B Gruff wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 September 2006 15:18 Larry Qualig wrote:
> This is actually quite interesting.....
Looks more like the bigoted scrawl of dotcom yuppie.
>> From Fool.com (Motley Fool)
>>
>> <quote>
>> Microsoft's antitrust woes with the EU are old news by now, as is
>> the EU's pigheaded, danged-if-you-do, danged-if-you-don't stance on
>> non-issues such as uncoupling Windows Media Player from the OS.
Well that tells me everything I need to know about the author.
>> (Turned out no one wanted that stripped-down version of the OS over
>> there
Maybe Microsoft's sneaky pricing strategy had something to do with it.
>> but why let facts get in the way of protectionist zeal?)
An MS apologist talking about "protectionism". LOL!
> in the U.S., Microsoft stated, in court, under oath
That they were guilty as hell. Yes I know it, you know it, and the
world knows it, but for the Windows community none of that is
relevant, much like Saddam Hussein refused to recognise the authority
of the court that tried him.
> MS finally issue a patch to permit certain ICONS (shortcuts) to be
> removed?
How very magnanimous of them. A whole *shortcut*, no less.
> In short, your author doesn't understand the point of the
> E.U. ruling.
Oh he gets it, he just doesn't believe in the underlying principles;
that Microsoft should be as equally accountable under law as anyone
else. Why let trivial things like the principles of Freedom and
Openness get in the way of a healthy bottom line?
> It's not that people *want* the OS without the media player, it's
> that it must be demonstrable that the media player can be removed
> (and therefore another one used instead) without detriment to the
> OS.
Both Microsoft and its sheep fully understand the requirements of the
antitrust rulings. They might be morally reprehensible, but they're
not stupid ... they're just playing that way. Look at how ridiculous
they looked continially asking for "clarification".
LOL! Maybe this is a case of life imitating art:
Are you sure you want to view the CIFS protocol specifications? >y
Are you sure you're sure? >y
The CIFS protocol specifications may be malicious, do you want to view
them anyway? >y
Error: file corrupt.
> Nobody is trying to "ban" a MS product, merely to ensure that
> competitors are not excluded.
In all truthfulness, I have no objection to the mere *existence* of
Microsoft Windows. In a fair game, where the deck isn't stacked in
favour of a corrupt player, I'd see no problem with both parties
coexisting and even cooperating. But the deck *is* stacked, the
(Microsoft) player *is* corrupt, and "cooperation" is something that
needs to be coerced by law, like getting blood out of a stone.
>> The Catch-22 for Microsoft is that security is a huge deal to
>> consumers. And, truth be told, the beta versions of its latest
>> security tools for Vista -- such as Windows Defender -- are much
>> better integrated than the patchwork of third-party stuff that used
>> to muck up my machine.
Better integrated perhaps, but if I had a choice between "integration"
and effectiveness, I'd rather choose the latter.
----
| NOD32 is the world leader of the Virus Bulletin 100% Awards having
| won more awards than any competing product.
|
| "As usual, NOD32 reached a high level of detection that brought
| another VB 100% award to its collection," wrote Matt Ham of Virus
| Bulletin.
`----
The two key words here being "effectiveness" and "choice".
The issue here is not whether Microsoft should be allowed to promote
and sell its products, but rather whether it should be allowed to
continue using its monopoly position to exclude others. Your statement
does nothing to dispel those fears, which are held not only by the EU,
but also by a growing proportion of ordinary users, and not just in
the FOSS community.
>> But by creating more robust tools to better serve consumers' demand
>> for security, Microsoft may run afoul of European regulators.
What is it about the Microsoft mindset, that makes them incapable of
conceiving of a situation where products are created, and made
available for those who choose them, but just not bundled or
preinstalled?
> Patchwork of third-party stuff, uh?
Integration is not the exclusive domain of the OS vendor, or at least
it *shouldn't* be. The level of integration that third party products
achieve under Windows seems fine to me. Obviously they're at a
deliberate disadvantage (part of the antitrust case), but nonetheless
the integration is acceptable, and like I said, their effectiveness is
nearly always superior (MSPaint vs Photoshop, et al). In that regard,
integration is highly overrated.
> Tell me, until a few months ago, who/what exactly was protecting MS
> users from 150,000+ known viruses?
NOD32, on my Winbox anyway. I got a 3 seat, 2 year license; which
covers both my VMWare "boxes" too. Frankly I wouldn't dream of using
anything else, and the only reason I haven't purchased licenses for
the Linux version is that, frankly at this point, there's really no
need. As for Vista, I hope for other users sakes that Defender can be
purged at the user's request, to facilitate have only one antivirus
app of their choice.
> The author presumably is in favour of MS driving all other vendors
> of security S/W out of the market?
That's the general idea, and the reason that MS spends more time in
the courtroom than in the lab.
>> Alas, it's not the only double standard under which Mr. Softy is
>> forced to labor. A few days ago, I noticed a story about a certain
>> widely used Internet browser that, according to the source,
>> contained "611 defects and 71 potential security vulnerabilities."
Yes and how many "defects" does IE have again? Oh that's right,
nobody's allowed to know the *real* truth about that.
> Be that as it may, I note that *now* Firfox has become *widely*
> *used* - :-)
It's a testament to the Mozilla team, that they can even begin to
penetrate such a protected market share, as the Microsoft
fortress. Then again, it's also a testament to users' total
disillusionment with IE; undoubtedly the world's worst Web browser
... in fact the worst software product of *any* kind.
>> Should have been front-page news, right? Well, it wasn't, and I'm
>> guessing the reason the press didn't pick up on it was that the
>> browser was Firefox.
You're attempting to sensationalise a non-story in order to detract
from the truth. Microsoft coerces IE on it's customers (witness the
Gates - Netscape interrogation), by means of not only preinstalled
bundling, but also by the embrace-and-extend nature of IE's
proprietary standards, which permeates the Internet - thus corrupting
it. In both ways, this squeezes out the competition and creates a
monopoly.
Tallying up bugs in two competing products is barely relevant to the
discussion, and hardly fair when one party hides behind
closed-sources. Regardless of which product has how many bugs,
Microsoft would like to see the annihilation of all competing
products, free or otherwise, and it attempts to achieve that through
bribery (e.g. cheap internet in SA) and corruption (political lobbying
and FUD spreading - e.g. political assassination of Kroes).
The only Front page news here, is Microsoft throwing it's weight
around like a school bully who resists punishment.
> But the author fails to mention how anybody knew how many "defects"
> and *potential* security vulnerabilities there were in it? My guess
> is that it was by automated analysis of the code? Perhaps you, or
> the author, can tell us what the corresponding numbers are for
> Internet Explorer - and if not, why not?
.----
| Neither Microsoft nor Opera have released proprietary code for their
| respective browsers for similar analysis, so no comparisons can be
| drawn.
|
| Alec Fleet, a former developer on the Mozilla Project, said that
| running code analysis tools has some benefit, but he criticised
| Klocwork's conclusions as incomplete and potentially misleading.
|
| "To claim that there are 611 known, specific, real defects is just
| wrong. With most of these tools the signal to noise ratio is very
| high," he writes.
|
| "This is not to say there aren't 141 other legitimate memory
| management defects lurking, but it takes a deeper (human)
| understanding of the codebase, as well as testing of actual codepaths
| in use, to flush them out. To spend smart developers' time going over
| long reports of machine-generated lint would be a waste," Fleet adds.
`----
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/08/firefox_bug_analysis/
>> http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2006/mft06091210.htm
By Seth Jayson, author of such illuminating articles as:
"V fer Vendetta: Avast, Ye Scurvy Commission!"
His Bio includes:
"As an investor, he's partial to damaged goods and companies with
great margins."
An allusion to Microsoft, presumably.
--
K.
http://slated.org - Slated, Rated & Blogged
Beware the Penguin:
http://www.victorialodging.com/video/Never_Trust_A_Penguin.mpg
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5
23:47:34 up 95 days, 4 min, 3 users, load average: 0.05, 0.01, 0.00
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