OT: Wow is all I can say...

[Thermodyne]

[quote]
Imperator Fyron said:

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;

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.

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;

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.

ActiveX (terrible, terrible software);

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.

product activation (this does not stop piracy by even 0.00001%, it only harasses legitimate customers; I fear what Longhorn will do to people...); XP (speaks for itself);

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.

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);

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.

having the default priveleges for users of home OSes be administrator level;

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

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.

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.

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.

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.