Microsoft's bid to sieze control of all PC use

[Lord MJ]

Please don't turn this into a Trek bashing thread.


The reason that many on the TrekBBS support microsoft is that, the particular forum I posted to, the Neutral Zone, is full of many, many conservatives. And the general party line of most republicans is the rights of big business, and government non-interference, unless it helps big business. Because helping big business, always is good for society, right?

That and the ignorance that the average PC user has about the computer industry.

[Enlightenment]

Perhaps Star Trek's intrusive, inflexible, conformist, homogeneous, omni-present, insecure, zero-privacy, single-vendor computing environment tends to condition viewers to accept (and perhaps even desire) the same thing in real life.

Nah. It's just that anyone dumb enough to really enjoy Star Trek is dumb enough to swallow any line of propaganda hook link and sinker. I mean, anyone so brainless to believe that Janeway was anything more than an incompetent idiot will believe anything.

[Eleas]

"As I said on SB, this is either:
a) bullshit
b) Blown out of proportion"

Yeah, God forbid someone should actually criticize the creators of the Halloween Document!

[Lord MJ]

Perhaps Star Trek's intrusive, inflexible, conformist, homogeneous, omni-present, insecure, zero-privacy, single-vendor computing environment tends to condition viewers to accept (and perhaps even desire) the same thing in real life.

Nah. It's just that anyone dumb enough to really enjoy Star Trek is dumb enough to swallow any line of propaganda hook link and sinker. I mean, anyone so brainless to believe that Janeway was anything more than an incompetent idiot will believe anything.

Watch it, I enjoy Star Trek (favorite show) and I know full well not to swallow M$ bullshit.

[Mr Bean]

Watch it, I enjoy Star Trek (favorite show) and I know full well not to swallow M$ bullshit.

We in the business call that an anomoly
Anomolys will be deleted

I personaly don't like ST simply because 2/3 of the show have the exact same plot line, The idiot *Futuristic pretty lights but useless devices oh and the fact is a Communist Goverment(The Federation)

[His Divine Shadow]

Yeah, God forbid someone should actually criticize the creators of the Halloween Document!

I don't follow...
what?

[Eleas]

"I don't follow...
what?"

This is pretty telling, boys and girls.

Anyway, Dennis, take a look at the documents here.

--
Björn

Bdubmmz, jn cfuujh ifmm dbmm ju b ipby.

[His Divine Shadow]

This is pretty telling, boys and girls.

It looks to me like your insulting me now.

[Eleas]

"It looks to me like your insulting me now."

I was. Maybe it was excessive, but I can't help being reminded on that other thread on ASVS where I sent the same link, which you (or so it seemed to me) ignored in favour of spouting pro-M$ arguments.

Anyway, have a look at this brave new world, and then come back and tell me if you want to contribute to it.

[His Divine Shadow]

I was. Maybe it was excessive, but I can't help being reminded on that other thread on ASVS where I sent the same link, which you (or so it seemed to me) ignored in favour of spouting pro-M$ arguments.

Oh I realized it's useless when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
Like how you insult me here for not being a MS hater and taking the middle road.

Why is spouting anti-ms better than spouting pro-ms? They got good points too, and honestly, most of this hate mongering I see here seems overly escessive and blown out of proportion, and everyone not part of chanting hatred against the evil giant in Redmond should be burned.

Whats so good about that page anyway? Long boring talk and anti-ms propaganda, I don't see why I should put anymore stock in that than I do the anti-linux propaganda.

Anyway, have a look at this brave new world, and then come back and tell me if you want to contribute to it.

Brave new world?
You mean the new world where everyone uses linux and live happily forever after?

I wouldn't want to be a part of a world thats nothing but a bunch of people jupming on the bandwagon and thinking of themselves like some kinda rebels against some mythical evil empire.

Especially not after I've seen the stupidity spewn by lots of socalled linux fanboys(not reffering to this forum) at places like arstechnica, they're like the trekkies of the computer world, they'll jump on to the linux bandwagon and spout mindless propaganda without actually understanding any of it.

[His Divine Shadow]

Ack, I just get so pissed when I see fanboys of both sides throwing feces mindlessly at each other...
But the worst is when I try to be impartial is that I get attacked, and I am apparently a pro-MS spouting drone!
GODAMN!

And when I should be attacked for trying to look at it from the "middle", well then I really don't want anything to do with this stuff, at all.

Just a buncha of overzealous jerks throwing shit at each other.

[Eleas]

"Oh I realized it's useless when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
Like how you insult me here for not being a MS hater and taking the middle road."

You're not taking the middle road. I would respect you if you did, but right now I don't, because you're not only unfamiliar with the facts of the debate, but you refuse to look at them. You dismiss them out of hand, despite the fact that even Microsoft didn't! They could have sued. Instead, they claimed that a memo meant for the eye of their executives somehow wasn't talking about their official policy, but was just a technical discussion primer!

Tell me, Dennis, what do we on ASVS do if someone comes in and starts raving about how Trek would beat Wars, and, when we post the link to SWTC or Stardestroyer.net, dismisses it out of hand as "warsie propaganda"? That's right, we mock them, just like I was mocking you.

My advice to you is: if you want to walk the middle road, first try to learn enough about the debate to see if this position is even justified. Your willful ignorance of primary sources like the Halloween Docs is akin to a trekkie refusing to read the FAQ.

As it is right now, the road you're walking on is The Road Ahead.

"Why is spouting anti-ms better than spouting pro-ms? They got good points too, and honestly, most of this hate mongering I see here seems overly escessive and blown out of proportion, and everyone not part of chanting hatred against the evil giant in Redmond should be burned."

Stop putting words in my mouth. I don't want to destroy Windows, I merely want my personal freedom to choose what business solution I want. Microsoft took the first steps to attack that freedom with their infamous contract with IBM, and again with the integration of IE. What makes you think they would stop?

"Whats so good about that page anyway? Long boring talk and anti-ms propaganda, I don't see why I should put anymore stock in that than I do the anti-linux propaganda."

Maybe because (1) Microsoft confirmed the claims that it came from their company, or perhaps because (2) there is plenty of evidence linked?

But I guess I'm speaking to a wall here. I doubt you even got past the title page.

"Brave new world?
You mean the new world where everyone uses linux and live happily forever after?"

No. Thanks for not understanding yet again. I was referring to the future in which I get to choose between operating systems. Anything else is a misrepresentation of my opinions, not to matter a silly fantasy, because everyone who's even looked at Linux knows how mutable it is. You're not going to get a homogenous all-Linux using future, because every Linux system can be made unique. Just tell me who the evil empire is - those who want their platform to be the best, or those who want theirs to be the only one.

"I wouldn't want to be a part of a world thats nothing but a bunch of people jupming on the bandwagon and thinking of themselves like some kinda rebels against some mythical evil empire."

A monopoly like Microsoft is evil. Microsofts release of an incomplete Windows NT was possible because there were no alternatives, at least not to the knowledge of business organizations. They can shit over customers all they like. The mere fact that monopolies grant this power makes them inherently undesirable.

"Especially not after I've seen the stupidity spewn by lots of socalled linux fanboys(not reffering to this forum) at places like arstechnica, they're like the trekkies of the computer world, they'll jump on to the linux bandwagon and spout mindless propaganda without actually understanding any of it."

Is that really so much different from someone who doesn't actually understand what he's talking about, and prefers this to actual knowledge?

[His Divine Shadow]

You're not taking the middle road. I would respect you if you did, but right now I don't, because you're not only unfamiliar with the facts of the debate, but you refuse to look at them. You dismiss them out of hand, despite the fact that even Microsoft didn't! They could have sued. Instead, they claimed that a memo meant for the eye of their executives somehow wasn't talking about their official policy, but was just a technical discussion primer!

Im not even in the debate, I just said this is being blown out of proportion.
And I am taking the middle road, the middle road here is that I don't think MS is as evil and horrible and wants to destroy humanity and whatnot and that Palladium is probably blown out of proportion, mostly because it would be bad bussiness move.

Tell me, Dennis, what do we on ASVS do if someone comes in and starts raving about how Trek would beat Wars, and, when we post the link to SWTC or Stardestroyer.net, dismisses it out of hand as "warsie propaganda"? That's right, we mock them, just like I was mocking you.

Mock away then, I never got any hint of what document was about, I skimmed some sections and saw stuff like "zombie armys from the fetid mists of Redmond", again my confidence about this paper was shot to hell, if they can't even keep it factual, why should I trust them to be professional about it?

Your only reason mocking me because I said I think all the talk about this was blown out of proportion...

My advice to you is: if you want to walk the middle road, first try to learn enough about the debate to see if this position is even justified. Your willful ignorance of primary sources like the Halloween Docs is akin to a trekkie refusing to read the FAQ.

I never got any idea where I should read, or why, or what it's credibility was in contrast to other sources, nothing, absolutely nothing, the situations are not analougous either.
I don't see why this is so factually correct either, what I first saw was "Where will Microsoft try to drag you today?
Do you really want to go there?" Yeah thats inspires confidence in the professionality of this article...
I never trust the mud slingers of any side, hence why I am very hesitant of that site.

As it is right now, the road you're walking on is The Road Ahead.

Who are you to make that judgement?

Stop putting words in my mouth. I don't want to destroy Windows, I merely want my personal freedom to choose what business solution I want. Microsoft took the first steps to attack that freedom with their infamous contract with IBM, and again with the integration of IE. What makes you think they would stop?

Well don't you?
As for the IE integration, I never saw the problem with it because it didn't stop me from installing other browsers and the features gained elsewhere by integration where favorable and to my liking.

Maybe because (1) Microsoft confirmed the claims that it came from their company, or perhaps because (2) there is plenty of evidence linked?

Does that mean that this is what MS is striving after? Like that the customer must loose? or? I dunno if I should take it as a serious representation of MS.

But I guess I'm speaking to a wall here. I doubt you even got past the title page.

Sure you assume away all your want, I'm just another dumb bastard who just happens to give MS the benefit of a doubt and I should be mocked for it, I'm not the wall just because I don't think that this is all people says it is.

No. Thanks for not understanding yet again. I was referring to the future in which I get to choose between operating systems. Anything else is a misrepresentation of my opinions, not to matter a silly fantasy, because everyone who's even looked at Linux knows how mutable it is. You're not going to get a homogenous all-Linux using future, because every Linux system can be made unique. Just tell me who the evil empire is - those who want their platform to be the best, or those who want theirs to be the only one.

I believe the future to choose between operating systems will always be there, I don't believe palladium could be all it's said to be here sice it would be suicidal move.
I don't want anyone to "win or loose" either.

A monopoly like Microsoft is evil. Microsofts release of an incomplete Windows NT was possible because there were no alternatives, at least not to the knowledge of business organizations. They can shit over customers all they like. The mere fact that monopolies grant this power makes them inherently undesirable.

What incomplete version of NT?
Is this in that document too? How reliable is that then?
I've see on the forums links like these for years and there has always been another side of the coin, hence I am precarious to look at any site, I also find that "proof" in this bussiness is very muddy, wich also leaves me hesitant to accept it.

Is that really so much different from someone who doesn't actually understand what he's talking about, and prefers this to actual knowledge?

I don't think I've really stated anything else than this being blown out of proportion, for that I was mocked then just because of that little comment. Jeez, I'm not the one with the problem here, I hardly care about these debates but I dislike the mud-slinging that goes on.

[His Divine Shadow]

I had troubles first at sorting that mumbo jumbo of a page out but I think I am on the stuff that MS actually wrote now.

I've just begun, now this is what MS said:
Consequently, OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft -- particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.

So they recognize Linux as a threat, as competition, the author goes on to say from that, that MS loathes competition, it wants to be the only one, alternatives are bad.
I don't see how he did that, all I see is that MS recognizes Linux for what it is, is that a bad thing? It will promote competition, and we can see competition has done MS a world of good, XP is a fine system compared to that bloated carcass of 9x, and we got competition to thank for it.

[His Divine Shadow]

Maybe I'm just naive, maybe I should listen to those who scream bloody murder everytime something like this happens.
Heck this Palladium thing i even illegal if it's all it's cracked up to be, isn't it?

[His Divine Shadow]

Tell you what, I'm going to leave this topic now, all I said was that I thought it was being blown out of proportion, if I have to be mocked for that by people I consider friends, it's not really the kind of discussion I want to involve myself in, I'll just leave now and we'll see what the future holds then instead.

[Eleas]

"Tell you what, I'm going to leave this topic now, all I said was that I thought it was being blown out of proportion, if I have to be mocked for that by people I consider friends, it's not really the kind of discussion I want to involve myself in, I'll just leave now and we'll see what the future holds then instead."

Tell you what... I apologize.

I read my post again and it was pretty condescending and hot-tempered. So I'm gonna go to bed now and shut up, and maybe I'll cook up some arguments that don't hinge quite so much on emotions.

Again, I'm sorry. I'll try to steer away from such in the future.

[Nick]

Maybe I'm just naive, maybe I should listen to those who scream bloody murder everytime something like this happens.
Heck this Palladium thing i even illegal if it's all it's cracked up to be, isn't it?

HDS, I think the reason people (me included) get somewhat . . . vehement . . . about Microsoft is that they have used the same tactics again and again to leverage their way into markets beyond their original one (desktop OS's) in addition to further cementing their control of the desktop market.

And so, when people like us see yet another attempt from Microsoft to gain even more control, there is an attitude of 'Here we go again, typical bloody Microsoft' which may come across as highly biased to newcomers who may not be quite as fluent with the history that grates on our nerves.

Summarising the 'evils' of Microsoft (not to mention oversimplying a number of the issues involved) :

Their first trick (i.e. the most annoying factor in their rise to monopoly) was to persuade a number of PC vendors to sign deals which meant the vendor paid Microsoft a licensing fee for every PC sold, even if MS-DOS was not installed on the PC being sold.

The natural result? The vendors shipped every PC with MS-DOS as the operating system, since the vendor would have to pay for it anyway. Essentially, Apple aside, everyone began selling IBM clones with MS-DOS installed.

Over time (along with a few other factors like IBM shooting themselves in the foot with OS/2), this has led directly to Microsoft's current dominant position in the desktop market. We have the first leg in "What Microsoft does, Microsoft does for Microsoft's benefit".

There is an important thing to understand about the vast majority of PC users: What comes with the system, stays with the system. Anything which doesn't come with the system, probably won't get looked at. In other words, if the machine comes with Outlook and IE preconfigured, that's what people will use. If the machine comes with Windows pre-installed, that's what people will use. Installing games is enough of a challenge for them - the concept of installing a different operating system is enough to make them run screaming in fear (with good reason - changing OS's is a major pain)

The deals cut with the PC vendors have meant that Microsoft has the leverage in the desktop OS market, and has used that to shut out other vendors in other areas. They succeeded spectacularly with Web browsers and email clients, they generally failed with the Web itself.

The second reason to dislike Microsoft is their philosophy of 'embrace-and-extend'. They take an open standard (e.g. HTML) and 'enhance' it, giving Web designers the ability to do funky tricks on their web pages. Problem: these funky tricks only work with IE - they cause any other browsers to die. Wait, it doesn't matter! Almost all our clients use IE anyway - and so the Microsoft monopoly becomes even more entrenched.

Microsoft have tried to use similar stunts to break into the server market - making it difficult for non-Microsoft servers to interact with Microsoft clients (and vice-versa). Some of these have worked, some haven't, the jury is still out on the rest. In a related area, Microsoft's monopolistic presence gives them the ability to create 'de-facto' standards, which are not publically available. A major example of this is the Microsoft Office file formats (Word, PowerPoint, Excel). The first question asked about most office suites is "Can it read Microsoft formats?" - the answering is usually 'most of the time', but only due to painstaking reverse engineering. Odd cases can still be misinterpreted, and of course, it all goes out the window as soon as Microsoft decide to change formats again (usually every couple of releases). Other examples are DirectX and the centralised .NET security architecture (note that the essence of .NET itself isn't that bad an idea - it's the centralisation of power in Microsoft's hands that _other_ aspects of the architecture entail which is the problem)

And the third major reason to dislike Microsoft's business practices is their ongoing willingness to exploit the gullibility of the general and business communities. This tactic, called FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), ultimately boils down to lying. They make unsubstantiated claims about alternatives to Microsoft (e.g. 'Linux is unsupported, there is no point of contact when you have problems' Someone really should mention this situation to RedHat, MandrakeSoft, SuSE, Caldera, etc.) and _also_ make unsubstantiated claims about their own products ('We're more secure, really, we mean it this time!').

So, what it boils down to is that Microsoft are very, very good at what they do - making more money for Microsoft. Along the way, they even do some incidental good (umm, specific suggestions for this point? All the examples I can think of were actually a case of Microsoft co-opting and popularising someone else's idea - I guess they did help make the PC the near-ubiquitous Western household item it is today).

The problem is that their goal of making more money for Microsoft does not necessarily equal "what is in the best interests of society". Now, some might argue 'well, why should that be their problem?' And, if they were a normal company, with a market share like that of, say Cisco (extremely dominant, but not monopolistic), this argument would be true. However, the simple fact is that too much power has become invested in a company which is not accountable to anyone except itself. The recent DoJ 'slap-on-the-wrist' is yet more evidence of that.

In the specific case of Palladium, the MPAA and RIAA, by means of both Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) and other avenues such as the Broadband Protection Discussion Group are pushing for legislation which would make something like Palladium not only legal, but mandatory.

Of course, it's always presented in the guise of 'protecting intellectual property' and 'encouraging innovation by protecting copyright holder's interests' and 'benefitting consumers by providing high quality digital content'. And the question concerned individuals are trying to make heard is "At what cost to our personal rights and liberties?".

And the reason I'm interested is because, where the US goes, Australia will often follow (not always, for which fact I am extremely grateful. . .)

Cheers,
Nick.

[numerouno]

Just bringing back an old topic...

[HemlockGrey]

-hand hovers over the 'Judicial Review' button-

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Just bringing back an old topic...

Why the hell did you need to bring back a topic that's been dead for seven and a half months? That must be a new record.

Anyway, if you're bring another thread up, at least continue the debate or bring up a new subject relating to it.

[Keevan_Colton]

Well...it does relate to a current discussion on the board....*gestures over at Einy's TCPA thread*

[Coaan]

Palladium can only work if those who they are planning to target buy the chips, if we don't buy the chips then there is nothing they can do save for getting the government to make it law (even then that would be restricted to the Usa, last I checked...it has no say on other countries law such as britain)Ie to make it illegal to operate a computer not palladium controlled which is physically impossible due to the rate at which awareness of this is spreading...there are too many people involved that this affects

what do they do then?...throw half the country in prison? I doubt it

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Solution?: buy AMD

Ahh, but even AMD is rushing to get Fritz-chip tech into their processors.

[Darth Yoshi]

Wait, it has no effect on the comps already in use, right?