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/

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

In <m3************ @invalid.addres s>, on 10/18/2005
at 01:21 PM, jo*@invalid.add ress said:

Yes, he deserves credit for what he did.

As well as blame. The commercializati on of the Internet was grossly
mismanaged. Take the InterNIC - please!

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to sp******@librar y.lspace.org

[Mike Meyer]

entropy <en*****@domain .invalid> writes:

en*****@domain. invalid wrote...

ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k wrote...

> In comp.lang.perl. misc David Schwartz <da****@webmast er.com> wrote:
> > "Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
> >> Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
> >> places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
> >> permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
> >> property, only they call it "property tax".
> > I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
> > live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
> > know.
> Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
> obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
> of property are true?

Methinks David simply missed that Mike was being facetious. (Irony
and facetiousness don't translate well into print, as Frank Zappa
once noted.)

Uh, you _were_ being facetious there, weren't you Mike?

No, I wasn't. The statements I made are true: the government charges
you taxes on your property, and in most places restricts the changes
you can make to it and the things you can do in it. I used the words
"rent" and "ownership" in an unconventional way to emphasize the
point.

The conventional usage of "ownwership " ignores these kinds of
facts. So you can talk about "your" house even if you're renting it,
or if the bank still owns most of the house. There are political
groups that are unhappy with these facts, and like to point out the
inconsistencies in the usage of the word "ownership" . See <URL:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-propertyrights.htm > and <URL:
http://magazine.14850.com/9307/politics.html > for examples of this.

David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.

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

[David Schwartz]

"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETH IScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa******** *************** *****@REMOVETHI Scyber.com.au.. .

No, not at all. It is the gravest act of self-contradiction to
maintain
that one should be allowed to pursue one's own interest while denying
that
same right to others.

This is perhaps the most ignorant thing I've seen written down by somebody
educated for a long, long long time. An individual's self-interest may
very well include theft, murder or rape, to mention just a few examples.

You are dishonest, lying sack of shit.

DS

[David Schwartz]

"Steven D'Aprano" <st***@REMOVETH IScyber.com.au> wrote in message
news:pa******** *************** *****@REMOVETHI Scyber.com.au.. .

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:02:44 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want
to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

In other words, "why don't you go back to Russia, you commie pinko
fascist Jew Nazi".
No.
Mike Meyer has got just as much right to live in America as David
Schwartz. Nice to see how quickly Americans' supposed love of freedom
disappears once they are exposed to views that contradict their own.

This is about whether we're talking *ABOUT* America, you idiot. It's as
if he said the press has no freedom, and I replied, "if you want to talk
about some country where that's true, fine, but this discussion presumed
America as the basis".

Remember, he is the one who said the government owned the economy. That
may be true in some countries, but it's simply *FALSE* in this country. Our
government has limited powers and ownership of the economy is not one of
them.

DS

[David Schwartz]

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

I am not saying Microsoft did not know the law. I am saying that no
rational person could have expected the law to be applied to Microsoft
that
way it was. The law *must* put a person on notice of precisely what
conduct
it prohibits. However, in this case, the law's applicability was
conditioned
on an abritrary and irrational choice of what the relevant market was. MS has a long history of dancing with the DOJ, and has been repeatedly
warned about the legality - or lack thereof - of their behavior. No
rational person who knew of that history could expect the law to be
applied to MS in any way other than the way it was.

Since when does the DOJ get to make the law? (George Bush's claims to
the contrary not withstanding.) The issue is whether the *LAW* put
Microsoft
on notice. A just law must itself put people on notice as to precisely
what
conduct constitutes a violation of that law.

In that case, we hav an *awful* lot of unjust laws, because laws
seldom disallow "precise" behavior.
That is true. A law *must* put a reasonable person on notice of
precisely what conduct it prohibits and what it does not. At the "fringes",
the tie goes to the runner, that is, the conduct is not illegal. The law is
not supposed to care about things that are trivial. (Except in genuine
private entity versus private entity non-criminal cases, where the law
really is about the slightest tip of the scales and there is no presumption
for either party.)
Which is the only rational way for
a system of laws to work. Requiring that the law predict *everything*
that someone might do to harm others and explicitly listing all those
cases is silly.
That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking that the law *clearly* put
people on notice of what conduct is prohibited. That's very easy in
legitimate laws, because we all know what it means to punch someone or to
rob them. It becomes very difficult in illegitimate laws, because there is
no reasonable test to decide whether something is a 'monopoly' or not. This
burden makes it harder for the government to pass unjust laws, and that is a
good thing.
Instead, you outline a class of actions and tag them
all as illegal. That's why we have laws against assault and battery
and unsafe driving. And laws against exercising monopoly power in an
unfair manner.

Interesting how you, again, equate a gun and an argument. It is very
important to you to justify responding to arguments with guns. However, I
reject that premise at its roots, not just in your application of it.

DS

[David Schwartz]

<ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k> wrote in message
news:3E******** **********@fe1. news.blueyonder .co.uk...

In comp.lang.perl. misc David Schwartz <da****@webmast er.com> wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message

Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
property, only they call it "property tax".

I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to
live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me
know.

Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
of property are true?

His comments are not applicable to America. They are applicable to a
country where the government owns the economy.

No reply is needed to his comments except to point out that they only
apply to a communist or totalitarian state. We don't have one here, so his
argument doesn't apply.

I am not saying "because you are a communist, your argument is wrong". I
am saying, "because your argument is based upon communist or totalitarian
premises about the relationship between the government and the economy, it
does not apply to the United States, and we were talking about the United
States."

I really felt that this was obvious, but I guess it wasn't.

DS

[David Schwartz]

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

David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.

Here's a question for you, Mike. Presumably, you have the right not to
be shot for no reason at all. Does that right act as a bulletproof vest that
actually physically prevents me from shooting you? If I argued that a person
had a right not to be shot for no reason at all by a random stranger, would
you point out that such shootings occur throughout the civilized world as
some kind of refutation?

The way you respond to what I'm saying shows that you really don't have
any clue whatsoever of what the words I'm using *mean*. Do you even know
what a "right" is? (Such that, for example, it's possible for rogue
governments to violate the rights of their citizens even if those
governments don't recognize those rights.)

DS

[Alex Martelli]

Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> wrote:
...

David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can

Incidentally, the perfectly good rationale for this universal existence
of limitations to "doing whatever you want with your property" is known
in economics as *externalities* . Transactions that appear to involve
just one or two parties, and be entirely voluntary between them, may in
fact produce all sort of beneficial or detrimental effects on further
parties who have not necessarily agreed to that. For example, I may
"own" a certain lot of land, but if on that lot I place a siren blaring
and a huge flashing red sign, the energy of the sound waves and light
will inevitably also affect other nearby places, which I do _not_ "own"
(either they're commons, or owned by somebody else), imposing an
externality on owners and/or users of those nearby places.

Of course, while some externalities are entirely obvious (it's hard to
argue against such sirens and flashing lights being otherwise), many
others are subtler and more debatable, so one reasonable society might
acknowledge a certain class of externality and try to regulate it while
another might prefer not to do so. But the general concept of society
as a whole placing limitations on private owners' uses of the property,
based on externalities certain uses might impose on unwilling parties,
is as solid as a rock, both practically and theoretically -- however
much anarchists or extreme libertarians might wish otherwise.
Alex

[Matt Garrish]

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> wrote in message
news:dj******** **@nntp.webmast er.com...

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

David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.

Here's a question for you, Mike. Presumably, you have the right not to
be shot for no reason at all. Does that right act as a bulletproof vest
that actually physically prevents me from shooting you? If I argued that a
person had a right not to be shot for no reason at all by a random
stranger, would you point out that such shootings occur throughout the
civilized world as some kind of refutation?

The way you respond to what I'm saying shows that you really don't have
any clue whatsoever of what the words I'm using *mean*. Do you even know
what a "right" is? (Such that, for example, it's possible for rogue
governments to violate the rights of their citizens even if those
governments don't recognize those rights.)

I'd be interested in hearing what you think a right is? In Florida, for
example, you have the right to gun someone down if you think they're a bit
too menacing. In Canada, most people find that reprehensible. So does a
Floridian visiting Canada have their rights infringed on by our rogue
government because they're not allowed to gun down menacing looking
Canadians at will? Should they be able to exercise that right regardless and
not have to face the consequences of our laws?

I think "right", however, was the wrong choice of words in this thread;
there is rarely anything codifying a company's "right" to succeed at all
costs and at the expense of all competition (except Crown Corporations and
the like, which are created (in theory, anyway) in the interest of general
population as opposed to it). Your question here appears to be one of
ethics. Is MS ethically bankrupt for pursuing business practices that run
counter to society's established norms, and should they be punished for
doing so? And is their behaviour the more reprehensible because of the
contempt they show for the decisions of society's judicial arm.

Matt

[David Schwartz]

"Matt Garrish" <ma************ *@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:GH******** **********@news 20.bellglobal.c om...

I'd be interested in hearing what you think a right is?
A right is a scope of authority. That is, a sphere within which one's
decision is sovereign.
In Florida, for example, you have the right to gun someone down if you
think they're a bit too menacing. In Canada, most people find that
reprehensible. So does a Floridian visiting Canada have their rights
infringed on by our rogue government because they're not allowed to gun
down menacing looking Canadians at will?
That's obviously a complicated question but totally unrelated to the
issue at hand, which was one's sovereignty over one's own property.
Obviously issues where a person has to use force against another are going
to be complicated. The existence of complicated questions doesn't make the
simple ones complicated.
Should they be able to exercise that right regardless and not have to face
the consequences of our laws?
I think there are objective criteria in which the use of force is
justified regardless of the laws. However, the strategic decision of whether
to use objectively justifiable force when one may not be able to justify it
to non-objective observers who may use force against you is going to be a
complicated one.
I think "right", however, was the wrong choice of words in this thread;
there is rarely anything codifying a company's "right" to succeed at all
costs and at the expense of all competition (except Crown Corporations and
the like, which are created (in theory, anyway) in the interest of general
population as opposed to it).
My point was that the Microsoft corporation was not an impersonal
entity. It is an entity that is supposed to embody the will and rights of
its shareholders and exists to allow them to act together for their own
benefit.
Your question here appears to be one of ethics. Is MS ethically bankrupt
for pursuing business practices that run counter to society's established
norms, and should they be punished for doing so? And is their behaviour
the more reprehensible because of the contempt they show for the decisions
of society's judicial arm.

It is only proper to show contempt for bad decisions. MS obligation was
to comply with the law and not perform actions that the law put them on
clear notice were prohibited. The court's determination of the relevent
market, on wich all of their other decisions were predicated, was arbitrary
and bizarre, and the law did not provide any notice of how the market would
be determined.

In the sense of interchangeabil ity, almost all operating systems are
monopolies. And if you go by application, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD are
all interchangeable -- there is nothing significant you can do on one that
you can't do on the other.

DS