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Windows

Journal Journal: Introducing Remote Rooted Windows 7

Windows 7 suffered a no user intervention required remote root flaw before it was introduced:

The more than 6,000 attendees who will be walking away from the sold-out event with the Windows 7 operating system software in hand could have been vulnerable to an attacker exploiting the security hole. "The code that will be distributed at PDC for Windows 7 was put on CD before last week's security update was developed, so it will not contain the update," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote...

This is to be expected because Windows code does not change much. 2000, XP and server 2003 were listed as sharing the problem.

Update, November 3: ActiveX is still a hole in Vista, and that has probably carried over into Windows 7.

Windows

Journal Journal: Windows 7 Failure Log. The Crash of Vista 2.0 1

Update 04/26/2011 Windows 7 does worse than Vista at world domination and Windows profits decline from 2008. Sales per desktop PC shipped fall to 66%. The figure is worse when you consider things like netbooks, smart phones and book readers.

Update 10/22/2010 Windows 7's first birthday leaves the company with little change to it's bottom line and can be written off as a commercial failure as Vista was. Microsoft has fired more than 10,000 since I started this log and the collapse is accelerating. Despite the hype, there have been no technical changes and business market share is in the single digits. I'm going to update this log, but in the mean time, please enjoy Techright's excellent Vista 7 Reality Log.

My Windows 7 sucks video collection is updated. This is where you can find real problems from real people.

The Vista 7 Failure Log as it was written.

Windows 7 is Vista 2.0 and is following Vista into oblivion because M$'s development method is broken and their business model has been discredited. Out for more than a year, The OS has not been taken up by business, M$'s revenue is flat and more layoff are on the way. Like the fictional "Mojave Experiment", Windows 7 is mostly a name change that inherits all the technical and ethical problems of Vista and general Windows design flaws. As evidence that M$ never learns,

The death knell is already sounding for Vista 7, M$. now promotes Windows 8 as "the rebirth of Windows".

You are better off with Ubuntu. Vista's glaring issues, industry and popular rejection are explained here. "Cloud computing" M$ style is actually a way Vista 2.0 will deliver less to customers while demanding greater lockin from service vendors. The recession will take Windows 7 down faster than Vista and that will be the end of M$. Non free software was wrong from it's inception and is finally being rejected. This log will be short, M$ may fail before the 2010 Windows 7 release date.

2007 Marketing Birth, it was clear that Vista had failed as soon as M$ announced MinWin. Windows 7 is promissed to be everything GNU/Linux is and Vista is not.

See my Vista 7 Hype Log for categorized marketing hype put out by compliant journalists and below for a chronological listing that includes the market and technical failures that inevitably followed launch.

2008 More Marketing

2009 Massive Hype, Early Industry Rejection and Quietly Dropped Features.

2010

2011

Vista's name change to Windows 7 should be analyzed in M$ terms to understand the magnitude of failure it represents. Why did they bother to change the name for what looks like the same old code? As M$ put it:

In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology

Specifically, Vista failed to gain critical mass, more developers took up GNU/Linux than Vista, home and business users alike rejected it and even the Wintel press came around. Instead of becoming an industry standard, Vista was completely defeated. Windows revenues declined and continued to fall further behind PC market growth. M$ took up the demoralizing task of starting all over again with little chance for actual code improvement. A nearly exhausted cash pile, plans to enter debt, defecting investors and the coming recession make them increasingly desperate and off track even as they bluster about patents and bludgeon Yahoo. Features are already starting to fall off. Paralleling and integral to the fall of the Windows monopoly is fall of their old binary document monopoly. They are forced back to littigation threats, obvious bribery and corruption, and vaporous promises they can't meet here or in the clouds while their competitors run circles around them. Vista proved once and for all that M$'s business and development methods are broken. Windows 7 shows the company is incapable of change, clinging to discredited methods like cult members to their idols. No rational person waited until 2010 to find out that Windows 7 is Vista 2.0. The world is moving on.

When M$ fails, non free software will quickly fall from dominance to niche markets and slowly fade away. Free software has proved it can get the job done without billion dollar advertising budgets, bribes and mindless slogging at companies and individuals. Honest and open cooperation is a better way to get things done. We have already won and we will all keep on winning as vendors see the light.

Windows

Journal Journal: ComputerWorld, "Vista has Failed"

How did I miss this beautiful statement of the obvious?

Vista is awful. Everyone knows it, including Microsoft, and now Microsoft's actions have made it clear that Vista is on its way to the Microsoft junkyard ... Vista, even after SP1 arrived, is junk. Using Vista, instead of XP, is just dumb. ... Why not, instead of waiting for 7, which may or may not be any good, try desktop Linux or Mac OS X?

I'd say that using XP instead of GNU/Linux was even dumber than using Vista. GNU/Linux has cost advantages non free software will never be able to match. The sooner you move, the better off you are. Vista and Office 2007 show that the M$ lock in is a dead end. Customer loyalty is rewarded with pointless, work wasting changes.

"Vista has failed" comes from this story.

Windows

Journal Journal: Windows 7 Gets Mixed Reviews 1

Windows 7 formal introduction to developers brought mixed reactions. One developer said he would take it home and stick it on his kid's PC. Others had doubts about this reworking of Vista.

"It looks like a re-packaged Vista [with] a little bit of eye candy," said Daniel McGloin, a software engineer at Intuit.

Randal Kennedy has some of the harshest criticism. He's been punished by M$ for Vista criticism so reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Many reviewers gave Vista a free ride from good faith that they had to apologize for. This time they will give it a free ride to avoid being punished.

Microsoft

Journal Journal: M$ Starts to Fire Razorfish Employees.

M$ Fired 40 Razorfish employees yesterday. It's hard to tell if this is part of M$'s recent hiring freezes and cost cutting. The article points out that M$ would have done this anyway because they were interested in other things when they bought aQuantive last year. Mergers like that are all about reducing costs by eliminating competition and firing people

The purchase of aQuantive sheds some light on their dealings with Yahoo. First, their accusations of anti-trust for Google's non exclusive deal are hypocritical as well as bogus. Second, we can understand better why Yahoo would rather fight to the death than be acquired by M$, the end result will be the same either way.

Security

Journal Journal: Direct Cash from SQL Injection. 3

"The Analyzer" has been arrested for $1.7 million of card fraud.

The alleged scheme involved the purchase of low-value cards, typically with balances of about $15. Tenenbaum would then exploit SQL injection vulnerabilities in Direct Cash's server to increase the value of the cards. The amount of a single card was inflated to more than $1m, Calgary officials told Wired.com.

What's that site running? IIS, of course. This is petty theft next to the current collapse but it's still no way to run a bank.

HP

Journal Journal: HP Brings Ubuntu Netbooks to a Store Near You.

As promised and for obvious reasons, HP is bringing a GNU/Linux Netbook to market in defiance of the failing M$ Monopoly and it's using Ubuntu. From the Forbes article:

the signal the product sends that HP doesnt need Microsoft quite so much anymore. ... The HP mini laptops customized look and feel is the labor of the Experience team in HPs Personal Systems Group, which is working to make its products feel simpler and more intuitive than the industry-standard Windows-based PCs.

Crunchgear coos over that interface:

The specs are only half the story as the OS is where it gets interesting. ... This Mobile Internet Experience streamlines most common uses into a custom built homescreen that screams of HPs Touchsmart interface - thats a good thing. ... take note at HPs netbooks, but dont copy em. Instead, hire a design firm and actually produce something that is innovative instead of another EEE clone.

Things will really get interesting when $100 MIPS and ARM netbooks hit the market. Of course, everything works better without Vista.

firehose submission

Windows

Journal Journal: Infoworld, Windows 7 is "Vista with a fresh coat of paint"

Infoworld pans Windows 7 as Vista 2.0:

I can now say -- with some confidence -- that Microsoft has once again dropped the ball. ... Just as slow as Vista. Just as consumer-focused as Vista. ... Just as confusing as Vista. ... Overall, I'm extremely disappointed with Windows 7. Far from atoning for Vista's sins, Windows 7 simply carries them forward, visiting them upon yet another generation.

Anyone who says things that are not glowing about M$ has to be ready for an onslaught of criticism. The author continues:

don't start with the whole "it's still in beta" crap. This is NO beta at least not at a kernel-mode level. As I predicted months ago, Windows 7 is very much Windows Vista "R2" under the covers. Microsoft established its platform baseline with the SP1/2008 kernel and nothing significant has changed since, nor is anything likely to change before RTM. This is the reality we face. Get used to it.

Looks like Windows 7 is part of the Vista failure. Except it's worse. This version dumps media applications that were the core of Vista's "consumer" focus.

In related news, people are calling Azure "Hailstone 2.0", remember that? All I remember is some vague buzz and all sorts of privacy/lockin warnings.

firehose submission

Update This sends M$ into their third Christmas with nothing to sell. Vista missed it's first launch date, did not have a service pack for it's second and is universally hated on it's third.

The Infoworld author tried out Windows 7 for a little more and learned it was, "a lot worse than I thought.... Microsoft is still finding ways to break applications. So much for the whole "seamless transition" promise to Vista users." Previous criticism of Vista, got him blacklisted from M$ functions.

someone high up on the Client Team (Steve?) really doesn't like me. I mean, really, truly loathes me. And it's not just your run-of-the-mill frustration with a journalist who picks on them. This thing is personal, and the executive in question is allowing his or her personal feelings to spill over into the company's handling of formal press relations with InfoWorld.

The comments are full of W.E. trolls talking about how much he deserved what he got and that he deserves to be fired.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Minor but Influential Troll AlexGr 17

Boycott Novell has noticed that there's a strong connection between poison pen Jeff Gould and AlexGr. If that's true, I'll list the proof here later. One thing for sure is that Slashdot user AlexGr hates software freedom.

The only thing missing is the usual insults for Slashdot readers, but he's only got five posts. His four accepted submissions all point back to FUD and confusion filled articles from Jeff Gould. I thought that was a strange acceptance ratio, until I could see how much he submitts. At least 11 of his last 20 submissions are dreadful Jeff Gould stories. There were about 80 submissions so the acceptance rate is about 5%. Slashdot editors are 95% on the ball.

Windows

Journal Journal: Windows 7 Stripped of Vista Aps to Fight Google. 1

What could be worse for your computer than Vista? How about Vista without a mail client rebranded Windows 7?

[to fight Google] Microsoft is stripping Windows 7 of some of Windows' best built-in applications [Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker], and it's making them available only as downloads on its Windows Live site. ... the software can be downloaded for free .... It's a variation on the classic "loss leader" in retail, where you lure folks in with freebies and then pounce with a hard sell.

The author thinks this is a silly idea and that people will stick with Google until M$ makes online services worth using. If that's so, there no reason to buy Windows 7 which will still be bloated with unpopular applications and digital restrictions. Ballmer will be hard pressed to convert websites besides their own to Windows only and, with Vista's market share still in the single less than 10%, Vista only is suicide. M$'s would be circular dependencies are best solved by sticking with real standards and moving to GNU/Linux or Mac.

Firehose submission

Microsoft

Journal Journal: M$ Has Less Cash than Apple, hits $500E6 Cost Cutting Skids. 1

Microsoft has hit the skids. Software sales tumbled and they ended last quarter with less cash on hand than Apple and has announced a $500 million dollar savings plan.

Microsoft closed the quarter with less cash than Apple. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments for Microsoft add up to $20.7 billion. Apple, meanwhile, closed the quarter with $24.5 billion. ... Steve Jobs ... [said], "The economic downturn may present extraordinary opportunities to companies that have cash. Cash is king. We are very comfortable with cash in bank and it is not burning a hole in our pocket."

Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Microsoft ... would cull as much as $500 million from its budget, by cutting marketing and travel expenditures, as well as reducing growth in the ranks of its employees. The company will also save in part by cutting spending on facilities and data centers.

"I don't see any scenario where we'll grow by that much this year," Liddell said. "What we've done is essentially gone right across the company -- every division -- and looked for areas where we would like to spend less."

What, they don't want to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software? No, the hiring freeze rumors were true.

Update: Apple Insider highlights just how embarrassing the quarter was for M$ :

While Microsoft executives like to talk about Apple as an insignificant company with less than 5% of the worldwide market share of all PCs and servers sold, the Mac maker now has more cash than Microsoft and earns more than half of its profits and over three fourths its revenues.

Boycott Novell has lots of details on M$'s current crisis, including serious allegations of fraud from an insider. referenced and summarized here.

Microsoft

Journal Journal: M$ Sales Tumble in First Quarter 2

M$'s traditional software sales tumbled in the first quarter of 2009 and things are going to get worse for them.

The company Thursday fell back to highlighting its un-sexy multi-year licensing agreements with big customers as proof its business is sound and can endure a recession and netbooks onslaught, as it saw software sales tumble.

The company's Windows client business grew by half its anticipated target - two percent instead of four compared to last year. Microsoft said fewer traditional PCs and more netbooks had shipped than expected. Also, revenue from OEMs was down as they shifted to sell cheaper netbooks.

Revenue fell nearly five percent and net-income was flat compared to the July quarter.

This result comes despite it being nearly impossible to buy anything but netbooks without Vista and good general hardware sales. PC shipments were up 10 to 12% in the same period.

Vista is dead. One year after their best quarter in eight years, it can safely be said that the Vista sales spurt is over. It was probably over a year ago. Because fewer than 10% of PC owners use Vista and big retail chains like CompUSA and Circuit City have seen significant pain we might also conclude that Vista's sales burst was just channel stuffing. No one wanted it and no one bought it.

Microsoft revised their projections downward for economic conditions and they don't have anything new.

firehose submission

Microsoft

Journal Journal: WGA spurs Revolt in China. 2

M$'s ability to monetize the developing world should be considered a failure. Users in China were upset to learn the WGA Black Screen was part of M$'s Anti-Pirate Day festivities. At least one lawsuit has been filed, calling WGA criminal hacking and invasion of privacy. From China.org:

of 574,923 participants, 73.33 percent said they were using pirate versions of XP, 51.58 percent said they intend to continue using pirate versions, and 32.87 percent said they will ignore Microsoft's "black screen" campaign. Only 15.55 percent said they intend to buy an authorized version. 77.23 percent said they oppose Microsoft's action. ... Some said they would turn to Non-Microsoft replacements, such as the LINUX system or Kingsoft's WPS Office if Microsoft's new policy takes effect.

[Many] point out that the WGA will be cracked, just like all the most complicated Windows operating systems have been in the past. ... pure black wallpapers have suddenly become very fashionable.

Just wait till that 15% finds out how much Windows really costs.

Only a year ago, the Wintel press was filled with optimism and thoughts of vast wealth pouring out of China and the developing world. There were stories of Bill Gates hero worship and the victory of Windows over GNU/Linux in China. Fortune magazine had actually called it, the conquest of China and talked about Bill Gates throwing out his usual business model. Nothing was different and nothing will change.

M$'s survival is at stake and their timing could not have been worse. With the US economy going into a deep recession, China has little to fear from a US trade embargo and can do whatever it likes with its computers. Other countries on the anti-piracy list, given the same treatment will have the same kind of reaction. The developing world is also moving towards software freedom. M$ has two choices, they can liberate their software or lose market share.

Upgrades

Journal Journal: Celebrating GNash Working with YouTube. 4

Gnash now works reliably with Iceweasel in Lenny. Flash advertising is annoying at first but a right click brings up two nice features. The most obvious ones are movie control, sound and quit controls. The less obvious feature is a start in pause mode in preference so you are only subjected to flash you want to see. This feature was not quite working for me yet nor was the save file option. Movies started from pause showed only a white screen, so you have to disable pause for the few pages where you want to see things. Clive will save things until the right click dialog is fixed. Sites like YouTube work very well. Rejoice! another evil format has been conquered by user friendly free software. The level of control is already superior to ordinary Flash.

What better way to celebrate than to compile a collection of Vista sucks videos? Here are more than 50 people, including Bill Gates, saying how much they hate Vista. This is intended as a complement to the Vista Failure Log. It's one thing to read about this stuff and it's another to see it yourself.

0. BSoD at Launch. The applause and laugh tracks are fake, so don't let them keep you from laughing out loud when you feel like you should. Instead of applause, real users made noises like the rest of this list:

  1. 02/01/2007 - Incompatible with everything shreds the Install Media.
  2. 02/05/2007 - long boot ends in BSoD
  3. 02/06/2007 - Just one word to describe it
  4. 02/13/2007 - Endless reboot.
  5. 02/19/2007 - Should you upgrade or not? Disco montage of days long, painful process from broken box to BSoD and reject back to XP.
  6. 02/27/2007 - Clumsy ftp dialogs
  7. 03/12/2007 - Very frustrated young man. Did not learn his lesson from XP but still remembers it's buggy launch.
  8. 03/07/2008 - menu search is buggy
  9. 04/02/2007 - FUBAR display
  10. 06/04/2007 - Don't use Vista "garbage" after year of beta testing.
  11. 06/13/2007 - Would you like to reset your computer now?
  12. 09/02/2007 - Angry man in your face.
  13. 09/02/2007 - Display fail on Toshiba laptop
  14. 09/02/2007 - strange anger
  15. 09/04/2007 - Chris Prillo BSoD, wow.
  16. 09/22/2007 - Long early rant resource hog, DRM troubles with own video files, bugs, everything rearanged. Makes him think well of XP.
  17. 09/30/2007 - won't boot
  18. 10/26/2007 - Staples employee distills months of Vista support nightmare, it made XP look good.
  19. 11/24/2007 - Forced upgrade spoof
  20. 12/09/2007 - Crashes on boot
  21. 12/16/2007 - BSoD collection
  22. 12/26/2007 - Random screen errors
  23. 01/03/2008 - can't look at a picture.
  24. 01/05/2008 - Lots of effort to make a statement
  25. 01/11/2008 - Bill Gates says it sucks
  26. 01/23/2008 - Error and bug mix
  27. 02/16/2008 - $1,200 upgrade to trash story
  28. 02/16/2008 - Purple people eater
  29. 02/26/2008 - display flake out
  30. 04/01/2008 - Frozen Chess
  31. 04/08/2008 - Media playing errors
  32. 05/08/2008 - BlipTV's Funny
  33. 05/11/2008 - Someone's nightmare funny.
  34. 06/03/2008 - M$ Explorer problem, split screen frozen.
  35. 06/06/2008 - DVD executed by electrocution.
  36. 06/10/2008 - updates suck
  37. 06/11/2008 - Vista is slow. Has run an different version on lots of hardware. Defensive from intensive trolling.
  38. 06/16/2008 - Infinite Ding Dong of errors and fail for racing game
  39. 06/25/2008 - Won't delete files
  40. 07/07/2008 - Vista sucks my balls
  41. 07/16/2008 - frozen SP1
  42. 07/31/2008 - Mojave spoof, this one is funny
  43. 08/07/2008 - all shortcuts and 'show desktop' not working
  44. 08/13/2008 - Split screen on new machine
  45. 08/16/2008 - A slide show
  46. 08/29/2008 - Very angry security anoyances, screen resolution resets, games don't work.
  47. 09/04/2008 - Angry man can no longer watch TV without Blue Screen of Death
  48. 09/07/2008 - Lost work, general flakeyness but Ubuntu looks great.
  49. 09/26/2008 - Buggy hard drive
  50. 09/28/2008 - Mojave spoof.
  51. 09/30/2008 - excellent Chris Prillo rant
  52. 10/02/2008 - can't play his games, random reboots
  53. 10/19/2008 - failed media player

08/18/02/2008 - Bonus! Angry dude in basement defends vista. "It ain't that bad," is the best he can come up with. Ignore all the problems people above have had, it's not real, they are liars. Yeah, right.

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I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.

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