(long OT) The Microsoft way (OT)

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 10/27/03 

Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 03:52:24 -0000

Hi,

    Unable to work out how to reply to this thread, with such a wealth
of material and such...I couldn't come up with a way to write the
post...so, instead, as merely a "taster" and "beginning" _only_, I
decided I wouldn't write the reply but would use Bill, Microsoft and
others in order to make the point...which in summary is basically:

"When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged."
[ Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly & Associates ]

>From Big Bill himself, as he is actually the very _best_ person to
quote as to why he shouldn't be allowed to own his own clothes, let
alone the world, with his irresponsible attitudes...really, no
criticisms uttered by anyone else actually comes as close to
condemning Microsoft as they do of themselves without thinking (yes,
their "bad attitude" is so engrained that they utter things of
unbelievable contempt without even thinking there's anything "wrong"
at all with it ;)...

"It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for
me. If so, it's going quite well I must admit."
[ Bill Gates ]

"There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince
them that our way is the way to go."
[ Bill Gates ]

"I have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'ask.'"
[ Bill Gates, in his deposition for the Microsoft antitrust trial ]

"Microsoft is - and will be - important, but it's hard to predict this
stuff. Say you'd been around in 1980, trying to predict the PC
revolution. You NEVER would've come and seen me."
[ Bill Gates in Wired 2.12 ]

"I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than
bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
[ Bill Gates ]

"One of the early programs I wrote, not for money, was for Lakeside
[where Gates went to highschool]. It scheduled students in classes. I
surreptitiously added a few instructions and found myself nearly the
only guy in a class full of girls. It was hard to tear myself away
from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success.
I was hooked."
[ Bill Gates, The Road Ahead [2nd Edition] ]

"The fact that there's some e-mail here at MS that says, 'let's go up
and beat this guy'...there's nothing wrong with that. That is
'Capitalism' at work for consumers."
[ Bill Gates on Good Morning America, 11-11-98 ]

"In one piece of Email people were suggesting that Office had to work
equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn't force Office
users to use our browser. This is wrong and I wanted to correct this."
[ Bill Gates, January 1997. ]

"Winning Internet browser share is a very, very, very important goal
for us."
[ Bill Gates ]

"The internet is central to everything we are doing."
[ Bill Gates ]

"Anywhere software can run, we like."
[ Bill Gates ]

"One World, One Web, One Program."
[ Advertisement for Internet Explorer ]

"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer."
[ Adolf Hitler ]

What a former employer of Mr.Gates thought about his charming
personality and attitudes:

"He [Bill Gates] acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was."
[ Ed Roberts, Gates' employer at MITS in the 1970s ]

"You'll read that Bill Gates envisioned it all, which is a crock. He
didn't envision any of it. Nobody did."
[ Ed Roberts, Gates' employer at MITS in the 1970s ]

So, it's just the "man at the top", right? Just because he's a menance
to humanity, doesn't imply that his employees necessarily share his
opinion? To a degree, that's correct...but the hypothesis that Bill's
attitudes don't rub off on them is slightly flawed:

"We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger."
[ Former Microsoft VP James Allchin in a '91 e-mail, as revealed in
"Caldera v. Microsoft" ]

"This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there
isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry -- you just
pull the trigger. Angry discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We
need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
[ Former Microsoft VP James Allchin in a '91 e-mail, as revealed in
"Caldera v. Microsoft" ]

"The threat to cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest
bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to
Apple immediately."
[ Ben Waldman, Microsoft manager of Mac Development, in a '97 email to
Big Bill ]

"Asked how small software companies could compete on products that
Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft COO Bob] Herbold told
Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to
Microsoft or a larger company or 'not go into business to begin
with.'"
[ Newsweek, March 1998 ]

"If the price seems too good to be true, it generally is."
[ Microsoft attorney Jim Lowe ]

"We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling,
we're going to give away for free."
[ Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President, referring to
Netscape ]

"...[Windows 98] must be a killer on shipments so that Netscape never
gets a chance..."
[ Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo ]

"Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80%
marketshare and we have less than 20% ... I am convinced we have to
use Windows - this is the one thing they don't have..."
[ Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo ]

"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market
share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to
leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
[ Microsoft Manager Christian Wildfeuer (from an internal memo dated
02-24-97) ]

"The number of error messages we put in front of people is a tragedy."
[ David Cole, general manager of Microsoft's consumer division ]

"We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while] other
component prices have come down and continue to come down."
[ Microsoft Senior VP Joachim Kempin ]

"I have a nice perspective on what it means to be in charge of the
most important project in the history of mankind."
[ Overinflated egotist Microsoft project manager Brian Valentine, as
quoted in BusinessWeek ]

"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it
down the throats of our users."
[ some nice irony from Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President ]

"And let's face facts. innovation has never been Microsoft's strong
suite. We're much better at ripping off our competitors. For example,
we did not invent either ASP or IE, we bought them!"
[ E-mail from an unidentified Microsoft employee, as revealed in the
antitrust trial ]

"The idea that people know what they want is wrong. They need to be
pulled through the Web."
[ Former MSN Vice President Laura Jennings ]

"DOS will be with us forever. We've learned how passionate people are
about DOS."
[ Former Microsoft Vice President Brad Silverberg ]

But, surely, business partners and "friends" of Bill and Microsoft
must have something "nice" to say about them? Nope, because he even
puts the fear of grud into "media god" Rupert Murdoch, with which they
have talked about working together to dominate the media entirely
through your TV set and, no doubt, bring Orwell's vision of Big
Brother unquestionably real...

"Everybody in the communications business is paranoid of Microsoft,
including me."
[ News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch ]

Ah, yes, but this is all "hearsay" and "emotional" and "paranoia",
right? Well, then, why does the objective,
ever-careful-that-everything-is-proved-beyond-doubt legal profession
talk in these sorts of tones? Remember, these people are very careful
about their language and accusations, dealing with facts and official
legal decisions...yet, amazingly, there's a direct correlation that
the closer to the "true face" of Bill Gates and Microsoft you get, the
_more_ condeming it is, not less so...Bill himself is the worst
advert, closely followed by his employees, even his business partners
hate him and his company...and, now, legal professionals looking
directly at Microsoft documentations and practices talk in the next
most condemning way:

"But for Microsoft's interference, the market would be much more
dynamic as new technologies and fresh innovations challenged the
company's present dominance."
[ Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee ]

"They're hell-bent on dominating the entire information infrastructure
of the world, and it scares the daylights out of me."
[ Antitrust attorney Gary Reback ]

"Their documents display a clear intent to monopolize, to prevent any
competition from springing up. And they have used a variety of
restrictive practices to prevent that kind of competition."
[ Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee ]

"An analogy [of Microsoft] would be the owner of a toll bridge, which
is the only bridge across a river, paying the owner of land to deny
access to a site where a competitive bridge is partly built."
[ Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee ]

"The period since 1996 has witnessed a large increase in the usage of
Microsoft's browsing technologies and a concomitant decline in
Navigator's share. ... The relative shares would not have changed
nearly as much as they did, however, had Microsoft not devoted its
monopoly profits to precisely that end."
[ Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial ]

"Stop Microsoft through government antitrust enforcement now or say
goodbye to new products and the openness of the Internet. Gates will
own everything, and collect a fee on every imaginable product and
service in cyberspace from home finance to a virtual visit to the
Louvre. And forget about getting these products and services someplace
else. Competitors won't exist."
[ Antitrust attorney Gary Reback ]

"It is Microsoft's corporate practice to pressure other firms to halt
software development that either shows the potential to weaken the
applications barrier to entry or competes directly with Microsoft's
most cherished software products."
[ Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial ]

"Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market
power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing
initiatives that could intensify competition against one of
Microsoft's core products. ... The ultimate result is that some
innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the
sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
[ Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial ]

"Microsoft expends a significant portion of its monopoly power ... on
imposing burdensome restrictions on its customers and inducing them to
behave in ways that augment and prolong that monopoly power.."
[ Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust trial ]

"If one company dominates everything, it's dangerous. You kill
innovation and you lose the capacity to create alternatives.
Ultimately, that isn't good for the consumer or the country."
[ Samuel Miller, U.S. Justice Department (echoing what I've been
saying in various posts) ]

Some other interesting opinions:

"The software empire that was built on a 'C:\' prompt, Microsoft has
done for software what McDonald's did for the hamburger."
[ PC Magazine, June 1997 ]

"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system. I guess I
would be nervous if my system was built on their technology, too."
[ Sun Microsystems President Scott McNealy ]

"Although UNIX is more reliable, NT may become more reliable with
time."
[ US Navy Fleet Introduction deputy director Ron Redman explaining why
the Navy uses Windows NT ]

"I think Gates still thinks he can treat everyone like *** and he'll
get his way eventually. I think he just got a big surprise."
[ Consumer Project on Technology Director James Love on Microsoft's
antitrust trial ]

"In Microsoft world, you are always one click away from harming
yourself."
[ Elias Levy, BUGTRAQ mailing list moderator. ]

"Some weeks it looks like Redmond feels entitled to capture not just
part of what we save, but all of it. That just isn't going to fly with
corporate America forever. When your margins are more sensitive to
Bill Gates' pricing whims than they are the price of oil, that's an
untenable position for a large company to be in."
[ John Chapman Sr., BP Amoco Technology Executive ]

"I take much of what [Bill Gates] says with a grain of salt because
Bill would like to be ... the center of gravity for the whole world.
He's totally dedicated to his work and will do virtually anything to
kill the rest of us ... Bill Gates can be your partner and be your
enemy at the same time."
[ AT&T Chairman Robert Allen ]

"Stop being paranoid. Gates is always whining about how any minute he
can be out of business because things change so fast in the software
business. The only companies put out of business in the software
industry have been put out either by their own incompetence or by
Microsoft. Give it a rest. I'm personally sick of listening to this
one. In the early 1980s before Microsoft was public, Gates would go on
and on about how he could always fall back on being a programmer if
Microsoft went broke. Let's see, he's up to $50 billion in net worth.
When does this thinking end? At this point it's pathological and
unhealthy."
[ John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine ]

"What Microsoft is doing is patently illegal. Think about it. If you
want to build computers, you've got to ask Bill's permission. If Bill
wanted to triple the price on Windows, what would you do? You'd pay,
you wouldn't have any choice."
[ Oracle Corp Chairman Larry Ellison ]

"In biology, if the members of a herd are too genetically similar, a
single disease can wipe them out. Ditto with computer systems: as
Microsoft becomes increasingly dominant, the users of its programs are
open to weaknesses that they may not know exist -- until it is too
late ... if nothing else, the problems of macro-viruses have shown the
weakness inherent in Microsoft's dominance of both business software
and home PCs."
[ Charles Arthur, The Independent ]

"A key lesson from Nature is that we should never forget that
diversity is mandatory to permit adaptation to a changing environment.
To insure the continuity of technological development we need vigorous
competition, preferably by totally different approaches. The Microsoft
model, while having clear economic advantages, contains the temptation
to engage in heavy handed copying and then snuffing out the
competition. Not pleasant. And certainly not fair. But, probably
legal, provided you have hired enough high priced lawyers to define
reality in its most favorable light. My concern is that this
over-concentrated, single, universal approach lacks the very long-term
diversity necessary for the adaptive evolution necessary in the longer
range interest of society."
[ Digital packet-switching inventor Paul Baran ]

"Depending on a single company for all future OS innovation and on
another for all future CPU innovation would be tragic for an industry
driven by technology."
[ Tom R. Halfhill, former Byte Magazine Senior Editor ]

I really, really could go on here (I've just deleted another _hundred_
or so quotations because it's already stupidly silly in size that it
_must_ be edited down significantly for posting ;)...but, anyway, time
to bring the quotations to a close...and, I'm proud of any part I have
in fulfilling the following prophechy:

"Ultimately, positive action to rein in Microsoft (and others, if need
be) will be taken when the general public realizes they're being had;
that as a society we're being forced to pay huge costs in lost
productivity due to the unnecessary difficulty of using computers; and
when the basically amoral and ruthless character of Microsoft's
leadership is graphically revealed."
[ Mitchell Kapor, Lotus founder and cofounder of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation ]

Go a'searching yourself:

http://www.opensource.org/halloween
http://www.lugod.org/microsoft/
http://www.msboycott.com/

...before Micro$oft take over the 'net sufficiently to permanently
shutdown the concept of free speech entirely...

Beth :)

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