Peter L. Peres wrote: [snip] > *>temperature application, it can means many thousands of dollars > lost, and *>bill will not want to be sued hundreds of times a day... > > True, that's why they have the EULA. Read it carefully. Free software > may come without warranty etc but some M$ products legally and > certifiedly come without it imho. I think along power comes responsibility. If you unleash the devil to dominate almost 85% of the world computers, and it turns you one of the richest man in the galaxy, it would be at least 'decent' to provide some sort and level of warranty that the devil will not punch tri-holes in your back while you are working serious. Perhaps for MS everything is just a game, but I guess it is NOT a game for me, you and several millions of computers running around, people that was forced by the competition (read here "MS punching technology software solutions not so reliable into the market"), to survive based on scary applications, crossing fingers to not lose the entire job during the next 5 minutes, hope strongly that the plug and play "will" work this time, pray to never see XP giving a hard time to access the office network, etc. For that people, they pay a WHOLE price, the software didn't come with 50% discount because it will fails 50% of the time. EULA smells like a dark plan. MS was never able to produce a reliable product, DOS was bought from somebody else, Windows were "borrowed", their "high-fly-dreams" took them (and us along) to a place where nobody knows exactly what is happening anymore. I don't care about 90% of the new windows innovations, all I need is a reliable email, reliable html browser, reliable platform to run graphics (or not) applications. Why should I install a whole Pandora box into my computer, if all I need is just a way to communicate with my customers via text email and to produce a letter now and then? and produce a simple graphic interface software to interface with my hardware industrial device? So somebody could answer: EULA! It seems a bunch of patches to fix other bunch of patches. IBM made something like that for mainframes many years ago. At that time PTF tapes (program temporary fixes) were sent to customers to fix diverse problems, in most of the cases a patch created several other issues that required other PTFs and so on. No wonder, the customer software support departments had more technicians than the hardware department. The new idea of "certification" is pulling chains in everyone good sleep. According to Microsoft, a good and reliable system should be a good marriage between hardware, OS and applications. For that, everything should be certified. Ok, now, to return to have a reliable platform as it was with MS-DOS-6.2 (something that it should be YOUR right to have since Windows 3.11), now the hardware will cost $2000, more $1000 for the operational system, more $1000 per application. Nice. Probably we will need to go back to 1982, assembling XTs running at 8MHz, 20MB HDs and monochrome CGA cards and 1 or 2MB of DRAM, all to bypass the actual holes in the system. At least under DOS 6.2 we never had any of the actual problems. I had industrial application running in DOS for YEARS without a single crash. Thanks God, the average computer consumer is NOT ANYMORE looking for the brand new windows version to install, making lines at the store doors at the release day. The consumer did already learn by the worst way the penalties to trust the new version as bringing amazing new "good" things. Amazing, yes, good? hmmm. Most of the people I know and talk about, are saying they will stick to the 98SE as long as they can, because at least they know what to expect from it. MS went high sky very fast and very high, but they forgot to build a strong structure below them, it can crack strong. I believe that more than 85% of the purchased windows applications in the planet was sold to run under win98 at most. Some of those applications simply don't run under XP or W2K. Most of that people simply CAN NOT purchase several thousand dollars new applications to run under XP or W2k, they WILL stick to old windows versions for quite a while. MS never made clear to dozens of thousand of software writers that they SHOULD stop writing applications based on Win98, since it WOULD not work anylonger an year later under XP or W2K, when it was to be released, probably even before the application was ready to be released. This is a clear MS demonstration of disrespect to people's investments and/or expenses. Now, everything you go buying, you need first to read if it WILL or not run in your windows OS. Looks like we return to the age of selecting 110 or 220V products. It is incredible. Aparently the word "compatibility" for MS just says "You can pay with Dollar bills, as ever". How many companies just invest everything they have to produce a new device, pay for the application development team, it took more than a whole year to be completed. At the doors to release the product, MS announced XP and W2K, 30% of the target customer for that particular application migrated to the XP, the application will not run on it. What the company should tell the customer? the application doesn't run under XP? that will be crazy and "not updated", right? Customers call like crazy saying "Hey, what a hell of application you sold me that doesn't run in my computer?" So, the company should find a way to adapt, rewrite, loan money to produce a new application, that could take another 12 months to finish, and then? The "at least" decent thing to do should release XP and W2K with some "programmable" compatibility to old windows versions, so customers could install newer platforms and still running old applications. Ok, new windows doesn't rely on DOS gears, that's ok, who really cares? Did you ever asked for it? So we are doomed at least for the next 15 years. I wonder what will happens in the future. I am trying to convince my customers to wait, not buying any new, perhaps try to learn some BSD. How can I invest into developing new products and applications if I can't trust MS OS compatibility for at least 2 or 3 years in the future? Bill Gates once said that he wanted to have something for sale, that all the world would be desperate to buy, and only he would have it available. That's right. That's the way to make billion$ in a couple of decades. What the world ended up in despair was dreaming that the next windows version would fix the previous version problems. By this way the same person ended up paying $100/year mostly, just to get rid of bugs in buying new versions, instead of success, the desperation went higher and higher. The only big difference between Win98 and XP is that XP does not show blue screens anymore, it is more polite, it says in a nice banner that the application will close due an invalid operation, and ask if you want to report the problem. I just get this all the time with a brand new HP machine, running MS applications. That was a real technology advance. Every time I see this happening, I think about a joke: Win98: "You are dead. Goodbye". WinXP: "We are sorry to announce that our life-support-application just failed by an invalid operation, and you will be dead in 60 seconds. Do you like to send your organs for analysis, so future applications could prevent this failure to happens?" A message to Bill: I would love to have money, but as you already got ALL of it for yourself, I would content myself with a machine that doesn't crash during a whole month. I always wanted to say that, sorry by the long text, now back to work. Ah, just to let you know. The first attempt to send this email, the OE crashed, I needed to reboot this machine to make it works nice. This is why I got so happy to write it longer the second time. It is a real shame, somebody please, dial nine-one-one. Wagner Lipnharski - email: wagner@ustr.net UST Research Inc. - Development Director http://www.ustr.net - Orlando Florida 32837 Licensed Consultant Atmel AVR _/_/_/_/_/_/ -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics