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You know, it's the same with websites.

You have a bunch of varying UIs with the same basic principals but not really following any set methods very well. Why don't we see more people whining about websites being different?

Seems like a lot of developers, at least for windows apps, treat their UIs like website designers treat their sites. I'll do it *my* way and make the UI interesting and not some bland normalcy

I agree completely about hardware utilities.
For example, motherboard manufacturers: when are they going to realize that not all people buying their products are 12 year olds that want a "cool" (see: http://marbleorchards.com/DigiPics/Easy%20Tune%20Specs.jpg ) looking app to monitor fan speeds, temperatures or set fsb. A simple, plain, elegant window with some tabs would be much better - one that you can minimize to tray and doesn't take 5 seconds to display and 30MB of ram because of all those useless bitmaps it has to load.

This link has nothing to do with Linux, that comment is a troll.

Edited 2008-06-01 17:43 UTC

Because it is what is used by the vast majority of the worlds population?

yes, and if they want it to CONTINUE TO BE USED by a majority they should take the time and effort to improve their product themselves instead of spending so much time adding in DRM which their customers don't even want.

What does that have to do with anything? We were talking about helping out the product team of a commercial company...

That's rule 23 of OSNews, I'm afraid: if a post mentions Microsoft in any way, shape, or form then 65% of all comments *must* contain comments that would have been considered "old meme" 5 years ago (65% is a minimum).

This is actually completely amazing me. It is completely out of context in any way, shape or form from either the parent comment (mine) or the original article. Someone literally clicked the comments section, completely ignored both the link, summery, and virtually every other comment on the page. He then proceeded to write something which might be considered mildly insightful if it WERE taken in the right context, and it was still 2006.

That is bad enough, what blows my mind is that there were 3 other people who saw something completely inane, but noticing it had Microsoft and DRM in the same paragraph, decided it was clever, and voted it up.

I remember when we used to make fun of the slashdot readership. Guess what guys, we have become yet another gibbering horde of idiots.

Sadly, that sort of thing has become the rule rather than the exception here. The standard seems to be: either you're rabidly, dogmatically opposed to everything that Microsoft does - or - prepare to be labeled a Microsoft shill.

Often times, the comment score is only useful as a measure of how strongly the echo chamber effect is in a particular comment thread.

The truly amusing part is that there are posters here who appear to be steadfastly-convinced that OSNews is absolutely crawling with Microsoft advocates. Anyone who believes that should seriously head over to the ArsTechnica "Battlefront" forum and look up the posting histories of folks like PeterB, Paul Hill, seta, Venture, EvilMerlin, or pdampier (who is in fact an employee of Microsoft).

I think we are still doing somewhat better than that. We squabble and we argue. And yeah, there is more talking and less listening going on these days. But I have a hunch that there is still hope for us. ;-)

I put on an asbestos suit every time I post a comment

BTW, to the person who modded me now: thank you, I could not have asked for any more effective proof of my point.

I agree with you. I'd rather see a community improve something which is OWNED by the community instead of them helping a big company which has done pretty much everything it could to hurt innovation - and in that sense, that same community. And as a psychologist, I well know past behavior is often the best predictor of future behavior.

Maybe I'm extreme, but I think it's bad to support proprietary software in any way. I think the whole concept is bad for humanity. Information and knowledge should be free, and by extend should the infrastructure on which it is transported and spread.

If you feel so strongly that all ideas and knowledge should be free, and also all software should be free please back it up with your actions in your profession: do what you trained for and spent lots of time and energy and money to acquire for free, and only for free. What, you can't do that? Ok, then stop insisting others must give things away for free!

Now, if you want to help a proprietary company make something that's better for end-users, sometimes you have to tell them "Hey, this sucks, I'd like this better, because it makes more sense to me!" and sometimes you honestly can't expect to get anything out of it besides the personal satisfaction that at least you made your wants/needs clear to the company(s) in question. Of course, it is entirely possible that their wants/needs and yours don't coincide: to which I reply, go back to the Open Source Software you support, and support it by doing what's needed to make it the way you want it. Of course, there's lots of things that aren't available for free, because there hasn't been enough interest in those that would do things for free to bother with it. In the end, everything that exists has a price: you just get to decide what price you're willing/able to pay, and perhaps whom has to pay it, as it isn't always a one-sided deal as to the people that pay the price.

Note: developers are part of the infrastructure of which you speak: this ties it back to the put-up-or-shutup dare. I think OSS is great, and those that voluntarily contribute to it are great for doing it, but in no manner would I insist that they do it on any other than their own agreed-upon terms. If they are lucky enough to get paid to do it, everyone wins, but demanding it be truly free in all senses is unfair.

Edited 2008-06-01 21:47 UTC

Not necessary, really. Red Hat has managed this better than anyone else. They do not work for free. And yet they do manage to keep ideas and knowledge free. It is a delicate balancing act, to be sure, Jonathan. But they have managed it. We need to consider how this beneficial strategy can be proliferated. No one should have to work for no gain. But to be able to work for everyone's gain is a privilege. I do not have the answer. But I think about it every day. Maybe someday I will.

I believe that Superstoned does contribute hard work to the KDE project. I respect him for that.

Clearly, those that are using Windows and want certain things "fixed" (I put that in quotes because many of the things listed in the article aren't bugs, but are requests), have an incentive to report said issues. Who are you to tell them not to do that, or look down on them for doing it? You don't think it's worthwhile to report problems in Windows (because it's not OSS or whatever)? Fine, then don't. That's your choice. But it's others' choice to go ahead and report the problems they find. Your calling these people saps for reporting problems with a closed source product is akin to a closed source dev calling an open source dev a sap for working for free to enrich the pockets of the investors and execs of a company that distributes the resulting OSS product. That's what you sound like when I read your self-righteous, self-congratulatory post.

I get the feeling that what really upsets you about this is that you hate Microsoft (you've said as much in your post), and therefore *want* their products to suck and can't abide any effort to improve their products undertaken by those that use said products.

Oh, and save the self-righteous "owned by the community" bull. The people reporting these UI problems aren't necessarily developers, they are users. And non-dev users aren't part of the "community" that "owns" OSS. For example, I and most I know use Firefox, an open source product, but none of us feel that we are in some "community that owns" Firefox, anymore than we'd feel that we "owned" Opera, IE, or any other closed-source browser. That's because we don't give a damn that the code is OSS. It's just another product.

One last thing: This article has nothing to do with OSS advocacy or your anti-Microsoft crusade. Every time a Microsoft article is posted here, the haters come out of the woodwork to spout the usual lines on how Microsoft sucks and how some OSS alternative is better or the OSS "philosophy" is better, or some other claptrap. When an Linux article is posted, you almost NEVER see some Windows fanboy derailing the thread with anti-Linux BS or pro-MS advocacy. To put is simply: This article is NOT about you. It's about Windows users that want to improve it. Not everything is about you. You want to advocate OSS? Then do it in an appropriate article rather than derailing every single Microsoft article's thread with pro-OSS anti-Microsoft bilge.

Edited 2008-06-02 01:11 UTC

It's not about hate for MS or any other company making and selling proprietary software. Many are decent and are doing a great job. But I sincerely believe the businessmodel behind proprietary software is bad for society. When I write Free, I'm not talking about free but Libre. Not free beer but freedom of thought. The freedom to aquire, share and develop knowledge which can help people. The freedom of political expression. The freedom to do with whatever hardware you bought whatever you want. The only restraint on human freedom should be another person's freedom - no more, no less.

Economically speaking, proprietary software has a tendency to lead to a monopoly. Every economist can tell you - a marginal cost of zero leads to a monopoly. And almost every economist will tell you a monopoly is bad. It raises prices, lowers efficiency and kills innovation. Maybe not immediately, but in the end, it's what happens.

Socially speaking, proprietary software developers have a financial incentive to limit the freedom of their users. They don't HAVE to do it, sure. Some will, some won't. But as long as there is that incentive, as soon as a small company grows into a big company, it becomes more and more likely to happen. And I think that's dangerous, as we slowly begin to depend more and more on computersoftware to express ourselves, to share information, knowledge and art.

So I think economical freedom, the free market economy, is good for people. I also believe personal and political freedom are good for people. Therefore I believe proprietary software is bad for humankind in the long run. Which is why I promote Free Software (Linux/BSD/KDE/Gnome), Free Culture (Blender/Magnatune/Creative Commons) and Free Knowledge (Wikipedia & friends).

MollyC said:

And then superstoned said:

It is not hard to see which of you is letting her hatred get the better of her in this thread.

Edited 2008-06-02 06:43 UTC

Et tu, sbergman27?

You're confusing "hatred" with "frustration". Just once, I'd like to read a Microsoft article on this site without the corresponding thread getting derailed by anti-Microsoft posters into unrelated anti-Microsoft/pro-ABM issues.

I can't even read an article on this site about some new Microsoft product without someone piping in to say, "That's nothing; XYZ company (that most never heard of) did the same thing ten years ago in product ABC (that nobody ever heard of)", thus derailing the thread into who did what first rather than talking about the product itself.

This type of thing goes on and on and on.

Regrading this specific article, the "all information wants to be free, and therefore all software that is used to convey information must be free" argument has nothing to do with this article, and is yet another instance of derailing a Microsoft thread into sideshows.

As for "letting it get the better of me", yes, after the 1000th time seeing a Microsoft article derailed by some anti-Microsoft holier-than-thou utopianist, I let it get the better of me and let off some steam.

Edited 2008-06-03 17:08 UTC

//Therefore I believe proprietary software is bad for humankind in the long run. Which is why I promote Free Software (Linux/BSD/KDE/Gnome), Free Culture (Blender/Magnatune/Creative Commons) and Free Knowledge (Wikipedia & friends).//

OK ... so ... how does Microsoft's existence prevent you from doing/using any of that? I'm confused. I thought Linux/OSS was growing every year?

Well, MS creates proprietary software. As I said, I think proprietary software is bad, and it should go as soon as possible. Preferably before governments give in to the pressure for making FOSS illegal; or take advantage of it to limit the freedom of their citizens.

I am interested in your opinion on how to make sustainable products that are specialized.

Open Source and Free Software is very good at producing low level software and software for the general public. However, I don't think that it is a good business model for niche products that very few developers can actually contribute to.

This is something that Free Software developers to this day still have not acknowledged: that there exists other business models than their own. This hurts the advancement of Free Software.

I'm not saying I've got answers to all questions, but generally, even rather specialized software can be build on FOSS. Besides, if it's really specialized, companies have to write it themselves anyway... You might know 95% of the money (that statistic is - well, rather random, btw, it might as well be 90 or 99%) being made in software development is made on custom software. Only 5% of the business depends on the whole concept of proprietary software, and I believe most of them could find a business model based on FOSS.

//As I said, I think proprietary software is bad, and it should go as soon as possible. //
Ummm .... ok? There are lots of things in life "that should just go away" but they won't. You can wish in one hand and poop in the other, and see which happens first.

Edited 2008-06-02 16:43 UTC

Hehe, didn't know that one. But yeah, you are right of course, things don't go as one wants them to. Part of the freedom we enjoy ;-)

First, Microsoft also creates open source software.

Second, lots of companies create closed source software, not just Microsoft. Have you ever injected your OSS advocacy into threads about articles regarding non-Microsoft closed source software (thus, derailing the thread)? Didn't think so.

Not often. I do often use the example of Flash being evil (that's not MS but Adobe), and I also mention WordPerfect who did their share of nasty stuff trying to keep MS from kicking their asses back in the nineties. So it's just natural MS learned from their tricks and used the MS Word format to keep their dominance for a long time. And what about Apple and the tricks surrounding their iPods and iTunes?

I must confess I consider MS especially evil, but I also think it's just the way proprietary software business works.

Let me guess. You're, like, 12, right?

You mean anyone over 12 can not dream about a better world? I thought that one generally got numb around 45...

Anyway, thanks for the compliment. Unfortunately I'm not as brilliant as you seem to think - having finished my study Psychology at 27... I wish I was smart enough to work as a businessconsultant at 12 ;-)

As a economist I have to correct you slightly: To develop software has *not* a marginal cost of zero. Because if you hand out more copies of your products you have a much larger user base to support and this produces costs. Even if you have the counter argument that they do not sell support -- which they certainly do -- you have to respect a larger user base because of existing competition and long term involvement in the market.
By the way a monopoly does not have to be bad. There are certainly some goods that profit from a monopoly. For example the production of money.
The real question that arises is: Is a monopoly in SW production bad, if it is done for free software or information in general as it is done for printing money. I find this somehow interesting.

thank you, you are of course right. Though the support MS offers isn't well known for it's quality ;-)

I certainly think a monopoly in SW is bad - you read my statements regarding the social implications. If you look at it from an economical standpoint, less innovation & higher prices would be (and are and have been, in this case) the result. By mandating the GPL as only legal license for software, the government would magically turn the software market from a market were someone almost naturally gains a monopoly into a market in which a monopoly is unlikely. Of course, such an event would be far too disruptive, so I'm not actually advocating it. But imho - it should be the target. It would result (I believe) in lower prices, better services and more innovation. Now the last thing might not be solely because proprietary sofware is bad for innovation but at least partly because MS is notoriously bad at it (they are well known for not having an R&D department until well in the nineties).

Apple, for example, does a much better job at it with far less resources. Meanwhile, both companies/situations are extremes, and in general I don't think you disagree that innovation doesn't benefit from a monopoly.

Your logic is backwards. If people are paying to use Windows, isn't it better if Microsoft asks them what they don't like and how to improve it? It's not that Microsoft can't or doesn't want to spend the money, but it's better to get user input and make decisions based on that.

Besides, if you take maybe 10 minutes to type up what you don't like and how to improve it, what's the big f--king deal?

This is Microsoft trying to actually do it's homework.

What difference does the license make to people that just want to use an improved OS? Serving up recommendations for improvements helps them just as much as it does people who recommend improvements for GNU-ish projects.

AFAICT, Long Zheng is not from Microsoft. I have no idea how he knows what has been fixed for Win7 and what has not been fixed. I do hope someone from the UX team is paying attention, thought.

Yes, it has purely to do with incompetence and nothing to do with resources. In case you didn't know, Microsoft pays the people that work there. Even with all the money they have, they only have a finite amount of resources.

Do some of you people even think before you post or do you just start typing away whatever comes to your brain?

Edited 2008-06-01 22:24 UTC

Do some of you people even think before you post or do you just start typing away whatever comes to your brain?

The answer to that is No and Yes, respectively.

I don't think you know a thing about programming. The remaining Win3.1 dialogs are very scarce on functionality and even if they where as complex as the fixed size system dialogs... it is the functionality that is the vast majority of the work, making *all* those dialogs resizable can't be more than a day of work for an average capable programmer, even if they are done directly on Win32 API. You can't seriously tell me that you think they couldn't afford one day of one programmers valuable time to do that.

An Vista Ultimate Retail license costs more than an complete PC in Europe. I think for that price they could at least pretend that they would give a crap about quality.

You know, Apple can. I didn't switch because their stuff got so unresistible much better, it is because Microsofts products have become so unbearable much worse... i could have lived with the status quo, quality wise.

I'm a software engineer for a living. I stopped reading your post after that because I'm sure the rest of it's garbage too. I wrote my post because I do understand software and the development life cycle and how many resources it takes to do one small thing, especially on such a large product.

Well, then it is that which i prefer on writing FOSS... when something is broken, i fix it. If there is a bug that slipped through QA from such a thing i rather have betatesters complain than dragging a pile of garbage from the early nineties along.

If Microsofts Managers are so stubborn that they don't allow resources on getting something done that was an *major* embarrassment even eight years ago, then clearly they are doomed.

Please don't confuse "not caring" with "having other priorities and a fixed set of resources and time."

We all care =)

And what's wrong with that?