Re: The Microsoft Way (OT)

From: The_Sage (theeSage_at_azrmci.net)
Date: 10/17/03 

Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:18:02 -0700

>Reply to article by: "The Half A Wanna Bee" <ShakainZulu@hotmail.com>
>Date written: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:06:28 +0200
>MsgID:<3f8ea6a1@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.

Then you are claiming ignorance...which implies you are not qualified to agree
or disagree on the topic.

>>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.

But that is only based on a rumor you heard and not actual knowledge. It was a
big lawsuit for it's day, amounting to about $100 million dollars. Do an intenet
search and see for yourself.

>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.

You never know.

>At least I hope so if what you say is true. The question is why dont they?

Well you aren't going to answer that question based on rumor or idle
speculation. Why didn't German citizens oust Hitler? Why didn't Iranian citizens
oust Saddam? Why don't American citizens oust M$? Who knows?

>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.

What you have is a list of rhetorical questions that do not address the facts.
But of course, since you admit you have no facts, you are not in any position to
draw any logical or factual conclusions.

<snip idle speculation>

>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.

You should know, but the point is, you cannot continue to assume that because MS
is the most widely used OS therefore it must be because it is the best OS. That
is illogical and unfactual. There are lots of reasons for something to be widely
used and being the best isn't necessarily one of them. The most widely used
vehicle in the world is the Volkswagen Beetle. According to you it must be
because it it the best vehicle in the world. Catholicism is the most popular
religion in the world. According to you it must be because it it the best
religion in the world. Sorry, but that isn't the way reality works.

>>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.

Prove it.

>Somebody must show the world a better OS . Its a pussycat who takes it
>competitor to court.

...or buys off their competition.

>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 !

People do not buy according to what it "better" or what it technologically
superior. They buy according to what it cuter or what everyone else is using
already. Most people could care less about the underlying technology, all they
care about is does it work.

>>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.

So what is stopping you from finding out the facts?

>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 ?

Do an internet search. There is one site that gives very specific instructions
on how to do it, even going so far as to give screen shots of the process. But
I'm not going to do your homework for you. If you aren't motivated to go beyond
the rumors you feed off of and do some honest research, you aren't interested in
pursuing the truth of the matter...so why waste my time?

>>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 !

The rest of the moral world disagrees with you.

>To use or to bend rules to accomlish you goal.

That makes you selfish and unethical. Child molestors use the same reasoning
philosophy you do. There is nothing wrong with exploiting people in your world,
but in the rest of the world, it demonstrates a lack of conscience.

And your attitude is exactly why I don't like to buy American products. The only
thing Americans are interested in is making money. Lots of it. But they aren't
willing to put their money where their quality is. They sell crap at high prices
and try to cram their poorly thought out product down your throat every chance
they get, but I'm not going to buy it. I want my money's worth, I don't want to
pay twice what a product is actually worth just so you can selfishly finance
your Porsche Boxster -- and a defective product at that! No thought went into
the product, all that matters is how to sell it at maximum profit. Everytime I
buy something American, I'm almost always sorry I did because it turns out to be
crap: Either a component is missing/broken out of the box or it doesn't last
long or I find out I could have bought two of them from the Japanese at half the
price and twice the functionality.

>>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 ?

It's in the news. Do a search.

>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 ?

Why don't you find out? All your knowledge and idel speculation is based on mere
rumors and not any actual knowledge, but when you hear something you don't like,
all of a sudden you desperately need "substantiation". Bull!

>>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.

That is my point: Easy virus creation capability is unneeded functionality.

>>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.

And did you ever find out why...or are you blindly assuming it was because they
"secretly" liked Win3.1 better and not because Win3.1 had more applications to
run?

>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.

It wasn't user friendly for device drive installation...but then neither was
Win3.1 -- which didn't even have a proper device driver installation GUI.

>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.

You are talking about unverified rumor again, not any actual knowledge you ever
obtained on the topic. Bill Gates and IBM co-ventured together to build OS/2, up
to version 2+. Then IBM dropped the Gates venture and Gates went 16-bit Win3.1
while IBM released it's techonologically superior 32-bit OS/2 3.0.

Of course, you will never know if that is a fact or not, not that you would care
anyway, because you will not bother to do any research beyond the rumors that
you selectively hear.

>>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)

Which is it? A little or 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.

Oh bull***. You have no clue what you are talking about. M$ uses the
round-robbin type of mutli-tasking where that is possible whereas OS Warp uses
pre-emptive multitaksing where that can never happen. If you don't even know how
the OS works, don't pretend to know that you do.

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." -- Bill Gates on the
solid code base of Win9X

Microsoft has not changed any of its plans for Windows. It is obvious that we
will not include things like threads and preemptive multitasking in Windows. By
the time we added that, you would have OS/2." -- Bill Gates, from "OS/2
Notebook", Microsoft Press, (c) 1990--an excerpt from an interview with Bill
Gates and Jim Cannavino, p. 614

The Sage

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