Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
> as a stable and secure OS?

  I have never understood and will probably never understand this:

  "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
they want on a whim. Let's also use their OS which is infamously known
for the vast amount of devastating malware in our absolutely critical
systems instead of using some other OS with little or no malware at all."

  Nothing becomes "industry standard" unless the industry adopts it as
a whole. The industry is completely stupid, IMO.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
>> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
>> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
>> as a stable and secure OS?
> 
>   I have never understood and will probably never understand this:
> 
>   "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
> absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim. Let's also use their OS which is infamously known
> for the vast amount of devastating malware in our absolutely critical
> systems instead of using some other OS with little or no malware at all."
> 

At least the Partners were intelligent enough to understand the problem
with the above mindset. Why they employ a moron as their Office Manager
is beyond me. OTOH maybe that's the sort of people you need for such a
boring task ;-) (apologies to any OMs amongst us)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

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Warp wrote:
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim.

Sure. And tomorrow, the government might pass a law saying that what 
you're doing is illegal or heavily taxed. It's just a calculated risk. 
Betting that you'll be able to get your data out of Microsoft format 
faster than Microsoft implodes is probably not a bad bet, business-wise. 
No worse than buying equipment from a company that could be bankrupt and 
no longer making parts to repair it the next day - Actually quite the 
same thing, really.

Now, using Windows for something like military operations or running a 
space ship or something is IMO a horribly stupid idea.

But if it's just money? Sure. People make those sorts of decisions 
wisely every day. They're betting on business inertia, that MS isn't 
going to go bankrupt without a whole lot of people knowing well in 
advance. They're also betting that Microsoft wouldn't be a huge 
successful software company without learning how not to change their 
licensing at a whim to prevent everyone using their software from 
continuing to use their software, for example.

Plus, of course, formats change. You can have the most open format in 
the world stored on 9-track tape, and you're going to have a heck of a 
time reading it back in 2020. Moving away from Microsoft formats isn't 
going to be a whole lot different than moving away from punched cards.

When you think about it, in *this* respect, the fact that MS *is* 
monopolistic is a good thing, in much the same way that smugglers can 
offer better prices on their wares. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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>  "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
> absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim.

I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary workers.  MS 
has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please, they are not going 
to do anything stupid.  On the other hand, one day the main developers may 
decide they don't have enough time to continue with some open source 
project, or the community might lose interest, etc.  From a business POV MS 
is far safer bet for the long run.

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary workers.  MS 
> has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please, they are not going 
> to do anything stupid.  On the other hand, one day the main developers may 
> decide they don't have enough time to continue with some open source 
> project, or the community might lose interest, etc.  From a business POV MS 
> is far safer bet for the long run.

  You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
may get away with it. That's because the format is closed, proprietary
and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
on it.

  As for stopping developement, have you ever heard of people having
problems importing old Word documents into newer versions of the program?
I have.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>  You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
> fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
> may get away with it.

Sure, but they'll only get away with it if it is a trivially small amount to 
most customers.  Otherwise people would stop using it and MS would lose 
market share and profit.  Of course the shareholders know this so they would 
never let such a thing happen.

That's the protection you have using MS products, you know that there are a 
large number of people with very large financial interests in how the 
company performs, not just a passing technical interest in the code of 
certain progams.

> That's because the format is closed, proprietary
> and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
> source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
> on it.

Sure, but that risk is pretty small as mentioned above.  The far greater 
risk is that development/support becomes very slow or stops altogether, 
because nobody has any financial interest in the project.

I've seen it happen so often, where developers get distracted by other 
things (both in the software world and IRL), development goes very slowly, 
and then finally development is stopped.  Because they have no financial 
incentive to continue development, there is absolutely nothing stopping them 
just leaving one day.  That would be impossible to happen at MS.

>  As for stopping developement, have you ever heard of people having
> problems importing old Word documents into newer versions of the program?
> I have.

Very occasionally yes, but usually it's because they haven't installed the 
right filters to read them.    Have you ever heard of an open source project 
essentially dying because nobody is developing it?  I have.

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Warp wrote:

>   You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
> fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
> may get away with it. That's because the format is closed, proprietary
> and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
> source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
> on it.

 From what I've seen this doesn't seem to be the direction MS is going.

I'm sort of fond of MS products. Especially their software development 
offerings. I'm impressed that they basically give for free a 
full-fledged IDE. (I've now seen the professional edition of the 2008 
tools, aside from having heterogeneous projects, some extra refactoring 
and testing stuff, everything's the same (Visual C++ is a big exception 
to this, since VC++ Express does not include MFC nor ATL)

The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based format, 
IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed into it, 
though.

Windows became notorious during the 3.1 and 95 days. One of the reasons 
for so many exploits on the Windows platform is by creating an exploit, 
you're pretty much guaranteed to cause the most damage, or get the most 
data, or spambot the most computers by targeting Windows. With Linux you 
have a much slimmer chance due to several factors, notably it's relative 
small share in the desktop market, and its users tend to be more 
technically adept. Much easier to compromise a Windows machine without 
the user noticing anything has been compromised, whereas with Linux, the 
user might actually investigate what's taking up resources.

People complain that Windows is unstable. This was true up to ME. After 
Windows XP hit the market, the NT Kernel went mainstream, and Windows 
has been extremely stable ever since. Aside from running updates, My 
Windows XP (Now Windows Vista) machine hardly ever has any down time. 
Heck, With Windows 95, I was pretty well guaranteed to have a bluescreen 
at some point. Windows 3.1 I avoided like the black plague, only running 
it when I couldn't find a DOS alternative. Win 3.1 sucked badly. I still 
get chills when I see that old interface.

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based format, 
> IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed into it, 
> though.

How about deliberately defining it in such a way that only Word itself 
can really "understand" what its content means?

XML is no magic bullet for instant portability...

> People complain that Windows is unstable. This was true up to ME. After 
> Windows XP hit the market, the NT Kernel went mainstream, and Windows 
> has been extremely stable ever since.

When XP first came out, it required insane amounts of resources and was 
hopelessly unstable. Over time they seem to have somehow fixed the 
stability issues; today XP is pretty stable. And... well, hardware as 
advanced so much that nobody *even notices* how much XP is wasting them.

Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:
<snip>
> No worse than buying equipment from a company that could be bankrupt and
> no longer making parts to repair it the next day - Actually quite the
> same thing, really.
> 
Generally, reverse engineering mechanical hardware is easier than
reverse engineering M$ software especially since patents for the m.h.
will contain a full set of drawings showing how the item is machined and
constructed. My problem with M$ software is the deliberate obfuscation
and secrecy that surrounds the source code. If BG took the unlikely step
of releasing all M$ s.c. with its original comments I'd be a lot happier.

> Now, using Windows for something like military operations or running a
> space ship or something is IMO a horribly stupid idea.
> 
:-) no comment

> But if it's just money? Sure. People make those sorts of decisions
> wisely every day. They're betting on business inertia, that MS isn't
> going to go bankrupt without a whole lot of people knowing well in
> advance. They're also betting that Microsoft wouldn't be a huge
> successful software company without learning how not to change their
> licensing at a whim to prevent everyone using their software from
> continuing to use their software, for example.
> 
The particular case that I used is a law firm. It's not just money, it's
people's lives and livelihoods.

> Plus, of course, formats change. You can have the most open format in
> the world stored on 9-track tape, and you're going to have a heck of a
> time reading it back in 2020. Moving away from Microsoft formats isn't
> going to be a whole lot different than moving away from punched cards.
> 
Sorry. Not a valid argument. You've confused physical format with coded
format.

> When you think about it, in *this* respect, the fact that MS *is*
> monopolistic is a good thing, in much the same way that smugglers can
> offer better prices on their wares. :-)
> 
ROTFLMAO. When M$ lowers its prices to those charged by the
GNU/Linux/FSF community then I'll agree with you. M$ prices are higher
than they need be _because_ it is a near monopoly. (Note: I am not
suggesting they should give their products away - everybody's got to
eat.) Using your analogy of smugglers, right now M$ is offering vin de
pays at champagne prices (plus FUD tax) and the man in the street is
buying because he's been told (by M$) that the vintage wine that my lot
is selling is worthless because you need to be a master sommelier just
to drink it and it can't be that good anyway since it doesn't cost as
much as theirs.

Finally, back to the majority point - I run and recommend Linux because
80% of the world's supercomputers run on it. The other 20% sure as hell
don't use M$.

John
-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

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47f0eec5@news.povray.org...
> Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
> now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
> expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
> even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

Hey, shouldn't your other nickname be Orchid Vista SP1 now, rather than 
Orchid XP V8 ;)
And when did you get patched anyway?

G.

-- 
*****************************
http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
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