Microsoft Is Accused of Idea Thefts

The idea that Microsoft would steal an idea is really funny. I mean do we really believe they come up with this stuff on their own. They have been sued for theft of ideas many times and there have been plenty of them they lost. I came across this article it the Tech Republic and found it quite amusing. I happen to agree with the author Jack Wallen  that Microsoft is indeed plagurizing from the open source community. But don't take my word for it, read it here yourself.

Linux vs Microsoft At It Again

Here we are poised for another round in the war for desktop supremacy. For now Microsoft will win this battle but with their recent propaganda campaign it is clear that the folks in Redmond are getting worried. What makes Redmond worried? Progress by the competition that's what. And to double their fear Linux is free. (consumers still have to pay for Mac OS) That alone will make the suits in Redmond worry about their bottom line. Windows is the flagship product and it is natural for them to try and protect it. But here's my opinion on why it won't work in the long run.

1. Microsoft will never be safe from those that prey upon their users. Malware alone will help keep the sales of Mac OS going steadily up and will bring more people seeking stability and safety to Linux. After all it's free to try free to use.
2. One could argue that Microsoft's flaws have always been a catalyst for those that can, to produce stable alternatives. Can you see why Linux leads in this arena? Linux is ultimately driven by developers who are creating and writing the code because they are passionate about Linux. September 9th the Linux kernel 2.26.31 was officially released. Think about this, over 11,000 patches were added from 200 different companies representing 1100 developers, 19% of those represented themselves.  (source)
   
3. End users really don't care what OS is running as long as they can do what they want to do. Whether that is chat, email, write novels or crunch numbers as long as the machine can do these things it simply won't matter what is the underlying OS. Can anyone say cloud computing?
4. Too many jobs depend on Microsoft Windows and I'm not talking just in Redmond. Techs everywhere and also entire shops depend on Windows breaking to earn their living. Even my own job depends on Windows. 
5. Ever wonder what keeps the internet running so smooth? The majority are running some kind of Linux server. Routers everywhere run Linux too. Why? Stability and performance. Microsoft may have the lion's share when it comes to business servers but that market is shrinking too. And to date Microsoft has yet to deliver a product completely bug free and never will since there are just too many variables in software and hardware to meet this challenge. And to be fair Linux too will suffer from similar issues in ever changing hardware. It is the passion of developers that will help Linux succeed here. See point number two.
   

So there you have it, my opinion on why their propaganda campiagn will not succeed. Its a given that Microsoft will succeed in some areas and hurt some companies along the way. Just as they have in the past. But as it always happens new competition, new ideas will always find ways into the market. And as computers evolve, so will the way we interact with them. The market will decide as it always does eventually.

Stop: 0X000000D1

I powered on my laptop to Windows XP a few days ago. I really haven't been using it with Windows lately preferring Fedora 11. But I had to do some banking and I have yet to move stuff to Linux in this area yet. I still want more experience with the OS before I commit this information. So on this night I logged into the bank and did what I needed to do. No problems with that. I'm logged in and I might as well check out the web and see what's going on tonight. Then it hit. At first my connection slowed to a crawl and I thought I was getting pegged by malware. So I ran a scan but it came up empty. Then I went back to surf some more but nothing would open. I pinged a site and that was okay so I re-booted the router. Still nothing. It was then that the dreaded blue screen appeared. Stop: 0X000000D1, IRQ_not_less_equal. Believe it or not but this was the very first blue screen I have ever had with this laptop. Needless to say I was a bit bummed and confirmed to myself that this is why I am going to Linux. Any way the stop error referenced the NDIS driver and I knew exactly what to do. Yesterday I finally got around to downloading the driver update from Dlink and I installed it today.No more BSOD and I'm running it right now. It is always puzzling as to why after all this time, hundreds of hours in use, the driver decided to go south. I haven't even used it except about twice a week lately to do my banking. This is just one of those Windows mysteries that hopefully Microsoft will improve with Windows 7. I admit I have been really lucky about blue screens with this laptop. I just can't figure out what happened. Well for me anyway, I will continue on my quest to learn Linux better and eventually do my banking on it too.

One of the most famous and funniest BSOD's of all time.

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Before I plunk down some of my hard earned cash for Windows 7, I want to know how it will run on my system. I have two options with one option being to download the rather large release candidate and install it. Option two is to run the Upgrade Advisor and get a report of how Windows 7 should install. The test laptop is a HP ze5385us which runs on a P4 2.66ghz cpu with 1gb of ram. My first step is to download the Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft here. The Upgrade Advisor is packaged as a msi file and is 6414kb in size.

Double clicking the msi file starts the install process. Simply accept the defaults for the install and it completes in about ten seconds leaving you at this screen with the option to launch the advisor.

The system check ran for only a couple of minutes. I now had enough information to decide running Windows 7. The good news it reported was that all my hardware passed minimum requirements. I did have two warnings listed in the report. One about the upgrade process and another about Aero Desktop. I won't be able to run Aero Desktop on this laptop since I can't upgrade the graphics card. The upgrade warning gave a link for step by step installation information. This could be very helpful and is a nice touch from Microsoft. All in all I'm glad I ran the tool. Upgrade Advisor has given me enough information to make an informed decision. Upgrading to Windows 7 on this laptop should go quite smoothly if I decide to install.

Linux Not Ready For The Masses

This is the argument Microsoft always wants to win. I think they are still winning the war of the desktop for now will for sometime to come. I really like Linux and I have to state upfront this is not a bashing Linux argument but hopefully will enlighten and encourage more people to experiment with Linux. First off Windows will always be the majority desktop on new computers until Linux distros fully support out of box functionality. Some would argue that it is the manufacturer's responsibility to supply the drivers but I argue that the differences from distribution to distribution is what keeps the manufacturers from creating the needed drivers. While this is improving in recent kernel releases, Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy, Slax and Debian, to name but a few, all have slightly different methods for installing drivers and slightly different directory structures. While the basics are the same in each, differences do exist. We can't expect a video card manufacturers for example to create drivers for all these different distributions when the methods for installing and configuration is slightly different in each one. The Linux community could come together on this and start creating some standards. Secondly Microsoft has for better or worse, kept plenty of configuration standards from version to version only making some minor changes along the way. As computer use grew this familiarity has helped the novice users. It is this group of users that make up the majority of users. Would Linux be right for them? A qualified maybe is my thought on that. Installed I think anyone can use most Linux distributions. It is when installing new software or hardware that will cause a novice to reconsider and return to the safety of Windows. I am a geek and I am learning more everyday about Linux but when I wanted to install the Flash plugin in Fedora I went to Adobe's download page and was presented with four choices a yum, a tar.gz, a deb and a rpm file to install Flash. Which one do I need? I had to stop and research what Fedora would want to install. Not too hard for me a geek but most users might give up. That brings me to package mangers which help quite a bit but still need tweaking for repositories and are not consistent amongst distributions I regularly use Puppy, Ubuntu, AntiX and Fedora. Puppy's package installer has the most differences from the others. AntiX has two different installers and of course all can install from the command line. Confusing? I will end this saying that I like Linux and enjoy the challenges it provides. But I recognize that this challenge is not for everyone. I hope to see Linux to continue to grow and perhaps move towards creating environments anyone, including my Mom, could enjoy what Linux offers.