Re: The Microsoft Way (OT)

From: The_Sage (theeSage_at_azrmci.net)
Date: 10/16/03 

Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 21:54:16 -0700

>Reply to article by: "The Half A Wanna Bee" <ShakainZulu@hotmail.com>
>Date written: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:43:48 +0200
>MsgID:<3f8d09a3$1@news.broadpark.no>

>>>So what I am looking for is the TOP 10 reasons why everybody hates MS. Or
>>>more.¨

>>Nobody likes a tyrant.

>Good phrase !

Yeah, I thought of it all by myself :^)

>True, but are they ? Did they allways been that, and when did it really
>change? Did you see that movie oh I dont recall its name, but the story was
>about some garage kids, that developed some satelite navigation system. One
>of them got headhunted to this company (not MS but anyone could really see
>through the smoke that the movie was pointing in that direction), and got
>spesial attention, not from Bill Gates, but from a character in the movie,
>that you would think would be Bill Gates. It was quite obvious that was what
>they meant. It was OBVIOUS. They even mentioned his name, and showed us a
>home that could be the famous Bill Gates home. Anyway, the plot included a a
>site that could be the famous MS site with strong security and a leader that
>really seemed to be quite insane. And they tried to kill the main character
>when he wanted to quit. It was basically a story about an evil empire, a mad
>man.

>Allthough I liked the movie, I reacted to the harsh way it insinuated all
>theese, in reality not well founded speculations. And on the good guys
>computers, there wore unix and macs ? A little stinky if you ask me. I mean
>theres a long way from pushing buggy OS, as to actually scout people out and
>kill them.

>So I took the movie to basically be based on accumulated fear of a very
>successful company, that after all has done nothing (evidently) wrong, but
>to use play the Capitalistic Game better than its competitors. MS have been
>anoying me for years, true, but I had lots of fun too.And belive me, I
>personally never paid them a cent !!!!!!!!!! I think for the huge work its
>userbase has done, by beeing agents (administrators) an debuggers
>(programmers), it should be given away for free, and that is my policy :-)

>Sorry I got lost.

That's okay, maybe I can help you find your way back! Think about this:

M$ has tried to defend all their past actions by claiming "freedom to innovate",
yet there isn't one single original thing about Windows that didn't appear
somewhere else first. Where's the "innovation"?

M$ "allegedly" stole their interface from the Apple Lisa. Apple sued but decided
to drop the lawsuit. The M$ interface was not an original idea (otherwise it
wouldn't have been so easily confused with Lisa) nor was it innovative.

M$ stole technology from STACKER, was sued and lost. Not very original nor
innovative.

M$ was caught with a "smoking gun" in regards to DR DOS (hidden code that was
"allegedly" never intended to be used that would disable DR DOS from working
with Windows).

M$ has gone to court numerous times for monopolizing. Like the tobacco
companies, they are mostly invincible, but they are slowly losing ground, ie --
they just lost a huge lawsuit for that very thing in California.

M$ sold NT Workstation as a crippled version of NT Server and falsely claimed
that that there were hundreds of dramatic differences in the underlying
technology between the two, making them "two completely different products"
(hence justifying the $700 difference in cost). Yet someone who had both did a
file compare and only found one difference: the registry settings. When he
changed the registry settings to match, his NT Workstation miraculously
transformed into NT Server. Why the dishonesty?

M$ was ordered to stop forcing PC manufacturers to cut special deals where if M$
sold their operating systems on one computer, they had to sell it on all their
computers or they would have to pay a higher price on the OS. Although this was
clearly an issue of monopolizing, their punishment was mild.

M$ wants to tax the internet and they have already readily volunteered to be the
collecting agency via their software.

Hotmail, Outlook, and Word have had numerous security issues with things like
back doors and M$ specific viruses. This isn't because "M$ is so popular that it
has become a popular target", it's because M$ has done stupid things like
provide macros that allow access to the hard drive or address book, where no
such access is needed or wanted by any customers. They seem to make it very easy
to write viruses for their OS.

When you start examining the character of M$, it doesn't seem to make for a very
trustworthy entity. And everytime my system crashes or bogs down to an
unreasonable level, I think of what I could have had, had not M$ stifled the
competition. For example, OS Warp was far superior to M$ -- even today! I had a
friend format a floppy, list every file on his computer using a DOS box and a
DIR command, run a self playing chess game, and STILL was able to type in real
time in a word processor. M$ had difficulty even loading their word processor
while the floppy was being formatted. It wasn't even close. OS Warp was very
stable.

M$ isn't the only choice because it is so far superior to anything else out
there, it is just that nothing else has ever had a chance against their apparent
bullying tactics. Take BeOS as another example. It cost half as much as any M$
product yet it would boot up in less than 10 seconds! It was excellent at
running multimedia applications. The BeOS lawsuit against the alleged M$
monopoly is still pending, the last I looked.

And why pay $400 for a word processor/spread***/presentation program when I
can get one exactly like it for free called OPEN OFFICE -- and it has no history
of OPEN OFFICE-specific viruses? Why pay over $100 for an email program that I
can get for free called Eudora -- and it has no history of Eudora-specific
viruses?

>PS. One of the reason that I still refuses to swallow this mass hysteria
>against MS to it full extent is that I always get my guard up when everybody
>does something. And hence my confusion. "Everybody" uses Microsoft and
>everybody hates them.....(!) Hmm. Maybe the hate simply comes from all the
>waiting and all the bugs ? And maybe all that waiting and all thoose bugs is
>the MAIN reason for the irritation ?

Yeah, right! Wait for Win95 because it is a vastly superior OS to Win3.1 since
it no longer relies on DOS for anything. It is completely and totally detached
from DOS technology in it's code...naught! Andrew Schulman proved what a lie
that was.

Something else I don't like that pissed me off when I first bought Win95, was
this card they provided. This card stated, "Who is the most important person at
M$?...You! Please register..." And then they went into all the benifits of
registering, like tech support. So I registered. Then guess what? I called in
for tech support. The phone recording asked me to input my serial number (along
with other info). Then the support tech asked for my serial number. He
transferred me and I had to give my serial number. Everytime I called I had to
give my serial number. So I asked, "What was the point in turning in my
registration card with all the info, yet they act like they don't even know me
when I call in?". The tech told me that the registration card went to marketing
and marketing sold the card to other marketing departments in other companies.
My registration, with my address, my income, my telephone number, my computer
serial number, and so on, was sold, for a profit, without my knowledge, to some
scum bag marketing agent. I never have ever registered a single product since.

>(Plus the feeling of loosing control with your hardware of course, thats a
>real killer issue with me personally)
>And when beeing really really forgiving here, maybe all thoose bugs are not
>actually all to blame on MS. After all they support an insane amount of
>drivers, right ?

They have hundreds of programmers and hundreds of testers for each driver, so
they only need to support all those drivers for a few weeks, and one at a time.
One thing M$ isn't short on is resources. All those bugs are a sign of a lack of
quality and nothing more. The more bugs the less the quality. Plain and simple.

>When they do this, wouldnt it make sence to try to strear
>HW developers in a unified direction as much as possible, in order to
>minimize spesial considerations for every hardware, designed to perform,
>essensially the same thing, like e.g a printer or a graphics card ?

That is called monopolizing. And take a look at the WinModem cards. Now there is
a unifying standard forced down the hardware industry's throat, just like you
proposed. They doen't work very well (they require an overly complicated install
procedure) so I avoid WinModem cards like the plague.

And most hardware is unified already: VESA, PCI (Plug and Play spec), Hard
Drives, Sound cards (Sound Blaster), mice, keyboards, Monitors, etc.

The Sage

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