This isn’t actually so far off track. The cartoonist Herblock, who had publicly despised Richard Nixon from the first day he was elected to the House of Representatives, used to talk about Nixon having the Multiple Bad Things Advantage. It went like this: Someone would ask Herblock, “So what, briefly, is your problem with Nixon?”; and Herblock wouldn’t have a snappy answer. This wasn’t because there was nothing wrong with Nixon, of course, but because there was so much wrong with him that it wasn’t possible to summarize briefly. Unfortunately, this made it look like he couldn’t support his dislike, when he really couldn’t do it in a sound bite. In consequence, Nixon escaped his (and other people’s) criticism, simply because it wasn’t easy to repeat.
Suffice to say that I feel about Microsoft much as Herblock did about Nixon.
Back in the day, oh… 1997 or so, Netscape was on v4 of Navigator, and so was Microsoft. Netscape charged oh… 50 bucks or thereabouts.
Know how much Microsoft charged?
$0. Zip. Zilch. Nada. They gave away IE 3.0 with Windows 95. Free of charge.
No matter how good Navigator was, they couldn’t compete with a free browser bundled with the OS.
At some point after that, Netscape gave away Navigator(both the actual binaries and even made the code open-source) and concentrated on web server technology.
Even at that, Navigator had more than 50% of the market share by all accounts in 1998. Citation.
Netscape didn’t go out of business as such either. They were bought by AOL. You can still get Navigator too- it’s just not popular on PCs. Linux and Unix machines still use it as the browser of choice.
Faced with a competitor with the size, resources and dominant OS market share of Microsoft, who also does things like integrating their Web browser into their OS, Netscape didn’t stand much of a chance in the browser wars, no matter how good or bad their business decisions might have been.
bump: Netscape charged far too much for a product that was patently inferior to Microsoft’s. Their sales, of course, evaporated. This is the nature of the free-market economy. If Netscape’s product had been WORTH the $50, they’d still be around.
Corporate practices aside, I think Microsoft plays the scapegoat for a lot of second-rate application programmers and good-old component failure.
Starting as a desktop technician and now as a network administrator I’ve seen my fair share of computer problems. And while I’ve worked through quite a few problems with Microsoft products I have to say the vast majority of issues originate in failed hardware, poorly written applications, faulty drivers, and plain old user error.
From a support standpoint I’ve come to appreciate Microsoft. Their support knowledgebase is excellent, as are their TechNet and MSDN libraries. Their phone support is top notch too.
There are nerds and there are Nerds. Most dopers are nerds. The people arguing, in this thread, about what the best OS is, and using lots of 3/4-letter abrevs. Those are Nerds!
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW & ORDER: Filed April 3, 2000 - http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/ms-conclusions.pdf
So the unfair trade practices federal court cases they lost, or signed consent decrees are squat, eh?
My experience indicates that the trojan/virus infected Windows machine is a staple in the food chain of Network Abuse, with the Abusers ranging from easily spooked herds of script kiddies, the primary “consumers” of the staple. Higher level “predators” who might not feed on the script kiddies, but they do collect valuable information from them.
Compromised Windows systems are used to cover tracks for all sorts of low-level abuse…the kinds of things that are not reported as often as those as often as they are reported. The kind of activity used to detect other compromised systems, send spam, participate in DDoS attacks, etc.
My strongest argument of this connection would be a phisher mailing. Mail is sent from an infected system, or a collection of them, posing as the Billing department of an ISP. The target list is full of addresses that belong to the ISP in question. Customers of the ISP are scared into thinking that their billing information is out of date, supplied with a link to a page that looks like it is official. They turn over all of their credit profile information, down to their mother’s maiden name and the amount of their credit limit on 3 different credit cards. (Funny…I don’t remember AOL asking me for all of this information when I signed up…oh well). The credit profile harvested from the phisher scam are used to sign up disposable abusive accounts, dialup, dsl, cable…the only limit is how much credit is on the card and how long that card stays active.
This is only one of many ways that compromised Windows machines are used to keep Internet Abuse alive and kicking. If you want to fuck around with something you just use an infected machine or an account that was set up fraudulently using a scam that involved a compromised Windows machine somewhere down the line.
I do admit that operator ignorance is just as to blame as Microsoft…if not moreso…but I think Microsoft knows better, and I think that they exploit this ignorance to make money. The problem is, that others exploit the ignorance and the opperating system aside from Microsoft…so the double whamy just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Password security ignorance is another big pet peeve.
MS Visual Studio is pretty much acknowledged as the best Development IDE around. MS Mice and keyboards are rated pretty much equally with Logitech as the best in the biz. MS Word provides a passable alternative to true desktop publishing at a fraction of the price. Despite claims from the *nix crowd, XP is still the most usable and user friendly interface for the x86.
The main strength of MS is that they make software that is acceptable, not brilliant. for 90% of the users, passably functional is all they demand from software.
I tried, believe me I tried to like it, when I failed to do that I tried to merely cope with it, when I failed to do that I went back to the beautifully user-friendly Borland C++ Builder.
(I was trying to like it because I was trying to learn DirectX. And at the time getting the latest version of directX SDK to work in builder was too much hastle)
Duckster: My point was that not that Microsoft is perfect, innocent, and would never hurt a fly. My point WAS that Netscape died not because Microsoft was evil, but because their products sucked and ceased to generate revenue. One can attack Microsoft for many reasons, doing so because they steamrolled an inferior product is an irrelevent one.
The best and worst day will be the day Bill Gates dies.
The reason?
The best part of the day is that he has already pretty much donated the vast amount of his money to charity…the rest is donated when he dies. Plus, despite what you think of him…the guy has really remained true to his vision…you don’t see him throwing parties for Madonna and doing the Hollywood circut.
The man really cares about his company. Think about it…what would YOU be like if you had billions and billions of dollars? He is still a nerd excited about new technology!
The bad?
Once Bill is gone, the soul of the company will leave with it - leaving a corporate monopoly who doesn’t give a damn.
Let’s not forget what Microsoft did in the DOS and Win3.1 days. DR-DOS was at that time a superior product to MS-DOS in many respects. It had many features lacking on MS-DOS, and it was perfectly compatible - except with Win3.1, which had a code designed to detect DR-DOS and throw up a meaningless error message in response. Even before that, it has been rumored that new versions of DOS sometimes intentionally broke compatibility with applications made by their competition. Even now, the inside knowledge and control of the operating system gives MS unfair advantage in developing applications for it.
Microsoft also has (or had) a huge leverage on computer manufacturers. They would offer heavily discounted prices on the condition that they install (or at least pay for) Windows on all the systems they sell. Not many companies can afford to turn it down and let the customers choose the operating system.
Another thing I don’t like about Microsoft is that their products provide what customers think they want (or what MS thinks they want), not what they really need. Instead of security and stability they emphasize features, many of which are better served by third-party applications and utilities.
My bigun: I can’t buy a notebook from a major manufacturer without also buying Windows. Why the fuck should I be required to pay for an OS that I’ll never use?
Microsoft is not especially bad. It’s just a corproation that monopolizes an industry doing what any other corporation in the same position would do. If NAPA had a similar lock on the autoparts business, it’d be screwing up the automobile industry.
A computer needs an operating system. Once one company controlled something like 75% of the operating systems, it was in a position to issue dictates to the computer industry. Basically everyone was told, “if you work with our competitors, you won’t work with us.” Everyone made the rational decision that they couldn’t afford to ignore a 75% market, so the competition got shafted. And 75% grew to 80% and 85% and 90% and the power to make demands grew stronger.
As for what’s wrong with this, read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. To summarize his work; competition good, monopoly bad.
The real reasons are that it is a large, corporate entity which wields a signifigant amount of control over the direction that software design takes. Its business practices are occasionally sketchy, but they aren’t of robber-baron calibre.
Essentially, people hate it the same way they hate McDonald’s.
A large amount of the vitriol comes from people involve in the open source “movement”, which positions itself as a sort of anti-Microsoft (note the ubiquitous “M$” of the last several years).
People need an enemy, and Microsoft fits the bill in many computer circles.
(Note: I’m not trying to sound overly cynical here, and I don’t mean to come off as poo-pooing all criticism of Microsoft, but I do think that the reason many people dislike them has to do with what they are, not what they do.)
I think it’s more than that. I have nothing against McDonald’s or Starbucks. I don’t have a generic hatred of big companies. I hate Microsoft because I feel that Microsoft’s monopolistic business practices have made my life difficult.
In all fairness to the folks at Redmond –
a) If, hypothetically speaking, Apple Computer had secured an important contract in the early days of MacOS that caused it to acquire the dominant market share instead of Microsoft operating systems, so that Apple was the one with the monopoly power, I doubt they’d be any improvement. For that matter, if Commodore Inc had invested in competent product placement and marketing people and had successfully pushed the Amiga into the forefront when they had the edge, so that Commodore/Amiga was the company with the monopoly, I suspect we’d be having problems with them too.
However…
b) There’s something about the least-common-denominator feel to most of their software that really grates on me. Most of it works adequately, and you can usually do what you came there to do if you poke around through the sprawl of button bars and menus and folder-tabbed dialogs long enough, but most people don’t fall in love with any of it. Some of their products I like (Excel), some of them I hate (Word), and most of them I’m indifferent to. Generally, if the software performs a function I need very often, I’m going to be happier with a non-Microsoft program that does what I want in a more elegant fashion.
therefore…
c) Microsoft is to computer software what a lot of American pop culture is to human social culture worldwide: ubiquitous, plastic-shallow, short on style and charm, and inclined to plant itself everywhere and choke out everything else like dandelions and crabgrass in the garden.
RIP WordPerfect Mac, Claris Resolve, MacWrite Pro; and on the worry-list: WordPro, 123, Quattro Pro, Nisus Writer, and WordPerfect PC.