"Someone has started rearranging content on the Internet to suit their own purposes and the culprit might be a convicted monopolist. This article examines some compelling evidence and asks Congress to investigate."
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Member since:2005-07-06
I wouldn't say they are a company of jerks. I would say they have too many idiotic executives and managers though.
I do have bad things to say about them though.
- Internet Explorer is outdated and well.. sucks.
- MSN Messenger sucks.
- Windows 9x series sucked.
- Windows XP pre SP1 had some serious networking issues that pissed the living f--k out of me.
- They try to get into way too many markets.
- They aren't very considerate of the state of the economy and the average family/person. I know out in the redmond area, the quality of life is a bit higher, so I think most of their employees views on things tend to be a bit skewed.
- They were way too late to do something to try and fix their problems with security. Vista is going to be the first true attempt to fix things. XP can only be patched so much. I don't think they deliberately ignored the problem though.
- This also correlates with Vista. They were relying on Vista being the fix and on it being out much sooner. Again, they dropped the ball with pushing it back so much, and then finally having to reset it last year. I think they're finally on the right track with it, but before it seemed they had little direction with it.
Member since:2005-10-02
Well, hang on to your chair sappyvcv...
Don't you think you're a bit too harsh on MS here?
I would say they have too many idiotic executives and managers though.
Well, okay I'll grant you that one. Seems as a reasonable explanation.
- Internet Explorer is outdated and well.. sucks.
Aahh... I wouldn't go that far. It's somewhat outdated in functionality, but it still handles websites in a good manner. It doesn't suck that much. I just miss the tabs (and no, I won't install on top-browsers like Avant... eew)
- MSN Messenger sucks.
I believe I've seen applications worse than MSN Messenger. But it could be a lot better. I'd go as far as less-than-optimal. I actually like the possibility to use my own smileys. And it has some drag'n'drop support. But it also has a lot of crap in it. But it's not completely crap. It can be used.
- Windows 9x series sucked.
Okay, I'll grant you this one. I could say a lot worse about 9x, but sucked is okay. 9x was so bad it's enough explanation for me to understand why some wishes MS gone forever.
- Windows XP pre SP1 had some serious networking issues that pissed the living f--k out of me.
Perhaps I'm wrong but wasn't it mostly the home edition that was affected. XP Home is almost as crappy as ME, in my mind. And anyway it got fixed.
- They try to get into way too many markets.
Granted. MS could do better if they concentrated on fewer markets. I'd like them to work a lot more on refining Windows incrementally (like fixing the scaling bug, better drag and drop support for printing, stuff like that they haven't solved the flaws appeared in win95) rather than doing all kind of stuff in all directions. I think they should quit MSN search, MSN Messenger and stick to Office and Windows. I believe that would give more resources to these two areas.
- They were way too late to do something to try and fix their problems with security. Vista is going to be the first true attempt to fix things. XP can only be patched so much. I don't think they deliberately ignored the problem though.
Well, I can't say for sure about this since I don't know the exact economical level for Joe Average and his family. But the prices for some MS applications and services could/should be lower. XP Home was/is pretty expensive in Denmark compared to most other systems. Only true Server OS'es are more expensive.
- They were way too late to do something to try and fix their problems with security. Vista is going to be the first true attempt to fix things. XP can only be patched so much. I don't think they deliberately ignored the problem though.
Well, I think they could patch XP as much as they want to. The question is how affordable it would be. There is a certain balance here. Whether or not they ignored the problems intentionally is difficult to say. Some might say that "evidence" shows one thing, other will "evidence" shows another thing. Ripping out the Win3xAPI would probably be good, and then run old Win-applications in an emulator (like running DOS-applications in DOS-Box). Few people still have 16bit Windows applications flying around. This way MS could make it a lot easier to enhance security.
- This also correlates with Vista. They were relying on Vista being the fix and on it being out much sooner. Again, they dropped the ball with pushing it back so much, and then finally having to reset it last year. I think they're finally on the right track with it, but before it seemed they had little direction with it.
From the reviews I've seen Vista seems like something I'd give an arm to avoid 
- I still consider an incremental improvement of Win2K3 to be the best approach. But yes, Vista seems to be on a healthier track by now. I still have many misgivings about it, but that's probably because I'm quite conservative about changes (unless it's something I'm really screaming for).
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-10-02
Hmm... I'm defending them too
(Let's see if you catch this one :p .. we haven't fought for hours 
Even if Microsoft is a company of jerks most the time
I can always install Linux on the Xbox... or ReactOS :p