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/

[David Schwartz]

"Alan Connor" <i3*****@j9n35c .invalid> wrote in message
news:sl******** ************@b2 9x3m.invalid...

AC

You wouldn't be this Alan Connor would you:

http://www.killfile.org/dungeon/why/connor.html

DS

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 23:16:24 GMT, Roedy Green
<my************ *************** ***@munged.inva lid> wrote or quoted :

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

As global bureaucracies go, I think they have done a good job. Can
you imagine herding the cats of egotistical dictators and politicians
from every country on earth who have not a clue about what the
function of domain are?

Imagine assigning two letter abbreviations to 200 five years olds and
getting them to accept their assignments. That would be a much easier
task.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Antoon Pardon]

Op 2005-10-23, David Schwartz schreef <da****@webmast er.com>:

"Roedy Green" <my************ *************** ***@munged.inva lid> wrote in
message news:s3******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:10:24 -0700, "David Schwartz"
<da****@webmast er.com> wrote or quoted :

If the deal didn't give you more than it cost you, all you had to do
was
say 'no'. I understand the frustration at being forced to pay for
something
what it is worth.

The choice was go along with MS arm twisting or go out of business.

Only because the product they were providing you was so important you
were unable to do business without it.

I call that extortion.

Microsoft had something you need so badly that you could not go into
business without it. So they demanded from you that you pay them what their
software was actually worth to you. That is not extortion. Everyone who
sells something tries to get the maximum possible value for it.

If a company wants to be paid for things it didn't deliver, then I think
that is extortion. Microsoft want te be paid a license on windows for
P.C.'s that were sold without windows.

--
Antoon Pardon

[axel]

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

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.

I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.

Also may I remind you that these newsgroups are international.

Axel

[axel]

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

<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.
The last time I looked, property taxes were enforced in many states of
the USA. Do you deny this?
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."

Then you are sadly deluded if you think that the US government does not
make decisions on the economy.

Axel

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 12:35:13 GMT, ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k wrote,
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.

And what has his inability to do that to your satisfaction got to do
with the price of eggs?
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Terry Hancock]

On Saturday 22 October 2005 05:44 pm, Tim Tyler wrote:

Microsoft still comes in at number 2 - on:
http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Busin...ethical_Firms/
Few companies are more despised than Microsoft.

Wrong URL?
No such list appears at that site, although it does link to several
different lists and topic-related sites. The two lists I happened
to check are years out of date (one was from 1994!) and do not even
list Microsoft.

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispacework s.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

[Terry Hancock]

On Monday 24 October 2005 08:19 am, Roedy Green wrote:

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 12:35:13 GMT, ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k wrote,
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :

I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.

And what has his inability to do that to your satisfaction got to do
with the price of eggs?

Funny you should ask that. Taxation, mostly in the form of income tax
supports a system of farm subsidies in the United States, that pays
farmers for surplus product, thus artificially elevating the price of
several farm products, including milk, cheese, and (you guessed it) eggs.

The purpose of this (ostensibly anyway) is to keep family farmers in
business, because that is viewed as a social benefit in itself (I happen
to agree with this statement, even if it does mean I pay more for eggs --
though the price is still one of the lowest globally, because the US has
such a large natural surplus of agricultural products owing to arable
land and mostly good weather).

Of course it does produce one of the most notorious examples of wastage --
much of that surplus is allowed to rot (or at least this *was* true at one
time, I haven't fact-checked that in over a decade). It has been proposed
that most of that food should instead go to foreign aid, or to programs
within the US for eliminating poverty. Certainly some of it does, I
have no idea what the current balance is, though.

The ability to do this, moreover represents the philosophical point
that the government "owns" the economy, in that it has the right,
representing the interests of the people, to pursue public good by
manipulating the economy. In other words, we do not believe in the
formal concept of a laissez faire economy, nor in the idea of "anarchic
libertarianism" .

People who do support the latter kind of idea frequently say that a
company should be "allowed to do anything to pursue profit, as long
as it isn't illegal". But of course, they usually turn around and
say that "there is no natural law". The combination of the two philosophies
is nonsensical -- if law consists only of artificial constraints, then
there is no natural basis for arguing what the law "should" allow. Hence,
only the will of the people matters, which means any form of monopoly
restriction is entirely within the powers of a democratic government
to pursue.

Since this includes ANY economic system from "laissez faire capitalism"
to "pure communism", it has no persuasive power whatsoever, and should
be dropped.

If on the other hand, you believe (as I do), that State law is an
embodiment, backed up by State power, to implement the best approximation
we can manage of "natural law" (i.e. law as evident to at least a
consensus of human minds, albeit through transcendental rather than
empirical derivation), then there IS a basis for arguing what laws
"should" be. But you can't make arguments about what law "should"
be if you don't acknowledge that law is measured against some external
standard.

This is of course, another result of the Human tendency to confuse
"NULL" with "ZERO". The absence of an external system of evaluating
law, does not mean that all laws must be negated. It equates to having
no basis for prefering them to exist or not, and thus abdicating all
right to change them. People who believe this really need, therefore,
to shut up.

;-D

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispacework s.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com

[David Schwartz]

"Antoon Pardon" <ap*****@forel. vub.ac.be> wrote in message
news:sl******** ************@rc pc42.vub.ac.be. ..

Microsoft had something you need so badly that you could not go into
business without it. So they demanded from you that you pay them what
their
software was actually worth to you. That is not extortion. Everyone who
sells something tries to get the maximum possible value for it.

If a company wants to be paid for things it didn't deliver, then I think
that is extortion. Microsoft want te be paid a license on windows for
P.C.'s that were sold without windows.

I think you need to look up "extortion" in a dictionary. I can walk up
to you and say "if you want me to mow your lawn, you must pay me $1 every
time you smoke a cigarette". So long as you can say "no" and all that
happens is that I don't mow your lawn (which I have no obligation to do
anyway), it isn't extortion.

The funny thing is that if Microsoft really had a monopoly on x86
operating systems, their deal would have been fair. Since you can't use a
computer without an operating system and theirs would have been the only
one.

DS

[David Schwartz]

<ax**@white-eagle.invalid.u k> wrote in message
news:5y******** ***********@fe2 .news.blueyonde r.co.uk...

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

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.

I see that you cannot make a reasoned argument against the fact that
property in the form of houses is taxed in America.
What does that have to do with anything? Look, this isn't a politics or
an economy newsgroup. I don't have to make rigorously valid economic or
political arguments. It's sufficient that they be valid with respect to the
subject at hand. And you can watch people reply to me by saying, "yeah, well
that isn't correct for Afghanistan". Well, guess what, Microsoft isn't an
Afghanistan company.
Also may I remind you that these newsgroups are international.

So what? We are talking about a United States' company's actions with
respect to United States laws. There is no reason to make this about
philosophy, politics, law, international relations or any such things. If we
did that, we would wind up on tangents (just like this one!) that have
nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft.

Yes, in a discussion about Microsoft, I will make economic or political
statements that aren't 100% valid in every possible imaginable case. But
guess what? They'll be 100% valid for the case we're discussing.

And you can watch all the replies about how my statement isn't true in
every possible case. Well, guess what? I only care about one case.

DS