Stop picking on Microsoft, you bullies

[She's been downed now, but she's not forgotten]

Hi!

Regarding : http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10403

The thing is, Microsoft buys pictures for it's site (microsoft.com) as many other big sites do, it doesn't mean that the woman on the picture is working on Microsoft. So, How do I know this ? I will tell you why. A couple of months ago, I saw a picture on Microsoft.com which had ONLY 3 PIXELS ERROR in it! Now, I email Microsoft and comlpain about this. They email me back with a personal email and appologize for the 3 pixel error and they tell me the pictures are bought from another company selling pictures and that they will try prevent this happening again. Makes sense to me. Anyway, Microsoft (this big company hated by many) changed the picture because of me complaining about those 3 pixels.

What does this teach you ?

1. Microsoft does not make those pictures, stop picking on'em.

2. Microsoft does care about its visitors and customers very much, not like Linux where if you have a problem and ask a question, You won't be getting any answer back or they send you a "u R n0t l33t" e-mail.

If you are a true news-site, stop posting stupid articles and call them news and start writting about real news. I do hate it when a "news-site" takes side, but that's me.

regards Siyavash

"Quite simply, the Vole uses Akamai Technologies' Internet-wide cacheing system to deliver content to surfers. And Akamai runs Linux. "

Yeah, real shocker. Will there be a follow-up story about how the UPS guy that makes deliveries to Microsoft uses a Logitech mouse? I have a friend who is a consultant for Microsoft and he uses a Palm Pilot. Would you like his name and e-mail adddress so you can write a story about how Microsoft indirectly doesn't use PocketPCs?

Nano J. Gator

Now, I have this problem with people who use analogies, Mike. Analogies are usually broken, as this one is. For one, UPS is not in the business of designing mice as input devices, as the analogy implies that it does.

For two, a consultant for Microsoft going about his personal life is not comparable to Microsoft conducting business as usual, as the analogy implies that he is. My solution is to shoot people who use analogies - analogies which are broken, that is, but only if people who use analogies do so because they are too damn disingenuous to simply state their position using the facts at hand.

I would also accept, instead of these people being shot, that they would each send me $10 and promise to stop trying to make us all perceive and learn about the world as they do - through the intellectually lazy, distorted lens of broken analogies.

Gene Mosher
Eugene, Oregon
former home of Sony CD manufacturing

Do I trust Microsoft to have anything to do with my credit card? Let me think. Um, NO. In fact, I have composed a series of limericks in honor of this worrisome development.

MS Windows Computer OS
draws most hackers, by my informed guess.
Despite patches applied,
It sports flaws far and wide
As a failure, it's quite a success.

Since Microsoft gained its control
The Inquirer has named it "The Vole"
'Cause it acts like a weasel
Managing DOJs with ease-al
And monopoly remains its main goal.

If His Bill-ness Gates had his way
For licenses each year we'd all pay
Open Source he'd outfox
And secure the xBox
So that just trusted games it would play.

Each competing firm he would buy,
Litigate til their money ran dry,
Or pretend partnership real
their trade secrets to steal
And sell something himself on the sly.

If Gates makes special smart cards
They'll leave out important safeguards
Leave it open to hacks
And financial hijacks
It'd be like keeping cash out in the yard.

If Gates tries to do you a favor
Don't put your brain on screen saver
If you're fooled in the least
Believe me you'll get fleeced
Like taking your sheep to the shaver.

Yes, I made this up myself. I would have continued it longer, but I have other things to work on today.

Michaela Stephens

Mike,

From the last several days stories by Adamson Rust (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10404) and in particular 'AMD says technical jargon stops people buying kit' (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10364), it seems that AMD has a problem concerning marketing their products in relation to Intel's marketing strategy while they both have 'uneducated' customers. Intel gets the easier part of the problem by advertising their processors speed while pushing for the 'faster is better' principle. This applies to all products except Centrino products in which are marketed around Wi- Fi/portability and not processor speed.

AMD's problem is product can do as much work (at times) while having a slower clockspeed and this is particularly true when talking about the Opteron/Athlon 64. They opted for a PR system (with almost none of the other PR). To be fair, Apple also has this low-GHZ problem but they market their products around style and superiority complex. Apple tried the low power feature, (Cube early version of Shuttle XPCs) but they were ahead of their time, not customizeable or expandable.

So we have these corporations all competing for the same customer who generally doesn't understand a thing except how to plug it in.

I am sure there are a lot of people getting paid a whole lot more than me to work on this, but to me, it seems like this is a little bit like a turbo-charged small 4-cylinder (Pentium 4) versus a big 4-cylinder (Athlon) versus a 6-cylinder (Athlon64/Opteron). [God forbid the average consumer need those gas-guzzling, cancer/heart-attack/infertility-causing V-8/V-10 Tritons, 5.7L V8 Hemis or 6L/8L Vortecs which are similar to the Itanium 2, Power 4+....an Alpha can only be equated to an exotic sports car engine). (www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/nata/natsa4.html & Risk Maps for cancer risk, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/medical_notes/336738.stm for heart attack link and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2984923.stm for fertility)

The auto industry has always relied on fuel-economy, horsepower, 0-60 times, and looks as their means for marketing even though their function is only to transport people from A to B. What are computers really used for? A tenative list is office applications, net surfing, image/graphics processing, and scientific computing/modeling/CAD. Are there improvements/advances in engine technology, brakes, interiors, etc. that each company can market? Sure. Are there architectural improvements in processors, busses, memory etc. that each company can market? So the solution is clear. A suite of real world software has to be used to come up with an application suite performance number without prejudice. AMD is very aware that many people use their computers to process images and if their systems aren't processing as fast, then it has to be made faster. Intel is also aware that their FP units aren't as powerful and what they can do to improve it's performance.

1st cut is to create a suite of applications that will use a new version of a piece of software every 3-4 years. (Isn't that what we can kind of expect for major product upgrades?) A proposed list would include MS Office+Star Office (all apps), IE+Netscape, PhotoShop+#2 in image editing software (Jasc ?), 2 DVD authoring software, 2 game engines (e.g., Q3 + ?) and 2 CAD as well as Sciencemark. All are equally weighted. Obviously these programs will test all aspects of the computer system because isn't that what a consumer gets? A whole system? Can you get the same car model with 2 different engines? Yes. Does the average consumer care if it has an AC Delco or Bosch fuel injection unit? No...as long as it works.

If everything would be analogous, then the onus would be on the computer system vendors (Dell, HPAQ, etc.) to promote their systems with these test results. Problem is that we have a multi-tiered system (Dell vs HPAQ, Intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs ATI) all promoting their brands and are looking for consumer awareness. The odd thing is that for an industry riddled with standards, it has none for the consumer.

Greg Barber

Señor Magee,

"By providing a backbone for hotspots, based on standards rather than the various proprietary WLan expansion technologies out there, it makes the idea of a ubiquitous wireless network to rival cellular far more realistic than it ever was with Wi-Fi alone."

"They certainly have the power and resource to take control from alternative network suppliers, but they may also be condemning their 3G investments to stillbirth."

While I am a big WiFi believer, I would like to point out that the cheap remote back-haul provided by WiMAX is every bit as applicable to the success of 3G as it is to WiFi. While we all like to complain about the ridiculous cost of GPRS services today, it is essential to realize that, in order to roll out network-wide IP services, providers must run T1-class backbone links to any and all cell cites on the entire network. With a world-wide digital network the size of, say, T-Mobile's (covering the vast majority of metropolitan areas -- any myriad non-metropolitan square miles -- in both Europe and the US), even discount-rate T1 service, at $500/month/site, is ridiculously expensive, and the cost of running connections to more remote or awkwardly-located cells is even more insane. This is the same intractable problem many are providing to assert that WiFi hot-spots will never rule the world, the only difference being the fractionally smaller coverage of each WiFi hot-spot.

WiMAX can just as easily be applied to provide a dirt cheap, high performance IP back-channel to data-oriented cells as to WiFi hot-spots, and, indeed, the proportional coverage advantage of 3G cells to WiFi hot-spots applies just as much to the economics of a WiMAX-connected network as a T1-connected network. The only real difference I see is that, assuming WiMAX, like WiFi, is a wireless abstraction of the conventional ethernet physical layer (it is 802.*), WiFi networks can be bridged to WiMAX back-haul at the ethernet level, while WCDMA would need to be bridged at a higher level -- but that's hardly a concern or an issue of any kind, just a geeky side-note.

I'm not claiming that 3G will rule the world as so many would have had us believe c. 1999, just that WiMAX stands to "turn current assumptions on their head" for the economics and success of cellular data roll-outs in exactly the same way you claim it does for public WiFi.

Respectfully,

Jonathan Ragan-Kelley

Subject: Puter Recycling....

" One woman from the National Recycling Coalition, told AP she was "thrilled" with the scheme. She didn't say she''d cough up the fifty bucks to assuage her own conscience though. "

you have no idea as to how dead on you are with that last comment, and how much that exactly pisses me off. Here in the wonderfull Poeple's Republix of California, everyone votes in anything and everything that does the general "good", so long as it doens't affect them, or they have put forth an extra effort. Just go ahed and shove off the responsibility to someone else, let them pay for it, and deal with the cost. What!? ME pay for it? you have got to be kidding...

What! THEY were doing WHAT!? I can't belive it, oh you mean *I* now have to actually PAY for the service i was getting for FREE before..?? could't be!

Keep up the --great-- work!!!

Nils

Subject: Recycling fee DELL

What a con. We have had to pay a recycling fee in the Netherlands for about ten years now and I believe that it is about EUR 5. For a screen (CRT) there is a further EUR 10 - 12 (can't remember precisely). This system is now profitable. When it started the fees were about 20% higher but they've reduced them as they were making too much profit. The recycling is done here in NL. (It is not legal to export your rubbish in the EU).

Gr, Tim Binsted

Subject: Microsoft uses Linux shocker

Ok OK! Stop with this retardedness, this isnt news, these shreak! omfg, my mothers friends daughters husband uses a pentium and I work for AMD stories. They are pathetic. If you want to write a story on it atleastttttttt put them all into one article, and just leave about a sentance or two for each. This whole little jumping on companies for nit picky things is starting to get annoying.

Frustrated spilling inq everywhere

Ajay Desai