MS punished for being succesful
Mark Marsella
also-rans. MS produce innovative products and it's unfair that they are
punished because they want to deliver an OS with all programs integrated. Ms
should counter-sue all those companies that instigated this waste of time
and money.
--
Thanks,
Mark Marsella
Mark Thornton
"Mark Marsella" <ma...@lismark.org> wrote in message
news:aq0eom$5bneg$1...@ID-162318.news.dfncis.de...
Microsoft have been found GUILTY of breaking the law. If they want to avoid
such prosecutions MS will have to modify their behaviour (or cease operating
in jurisdictions where they don't like the law).
Luke Tulkas
"Mark Marsella" <ma...@lismark.org> wrote in message
news:aq0eom$5bneg$1...@ID-162318.news.dfncis.de...
Yeah! Go tell'em, Mark! Let'em sue everybody!
Andrew V. Kispert, Jr.
With all due respect, where have you been the last 15 years or so ?
Kent Paul Dolan
> A company that becomes successful
You have a strange definition of "successful" when it means using
monopolistic market share to stiffle innovation so you can continue to
fill store shelves with poorly engineered, egregiously unusable
products.
Oh, you're an admirer of _money_?
How sad.
> should not be taken to court by a bunch of also-rans.
They're called "victims" in legal parlance, or "prey" in Microsoft
corporate headquarters chat.
> MS produce innovative products
You will be able to name at least _one_ Microsoft product then that is
not a derivative of and rip-off of work done first elsewhere? I won't
hold my breath.
> and it's unfair that they are punished
They weren't punished. They were chided at worst.
Microsoft should have been broken up into 20 to 200 separate
companies, and even that wouldn't begin to pay for all the harm
they've done to the computing field in 20 years.
> because they want to deliver an OS with all programs integrated.
You apparently have exactly zero grasp of retail economics.
> Ms should counter-sue all those companies that instigated
> this waste of time and money.
That would be the US Justice Department. I will reserve my hysterical
laughter for the moment they _take_ your ignorant advice.
xanthian.
Chris Kelly
wrote:
>"Mark Marsella" <ma...@lismark.org> wrote:
>
>> A company that becomes successful
>
>You have a strange definition of "successful" when it means using
>monopolistic market share to stiffle innovation so you can continue to
>fill store shelves with poorly engineered, egregiously unusable
>products.
I wonder, was Sun's attempt to shut down MS's VM an attempt to "stifle
innovation" or not? I mean, MS's VM was far superior to Sun's, and
Sun's own engineers (including Gosling) knew and were scared of it.
Was Sun's technology in any way superior to MS's?
-----
http://www.lonewacko.com/blog
The Lone Wacko Blog: bitter, twisted, and ready to rock
SEE_SIG_BELOW Proper collar
>"Mark Marsella" <ma...@lismark.org> wrote:
>
>> A company that becomes successful
>
>You have a strange definition of "successful" when it means using
>monopolistic market share to stiffle innovation so you can continue to
>fill store shelves with poorly engineered, egregiously unusable
>products.
>
Not to mention teir plans to roll out such horrors
as Palladium.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
>Oh, you're an admirer of _money_?
>
>How sad.
>
>> should not be taken to court by a bunch of also-rans.
>
>They're called "victims" in legal parlance, or "prey" in Microsoft
>corporate headquarters chat.
>
>> MS produce innovative products
>
>You will be able to name at least _one_ Microsoft product then that is
>not a derivative of and rip-off of work done first elsewhere? I won't
>hold my breath.
>
>> and it's unfair that they are punished
>
>They weren't punished. They were chided at worst.
>
>Microsoft should have been broken up into 20 to 200 separate
>companies, and even that wouldn't begin to pay for all the harm
>they've done to the computing field in 20 years.
>
>> because they want to deliver an OS with all programs integrated.
>
>You apparently have exactly zero grasp of retail economics.
>
>> Ms should counter-sue all those companies that instigated
>> this waste of time and money.
>
>That would be the US Justice Department. I will reserve my hysterical
>laughter for the moment they _take_ your ignorant advice.
>
>xanthian.
-- Because of recent forgery, make sure the path header ends with earthlink.
c ## ________________________________________________ Yvan eht nioj!
m ###### l Proprclr - batch file writer, non conformist l alt.prog:
d ######## l and command line maniac. Window to my life: l
l ######## l______________________________________________l
n ########## started usenet reader at: 10:59:34.91a _Mon_11-04-2002 signame:
e # Remove the obvious from my address to e-mail me. sig.txt
started with cmds sigdir:c:\_lgdr:-c:\_pmpt: C:\USENET1.BAT cmd_usenet au_set_temp c:\ 4windoze_illegal_bp bell_left (6)autvt sigsep men_and_women need_equal_rights
Sam
are a sunw supporter you have to admit that some things were better
and faster in ms version (not all but some things were better).
I think this whole discussion is moot now for us though. About 90% of
all new projects and recommendations that we make to custers is now
based on a .Net solution, whereas 3 to 4 years ago 90% was Java based.
Now the only Java work we preety much do is maintainence of older
systems (kind of like cobal).
I think sunw shot themselves in the foot over this one....
Kent Paul Dolan
> xant...@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
> I mean, MS's VM was far superior to Sun's,
Funny. I cannot do the evaluation myself, I
don't have the needed technical skills there,
but the reviews by those who do, at the time,
all seemed to indicate that the Microsoft
mangling of Java was conceptually inferior
(much like C#), and demonstrated in its details
its exact motivation, distracting Java developers
to a product which could once again be vendor
crippled to lock it to the MS OS family.
The folks running scared at the time all seemed
to reside in Redmond. I'm sure they give a cheer
of hope every time some short-sighted Java hacker
here or in comp.lang.java.programmer asks for a
platform-specific "enhancement" to Java for
guess-what monopolist's widely used OS platform.
The courts, who reviewed the issues, found the
same implicit motivation, and lo and behold, M$
got to pay a big fine and had to back off to
make another attempt to lure programmers to one
of their brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
designed products, this time C#, then later .NET.
But if you claim expertise above both the expert
commentators and the court-summoned specialists,
who am I to doubt you?
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> xant...@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)sayeth::
>> "Mark Marsella" <ma...@lismark.org> wrote:
>>> A company that becomes successful
>> You have a strange definition of "successful" when it means
>> using monopolistic market share to stiffle innovation so you
>> can continue to fill store shelves with poorly engineered,
>> egregiously unusable products.
> Not to mention t[h]eir plans to roll out such horrors
> as Palladium.
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Oh, yeah! Everyone on the planet needs to read that,
then the link to Richard Stallman's comments at the
bottom, then the responses to Stallman's comments that
follow what he wrote on the linked page.
Palladium could simply end use of computers, world wide,
period, in a single computer generation, as people
refuse to be robbed, spied upon, bullied, and censored,
and voluntarily return to a paper-and-pencil economy.
xanthian.
Grant Wagner
> (Chris Kelly) wrote:
>
> > xant...@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
>
> > I mean, MS's VM was far superior to Sun's,
>
> Funny. I cannot do the evaluation myself, I
> don't have the needed technical skills there,
> but the reviews by those who do, at the time,
> all seemed to indicate that the Microsoft
> mangling of Java was conceptually inferior
> (much like C#), and demonstrated in its details
> its exact motivation, distracting Java developers
> to a product which could once again be vendor
> crippled to lock it to the MS OS family.
While what you say has been said about J++, what does any of it have to
do with the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine which will run standard Java
(1.1.x) just fine (and in fact faster than 1.1.x JVMs shipped with
Netscape or as part of the 1.1.x JDKs)?
Besides, any developer that could be "distracted" to use non-standard
API calls deserved what they got.
You're just parroting what you've read and heard, and doing it badly,
but confusing issues surrounding J++ (which would let you write Java
code that would not run on other JVMs) to the Microsoft Java Virtual
Machine (which would run J++ code, but would also run other Java just
fine).
> The folks running scared at the time all seemed
> to reside in Redmond. I'm sure they give a cheer
> of hope every time some short-sighted Java hacker
> here or in comp.lang.java.programmer asks for a
> platform-specific "enhancement" to Java for
> guess-what monopolist's widely used OS platform.
WORA is only necessary if you need to run the code on multiple
platforms. If I am authoring a Java application that will only run a
specific platform, then why is it "short-sighted" to use platform
specific implementations? I'm *not* going to use JNI and write a C
component for every known platform just in case the application I'm
writing may someday need to invoke a system utility on VAX VMS.
> The courts, who reviewed the issues, found the
> same implicit motivation, and lo and behold, M$
> got to pay a big fine and had to back off to
> make another attempt to lure programmers to one
> of their brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
> designed products, this time C#, then later .NET.
Again, parotting the ABM (Anything But Microsoft) crowd again, and
again, doing it badly. And it isn't "this time C#, then later .NET". C#
is a core component in the .NET concept, and was designed to closely
mimic the underlying concepts of the CLI. It's part of the "Developer
tools" section at <url: http://www.microsoft.com/net/basics/whatis.asp
/>
And dissin' Microsoft with "brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
designed" doesn't do anything for your credibility, because even some
Microsoft detractors will admit that .NET (based on the CLI) is a
well-designed architecture. Simply hating it because it's Microsoft
devalues all your opinions.
> But if you claim expertise above both the expert
> commentators and the court-summoned specialists,
> who am I to doubt you?
And if you claim that .NET is "brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
designed" without providing any substancial proof and while admitting
that you don't have any technical skills, who are we to doubt you?
--
| Grant Wagner <gwa...@agricoreunited.com>
Chris Kelly
wrote:
>(Chris Kelly) wrote:
>
>> xant...@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
>
>> I mean, MS's VM was far superior to Sun's,
>
>Funny. I cannot do the evaluation myself, I
>don't have the needed technical skills there,
>but the reviews by those who do, at the time,
>all seemed to indicate that the Microsoft
>mangling of Java was conceptually inferior
Perhaps they were biased. There certainly are a lot of people who are
automatically biased against just about anything MS does. Sometimes,
in the case of J-oriented magazines, that bias is based on where their
ad revenues (and money for "special" issues) is coming from. Say, like
a special issue released in conjunction with, say, a very large J
convo. If'n you know what I mean.
Regarding MS's additions, MS basically only added features, like
libraries and a keyword or two, plus RNI and (IIRC) a debugging
interface. The libraries, while Windows-specific, actually made it
possible to do things that *real* apps (i.e., commercial products vs.
vaporware like COJ, Javagator, etc.) need to do. For instance, in the
original version of J, it wasn't possible to get the HWND of a
component. At which version did J let you get a platform-specific
window handle? 1.2? 1.3? The MS libraries back in '97 let you get
that, and had lots of other things which those of us who have written
commercial apps find necessary.
>The folks running scared at the time all seemed
>to reside in Redmond.
No, the folks running scared were the Sun engineers who visited MS and
found out what they were doing with J. They were speeding it up,
actually making it work. I tried to find the exact email at MS's site
in which that was discussed, and I still could if necessary, but
here's a summary:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/dec98/120398.asp
>I'm sure they give a cheer
>of hope every time some short-sighted Java hacker
>here or in comp.lang.java.programmer asks for a
>platform-specific "enhancement" to Java for
>guess-what monopolist's widely used OS platform.
Jawohl, Reinheit ueber Alles!
Kent Paul Dolan
> And if you claim that .NET is "brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
> designed" without providing any substancial proof and while admitting
> that you don't have any technical skills, who are we to doubt you?
I didn't claim that I don't have any technical skills, I've
been delivering state of the art software since before most
participants here were born. I said I didn't have the
technical skills to compare two versions of Java VM.
As to my ability to identify cruft simply by the Microsoft label,
let's just say that after 20 years of using Microsoft products
and listening to the vast brainwashed hordes of M$-loving lemmings
claim them to be perfect when for me they failed in use with
astonishing regularity, I've smartened up a bit, and no longer
have to risk food poisoning to know when a dish is rancid. If the
label says it comes from "We Poison Customers for Fun and Profit",
I can now happily leave it untasted and laugh at the eventual
stomach cramps of the utterly unwarnable people incapable of
learning from history. It was not six weeks ago someone in this
very forum defended WinXP as "uncrashable", shortly after which I
published instructions for crashing it with complete dependability.
I should suddenly accept on your word that the always-carnivorous
leopard that is foisting off .NET on an unwary public has changed
its spots, exactly why?
xanthian.
Go read the Palladium FAQ to remind yourself what Microsoft is about,
and has always been about: customer-oriented issues are not on the
plate at HQ in Redmond, except in the "finding more ways to diddle
them" sense.
Chris Kelly
>I tried to find the exact email at MS's site
>in which that was discussed, and I still could if necessary
"MS has independently built a first rate JVM" - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2049/sld001.asp
"The really scary thing about the meeting [with MS] was how much
effort they're putting into it... They have a team dealing with
[this], a team dealing with [that]" - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/1932/sld001.asp
"So combining this tuned/compiled Explorer with a MS JIT means a
(cheap) Pentium PC will make NC's look pathetic unless we do the
same." - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2028/sld001.asp
"the Jakarta [MS's project name, not the Apache project] team seems to
have a much clearer understanding of Java than say, Netscape." - a sun
employee
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/1999/sld001.asp
"The minor problem is that when people start building "real" Java apps
then they immediately need application framework support that isn't
there. If they are smart they will want to make sure that their
applications integrate well into the Microsoft containers (e.g. word
and explorer." - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2031/sld001.asp
Apropos of the last, see this:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/feb99/1930/sld001.asp
and this:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/feb99/53/sld001.asp
Grant Wagner
> Grant Wagner <gwa...@agricoreunited.com> wrote:
>
> > And if you claim that .NET is "brain-dead, always buggy and poorly
> > designed" without providing any substancial proof and while admitting
> > that you don't have any technical skills, who are we to doubt you?
>
> I didn't claim that I don't have any technical skills, I've
> been delivering state of the art software since before most
> participants here were born. I said I didn't have the
> technical skills to compare two versions of Java VM.
You also exhibited by your original post that you had no technical
knowledge of .Net, the CLS, CLI, or CLR, yet you were able to pass
judgement on their quality and design simply by seeing they were designed
by Microsoft.
> As to my ability to identify cruft simply by the Microsoft label,
> let's just say that after 20 years of using Microsoft products
> and listening to the vast brainwashed hordes of M$-loving lemmings
> claim them to be perfect when for me they failed in use with
> astonishing regularity, I've smartened up a bit, and no longer
> have to risk food poisoning to know when a dish is rancid. If the
> label says it comes from "We Poison Customers for Fun and Profit",
> I can now happily leave it untasted and laugh at the eventual
> stomach cramps of the utterly unwarnable people incapable of
> learning from history. It was not six weeks ago someone in this
> very forum defended WinXP as "uncrashable", shortly after which I
> published instructions for crashing it with complete dependability.
"someone" defended Windows XP as uncrashable, well then it's gotta be so!
Of *course* Windows XP isn't uncrashable, and to say otherwise is idiotic.
As for instructions for crashing it with complete dependability, as has
already been pointed out (and I think you admitted yourself), the culprit
appears to be the video driver. Regardless, hundreds of thousands of
installations of Windows XP run with complete and total dependability.
Certainly there are *specific* situations where Windows XP will fail. You
identify the offending hardware or software components and you take steps
to fix the problem.
As for the rest, blindly distrusting Microsoft is as silly as blindly
trusting them. You examine each product and system, and if it fits your
needs and budget, you use it. Otherwise you are doing yourself and your
clients a disservice by discounting a product before you have even
determined if it will meet their needs.
> I should suddenly accept on your word that the always-carnivorous
> leopard that is foisting off .NET on an unwary public has changed
> its spots, exactly why?
I never claimed they did, however you appear unwilling to even examine the
technical aspects of the product and come to an informed judgement. You
used the phrase "brain-dead, always buggy and poorly designed" without
knowing *any* technical details of the product.
If you want to claim "Microsoft wants to lock everyone into platform
specific code with .NET". Go right ahead. Whether it's true or not is a
matter of opinion for those of us not in the inner circle of decision
makers at Microsoft.
But to claim that a product is "buggy and poorly designed", I'd expect you
to have actual proof of known bugs and design flaws in the APIs or
run-time. And something significant, something that actually impacts the
usability of the product. Because if you start mentioning insignificant
bugs for which there are work-arounds or which do not actually affect the
usability of the product, then I can begin to quote figures from Sun's own
Java bug database.
> Go read the Palladium FAQ to remind yourself what Microsoft is about,
> and has always been about: customer-oriented issues are not on the
> plate at HQ in Redmond, except in the "finding more ways to diddle
> them" sense.
Palladium is a long way off, and all major corporations want to control
your life, so get over it. Car manufacturers can record maximum engine RPM
and speed data in the onboard computer, which can be downloaded by a
technician. Take your car in for warranty work, they could tell you,
"sorry, you revved it over 6,000RPM for 5 minutes on November 1, 2001", the
damage isn't covered in your warranty. Car rental agencies spy on their
clients using global positioning information. Microsoft is interested in
Palladium because they can use it to make deals with content providers to
make more money. Which is what all major corporations are interested in
(which is why James Bond drives a "brand new Mustang!" in the latest movie,
and why celebrities hawk products they do not use).
All of the above is beyond my control as an individual. It'll happen, it
won't happen, the government will stop it, the government will endorse it,
whatever, it hardly affects my life in any huge way, except that in the
long run, corporations want me to pay more for everything.
Regardless, what does that have to do with .NET being "brain-dead, always
buggy and poorly designed"?
As Chris Kelly has already pointed out, there are lots of people who have
examined the .NET technology and disagree with your (uninformed) opinion:
"MS has independently built a first rate JVM" - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2049/sld001.asp
"The really scary thing about the meeting [with MS] was how much effort
they're putting into it... They have a team dealing with [this], a team
dealing with [that]" - a sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/1932/sld001.asp
"So combining this tuned/compiled Explorer with a MS JIT means a (cheap)
Pentium PC will make NC's look pathetic unless we do the same." - a sun
engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2028/sld001.asp
"the Jakarta [MS's project name, not the Apache project] team seems to have
a much clearer understanding of Java than say, Netscape." - a sun employee
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/1999/sld001.asp
"The minor problem is that when people start building "real" Java apps then
they immediately need application framework support that isn't there. If
they are smart they will want to make sure that their applications
integrate well into the Microsoft containers (e.g. word and explorer." - a
sun engineer
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/dec98/2031/sld001.asp
Apropos of the last, see this:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/feb99/1930/sld001.asp
and this:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/exhibits/feb99/53/sld001.asp
--
| Grant Wagner <gwa...@agricoreunited.com>
Kent Paul Dolan
> [...] yet you were able to pass
> judgement on their quality and design simply by seeing they were designed
> by Microsoft.
Why yes, I think I said that, as can anyone with a modicum of
intelligence after the twenty year track record Microsoft has
accumulated:
xanthian wrote:
> > As to my ability to identify cruft simply by the Microsoft label,
> > let's just say that after 20 years of using Microsoft products
> > and listening to the vast brainwashed hordes of M$-loving lemmings
> > claim them to be perfect when for me they failed in use with
> > astonishing regularity, I've smartened up a bit, and no longer
> > have to risk food poisoning to know when a dish is rancid. If the
> > label says it comes from "We Poison Customers for Fun and Profit",
> > I can now happily leave it untasted and laugh at the eventual
> > stomach cramps of the utterly unwarnable people incapable of
> > learning from history. It was not six weeks ago someone in this
> > very forum defended WinXP as "uncrashable", shortly after which I
> > published instructions for crashing it with complete dependability.
> "someone" defended Windows XP as uncrashable, well then it's gotta be so!
> Of *course* Windows XP isn't uncrashable, and to say otherwise is idiotic.
Yet many who defend Microsoft will make exactly that claim, or your
equally idiotic one below.(*)
> As for instructions for crashing it with complete dependability, as has
> already been pointed out (and I think you admitted yourself), the culprit
> appears to be the video driver.
Reading comprehension problems seem to be rife among True Believers.
Simply holding open the tool bar summary icon while windows of that
class are being created rapidly suffices to crash WinXP, independent
of driver issues. This is simply bad product QA, Microsoft's stock in
trade.
(*)
> Regardless, hundreds of thousands of
> installations of Windows XP run with complete and total dependability.
Nonsense.
Why is it that it is always "somebody else's Microsoft product in
use", claims backed up by nothing but True-Believer Tail-Wind, that
works infallibly and reliably, while whenever _I_ use a Microsoft
product, it promptly fails in ways any quality control organization at
all would have used to forbid the product from leaving the factory?
Could it be that vaporous and unsubstantiated claims from afar have
less reliability than simple local ground truth? Ask any secretary
how many letters she's lost in the past _week_ to Microsoft Word, and
prepare to have your ear scalded.
> Certainly there are *specific* situations where Windows XP will fail.
Why? This is an _operating system_. Its only and entire _job_ is not
to lose control of the machine. That technology is 35 years old.
What but rotten quality control and the urge to adopt (**) every
revenue producing product created by anyone anywhere anywhere into a
Microsoft version, and cram it into the OS instead of into application
space where it belongs, as an anti-competitive measure, could
_possibly_ have anyone producing an _operating system_ that is
_subject to failure_? Someone once described to me the VAX VMS
operating system as "the one you get when you want it to keep running
even with the disk drives on fire". That remark was made _decades_
ago. Where have Billy G and his billions spent on software development
been since?
That you can make the above admission is a condemnation of just how
horrible Microsoft's reputation is _actually_, even among its slavish
adorers, rapidly as they deny it when challenged.
> You
> identify the offending hardware or software components and you take steps
> to fix the problem.
"The manual said 'requires Windows 95 or better', so I installed
Linux".
> As for the rest, blindly distrusting Microsoft is as silly as blindly
> trusting them.
> [...] , however you appear unwilling to even examine the
> technical aspects of the product and come to an informed judgement.
Blindly? None so blind but those who refuse to see.
Yep, after TWO ENTIRE DECADES of unsubstantiated claims of Microsoft
product "fitness for merchantability", always promptly disclaimed on
the shrink-wrap licensing agreement, i.e., they lie out of both sides
of their mouth, I am now mature enough in my convictions not to be led
down the garden path by still more True Believer claims that "this
time Redmond's done it for sure", nor to waste my valuable time either
reading claims to that effect, or doing research to find that
unexpected philosopher's stone that will have turned Microsoft dross
to fairy gold [but still fading to trash when actually used].
Gullibility does have its limits, at least for those with some
quantifiable measure of intelligence.
I naturally exclude Microsoft zealots from that category without a
twinge of pity or regret. They'll get what's coming to them, this
time as always. Practice your ankle grab.
xanthian.
Note that quoting that same trade press that has slavishly boostered
every previous buggy product out of Redmond makes less than no
impression on the intelligent person; their track record of
gullibility and probable graft is also well established.
You look at a cigarette smoker and say, "But how could anyone be so
_stupid_?"
I look at a Microsoft zealot and say the same, though I'll admit that
cigarettes' harmful effects became known two whole decades before
those of using Redmond-ware.
Addiction is still addiction, and no defense by the addict needs the
attention of the intelligent listener.
(**) Read: "steal".
Kent Paul Dolan
> How about some examples?
The brief version:
Every major project done using Microsoft Word has included crashes of
the product, usually taking the Microsoft OS with it, that have cost
me work effort. Not infrequently, but daily. Ditto MS-Project,
MS-Powerpoint, MS-Excel, MS-Acesss, etc. ad nauseum.
Every single software development project I've done under MS operating
systems, from MS-DOS 1.0 and forward through MS-DOS 5.x, Windows95,
Windows NT, and now Windows XP, has found a vulnerability where user
space software crashed the OS, not once, but time and again, one
vulnerability after another.
Never once, in developing software over the last 18 years of the same
two decades in which I've been subjected to Microsoft product
failures, have I been able to crash any of the Unix or Unix
derivatives I've used, from eight _different_ Unix-variant vendors,
merely by creating and testing user-mode software.
Even when I was working in the bowels of FreeBSD, on the other side of
the memory protection barrier, where the OS is at the programmer's
mercy, it was astonishingly hard to do anything that would actually
crash the entire OS, though I managed to massacre the email system
times beyond counting, so it isn't that my Unix software is somehow
free of bugs in comparision to my Microsoft software.
Even working as a junior Unix sysadmin, with all of the privileges at
my command, I only managed to take the entire OS down completely three
times in five years with code I'd written. It was typical of general
purpose machines _I_ used in the Unix environment that they measured
uptime in hundreds of days. I cannot honestly remember any Microsoft
OS under which _I_ have been doing software development as part of a
general use community, that survived regularly for as long as an
entire week.
But the work at eBay, where from the same
application/driver/database/server source code base, with wide open
access to internals on both platforms, supposedly "bulletproof"
Windows NT crashed to bare metal hourly per server cluster compared to
Solaris' weekly per server cluster soft crashes [a tribute to
brain-dead Microsoft attempts to "help" the Visual C++ programmer with
exception handling in ways incompatible with C++'s intended workings,
which I isolated and eliminated from a quarter gigabyte of C++ source
code] in a high volume online transaction processing environment
extremely stressful to both operating systems, was a bit the crowning
blow.
Enough said; I speak from roughly as vast an experience on the issues
as one person is likely to attain, what with being white haired now
and having begun in my teens.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> dec98
> dec98
> dec98
> dec98
> dec98
> feb99
> feb99
Enough said?
xanthian.
Chris Kelly
wrote:>> feb99
>
>Enough said?
You apparently don't have any clue vis-a-vis the time line of how
these various nuisance suits worked.
ET
consider suspicion.
I've numerous instances of Windows systems under heavy development
experience that hadn't "crashed" in many months and numerous instances of
various Unix systems that crashed on a fairly frequent basis.
Your anecdotes remain that, at best.
--ET--
"Kent Paul Dolan" <xant...@well.com> wrote in message
news:a3eaa964.02110...@posting.google.com...
Robert Hand
lmao! Brutal, and true, from another 20+ year developer.
I have been burnt several times on large projects by features that didnt
quite work yet. Here are a few that come readily to mind...
Oh QuickC is much faster than TurboC - and lo, after I spend my money, its
much slower.
Masm with menu options shown on the box that arent in the product.
VB that worked great, until I tried to make distribution disks (although
they did fix it for me)
Windows 3.11 leaking memory so that after a 3 day continuous process, it
craps out.
Visual FoxPro, supports OCX's! Right, but if a version change of ocx occurs,
it takes it out of your forms and deletes the code as well.
My favorite response was when trying to invoke protected mode on a 286, and
the MS guy says "well you arent supposed to be playing with that"
I could probably dig up more, but there is no point. There is no escape now.
I just code java whenever I can, and live with the problems. No wonder I am
prematurely gray.
"Kent Paul Dolan" <xant...@well.com> wrote in message
news:a3eaa964.0211...@posting.google.com...
Aldo Pignotti
> also-rans. MS produce innovative products
MS is one of the least innovative companies I can think of. Name
one thing they've invented. They got a stamp of approval from IBM,
got in people's doors on the basis of that approval and have
riden that acceptance ever since.
> and it's unfair that they are
> punished because they want to deliver an OS with all programs integrated.
Perhaps if their products didn't so severely suck you might have an
arguement. As it is, they have the worse mailtool, net browser,
everything of any company. These products just shouldn't have the
security problems that they do. They are terrible. Their worse
problem is that they don't work well with other people's products
because MS doesn't want you to use other people's products.
> Ms
> should counter-sue all those companies that instigated this waste of time
> and money.
It's clear to me that the legal system in this country doesn't
understand computer usage one bit. If you've ever been called up
for jury duty, one of the things you will notice that no one in
the system, including lawyers uses computers. They are worse
than doctors.
My only hope is that MS will overexpand and flounder in some of
these new areas that they are trying to take over. Eventually,
they will fail because they are not technologists, just bullys.
Grant Wagner
> > and it's unfair that they are
> > punished because they want to deliver an OS with all programs integrated.
>
> Perhaps if their products didn't so severely suck you might have an
> arguement. As it is, they have the worse mailtool, net browser,
> everything of any company. These products just shouldn't have the
> security problems that they do. They are terrible. Their worse
> problem is that they don't work well with other people's products
> because MS doesn't want you to use other people's products.
Apache <url: http://isc.incidents.org/analysis.html?id=161 />, PHP <url:
http://isc.incidents.org/analysis.html?id=164 /> and OpenSSL <url:
http://isc.incidents.org/analysis.html?id=167 /> shouldn't have the security problems they do either. But
they do, so you apply your patches and harden your systems as best you can and keep abreast of the latest
information regarding vulnerabilities.
Interesting note, the recent Kerberos vulnerability <url: http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2002-29.html
/> affects almost every variant of Unix, yet Microsoft's implementation is not vulnerable. Why is it that
when Microsoft browser, or E-mail client, or anything else is revealed to have a vulnerability, a huge
deal is made that the same software on Linux, or Solaris, does not have that problem, but when a
vulnerability impacts every installation of *nix but does not affect Microsoft's products, no one seems
to care?
In fact, you have to go back 7 advisories (and back to July 2002) at <url:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/ /> to find the first Microsoft specific advisory, yet every Microsoft
vulnerability is a headline on CNN, the rest go unnoticed.
The reason is *not* that Microsoft is better or worse than other software vendors at supplying secure
products, the reason is that Microsoft is bigger, and it makes for a good story to say "yes *another*
vulnerability was found in a Microsoft product today..."
> > Ms
> > should counter-sue all those companies that instigated this waste of time
> > and money.
>
> It's clear to me that the legal system in this country doesn't
> understand computer usage one bit. If you've ever been called up
> for jury duty, one of the things you will notice that no one in
> the system, including lawyers uses computers. They are worse
> than doctors.
No one in the legal system works on construction sites, yet they somehow manage to handle cases that
involve construction site safety. No one in the legal system has ever killed anyone (at least I hope
not), but they somehow manage to handle cases that involve murders. No one... I think you get the point.
The people in the legal system do not need to be intimiately involved in a product, process or area of
expertise to be involved in cases that deal with those things.
> My only hope is that MS will overexpand and flounder in some of
> these new areas that they are trying to take over. Eventually,
> they will fail because they are not technologists, just bullys.
Microsoft has already overexpanded and floundered in a number of areas (MSN, and the Xbox are just a
couple of examples). But their pockets are deep, so it does not hurt them too much.
I doubt they will fail, but anything is possible, and we've seen it happen to companies as large or
larger. In the meantime, they will provide solutions which will be good for some companies and
individuals, and not as good for others. I'll continue to do as I always have, which is evaluate all
available solutions to see what fits best for my clients.
--
| Grant Wagner <gwa...@agricoreunited.com>
Kent Paul Dolan
> yet you were able to pass
> judgement on their quality and design simply by seeing they were designed
> by Microsoft.
I tend to be prolix, but there's always someone who's written the
terser, better rejoinder. To re-answer your question, why do I reject
the concept of competently written software from Microsoft, without
wasting my time digging into each separate additional claimed
exception to depressingly consistent dreckhood, comes this, stolen
without attribution from another newsgroup:
"It's like perpetual motion, I don't have to see the schematics to
know it doesn't work."
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> Your statements are at extreme variance with other's experience and hence of
> consider suspicion.
>
> I've numerous instances of Windows systems under heavy development
> experience that hadn't "crashed" in many months and numerous instances of
> various Unix systems that crashed on a fairly frequent basis.
>
> Your anecdotes remain that, at best.
>
> --ET--
Well, since I didn't walk up to your table and say "I'll be your
deprogrammer tonight", I have no intellectual or emotional investment
in whether you are intelligent enough to learn from the experience of
others or not, do I?
xanthian.
Noticing that a confirming set of experiences is _already_ posted in
this very thread, "pfft" for your hordes of uncrashable Windows
systems; not on this planet, there aren't.
Aldo Pignotti
> In fact, you have to go back 7 advisories (and back to July 2002) at <url:
> http://www.cert.org/advisories/ /> to find the first Microsoft specific advisory, yet every Microsoft
> vulnerability is a headline on CNN, the rest go unnoticed.
That's a rather narrow measure of vulnerability. Day in and day out
Outlook has security problems, UNIX mail servers don't.
It's not that UNIX machines can't be hacked, it's just that it
takes half a brain to hack into a UNIX machine and any nitwit
can create a virus that will not only hang up Outlook, it will
wipe out someone's harddrive.
>
> No one in the legal system works on construction sites, yet they somehow
> manage to handle cases that
> involve construction site safety.
All the lawyers ever accomplish is creating more work for themselves.
Have you ever tried to wade through a ladder safety manual? It's
the kind of garbage Microsoft has given us.
> I'll continue to do as I always have, which is evaluate all
> available solutions to see what fits best for my clients.
I'm very proud of you. When I need a nit wit, I'll look you up.