That some of the recent updates to Win XP are designed to make it run 
slower and to be even more of a resource hog, in order to make Win XP 
users more accepting of Vista?

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> That some of the recent updates to Win XP are designed to make it run 
> slower and to be even more of a resource hog, in order to make Win XP 
> users more accepting of Vista?

  I have noticed Firefox getting into some kind of allocation loop with
some webpages, rendering it irresponsive (even to attempts of killing it).
I don't know if this is caused by a bug in Firefox itself (which presents
itself only in the Windows version, not the Linux version), or if Microsoft
has done something nasty behind the scenes. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
> That some of the recent updates to Win XP are designed to make it run 
> slower and to be even more of a resource hog, in order to make Win XP 
> users more accepting of Vista?

I have noticed I can no longer mount Vista drives on XP with "net use". 
There's a patch for the Server OSes but not for XP.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> John VanSickle wrote:
> > That some of the recent updates to Win XP are designed to make it run 
> > slower and to be even more of a resource hog, in order to make Win XP 
> > users more accepting of Vista?

> I have noticed I can no longer mount Vista drives on XP with "net use". 
> There's a patch for the Server OSes but not for XP.

  I wonder how legal would it be for Microsoft to boycott its own product
in order to promote a new version of it.

  (And before anyone answers with a "it's their product, they can do
whatever they like with it", that's definitely not always the case. See
for example the European Union vs. Microsoft on their product called
"Internet Explorer", or the European Union vs. Apple on their product
called "iPod". Just because some company owns a product doesn't mean
they can do whatever they like with it.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   (And before anyone answers with a "it's their product, they can do
> whatever they like with it", that's definitely not always the case.

Well, technically, I'm sure any country could pass a law saying some group 
of people has to do something.

However, I'm pretty sure the EU's rules are more like "you're not allowed to 
sell the iPod unless you change it to do X."  I wouldn't think there's any 
way for the EU to say "you must sell iPods here."

Now, they *could* say "You're not allowed to sell Vista if you don't support 
XP."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   (And before anyone answers with a "it's their product, they can do
> > whatever they like with it", that's definitely not always the case.

> Well, technically, I'm sure any country could pass a law saying some group 
> of people has to do something.

> However, I'm pretty sure the EU's rules are more like "you're not allowed to 
> sell the iPod unless you change it to do X."  I wouldn't think there's any 
> way for the EU to say "you must sell iPods here."

> Now, they *could* say "You're not allowed to sell Vista if you don't support 
> XP."

  I'm more thinking along the lines of software writers having the legal
obligation of not harming their users deliberately. That's why, for example,
writing a virus is illegal and you cannot just shrug it off with "it's my
software, I can make it to do anything I want": No you can't. If it harms
people's computers, you are going to jail.

  While deliberately making XP perform poorly to boost Windows7 sales is
not the same category of "harm" as a virus, it still can potentially cause
harm to the millions of people and companies using the product by making
their computers less responsive (potentially causing loss of productivity,
especially for companies). What aggravates it is that it would be a
*deliberate* act, not a mistake.

  However, there's probably no precedent for this, so I don't know if it
would cause any consequences to MS. (OTOH I don't think there was any
precedent for the Internet Explorer issue either, but that got to courts
anyways.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

Oh, by "boycott" I thought you meant "stop selling", not "apply automatic 
updates that break it."  (I think "boycott" has a pretty specific meaning in 
English, just so ya know. I never heard it used in any way other than 
consumers avoiding a particular company because they don't like that 
company's behavior (rather than just disliking the products).)

>   However, there's probably no precedent for this, so I don't know if it
> would cause any consequences to MS.

Well, you know, I think if you argued MS isn't allowed to make XP perform 
more poorly with an automatic update, you'd be stepping on the toes of a lot 
of DRM stuff too. If a DRM scheme is cracked and MS sends out an update to 
fix that crack, one could argue MS just made your computer intentionally 
perform worse. It would definitely be an interesting court case.

And yes, almost all monopoly court cases are very vague and open to 
argument, especially in the USA.  There really aren't too many fixed rules 
that would let you avoid most of the big cases you read about in the news. 
I'm sure there's regularly cases of price fixing and stuff like that, but 
most what you hear about is loud because there *isn't* a clear rule about it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> Oh, by "boycott" I thought you meant "stop selling", not "apply automatic 
> updates that break it."  (I think "boycott" has a pretty specific meaning in 
> English, just so ya know. I never heard it used in any way other than 
> consumers avoiding a particular company because they don't like that 
> company's behavior (rather than just disliking the products).)

  What would be a better term? Sabotage?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   What would be a better term? Sabotage?

Yes, that's actually the perfect word.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message