Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

In the words of John McEnroe, "you cant be serious"

They actively went out of their way to accomplish lockin and maintain their monpolistic position.

A direct quote from PJ of http://www.groklaw.net :

Quoting:PJ: I think if you read through the exhibits we are publishing from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation, you will see that it was hardly accidental.

Yeah, I'd say a different part of him was brass, to make that claim.

Ha. It's the accidental serial killer all over again.

There is no accident on Microsoft's monopolies. They were built by using unethical if not outright illegal means to marginalize or eliminate competitors from markets.

Just like on one of those true crime shows-- "It's a suicide, he accidentally stabbed himself 14 times."

TC, the suspect turned out to be the wrong guy, after the police tazered him 11 times in one minute, and they had no way to know he had a heart condition before he died.

But seriously, Microsoft's actions have been reprehensible from the very start, when they took BASIC code and "made it their own". The use of BSD code in Windows is just more of the same.

While I don't consider Microsoft's actions to be actual crimes, considering the exceedingly flexible nature of anti-trust "laws", Microsoft management and marketing have proven themselves to be utterly unethical, with moral compasses even less reliable than a small-town politician's.

When Microsoft finally goes out of business, I will be very, very happy. Unlike Sun.

WTF. MS really are in trouble. Mundie's brilliant idea:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/04/2249241/Craig-Mundie-...

> Mundie's brilliant idea:

You know, I don't think he's thought the matter through very carefully. The various state governments not only license drivers, they register cars. And most of them have a required safety inspection. Does he really think any version of Windows could pass the equivalent of a vehicle safety inspection?

Quoting:Mundie's brilliant idea:

I never liked the song, nor could I understand why anyone would like its tone and beat. Nonetheless, it seems so appropriate I can only ask: "Who Let the Dog Out?"!

YBT

Mundie probably doesn't really know any better, but car analogies to the internet ("Information Superhighway") made it on to the "not hot" list at the turn of the century.

But I'm sure his reasoning goes like this: One person = one computer = at least one Windows License ($$$!), so nobody will object to an Information Superhighway Driver's license! It can be part of the Windows Software ecology, too, like all those MCSEs, the testing agencies, the teaching agencies, the book authors, etc etc! What a great idea!

@jdixon:

Some of Slashdot's comments to this story agree with you, strongly.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/04/2249241/

What would bother me is, with the way MS can weasel around, can you conceive that they would ensure that theirs was the only product that could pass such a test?

I had an answer to that question ready, but then I realized I'd better not give them any ideas.

Quoting:Loose lips Sink ships.

I must say I am a bit worried about what is going to happen with the shift to IPv6, as all those windows machines sitting semi-blissfully behind NAT routers in homes and small offices suddenly get world-accessable addresses.

I recently had to turn on DMZ on my cheap home router in order to get an IPv6 tunnel working, because it didn't know about "protocol 41", only TCP and UDP. The ensuing continuous flood of bogus packets made my wifi nearly unusable. So off goes DMZ, away goes the tunnel, and I am again blissfully quiet behind the accidental "security" of NAT.

Yes, time to buy a new router. Belkin is rudamentary at best, and I'd like a router capable of accepting the IPv6 tunnel itself. The search is on.

Maybe an "internet driver's license" isn't such a bad idea, if one is going to drive a piece of crud like Windows.

@Bob:

You may have needed to enable other protocols to go with it. There are several IPv6-specific protocols listed in /etc/protocols (43, 44, 58, 59, and 60).

And maybe not. I don't know. I only know that IPv6 seems to be a lot more active in its route management.

Gus, it was just to enable pass-through for the Hurricane Electric tunnel, not full routing.

Suddenlink does not even mention IPv6 on their ISP service web site.

> The ensuing continuous flood of bogus packets made my wifi nearly unusable.

Bob, simply turning on something as relatively innocuous as ssh in your gateway gives you enough attack hits to make parsing your logs an entertaining activity. :(

> Gus, it was just to enable pass-through for the Hurricane Electric tunnel, not full routing.

My wife hosts her site with Hurricane Electric, fwiw.

@jd which is why ssh listens on a port up in the transport range at home ... way up into the transport range.

> ...which is why ssh listens on a port up in the transport range at home ...

I've considered that, but settled for locking down the IP addresses allowed with tcp wrapper. I'm only using it to connect from a single location. I'll be turning it off early next month.

Well, I've ordered a Linksys WRT54GL, mentioned on the Hurricane Electric site as "just works". And as it is proclaimed as utterly configurable, can have OpenWRT on it, and even, so I am told, run Linux (or was that just the 54G?), I don't think I'll be too upset.