[TAG] MS plans competition for Google

[Ben Okopnik]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 09:25:00PM -0600, Jason Creighton wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 07:37:06 -0400, 
> Ben Okopnik <ben at callahans.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 05:36:59PM -0600, Jason Creighton wrote:
> > > Oh, they wouldn't do something so silly as just implementing just a
> > > simple GUI grep-like tool and then call it a great feature, would they?
> > 
> > ...or copy Mac's much-loved "Finder" without giving credit where
> > it's due? Not Micr0s0ft; not those famous upholders of individual rights
> > and integrity, those champions of all that is right and decent.
> > 
> > Just for the record: say the name of your universe, again? I didn't
> > quite get it the first time.
> 
> Oh, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I didn't doubt Microsoft's
> ability to rip features off. What I meant was that they usually think
> bigger. They don't like simple things. They like System Restore.
 
Actually, when it comes to their OS, so do I. The correct fix for about
3/4 of all Wind0ws problems - the one that takes the least time, effort,
and frustration - is to back up the data and reinstall from scratch.
I've got most of my commercial clients trained in the basics: keep the
data on a separate partition, back up often, keep all the install
CDs/installation software close at hand.

Buying a new car instead of continuously fixing the old junker (in which
each problem triggers several others, and fixing one thing breaks three)
can be a very sound policy. Unfortunately, many people continue to buy
the same model that produced that junker in the first place...

> So I'm thinking it's not just a simple grep. They'll have hacks
> into Outlook's file format in order to look at emails. Hacks for all of
> Microsoft's special formats. Maybe even a kludge of a plugin system that
> allows Windows to search third-party formats. Something like that is
> what I expect from Microsoft.

I agree. It's also likely to have a dancing paperclip, a Micr0s0ft Bob,
or some new version of a combination of the two, subtly unsettling and
vaguely smelling of brimstone.

> Of course, it's hard to tell what software actually *does* from a press
> release. So we really don't know if it's something big that might
> actually do something useful[1]  or if it's just something like
> what you can do with find and grep.
> 
> Jason Creighton
> 
> [1] On thursdays. When the wind is blowing at greater than 10 MPH from
> the south-east. And it has trouble with metric, so if the wind isn't
> blowing fast enough, if you change the i18n settings, you can get it
> work when the wind is only blowing at 10 KPH.

Well, geez, Jason. *Of course* it's going to have an easily exploited
security hole! And here you go, telling the world about it even before
the thing is published...


* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net> -*-