8 May
2000
8 May
'00
9:05 a.m.
There were indeed some "problems" with the first Office for '95 suite on
top
of the "upgrade" version of the first release of '95. These were fixed
with
a download, however.
How the activity of a few morons who think cyber-vandalism is funny ties
into this thread, I don't know, but I'd certainly vote to make a spectacle
of all virus-progenitors by dipping them, slowly, and feet first, into a hot
solder pot during halftime at the superbowl.
I think people who send cute little pictures, and unsolicited jokes, etc,
ought to be charged for their transmitted bandwidth by their ISP rather than
getting a flat rate. If bandwidth continues to be wasted like that, it will
eventually cost us all by the bit. People who open email from sources they
don't recognize are running a risk similar to unprotected sex with unknown
people. People who open attachments to such email get what they deserve.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc(a)armigeron.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 07, 2000 10:27 PM
Subject: Re: I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'
Microsoft
office
wish
(or
to
but
but
I'm replying to several messages, all by Richard Erlacher, here in one
message:
> I'm often puzzled by the complaints about "crashes" under Win9x and
NT.
> My notebook, running Win95, hasn't crashed, although it's been in almost
> constant use since early '97 when I bought it. Now, the machines into
> which I routinely stick cards that may or may not work, along with
> products that may or may not work, both hardware and software, . . .
well,
they have had
other histories, but it's seldom Microsoft software that's
to blame for that.
And I've run Win95 for a year with no problems. It wasn't until
Office was installed on the machine did it lock up and
I wasted two days
trying to reinstall Win95, from scratch, before giving up and going to
Linux
so I could continue my job.
Hardware didn't change. Just the addition of Microsoft Office.
> I've never bought a license for a DEC OS, but I doubt it cost under
$100.
> There are Linux versions one can buy in
ready-to-install form for under
> $100, but those will cost $1M, at least, at 50-cents-an-hour before
> they're working properly and that's only if you're a real *nix expert.
> What's more, NO *nix version offers the features that make the Win9x
> desirable for home computer use. There are lots of books out there for
> *nix users, but I've yet to see a "{insert vendor name here} Office for
> Dummies" book for LINUX, though I hear there is a "LINUX for Dummies"
book
out there.
So I assume that the *only* use a home computer is used for is for suite software. Okay.
Now, how much damage did the ILOVEYOU virus do? How much will it cost
to
fix the damage that ILOVEYOU virus did?
More to the point (not really using any office suite program) the major
attraction of an office suite is that the different applications can embed
files from each other into a single document, right? That you can take a
spreadsheet (or portion thereof) and embed it into a word processor
document. Am I correct in that? There's nothing inherent in the design
of
Windows that precludes such from being done in other
systems, other than a
lack of economic insentive and the fear of bring the wrath of Microsoft
down
upon you and being crushed out of existance (aside:
Cisco has as much, if
not more, control in the router industry as Microsoft in software yet
aren't
nearly as hated as they make very good products and
when they buy out a
company, they tend to actually use the technology they bought out.
Microsoft has a hit-or-miss reputation with software reliability and even
when they buy out a company they are equally likely to sink the technolgy
as
they are to market it).
> Many people think that lobotomizing MS would help the industry. I am
not
among them,
however, because, at least for now, MS is the only
organization capable of mustering the talent and resources to generate
application software that pretty much functions as it should within the
framework of this extremely complex OS.
I doubt that. The free BSDs or Linux is a good counter example. And if
you wish to discount the operating system, there is Apache. And if you to discount servers, the GIMP. While it isn't up
to the functionality of
Photoshop it certainly does anything a home user would want it to do.
Nature abhoors a vaccum and if Microsoft is gone, it will be filled in
rather quickly. Ding dong the witch is dead and all that.
> Even if someone else could do it, which I seriously doubt, it's unlikely
> anyone can come up with an OS capable of competing against Windows, if
the
same tests are
to be applied that have been used to determine MS'
practices monopolistic or anticompetitive.
I don't follow your logic here. Which tests are you referring to?
Outside of marketing, there is no technical reason why a Windows-like Mac-like) graphical user interface can't be built
upon X Windows (the
primary graphic sub-system used on Unix workstations) and applications
built
to that interface. Embedding documents into other
documents isn't
dependant
upon the underlying operating system---OLE, COM and
DCOM are interface and
data exchange/understanding issues, not operating system dependant issues.
> If the complete source code
> for Windows is to be mandated by the courts to be made available to
anyone
> who wishes to write applications for Windows, MS
is correct in demanding
> that the code be released only to companies who, including all their
> employees as individuals, be barred for a period of, say, ten years,
from
participating
in the production of any operating system which might be
used as a competitor to Microsoft's OS products, including the drivers,
utilities, or ancillary programs, e.g. a browser.
Why? Such draconian measures would be such that you might not get very
many companies (or programmers) willing to even consider such a deal.
> If they're to "fix" this thing in a permanent way, then they will have
> legislate a solution which would require that no
person involved in the
> development of any major software product be permitted to communicate
with
anyone else,
not his/her spouse, offspring, superiors or subordinates,
except in permanently recorded written form for a period not less than
five years beyond the end of the economic life of that product. I doubt
that will happen.
Again, why do you think this?
> Well, we may get to see whether the courts come up with a prudent and
> reasonable solution. The obvious solution to break up MS won't help, > it will serve to octuple the cost of both
software and hardware. It
will
> set back the industry a decade as it tries to
find a substitute for MS
in
> a market where really only one OS and Office
automation suite is going
to
> be effective. If you don't see that through
your haze of rage at
> Microsoft for doing something you weren't smart enough or diligent
enough
> to do yourself, then perhaps you can come up with
a potential successor
OS
> to WIndows. Remember, though, that if MS simply
closed its doors
tomorrow,
it
wouldn't harm MS as much as it would harm the end user.
Personally, I feel that the two worst things to happen to our industry
have been Unix and Microsoft. I won't go into why I think Unix is bad, Microsoft has definitely kept the industry back
technically, if only with
entrenching the poor design of the IBM PC as a standard for nearly 20
years.
Hell, if this sets the industry back 20 years
that'll be the best thing to
happen! Imagine, decent hardware! Software that actually works! Less
slavish reliance on computers! That's bad?
Another bad aspect of Microsoft is the proliferation of file formats.
Microsoft Word 6 format is imcompatible with Microsoft Word 95 format is
imcompatible with Microsoft Word 98 format is imcompatible with Microsoft
Word 2000 format. Sure Microsoft MAY make a utility available for
upgrading
the document but they don't make it easy and
heaven forbid you find a
cache
of documents seven years old in the backups that is in
Word 6 format.
It's not hard to create a file format that is extensible, nor forward
and
backward compible. To bring this back to topic, I
have extensive
documentation on IFF, initially designed and documented in 1986 for the
creation of files that can be extensible and forward/backward compatible,
such that a document created with a program now can be opened with a
program
written 10 years ago and have it not crash (or at
least be able to do
something with the file and not loose the extra information).
And it certainly doesn't take one megabyte to store a single page of
information. That is just plain insane.
were
jpero(a)pop.cgocable.net
Again, to bring this back on topic, there have been plenty of operating
systems distributed in ROM---AmigaOS, QNX, OS-9 and the original MacOS What I was thinking of is a untoucheable and
invisible OS and for
managing data is data users created only. Applications and any little
utils, drivers and hardware all are seen as "modules". Drivers and
hardware go hand in hand and is therefore as hardware module set. For
applications and small utils, they would be software modules.
That would be a WONDERFUL idea ... an OS distributed on ROM. I trust
you'll start on that immediately. all contained in ROM, were/are ROMmable and
extensible. And all are older
than 10 years old. Even MS-DOS came in ROM format for some computers
(although I'm not sure if it ran out of ROM, or was copied to RAM before
running).
-spc (Have you actually USED anything other than Microsoft products?)