Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive
How Top-Valued Microsoft Has Avoided the Big Tech Backlash (nytimes.com) 49
Market shifts and the evolution of Microsoft’s business over the years help explain the transformation. It is less a consumer company than its peers. For example, Microsoft’s Bing search engine and LinkedIn professional network sell ads, but the company as a whole is not dependent on online advertising and the harvesting of personal data, unlike Facebook and Google. […] But Microsoft has also undergone a corporate personality change over the years, becoming more outward looking and seeking the views of policymakers, critics and competitors. That shift has been guided by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, diplomat-in-residence and emissary to the outside world. In a new book, Mr. Smith makes the case for a new relationship between the tech sector and government — closer cooperation and challenges for each side. “When your technology changes the world,” he writes, “you bear a responsibility to help address the world that you have helped create.” And governments, he writes, “need to move faster and start to catch up with the pace of technology.”
Microsoft and goalposts (Score:5, Interesting)
by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:16PM (#59175266)Social media companies substantially moved goalposts on what constitutes customer abuse by hiding behind “free” services. By these new standards MS is an upstanding citizen, and not because they cleaned up their act.Social media companies substantially moved goalposts on what constitutes customer abuse by hiding behind “free” services
Can you really call it “hiding?” These companies were ad-supported from the very beginning. The fact they took so long to turn a profit doesn’t change that they stuck with the original business plan.
MS decided it’s politically safer to screw businesses instead of consumers because co’s can’t vote (as much).
Win10 could have fooled me.
But consumers are not where they are focusing their investments. Consumer Windows sales are stagnant. They are trying to be IBM (during its glory days), not Facebook.
I don’t dispute it, but they seem to be either moving away from consumer services, or using it as a cash cow and letting it stagnate. They are barely working on a smart speaker. It’s probably a hedge; they want to keep one tentacle in the consumer market “in case”. Most their R&D is in corporate tools and services.
Well, they tried to be a social media platform, and failed. But they have always stayed focused on what they wanted to do in the 90s: Own the living room.
Win10 is their best OS since 2000
I remember posting on Slashdot about the need for the government to go after Microsoft during their monopoly trial. The Microsoft back then and the Microsoft today are very different companies. Microsoft certainly still has their faults, but I think it is safe to say that they have done a lot to clean up their monopolistic act. The following come to mind off the top of my head:
Microsoft has gone from trying to extinguish open source to actually being the largest corporate contributor to it in the world
https [techrepublic.com]The average person is not worried about either, but fed up about MS because their Windows reboots when the Netflix movie just got interesting.
To worry, they’d first of all even know what’s going on. And the amount of people still using Facebook and all the other data leeches tells me that the majority doesn’t.
The average person is not worried about either, but fed up about MS because their Windows reboots when the Netflix movie just got interesting.
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/stop-windows-automatic-reboots [laptopmag.com] You’re welcome, not that difficult though.
yeah, until they change that mother #*$@#ing ribbon AGAIN, for no discernible reason.
Oh, and keep your filthy, grubby hands off of the snipping tool, it is an eidolon of perfection.
hiding behind “free” services
Their services are free. Nobody is forced to give up anything. Everybody is wagging the dog. The only real problem with the internet is service provision. Nobody but the ISP can control access.
People are forced to give up their data, even people who aren’t customers.
That’s ridiculous. How is anybody forced to do anything?
Using my incredible ability to see into the future, I predict some people around these parts may not entirely agree. Although some people seem to be operating off an impression of reality crafted and sealed 20 years ago.
I’m not sure when their “Evil Empire” moniker fell by the wayside. It’s mostly their bumbling incompetence which makes them appear less threatening for the moment.
I think it was the failure of windows mobile, coupled with Azure being a competitor for AWS who are the newest evil empire on the block.
They’ve been stung many times, especially in Europe. It’s old hat to fine Microsoft now, even if they haven’t been fined in a few years. Microsoft has surely developed the armour after being hit by European fines.
And yet Win10 is just a roomba in drag (Score:5, Informative)
by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:24PM (#59175298)It hoovers up user data faster than Facebook for all sorts of nefarious reasons.
So, nothing has changed. Microsoft is still evil, but maybe Facebook et al just appear to be more evil.It hoovers up user data faster than Facebook for all sorts of nefarious reasons. So, nothing has changed. Microsoft is still evil, but maybe Facebook et al just appear to be more evil.
What data is being collected and how is it being used? Please cite.
We’d love to, but since Microsoft won’t give any sort of detailed specs and a commitment not to change them, and since updates are mandatory and automatically installed, and since Microsoft has a track record of abusing software updates to push user-hostile changes, it’s literally impossible to answer your question in any meaningful, future-proof way.
Re:And yet Win10 is just a roomba in drag (Score:5, Interesting)
by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:59PM (#59175416) JournalWhat data is being collected and how is it being used? Please cite.Here is their “privacy” statement [microsoft.com] which outlines what they are collecting. Here’s a little snip:
Microsoft collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products for a variety of purposes described below, including to operate effectively and provide you with the best experiences with our products. You provide some of this data directly, such as when you create a Microsoft account, administer your organizationâ(TM)s licensing account, submit a search query to Bing, register for a Microsoft event, speak a voice command to Cortana, upload a document to OneDrive, purchase an MSDN subscription, sign up for Office 365, or contact us for support. We get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experience with our products and communications.
And there’s this little gem in the preceding paragraph:
Many of our products require some personal data to provide you with a service. If you choose not to provide data required to provide you with a product or feature, you cannot use that product or feature.
No, Microsoft does not need my personal data to use a service. The only thing they need is an email account, at best.
So what’s your next excuse about them collecting data and using it as they see fit?
- by vux984 ( 928602 )
“Microsoft collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products for a variety of purposes described below, including to operate effectively and provide you with the best experiences with our products. You provide some of this data directly, such as when you create a Microsoft account, administer your organizationÃ(TM)s licensing account, submit a search query to Bing, register for a Microsoft event, speak a voice command to Cortana, upload a document to OneDrive, purchase an MSDN subscription, sign up for Office 365, or contact us for support.”
All of THAT except MAYBE Cortana commands should be 100% obvious to absolutely anybody.
THIS is the only bit that is even slightly vague or potentially concerning.
. We get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experience with our products and communications.
Likewise, this is not particularly scary either:
Many of our products require some personal data to provide you with a service. If you choose not to provide data required to provide you with a product or feature, you cannot use that product or feature.
So you can’t use cortana to tell you what restaurants are having a special nearby if you don’t share your location. You can’t sync your contacts “People” app between different computers using your microsoft account if you refuse to sign up for one, and refuse to use People. Etc, etc.
Windows 10 does ra
“upload a document to OneDrive,”
lol, so them claiming rights to search your data on onedrive isn’t alarming to you?
Plus they do what they can to trick people into using it by making it look like a local folder?You know what MS should need from me to use there OS? Nothing.
- by vux984 ( 928602 )
“lol, so them claiming rights to search your data on onedrive isn’t alarming to you?”
The idea that if I send a file to microsoft to be hosted by them, share it with other people, access it via a web browser from anywhere, and have it indexed so I can search for it by its contents, that they have access to it is not particularly alarming or surprising to me, no.
If you don’t want microsoft to have your files. Don’t send them your files.
“Plus they do what they can to trick people into using it by making it loo
But if you do choose “OneDrive” then your data is going to get hoovered.
The problem is that in practice, the current situation is the reverse of that. The big multinational tech corporations clearly are bigger than some governments, as you can tell from the way they avoid tax obligations, don’t bother sending senior executives when invited to hearings, laugh at new regulations regarding things like privacy and security, and so on. And with governments typically in office for only 4-5 years between elections, multinationals do tend to outlast them by a long way, and indeed poten
Bribed the right politicians . . . ? (Score:4, Insightful)
by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:28PM (#59175314)In the end, Microsoft paid billions in fines and settlements, and absorbed humbling lessons.
Paid to the government . . . ? Or to politicians . . . ?
Mr. Smith makes the case for a new relationship between the tech sector and government
Streamlined “one click” bribe system . . . as an app and in the cloud.
- Yeah, I think Google and Facebook didn’t pay enough donations to the R team. Now that the R team is in power, those companies are getting harassed. Microsoft is smart, they donate to both the R and the D team. (A look at OpenSecrets should be enough to verify this hypothesis).
How have they avoided the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:43PM (#59175346)One of the biggest things Microsoft has going for it is the ability to change, relatively quickly. Lately, they have been adopting and improving open source where it fits into their larger aims (i.e. git). Also, Microsoft’s business model still involves selling software, hardware, and server space, unlike Google and Facebook that are advertising supported. Microsoft is a direct competitor to Apple, though, it should be suffering all the same problems that Apple is, e.g. from doing all their manufacturing in China.MS is a Steaming Pile (Score:5, Interesting)
by LifesABeach ( 234436 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:43PM (#59175350) HomepageWhen someone is convicted of lying, cheating, and stealing, in a Federal court; that’s when I make a value judgement. Linux has became better. I tell my clients to migrate to Linux, and non have regretted the move. Windows is like a 1957 Buick. Buick’s are fine cars and there are those who have fine memories of them. But business today is like the Indy 500, and entering a ’57 Buick in that race has a predictable outcome.Re:MS is a Steaming Pile (Score:4, Insightful)
by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Monday September 09, 2019 @05:41PM (#59175560)Microsoft has also changed their business model. With something like Azure they don’t really care whether you run Linux or not, they just want to be the ones to host it for you. Microsoft has realized that there are going to be some people who just don’t want to run Windows, but that doesn’t have to mean that Microsoft can’t do business with them or sell them other services or products to turn a profit. They also ditched almost all of the old guard from upper management positions, so you don’t have people like Gates or Balmer at the helm that insist everything everywhere be a Microsoft product and go to any extent to accomplish that.Similarly there aren’t the kinds of people running their divisions that will gladly sabotage new products in the most boneheaded ways like insisting that a Tablet PC run Windows and have a Start button/menu even though the UI on such a device won’t be controlled with a keyboard and mouse. I’d read an article from one of the developers who worked on Microsoft’s early tablets (circa late-90’s, early-00’s) who said that they had come up with a really good interface, but it got axed because the person running the Windows division insisted that everything had to have similar form/function even though it sucked doing that on a tablet. Just pure ego-driven incompetence that lead to a decade of stagnation and let Apple steal the market away with the iPad.
The Microsoft of today is just standard corporate evil. They’re going to dick you over on pricing and might make it a little more difficult to move off of their platform than they actually have to, but they’re not 90’s Microsoft that would viciously attack anything that might be a new market for them to exploit. Gates wanted it all. It was pretty evident from the address they chose for the corporate office: 1 Microsoft Way. Of course this kind of strategy just makes a disjointed mess of a company, and Microsoft didn’t always win so much as they made everybody lose. Satya Nadella has realized it’s better to do focused business and create an ecosystem where everyone can earn a buck that Microsoft might only get a few pennies of themselves instead of trying to cut everyone else out and spending a lot of money trying to push out yet another project that needs to be supported.
seeking the views of policymakers
It’s the other way around — policymakers are seeking approval of the feeding hand. Microsoft increased their brib… lobby spending by orders of magnitude following their anti-trust fiasco in the 90s.
- “Market shifts and the evolution of Microsoft’s business over the years help explain the transformation. It is less a consumer company than its peers.”
Yea, it makers its money out of patents, copyrights and intellectual property rights [mail-archive.com]
“Microsoft has also undergone a corporate personality change over the years, becoming more outward looking and seeking the views of policymakers, critics and competitors”
Is this the same company that is extorting revenue out of Android hardwar
- Just this morning, a Monday no less, I had 10 minutes that I figured I’d use to do email. Opened up the laptop and it was doing an update. Keep in mind, I’d already been on this laptop for an hour this morning. I just closed it to take a shower.
Anyway, my 10 minutes of email work ended up being 10 minutes of swearing at Microsoft.
Why the hell cant’ we sue those cocksuckers for rebooting our computers without asking?
Yeah, I have Linux installed, and run it a lot. But there are things that I need
- …Instead of the simpler, UNIX-compatible, forward slash / in its pathnames. MS-DOS 2.0 had the SWITCHAR option in config.sys but, regrettably, this was dropped in later versions. How much longer will Microsoft cling to, rather than avoid, this technological backslash?
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
- 694 commentsFinland Basic Income Trial Left People ‘Happier But Jobless’
- 503 commentsEurope Sticks a Knife Into Vegan Meat
- 435 commentsAfter Amazon Increases Worker Wages, Whole Foods Responds By Cutting Worker Hours
- 418 commentsWas Commodore’s Amiga ‘A Computer Ahead of Its Time’?
- 384 commentsWhy Some US Cities are Fighting ‘Dollar Stores’
Slashdot Top Deals
- Get more comments
- 48 of 48 loaded
“In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it’s not there if you want to keep writing good code.” — Karl Lehenbauer
