Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Cannot Compete Fairly, May be Bricking Its Own Systems Again

Hanging out too much with the Microsoft Cult clouds one's judgment

Mary Jo Foley Credit: Scott Hanselman



Summary: Microsoft is proving once again that no sane OEM should have pre-installed Windows; a little revisionism and spin from Mary Jo Foley (Microsoft's Mouth) is rebutted

IT IS TOO easy to get distracted by the fiction of Windows 'sales', conveniently forgetting that Microsoft does not really sell anything, it just licences Windows for OEMs. This accounts for almost all installations of Windows, which is an NSA Trojan horse that nations must broadly reject.



Tim Worstall, the autor of many bad articles in Forbes, helps relay some Microsoft talking points again. Amplifying the words of the bribing CEO (Steve Ballmer bribes officials to take the NSA Trojan horses) and quoting Microsoft's Mouth (Mary Jo Foley, CBS), Worstall speaks about the practice of tying the operating systems to hardware, sometimes with the aid of selective (manipulative) bribes to OEMs. Worstall makes it look banal and normal, perhaps failing to recall (or even know) about antitrust cases against Microsoft. Worstall's article is titled "Microsoft's Steve Ballmer "Nobody Ever Buys Windows. They Buy Windows PCs."" (Mary Jo Foley got granted access to Ballmer after she had sucked up to Microsoft for years). Here is what Worstall says: "For it certainly used to be true that you would buy a Windows box. The vast majority of the world’s software was written to run on that operating system and that’s what you wanted to have access to. It wasn’t Windows per se that was being bought, it was a computer that ran most of the available software that was: and that just happened to be a computer with Windows on/in it.

"This is probably still true in much of the corporate world: companies will have built systems that rely upon this specific OS, or rather will have built their packages on top of it and therefore when a replacement cycle comes around it’s going to be Windows boxes again."

It's actually a lot worse and a glimpse at antitrust evidence explains why. Microsoft made it virtually impossible for OEMs to offer anything but Windows on hardware systems. It's not a choice, it's imposition by secret deals (which the court made less secret). Microsoft is still trying to bundle hardware and Windows, but this no longer works too well. Since the number of non-desktop systems sold with Windows is so small, defects have become common. Here is the latest: "SOFTWARE FIRM Microsoft has pulled back a software update for the Surface Pro 2 because it didn't work and caused issues.

"Microsoft has removed the update, released just over a week ago, and apologised to users for its faults.

""To ensure the best experience for our customers during the holiday season, we have taken steps to remove the update for Surface Pro 2 that was previously published through Windows Update on 10 December 2013," says a post from Josh, a forum admin. "We are working to release an alternative update package after the holidays.""

The desktop monopoly too is about to end because Windows XP is reaching its end of life. Despite the claim that half of IT 'pros' plan to stay with this unpatched OS (very easily remotely accessible not just to the NSA), it is already clear that some nations explore moving to GNU/Linux. Apple is not even an option. Apple, which basically sells hardware it does not even make, fails to provide a decent warranty policy [1,2].

It is worth remembering that Microsoft used criminal activities to make almost every PC come with Windows; it's not a choice, it's corruption. Now that Microsoft actually has to compete for preinstalls it is failing very badly and resorting to FUD campaigns. Watch out for revisionism and spin; if it's seeded by Microsoft's Mouth, be extra cautious. Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft executives might soon be called into courts over bribery, so twisting the story is important to them and they use corruptible 'journalists' (CBS is good at that, as the NSA showed last Sunday).

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Apple Forced to Change Warranty Policies for New Laws


  2. Apple changes wording of warranty policy in EU to clarify two year guarantee


Recent Techrights' Posts

Security Advisory: Debian falls for social engineering hacks
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The High Cost of Making Scepticism of Proprietary Voting Machines a "Trump" and "Conspiracy Theory" Territory
Time to get back to paper? Or read an old paper?
Today We Got an Early Birthday Gift
Exciting times
[Meme] Going Too Far to the Left Can Breed Militant Ideology
Some people can never be appeased because they prefer not to be appeased
FSF Expressed No Preference Regarding Presidential Candidates (Its Founder Did)
Because he is a principled person, he does not prioritise loyalty to customers or employers (money)
Who Next on the Linux Foundation's 'Kill List'?
Remember that only about 2% of the "Linux" Foundation's budget goes to Linux
 
More Cuts/End to Benefits for EPO Workers (Europe's Working Conditions Incompatible With the European Patent Convention)
"The Office is now reviving it but plans to introduce new cuts on benefits"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 07, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, November 07, 2024
Gemini Links 08/11/2024: US Election, RetroChallenge 2024, and More
Links for the day
[Meme] Questioning Proprietary Software? Not OK...
A disaster long in the making
Links 07/11/2024: HTTP/3, Health Research, and Punditry
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/11/2024: On Writing Publicly and Record Player Table
Links for the day
Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Hosted SOSS as Microsoft Propaganda Platform With Microsoft Front Group OSI
They essentially promote what they're attacking under false pretences [...] OSI is deeply corrupt. It's more toxic than arsenic.
Anti-Linux FUD, Now in LLM Form, Thanks to Brittany Day
They attack Linux with chatbots
[Meme] When You Discredit People Who Discredit Secret Code
proprietary systems with hundreds of millions of transistors (and hundreds of millions of lines of code)
Links 07/11/2024: Online Manipulation in Social Control Media, Election Deniers, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/11/2024: emacs-guix and File Hoarding
Links for the day
[Meme] Election Day at the European Patent Office
Less than 60 minutes left to cast your vote
Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) Election Ending Today
In one hour
[Meme] When the Patent Office Does Illegal Things and Staff Speaks Out
many leaks received today
Apple's Debt Has Skyrocketed While Gimmicks Like Vision Pro Failed
In Apple's case, the debt is almost double the "Cash on Hand", which isn't even cash
A President Trump is Excellent News to Microsoft
His racist policies gave lots of contracts to Microsoft
Links 07/11/2024: Facebook Scams, Journalists on Strike
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 06, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 06, 2024
Microsoft-Connected Publishers Want Us to Think That Linux is Some Sort of a Virus and a "Backdoor"
"The problem is with windows and the attack vector is via Windows"
We've Made it to 18! Here's to Another 18!
Going on for another 18 years means until some time at the end of 2042
Links 07/11/2024: Political Angst and Laptop Issues
Links for the day
Even LKML Subjected to Slop/SPAM by Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com)
They're really awful
Links 06/11/2024: BPF in RFC 9669, More Facebook Fines for Privacy Abuses
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Political Shock and Hermaic Encouragement
Links for the day
Planet Debian Allows Politics (But It Depends on Your Opinions and Debian's Big Sponsors)
Planet Debian is OK with politics... as long as all your political opinions are the "correct" ones and you add cute animals
What Makes RMS Such an Attractive Target ('Discreditisation' Campaigns)
Don't be so easily fooled
The Biggest OEMs or Vendors of GNU/Linux Stopped Competing With Microsoft (Which Pays Them to Promote Windows, Too)
Where are the competition authorities (or regulators for that matter)?
Let's Encrypt Falls to a New Low of Only 0.6% of Gemini Capsules Known to Lupa
In Gemini Protocol, certificates for encryption are required, but centralised Certificate Authorities (CAs) aren't needed
Computer-Generator Crap Flooding the Web, the Latest Example About "Linux"
Here's today's example
Links 06/11/2024: Election Disinformation and Legal Actions
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/11/2024: Stargazing and Death on Hallowe'en
Links for the day
Would You Trust a Liar?
Why lie about the authorship?
Mass Layoffs at Mozilla Announced During US Elections
Maybe nobody will notice?
[Meme] Announcing "Results" Before Everyone Even "Played"
There is a "tech" angle to otherwise political news
US Polls Close in One Minute (Social Control Media Does Not Care, Will Not Wait)
US election results will be known in about 2 days
Concentration and Centralisation Versus Aggregation or Syndication
KDE has a history of burying old sites
Social Control Media, Even Hours Before Polls Have Closed
Has social control media controlled by CPC (TikTok) and the Trumpmobile guy (Musk's "X") done enough to convince people not to even vote (based on presumptive "results", presented a long time before all polls have closed)?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 05, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 05, 2024
Wayland Pains in Community-Led Distros of GNU/Linux
Few people and companies use Wayland; there's hardly any technical or practical reason to choose it
IBM Still Conflating Microsoft With 'Security'
As a meme
Sanctions Cause Fragmentation in Software
some Chinese Linux developers are already subjected to restrictions similar to Russians'
Web Failing With Slop, Even in 'Linux' Sites (LLM Spam)
Add SEO prompting to the mix and the Web becomes a pool of slop, not knowledge
[Meme] State of the World Wide Web and Online Journalism
Technically a failure (DRM) and cannot even get basic things right
Trump's signature policy, building a wall, copied from Irish-Australian student politician
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linus Torvalds' self-deprecating LKML CoC mail linked to Hitler's first writing: Gemlich letter
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] Turning 18 in One Day
just one more day