ntakasaki

You mean like how Chrome is bundled with Flash and Java updates on Windows, yet alternate browsers cannot even be made for Chromebooks?

>is only going to force Google to become more closed to stop Microsoft from doing that.

Being "Open" is about principles, no matter the outcome. If you close off something because people are using it, then it was never open in the first place.

It's like saying I offer you $100 on the condition that you won't take it. What would be your reaction if MS restricted Secure Boot on Windows to stop Linux because people are dual booting or switching to it? Or what if they block Chrome on Windows to boost IE/Edge? Would you say they are being forced to do that because Chrome is getting marketshare, like you said Google was forced to close Hangouts and Android?

The PC software ecosystem has been open historically, even with Windows and OS X, and now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative

I disagree, developers can develop native apps for iOS even if they need to go through the App Store. Only crippled web apps are allowed on Chrome OS and only Google can develop really native apps.

Where are the real shipping numbers from Google then? Surely they must know the numbers? Why won't they release it then? The only reason I can think of could be that they aren't all that great.

Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS? Only Google can make system and native apps, unlike the iDevices where you can access most of the native functionality even if you have to go through Apple's approval and you're not forced to upload all your information into Google's cloud with paltry local storage like 64GB on even a 1500 dollar machine where the information is mined by Google and is accessible to various parties like the Government. They now even track which retail stores people visit using their Android phones or iPhones. http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

Looks like user and developer freedom are a big concern only when Apple or Microsoft infringe it(even though Win32 is much more open than ChromeOS, after all Google exploited it with the Chrome browser and bundling it with Flash and Java updates), but Google gets a free pass to lock everything down and still call itself open.

The Chromebook is actually worse, since the iDevices at least give you access to run native applications even if they have to be approved by Apple. On a Chromebook, native applications can only be made by Google.

Can Mozilla make a Firefox for ChromeOS? How many Chromebooks that are being dumped in the education space are having Linux installed on them? Google has root on ChromeOS and the user doesn't. The whole purpose of them is to force the user into uploading all their data into Google's cloud. That's why even a $1400 machine has a paltry 64GB of storage but comes free with a few years of 1TB space on Google Drive.

I would think a Windows laptop or a Macbook because the users and developers can install or develop any application, yet we have everyone singing the praises of heavily DRM'ed and locked up Chromebooks and iPads. Sometimes I feel it's more about Microsoft hate than about a free computing environment. At least RMS is consistent and is less prone to company fanboyism than the tech crowd.

MS didn't do that from IE, they did for users who installed the Bing bar, a huge difference.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/16/tdl_rootkit_does_64_...

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217953/Rootkit_infec...

A snippet:

TDL4 is the most recent high tech and widely spread member of the TDSS family rootkit, targeting x64 operating systems too such as Windows Vista and Windows 7. One of the most striking features of TDL4 is that it is able to load its kernel-mode driver on systems with an enforced kernel-mode code signing policy (64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista and 7) and perform kernel-mode hooks with kernel-mode patch protection policy enabled.

When the driver is loaded into kernel-mode address space it overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the disk by sending SRB (SCSI Request Block) packets directly to the miniport device object, then it initializes its hidden file system. The bootkit’s modules are written into the hidden file system from the dropper.

The TDL4 bootkit controls two areas of the hard drive one is the MBR and other is the hidden file system created at the time of malware deployment. When any application reads the MBR, the bootkit changes data and returns the contents of the clean MBR i.e. prior to the infection, and also it takes care of Infected MBR by protecting it from overwriting.

The hidden file system with the malicious components also gets protected by the bootkit. So if any application is making an attempt to read sectors of the hard disk where the hidden file system is stored, It will return zeroed buffer instead of the original data.

The bootkit contains code that performs additional checks to prevent the malware from the cleanup. At every start of the system TDL4 bootkit driver gets loaded and initialized properly by performing tasks as follows: Reads the contents of the boot sector, compares it with the infected image stored in hidden file system, if it finds any difference between these two images it rewrites the infected image to the boot sector. Sets the DriverObject field of the miniport device object to point to the bootkit’s driver object and also hooks the DriverStartIo field of the miniport’s driver object. If kernel debugging is enabled then this TDL4 does not install any of it’s components.

TDL4 Rootkit hooks the ATAPI driver i.e. standard windows miniport drivers like atapi.sys. It keeps Device Object at lowest in the device stack, which makes a lot harder to dump TDL4 files.

All these striking features have made TDL4 most notorious Windows rootkit and it is also very important to mention that the key to its success is the boot sector infection.

Another bit:

The original MBR and driver component are stored in encrypted form using the same encryption. Driver component hooks ATAPI's DriverStartIo routine where it monitors for write operations. In case of write operation targeted at the MBR sector, it is changed to read operation. This way it is trying to bypass repair operation by Security Products

Yet you decided to buy her a Chromebook, which is the most locked down laptop out there with heavy DRM with everything locked to Google's services and only Google code being allowed to run natively. Even Windows is much more open in comparison and doesn't wipe the hard disk when you try to install an alternate OS. Nor do you have to "root" it.

By that metric, Windows is also free if you buy a Surface.

>their market share has been gobbled up by Apple in the last decade or so

Today I learned that going from 5% to 7% marketshare is gobbling up a rival that has 90%+ marketshare.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-sideba...

http://marc.durdin.net/2012/08/rant-of-the-day-the-big-green...

Apparently, the same parts of the brain are triggered.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/05/19/apple.reli...

"The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company's gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says."

What traditional immigration proceedings are you people talking about? Get a company employee to marry him/her and bring them here on a green card?

So does buying hardware that's made overseas. Interesting that this argument is made now, but how many local programmers ever bought anything electronic which was a little more expensive but made in the US instead of overseas?

Why do software jobs deserve protection but hardware jobs do not? The amount of hypocrisy here is nauseating.

Felix said he's the MS person for YC. You misrepresented it as HN a couple of times. Please read your post again.

>Every third or so link you posted has 'microsoft' in it.

But we do have you to counterbalance me.

>Hosting is almost never the biggest cost for a start-up, but it can be the biggest cost for a larger company, which is what most start-up aim to become.

What? What is the biggest cost for a startup in the initial phase when founders are not taking salaries? Rent for sleeping? Ramen noodles? Which large company has the biggest cost as hosting? Even 50k/yr is like 1/3rd of a Silicon level salary. It's like you got it completely backwards.

Anyway, all this unrelated to the topic at hand and does not belong here. There were numerous HN threads with this discussion and please write your thoughts as a blog post and you'll have my upvote.

Again, got any thoughts on the Microsoft Band? If not, /thread, I am out.

Hint: HN is a message board, YC is a startup accelerator. They are NOT the same. And yes, there are plenty of startups that do quite okay on the MS stack and for many it may not be a good fit. Your post adds nothing new to the discussion.

>It means: try to get companies that otherwise would not go for Microsoft products to give it a try through free product samples, and talking down companies not microsoft.

But luckily we have you to talk down Microsoft.

>$50K in freebies will have to translate into $50K more profit somewhere along the line.

And paying $50K for hosting when you have no money can just shutdown a startup instead of increasing its costs by 1% down the line. Hosting is the biggest cost for a startup most of the time, it can't be "free" like founders time.

Anyway, got any thoughts on the Microsoft Band?

At the grocery store I shop, people even go to the trouble of entering their phone number to track themselves if they don't have the card, to save a couple of bucks.

Since CurrentC avoids the credit card merchant fees, they can give even steeper discounts to push it.

This actually makes it worse, since the people who pay with cash are typically poor and homeless who cannot get a credit card, yet the richer folks with rewards cards get cashback while they don't.

Edit: Downvotes why?

From a Google filing in court about Gmail privacy:

>Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979).

> it's "inconceivable" that someone using a Gmail account would not be aware that the information in their email would be known to Google.

Also referenced the scroogled ad campaign to support that users know and accept this behavior.

/facepalm