LOL Microsoft (X-posted from personal journal)

[superbus.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but this is a hoot.

I can imagine the meeting leading up to this...

"OK. Vista's taking a beating in the press, in advertisements, and in word of mouth. We've got very good technicians on all sides of the divide stressing everyone to either wait for the new Windows 7 or go to another operating system, be it OS/X or one of the Linux distributions. Users have concerns about our privacy settings and the conflict of interest we show between people that advertise with us, the government and our customers, routinely shafting our customers in the name of DRM and backdoors into their systems. We need to shove Vista down the throats of the average consumer to the fullest extent that antitrust laws allow us to. What should we do about this?"

"Um... well, Vista is a resource hog, so maybe we could tighten the code with the next service pack to make it take up less resources? You know, the service pack we tried to bully people into buying Vista for?"

"Clean out your desk, you stupid motherfucker! Get out of my face! Who else?"

"OK, sir, we had good intentions with User Account Controls, but the controls and nag screens are so intrusive that people are just clicking past them as a matter of course; they might as well be telling the uses that their 13 year old daughters are the bullseyes in a circle-jerk and they would blindly click past it to install a screensaver. I know this is a sensitive topic, but perhaps we could..."

"Don't say the L-word..."

"... well, sir, most... uh, FLAVOURS of... uh, Inux-Lay, have a system where, if you want to do something administrative..."

"Don't you fucking go there..."

"... um, it makes you put in a password of a root administrator, for security reasons... sir, I just think that we can market it so that we're not outright saying we're taking an idea from Linux... oh shit! Oh shit!"

"SECURITY! Escort this man out! Beat the shit out of him in front of his wife and kids! OK... anyone else?"

*timidly* "Well, sir, our policy of twisting the arms of the OEMs is backfiring, between Dell offering XP and many more system builders offering naked systems, and I think our prospects of forcing Congress to state that anyone buying a computer without a Microsoft OS on it is automatically a pirate isn't going to fly... *reflexive flinch*... ... OK... so as I was saying, since we're putting our finger in a crack the size of our heads, and we can't hold Ed Bott's family hostage forever, maybe... we should write this off as Windows ME2, and focus on the upcoming Wind--*BONK*

"Yeah, you feel that motherfucker!? That's the Chair of Justice, bitch! I'm cookin' with gas! Don't fuck with the chair of justice, you faggot! OK... still taking ideas, anyone else?"

*thirty seconds of silence*

*someone stands up, after silently crossing himself*

"I got it! How about we start an advertising campaign, telling people the "truth" about Vista? We can pretend we're as witty as the Apple guys and those funny commercials!"

"... Tell me more."

*sigh* "OK! OK! I figure if we use some money, we can put out a FUD campaign to bullshit and bully people into buying our products, that way, not only do we hit more of our core market, which as you all know are average users who don't know a keyboard from a bass guitar, we can tell people that we didn't have to change anything, and it was all a media campaign to discredit Big Bad Microsoft! That will be a PR victory!"

"... I like it! Let's devote $300 million to that! I like you! The rest of you, you're fired! Get the fuck out of my building! Security! Begin the cleansing!"

Comments

[corwinofamber.livejournal.com]

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Nice username - but wouldn't Merlin be more appropriate in an IT community? =)

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Do Microsoft know you have a bug in their boardroom?

[superbus.livejournal.com]

They have software that would find stuff like that, but unfortunately, it didn't pass WGA, so it got bricked.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is the Apple ads *are* bullshit. The really sad thing is you're *right* that they're not trying to fix their core PROBLEMS just their image.


Well, I think my XP box should last another 1.5 year. We'll see then.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

The sad part is MS could take Vista, make the default install sane with respect to running services (the source of all the resource hog issues) and ditch SP1, rebadge it as Windows 7 and everybody would be happy.

Vista has 3 major issues. The forced driver incompatibility, the fucking insane set of services running by default (C'Mon, what Home Premium box needs the iSCSI service running by default) and the utter usability atrocity that is UAC. The first one is pretty much solved and the other two would be easily fixed if MS had an utter clue.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Ergh, that was supposed to be 'and ditch UAC' in the first sentence.

[superbus.livejournal.com]

I cannot understand why they cannot figure admin vs. user permissions, as Unix figured it out 20 plus years ago.

If you're installing a programme in Ubuntu it asks for your user password for admin privleges.

If you try it in Windows it won't let you, so you either have to log in as an admin (which gets annoying so most people browse as admin) or remember to hold Shift down and right click, select "Run as...", type in admin credentials, and even then the programme might not install right because the registry might puke on the permission rights, so you either have to give that user specific NT permissions or log out of the user account, log in as admin...

I do not understand why Windows went with UAC, because there's a better way to do it that already works.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

MS went with UAC for the express purpose of trying to annoy their users and developers into coming up with sane install configs (most software should not need admin priviledges to install). This is according to the head of the Windows security team.

Ironically, this also violates said head's white paper on how to do security right.

Windows badly needs sudo, Run As is not a solution.

Apple gets this right, most GUI-oriented Linux distro's get this right (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc). MS doesn't.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Mind getting your facts straight? iSCSI, while installed by default, is also set to manual startup by default, so it's not actually doing anything - or taking up any resources other than a wee bit of HD space - until you actually need it. For the reference, I just went through the list of running services on my Vista Ultimate x64 desktop I'm posting this from (which has been running flawlessly since I built in in november), and the only thing running that wasn't relevant was Tablet PC Input Service. OMFG MY LIFE IS OVER, GIVE ME MY TWO MEGABYTES OF RAM!!!11!!~111!!!

UAC is exactly the privilege escalation engine that you're advocating, and Vista takes an extra step by making administrator users run with regular user rights until full administration privileges are needed for something - in which case UAC asks for permission. A regular user has to type in admin password to escalate.

A sloppily coded application won't work well regardless of platform - I lurk in a couple of linux support communities, and I see questions on "how do I make suchandsuch work with sudo without logging in as root" on an almost daily basis - this is different from UAC how?..

And, if GUI-oriented linux distros have made it so easy, why do instructions on trivial things generally go along the lines of "open terminal and sudo three paragraphs of text; god have mercy on your soul if you make a single typo"?

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

I've got 2 Vista boxes, both running Home Premium. Both had iSCSI Initiator started on boot with the default install, not in manual. One was a default install (shipped with Vista), the other was an XP machine upgraded to Vista. Both had at least a dozen useless services running (not including Tablet PC INput Service, I have a Wacom tablet which uses that) that should have been in manual or set to start only when needed. Note that one of those systems has been running Vista since last March (the earliest the free Vista upgrades shipped for those of us who bought XP systems between mid-october 2006 and Vista's launch) and the other shipped with Vista when I purchased it in November.

UAC is NOT the priviledge escalation engine I'm talking about. sudo asks once and then you're authenticated for the next 5 minutes and until you quit the authenticated application (IE launching another app which requires sudo doesn't need authentication for 5 minutes and apps retain their authentication until closed). UAC asks for every change you make. With Ubuntu and Fedora Core, as well as OS X, when you launch a GUI app that requires admin rights as a non-root user, it runs via sudo, so you only authenticate once.

And very rarely do you have to 'open terminal and sudo three paragraphs of text; god have mercy on your soul if you make a single typo' on Ubuntu, Fedora requires it on initial setup for a couple things (Damned Broadcom wifi drivers) but not in general use. Either you've been using Debian, Slackware or Gentoo too much, or you simply aren't up to speed on Linux.

Please get your facts straight, you very obviously aren't familiar with actually using recent desktop-oriented linux distros or how sudo actually works.

Oh, and frankly, I like Vista, the UI improvements and better memory management over XP are big wins. But the default install sucks.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

And, if GUI-oriented linux distros have made it so easy, why do instructions on trivial things generally go along the lines of "open terminal and sudo three paragraphs of text; god have mercy on your soul if you make a single typo"?

Because it is faster than typing "click Applications->System->FuzzyBunnyWidget". Then Click the "doohickies" tab, go down to "fnord", and set the slider to the whatever you want.

sudo fuzzybunnywidget --set fnord=12345

Is much easier to relate to folks.

[jecook]

*nods*

I've figured out how to bypass one of the group policy-managed security lockdowns using the RunAs feature and my account's ability to edit the local security policy (secpol.msc)

It's the only way I can install SP3, unfortunately, unless I boot said machine out of all group policies, because SP3 requires access to the securioty log, which us low-life support people don't have access to. *shakes head sadly*

and the kicker? When I reported it to the network admins, with big bright letters 'POSSIBLE SECURITY ISSUE', I never heard back from them.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Best part:

Brooks also re-emphasized that because Windows 7 won’t veer widely from Vista’s hardware requirements and core set of features, partners should encourage customers to move to Vista today in so they will be well-prepared for Windows 7.

Somebody doesn't realize how that works. If product X today sucks ass but is mostly the same as product Y next year... then why the hell should anybody buy product X at all, much less to "be well-prepared" for buying product Y?

[fnordx.livejournal.com]

So that you're used to the hurting? Possibly also so that you are more loose so it won't hurt as bad when they do get the new software out?

[superbus.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand that either, and the sad thing is that Mary Jo Foley is such a tool she couldn't even point that out. Any business manager worth his salt would see through that.

"Because Windows 7 is basically going to be the same as Vista, you should really look into just moving to Vista today, so your hardware will be prepared for Windows 7!"

"Yeah. I got a better idea: I'll keep what I have now, upgrade my hardware when Windows 7 comes out, at which point it will be cheaper for the same specs, and then there's still a possibility I'm going to Red Hat of Ubuntu, if Windows 7 is going to be the same shit. Get out of my office."

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Tell me please, has Ubuntu managed to overtake install base of Windows Me yet, or does it take all desktop linux distros put together? Last I checked, about half a year ago, the latter was true...

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Problem is, you can't count it. Like, MS can tell how many copies of Me they sold, and how many copies of XP have been activated. You can't do that reliably with any Linux distro.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Actually, with the centralized package distribution most linux distros use, estimating the size of your userbase is trivial - all you need to do is collect some statistics from your repositories.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Not really. For small installations, maybe - you could track the number of downloads for some core package or whatever, and use that. However, most large installations set up a local repository mirror, so with hundreds or thousands of machines, you count all of 1....

[gholam.livejournal.com]

/yawn

Rewind 6 years back, exact same thing said about 98SE and XP.

Fast forward 4 years ahead, same thing said about Vista and Win7.

Hell, there's an often circulated quote from an early '90s book, loosely translated from Russian - "A good example of unnecessary waste of system resources is the new Microsoft Windows OS. Nobody actually needs it, and it is certain not to last long in the market".

The main thing that history teaches us is that history doesn't really teach anybody anything...

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Apparently, history has failed to teach you that today's Invincible Top Dog that will Dominate The Market For Eternity almost certainly isn't and won't.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

What do you mean? The Dutch East India company is still thriving in global exploration and trade!

[gholam.livejournal.com]

At their current growth rates, Linux/OSX will push Windows out of the market by 2475 or so.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

So, MSFT's rise to dominance in the microcomputer market was linear?

Again, you aren't the best historian out there.

I give MSFT about 5-10 years of continued monopoly status before enough of the big third party developers start doing cross-platform compilation that the pain of changing platform becomes primarily OS-related rather than app-related. After that, it's a new world.

MSFT doesn't have a monopoly because the OS is the best thing ever, they have a monopoly because 95% of the apps are developed for Win32 only. That's changing, and as that changes, MSFT's monopoly will erode with it. We can talk until the cows come home about the technical merits of one OS versus another OS, but at the end of the day a VANISHINGLY small percentage of users actually give a shit about the operating system itself: all they really care about is the apps they use.