The Ad sponsored web model is not viable forever.

a thousand times this

we’ll probably get a win 12 that is less good than win 10, but better than win 11,

I wouldn’t count on it. MS is moving away from selling desktop-stuff and towards selling cloud stuff (think azure and office356) and consulting. That’s why they changed their attitude towards linux (think wsl and c# for linux) and open-source (think github). MS wants companies to use open-source tools (preferably written in c#) and deploy them to azure with the help of MS-consultants.

Enshittifying windows is a step in that direction. For example: The more people have a MS-Account, the easier it is to sell office356. That’s why they pressure windows-user into making MS-Accounts.

MS knows that desktop is dying.

most recently I had this with energy-settings, before that with network-settings, and before that with some language settings.

I’ve not actually had this problem …(aside from [when I had this problem])

lol

the last time I had to set up a windows-system, I just said fuck-it and bought a key for 2€ from on of these shady key-sides.

There’s a lot to not like here.

the new snipping-tool is neat

yes I know if you look hard enough you can find legacy panels

In some case you have to actively looks for the legacy panel, because the new ones don’t allow to change certain settings.

soft failures add complexity and ambiguity to your system, as it creates many paths and states you have to consider. It’s generally a good idea to keep the exception handling simple, by failing fast and hard.

here is a nice paper, that highlights some exception handling issues in complex systems

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-yuan.pdf

Because megacorps are at least “smart enough” to pretend they aren’t trying to take over the world.

there are enough examples for corps doing evil things. You hear about them less often, because they cover their tracks and the outcry is generally smaller than when governments do similar things.

Whereas governments have a tendency to justify a lot of horrible shit for righteous reasons.

corps justify a lot of horribble shit for financial reasons. Is that better?

who else should be a significant backer for an open source project? google? microsoft?

That’s still not how governments work

It would be nice if it worked like that, but we both know it doesn’t

To become chancellor you have to swear an oath on the “schwarze Null”. that you forgot what you did during the largest tax-scam in history

https://www.eigenmagic.com/2010/12/31/why-some-people-hate-microsoft-a-history-lesson/

it’s worth the read, but the conclusion at the end is important

Who cares?

Well, everyone who uses a computer should, particularly if we consider what might have happened if Microsoft hadn’t abused their market power. When a monopolist abuses their power, customers all lose, because they don’t get to enjoy the more rapid improvements that robust competition provides. It’s one of the key reasons we think competition is a good thing.

[…] But lastly, and this is the big one for me, we might not have a monoculture of operating system on the Internet with such a poor security model.

[…] Imagine a world where Symantec didn’t exist, because viruses weren’t so easy to write and spread to all the world’s computers. Imagine a world where spam didn’t constitute 90% of all email because it wasn’t so easy to take over a PC and turn it into a botnet zombie. Imagine not having to do impromptu tech-support for family members who accidentally installed a bunch of spyware.

[…]Imagine all the time and money that has been, and continues to be, spent on fixing all of the issues that a better security model 10-15 years ago might have avoided.

In Summary

Microsoft have made (or bought) some excellent products, as they continue to do. There are many wise, capable, and perfectly reasonable people who work there, what with it being a big company and all. This is not a company that is an unrestrained force for evil in the world.

However.

Microsoft have a history of abusing market dominance in order to exclude competitors. Many of the top management running the company at the time are still there, running the company today.

Perhaps there will be no repeat performances, but there are very good reasons for greeting rhetoric from Microsoft regarding their openness with some scepticism.

Inflammatory headline aside, let me be clear that I don’t hate Microsoft. But I can understand why there are those who do.