Gates Provides Windows Crash Statistic 984
cybercuzco writes "In an otherwise innocuous article at they NYT (FRRYYY) Bill Gates says that according to error reporting software in windows, 5% of all windows installations crash two or more times every day. Gates goes on to state that Microsoft is looking at charging for some of its software updates that it now distributes for free."
Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have to say that SCO has him beat. At least Microsoft sells products, SCO posted a profit for the first time in years based solely on licensing 20+ year old technology!
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two Words: Software Assurance.
They'll make you pay for the same product over and over again, for life.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of Jaguar as OS X v2.0 and Panther as OS X v3.0 and you'll be all right. That makes the current OS version 2.6.
WinXP was only a point release to the "kernel" but XP's userland is (supposedly) significantly differnet. Sadly, Win2K's userland was only really needed a point release, and the kernel needed a thorough overhaul [2]
[1] I just noticed (pause for laughter) that the current technologies [apple.com] page is now highlighting Applescript [apple.com] as a top-level component of the OS, on the same conceptual level as Aqua. Imagine that, an OS that considers scripting and automation to be equally as important as the GUI. That's a nice balance.
[2] Admittedly only in comparison to operating systems which I'd consider well-designed, which would be almost anything.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
now, if he is serious about pulling this through (for smaller updates) people sould make complaints to the local organizations or officials depending on the country that look after consumer rights, it is not legal to sell a product that is defective (has major flaws) and then charge for fixing it. if your car's engine has a manufacturing flaw, it is the manufacturers(importers) responsibility to take care of it. there was some press some time back on game bugs, and how some games shipped with bugs that prevented you from playing them through(!), iirc the consumer advisor recommended refund of the games, at least, if the consumer wanted.
anyways, you already pretty much have to pay to somebody for keeping your windows machine up to date, because the updates take a nice amount of bandwith (you either have broadband and updates or you don't, luggaging servicepacks on cd's is not an option for most common people).
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:3, Informative)
of course there were ways around this.. but they at least tried something.. the 'whole' idea is to get them to be subscribers, you can't warez an internet connection you subscribe to, ms would like to sell you a subscription service similar to that.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well considering that I think most people rarely send MS error reports - I would guess that 2 times per day is a low estimate of windows crashes.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't by any means think Windows is reliable, I'm just saying that application errors are a strange way to guage OS stability.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
well thats microsofts fault for allowing so many userland hooks into the damn kernel. i have been using Linux, *BSD, and even Solaris for years and at no point have i ever had an application crash a system. i once had an nvidia driver lockup (well X and the v-terms stopped working) a Linux system. but its a device driver,(shitty one at that) not an application.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:4, Insightful)
I beat the crap out of Solaris daily, using up 90%+ of virtual memory occasionally and launching several large programs simultaneously, and it doesn't crash. The only time I have seen Solaris crash (twice in years) was due to having a wrong device driver installed (our fault and easily fixed, BTW).
I dunno how much of this, if any, is Microsoft's fault.
Anytime an application crashes Windows is Microsoft's fault. Anytime Windows crashes on its own is Microsoft's fault, too.
Microsoft should be liable for their negligence over the last decade or more. They should also be tried for psychological damage, as the "break-reboot" cycle is a part of our culture, now.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, having too many apps that load VxDs or other code that runs with OS-level privileges implies that the OS isn't well-enough designed to let the necessary functions be done with code having only regular user priveleges.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to follow your so-called logic.
1. It's hard to write software.
2. Even the best programmers have bugs in their code.
3. There are multiple ways to do things.
Therefore mistakes in programming (bugs) are not "screw ups".
Did I get that right? Yes? Well I have a news flash for you, difficulty and other programmers having bugs in their code, and yes, even there being more than one way to do things, do not mean that bugs aren't screwups!
You can argue that screwups, er bugs, are understandable, but if you have a mistake in your code you've screwed up.
Touchy git.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every keystroke can cause a bug and every line of code is a liability.
Whatever else can be said about it one thing is for sure; Bugs are mistakes, screwups, errors, ommisions, or general failures caused by one of the software developers/designers in the chain.
Failure to accept this is just admiting that it is OK to have bugs. And when you accept this you lose all hope of fixing the bugs.
(Bias note: I've written commercial/consumer software for a *long* time)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
And lots of people looked over the rubble to get some idea of why the house fell down. Lots of people. Lots of debris. Sounds like the "With enough eyes all bugs are shallow" aphorism. Note this is not necessarily lots of eyes to fix the problem. You need lots of eyes so that someone looks just the right way and can actually see the problem. "My house fell down" is just as useless as "My computer crashed" to anyone actually trying to solve the problem.
Because it's hard they're not mistakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft business model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
- You could do only one color of bricks with each row shifting by half.
- You could do longer bricks and shift by a third the length.
- You could put a brick of a different color in place of every third brick.
- You could turn every other brick sideways so it would stick out the front.
- You could tile the bricks alternating between two colors.
- You might add a column of bricks, in which case you could have some of the bricks in a vertical orientation.
- You might do a pattern of bricks on the ground consisting of two bricks sideway followed by two bricks turned 90 degrees.
- You might use a short brick for every fourth brick, and you might lay every other row in opposite directions so that you would form a zig-zag pattern.
With all of these, you might use a light mortar or a dark mortar.With all of these, you might choose to use a smooth brick or a rough brick.
That's 8 * 2 * 2 = 32 ways to lay bricks. Those are just the first few off the top of my head.
Just as there are infinitely many ways to write most non-trivial pieces of software---indeed, as with any art form---there are certain rules that must be met in order to get something that resembles usable output, but there are infinitely many ways to lay bricks. That having been said, no matter how complex the pattern, if you put the wrong brick in the wrong place, it's still a screw-up.
The only real difference is that screw-ups in software (i.e. bugs) are generally somewhat easier to fix. However, this in no way excuses the apathy that many programmers seem to feel about the existence of such mistakes.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if this isn't the second sly attempt by microsoft to move to a subscription model. Look at what RedHat does - Get the OS for free, then encourage people to pay for their services. Now Microsoft takes this a step farther. Get MS Windows [blah blah] Edition which is discounted but allows you to get updates w
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interested that MS is so blinded by dollar signes that they can't see that keeping people on windows is more important, and the easiest way to do that is to give everyone the chance to make stupid little apps that ONLY work on windows. Those people that start out developing on windows will probably stay on windows, and each app (big or small) that they create that people like, encourages users to stay on windows as well.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Informative)
Oct 25, 2001 - Windows XP ships
Sept 9, 2002 - SP1 ships (10.5 months, or 4.5 months late)
Sept ?, 2003 - SP2 ships (12 months, or 6 months late) Check out Mr. Allchin's comments [com.com].
And, according to this [ethan-c-allen.com] link there are almost 300 issues addressed in this long-overdue patch.
What exactly are they going to charge for? Fixes, or enhancements? Apple charges for their regular updates - OSX 10.1, OSX 10.2, OSX 10.3, but they are also ENHANCING the product significantly with every release. Is this something MS intends to do, because I certainly don't mind paying for updates to the software as long as it actually ENHANCES things. I'll be pretty ticked off if I have to pay for FIXES.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, when you don't upgrade your software, you support the destruction of all mankind at the hands of The Machines.
Brought to you by Microsoft.
Microsoft: There is no Fate.
skewed statistics. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S This never happens on my Win2K workstation.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Informative)
The statistic is highly scewed because most people don't send the crash report to Microsoft.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite correct. (Score:5, Insightful)
#1. The core OS was not sufficiently protected from being "upgraded" by any application that was installed. Microsoft was the biggest offender with Office.
#2. The binary registry has all of the information for everything, users, applications, hardware, security, etc stored in it. If something goes wrong it is a major pain to fix it.
#3. The uninstall feature of Windows does not clear out everything. If I do install a buggy driver for a scanner and I want to remove it so it doesn't affect my system anymore, uninstalling does NOT always clean it out.
That is why, over time, Windows installations become less stable. Crap gets stuck in the registry and drivers get stuck in the OS directories and bad things start happening.
And don't give me any crap about that being the fault of the user. The OS should be able to control itself. Look at Debian's uninstall feature. Debian even has multiple levels of uninstall.
The problems with Windows are because of decisions Microsoft made. Not because of end-users.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as the 5% have apps that crashed twice or more a day. That's not hard to imagine:
"'random shareware app' has generated errors."
WTF? Run it again.
"'random shareware app' has
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Informative)
I've found the feature to be really annoying while you're trying to debug the problem, however, so I usually turn it off.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Informative)
MS Does Track OS Crashes (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the time for me, that information is "this was caused by a device driver problem; we are investigating." Once however, it told m
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of observations.
First, just because an application crashes under Windows does not necessarily mean that it is the fault of the application, or that there is an error in the application's code. A bug in windows could cause the application to crash. (Does anyone remember the days of "Windows isn't done until [fill in the blank] won't run?") If I fall because the foundation under me crumbles, is it my fault? Does it imply that there is something wrong with my legs, or my sense of balance? Or is it because maybe something was wrong with the foundation?
Secondly, I suspect that the 5% number is low. As I recall, when an application crashes, the windows error reporting system puts up a "Yes / No" dialog box asking permission to fire off an error report to Microsoft. I know many people who routinely click "No" because they don't want to be bothered and/or don't want to send any information to MS about their box. I suspect that many more people see that dialog box than click "Yes." Thus, crashes are under-reported.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether the NYTimes reporter can tell the difference between an application crash and an OS crash is up for debate (I'd say there are 50/50 odds either way).
That number is also a huge aggregate of apples and oranges. It doesn't make a distinction between 9X kernels and NT kernels, which I would bet have wildly different numbers of OS crashes (just about anything can blow up a 9X kernel, NT kernel BSODs are generally caused by faulty device drivers, hardware faults, and OS bugs).
The real problem WRT crashing on NT kernel machines is the device drivers running in kernel space. This means that a non-OS part of the system can zap the OS part of the system. Thus, even if you do convert everybody to an NT kernel-based OS, you're probably going to continue to have trouble with people that run terribly bad hardware with equally terrible device drivers. Unfortunately, most people don't understand that buying that white box ethernet card from Fry's or that roundy-looking-box-with-crappy-monitor consumer PC from Best Buy really *can* hurt you in the morning.
When and if MS rearchitects the Windows kernel so device drivers run in user space, or some protected space, I think that the so-called reliability gap between UNIX/UNIX workalikes and Windows will be very, very small indeed.
Re:App Crash (usually) = Windows Crash (sorta) (Score:5, Insightful)
Device drivers are another matter, but still one within MS's control in a way; MS is the one that created the culture of every device having its own drivers, instead of the linux way where drivers are included in the kernel distribution and are written for devices generically. For instance, if you download the newest kernel, there's a driver in there for the RTL3019 NIC chipset. So all cards based on this chipset (which is a lot; it's a common low-cost chipset for NICs) use the same driver, unlike the Windows world where all those cards are about the same from a hardware POV, but the drivers are all different, and some may be better than others. Also, in Linux, the drivers are open-source just like the rest of the kernel, so people are able to file bug reports against them, debug them themselves, etc., unlike the Windows world where each driver is a little black box from the manufacturer, and may not even be supported anymore (common when the manuf. goes out of business). Admittedly, MS has finally, after all these years, started to recognize this problem, and is now trying this "signed" driver scheme to improve their situation.
Re:App Crash (usually) = Windows Crash (sorta) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Informative)
WOW. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WOW. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: huge number (Score:3, Funny)
No kidding.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Boy... (Score:5, Funny)
I haven't read the article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I haven't read the article (Score:5, Funny)
How many of you press cancel when the error report is to be send ?
If user are not completely stupids(did you already read a report and understood all what to be send to MS), 90% of crashes are not reported. And 5% are so crashed they are not in a state to do any reporting. so we now have 100% of all windows installations.
So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Halting problem...???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that's the halting problem.
But that has nothing to do with OS stability. The OS does not have to determine if the program will end, or even shutdown properly. Since the OS is the arbiter of resources, it can make the decision to disallow a program from executi
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point.
I use Opera, not IE as my web browser. And, XP rarely crashes on me. Sure, the occasional app crashes, but I've not has a "the system is locked" crash since I QUIT using IE as a browser...
DIRECT LINK! (comments) (Score:5, Informative)
HERE IS THE DIRECT LINK [nytimes.com] : (Doesn't require you to log in!) Thank you, Google News! [google.com]
My favorite part: Last week, Microsoft raised its revenue forecast for fiscal 2004 by about $1 billion. At the same time the company also said it had no plans to spend any of its $49 billion cash on major acquisitions or increase dividends, despite recent rumors.
Now, If I'm reading this article correctly, they are indirectly affecting their positive cashflow 'problem' by increasing R&D. The article says that Microsoft expects revenue to increase 6-9% (of total revenue) in 2004; They are going to spend 8% more on R&D (8% more than R&D expenses in 2003)... So this looks like one way that Microsoft is going to slow down their positive cashflow. I can't see anything bad coming from Microsoft spending more on R This should be beneficial to end-users as long as MS doesn't spend all this additional research money finding better ways to make it difficult to pirate Windows.
5% (Score:5, Funny)
Uhm.... sure. (Score:5, Funny)
>>its software updates that it now distributes
>>for free."
Buffer ovverflow - $15
Firewall Fix - $45
Service Pack 3 - $300
Knowing that no matter how much patches come out, Linux will be more secure - Pricess
*sigh* (Score:5, Funny)
Price[le]ss
And that sums up the problem with Linux at this stage of the game: no matter what you want it to do, there seems to be one little piece that isn't there yet.
Charging for updates .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm gonna code myself up a minivan! (Score:3, Insightful)
Charging For Updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't belive that Microsoft has the gall to even consider charging us to fix the holes in their systems
That's good you can't believe it, because nobody said it.
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:3, Insightful)
That'd be a great thing... you could get security features without them trying to ram "upgrades" like DRM down your throat then!
A lot of MS's current patches come along with unwanted tag-alongs like that... I'd welcome the change.
MadCow.
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:3, Insightful)
My $0.02 (Cdn).
MadCow.
Bounty for Every Bug (Score:5, Insightful)
The true story (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing, of course, is that so few bugs have been found. Imagine if M$ had this policy!
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Charging For Updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? I can believe it. And maybe if all the other stupid MS customers out there would get it through their thick skulls that sitting around galled and shocked at this brazen display of customer-unfriendly monopolistic power is not going to make MS change magically into a company that values its customers, and stop buying their products and go to their competitors instead, then we wouldn't constantly be reading here about all the problems with MS products.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jaysyn
Charging to Fix Their Own Defective Product? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I pay for a copy of Windows and soon I might have to pay Microsoft to fix the bugs that shouldn't have been there in the first place?
I've been considering switching to Linux for a while now and having to pay more money to Microsoft for fixes would cause me to switch for sure. I'm not going to put up with crap like that!
Major versus minor updates (Score:5, Informative)
Each time a major OS release comes out of Apple, they charge for it, yes. So does everyone else. Microsoft does it. SuSE does it. Don't let the version numbering for Mac OS X fool ya, 10.2 was a major upgrade over 10.1, which was a major upgrade compared to 10.0.
However, Apple doesn't charge for minor point releases. They're up to 10.2.6 right now in OS X, so you can see there have been several point releases since 10.2 was released, plus a smattering of security updates and individual application updates. Those are all free.
If Microsoft really does start charging for service packs, as the parent article for this thread suggests, their customers are going to revolt. From the Microsoft standpoint, they need a new revenue stream, and they want a way to subsidize the ongoing effort of improving products already in the market (like Windows 2000 Professional, since many users refuse to upgrade to XP).
I'm willing to pay for a major new OS release once every year or two, if the new features are compelling enough and my hardware can support it. But I'm not willing to pay for the vendor's bug-fixing efforts and minor feature fixes/additions.
It's all in how you spin the language (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, the word "bugfixes" is not used. However, we all know that Microsoft typically does not refer to bug fixes as bug fixes. They call them "updates" or "Service Packs" or something similar, but never "bug fixes."
However, if you read the description of what these updates are (by reading the descriptions when you point your
Stating the obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Well duh. The company's biggest bet is always on the next version of Windows!
If they said "Well, we're betting the entire company's future on the next version of Microsoft Bob", they're screwed.
5% seems a bit low... (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, but how many people actually use the "report this error to microsoft" feature?. I know everytime I get a crash, I opt to not send the report, and I know i'm not the only one that does this. Also, the only time this method for reporting error is used at all is when customers are on broadband connections, or in office networks (can you imagine wating for your modem to dial to report an error or a crash?), and what about those times when the crash is so bad your entire system needs to be restarted?. From what I can tell, this error reporting software only sends error reports regarding programs that crash, not the OS itself. So... 5% of windows users, who are on persistent connections, who use the error reporting software, who had a crash on an application that doesn't freeze the entire system, are crashing at least 2 times a day... The real number has to be much higher that that.
-K
-K
Re:5% seems a bit low... (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, yeah, I could see not reporting a pirated copy of Photoshop or something. But come on people... they are fixing hundreds of bugs a year, help them identify which ones are the important ones.
And windows will ask if you want to send a non-hardware related report if the OS died for non-hardware related issues (I had it ask just the other day if I wanted to report a spontanious re
Negative on that, Houston... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Twice, Windows has done a hard, cold BSOD and at the next boot, come up with a msg saying something like "Uh oh. Call home?" in slightly different words. Btw, in both cases the error was reported to be in a driver (yep, I read the details).
Kjella
Re:Windows Error Reporting (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has a huge AppCompat lab that they run to test against thousands of applications whenever they release new versions of their software. If you send the non-Microsoft-software errors, it helps them see if maybe some new app is causing a problem. If it is, they may consider adding it to their AppCompat lab (although it does depend
Nothing new (Score:3, Funny)
that's sad. (Score:3, Funny)
Suddenly, I'm really thankful for my Win98 (1st edition) install -- it only crashes 2 or three times a WEEK!
Re:that's sad. (Score:3, Insightful)
We see a slightly higher incidence (Score:5, Informative)
The other 95% (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
REPORTED incidents (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say then, that maybe 10% crash once per day, 20% crash every couple of days, 40% crash once a week, etc. If we only go that far that's saying
75% of windows computers crash at least once a week.
If once a week doesn't sound like a lot to you, imagine how annoyed you'd be if your ISP was down once a week, because that's what we're talking about.
waitaminute (Score:5, Insightful)
I was under the impression the error reporting tool didn't send any personally identifiable info back to MS. How, exactly, is he figuring out the frequency with which individual machines crash?
Could be an advertisement for MSFT scalability (Score:5, Funny)
That's 416,666 transactions per hour, 6944 transactions per minute, or about 116 transactions per second.
If each report is 50K (don't have an exact figure, and I don't want to wait the
*That's* the kind of data processing system I'd like to buy!
-m
Re:Could be an advertisement for MSFT scalability (Score:3, Interesting)
It also does not take into account businesses like ours that reboot ALL the NT Webservers once a day to keep them from falling over.
FWIW, they are being replace by a clump of SUN's.
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Whos fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all application crashes can be blamed on the OS, but the number is probably significant.
Bill, you are thinking too small. (Score:5, Funny)
What Bill needs to do is think fourth dimensionally. Updates continue to be free. Hell, Windows itself and all other Microsoft software should be completely free of charge as well. Microsoft will instead bring in ten times more profit by...
Charging for each software malfunction!
Microsoft will include special code in its kernels that will be backed up by a legally required instruction in the processor, along with a strong encryption path on the physical electronics that protect this particular instruction. This innovative technology will automatically detect software malfunctions and send a strongly encrypted packet to Microsoft. At that point, Microsoft will automatically bill the luser some set fee, like $20.00 for each occurance of a bug that causes an application to crash, $40.00 for a Windows BSOD, $60.00 for a complete crash requiring a cold boot, and, say, $100.00 for a crash that causes loss of data, including hard disk crashes unrelated to software.
This innovative technology would create tremendous value for Microsoft stockholders and employees of the company. Stockholders would make enormous profits on the millions upon millions of crashes that occur each day, compounded by the fact that Microsoft's software would inevitably get installed on more computers, being free of charge. Microsoft employees would not have to test or debug software as it is no longer a problem if the software malfunctions. This would shorten cycles, increase revenue and fulfill the enterprise integration strategy.
In short, Bill, stop thinking like a hungry beggar on the street trying to get a few more pennies for a beer and start thinking like a CEO of some powerful company.
Memo from Firestone (Score:3, Funny)
No means YES, Yes means YES.
Enough Said
Enjoy,
Error reporting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hm. (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, with a statistical sample of 1 we can draw all sorts of conclusions. That being said I too find Windows 2000 to be very stable. I still greatly perfer Linux, but you must admit that Microsoft products are getting better.