Linux-Advocacy Digest #1, Volume #27 Fri, 9 Jun 00 20:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It? (Marty)
WIDESPREAD INCOMPETENCE AT BELL ATLANTIC ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 23:48:36 GMT
"Pascal Haakmat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
[snip]
> >> Maybe. I suppose I don't use the stuff that makes it unusually good.
> >
> >Well, they are pretty good about supporting their competitors protocols
> >and formats.
>
> You must mean they are very good at bait-and-switch!
No. I don't recall them advertising ont he basis of compatibility
either, so even if they didn't deliver it, it wouldn't be "bait and
switch". It would just be "switch". :D
> Seriously, some of their compatibility efforts are so badly executed that
> you have to wonder about Microsoft's intent in creating them in the first
> place.
I haven't had a problem with them.
> Take for example NT's "Services for Macintosh". The promise is: buy NT
> Server and interconnect your existing systems. So you do just that and
hook
> your existing Macs up to the NT machine. But then performance proves
abysmal
> and a host of printing problems ensues. This has management conclude "Macs
> suck. We must move everything to Windows".
Well, I ask you how many *other* server OSes even go this far: how many
support Apple's protocols at all?
> Or take the telnet client that ships with Windows. The promise, again, is:
> buy Windows and connect to your legacy systems. So you do just that; but
> not surprisingly, the client's VT100 emulation is so abominable that many
> applications refuse to work correctly or at all. Leaving management to
> conclude, again, that "Unix sucks. We must move everything to Windows".
If they are using VT100s, they are going to conclude that *anyway*.
I've used Window's telnet. It's pretty limited, but it is servicable.
> >It's just that realistically, Unix *isn't* a competitor to Windows 98.
>
> Is Windows 98 a competitor to Unix?
No, not seriously.
> >To NT, sure. This is, in part, why Windows 2000 suddenly
> >learned to speak Kerberos. It already knew NetWare,
> >but increasingly its competitors wasn't speaking that.
>
> Can you explain to me what all the fuzz was about with MS' implementation
of
> Kerberos security?
MS asked MIT (I think it was) for an extension to Kerberos that would
let them put NT security info into Kerberos transmissions; you need this
to support NT's security model. MIT obliged, and the result is that
Windows 2000 clients work better with Windows 2000 Kerberos
servers, because they can integrate with domain security; if you use
Unix Kerberos you do not get this, and it is a pain.
[snip]
> >Yes. That's why I don't think mandating a standard technology
> >that everyone must use is a real answer to the problem of
> >interoperability.
> >
> >"Everyone should use (say) TeX format" is no better than
> >"everyone should use Word format".
>
> Yes, it is.
>
> It's approximately the difference between "all cars should use gasoline"
and
> "all cars should be Fords".
No, it isn't. You may prefer one format. You may prefer one format
simply because you like its creator, or dislike the creator of the
other.
But your preference in such things is no reason for *everyone* to use
your favored format.
> To slip out of hypothetical generalities and into reality for a moment, I
> would not require either TeX or Word to be used by everyone. Use the best
> tool for the job, and sometimes that may be Word.
>
> The difference between human readable text files and binary data in a
> proprietary format remains.
Text data storage versus binary is a implementation detail; you may
well feel that text data storage is superior, but again that is you
preference and it is not universal.
It is still no reason for everyone to use TeX.
[snip]
> Maybe you are familiar with the image of the elephant in the porcelain
> cabinet. Every time it makes even the slightest of movements, something
> breaks. Reasonably we shouldn't attribute that to any perfidy on behalf of
> the elephant. It's not like the intent really matters anyway, when the
best
> option is simply to remove the elephant.
I think this analogy very weak.
> >> What I mean is that the influence of the network effects that Windows
> >> enjoys is so great that no other OS compares to it.
> >
> >I think these are overestimated. There are very few things that
> >network effects *don't* apply to, after all, so why is the effect
> >so much greater in operating systems?
>
> Is it?
Well, maybe it isn't. Why worry about it if it isn't? It isn't like,
say diesel fuel has disappear because of the popularity
of unleaded gasoline. The same sort of network effects
would appear to apply.
[snip]
> >I think you are holding the bar of substitutability that no product
> >could ever acheive it with respect to any other product.
>
> [Usenet economist speaking:]
>
> Not really. If I take an example like Coke or Microsoft, the bar of
> substitutability is so high not because of my standards, but because of
> their dominance in their respective markets.
This sounds very like "I have a double standards; big companies
must meet a high standard because of this."
Did you mean it that way?
> This is why monopolies are
> generally bad -- they hurt substitutability.
This doesn't make sense. "XCorp has a monopoly" is not
equivalent to "YCorp's products are not substitutable for XCorp's";
if you want to argue that monopolies do hurt substitutability,
argue that: but don't suppose it to be self-evident.
I could make an argument that they *enhance* substitutability
by giving everyone a nice obvious target to try to clone.
[snip]
> >Well, bear in mind that less dominant players can also obstruct
> >interoperability in the same way; and they can do so without
> >monpolies.
>
> They could, but for less dominant players, interoperability is a
_benefit_.
> To monopolies, it is a _threat_.
No. If interoperability allows people to switch to the monopolies
product. That is why MS is so gung ho about it.
> >But it *is* true that making a product with all the capabilities
> >of Windows is very hard to do. I'm not sure this says anything
> >*bad* about Microsoft.
>
> Look, it's also very hard to make a car that has all the capabilities of
> another car, or a VCR, or even a good spaghetti. Still people seem to
> manage. With operating systems, nobody seems to manage. Either everybody
is
> incompetent, which is what you often end up saying, or there is some other
> force involved, which is of course the position that I, in my infinite
> wisdom, tend to procure :)
Well, I would say that *some* people are incompetant. But the competant
ones do not want to spend their effort solving a solved problem; that is
boring. Worse, it's not very lucrative- you *may* make some money
if you can pry all or part of the market from Microsoft, but it sure is
doing
it the hard way. MS will fight back. You are taking a big risk, and great
efforts will be needed for sure.
Far, far better to head for new, untapped areas. Get innovative; come up
with something new. That's where the real money is, *and* where the
real excitement is.
What possible inducement could there be for a creative, driven,
ambitious individual to want to build a better Windows?
[snip]
> >I'm not sure you have an inalienable right to have different sugarwaters
> >manufactured just so you can sample them.
>
> No, but you do have an inalienable right to make money selling me
> sugarwater.
I very much disagree. Y ou have no right to make money selling it; that
necessarily implies that other people have an obligation to buy it and
pay for it, even if it tastes like Yoohoo, but looks like Mountain Dew.
I do not accept that your 'rights' can impose such an obligation on others.
> >There are good reasons
> >why people *don't* favor variety in their OSes, and they have nothing
> >to do with Microsoft.
>
> It's hardly surprising that people don't favor variety in their OSes
> considering that a part of the Microsoft strategy is to penalize such
> variety ("decommoditization").
Do you know what a "commodity" is?
It isn't noted for variety.
"Commoditization" is when a class of product becomes essentially
indistinguishable, so that the only differentating factor is price.
"Decommoditization" favors variety; MS wants to be different
from the next guy, so you'll want their software instead of
his.
> Besides this is just a very weak argument. Most people don't even know
what
> an OS is, let alone whether they want variety in it.
I don't think *anyone* knows what an OS is in precise terms; I've certainly
never heard a definition that is consistant with real world usage. :D
> I think the popularity
> of eye-candy software (considering that to most people the GUI _is_ the
OS)
> casts further doubts on the validity your argument.
What popularity fo eye candy software?
[snip]
> >I don't agee; Microsoft has no magical powers, and OS/2 failure
> >came from several sources. Microsoft's leverage over IBM was, at
> >that time, limited to its ability to woo IBM's OS customers away from
> >it.
>
> I agree that the OS/2 failure came from several sources. That said, I
don't
> hold it above Microsoft to prevent e.g. Compaq from preloading OS/2 or
some
> other OS by threatening to raise licensing cost.
I don't either. MS is quite ruthless. But the *source* of this power is
MS's ability to woo customers (and developers) to Windows; only
once this is accomplished can threatening to withhold Windows
work.
And after it is done, the rest is just a formality- Windows has won.
> Of course I don't know whether that happened -- it's a mere speculation
> showing how hypothetically, Microsoft's "ability to woo IBM's OS customers
> away" can be brought about using plain old bribery.
Nope; the extortion (it's really a threat, not a bribe) has to come *after*
you've got the customers. Otherwise Compaqs answer will be
"so what? We're shipping OS/2 anyway. That's what out customers
want."
[snip]
> >Middle nineties. Win3's support for games was totally inadequate.
> >
> >But that was then, this is now.
>
> In the past, if people wanted to play games, they bought consoles.
They do that now, too.
> They may
> do so again in the future: the PC that people bought three years ago to
play
> games on might be replaced by a console next year. The lifetime of most
> gaming products is so short that the adoption of a new hard- and software
> simply falls straight into the upgrade path.
I'm afraid that Win3 managed to fall off the 'upgrade path' on that
one; games of the period (for the PC) were written to DOS because
Win3 couldn't handle it.
MS fixed this, eventually. It was, potentially, an opportunity for someone
to come out with a better OS for games and sell it into the home
market- gawd knows DOS wasn't exactly good at them- but nobody
tried it. Perhaps 4 years (91-95) wasn't enough?
> Moreover it was not necessary for the PC to be a great gaming platform
> because consoles and machines like the Amiga and the C64 sufficiently met
> the demand. Should a Windows competitor arise without great gaming
support,
> that situation may return within a couple of years.
In the business world, you are right, but in the home I think you are
mistaken;
I think users will turn their noses up at a PC that won't play games.
I am speculating, really, but heck, my tea leaves are as good as the
next guys,. :D
> IOW, looking at the past and seeing how the Windows didn't need games to
> become "the standard",
It had to depend on DOS for them; definitely a vulnerability, and MS was
lucky nobody exploited it.
> and looking to the future and seeing how games
> consoles/stripped down PC's could rapidly expand to meet popular gaming
> demand, I don't think gaming is the "critical" component you've made it
out
> to be.
Well, maybe not. But it is certainly been one of the cheif uses of home
computers in the past, even at other times where consoles were
popular.
[snip]
> >Nevertheless, they show some awareness that this is an issue.
> >I prefer to think of that as promising.
>
> Then you prefer to think of low-quality good-looking crap as promising :)
Oh, everybody's a critic. :D
[snip]
> >Sure. I have also used Win NT 3.51, and Windows 2000: Windows 2000
> >is a very large improvement. It isn't getting worse every day.
>
> In large part this is a matter of feeling and taste. Common wisdom has it
> you cannot argue those.
I've never let that stop me before. :D
> So if you are happy with W2K, that is great.
Well, thank you.
[snip]
> >Yes, I know. But what you are looking for is not really
> >the determining factor.
>
> No, the determining factor is whether it makes money. And if I'm looking,
> that means there is a market. The question is whether the market is
> profitable enough.
I think there *is* a market for a non MS OS that products like
Linux can fill; I just don't think it's the same market Windows 98
is filling.
[snip]
> >This is reality. I know you'd *prefer* to get a desktop OS
> >that is tailored to your tastes- or at least more or less
> >matches them- but current software engineering
> >practices simply cannot deliver this.
>
> A nice round thought in closing but I'm afraid it doesn't quite address
what
> I had in mind.
"brain implaint"? What am I supposed to say?
> Current software engineering practices cannot deliver (say)
> an .AVI, .MOV or DVD player for (say) Linux?
Maybe.
Linux is not exactly a really media friendly sort of OS, when
you get right down to it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but
certainly it is a challenge.
And there's only so much talent out there to meet that
and many, many other challenges.
Why is that one the important one?
[snip]
> >> I've addressed this above, too. Windows could triumph because it had
> >> Microsoft's blessing.
> >
> >Microsoft isn't the software fairy- they have no magic.
>
> This is the second time you're confusing "magic" and "power".
Forgive me, but I think you have confused them. You are saying
that Microsoft's "power"- whatever that was before Windows took
off- just suddenly *caused* Windows to succeed without so much
as a mechanism.
Sure seems like magic.
> >In particular, they didn't manage a seamless DOS->Windows
> >transition; it *cost* and it had all the disadvantages you'd expect
> >from a platform switch.
>
> And Microsoft got away with it -- an example of their power.
You say "power", I say "product quality".
And I think that my view is supportable. In particular, I notice
that Windows 1 and 2 failed badly, and Windows 3 succeeded.
I observe no substantial difference in Microsoft's "power"
over this time period; but there was surely a different in product
quality.
Thus, my "product quality" explaination can explain why *this*
Windows succeeded, and others had failed. I don't see how your
"power" explaination can do so.
> >It's quite different from, say, Apple's transition from 680x0 to
> >PPC. They made that dang near seamless; you could hardly
> >tell you were doing it, and they were able to leverage developers
> >onto the new platform because they could make it clear (with
> >credibility) that 680x0 *would* die.
>
> Had Apple made a clean break with the past, most everybody would have left
> the platform and went with Microsoft.
They made a pretty darn clean break, actually. "You all have to program for
PowerPC now. Have a nice day."
> Microsoft doesn't need to worry about these things very much -- they have
> more power.
Yet they do worry; they bend into pretzels for backwards compibility.
> >You can argue that Microsoft should have been able to do this,
> >but they *did not* do it when switching from DOS to Windows.
>
> They did not have to. Power.
They were not able to. They lacked the power to make developers swtich
suddenly. They had to try to lure them over, and they ahd mixed success.
They were a *long* time wooing the game developers, in particular.
In the meantime, they had to rely on compatibility.
[snip]
> >> Digital GEM?
> >
> >GEM was like Windows, but it didn't deal with the memory problems,
> >so it was next to impossible to write non-toy software for it.
>
> Atari was able to deliver a nice (for the time) desktop environment based
on
> GEM for their hardware. Why didn't that catch on?
I'm not that familiar with Atari's product. I recall vaguely that
they had a bad case of 'too little, too late'- they went to 16 bit
very late, and by then it was all old news.
"It wasn't Microsoft branded" doesn't explain why the MAc did
so much better than the Atari, or what the Commodore Amiga
also did.
I was thinking of GEM for DOS, of course. That was like
Windows. Like early, useless Windows. :D
> For the Mac, one could make the argument that it was too expensive. But
for
> the Atari?
I dunno. Maybe there were too expensive too. :D
> >Same problem killed Windows 1 and 2, too. You just can't
> >do the stuff that needed doing in 640k on an 8086.
> >
> >GEM is about the closest thing out there to Windows that
> >didn't have a Microsoft brand name.
>
> Which is what killed it.
No, no, it was just inadquate, in the same way and for
the reasons Windows 1 and 2 were. It was dang near
impossible to write real software with the memory
constraints you faced.
> [never mind the validity of that sentence, I'm just saying it so as to
give
> this message a powerful line in closing :)]
Oops. Too late... :d
------------------------------
From: Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split Save It?
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 23:49:01 GMT
Leslie Mikesell wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >> "interoperability" as you define it is somewhat meaningless.
> >> Passing off some imbedded binary data to another application
> >> and making it look like it's all integrated is slight of hand
> >> not "interoperability".
> >
> >You just don't get it, do you? There are no streams of data flying around
> >under the hood to make this happen. Not a single part of the app is even
> >aware that anything is happening. I guess you're just not going to understand
> >it clearly until you've used the workplace shell of OS/2. There's no slight
> >of hand involved. It's an extremely elegant and OO solution, which guarantees
> >future interoperability. You just can't find solutions like that on Unix
> >based platforms.
>
> Will it work with java applets running under a browser?
It will work with Java applications running natively. I haven't tried it with
an applet in a browser.
> VNC control of other boxes?
Not sure if VNC exists for OS/2. If it does and was implemented as a PM app,
then it will work.
> Telnet to something else?
Yup.
> X programs running elsewhere?
Depends on the flavor of X. If it uses XFree86, then no, as this is not a PM
application. If it uses PMX, then yes.
> >Your aim was to point out how this could be used to show system
> >interoperability, was it not? I stated that a solution such as VoiceType
> >could only be implemented effectively on one box, showing the value of
> >application interoperability, and you challenged that statement.
>
> My keyboard works with all of the above.
Your keystrokes are a recognized part of the X protocol, as are mouse actions.
> >But you were attempting to tell me about the wonder of system interoperability
> >for home users. How can you claim any reasonable amount of interoperability
> >if you have to rely on a specific installation of an OS? Are you going to
> >convince Sun to install these daemons? How about HP? IBM for their AIX
> >platforms? They all support the X protocol, so you should have
> >interoperability with all of these systems, right? I'll stick to VoiceType,
> >DDE, and my proprietary but cozy Workplace Shell, thanks just the same.
>
> Are you just using the computer to replace a typewriter? If not, how
> do you make it deal with the rest of the world?
You're missing the point. OS/2 has very good system interoperability.
However, its application interoperability is stellar. I can't export my OS/2
desktop display to another system (though I can fire off an XF86 server in the
background if I like, but it's not my desktop for sure). I don't mind that
one bit, considering that solutions like VoiceType are possible as a
trade-off. Can I send off a print job to New Jersey if I wanted to? Sure.
Can I upload a file to the internet or post a Usenet message? Sure. Is it
more important for me to be able to post a message to Usenet or to be able to
embed my spreadsheet into my word processing document? Definitely the
latter. Application interoperability makes your tools better. System
interoperability facilitates communication. As a home user, I favor the
former as it makes my life easier and increases my productivity.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: WIDESPREAD INCOMPETENCE AT BELL ATLANTIC
Date: 9 Jun 2000 23:42:33 GMT
Friday, June 9, 2000
-
It would seem that in every category of service BA offers, there are a
whole lot of unhappy customers. With the possible exception of
voice-only service, BA has littered the Internet with consumer
horror stories.
-
Let's take DSL for example... You need only spend a little time
in COMP.DCOM.XDSL to learn that this is a service that BA is just
not in a position to support and should probably not be offering at all.
Network availability is abysmal (less than 50% for some people); as
evidenced by last weeks' outage, where major parts of the mid-Atlantic and
northeast were without DSL service for 72 hours and longer.
Multiple subscribers report calling into tech support, only to
be told that there were no reported problems with the network.
Could anything be more frustrating?
-
It also appears that BA is not at all committed to staffing their
tech support and customer service lines with properly trained,
articulate, informed and technically capable individuals.
It's as though these people were simply grabbed off the street and
required to man the helpdesk phones - like conscripts into some
rag-tag militia.
-
Perhaps the US Government should take a look at Bell Atlantic in
much the same way it's currently looking at Microsoft, with a similar
remedy in mind.
-
-
-
-
-
-
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------------------------------
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