Hey Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has become the cancer

[SteveRiley]

Ah, what a fun thread

[tek_heretik]

SteveRiley is indeed an asset to KFN, and a greatly valued one. The joke - which was never very good, but wasn't supposed to be that subtle and definitely not critical - is not on Steve but rather on the stereotypical Linux advocate who refuses to hear anything good about Microsoft, and sometimes seems to assume that anything good said about them must be part of a Linux-bashing campaign probably funded covertly by Microsoft stooges.

(Which probably does happen, because Microsoft are indeed an evil empire, even if some of their output is good.)

Well thanks for explaining the joke, lol, even if you made me an involuntary accomplice. On the other hand, you are right, my MS experience started with a used computer and the tail end of Win-DOHs '95, Win-DOHs '98 was even less palatable (for a short time, I had the '98 version WITHOUT IE, I kid you not, and had no idea how valuable it was at the time, then SE came out), the beginning of MS ingrained spyware, primarily to 'gauge' user's activities, etc, basically turning the average computer user in to a source of marketing/demographic info, each subsequent version of Win-DOHs has been no better, then I discovered Win-DOHs 2000, used it for years (there was a brief flirtation with Mepis and PCLinuxOS in the mid '00s), as long as I could, it was MS's peak, my last version was XP Home, which I promptly learned how to turn off all their marketing spyware background processes and 'phone home' junk. All of their software pretty much has all the same traits, I think I used Win-DOHs media player for about 5 minutes back in '98, RealPlayer was my substitute, just as spying but more controllable and it WASN'T MS. So yeah, after years of reading about their despicable business practices and them costing ME hours and countless money (before I knew what I was doing), I do really hate them. I have somewhat of a mathematical mind, and can only imagine the countless law suits they have avoided because of their totally self-absolving EULAs, we are talking TRILLIONS of dollars lost in the business world because of their second rate software (for which businesses have NO recourse), which in my opinion, is purposely left 'swiss cheese' when it comes to security, if they closed all the 'holes', they themselves wouldn't be able to sniff your digital underwear at practically every click, but that's just my opinion.

Edit: JFYI, I don't like Apple for the same reasons, strictly Linux on my computer and have an Android phone (which incidently, I have quickly learned how to turn off all the 'spyware' on it too, Google is a close second behind the two tied for first front runners when it comes to lack of privacy, but I didn't PAY for Android, it came with the phone).

IMHO, there should be a law passed, that if you PAY for ANY software, it should come with a warning about privacy and the COMPLETE ability to turn it all off (during the install and/or EULA), but hey, we live in a capitalist world and EVERYTHING is all about money, so that will never happen.

My computing epoch started in early 2011 when I was able to get Mint 10 to run on my 'hardware' Raid, that was the end of MS (and XP, didn't even bother trying Vista), then I tried Kubuntu 12.04, got it installed and never looked back, way more functionality than Mint and 5 year support, I would even dare to bet this same installed copy will be on this computer until 2017 (unless I build another one in the mean time, which is pretty likely but will install K-12.04 on it too)

[tek_heretik]

Wow, I go away for a few days and all hell breaks loose, Sir Steve, I NEVER made no such comment about you and never would, not only do we share the same astro sign, you are much more advanced than I when it comes to computers, not just Linux. Shame on the trouble maker, SHAME! lol

[GreyGeek]

That episode is the ONLY thing people are remembering about the Surface presentation, besides the look that was on Ballmer's face... warmed over death. I've never seen him look so grim.

[SteveRiley]

Aw, thanks much... you guys are too cool.

Here's a little present for ya.

[SecretCode]

SteveRiley is indeed an asset to KFN, and a greatly valued one. The joke - which was never very good, but wasn't supposed to be that subtle and definitely not critical - is not on Steve but rather on the stereotypical Linux advocate who refuses to hear anything good about Microsoft, and sometimes seems to assume that anything good said about them must be part of a Linux-bashing campaign probably funded covertly by Microsoft stooges.

(Which probably does happen, because Microsoft are indeed an evil empire, even if some of their output is good.)

[Qqmike]

Post #7 (today is the first day I've logged in for two days):
"Who else gets the feeling SteveRiley is trying to worm his way in and eat our KFN from the inside?!"

I'm sure there's some subtle joking-around going on here, some of which is over my head :-)
Although I once noticed Steve's MS affiliation/credentials, I quickly, long ago, released any suspicion; and furthermore, I feel SR is a true asset to KFN.

[SteveRiley]

Um, maybe tek_heretik never made such a comment ... :eek:

Hah. The truth comes out!

[SteveRiley]

Who else gets the feeling SteveRiley is trying to worm his way in and eat our KFN from the inside?!

Why, whatever gives you that idea?

SecretCode, did you manufacture that quote from tek_heretik? I don't see it anywhere in the thread!

But to provide some background, to allay anyone's fears of me trying to usurp this place ... I worked at Microsoft from 1998 to 2009, spending most of my time in the Trustworthy Computing Group. I went to Amazon Web Services for a year and half, focusing on cloud security. Now I'm part of the CTO office at Riverbed Technology, directing most of my energies around cloud performance. After leaving Microsoft, I gradually migrated away from Windows, and now run Linux (various *buntu flavors, mostly Kubuntu) exclusively. I'm no shill for Redmond, but I'm also not uniformly criticial: not all of Microsoft is bad, you know.

[SecretCode]

Um, maybe tek_heretik never made such a comment ... :eek:

[GreyGeek]

Why, whatever gives you that idea?

Apparently Tek_heretik edited out his comment about Steve. Wise move. Perhaps he didn't notice Steve's forum badges, which illustrates the fact that Steve donates his time, talents and money to KFN and Linux. IF he is "trying to worm his way in and eat our KFN from the inside", I can only hope that we find dozens more like him because we need that kind of "eating".

I'm also glad to see that Tek_heretik is supporting KFN at the "professional" level.

[SecretCode]

Who else gets the feeling SteveRiley is trying to worm his way in and eat our KFN from the inside?!

Why, whatever gives you that idea?

[SteveRiley]

There wasn't any stolen code... there was a GPL violation, however.

http://linux-network-plumber.blogspo...microsoft.html

The comments in the article reflect some inconsistencies in understanding whether open-source shims can exist between the kernel and closed-source drivers. nVidia and ATI get away with it. But at least Microsoft eventually released the drivers.

Tah-mate-toe, tah-matt-toe, heh

Actually, it's a much greater difference than preferences for how to pronounce the name of a certain kind of plant Your original statement accused Microsoft of using stolen code in Hyper-V, when nothing of the sort happened. Setting aside for the moment Microsoft's usual embrace/extend/exterminate habits, Hyper-V is sufficiently novel to earn some respect. Virtualization is hard -- and I don't mean desktop-style, but server-style -- where the intent is to duplicate isolation zones that are as strong as physically separate computers. Hyper-V's architecture lends itself to this approach very well. One of the early design decisions was not to allow third-party code to run in the hypervisor. So while this shut out the development of a VMware-ish ecosystem around Hyper-V, it does allow the code to remain quite small (about 1 MiB) and thus easy to test for bugs and vulnerabilities. The only real limitation I see with Hyper-V is its performance: it doesn't do network virtualization very well, and it's difficult to push more than a gigabit per second through its vNICs. So Hyper-V won't work too well if you're trying to build out a software-defined network on generic x86_64 boxes.

[tek_heretik]

They are still an idea stealing, monopolistic 3rd party competition swallowing 'cancer', regardless of their relationship with Linux, they tried to kill Java and lost.

[tek_heretik]

There wasn't any stolen code... there was a GPL violation, however.

http://linux-network-plumber.blogspo...microsoft.html

Tah-mate-toe, tah-matt-toe, heh