msft impede software innovation & intel impede hardware innovation?

[draggoon01]

this article was mentioned in another thread. there was this one part that caught my attention:

Text

Bill is almost single-handedly responsible for destroying any real innovation in the software world, in a manner very similar to the way Intel destroyed any real innovation in computer architecture.

can someone explain what he's getting at/what he means?

as far as msft, i'm under the impression that them monopolizing with windows is in many ways a good thing because they've created a standard os to write programs for. and that this good mostly outweighs the bad they do (using their position to muscle out certain companies in their way).

as far as intel i don't know much of their history or tactics

 

[dawks]

Actually.. I've never thought of it that way..

Imagine how much it would cost the average software developer if they had to customize their programs for 5-6 different operating systems.. Imagine having to choose an O/S simply on which software is available for that O/S... (ie say 3dsm5 was only on Windows)... Consider how much more significantly expensive software development would be. Hence why most software is only available on one platform or the other currently..

Say there is... 6 competing O/S's.. Not all companies will be able to support all those O/S's.. so imagine having your favorite game not being developed for 'your' O/S..

Of course, this is where Java could become god like. Im not very familiar with Java, but if someone actually tried, could you code a fully function 3D game like quake3 in java? is it that capable? or even an application like photoshop.. could it be done?

Or companies could develop their own VM, much like Carmack did with Quake3.. qvm!

As for Microsoft and Intel holding down innovation..

 

[Electrode]

Two points I want to make about Microsoft:

1. Windows is a piece of shit. Windows XP is an ugly collection of bloat and hacks hot glued to a core that hasn't changed much since 1994. Microsoft has no strong competition, so they have no motivation to improve their product. Other operating systems, like Linux and BSD, are changing all the time, not at the user interface level, but at the kernel level. That means REAL improvement thaat actually makes a difference. The only thing new versions of Windows add are more bloat and pretty pictures.

2. Since Microsoft has so much control over everything, they are free to do whatever they want to in order to squeeze more money out of those who made the mistake of using their products. Just look at the subscription-based licenses they're moving everyone over to. Now you no longer have the choice to stick with an older version of their software that works just fine, you will be forced to upgrade, since Microsoft will refuse to renew your subscription licences, or charge insane fees to do so. Since they have all this control, there's really not much anyone can do about it.


Two points I want to make about Intel, Microsoft, and innovation:

1. Remember what it was when Intel called all the shots, before AMD was the household name it is now? New CPUs were few and far between, and they would set you back upwards of $1000 a piece. Now we have new chips coming out every other month, and a top-of-the-line one costs somewhere around $250. Competition, not monopolization, causes innovation.

2. Microsoft does not 'innovate'. They buy 'innovative' products from other, smaller companies, and then relabel them as their own, often giving little or no credit to the original designer. This started with MS-DOS (QDOS with some extra bugs and MS branding) and has continued ever since.

 

[dawks]

I believe the new crown of bloatware goes to RedHat LINUX 8.0

What a fat piece of sh!t.

XP is incredibly well designed compaired to rh..

Im very surprised however, that AOL hasnt put 5 million icons all over it yet.

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: DaZ
I believe the new crown of bloatware goes to RedHat LINUX 8.0

What a fat piece of sh!t.

RedHat is only bloated if you install every frigging package that comes with it. This isn't Windows, you can trim the fat quite easily. Earlier I was able to get a fully functional RedHat system to fit within 200 MB. Show me how to do that with Windows XP.

 

[zeruty]

interesting article

 

[dawks]

Shrug, i went pretty basic install, and it was 1.7gigs I belive.. didnt even use the third CD..

Theres like 3-4 web browsers intsalled.. 500,000 crappy little games.. and screensavers... w00t.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Originally posted by: DaZ
I believe the new crown of bloatware goes to RedHat LINUX 8.0

What a fat piece of sh!t.

XP is incredibly well designed compaired to rh..

Im very surprised however, that AOL hasnt put 5 million icons all over it yet.

I'm no big fan of linux (really only use it because I have to), but even so I think you're very misinformed. Did you bother to look at all the packages you install(ed)? Linux, because of its nature, has a lot of applications and features that a "dumb" consumer doesn't need, but a developer requires. You probably installed a lot of those things and wonder why all this "bloatware" didn't give you any "special" features or eye candy...

 

[gopunk]

1. Windows is a piece of shit. Windows XP is an ugly collection of bloat and hacks hot glued to a core that hasn't changed much since 1994. Microsoft has no strong competition, so they have no motivation to improve their product. Other operating systems, like Linux and BSD, are changing all the time, not at the user interface level, but at the kernel level. That means REAL improvement thaat actually makes a difference. The only thing new versions of Windows add are more bloat and pretty pictures.

have you actually used windows xp extensively? because if you did, you wouldn't be saying these things. i don't really see how bloat and pretty pictures would improve stability and speed.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Originally posted by: DaZ
Shrug, i went pretty basic install, and it was 1.7gigs I belive.. didnt even use the third CD..

Theres like 3-4 web browsers intsalled.. 500,000 crappy little games.. and screensavers... w00t.

And you could have individually selected/deselected those...

Linux, true, isn't really ready for the quote-unquote consumer yet IMO...

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: gopunk

1. Windows is a piece of shit. Windows XP is an ugly collection of bloat and hacks hot glued to a core that hasn't changed much since 1994. Microsoft has no strong competition, so they have no motivation to improve their product. Other operating systems, like Linux and BSD, are changing all the time, not at the user interface level, but at the kernel level. That means REAL improvement thaat actually makes a difference. The only thing new versions of Windows add are more bloat and pretty pictures.

have you actually used windows xp extensively? because if you did, you wouldn't be saying these things.

Alright, tell me this: other than more bloat and pretty pictures, what difference is there between windows 2000 and windows xp? Or for that matter, between windows nt 4.0 and windows xp?

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Electrode

Originally posted by: gopunk

1. Windows is a piece of shit. Windows XP is an ugly collection of bloat and hacks hot glued to a core that hasn't changed much since 1994. Microsoft has no strong competition, so they have no motivation to improve their product. Other operating systems, like Linux and BSD, are changing all the time, not at the user interface level, but at the kernel level. That means REAL improvement thaat actually makes a difference. The only thing new versions of Windows add are more bloat and pretty pictures.

have you actually used windows xp extensively? because if you did, you wouldn't be saying these things.

Alright, tell me this: other than more bloat and pretty pictures, what difference is there between windows 2000 and windows xp? Or for that matter, between windows nt 4.0 and windows xp?

well i put it in my edit, but i guess it was too late... it's faster and more stable. nt 4 and 2000 were both better than the consumer products but still gave bsod occasionally. haven't run nt4 and xp on the same machine, but there is a diff in speed between 2000 and xp.

if you're interested in a more detailed explanation (one that i can't give), have a read

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: gopunk
if you're interested in a more detailed explanation (one that i can't give), have a read

Looks like a fairly long list of minor tweaks. Sure it improves performance, but this is the kind of thing that shoud go into a patch, not a $100+ OS upgrade.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Electrode

Originally posted by: gopunk
if you're interested in a more detailed explanation (one that i can't give), have a read

Looks like a fairly long list of minor tweaks. Sure it improves performance, but this is the kind of thing that shoud go into a patch, not a $100+ OS upgrade.

well, a lot of these things were available in patches for 2000... but for stuff like the prefetch... i think that belongs in a new OS. regardless, you must admit that these changes would indicate something other than:

1. Windows is a piece of shit. Windows XP is an ugly collection of bloat and hacks hot glued to a core that hasn't changed much since 1994. Microsoft has no strong competition, so they have no motivation to improve their product. Other operating systems, like Linux and BSD, are changing all the time, not at the user interface level, but at the kernel level. That means REAL improvement thaat actually makes a difference. The only thing new versions of Windows add are more bloat and pretty pictures.

i use the product every day, if there wasn't a big difference, i think i would notice.

i know a lot (well, quite a few) very smart people that work at MS... you don't expect me to believe they just sit there all day twiddling their thumbs and thinking of ways to change icons.

btw only suckers pay retail

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Electrode

1. Remember what it was when Intel called all the shots, before AMD was the household name it is now? New CPUs were few and far between, and they would set you back upwards of $1000 a piece. Now we have new chips coming out every other month, and a top-of-the-line one costs somewhere around $250. Competition, not monopolization, causes innovation.

Oh yeah, never you mind that AMD charged more than $1000 when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

When there is high demand, you raise your prices to meet it. AMD is no less guilty of this, and hell, I'll bet you'd do the same thing.

 

[brxndxn]

Oh yeah, never you mind that AMD charged more than $1000 when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

AMD was not the first to charge $1000! You're crazy or less than 12 years old.

The Pentium 100 was originally $1000 or so, same with Pentium 200, the Pentium Pro was $2000+ at first, Pentium 2 300mhz was $1000... Many, many Intel chips were more than $1000 before AMD came along with some competition.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: brxndxn

Oh yeah, never you mind that AMD charged more than $1000 when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

AMD was not the first to charge $1000! You're crazy or less than 12 years old.

The Pentium 100 was originally $1000 or so, same with Pentium 200, the Pentium Pro was $2000+ at first, Pentium 2 300mhz was $1000... Many, many Intel chips were more than $1000 before AMD came along with some competition.

first to hit 1ghz, he said

 

[Electrode]

You people seem to be missing a key point: The 1 GHz Athlon was REAL innovation. It was WORTH the $1000 that AMD wanted for it. Intel, with all their resources hard at work, couldn't even come close to what AMD had accomplished. The P3 1 GHz paper launch doesn't count.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: brxndxn

Oh yeah, never you mind that AMD charged more than $1000 when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

AMD was not the first to charge $1000! You're crazy or less than 12 years old.

The Pentium 100 was originally $1000 or so, same with Pentium 200, the Pentium Pro was $2000+ at first, Pentium 2 300mhz was $1000... Many, many Intel chips were more than $1000 before AMD came along with some competition.

first to hit 1ghz, he said

What he said.

Take a refresher course on reading comprehension, brxndxn.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: Electrode

Originally posted by: gopunk
if you're interested in a more detailed explanation (one that i can't give), have a read

Looks like a fairly long list of minor tweaks. Sure it improves performance, but this is the kind of thing that shoud go into a patch, not a $100+ OS upgrade.

Those are just core kernal improvements and lots of them.. You must consider the usability features.. the start menu, if used properly is a big time saver. the system tray organizer is a lifesaver.. theme support is awesome (with a simple .dll hack).. i can live without the advanced thumbnail feature ... Simple filesharing is a very nice add-on. As is Remote Desktop. The XP firewall works GREAT... Who needs winzip anymore? Winxp handles zip files natively.. msconfig is back.. (granted they never should have jacked it from 2k..)

And of course theres the hundreds of new drivers bundled with XP... and boot time improvements.. my computer can boot from bios to usable state in 29 seconds I think.. its a PII 400 with 256megs ram.

Oh and I REALLY love how you can have multiple users logged in.. awesome for a house full of people and only one computer!

And if you have to ask the differences between NT4 and XP.. wow.. you should install NT4 and try it some time..

 

[sandorski]

Microsoft has definitely stifled innovation, Netscape being an obvious example.

Intel though, doesn't deserve to be lumped into this discussion, IMO. If AMD had failed during it's foray into SS7/k6-x, then Intel could be accused of truly stifling innovation, however, innovation has actually expanded in the PC(x86) world since Intel locked(to a large extent) competition out. One could argue that Intel "tried" to stifle innovation though.

 

[Dragnov]

Boo hoo. It's business.

When you become a leading CEO of a company that is dominating the market, please do be friendly to your competitors and give em a bigger market share, and reduce your profits for the sake of innovation and the consumers.

 

[Electrode]

Originally posted by: DaZ
You must consider the usability features..

That's just MicroSpeak for bloat.

the start menu, if used properly is a big time saver.

I hate the start button. Why do I have to move the pointer to a corner then repeat an up-wait-down-wait-right-wait sequence to start a program? In many other (better designed) environments, you just click anywhere on the root window/desktop and the menu is right there, and it doesn't take up half the screen either. Intuitiveness takes a back seat to looks in Microsoft's world.

the system tray organizer is a lifesaver..

But that does not answer a more fundamental question: why is there a system tray? It's the most useless thing ever made!

theme support is awesome (with a simple .dll hack)..

bloat

advanced thumbnail feature...

more bloat

Simple filesharing is a very nice add-on.

Poorly designed and utterly useless feature.

As is Remote Desktop.

Wonderful! A bloated, poorly-written trojan server built into every shipping copy of Windows! :Q

The XP firewall works GREAT...

No it doesn't.

Who needs winzip anymore?

Who would even want to use that piece of bloated crap?

Winxp handles zip files natively..

No it doesn't. It's done with an explorer extension DLL associated with .zip files. This is also included in Windows ME, and Plus 98.

msconfig is back.. (granted they never should have jacked it from 2k..)

If the OS' configuration tools were anywhere near as good as they should be, things like msconfig would not be needed.

And of course theres the hundreds of new drivers bundled with XP...

Many of which are redundant, and many of which are poorly written.

and boot time improvements.. my computer can boot from bios to usable state in 29 seconds I think.. its a PII 400 with 256megs ram.

If it weren't so bloated, perhaps it could compete with the 16.47 seconds it takes to boot Linux on my P166 MMX laptop w/ 144 MB RAM!

Oh and I REALLY love how you can have multiple users logged in.. awesome for a house full of people and only one computer!

UNIX systems have been doing this since at least the early 1970's, and it works a lot better.

And if you have to ask the differences between NT4 and XP.. wow.. you should install NT4 and try it some time..

I'm running it in VMware now. MS should have quit when they were ahead if you ask me.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: draggoon01
this article was mentioned in another thread. there was this one part that caught my attention:

Text

Bill is almost single-handedly responsible for destroying any real innovation in the software world, in a manner very similar to the way Intel destroyed any real innovation in computer architecture.

can someone explain what he's getting at/what he means?

as far as msft, i'm under the impression that them monopolizing with windows is in many ways a good thing because they've created a standard os to write programs for. and that this good mostly outweighs the bad they do (using their position to muscle out certain companies in their way).

as far as intel i don't know much of their history or tactics

There is no easy short answers to this stuff or else someone would be jailed or sued... heres One one way though...
Microsoft is killing Open GL which is a superior and certainly easier for developers to write in 3D language than direct3d.


Heres How they did it

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: sandorski
Microsoft has definitely stifled innovation, Netscape being an obvious example.

Intel though, doesn't deserve to be lumped into this discussion, IMO. If AMD had failed during it's foray into SS7/k6-x, then Intel could be accused of truly stifling innovation, however, innovation has actually expanded in the PC(x86) world since Intel locked(to a large extent) competition out. One could argue that Intel "tried" to stifle innovation though.

netscape stifled itself by being crappy