Re: The Microsoft Way (OT)

From: The Half A Wanna Bee (ShakainZulu_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/16/03 

Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:06:28 +0200

"The_Sage" <theeSage@azrmci.net> wrote in message
news:dq4sov8kp9if8d78cmrthdpfn5qtijop99@4ax.com...
> >Reply to article by: "The Half A Wanna Bee" <ShakainZulu@hotmail.com>
> >Date written: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:43:48 +0200
> >MsgID:<3f8d09a3$1@news.broadpark.no>
>

> >Sorry I got lost.
>
> That's okay, maybe I can help you find your way back! Think about this:
>
> M$ has tried to defend all their past actions by claiming "freedom to
innovate",
> yet there isn't one single original thing about Windows that didn't appear
> somewhere else first. Where's the "innovation"?
>

I "fully" agree with this, but most of it (my agreement) is based on rumors,
since I do not KNOW theese things. Also there must be something there, under
the hood that makes for innovation, but basically, I have the feel that you
are right on this one.

> M$ "allegedly" stole their interface from the Apple Lisa. Apple sued but
decided
> to drop the lawsuit. The M$ interface was not an original idea (otherwise
it
> wouldn't have been so easily confused with Lisa) nor was it innovative.

> M$ stole technology from STACKER, was sued and lost. Not very original nor
> innovative.
>

I heard they bought it. I allways thought so. not only stacker, but from
norton too ?

> M$ was caught with a "smoking gun" in regards to DR DOS (hidden code that
was
> "allegedly" never intended to be used that would disable DR DOS from
working
> with Windows).
>
When (if) they do things like that I hate it. This is also a strange way to
keep competition away, some day someones gonna spend an large amount to
burry MS just in anger.
At least I hope so if what you say is true. The question is why dont they?
Why dont apple or IBM or some other large company, start hiring some of you
guys in here f.i to work on the next MS Killer. OS/2 Warp failed, right ?
MAC OS is strong in its segment? Why do they not join against MS, if what
you say is true. Why do they not just create a super OS, give it away like
MS did in the beginning, and cash in on support, and later improvements?
like I asked in another mail. Heck, some of the people in this group beleive
they can write an OS singelhandedly. Could it be that hard for IBM ? Is it
about MS allways gettin their OS default on a machine (or is that of the
past?). If MS really suck, where the h.... is the competition ?
I wrote a MS windowless gui in about a year that uses windows like buttons,
dialogboxes and such. How long would it take to write the rest ? Isnt the
problem with the hardware, the amount of richness of diffrent vendor
hardware, the drivers? Why cant they just follow ms, rip the Plug and pray,
and have a pluggable os supporting all the current drivers ? If MS did all
this stealing, why cant they ? And if "look" really sell an OS, why dont
they hire same kind of designers. There are millions of questions to be
answered, but its much easier to fall back on a rumor, supported only by the
number of people who tell it, or maybe sometimes of qualified guesses. But I
like to know what is true and what is not. Rumors is no good.

> M$ has gone to court numerous times for monopolizing. Like the tobacco
> companies, they are mostly invincible, but they are slowly losing ground,
ie --
> they just lost a huge lawsuit for that very thing in California.
>

Yes but MS could lose countless of lawsuits, and still sell that OS.
Somebody must show the world a better OS . Its a pussycat who takes it
competitor to court. Thats strange from any angle. Write something new,
something obviously better. That *starts* like Quake. When I press enter on
my desktop to start Quake1, demo1.dem is loaded and running in fullscreen
before I can remove my finger from the enter button. (btw:still loves that
game). This means that the OS is not that killing. The SHELL and API /
ORGANISTATION on the other hand is an abomination. Its take 10-100 times
longer to open a folder(a simple folder :O).......In theory any right click
menu can be responsible for loading sleeping eights of DLLs per item !

> M$ sold NT Workstation as a crippled version of NT Server and falsely
claimed
> that that there were hundreds of dramatic differences in the underlying
> technology between the two, making them "two completely different
products"
> (hence justifying the $700 difference in cost). Yet someone who had both
did a
> file compare and only found one difference: the registry settings. When he
> changed the registry settings to match, his NT Workstation miraculously
> transformed into NT Server. Why the dishonesty?

Dishonesty? I would call that strange stupidity. But thats me. I wouldnt be
able to stand up straight if I pulled a stunt like that. I would be ribbed
of any dignity whatsoever. Its so stupid that is really hard to imagine that
it can be true.....But once again, one never knows unless reproduable facts
is available. And I cant see them here, or can I .... So I wouldnt know,
even if I wanted to belive that, I wouldnt really know if it was true? I
have a friend who collect ALL software, he is a wannabe FPT server, and he
has collected all kinds of software since the late 80ies. He has 5
computers. Maybe I ask him to test it. *Was there any spesial conditions to
be met prior to testing ?

>
> M$ was ordered to stop forcing PC manufacturers to cut special deals where
if M$
> sold their operating systems on one computer, they had to sell it on all
their
> computers or they would have to pay a higher price on the OS. Although
this was
> clearly an issue of monopolizing, their punishment was mild.
>
And it should be. This is not forcing, its dealing/sweetening, (beeing done
everywhere) with the rules at hand, and the unseen rules at hand, its
programmer thinking ! To use or to bend rules to accomlish you goal. Not to
use them as they wore intended and get nowhere. You can hardly call it
monopolising, if there arent any competitors or can you ? Its a gruesome
strategy, but its a gruesome world. The rules (Capitalistic) are widely
agreed upon even by the other competitors, right ? Why didnt the competitors
GIVE away there software to counter this. Why does everyone think they need
to rule the f..king world ? Would it be impossible to explain the counter
actions to the people who lend them money? NO! If the software/OS would be
well done, everyone would see that in the long run they would have their
money back. They simply would choose to not belive that the competitors wore
able to pull it off, with the product at hand. Many OS ARE given away. But
they cannot fullfill on many of their promises. You cannot sell technology
to people in general, only results. And even the thought of having to enter
sectors, head and cylindercounts during a setup would scare almost anybody
off when they can avoid it. Why cant MAC, after selling their normal amount
of OS, give the rest away for free. Why dont they enlighten their user base
that the hardware they pay 3X for, can be bought on the other side of the
street at PC prices. Inserted into the same slot. Are MAC users stupid,
since they go for this insane prices ? If their users are stupid, what does
that say about the OS ? Oh man, theres is a lot of things I havent seen any
answers too.

> M$ wants to tax the internet and they have already readily volunteered to
be the
> collecting agency via their software.
>
That scares me....if its true..where did you get that information ? Can they
really do that at all, its seems not possible. Their OS would be dead the
day after they did this, and therefore it must be a rumor. A bad rumor to
discredit them even more ? Or can you substansiate it ?

> Hotmail, Outlook, and Word have had numerous security issues with things
like
> back doors and M$ specific viruses. This isn't because "M$ is so popular
that it
> has become a popular target", it's because M$ has done stupid things like
> provide macros that allow access to the hard drive or address book, where
no
> such access is needed or wanted by any customers. They seem to make it
very easy
> to write viruses for their OS.
>
This is very true, but at the same time they provide much (maybe unneeded)
functionality. People tend to think better of a product if it "known" to be
more capable (even when its not). I know people who never DREAMED of having
a PC, but at the Window95 campain launch, theese "greenhorns" that looked
down on geeks like "us", couldnt get their wallets out of their pockets fast
enough to buy it. Why ? Can we agree that people in general are easy fooled
? Are people generally ****** ? Even my litle aunt, who shaked her head at
me from I was 15 or so, got a PC allthough after a few months she gave it to
me...(lucky me) since it doesnt exactly look that well in the livingroom
after all, and she had to agree with herself that I would have more use for
it. Her job paid for it...:-) :-). My brother got his first PIII-500 PC from
the workplace where his wife works....The wife was in charge of 5
programmers and had to really stretch herself to even turn on the things at
her workplace. Me and me brother was trying to guide her to select a
programming tool to solve her projects at work. Man the world is some
strange place to be.....And she earned twice his wages !!!

> When you start examining the character of M$, it doesn't seem to make for
a very
> trustworthy entity. And everytime my system crashes or bogs down to an
> unreasonable level, I think of what I could have had, had not M$ stifled
the
> competition. For example, OS Warp was far superior to M$ -- even today!

I agree upto the point where you say OS Warp. I HAD to use that at a
assurancecompany I worked, (the boss liked it, and he was actually walking
from office to office to make sure everybody else used it too. I never
worked amoung more demented coworkers. They bragged about having an OS that
could run win3.1 in a window, and that was all they did :-)
they booted the OS and started MS windows in a window, and they used IT.
For driver installation. OS/2 Warp was not a warp. If you had opened 3 or 4
dialogboxes inside each other and finally should specify a file, there was
no browse button, and you had to work your way all back to the top of the
chain to be able to find the path and filename of the driver on some server
that you'd needed to install. No room for altheimers there. Maybe thats good
think...that only the programmers suffer from it ? The only thing I thought
warped about OS/2 was the speed I killed it from my computer when the boss
was on a buiztrip. I cant belive you say a thing like that. This was 1996,
by the way....We had Pentium 100, and the programmers..whooo had pentium
133. God what good times it was.......After I quit, I found out that OS/2
was made in companionship with MS. They brought in MS people on it to get it
done in time for release. And the visual design, was just awful. I have to
add, that on the indepth knowledge of OS/2 it might have been a good OS, I
wouldnt know cause I never programmed it. But I had to install it, reboot
it, and upgrade it. And from that perspective it was not nice.

> I had a
> friend format a floppy, list every file on his computer using a DOS box
and a
> DIR command, run a self playing chess game, and STILL was able to type in
real
> time in a word processor. M$ had difficulty even loading their word
processor
> while the floppy was being formatted. It wasn't even close. OS Warp was
very
> stable.

Thats true, but has litle/nothing to to with the OS! (Well actually a lot)
You see each windows program can change its own priority. It can hog 99% of
the resources if it wants to. Its left to the programmer. Maybe a bad
dessision, but when done correctly it allows for more control in the hand of
the programmer. The programmer is warned in the API docs to not use too high
priority, as he can even disable some system code. In Win9X the default
priority is 8, and on XP it is 14, out of 1-31, I often used 2, it will be
enough to reveal most spies. Since on a freshly installation 2 will work
fine, but if a program, that is not idle, runs on higher priority it will
make the menues in my program hog, and that get my attention. I have found
some viruses and hidden server programs using this method. The copy worm, is
it nimda ? I detected using this as frontline, a diskspace reporter to
detect activity, and a dirrectorymonitor to find location, and files. Then I
did a search of all thoses types of files. MS nws, and mail files mostly I
belive and delete everyone of them. And the problem was gone. Also someother
files was removed as I recall.

>
> M$ isn't the only choice because it is so far superior to anything else
out
> there, it is just that nothing else has ever had a chance against their
apparent
> bullying tactics. Take BeOS as another example. It cost half as much as
any M$
> product yet it would boot up in less than 10 seconds! It was excellent at
> running multimedia applications. The BeOS lawsuit against the alleged M$
> monopoly is still pending, the last I looked.

Okey, I not up to date with BeOS. I look for it and try to install it.

>
> And why pay $400 for a word processor/spread***/presentation program
when I
> can get one exactly like it for free called OPEN OFFICE -- and it has no
history
> of OPEN OFFICE-specific viruses? Why pay over $100 for an email program
that I
> can get for free called Eudora -- and it has no history of Eudora-specific
> viruses?

Indeed, why. As I said before I never paid for an MS stuff, and I probably
never will. I rather go linux where I can continue using my codebase, but I
wait for other nice people to prepare it for a not to painful move. After
Kylix, things should start to roll, Borland has started taking linux
seriously.

> >PS. One of the reason that I still refuses to swallow this mass hysteria
> >against MS to its full extent is that I always get my guard up when
everybody
> >does something. And hence my confusion. "Everybody" uses Microsoft and
> >everybody hates them.....(!) Hmm. Maybe the hate simply comes from all
the
> >waiting and all the bugs ? And maybe all that waiting and all thoose bugs
is
> >the MAIN reason for the irritation ?
>
> Yeah, right! Wait for Win95 because it is a vastly superior OS to Win3.1
since
> it no longer relies on DOS for anything. It is completely and totally
detached
> from DOS technology in it's code...naught! Andrew Schulman proved what a
lie
> that was.
>

:-)

> Something else I don't like that pissed me off when I first bought Win95,
was
> this card they provided. This card stated, "Who is the most important
person at
> M$?...You! Please register..." And then they went into all the benifits of
> registering, like tech support. So I registered. Then guess what? I called
in
> for tech support. The phone recording asked me to input my serial number
(along
> with other info). Then the support tech asked for my serial number. He
> transferred me and I had to give my serial number. Everytime I called I
had to
> give my serial number. So I asked, "What was the point in turning in my
> registration card with all the info, yet they act like they don't even
know me
> when I call in?". The tech told me that the registration card went to
marketing
> and marketing sold the card to other marketing departments in other
companies.
> My registration, with my address, my income, my telephone number, my
computer
> serial number, and so on, was sold, for a profit, without my knowledge, to
some
> scum bag marketing agent. I never have ever registered a single product
since.

I never ever had registered any product whatsoever. I think if I ever start
selling the *** I have been making for my own personal fun, I be happy for
the few who wanted to pay for it. If someone dont think what you are doing
is worth paying for, then it proably isnt ?
>
> >(Plus the feeling of loosing control with your hardware of course, thats
a
> >real killer issue with me personally)
> >And when beeing really really forgiving here, maybe all thoose bugs are
not
> >actually all to blame on MS. After all they support an insane amount of
> >drivers, right ?
>
> They have hundreds of programmers and hundreds of testers for each driver,
so
> they only need to support all those drivers for a few weeks, and one at a
time.
> One thing M$ isn't short on is resources. All those bugs are a sign of a
lack of
> quality and nothing more. The more bugs the less the quality. Plain and
simple.
>
> >When they do this, wouldnt it make sence to try to strear
> >HW developers in a unified direction as much as possible, in order to
> >minimize spesial considerations for every hardware, designed to perform,
> >essensially the same thing, like e.g a printer or a graphics card ?
>
> That is called monopolizing. And take a look at the WinModem cards. Now
there is
> a unifying standard forced down the hardware industry's throat, just like
you
> proposed. They doen't work very well (they require an overly complicated
install
> procedure) so I avoid WinModem cards like the plague.
>
> And most hardware is unified already: VESA, PCI (Plug and Play spec), Hard
> Drives, Sound cards (Sound Blaster), mice, keyboards, Monitors, etc.
>
> The Sage
>
>

The Beth Wannabee. :-) Just discussing my ass of since I find it a litle
more entertaining than not saying anything. Heck I just admit it, I am
unemployed :) As if anyone could doubt that after a reply like this.
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