There is a problem though, of course, and that's when choice is ripped away from me by technical means.
That's nothing new... CSS was one of the first examples of ripping away your rights via technical measures. It gets really bad, though, when you are legally prevented from removing such measures yourself or even trafficking in the tools to do so (see: DMCA.) The combination of legal controls enforced by technological means is disastrous, but that's precisely where we're heading, like it or not.
Personally, I stopped using QuickTime on the PC since Apple bundled it with iTunes. Sometimes I like to play.mov files, but (and this is probably hard for Apple's marketing people to believe) I don't use iTunes and have no interest in iTunes or FairPlay and I don't own an iPod. I tried iTunes once about year ago, it took out my XP system and I never bothered with it again. Since I found QuickTime Alternative for playing video I haven't looked back.
However, I do believe it is unethical for a software vendor to release software with serious bugs and simultaneously remove access to previous versions. I don't care if it's "free" software or not, if a user is unable to revert to a previous version (at least, the previous version) as a software vendor you're being very disrespectful.
Win2K had write-caching (lazy writes) on by default, consequently you needed to use the "Safely Remove" option to flush any open file buffers to disk. XP has write-caching OFF by default, so it isn't quite so necessary: just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.
when their business revolves around making me-too parodies of competitors innovative products.
So what? Competition often involves duplicating or emulating a competitor's efforts, particularly when there aren't many ways to solve a particular problem. The entire patent and copyright systems in the U.S. were once geared toward encouraging the creation of new ideas and products, with the intent that they would eventually become the property of everyone. Consumers benefit when good product ideas are promulgated throughout an entire industry. Frankly, I'd like to see Microsoft steal more of the good stuff from other operating systems rather than simply ladling in more DRM and SFX.
The fact that Microsoft isn't innovative is largely irrelevant when deciding if they are a good company or not, if you define innovative as meaning the development of novel products in-house. Many companies acquire technology originally developed outside the confines of their own organization. Is Google a bad company because they bought YouTube? Is Apple a bad company simply because they used some ideas originally developed by PARC? Windows NT (and all derivative OSes) benefited from technology originally developed by DEC and taken to Microsoft by Dave Cutler and his people. This idea that a company is somehow defective because it doesn't do everything on its own is a bit off-base. The fact that Microsoft point-blank steals a lot of technology, denies that fact, and the refuses to pay the originators is more to the point, however.
People spend a lot of time complaining about the unoriginality of Microsoft's products. Who cares? Graphical operating system technology is becoming fairly mature and commoditized at this point, as a matter of fact most users don't particularly want novelty anymore... they want efficiency and familiarity because computers are no longer expensive gadgets but necessary tools. In a sense, the user base has become more conservative with time and less tolerant of gratuitous changes. That's hurting Microsoft, because those selfsame users aren't really seeing a clear need for the latest-greatest any more.
For example, I don't want my socket set working differently every few months, I want the damn things to do their jobs in a consistent manner. Yet, once I did buy a new set because the handle had some kind of gearing that gave a mechanical advantage... very useful and worth the money. Operating systems are no different in that respect: if you want me to invest in something new, make damn sure it's worth my effort, otherwise I'll just be seriously torqued off. Apple has traditionally had a much better (not perfect, but better) grasp of this aspect of the user mentality than Microsoft.
In the end, this has less to do with the originality of the ideas that Microsoft turns into products as it does with the quality of those implementations. By taking the comparatively poor quality of the products that Microsoft has sold over the years in concert with the equally-poor ethical (indeed, outright criminal) standards upon which that company operates... now you can honestly say you have a bad company. Of course, if you're talking about profit-margin and growth rate, hell, Microsoft is an awesome corporation.
What does your remark have to do with anything? There are ethical forms of employment, and others that are less so. In any event, the OP chose to write malware for a living: presumably he had other options available. Consequently, criticism of that personal decision is perfectly legitimate, however much it offends you. On the other hand, none of us have a choice about where our respective government(s) decide to throw our tax dollars.
I believe Mr. Jandreau used to work at Paypal, but I could be mistaken.
And he's wrong about one thing. He's not the CEO of Lycos, so there most certainly are other people to whom she could have spoken.
Many years ago, back when Mr. Coffee-style coffeemakers started to become common, my father bought one from Proctor & Gamble. Nice machine, but unfortunately the coffee it brewed had a rather unpleasant chemical taste. The day after he bought it he tried to return it to the store where he originally bought it... no dice. They were jerks. So he called up the Customer Service number from the owner's manual: he tried calling several times and got different people that refused to help, "Sorry, we don't replace coffeemakers because you don't like your coffee", etc. etc. Spoke to supervisors, no help there either. Finally he'd had enough and called up the CEO of Proctor and Gamble, and explained the situation. The gentleman was very pleasant, and cheerfully admitted that that model had a problem with the type of plastic used in a small tube that carried water from the reservoir to the heater, and overnighted Dad a brand new model for no charge.
A similar story happened to a friend of mine. He had sent several high-speed modems back to U.S. Robotics (about a year or so after 3Com acquired them) for repair. Keep in mind that each of these devices cost nearly a grand at the time, so we aren't talking chump change. Well, U.S. Robotics' service department issued RMA numbers, took receipt of the modems... and lost them. Now, that wouldn't have been so bad if they had at least admitted that they had lost the equipment and offered to replace it. No, they simply denied that he had ever sent the stuff in. "But I have RMA numbers and receipts from UPS!" he told them. Didn't matter... nobody there would own up to knowing anything about it, but they were happy to forward his call to the Sales Department so he could order some more. After several hours of annoying various secretaries at USR, he ended up talking to a woman who was the VP in charge of inside service. She was very displeased to hear about his situation, apologized profusely and explained that the department was still in flux after the 3Com takeover, and stated that she would get to the bottom of it personally. She did and he got his stuff back, all fixed, a couple of days later. Amazing how a little pressure from above made all that nonexistent hardware magically reappear.
The moral of the story is: don't take no for an answer and don't let some underling tell you "there's nobody higher than me you can talk to." That's a line of crap designed to get the pissed-off customer to simply go away and not get them in any hot water with their bosses. Don't accept it: climb the corporate ladder until you get some satisfaction, even if it is only an apology.
They 'now seemingly make many decisions based on these two things: 1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality) 2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy.
This is not exactly a revolutionary observation. Ever since the PC entered the corporate market Microsoft has been this way. The "end user" has been nothing more than a cash cow to be milked.
On the other hand, in the State in which I live, the cops cannot be held liable for making mistakes, which I'm sure does little to encourage them to make fewer mistakes.
the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.
... is sure to make it useless. I just bought a Samsung phone from Sprint, and the Bluetooth headset works great but that's about all you can do with the thing. Oh, you can blow "business cards" back and forth, but only one at a time, and forget about up/downloading images from the camera. Unless, of course, you want to pay more juice to Sprint for their "PCS Vision" service, which I refuse to do because I don't think I should have to pay to send my own data two feet to my PC. It is a nice phone (the camera is just a gimmick to me at 640x480) and that's all I bought it for, but the attitude of these companies irritates me.
Gagh. Honestly, the overall sleaziness of U.S. carriers is enough to make you want to throw up.
Well, it just goes to make your point even more, I'd say. I dunno how many squibs get fired off in a typical Chuck Norris flick but it's got to be in the thousands.
You might want to re-read the parent's post again, and take the sentence "After all if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry" in context. He was commenting on the ridiculousness of that belief, not trying to promote it.
On the other hand, it really doesn't matter what you or I or the Feds think constitutes a small or medium-sized company. It's what Microsoft thinks is a small or medium-sized company. And I have no idea what that is.
The Internet changed the face of television the instant Bram Cohen released the Bit Torrent protocol. Every TV show is available for download, usually within a day or so of initial broadcast, and usually have the commercials stripped out. Besides, if Comcast and the other big boys released an open PVR with swarming capabilities at a reasonable price, bandwidth issues would probably disappear since all that video would stay on their own backbone and they wouldn't be paying peering charges for it.
You don't get a free pass with a comment like that. It's easy to look at what Congress has done here, and say, "boy, is the U.S. fucked." Unfortunately, we aren't alone. Europe is taking our shiny new copyright and patent crap and running with it (and making it even worse in some respects, if that's possible.) Furthermore, there's a lot of pressure being applied to bring other countries in line, pardon me, "harmonized", with certain unpleasant aspects U.S. IP law. We're all going down the tubes together: we're perhaps a couple of elbow joints ahead of everyone else, but not that's all. Too many powerful people around the world want control of their respective economies, and one way you do that is by manipulating and suppressing technological advancement.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, launch tubes for nuclear-tipped missiles, of course. What else would a moonbase be good for?
There is a problem though, of course, and that's when choice is ripped away from me by technical means.
... CSS was one of the first examples of ripping away your rights via technical measures. It gets really bad, though, when you are legally prevented from removing such measures yourself or even trafficking in the tools to do so (see: DMCA.) The combination of legal controls enforced by technological means is disastrous, but that's precisely where we're heading, like it or not.
That's nothing new
Personally, I stopped using QuickTime on the PC since Apple bundled it with iTunes. Sometimes I like to play .mov files, but (and this is probably hard for Apple's marketing people to believe) I don't use iTunes and have no interest in iTunes or FairPlay and I don't own an iPod. I tried iTunes once about year ago, it took out my XP system and I never bothered with it again. Since I found QuickTime Alternative for playing video I haven't looked back.
However, I do believe it is unethical for a software vendor to release software with serious bugs and simultaneously remove access to previous versions. I don't care if it's "free" software or not, if a user is unable to revert to a previous version (at least, the previous version) as a software vendor you're being very disrespectful.
You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat.
...
That's really very funny but I could well live without the image it evoked.
Oh, the humanity
Win2K had write-caching (lazy writes) on by default, consequently you needed to use the "Safely Remove" option to flush any open file buffers to disk. XP has write-caching OFF by default, so it isn't quite so necessary: just make sure your access LED stops flickering before you yank your stick out.
when their business revolves around making me-too parodies of competitors innovative products.
... they want efficiency and familiarity because computers are no longer expensive gadgets but necessary tools. In a sense, the user base has become more conservative with time and less tolerant of gratuitous changes. That's hurting Microsoft, because those selfsame users aren't really seeing a clear need for the latest-greatest any more.
... very useful and worth the money. Operating systems are no different in that respect: if you want me to invest in something new, make damn sure it's worth my effort, otherwise I'll just be seriously torqued off. Apple has traditionally had a much better (not perfect, but better) grasp of this aspect of the user mentality than Microsoft.
... now you can honestly say you have a bad company. Of course, if you're talking about profit-margin and growth rate, hell, Microsoft is an awesome corporation.
So what? Competition often involves duplicating or emulating a competitor's efforts, particularly when there aren't many ways to solve a particular problem. The entire patent and copyright systems in the U.S. were once geared toward encouraging the creation of new ideas and products, with the intent that they would eventually become the property of everyone. Consumers benefit when good product ideas are promulgated throughout an entire industry. Frankly, I'd like to see Microsoft steal more of the good stuff from other operating systems rather than simply ladling in more DRM and SFX.
The fact that Microsoft isn't innovative is largely irrelevant when deciding if they are a good company or not, if you define innovative as meaning the development of novel products in-house. Many companies acquire technology originally developed outside the confines of their own organization. Is Google a bad company because they bought YouTube? Is Apple a bad company simply because they used some ideas originally developed by PARC? Windows NT (and all derivative OSes) benefited from technology originally developed by DEC and taken to Microsoft by Dave Cutler and his people. This idea that a company is somehow defective because it doesn't do everything on its own is a bit off-base. The fact that Microsoft point-blank steals a lot of technology, denies that fact, and the refuses to pay the originators is more to the point, however.
People spend a lot of time complaining about the unoriginality of Microsoft's products. Who cares? Graphical operating system technology is becoming fairly mature and commoditized at this point, as a matter of fact most users don't particularly want novelty anymore
For example, I don't want my socket set working differently every few months, I want the damn things to do their jobs in a consistent manner. Yet, once I did buy a new set because the handle had some kind of gearing that gave a mechanical advantage
In the end, this has less to do with the originality of the ideas that Microsoft turns into products as it does with the quality of those implementations. By taking the comparatively poor quality of the products that Microsoft has sold over the years in concert with the equally-poor ethical (indeed, outright criminal) standards upon which that company operates
Apples to oranges. You chose to make this an anti-American rant, consequently I've lost interest in the thread. Good day.
I wasn't trying to be logical I was trying to be funny.
I guess I'll have to work harder next time.
What does your remark have to do with anything? There are ethical forms of employment, and others that are less so. In any event, the OP chose to write malware for a living: presumably he had other options available. Consequently, criticism of that personal decision is perfectly legitimate, however much it offends you. On the other hand, none of us have a choice about where our respective government(s) decide to throw our tax dollars.
Those 140,000 "exploits" are largely redundant and exploit a small number of actual vulnerabilities - most of them being the user.
... but if so the number of vulnerabilities is in the hundreds of millions.
That may be
I believe Mr. Jandreau used to work at Paypal, but I could be mistaken.
... no dice. They were jerks. So he called up the Customer Service number from the owner's manual: he tried calling several times and got different people that refused to help, "Sorry, we don't replace coffeemakers because you don't like your coffee", etc. etc. Spoke to supervisors, no help there either. Finally he'd had enough and called up the CEO of Proctor and Gamble, and explained the situation. The gentleman was very pleasant, and cheerfully admitted that that model had a problem with the type of plastic used in a small tube that carried water from the reservoir to the heater, and overnighted Dad a brand new model for no charge.
... and lost them. Now, that wouldn't have been so bad if they had at least admitted that they had lost the equipment and offered to replace it. No, they simply denied that he had ever sent the stuff in. "But I have RMA numbers and receipts from UPS!" he told them. Didn't matter ... nobody there would own up to knowing anything about it, but they were happy to forward his call to the Sales Department so he could order some more. After several hours of annoying various secretaries at USR, he ended up talking to a woman who was the VP in charge of inside service. She was very displeased to hear about his situation, apologized profusely and explained that the department was still in flux after the 3Com takeover, and stated that she would get to the bottom of it personally. She did and he got his stuff back, all fixed, a couple of days later. Amazing how a little pressure from above made all that nonexistent hardware magically reappear.
And he's wrong about one thing. He's not the CEO of Lycos, so there most certainly are other people to whom she could have spoken.
Many years ago, back when Mr. Coffee-style coffeemakers started to become common, my father bought one from Proctor & Gamble. Nice machine, but unfortunately the coffee it brewed had a rather unpleasant chemical taste. The day after he bought it he tried to return it to the store where he originally bought it
A similar story happened to a friend of mine. He had sent several high-speed modems back to U.S. Robotics (about a year or so after 3Com acquired them) for repair. Keep in mind that each of these devices cost nearly a grand at the time, so we aren't talking chump change. Well, U.S. Robotics' service department issued RMA numbers, took receipt of the modems
The moral of the story is: don't take no for an answer and don't let some underling tell you "there's nobody higher than me you can talk to." That's a line of crap designed to get the pissed-off customer to simply go away and not get them in any hot water with their bosses. Don't accept it: climb the corporate ladder until you get some satisfaction, even if it is only an apology.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Never forget that the devil you know is still a devil!
They 'now seemingly make many decisions based on these two things: 1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality) 2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy.
This is not exactly a revolutionary observation. Ever since the PC entered the corporate market Microsoft has been this way. The "end user" has been nothing more than a cash cow to be milked.
Rather like a pair of Klingons, actually.
On the other hand, in the State in which I live, the cops cannot be held liable for making mistakes, which I'm sure does little to encourage them to make fewer mistakes.
Although I would hate to have to be the guy who sticks his finer in that hole.
... I've stuck my finer into plenty of nice holes over the years.
I dunno
the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.
... is sure to make it useless. I just bought a Samsung phone from Sprint, and the Bluetooth headset works great but that's about all you can do with the thing. Oh, you can blow "business cards" back and forth, but only one at a time, and forget about up/downloading images from the camera. Unless, of course, you want to pay more juice to Sprint for their "PCS Vision" service, which I refuse to do because I don't think I should have to pay to send my own data two feet to my PC. It is a nice phone (the camera is just a gimmick to me at 640x480) and that's all I bought it for, but the attitude of these companies irritates me.
Gagh. Honestly, the overall sleaziness of U.S. carriers is enough to make you want to throw up.
Well, it just goes to make your point even more, I'd say. I dunno how many squibs get fired off in a typical Chuck Norris flick but it's got to be in the thousands.
You might want to re-read the parent's post again, and take the sentence "After all if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have to worry" in context. He was commenting on the ridiculousness of that belief, not trying to promote it.
Two orders, actually.
On the other hand, it really doesn't matter what you or I or the Feds think constitutes a small or medium-sized company. It's what Microsoft thinks is a small or medium-sized company. And I have no idea what that is.
Well, at a nominal .50c per mile, I suspect he could get the maximum writeoff shortly after launch.
The Internet changed the face of television the instant Bram Cohen released the Bit Torrent protocol. Every TV show is available for download, usually within a day or so of initial broadcast, and usually have the commercials stripped out. Besides, if Comcast and the other big boys released an open PVR with swarming capabilities at a reasonable price, bandwidth issues would probably disappear since all that video would stay on their own backbone and they wouldn't be paying peering charges for it.
Eventually the ability to innovate is lost, others take the lead, and the cycle can repeat.
I tend to agree, but in the case of nations we are generally not talking about a cycle, but a decline.
You don't get a free pass with a comment like that. It's easy to look at what Congress has done here, and say, "boy, is the U.S. fucked." Unfortunately, we aren't alone. Europe is taking our shiny new copyright and patent crap and running with it (and making it even worse in some respects, if that's possible.) Furthermore, there's a lot of pressure being applied to bring other countries in line, pardon me, "harmonized", with certain unpleasant aspects U.S. IP law. We're all going down the tubes together: we're perhaps a couple of elbow joints ahead of everyone else, but not that's all. Too many powerful people around the world want control of their respective economies, and one way you do that is by manipulating and suppressing technological advancement.