Re: XP has no significant bugs that any significant number of users want fixed


"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote in message
news:115sqq25avpgh3b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> FOCUS:
> So where does this common feeling of frustration come from that
> unites all the PC users? Everybody experiences it every day that
> these things simply don't work like they should.
>
> Gates:
> Because it's cool. It's like, "Yeah, been there done that - oh,
> yeah, I know that bug." - I can understand that phenomenon
> sociologically, not technically.



Well Bill Gates does have a point here. It has become "cool" to criticize a
number of things in our society somewhat regardless of the current reality.
For example most people in school, often even at the university level, will
complain with each other about how much school sucks. People at the college
level aren't forced to go to school, so if it really sucked so much overall
they would stop doing it (or change majors if that was the problem).
Similarly people like to criticize the government. They criticize them
about everything and are super suspicious about what they say or anything
they ever do. Seeing as how the government is theoretically "for the
people, by the people," then this means that ordinary people that criticize
should do something about it to fix the problem. Yet they don't. A
substantial fraction of these complainers never vote nor do they pay
anywhere near close enough attention to current events to even make comments
about the way the government is handling things.

As for Microsoft... I've have personally observed that Bill Gates is very
accurate in claiming it is "cool" to criticize MS products for bugs. In the
case of Win95 and Win98, the criticism was fully justified. Those were just
plain buggy products. Released versions of the NT core products (NT 4.0,
Win2000, XP) have never been very buggy, indeed all of those products can
run for weeks or months at a time without need for reboot. Some may
disagree with this idea. Almost all problems that you might encounter that
seemingly need rebooting to be fixed can be fixed without a reboot if you
know how.

Currently the biggest source of frustration comes from things like viruses,
worms, adware, spam, etc. These aren't exactly Microsoft's fault. In the
case of the bugs in Win95/98, those were clearly Microsoft's sole
responsibility. They created them and they should have been the ones to fix
them. In the case of things like viruses, adware, spam, etc. the problem
isn't caused by Microsoft. The problem is caused by degenerate elements of
society that have obtained excessively high levels of technological
sophistication. Granted Microsoft is the only single entity in the world
that has the power to make a difference in this problem, but they weren't
the cause of these problems, and to blame them isn't exactly fair.

I contend that any software products as complicated as those produced by
Microsoft are bound to have security issues. Partly security is a tradeoff
between ease of use and functionality. Increasing the built in security of
a product often results in the product being harder to use and not as
functional. If the makers of these viruses/worms/adware/etc. were to target
other operating systems such as Linux, I'm confident that they would
successfully be able to find plenty of exploitable security holes in those
as well (especially since they have source code to look at). The reason
these problems don't seem so relevant with regards to Linux is because the
makers of these exploits don't design for Linux. Partly Linux is an
operating system that is fond to them personally, so many of them might not
ever even conceive of something so malicious. Additionally there just
aren't enough users of Linux to be as juicy a target as MS products. And
then we go back to the "coolness" factor.

If wouldn't be very "cool" for a hacker to brag to his fellow cronies about
how he made an exploit for Linux. It is however socially acceptable and
cool to make MS look bad by making exploits for their products. And so the
net result is MS products are targeted, other are not, and it furthers the
idea that MS products aren't stable/reliable/secure/etc.

One more thing about coolness. You posted this article to this newsgroup.
Might this have something to do with you trying to be "cool" or otherwise
socially acceptable?


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