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178 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -16/+49"If Microsoft didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it"
Hopefully we'd learn from our mistakes and get it right the second time around. - silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -15/+44I wouldnt say it would be best day of my life, but i dont think much would change.
There is really big flaw in this article.... there is BIG difference in case if there was no MS at all or if by some act of god all MS software would stop to work for one day.
If there was no MS, other products would take place instead of MS ones - MS Office - Star Office, IE - Netscape, Windows itself - AppleOS, Linux, maybe even OS/2. We would prolly have much greater choice and competition.
But, this article is centered on stupid idea of MS products being stopped or deleted for one day... yes, that would bring Internet down due to downloads of Open Office, Thunderbird and many other alternatives to MS products, but thats just one day.
THE MOST STUPID (sorry for caps) thing is compering UI of Adobe Premiere with Office. Those are two totally different applications and only total moron would use that argument to make point. How in the world anyone with even sligh knowladge of computers can rant about standardization of UI compering these two apps??????
Imagine what.... UI for Office and Solitaire arent the same... ohhhh noes.... how will people play Solitaire?????
Only an idiot can write that article. - ThinkBox, on 10/12/2007, -20/+49Imagining a day without Microsoft is almost like imagining my dual 2.7 G5 could run games....
- RadiatedAnt, on 10/12/2007, -20/+40If microsoft didn't exist, another corporation would take its place...and so forth you can't stop progress. In another parallel universe a worse monopolistic corporation exists. Just be glad with what you have.
/action Skynet - timalmond, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23"As for the article, there'd be no StarOffice or OpenOffice downloads because they'd not have had MS Office to copy in the first place"
A little history for you: a lot of word processors and spreadsheets existed before MS Office. - sgent, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Most likely ATI & Nvidia would release open source drivers...
- srg13, on 10/12/2007, -9/+25"We would also find out how bad the Linux and Apple vendors are at providing patches, compared to what [customers] got used to from Microsoft, Pescattore says, adding that Microsoft is much better than Apple and Linux at delivering security patches."
Hmmm.... Linux and Apple computers don't need security patches very often. I see it as a bad thing that microsoft issues hundreds of patches a year....
"Marty Cooper, the man who invented the cell phone when he was at Motorola, thinks a world without Microsoft would be a disaster -- but only because we would have to learn somebody else's complex system. Cooper points out that you can get into a rental car anywhere in the world and just drive away, despite the fact that the automatic transmission is at least as complex as Office."
I used windows for 7 years, but I found it incredibly easy to use Linux and Mac OS. Gnome and KDE are incredibly easy to use if you have ever used a mouse before. OpenOffice and AbiWord are also very easy. - thefinger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16The article goes on as though MS and other companies/programs were separate, as though they weren't causes and effects of each other. I don't think the writer thought this through, nor the people being interviewed.
- HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18The more correct question would be: "What would life be like if Microsoft never existed in the first place?"
There were many companies on the scen when MS started up, and not counting some of their shenanigans (alt-f4 to close a windows when they knew WordPerfect used that combo for something else) the world would be much the same. The "home-PC" may have come a few years later but... - falloutsyndrome, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17He's absolutely right, Good technology is transparent. [Pun]Maybe thats what Microsoft is thinking about with thier new Aero "Glass" interface. [/pun]
- machx, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15man a day without microsoft? wow we might actually operating systems and software that compete on their quality, security and reliability with open standards on an even battlefield. what sort of a world would that be?
- annoia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12But we don't! You don't need Microsoft because your company has decided to use Outlook! Or Word. If Microsoft disappeared the games industry would adapt VERY quickly to OpenGL / Linux / Mac. For all the commons tasks, Linux is more than capable. I only use Windows for games and programming, when my partners use Windows (It's a bitch to keep correcting their mistakes because VS (2003) is more lax). When I don't use Windows I use Linux. On my university we use Solaris. In my dorm the servers use Linux.
We do NOT need Microsoft, we're just used to their products. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15"We would also find out how bad the Linux and Apple vendors are at providing patches, compared to what [customers] got used to from Microsoft"
Yeah, i hate getting security patches within days, if not hours, of a flaw being found.
I would rather wait a month and get them all on one day, gives people time to prepare for them.
[/sarcasm] - mozzep, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Good, farms kick ass, free food.
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Let's not rewrite history, mmmkay?
Wordperfect - 1982
"Originally written for Data General minicomputers, in 1982 the developers ported the program to the IBM PC"
MS Word - 1983
"Word's first general release was for MS-DOS computers on May 2, 1983. It was not well received, and sales lagged behind those of rival products such as WordPerfect."
*quotes from wikipedia. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13I get emails about newly patched debian packages every day. Microsoft rolls patches out, what, once every couple of weeks?
I find the "microsoft is better at patching 'cause they have more flaws" argument highly suspect.
"I used windows for 7 years, but I found it incredibly easy to use Linux and Mac OS"
You're in the minority. Your average user takes months to adjust to an upgrade from office 2k to 2k3. The average user is only comfortable with a very small number of tasks, and operates on memorization rather than a general understanding of how computers and software work.
The general understanding that you and I have makes it MUCH easier for us to adapt to UI changes. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+23We? We demanded what they sold, or they supplied what we demanded, but we didn't do the inventing, Microsoft did. I'm not the biggest fan of their products being a former Amiga devotee, but because Microsoft is unpopular with the Slashdot/Digg crowd is not some symptom of our society's problems.
As for the article, there'd be no StarOffice or OpenOffice downloads because they'd not have had MS Office to copy in the first place.
Also, is there anything more stale or less newsworthy than a group of IT folks that don't like Microsoft? Well, other than Mac or Google worship on Digg, that is. - Dracos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9This article is empty status quo fluff.
MS is good (hah!) at patches because they aren't good at writing stable softwre in the first place. I don't see that Apple would have much of a problem long term if their userbase increased by a factor of 10; short term, they'd just be scrambling to get more infrastructure in place.
Linux, however, doesn't have a single point of origin like MS and Apple, so those patch comments are all baseless. Linux (as a server or even desktop environment), isn't a single codebase; it's a conglomeration of thousands of separate projects that each focus on one task. Anyone with even minimal exposure to any *nix knows this. If Apache gets patched, you don't *have* to wait for RedHat to push out a new RPM, you can roll your own.
It's articles like this that most clearly illustrate the stranglehold MS has on business. If more businesses could think farther ahead than the next quarter's earnings report, more would be jumping off of the MS bandwagon that they've chained themselves to.
But consider the opposite: if Unix/Linux disappeared tomorrow, so would the internet. Just imagine trying to get windows installed on every server on the planet, especially the 13 DNS root servers. Somewhere, every 37 days, the internet would disappear for no apparent reason. - samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The question itself is flawed. The proper question would be either, "What if Microsoft had never existed," or, "What if Microsoft had never become as big as they did?" Asking if they disappeared tomorrow is akin to asking, "What if fossil fuels disappeared tomorrow?" They're already so ingrained so deeply in the economy that there's a good chance that the economy would collapse. Now, if the had never existed, then some really interesting things might have happened. Who knows what platform would have taken the lead? Could we all be using Amigas? Macs? Atari STs? Would there even be a single platform as dominant as Windows is now? And if not, what would that look like? Would the computer world have been better or worse off? Would a lack of a monopoly on the desktop have slowed innovation or would it have encouraged interoperability?
- confluence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7My god, what a stupid article. The author can't seem to decide on what he means when he discusses Microsoft "disappearing".
Does Microsoft suddenly go bankrupt and collapse in a single day? Well, that won't magically make all the MS software in the world stop working or evaporate, so there will hardly be "panic in the streets" and massive internet downtime caused by people suddenly downloading StarOffice [I would have said OpenOffice; I think their talking head is behind on the news] to replace their "disappeared" copies of MS Word (and surely they'd have to get an operating system to replace their "disappeared" copy of Windows first?). People will just chug along on their aging, unsupported systems until they can find replacements.
Does all MS software in the world in fact suddenly disappear? Then the major disaster caused by millions of computers used for critical tasks suddenly not working would be by far the most noticeable thing, and people wouldn't be wasting time bitching that they have to be re-trained for different operating systems. They would be too busy freaking out that basic services are not working, there is rioting and looting in the streets and they can't get their money out of the bank.
Geez. I'm all for thought experiments, but they have to actually *make sense*. - cayamara, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I think that this article is just a little biased
"Today you can send a Word document to anybody in the world and expect them to be able to open it. According to Meadow, it takes forever for people to agree to these kinds of standards."
The Word document format is in no ways a standard. In fact, you can run into a lot of trouble when you try to open a newer document with an old version of Word. The OpenDocument Format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument) on the other hand is a standard.
"Bostick says that because Microsoft has, over the years, standardized its user interface across its product line, it’s easy to find what you need."
Yeah, like having to press the "start" button to shut the pc down. It's just that we got used to this kind of stuff, but it's definitely not a good thing.
"Finally I asked our own tech guru, Jon Udell, what he thought. On the whole, he thought Microsoft’s disappearance would be a good thing, saying, 'I hope it would jump start the kind of competitive innovation we haven’t seen forever.'"
He's the only one who makes sense in that article. Because of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics, they block out almost any innovation. Just look at the browser market and see how hard it is to do something innovative (like Firefox and Opera) with MS having 95% or more of the browser market share. And that's just because their product comes with their OS.
Just my thoughts, mod em down as you like. - samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's also a myth that Microsoft has standardized the interface elements in Windows. Their own programs don't even consistently follow any interface guidelines. Some dialogue boxes are resizeable, some aren't. Some are modal, some amodal. Heck, even successive versions of Windows seem to move elements and terminology around willy-nilly. Take the location of the Device Manager for instance. I don't think there have been two successive versions of Windows in which the device manager has been located in the same place. It's irritating and the only reason I can think of for making such silly changes is to keep the training and certification revenue coming in.
- XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Microsoft paid them to advertise this article, I bet.
They never took into account that when Microsoft is gone, there is linux and mac to concentrate on.
When there's linux and mac to concentrate on, they will become the mainstream operating systems and it will be easier to get patches and drivers there. And yeah, linux doesn't need alot of security patches, since it's open, people who will in the future find bugs can write patches and submit it to repositories.
That's one lame article...
P.S: Stop saying that microsoft has everything, if microsoft wouldn't exist, others would do the work for them (As in, instead of them). - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10If they wouldn't have created an OS that every idiot can use, there wouldn't be much of an IT market, and most of us would be working on a farm ;-)
- shikaga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Necessity is the mother of invention. If something dissapears there will be something new to take its place.
- silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11@jrbrewin
"uhm, and they'd be downloading and installing them on what... exactly?"
Linux? which people would also need to download, making internet crawl even more....
i am NOT getting into win-linux flame war here or anything, dont get me wrong (i am writing this on XP machine). i was just pointing that whole idea of article is more or less stupid.
and as for innovations... Internet Explorer is best showcase of how MS sees innovation, they crashed Netscape by bundling IE into Windows and then stopped doing anything....
how many new features have been added to IE in last couple of years?
i also find it amusing that you can open old Word documents in OO, but not in latest MS software.
sorry, but that isnt innovation, thats extortion... when you force people to buy something they acctually don't need just cause you decided to "innovate" - buddhistMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5kicken18: You must be a youngster (younger than me, anyway). I was talking about Lotus 1, 2, 3, not Lotus Notes. Lotus 1, 2, 3 was the dominant spreadsheet before Excel came along, and Lotus was the biggest software company in the world.
I've got to agree with you on Lotus Notes, though. Crappola incarnate. - vedichymn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Apple & the major Linux vendors all put out regular security updates. Take a look at RedHat's errata for Redhat 4 ES:
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rhel4es-errata.html
I get plenty of email from RedHat and the CentOS lists about package updates :( - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8 I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"
They're really saying "I love you"
I hear babies cryin', I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world - imjustabill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I could finally convince family and friends to buy a mac,.
- gopal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The assumption of sending a Microsoft Word[tm] document across to anybody in the planet is false. Majority of the users of Microsoft operating systems and applications like Office in countries like India, Vietnam, Thailand, etc are owning pirated copies. So, if someday they realise that piracy is bad, or Microsoft stops them, opening a Microsoft Word document is not that easy.
Why don't we put an end to using a secret file format like Microsoft Word etc?
I'm against both piracy and non-free software. - aroedl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6And that's a bad thing? After 15 years in the IT business, I'd be glad to work on a farm!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If microsoft were to disappear tomorrow, their software would still be around for eons, and third party support, development and maintenance companies would abound. That said, there's no chance in hell microsoft would 'suddenly disappear', they would go away very slowly, unless someone chucks a few nukes at redmond and the rest of their sites.
- ArchonSG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@ Kicken18 :
I disaggree, with the latest round of Linux releases, namely, Suse 10.1, Fedora 5 and the upcoming 6.0x Ubuntu variants, Linux has become more then sufficient for the basic user who just needs to log on to the web, get and do thier emails, handle wordprecessing and such.
Note that I am only refering to people who are your "average" Joe / Jane Doe who doesn't use thier PCs other then for "basic" usage.
Of course you can do more with linux but as with everything else it'll mean a learning curve which is no different then learning how to use the Apple or Windows machine. Both which regardless of what one camp or the other say or claim to be better, have thier ups and downs.
And yes, I use all three systems. - zetsurin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5A lot of people seem to think that if Microsoft went belly up (as unlikely a notion as that would sound) another monopolistic entitiy would just take their place and own the market. I say that's utter nonsense. Microsoft could only get into the position it was in by timing, chance, followed by brute monopolistic practises. No other company today would be able to suddenly do that. Also, all the companies who would innevitably feel the pain from using unsupported/unmaintained tech would have learnt their lessons well, provided they survived, and wouldn't just dive into that same situation again.
- guesty, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I see blue skies and rainbows
- cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5What a nonsense article. The basic premise seems to be 'if Microsoft and everything it ever created were to disappear in an instant, what would we do?' So if Microsoft were to shut its doors, all the installations of Office 97 that are still kicking around would magically disappear and we would be left in an IT desert? I don't think so.
The strawman this article sets up is utter crap. If MS had never existed, then we wouldn't all be wandering about saying "oh noes I has no office software or email client", we'd be using something else. If MS suddenly closed its doors never to open again, we similarly wouldn't be catapulted into an IT dark age, we'd just have some transitions to work through.
In fact, the only point that this article successfully proves is that MS has acquired lock-in not only at the software level, but also in mindset. If people can genuinely not imagine an email client existing that is not Outlook, or a word processor that is not Word, then it is a sad day indeed. - uownedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Terrible article. Terrible. If MS never existed, we'd have Apple. Despite the fact that some of you seem to think they'd "do nothing" and we'd be using an inferior OS, I kind of doubt it. I'm going to get modded down and flamed big time for this, but think about it. How much of what MS does are things they really actually pioneered? Not very much. You say Apple would still be running on a 32 bit platform? Last time I checked, Apple was running on a 64 bit platform before Microsoft even concidered it (or it was even possible for that matter).
Would this mean that Apple would be perfect? Hell no! But I bet instead of spending my days supporting a ***** of an OS and applications that barely work, I'd be fly fishing somewhere for most of my week, and pulling in real money supporting an OS and office suite that is actually worth using (i.e. works the way it should).
Microsoft paved their way by doing what everyone else was doing. Were they on top for a while? Yes! There was a time when I actually ENJOYED using MS products. Anymore? Not so much. But you better believe they didn't start out on top.
MS is a "right place at the right time" situation. Any one of the major competitors, or even some non-major competitors could have come out on top. It just so happens, that MS were the ones who could pull it off at the time.
Quite frankly, if MS ceased to exist, I wouldn't care in the least. I'd be out a job, but I'd still be able to do everything computer related that I do every day.
Regardless, terrible article. - timalmond, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5There's actually a really interesting side to this article that the author hasn't considered, which is about the question of dependancy in software on one company.
What if Microsoft did disappear tomorrow? What if Bill and a few of the chief shareholders just "lost it" and decided to release no more software, no patches, whatever? What are you going to do then? The developers can't work on the code base.
Of course, Microsoft aren't going to do this, but look at the problem in smaller areas. VB6 is not being developed further, which means sticking with it, or migrating to VB.NET (which isn't a simple migration).
This is one of the points of the open approach (whether open source or simply open protocols). That if something does happen, then you've simple alternatives. - tijer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"It is not an accident that Microsoft and its hardball tactics have succeeded all these years. They did not happen accidentally."
What the ***** is this guy even talking about? Not an accident? No, hardball tactics is for monopolies, it's for gaining money, it's not for technology or transparency, and it's not accidentally
Microsoft going away, this very second, would set back a lot of business and a lot of communication. But within a year or two, we would have made something much much better. Then we would be forced to use open standards. I'm not saying a couple of years of set-back is worth it. I'm just saying that we should have started out in an entirely different mannor. But US supreme court was not up for the job, and that's the real consequence. And international organisations have not succeeded in demanding open source for communication. - combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@chris9902: I'm burying you and replying to you. nVidia and ATi wouldn't be "giving away" anything if they opened their drivers. Buying the card is still required to use the drivers.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Now we're dancing in the land of make believe?
What if rainbows were shaped like unicorns and the roaring of waterfalls poured from their colorful mouths?
Back on Earth, in reality, Ubuntu Dapper will be released next month. - neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4my amendment:
"Today you can send a Word document to anybody in the world and expect it to be automatically opened and deploy it's macro virus IF THEY ALSO HAVE A COPY OF OUTLOOK". - timalmond, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5To correct what was said, "Today you can send a Word document to anybody in the world and expect them to be able to open it IF THEY ALSO HAVE A COPY OF WORD".
- sbutcher, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Suddenly those 10 kubuntu disks on my desk would be like gold dust.
The article was rather poor: as if to say that Microsoft is great after all.
However the topic isn't completely unfeasible - what if some super worm was released which took down all connected Windows boxes.
And who talks about StarOffice anymore, when you have OpenOffice?
On a practical side, ATMs and airport/rail information screens would probably not be working.
"adding that Microsoft is much better than Apple and Linux at delivering security patches."...i say this is untrue - anyone else agree?
To conclude - a day without Microsoft might just turn into 2 days, when we realise we don't miss them after all. - fgsfds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@chris9902: NOT SO LOUD!
If they find out that they could sell their hardware and software seperately, then we'd all be stuck in fix-a-bug-add-a-bug hell forever, like what Microsoft did to OSes! D: - satansbanjo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Why exactly is it a good thing that MS has to release so many security patches? And the car analogy is stupid. If I crash my car all the times, I become good at fixing it. But that means I'm a terrible driver!
And as for the consistent user interfaces, it's common knowledge that Apple were the first to bring out the GUI-based operating system. MS just nicked the idea. There is actually very little MS invented. Microsoft Office, don't get me wrong, is a great package. However, if there was no MS Office then there would be more work being done on open-source applications like OpenOffice.org, or more competition in the market meaning there would be more innovation amongst StarOffice and it's competitors - erkokite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"'We would also find out how bad the Linux and Apple vendors are at providing patches, compared to what [customers] got used to from Microsoft,' Pescattore says, adding that Microsoft is much better than Apple and Linux at delivering security patches. 'If you keep getting into car accidents, you know how to fix dents.'"
ummm... no. I don't think this guy has any idea what he is talking about. Pretty much any time there is a security hole in the linux kernel, or X, or anything of that nature, it's fixed within a day. It usually takes at least a week for microsoft to create and post a patch. Compare the recently found vulnerability in X that granted root access to anyone, to the WMF vulnerability in MS windows. It took MS a week or more to patch it, and it was a half-baked patch at that. The problem with X was fixed almost immediately(I think about as soon as it was announced). - wstryder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Imagine a day without a flame war after a Microsoft post.
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