Ridiculously untrue, particularly in the context of non-specialised, non-expert users.
There is a difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn".
For example, Linux is extremely easy to use -- if you understand it. Windows is a hell of a lot easier to learn but knowing all about it won't make it much easier to use.
Your comment there describes what is easy to learn.
The CLI appeals to people who are willing to learn, who like learning new things and consider it worthwhile. Once they achieve a level of understanding, the learning is then a one-time investment that continues to pay off into the future, in the form of a system that is easy to use, simple but not oversimplified, elegant, easily automated, that does what you tell it to do but nothing more and nothing less. This is why many Linux users who use a pretty, feature-packed GUI like KDE still keep a terminal window open that they frequently use. The terminal is for non-trivial tasks.
The average Windows user who views learning as an unreasonable burden that should never be expected of anyone who wants to use a complex machine... they avoid the up-front investment of learning to understand the system. Instead, they can jump in and start using the system right now. But they continuously pay for it over time in the form of enjoying few or none of those advantages.
It's like the difference between people who live within their means and use plastic only as a form of payment, saving up until they can actually afford something before they purchase it, versus those who live all the time on credit. The person living on credit gets the stuff they want right now but ultimately pays quite a bit more for it and can quickly find themselves in over their head. The discipline and delayed gratification that the latter is trying so hard to avoid is something that the former considers to be virtues worth cultivating.
Yes indeed! Ignorance is bliss! And you can always rationalize that it's not your JOB to actually understand the problems, just make them go away.
Until, of course, that ignorance has lead you down the garden path to your own demise. I certainly wish it was true that "what you don't know won't hurt you". Unfortunately, in IT in particular, that has never held true for me.
A lot of people have a type of intellectual laziness which they are quite eager to justify. Sometimes they can successfully justify it by placing emphasis on the effort required to truly resolve a matter (while downplaying what would be gained). Sometimes it's obvious (to everyone but them) that they're just making excuses for a personal shortcoming.
The "tell" is that when investigation of a problem really must be done and there's no way around that, they respond with annoyance and disappointment instead of fascination and curiosity.
Sounds like you have poor unix admins that are exactly the reason this mindset is prevalent. I can tell you from 15+ years as a Unix admin, the only times I have "needed" to reboot were: upgrades (OS or hardware), hardware failure, and testing of init scripts. Real, stable, properly administered systems don't need rebooting. I even think this is fair to say of Windows. The problem is, as already described: there are not many good Windows Admins.
Unfortunately Windows is not a terribly open system and one of the biggest selling points of Windows is that less-skilled people can run it. It's not like the Unix command line where you're just going to be lost if you don't understand it, if you're missing basic skills or don't grasp first principles, if you don't have a solid foundation for your knowledge. Less-skilled people don't have the payroll expense of skilled people and that appeals to the PHB types.
It's surprising this works out as well as it does, all things considered, except that the systems require more maintainence, they're more difficult to automate (Windows has *nothing* on even a simple shell script) and they often suffer problems that should have been preventable.
How is that false? In Windows, moving beyond the pretty clicky clicky click interfaces is deep, dark fucking Voodoo that nobody actually understands! There are no serious experts in Windows.
That's the problem I am talking about, yes. You've restated it more succinctly than I did.
The notion that thare are no intermediary skill levels between "drooling noob" and "serious expert" is the false part. That's easy to explain: some Windows users are more skilled than others. If you need a concrete example, some are much better about avoiding malware and such than others. That one in particular isn't so much a matter of what you do, but how you do it.
The thing is, the design of Windows and the culture surrounding it tends to encourage people to believe that they should never, ever have to learn anything about it. The truth is, the users who don't resist gradually acquiring more knowledge over time as they gain experience have a better experience with fewer problems compared to the users I like to call "permanent newbies".
If you expect a permanent newbie to know how to perform a very basic office-type e-mail task on the grounds that he's been using that same e-mail program (i.e. Lotus Notes) since its release in 1989, they switch to resentment mode and fallback to excuses like "I am not a computer expert!" Well that's good, because this task doesn't require an expert. Yet somehow in over 20 years of use the user never learned anything about the program except the one or two features he most commonly uses.
To be that resistant to even accidentally noticing readily accessible pieces of information that you witness on a daily basis... well, it takes a lot more effort than just reading the fucking manual. Really. I'm amazed they can accomplish this at all without daily use of amnesia-inducing drugs. Anyone who has worked front-line tech support or helpdesk jobs has seen this.
If you subscribe to ITIL or Visible Operations ideal, you probably believe that 80% of all IT related outages are self-inflicted due to change.
So for 80% of all IT outages, it does make sense to have a strategy where it is cheaper to rebuild(revert the change) than to repair.
But for the other 20%, it does make sense to investigate further. A virtualization strategy where you could redeploy the offending server while saving the old one out of service for investigation seems ideal.
I agree with investigation in principal, but the blog post seems quite sensational and misleading.
That often happens when a generalized article is written about a scenario that differs from place to place. By that I mean, which approach makes the most sense will depend on the actual problem, the downtime you are facing, the preparations you have made, and the needs of the business or organization. It's not such a one-size-fits-all deal though of course it can be spoken of in general terms.
I think it should be appreciated that a great number of problems are preventable, either through best practices or through redundancy. Wherever it is possible, a good sysadmin would rather invest a little effort into foresight up-front than fail to do so and end up having to perform crisis management.
Could be. One of my favorite cosmological theories is that our universe is a simulation. In the "real" universe, there's a big computer that has a data object for every elementary particle in our universe. The simulation software (probably massively parallel) "steps" through the simulation, by calculating the position and velocity of each particle after the next time quantum. The beings running the simulation can stop it, do a bit of editing, and restart, which explains the religious "miracles" that have been so often reported.
It's hard to imagine how we could test this hypothesis. If we were to do a successful test, the simulation could just be stopped, reloaded from backup, and edited so our test came out inconclusive.
Of course, if this is valid, then we should also consider that the simulation might itself be running in a simulated universe...
That's really not too far from Hermetic thought, which is quite ancient. What follows is an oversimplification I hope is still useful. The main difference could just be that they didn't have computers thousands of years ago. Rather than imagining that the simulation is running on a highly advanced computer that's basically a machine of the ultimate sophistication, they conceive the simulation (the "software") to be thoughts in the mind of God. It's also an explanation for how God could be transcendental, beyond the Universe, omniscient and omnipresent, but not some old man in the clouds you could shake hands with like the more childish notions of God.
The Matrix is based on some very old ideas.
I also think it's fascinating to wonder... if you could see the Universe as a whole, in its entirety, all at once, like perhaps from the perspective of another Universe, what would it look like? Would it look like a single living being, recognizable as such? Would it look sort of like a man even, as in the "we are made in the 'image of God'" idea? What fascinates me about that is the notion of galaxies being like cells in its body, which are made of stars, which have planets, which have organisms, which are made of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of subatomic particles, etc, potentially to infinity. It could be infinite both ways, scaling ever smaller and also scaling ever larger. It's like the fractal Universe idea.
That, in turn, reminds me of the holographic Universe idea. It's a notion of such a fractal nature in terms of interrelatedness. It's an analogy for how the "parts contain the whole". Basically, if you take a glass photographic plate and take an ordinary photograph on it, and then break that plate... you get something like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has an incomplete fraction of the total information. If you put a hologram onto a photographic plate and then break that plate into pieces, you get something quite different. You don't get a jigsaw puzzle at all. If it breaks into 10 pieces, then you get 10 complete holograms containing the full information of the original, just with each of them 1/10th the size of the original.
It's like the notion that truly understanding yourself would require truly understanding the Universe. Carl Sagan may or may not have been thinking something like that when he said, "in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe."
Someone still has to make the images that the point and click types use. That requires real sys-admin work.
Someone still has to write the programs that average end-users run. That requires real programming skill.
Yet I don't see too many average end-users who are skilled programmers.
Point is, you only need one person with actual sysadmin skill to make and maintain an imagine. Hundreds of point-and-click types can then use that image. It happens in large organizations all the time. Why pay for a hundred skilled, experienced sysadmins when you only need one skilled, experienced sysadmin and 99 paper MCSEs? For many businesses this is an easy decision.
Reminds me of our Windoze guy in my previous job. I had run into some kind of problem with XP at home and spent a good amount of time banging my head against it. Finally I told him what was going on and asked what he recommended. "Reinstall XP" was the answer. I thought he was joking, nope he was serious.:P
Not only was he completely serious, he probably can't understand why you might have thought he was joking.
The idea that it's a black box and you shouldn't expect to understand how or why something happened is definitely one of the more subtle costs of Microsoft systems. It lends credibility to the (false) notion, so common among average users, that you're either a completely unskilled newbie or a serious expert who can discern the inner workings of the mysterious black box. It discourages middle ground for intermediary skill levels, the kind of thing that would otherwise occur naturally as users gain experience over time.
Most of all, it's supports the falsehood that it's unreasonable to expect the most basic competence from non-experts.
I’m not a system admin but I don’t see how this is a bad approach.
I see value in finding out what the problem is and why it happened.. if you just blindly re-image then the problem might pop up again at a less opportune time.
But if you know what the problem is... and you have an image of the server in a working state, or a documented procedure on how to set up the server in it’s intended configuration then why would anyone waste time trying to repair it.
I think the issue here is that the need for a business to get a production system back up and operational with as little downtime as possible can sometimes conflict with the principles that most effectively assure sound system administration.
Unix/Linux systems don't just break for no reason, particularly servers with enterprise hardware. The idea that a system just breaks for no apparent reason and a reboot, reset, or re-image is going to actually fix the cause and somehow prevent a future reoccurrence is alien to this realm. That's a mentality that comes from running Windows (esp. previous incarnations) on commodity hardware.
Something on that "known working" image is faulty or capable of breaking. Otherwise, normal use would not have led to a state of system breakage.
The ideal course of action would be to do whatever is necessary to get the system back online, which may include re-imaging, and then discover what is wrong with the "known working" image that eventually broke. That could be greatly assisted, of course, by saving the data (at least the logs) from the known-faulty system prior to re-imaging.
Even though there are ways to be tracked in such a manner across domain, its not accepted. You're just making justifications for hating all of online tracking, including those done by the domain you're visiting. Sites that perform these shady techniques to track your browsing are not smiled upon by the status quo. You're talking about all forms of tracking in your first point, and then justify such a position by presenting techniques usually reserved for use only by porno sites.
This kind of tracking has been happening for ages anyways. If you buy gas with your CC every time, that data can be used to track your travels. Even your licence plate driving past cameras can be used to track you. The point is, you leave cookie crumbs everywhere you go doing everything you do. How does this cookie trail even begin to belong to you? How is it YOUR data? These are the main questions of my original point but you completely dodged them. Instead you chose to attack my intelligence. Bravo Sir.
I don't think I need to explain to you the facts about bandwidth as I assume you're trying somehow to discredit my opinion with that entirely off topic comment; However, you may need to know that slashdot's entire purpose for being are these discussions. You seem to need to be spoon fed this obvious fact though so here comes the airplane open the hanger! VROOOM
You're just making justifications for hating all of online tracking, including those done by the domain you're visiting.
Yes, it's just because I'm so full of hate. It can't possibly be that I oppose something on principle. What is this, mainstream politics?
Sites that perform these shady techniques to track your browsing are not smiled upon by the status quo.
What, you mean like Google? How about Doubleclick? It wouldn't be hard to name plenty of others who perform tracking but I think my point is made. That's another thing you'd have known if you informed yourself about this subject prior to taking a position on it.
You're talking about all forms of tracking in your first point, and then justify such a position by presenting techniques usually reserved for use only by porno sites.
You can use Google to find a porn site but I wouldn't call Google a pornographer.
This kind of tracking has been happening for ages anyways. If you buy gas with your CC every time, that data can be used to track your travels. Even your licence plate driving past cameras can be used to track you. The point is, you leave cookie crumbs everywhere you go doing everything you do. How does this cookie trail even begin to belong to you? How is it YOUR data? These are the main questions of my original point but you completely dodged them. Instead you chose to attack my intelligence. Bravo Sir.
Yes, that kind of tracking is nearly universal. That doesn't make it alright. This is Ethics 101 material here. It's "MY" data because it was created by me, it is about me, and would not exist if I had not created it with my actions. It's "MY" data because the purpose of the credit card companies is to provide a useful service to their customers and the purpose of the local government that issued my license plate is to serve its citizens. Doing business with them doesn't make them my master. This is not difficult to understand.
In some European countries they have strong privacy protection laws. The laws allow you to basically own your private data so that companies need your consent in order to collect and use it. This system of monetizing your private data (so that someone who takes it without paying is basically stealing something of value) is another way to arrange the same level of control.
Also, I didn't insult your intelligence. I pointed out that you failed to understand what I was talking about and that bothering t
When you visit somebodies web server, the information regarding that visit is not your personal property. If you don't want them to record and mine your activities on their website, don't visit that website. Get noscript and live on the internet that way
Thats like walking into a 7/11 and bitching because they're recording you without asking. Its like getting on public transit and bitching at the driver because there are passenger counters installed. Its like going to your local politician up in arms about the traffic counter installed on the road you take home. Frankly, I have no idea what personal data is supposed to mean in this context. You're visiting somebody else's domain. How is a record of that and what you do there, belong to you in any way shape or form?
It would be courteous of you to learn what browser tracking is, how it is performed, and what sorts of data can be gathered before deciding to speak about the subject. That would save me some time and Slashdot some bandwidth.
That the owner of a particular site knows my IP address visited that specific site is not the problem. In short, the problem is that there are multiple ways in which an organization can track your browsing across many different sites that said organization does not own.
This is not like complaining that the local 7/11 recorded my visit. This is more like the local 7/11 hiring someone to follow me around and record every store I visit.
Now that the very most basic bit of knowledge about this subject has been spoonfed to you, perhaps you could revise your position in light of this new information.
How does this protect your privacy? It sounds more like selling your privacy.
I've argued before that the way online advertisers track your browsing habits and otherwise take your personal data without first asking is like a form of piracy. It absolutely amounts to treating you as a resource like so much lumber or livestock. What I found was that many people are willing to make excuses and rationalizations for it. Some of them even acted like it's some kind of public service to invade your privacy in order to spam you with ads for things you are more likely to buy, as though you couldn't decide for yourself what you want, as though it were some epitome of altruism.
So, now that more people are attaching a dollar value to their personal data will that finally be what it takes to get them to value their privacy and reject the idea that they should ever have to surrender it involuntarily? At least in the USA the almighty dollar seems to convince people more readily than the soundest of principles.
we should encourage microsoft to take these kinds of steps. This attitude of "we won't do anything until they do something, but even if they do something, it'll never be good enough" never leads to any kind of progress whatsoever.
Microsoft has earned its reputation and deserves scepticism, but when they do take a positive step forward, then rather than say "well, you know what MS? You're MS, so fuck you", we should say "ok, well, it's a start". Fervent religiosity never helps anyone.
There is a third option which I thoroughly enjoy: that's to consider none of this my problem.
It's interesting discussion but that's about all it is to me. When you don't use Microsoft's products and services you no longer have to care so much about what they do. I will say that encouraging someone to take positive steps is useful the first time or two they act inappropriately. When there is a long history of more than ten years of repeated and deliberate treachery, you're way past that point. There is nothing religious about that.
There are rational reasons to give them the cold shoulder. What kind of psychotic person wants to continue relating to an abuser? Microsoft has repeatedly viewed Open Source as an enemy, has repeatedly lied and spread FUD, has made threats (i.e. patents), has subverted standards committees... and now that they say they want to play nice we're supposed to welcome them with open arms? No, it doesn't and shouldn't work that way. That's referred to as enabling the problem. It guarantees more of the same no matter how well-intentioned it is.
If you want to understand this pathological urge to cuddle up with an entity that has a long history of adversarial and abusive behavior, that's easy. All you have to do is look at all the battered women who convince themselves that "this time he means it, he'll really change" right before they get beaten up again. Is that a model you wish to emulate? I refuse. Trying to rationalize this behavior and make it seem normal is a form of insanity rooted in wishful thinking.
I'd rather make an example of Microsoft and send a message to other companies: you don't mistreat and alienate entire communities like that because one day you may decide you need them after all. Wouldn't that be a nice, healthy contrast to the message we usually send to corporations, which is "we'll keep taking your shit no matter how much of it you dish out"?
What is it about a brand name and a logo that turns so many people into masochists?
No, I'm not saying trust Microsoft implicitly and if they start firing patents against Linux then I'll eat my words. But the fact is that at this moment in time, Microsoft owns the desktop, Windows is supposedly an easy OS for most users, yet there are more virus-ridden PCs and botnets than there ever have been. And not just because of security issues in Windows, more because of silly marketing by Microsoft convincing inexperienced users that they don't need to know anything about how an OS works before using Windows, and they end up downloading all manner of cracked software and warez because of being clueless. And do you really want those people migrating en masse to Linux?
The fact that most Linux users view cluelessness as something that can and should be remedied through a natural process of learning through experience is one of the very best things I like about the platform. It influences not just fellow users but also the developers, the community, and the culture surrounding it.
I'm really not interested in preaching Linux and trying to convert the world to it - when my nephew trashes his Windows PC because of downloading crappy files, his uncle rebuilds it and puts Windows back on it, not Linux. Yep, he gets a few bits of advice about being more careful, but other than that, if he wants to move to Linux he can come and ask me and I'll give him the pros and cons of doing so.
If you respect someone and/or if you respect yourself, then you don't shove something down their throat no matter how wonderful that thing might be. If you tried, then if they have any sense they will resist it. If they accept it, they will (possibly forever) be deprived of a true appreciation of it.
I for one am not such a preacher either. I don't believe in it for many of the same reasons I don't believe in marketing and PR. I believe people should have the self-awareness and the sense to determine for themselves what they want. My only role in the process (if any at all) would be as a reference, a source of information, since I've been using Linux for a long time now.
And let me ask you one final thing - let's say Microsoft did lauch patent attacks on Linux. Do you really believe users like you and me will stand there and do nothing? No, of course not. The first thing that will happen is a "call to arms" and millions of people contributing a few pounds/dollars/euros each to a fighting fund to get the lawyers or whatever else is needed to fight back. Do you not think Microsoft *knows* that? And what would that do to their reputation that is already suffering because of worse evils like Apple?
As I've explained, the patent scare is entirely bogus. If Microsoft could cripple or devastate a potential competitor that easily, they'd have done it by now. It's FUD and that's all it ever was. Using fear as a weapon because of their extreme insecurity about actually having to compete on merit is part of why Microsoft's reputation is "already suffering". This is standard practice for them. They'll use fear, PR, marketing, threats, falsehoods... they'll do anything they can get away with if they think it will improve their position, except improve their own products.
Too many doomsayers are painting too dark a future and they need to lighten up...
There's one really great, highly effective way to experience a darker future: put your trust in something that has proven time and again that it is not trustworthy. That's just a fact. It is not naysaying to acknowledge this basic truth and act accordingly. Microsoft is simply not trustworthy when it comes to Open Source and the thoroughly misguided desire to get in bed with them that some of its members have. If you don't make mistakes and glaring errors of judgment like that, the future can be quite bright.
The only reason MS is being so nice lately is they're more irrelevant than ever. Microsoft can handle being loved and they can handle being hated. What they don't want to face is being ignored. They're hardly obscure yet but they are long-term strategic thinkers so they realize that things are moving in that direction, in baby steps at the moment. The real interesting stuff is coming from Google and Apple while Microsoft is stagnating. Windows 7 is nice but it's not the giant improvement that XP was over Win98. Even the XBox360 is showing its age.
Go back ten years, and you're exactly the same... Microsoft owns the desktop with Windows, the businesses through Exchange and Office, everybody is going "Microsoft is stagnating" Uh no, just no. If anything most companies are now even deeper in the pockets of Microsoft than before through Sharepoint and various other hooks. Many people will continue to use Windows at home because they use Windows at work, and honestly if Microsoft wasn't in a crisis over Vista then Windows 7 is a walk in the park. The only thing it's fighting is 10 years of user skills, routine and procedures built up around WinXP that users and corporations don't want to let go of. Apple has always had the flashier and more stylish stuff and gotten the press attention, they've been the fashion show while people went to the Microsoft store and bought clothes to use. We may review again in 2021, but I'm willing to wager Microsoft is still an IT giant with a business heavy side.
Perhaps "taken for granted" is a more fitting term than "ignored".
I agree that Microsoft is absolutely gigantic and isn't going away anytime soon. They could stop making any profit whatsoever today and still remain in business for years. Their cash reserves and other assets are that extensive.
I think there is some gradual attrition happening though. You're seeing it now the way IE has gradually lost marketshare throughout the years. They still command a large chunk of the marketshare, but nothing like they once did. If the Windows didn't automatically include IE, I doubt the browser would even be relevant today. I think many comparisons could be made to IBM. IBM certainly didn't go away. They just don't unilaterally command this industry anymore.
It's a slow process and will take a long, long time... yet I believe Microsoft is heading in that direction. Too many people are tired of them and too many people are familiar with their treacherous history, despite the few folks you see who act like they walk on water and could do no wrong (FYI that doesn't describe you, but does describe a few posters in this discussion).
" By their nature, open formats are accessible and open to anyone who would like to implement them. " But it might take some time to be an expert on them (e.g. ODT).
... which has been around since at least 2005. They've had six years. In this industry that's a minor eternity.
They have had plenty of time. What they haven't had is the will to do it.
When dealing with organizations, particularly governments and corporations, it is best to completely ignore every word they say. Instead, listen to their actions and what their actions tell you about their intentions and priorities. The communication is far more honest that way.
As a non-zealot Linux guy, I say give Microsoft a chance and those of us who believe there is some "Windows vs Linux" desktop battle to be won need to get over themselves.
Recognizing that it is unwise to invest trust in a company that has a long history of betrayals and dishonest business practices is emphatically not zealotry. It's rationality.
You really think that's what the distrust is about? Fanboy against fanboy? Is that the way you perceive it? No, that just isn't the reality. It's about the fact that Microsoft has a lot of penance to pay before they'd even begin to look trustworthy in the eyes of anyone familiar with their history.
Linux has been incredibly successful in the embedded and server space, it's damn good on the desktop now but users should decide for themselves their OS of choice
You know what's great at interfering with choice? Patents, proprietary file formats, and vendorlock. Are those coming from the Linux community? No.
As far as I'm concerned, if the world ends up as a place where people are interchanging information on PCs that's in an open format, then that's good enough and they can use what they like on the desktop.
And Microsoft is one of the strongest forces opposing the easy interchange of information in open formats. They have been for a long time. If you really celebrate interoperability then you recognize why that's a problem. It's definitely not the people who do everything in the open, have no monopoly, and produce nothing proprietary who are the problem here. If you want to solve a problem, the first step is to identify its source.
If Microsoft observe open source licenses and open up their proprietary formats then they've every right to get involved - and let's face it, they've not yet started a patent war with Linux that everyone has been expecting.
If they want to get involved in Open Source they can do what many others do: contribute code licensed under the GPL. There is absolutely nothing stopping them. No special liason is needed, no new employment positions are required. No, what they want is influence.
The patent war concept is silly. It's just posturing and threatening. Microsoft has viewed Open Source generally and Linux specifically as an enemy for quite some time. If they could cripple or eliminate this enemy so easily, they would have. That's their real fixation with Open Source: they can't just buy it out, they can't just starve it of income, and they can't just use their warchest of patents. In other words, all of their standard tactics won't work here and that scares them. I don't believe Microsoft has ever faced another potential competitor that it couldn't just strong-arm.
I see a spade and I call it a spade. Being honest about Microsoft doesn't make Microsoft look so benevolent and that's not my fault. At every turn they had a choice in the matter. So be it. I'd love for Microsoft to be a truly benevolent and honest company, but I am not going to act like a battered spouse and excuse their long string of abuses by saying "they said they'll change and this time they really mean it!"
Do you regard that as zealotry because it isn't what you'd prefer to hear?
They're hardly being ignored here on Slashdot. Probably even Microsoft's blog doesn't post such a binge of Microsoft PR material...
True, though from reading through the comments I see that most people aren't buying it. That's PR I can appreciate.
It's probably the only kind. They call it "Public Relations" because that's shorter than "a substitute for lack of merit". PR: what you fall back on when the straight unspun truth wouldn't make you look so good.
I suspect this is a PR stunt more than anything. Even if MS were serious about it, it wouldn't work. Combining a for-profit company and the OSS philosophy of selfless idealism (which the OSS community often embraces in its most extreme and uncompromising form, no less) almost always results in failure. Just look at Canonical. They tried to do it, only to end up under fire for even the mildest moves towards making money. Combining "I want to give everything away for free, including all our IP" with "I want to make money" is just a very tough proposition.
The viable Open Source companies like Red Hat generally sell support and enterprise features. It seems to work well for them.
Destroying the open source community and wanting to hire them because "that's where the developers are" are hardly contradictory. They gotta eat somehow...
If that's where the developers are it's partly because Microsoft's business practices and general stagnation drove them there.
Microsoft interoperating more easily with open source formats and tools (better support for open document formats, etc)?
I would like to believe that but there's one reason I doubt it. By their nature, open formats are accessible and open to anyone who would like to implement them. Microsoft wouldn't need outside help for that. If this were important to them they would have already done it.
Abandoning the vendorlock that comes with proprietary file formats goes against their grain. If they do it, it will be reluctantly.
It's not the hardest job in MS. It's a PR stunt. Just being hired is already a win for MS.
The hardest job at MS would be their security experts. Imagine trying to do a job and having every last move you make either neutered or cancelled entirely by Marketing.
MS has a small army of highly skilled people. They could definitely produce higher quality software. I believe they could make malware a rarity if they really wanted to do it. But what's their incentive when you can make billions without going to all the trouble?
The only reason MS is being so nice lately is they're more irrelevant than ever. Microsoft can handle being loved and they can handle being hated. What they don't want to face is being ignored. They're hardly obscure yet but they are long-term strategic thinkers so they realize that things are moving in that direction, in baby steps at the moment. The real interesting stuff is coming from Google and Apple while Microsoft is stagnating. Windows 7 is nice but it's not the giant improvement that XP was over Win98. Even the XBox360 is showing its age.
When things were going so well for MS and the industry was very interested in what they were doing, we got to see how much of a dick they can be. If they start innovating again you can expect their attitude about Open Source to go back to the "Halloween documents" days. I hope Mr. Rabellino understands one thing very well: if you get in bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked.
You know, even if Microsoft really has turned over a new leaf and really has a sincere desire to honestly work with Open Source, even if this really isn't a trap of the "embrace and extend" sort... their past behavior makes them unworthy of our cooperation. They have about ten years of complete asshattery to undo and all of the people who perpetrated that are still running the company, particularly Ballmer. Maybe this is like politics where people have horribly short memories.
Apple made a wise move by basing OSX on BSD Unix. They won't end up reinventing Unix that way and they are starting with a mature codebase that has already experienced a great number of security attacks. Of course that isn't and won't be perfect, but it would be worse still if they started from scratch.
Can you highlight the aspects of Apple's marketing where they "unambiguously state that their products may endanger the user if the user does not learn about and follow good security practices" ?
Oh I get it. This is more "us and them" fanboyism. It's like when I say that something Obama does is bad for the country, somebody who likes the Democrats has to chime in and say "oh yeah well Bush did this and that and it was bad too!" as though that makes it okay. Like it's a big imaginary zero-sum balance sheet, so if I criticize "one side" I must also be supporting "the other side". You're either with us or against us, right? It's a rejection of objectivity and I refuse to validate it.
Why would you embrace an artificial duality and limit yourself like that? Your emotions surrounding the Microsoft Corporation and the Apple Corporation cloud judgment that badly?
Now that I've addressed the origin of your question, I'll address the question itself. Did you notice how I never claimed that "oh, by the way, what I just said about Microsoft's marketing wouldn't apply to Apple"? That was no accident. Microsoft's very visible practice was used as an example to explain a more generally applicable concept. Just like when politicians fuck up the country with their poor decision-making, it's not somehow okay when someone else does it.
I explained the concept. The reader either understands the concept and where it would and would not apply without me having to spell everything out, or not. If not they ask questions like you just did. Sure, I could have explicitly said "there's no reason why this is any less true of Apple". But why should I go out of my way to pre-emptively accommodate every potential failure to understand what I did say and every potential failure to appreciate that if I didn't say something, it was for a reason?
I recognize this type of self-limiting "either-or" thinking for what it is: invalid. I accordingly give it no accommodation when writing a post. I hope that answers your question, though I'm betting it's more answer than you bargained for. You could view it as inflammatory or you could recognize it's the only valid response to what you gave me to work with; that part's up to you.
Don't bother. It's practically an article of faith around here that Windows is badly-made, that Microsoft is a malicious, profiteering drag on innovation, and that Windows OS security is responsible for the spread of malware.
If by "article of faith" you mean "consistent with the long history of this corporation, its products, and its business practices" then I agree. The tone with which you make that statement reminds me of a saying: I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you.
The only thing I would add to your statement is that the security of Windows is part of the problem. The other part of the problem is Microsoft's insistence (because they make more profit this way and never face liability) on marketing Windows to completely clueless users with claims that it's "easier to use than ever!" etc. A significant fraction of the security problems would be mitigated if Microsoft would be more honest and unambiguously state that their products may endanger the user if the user does not learn about and follow good security practices.
As it stands now, users have a sense of entitlement which leads them to believe that security is always someone else's job. Those with this mentality are among the first to be compromised. I don't like this any more than you do but I accept the reality of it. The positive side is it means that users willing to invest in their own experience are far less likely to have problems in this area. So everyone gets to make a choice, and choice is good.
Another significant fraction of the problems would be mitigated if Windows shipped with all non-essential services and background processes disabled by default. A user savvy enough to enable them is more likely to be savvy enough to secure them.
Companies are made up of people, and people change and mature.
I don't understand why people feel a need to make statements like this. Was someone claiming that companies are not made up of people? Was anyone stating that people are entirely static entities who never change?
Microsoft is trying to be a good corporate citizen these days
I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Microsoft has never been more irrelevant. They are no longer the source of all the new and interesting innovations.
frankly, I'd be far more worried about Apple, both from a technical-security perspective and from a market lock-in perspective
Apple made a wise move by basing OSX on BSD Unix. They won't end up reinventing Unix that way and they are starting with a mature codebase that has already experienced a great number of security attacks. Of course that isn't and won't be perfect, but it would be worse still if they started from scratch.
I absolutely agree with you about the market lock-in. I don't like that no matter who is doing it. It's against the users' interests when Microsoft does it and it's against the users' interests when Apple does it. It represents a failure to put the customer first. The only reason why it's so common in the software industry is that most people don't understand computers.
Vendor lock-in sends a clear message though unfortunately it largely falls on deaf ears: it means the vendor does not really believe in its products or its excellence and is afraid of having to compete on a level playing field.
Let me get this straight. It's my fault if someone kills me in my home. I should have cared better about security? It's not the consumers fault for believing when they buy a pc with legal software they have everything they need. When I buy a new car, I'm not going to take it to a garage to check the brakes, you just assume it works. Not everybody knows a thing or 2 about software/hardware. No matter how you turn it. It's still the baddies fault.
The problem with broad analogies is that they fail to account for the fact that one situation is not like the others.
A "pc with legal software" is more like a firearm. At least in the States, it's legal to own. That doesn't mean it isn't potentially dangerous if misused. A general-purpose computer is a powerful machine. It is not a mere appliance. It can both help and harm its owner. Which one occurs depends on the owner and what the owner is willing to invest in his or her own experience.
Computers are not yet ready for the stupid, ignorant, careless, irresponsible, etc. They are not idiot-proof. In the case of Microsoft, they will fail to live up to the marketing claims of security and ease-of-use. It is up to We the People, or if you like, We the Customer to realize this and act accordingly. Certainly the government is not going to make Microsoft liable for damages suffered by compromises of its operating systems. So it's up to the users. Ideal or non-ideal, just or unjust, that is the reality. You either deny it and suffer or acknowledge it and avoid preventable suffering. That much is your choice. It's about the only choice you're going to have in the matter, right or wrong.
Those who disagree with me can always get compromised and complain about how much of a victim they are. As for me, I'd rather inform myself and protect myself. Every adult has the same choice in the matter. Ultimately, reality is a really tough thing with which to argue.
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There is a difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn".
For example, Linux is extremely easy to use -- if you understand it. Windows is a hell of a lot easier to learn but knowing all about it won't make it much easier to use.
Your comment there describes what is easy to learn.
The CLI appeals to people who are willing to learn, who like learning new things and consider it worthwhile. Once they achieve a level of understanding, the learning is then a one-time investment that continues to pay off into the future, in the form of a system that is easy to use, simple but not oversimplified, elegant, easily automated, that does what you tell it to do but nothing more and nothing less. This is why many Linux users who use a pretty, feature-packed GUI like KDE still keep a terminal window open that they frequently use. The terminal is for non-trivial tasks.
The average Windows user who views learning as an unreasonable burden that should never be expected of anyone who wants to use a complex machine ... they avoid the up-front investment of learning to understand the system. Instead, they can jump in and start using the system right now. But they continuously pay for it over time in the form of enjoying few or none of those advantages.
It's like the difference between people who live within their means and use plastic only as a form of payment, saving up until they can actually afford something before they purchase it, versus those who live all the time on credit. The person living on credit gets the stuff they want right now but ultimately pays quite a bit more for it and can quickly find themselves in over their head. The discipline and delayed gratification that the latter is trying so hard to avoid is something that the former considers to be virtues worth cultivating.
Yes indeed! Ignorance is bliss! And you can always rationalize that it's not your JOB to actually understand the problems, just make them go away.
Until, of course, that ignorance has lead you down the garden path to your own demise. I certainly wish it was true that "what you don't know won't hurt you". Unfortunately, in IT in particular, that has never held true for me.
A lot of people have a type of intellectual laziness which they are quite eager to justify. Sometimes they can successfully justify it by placing emphasis on the effort required to truly resolve a matter (while downplaying what would be gained). Sometimes it's obvious (to everyone but them) that they're just making excuses for a personal shortcoming.
The "tell" is that when investigation of a problem really must be done and there's no way around that, they respond with annoyance and disappointment instead of fascination and curiosity.
Sounds like you have poor unix admins that are exactly the reason this mindset is prevalent. I can tell you from 15+ years as a Unix admin, the only times I have "needed" to reboot were: upgrades (OS or hardware), hardware failure, and testing of init scripts. Real, stable, properly administered systems don't need rebooting. I even think this is fair to say of Windows. The problem is, as already described: there are not many good Windows Admins.
Unfortunately Windows is not a terribly open system and one of the biggest selling points of Windows is that less-skilled people can run it. It's not like the Unix command line where you're just going to be lost if you don't understand it, if you're missing basic skills or don't grasp first principles, if you don't have a solid foundation for your knowledge. Less-skilled people don't have the payroll expense of skilled people and that appeals to the PHB types.
It's surprising this works out as well as it does, all things considered, except that the systems require more maintainence, they're more difficult to automate (Windows has *nothing* on even a simple shell script) and they often suffer problems that should have been preventable.
That's the problem I am talking about, yes. You've restated it more succinctly than I did.
The notion that thare are no intermediary skill levels between "drooling noob" and "serious expert" is the false part. That's easy to explain: some Windows users are more skilled than others. If you need a concrete example, some are much better about avoiding malware and such than others. That one in particular isn't so much a matter of what you do, but how you do it.
The thing is, the design of Windows and the culture surrounding it tends to encourage people to believe that they should never, ever have to learn anything about it. The truth is, the users who don't resist gradually acquiring more knowledge over time as they gain experience have a better experience with fewer problems compared to the users I like to call "permanent newbies".
If you expect a permanent newbie to know how to perform a very basic office-type e-mail task on the grounds that he's been using that same e-mail program (i.e. Lotus Notes) since its release in 1989, they switch to resentment mode and fallback to excuses like "I am not a computer expert!" Well that's good, because this task doesn't require an expert. Yet somehow in over 20 years of use the user never learned anything about the program except the one or two features he most commonly uses.
To be that resistant to even accidentally noticing readily accessible pieces of information that you witness on a daily basis ... well, it takes a lot more effort than just reading the fucking manual. Really. I'm amazed they can accomplish this at all without daily use of amnesia-inducing drugs. Anyone who has worked front-line tech support or helpdesk jobs has seen this.
It is smart, but I don't think its very sad.
If you subscribe to ITIL or Visible Operations ideal, you probably believe that 80% of all IT related outages are self-inflicted due to change.
So for 80% of all IT outages, it does make sense to have a strategy where it is cheaper to rebuild(revert the change) than to repair.
But for the other 20%, it does make sense to investigate further. A virtualization strategy where you could redeploy the offending server while saving the old one out of service for investigation seems ideal.
I agree with investigation in principal, but the blog post seems quite sensational and misleading.
That often happens when a generalized article is written about a scenario that differs from place to place. By that I mean, which approach makes the most sense will depend on the actual problem, the downtime you are facing, the preparations you have made, and the needs of the business or organization. It's not such a one-size-fits-all deal though of course it can be spoken of in general terms.
I think it should be appreciated that a great number of problems are preventable, either through best practices or through redundancy. Wherever it is possible, a good sysadmin would rather invest a little effort into foresight up-front than fail to do so and end up having to perform crisis management.
It's VMs all the way down.
Could be. One of my favorite cosmological theories is that our universe is a simulation. In the "real" universe, there's a big computer that has a data object for every elementary particle in our universe. The simulation software (probably massively parallel) "steps" through the simulation, by calculating the position and velocity of each particle after the next time quantum. The beings running the simulation can stop it, do a bit of editing, and restart, which explains the religious "miracles" that have been so often reported.
It's hard to imagine how we could test this hypothesis. If we were to do a successful test, the simulation could just be stopped, reloaded from backup, and edited so our test came out inconclusive.
Of course, if this is valid, then we should also consider that the simulation might itself be running in a simulated universe ...
That's really not too far from Hermetic thought, which is quite ancient. What follows is an oversimplification I hope is still useful. The main difference could just be that they didn't have computers thousands of years ago. Rather than imagining that the simulation is running on a highly advanced computer that's basically a machine of the ultimate sophistication, they conceive the simulation (the "software") to be thoughts in the mind of God. It's also an explanation for how God could be transcendental, beyond the Universe, omniscient and omnipresent, but not some old man in the clouds you could shake hands with like the more childish notions of God.
The Matrix is based on some very old ideas.
I also think it's fascinating to wonder ... if you could see the Universe as a whole, in its entirety, all at once, like perhaps from the perspective of another Universe, what would it look like? Would it look like a single living being, recognizable as such? Would it look sort of like a man even, as in the "we are made in the 'image of God'" idea? What fascinates me about that is the notion of galaxies being like cells in its body, which are made of stars, which have planets, which have organisms, which are made of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of subatomic particles, etc, potentially to infinity. It could be infinite both ways, scaling ever smaller and also scaling ever larger. It's like the fractal Universe idea.
That, in turn, reminds me of the holographic Universe idea. It's a notion of such a fractal nature in terms of interrelatedness. It's an analogy for how the "parts contain the whole". Basically, if you take a glass photographic plate and take an ordinary photograph on it, and then break that plate ... you get something like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has an incomplete fraction of the total information. If you put a hologram onto a photographic plate and then break that plate into pieces, you get something quite different. You don't get a jigsaw puzzle at all. If it breaks into 10 pieces, then you get 10 complete holograms containing the full information of the original, just with each of them 1/10th the size of the original.
It's like the notion that truly understanding yourself would require truly understanding the Universe. Carl Sagan may or may not have been thinking something like that when he said, "in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe."
Someone still has to write the programs that average end-users run. That requires real programming skill.
Yet I don't see too many average end-users who are skilled programmers.
Point is, you only need one person with actual sysadmin skill to make and maintain an imagine. Hundreds of point-and-click types can then use that image. It happens in large organizations all the time. Why pay for a hundred skilled, experienced sysadmins when you only need one skilled, experienced sysadmin and 99 paper MCSEs? For many businesses this is an easy decision.
Reminds me of our Windoze guy in my previous job. I had run into some kind of problem with XP at home and spent a good amount of time banging my head against it. Finally I told him what was going on and asked what he recommended. "Reinstall XP" was the answer. I thought he was joking, nope he was serious. :P
Not only was he completely serious, he probably can't understand why you might have thought he was joking.
The idea that it's a black box and you shouldn't expect to understand how or why something happened is definitely one of the more subtle costs of Microsoft systems. It lends credibility to the (false) notion, so common among average users, that you're either a completely unskilled newbie or a serious expert who can discern the inner workings of the mysterious black box. It discourages middle ground for intermediary skill levels, the kind of thing that would otherwise occur naturally as users gain experience over time.
Most of all, it's supports the falsehood that it's unreasonable to expect the most basic competence from non-experts.
I think the issue here is that the need for a business to get a production system back up and operational with as little downtime as possible can sometimes conflict with the principles that most effectively assure sound system administration.
Unix/Linux systems don't just break for no reason, particularly servers with enterprise hardware. The idea that a system just breaks for no apparent reason and a reboot, reset, or re-image is going to actually fix the cause and somehow prevent a future reoccurrence is alien to this realm. That's a mentality that comes from running Windows (esp. previous incarnations) on commodity hardware.
Something on that "known working" image is faulty or capable of breaking. Otherwise, normal use would not have led to a state of system breakage.
The ideal course of action would be to do whatever is necessary to get the system back online, which may include re-imaging, and then discover what is wrong with the "known working" image that eventually broke. That could be greatly assisted, of course, by saving the data (at least the logs) from the known-faulty system prior to re-imaging.
Even though there are ways to be tracked in such a manner across domain, its not accepted. You're just making justifications for hating all of online tracking, including those done by the domain you're visiting. Sites that perform these shady techniques to track your browsing are not smiled upon by the status quo. You're talking about all forms of tracking in your first point, and then justify such a position by presenting techniques usually reserved for use only by porno sites.
This kind of tracking has been happening for ages anyways. If you buy gas with your CC every time, that data can be used to track your travels. Even your licence plate driving past cameras can be used to track you. The point is, you leave cookie crumbs everywhere you go doing everything you do. How does this cookie trail even begin to belong to you? How is it YOUR data? These are the main questions of my original point but you completely dodged them. Instead you chose to attack my intelligence. Bravo Sir.
I don't think I need to explain to you the facts about bandwidth as I assume you're trying somehow to discredit my opinion with that entirely off topic comment; However, you may need to know that slashdot's entire purpose for being are these discussions. You seem to need to be spoon fed this obvious fact though so here comes the airplane open the hanger! VROOOM
Yes, it's just because I'm so full of hate. It can't possibly be that I oppose something on principle. What is this, mainstream politics?
What, you mean like Google? How about Doubleclick? It wouldn't be hard to name plenty of others who perform tracking but I think my point is made. That's another thing you'd have known if you informed yourself about this subject prior to taking a position on it.
You can use Google to find a porn site but I wouldn't call Google a pornographer.
Yes, that kind of tracking is nearly universal. That doesn't make it alright. This is Ethics 101 material here. It's "MY" data because it was created by me, it is about me, and would not exist if I had not created it with my actions. It's "MY" data because the purpose of the credit card companies is to provide a useful service to their customers and the purpose of the local government that issued my license plate is to serve its citizens. Doing business with them doesn't make them my master. This is not difficult to understand.
In some European countries they have strong privacy protection laws. The laws allow you to basically own your private data so that companies need your consent in order to collect and use it. This system of monetizing your private data (so that someone who takes it without paying is basically stealing something of value) is another way to arrange the same level of control.
Also, I didn't insult your intelligence. I pointed out that you failed to understand what I was talking about and that bothering t
When you visit somebodies web server, the information regarding that visit is not your personal property. If you don't want them to record and mine your activities on their website, don't visit that website. Get noscript and live on the internet that way
Thats like walking into a 7/11 and bitching because they're recording you without asking. Its like getting on public transit and bitching at the driver because there are passenger counters installed. Its like going to your local politician up in arms about the traffic counter installed on the road you take home. Frankly, I have no idea what personal data is supposed to mean in this context. You're visiting somebody else's domain. How is a record of that and what you do there, belong to you in any way shape or form?
It would be courteous of you to learn what browser tracking is, how it is performed, and what sorts of data can be gathered before deciding to speak about the subject. That would save me some time and Slashdot some bandwidth.
That the owner of a particular site knows my IP address visited that specific site is not the problem. In short, the problem is that there are multiple ways in which an organization can track your browsing across many different sites that said organization does not own.
This is not like complaining that the local 7/11 recorded my visit. This is more like the local 7/11 hiring someone to follow me around and record every store I visit.
Now that the very most basic bit of knowledge about this subject has been spoonfed to you, perhaps you could revise your position in light of this new information.
How does this protect your privacy? It sounds more like selling your privacy.
I've argued before that the way online advertisers track your browsing habits and otherwise take your personal data without first asking is like a form of piracy. It absolutely amounts to treating you as a resource like so much lumber or livestock. What I found was that many people are willing to make excuses and rationalizations for it. Some of them even acted like it's some kind of public service to invade your privacy in order to spam you with ads for things you are more likely to buy, as though you couldn't decide for yourself what you want, as though it were some epitome of altruism.
So, now that more people are attaching a dollar value to their personal data will that finally be what it takes to get them to value their privacy and reject the idea that they should ever have to surrender it involuntarily? At least in the USA the almighty dollar seems to convince people more readily than the soundest of principles.
I don't see why this was modded Flamebait.
we should encourage microsoft to take these kinds of steps. This attitude of "we won't do anything until they do something, but even if they do something, it'll never be good enough" never leads to any kind of progress whatsoever.
Microsoft has earned its reputation and deserves scepticism, but when they do take a positive step forward, then rather than say "well, you know what MS? You're MS, so fuck you", we should say "ok, well, it's a start". Fervent religiosity never helps anyone.
There is a third option which I thoroughly enjoy: that's to consider none of this my problem.
It's interesting discussion but that's about all it is to me. When you don't use Microsoft's products and services you no longer have to care so much about what they do. I will say that encouraging someone to take positive steps is useful the first time or two they act inappropriately. When there is a long history of more than ten years of repeated and deliberate treachery, you're way past that point. There is nothing religious about that.
There are rational reasons to give them the cold shoulder. What kind of psychotic person wants to continue relating to an abuser? Microsoft has repeatedly viewed Open Source as an enemy, has repeatedly lied and spread FUD, has made threats (i.e. patents), has subverted standards committees ... and now that they say they want to play nice we're supposed to welcome them with open arms? No, it doesn't and shouldn't work that way. That's referred to as enabling the problem. It guarantees more of the same no matter how well-intentioned it is.
If you want to understand this pathological urge to cuddle up with an entity that has a long history of adversarial and abusive behavior, that's easy. All you have to do is look at all the battered women who convince themselves that "this time he means it, he'll really change" right before they get beaten up again. Is that a model you wish to emulate? I refuse. Trying to rationalize this behavior and make it seem normal is a form of insanity rooted in wishful thinking.
I'd rather make an example of Microsoft and send a message to other companies: you don't mistreat and alienate entire communities like that because one day you may decide you need them after all. Wouldn't that be a nice, healthy contrast to the message we usually send to corporations, which is "we'll keep taking your shit no matter how much of it you dish out"?
What is it about a brand name and a logo that turns so many people into masochists?
The fact that most Linux users view cluelessness as something that can and should be remedied through a natural process of learning through experience is one of the very best things I like about the platform. It influences not just fellow users but also the developers, the community, and the culture surrounding it.
If you respect someone and/or if you respect yourself, then you don't shove something down their throat no matter how wonderful that thing might be. If you tried, then if they have any sense they will resist it. If they accept it, they will (possibly forever) be deprived of a true appreciation of it.
I for one am not such a preacher either. I don't believe in it for many of the same reasons I don't believe in marketing and PR. I believe people should have the self-awareness and the sense to determine for themselves what they want. My only role in the process (if any at all) would be as a reference, a source of information, since I've been using Linux for a long time now.
As I've explained, the patent scare is entirely bogus. If Microsoft could cripple or devastate a potential competitor that easily, they'd have done it by now. It's FUD and that's all it ever was. Using fear as a weapon because of their extreme insecurity about actually having to compete on merit is part of why Microsoft's reputation is "already suffering". This is standard practice for them. They'll use fear, PR, marketing, threats, falsehoods ... they'll do anything they can get away with if they think it will improve their position, except improve their own products.
There's one really great, highly effective way to experience a darker future: put your trust in something that has proven time and again that it is not trustworthy. That's just a fact. It is not naysaying to acknowledge this basic truth and act accordingly. Microsoft is simply not trustworthy when it comes to Open Source and the thoroughly misguided desire to get in bed with them that some of its members have. If you don't make mistakes and glaring errors of judgment like that, the future can be quite bright.
The only reason MS is being so nice lately is they're more irrelevant than ever. Microsoft can handle being loved and they can handle being hated. What they don't want to face is being ignored. They're hardly obscure yet but they are long-term strategic thinkers so they realize that things are moving in that direction, in baby steps at the moment. The real interesting stuff is coming from Google and Apple while Microsoft is stagnating. Windows 7 is nice but it's not the giant improvement that XP was over Win98. Even the XBox360 is showing its age.
Go back ten years, and you're exactly the same... Microsoft owns the desktop with Windows, the businesses through Exchange and Office, everybody is going "Microsoft is stagnating" Uh no, just no. If anything most companies are now even deeper in the pockets of Microsoft than before through Sharepoint and various other hooks. Many people will continue to use Windows at home because they use Windows at work, and honestly if Microsoft wasn't in a crisis over Vista then Windows 7 is a walk in the park. The only thing it's fighting is 10 years of user skills, routine and procedures built up around WinXP that users and corporations don't want to let go of. Apple has always had the flashier and more stylish stuff and gotten the press attention, they've been the fashion show while people went to the Microsoft store and bought clothes to use. We may review again in 2021, but I'm willing to wager Microsoft is still an IT giant with a business heavy side.
Perhaps "taken for granted" is a more fitting term than "ignored".
I agree that Microsoft is absolutely gigantic and isn't going away anytime soon. They could stop making any profit whatsoever today and still remain in business for years. Their cash reserves and other assets are that extensive.
I think there is some gradual attrition happening though. You're seeing it now the way IE has gradually lost marketshare throughout the years. They still command a large chunk of the marketshare, but nothing like they once did. If the Windows didn't automatically include IE, I doubt the browser would even be relevant today. I think many comparisons could be made to IBM. IBM certainly didn't go away. They just don't unilaterally command this industry anymore.
It's a slow process and will take a long, long time ... yet I believe Microsoft is heading in that direction. Too many people are tired of them and too many people are familiar with their treacherous history, despite the few folks you see who act like they walk on water and could do no wrong (FYI that doesn't describe you, but does describe a few posters in this discussion).
" By their nature, open formats are accessible and open to anyone who would like to implement them. "
But it might take some time to be an expert on them (e.g. ODT).
... which has been around since at least 2005. They've had six years. In this industry that's a minor eternity.
They have had plenty of time. What they haven't had is the will to do it.
When dealing with organizations, particularly governments and corporations, it is best to completely ignore every word they say. Instead, listen to their actions and what their actions tell you about their intentions and priorities. The communication is far more honest that way.
Recognizing that it is unwise to invest trust in a company that has a long history of betrayals and dishonest business practices is emphatically not zealotry. It's rationality.
You really think that's what the distrust is about? Fanboy against fanboy? Is that the way you perceive it? No, that just isn't the reality. It's about the fact that Microsoft has a lot of penance to pay before they'd even begin to look trustworthy in the eyes of anyone familiar with their history.
You know what's great at interfering with choice? Patents, proprietary file formats, and vendorlock. Are those coming from the Linux community? No.
And Microsoft is one of the strongest forces opposing the easy interchange of information in open formats. They have been for a long time. If you really celebrate interoperability then you recognize why that's a problem. It's definitely not the people who do everything in the open, have no monopoly, and produce nothing proprietary who are the problem here. If you want to solve a problem, the first step is to identify its source.
If they want to get involved in Open Source they can do what many others do: contribute code licensed under the GPL. There is absolutely nothing stopping them. No special liason is needed, no new employment positions are required. No, what they want is influence.
The patent war concept is silly. It's just posturing and threatening. Microsoft has viewed Open Source generally and Linux specifically as an enemy for quite some time. If they could cripple or eliminate this enemy so easily, they would have. That's their real fixation with Open Source: they can't just buy it out, they can't just starve it of income, and they can't just use their warchest of patents. In other words, all of their standard tactics won't work here and that scares them. I don't believe Microsoft has ever faced another potential competitor that it couldn't just strong-arm.
I see a spade and I call it a spade. Being honest about Microsoft doesn't make Microsoft look so benevolent and that's not my fault. At every turn they had a choice in the matter. So be it. I'd love for Microsoft to be a truly benevolent and honest company, but I am not going to act like a battered spouse and excuse their long string of abuses by saying "they said they'll change and this time they really mean it!"
Do you regard that as zealotry because it isn't what you'd prefer to hear?
They're hardly being ignored here on Slashdot. Probably even Microsoft's blog doesn't post such a binge of Microsoft PR material...
True, though from reading through the comments I see that most people aren't buying it. That's PR I can appreciate.
It's probably the only kind. They call it "Public Relations" because that's shorter than "a substitute for lack of merit". PR: what you fall back on when the straight unspun truth wouldn't make you look so good.
I suspect this is a PR stunt more than anything. Even if MS were serious about it, it wouldn't work. Combining a for-profit company and the OSS philosophy of selfless idealism (which the OSS community often embraces in its most extreme and uncompromising form, no less) almost always results in failure. Just look at Canonical. They tried to do it, only to end up under fire for even the mildest moves towards making money. Combining "I want to give everything away for free, including all our IP" with "I want to make money" is just a very tough proposition.
The viable Open Source companies like Red Hat generally sell support and enterprise features. It seems to work well for them.
Destroying the open source community and wanting to hire them because "that's where the developers are" are hardly contradictory. They gotta eat somehow...
If that's where the developers are it's partly because Microsoft's business practices and general stagnation drove them there.
Microsoft interoperating more easily with open source formats and tools (better support for open document formats, etc)?
I would like to believe that but there's one reason I doubt it. By their nature, open formats are accessible and open to anyone who would like to implement them. Microsoft wouldn't need outside help for that. If this were important to them they would have already done it.
Abandoning the vendorlock that comes with proprietary file formats goes against their grain. If they do it, it will be reluctantly.
It's not the hardest job in MS. It's a PR stunt. Just being hired is already a win for MS.
The hardest job at MS would be their security experts. Imagine trying to do a job and having every last move you make either neutered or cancelled entirely by Marketing.
MS has a small army of highly skilled people. They could definitely produce higher quality software. I believe they could make malware a rarity if they really wanted to do it. But what's their incentive when you can make billions without going to all the trouble?
The only reason MS is being so nice lately is they're more irrelevant than ever. Microsoft can handle being loved and they can handle being hated. What they don't want to face is being ignored. They're hardly obscure yet but they are long-term strategic thinkers so they realize that things are moving in that direction, in baby steps at the moment. The real interesting stuff is coming from Google and Apple while Microsoft is stagnating. Windows 7 is nice but it's not the giant improvement that XP was over Win98. Even the XBox360 is showing its age.
When things were going so well for MS and the industry was very interested in what they were doing, we got to see how much of a dick they can be. If they start innovating again you can expect their attitude about Open Source to go back to the "Halloween documents" days. I hope Mr. Rabellino understands one thing very well: if you get in bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked.
You know, even if Microsoft really has turned over a new leaf and really has a sincere desire to honestly work with Open Source, even if this really isn't a trap of the "embrace and extend" sort ... their past behavior makes them unworthy of our cooperation. They have about ten years of complete asshattery to undo and all of the people who perpetrated that are still running the company, particularly Ballmer. Maybe this is like politics where people have horribly short memories.
Can you highlight the aspects of Apple's marketing where they "unambiguously state that their products may endanger the user if the user does not learn about and follow good security practices" ?
Oh I get it. This is more "us and them" fanboyism. It's like when I say that something Obama does is bad for the country, somebody who likes the Democrats has to chime in and say "oh yeah well Bush did this and that and it was bad too!" as though that makes it okay. Like it's a big imaginary zero-sum balance sheet, so if I criticize "one side" I must also be supporting "the other side". You're either with us or against us, right? It's a rejection of objectivity and I refuse to validate it.
Why would you embrace an artificial duality and limit yourself like that? Your emotions surrounding the Microsoft Corporation and the Apple Corporation cloud judgment that badly?
Now that I've addressed the origin of your question, I'll address the question itself. Did you notice how I never claimed that "oh, by the way, what I just said about Microsoft's marketing wouldn't apply to Apple"? That was no accident. Microsoft's very visible practice was used as an example to explain a more generally applicable concept. Just like when politicians fuck up the country with their poor decision-making, it's not somehow okay when someone else does it.
I explained the concept. The reader either understands the concept and where it would and would not apply without me having to spell everything out, or not. If not they ask questions like you just did. Sure, I could have explicitly said "there's no reason why this is any less true of Apple". But why should I go out of my way to pre-emptively accommodate every potential failure to understand what I did say and every potential failure to appreciate that if I didn't say something, it was for a reason?
I recognize this type of self-limiting "either-or" thinking for what it is: invalid. I accordingly give it no accommodation when writing a post. I hope that answers your question, though I'm betting it's more answer than you bargained for. You could view it as inflammatory or you could recognize it's the only valid response to what you gave me to work with; that part's up to you.
If by "article of faith" you mean "consistent with the long history of this corporation, its products, and its business practices" then I agree. The tone with which you make that statement reminds me of a saying: I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you.
The only thing I would add to your statement is that the security of Windows is part of the problem. The other part of the problem is Microsoft's insistence (because they make more profit this way and never face liability) on marketing Windows to completely clueless users with claims that it's "easier to use than ever!" etc. A significant fraction of the security problems would be mitigated if Microsoft would be more honest and unambiguously state that their products may endanger the user if the user does not learn about and follow good security practices.
As it stands now, users have a sense of entitlement which leads them to believe that security is always someone else's job. Those with this mentality are among the first to be compromised. I don't like this any more than you do but I accept the reality of it. The positive side is it means that users willing to invest in their own experience are far less likely to have problems in this area. So everyone gets to make a choice, and choice is good.
Another significant fraction of the problems would be mitigated if Windows shipped with all non-essential services and background processes disabled by default. A user savvy enough to enable them is more likely to be savvy enough to secure them.
I don't understand why people feel a need to make statements like this. Was someone claiming that companies are not made up of people? Was anyone stating that people are entirely static entities who never change?
I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Microsoft has never been more irrelevant. They are no longer the source of all the new and interesting innovations.
Apple made a wise move by basing OSX on BSD Unix. They won't end up reinventing Unix that way and they are starting with a mature codebase that has already experienced a great number of security attacks. Of course that isn't and won't be perfect, but it would be worse still if they started from scratch.
I absolutely agree with you about the market lock-in. I don't like that no matter who is doing it. It's against the users' interests when Microsoft does it and it's against the users' interests when Apple does it. It represents a failure to put the customer first. The only reason why it's so common in the software industry is that most people don't understand computers.
Vendor lock-in sends a clear message though unfortunately it largely falls on deaf ears: it means the vendor does not really believe in its products or its excellence and is afraid of having to compete on a level playing field.
Let me get this straight. It's my fault if someone kills me in my home. I should have cared better about security?
It's not the consumers fault for believing when they buy a pc with legal software they have everything they need. When I buy a new car, I'm not going to take it to a garage to check the brakes, you just assume it works. Not everybody knows a thing or 2 about software/hardware.
No matter how you turn it. It's still the baddies fault.
The problem with broad analogies is that they fail to account for the fact that one situation is not like the others.
A "pc with legal software" is more like a firearm. At least in the States, it's legal to own. That doesn't mean it isn't potentially dangerous if misused. A general-purpose computer is a powerful machine. It is not a mere appliance. It can both help and harm its owner. Which one occurs depends on the owner and what the owner is willing to invest in his or her own experience.
Computers are not yet ready for the stupid, ignorant, careless, irresponsible, etc. They are not idiot-proof. In the case of Microsoft, they will fail to live up to the marketing claims of security and ease-of-use. It is up to We the People, or if you like, We the Customer to realize this and act accordingly. Certainly the government is not going to make Microsoft liable for damages suffered by compromises of its operating systems. So it's up to the users. Ideal or non-ideal, just or unjust, that is the reality. You either deny it and suffer or acknowledge it and avoid preventable suffering. That much is your choice. It's about the only choice you're going to have in the matter, right or wrong.
Those who disagree with me can always get compromised and complain about how much of a victim they are. As for me, I'd rather inform myself and protect myself. Every adult has the same choice in the matter. Ultimately, reality is a really tough thing with which to argue.