Cringley on Microsoft and Linux 480
brentlaminack writes "Time for this week's dose of I, Cringely. This week the Cringe talks about Ballmer's Orlando comments from this week. He compares Ballmer's comments with Linus's. Nothing new here for the /. group, but a good read for the non-technical."
Well said (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well said (Score:5, Funny)
You misspelled 'Clippy.'
Re:Well said (Score:3, Interesting)
You misspelled 'Clippy.'
Not to mention that stupid @#$% dog in the WinXP search program. More annoying yet, when you tell it to go away, you have to wait for it to amble off the screen and jump off some unseen (hopefully high) cliff. Congratulations, Microsoft, you've managed to reimplement find [t-a-y-l-o-r.com]
, in such a way as to consume a double digit percentage of the processor and only 64 meg of Ram!
Now to be fair, neither grep nor find are exa
Re:Well said (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well said (Score:5, Funny)
PSN did pretty well compaired to MS.
[oceanwave.com]
Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network
Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network
In the course of a recent Microsoft Access programming project, we had three difficult technical problems where we decided to call a support hotline for advice. This article compares the two support numbers we tried: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a resultof this research, we have come to the following conclusions: 1 ) that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for Microsoft products over the phone ; 2 ) that the Psychic Friends Net work has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support; but 3) that Microsoft has a generally better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.
In the paragraphs that follow, we will detail the support calls we made and the responses we received from each pport provider. We will follow this with a discussion of the features provided by each support provider so that readers can do their own rankings of the two services.
Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter which database we queried first. Dan called Microsoft's Technical Solutions Line, gave them $55, and was connected with an official Microsoft Access technical support person. As Dan began to explain the problem, the support person interrupted him, and told him that since it was clear that it was not just a problem with Access but with the two programs together, Microsoft would not try to help us. They did,however, have a consultant referral service with which he would be glad to connect us. Dan then asked if we could have our $55 refunded, since Microsoft was not going to try to answer to our question. The tech support person responded by forwarding Dan to the person in charge of giving refunds. The person officially in charge of giving refunds took Dan's credit card info again, after which Dan asked about the referral service. It was too late, however - the refund folks could not reconnect Dan with the tech support guy he'd been talking with, nor could he put Dan in touch with the referral service hotline. End of Call One.
Our second call came when Dan was creating some line graphs in Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access actually uses a program called Microsoft Graph to create its graphs, and this program has a "feature" that makes the automatic axis scale always start the scale at zero. If all of your data are between 9,800 and 10,000 and you get a scale of 0 to 10,000, your data will appear as a flat line at the top of your graph-not a very interesting chart. Since Dan was writing Visual Basic code to create the graphs, he wanted to be able to use Visual Basic code to change the graph scaling, but he could not find anything in the help files that would tell him how to do this. After working with Microsoft Graph for a while, Dan concluded that it probably didn't have the capability that he needed, but he decided to call Microsoft just to make sure. Dan described his problem to the technical support person, whom we'll call Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob said he'd never gotten a call about Microsoft Graph before. He then left Dan on hold while he went to ask another support person how to use Microsoft Graph. Microsoft Bob came back with the suggestion that Dan use the online help. Dan, however, had already used the online help, and didn't feel that this was an appro
Re:Well said (Score:2, Informative)
That just shows Cringley's ignorance of how Microsoft functions. Microsoft routinely kills off bad projects,usually before they even make it out to the public...
Ahem...
Windows For Pen Computing
NetBUI
That stupid MS email protocall, before they adopted POP3
Actimates Barney
MS Paint.
MS Photo Editor.
Notepad with a 32K buffer.
Command.com with no real scripting.
The whole registry idea.
Windows 1.0, 2.0, 286, 286
Comic Sans-Serif. God that font sucks.
DiectX sucked untill it got to 8.0
MS Fortan.
MS Quick Pascal.
MS
Re:Well said (Score:5, Informative)
Then you write:
Actually, what you discribe is actually a bit of a credit for MS.
Windows 1..., MS C++, DOS, Notepad etc all started off pretty bad, but it was their persistance that made it all work.
MS has the luxury of releasing something that doesn't quite work properly and just working at it till it has it right.
Do you know how to COMPREHEND what you read?
Microsoft put out crap products and they should be congratulated for their persistence?
You're a complete twonk.
Re:Well said (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway his point was that Microsoft can make software that totally blows and spend time and money making it better since people are getting paid to do it (it's their job so they don't have to worry about work taking up their time) and microsoft has a lot of money to spend to fund crap projects. With open source you have to worry about your limited resources and you try to not spend them on crap.
Re:Well said (Score:3, Funny)
I agree. Bill chose Unix way back in the 80's and it looks like Unix will win.
First to market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well said (Score:5, Interesting)
You maybe have this attitude, but most people don't. It really has nothing to do with brand loyalty for most people, it has everything to do with the fact that Microsoft has a stranglehold on PC makers, through pricing schemes and threats, to the point that no major PC manufacturer will release a system that can be bought off the shelf without Windows. If, say, HP, Dell, or Compaq would offer the buyer his choice of OS on whatever system the buyer wanted, Microsoft would charge the manufacturer at least full-retail price for Windows, and possibly ban them from selling Windows systems at all.
Since every major corporation in the world cares for nothing but money, they would rather sell-out and let Microsoft basically force them to do what Microsoft wants them to than give their customer any choice.
That is the beauty of small business. I build PCs and sell them. If you want Windows XP, I'll make sure you have a properly licensed legal copy. If you want Linux, I'll make sure you get the distro you want, installed and configured, and guaranteed, no different than a Windows box. If you bring in your old copy of O/S2 Warp, I'll get it going for you. If you want BeOS, I'll do that. After all, it is your machine I am building for you.
However, I cannot get the same price for Windows XP as Dell or Gateway, therefore, it will cost you more from me than them. That is fine with me. If some entity comes to me with some "sweetheart" deal, but tries to tell me what I can and cannot do with my business, and there is no law saying I must obey, I ask them to leave, immediately. This is my shop, not theirs. I would rather repeatedly plunge the splintered end of a broken two-by-four through their skulls, then my own than voluntarily give control over to another, especially one such as Microsoft.
So I may never be the next Dell. That's fine. I can live with that. I won't sell myself to anyone, nor will I force my customers into an either/or situation. If you want a quad Opteron box, a beowulf cluster, G5 Mac, or Hell, even a Dell, I will make it happen for you.
The biggest difference between Microsoft and the Open Source crowd is, Microsoft is shareholder and profit oriented, and Open Source people are people and solution oriented.
Opinion: Ballmer's Slip (Score:3, Informative)
The real reason why Linux is better than Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux people are geeks, inherently technical people, that focus on technology. I'm not even mentionning that they might be professionals themselves. Microsoft people are professionals, driven by marketing and other business objectives.
Hence:
All of that is obviously not only true for Linux. Apple did understand that. There is a bunch of people doing a nice OS, and giving it away for free. It is not polished as we would like it to be. Ok. Let's polish it!
The point is that Apple did a nice economy of scale with relying on a nice kernel that they don't have to maintain or pay!
I think as OSS as some kind of "Public domain for software." It's just that enough people has an extensive knowledge of how a well architectured OS such as a UNIX work. When the critical mass of people is reached, an OSS software such as Linux pops up and it just reflects the materialization of the public knowledge.
A multi-task OS is so basic nowadays, ther is no way Microsoft or any one else will ever be able to make money off of it. Microsoft is still resisting because they have this huge userbase, but it is just a matter of time.
To resume my position, it is going to become very hard to make money off of a "Generic" proprietary software. By generic, I mean anything that has been around for a while and is understood by many people. OSS will represent a very nice basis for every software. A kind of public domain toolbox.
Companies will have to find their added value on top of that.
Re:The real reason why Linux is better than Window (Score:3, Informative)
Ohh I really hate nitpicking, but I just want to point out that OSX uses FreeBSD userland, not kernel. They actually used the NextStep Kernel developed by NeXT.
You do however make a lot of good points about the structure of Linux and what holds Microsoft back.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
C-Class players (Score:5, Funny)
Notepad (Score:2)
Re:C-Class players (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I can gather having read Code Complete and other books from M$ Press is that the serious A-Class players at M$ tend to work in the libraries and languages divisions since 1) languages and libraries were their original product to start with, and 2) the libraries are used in EVERYTHING else, from the OS to Office to these little don't mean a thing until they're integrated into Windows itself projects like UPNP. If they libraries are flawed, EVERYTHING they do, and everything everybody else does, is flawed, and M$ can't afford that. Thus, most A-Class players were working on
On the other hand, they got crappy people do to the
Fortunately, 1.1 fixed that particular issue...
Re:C-Class players (Score:5, Funny)
Marketing and Legal.
Re:C-Class players (Score:4, Insightful)
The A players are in marketing and sales.
Re:C-Class players (Score:5, Insightful)
Other organizations, like government contracters, are actively searching for C players because 1) they need to stretch out the project for as long as possible and most A and B players won't put up with that game, 2) they need someone who will be willing to take such a crappy salary and 3) they like having people who occupy a slot and stay there (preferably spending their day managing the signs around the coffeepot and making sure that there are enough stirrers).
You may think I'm joking. I'm not. The startup I had been working for went under, I stayed with them out of foolish optimism until I couldn't pay the rent. Then I desperately roamed the streets looking for a job and found one working for a government contractor. I tried to stay for a year out of personal pride at holding down the job. But after nine months, I had enough money in the bank to live on for six months and I got out before finding another job. I simply could not take the insanity any more.
I've never seen more people doing less work but still looking busy than inside that "secure" environment. There were maybe three of us out of a team of twenty who actually did work on a day to day basis. Now there are two and one of them woke up the other day (it was a hilarious email). That's "okay", though, because the contractor makes their money by the number of warm bodies "working" on the project, not by actually delivering a solution. *sigh*
Regards,
Ross
Re:C-Class players (Score:3, Interesting)
Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with holding back Open Source releases 'until they're ready.' Personally, no software SHOULD be released until it's ready. The tendency to ship software out the door as soon as it boots has given us a market full of buggy, slopped together code and numbed the public to what amounts to poor craftsmanship. All in the name of the Holy Schedule.
The one thing Open Source lacks, and despite the holding back -- clearly needs, is structured testing. There is no real testing of Open Source. No Test Plans, no Test Matrices of test cases. Pre release versions are dumped to the public to use as they will in a blind, shotgun approach to testing. Exceptionally sloppy QA at best. The frequent patch history of Open Source is testament to this weakness.
Unfortunately, I don't have a suggestion as to how to solve this problem. Open Source by it's very nature doesn't lend itself well to any form of centralization, which is necessary for structured testing.
On the other hand, you have Microsoft and others that USE structured testing, but they ship based on schedule, not the number of P1 bugs still open. End result? Garbage.
Open Source at least is a labor of love. I'd just like to see SOMEONE commit to solid testing so that in the future people wouldn't have to put up with such bug ridden software.
Whooosh! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whooosh! (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the parent, I have a suggestion: If there is an open source software package that you use and want to help improve the quality, do your own testing and send feedback. Or write some tests and send them to the developer as a patch.
One thing Cringley didn't really hit on is that many open source projects are just personal projects that someone happened to put online to share. That person will do some limited testing to make sure it does what they want, but probably not an exhaustive test, since they'd rather spend time developing once it "works." (I don't think that's something unique to open source. Commercial software often gets developed to the point that it "works", even though it might not work perfectly... take Windows, for example. It works, though it has its share of bugs and flaws which don't always get fixed.)
The goal of open source developers isn't necessarily to gain market share or visibility, or to produce a perfect product. A lot of it is done to fill the needs of an individual developer, and the non-selfish idea that "if its useful to me, it might be useful to others" gets it released to the public.
What happens in the case of some of the bigger projects (Linux, OpenOffice, etc) is that a huge number of interested users start lending a hand. Some write code. Some write documentation. Some do testing. Some give money.
The really great thing about open source projects is that if you see a weakness, you can do something about it. You don't have to ask for anyone's permission first. You don't have to wait around for a patch. You can make your own and send it back to the developer. You become part of the project.
Open Source doesn't need centralization in order to develop quality tests. It just needs people to understand that fact, and then jump on board and make it happen.
Re:Whooosh! (Score:3, Funny)
Until then, I'll continue to join the 1200+ testers that work on windows, and probably around 8000 testers that work at Microsoft.
I use linux at home, but it isn't worth enough for me to contribute to. In fact, I love many aspects of unix design and have many flavors of unix in my home network and linux is fun to work with. Testing requires significant thought and work, as muc
Re:Whooosh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people will never get it. If you only work on projects because you get paid, or if you only pay for things or contribute money because you have to, or if you only offe
Who's Job is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of points...
First, Open Source projects tend to be pretty up front about the state of their code. They'll warn people when the project is lacking in its early stages. And bug reports / tracking tends to be done on a fairly open basis. There is no marketing group pushing glossy brochures trying to paint a rosy picture of bulletproof reliability and infalability (not even touching on EULAs and business deals that forbid negative product reviews).
Secondly, if I'm supposed to be a permament beta tester for someone... why do I pay hard cash for the privilige? Open Source involves a trade in time and effort. Commercial software should be a finished product.
Not all coding goes in to a shrinkwrap. I know a good number of coders who are paid for customized code that largely stays within the confines of their employer's enterprise. In most cases, what they want to code on their own free time would never compete with what they're working on for their employer.
Meanwhile, some have created Open Source projects out of a few untilities they threw togeather to handle some internal situation - with Corporate blessings. And there's talk where I work right now to put some manhours (either from existing employees or hiring in additional help) towards extending an Open Source application management has become particularly endeared to - but doesn't quite do everything they want.
For these people, Open Source software is not a threat. I could see that if your entire focus on the industry is niche products or shrinkwrapped OS' and applications, the whole Open Source thing could be a bit troublesome. But then - if people doing something for no cost ruins your industry... you have to wonder about the viability of that industry.
Sure - the views of people like RMS may make some view Free Software as a threat to their livlihoods. But honestly, is RMS' ultimate vision really going to come to pass? Will all commercial software be replaced by Free altenatives? Look around. For every product being esentially commoditized, I bet you can find a few more that haven't been touched. That's not even mentioning how many commercial products sprang either directly from, or due to the influence of, Open Source projects.
One final thought. Competition is competition. Any given commercial software house has no guarentee to profit and success. It is just as likely that another commercial outfit will produce a killer product as it is that an Open Source project will eliminate the profit in it. And at that point, you're out of a job no matter what.
If that worries you, look in to another career. But then - don't expect much more stability elsewhere either. The world is a rough place like that.
Forgotten? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ask and ye shall receive - ever hear of this place [osdl.org]? They employ a few really [osdl.org] good [osdl.org] programmers, BTW...
Soko
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:3, Funny)
Come out with your hands up, Archangeli!
( Just kidding! )
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
You can always wait until the reviews, or even the project site, say that the application is stable. I do that.
But sometimes I find really cool projects which would be a torture to wait for them to be stable; you just want to try them out IN THE VERY MOMENT you learn they exist. Screenshots, manuals and readmes are not enough.
And, of course, developers could use the feedback, bug reports and fixes, which is the whole point of open source.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, I really doubt structured testing will show all bugs. It sure helps, but only when combined with clear functional specifications and and a thoroughly described implementation. That whould require a central design and a central development process as well.
In some respect this does mean that Balmer is right, extremely good software comes from a controlled process, but it whould be really expensive software as well. MS clearly cuts corners in this process wich is killing for quality. This is why OSS development still is better than half-harted controled development. Balmer whould be right is his top priority whould be quality, Cringly is right when he say's that isn't the case.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:3)
No, no, no. Processes never create anything. People do. Skilled, talented, motivated developers, who know the domain their applications work in; working with other necessary people -- users that will be using thing developed (unless developing for themselves), testers (which may be users, or developers; tester is a role not title). Good software comes from good teams. Good teams apply whatever pr
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:2)
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:2, Interesting)
In open source, the users are the testers. If they don't like something, they fix it, or complain, and patches come out. The find/fix cycle has a speed relative to the number of users that give a crap.
That means, nobody wasted time fixing things nobody cared about anyway. And, cool things one bug shy of being really cool will get that fix.
I call that effiency.
Structured testing is the old way. Let it go.
In the future, the people putting up with bug ridden software -- w
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
That's true for some projects, but there are plenty of examples of open source projects which do have test cases. You probably wouldn't have to look very far to find them, either. Could they use improvement? Yes. Should more projects have them? Yes.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that OSS gets tested "in the real world" means that it undergoes the sort of testing that even Microsoft couldn't match (for most companies, they don't have the money to hire the hoards of testers with the almost infinite variations of setups required to really test something, for MS, they don't have the time to test this thoroughly). If you don't want to be part of this, then you use older, stable versions of the software.
Otherwise, you've pretty much argued against one of the main strengths of OSS, which from inception has been release often and early (but don't call it version 1.0 until it's actually ready). There's entire articles written about how it's not hard to fix bugs -- the hard part is finding them.
You're arguing for a step backwards in the development of software (a step into how its done in the commercial software world), and for changing one of the core strengths of how OSS has gotten to where it's at.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:2)
For example, with Debian you have the unstable branches and the stable branches. There's a solid year+ of testing before packages make it into stable.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Many eyes make all bugs shallow.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
PostgreSQL is quite heavily tested. Their regression test suite is...formidable.
gcc is, if I recall, has a regression test suite which grows by leaps and bounds with every release. Not sure what sort of coverage we're looking at right now.
perl 5.8 also has a large test suite, and 5.10 is looking to be insane in the testing department.
All of the core CPAN modules have at least rudimentary testing, most of them have quite heavy testing.
parrot loves it some testing as well.
OSDL wrote a test suite for the Linux kernel which is pretty hard-core, I've been told. Testing results for development kernels are posted regularly to LKML, I believe.
These are scattered projects (and they are not the only projects out there that test), but they reflect, in my opinion, a growing trend in open source: automated testing.
The reason for this is twofold, IMO.
As a possible argument against what I'm saying, I'll refer to your statement "no real testing of Open Source. No Test Plans, no Test Matrices of test cases"[1].
To that argument I would say: don't get so hung up on names that you miss the point.
[1] - I'm not saying you are making or would make this argument, just trying to think of possible responses and responses to those responses.
Re:Forgotten Element in Commercial and Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
1) Bugs that you've fixed don't get reintroduced by later code changes,
2) The system runs across a matrix of operating systems, platforms, etc., and
3) if you write your regression tests before you code the app (yay XP!) they're how you know that you're done coding your app.
Depending on what you're coding, you'll almost certainly need to suppliment regression testing with other forms of testing. I find that throwing naive users at software is a great test
What MS does provide (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What MS does provide (Score:2)
That way lies madness.
Re:What MS does provide (Score:2)
Re:What MS does provide (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk to the Samba guys about how inconsistent they are about protocols. They are a huge company, and many things are inconsistent. You do raise valid points tho, and many in the OS community don't want to hear anything negative.
There was a MS funded benchmark a while back, where Windows came out on top of Linux when it came to webserver performance. The great sea of Slashdotters were up in arms, They shilled for MS!!! A few people actually decided to think "maybe they're right" and looked for improvements in Linux networking code. And Linux got faster, and has beat beating Windows IIS's ass ever since. There are advantages to listening to bad news sometimes.
Re:What MS does provide (Score:2)
Re:What MS does provide (Score:2, Informative)
Yes and the MSRPC protocol was secure.
The fact is that an API is never going to be "resonable" in the sense you define it because like the programs it is designed to bolster it is ever evolving. Take GTK+ it has what I would consider a resonable API, but it must evolve. If you want stability go and get a specification, oh wait, Microsoft will slaughter it, remember the Microsoft "extentions" of kerberos, java, and ANSI C/C++.(I know no C/C++ compiler is strictly ANSI standard, but
Re:What MS does provide (Score:3, Insightful)
The non-technical... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that the group Balmer addressed in the first place? My guess whould be that Balmer perfectly knew that it would be a clear to the
Cringely has a good perspective on MS. (Score:4, Informative)
He's right, Microsoft frequently gives away "Ship IT!" awards to managers who get the product out the door on time. This is the reason so many products that could have been great, are not.
Failure (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft Bob!!
Never see it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cough cough Sourceforge cough cough...
So much stuff there is untouched by human hands its incredible.
Re:Never see it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Never see it? (Score:2)
Re:Never see it? (Score:2)
Re:Never see it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's ass and what line? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right, why does Ballmer think Microsoft includes an EULA with their software? To void them of the responsibility for the trillions of damage their software has caused through security vulenerabilites and generally poor design.
Yeah, trillions. We've all seen the way damage is estimated each time a virus grinds everything Microsoft to a halt. Usually in the hundreds of billions, and it's probably happened at least a dozen times. This let alone unrelated individual incidents companies around the world have on a daily basis.
Oh, and don't forget about the kids that get locked up for writing viruses and other mischevious software that exploit said vulnerabilities. They're an easy scape goat to relieve Microsoft yet again of any responsibility what so ever.
I'm tired of this bullshit. The day Microsoft gets hauled in to court to take responsibility once and for all is the day I go skiing in hell. I bet I'll see Gates running the resort.
Re:Who's ass and what line? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have a house and it's broken into, you're going to hope that the kids that did it are caught and put in jail. Just remember that it's your fault because you didn't put unbreakable glass in your windows, and encase the entire house in armor plating.
I hope I never see you skiing in hell (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't remember the details, but the software industry tried to get a law passed that would've voided EULAs without a piece of paper to back them up (anyone remember what I'm talking about?). Microsoft was all for the idea. I think it died (fortunately). Just remember, liability is a double edged sword.
Depends on the gates (no not that Gates) (Score:3, Insightful)
You usually have a lot more liability if a) you're selling the product and b) marketing the product as having specific qualities.
So would I, p
Re:Who's ass and what line? (Score:2)
I bet I'll see Gates running the resort
No, he will be running the lift. Once all of the the Linux people are in the chairs, the lift motor will mysteriously BSOD!
Someone Needs to Ask Balmer or Gates! (Score:3, Interesting)
Both Microsoft and SCO tout the fact that they indemnify their customers as an advantage of their products over Linux and other Open Source Software. The American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary defines indemnify as:
1. To protect against damage, loss, or injury; insure.
2. To make compensation to for damage, loss, or injury suffered.
This d
Linux changes MS, too (Score:5, Insightful)
When I started to use linux, people who worked with windows pretty much accepted that you'd have to reboot several times a day. This wasn't just because of the need to preserve backward compatitibility with DOS. Even NT 4 was pretty buggy before sp4 or so.
I remember telling people that sun servers often stayed up for years without reboots -- no one believed it. Computers crashed, that's what computers do. Microsoft, and to a lesser extent apple, convinced most casual users that's the way computers worked.
But obviously, this wasn't something that was caused by an immature level of technological development, because other companies, like sun, were shipping machines that didn't crash all the time.
I believe that linux is responsible for a huge percentage of the core improvements that MS made to windows. They never felt it was a problem to ship OSs that crashed until they saw an alternative that didn't crash, on the edge of their radar screen. An alternative that people could install on their existing PCs, an alternative that people running ISPs could use to do server work.
Linux's quality, for the most part, doesn't come out of competition. There are efforts to make linux better at doing certain specific things, efforts that are driven by benchmarks. Most of the time, these little competitions seem to be waged with FreeBSD. But it's a historical fact that people wanted to make linux more reliable way before windows had any stability at all.
Microsoft *needs* linux to push it. If linux wasn't out there, does anyone think they'd be trying to tighten up security? Does anyone think that they would have delivered stable versions of windows without the pressure of competition.
My point is that even if you don't use linux, you benefit from it in a big way. In fact, I would say that most of the real benefit that linux brings to the world comes in the form of competitive pressure on microsoft, and those benefits are seen by windows users, not by linux users. Who knows how much they'd be charging, what the net would look like, how often windows would crash, etc., if it weren't for linux.
It's hard to get this across, but every discussion of open source vs. commercial development ignores the effect that open source exerts on commercial developers. The discussions are simplistic for that reason.
If you were going to compare open source development vs. monopolistic commercial development in a realistic way, you'd have to talk about what a horrible job commercial developers did before open source developers started to hold their feet to the fire.
Re:Linux changes MS, too (Score:5, Funny)
Windows NT4 had no utility to show the uptime of a running server. It was stored in the kernel, but there was no tool that came with the operating system that would display that information.
But, Microsoft DID release a unsupported set of tools called the Resource Kit. The Resource Kit was, as you would expect, all the tools that would be of USE to a system administrator, like a remote shutdown tool, a remote command tool, just to name a couple.
In there, there was a utility you could use to display the uptime of the server.
The format that the server displayed was:
HH:MM:SS.s
So, much like the 'no one would EVER need more than 640KB of memory', whoever wrote that tool couldn't even comprehend a system that was up for more than 99 hours, and 59 seconds.
My server at home has been up for 68 days, 11 hours, 26 minutes.
Re:Linux changes MS, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it was. The Win9x line not only needed to ensure application compatibility with DOS, but also device driver compatibility with DOS -- and anyone who ever wrote DOS drivers could tell you, there was almost no such thing as standards.
The end result was a GUI system that couldn't be stable because in order to be stable it had to enforce restrictions, and that was unacceptable because the software and the drivers needed to run without restrictions. Over the course of the Win9x line, Microsoft built APIs and pushed developers to use them, and then once there was sufficient legacy behind Win32 and WDM, they pulled the rug out from under us and we're all running on NT and enjoying the stability benefits that a protected architecture can provide.
To say that Win9x was unstable because Microsoft was just lazy is a completely asinine thing to say and anyone who maintains as such shows how little they actually know about the situation. To say that Windows is stable today because of Linux is also misguided: Linux didn't really start appearing on Microsoft's radar until after 1999, which was when Win2k shipped, so Microsoft was already firmly in the stable OS bandwagon before Linux was a concern.
Re:Linux changes MS, too (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't say (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider the software marketplace, and the two feedback loops that drive it. One is the Almighty Frogskin* the other is the quasi-academic pursuit of excellence for its own sake. [slashdot.org] **
I'm increasingly bemused by those who try to see these orthogonal motives as somehow overlapping. They just ain't. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
*They're no longer purely green...but neither are frogs [genomenewsnetwork.com]
**because a shot o' sake, like jogging nude, puts color in your cheeks
I, Cringley slashbox (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps, I'm just dreaming and the title was never there... it's been one of _those_ days...
"cognitive dissonance" (Score:5, Interesting)
Conventional wisdom suggests that the people who had been paid more would be more apt to change their minds, but actually, the reverse was true. The explanation is that the people who were paid could resolve the conflict in their mind between the beliefs they held and the contradictory statements they were writing by saying "heck, I still don't believe this, I'm not writing it because I believe it or anything, I'm writing it because I'm being bribed to." But the people who didn't have that "out" had to resolve their own cognitive dissonance another way, and for some of them, at least, the way was to realize that maybe there was something to the counterargument, after all.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I was eerily reminded of it while reading Ballmer's arguments that Microsoft's commercial software is "obviously" better because it's written by professional programmers who are paid for it.
But if you're getting paid to write code, and the code is (for whatever reason) crap, that you can't take pride in, you can at least feel good about all the lovely $$$ you're being paid. The open source programmer, on the other hand, who is doing it for love rather than money, doesn't have that out, so has a much higher incentive to write code that's not crap, because feeling good about it is the only reward.
Re:"cognitive dissonance" (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what is confusing about open source to some (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are a good programmer, you program for a living because that is what you're good at. This is something that economists and Ballmer/Gates understand. Might as well get paid to program if you're good at it and enjoy it.
That's what's confusing about open source/free software--what do the developers do for a living? Are they students? Are they unemployed? Are they underemployed (e.g., working McDonalds)? If under/unemployed, why? If you are a good enough programmer to contribute to open source, can't you get a job with MS/IBM/Apple/Adobe/Oracle/etc.? Why would you program for free, in your spare time, instead of getting paid to do so?
Re:Here's what is confusing about open source to s (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you be a starving actor or artist, working poor-paying jobs to live on and doing what you love in your "spare time"?
Programming -- good programming, anyway -- is a creative process, and creative people love what they do, and will do it whether or not they get paid to do it. Heck, they'll do it even if it costs them.
Simply put, open-source programmers program for love rather than money. And it turns out that
Boxed blinders (Score:3, Informative)
I'll give you a for-instance. We use a troubleticket system called IRM to handle IT inventory and helpdesk tracking. It did almost everything we needed it to do very very well. The only thing it cost us was me learning how to set it up. The o
Re:Here's what is confusing about open source to s (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only this, but in the real world, people don't always get to work on stuff that interests them. You may have a deep interest in audio codecs, but how easy is it to get a job working on that? Not very. But if you want to play around with the source code for Ogg Vorbis, there's nothing stopping you.
The idea that stupid economists hold that people will take jobs they're best at is BS, because real economies don't work that way. Finding someone else to pay you to do something you love is hard to do, as many starving artists will vouch for. Or, you could become an entrepreneur and start your own business doing something you like, but then you'll find that you have to waste a lot of time doing all the business crap, and not the fun stuff.
Open source changes all of this. Anyone who's interested can get involved on an OSS project in their spare time; sometimes they can even turn it into a job function if their job has a need for it as some others here have mentioned. You don't have to find some company to hire you to do it, and thanks to the internet you can easily collaborate with other people on the same project. And best of all, none of it is like working in a corporation.
I think in reality, a lot of OSS programmers are also professional programmers, but the stuff they do at home is much more interesting to them than what they're paid to do at work.
Re:Here's what is confusing about open source to s (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw a survey a long, long, time ago (5 years? more?) that showed that most contributors to Linux (or was it BSD... or some other project...? I've forgotten the specifics) were computer professionals in their mid 20's to 30's, who had full-time jobs. A lot, but not all, were
I'm surprised (Score:3, Informative)
The truth about Linux everyone seems to miss. (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft is producing the software to make money; that's a given. And it's often stated that Bill is driven by a Borg mentality to beat the other players in the industry and to own everything. Which makes a lot of sense; a lot of the evil illegal things they do can not be explained just by a motivation to get money, they already have the money.
And it stated in this article again that open source software development is based on a desire to make this software free. And personal reputation of the developer. And other motivations. But here's the one major driving motivation to Open Source Software that no one else seems to be willing to state:
Open Source software is largely driven, and will continue to succeeded, because of a hatred of Bill Gates. It's as simple as that. People hate Bill Gates so much that they are not just willing but glad to donate tens or hundreds of hours of their time to anything that would make projects that Microsoft competes with better. And the more illegal things he does to try to destroy other software and to take over the software world, the more this will continue to be true.
Re:The truth about Linux everyone seems to miss. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so far from the truth it's not even funny. I don't know of a single Open Source developer that develops software based on some personal feelings toward anyone at Microsoft.
This is a misconception that really gets me because it inevitably leads to the "If you want X project to beat M$, you need to put feature Y in just like in the M$ product."
What people fail to understand is that I, and most Open Source developers I know, simply don't care about beating anyone. I'm just out to make good software that I'm proud of. That's it.
Re:The truth about Linux everyone seems to miss. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's true. Plus teh feeling of community, the fuzzy feeling of giving back to the community which also gives you such great software to use and work with.
One flaw in Ballmer's criticism I noticed is that he says "there are no butts on the line", but yes there are - just not people's butts. The best code gets into the mainline. Not as good code doesn't. So, survival of the fittest code wins and the butts of the less-fit code get kicked
Re:The truth about Linux everyone seems to miss. (Score:3, Funny)
I think you're right. Here's a bit of code I found in the latest version of emacs:
The reason Open source works (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong attribution (Score:4, Funny)
Ballmer didn't write glib [gtk.org] and that's a fact.
why bother (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as Microsoft doesn't boycot Linux, I'm fine with whatever Balmer is saying. I'm passed the Linux is better then Windows thing.
If Windows would fit my needs, I would have used Windows. If people using Windows have security problems, don't look at me, I'm not going to tell them to make the switc
Does Cringely have a show? (Score:2)
His opinion pieces are carried on PBS' website. Does he have a show on PBS? I've searched the TV schedules for all the nearby PBS stations but no one seems to carry a show entitled "I, Cringely." Is it a show that's carried somewhere? Or does he have a show of some other name, and as a result gets to do this opinion piece on their web site as well? If so, what's the other show? What's it about? Is it any good at all?
SCO Keyword: indemnify customers (Score:2)
Can't undercut free? (Score:2, Funny)
Whose Butt Is on the Line? (Score:4, Flamebait)
Seriously: Has anyone ever been fired from Microsoft for writing insecure or buggy code? I don't think so.
I live and work near Redmond and know many Microserfs.... Both blue badges and permatemps. I've never heard any of them saying anything about anyone being fired for quality issues.
Sure there was the guy who offed himself in the 911 on highway 522 because he didn't get promoted (taking out some elderly tourists in a motor home as a bonus). Then there was the guy who stole/resold a few mil $$ worth of software that then died... of "mysterious causes."
But actually *FIRED*??? Not yet.
I think that would be a great motivator to assist "Trustworthy Computing" to live up to its name. Take the bozos responsible for the latest RPC vulnerabilities and FIRE the whole damn group in a very public fashion. Of course a public execution would be even better, but Microsoft doesn't have *that* much political clout here in Washington State. I'm sure the current administration in "the other Washington" would allow it under some provision of the Patriot Act, but as far as I know, only Boeing and the penitentiary in Walla Walla have the authority to actually kill people around here.
C'mon Ballmer! Live up to your promise and SACK SOMEBODY NOW!
he forgot the biggest difference of all (Score:3, Interesting)
but anyhow, the largest reason open source is better and more secure than closed source (or commercial software like microsoft) is because you have millions of people around the world looking at it, testing it, not just coders, but everyone.
If there is a serious flaw, it's going to be found, and very quickly, and what's more, lots of those people are coders, which means they submit suggestions and sometimes even patches and improvements to the developers. and not only that, he misses the whole culture and ideas of sourceforge, where anyone and everyone can review any project, and also development of open source projects for the ones we know most well, are not single person developments, but a team, and that team is reall cohesive, it has to be.
anyone in the world can stamp out an email to the developer(s) of an open source project and say "hey dude, there's a bug when you do this, this and this", even a novice computer user can do that.
ballmer just doesn't get it, and never will. M$ can never beat the sheer magnitude of good coders around the world, 24 hours a day inspecting the code.
the only way M$ can beat open source would be to try to open source windows themselves. but that wouldn't work. M$ has lost the respect of decent coders, and their "cool" factor a long time ago.
My bet would be open source coders would look at their code and end up vomitting the rest of the day. it really is that bad.
Re:he forgot the biggest difference of all (Score:3, Funny)
Unless that project is XFree86... because looking at it just paralyzes you with FEAR.
The heads of Microsoft are not dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is a company - its objective is to make money. It does this by selling software and associated other things (part services and hardware, (Joysticks Mice etc...))
The objective of Open Source (Linux in this example) is to make the best software possible it just so happens that this model also believes that open code is the best code.
This is pretty simple. Now, the heads at Microsoft understand this - but it is their job to promote Microsoft. That is what they get paid to do. They work for Microsoft, they have Microsoft stock options - they make their living by selling Microsoft. The heads of these companies (and all companies really) are salesmen. They work to sell a product. Now, it is important to believe in your product to sell it - and Microsoft exec's clearly do.
But really, can you blame them? They are clearly worried by the Open Source model because it presents a direct threat to their Cash Flow. Buggy software requires upgrades - this is good for business because you can sell the upgrades, and make money. That is their objective. With Open Source, buggy software is bad, because the objective is to make the best software possible.
Microsoft does not want to make the best software possible - otherwise people would buy it, and once they bought it, they would never need to buy it again. Their sales would go up - and then plateau.
Linux developers want to make the best software - because that is what they set out to do in the beginning.
There are totally different perspectives at work here. If you want to understand Open Source, and Commercial software you have to understand both ideals. I think Balmer understands totally - but he can't start disparaging Microsoft. It goes against his mandate.
I think MS is scared - and rightly so. They are hitting a plateau in sales, and Open Source is a serious threat to their server sales. What comes out of this will be interesting. That much is certain.
Re:The heads of Microsoft are not dumb. (Score:3)
If that's the objective of Open Source, then it has failed utterly.
I would say the objective of Open Source is more making software that is good enough that people can tweak easily to meet their specific needs...
With Open Source, buggy software is bad, because the objective is to make the best software possible.
Dude, put the kool-a
Oh, they understand allright (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:from "Nothing new here" department (Score:5, Informative)
Cringley's article is a good non-technical explanation of why freely developed and freely distributed open source software can and often does work better than Microsoft's commercially developed and commercially distributed closed source software.
Re:from "Nothing new here" department (Score:2, Insightful)
You've never had an office job have you?
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely is useful for this purpose, if nothing else, since he is good at taking technically-oriented "stuff" and presenting it in a manner palpable and coherent to totally non-technical people. Which makes good e-mail forwards.
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Richard Feynman held that if he couldn't explain a physical phenomenon to someone with no scientific background in plain English in a minute it meant he didn't really understand it himself.
While this may rankle some of the peanut gallery here I'd suggest that if you can't explain the most technically archane subject you deal with to a nontechnical person in plain English (or Russian, or Chinese, or what have you) in a few minutes you don't really understand it either.
Cringley's pieces may contain far more depth than they can appear to have on the surface, even if sometimes he's a little slow to "get it."
So was Feynman, for that matter, but when he got it, he got it.
KFG
Re:Uhh... (Score:4, Interesting)
And I never suggested anything of the kind.
In this particular instance I think Cringley was a bit slow in his enlightenment. This peculiar dichotomy of society's view of the "professional" versus the "amatuer" is one I've been dealing with, and conversant with, since as long as I can remember.
To me Microsoft's position is patently like that of Starving Artists Inc. claiming they make the best art because they employ thousands of professional artists. Not like those disreputable independants Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse.
Still, it's interesting to see someone go through it, and to do so in this public manner. It can be instructive to both the technical and the nontechnical, even if only as a reminder to the technical that this is where most people's perceptions are hovering around.
While you may be someone who understands your field well enough that you can explain it simply it also has to be remembered that sometimes you have to.
KFG
Re:History of Linux (Score:3, Funny)