Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! ... also many other expressions indicating extreme
frustration.
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? The following is a typical example.

I am in the process of assisting with a staged migration of a legal
practice's system from you-know-what to the One True OS and, today, got
hijacked by their Office Manager whilst enjoying lunch in their office
canteen.
Despite the fact that the partners had made the decision to go ahead
with the migration (and that decision is irrevocable); despite the fact
that they would save money; despite  the fact that they would be
considerably more secure and resilient, this idiot decided to fight a
rearguard action with _me_ using M$'s business success as an indicator
of the strength of their OS. I suppose he chose me as messenger rather
than face up to those who pay his salary but FGS why not at least use
examples of where Windows gets it right.
It was impossible to get him to listen to any rational reasoning because
each time I raised a point, back came the pat retort that M$ was now one
of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world. In the end I
gave up and to my shame left him with the retort that the Nazi party was
the biggest political organisation in Germany in the thirties but that
didn't make them a force for good.

I suspect I may have made an enemy.

John
(listening to Enya's Memory Of Trees to calm himself down)

-- 
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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Doctor John 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? 

Because non-technical people don't know about that stuff. They just know 
that it can't be *too* bad if that many people are using it.  I.e., they 
look at the users, and trust the opinion of those who most got it right.

It's not science, it's politics.

> with the migration (and that decision is irrevocable)

It's a transition, not a migration. A migration returns again next year 
to where they started. ;-)

[I had a boss that was almost as anal about that word as Warp is about 
cut&paste. ;-]

-- 
   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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Darren New wrote:
> 
> Because non-technical people don't know about that stuff. They just know 
> that it can't be *too* bad if that many people are using it.  I.e., they 
> look at the users, and trust the opinion of those who most got it right.
> 
> It's not science, it's politics.
> 

Practically 100% of people talk bs every once in a while, so it can't be 
too bad.

:p

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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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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