Time to Move On
SEATTLE (AP) – Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes.
The new authentication system, announced Tuesday and due to arrive by midyear, will still allow people with pirated copies of Windows to obtain security fixes, but their options will be limited. The move allows Microsoft to use one of its sharpest weapons – access to security patches that can prevent viruses, worms and other crippling attacks – to thwart a costly and meddlesome piracy problem.
But some security experts said the crackdown also could increase Internet security problems in general, if there is a spike in unsecured computers open to attack, which then could be used to attack others.
via T. Wagner
Microsoft is concerned with stuff that not many people really care about. They keep trying to fix Windows, the Internet, music distribution or whatever. It is like any other huge company. They spend billions on research and introduce a few flashy new programs. Firefox is being given away so why spend time and money trying to develop a better browser, that nobody will pay for? There are free word processors, encryption apps, office suites, etc. Google runs on Linux and most everything else can run on open source. That can’t be stopped because there is no incentive to stop it or no technology that can reverse it. Open source will move forward with or without Microsoft. Google doesn’t need Microsoft, so where does the PC user fit in?
Where do you get all these graphics for your posts?
“Microsoft is concerned with stuff that not many people really care about.”
You mean they aren’t concerned with stuff *you* care about. Microsoft spends more money on R&D, usability testing and requirements gathering than any other company.
Open source is good at mimicking and refining existing ideas but is terrible at generating innovative ideas.
Open source is good at mimicking and refining existing ideas but is terrible at generating innovative ideas.
I see plenty of innovation in Firefox. How much innovation do you see in IE?
I don’t think either closed or open source software has a monopoly on generating ideas and innovation. OSS is simply a different method of developing software.
Hey Thomas, will all of the money Microsoft spends and R&D, name three things Microsoft invented?!
The GUI? Nope. The file system? Nope. DOS? nope. The NT kernel? Nope.
Oh, wait, I know. Microsoft has a patent on double clicking, so they MUST have invented that! I wonder how many engineers were working on THAT problem!
Why should they be required to offer tech support to folks that have stolen their product? I am not a MS apologist — there are many things they do that I don’t agree with. However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to limit their support resources to those that have actually paid for them. Should Wal-Mart be required to replace a defective product that was stolen from their store? An even better analogy….should a car thief expect free recall work on a car they stole from the local lot?
They may have security issues and their computers may be overrun with viruses. So… that’s the chance you take. You want free? Go open source. You want tech support and updates? You gotta pay to play.
Mike T
Microsoft invented double clicking. I really like the tabbed browser feature in Firefox. One click opens a new tab another switches to another web page. Two for one clicks is really the wave of the future. Doing something that makes sense shouldn’t cost a billion dollars for research. I think that sometimes all that the money buys is greater complexity, when a simple solution is all anybody really needed. More capital gets invested in marketing the complexity and still more gets spent explaining it and training people to use it or fix it. The ipod is doing well because it is easy to use, not because of the genius of the software and the complexity of the code. They could make the ipod twice as complex and people would drop it. Google is another example of the elegance of simplicity in action. Microsoft is too much to think about for me. Spending billions on R&D might not create products we want. Microsoft research seems kind of like the NASA budget and how many folks need to get to the moon? More people want to fly to Chicago or Pittsburgh for $99.00. You get what you need and people invent stuff. Big companies invent markets for stuff and back it with marketing so we know why we will need it. Maybe Microsoft will come out with something really cutting edge this year. Everybody will need it, but we don’t need it now or we don’t know we need it. Perhaps they are developing another browser. Whatever it is, you know it is costing billions of dollars and countless hours in some lab. It might end up being a flop, who knows?
I agree with you Mike T. Sure it’d be nice for the net community to make all PCs safer and more secure, but Microsoft doesn’t have any obligation to fix stolen products.
Joe – “I see plenty of innovation in FireFox…”
Can you name a feature that didn’t appear in Opera first?
It would be more accurate to have written – “Microsoft doesn’t even have the brains to steal features from Opera, like the FireFox team does.”
Credit where due, please.
Jim, I believe one had to double click in the Mac inteface. I hardly think MS invented this. “Pirated” would be a more appropriate term.