h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I wrote the following at another website about 15 minutes ago and I don't know If I still agree with what I said but here it is for your reading pleasure:
I am really tired of all this pointless Microsoft bashing from guys sitting at computers complaining about how Quake doesn't load fast enough because Bill Gates is evil. I do agree that the government should place some restrictions on Microsoft but this whole hearing is a sham. The judge has decided to make himself the czar of the software industry and I think he hated microsoft from the start. And the settlement talks were all scuttled by the 19 states trying to impose their own beliefs. Some wouldn't agree to anything but the extremes which Microsoft wasn't going to consider at this stage.
If MS gets split up then I don't want to have to deal with 150 different versions of windows. This could really hurt developers. They already have to make games that run on tons of different types of hardware and ensure backwards compatibility. And now they could be forced to develop for different versions of Windows! If Joel Klien gets his way then we may end up looking at software shelves filled with OS's titled: Windoze, Windoes, and every other weird concoction you can think of. I just think that the software industry changes way too much for the government to treat it like a regular brick and mortar industry. Now I realize I just went on a rant so I will shut up now.
Feel free to add your opinions.


Don't get me wrong. I think Microsoft is essentially a monopoly and something needs to be done, I am just frightened that a lot of this whole prosecution isn't actually meant to help consumers and won't, but instead is all about scoring political points with the huge population of people who just plain hate microsoft.
Again, go ahead and add on to my rant

I'm sorry. Maybe I missed it, but was there an actual question in that rant. I mean the forum is called "Ask H2G2" not "Rant on H2G2".

It might be a bit more constuctive if you found a more appropriate forum, or better yet, made an article about it.

Indeed, would you have defended Standard Oil's monopoly? or the AT&T monopoly on telephone calls? (State owned telephone monopolies, something europe has started doing something about in the last few years.)

As for multiple different versions of windows, there already are. Each has slightly different incompatibilites with another of supposed the same type, eg win95, win98, win98SE, Win NT (and then there are the service packs), Win2000, WinCE. Can you tell me that one program will run correctly on all those platforms. it's Microsoft who fragment the market to keep people on the upgrade path and make them more money.

Hmmm.

Well, Microsoft have done some good things and some bad things. They're pretty supportive of developers, and when it comes down to it Windows is a good product. They've done the games industry a lot of good, I think, by introducing DirectX...

I can't see that any combination of small companies would be better for the end-user than Microsoft... except for what is arguably the exactly opposite of Microsoft, i.e. a completely open-source architecture kind of thing. That's the only thing that can really replace the unity provided by a monopolistic company... a whole load of people really co-operating. And that'll take a while to happen, I think...

Microsoft aren't perfect. But they're not as bad as some people like to make out, and they're probably a necessary transition stage to something (hopefully) better...

26199

True, there wasn't a question in there... but most questions seem to degenerate into discussions anyway, so starting with a discussion is simply bowing to the inevitable...

26199 (who isn't actually sure he approves of bowing to the inevitable)

Check the title, I asked if I am the only one not totally anti-microsoft. I agree with what someone said about it being a mixed bag.

That was me .

And so you did... you didn't put a question mark in, otherwise I'd have spotted it

There, I've fixed it now.

26199

What does 26199 stand for?

It's short for Researcher 26199. Oh, and thanks. The question mark cleared things up for me.

You've obviously never had the pleasure of using a Mac! If you did, you'd know that one of the main reasons people hate Microsoft products is because they are so damned difficult to use. Case in point: the company I work for has both Mac and Windows machines, but the folks with the Macs are the only ones who are ably to troubleshoot their own machines instead of calling a techie. The Macs are so much more sensibly designed, and much more easily accessable. The Windows OS is terribly convoluted, and nearly impossible to figure out without professional help. They actually hide important files so that you can't find them.

As for the monopoly business, it's not such a big deal, legally, for Microsoft to have a huge corner on the market for operating systems, but the problem comes in when they also try to corner the market in web browsers. Especially if they try to do it by forcing computer makers to buy their web browser just to get the OS. It's not the Windows market that the government is interested in, it's the fact that Microsoft is PACKAGING it's OS with a seperate product, and refusing to sell the components individually.

Think of a huge automotive company suddenly deciding to get into the automobile insurance business, and then forcing all it's customers to buy THEIR insurance when they buy a car. That's the sort of thing that Microsoft is doing. And that is why the judge ruled correctly, in stating that Microsoft is doing business illegally, and unethically.

There is no possibility that the courts will "split up Windows", as you seem to think. Windows is one product. Windows always will be Windows, as crappy as it may be. What WILL be split up is Microsoft's seperate departments. Windows will be under one roof, and Explorer will be under another. So that consumers and computer manufacturers will be able to purchase one and not the other, if they so wish. See, it's not really that big a deal. And there already is a wide variety of different operating systems out there for software designers to contend with, Mac, Windows, DOS, all the NT's, Linux, etc, and there will inevitably be more. I believe that IBM is now working on a new open source OS, similar to Linux. (But I could be making that up completely. It's something I heard about a long time ago.) And there will pretty much always be some software designers making the products that people need/want for all of the systems. You may not have Quake for all of them, but so what?

Though I still contend that Bill Gates still is evil, and the main reason most people hate him is that he's a money grubbing maniac, who tends to put profits way above product quality.

(Replying to a message a few posts up, so this is going to look a bit daft, but never mind...)

Actually, 26199 isn't short for anything, although I was at one point known as 'Researcher 26199'. When I dropped the 'Researcher' bit it was intended to signify that I'd taken it on as a name, rather than a number... hence it no longer has any significance other than that it is my name.

I *am* 26199. And probably slightly eccentric, if not a little weird.



26199

I've not had the displeasure of using a mac, but I agree with the sentiments about MS turtle.
I do have points about macs that make me wonder about the how sensible the design is though but this is not a forum for that.
One thing I do think is that you've got the thing about windows being one product wrong. There is no one product windows. There is a family of products called windows each with different capabilities and interoperation difficulties (things will run on one but not others yet they're all supposed to be compatible), without going into WinCE which is implemented on different processors.

Yikes, now I get to argue my points. Windows could be broken up and the DOJ (Department of Justice) wanted Microsoft to allow any company to make their own windows version free of charge. Also while macs can be simple in some situations I have used them and find them incredibly annoying. I don't want to get in a pissing match because I know it is just my opinion and you can like whatever OS you want, but when there is an error on a mac I am using it never gives me details. Also (This may no longer be true because I haven't used anything later than OS 7.1 that I can remember) every mac program I have ever installed never had an uninstall and required me to go through the extensions folder first turning them off and then deleting individual files. I still think that macintosh is a good company and I've heard good things about their upcoming OS X but I have always found Windows easier to use and understand in many ways. Ofcourse I have to say that Macs use a much prettier interface than windows' select few icons and whatnot.

I really must disagree with you on a few points though. While I agree it is a bit sinister to have IE binded to windows, everyone agrees that the internet is extremely important and I have found it IE very useful for upgrading windows components. Now I am sure you will tear me to shreds so I just want to say again that I respect your opinions and that of everyone else here.

I think you guys are missing the point behind the whole anti-trust suit. This is NOT about Windows. This is about Microsoft using their dominance in the OS market to take over other markets, most especially the web browser market. By bundling their own browser in the OS, and then forcing vendors to dump Netscape, they were practicing the worst kinds of monopolistic business. Another prime example is the complete inability for Word to interpret Wordperfect documents, even though Wordperfect converted them to .doc files. It's coded that way on purpose. The OS market already has some decent competition (Mac, Linux) but by using their OS to force their other products down consumers' throats, Microshaft has gone too far, and I'm glad they're getting what they deserve.

Please don't make this a Mac vs WIndows rant! We've had enough. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and people should use whichever they like better without having to stoop to always putting down the other. Most users of software are also the first to point out the flaws of the system that they use the most as well, so it goes both ways, leave it at that. I use MS software on Macs as well, typing right now on IE 5.0 Mac edition.

Anyway, as for Microsoft the company (versus evaluating the relative merits of its software) the things they've done that get to me the most are the "you do what we say or else" bits. They did this with their customers (computer makers, threatening to not sell them Windows if they didn't use Internet Explorer, or something to that effect), they apparently did this with Apple at one point (threatening to cut off development of Office for Mac if Apple made some other software for Windows) and so on.

The idea that one OS having 90% of the market makes things better is a much harder one for me, though. As the user of a "minority" OS, it makes things rather annoying sometimes, in fact, as far as application software or web design or one of a handful of other things goes. Not that I can't get by quite well, but sometimes the latest little cool trick is proprietary (case in point, the little utilities that work with this very site). If all developers ignored other platforms then we'd have a 100% OS. The people who think that's a great thing really drive me nuts. It's amazing that we have the innovation we have now with one OS commanding 90% of the market. Imagine what the innovation would be like if that 90% were instead two different products with about 45% each.

That's a bit idealistic to think, that two products would run neck and neck, but if there were, innovation would be fierce. Right now there's little innovation in Windows, not much more in Mac OS, we have all the variations of Unix and Linux which are great stable operating systems none of which will catch on with the mass public without a decent GUI on top. (In fact, this is precisely what Apple is going to try to do, sell all their customers Unix with an Apple GUI and Mac OS emulation, in OS X.) But if there were two OS products with sizable market shares, it would be quite interesting. The trouble might come in that there's only room for two, which means if the OS I like is *still* a minority, I could be out of luck. But the two would be in competition, each one trying to have some selling point over the other. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, or that's what the government should do. I just think it would be interesting to see. Would it make application software more expensive? Maybe. Maybe we'd see even more different apps though. I don't claim to have any real answers here. But it would be wild to think about, at least.

Sorry I went off on windows vs. mac. But sometimes it gets hard to seperate the companies from their products. I seem to remember that the judge did rule in favor for MS in a few of the instances by saying that though he felt they misused their power they didn't force netscape out of computers (or atleast the case for that wasn't strong enough). The thing that makes it hard for me to hate microsoft is that they started out just like everyone else. Small weaklings who didn't have anything going for them till they had one huge success (namely the DOS deal with IBM in this case). So now they control all this stuff but what if apple was then able to take 90% OS share (not bloody likely with the way things are going). Would we be crying for apple's head or do we just not like MS? I think that if two OS's had 45% share then we might have more problems because the windows standard wouldn't be in place. Unlike now where 8% are upset because the other 90% can't give them files we would have 45% who couldn't work with the other 45%.

The 45% would be able to figure out how to work with the other 45%. A bit of file conversion is all that would be required. As I said with the office suites, that technology is in place, but Word purposely fails to read documents generated in Wordperfect. So, despite the fact that Wordperfect Suite 8 is far and away a superior product, everyone is stuck with that annoying paper clip, just for compatibility.

I think so too. I mean, the "standard" is the argument these people use. By that argument you should let the other 10% die on the vine while the inevitable happens and everyone is assimilated. But that has failed to happen even in the face of management blunders at that flamboyant 5-7% company. (In the days of DOS and possibly early days of Windows, Apple had over 20% market share with proprietary hardware and OS. Amazing.)

So anyway, I agree, if there were two 45% companies, they'd figure out how to make things work. File translation is already ubiquitous. You already need it to account for the fact that some use Word and some WordPerfect, for example. It's totally bogus to suggest that having one standard would be better. If it weren't for competing platforms, there would have been no Windows in the first place!

Hmmm, try to end everything you say with "but I respect all your opinions" like I do because you sound a bit ummm, well, insulting. I'm sure I am just misreading you though. The thing is though, that why would two 45% OS's work together any better than what we have now. I mean in order to compete all the modern companies seem to try two main things. One, make some special feature that only works for you so that people buy your product so it can work, or two, make your product work with all the things the other one can do.
The original IE versions would follow with the second business method. They essentially copied all the features of Netscape and offered it free and I think that is what really made so many switch. (Personally I used to use Netscape but that darn load times is still annoying even on super powerful machines.) Well It seems I am quite outnumbered. In general people who are against microsoft being broken up don't speak out for fear of violent retribution from netscape/mac/anything-non-microsoft fans... Hey , what are you doing in here, what!@! Get your hands off of me, where are you taking me!!!
P.S. I respect all your opinions.

Hehe, to come out and state "I respect all your opinions" after a bit of a rant seems, well, silly. If I didn't respect the opinions here, I probably wouldn't be discussing it at all.

And quite the contrary to what you fear, I am led to believe that more people in fact want the government to leave Microsoft alone, just butt right out. I think breakup and left on its own are the two extremes, and somewhere in between the actual remedies will lie. Microsoft has now been declared in violation of the law by a court; I don't think that should pass by without penalty. Whether said penalty involves breakup of the company is something we don't know yet.

As for competition, again, I'm by no means certain that things would be better with two OS's each with around half of Windows' market share. But I do believe it's a valid thing to look at. Let's take a comparison. How about Adobe GoLive versus Macromedia DreamWeaver? What distinguishes one from the other? Each has a bit more strength in a given area, but both are powerful WYSIWYG web design applications. Adobe has just announced version 5 of GoLive; it will close the gap with some of the features. Macromedia will respond by adding more to DreamWeaver to keep up, and so on. Software pairs abound. How about Freehand vs Illustrator? InDesign vs Quark? Word vs WordPerfect? The real point is special features don't stay special. Once they're out there, the users decide and comment on what's good and what's not. Sometimes new things are tried and promptly changed back to the old way. Other times they become revolutionary. The competing products get to see this too. Features that are exclusive to one don't stay that way for long if they're deemed to be good. (IE's Toolbar Favorites is a good example of that.)

Competition is an important part of what drives innovation. That's the point I'd like to express to anyone who thinks 100% same OS would be a good thing. I'm not saying they're wrong, or under any illusion that I'll change a lot of minds, but this is one of the things that must be kept in perspective.