OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

I am not sure if words can discribe the bull*#%@ that this link leads to.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...s/default.mspx

Re: Wow is all I can say...
 

I think mine came close: 'Gee, suddenly I trust microsoft x50% more than I used too! '

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

50% more than 0? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

...You know, it's kinda hard to put a number on it.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

That has to be a paid site!!!

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

No, it is just part of M$'s marketing department. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

AT, you of all people should know that.

You confirmed it yourself.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

But... what does it... mean...

Nothing pleases me more than vapid jargon.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

That article seems kind of biased

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Of course it does. No corporate entity would EVER post negative stuff about their own offerings.

I do creative stuff here in LA, and frankly I enjoy negative reviews more. You learn something about your audience, and you get to laugh at how self-important critics really are.

That said, GOD but Microsoft is evil.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

What makes you guy hate MS so much? I’d really like to know. Their stuff works well, they respond better than most huge corporations. And they really take care of the stock holders, this year was especially nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The article is meant to show that MS can compete price wise against nix. In the real world they do quite well everywhere except the single desktop. As far as supporting users goes, nix can't tuch them.

As an example: I have a project to roll out Office 2003 with sp1 to 600+- users. It has to upgrade about 100 existing 03 installs to sp1, and replace (uninstall/preserve user profiles) about 350 Office XP and Office 2000 installs. Also it has to make clean installs on about 50 systems that are left over from Citrix and have no Office products installed. All system must have the same features installed and all configurations such as email server and security must be configured at install. Also, existing user profiles must be imported. It also needs to recognize 03sp1 installs and conform them to current standards. In less than an hour, starting from scratch, I was able to build an unattended network install package. One package for all systems and all the user needs to do is point and click. No keys to enter, no activations. And everything was done through a wizard. Stuff like this just does not exist in the nix world.

As a second example. I just completed my third SBS server deployment last weekend. I have yet to need to write or use an imported script for any of the setups. Everything was done with the existing wizards and built in browser interface. FreeBSD and Red Hat Enterprise take a lot more effort to configure. I can do the server side of a SBS setup in about 5 hours, including exchange, ISA firewall, SUS, Corporate AV, and SQL server. Each desktop takes about 5 minutes and remote access and wireless system take about another 5 minutes to configure for certificates and VPN. I use VPN’s and certs for all wireless access now, in large part because of the ease of setting them up with the 03 Server systems.

I have bid about 15 SBS installs, and have yet to loose to a Nix bid. With the exception of FreeBSD, Nix is not much of a money saver for businesses. Especially for businesses that have existing Windows desktops (most by far). And FreeBSD is more than most office users can deal with on their own.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

I too have never understood MS bashing. They succeed, and therefore they're evil?? I don't get it. Sure they have some problems, but no one's perfect, and everyone knows that no software is ever even near perfect.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Nobody likes monopolies. Me too.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

There are many reasons: strong arm tactics; abuse of OS monopoly to drive countless competitors out of business through extremely anti-competitive behavior; being behind everyone else by years, even decades, on adding "new" features; making a browser that has never supported HTML or CSS (flagrant disregard for standards of all sorts); integrating IE into the OS (very bad idea on every level; running a browser in kernel mode is probably the single stupidest thing MS has ever done); all future updates to IE will be parts of service packs for XP and later, so users of older (better) versions of Windows are screwed; ActiveX (terrible, terrible software); product activation (this does not stop piracy by even 0.00001%, it only harrasses legitimate customers; I fear what Longhorn will do to people...); XP (speaks for itself); making products that are so full of security holes and _not_ patching them for years or even ever that it is not even funny anymore (there are a few dozen critical security flaws in IE that let a remote user run any arbitrary software on your PC that s/he wishes that have been well documented but never patched, for example); adding "features" like the ability to install software on a machine just by including it in an email and having that email opened in Outlook (yes, this was a fully intended and advertised feature, not any sort of bug); having the default priveleges for users of home OSes be administrator level; the fact that the majority of Microsoft's servers run BSD, not Windows Server, which just tells you that not even MS trusts their OS; etc. It is not because Microsoft is big or successful, it is because it is extremely evil and still has not figured out how to make an OS that is secure on a basic level.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Looks around...

Fyron really summed it up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

He forgot about one more thing: there must be always a scapegoat.
In a modern IT world it's Microsoft. In 60-70s it was IBM ("big iron pushers"), in 80s - Intel ("80086 processors from hell"). We simply need someone to blame.
Not that I justify MS - they made a bunch of really buggy and insecure programs and sold them all around the world. Unfortunately, this is how modern bussiness works.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Yeesh, Fyron. All of this can be summed up in a single word: manipulativeness!

Microsoft thinks of customers, markets, and even business law like a hacker thinks of a computer program. Just something to be manipulated to get what you want. The 'mandatory licensing' scheme for example. MS has forced all manufacturers of PCs to pay them for an OS install on every machine they ship -- even if there isn't a Microsoft OS installed. Every since the days of MS-DOS we have all been paying a 'Microsoft tax' for every machine we buy, regardless of whether we buy a Microsoft OS with it. And they have gotten away with this. Somehow or other this doesn't equal 'monopoly' tactics according to the US government. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif And then there is the old 'embrace and extend' trick where they seem to join a popular standard, like HTML, but instead of following the standard they add their own features to change it into something proprietary so they can lock out the competition. This is what killed Netscape. They are currently working on ways to do this to the entire Internet. That's what '.NET' is really about. Turning the whole Internet into a proprietary Microsoft system.

The real question to ask is why do you not hate Microsoft? Anyone who is aware of what they are doing should hate them.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Why hate them? It's certainly not going to bother them. It'll only bother you.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Well, I am not talking about setting a portrait of Bill Gates on the wall and cursing it for a few minutes every hour on the hour. But when I encounter MS products, I know to be extremely suspicious of everything they do.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

[quote]
Imperator Fyron said:


Well, what you call anticompetitive behavior is seen by many as aggressive business tactics. And of course they are behind many developments in software, they have massive applications to support and changes impact many of the functions of existing software. MS has used an approach of building upon successive OS for more than a decade now. All of their mainstream apps are just advanced versions of NT. And like other huge businesses, it takes them longer to bring new products to market; the small shops have a huge advantage here.


IE was developed to a set of standards that was partly MS’s choice and partly dictated by copy write law. Let’s not forget that there has been a content standardization battle going since the early days of the internet. I doubt it will ever end, there is way too much money at stake. Also, IE has suffered from the on again off again nature of java support, which can not be blamed totally on MS. As to the built in nature of the browser, this is in no small part due to the internal uses. IE has many functions within the internal management of the OS. Also, it is the delivery method of choice for many big buck custom apps, which forces MS to retain some features that make it exploitable. It should be remembered that back when the base code was developed, interconnectivity was what everyone was striving for. And when MS has removed some of this connectivity (worm patches of last year and XPsp2) people have screamed. Just as they do when elimination of support for old exploitable code makes old software inoperable.

Today yes, but in it’s day it was seen as a big step forward. Unfortunately, it will stay around so long as third parties continue to leverage their apps with it. We use a db at work that relies on it because third and fourth party vendors still require it. Most custom db’s are built this way. One developer uses apps from many other developers and in so doing requires support for their code. We also use a db app that uses Java, recently the manufacture (Large db company that will remain un-named) gave up on the Java client and released an A/X version. The Users seem to be quite happy with the change. So there are worse things than Active X from a user’s point of view. I guess I should also mention that a lot of A/X issues are caused my mis-application of the controls. This used to be a big issue in the gaming community, and push MS into the position of approving some and not approving others. Problem is they never tell us what the bad ones are. The final point about Active X is that it was original design to self install, so that Joe user could easily install his software and gain access to advance web feature. This has been much abused by hackers and is a function no longer available on a properly configured IE install.


MS really had no choice. Statistics from the update server showed that a large percentage of the 98 and 2Kpro installs were not licensed. If you sell 100 copies and then provide support for 200 copies, you know something stinks. MS is stuck needing to balance user inconvenience against theft control. They do provide activation relief for enterprise users. And there are far more draconian schemes in use by software vendors. Ever use any per seat software? Try doing 50 installs on CAD systems, and obtaining activation files on a per set basis.

Again, this comes down to providing connectivity and interoperability weighed against closing holes. As an example, one of the worm patches of last summer eliminated a WAN printing protocol that was widely used and more or less standard for many users that worked off of a central db’s. We as users often forget that a small change of core code can adversely affect the whole OS. Also, many of the exploits are a result of security settings that are user controlled. Could MS do a better job with security? Sure, but it’s not quite as bad a many people make it sound. As an example, the Blaster worm exploited a port that should have been fire walled by everyone not using RPC printing. It was a well known hole, MS and others had warned of this. But it still hit lots of users hard. Many had no firewall at all or had never locked down the existing one. And as in the case of several DMV’s, never budgeted the funds to move away from RPC printing.

Ease of use balanced against security. Most home users don’t even logon, and don’t want any extra administration until after disaster strikes.

Not sure on this one, MS had never really spoken on the subject. What I have read is that hotmail and many of the web servers are non MS. IIRC, they moved hotmail to MS servers. Not without some problems in so doing. Again, it should be noted that many of MS’s needs are not within the scope of their existing OS at the time of deployment. Until recently, very large db’s were run almost exclusively on mainframes and large web arrays are still the forte of Apache. Also of not here is the fact that the three major breeches in security that MS has suffered were on non MS systems.


To the first part, please expand your statement. Do they kill babies or is it that you don’t approve of their aggressive business tactics?

To the second part, I think MS would love to make a break with the past. More of less fix all of the errors that were coded in back when NT was built. But with the majority of the world using NT still, (more than 300 of the fortune 500) they have to build in interconnectivity and legacy app support. Also, with today’s climate within the copy write courts, it’s very hard to bring new code to market. California has gone so far as to uphold rights to uncoded ideas that more or less predate the arena where they are eventually used. In many cases these rulings have not survived examination in federal court. Let’s face it, there is not a lot that can be done with software that has not already been tried. There are better more secure and more efficient ways, but these must be weighed against the cost of using them. Longhorn was going to make a break form NT in several areas, but a lot of this has been shelved do to resistance from vendors and large users. And a lot of it has been set aside do to concerns about the use of the code. Another problem will new code is the need to be sure that it does not violate copy write. If you roll out a new OS with 50 million lines of code written by a thousand people who are under pressure to make deadlines or perhaps just lazy, you will get some stuff more or less cut and pasted from pre-existing work. In today’s climate, someone has to sit down and examine the code line by line to check for these problems. And often when it is found, a decision has to be made on how to handle it. You can start over and write it out, you can try to buy it or license it, or you can decide to worry about it later. This makes it very expensive to develop totally new code such as an OS. Personally, I doubt we will ever see a new main stream OS built with a clean sheet of paper. IMHO all future releases will be built on the preceding versions. Sure, each new release will have some new features and drop support for others, but they will be evolutions not rebirths.


MS and Windows by what ever name will be around for the foreseeable future. MS has a dominant position in the industry, and will probably continue to aggressively target the competition. And the little guys will get eaten by the big guys, this is the nature of American business. It not just software, all business is becoming this way. Just look ant PC hardware, or see if you can find an independent hardware store. When was the last time an independent drug store opened where you live? Or a non branded book store? So long as large corporations can out weigh us in the campaign coffer, this will be the way of things. And until someone finds a way to do it better, cheaper, and more user friendly than MS, they will be king of the hill. Even IBM, has halted their internal nix desktop deployment. If the self described leader in nix management can’t make it work, then I doubt that main stream world business will be able to make it work either. Nix is just not ready to take on MS. The ties to Unix and its lack of user friendliness are just too strong. I think it could over come this, but not without a lot of development, especially enterprise side. Personally, I would like to see someone emerge to really put some pressure on MS. I don’t think IBM has the long range vision to see it through though. And Sun Microsystems is more or less dead in the water. Perhaps now that Compaq has performed a self exorcism, they will take the plunge, but I doubt it. There is just too much pressure on the bottom line and demands for profits next quarter. So in closing. It’s not so much that MS is so evil, in large part this is just a result of having a very good product in a market that is filled with less capable competition. It’s more a case of there being too little demand for a competing technology. And while it may be popular to bash the big guy, I find it hard to hate MS just because they are very good at what they do.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Wow, it sounds like a great devil's advocacy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Thermodyne, Ever considered a position in Politics? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

You almost made me feel sympathy for Microsoft, Well, Almost. Close, but No Cigar http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Very true Aiken. Bill Gates, AKA Bill Hellgates AKA Beelzebub Gates.

No but seriously, MS has pulled some nasty tricks on PC users. Fyron summed it up very well; there is just one more thing.

WinME.

It takes all the bugs from Win98 and WinXP and combines them into a pretty much unusable OS.

And for me, being a lifetime Win95/98 user, XP was extremely user-unfriendly..... it was almost like having to re-learn working with the computer from scratch. Take, for instance, sharing a folder; in Win98 you just right-clicked the icon, clicked Share and chose a name for the shared folder, then you're done. When I try to do this in WinXP, it says I have to copy the folder into my PC's SharedDocs folder. WTF?!? I want the folder to simply be shared! Whenever I modify its contents I do NOT want to have to do it twice so that the SharedDocs version is the same as the original!

Microsoft is the worst thing that EVER happened to this planet next to Homo sapiens sapiens.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Thermodyne, I can safely say that that is the longest post I have ever seen. Ever.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Me? No way. But my grandfather was a lawyer, judge, and politician, so perhaps I inherited some of his gift for rhetoric.

The intent was not to make you like MS. I wanted to try to make you take a long look at the position of hating them. Many people just pile on the band wagon, repeat the key points when queried, and never make an informed independent judgment of the position they have taken. If we are going to hate them because of their success, or as many say “greed”, shouldn’t we hate the whole NBA? Most of baseball and the NFL? Every major movie star? They all do more or less the same thing, they all estimate what the market can withstand, then ask for just a little more. There are many better reasons to take a stand against MS and other massive semi monopolies. The way they influence American politics is a pet peeve of mine. But personally, I think it is better to take a position in support of something. Instead of just trying to tear something down, why not use the energy to build something better, and then let nature take its course. If what you create is truly better, it will displace that which you don’t like. Personally, I choose to use MS for my own financial fulfillment, and take every opportunity to offer my influence as to the products that they provide.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Actually, my friend Nolan did not sum it up well at all. He repeated the headline rhetoric that is put forth by the nix community, then failed to support his position with an expanded statement. There are many good things happening with nix, the collaborative effort is worth mention, never has something like this occurred in this industry. But IMHO, unless the nix community applies a sustainable business model to their efforts, some large corporation will reap that majority of the profits down the road.


Win ME is a good system. Sure, it’s not as good as 2K, but it addressed a lot of the problems that remained from Win 95. Problem was that the users did not comprehend the changes, and MS didn’t protect it from unsupported code. MS learned a lot from ME and we cans see these changes in 2K and XP. ME was the first true break from DOS, and as such did not support 16 bit drivers and software not specifically adapted to run in a 32bit environment. So people saw it as the next flavor of 98, and had tons of problems because of drivers and legacy software. How many of you ever bothered to the compatibility lists for ME? From a pure performance standpoint it is the fastest 32bit OS that MS has released to date. Take a look at some of the high end benchmarks that are posted on the net. If you find some guy with a nitrogen cooled CPU putting up marks at 6 or 7 GHz, they are almost always running ME. And until recently, most top video marks were run with ME. This only switched to XP when ME driver support dried up. From personal experience, I have found that ME will do intense work like Seti of Folding at Home faster than 2K or XP. Same hardware, same reference job packets, ME wins every time. The problem with ME was that it allowed the average user to hang him with ease. When they loaded an old Win95 16/32 bit game, it just rolled merrily along until the software called a 16 bit dll, then froze or crashed. Same with drivers, it would allow you to install 16bit Win95 driver with no complaint, the fail to start after the reboot. The problem with Win ME was the failure of MS to realize exactly how much people tinkered with their systems, and their arrogant belief that these same people read directions and compatibility lists.

I still us ME for Win95 upgrades. It’s cheap and runs will on down level hardware with limited memory installed. On an old PII it will out perform 2K by a noticeable margin.

A vast amount of ME problems were caused by users, and today when you try to load that old game on a 2k box, what happens? It won’t let you. When you try to load that old 16 bit sound card driver, what happens? It won’t let you.

So when people say that ME sucks, they are really just stating that ME was too advanced and too user unfriendly for them to use reliably at the time. And if IMHO, MS should have realized this when they beta released it. Whoops, I forgot, they didn’t do that kind of stuff back then, everything was a big secret in the software business during that time. But all things change, now OS’s are beta tested, across several builds before being put on the retail shelf. I think I’m on the 3rd build of beta 64bit Windows now. In the old days they would have released it and then started patching. Things do change for the better.


This just goes to support my post above. Many users resist learning how to use software. And strongly resist adapting to new versions. The problem you are having with shares results from the need to balance security against ease of use(mentioned earlier) and can be altered with ease.

Bold statement! I would hope that it was made in jest. If not, then I think a few hunderd words to expand on the statement would be in order. Some of you guys should use a UNIX terminal for a few weeks. Or try to do some email ala compaq AS300. Before Windows, the average person could not use a computer. I recall this state of the art 8088 we had and there was a huge book chained to the desk. The DEC tech couldn't even run it without looking up command strings. Oh it worked well, never crashed. But it would only do about 16 things and only 1 at a time. That was life before MS.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

My statements were rather well informed, most certainly not just jumping on the bandwagon... I was not looking to get into any sort of debate, so I did not post anything further and do not have any plan to do so now.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Shucks, I was looking forward to a good debate with you. Anyone else care to step in?

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Perhaps if it wasn't finals week this week... but alas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Check a few (dozen) pages back in the SEV Wishlist. My first post was just over six pages long.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

One of the things Microsoft does that makes many people hate them:

Forced Upgrading by discontinuation and poor compatibility:
When MS produces a new versin of a program - Word, as an example - they stop producing and selling the previous versions; moreover, previous versions can't read later versions' format, unless the later version specifically saved the document into an older format. So, say you are a buisiness operating Word 97 on your 100 licensed workstations. Microsoft then comes out with Word 2000 and stops selling Word 97 licenses. Your buisiness expands a bit, and you need to outfit three new workstations. Unfortunately, you can't just put Word 97 on those three new workstations, as the license isn't available; you need to put Word 2000 on them, as that's all you can leagally get (without such measures as looking for people who are selling old copies of Word 97 licensing - wich can get rather tricky). Now documents made on those Word 2000 machines can't be read by the rest of the staff when needed - in order to make it work, the three Word 2000 stations must either always take an additional step (saving in the older format), or you must "upgrade" all 100 of the other machines. At $50 a unit for Word 2000 (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat), adding those three machines (let's say each machine costs $1000) cost you $3000 individually, but arranging them to actually work with the others in your system costs $5000 for upgrades.
Now suppose you are running a smaller buisiness that isn't growing significantly. You are running happily along with Word 97 on your five machines, and dealing with your clients. Then, Microsoft comes out with Word 2000, and stops issuing new Word 97 licenses. Now, if any of your clients upgrade, or get a new machine, you can't work with the files they send you, due to the wrong format, and you are basically left with a few options: Drop the client, Annoy the client (dude, I can't read that format - you have to save it in Word 97) (and probably lose the client, eventually) or upgrade your machines (for $50 apice that's $250).
Now note that Microsoft can do this at essentially any time they wish, with virtually any of their products, and almost any business must eventually cave, if using those MS products. In essence, the corporation can (and does, every few years) tax buisinesses at will, for whatever amount they choose. After all, Microsoft is the only entity that can leagally make new licenses for the use of Microsoft's products.
Currently, they are starting to move over to a subscription model, wherein you continually pay for the priviledge of using their products, and the corporation doesn't have to do a thing ever again to maintain your obligation to pay them. And the above tactics essentially gauruntee that, if nothing else changes, they will be able to force most buisinesses to go along with it.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

How did you make money on MSFT stock? It has been going down steadily this year. At the beginning of January it was around $26.74 and today it's $25.09. Did you sell it short?

Anyway, it's probably not a good idea to buy MSFT right now, it's still on a down trend.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

They actually pay nice dividends. When closing out each year, one of the reports I get is a stocks income as a percentage of money invested. The return percentage for 2004 (this year) was far and away the highest I have ever been the recipient of.

The types of profits that you are speaking of do not come from keepers; MS is a keeper at the moment. These profits are made from market changes, buy low sell high. My champion of the last few years has been Rambus. They get accused of all sorts of things by the offshore memory foundries and the stock goes to rock bottom. They have their day in court and walk out with huge royalty awards; stock takes off like a rocket. A few weeks latter it returns to more or less its true value. In and out in less than two weeks with 10%+ returns.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

New software always displaces older software. As to the problem of which you speak, it would take less than 5 minutes a system to default the three systems to Office 97 compatibility. Even Office 2003 can be defaulted to 97 settings. Again this would have to be laid at the feet of the users. A business with 100 workstations is actually an enterprise class business. As described, it would probably be Windows 98 or NT running in an NT domain. So it would be assumed that the MIS manager would have researched this and rolled it out at deployment. If it was a sneaker net, then they would already be ITdead with 100 systems. If they were running on WinProxy, Novell or one of the defunct network systems, then again, they should have known to make the changes before deployment. I can’t lay this at the feet of MS because user fail to learn what new software is capable of. I can say that planned obsolescence is bad, but such is life. Almost everything suffers from this.

Also, Office products stay in the vendor pipeline long after they have been replaced. And with that said now let me add that your example is vaporware. I can provide as many copies of Office 97 as an office of 103 systems needs at $112/copy. http://google-cnet.com.com/MS_Office...-30671582.html And I could probably throw in installation at that price if they were willing to sign a network support contract.

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

Next http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: Wow is all I can say...
 

I just love how naive Microsoft was when they decided ActiveX was a good idea...

"Hey! Let's design a technology that, in a nutshell, allows people to put what is essentially a win32 executable on a webpage and have it run--with system level privileges and no sandboxing--in the browser which we're conveniently integrating into the operating system..."

And yes, that <i>is</i> pretty much ActiveX in a nutshell. Supposedly sandboxing is going into the next version of IE, however. Further, .NET is, from what I've heard, very similar to and compatible with ActiveX only much safer. Why MS hasn't leveraged its power for the noble cause of eradicating ActiveX, I'm not sure.

As for Windows being cheaper overall than Linux, I can see why: for one, MCSEs are a dime a dozen, while linux gurus aren't. Second, enterprise-level management software. Linux is a blackhole in this regard. The kind of management software admins want just isn't available for linux yet.