to "data theft" and "stolen data". But while the laptop and external harddrive were stolen, the data itself was not. "Stolen" and "theft" only apply to cases in which the rightful owner no longer has possession of the item in question. So we cannot say that the data itself was "stolen", rather we must say that the rights of the righful data owners were "infringed", right? Indeed, if someone had obtained this data without authorization by hacking into the VA's computers (rather than by stealing a harddrive), then "stolen" and "theft" wouldn't apply at all. Am I right? No? I didn't think so either. ;-)
The hypocrisy on this site is astounding.
6 /02/XPSAdobe.aspx/ 02/613702.aspx/ 03/616022.aspx
Consider this:
1. Adobe's market share in PDF creation software is similar to Microsoft's marketshare in desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs. Therefore, one could argue that Adobe has a "monopoly" in pdf creation software (not 100% share, but nearly so). But to keep some of you from bitching about the use of the term "monopoly" in this case, I'll use the term "quasi-monopoly".
2. Adobe, wanting to protect their "quasi-monopoly", was willing to allow Microsoft Office 2007 to export PDF if Microsoft charged extra for that functionality so as to not undercut the price of Adobe's own PDF creation software. In other words, Adobe wanted to engage in price-fixing with Microsoft in order to protect Adobe's quasi-monopoly. That is what you guys are supporting! Do you really want to go down that road? Surely you'll want to rethink your position, or does your hypocrisy really go that far?
3. Microsoft wasn't bastardizing PDF. What would be the point, since Microsoft is not producing any PDF reader? Since Microsoft isn't creating their own reader, any PDF document producted by Microsoft Office would have to be readable by other readers (and printable by printers), so why bastardize the format? Think logically.
4. If you want to see an example of the PDF produced by Office 2007, try Office 2007 beta 2. Or you can read the PDF version of the latest draft of the OpenXML ECMA spec, a PDF document that was created by Office 2007 beta. Guess what, it's perfectly readable by Acrobat Reader and any other PDF compliant reader.
5. Regarding XPS, XPS is a PDF competitor based on XML, but includes many advances over the current PDF spec (though future PDF specs may add such advances). XPS is part of Vista; XPS's role in Vista is similar to PDF's role in Mac OS X. Microsoft has shared with Adobe info on XPS for several years. Now Microsoft, bending over backwards to allay Adobe's hypocritcal paranoia, is removing from Office 2007 built-in support for both PDF and XPS. Furthermore, Microsoft is leaving it up to OEMs as to whether they want to include XPS support in Vista itself (except for XPS's role as a spool file format for Vista's printing enhacements).
6. Lastly, Microsoft is still going to provide PDF and XPS export support in Office 2007 as free downloadable plug-ins. Adobe's still pissed about this because they want Microsoft to charge for the plug-ins (more of the price-fixing scheme that you guys are supporting).
See these links for sources of the above info:
http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/archive/2006/0
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06
Lastly, please don't you (or the state of MA) ever refer to PDF as "open" in the future. If it's not open for all, then it's not truly open, period.
So every other office suite should be allowed to export to .pdf except Microsoft Office? And you'd probably be one of the first to point to Microsft Office's lack of such functionality as evidence that it sucks compared to OO.o and the like, am I right? Well, at least you're admitting your hypocrisy.
.pdf as an open format, well I guess it's not open at all, now is it?
The funny thing is that those of your ilk were applauding MA's blessing the use of
"There is no "lack of Linux adoption"; at this point, Linux is the most common OS after Windows, with OS X trailing a distant third on servers and a closer third on desktops. Linux supports far more hardware than OS X, and far more hardware out of the box than Windows."
= 2
Really? According to these stat trackers, OSX's share is an order of magnitude larger than that of Linux. OSX is approximately 3% to 4%, and Linux is 1/10th of that.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/May/os.php
I see many here saying that only those that sell software should be liable, while those that give it away for free should not. If such a law were passed, you can bet that FOSS would be killed off in the corporate world, as corporations would gadly rather work with software vendors that can be held liable than those that cannot, as the former have something to lose for having bugs while the latter is free to produce bug-infested crapware. It makes no differnce if the "free" software is actually good; corps would feel safer using software produced by someone that could be held liable.
And as I said in another post, large commercial vendors would survive, as they'd simply buy software liability insurance (ala medical malpractice insurance). Smaller vendors would be hurt if they couldn't afford such insurance.
So FOSS is hurt (corps won't use it because FOSS "vendors" can't be held liable for bugs), small commercial vendors are hurt (since they can't afford software liability insurance), and large commercial vendors thrive since FOSS and small vendors are eliminated.
Too bad inhose software is mostly database manipulation programs in VB, Java, or Perl that are very tedious to write compared to software "products".
Also, much in-house software is based on customizing software "products", so killing off the software "products" industry would have a major effect on in-house.
All this proposal would do is to create a software vendor liability insurance industry. Software vendors would buy liability insurance policies (just like doctors buy medical malpractice insurance policies), and pass the costs on to the customers.
Yes, it's a tough crowd here at Slashdot.
You give yourself too much credit. Slashdot's not a tough crowd at all. Slashdotters generally hate Microsoft, that's all. Those companies that Slashdot favors can put out utter crap and get unqualified praise from slashdotters.
First, if the user feedback compels it, then you *do* make design changes in beta. I don't care what wikipedia has to say about it, beta != release candidate.
Second, you clearly didn't bother to read the article, since the underlying design isn't going to be changed anyway.
LOL
Your post is spot-on, but what do you expect from a site that uses a broken windows icon for Windows stories and a Gates-Borg icon for Microsoft stories? These are the only topics on this site whose icons contain editorial spin of any kind (and that spin is derragatory, of course). This site really doesn't have any credibility whatsoever when it comes to Microsoft stories. Sad, but true.
You do realize that you can turn off UAC (maybe only if you're an admin, I'm not sure), don't you? Or just use Linux (and be sure to run as "root", since you want to be free to do anything and everything at a whim). Be sure to stay away from Macs, though, as OSX also prompts for operations that Apple thinks are dangerous.