Check the times. This was posted first, the one you're quoting second. I'm happy to recycle. The order makes no difference. Roughly drafted is still an utterly pointless site with, lies, untruths, half-truths, revisions etc. on it. Linking to that article twice (or even once), is absolutely pointless.
I lived, worked and developed software through the era. I did the Google post to show the AC how dumb it was to try to revise history. That's the point! The google post doesn't show anything. It comes up with stuff like the roughly drafted article, which means absolutely nothing. Seriously, if you lived and developed software through the era, you of all people should know that there is nothing that makes sense in that article.
I guess you're still trying. Good luck with that, 'cause theres plenty of us with memories intact. It's the other way around. Honestly, I'm not even an MS supporter. There's plenty of areas where I'll give them crap. You won't catch me defending them when for, say, Zunes not being PlaysForSure compatible (just pulling out some example at random). But the way the conversation on/. constantly gets skewed and constantly degenerates to the same "microsoft sucks, windows is insecure, linux rules, apple rules" nonsense has frankly gotten really annoying. TFA was about information for Windows 7. I'm interested in reading what people have to say about that (positive or negative), but it's impossible to even find such comments when they constantly get drowned out by posts like yours. And seriously man -- roughly drafted? And the article accusing MS of being a main oppressor of African Americans?? Your original point might have had some merit (highlighting a bait-and-switch or vaporware strategy) but it got completely discredited with those links.
Somebody probably threw a chair at him when he was a small child. That's pretty funny:)
That, or he feels Microsoft is a good example of the root cause of a lot of the problems the world faces. I really didn't see that kind of depth in his posts. That's an interesting thought though.
Your psychobabble ridicule method follows the pattern pioneered by the Stalinists, by the way. Address your opponents like they're mentally unstable, and their angst is a psychological problem (Stalin took it further by institutionalizing them- you don't have that power at the moment.) Aw c'mon man -- did you see the links he had posted to? Alright, I'm still processing what you said here -- I guess that last paragraph was a bit unnecessary. It was not untrue, but did not necessarily add anything to the dialog.
Somebody was already kind enough to give us a link to the roughlydrafted article. Oh wait -- that was you!. Of course that article is still not worth the disk space it's saved on for very obvious reasons.
But wait, we have more evidence here -- the infamous google test. Did you even read some of the nonsense that popped up? The second result from google was that roughly drafted nonsense. Plus, I just googled "slashdot africa" and got 5.4 million results back, which means.. well, I'm not sure what it means other than the fact that your google search is meaningless.
And then you link to some article that uses some incredibly convoluted logic to claim that MS is one of the worst oppressors of the African American community?? Have you absolutely no conscience? How do you get to the point where your hatred blinds you to this extent? I'm really curious to know. I mean, there are wars going on that could have been avoided (Iraq springs to mind), pockets of racists getting away with just anything they want to (Jena 6), desperate poverty in the third world, and many more things that are worth this kind of passionate hatred. I'm really curious to know what MS did that pissed you off to this extent.
Jokes aside, I don't think the final version will be called Windows 7 -- that's just the development name they are using. Just like there will be no product called Longhorn (Vista and Windows Server 2008).. I doubt the folks at MS know what they're gonna call it yet..
The article is full of crap like:
Rather than just bluffing its hand like other companies, Microsoft played the game with a set of cards in one hand, while waving the illusion of another set of cards in the other hand. The fake set of cards were highly distracting because they looked like a much better hand than anyone else could possibly have. and:
Microsoft struggled with the complex reality of building its own operating system without IBM. and:
Despite quaint stories about Bill Gates singlehandedly writing DOS on the back of a napkin, Microsoft had no real experience in building or designing operating systems at all. Throughout the second half of the 80s, it had relied on IBM to develop OS/2 as the replacement for DOS. And that's just from the first page or so of a roughly 7 to 10 page article. I want back the 5 minutes of my life that I wasted reading that crap. Twisted facts, shameless bias, bungled timelines is all there was in it. Jeez!
Yes, there are some solutions. I'm mostly aware of those in the windows world, but from reading this thread I'm sure there are others from third-party vendors as well.
You're dead right that encryption requiring a password (simple or complex) is easy to crack -- that's a gimmick, not true security.
Encryption using an external device isn't really necessary though. This line of thought actually confuses two separate issues -- Authentication, and Encryption.
The Authentication part (as I'm sure you're aware) is more about "Are you who you say you are". This can be done with your standard challenge response (user and pass), biometrics, or a hardware solution (such as smart cards). All have thier pros and cons and depend on educating users on the correct procedures. Biometrics are insecure for a variety of reasons (won't get into it here), user/pass is insecure for another variety of reasons. Smart cards of course can be stolen/borrowed/lent but they at least have a password (or Pin) as well. At this point, they seem to be one of the safer Authentication methods.
Then comes the Encryption part of it. Most encryption schemes are going to use some sort of symmetric key algo, and some block ciper algo. There are tradeoffs to be made between speed, random access, and security, and an algo should be chosen (or will already have been chosen by the tool you are using) depending on the purpose you are using the system for.
Now comes the part where you are trying to decide how to keep that symmetric key safe. Naturally, anyone with access to that key has access to your document. But you want to distribute it to people who you want to give access to your document. That's the key management part, and honestly this is the tricky part.
Before giving any user a key, you want to make sure that they should indeed have a key. (i.e. whoever protected the document, has given access to the person requesting). You want to make sure that the process requesting the key is not running in a debugger (otherwise it's game over right there -- they can just step to the point where your data is decrypted and get a dump). You want to make sure they are not running in a hypervisor (game over for the same reason). There are various obfuscation techniques that can do this with varying levels of success. You also want to make sure that the process requesting they key is going to play nice. (i.e. what if I write a program that uses the encryption API, following all the rules etc., but once it decrypts the data it merely dumps it out in plain text). There are ways of doing this, that are roughly the same as using a digital signature on a module. i.e. you can have an authority with a cert-chain, that tests apps and signs them into their chain if they find that they behave nicely. So if an app's signature roots to that certchain, you know the app behaves nicely, and the app has not been compromised.
The code-signing, key management etc. stuff is always based on PKI (or it should be). Any information protection system that does not do good key management, obfuscation to guard against debuggers etc, use a good (well-reviewed) algo and block cipher for encrypting the data is a toy and should not be used if your data is really sensitive.
Etc. Etc.
Basically, depending on how sensitive your data is, there are various systems that already fit the bill for the TSA. I am at least aware of RMS (encrypts ms office docs and email for example, in a domain environment - essentially works only with RMS-aware apps such as ms-office and outlook), EFS (encrypts marked folders in a file system), and Bitlocker (encrypts complete volumes) from Microsoft. I know about PGP/GPG but I'm less familiar with non-MS solutions (perhaps others could reply here? there have been many mentioned in this thread already).
One interesting thing to note. The underlying infrastructure of information protections systems is basically 99% identical to DRM systems. And the drawbacks are similar as well. None of the systems are uncrackab
Kerry did answer his question, or try to. The nut-case wouldn't shut up long enough for anybody else to get a word in edgewise. Besides, he was just spouting paranoid conspiracy theories. You didn't get the point then. Meyer's questions could be summed up as him telling Kerry "I agree with your stance (on said issues) -- but why didn't you have the courage and conviction to follow your own stance? Whether it was the Florida vote counting, or giving Bush the power to wage war in Iraq? You could have been president, and you could have helped prevent a war -- why didn't you try harder?"
Fair question. He needed more than his allotted time to pose the question - that's fine. The time limit should not be used as an excuse to stifle political debate. And violating your time limit as an excuse to taser someone? That's completely insane.
Ironically, this incident just brought out Kerry's lack of guts even further. He could have got down from the stage and intervened. There's no way the cops would have continued to manhandle the dude if he had done so. Instead he remained at the mic meekly saying stuff like "that's alright, I'll answer his question". That only illustrated his point further.
And it's extremely valid -- Bush hasn't just succeeded in waging war because of his administration's guile and politics of fear. He's also managed it because the Democrats have shown complete spinelessness at every point along the way when they had a chance to do the right thing, or to keep the administration in check. His (Meyer's) point to Kerry was that it isn't enough to have the right stance, or have the right intentions. You have to have the courage to act on your convictions as well, especially when so much is at stake
Besides, this guy was obstructing the event and monopolizing the speaker. I would wager the other participants were happy to see him taken away, they were trying to listen to Kerry, not this crazy jerk's wild-ass conspiracy theories. You seriously missed the point. The Skull and bones thing is just a veiled way of asking "Was there some reason you did not act when you had the chance to prevent a war?". The reason could be anything - not just some alliance with Bush through skull and bones. There could have been all kinds of lobbying (invisible to us voters), including bribes, and you should also factor in vote bank politics (i.e. not wanting to take too strong a stance because then ppl will think that he's soft, even in spite of 9/11). i.e. Is Kerry willing to sit silent (or just pretending to oppose without acting to oppose) when there's a war brewing, for the sake of not alienating voters? He certainly was willing to be an observer to the unnecessary force being used just 20 or so yards in front of him.
And dude -- you need to get some perspective. Monopolizing the speaker, and obstructing an event are, well, rude things to do. I'd gladly put up with a bit of rudeness if our politicians finally get put on the spot to account for their spinelessness. The rest of the country should as well. Tasering the dude was simply not ok.
And lastly -- listen to the audio of the clip more closely. You'll hear many many people yelling at the cops to let Meyer go, asking what he did wrong, etc. From their treatment of Meyer its understandable that people from the audience would be scared to intervene beyond yelling stuff at the cops or in his support. The one person with sufficient authority to actually stop the situation from spiraling out of control was Kerry, and he did nothing. This whole situation is a very good metaphor for the inaction and gutlessness of the Democrats over the last 7 years.
This situation where you can't ask your politicians a question, can't put them on the spot in any kind of way, and have to stick to the rules of the forum (10 second limit to ask questions, no rebuttals, etc.) are basically approaching situations in communist countries. The forum itself is designed to stifle dissent, and make it easy for politicians to avoid answering tough questions. And deviating from the rules of the forum results in brutality..
Nice rant, but I think Microsoft is far from crashing and burning People used to say the same thing about IBM, when they were the "gold standard" in business computing. "They'd be around forever" and "People are afraid to try anything else" were conventional wisdom at one time. When did IBM crash and burn? Last time I checked they were still doing pretty well. At least $95 billion in revenues, and a 10% profit margin says so, not to mention a strong consulting arm, chip sales, AIX, WebSphere, DB2, RS/6000 series etc. all raking in the money..
They might not be around forever, and people might not be afraid to try alternatives, but they're still one of the most successful companies ever in the IT business.
And like it or not, the same actually holds true for Apple and MS as well. None of these companies got to where they were by not making products that people wanted. Apple did that for a while and suffered. They changed (they started making compelling products again), and people flocked back to them.
The open and free market does work. Never before have we been so spoiled for choice in the computing world as we are now, with OS-X, Windows and Linux all being very viable options.
Even in the cell phone market you have choices. You can go for a pay-as-you-go plan where you can never exceed the amount of minutes you've already charged your account for. It's super-convenient if not exceeding your limit is your concern. You'll have to pay for the price of the phone up-front (no rebates etc.) but you're saving money long-term by only paying for the minutes you use and no extra.
Bottom line is that you always have a choice.
Bottom line is also that all companies exist to make money. If you say that you want the sexy phones you would get with a contract based plan, and the cost control that comes with pay-as-you-go, well, you can't get everything you want. Customer is _not_ always right. Companies will offer you choices from which they can make money. They will not offer you choices that lose them money. Everyone has the option of pay-as-you-go. Customers choose contracts in spite of that because they prefer sexy phones even if they don't tell them about call limits/charges etc. Customers basically chose what was more important for them..
Exclusive contracts etc: Because they are part of "any" business doesn't necessarily make them moral/ethical.
Doesn't make them unethical either - ethics is a complicated subject - hating MS for doing what every other company does is quite pointless.
Business classes, VC++, java and windows networking stuff
Business classes are not an MS technology. Teaching VC++ is good. Java is not an MS technology. Windows networking - not sure what you mean: if you mean administering a windows AD-based network, that's good. If its protocol-level stuff it's quite impossible to do that without starting at TCP/IP which is not a MS technology. None of this is unjustified.
I've also heard students who help manage departments at other colleges say that MS offers them various incentives for offering MS curiculums.
This is a vague unsubstantiated claim, and hating MS for that makes it sound like you just hate MS period, and will use any reason, however unfounded, to back that up. This way anyone can say "I've heard that Sun/Apple/Google/whoever offer incentives.....".
I didn't mean "for hire". There are plenty who would do it for free if only they had the proper specs
Not MS's fault! Take it up with the vendor. The specs are their IP (Itellectual Property), the code for the windows drivers is their IP. There is no law, or code of ethics that says they should hand it over. There are good reasons for them to not hand it over (because of the information that their competitiors get from the specs and driver code). The only thing that will work is pressure from customers, and that will take time. MS has no voice here.
If I had a decent job I could support myself on and liked OK, I wouldn't bother trying to get a second one
What about if your spouse is earning enough for your family? What about all those families where both parents are working? Are they depriving other families by holding two jobs when there is so much unemployment out there? The analogy stands. MS will continue to do the best it can, and will always assume that the day it stops doing that it's competitors will make it irrelevent. All business operate on that principle -- some forget it when they taste success. You can't blame MS for it's competitors shortcomings.
I believe you have to be crazy to think the perversion of standards didn't contribute to Netscape's demise.
I lived it, and I explained what happened. If you refuse to accept that, I guess we should agree to disagree.
I've pretty much been a diehard Linux user for years and even *I* have been tempted to use a windows box on occasion just to see what a given site was about or how it looked when displayed properly
And now you can on Firefox. At least FF on windows is perfect and FF on Linux is pretty close to it with a few exceptions. There's no reason this could not have been done earlier. As usual you blame MS for the lack of a compeliing alternative when there is nothing MS can do about it. FF adopted IE's defacto standard. This could have been done by any browser a long time ago. If the Linux folks could not make a compelling browser, why blame MS? Until Konquerer/Safari there has been no such thing as a browser that comes even close to standards compliance. This is such a complicated topic - your view of 'MS subverted the standard and killed everyone' is so simplistic when you consider the fact that there has never been a single browser ever made that is completely standards compliant.
Your complaint is also invalid that 90% of the people designed websites for IE only -- well what are they supposed to do? No coercion is necessary for them to see that 90% of traffic needs thier site to be IE-compatible. And after that any effort only gets them a small gain, so usually they don't bother. Success begets success -- that's life. If you don't like anything from MS and chose to use alternatives, that your choice. But if you think
it is still wrong/unethical IMO for them to ever force OEMs to sale only Windows
These allegations were not proved during the antitrust cases, so MS was not penalized for this. In any case, for an OEM, offering an OS choice has a cost associated with it. They need to validate each model with each OS, and then automate the install process for all options the customer might choose. If that costs 'x' dollars, they generally spend that 'x' on windows and get 90% of the market. After that do they spend 'x' to get another 2% of the market? The economics don't add up, so usually OEMs don't give you an option. There have been exceptions of course. This isn't the first time Dell is flirting with Linux -- it started selling Linux on the precision line around 2000. HP has had free dos as an option on many machines for a long time now. For many years now there have been countless OEMs (mwave, discount laptops to name a couple) from which you could buy machines without an OS installed. The fact that windows adoption hasn't changed means that the alternatives have not been compelling to customers.
Patent-squatting: this is when you patent something, wait for somebody to release a product and make big bucks, and then you sue them for patent infringement to get a slice of their pie. MS doesn't do that. They actually make and sell products that are protected by thier patents. Their patent strategy has historically been defensive (read this memo by bill gates for details: http://www.bralyn.net/etext/literature/bill.gates/ challenges-strategy.txt)
Exclusive contracts: these are a part of any business. You sign an exclusive contract everytime you renew your cell phone contract. Apple and AT&T have an exclusive contract for the iPhone. There are countless examples -- this is the norm in the business world.
Closed protocols: If you're complaining about NTLM/MAPI/SMB -- well these things were designed by MS. Why should they allow others to profit from their work? In any case since the antitrust ruling they have had to license all thier protocols and APIs. That ruling expires in 2007. MS has stated that it will not object to extending that ruling to 2012. So again, if there are no compelling alternative implementations, that is not MS's fault. Where there are good alternatives (for example Samba for SMB), people can and do use them. I fail to see the issue.
Coercion, cirriculum, etc: This is unfounded. I have two degrees in Engineering and save CS101 I have never taken an MS-specific course. CS101 had a whole bunch of MS Office stuff in it. Makes sense -- that's the most common productivity s/w used. As a teacher I'd want to give my students the best chance of success possible -- that means exposing them to tools they are most likely to use in the real world. Similarly the media labs were full of Macs w/ Photoshop. No conspiracy. Success begets success -- that's life. OTOH, during all my CSE courses, I cannot begin to count the number of Solaris and Linux machines I used. Aside from hobby stuff, school was the last time I coded on those platforms. I've coded J2EE web apps that have run on Tomact/DB2/Linux in production -- but when developing the app the entire team used Eclipse/Tomcat/MySQL/Windows. Our CVS was on Ubuntu. So people basically use what's most convenient for them. If cost is prohibitive they find alternatives. The cost of windows is worth it for what we needed to do. If a team member didn't think so (or just wanted to be different) they were free to switch to Linux or OS-X or whatever.
there are literally hundreds of FOSS developers who are eager to develop the drivers if they could get decent specs and not have to reverse-engineer all of the drivers from scratch
The MS/white-collar-crime/drug dealers thread is really difficult to agree with. It's impractical for me to refute everything, so let me summarize by saying you draw too many conclusions based on hypothetic situations, and take too many things as being absolute that are far from it.
Let me just concentrate on this instead:
Hrm... you dont' see perversion of standards as being screwed? What about the resulting lack of software choices that result? Perhaps the choices that might have been provided by one of the companies they put out of business? Maybe I miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os. I consider all of that being screwed because they are all freedoms that would exist (or at least be a lot more likely to) if MS or other giant corps didn't exist or engage in their current practices. I also consider being forced to work in POS MS environments to pursue my career being screwed (and trying to work out the problems they introduce with their products because their own development teams apparently cant).
No. Whether its blue-screens, poor standards compliance, philosophical difference about proprietary software, any other problem -- everybody has a simple choice -- don't run windows if you don't like it. The lack of compelling alternatives is not MS's fault. It is the fault of their competitors.
You have choices for all the things you're complaining about. You can choose to be a dev for a FOSS project, or work on J2EE related technologies, or Apple/IBM/Sun/whatever technologies. Like it or not, if MS is present everywhere it simply means that they're doing a good job. This answer might upset you, but it's the simple truth. Nobody used to use IIS as a webserver in critical scenarios until a few years ago -- because it sucked. IIS adoption is on the up now, because it doesn't suck now. Nobody used to use SQL server until 7 or 8 years ago because it sucked. Nobody used to use Macs 9 years ago because they sucked. People don't like things that suck.
I don't even understand what you mean when you say you "miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os". By OS do you mean windows or linux? Even with the current issues Vista is going through, windows hardware support is phenomenal. MS has done a fantastic job of keeping their driver model stable over the years, working with vendors when there are changes, etc. And with windows being present on 90% of machines, it's obvious that any vendors 1st priority is windows drivers. There's no blame to assign for this, and no apologies to be made.
Now, if you're complaining about lack of Linux drivers -- well, by what logic can you blame that on MS?
Even when you talk about poverty inflicted on families of companies forced out of business by MS, this is completely non sequitur on your part. By that logic, any time you interview for a job and succeed in getting it, you are inflicting poverty on those who didn't get it. Or the Japanese car makers are inflicting poverty on the employees of GM/Ford/Chrysler. Companies don't go belly-up overnight. They know when they're making crap products, and they know the competitive landscape and what it means in terms of how long they can survive if they don't get their stuff together. Nobody is *entitled* to having 'x' slice of a market so they can survive no matter how non-viable their products are.
Nothing illustrates this example better than Firefox. They came into a market which was pretty much owned by IE (90%+). IE already shipped with windows, and was set as the default on virtually everyones computer. Yet they have been gaining market share for the last 4 years by making a superior product.
Now when Netscape started getting challenged by IE, at that time Netscape had 90% of the market already. Even if IE shipped as a part of windows at the very least Netscape was already the incumbent. How come Firefox can thrive from such a disadvantaged position whereas Netscape sank from such an advantageous position?
...the law should be applied fairly to everyone regardless... Strongly agreed. I didn't suggest that the outcome of the antitrust cases should have been different. M$ violated whatever laws, got it's ass hauled into court, and got penalized.
My point was: Every business leverages everything it can for an advantage (synergy between product lines, undercutting competitors, exclusivity contracts, negative advertising etc. - it's all fair game). After you cross a certain market share threshold, there's this code of ethics that is supposed to apply to you, but not to your competitors. This 'code of ethics' isn't always clear because there are many arguments that can be made about what constitutes 'leveraging a monopoly' -- that's why it's shades of gray -- I belive that's what you mentioned: "it's funny how people can see things in shades of grey".
It doesn't get defended more? No, it doesn't.. just tally up the pro-MS, anti-MS stuff in the thread. Public opinion is strongly against MS. I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I get the feeling you're passionately anti-MS so you're getting annoyed a lot more by the pro-MS posts and taking more note of them (no offence - if I'm wrong, I apologise). But again, the antitrust issue has shades of grey -- to expect zero posts supporting MS is unrealistic. To expect a minority (say 30%) is much more realistic.
How many of the people who so passionately defend M$ would even think twice about or feel sorry for a drug dealer That's completely unrelated, and no point continuing down that thread.. There are all kinds of drug dealers - some you can feel sorry for and some maybe not. There are arguments for legalizing all controlled substances, and arguments for banning them all.. More shades of grey here as well..
We are all be silently screwed whether we like to admit it and defending it only exacerbates the problem How so? If you don't like windows don't use it. The common response is, "your average non-geek buys a budget PC for email and net use -- and has to get windows on it". Well, I don't see that as people "getting silently screwed". This budget PC will do what it's supposed to do. The cost of windows on that PC was about $50 -- so nothing took place that bears comparison with drug peddling/killing/whatever. OEM's haven't offered linux as an option -- that's on them (or on Linux for not appearing to be a viable alternative). For the last 7 years (since the antitrust judgement) MS has not had the ability to penalize OEMs for offering alternatives to Windows. If Apple was historically absent from the budget PC segment -- well -- that's on them.
In the mean time, MS and the like are helping to create more individuals who are more likely to become desperate to the point of committing crime (just look at the piracy caused by overpriced software and the potential poverty inflicted on the families of employees of businesses they screwed). That's overly dramatic. People don't pirate stuff because they are 'desperate to the point of committing a crime'. Like getting that latest song using a P2P app (instead of getting the single from iTunes) was an act of desperation. And why do you not feel that, say, Apple charging $1500 for a laptop drives people to poverty? You give MS too much credit -- in the big picture of US/world poverty, Windows license fees are just noise.
The guy who started this thread may be modded as a troll, but he isn't the one who burned most of the bridges, charges $200 tolls for the one he lives under and attempts to kill anyone who tries to build more Parent was indeed a troll. (for calling for MS to be obliterated). And when you say MS "...attempts to kill anyone who..." you are trolling as well.
Agreed about the point of showing strength to investors. The move to stay out has to look deliberate and planned as opposed to "we can't go there yet 'cos we don't have the resources".
So we agree to mostly agree.. I like it when that happens:)
Actually, I was aware of Apple's Xserve/SAN offerings when I wrote my post. I didn't mean to imply that Apple is absent in the Server segment, though I guess it's easy to infer that - so my bad.
The context there started with Windows and Linux forming a duopoly and then someone pointed out that OS-X wasn't an OS with 'general availability', and got pounced on. I attempted to defend him saying that unlike Linux and Windows you can't buy a sundry 1u blade and run OS X Server on it (afaik - pls correct me if I'm wrong). i.e. Apple limit the 'general availability' of their OS in the server scenario as well, similar to the way they do in the desktop scenario. I guess AIX was a bad example...
With due respect to John Siracusa's article, I don't think it was very informative. He went on repeatedly about the iPhone in the enterprise, which is far from relevant to Apple's presence there. He also claims that Apple is being high-minded and deliberately ignoring markets where it has to sell to someone other than the end user. Well, that would be any bulk contract. I don't think Apple sells the macs in schools and colleges to the kids there directly - they sell them to the universities and boards controlling the money. I don't understand this attempt to put an altruistic/high-minded/whatever spin to Apple's intentions - they're a company like any other.
Then he repeats classic Jobs sound bytes such as:
Want more? Here's Jobs's response to a question about Apple's neglect of the low-end of the market (e.g., $500 PCs, $100 phones, etc.):
There's some stuff in our industry that we wouldn't be proud to ship. And we just can't do it. We can't ship junk. There are thresholds we can't cross because of who we are.
This can all sound pretty smug. For a more grounded interpretation, you can try to look at it from a business perspective--profit margins, avoiding commoditization, the potential for growth and so on--but there's no getting around the results. And no matter how you slice it, the decision to ignore markets where you must sell to someone other than the end user is pretty high-minded (for a corporation). It's also perhaps the only way to ever create great products, products that customers actually love.
Think about this the next time you're peeling stickers off your new laptop at work.
This is where Apple and Jobs let themselves down. It comes off as smug and disrespectful towards companies and individuals who buy budget PCs. At my previous company we had about 1000+ corporate employees who's PC use consisted of productivity apps, and enterprise app front-ends, so a fairly common enterprise scenario. Bbudget PCs and laptops are exactly what they need. And they need to be easy to maintain, upgrade etc. If style/brand positioning is getting in the way of these criteria, taking pot-shots isn't the solution. They need to find the right compromises -- and they will do this if and when they are able to focus on this segment. Until then, the high-minded thing to do would be to refrain from snide remarks of this nature.
I have no doubt that OS X is a credible server OS. That's not the point. There are many reasons it's not present more in the enterprise. One of them is that Apple doesn't focus on the different Enterprise verticals and sell complete solutions. It's more like, here's Xserver and OS X Server, and Web Objects, and oh btw: there's all this cool OSS stuff that you can run on it as well. Over generalization, I know, but the point remains.
They seem to know it, and they don't want to get spread too thin, so they're picking battles they can win. Right now the consumer desktop is one such battle, so I think they're doing the right thing by nibbling away at the desktop market first, while keeping the enterprise thread alive until they're ready to make moves there as well. This is a much more credible explanation than Siracusa's -- contrast Apple's manpower to MS and IBM's, and add the "we delayed Leopard because we moved a lot of devs to the iPhone" and it gets even more weight.
It's funny how people can see things in shades of grey
But it is in shades of gray dude..
Firstly antitrust law is actually very murky territory. Prior to the antitrust cases, expecting the execs and sales people to be aware 100% of the time that some (potentially dirty tactic) is an antitrust violation isn't realistic IMHO. For example, if Apple has a monopoly of the MP3 player market and they refuse to license FairPlay, thereby leveraging their monopoly to expand into the online music sales market, is that illegal or not? Maybe it's illegal when iPods have 80% of the market but legal if they only have 65%?
Next, many countries don't even have antitrust laws. And even in the US, a company actually getting hauled up for anti-competitive behavior tells you more about the lobbying dollars spent by its competitors to get congress to ask the Justice Department to look into it, than anything else.
I don't mean any of this to condone M$ actions - penalizing a vendor for offering alternatives to windows is not nice. (though with over 30% of windows copies being pirated - IMHO they do have a limb to stand on when they say "don't sell a PC without an OS on it". Not a strong limb, but a limb nonetheless).
I don't even mean this to be a defense for any of their subtle protocol-changing dirty tricks etc. But the fact remains that all companies do nasty things like this all the time. That's why it's all shades of grey.
Why does the big entity get defended more? It doesn't! Quite the reverse from what I see on this thread..
"Linux just made the kernel; it's irritating when he gets credit for Linux"
"Yeah, but at least he made the Kernel -- Gates just made the Basic compiler"
"That's news to me - have you ever heard of this guy called Paul Allen?"
"Doesn't matter - personally I think the Linux kernel isn't all that - I use BSD"
"Screw Linus -- he was wrong about Bitkeeper and Tivo so he's wrong about MS & Novell"
"Yeah, well at least he's not a convicted monopolist"
"Yeah, until M$ stops treating me like a criminal I refuse to buy their software"
Also insert random quotes and mis-quotes such as: "When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won." - Linus Torvalds "640kb ought to be enough for everybody" - Bill Gates
That about cover it? Can we have a non-childish discussion now? If there's any other slime to be thrown, just reply to this post -- let's keep the forum clean for an actual discussion.
Everytime anything goes wrong just blame windows. Say something like "I had to reboot the windows server and it would not come up for a while, just like the time we rebooted your desktop and it would not come up remember".
Soon the PHB will get the message that the answer is not windows, the problem is windows. I think this is the kind of ridicule TFA is referring to. You're actually suggesting that people blame windows 'Everytime anything goes wrong' - irrespective of whether it's windows fault or not. It's like crying wolf. If the linux community resorts to tactics like this it will eventually lose credibility, which would be a serious problem. Just the way you lost credibility when you posted this comment. I mean, you ended your post saying "the answer is not windows, the problem is windows" but in your post you say "blame windows no matter what the problem is".
Aren't you guys getting a little pedantic? He didn't say OS-X "wasn't an OS" -- he said it "wasn't an OS available for general use"
And he has a point as well -- OS-X has never been seriously positioned as a server OS like AIX, HP-UX, etc. It's not realistic to expect Apple to become a major server OS player with the machines they sell right now.
Even on the desktop - Apples market share might be increasing but it's very hard to see them go past 10 or 20% of the market. You can argue both ways about whether that needs to be counted or not (in said duopoly).
The reason I say Apple's share is unlikely to increase past that point: It's because they don't license OS-X for use on PCs (or create a Mac spec and license it out). That's a huge problem for the h/w industry. If Apple were to get, say, 80% of the market and for this year they only offer nVidia cards and Intel processors in their machines, well, AMD will go bankrupt. If they stick with Intel wifi chips, Atheros might go bankrupt. Basically the whole industry will have to come up with a way of ramping up and scaling down production as and when their products get selected/deselected for use in Apple's lines -- if not, the entire computer hardware industry will become a one-horse-race for any component that goes into a computer.
If PETA want to rally against Michael Vick, or against testing on animals for research into, say, cosmetics - I'll be the first to join them. But I hope they don't have a problem with research of this sort.
Something's wrong with this picture. Parent is basically a bigot. And whoever modded the parent up is a bigot is well.
Muslims do not think like Westerners. To Put Western Logic over Muslims and expect them to ask as we would shows a complete lack of understanding of who and what they are.
Islam has been in Active jihad against the West since the end of WW1, when the Brits and Frenchies lied to them about giving them their own state
50: Death toll in London Bombings
3,000: Death toll in 9/11
650,000: Civillian death toll in Iraq (during the current invasion by US and UK)
300,000: Civillians living (dying?) in refugee camps in Iraq
3,600: Civillian death toll in Iraq during the Gulf war
500,000: Civillain deaths in Iraq due to sanctions imposed by the Clinton govt.
300 to 3000: Civillian deaths in the US invasion of Panama
3,700: Civillian casualties due to US bombing in Afghanistan
2 million to 5.1 million: Vietnamese civilian casualties during the US-Vietnam war
700,000: Cambodian civillian deaths during the US-Vietnam war
50,000: Laotian civillain deaths during the US-Vietnam war
51 million: Death toll during the almost 300 yr British rule in India
3 million: people affected by Agent Orange in vietnam
140,000: Deaths in Hiroshima due to "Little Boy"
80,000: Deaths in Nagasaki due to "Fat Man"
This is the tip of the freaking iceberg. I haven't mentioned Guantanamo Bay, the School of The Americas, US involvement in Haiti, Korea and so many more places where we simply were never welcome. You're in need of a serious history lesson -- Btitain and the US have been aggressor states as long as they have existed. I would rather change my 'way of life' than have millions of people killed in the name of preserving it. I'll gladly take the bus instead of driving a truck/SUV if it means that we stop killing people for oil. When we stop killing people for oil, they'll stop hijacking our aircraft and planting bombs.
Oh wait, I forgot - we did it to make the world safe. From the nuclear arsenal we never found. Oh no -- from the chemical weapons we never found. No no, I got it -- from the biological weapons we never found. Doh! Sorry - it was the Al Quaida operatives who we never found. Shit. Why did we invade Iraq again? And while we were complaining about chemical weapons, why did we use Napalm in Fallujah? Oh, right - it was to bring democracy (our way of life) to the Middle East! Now I get it. Bigot.
The Fact of the matter is, Islam has been at war with the West since the Crusades. It's really funny how you put it like that, when in fact the West was constantly waging war on Islam during the crusades.
I can't believe how some people (you, and whoever modded your post) can be so blind that they lose thier objectivity, and even thier humanity over issues like this.
Tell me that in 15 years when England is an Islamic State.
When your women wear burkas.
When your Liberals lie dead in the streets.
When your Christians serve as torches for the sport of Imams.
When Sharia is the Law of the Land, and the Magna Carte is no more.
Then Tell my your way of life is not under threat. Xenophobic, racist crap!
Unless the West wakes up, and sees the same Big Picture that Islams sees,
The West is lost. The West is definitely lost. But it's because of people like you who will believe (and regurgitate) any nonsense without questioning it. If you're interested in the Truth about the Big Picture read this link:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/0 7/130258
The fact is, nothing you see on TV is true. Nothing you read in the papers is true. Nothing your politicians tell you is true. Most people with a healthy amount of skepticism would have already come to that conclusion - but from reading your racist rant its clear that you don't realize that yet. Read the link completely, and attempt to refute it using a proper logical debate - I dare you.
I have taken note of M$'s use of patents as a weapon Taking notes is fine, but understanding them is important too. All your links prove my point:
On the ACPI link: That is exactly the point. Why spend the R&D dollars only to have your competitors benefit? Patents protect R&D investment. Whether you're a small company or big company. Making the API difficult to use with a non-NT system would have been the wrong choice (and its disappointing to see that option was considered). Patenting their work was the correct choice.
On Ballmer's threats: this is a serious topic of conversation, why??
On the Novell agreement: Again this proves my point. MS paid Novell for seats of Suse Linux that it could redistribute. MS paid Novell $100+ million for access to its patents. Novell paid MS $40 million for access to its patents. Move along, nothing to see here. GPL v3 threatening this pact is a bad thing. It makes it harder and harder for closed-source companies to work with OSS companies, and also undermines the credibility of the OSS movement. It basically says that OSS will change the rules anytime they want, and if that affects your business relationship, well, too bad. I have to hand it to Novell -- they are one of the few OSS vendors that seem to understand, that if OSS players expect everybody to respect the GPL (and they should) then OSS players need to respect IP law as well.
I'm not really interested in carrying out this conversation with you - I'm not even really an MS fan; just able to see the facts and appreciate them for what they are. You're so blinded with hate nothing you say makes any sense. The only thing I'm interested in knowing at this point is how your original post can get modded up of all things, when all it contains is venom. *sigh*
Slashdot Mirror
Huh?? I just looked and my Vista machine has Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Tahoma etc.
I lived, worked and developed software through the era. I did the Google post to show the AC how dumb it was to try to revise history. That's the point! The google post doesn't show anything. It comes up with stuff like the roughly drafted article, which means absolutely nothing. Seriously, if you lived and developed software through the era, you of all people should know that there is nothing that makes sense in that article.
I guess you're still trying. Good luck with that, 'cause theres plenty of us with memories intact. It's the other way around. Honestly, I'm not even an MS supporter. There's plenty of areas where I'll give them crap. You won't catch me defending them when for, say, Zunes not being PlaysForSure compatible (just pulling out some example at random). But the way the conversation on
I didn't get it.. did I say something offensive that someone else is famous for?
That, or he feels Microsoft is a good example of the root cause of a lot of the problems the world faces. I really didn't see that kind of depth in his posts. That's an interesting thought though.
Your psychobabble ridicule method follows the pattern pioneered by the Stalinists, by the way. Address your opponents like they're mentally unstable, and their angst is a psychological problem (Stalin took it further by institutionalizing them- you don't have that power at the moment.) Aw c'mon man -- did you see the links he had posted to? Alright, I'm still processing what you said here -- I guess that last paragraph was a bit unnecessary. It was not untrue, but did not necessarily add anything to the dialog.
Somebody was already kind enough to give us a link to the roughlydrafted article. Oh wait -- that was you!. Of course that article is still not worth the disk space it's saved on for very obvious reasons.
But wait, we have more evidence here -- the infamous google test. Did you even read some of the nonsense that popped up? The second result from google was that roughly drafted nonsense. Plus, I just googled "slashdot africa" and got 5.4 million results back, which means.. well, I'm not sure what it means other than the fact that your google search is meaningless.
And then you link to some article that uses some incredibly convoluted logic to claim that MS is one of the worst oppressors of the African American community?? Have you absolutely no conscience? How do you get to the point where your hatred blinds you to this extent? I'm really curious to know. I mean, there are wars going on that could have been avoided (Iraq springs to mind), pockets of racists getting away with just anything they want to (Jena 6), desperate poverty in the third world, and many more things that are worth this kind of passionate hatred. I'm really curious to know what MS did that pissed you off to this extent.
Jokes aside, I don't think the final version will be called Windows 7 -- that's just the development name they are using. Just like there will be no product called Longhorn (Vista and Windows Server 2008).. I doubt the folks at MS know what they're gonna call it yet..
Yes, there are some solutions. I'm mostly aware of those in the windows world, but from reading this thread I'm sure there are others from third-party vendors as well.
You're dead right that encryption requiring a password (simple or complex) is easy to crack -- that's a gimmick, not true security.
Encryption using an external device isn't really necessary though. This line of thought actually confuses two separate issues -- Authentication, and Encryption.
The Authentication part (as I'm sure you're aware) is more about "Are you who you say you are". This can be done with your standard challenge response (user and pass), biometrics, or a hardware solution (such as smart cards). All have thier pros and cons and depend on educating users on the correct procedures. Biometrics are insecure for a variety of reasons (won't get into it here), user/pass is insecure for another variety of reasons. Smart cards of course can be stolen/borrowed/lent but they at least have a password (or Pin) as well. At this point, they seem to be one of the safer Authentication methods.
Then comes the Encryption part of it. Most encryption schemes are going to use some sort of symmetric key algo, and some block ciper algo. There are tradeoffs to be made between speed, random access, and security, and an algo should be chosen (or will already have been chosen by the tool you are using) depending on the purpose you are using the system for.
Now comes the part where you are trying to decide how to keep that symmetric key safe. Naturally, anyone with access to that key has access to your document. But you want to distribute it to people who you want to give access to your document. That's the key management part, and honestly this is the tricky part.
Before giving any user a key, you want to make sure that they should indeed have a key. (i.e. whoever protected the document, has given access to the person requesting). You want to make sure that the process requesting the key is not running in a debugger (otherwise it's game over right there -- they can just step to the point where your data is decrypted and get a dump). You want to make sure they are not running in a hypervisor (game over for the same reason). There are various obfuscation techniques that can do this with varying levels of success. You also want to make sure that the process requesting they key is going to play nice. (i.e. what if I write a program that uses the encryption API, following all the rules etc., but once it decrypts the data it merely dumps it out in plain text). There are ways of doing this, that are roughly the same as using a digital signature on a module. i.e. you can have an authority with a cert-chain, that tests apps and signs them into their chain if they find that they behave nicely. So if an app's signature roots to that certchain, you know the app behaves nicely, and the app has not been compromised.
The code-signing, key management etc. stuff is always based on PKI (or it should be). Any information protection system that does not do good key management, obfuscation to guard against debuggers etc, use a good (well-reviewed) algo and block cipher for encrypting the data is a toy and should not be used if your data is really sensitive.
Etc. Etc.
Basically, depending on how sensitive your data is, there are various systems that already fit the bill for the TSA. I am at least aware of RMS (encrypts ms office docs and email for example, in a domain environment - essentially works only with RMS-aware apps such as ms-office and outlook), EFS (encrypts marked folders in a file system), and Bitlocker (encrypts complete volumes) from Microsoft. I know about PGP/GPG but I'm less familiar with non-MS solutions (perhaps others could reply here? there have been many mentioned in this thread already).
One interesting thing to note. The underlying infrastructure of information protections systems is basically 99% identical to DRM systems. And the drawbacks are similar as well. None of the systems are uncrackab
Fair question. He needed more than his allotted time to pose the question - that's fine. The time limit should not be used as an excuse to stifle political debate. And violating your time limit as an excuse to taser someone? That's completely insane.
Ironically, this incident just brought out Kerry's lack of guts even further. He could have got down from the stage and intervened. There's no way the cops would have continued to manhandle the dude if he had done so. Instead he remained at the mic meekly saying stuff like "that's alright, I'll answer his question". That only illustrated his point further.
And it's extremely valid -- Bush hasn't just succeeded in waging war because of his administration's guile and politics of fear. He's also managed it because the Democrats have shown complete spinelessness at every point along the way when they had a chance to do the right thing, or to keep the administration in check. His (Meyer's) point to Kerry was that it isn't enough to have the right stance, or have the right intentions. You have to have the courage to act on your convictions as well, especially when so much is at stake Besides, this guy was obstructing the event and monopolizing the speaker. I would wager the other participants were happy to see him taken away, they were trying to listen to Kerry, not this crazy jerk's wild-ass conspiracy theories. You seriously missed the point. The Skull and bones thing is just a veiled way of asking "Was there some reason you did not act when you had the chance to prevent a war?". The reason could be anything - not just some alliance with Bush through skull and bones. There could have been all kinds of lobbying (invisible to us voters), including bribes, and you should also factor in vote bank politics (i.e. not wanting to take too strong a stance because then ppl will think that he's soft, even in spite of 9/11). i.e. Is Kerry willing to sit silent (or just pretending to oppose without acting to oppose) when there's a war brewing, for the sake of not alienating voters? He certainly was willing to be an observer to the unnecessary force being used just 20 or so yards in front of him.
And dude -- you need to get some perspective. Monopolizing the speaker, and obstructing an event are, well, rude things to do. I'd gladly put up with a bit of rudeness if our politicians finally get put on the spot to account for their spinelessness. The rest of the country should as well. Tasering the dude was simply not ok.
And lastly -- listen to the audio of the clip more closely. You'll hear many many people yelling at the cops to let Meyer go, asking what he did wrong, etc. From their treatment of Meyer its understandable that people from the audience would be scared to intervene beyond yelling stuff at the cops or in his support. The one person with sufficient authority to actually stop the situation from spiraling out of control was Kerry, and he did nothing. This whole situation is a very good metaphor for the inaction and gutlessness of the Democrats over the last 7 years.
This situation where you can't ask your politicians a question, can't put them on the spot in any kind of way, and have to stick to the rules of the forum (10 second limit to ask questions, no rebuttals, etc.) are basically approaching situations in communist countries. The forum itself is designed to stifle dissent, and make it easy for politicians to avoid answering tough questions. And deviating from the rules of the forum results in brutality..
They might not be around forever, and people might not be afraid to try alternatives, but they're still one of the most successful companies ever in the IT business.
And like it or not, the same actually holds true for Apple and MS as well. None of these companies got to where they were by not making products that people wanted. Apple did that for a while and suffered. They changed (they started making compelling products again), and people flocked back to them.
The open and free market does work. Never before have we been so spoiled for choice in the computing world as we are now, with OS-X, Windows and Linux all being very viable options.
Even in the cell phone market you have choices. You can go for a pay-as-you-go plan where you can never exceed the amount of minutes you've already charged your account for. It's super-convenient if not exceeding your limit is your concern. You'll have to pay for the price of the phone up-front (no rebates etc.) but you're saving money long-term by only paying for the minutes you use and no extra.
Bottom line is that you always have a choice.
Bottom line is also that all companies exist to make money. If you say that you want the sexy phones you would get with a contract based plan, and the cost control that comes with pay-as-you-go, well, you can't get everything you want. Customer is _not_ always right. Companies will offer you choices from which they can make money. They will not offer you choices that lose them money. Everyone has the option of pay-as-you-go. Customers choose contracts in spite of that because they prefer sexy phones even if they don't tell them about call limits/charges etc. Customers basically chose what was more important for them..
Exclusive contracts etc: Because they are part of "any" business doesn't necessarily make them moral/ethical.
Doesn't make them unethical either - ethics is a complicated subject - hating MS for doing what every other company does is quite pointless.
Business classes, VC++, java and windows networking stuff
Business classes are not an MS technology. Teaching VC++ is good. Java is not an MS technology. Windows networking - not sure what you mean: if you mean administering a windows AD-based network, that's good. If its protocol-level stuff it's quite impossible to do that without starting at TCP/IP which is not a MS technology. None of this is unjustified.
I've also heard students who help manage departments at other colleges say that MS offers them various incentives for offering MS curiculums.
This is a vague unsubstantiated claim, and hating MS for that makes it sound like you just hate MS period, and will use any reason, however unfounded, to back that up. This way anyone can say "I've heard that Sun/Apple/Google/whoever offer incentives.....".
I didn't mean "for hire". There are plenty who would do it for free if only they had the proper specs
Not MS's fault! Take it up with the vendor. The specs are their IP (Itellectual Property), the code for the windows drivers is their IP. There is no law, or code of ethics that says they should hand it over. There are good reasons for them to not hand it over (because of the information that their competitiors get from the specs and driver code). The only thing that will work is pressure from customers, and that will take time. MS has no voice here.
If I had a decent job I could support myself on and liked OK, I wouldn't bother trying to get a second one
What about if your spouse is earning enough for your family? What about all those families where both parents are working? Are they depriving other families by holding two jobs when there is so much unemployment out there? The analogy stands. MS will continue to do the best it can, and will always assume that the day it stops doing that it's competitors will make it irrelevent. All business operate on that principle -- some forget it when they taste success. You can't blame MS for it's competitors shortcomings.
I believe you have to be crazy to think the perversion of standards didn't contribute to Netscape's demise.
I lived it, and I explained what happened. If you refuse to accept that, I guess we should agree to disagree.
I've pretty much been a diehard Linux user for years and even *I* have been tempted to use a windows box on occasion just to see what a given site was about or how it looked when displayed properly
And now you can on Firefox. At least FF on windows is perfect and FF on Linux is pretty close to it with a few exceptions. There's no reason this could not have been done earlier. As usual you blame MS for the lack of a compeliing alternative when there is nothing MS can do about it. FF adopted IE's defacto standard. This could have been done by any browser a long time ago. If the Linux folks could not make a compelling browser, why blame MS? Until Konquerer/Safari there has been no such thing as a browser that comes even close to standards compliance. This is such a complicated topic - your view of 'MS subverted the standard and killed everyone' is so simplistic when you consider the fact that there has never been a single browser ever made that is completely standards compliant. Your complaint is also invalid that 90% of the people designed websites for IE only -- well what are they supposed to do? No coercion is necessary for them to see that 90% of traffic needs thier site to be IE-compatible. And after that any effort only gets them a small gain, so usually they don't bother. Success begets success -- that's life. If you don't like anything from MS and chose to use alternatives, that your choice. But if you think
it is still wrong/unethical IMO for them to ever force OEMs to sale only Windows
These allegations were not proved during the antitrust cases, so MS was not penalized for this. In any case, for an OEM, offering an OS choice has a cost associated with it. They need to validate each model with each OS, and then automate the install process for all options the customer might choose. If that costs 'x' dollars, they generally spend that 'x' on windows and get 90% of the market. After that do they spend 'x' to get another 2% of the market? The economics don't add up, so usually OEMs don't give you an option. There have been exceptions of course. This isn't the first time Dell is flirting with Linux -- it started selling Linux on the precision line around 2000. HP has had free dos as an option on many machines for a long time now. For many years now there have been countless OEMs (mwave, discount laptops to name a couple) from which you could buy machines without an OS installed. The fact that windows adoption hasn't changed means that the alternatives have not been compelling to customers.
...patent-squatting, exclusive contracts, closed protocols, coercing higher-education institutions to incorporate MS-only curriculums...
Patent-squatting: this is when you patent something, wait for somebody to release a product and make big bucks, and then you sue them for patent infringement to get a slice of their pie. MS doesn't do that. They actually make and sell products that are protected by thier patents. Their patent strategy has historically been defensive (read this memo by bill gates for details: http://www.bralyn.net/etext/literature/bill.gates/ challenges-strategy.txt)
Exclusive contracts: these are a part of any business. You sign an exclusive contract everytime you renew your cell phone contract. Apple and AT&T have an exclusive contract for the iPhone. There are countless examples -- this is the norm in the business world.
Closed protocols: If you're complaining about NTLM/MAPI/SMB -- well these things were designed by MS. Why should they allow others to profit from their work? In any case since the antitrust ruling they have had to license all thier protocols and APIs. That ruling expires in 2007. MS has stated that it will not object to extending that ruling to 2012. So again, if there are no compelling alternative implementations, that is not MS's fault. Where there are good alternatives (for example Samba for SMB), people can and do use them. I fail to see the issue.
Coercion, cirriculum, etc: This is unfounded. I have two degrees in Engineering and save CS101 I have never taken an MS-specific course. CS101 had a whole bunch of MS Office stuff in it. Makes sense -- that's the most common productivity s/w used. As a teacher I'd want to give my students the best chance of success possible -- that means exposing them to tools they are most likely to use in the real world. Similarly the media labs were full of Macs w/ Photoshop. No conspiracy. Success begets success -- that's life. OTOH, during all my CSE courses, I cannot begin to count the number of Solaris and Linux machines I used. Aside from hobby stuff, school was the last time I coded on those platforms. I've coded J2EE web apps that have run on Tomact/DB2/Linux in production -- but when developing the app the entire team used Eclipse/Tomcat/MySQL/Windows. Our CVS was on Ubuntu. So people basically use what's most convenient for them. If cost is prohibitive they find alternatives. The cost of windows is worth it for what we needed to do. If a team member didn't think so (or just wanted to be different) they were free to switch to Linux or OS-X or whatever.
there are literally hundreds of FOSS developers who are eager to develop the drivers if they could get decent specs and not have to reverse-engineer all of the drivers from scratch
The MS/white-collar-crime/drug dealers thread is really difficult to agree with. It's impractical for me to refute everything, so let me summarize by saying you draw too many conclusions based on hypothetic situations, and take too many things as being absolute that are far from it.
Let me just concentrate on this instead:
Hrm... you dont' see perversion of standards as being screwed? What about the resulting lack of software choices that result? Perhaps the choices that might have been provided by one of the companies they put out of business? Maybe I miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os. I consider all of that being screwed because they are all freedoms that would exist (or at least be a lot more likely to) if MS or other giant corps didn't exist or engage in their current practices. I also consider being forced to work in POS MS environments to pursue my career being screwed (and trying to work out the problems they introduce with their products because their own development teams apparently cant).
No. Whether its blue-screens, poor standards compliance, philosophical difference about proprietary software, any other problem -- everybody has a simple choice -- don't run windows if you don't like it. The lack of compelling alternatives is not MS's fault. It is the fault of their competitors.
You have choices for all the things you're complaining about. You can choose to be a dev for a FOSS project, or work on J2EE related technologies, or Apple/IBM/Sun/whatever technologies. Like it or not, if MS is present everywhere it simply means that they're doing a good job. This answer might upset you, but it's the simple truth. Nobody used to use IIS as a webserver in critical scenarios until a few years ago -- because it sucked. IIS adoption is on the up now, because it doesn't suck now. Nobody used to use SQL server until 7 or 8 years ago because it sucked. Nobody used to use Macs 9 years ago because they sucked. People don't like things that suck.
I don't even understand what you mean when you say you "miss the ability to buy hardware that is compatible with my os". By OS do you mean windows or linux? Even with the current issues Vista is going through, windows hardware support is phenomenal. MS has done a fantastic job of keeping their driver model stable over the years, working with vendors when there are changes, etc. And with windows being present on 90% of machines, it's obvious that any vendors 1st priority is windows drivers. There's no blame to assign for this, and no apologies to be made.
Now, if you're complaining about lack of Linux drivers -- well, by what logic can you blame that on MS?
Even when you talk about poverty inflicted on families of companies forced out of business by MS, this is completely non sequitur on your part. By that logic, any time you interview for a job and succeed in getting it, you are inflicting poverty on those who didn't get it. Or the Japanese car makers are inflicting poverty on the employees of GM/Ford/Chrysler. Companies don't go belly-up overnight. They know when they're making crap products, and they know the competitive landscape and what it means in terms of how long they can survive if they don't get their stuff together. Nobody is *entitled* to having 'x' slice of a market so they can survive no matter how non-viable their products are.
Nothing illustrates this example better than Firefox. They came into a market which was pretty much owned by IE (90%+). IE already shipped with windows, and was set as the default on virtually everyones computer. Yet they have been gaining market share for the last 4 years by making a superior product.
Now when Netscape started getting challenged by IE, at that time Netscape had 90% of the market already. Even if IE shipped as a part of windows at the very least Netscape was already the incumbent. How come Firefox can thrive from such a disadvantaged position whereas Netscape sank from such an advantageous position?
The
...the law should be applied fairly to everyone regardless... Strongly agreed. I didn't suggest that the outcome of the antitrust cases should have been different. M$ violated whatever laws, got it's ass hauled into court, and got penalized.My point was: Every business leverages everything it can for an advantage (synergy between product lines, undercutting competitors, exclusivity contracts, negative advertising etc. - it's all fair game). After you cross a certain market share threshold, there's this code of ethics that is supposed to apply to you, but not to your competitors. This 'code of ethics' isn't always clear because there are many arguments that can be made about what constitutes 'leveraging a monopoly' -- that's why it's shades of gray -- I belive that's what you mentioned: "it's funny how people can see things in shades of grey". It doesn't get defended more? No, it doesn't.. just tally up the pro-MS, anti-MS stuff in the thread. Public opinion is strongly against MS. I'm not saying it shouldn't be. I get the feeling you're passionately anti-MS so you're getting annoyed a lot more by the pro-MS posts and taking more note of them (no offence - if I'm wrong, I apologise). But again, the antitrust issue has shades of grey -- to expect zero posts supporting MS is unrealistic. To expect a minority (say 30%) is much more realistic. How many of the people who so passionately defend M$ would even think twice about or feel sorry for a drug dealer That's completely unrelated, and no point continuing down that thread.. There are all kinds of drug dealers - some you can feel sorry for and some maybe not. There are arguments for legalizing all controlled substances, and arguments for banning them all.. More shades of grey here as well.. We are all be silently screwed whether we like to admit it and defending it only exacerbates the problem How so? If you don't like windows don't use it. The common response is, "your average non-geek buys a budget PC for email and net use -- and has to get windows on it". Well, I don't see that as people "getting silently screwed". This budget PC will do what it's supposed to do. The cost of windows on that PC was about $50 -- so nothing took place that bears comparison with drug peddling/killing/whatever. OEM's haven't offered linux as an option -- that's on them (or on Linux for not appearing to be a viable alternative). For the last 7 years (since the antitrust judgement) MS has not had the ability to penalize OEMs for offering alternatives to Windows. If Apple was historically absent from the budget PC segment -- well -- that's on them. In the mean time, MS and the like are helping to create more individuals who are more likely to become desperate to the point of committing crime (just look at the piracy caused by overpriced software and the potential poverty inflicted on the families of employees of businesses they screwed). That's overly dramatic. People don't pirate stuff because they are 'desperate to the point of committing a crime'. Like getting that latest song using a P2P app (instead of getting the single from iTunes) was an act of desperation. And why do you not feel that, say, Apple charging $1500 for a laptop drives people to poverty? You give MS too much credit -- in the big picture of US/world poverty, Windows license fees are just noise. The guy who started this thread may be modded as a troll, but he isn't the one who burned most of the bridges, charges $200 tolls for the one he lives under and attempts to kill anyone who tries to build more Parent was indeed a troll. (for calling for MS to be obliterated). And when you say MS "...attempts to kill anyone who..." you are trolling as well.
Agreed about the point of showing strength to investors. The move to stay out has to look deliberate and planned as opposed to "we can't go there yet 'cos we don't have the resources". So we agree to mostly agree.. I like it when that happens :)
I have no idea why that paragraph got boldfaced :P.. I guess I typed <b> instead of <p>??
Sorry.. didn't mean to yell :P
Actually, I was aware of Apple's Xserve/SAN offerings when I wrote my post. I didn't mean to imply that Apple is absent in the Server segment, though I guess it's easy to infer that - so my bad.
The context there started with Windows and Linux forming a duopoly and then someone pointed out that OS-X wasn't an OS with 'general availability', and got pounced on. I attempted to defend him saying that unlike Linux and Windows you can't buy a sundry 1u blade and run OS X Server on it (afaik - pls correct me if I'm wrong). i.e. Apple limit the 'general availability' of their OS in the server scenario as well, similar to the way they do in the desktop scenario. I guess AIX was a bad example...
With due respect to John Siracusa's article, I don't think it was very informative. He went on repeatedly about the iPhone in the enterprise, which is far from relevant to Apple's presence there. He also claims that Apple is being high-minded and deliberately ignoring markets where it has to sell to someone other than the end user. Well, that would be any bulk contract. I don't think Apple sells the macs in schools and colleges to the kids there directly - they sell them to the universities and boards controlling the money. I don't understand this attempt to put an altruistic/high-minded/whatever spin to Apple's intentions - they're a company like any other.
Then he repeats classic Jobs sound bytes such as:
Want more? Here's Jobs's response to a question about Apple's neglect of the low-end of the market (e.g., $500 PCs, $100 phones, etc.):This can all sound pretty smug. For a more grounded interpretation, you can try to look at it from a business perspective--profit margins, avoiding commoditization, the potential for growth and so on--but there's no getting around the results. And no matter how you slice it, the decision to ignore markets where you must sell to someone other than the end user is pretty high-minded (for a corporation). It's also perhaps the only way to ever create great products, products that customers actually love.Think about this the next time you're peeling stickers off your new laptop at work.
This is where Apple and Jobs let themselves down. It comes off as smug and disrespectful towards companies and individuals who buy budget PCs. At my previous company we had about 1000+ corporate employees who's PC use consisted of productivity apps, and enterprise app front-ends, so a fairly common enterprise scenario. Bbudget PCs and laptops are exactly what they need. And they need to be easy to maintain, upgrade etc. If style/brand positioning is getting in the way of these criteria, taking pot-shots isn't the solution. They need to find the right compromises -- and they will do this if and when they are able to focus on this segment. Until then, the high-minded thing to do would be to refrain from snide remarks of this nature.
I have no doubt that OS X is a credible server OS. That's not the point. There are many reasons it's not present more in the enterprise. One of them is that Apple doesn't focus on the different Enterprise verticals and sell complete solutions. It's more like, here's Xserver and OS X Server, and Web Objects, and oh btw: there's all this cool OSS stuff that you can run on it as well. Over generalization, I know, but the point remains.
They seem to know it, and they don't want to get spread too thin, so they're picking battles they can win. Right now the consumer desktop is one such battle, so I think they're doing the right thing by nibbling away at the desktop market first, while keeping the enterprise thread alive until they're ready to make moves there as well. This is a much more credible explanation than Siracusa's -- contrast Apple's manpower to MS and IBM's, and add the "we delayed Leopard because we moved a lot of devs to the iPhone" and it gets even more weight.
But it is in shades of gray dude..
Firstly antitrust law is actually very murky territory. Prior to the antitrust cases, expecting the execs and sales people to be aware 100% of the time that some (potentially dirty tactic) is an antitrust violation isn't realistic IMHO. For example, if Apple has a monopoly of the MP3 player market and they refuse to license FairPlay, thereby leveraging their monopoly to expand into the online music sales market, is that illegal or not? Maybe it's illegal when iPods have 80% of the market but legal if they only have 65%?
Next, many countries don't even have antitrust laws. And even in the US, a company actually getting hauled up for anti-competitive behavior tells you more about the lobbying dollars spent by its competitors to get congress to ask the Justice Department to look into it, than anything else.
I don't mean any of this to condone M$ actions - penalizing a vendor for offering alternatives to windows is not nice. (though with over 30% of windows copies being pirated - IMHO they do have a limb to stand on when they say "don't sell a PC without an OS on it". Not a strong limb, but a limb nonetheless).
I don't even mean this to be a defense for any of their subtle protocol-changing dirty tricks etc. But the fact remains that all companies do nasty things like this all the time. That's why it's all shades of grey.
Why does the big entity get defended more? It doesn't! Quite the reverse from what I see on this thread..Oh no, here we go again..
"Linux just made the kernel; it's irritating when he gets credit for Linux"
"Yeah, but at least he made the Kernel -- Gates just made the Basic compiler"
"That's news to me - have you ever heard of this guy called Paul Allen?"
"Doesn't matter - personally I think the Linux kernel isn't all that - I use BSD"
"Screw Linus -- he was wrong about Bitkeeper and Tivo so he's wrong about MS & Novell"
"Yeah, well at least he's not a convicted monopolist"
"Yeah, until M$ stops treating me like a criminal I refuse to buy their software"
Also insert random quotes and mis-quotes such as:
"When Microsoft writes an application for Linux, I've Won." - Linus Torvalds
"640kb ought to be enough for everybody" - Bill Gates
That about cover it? Can we have a non-childish discussion now? If there's any other slime to be thrown, just reply to this post -- let's keep the forum clean for an actual discussion.
Soon the PHB will get the message that the answer is not windows, the problem is windows. I think this is the kind of ridicule TFA is referring to. You're actually suggesting that people blame windows 'Everytime anything goes wrong' - irrespective of whether it's windows fault or not. It's like crying wolf. If the linux community resorts to tactics like this it will eventually lose credibility, which would be a serious problem. Just the way you lost credibility when you posted this comment. I mean, you ended your post saying "the answer is not windows, the problem is windows" but in your post you say "blame windows no matter what the problem is".
Aren't you guys getting a little pedantic? He didn't say OS-X "wasn't an OS" -- he said it "wasn't an OS available for general use"
And he has a point as well -- OS-X has never been seriously positioned as a server OS like AIX, HP-UX, etc. It's not realistic to expect Apple to become a major server OS player with the machines they sell right now.
Even on the desktop - Apples market share might be increasing but it's very hard to see them go past 10 or 20% of the market. You can argue both ways about whether that needs to be counted or not (in said duopoly).
The reason I say Apple's share is unlikely to increase past that point: It's because they don't license OS-X for use on PCs (or create a Mac spec and license it out). That's a huge problem for the h/w industry. If Apple were to get, say, 80% of the market and for this year they only offer nVidia cards and Intel processors in their machines, well, AMD will go bankrupt. If they stick with Intel wifi chips, Atheros might go bankrupt. Basically the whole industry will have to come up with a way of ramping up and scaling down production as and when their products get selected/deselected for use in Apple's lines -- if not, the entire computer hardware industry will become a one-horse-race for any component that goes into a computer.
Agreed.
If PETA want to rally against Michael Vick, or against testing on animals for research into, say, cosmetics - I'll be the first to join them. But I hope they don't have a problem with research of this sort.
This is the tip of the freaking iceberg. I haven't mentioned Guantanamo Bay, the School of The Americas, US involvement in Haiti, Korea and so many more places where we simply were never welcome. You're in need of a serious history lesson -- Btitain and the US have been aggressor states as long as they have existed. I would rather change my 'way of life' than have millions of people killed in the name of preserving it. I'll gladly take the bus instead of driving a truck/SUV if it means that we stop killing people for oil. When we stop killing people for oil, they'll stop hijacking our aircraft and planting bombs.
Oh wait, I forgot - we did it to make the world safe. From the nuclear arsenal we never found. Oh no -- from the chemical weapons we never found. No no, I got it -- from the biological weapons we never found. Doh! Sorry - it was the Al Quaida operatives who we never found. Shit. Why did we invade Iraq again? And while we were complaining about chemical weapons, why did we use Napalm in Fallujah? Oh, right - it was to bring democracy (our way of life) to the Middle East! Now I get it. Bigot. The Fact of the matter is, Islam has been at war with the West since the Crusades. It's really funny how you put it like that, when in fact the West was constantly waging war on Islam during the crusades.
I can't believe how some people (you, and whoever modded your post) can be so blind that they lose thier objectivity, and even thier humanity over issues like this.
Tell me that in 15 years when England is an Islamic State.
When your women wear burkas.
When your Liberals lie dead in the streets.
When your Christians serve as torches for the sport of Imams.
When Sharia is the Law of the Land, and the Magna Carte is no more.
Then Tell my your way of life is not under threat. Xenophobic, racist crap! Unless the West wakes up, and sees the same Big Picture that Islams sees, The West is lost. The West is definitely lost. But it's because of people like you who will believe (and regurgitate) any nonsense without questioning it. If you're interested in the Truth about the Big Picture read this link: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/
I'm not really interested in carrying out this conversation with you - I'm not even really an MS fan; just able to see the facts and appreciate them for what they are. You're so blinded with hate nothing you say makes any sense. The only thing I'm interested in knowing at this point is how your original post can get modded up of all things, when all it contains is venom. *sigh*