Vista is a failure. It always has been, and it still is. Microsoft try to tell you otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less of a failure.
...
(Excuse my English, I am Norwegian.)
Have soimeone translate this for you: "An accurate technical description of Microsoft Vista can be found in any good guide to computing under the heading 'clusterfuck'."
Big companies are not known for leaping forward into new and unproven technologies, especially when most of the improvement is just user eye-candy.
Exactly. XP was a disaster when it was first released, but like most Microsoft products, it benefitted from being beaten up by users for several years. I know of savvy computer users who still run Win2K, not because of corporate lethargy, but because it is arguably faster and more stable than XP, and has a smaller footprint, even after all the multitudinous Service Packs and other patches have been applied. Honestly, I don't do anything that depends on XP that I couldn't do with Win2K, and think downgrading to Vista would be a major step in the wrong direction. Microsoft OSes need to "age" at least three or four years before they can be trusted in the real world.
I still say that Windows Vista is the best advertisement around for Ubuntu Linux.
They've amply demonstrated that they are LESS trustworthy than AOL.
AOHell? Is that for blue haired little old ladies who follow the "collect em' all!" theory of computer virus acquisition?
Seriously, AOL has no redeeming features. Just the AOL installation disk should suffice as a warning, laden with all the crapware that it is. With Google, you need not install anything. I don't use Google Toolbar or any such nonsense. I am free to encrypt my mail so Google doesn't have a clue as to what I'm communicating. Gmail is *ALWAYS* available, anywhere I happen to find 'Net connectivity.
When is the last time you saw this kind of bad news regarding Gmail?: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-242034.html>
I do a fair amount of comptuer consulting and one of the things I always do when a client gets a new computer is clean out the crapware -- AOL's crap is among the first to go! The best thing we could do with AOL is give the entire company to Al Queda. If Osama Bin Laden we're foolish enough to use it, he'd have no security and no working computers!
Can we stop taking balanced articles and turning them into overly sensationalized summaries? This isn't the 1920's anymore. We don't need to expand an ultra-brief telegraph message or make up details while we wait for a postmarked letter.:-/ Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?
Casinos should get what they deserve. When they fuck up, they should lose.
If you put $1 in the machine and got a $10 credit, I should think that the user would figure out that there's more going on than them just being "lucky".
So? If I did that, I'd be a fool not to insert a *LOT* of dollars!
As TFA says, the Casino contacted the winners about the fault, and several of them agreed to give back their winnings. (Total losses for the casino were nearly $500,000.)
Why should it be a win-win situation for the casino? If a gambler is an idiot, he loses money. The same should apply to the casino. Realistically, no special rules/laws should apply to casinos -- they should not be allowed to ban card sharks (or slot sharks) anymore than other businesses are allowed to discriminate unfairly.
The bottom line: Hotmail sucks. Like most Microsoft products.
Like most Microsoft products, especially Windows, Hotmail appears to be broken -- arguably intentionally.
Gmail works!
I'm not so sure about the "huge disk buffer". Smaller disks can be spun faster and tend to have lower latency. I'd like to see the drum drive make a comeback for disk cache...expensive, but fast!
"Using a Mac is often seized upon by support technicians or customer service squids as a one-size-fits-all scapegoat to excuse themselves from providing assistance."
There is a Mac user at the office here. Sometimes we let him sit at the grown-up's table when we have meetings if he has been behaving well.
To add to that, there's often articles about Firefox vulnerabilities on Slashdot, and many posts saying 'everything works fine here' regularly modded up to +5
How many alleged Firefox vulnerabilities affect the integrity of non-Windows systems? For that matter how many serious problems of any sort have you, personally, ever experienced with Firefox that weren't directly related to certain Web sites that were written specifically for IE, rather than generally accepted WC3 standards? The only major problem I've noticed with Firefox that actually bothered me much was when several earlier versions suffered a significant memory leak over time under heavy use. I won't even try to list the dozens of critical issues that have existed with various versions of IE since it was first foisted upon the largely unsuspecting marketplace. I simply avoid using IE -- I don't even use MS Update, but I can get all the patches (and there are a *lot* of them...hehehe) from other sources that I trust most than I do using IE to access MS's Web site.
Firefox isn't perfect, but it isn't the open invitation to malicious hackers that IE is, especially when ActiveX is enabled on the latter. If you want to give your computer away, just use IE on it to access a few pr0n or warez sites -- someone else will own it soon enough!
> > Why are the good points about Vista never mentioned on Slashdot?
>Um because most of the people that come here just see history repeating
>itself.
Try as I might, I can't think of any good points about Vista. Given that few except the Marketing Spinmeisters at Microsoft seems to be able to do so, perhaps that's the reason you don't see sais (alleged) "good points about Vista" mentioned around here. Besides, Vista has so many bad points we can barely keep up with them! Vista is the best advertising Ubuntu linux could ever hope for!
I'd say a car that doesn't ship with lcoks *IS* less secure than one that does. The survey seems reasonably valid in suggesting that security is the last reason on Earth a fool might waste money on Vista.
Hehehehe! "Much"? Can't you be more precise? Say, like 99.44% of Microsoft's IP strategy is FUD? Or maybe you're being cautious, because the rest of MS's IP strategy is 100% pure BS and you don't want to examine it? (Can't blame you, as it is extra smelly...)
Microsoft is a monopoly run amok, not an innovator in any way shape or form.
I'd be surprised if anyone can post anything major that Microsoft has innovated that is worthy of a patent.
As I've suggested before, the FedGov ought to bust MS on anti-trust violations and impose a simple penalty, namely FOSS all of the existing commercialized IP MS claims to own -- force MS to make the code public domain. If MS was really doing innovative things, it would still have a huge running head start over any and all competition because it would have developers (researchers? *snicker*) who had been working on products based on new advances that it would not have to disclose under such a ruling. My guess is that the sum total of said innovative works in progress would amount to zilch.
(Presumably, MS developers are at least somewhat familiar with their own code base...but the error rate in their code suggests otherwise.)
Take the monopoly out of Microsoft and you are left with nothing worth mentioning...unless you consider buggy bloatware to be important.
If you want to raise your MPG, take a longer route in the city that makes you stop much less frequently. Stop/Go is the hardest on an engine and your millage efficiency.
My brand new car gets pretty good mileage for a performance car, but I am amused by your suggestion that stop/go is the worst factor as far as reduced gas mileage goes. Try driving at 110+MPH for a couple of hours on end...you can practically see the gas gauge drop as you drive. This is especially true if you are trying to keep up with a maniac (defined as someone who drives faster than I normally would under given conditions), as you better determine exactly what the actual top end of your new car's performance is over sustained periods of time. Wringing out a new car is obligatory. I had to do it. I think it is also mandatory after every oil change or something, too.
My car will get 24MPG or better if I keep it down to 65MPH on the freeway, but that drops to about 16MPG if I keep it above 100MPH as much as possible. It is rated by the EPA at 20MPG city and 27MPH Highway. I tend to be a bit of a gear head...
Wind resistance sucks...specifically: it sucks fuel!
Concealed pistol arguments have both sides too. "I prefer the 9MM Glock" or "Nothing less than a.45 will do the job, it has _stopping power_."
Of course,/. readers are tech savvy enough to know that a Glock 20 or 29 (10mm) is the handgun to have if you only have one...
Gmail is nice in that one can use it with a POP3 client if one wants to do so. I used to use Eudora as my mailreader, but Gmail is so fast and convenient that I just stopped using Eudora, despite the extra functionality it offers. I've never seen any reason to use Thunderbird although I'll take another look at it; this thread having piqued my curiosity about it.
Don't forget to clear your cookies or block them from Google.
I use Gmail and like it. I do not allow google-analytics or other Google scripts that are not necessary for Gmail to run. I don't allow any persistent cookies and I shut down my browser frequently, but at this point it is a given that Google has a pretty good idea of who I am and what my interests are. It bothers me that Google, Yahoo, and others are clearly using their free browser toolbars as a means of tracking people's activity even more closely than they can with info any Web site can easily glean from anyone who visits.
Then there was Bob, Clippy, etc. Really amazing stuff...for a two year old with a mental problem. Windows Live(tm) is for the brain dead. Let us not forget Windows ME... or all versions prior to Windows for Workgroups 3.11, not that it was a good OS, but as far as Winblows goes, it was the first version to work even somewhat realiably and provide limited networking capability for home users. NT was largely borrowed/stolen tech from VMS. When you think about it, there is nothing about M$ Winblows that M$ actually invented that is worthwhile. If the antitrust lawyers working for Big Brother ever get their act together and nail the monopolistic M$, it would be fitting for the settlement agreement to specify that M$ do nothing more than make all of its current proprietary code that is in use in products currently on the market (ditto for file formats, and other internal specs/standards) FOS software/standards/specs.
I say that because one would think that since M$ has shitloads of (admittedly mostly lame) programmers who are already familiar with the codebase in question and are theoretically already working on allegedly new products based on it, that M$ would take a big but recoverable hit that it ought to easily work its way back from. I think that even with a huge running start, M$ would lose out against the zillions of talented *nix programmers who would be fixing the problems with current M$ software products and then designing and implementing newer, better, more secure products that the M$ clowns just can't seem to come up with on their own.
Can you imagine what the folks at Apple, Sun, Red Hat, Google, etc. would do if all currently marketed M$ software product source code and standards were suddenly made public domain and very publicly available? We're not talking about a huge financial penalty. A $1 fine would be sufficient, IMHO. We're talking about taking what Microsoft has stuck together using its unfair monopolisitic practices and levelling the playing the field by making it available to everyone. M$ would then have to compete on that now-level field with a huge head start. I think it would stumble around for a couple a years then fall down and go boom.
In short, the best way for the U.S. and/or EU goverments to penalize Microsoft for its long history of unfair, unethical and almost certainly illegal business practices would be to strip it of the rights to the IP of any product it is now or has ever sold and make that IP available to the world. M$ ought to be allowed to keep rights to its trademarks, tradenames, and other non-technical business-related IP stuff. I don't think it would be fair to let true pirates use Microsoft logos, for example, not that such a tactic would be profitable for very much longer.
For most general purpose computers, it is clear that the OS and application software need not come bundled with the machine at all, and that there are many good reasons the use should be able to choose what compatible software goes on his new machine.
I really don't think the Dells and HPs of the world would mind a bit if the government said that any contracts they have that obligate them to bundle M$ crapware are null and void and they must offer consumers a choice of software, especially OSes and office suites or the option of buying a bare machine. You do realize that M$ has the HW vendors by the balls, don't you? IF they could pin the blame on the government and tell M$ to taker a hike, many would offer consumers some very nice alternatives to Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm).
Yeah. I just can't *wait* to have to buy a car one component at a time, and wear the extra cost the manufacturers and sellers will be passing on to consumers..
So, you want to be stuck with a $3K Recaro seating system in your next car, just because Recarro (hypothetically) has mananged to gain a monopolistic position in the car seat industry? (I like Recaro seats, BTW.) Is it OK with you if your car dealer specifies what brand of automotive consumables you must use to keep it under warranty?
x86/x64 computers can run a wide variety of OSes, most of them non-M$. The hardware vendor should care what OS you use, if the HW is any good. They may or may not support your OS, but that decision should be up to you -- do you want to pay extra for lame tech support?
I agree with your post, my response is only to the signature. I've made my share of complaints about Microsoft and Windows in my life, but with the whole bundling argument I disagree.
Nice riposte! Think of it this way (I am an IP lawyer wannabe...): IBM got into the shit in the 40s or 50s for bundling its punch cards with its DP systems. The U.S. Fed. Govt. said that was a no-no. Rightfully so, I think.
Just because I buy a GM car should not mean I have to buy whatever oil, gas and filters for same that are sold by GM subsidiaries. Spark plugs are spark plugs, to a large degree...must you get stuck paying premium prices for AC Delco plugs just because you found a cheap Caddy and want to keep it under warranty?
To twist your analogy around to the max, think about having to buy only Sony/BMG-label music to play on a Sony stereo. Ooops...that is getting damn close to the DRM issues we read about around here a lot, isn't it? Look at the silly iPodiots!
I don't want to pay for Winblows Vista when my only real vista is Ubuntu Linux as far as OSes go. Why should the M$ monopoly be able to (essentially) force the major HW vendors to shove M$ buggy bloatware down my throat, at my expense? Choice and freedom are good things to have and protect.
Microsoft makes most of its money through its OEM deals.
See my.sig line. If M$ can't legally bundle its buggy bloatware, it will either have to create/buy good software, or go under. I don't quite hate M$ the way some folks do, although I think it has never done anything technologically innovative worth mentioning. M$ just needs a massive kick in the ass to get it in gear and shift its direction. Despite Google snagging the cream of the IT/CS crop these days, MS has some very impressive capabilities...ones it has no motivation to use as long as it can fall back on its monopoly position to generate big bucks.
IBM went through the kind of humbling process I am talking about. IBM is no longer the "environment" where computing is concerned, but it has been the source of funding for great pure research and incredible development efforts for decades. With a little "spanking" from the courts, I think M$ might become a good, yet still very profitable, corporate citizen.
Unless you're well-funded and well-represented in court, that is.
Or you can take my approach to speeding tickets...I'll cost "them" more time and effort than it is worth to extract ~$75 to $200 from me, and have fun doing it!, more often than not. If every lonely soul the RIAA or MPAA decides to chase down and prosecute for alleged info piracy would just have some spine and fight back, using the local law library and the incredibly convoluted legal system to their advantage, the RIAA/MPAA couldn't afford to harass people the way they do. Filing unusual countersuits that require the time of serious lawyers (as opposed to clock-punchers) to deal with would be a good first step for many folks.
Have your day or month in court! It is fun. It is educational (esp. for a college student). It makes the legal system work better...but not from the RIAA/MPAA's point-of-view.
Because I haven't woken up enuough to be in full rant mode, I won't do more than mention the notion of pushing for jury nullification... Let's just say that almost every potential juror either has done something that would piss off the RIAA/MPAA or has a kid who does so routinely. Jury sympathy helps a lot! What percentage of folks reading this have been in possession of an arguably pirated recording? I'm guessing 97%+. With "the masses" that would drop to maybe 90%+. Figure the odds. Figure the fun! Figure the ruin of the MPAA/RIAA if they somehow lose even one or two precendent setting cases, the way the tobacco industry finally did.
You do know that the NT4 core is extremely similar to OS/2, and the only reason they diverged is because of a fight between IBM and MS?
You do know that much of the design of the Windows NT core was first developed by DEC's VAX/VMS engineers? A quick glance at the computer security mechanisms tells a lot. The two OSes were developed for very different hardware platforms, but the access control stuff was surprisingly similar. He who controls "admin" (that's "root" to us Linux geek wannabes) owns the system, so an OS that allows for very specific, measured control of such access was becoming extremely critical in the late 70s, when the DEC VAX 11/780 was born. Before the PDP and the VAX, mere users just got to submit jobs to systems folks who would (hopefully) eventually get around to returning the machine's results...often an simple numeric error code that indicated a Stupid User Trick...like a typo. DEC was arguably the main pioneer of multi-user terminal-based computing.
Microsloth, as usual, ripped off some good ideas when it saw them and made them the core of its first true 32-bit OS. Sadly, the Intel x86 architecture was never as clever as the VAX design, at least not from a systems/low-level programmer's perspective. All these stack/buffer overflow errors/expliots that we associate with Winblows would be much more avoidable if the 16 addressing modes of VAXen were available to folks writting OSes for today's microcomputers.
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U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard: Do you want to change your bullshit story!
When it comes from Microsoft, especially from Ballmer's asshmouth, you know it is the purest, unadulterated bullshit. Microsoft Vista is Windows ME2.
Vista is a failure. It always has been, and it still is. Microsoft try to tell you otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less of a failure.
...
(Excuse my English, I am Norwegian.)
Have soimeone translate this for you: "An accurate technical description of Microsoft Vista can be found in any good guide to computing under the heading 'clusterfuck'."
BTW, does Norway have a Bikini Team? It should!
Big companies are not known for leaping forward into new and unproven technologies, especially when most of the improvement is just user eye-candy.
Exactly. XP was a disaster when it was first released, but like most Microsoft products, it benefitted from being beaten up by users for several years. I know of savvy computer users who still run Win2K, not because of corporate lethargy, but because it is arguably faster and more stable than XP, and has a smaller footprint, even after all the multitudinous Service Packs and other patches have been applied. Honestly, I don't do anything that depends on XP that I couldn't do with Win2K, and think downgrading to Vista would be a major step in the wrong direction. Microsoft OSes need to "age" at least three or four years before they can be trusted in the real world.
I still say that Windows Vista is the best advertisement around for Ubuntu Linux.
They've amply demonstrated that they are LESS trustworthy than AOL.
AOHell? Is that for blue haired little old ladies who follow the "collect em' all!" theory of computer virus acquisition?
Seriously, AOL has no redeeming features. Just the AOL installation disk should suffice as a warning, laden with all the crapware that it is. With Google, you need not install anything. I don't use Google Toolbar or any such nonsense. I am free to encrypt my mail so Google doesn't have a clue as to what I'm communicating. Gmail is *ALWAYS* available, anywhere I happen to find 'Net connectivity. When is the last time you saw this kind of bad news regarding Gmail?: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-242034.html>
I do a fair amount of comptuer consulting and one of the things I always do when a client gets a new computer is clean out the crapware -- AOL's crap is among the first to go! The best thing we could do with AOL is give the entire company to Al Queda. If Osama Bin Laden we're foolish enough to use it, he'd have no security and no working computers!
Can we stop taking balanced articles and turning them into overly sensationalized summaries? This isn't the 1920's anymore. We don't need to expand an ultra-brief telegraph message or make up details while we wait for a postmarked letter. :-/
Would your average user be able to distinguish 'faulty software' from 'lucky'?
Casinos should get what they deserve. When they fuck up, they should lose.
If you put $1 in the machine and got a $10 credit, I should think that the user would figure out that there's more going on than them just being "lucky".
So? If I did that, I'd be a fool not to insert a *LOT* of dollars!
As TFA says, the Casino contacted the winners about the fault, and several of them agreed to give back their winnings. (Total losses for the casino were nearly $500,000.)
Why should it be a win-win situation for the casino? If a gambler is an idiot, he loses money. The same should apply to the casino. Realistically, no special rules/laws should apply to casinos -- they should not be allowed to ban card sharks (or slot sharks) anymore than other businesses are allowed to discriminate unfairly.
"yahoo has been automatically sending all my emails with attachments to my Trash folder for about 2 years now."
If you actually use Yahoo email for anything of importance, your posts belong in the Trash. Silly person!
The bottom line: Hotmail sucks. Like most Microsoft products. Like most Microsoft products, especially Windows, Hotmail appears to be broken -- arguably intentionally. Gmail works!
I'm not so sure about the "huge disk buffer". Smaller disks can be spun faster and tend to have lower latency. I'd like to see the drum drive make a comeback for disk cache...expensive, but fast!
"Using a Mac is often seized upon by support technicians or customer service squids as a one-size-fits-all scapegoat to excuse themselves from providing assistance."
There is a Mac user at the office here. Sometimes we let him sit at the grown-up's table when we have meetings if he has been behaving well.
To add to that, there's often articles about Firefox vulnerabilities on Slashdot, and many posts saying 'everything works fine here' regularly modded up to +5
How many alleged Firefox vulnerabilities affect the integrity of non-Windows systems? For that matter how many serious problems of any sort have you, personally, ever experienced with Firefox that weren't directly related to certain Web sites that were written specifically for IE, rather than generally accepted WC3 standards? The only major problem I've noticed with Firefox that actually bothered me much was when several earlier versions suffered a significant memory leak over time under heavy use. I won't even try to list the dozens of critical issues that have existed with various versions of IE since it was first foisted upon the largely unsuspecting marketplace. I simply avoid using IE -- I don't even use MS Update, but I can get all the patches (and there are a *lot* of them...hehehe) from other sources that I trust most than I do using IE to access MS's Web site. Firefox isn't perfect, but it isn't the open invitation to malicious hackers that IE is, especially when ActiveX is enabled on the latter. If you want to give your computer away, just use IE on it to access a few pr0n or warez sites -- someone else will own it soon enough!
> > Why are the good points about Vista never mentioned on Slashdot? >Um because most of the people that come here just see history repeating >itself. Try as I might, I can't think of any good points about Vista. Given that few except the Marketing Spinmeisters at Microsoft seems to be able to do so, perhaps that's the reason you don't see sais (alleged) "good points about Vista" mentioned around here. Besides, Vista has so many bad points we can barely keep up with them! Vista is the best advertising Ubuntu linux could ever hope for!
I'd say a car that doesn't ship with lcoks *IS* less secure than one that does. The survey seems reasonably valid in suggesting that security is the last reason on Earth a fool might waste money on Vista.
Much of Microsoft's IP strategy is FUD
Hehehehe! "Much"? Can't you be more precise? Say, like 99.44% of Microsoft's IP strategy is FUD? Or maybe you're being cautious, because the rest of MS's IP strategy is 100% pure BS and you don't want to examine it? (Can't blame you, as it is extra smelly...)
Microsoft is a monopoly run amok, not an innovator in any way shape or form.
I'd be surprised if anyone can post anything major that Microsoft has innovated that is worthy of a patent.
As I've suggested before, the FedGov ought to bust MS on anti-trust violations and impose a simple penalty, namely FOSS all of the existing commercialized IP MS claims to own -- force MS to make the code public domain. If MS was really doing innovative things, it would still have a huge running head start over any and all competition because it would have developers (researchers? *snicker*) who had been working on products based on new advances that it would not have to disclose under such a ruling. My guess is that the sum total of said innovative works in progress would amount to zilch.
(Presumably, MS developers are at least somewhat familiar with their own code base...but the error rate in their code suggests otherwise.)
Take the monopoly out of Microsoft and you are left with nothing worth mentioning...unless you consider buggy bloatware to be important.
If you want to raise your MPG, take a longer route in the city that makes you stop much less frequently. Stop/Go is the hardest on an engine and your millage efficiency.
My brand new car gets pretty good mileage for a performance car, but I am amused by your suggestion that stop/go is the worst factor as far as reduced gas mileage goes. Try driving at 110+MPH for a couple of hours on end...you can practically see the gas gauge drop as you drive. This is especially true if you are trying to keep up with a maniac (defined as someone who drives faster than I normally would under given conditions), as you better determine exactly what the actual top end of your new car's performance is over sustained periods of time. Wringing out a new car is obligatory. I had to do it. I think it is also mandatory after every oil change or something, too.
My car will get 24MPG or better if I keep it down to 65MPH on the freeway, but that drops to about 16MPG if I keep it above 100MPH as much as possible. It is rated by the EPA at 20MPG city and 27MPH Highway. I tend to be a bit of a gear head...
Wind resistance sucks...specifically: it sucks fuel!
Content (information) just wants to be free!
Concealed pistol arguments have both sides too. "I prefer the 9MM Glock" or "Nothing less than a .45 will do the job, it has _stopping power_."
/. readers are tech savvy enough to know that a Glock 20 or 29 (10mm) is the handgun to have if you only have one...
Of course,
Gmail is nice in that one can use it with a POP3 client if one wants to do so. I used to use Eudora as my mailreader, but Gmail is so fast and convenient that I just stopped using Eudora, despite the extra functionality it offers. I've never seen any reason to use Thunderbird although I'll take another look at it; this thread having piqued my curiosity about it.
Don't forget to clear your cookies or block them from Google.
I use Gmail and like it. I do not allow google-analytics or other Google scripts that are not necessary for Gmail to run. I don't allow any persistent cookies and I shut down my browser frequently, but at this point it is a given that Google has a pretty good idea of who I am and what my interests are. It bothers me that Google, Yahoo, and others are clearly using their free browser toolbars as a means of tracking people's activity even more closely than they can with info any Web site can easily glean from anyone who visits.
Then there was Bob, Clippy, etc. Really amazing stuff...for a two year old with a mental problem. Windows Live(tm) is for the brain dead. Let us not forget Windows ME... or all versions prior to Windows for Workgroups 3.11, not that it was a good OS, but as far as Winblows goes, it was the first version to work even somewhat realiably and provide limited networking capability for home users. NT was largely borrowed/stolen tech from VMS. When you think about it, there is nothing about M$ Winblows that M$ actually invented that is worthwhile. If the antitrust lawyers working for Big Brother ever get their act together and nail the monopolistic M$, it would be fitting for the settlement agreement to specify that M$ do nothing more than make all of its current proprietary code that is in use in products currently on the market (ditto for file formats, and other internal specs/standards) FOS software/standards/specs.
I say that because one would think that since M$ has shitloads of (admittedly mostly lame) programmers who are already familiar with the codebase in question and are theoretically already working on allegedly new products based on it, that M$ would take a big but recoverable hit that it ought to easily work its way back from. I think that even with a huge running start, M$ would lose out against the zillions of talented *nix programmers who would be fixing the problems with current M$ software products and then designing and implementing newer, better, more secure products that the M$ clowns just can't seem to come up with on their own.
Can you imagine what the folks at Apple, Sun, Red Hat, Google, etc. would do if all currently marketed M$ software product source code and standards were suddenly made public domain and very publicly available? We're not talking about a huge financial penalty. A $1 fine would be sufficient, IMHO. We're talking about taking what Microsoft has stuck together using its unfair monopolisitic practices and levelling the playing the field by making it available to everyone. M$ would then have to compete on that now-level field with a huge head start. I think it would stumble around for a couple a years then fall down and go boom.
In short, the best way for the U.S. and/or EU goverments to penalize Microsoft for its long history of unfair, unethical and almost certainly illegal business practices would be to strip it of the rights to the IP of any product it is now or has ever sold and make that IP available to the world. M$ ought to be allowed to keep rights to its trademarks, tradenames, and other non-technical business-related IP stuff. I don't think it would be fair to let true pirates use Microsoft logos, for example, not that such a tactic would be profitable for very much longer.
For most general purpose computers, it is clear that the OS and application software need not come bundled with the machine at all, and that there are many good reasons the use should be able to choose what compatible software goes on his new machine.
I really don't think the Dells and HPs of the world would mind a bit if the government said that any contracts they have that obligate them to bundle M$ crapware are null and void and they must offer consumers a choice of software, especially OSes and office suites or the option of buying a bare machine. You do realize that M$ has the HW vendors by the balls, don't you? IF they could pin the blame on the government and tell M$ to taker a hike, many would offer consumers some very nice alternatives to Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm).
Yeah. I just can't *wait* to have to buy a car one component at a time, and wear the extra cost the manufacturers and sellers will be passing on to consumers..
So, you want to be stuck with a $3K Recaro seating system in your next car, just because Recarro (hypothetically) has mananged to gain a monopolistic position in the car seat industry? (I like Recaro seats, BTW.) Is it OK with you if your car dealer specifies what brand of automotive consumables you must use to keep it under warranty?
x86/x64 computers can run a wide variety of OSes, most of them non-M$. The hardware vendor should care what OS you use, if the HW is any good. They may or may not support your OS, but that decision should be up to you -- do you want to pay extra for lame tech support?
I agree with your post, my response is only to the signature. I've made my share of complaints about Microsoft and Windows in my life, but with the whole bundling argument I disagree.
Nice riposte! Think of it this way (I am an IP lawyer wannabe...): IBM got into the shit in the 40s or 50s for bundling its punch cards with its DP systems. The U.S. Fed. Govt. said that was a no-no. Rightfully so, I think.
Just because I buy a GM car should not mean I have to buy whatever oil, gas and filters for same that are sold by GM subsidiaries. Spark plugs are spark plugs, to a large degree...must you get stuck paying premium prices for AC Delco plugs just because you found a cheap Caddy and want to keep it under warranty?
To twist your analogy around to the max, think about having to buy only Sony/BMG-label music to play on a Sony stereo. Ooops...that is getting damn close to the DRM issues we read about around here a lot, isn't it? Look at the silly iPodiots!
I don't want to pay for Winblows Vista when my only real vista is Ubuntu Linux as far as OSes go. Why should the M$ monopoly be able to (essentially) force the major HW vendors to shove M$ buggy bloatware down my throat, at my expense? Choice and freedom are good things to have and protect.
Microsoft makes most of its money through its OEM deals.
.sig line. If M$ can't legally bundle its buggy bloatware, it will either have to create/buy good software, or go under. I don't quite hate M$ the way some folks do, although I think it has never done anything technologically innovative worth mentioning. M$ just needs a massive kick in the ass to get it in gear and shift its direction. Despite Google snagging the cream of the IT/CS crop these days, MS has some very impressive capabilities...ones it has no motivation to use as long as it can fall back on its monopoly position to generate big bucks.
See my
IBM went through the kind of humbling process I am talking about. IBM is no longer the "environment" where computing is concerned, but it has been the source of funding for great pure research and incredible development efforts for decades. With a little "spanking" from the courts, I think M$ might become a good, yet still very profitable, corporate citizen.
Unless you're well-funded and well-represented in court, that is.
Or you can take my approach to speeding tickets...I'll cost "them" more time and effort than it is worth to extract ~$75 to $200 from me, and have fun doing it!, more often than not. If every lonely soul the RIAA or MPAA decides to chase down and prosecute for alleged info piracy would just have some spine and fight back, using the local law library and the incredibly convoluted legal system to their advantage, the RIAA/MPAA couldn't afford to harass people the way they do. Filing unusual countersuits that require the time of serious lawyers (as opposed to clock-punchers) to deal with would be a good first step for many folks.
Have your day or month in court! It is fun. It is educational (esp. for a college student). It makes the legal system work better...but not from the RIAA/MPAA's point-of-view.
Because I haven't woken up enuough to be in full rant mode, I won't do more than mention the notion of pushing for jury nullification... Let's just say that almost every potential juror either has done something that would piss off the RIAA/MPAA or has a kid who does so routinely. Jury sympathy helps a lot! What percentage of folks reading this have been in possession of an arguably pirated recording? I'm guessing 97%+. With "the masses" that would drop to maybe 90%+. Figure the odds. Figure the fun! Figure the ruin of the MPAA/RIAA if they somehow lose even one or two precendent setting cases, the way the tobacco industry finally did.
You do know that the NT4 core is extremely similar to OS/2, and the only reason they diverged is because of a fight between IBM and MS?
You do know that much of the design of the Windows NT core was first developed by DEC's VAX/VMS engineers? A quick glance at the computer security mechanisms tells a lot. The two OSes were developed for very different hardware platforms, but the access control stuff was surprisingly similar. He who controls "admin" (that's "root" to us Linux geek wannabes) owns the system, so an OS that allows for very specific, measured control of such access was becoming extremely critical in the late 70s, when the DEC VAX 11/780 was born. Before the PDP and the VAX, mere users just got to submit jobs to systems folks who would (hopefully) eventually get around to returning the machine's results...often an simple numeric error code that indicated a Stupid User Trick...like a typo. DEC was arguably the main pioneer of multi-user terminal-based computing.
Microsloth, as usual, ripped off some good ideas when it saw them and made them the core of its first true 32-bit OS. Sadly, the Intel x86 architecture was never as clever as the VAX design, at least not from a systems/low-level programmer's perspective. All these stack/buffer overflow errors/expliots that we associate with Winblows would be much more avoidable if the 16 addressing modes of VAXen were available to folks writting OSes for today's microcomputers.
Parlez vous Frog?
I like Ububtu. The fact that France likes it too disturbes me. It isn't as if the French have ever made a major correct decision...