[LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
Erez Zadok
ezk at cs.sunysb.edu
Sat Dec 20 19:00:57 EST 2003
Michael, I appreciate MS's interest in this community. Although I'm the
faculty sponsor for LUGSB, the personal opinions herein are my own.
1. Usability
As a LONG time user, programmer, researcher, and system administrator of
numerous Unix and Windows systems, I can tell you that my next laptop
will be a Macintosh. For years now, my choice of workstations and
laptops had to double:
- I need some form of unix (mostly linux) for OSS tools, development
tools, and easy of programmability (e.g., perl scripting).
- but I also need Windows because I interact with people who use
MS-Office exclusively. I myself use excel every day, and my only
choice of presentation software is PPT.
So I've always needed two laptops (one linux, one windows), or dual-booted
laptops (annoying to switch around), or used VMware (typically too slow on
a laptop, and not fully integrated into one OS). With Mac-OS X, I can get
the best of both worlds: the easy of use of a fully integrated graphical
environment, with excellent office productivity tools --- as well as
access to numerous OSS packages; I can open a xterm and bash, start emacs,
gcc, etc.
If I were Microsoft, I'd also worry about Apple. :-) Seriously, having
traveled to conferences for years now, I've seen the trends among the the
technical crowds (read: the grass roots of people who eventually affect
what the John Doe's out there will buy and use); they've been shifting
heavily toward Mac-OS X systems in the past couple of years.
If MS were to offer a best-of-both-worlds solution ala Mac-OS X, that
would be my next choice of laptop and workstations.
Alternatively, port Office to Linux. If it costs the same as it costs on
Windows I'll be the first to buy a copy.
2. Security
Users see MS as reactive: only worrying about security problems after the
fact. Linux is seen as a a proactive system where bugs are found and closed
before they become a serious problem.
I'd like to see a lot more security s/w on Windows:
- It should come w/ an ssh client and server.
- It should have a strongly encrypted file system support that works with
any file system (not just an add-on EFS to NTFS).
- it should come w/ integrated anti-virus software.
- it should come with anti-spyware and anti-popup support. (Every other
browser supports popup suppression. Why does IE have to continue to
refuse to support this? MS seems to cater to the Advertising industry
instead of the end-user/consumer.)
- It should come with multiple anti-spam systems, esp. those based on
Bayesian techniques (ala SpamAssassin) and challenge-response methods (ala
ASK or TMDA).
It is still not possible to run Windows while not giving users full
Administrator privileges. All sorts of things stop working, esp. trivial
software installations. I.e., I have to give my daughter's account Admin
privileges so that child games can be installed and run; but then she
browses the Web and gets hit by spyware and friends. Unix had super-user
vs. non-super-user privileges sorted out 30 years ago. How long will it
take MS to get out of the mode of thinking of "one all-powerful user per
system"?!
Right now, when people want a secure system, they stay away from Windows.
If MS did the above things: Windows will be the first choice OS when
security is paramount.
3. Unix Interoperability.
Give me an X11 server please, so I can pop applications from Unix hosts.
Give me NIS/NIS+/LDAP login clients, so I can integrate my login environment
with my Unix system w/o having to switch to the MS way of doing things (PDC
etc.).
Give me a PDC that doesn't force me to to make the PDC host be my primary
DNS server (I want to use Vixie's Bind).
I'd like to be able to mount FreeBSD/Solaris UFS/FFS file systems, and Linux
EXT2/3 file systems, from Windows, and have it all supported by MS and work
well (I don't want any 3rd party stuff).
Work with the OSS community to open up standards and even help to port CIFS,
SMB, and NTFS to linux. I have to tell you that a lot of people in the OSS
community have changed their minds about SGI and Apple since they
open-sourced major parts of their systems (XFS for SGI), and have since
actively sought to court the OSS community. In just a couple of years,
Apple has transformed itself from the "Other (smaller) Evil Empire" to the
"Champion of the OSS Movement." You cannot buy this kind of publicity,
Michael.
4. Pricing
I'm amazed at how many companies have forgotten an age old lesson: build a
grass-roots set of followers in academia, and those graduating students will
eventually recommend, buy, and use your products. Several companies have
done so, but then when they got big, they abandoned the academic users --
esp. students.
IBM did so in the 70s, then they grew bigger and forgot about their academic
uses. Fortunately, IBM survived.
DEC stepped in to fill in the void in the 80s. Then they grew big, figured
they don't need the academic users, and abandoned them. Where is DEC now?!
So Sun stepped in to fill in the void in the 90s, and was very pro-academia
(discounts, give-aways, etc.). Then they grew big, and neglected their
academic users. And where are their stocks today?
Microsoft should cater to the academic users, esp. students who cannot
afford full retail price of MS Windows and Office. Give students DIRT-CHEAP
prices and you'll get a huge following hooked up on MS systems.
I think iTunes is a great idea, and the best way to address music piracy.
It had been much more successful than the RIAA's Scare Tactics. I'm not
saying MS should sell Office for 99c, but make it such a low price for
students that no one would need to think twice about buying vs. duplicating
a friend's CD.
Cheers,
Erez.
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From: Erez Zadok <ezk at cs.sunysb.edu>
To: "Michael Surkan" <msurkan at windows.microsoft.com>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 20 Dec 2003 16:11:04 PST."
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In message <DDE1793D7266AD488BB4F5E8D38EACB80454FB90 at WIN-MSG-10.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com>, "Michael Surkan" writes:
> I find your comments about Apple very interesting. I would have thought
> people would rather be running Linux on their next laptops instead of
> the Mac OS.
My motto is "the right tool for the right job."
While I cannot speak for "all people," I can tell you that I have things I
have to do, and I need to do them: I don't care what platform I use, as long
as it lets me do what I want to do as efficiently and painlessly as
possible. There were times when Solaris was the best thing for me. There
were times when NeXT was the best platform for me. And before that Vax/VMS.
Today it's dual-use Linux+Windows. And not too far from now, Mac-OS X.
After that, who knows -- I'll just switch to whatever I perceive is "best"
:-)
> Would you say that Linux is also more "usable" than Windows
> for most users?
No, of course not. "Most users" are novices for whom installing and using
linux is still more difficult than Windows; heck, most users wouldn't know
how to install and setup Windows either. But Linux has made great strides
in recent years in becoming more usable, and is slowly eating away at
Microsoft's sole claim for ease-of-use.
Like I said, however, I think Apple is making leaps and bounds of headway
wrt ease-of-use. Apple has much more experience in producing usable
software than the Linux vendors; also I think the Linux community isn't
spending nearly enough resources on ease-of-use and usability: all the
(media) attention is given to all the funky new 2.6 kernel features which
mean squat to my grandma.
> The usability features you talk about likely would be
> most appealing to developers (not that developers aren't important, mind
> you).
Yes, developers are a small fraction of users. But Developers are those
that try new things first, not my grandma. After developers come students,
and then everyone's grandma. That's Apple's approach and it's working.
> As far as security goes, I agree this is something Microsoft has to
> continue doing a lot more work to improve. Have you heard about some of
> the plans for our new Windows XP service pack this coming year? We have
> a greatly improved firewall in it (on by default now), as well as some
> pop-blocking and general Internet Explorer security enhancements. Not
> that this is nearly enough to solve the security issues.
Geez, man, I've hacked together a commercial firewall product using TIS's
fwtk back in 1991. Back then a firewall was a novel idea: we had to fight
to explain to customers why they should buy a f/w.
Firewalls today are old technology. It's EXPECTED to exist on every
self-respecting OS. I'm not excited the least bit about MS doing something
that should already have been there years ago. Yawn.
MS instead should give people new solutions to existing, new, and emerging
problems: anti-virus, anti-spam, popups, spyware, etc. (Popup suppression
is particularly upsetting me, since MS can support that in IE very early,
but refuse to for fear of alienating the Ad industry; instead, you alienate
the end users. Despite the fact that I find IE runs faster, the *only*
reason I use Netscape/Mozilla on Windows is to suppress popups! Otherwise I
have no desire to use yet another bloated piece of software.)
> Interestingly, I think that at least a part of Microsoft's security
> problems stem from the simple fact that Windows is such a popular target
> for people who want to write viruses and other nefarious nasty software.
> You just don't get as much attention by writing a virus that attacks
> Linux. :)
>
> In the end, however, if Windows users get attacked more than other users
> the cause is irrelevant, and Microsoft has to solve the problem.
Yeah, I knew this argument was going to rear its ugly head sooner or later
:-) "Since we're so popular, we get attacked more." Sorry, I don't buy it
for several reasons:
- Despite the closed-source policy, many attacks are perpetrated on Windows.
How is it that attackers are finding such easy holes in MS software, w/o
source access? My guess is that attackers assume that MS programmers will
not take care of the most obvious safety concerns when programming, and
then they try their assertions, only to find it true (e.g., the equivalent
of "let's see if they used gets() or fgets() in this socket read").
- Windows always had a poor security model: you still need Admin privs to do
anything half decent. This has been MS's way of doing things for years
now. MS had plenty of time to fix this, esp. considering how many new OS
versions and SPs you've released.
- With more popularity, comes greater responsibility. Security attacks have
reached the popular media one Friday afternoon more than 13 years ago,
courtesy RTM Jr. MS had enough time to react.
- While I don't have stats to support this, I don't think the rate of
attacks on MS software is proportional to its popularity (or market
share). It just seems like every time you turn around, another huge (ala
"remote root exploit") bug is discovered. While Linux security flaws are
much rarer. I have plenty of windows machines, but I'll never expose them
to the outside world; I just don't trust MS to be safe enough; so I use
Linux as my firewall at work (and *linksys* f/w hub -- linux inside -- at
home).
MS should take a page from OpenBSD's code release methodology: no new code
is released without a thorough code review specifically looking for
security flaws. OpenBSD even does casual random audits looking for
problems. Does MS have a large enough "Security-oriented QA" group that
has the final say over whether s/w has been inspected for safety?
> Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
You're welcome.
> Cheers,
> Michael Surkan
Erez.
>From sarang at users.sourceforge.net Sat Dec 20 20:55:41 2003
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From: Sarang Lakare <sarang at users.sourceforge.net>
Organization: The Freedom Movement (Linux!)
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:57:21 -0500
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Wow! After reading your entire list of requirements, why not just use Linux?
Looks like the only reason you want windows to have all these things that
Linux already has is Office!
I am just curious, have you tried OpenOffice/StarOffice impress for
presentations? I have been using that s/w for 4 years now and I find it
absolutely amazing.. no crashes, no major bugs.. extremely stable and usable.
Is there any reason to stick to PPT? Its .ppt export is also very good and u
can always export to PDF directly just incase your laptop goes bonk at the
right moment. Similarly, OpenOffice Calc is an excellent replacement for
excel.
So only if everyone starts using open office, there will be no
interoperability problems. To me it sounds as if you want office so you want
to use Windows.. Splitting windows from Office would have been the perfect
outcome of the anti-trust trial.. unfortunately, money has longer hands than
the law :(
And I agree with John 100%.. why are we even entertaining this guy? He better
pay up $100 for each of our replies..
Sarang
On Saturday 20 December 2003 07:00 pm, Erez Zadok wrote:
> Michael, I appreciate MS's interest in this community. Although I'm the
> faculty sponsor for LUGSB, the personal opinions herein are my own.
>
> 1. Usability
>
> As a LONG time user, programmer, researcher, and system administrator of
> numerous Unix and Windows systems, I can tell you that my next laptop
> will be a Macintosh. For years now, my choice of workstations and
> laptops had to double:
>
> - I need some form of unix (mostly linux) for OSS tools, development
> tools, and easy of programmability (e.g., perl scripting).
>
> - but I also need Windows because I interact with people who use
> MS-Office exclusively. I myself use excel every day, and my only
> choice of presentation software is PPT.
>
> So I've always needed two laptops (one linux, one windows), or
> dual-booted laptops (annoying to switch around), or used VMware (typically
> too slow on a laptop, and not fully integrated into one OS). With Mac-OS
> X, I can get the best of both worlds: the easy of use of a fully integrated
> graphical environment, with excellent office productivity tools --- as well
> as access to numerous OSS packages; I can open a xterm and bash, start
> emacs, gcc, etc.
>
> If I were Microsoft, I'd also worry about Apple. :-) Seriously, having
> traveled to conferences for years now, I've seen the trends among the the
> technical crowds (read: the grass roots of people who eventually affect
> what the John Doe's out there will buy and use); they've been shifting
> heavily toward Mac-OS X systems in the past couple of years.
>
> If MS were to offer a best-of-both-worlds solution ala Mac-OS X, that
> would be my next choice of laptop and workstations.
>
> Alternatively, port Office to Linux. If it costs the same as it costs on
> Windows I'll be the first to buy a copy.
>
>
> 2. Security
>
> Users see MS as reactive: only worrying about security problems after the
> fact. Linux is seen as a a proactive system where bugs are found and
> closed before they become a serious problem.
>
> I'd like to see a lot more security s/w on Windows:
>
> - It should come w/ an ssh client and server.
>
> - It should have a strongly encrypted file system support that works with
> any file system (not just an add-on EFS to NTFS).
>
> - it should come w/ integrated anti-virus software.
>
> - it should come with anti-spyware and anti-popup support. (Every other
> browser supports popup suppression. Why does IE have to continue to
> refuse to support this? MS seems to cater to the Advertising industry
> instead of the end-user/consumer.)
>
> - It should come with multiple anti-spam systems, esp. those based on
> Bayesian techniques (ala SpamAssassin) and challenge-response methods
> (ala ASK or TMDA).
>
> It is still not possible to run Windows while not giving users full
> Administrator privileges. All sorts of things stop working, esp. trivial
> software installations. I.e., I have to give my daughter's account Admin
> privileges so that child games can be installed and run; but then she
> browses the Web and gets hit by spyware and friends. Unix had super-user
> vs. non-super-user privileges sorted out 30 years ago. How long will it
> take MS to get out of the mode of thinking of "one all-powerful user per
> system"?!
>
> Right now, when people want a secure system, they stay away from Windows.
> If MS did the above things: Windows will be the first choice OS when
> security is paramount.
>
>
> 3. Unix Interoperability.
>
> Give me an X11 server please, so I can pop applications from Unix hosts.
>
> Give me NIS/NIS+/LDAP login clients, so I can integrate my login
> environment with my Unix system w/o having to switch to the MS way of doing
> things (PDC etc.).
>
> Give me a PDC that doesn't force me to to make the PDC host be my primary
> DNS server (I want to use Vixie's Bind).
>
> I'd like to be able to mount FreeBSD/Solaris UFS/FFS file systems, and
> Linux EXT2/3 file systems, from Windows, and have it all supported by MS
> and work well (I don't want any 3rd party stuff).
>
> Work with the OSS community to open up standards and even help to port
> CIFS, SMB, and NTFS to linux. I have to tell you that a lot of people in
> the OSS community have changed their minds about SGI and Apple since they
> open-sourced major parts of their systems (XFS for SGI), and have since
> actively sought to court the OSS community. In just a couple of years,
> Apple has transformed itself from the "Other (smaller) Evil Empire" to the
> "Champion of the OSS Movement." You cannot buy this kind of publicity,
> Michael.
>
>
> 4. Pricing
>
> I'm amazed at how many companies have forgotten an age old lesson: build a
> grass-roots set of followers in academia, and those graduating students
> will eventually recommend, buy, and use your products. Several companies
> have done so, but then when they got big, they abandoned the academic users
> -- esp. students.
>
> IBM did so in the 70s, then they grew bigger and forgot about their
> academic uses. Fortunately, IBM survived.
>
> DEC stepped in to fill in the void in the 80s. Then they grew big, figured
> they don't need the academic users, and abandoned them. Where is DEC now?!
>
> So Sun stepped in to fill in the void in the 90s, and was very pro-academia
> (discounts, give-aways, etc.). Then they grew big, and neglected their
> academic users. And where are their stocks today?
>
> Microsoft should cater to the academic users, esp. students who cannot
> afford full retail price of MS Windows and Office. Give students
> DIRT-CHEAP prices and you'll get a huge following hooked up on MS systems.
>
> I think iTunes is a great idea, and the best way to address music piracy.
> It had been much more successful than the RIAA's Scare Tactics. I'm not
> saying MS should sell Office for 99c, but make it such a low price for
> students that no one would need to think twice about buying vs. duplicating
> a friend's CD.
>
> Cheers,
> Erez.
> _______________________________________________
> lugsb mailing list
> lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
> http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sarang Lakare
mailto:sarang at users#sourceforge.net
web:http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~lsarang/linux
!!Join the fight for freedom - Go GNU/Linux!!
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From: Erez Zadok <ezk at cs.sunysb.edu>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:57:21 EST."
<200312202057.21297.sarang at users.sourceforge.net>
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In message <200312202057.21297.sarang at users.sourceforge.net>, Sarang Lakare writes:
> Wow! After reading your entire list of requirements, why not just use Linux?
> Looks like the only reason you want windows to have all these things that
> Linux already has is Office!
There's plenty of people who use windows for Office only. That's one of my
main reason for using Windows: writing PPT and Excel files, and opening Word
docs people send me. My other reasons are the occasional need for using IE
b/c people neglect to design portable Web pages that work with any other Web
browser, or that I have to try some s/w that's only available on Windows.
MS Office is the de-facto mode of communication of various files in many,
many corporate and government environments. It's a (sad) reality that you
have to send people Office docs and you're going to get Office docs sent to
you.
Office is a MAJOR cash-producing cow for MS.
> I am just curious, have you tried OpenOffice/StarOffice impress for
> presentations? I have been using that s/w for 4 years now and I find it
> absolutely amazing.. no crashes, no major bugs.. extremely stable and
> usable.
Yes, many times. It doesn't support the features I need. It doesn't have
100% backward and forward compatibility with Office file formats (partially
this is MS's fault). And I'm always finding myself in environments in which
I have no laptop or machine, just a floppy or CD, and I have to load up
something on someone else's machine: and that's 99% of the time a Windows
machine using Office.
> Is there any reason to stick to PPT? Its .ppt export is also very good and u
> can always export to PDF directly just incase your laptop goes bonk at the
> right moment. Similarly, OpenOffice Calc is an excellent replacement for
> excel.
I give OO a try every once in a while, esp. w/ a new major release. It
always leaves me wanting. My days of getting excited each time a new
version of software foo came out -- running to download the latest CVS
nightly release and building it -- are over. I cannot afford to waste time
on s/w that won't give me all the features I use and won't interoperate w/
the rest of the world.
I fully agree that if more people used OO, it'd get better and less bloated.
I hope to see a lot more people who have the time and energy use OO, and
make it better (contribute to its development).
Cheers,
Erez.
>From aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu Sat Dec 20 23:45:21 2003
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From: Akshat Aranya <aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
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>
> MS instead should give people new solutions to existing, new, and emerging
> problems: anti-virus, anti-spam, popups, spyware, etc. (Popup suppression
> is particularly upsetting me, since MS can support that in IE very early,
> but refuse to for fear of alienating the Ad industry; instead, you alienate
> the end users. Despite the fact that I find IE runs faster, the *only*
> reason I use Netscape/Mozilla on Windows is to suppress popups! Otherwise I
> have no desire to use yet another bloated piece of software.)
>
Just to add on this, I have friends in the IE team at Microsoft (who shall
go unnamed for obvious reasons), who have told me that they have popup
blocking in their internal builds, but they still don't provide it for
public consumption.
Netscape/Mozilla have better features than IE, especially now that there
won't be a new IE for another two years, but they really need to fix
problems with plugins. Even on Windows, the plugins are flaky at best.
-Akshat
>From aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu Sun Dec 21 00:02:57 2003
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From: Akshat Aranya <aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
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>
> > As far as security goes, I agree this is something Microsoft has to
> > continue doing a lot more work to improve. Have you heard about some of
> > the plans for our new Windows XP service pack this coming year? We have
> > a greatly improved firewall in it (on by default now), as well as some
> > pop-blocking and general Internet Explorer security enhancements. Not
> > that this is nearly enough to solve the security issues.
>
<rant>
Michael,
If by "security enhancements" you mean something similar to what has been
put into Windows 2003 Server, then I'm afraid not too many people will be
pleased with it. The Win2k3 default configuration for IE is "enhanced
security" that renders most websites unusable. It won't let me access
sites that it considers "insecure" (something to do with https, I think).
It won't run ActiveX controls, or other plugins like Flash, etc.
Providing enhanced security by taking back functionality is *not* an
answer. How about taking a long hard look at the source code and fixing
the source of all problems instead of crippling the system? Java has had
a good security model for applets since its 1.0 release.
</rant>
-Akshat
>From msurkan at windows.microsoft.com Sat Dec 20 19:10:30 2003
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I find your comments about Apple very interesting. I would have thought
people would rather be running Linux on their next laptops instead of
the Mac OS. Would you say that Linux is also more "usable" than Windows
for most users? The usability features you talk about likely would be
most appealing to developers (not that developers aren't important, mind
you).
As far as security goes, I agree this is something Microsoft has to
continue doing a lot more work to improve. Have you heard about some of
the plans for our new Windows XP service pack this coming year? We have
a greatly improved firewall in it (on by default now), as well as some
pop-blocking and general Internet Explorer security enhancements. Not
that this is nearly enough to solve the security issues.
Interestingly, I think that at least a part of Microsoft's security
problems stem from the simple fact that Windows is such a popular target
for people who want to write viruses and other nefarious nasty software.
You just don't get as much attention by writing a virus that attacks
Linux. :)
In the end, however, if Windows users get attacked more than other users
the cause is irrelevant, and Microsoft has to solve the problem.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Cheers,
Michael Surkan
-----Original Message-----
From: Erez Zadok [mailto:ezk at cs.sunysb.edu]
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 4:01 PM
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook
Cc: Michael Surkan
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
Michael, I appreciate MS's interest in this community. Although I'm the
faculty sponsor for LUGSB, the personal opinions herein are my own.
1. Usability
As a LONG time user, programmer, researcher, and system administrator
of
numerous Unix and Windows systems, I can tell you that my next laptop
will be a Macintosh. For years now, my choice of workstations and
laptops had to double:
- I need some form of unix (mostly linux) for OSS tools, development
tools, and easy of programmability (e.g., perl scripting).
- but I also need Windows because I interact with people who use
MS-Office exclusively. I myself use excel every day, and my only
choice of presentation software is PPT.
So I've always needed two laptops (one linux, one windows), or
dual-booted
laptops (annoying to switch around), or used VMware (typically too
slow on
a laptop, and not fully integrated into one OS). With Mac-OS X, I can
get
the best of both worlds: the easy of use of a fully integrated
graphical
environment, with excellent office productivity tools --- as well as
access to numerous OSS packages; I can open a xterm and bash, start
emacs,
gcc, etc.
If I were Microsoft, I'd also worry about Apple. :-) Seriously, having
traveled to conferences for years now, I've seen the trends among the
the
technical crowds (read: the grass roots of people who eventually
affect
what the John Doe's out there will buy and use); they've been shifting
heavily toward Mac-OS X systems in the past couple of years.
If MS were to offer a best-of-both-worlds solution ala Mac-OS X, that
would be my next choice of laptop and workstations.
Alternatively, port Office to Linux. If it costs the same as it costs
on
Windows I'll be the first to buy a copy.
2. Security
Users see MS as reactive: only worrying about security problems after
the
fact. Linux is seen as a a proactive system where bugs are found and
closed
before they become a serious problem.
I'd like to see a lot more security s/w on Windows:
- It should come w/ an ssh client and server.
- It should have a strongly encrypted file system support that works
with
any file system (not just an add-on EFS to NTFS).
- it should come w/ integrated anti-virus software.
- it should come with anti-spyware and anti-popup support. (Every other
browser supports popup suppression. Why does IE have to continue to
refuse to support this? MS seems to cater to the Advertising industry
instead of the end-user/consumer.)
- It should come with multiple anti-spam systems, esp. those based on
Bayesian techniques (ala SpamAssassin) and challenge-response methods
(ala
ASK or TMDA).
It is still not possible to run Windows while not giving users full
Administrator privileges. All sorts of things stop working, esp.
trivial
software installations. I.e., I have to give my daughter's account
Admin
privileges so that child games can be installed and run; but then she
browses the Web and gets hit by spyware and friends. Unix had
super-user
vs. non-super-user privileges sorted out 30 years ago. How long will it
take MS to get out of the mode of thinking of "one all-powerful user per
system"?!
Right now, when people want a secure system, they stay away from
Windows.
If MS did the above things: Windows will be the first choice OS when
security is paramount.
3. Unix Interoperability.
Give me an X11 server please, so I can pop applications from Unix hosts.
Give me NIS/NIS+/LDAP login clients, so I can integrate my login
environment
with my Unix system w/o having to switch to the MS way of doing things
(PDC
etc.).
Give me a PDC that doesn't force me to to make the PDC host be my
primary
DNS server (I want to use Vixie's Bind).
I'd like to be able to mount FreeBSD/Solaris UFS/FFS file systems, and
Linux
EXT2/3 file systems, from Windows, and have it all supported by MS and
work
well (I don't want any 3rd party stuff).
Work with the OSS community to open up standards and even help to port
CIFS,
SMB, and NTFS to linux. I have to tell you that a lot of people in the
OSS
community have changed their minds about SGI and Apple since they
open-sourced major parts of their systems (XFS for SGI), and have since
actively sought to court the OSS community. In just a couple of years,
Apple has transformed itself from the "Other (smaller) Evil Empire" to
the
"Champion of the OSS Movement." You cannot buy this kind of publicity,
Michael.
4. Pricing
I'm amazed at how many companies have forgotten an age old lesson: build
a
grass-roots set of followers in academia, and those graduating students
will
eventually recommend, buy, and use your products. Several companies
have
done so, but then when they got big, they abandoned the academic users
--
esp. students.
IBM did so in the 70s, then they grew bigger and forgot about their
academic
uses. Fortunately, IBM survived.
DEC stepped in to fill in the void in the 80s. Then they grew big,
figured
they don't need the academic users, and abandoned them. Where is DEC
now?!
So Sun stepped in to fill in the void in the 90s, and was very
pro-academia
(discounts, give-aways, etc.). Then they grew big, and neglected their
academic users. And where are their stocks today?
Microsoft should cater to the academic users, esp. students who cannot
afford full retail price of MS Windows and Office. Give students
DIRT-CHEAP
prices and you'll get a huge following hooked up on MS systems.
I think iTunes is a great idea, and the best way to address music
piracy.
It had been much more successful than the RIAA's Scare Tactics. I'm not
saying MS should sell Office for 99c, but make it such a low price for
students that no one would need to think twice about buying vs.
duplicating
a friend's CD.
Cheers,
Erez.
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