Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? 1643
vd writes "Given most comments on Slashdot, it would appear that anyone with even a slight knowledge of computers hates Microsoft. An article on CoolTechZone, though, argues that not everyone should dismiss Microsoft outright. According to Varun Dubey, Linux is over-rated, Macs aren't worthy and Windows deserves respect and some love. From the article: 'What has Microsoft given us? It has given us Windows, sure, it was buggy earlier and a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind) but it was a pioneering effort. No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered. Sure, Mac OS was a lot prettier but then it cost the moon and the stars along with both your arms and legs.'"
I must be in a dream... (Score:5, Funny)
2 almost pro-MS posts on
someone please hit me...
There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
Good things cost more, it's a fact
If you want a good car, you'll pay more than if you just want a cheap car...
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but they're only usable before you boot.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Informative)
Or perhaps runs Windows XP and uses QEMU for Windows 2000 and Linux or runs Linux, and uses VMWare for Windows XP and PearPC for Mac OSX?
My point is that all of these OS wars, and I use - actively - all three major flavors. And I know I can't be alone. Why use only a hammer to build a house when you have so many different tools in your toolbox?
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Point is, who cares why he does it? It's his bloody decision and it obviously works best for him.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Interesting)
Quoting GP:
Because MS's "tool" is actually just a rotting scrotum, flopping mercilessly at those nails, only getting damaged in the process.
and the comment is modded +5 insigthful???
Quoting parent:
. It is exceedingly terrible to use. You have to struggle with it forever to get any app to load. Can't play games unless you know that you need to DL a shitload of dependencies.
See the difference? GP is just saying a lot of bad words and swearing things about windows... while Parent says some things that are sad but half truth (YES Linux is terrible to use, at least it is EASIER to use Windows OVERALL, thats why J6P prefeer WinXP), about the app loading I think it does no thold, and the dependencies problem man.. I have passed that hell once and it is INDEED a shit.
So come on fucking mods! if parent is a flamebait then GP is more flamebait, this REALLY PISSES ME OFF ABOUT SLASHDOT! and I know my comment will be also moded down.... but noooooo when it is about Linux it is flamebait, you can see in this thread the subjectivity of this site... grow up please
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft's best product ever is the Win32 API. It's somewhat sad to see that they seem to be trying to replace it with something worse. But as long as it lasts, it's pretty much the developers dream (the actual implementation might not be).
I'm probably not going to install Windows any time soon. I don't like it as a user, and I can cross-compile with Mingw on Linux just fine. Wine let's me do the initial tests, and I can use my girlfriends box to do the rest.
But I don't see myself doing that much (non-server) Linux development in the future, at least not until X is replaced with something else. Preferably with something that fits into the POSIX API. At present, mixing the two is just too painful.
PS. The network transparency of X is overrated. You can't really do pretty graphics without shared memory and/or heavy console-side logic, and if it doesn't even do sound, then what's it's advantage to a tool like VNC?
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not really true. They were barely adequate at creating software in the early days.
They started out with a bought copy of the base for both their OS and for BASIC. These weren't even the most advanced things going in the day, but they managed to acquire them.
What they were exceedingly good at is signing a contract with IBM that said all PCs would have their operating system on it. As the PC marketplace grew, it gave them a pretty much locked in revenue stream.
Once they had made a butt-load of money, they had the resources the hire a bunch of developers and actually start doing more.
But make no mistake about it, they didn't get where they are due to the (initial) quality of their product offerings. They got there by locking everybody in to Microsoft as early in the PC industry as you could get, and growing with an emerging market.
That's why we had to have court cases saying we're allowed to buy a PC which doesn't include a Microsoft OS on it and requiring they get paid for every single PC sold. Because people decided having to pay Microsoft for a PC which would run Linux was just plain wrong.
Re:They could code (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes they [Microsoft] did. You don't think Microsoft didn't make money off IBM's PC-DOS or OS/2? Think again. Strike one.
In that time period, the only way you could get away with not paying the Microsoft tax (aside from pirating) was buying non PC hardware...that being an Apple Macintosh, an Amiga, or an Atari ST. I'm not counting NeXT or Sun hardware in that category because they weren't exactly considered PCs in that era...
"Microsoft won the desktop war by being better than the competition at providing what corporations are interested in - useable applications."
OS/2 ran Windows apps. Strike two.
"Give credit where it's due. Without Windows 95 we'd all be running OS/2 by now and the Internet wouldn't be nearly as accessible."
Credit is not due. Guess you've never heard of OS/2 Warp for PCs. And Macs could access the net without Microsoft's software. Lynx and Mosaic worked on Amigas and Atari STs, not to mention software like Stik and Cab. Strike three.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft Vista - It Just (Barely) Works!
To revisit the car analogy, I think anyone that's ever been in a wreck in a Pinto or a Corvair will tell you the negative implications to such a philosophy.
And the PC revolution was here without Microsoft. The IBM PC was not made possible by Microsoft, Microsoft only got a deal on OS licensing. If MS hadn't been around, the PC would still have hit the market with a different OS (CP/M perhaps, which by all accounts was the most successful OS of the day and of which QDOS - to be usurped and called MS-DOS - was a rough implementation), or perhaps ATARI would have stepped up in its place. Most probably Apple would have retained the PC throne. In any case, Microsoft did not make the PC possible, it only latched on to a market for profit. There was nothing noble about it, Bill Gates and his cronies made a deal with IBM to distribute exclusively a fictional OS that MS didn't have, bought QDOS from SCP, and gave it to IBM as their own. They used a cheap and dirty gamble to get their position and fortune, not a noble move on behalf of home computer users everywhere as you would pretend.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
From the begining the Microsoft crew has ridden the back of the PC industry. Not only have they blood-sucked consumers, they have made life hell for developers by leveraging their monopoly on the desktop to suppress standards, maniacal attempts to bring all developers to a mediocre 'good enough' level of capabilities (considering they are competing directly with the same developers they support, this is not surprising).
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Funny)
Holy crap! That must be... what? About 28% or so?
Pathetic!
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
The Wright brothers invented the airplane, but were not able to turn it into a successful business venture, leaving plenty of room for others to come in and dominate the market.
Take cars for example, Henry Ford certainly did not invent the automobile, he just created a better way of doing it, along the way creating an empire based on his early work that has enabled his company to go further than he or anyone else at the time could have predicted.
Sure, Microsoft may not have invented many of those products you mentioned, but they certainly have taken each and turned them into major players in ways that their original inventors were not able to.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Funny)
You've clearly forgotten about Microsoft Bob.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Interesting)
No Xerox did. And no Apple didn't develop it.
Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. It had been demonstrated in the lab 20 years earlier. Edison made some improvements, mass-marketed and mass-produced lightbulbs, and built the infrastructure to bring them to the home and office.
Ford didn't invent the automobile. Ford made some improvements, used massproduction to bring the cost down to make it affordable for the average home and office.
The original article is a rant, with spelling and grammar errors and some weak arguments and claims.
But it has a valid central point.
Bill Gates is (approximately) the world's richest man because he, as much as anyone, made computers accessible and affordable to the average home and office.
We can whine that Edison screwed Tesla, and electric cars were better than model A's, and Sarnof screwed Farnsworth, and Sinatra killed Kennedy, and so forth, but I'm happy to be living in a world where a billion people are online.
We don't know how things would have played out if there had been no microsoft.
The open source movement at some point should give us something better than windows, but it's still not here yet. Apple is still making Volvos in a Ford world, catering to a niche market which can afford a better product at a higher price.
Windows has been the electric light bulb and the model A that made the new technology accessible to the masses.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is I want a GREAT car but some company is out there trying to change the gas pumps so they only work with the cheap cars.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
And viruses are not in direct relation to the market share: STs and Amigas had viruses without a near market monopoly. Viruses are just programs that use the flaws of a system. If there are less flaws there are less (posible) viruses.
Re:There is a price for what you want (Score:4, Funny)
authentication schemes, document formats, network protocolls
there is a microsoft touch that makes it NOT WORK with anything else unless you hack the hell out of the program (of course the correctly working open source one) turning it into a crippled version
Well dunno how it is nowadays, I refuse to give tech support develop, install or touch any windows machine for the last 4 days
Re:People don't hate MS because it's MS ... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a TCP/IP stack market before Microsoft included one with the OS. Are they also to blame for the destruction of the TCP/IP stack market? Yes, the strongarm tactics they used on OEMs to kill the nascent market were unethical and quite probably illegal, but I hardly considered the allegations of mere "bundling" to have merit then, and certainly not now.
Microsoft did not "rip code from mosaic". They bought it outright from Spyglass.
Currently, the licenses for 2000 SP3, XP SP 2 and later even give MS administrative rights to the machine.
I'll admit to not having read the whole license. Could you quote the relevant parts?
Re:People don't hate MS because it's MS ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually they fucked spyglass to get it. They promised them a percent of every IE sold then they gave the thing away. Poor spyglass, next time get better lawyers when signing a deal with the devil.
Pioneers Get the arrows (Score:5, Interesting)
A good accomplisment? Probably not. Yeah it let in some innovation but not much. Mainly it sowed confusion and prevented the establishment of standards that would have moved the industry along faster. Where it did establish standards it mainly were undesirable ones. Witness all the legacy crap like parallel ports, old fashioned serial ports, and Bioses. How long did it take just to get something sensible like USB to be implemented?
On the other hand apple was a pioneer, though not always the inventor of PC methods. First (working practical) use of dynamic memory. First widepread use of memory mapped video (yes we have gone back to graphics cards but for anyone who used CGA you now what I mean), first integration of post script, First affordable Graphical user interface, first affordable mouse system, cut and paste between applications, Firewire, first consumer freindly unix desktop. first extensible files system (HFS+), metadata in file system, long liberal file names, Application oriented message passing scripting language (apple script). Self discovering local networks (first appletalk, now bonjour) If we include NeXT then we can include an OS based on Object oriented programming, Display postscript, First use of optical drives...,
Pioneering, but not settling. Not always inventing but perfrecting. They drove innovation by adopting it early and creating needs for it. Look at the first affordable desktop publishing. That required a Gui, and the ability to edit graphics as objects, and thus a mouse.
Microsoft...hmmm what can we say... they did settle the land and run on cheap hardware. Of course Cheap is why it was also so shitty. Macs were all configured at a high level. You didnlt need a pile of add on cards or figure out the interrupts and ports the card conflicts created. When you did need cards they were autoconfigured by the OS. macs had true plug and play from the day the mac II came out. Windows never really mastered plug and play till the PXI bus.
Linux on the other hand plays to a different market. Wheras macs were at the maximally configured end of the spectrum. linux allowed you to diassemble everything and configure it exactly how you wanted. Not a shrink wrapped solution like widows that tried to do it for you and consequently invented horrors like the registrtry, incompatible DLLs, and resource conflicts. Instead Linux is a tinkerer's toychest. Of course that's why it comes in third for desktop and ease of use. But it's also starting to become an innovator in software ideas as more tinkerers get linked together.
Re:Pioneers Get the arrows (Score:4, Insightful)
No, for the most part the PC isn't the early adopter but it does save lots and lots of money even if the system as a whole isn't as clean as Macintosh.
Don't you think MS and everybody else would have liked to change the 8.3 filenames faster then what was happening. It couldn't be done becuase there was millions of programs people relied upon that wouldn't handle the change. Apple whipes the slate clean from time to time and start over. That wouldn't be possible if Apple had 95% of the market insted of 3%.
8.3 (Score:5, Informative)
put down the crack pipe and step away from the keyboard. Are you kidding? Apple had long filenames on Windows disks long before Windows 95 did. How did they manage that? It was pretty easy, and in fact the same way windows 95 later copied. they just wrapped the old 8.3 names with a layer that looked up the short name as was actually stored on the DOS disk.
What do you think would happen to the world economy if Microsoft only would release longhorn for PPC?
Uh dude, apple has switched many times and many processors and never left their currentusers behind. I was playing crystal quest, a game from the mid 90's on my OSX computer, just yesterday. When apple switched to intel they are still going to be compiling apps for my present computer.
Crystal Quest (Score:4, Informative)
I know because baby, I WAS THERE!! (that game was great. and I've used macs since 12/84...)
Re:I must be in a dream... (Score:5, Funny)
Evidently not (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the article piece by piece:
Recap on alternative/joke names for MS.
States explicitely that "I love Microsoft. Absolutely adore it and what's more, I hate Linux. I think it's the most over rated piece of software ever built and survives simply out of spite and not because it is terribly good at doing something because it is not!". He's clearly already marked out his opinion as essentially content-less uninformed flaming, exactly what he complains about when it happen to MS.
Calls Windows a "pioneering effort". Now, I'm no Linux or Mac fanboy, but I was under the distinct impression that Windows had very little innovation compared to the Mac. IIRC various Microsofties have even admitted as much before, albeit off the record.
Regurgitates the long-disproven "popularity => more successful breakins" argument. More popularity equals more cracking attempts, I'll grant you, but that's not the same as successful security breaches. And anyway, haven't we already disproven this whole argument [apache.org]?
"Considering the fact that everyone who knows how to write two bits of code dreams of hitting windows with a virus, the guys at the "Redmond Giant" are doing a spectacular job."
Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaaa! As everyone knows, the two main groups who write viruses are security professionals offering a "proof of concept", and script kiddies. The overwhelming majority of coders/developers have never written (or certainly released) a virus in their lives.
In addition, given it's mostly VBScript kiddies - who are almost universally poor programmers - the runaway success of most Windows viruses is even more damning.
"XP is such a joy when it comes to simply connecting a device and watching the pretty little bubble detecting it and saying "its installed and ready for use" makes the slightly high price absolutely worth it."
Dunno what version of windows he's using, and not to deny Windows has got better over the years, but I still have plenty of issues even these days with unrecognised hardware, pieces of hardware detected twice, crashes due to dodgy device drivers, etc.
"In Linux, you have to recompile a kernel if you want to so much as change your modem!"
Now, I'm not that au fait with the low-level Windows or Linux processes, but I understood that they both used monolithic kernels (ie, drivers not in userland). Surely this means that Windows also has to "recompile" the kernel when the device drivers change? If so it might be hidden behind a pretty user-interface, but it's the same damn architecture and the same design problem.
Tackles the anti-trust cases. Totally ignores Microsoft's documented illegal behaviour and instead blames it on jealousy from competitors. Riiiiiight...
Suggests Sun and Oracle's business models are based around sueing Microsoft. Is he confusing "Sun" with (the Microsoft-backed) SCO, and "Microsoft" with Linux?
He's actually suggesting these companies sue Microsoft because they see it as an easy revenue-earner, rather than a highly risky attempt at redress against the richest organisation (with the most expensive and persuasive legal team) in the world. Mind-boggling.
"Microsoft made some products which it would like to ship together with its OS, no where in the EULA does it say that "you are not authorized to install other software" If Mr. John Doe thinks media player is the worst piece of software he has ever used, he is free to go and download Winamp or Musicmatch Jukebox (neither of these offer free full versions)."
Yeah, they don't write it into the EULA where anyone could see it, but you don't need to do that when you've got the CEO of Dell's balls in your office drawer. It's harder to prove, and leaves less obvious marks for the next lawsuit.
Oh, and the key thi
Freak (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy really must not like open source developers.
Re:Freak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Freak (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the people developing Linux couldn't care less about windows, so why bother writing up malicious code for it when they can spen that time (if coding) coding to improove the tools they use and learnt to love?
This article is written by someone who doesn't know nothing about OSS, and that quote shows it well.
Re:Freak (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Freak (Score:3, Insightful)
i tried to port one of my programs to windows, and it wouldn't even compile. I toyed around with it in visual studio at my friend's job and nothing I did would get it to compile. it kept complaining about compiled headers or something. and I was only using the
Porting to Windows (Score:3, Informative)
Turn off the compiled headers option, and watch out for "include" discrepancies in the header files you are using. For example, in some compilers might include , so when you are using functions from and you might mistakenly include only . This would then compile on the compiler you're used to, but would not compile on a different compiler. Neither compiler is broken in this scenario - it's your code that's broken.
However, the compiled headers option in Visual Studio is a "bug", IMO.
Porting to Windows (boy, that was bad) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Freak (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, most of the people developing Windows probably sit at night writing up malicious code for Windows! Or is Internet Explorer a very successful third-party trojan?
Re:Freak (Score:5, Funny)
whoever the author of this crap is, he had better crawl back into the slimy hole whence he came because he verges on libel and slander.
Re:Freak (Score:5, Informative)
Say for instance you develop a unique product that no one else has ever developed before. As long as your company is the only one to develop that product you automatically have a monopoly on that product. How can you be punished for something that's beyond your control ?
Microsoft has done a lot of shady business practices.. no one is arguing that. But having the monopoly alone does not make them criminals. It's how they abused their monopoly to wipe out future competition and to screw over their customers that got them in trouble.
I'm confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Funny)
http://ilovemicrosoft.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid
In other news ... (Score:5, Funny)
What else has Microsoft meant to us... (Score:5, Interesting)
Suppressed or destroyed competition in the app space.
Dictated an artificial (e.g. unnecessarily expensive) software replacement cycle.
Empowered unscrupulous businesses to spy on your every web surfing move.
I hear people say that things aren't so bad with the current state of desktop computing. After all, Windows rarely crashes anymore and you can surf the web, play games, read email, etc. What else is there? To be quite frank, a lot. It is difficult to quantify all of the software development that hasn't been done because of Microsoft's oppressive control over the desktop. I estimate we are at least three generations of software development behind because most businesses would not risk competing with Microsoft. Just 5 years ago I can remember reading stories about companies that decided NOT to compete in a particular area because they feared Microsoft would crush them. Forget the companies put out of business or the people who had to find a new job. The loss of advancement in software technique is incalculable.
Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft isn't buggy, it's evil!
Re:What else has Microsoft meant to us... (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets say tomorrow Bob 1 and Bob 2 invest some new uber fantastic computer program/hardware/whatever you pick. Now three years ago Bob 1 was working for small start up Company A while Bob 2 were working at Company B. Now Microsoft caused both companies to go out of business. So Bob 1 and 2 found each other at company 3.
Now if MS didn't "crush them", we never would have whatever it is they invent. So while I hate MS and all it stands for, they a
Re:What else has Microsoft meant to us... (Score:3)
This is lik saying "I don't blame thieves for stealing money, because everybody wants to have more money."
True, but not everybody steals. And not every company behaves like MS.
Re:What else has Microsoft meant to us... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the actions they use are illegal, but they either weasel off, hire better lawyers, or just pay off defendants. They're well known for entering negotiations to license technology, and if the talks break down, they just steal it.
Also, everything they've been able to do since the early-mid 90's has been due to their illegal exploitation of monopoly, such as strongarming OEMs not to include Netscape or WordPerfect.
So I'd say it's not the laws that are at fault, but a legal system that never envisioned a defendant strong and willful enough to flaunt the law because the penalties are simply part of the cost of maintaining a monopoly.
Re:Short sighted (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Short sighted (Score:3, Insightful)
Without Microsoft, the same thing would have happened via Apple, Atari, Commodore or someone else either through a primary platform or through cloning one.
Microsoft actually stunted the saturation of the home computing market by supporting the dominance of a dull, overpriced "business only" machine.
It took the PC a good 10 years to catch up to the basic standard features of a 1985 era non-PC home computer. Th
Re:What else has Microsoft meant to us... (Score:3, Insightful)
No it didn't. MS Windows was a result of the IT industry growth, not a cause. The PC was already cheap and widely used (in the UK, Amstrad PCs running DR-DOS and GEM were selling well) before Windows turned up. There were many alternative GUI systems that could have become dominant on the PC.
Drumming up advertising revenue (Score:3, Informative)
Taco have you guys on some kind of a quota system? Or do you get bonuses for generating a certain amount of page hits?
Obligatory Amiga reference (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
In what universe is that true?
Hey! I know the answer to this one! (Score:5, Funny)
Next on the agenda: is genocide really that bad of an idea?
Viewing habits (Score:5, Funny)
You obviously don't read at threshold: -1.
Will Slashdot comments be news next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor guy. (Score:3, Funny)
Terrible article (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there's this: Lets be fair and honest about this. Here is a company that single handedly created the market for Personal Computers, brought computing to ordinary folks like you and me, made it affordable by encouraging mass acceptance and constantly strives to provide us ease of use in every sphere it touche
Gee, I remember something called the Apple II doing this long before microsoft was the force it was. What a maroon.
Re:Terrible article (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, be reasonable. The Apple II never saw the penetration into (especially small) businesses that even the earliest, crudest PCs immediately had. The PC, running DOS even, was hugely successful. When Windows hit, it made word processor users out of millions of people that had never even heard of the Apple II or had any inclination to spend Mac sort of money.
Re:Terrible article (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're being too kind. The writer comes across as a not too bright 12 year old. In other words, I think we may have just witnessed the birth of India's version of Rob Enderle.
wrong (Score:5, Informative)
This "ease of use" includes people running as Admin with all the services running and basically wide open to the universe. That's "ease of use".
I won't pretend that Linux or BSD is any easier but I really don't think this "ease of use" label is meaningful.
"Chainsaws are easy to use!" -- Said the current reigning king of the one armed people.
Tom
Heh (Score:5, Funny)
This is the greatest sentence ever written in the history of man. Thank you for your penetrating insight.
Wow, you truly do have a death wish! (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously, I've thought this for a long while. True, it's free, and (arguably) good as a server platform. But hugely overrated - Linux nuts often (not always) seem to consider it a viable replacement to Windows or OSX for *everyone*, which it is not...especilly when you consider that users don't care about the "morals" behind their software, just whether they can share files with others and keep working the same way that they're used to.
Re:Wow, you truly do have a death wish! (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is that I want to do more than just use my computer. I want to love using my computer. And I never quite have that with Windows as a whole. But I love using Linux.
I also don't dismiss Microsoft products out of hand... I like using Windows XP although it would not work for me exclusively. Two MS products in particular I consider t
Yes, wrong to love Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has done a lot of things, some good, some bad, some neither. Businesses are just that way. Is Microsoft worthy of respect? Sure. They have done something that other computer companies only dream of: they own several of the markets that they are part of. But does that mean we should hate them? Does it mean we should love them? Of course not.
People who feel strong emotions towards companies that they have very little part in (having neither worked there nor been part of the founding and building of it) are misdirecting their emotions. Save your love for your neighbor, don't waste it on Microsoft.
Plug and play not pioneering on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Plug and play was by no means a pioneering effort by Microsoft, the Macintosh has had it forever, so long in-fact that it had no name on Mac OS, not until it was a new feature in Windows did Microsoft give it a name. We Mac users just knew it as "stuff working when I plug it in just like it should"
Also I would argue (and I know there are many on both sides) that the Mac OS was prettier, cost more, and was easier to use as well.
Regardless of your opinion... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fatuous nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why was this even published? (Score:5, Insightful)
IOW: Nothing to see here, move along.
Okay, if you insist:
FTA: It is about time we stopped being hypocritical and appreciated a job really well done.
But it isn't. Popular or not, most of their products are mediocre hack-jobs that thrive despite their quality, not because of it.
Well written (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well written (Score:4, Funny)
Windows != Pioneering (Score:5, Insightful)
To say that Windows was a "Pioneering" effort is like saying Columbus "Discovered" America, when there were already people living here.
Give me a break. Why do people insist on re-writing history?
kulakovich
He's missing a point about Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not even a hardcore Linux user (I've had Fedora Core for only a few months now) and even I can see this. Am I entirely wrong?
aaah memories... (Score:3, Funny)
It has given us Windows, sure, it was buggy earlier and a lot of things didn't work like they were supposed to (plug and play springs to mind)
Did anyone else just remember back to that lovely lovely video of good 'ol Bill , and that scanner :)
'Plug and play' *grin*
Before you all flame him ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Having said all that, there is nothing wrong (as such) with loving Microsoft. If you like a product, find it easy to use and it allows you to do what you want to do, spend less time doing boring stuff and generally make the time you spend with it enjoyable then good for you. Some people can't stand it, some people love it.
Personally, I don't have a problem with Windows. I know it inside out (well, reasonably), can troubleshoot the few problems I have and so I'm reluctant to change to something else. Yes, the shell is a bit crappy, but XP+Cygwin in my mind is better and easier than Linux especially when under the latter my modem, sound card and network all fail to work.
Finally as for the "loving" comments, I find it odd that anyone could love an operating system. For me, the majority of the added value are the applications than I run on top of it. Sure the OS may have some neat tricks and features but I spend more time tinkering and using the apps than the OS directly.
But then I'm probably not your average Slashdot reader.
Shockingly, I agree. (Score:3)
We all know Win9x stunk like hell. NT was too lacking inuser friendliness. Win 2k and XP really are solid and useable for a lot of people, though. The last time I say the fabled BSOD other than through overclocking and shitty drivers - probably 2001 or something.
Office is a slick bit of kit for people like me who can make a tidy sum developing and selling (cha-ching!) custom solutions centred around it. Word surely sucks but Excel is top notch and Access being good for smaller projects.
At the risk of sounding like an astroturfing troll, mainstream MS software just gets the job done and if you know what you're doing - with the minimum of fuss. OSS is all well and good, and a wonderful concept, but until it's got those Ts crossed and Is dotted, Microsoft just offers a more compelling option for those wanting to run a business that don't have the resources of someone like IBM.
In 5-10 years maybe I'll be singing the praises of a Linux/OO.o/xSQL solution, and I hope so too - I like the concept and theoretical freedom.
Small flaw in the argument... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, my question to Microsoft fans is, what happened between 1990 and 2000 that turned Microsoft from hero to goat? You be the judge.
sPh
Why the change? (Score:5, Interesting)
W95 was also the debut of the Registry with all it's attendant obfuscations and encrypted entries. No more of this human readable
Then there were the help files. I taught myself how to use Win3.11 to quite a high level purely from the bundled helpfiles. W95 seemed a lot less helpful. However I think the nadair was reached with WinME when I was tryng to troubleshoot my wife's PC and suddenly though "all these halp files are, are a lit of reason's why the problem is not MS's fault".
Then there was Stacker - where MS bough out just enough of the company to squash the product. Everyone has their favourite MS unfair competition story - that was the one that made me realise these guys were not playng fair
And there was the chap on USENET - demon.local - who posted a message subject "Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!". Apparently he'd found a bug in 95, reported it and was told he'd be given 30 days free credit while they looked into it. He was outraged - he spent his own valuable time tracking down a bug for Microsoft to improve their product, and in return they threatened to charge him money if they couldn't replicate it in 30 days. How to alienate your techically adept userbase in one easy lesson...
The final straw for me, was finding that getting a copy of office for my dad's new XP machine doubled the cost of the computer (which we'd already bought) and that we'd need a new printer and scanner. None of which was advertised, of course.
These are some of the landmarks on the journey from me as a MS enthusiast c.1990 to a Linux evangelist in 2005. It's not that I woke up one day and thought "linux looks cool", MS had to work long and hard before I started to think of them as the enemy.
There's a line, arguably a subtle one, between wrtiting novice-friendly software and treating your users as idiots. Further on in the same directin there's another one markign the start of treating the user with contempt. As far as I'm concerned, MS crossed first one, then the other, and have not so much as looked over their shoulder the whole time...
Re:Small flaw in the argument... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was around 1990 that Microsoft decided to abandon its partnership with IBM in developing the powerful next-generation OS known as OS/2 and instead go solo with a lightweight GUI layer for DOS called Windows 3.0.
I'm a windows zealot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly there are flaws in windows, including security, which this guy just brushes under the carpet. And he clearly hasn't used linux in a while -- I can't remember having to recompile my kernel too recently to get things working.
This isn't even an article! I've seen slashdot posts that are more insightful (and better structured).
There are pros and cons to both OSes, and I personally feel there are more pros on the side of Windows. But this article is the kind of drivel that gives us windows fanboys a bad name.
Stockholm Syndrome (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny to think that somebody would willingly make themselves look like a doofus.
Is it wrong to love Microsoft? Do some research, like the rest of us.
This guy sounds as if he has Stockholm Syndrome, where he has become sympathetic to his captor.
I'm Confused? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the latest Netcraft survey I've read, Apache still show's %70 Market Share. So according the the Author's logic, we should be seeing CodeRed, et al. for Apache NOT IIS. According to the authors logic why would someone spend "sleepless nights" focusing on the %29, instead of the %70?
How come we don't see the same type of devestating worms that we've seen directed at IIS, being written and directed at Apache?
Seriously, I would like to see such authors as these explain that to his readers.
That's not a meaningful article (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I started respecting Microsoft a whole lot more when the developers started blogging [msdn.com] on a large scale. Few people can possibly have missed Raymond Chen's excellent blog Old New Thing [msdn.com] which really explains a lot of the things that Slashdot would consider "cruft" and "archaic design" in Windows. For those who missed it I would recommend the post about file-system tunneling [msdn.com]. On one hand it is a downright revolting workaround to make old apps work and behave as one would expect, but on the other hand one has to respect the obviously huge amounts of thought and effort that went into it.
To some part this also goes back to a bit of a reaction against Slashdot and similar places obsession with hating Microsoft. They are a lot better than they were in say, 97. With NT under the hood Windows is an a lot more agreeable operating system. Slashdot may scoff at Microsofts security effort, but in all honesty it seems to be going fairly well form my perspective. Updates are quicker and more plentiful (also most vulnerabilities seem to be announced because the fix showed up on WindowsUpdate than because an exploit was found). Recompiling large part of the system with automatic buffer checks (where possible, this is C/C++ we are talking about) has helped the severity of a lot of exploits. The new low-rights IE seems to be a good approach to insulate any problems further (borrowed from UNIX daemons granted, but the OS-level security infrastructure is sound, and applying it in a useful way to desktop applications really is a new thing), check out the IE teams blog for information about that work by the way: IEBlog [msdn.com]. They may not have had the best place to start from, but it does seem to be going the right way (I mean, hey, just getting a working software firewall in place was a huge leap forward), which I would think everyone can agree is a good thing.
Another popular blog is Michael Kaplan's blog [msdn.com] dealing with internationalization stuff like character encoding and input support.
Overall I could link blogs for quite a while, pretty much all major Microsoft products have developers blogging. It can be interesting to have a read, they are often well written, have a nice technical content and give a bit more understanding for how things work (and may help cure some of the more irrational hate for Microsoft :).
Can We Say FLAIMBATE??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now... addressing the , "is it OK to love Microsoft" question. It all depends on who you are and what your point of view of technology is. Let me explain:
1. There are people who love certain company/technology just because they are told the technology is good. Non-technical Sun Microsystems fans tend to be an example of this. They are told that Sun Microsystems is a good company to buy stock in, so they assume that the products Sun produces are good. But this is not the case. Trust me, I've worked with a few really bad Sun products for the past five years and I welcomed HP-UX with open arms where support and reliability are concerned.
2. There are people who love a technology because of it's status symbol ranking. Notable in this arena is Apple. Apple produces decent products, to be sure. But they are extremely expensive for what they are. They've been making a break with this as of late, so this isn't the ideal example, but there are plenty of products out there that fall into this realm. Think Adobe Photoshop vs. everyone else. Depending on your needs, Adobe Photoshop might be financial overkill. In many cases Paint Shop Pro or even GIMP might be enough. Especially where you don't need professional print features. But there are people out there who won't touch anything but Adobe Photoshop even to the extent of pirating it.
3. There are the people who actually know technology well. They might be programmers or engineers. To them, there are two possible divisions. The first one are the people who came up with the technology first. I know quite a few people who worship the DEC Alpha. Even to the extent of passing around unsubstantiated rumours that Itanium 2 is really a DEC Alpha in disguise. They hate everything else that has come along since the Alpha because their battle cry is that they had 64-bit RISC processing back in 1992.
4. The second group are those who know even more about technology than the people in example 3 above. These people usually have a really good clue about what constitutes good technology. They've usually been around a long time and have seen fads come, go and return as "new" again. They usually quitely shake their heads and take the more pragmatic view of choosing the most well designed technology. (They tend to be OpenVMS and Unix users)
5. Then there are the retarded suits who base what makes a technology company good on their stock portfolio. This group is the least well informed and are the most likely candidates to love Microsoft. When they get mailings from various tech companies, they'll ditch anything from smaller companies (even if the technology is superior to larger companies) and only go with big name brands. Dell, HP, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, IBM, etc... To them, these are the only options. They even tend to eschew companies like Epson, Gateway, Corel, Redhat even though there might be some very good technology coming out of these companies.
So, the question, "is it OK to love Microsoft" is really a non-starter. Security and reliability issues aside, Microsoft has done very little in the way of creating new and useful technologies. They just buy up technologies rather then developing them from the ground up. The company is not run by engineers, it's run by businessmen. The approach is to do just enough to make their technology usable, but not to make it superior. Where they want real performance is in their profits. And that is completely counter to excellent software engineering. For someone like me, I can't love a company that doesn't engineer things properly. Of all the companies I've had to deal with, DEC was probably THE best technology company out there with a real eye on great engineering. When they got taken over by Compaq, a good deal of that got shitcanned. When HP took over Compaq even more got given away, sold off and
Re:Can We Say FLAIMBATE??? (Score:4, Funny)
Woah, wait - you mean there are people out there who've actually bought Photoshop? Next you'll be telling me that there are people who paid money for Word instead of just copying it from their machine at work!
As a Windows programmer.... (Score:5, Insightful)
story submitted on slashdoty now simply by stating
an option which is controversial!
What's next?
"SCO's a really great company!"
"Osama bid Laden's a really nice guy!"
"The Twin Towers needed to be demolished!"
"Windows Viruses are a good thing!"
Anyway, as a Windows programmer... the reason why Microsoft should be hated is because:
1) Microsoft's anti-competitive (illegal) practises.
2) Windows over complicated and badly designed architecture(s).
There's no doubt that Microsofts office suite is currently unriveled (Sorry OOo lovers!), but that's mainly becuase Micosoft have squashed all the opposition.
P.S. I recently bought a Mac mini for my mother-in-law. Wow! What a really lovely little computer! And MacOS X is _really_ nice. I've just bought some books on programming Cocoa... just got to buy a Mac now
Revisionism at work (Score:3, Insightful)
Berkeley Systems' GeoWorks was in many ways much nicer than Windows, ``run(ing) with a crispness Windows can only dream of on a 386'' (and was quite usable even on a lowly 8086).
http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/geos.htm [fortunecity.com]
VisiOn was tracking quite nicely as well, but was undone by MS FUD.
PenPoint was way cool as well.
and of course, while MS was busy w/ Windows 3.1, NeXT had NeXTStep.
William
AdWords Knows all (Score:4, Funny)
Even Google could detect that Dubay's meds aren't working.
What has Microsoft given us? (Score:5, Interesting)
2) the lowering of expectations for the reliability of computers.
Is it wrong to love extortionists? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost is MUCH more than initial outlay of cash (Score:4, Insightful)
Macintosh cost more in initial cash outlay, but did it increase productivity?
I think back over the endless days I've spent fixing Windows problems, the loss of data when Windows has bluescreened, the loss of billable time and the loss of my hair...
The cost of an operating system and applications is one helluva lot more than merely the sticker price.
my letter to author of article (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that quote from your article says almost all. You adore Microsoft. Good for you. You hate [L]inux (it's not capitalized). Good for you. That's really about the only objective part of you article. You don't think linux is good at doing something? You're opinion... It's misguide at best, but it's really wrong. Did you know at Microsoft for the longest time their e-mail servers were Unix machines? That was because their e-mail applications weren't up to the task. This I know because I worked there. Haven't checked recently, so I don't know if they're still using unix for e-mail.
Also, some of the world's largest, most complex, and savviest applications are running on linux platforms. Do you ever use Google? Google (last time I checked) is up over 40,000 linux servers running the show. Ever shop at Amazon? Amazon runs almost exclusively on linux and Solaris (Sun) boxes under the covers.
Sad, unfair and uncompetitive? Maybe you're only fifteen years old. If you were older and had any sense of history and knew what Microsoft has done in the past you'd understand better. Microsoft has gotten where it is, become what it is, with blatant disregard for fair and competitive business practices. (Not sure what "agreeing on a constitution" has to do with anything in your thesis.)
Continue to love Microsoft, it's a warm fuzzy world from your view. You obviously are part of the target demographic.
You're probably going to get hammered for your column. You deserve it.
Re:MAC (Score:4, Funny)
Magnificent Amazing Computer :-)
what Macs are good for (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac's are only good for video editing, music editing, graphic's and i think thats pretty much it.
This is a big misconception many people have about Macs, Mac are for more than just these. Macs can pretty much do everything Windows are tasked for. There may be specific apps that are only ported to Windows but more than likely there's a Mac app that can do the same or similar things. Database, there are dbs for Macs, same thing with wordprocessing and spreadsheets. Afterall Microsoft has MS Office for
Re:Would i listen to someone... (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't seen a Windows user who *doesn't* drool over my keyboard.
Things blissfully fade in and out, a soothing animated xscreensaver is my desktop background, my window title bar and border are transparent (crystal theme (check out crystalgl and oceangl, they are stunning)). Too bad you can't run crystal gl or ocean gl with kompmgr; I'm sure that will be fixed in the future. (crystal GL, btw, does the Vista-like translucency of window borders. 1.5 years ago. )
Font rendering on my system blows away anything else, and I'm talking about graphics professionals running Windows and Mac OS X doing comparisons.
Not too mention the oohs and ahhs I hear about Project Looking Glass. It'll be fun when that's avaliable as a Window Manager for distributions.
KDE amazes most people. Kparts, all the nifty little protocols (like fish://, camera://, and ipod://), native output to PDF for an application (like OS X). Kaffeine, which plays any format under the sun.
My girlfriend saw the automatic downloading of lyrics and wikipedia entries in amarok, and decided she wanted this 'KDE' thing.
Not to mention non-KDE things that KDE builds on. Samba integration is beautiful. CUPS autodetection of network printers makes most Windows people drop their jaws in shock.
"What? You mean I can go back and forth between offices, and it only shows me the working printers I have avaliable? Where do I get the drivers?"
The *only* difficulty I have on my system is Windows applications. Wine just isn't all the way there yet. Other than that, everything, and I mean everything, works beautifully. I have to spend a lot of time explaining that Linux has problems with Windows applications only, and that Windows application performance is not indicative of Linux app performance.