ggs wrote:Xisiqomelir wrote:What the fuck are you talking about? Seriously, what "claim" do you mean? Are you suggesting that I ever said Microsoft CAN'T do what it wants?
You presented a bunch of bullshit ideas of what Microsoft would o, then tried to cover it by saying Microsoft can do what ever it wants.
I think you are confusing "could" and "would". If English isn't your native language, I have to tell you they are quite different.
ggs wrote:I've got news for you, Microsoft can not do what ever it wants.
This is true, it can no longer overtly illegally abuse its monopoly. However, the DoJ lacks a spine, so M$ pretty much is doing what it wants.
Now let's go over your long list of things I never said they should stop doing, which you bring up to say they can't stop doing (perhaps you thought you were making a valid point):
- They can not pull out of entire markets because they arent liked
Yup, we're going to be stuck with IIS forever. (This also falls under "pathological need to compete in areas where they are clearly outclassed")
- They can not Visual Studio
I actually don't have anything against Visual Studio (aside from the usual stuff). I'd never use it myself, of course, but I think a simplified IDE is a good thing for encouraging people to start learning programming.
Office is a huge cash cow. They should keep Office around till the heat death of the universe.
Because it's an integral part of the operating system, right?
- They can not kill ActiveX/COM/OLE/NET
However, security is being prioritized in Vista development. How wonderful to have your cake and eat it, too.
- They can not drop Windows NT for some opensource POS.
Sturgeon's Law holds in OSS the way it does in all other fields, but I wonder what basis you have for calling BSD (of all things) a POS. Did
Netcraft confirm it for you? Or are you just burning off some spare calories by pressing keys and hoping that a sound argument will emerge on screen?
- They can not actually kill anyone
Because, of course, when I say "Microsoft can do what it wants", what I MEANT was "Microsoft is free of all restrictions imposed by criminal law". Please keep your bullshit strawmen to yourself.
- They did kill Windows 9x line because it was a POS (however technologically superior to Mac OS 9 and less)
If you really want to argue the merits of two discontinued, obsolete operating systems, I'd be happy to, but I can assure you that winblows, as always, will lose to Mac OSes 9, and 8, and probably 7 too (I'd have to stretch my memory). I'll throw in A/UX for good measure.
Todo any of these is tangent to suicide for the company.
I think you meant "tantamount to suicide".
Obviously, you are right. There are no secure and easy to use OSes with BSD underpinnings, how foolish of me.
Mac OS X is a Mach kernel with a BSD personaility(BSD interface between userland & the kernel) with a custon userland environment with some BSD bits strapped on.
It isnt a fucking BSD operating system.
Do you know what "underpinnings" means? OS X has quite a few pieces of BSD code, but I was very careful not to say OS X was a BSD operating system. You of course, have no such compunctions and are now accusing me being incorrect in a statement I never made.
Now, I did say that Microsoft could steal from BSD for their OS, and that is entirely true, they can. In fact, they still can, but I think they probably should stop stalling on the Pasta release, even if Allchin's career is already over.
but there's still more than enough kludge (ActiveX) that's going to make it into Pasta to back up my $5bn prediction.
You really are quite stupid and misgiuided if you think ActiveX is a gaping security hole.
ActiveX uses COM to expose functionaility to the browser to allow for scripting to be extended. All COM interfaces have an ACL attached (Access Control List) which can only be bypassed by by compromising the kernel, which a userland appliation can not do with limited user rights.
Like the limited-privileges default user in XP?
I've got a hint for you, it is trivial to tighten the existing security on the COM interfaces and in ActiveX. As well as moving the Internet Zone security from "low" to something which atually provides any protection. Which IE7 does.
IE7 is still in beta, and Pasta is still unreleased.
ActiveX is a security disaster. (observe the tense before you respond)
The traditional problem with ActiveX is poor default security choices and lack of security auditing on decades old code. Both of which have been changed in new Microsoft products.
Now, when Pasta does eventually come out, ActiveX will be somewhat less of a security disaster, but I still have full faith in M$ coding to provide enough gunk that we'll be seeing critical Secunia advisories for a year. There are viruses for the Beta already, and I'm sure we'll see viruses for the production release. OS X still has no viruses after 5 years, and if you think that's not true you should have taken Will Shipley's money from him.
Also ActiveX is a big business tool. It isnt going to die anytime soon.
How lucky for the rest of internet that the M$ ecosystem is going to keep blowing secondhand smoke in our face with support for insecure legacy kludge.
Thanks to John Sculley (cbuh), M$ is entitled to rip off the Mac UI elements into perpetuity. You have nothing illicit to hide for Microsoft, and honestly you ought to rub it in my face, since it's the thing about the Apple-Microsoft relationship that grates on me the most.
Blame Apple's legal team. They
gave it away.
No, I blame Sculley exclusively. CEOs should be held responsible for their actions. Yet, even with this carte blanche, M$ still manages to make worse UIs than BeOS and AmigaOS.
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
I'm going to have to demand you provide proof that Bill Gates actually ever said that. In it widely regarded as urban legend.
I will concede inability to attribute or verify this quotation.
Here's an alternative attributed quote about Billy's longterm vision and understanding of the market:
William Henry Gates III, 23 Oct 1995 wrote:There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
Focus Magazine, nr.43, pages 206-212
and another
William Henry Gates III, 24 Jan 2004 wrote:Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time
Link
M$ can prognosticate only as well as the rest of us can, they have 0 mystic insight, I can assure you.
Okay, so the 360 is a loss leader, which is going to reap vast profit (or at least cover costs) through...
...game sales like other loss-leader consoles? Not if "Microsoft really doesnt give a flying fuck about the gamers", you have to market to get sales.
The Xbox360 is apparently been sold at a loss (like most consoles) and making up the profit on the games been solid(mainly via royalties).
Can your bullshit and put it away, please. The original Xbox stands at $4bn in losses right now, and that's going to become a "$4bn throughout its history" once it goes out of production, unless someone buys a fuckload of DOA copies in the next few months. 360 game sales are lacklustre and Halo 3 is a long distance away.
...paid content downloads? I know who I'd back in M$, whose offering as of now is of course vapourware as usual, vs iTMS, which is selling hundreds of millions of songs and millions of movies.
Xbox Live! service has had Geometry Wars 200,000 trial downloads and 45,000 paid downloads since Xbox 360 launch. So people are obviously buying stuff from here.
Okay, so the amazing paid content is going to be.....gaming content? Remember, "Microsoft really doesnt give a flying fuck about the gamers", so shouldn't they be signing up some movie studios, music labels and TV networks? Or is everyone expected to play and watch people playing Geometry wars?
...becoming "the digital hub of the living room"? Don't you need market share for that? 1st quarter 360 sales are at
1.5 million so far, which is setting up to be Sega Megadrive/Genesis vs Nintendo Super Famicom/SNES all over again.
The Xbox360 has only been out for
3 months, and they are obviously having supply problems (probably IBM, one of the reasons Apple jumped ship to intel). They have over a year before the PS3 is even vaugely ready for release.
Unlike you, I pick my analogies with care. This situation with 360/PS3 is almost exactly analogous to the Genesis/SNES. The weaker competitor, who fared poorly in the previous era (NES vs Master System), is rushing a next-generation system out the door in the hopes that a lead to market alone will be sufficient to win the next round. Despite initial lukewarm success, most buyers hold off their purchase until the stronger competitor comes out with a technically superior system and a better game library, and the stronger competitor wins for the second time. The only significant differences are that the Genesis had more than 2 years of lead to market, a luxury that Sony is going to deprive M$ of, and that people still care about Sonic the Hedgehog today, which I think is more than can be said for the Master Chief.
Microsoft seems content to do passably well in America (though still hammered by Sony), but absolutely miserably in Japan, where it will be outright raped by the home team. However, livingrooms across the world will doubtlessly be dominated by the hugely outnumbered 360 instead of the far more prevalent PS3.
America + EU is a vastly bigger market than Japan, nor are there many games out for the Xbox360 currently.
You miss the point. Japan is crucial as a videogame market because it is a litmus test for the rest of Asia. If you do well in Japan, you'll probably do well worldwide (Nintendo DS), whereas if you do 2nd best in America and dead last in Japan (Xbox), you're going to sink worldwide and lose $4bn. How do you do well in Japan? The same way you do well in any market, you cater to user tastes. What killer apps does the 360 have lined up for fighting games, scrolling shooters, linear RPGs and racing? They've got racing fairly well covered, but there's unplayable at a tournament level, glitchy and community derided DOA for fighting, which will be destroyed by Tekken 6, pretty much nada for quality side-scrolling shooters, and they got the MMORPG Final Fantasy instead of FFXII. So, once again, instead of giving Asian gamers what they want, M$ is going to try and sell them Halo. What a recipe for success.
Alternatively of course, you could be a fanboy who cannot accept that Microsoft is prone to defeat in markets where it has no legacy monopoly to negate the effect of its abysmal performances.
I have stated Microsoft has been trying for
over ten years at getting into the home entertainment market. If they have been trying for
10 fucking years then they obviously havent been succeeding.
Concession accepted.
Holy shit, you must be right! MCE extender on the 50 (I'm being generous there) million 360s which will be around will DOMINATE completely! It is the Killer App of Home Media, and warrants thrice as many uppercase letters.
Selling Media Center PC is much for of a bigger win for Microsoft than an Xbox360.
So where does that leave your "the 360 will dominate the living room" argument? I agree with you that MCE on the PC will work out nicely for M$ because of their huge monopoly, but what about the 360? "Microsoft really doesnt give a flying fuck about the gamers", so people are going to buy a console with lots of specialized gaming hardware to use as a media player?
Now, I'm glad you can quote humourous computer literature from 1994, but I think you ought to be aware that unlike Windows, UNIX was always meant to be a multi-user networked operating system.
Window 9x was designed to be a single user OS with limited to no network support. Windows NT was designed to be a multi-user networked OS from the start. Nice to see you are keeping up your tradition of not knowing what the fuck you are talking about.
You are an idiot. Which was the first version of Windows, and when did it ship? At what point does NT first appear in the Windows timeline? What the fuck do you think "always" means? My point was about UNIX, and you intepret it as NT bashing, and save me the effort of having to prove my own point with your stellar response. Stop being retarded.
As such, remote operation of programs is a very critical feature. Are you seriously saying that you want to swap "server" and "client"
in this diagram?
You mean like the one on (IMAGE)?
That's the one. Would you like all the applications in that picture to be servers instead of clients? Do you seriously think that's more descriptive and accurate terminology?
No, since you decided to bring it up, it's very much ON topic.
You really do suck at debating.
Because I question your nonsensical "points"? If you concede their senselessness, then I'll leave the subject alone, but I'm not going to have you think that I agree with you when you are clearly wrong.
What exactly is it that "sucks" about X windows design, and how should it be implemented differently?.
The actual design itself, I'm not talking about implemention.
Specifics please, I can't answer you when you make no clear assertions. The X system is designed as a networked windowing provider. It's a little clunky, but it definitely works.
ggs, I really don't want to be bogged down in debate with you
ad infinitum with these strawmen and irrelevancies popping up repeatedly. Why don't you show me your exact list of demanded concessions so we can wrap things up quickly. Here is mine:
1) Concede that "Microsoft must make a BSD-based OS" is not a statement that I ever made.
I don't care if you carry on thinking that M$ makes good, useful software, that the 360 will outsell the PS3 70-to-1, that ActiveX is a securable, useful piece of computer technology, and that we should bow down facing the direction of Redmond 5x/day while chanting "Please take my money", but I cannot have you claiming I said things I never did.
