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The thing I dislike about MS (as well as other near-monopolies) is their tactic of destroying all competition, sometimes without acquiring the innovations that brought around the destruction. Without competitors their "innovations" grind to a halt. And the consumer ends up with whatever they deliver. Think about products that MS has innovated: Bob (the OS), MS Money, MSN (the first iteration). All failed miserably. How to fix? Acquire other companies and rebrand their products as MS ones. This approach doesn't so much take brains as money.
MS consistently touts their product as the best, denying any security flaws in the software for upwards of half a year (as in the case under discussion). As was already pointed out on this thread, their "innovation" tends to be either "ripping off" or "buying out" a true innovator. Ask anybody who's been borged by either MS or any other large software company, how their intellectual property (as well as human resources, i.e., employees) is treated after the assimilation. The sad truth is, it's usually squandered. The defense for MS that I see a lot is that Bill Gates is a smart guy. I don't deny it, but he's also an unethical and ruthless guy. That's the part I dislike.
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The defense for MS that I see a lot is that Bill Gates is a smart guy.
I agree with everything you said. MS is ruthless. Bill Gates is ruthless.
But let me be very clear. I don't offer Bill's intelligence as a defense. There is a tendency when people are against somebody or something to think that somehow any claim that anybody cares to make against the person or thing is true. There's a lot of people who say BG is stupid or Microsoft is stupid. That's just not true. There are a lot of smart people working for MS (unfortunately, too many of them are lawyers) and Bill Gates is among them.
Also, there are a lot of reasons why MS is dominant, and ruthless, shady business practices are only part of it.
k
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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...time machine...
Oh, what's time, anyway?
;)
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As Saint Austin once quipped: quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quærat, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio. (Therefore, what is time? If nobody asks me, I know what it is, but as soon as somebody asks me, I don't.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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si quærenti explicare velim, nescio.sorta Heisenbergish, eh? 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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What's Heisenberg got to do with Schrodinger's moggy? And, anyway, you may or may not have killed it.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I try to keep a perspective on M$, but it's difficult when every day, at least ONCE a day, I'm faced with their basic incompetence. I work in an M$-orient(at)ed shop, so much so, in fact, that we have a very close relationship with The Redmond Raiders. We're joined at the wallet, quite literally. Half our architecture team spend a good deal of their time in WA praying at the M$ Holy Billy Gates Tabernacle's altar. It's .NET this, .NET that and we keep getting briefings on the latest incarnation of M$'s NEXT operating system currently codenamed Longhorn. This new OS is all-singing and all-dancing but the one thing I know for certain about it is that it will crash regularly and spectacularly. That's kinda comforting, because I would be horrified if M$ did a competent job on something. My whole world view would be changed overnight and I would have to do penance. But I'm certain I'm safe from having to light candles and say "Hail Billys".
In fact, I've just been interrupted by 'er indoors, who's had Windoze Exploder crash on her leaving her unable to do anything except CTRL-ALT-DEL her W2K machine. And W2K is by far the most stable of the current crop of M$ OSs, which is why I chose it over XP, which means "eXPerimental", I'm sure. I have this abortive attempt at an OS on my work laptop and it gives me grief every day. I've also had Word fail to open two files (with no explanation) and Excel crash catastrophically in the past 10 hours.
I'm right up to date on all the security patches. I clean up my registry religiously. But the OSs churned out by all those "bright" people are unfinished works, and will forever remain so. I hope I can get to the end of the night without having to reboot MY machine ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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MS has sent me two updates for WindowsXP in less than a month. So far my only problem with it is that because of
poor vision it is hard to read the manual. And I cannot
open the text tutorial, and the audio is useless to me because of my deafness. And just about everybody who bitches
about MS earns money implementing it.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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What's Heisenberg got to do with Schrodinger's moggy?
I'm uncertain.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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mono cultures, (for the irish with potatoes, or the french with grapes, or modern offices with MS) arise all the time.
there are advantages to mono cultures. You know exactly what your going to get, how to work with it, etc.. the disadvantages, with soft ware OS and with botanicals are the same.. you leave your self open to pests.. most are just irritating, some are fatal.
so far, most of the viruses for MS have just been pests. there are 'anti virus' software to deal with them. but eventually, there will be a catostrophic failure. and a new hybrid (or several new hybrids)OS's will evolve.
apples are increadibly genetical diverse. plant 100 seeds, you'll get 100 different type of apples from the trees--and some of the trees will be giants, and some minuture.
but go into your local green grocer, and you'll be lucky to find 20 different apples over the course of year.
we like mono culture. we like those big shiny, symetrical red delicous apples, the smooth dense crunch granny smiths, the tart juicy Mac's. we like knowing when we bite into an apple, what we are going to get.
for all the complaints, for all the expense the companies go to, (to have an IS department, a helpdesk, etc) they like MS. that is way we humans are.
you might as well join king Cunet on the shore an rail agaist the rising tide! he knew it was a futile effort aren't you at least as smart?
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