Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Xah Lee]

Microsoft Hatred, FAQ

Xah Lee, 20020518

Question: U.S. Judges are not morons, and quite a few others are
not morons. They find MS guilty, so it must be true.

Answer: so did the German population thought Jews are morons by
heritage, to the point that Jews should be exterminated from earth.
Apparently, the entire German population cannot be morons, they must be
right.

Judge for yourself, is a principle i abide by. And when you judge, it
is better to put some effort into it.

How much you invest in this endearvor depends on how important the
issue is to you. If you are like most people, for which the issue of
Microsoft have remote effect on your personal well-being, then you can
go out and buy a case of beer on one hand and pizza on the other, and
rap with your online confabulation buddies about how evil is MS. If you
are an author writing a book on this, then obviously its different
because your reputation and ultimately daily bread depend on what you
put down. If you are a MS competitor such as Apple or Sun, then
obviously you will see to it with as much money as you can cough out
that MS is guilty by all measures and gets put out of business. If you
are a government employee such as a judge, of course it is your
interest to please your boss, with your best accessment of the air.

When i judge things, i like to imagine things being serious, as if my
wife is a wager, my daughter is at stake, that any small factual error
or mis-judgement or misleading perspective will cause unimaginable
things to happen. Then, my opinions becomes better ones.

Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's
not monopoly, i don't know what is.

A: Now suppose there is a very ethical company E, whose products have
the best performance/price ratio, and making all the competitors
looking so majorly stupid and ultimately won over 90% of the market as
decided by consumers. Is E now a monopoly? Apparently, beer drinkers
and pizza eaters needs to study a bit on the word monopoly, from the
perspectives of language to history to law. If they have some extra
time, they can sharpen views from philosophy & logic contexts as well.

Q: What about all the people in the corporate environments who are
forced to use MS products and aren't allowed the option/choice to use
Mac/Linux/UNIX?

A: Kick your boss's ass, or, choose to work for a company who have
decisions that you liked.

Q: What about MS buying out all competitors?

A: Microsoft offered me $1 grand for saying good things about them.
They didn't put a gunpoint on my head. I CHOOSE to take the bribe.
Likewise, sold companies can and have decided what's best for them.
It's nothing like under gunpoint.

Q: Microsoft forced computer makers to not install competitor's
applications or OSes.

A: It is free country. Don't like MS this or that? Fuck MS and talk to
the Solaris or BeOS or AIX or HP-UX or Apple or OS/2 or Amiga or NeXT
or the Linuxes with their free yet fantastically easy-to-use and
network-spamming X-Windows. Bad business prospects? Then grab the
opportunity and become an entrepreneur and market your own beats-all
OS. Too difficult? Let's sue Microsoft!

Q: Microsoft distributed their Internet Explorer web browser free,
using their “monopoly� power to put Netscape out of business.

A: entirely inane coding monkeys listen: It takes huge investment to
give away a quality software free. Netscape can give away Operating
Systems free to put MS out of business too. Nobody is stopping Sun
Microsystem from giving Java free, or BeOS a browser free, or Apple to
bundle QuickTime deeply with their OS free.

Not to mention that Netscape is worse than IE in just about every
version till they become the OpenSource mozilla shit and eventually
bought out by AOL and still shit.

• Netscape struggles, announced open browser source code in 1998-01,
industry shock
http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html

• Netscape browser code released in 1998-03. Mozilla FAQ.
http://mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html

• AOL buys Netscape in 1998-11 for 4.2 billion.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218360.html?legacy=cnet

• Jamie Zawinski, resignation and postmortem, 1999-04
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html

• suck.com, Greg Knauss & Terry Colon, 2000-04, Netscape 6 mockery
http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/04/10/
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_...s_netscape.zip

• Xah Lee, Netscape Crap
http://xahlee.org/Writ_dir/macos-talk/58.txt

Q: Microsoft implemented extra things to standard protocols in
their OS so that other OS makers cannot be compatible with their OS
while their OS can be compatible with all. They used this Embrace &
Extend to lock out competitors.

A: My perspective is this: suppose you are now a company who's OS sits
over 90% of computers (regardless how this come to be for the moment).
Now, lots of “standard� protocols in the industry is a result of
popularity (RFC = Really Fucking Common), and popularity resulted from
being free, from the RFCs of the fantastically incompetent by the
truely stupid unix tech morons. What can you do if you want to improve
these protocols? If you go with totally different protocols, then the
incompatibility with the rest 10% isn't your best interest. I would
adopt existing protocols, and extend them with improvements. Being a
commercial entity, i'm sorry that it is not my duty to release my
improvments to my competitors. Any of you incompetent IBM/AIX/OS/2 or
SGI/Irix or HP/HP-UX or Sun/Solaris or Apple/AU-X/Mac can do the same,
not that they haven't.

Of course, the universe of moronic unixers and Apple fanatics cannot
see that. The unix idiots cannot see that their fantastically stupid
protocols are fantastically stupid in the first place. The Apple
fanatics are simply chronically fanatic.

Q: Microsoft product is notorious for their lack of security.

A: In my very sound opinion, if Microsoft's OS's security flaws is
measured at one, then the unixes are measured at one myriad. If unixes
suddenly switch popularity with Windows, then the world's computers
will collapse uncontrollably by all sorts of viruses and attacks. This
can be seen for technical person who knows unix history well:

• http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html (e.g.
ftpd/proftpd, inetd/xinetd, sendmail/qmail, X-Windows, telnet, passwd,
login, rsh, rlogin.)

• on the criminality of buffer overflow, by Henry Baker, 2001.
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_..._overflow.html

• Fast Food The UNIX Way:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_.../fastfood.html

• Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/jargon/

• The Rise of Worse is Better, by Richard P. Gabriel, 1991, at
http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

and plenty other pre-90s documents to get a sense of just how
fantastically insecure unix was and is. Unix today is not just
technically slacking in the “security� department, but the unix
ways created far more unmanageable security risks that's another topic
to discuss.

The unix crime, is not just being utmost technically sloppy. Its entire
system and “philosophy†� created an entire generation of incompetent
programers and thinking and programing languages, with damage that is a
few magnitude times beyond all computer viruses and attacks damages in
history combined. See also:

• Responsible Software License:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...e_license.html

Q: Microsoft products are simply poor quality.

A: Perhaps this in general is true pre-1997. I think the vast majority
of MS products today have better performance/price ratio then
competitors. This includes their operating system, their input devices
(mouse & keyboard), their X-Box gaming console, their software game
titles, their software architectures and languages (.NET, C#), their
technologies (few i know: SMB), and many of their software applications
(suite of Office, which consistently ranked top since early 90s).

e.g. Tom's hardware review on x-box, esp in comparison with Sony
Playstation 2. (2002-02):
http://www4.tomshardware.com/consume...204/index.html

the leading role of MS Office products can be seen in MacUser &
MacWorld magazine reviews through out early 90s.

Q: BeOS was once to be bundled with PC, but MS meddled with it and
basically at the end fucked Be up.

A: BeOS is a fantastically fucking useless OS. No DVD player, No Java,
No QuickTime, No games, no Mathematica, no nothing. For all practical
purposes, fucking useless in a different way than every donkey unixes.
Not to mention the evil Apple computer, refused to pass the QuickTime
technology, and tried to prevent BeOS from running on Apple hardware by
refusing to release their PPC hardware spec. Be founder Jean-Louis
Gassee wrote an article about it. Who's fucking whom?

Q: X inc tried to do W, but MS threatened to depart.

A: Dear X inc., try to find a bigger dick for your needs. If you cannot
find any, too bad! Suck it up to the big brother and hold on to what
you can get! If you have the smarts, milk him dry! Free country, free
to choose partnership. Ladies, previous night's indiscretion is not
rape the morning after.

Q: I'm not a beer bucket or pizza hole, but i want to do research
over the web. Is there any free stuff on the web i can grab? I'm an
OpenSource advocate, i demand free things.

A: •
http://www.moraldefense.com/Campaign...AQ/default.htm
(The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism)

• http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_repo.../friedman.html (The
Business Community's Suicidal Impulse by Milton Friedman, 1999-03)
local copy

Q: I'm thinking of putting my wife and daughter on the table. What
do you suggest to begin with?

A: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_di...economics.html

Q: Are you confident enough to bet your wifes and daughters for
what you say?

A: No. But I put my reputation in.
-------
This post is archived at:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/w...hatredfaq.html

Xah
xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/

[Peter T. Breuer]

In comp.os.linux.m isc Richard Steiner <rs******@visi. com> wrote:

Here in comp.os.linux.m isc,
John Wingate <jo****@worldpa th.net> spake unto us, saying:

Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc 3m.es> wrote:

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

Dunno. The first version I used was 3.4, in 1987.

MS-DOS 3.3 was the most popular DOS release back in 1987/1988. I don't
recall there ever being a 3.4 release, though.

We were talking sunOS. At least I was!

Peter

[Roedy Green]

On 18 Oct 2005 06:57:47 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamb er.com> wrote
or quoted :

That an HTML standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000) and an HTML recommendation by
w3c (4.01 for example) are two different things, and mixing them up by
calling both standards is a bad thing.

Because ... what are the consequences?

If you mean if you are put in jail for 20 years, and tortured, none.

No. ANY consequences. You have not explained the downside.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Eike Preuss]

John Bokma wrote:
[snip]

I see little difference with other big companies. You're right that there
is no excuse for such behaviour, but if MS isn't doing it, another company
will take their place.

And if companies are allowed to behave this way (because of your
'nice,fatalisti c' argument), this will never change.
Showing companies that you don't excuse such behavior would include not
buying there products, using other products, whatever. To say that they
are just playing the evil part that somebody *has* to play, is to excuse
their behavior, IMO.

++ Eike

[Mike Schilling]

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...

"Mike Schilling" <ms************ *@hotmail.com> writes:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...

"Mike Schilling" <ms************ *@hotmail.com> writes:
What matters in generating HTML is which browsers you want to support
and
what they understand. Standards and recommendations are both
irrelevant.
Unless, of course, you want to support any compliant browser.

Since no browser I know of is perfectly compliant (e.g. bug-free), that's
not a feasible goal.

I guess you'd say developing any software isn't a feasible goal,
because it'll never be bug-free, will never have bug-free compilers to
compile it, bug-free linkers to link it, bug-free GUI/db/etc libraries
to link with it, bug-free servers to communicate with, and bug-free
operating systems to run it on. Fortunately, most developers aren't
quite that anal, and realize that you can get useful work done in a
less-than-perfect environment.

I'm not speaking theroetically. My company (though not me personally)
creates browser-based UIs, and one of the biggest expenses has been dealing
with IE rendering bugs Given the market share of IE, the fact that
something should work, and even does work in Firefox, Opera, etc, is
irrelevant. If it breaks IE, we can't use it.

When we've had similar issues with C++ compilers, patches have usually been
forthcoming, or perhaps optimization has to be turned off on a few source
files. In a few areas, though, the solution has been "Don't do that", and
again, the fact that the standard supports it is irrelevant.

[John Wingate]

Richard Steiner <rs******@visi. com> wrote:

Here in comp.os.linux.m isc,
John Wingate <jo****@worldpa th.net> spake unto us, saying:

Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc 3m.es> wrote:

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

Dunno. The first version I used was 3.4, in 1987.

MS-DOS 3.3 was the most popular DOS release back in 1987/1988. I don't
recall there ever being a 3.4 release, though.

You snipped the bits that provide the context showing that here Peter and I
were talking about versions of SunOS, not MS-DOS.

I too don't recall an MS-DOS 3.4. The Victor/Sirius version I mentioned
was definitely 3.10 (three point ten)--the version byte was hex 030A.
Perhaps the gap in sequencing was introduced to separate the versions
for IBM-compatible machines from the versions for non-IBM-compatible
machines.

--
John Wingate Mathematics is the art which teaches
jo****@worldpat h.net one how not to make calculations.
--Oscar Chisini

[Mike Meyer]

"Mike Schilling" <ms************ *@hotmail.com> writes:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...

"Mike Schilling" <ms************ *@hotmail.com> writes:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org...
"Mike Schilling" <ms************ *@hotmail.com> writes:
> What matters in generating HTML is which browsers you want to support
> and
> what they understand. Standards and recommendations are both
> irrelevant.
Unless, of course, you want to support any compliant browser.
Since no browser I know of is perfectly compliant (e.g. bug-free), that's
not a feasible goal.

I guess you'd say developing any software isn't a feasible goal,
because it'll never be bug-free, will never have bug-free compilers to
compile it, bug-free linkers to link it, bug-free GUI/db/etc libraries
to link with it, bug-free servers to communicate with, and bug-free
operating systems to run it on. Fortunately, most developers aren't
quite that anal, and realize that you can get useful work done in a
less-than-perfect environment.

I'm not speaking theroetically. My company (though not me personally)
creates browser-based UIs, and one of the biggest expenses has been dealing
with IE rendering bugs Given the market share of IE, the fact that
something should work, and even does work in Firefox, Opera, etc, is
irrelevant. If it breaks IE, we can't use it.

Been there, done that, threw out the T-shirt as to ugly to wear.

Yes, you have to work around bugs in the popular browsers. That hasn't
changed since the first published specs showed up. That doesn't mean
you throw out the standards and only support a trivial set of
browsers. That means you restrict yourself to a subset of the
standard, or - better - detect the deficiency and fail soft, the same
as you would do when you get a visit from someone who's disabled some
feature you want to use. In extreme cases, you wind up implementing
something twice: once for busted-but-popular browsers, and once for
people using browsers written by developers who read specifications.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 18 October 2005 05:32, Richard Steiner stood up and spoke the
following words to the masses in /comp.os.linux.m isc...:/

Here in comp.os.linux.m isc,
John Wingate <jo****@worldpa th.net> spake unto us, saying:

Peter T. Breuer <pt*@oboe.it.uc 3m.es> wrote:

It seems to me that I was using 3.x. Maybe it was 3.1? I seem to
remember an earlier major ... was there a 2.8 or 2.9?

Dunno. The first version I used was 3.4, in 1987.

MS-DOS 3.3 was the most popular DOS release back in 1987/1988. I
don't recall there ever being a 3.4 release, though.

There wàs indeed a version 3.4, but I don't know whether this was
MS-DOS. IBM did have a PC-DOS 3.4 at one stage, where it offered the
purchaser of the PS/2 series computers the choice between DOS 3.4 and
DOS 4.00.

However, Peter was of course not talking of DOS. ;-)

--
With kind regards,

*Aragorn*
(Registered Gnu/Linux user #223157)

[John W. Kennedy]

Michael Heiming wrote:

Let's not forget about the Internet, they invented together with
Al Gore and of course the wheel!

No fair picking on Al Gore. All he ever claimed was that he was the
Congressional point man for the "Informatio n Superhighway", which he was.

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Doub...ood/index.html

[joe]

"John W. Kennedy" <jw*****@attglo bal.net> writes:

Michael Heiming wrote:

Let's not forget about the Internet, they invented together with
Al Gore and of course the wheel!

No fair picking on Al Gore. All he ever claimed was that he was the
Congressional point man for the "Informatio n Superhighway", which he
was.

Well, what he said was

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
initiative in creating the Internet."

What you say he did is what he actually did, but what he said gives a
different impression. I don't think he's careless or stupid, so I
think he said that in order to create the impression in the minds of
the people listening to the interview that he's responsible for the
internet.

That's just what politicians do, regardless of party affiliation.

joe
--
Gort, klatu barada nikto

[David Schwartz]

"Roedy Green" <my************ *************** ***@munged.inva lid> wrote in
message news:iv******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:21:55 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmast er.com> wrote or quoted :

I don't think any of it bordered on force or fraud. However, their
obligation to their shareholders requires them to do anythign that borders
on force/fraud so long as it isn't force/fraud.

I avoid MS products whenever possible. Surely others feel the same
way because we have had it up to the teeth with MS dirty tactics. That
has to be factored into profitability as well.

Definitely. Sometimes you have to make nice if you want to make money.

I have no complaints with people who choose to avoid a particular
company's products because they don't like that company's tactics. And I
have no problem with them spreading their views and sharing their beliefs.

Heck, I work for a company that probably has made quite a few sales
because people were looking for a product by "anyone but Microsoft".

That said, I do agree there were some "dirty tactics" in the sense that
they were pure hardball and could have resulted in inferior products getting
greater market share. However, I don't think they came anywhere near force
or fraud, with very few exceptions.

Notable exceptions included cases where Microsoft told companies they
had no intention of releasing a competing product to get technical details
and later turned around and released competing products or cases where
Microsoft threatened legal action they knew they had no chance of winning at
a fair hearing. These did border on force/fraud and in some cases, Microsoft
did get spanked for these tactics.

DS