Microsoft not ruling out Windows XP extension
April 24th, 2008 By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer scratches his head during a media conference at the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, Thursday April 24, 2008. Ballmer on Thursday offered a glimmer of hope to fans of the company's XP operating system, saying customer demand could see the company reconsider a decision to stop selling XP in June. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
(AP) -- Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer offered a glimmer of hope on Thursday to fans of the company's Windows XP operating system, saying the company may reconsider its decision to stop selling it soon.
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I feel that there are some pretty rational reasons to dislike them strongly. Just how do you go about being one of if not the richest company in the world and produce products of such mediocre value?
Corban, I don't know if you and Gopher are computer techs or have ever done extensive technical service work on Windows machines, but it's pretty obvious from my experience they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to make things more difficult than they need to be. And just when they start getting things right, they take two steps back with Vista. While I will continue to use XP, I've had my experiences with Vista and it most definitely has some perks and very nice features... But there's tons of dumbass simple shit and annoyances from as far back as Win95 that they refuse to address or continually over look.
All of their products are "lock ins." Interoperability only comes in once they're paid off by "collaborators." When Digital Rights Management became and issue and RIAA start crying - who was the first on the scene to lock everything down and keep us in the stone age?!
As "King of IT" they don't appear to stand for in my eyes the betterment or advancement of society and only wish to hold us back for no other reason than a quick buck.
And so may argue "oh well that's their right, that's capitalism for you!"
Well, this is my opinion for you - and our attitudes and behaviors don't make me any friend of them and vice versa.
Google has another whole different vision, openness, interconnectivity, sharing, collaboration, a vision of the future... And they still manage to make money doing it. Maybe in the end they'll turn out to be the next Microsoft and will be a bunch of control freak jackholes... But I doubt it, and in the mean time I'm going to enjoy Microsoft's downfall due to their draconian approaches to technology.
Be an equal opportunity hater;). Treat all companies equally based on their actions. Fanbois and slambois are both simply irrational idiots who ignore the evidence and make decisions based on how they "feel" about a company. Please. Grow up. These companies aren't "good" or "evil". Every last one of them is out of their shareholders and nothing more. Google isn't "good" and Microsoft isn't "evil". They are both perfectly neutral organizations, who are out for nothing but profit.
If you want to say something like, "Based on Microsoft's past lack of support for product type XXXX, I won't be purchasing this type of product from them in the future unless the company undergoes drastic changes", then I'll post "Dude, I so agree with you". If you say, "I hate %##@!) Microsoft, and every person that works there is a traitor to humanity!!1111!!", then I'm going to rate you down for being an emo idiot.
Now individual execs, those you can hate. Ballmer for instance is a freaking idiot.
Is Google bad for this? No, they are just doing business, just like MS or any other company.
Now, on topic:
I am not saying Google should be free and open; they are not free and open.
All true.
Google vigorously defends its copyrights, patents, and trademarks so that others don't use them for free.
They refuse to release any information that might give away information about the technology, such as data involving searches for child pornography or terrorism.
Google posts pictures of people and property online without consent, not illegal but creepy.
Google puts many pages of text from copyrighted books online with out the consent of the owner of the copyright. They win court cases because they only post pages that have been previously uploaded on public servers, they stopped scanning books. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
Google continued to post news stories from Copiepresse even though they didn't want to be posted on Google or Google News. They had to be forced by a court to remove listing and excerpts.
"Google hands over data on suspected pedophiles to Brazil"
http://www.breitb...tfimgehd&show_article=1
And there's multiple other examples of them doing similar deeds.
You say they're not open yet all you do is point out how their openness is "offensive" or problematic to, I assume you, and others.
And I've yet to pay a dime for gmail, google docs or google maps among many other services and software they provide COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE.
But whatever, you're exactly the type of person Gopher is talking about, irrational.
Rate away, friend.
They are not free, advertising pays for it. Some parts don't have direct adversing but are still a result of conglomerate activities.
Use Gmail? notice the ads in Gmail are tied to the content of the messages? Don't you think that is a violation of privacy assumed?
On a side note, I use Gmail and Google Search regularly because I can ignore ads. But it is not free, my time and attention are spent at the cost of ads.
On openness, I point out their hypocrisies: Openness is great, by their standards, as long as it is not their intellectual property.
Privacy is a fine line that has been debated over the ages by the likes of the supreme court... The ninth amendment came at great expense, as and as we venture into a new digital and virtual frontier the line is constantly being redrawn.
As far as their ads go, I block them too, myself. But some code that matches words in my email to words in a database to display an ad hardly feels like an invasion of privacy that would be something along the lines of the NSA tapping my phone lines.
I like your last point the best, and honestly it's the truth... we can only hope they realize the folly of their ways OR they're just making strategic moves to be competitive in the idiotic copyright/patent laden capitalist market place we "thrive" in today.
cheers.