131–140 of 146 posts
No one seems to have mentioned the impact this will have on Live systems. I'm frequently called on by Windows users to recover lost data on corrupted systems, which I do using a Live Linux distribution (especially when they have discarded their installation media & access keys, and have no interest in investing money in continuing using Windows if I can give them a free alternative to getting online). How will I be a…
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Shhh, not so loud! Such thoughts would destabilize Slashdot if they got out! Seriously, this seems especially short-sighted, as the perception is that MS is getting thrashed by Apple in the consumer market. I think its more about preventing malware from getting ahold of the boot process, side effects be damned.
I don't see this. Apple sells hardware; incidentally, it comes with its own OS. I haven't met many people who bought a Mac for MacOS since Windows XP.
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Shhh, not so loud! Such thoughts would destabilize Slashdot if they got out! Seriously, this seems especially short-sighted, as the perception is that MS is getting thrashed by Apple in the consumer market. I think its more about preventing malware from getting ahold of the boot process, side effects be damned.
I don't see this. Apple sells hardware; incidentally, it comes with its own OS. I haven't met many people who bought a Mac for MacOS since Windows XP.
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Two words: Power Shell. Well, one word. PS is a "decent command line" for Windows, that can handle most of the things you discuss pretty well.
Why should I learn a new toolchain when I already have one that's just as good but has been around for 30+ years? It's fun to reinvent the wheel, but as a user, sometimes enough is enough. Just give me bash and the coreutils, kthx.
Also if you don't know this anything about new toolchain, how can you say that your old one is "just as good"?
Caveat: I have been heavy Linux user for past 7 years, but I'm not so quick to dismiss alien technology, especially when it addresses obvious flaws in Unix -- e.g. piping plain text with parsing and printing it again on all stages seems so ancient, I would much rather like to be able to use structured data instead. Also, you could remove the overhead of process initialization if your command line tools are just functions, and not executables. Just sayin'.
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I don't see this. Apple sells hardware; incidentally, it comes with its own OS. I haven't met many people who bought a Mac for MacOS since Windows XP.
As much as I don't like Apple/OS X, most of my friends do. Everyone got Mac _because_ of OS X. One got it because of low latency, and because he was "sure it won't hang up for a moment because of some background job". He uses it to make music. Others got it for its (OS X's) usability.
I doubt any major vendor will do this. First off, they don't want to be locked into selling Microsoft-only machines. If they can't pretend Linux is an option, Microsoft can charge them $1000 for a Windows license and there's nothing they can do about it. If they have Linux hanging over Microsoft's head, though, they'll get better pricing on Windows. (Think this won't happen? It already did with XP on netbooks. When M…
Sorry, I don't buy it. No PC OEM has a rational fear of MS doing bad by them, regardless of lock-in. Firstly, MS has no good reason to do that since it would just put the retail price of the PCs too high to sell well, and MS is a volume business and knows it. They're smart enough to know to avoid hurting their own sales. They already know who and how to charge ridiculously high prices per client for software and its…
Microsoft already prices it differently for different OEMs. They are already in mortal fear than Microsoft will change it, even without the technology to enforce it.
Can't find a link now, but in one of the big computer trade shows, in the morning Asus said they'll be promoting linux on the recent 9" eee. Afternoon, they apologized and said they will only promote Windows, and will in fact redesign it to better fit windows. The difference was apparently made by a call from Microsoft that threatened their volume licensing deal.
> MS would find itself in a fecal-tornado of bad press and government action that it would surely not enjoy.
The government works for Microsoft. MS had some fear of antitrust back in the late 90s, but they've since become one of the largest lobbyists, buying politicians on both sides. They are not touchable by antitrust or any other government action in the foreseeable future.
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> Microsoft isnt stupid enough (or evil enough, despite what some like to believe) to attempt to force PC oems to effectively block all OSes except Windows. Um, Microsoft used to do exactly this. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/08/31/jean_louis_gass_233_... I don't know if they have the muscle or the guts to try something like this again. edit: fixed typo
There's a rather large difference between contractually forbidding PC OEMs from selling Windows machines bundled with BeOS and technologically blocking non-Windows OSes from executing. It's one thing to say "you can't bundle another OS with mine". It's another thing entirely to say "your hardware can never run any OS except mine".
They both result from signing an agreement between said parties, and basically provide the same benefits to both parties (given that most people won't install an operating system themselves).
Except one leaves a choice to the end user, and the other doesn't.
Wouldn't this draw anti-trust battles? Since complying with EFI signing is against the license of one of the only other major alternatives to Windows, this would not bode well for Microsoft.
And who do you expect to pursue this anti-trust?
The US government?
Oh, I didn't realize you were joking! ha ha, funny.
The US government is owned by big corps, MS being one of them. Something really weird has to happen for them to turn against their corporate masters. (And don't compare it to the previous anti-trust case - at the time, microsoft wasn't lobbying and paying, sorry, donating to, politicians from both parties)