Rant 2006-04-05: Little world... & Standards

Notes before reading:
*For an explanation on how this rant is organized, please: read this.
*This rant is posted in this thread.
*The discussion is about an article that is about a new Microsoft product that will bring the checking of Hotmail into the desktop. For some reason, the thread began to enter the topic of standards and how Microsoft doesn't follow them.
-This rant is actually divided in two parts: my rant, that comes first, and the rant of colleague of mine name Jesus Alfonso or "Poncho". Apparently we both discovered this article and ranted very similarly which is quite entertaining.
-Both rants are directed to a user that goes by the name of xuniL, that posted here, although it won't be necessary for you to read it, I quoted pretty much the whole post in my rant.
-In my rant I use a lot of different names to refer to Microsoft, some of which are: MS, M$, Microsuck, Macrobogus, Microblows, and Macrodup.

Caleb's Rant:
linux and open sores is writing code that targets linux and unix.

Oh, c'mon! that's stupid and you know it "linux [...] is writing code that targets linux" DUH!!!!! Linux is an OS (a real one), it doesn't write code =P. And if your intentions were to point out that Microsoft as well as the Open Source community is targetting their own OS, I beg to differ: there are plenty of open source projects that are built for Windows. And as for Linux: every bit of code in there is plain C, a standard language. A language that can even be compiled in Windows (of course, after needing to buy the goddamn compiler that Microsoft bought from another company).


So what is your point? You call them open, but that is just your perspective. What makes the standards they use the best ones?There are bids now by India and China for new standards...should we ignore those, for yours? That may be a dumb example because they are forced to run lamux

Do you even get what the phrase "to use a standard" means? Do you even know what standards are we talking about? C, HTML, Javascript (in the early days), and what supposedly was the idea behind a Server Side Web Language (what then became PHP and ASP), were created aside from Linux and your "open sores" (BTW, I am going to play your game: Microsuck IT professional wannabe). And then all this projects adopted those standards. And those standards have been changing to adapt to new technologies like RSS feeds, WAP, etc. Which your precious lame excuse for a browser hasn't kept up with. You think that because 90% of all people are using your software is the reason for it to be treated as a standard, oh please; so don't say that the subject of M$ pulling that monopoly lever is out of the question (protecting their investment, my ass).

They're open: that is not a perspective is a fact. I can modify their source code and submit improvements without paying a penny: that's an open standard.

India and China are not forced to run Linux: they've chosen to switched to it because of all the crap that Macrobogus rent them.

So, partly, yes, you're right: that was a dumb example.


but what if Google comes out with some wild variation of linux that is mostly proprietary, will you still be standing behind them at that point?...google is not an open sores vendor you know. They aren't giving away any secrets.

Wow, you're really just spitting out bull without even knowing it:
http://code.google.com/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/supporting-open-source.html


Or what if somebody brighter than all of us comes up with an OS and set of protocols that blow any today away in terms of speed and usability and decides to copyright it and patent it? What makes open sores "the" standard? Cause you say so? I don't care how many standard orgs are involved. Most of them were spawned from some old governement agency or something like that, which we all know is always the worst way to do things....by committee.

Or what if you just shut your s**thole and actually read something before openning it? If someone has an idea of improving a standard or creating a whole new one, those many standard orgs that you don't care about are a very good way to spread it around the IT community and making it easy to adopt it in the near future: the Internet Engineering Task Force is one of them (http://www.ietf.org/ ):

Here is the document that explains the DNS standard.

Here is the document that explains the HTTP (v 1.1) protocol.

Both of them were submitted by a person, a coder, someone like anybody here, and right now both of them are widely used. WINS is a Microblows standard that's very similar to DNS but, alas, I can't find it's explanation here. Tried googling "DNS standard" and came up with several other pages explaining it in the first result page (ironically, the first one was of Microsoft, explaining how to use their version of the DNS standard with dynamic registers [who said "security issues"?]), tried googling "WINS standard" and, alas, no dice. Well, WINS is a word not only used in tecnical aspects, so I used "Microsoft WINS standard" and it came up with this article of the story of former CIO of Massachusetts, Peter Quinn, whose decision to adopt ODF (OpenDocument Format), an open standard for office documents, to use in executive agencies was attacked by Microsoft.

God! How can you sleep at night saying "Most of them were spawned from some old governement agency or something like that"? By the look of things you don't even know how one those "standard orgs" work, how do you claim to know where have they come from? And even if it's true: I don't care, they work; no matter how much you ignore them, and don't care about them, they've brought us the standards that have been working in a much broader way than even Windows, and the means to improve those standards as well.


To me, the OS running on 90% of the worlds desktops is the standard? Majority rules, correct? Why don't you respect those standards....the standards adopted by most of the world.

Adopted? You mean cramed? And those "standards" aren't being adopted partially because of all their vulnerabilities that can't be fixed externally because of their closed code:
This article was reviewed and updated about two months ago. Basically saying that Macrodup is investigating (not actually fixing) a vulnerability in which by using their WINS server in several machines could cause those machines to be compromised. Their solutions: block ports at firewall (how the hell am I suppose to replicate then?), use IPSec to protect traffic (wow, encription, so server-to-server communication it's not encripted at all?), or not use WINS at all (wonderful).


And please don't go into some story about how the entire world was held for ransom and forced at gunpoint to buy Microsoft machines. That is just too lame, too old and wrong. They could have bought unix machines or apple machines or DR machines or any other OS along the way if they wanted to. Don't be selling the intelligence of the American people or any other people short. Anyone that says the average person doesn't know any better sounds like they are the one lost in their own little world.

Maybe, but did they buy any of those? Nope. What happenned when they wanted to switch? Because they have wanted to do that, many times. Too old, maybe: but it still happenned, so stop ignoring it. 90% of the market share was caught by pure well-crafted business planning (anyways, isn't "market share" a business term?). Bill knows how to sell and make other people buy, period.

"their own little world"? Aren't you the one saying that we're selling short the intelligence of the "American people"? If you hadn't noticed, a lot of people other than "Americans", are using computers. You're the one lost in your own little world, where you think a monopoly is good and you point the finger at the only thing in this IT world that's doing the anti-monopoly thing and claiming that it's monopolizing standards. And don't give me the "I've never said that they were monopolizing anything" crap: read your post, you are.


Get a PC and install Linux, get a book and read, get a browser (a real one) and surf, get a life, and get another screen name: you don't deserve to (and, apparently, you don't even want to) have any link to Linux, even if it's backwards.


Pocho's Rant:
Here we go again...

"linux and open sores is writing code that targets linux and unix."
I don't know what to say here. This is a plain lie. Many Open Source projects have Windows implementations. Clam, Perl, PHP, Apache... crap, just take a peek at sourceforge.net

"...but what if Google comes out with some wild variation of linux that is mostly proprietary"
Hm... How, exactly, would a Google distro be proprietary? I mean, Linux as such is an OPEN kernel, so any closedness can only be present in a form of proprietary implementations of public-domain protocols and the kind. In such a scenario, Google would be hanging itself...

"Or what if somebody brighter than all of us comes up with an OS and set of protocols that blow any today away in terms of speed and usability and decides to copyright it and patent it?"
And, what, it became abandoned because patents made no one implement such a wonder? Breaking news: this has happened far too many times to list reliably. Just ask Sun, IBM, and, yes, Microsoft (although this one has never blown anyone away in terms of anything useful).

"What makes open sores "the" standard?"
Nothing. More than a standard by itself, Open Source seeks to be an implementation of "stuff" that has become standard.

"Most of them [standard-setting organizations] were spawned from some old governement agency or something like that, which we all know is always the worst way to do things....by committee."
Really? Let's see how you do measuring your own height in King Charles' palms instead of meters (or yards, for that matter). And I also suppose that your own Department of Defense is pretty unreliable, since it's an old govenment agency that does things the worst way, right?
And just for the sake of curiosity, what's the "best" way to do things? With a group of pressure that changes both technical and non-technical specifications at will?

"To me, the OS running on 90% of the worlds desktops is the standard? Majority rules, correct? Why don't you respect those standards....the standards adopted by most of the world."
Majority does not set a standard. What you are describing is called "demagogy", which is fine to overthrow some sort of dictatorship, but not for an engineering infrastructure. By the way, I personally don't give a damn if 90% of the world's population uses Windows; I'm just glad that my grandparents (using Mac OS X Tiger) and my mother (using Fedora Linux Core 4), all average users who obviously don't know squat about OS/networking/IT theory, are able to do productive work anytime and are part of the 10% that do not have the constant fear of having their computers hijacked because they visited the wrong web page.

"And please don't go into some story about how the entire world was held for ransom and forced at gunpoint to buy Microsoft machines. That is just too lame, too old and wrong."
Just take a peek at Microsoft: Don't Sell PCs Without Operating Systems, also published in ZDNet. The issue is way old, that's correct. This is not 1996, when Microsoft could racketeer PC manufacturers and vendors at will, but the problem is not gone.

"They could have bought unix machines or apple machines or DR machines or any other OS along the way if they wanted to."
That's partially right. People have choices. The problem arises when Microsoft says any option but theirs is stupid, wrong, and/or dangerous, so as you are stating. That is a complete lie.

"Don't be selling the intelligence of the American people or any other people short. Anyone that says the average person doesn't know any better sounds like they are the one lost in their own little world."
In fact, the average user doesn't know better, but that DOES NOT imply that he/she is stupid. It's just that he/she does not have any obligation to know better. That's why Microsoft's lousy implementation of applications, protocols, etc., for the sake of demagogy and marketing is such a serious ethical offense.
Just as a side note, I know many average users (aside from my family) that know for sure that Windows is crap, but felt trapped because nobody had presented them alternatives (until now, that is).

By the way, this "open sores zealot" is an IT professional who is certified in both Linux and Windows, as well as *BSD. So I'm pretty confident I know what I'm talking about. Are you?

PS: What's the deal with the "open sores" thing? I hope it's just some dimwit word game; otherwise, I'll be VERY concerned...

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