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Evil Microsoft
- Thread starter AppleMatt
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Ah...All this reminds me of a little thing that happened between me and microsuck. Back then in '97. My dad bought me a copy of encarta 97 through macwharehouse. So when i get the cd and pop it in install everything i open it. Encarta 97 was a two cd pack( ie you had to had to eject the cd snd pop in disc # 2 in to get to a ceretain part of the app) The disc # 1 was mac but the disc #2 was a windows disc. So my dad called microsuck and told them about our problem with the mix up. They said that couldnt give us a replacement because i opened the box. WTF is that? Of course I opened the box. How was i to ****en supposed to use it? My dad got pissed at them and we just returned the dics to macwharehouse and bought the groiler encyclopedia. 
This isn't specifically about Microsoft, but remember the flap when there were manufacturing flaws in the Pentium processors, maybe back in 1995 or so? That was pretty funny for me to watch.
Of course, the Classic Calculator DA told you that one minus one isn't zero...
Of course, the Classic Calculator DA told you that one minus one isn't zero...
businesses use windows because of IT departments, they don't all want to lose of their jobs, so they recommend the option which needs the most maintenence
consumers use windows because they don't know there are alternatives, and if they do know, they don't know how or why they are better and opt for the cheaper machine or the machine their used to
regarding the maintenence thing, a major factor for consumers, in windows, 95% of the programs you install create an entry in a file called 'msconfig' instructing windows to open that program in some form or another (tray, background etc...) on startup. the average joe who reads email and writes stuff on word, may not install much, but it does add up. many years ago, i had a 475MHz(not bad at the time) running windows 98, and about 6 or 7 months after buying it, startup time had slow from around a minute to 7 minutes, and the computers responsiveness was (not an exagguration) slightly less responsive then my previous computer (25MHz 486). calling any support line, either microsoft or compaq, i was told i needed to purchase more ram, so i raised it from 64MB(again, not bad for the time) to 256MB, and it helped, slightly, but it was still painfully slow. finnaly my uncle tells me about this msconfig program, i open it up, deselect everything, restarted the computer, and the speed tripled. now, its not that big of a deal having it set up to make all those entries in msconfig, but having it in no help manuals, or never mentioning it when calling for support, just because they want you to buy more hardware, which will indirectly give them more $$, is obserd. that may have been a long time ago, but i have a relativly new windows system laying around, running on xp pro, and that has not changed, it still makes useless entries in msconfig, and no help or support will tell you that.
consumers use windows because they don't know there are alternatives, and if they do know, they don't know how or why they are better and opt for the cheaper machine or the machine their used to
regarding the maintenence thing, a major factor for consumers, in windows, 95% of the programs you install create an entry in a file called 'msconfig' instructing windows to open that program in some form or another (tray, background etc...) on startup. the average joe who reads email and writes stuff on word, may not install much, but it does add up. many years ago, i had a 475MHz(not bad at the time) running windows 98, and about 6 or 7 months after buying it, startup time had slow from around a minute to 7 minutes, and the computers responsiveness was (not an exagguration) slightly less responsive then my previous computer (25MHz 486). calling any support line, either microsoft or compaq, i was told i needed to purchase more ram, so i raised it from 64MB(again, not bad for the time) to 256MB, and it helped, slightly, but it was still painfully slow. finnaly my uncle tells me about this msconfig program, i open it up, deselect everything, restarted the computer, and the speed tripled. now, its not that big of a deal having it set up to make all those entries in msconfig, but having it in no help manuals, or never mentioning it when calling for support, just because they want you to buy more hardware, which will indirectly give them more $$, is obserd. that may have been a long time ago, but i have a relativly new windows system laying around, running on xp pro, and that has not changed, it still makes useless entries in msconfig, and no help or support will tell you that.
Have you ever thought about how many jobs are needed, and how much money is generated, because Windows sucks? Utilities, anti-virus, RAM, big hard drives--all fairly expensive things that people buy to appease the insatiable Windows demon. Then there's the people who make/sell/market all that stuff--the companies that make money shipping it from here to there. A lot of people depend on Windows to suck in order to keep their jobs. It's really pretty scary.
You can buy system utilities and anti-virus for the Mac, but most people don't do it because they don't need to. On the Windows side of the fence these are always top-sellers. Look at Amazon's (or anybody's) top 10 sellers and half of it is always versions of Windows and system utilities/anti-virus.
Obviously Macs also have RAM and hard drives. Windows requires you to upgrade both at a faster rate than the Mac. RAM is part of the "tweaking Windows voodoo." If your system slows down you just pop in more RAM. It probably won't help, but it's a standard reaction. I mentioned hard drives because each version of Windows is much bigger than the last and an OS "upgrade" might require a bigger hard drive. That's probably more true on older computers though where you'd have to upgrade from a 2GB to 5GB to make room for 98, then a much bigger one for XP.
I don't think the RAM and hard drive points hold much water, Horrortaxi.
OS X sees huge returns in performance the more RAM you feed it, and the base install is well over a gigabyte these days, with Panther nearing 2.
I agree that antivirus and system maintenance utilities are much more important on the PC side, though.
OS X sees huge returns in performance the more RAM you feed it, and the base install is well over a gigabyte these days, with Panther nearing 2.
I agree that antivirus and system maintenance utilities are much more important on the PC side, though.
The hard drive issue is dated and throwing RAM at Windows is a very common way to try to make it run better--although the slowdown is from haystacking so it won't quite do what it's expected to do.
My point was just that there are a lot of people whose jobs rely on Windows sucking, and a lot of revenue is generated because Windows sucks.
My point was just that there are a lot of people whose jobs rely on Windows sucking, and a lot of revenue is generated because Windows sucks.
post or essay?
Microsoft the lesser of two evils my ***. First and foremost the very nature of MS and its culture is based on arrogance personified in its executives. That doesnt mean I dont think Jobs isnt an arrogant prick. I do. The big difference is that MS can flaunt it in the market place Apple cannot. (Jobs and Gates are 2 sides of the same quarter. I think it market share was reversed Jobs as be just as big of an *** as gates.) For MS to stay on top for the time being all they have to do is nothing. Truly. They dont have to do a dang thing. For Apple to even stay alive they need to be better then the rest. They have no choice in the matter. Its either that or close up shop.
As to what is evil about MS
Patches......to.....many....God $(*@&(........PATCHES!!
ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Honestly though. If I have to ever do the mass patch shuffle for the 164 machines we did week before last in this office I'm going to go on a cross country kill'n spree at every MS office around.
*looks up* Starting off with the folks on the 9th floor. We have a MS office 5 floors above me. My dream is that someday Billy Boy shows up and I end up in an elevator with him. I'd hock a luggey on the guy big time. I despise him and Ballmer with a passion. (It could be argued an unhealthy one at that.)
MS could be a good software company. I truly believe it. Ive met more then a few cool MS employees with your occasional snotty a-wipe thrown in for good measure.
If the heads of MS were fired tomorrow and the creative juices of the people working there were really let loose I firmly believe something cool would be released by MS. As it stands once every few years MS squats and deposits crap like XP. (To be fair Win2K rocks if it werent for the blasted patches again!)
Windows. What can really be said about Windows? The experience aint that great. Its passable as a operating system but really thats all that can be said about it. Until 2K I loathed it. I firmly believe that the staunchest supporters of the Mac have to be people that are IT\IS based. We deal with the crap MS puts out on a day in\out basis. For me its a matter of I dont want to deal with the same crap I deal with in the office when I get home.
Actually when I went to NT4 way back when I never touched 9x ever again. The developers of 9x should be charged with crimes against humanity. Check that I mean developers of ME, 98 is somewhat tolerable as a rash can be tolerated. I went NT, then 2K. My god a decent OS by MS. What a concept.
I looked forward to XP until the first shoe dropped. Product activation. Ummm I think NOT. I dont need to be treated like a criminal when I havent even done anything.
Then I finally had the chance to use XP RC1-2 for a few months. It was OK but looking at the overall system usage. The GUI itself took anywhere from 5-20% of system resources when just sitting idle. WTH. The final shoe dropped when I discovered that XP home version is basically XP Pro with a crap load of items that the business users needs disabled. Its not as if there were separate tracks for XP home and XP Pro. They are nearly identical OSs with simply key features disabled. So I blew away XP and went back to 2K and havent looked at it since. XP can be functional if you tweak the crap out of it. Otherwise just go 2K and you have XP without: fast user switching, fast startup, the fisher Price GUI which kinda grew on me but not at the sacrifice of 5-20% of my system resources, and system restore which if you think about it isnt much more then what an ERD does in 2K and NT. The only thing about XP that did impress me was its software support. I had multiple DOS games that ran nearly flawless on XP. I have to admit I sat there with a crap eating grin on my face for at least 5 minutes as I played Wing Commander III. Well done MS.
XP is a lot of fluff. A .5 upgrade of 2K. And I resent MS for even squatting .I mean releasing such a product.
Again we get back to what is evil about MS. The only thing evil about them is their executives. Get rid of these guys: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/bod/ And you have a chance at a good company. As it stands the only reason MS exists isnt to make good software its to make as much money as possible. Software is secondary on the minds of these guys. They only release or update a product if it drives the bottom line.
Someone once told me Microsoft is a marketing company that just happens to make software. I laughed at the time. Now I truly believe it.
PS- Um sorry for the 2 page babbling. You get me started on MS I can go on for 4+ pages. I have one such example on ZDNET. I think it was about 5 pages long.
Microsoft the lesser of two evils my ***. First and foremost the very nature of MS and its culture is based on arrogance personified in its executives. That doesnt mean I dont think Jobs isnt an arrogant prick. I do. The big difference is that MS can flaunt it in the market place Apple cannot. (Jobs and Gates are 2 sides of the same quarter. I think it market share was reversed Jobs as be just as big of an *** as gates.) For MS to stay on top for the time being all they have to do is nothing. Truly. They dont have to do a dang thing. For Apple to even stay alive they need to be better then the rest. They have no choice in the matter. Its either that or close up shop.
As to what is evil about MS
Patches......to.....many....God $(*@&(........PATCHES!!
ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
Honestly though. If I have to ever do the mass patch shuffle for the 164 machines we did week before last in this office I'm going to go on a cross country kill'n spree at every MS office around.
*looks up* Starting off with the folks on the 9th floor. We have a MS office 5 floors above me. My dream is that someday Billy Boy shows up and I end up in an elevator with him. I'd hock a luggey on the guy big time. I despise him and Ballmer with a passion. (It could be argued an unhealthy one at that.)
MS could be a good software company. I truly believe it. Ive met more then a few cool MS employees with your occasional snotty a-wipe thrown in for good measure.
If the heads of MS were fired tomorrow and the creative juices of the people working there were really let loose I firmly believe something cool would be released by MS. As it stands once every few years MS squats and deposits crap like XP. (To be fair Win2K rocks if it werent for the blasted patches again!)
Windows. What can really be said about Windows? The experience aint that great. Its passable as a operating system but really thats all that can be said about it. Until 2K I loathed it. I firmly believe that the staunchest supporters of the Mac have to be people that are IT\IS based. We deal with the crap MS puts out on a day in\out basis. For me its a matter of I dont want to deal with the same crap I deal with in the office when I get home.
Actually when I went to NT4 way back when I never touched 9x ever again. The developers of 9x should be charged with crimes against humanity. Check that I mean developers of ME, 98 is somewhat tolerable as a rash can be tolerated. I went NT, then 2K. My god a decent OS by MS. What a concept.
I looked forward to XP until the first shoe dropped. Product activation. Ummm I think NOT. I dont need to be treated like a criminal when I havent even done anything.
Then I finally had the chance to use XP RC1-2 for a few months. It was OK but looking at the overall system usage. The GUI itself took anywhere from 5-20% of system resources when just sitting idle. WTH. The final shoe dropped when I discovered that XP home version is basically XP Pro with a crap load of items that the business users needs disabled. Its not as if there were separate tracks for XP home and XP Pro. They are nearly identical OSs with simply key features disabled. So I blew away XP and went back to 2K and havent looked at it since. XP can be functional if you tweak the crap out of it. Otherwise just go 2K and you have XP without: fast user switching, fast startup, the fisher Price GUI which kinda grew on me but not at the sacrifice of 5-20% of my system resources, and system restore which if you think about it isnt much more then what an ERD does in 2K and NT. The only thing about XP that did impress me was its software support. I had multiple DOS games that ran nearly flawless on XP. I have to admit I sat there with a crap eating grin on my face for at least 5 minutes as I played Wing Commander III. Well done MS.
XP is a lot of fluff. A .5 upgrade of 2K. And I resent MS for even squatting .I mean releasing such a product.
Again we get back to what is evil about MS. The only thing evil about them is their executives. Get rid of these guys: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/bod/ And you have a chance at a good company. As it stands the only reason MS exists isnt to make good software its to make as much money as possible. Software is secondary on the minds of these guys. They only release or update a product if it drives the bottom line.
Someone once told me Microsoft is a marketing company that just happens to make software. I laughed at the time. Now I truly believe it.
PS- Um sorry for the 2 page babbling. You get me started on MS I can go on for 4+ pages. I have one such example on ZDNET. I think it was about 5 pages long.
The main reason each version of Windows is larger is because of the driver cache is expanding with each release of Windows. Yes there is some bloat going on there but for the most part it comes back to drivers. The ONLY thing going for MS is their hardware support. There isn't anything out there that rivals MS for the amount of hardware it supports out of the box. However this can be a blessing and a curse all at once. I've run into more then a few instances where MS uses its own drivers for a PCMCIA NIC and refuses to use the ones that are newer provided by the hardware manufacturer. I've had to "trick" windows into using it, which is always amusing.
Also there is something to be said that W2K install is somewhere in the 500MB range and WinXP is in the 800MB-1GB range. These systems typically require a 300Mhz CPU minimum to function decently. (However I've run 2K on a 166Mhz system before. Its not fun but doable.) Typically 300Mhz Intel based systems have at least a 4GB HD for a 300Mhz system. You can typically get a ballpark figure as to what size hard drive you are running by the CPU speed because drives are typically purchased at the time of the computer sale.
My point? Just that Windows won't really run well on anything less then a 300Mhz system which almost makes OS size a moot point.
If you are talking a system of less then 3 years of age its even less relevant with hard drive sizes ranging from 10GB to 120+GB in size.
Re: post or essay?
I wonder...if someone installed every single patch that MS offered, how much of the original code would be left?
Re: Re: post or essay?
Small trivia note about MS. I don't know if Apple does this with their updates but MS service packs actually get code names. Windows 2000 SP1 was called Astroid. I dont know off the top of my head what the other SPs were called.
Maybe its just me but if you have to gave a service pack a code name that not a good thing. *shrugs*
Small trivia note about MS. I don't know if Apple does this with their updates but MS service packs actually get code names. Windows 2000 SP1 was called Astroid. I dont know off the top of my head what the other SPs were called.
Maybe its just me but if you have to gave a service pack a code name that not a good thing. *shrugs*
Re: Re: Re: post or essay?
-SiliconAddict
Well, MS departed the x.x.x numbering convention with '95. And therefore switched the marketing names of minor updates to "Service Pack", thought to be fair, a service pack is more analogous to a middle point (x.#.x) update, not exacly minor, but not a win2k to XP upgrade.
Yes, Apple has code names for it's updates (Service Packs). I'm going from memory here, but with Jaguar, there was "Blue", "Yellow", "Pink" I know I got the details wrong here, but they used colors to codename the 10.2.# updates.
-SiliconAddict
Well, MS departed the x.x.x numbering convention with '95. And therefore switched the marketing names of minor updates to "Service Pack", thought to be fair, a service pack is more analogous to a middle point (x.#.x) update, not exacly minor, but not a win2k to XP upgrade.
Yes, Apple has code names for it's updates (Service Packs). I'm going from memory here, but with Jaguar, there was "Blue", "Yellow", "Pink" I know I got the details wrong here, but they used colors to codename the 10.2.# updates.
Re: Re: Re: Re: post or essay?
Here are your names... Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
MR. PINK
Why am I Mr. Pink?
JOE
Because[...]
MR. PINK
Why can't we pick our own colors?
JOE
No way, no way. Tried it once, it doesn't work. You get four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black. But they don't know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way, I pick. You're Mr. Pink. Be thankful you're not Mr. Yellow.
<--That's Mr. Yellow!
JOE
Here are your names... Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
MR. PINK
Why am I Mr. Pink?
JOE
Because[...]
MR. PINK
Why can't we pick our own colors?
JOE
No way, no way. Tried it once, it doesn't work. You get four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black. But they don't know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way, I pick. You're Mr. Pink. Be thankful you're not Mr. Yellow.
<--That's Mr. Yellow!
-idea_hamster
Reservoir Dogs?
It's either that, or somebody'd better lay off mixing caffeine with Ibuprofen on an empty stomach
Reservoir Dogs?
It's either that, or somebody'd better lay off mixing caffeine with Ibuprofen on an empty stomach
Ok, if you started with 2gb of hard drive space, you're running something in the range of a Pentium 100-150. Thats like 1994 land, OS X or Windows 2k or XP will not run well on any computer from 1994. Nor should you expect them to. Thats 10 years ago.
Adding RAM is voodoo? How is adding ram voodoo? Any platform will benefit from more ram. I guess the Principal of Locality Reference doesn't apply to Macs.
Anyway, lets look at space requirements. From Apple's site for OS X: 3gb recommended.
Windows XP: 1.5 Gb Recommended.
Yep, those Windows updates keep getting bigger and bigger.
Please go check your facts before you start spreading misinformation around.
Microsoft is far from evil, they are a company, a very big one, they are out to make money, not to make the "best computing platform around" and neither is Apple. For all they say when it comes down to it, they want to make the most money using the least amount of expedeture. If they were in microsoft's position, with so many products in so many different fields, they would be the same way.
Can anybody name one large company in size range such as Microsoft that is nice?
You got it!
I always love moments that show how it's life that imitates art rather than the other way around -- it keeps my faith in human innovation high.
You know, I've always heard tales of Steve's methods, as they said in the Great War, "pour encourager les autres" -- a euphamism for shooting deserters/cowards/Yosarian. This included that story about some Apple guy who left a Jaguar screen shot on his shareable files and it wound up on the 'net. Fired.Originally posted by Powerbook G5
But that's how Apple motivates its software team to innovate
I suppose when you have a devoted following, you don't need to put up with mediocrity. I'm not sure I could really enjoy myself working at Apple knowing that I get "zero strikes" before I hit the bricks.
-idea_hamster
Well, that depends on how big the strike is.
At pretty much any corporate environment, if you punched your boss - or even a coworker - you'd be hitting the bricks pretty fast.
This screenshot incident would fall into violating company policy for trade secrets, not to mention violating an NDA. That's a pretty big double strike.
You're right. I thought about it and you're right. It wasn't a small thing -- and I don't think that it was ever clear why this guy had screenshots on his home computer anyway.
Oh, and that punching my co-workers in the face? Don't tempt me, man -- sometimes people just beg for it!
"Oh...yeah...I remember that print job you asked for two weeks ago...it's odd how some of it didn't print out."
"And you didn't tell anyone? OK, for future reference, this is not called 'odd'. This is called 'AN EMERGENCY!'"
For crying out loud! My point was that a lot of people's jobs depend on Microsoft dropping the ball. Because Windows has so many problems a lot of people outside of Microsoft make a lot of money. It's just an interesting thing I realized. Nobody has given a rebuttal to that. I've conceded the hard drive thing already, but the RAM voodoo is valid. Sure a system will benefit from as much RAM as you can give it, but feeding it RAM when it starts to slow down doing the same things it's always done is voodoo and it's very common. It may work for a while, until the registry bloats up some more. I've done my research, unfortunately, as a Windows user from 3.1 to XP. I know what I'm talking about. This is all out of context now though.
I've worked at an insurance brokerage for 5 years now. (Dang has it been that long. Geesh.) I've run almost the entire spectrum of Windows OS starting off with Win95, going to Win98, then to Win2000. Memory in the 9x world is nearly pointless above 256. The system doesnt really take advantage of it. This is from in-house benchmarks. We have, check that HAD they are now citrix based, some massive apps that ate system resources like a hog. It was nasty. Win98, to be blunt, did NOT work for us. Didnt matter if it was 128, 256 or 512 MB of RAM. The system didnt take advantage of the RAM and consequently users were rebooting at least 3-5 times a day because their systems were hanging due to lack of resources. It wasnt pretty. We moved to Windows 2000. Simply put night and day. Our first crop of boxes was Dell GX110s with 550Mhz, 10GB, and 128MB of RAM. We have gone through 2 iterations of Dells now at the GX260 level with 1.7Ghz, 20GB, and still 128MB of RAM. Yes RAM does make a difference and generally your sweet spot for an NT based system for basic application use is 256-512MB of RAM. Its when your system starts paging to your hard disk is when you run into problems. The Windows OS itself generally doesnt take much more then 64MB of RAM. I say generally because you have all kinds of other services running in the background so your results may very. Windows slowdown really starts becoming noticeable when you start hitting your pagefile often and always. General rule of thumb if you are hitting your page file on bootup without having more then 1 or 2 apps open its time to get a RAM upgrade. Many times it is warranted. An older system may have a ton of TSR sitting in the background that have been loaded over the years. May have new, more memory intensive games that require more RAM. Also keep in mind that those $500 puters you see in Best Buy ads and on line are most likely packed with the bare minimum or, god help them, shared memory with the video card (HP and Compaq LOVED to pull this.) They give you the minimum so it looks like you are saving a bundle on that brand new computer purchase but surprise, surprise 6 months to a year later when you have massive amounts of apps loaded on your system and you are getting slowdown.
Not because the OS is the problem but because the OEM cut corners. When someone says get a RAM upgrade if a computer is a few years old or was lacking in the first place it very well could improve performance. It all depends on whos giving the advice. A tech who knows his/her stuff or some fartknocker that wouldnt know a CD-ROM from a CF card.
I do agree with you about an industry being built up around windows defects and problems (Look at the Pocket PC and 3rd party software to fill in the gaps.) but to be honest I went back over my metrics for the last year for helpdesk calls this evening. We have them categorized by type here (Yah for paperwork.) and to be honest less then 20% of the problems were OS related. A good majority were from 3rd party software such as Lotus Notes (Dont ask. I have no say in the e-mail thats a corp decision.) and our faxing software with a scattering of server hardware problems in there and your occasional MS-patch-the-crap-out-of-everything-job. Windows 2000 really has been rock solid with a few exceptions. Bad hard drives in laptops and such.
Could it be better? Sure. My manager use to say the nature of IT was to put ourselves out of business by making the place run itself. Would Apple do this? No clue because Ive never seen a large scale enterprise environment with nothing but Mac. Show me a business with several thousand systems, automated software distribution systems with remote desktop capabilities for support, a rigorous training program to get users up to speed on the Mac GUI and I will be a believer.
Sit back, and have a read of this article, it will teach you some things. Also go here and you'll find plenty to read. I'm not naming names here, I'm just aiming this at people who still think "Golly gee, M$ is just trying to run a business" or "What's wrong with M$?". Wake UP- There's a LOT wrong with them, just read about it. Business is business, but M$ does not and will not play fair.
I've used PCs since the PC first came out: the IBM PC XT. I've used every version of windows since 3.1, and I've had such a better eXPerience with MacOS (X and before.)
I've used PCs since the PC first came out: the IBM PC XT. I've used every version of windows since 3.1, and I've had such a better eXPerience with MacOS (X and before.)