On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 14:38, Larry Brown wrote:
> I would like to say after...
> LONG LIVE THE THREAD....
> is that I love the fact that M$ is making heavy handed decisions that
> taste bad in the mouths of their customers. I think that from the Linux
> standpoint, the more obvious the intrusion, the better.
Understand that the "Longhorn" BS is just a repeat of "Cairo" to those
of us who were NT 3.1/3.5 adopters. First time on Microsoft, second
time on me -- and no way is it a 2nd time on me! As of early 2003,
Microsoft is _so_guilty_ of what IBM used to do (and the DOJ repremanded
them in 1984, preventing them from announcing products more than 6
months in advance) on Longhorn, as _anyone_ with the Alpha-quality SDKs
_knew_ it was _not_ going to feature _anything_ but those 2, now,
"WinFX" technologies.
As such, I don't think it'll make any difference as 90% of consumers are
ignorant of the "problem." As Scott McNealy said about 5 years ago on a
major network program, "you think that way because you haven't used
anything else" in response to an anchor saying, "well, it doesn't seem
to work too bad" with regards to Microsoft solutions. People just don't
believe that Microsoft doesn't innovate, but it's fact. They are an
investment company that outsources everything, and the result is
horrendous control over the code.
The level of integration in Windows is mutually exclusive with
reliability and, more importantly, security. The SQL Slammer worm was
the epitome of this fact -- which went _underreported_ by _all_ IT media
outlets. And that's one of the reasons that businesses are starting to
become less and less ignorant on Linux. A consumer accepts the reboot
button. Businesses do not.
> It is difficult to impress upon people how much control they are losing
> and how much less privacy they have until this kind of thing happens.
Actually, McNealy has also said, "you have no privacy, get over it." It
was a response to people who believe they had privacy at the time, and
frankly, I agree with him. It's already gone.
We can enact laws to protect _new_ people. But as someone who has been
the victim of repeated identity theft by people with outstanding arrest
warrants in other states, it doesn't matter.
> Microsoft's removing some portion of backward compatibility in XP and
> their removing the ability for customers to purchase W2k (IMHO the
> best OS they've had, and at this rate ever will have) is costing
> customers again and again without any real added functionality.
Had Microsoft stuck with "pure" Win32, we wouldn't have had this
problem. But like "pure" .NET, it's a fantasy. "Longhorn" is "Cairo"
all over again.
Microsoft is the king of reuse, the jester of innovation. They simply
will not write new code if they can't buy it or steal it. E.g., most of
Windows 95 was swiped illegally from OS/2 Warp, but IBM signed the
Windows 95 licensing agreement the night before 95 was released, pissing
away their right to sue.
The NT/Win32 developers at Microsoft just shook their heads.
-- Bryan
P.S. For those talking about MS Linux, if Microsoft released a UNIX
flavor, it would be BSD like Apple. In fact, Microsoft would probably
attempt to buy Apple first, if the FTC didn't intervene.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Communities don't have rights. Only individuals in the community have rights. ... That idea of community rights is firmly rooted in the 'Communist Manifesto.'" -- Michael Badnarik----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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