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]

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

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> writes:

I'm trying to find out why you regularly ignore that difference for
everyone but MS. To substantiate that claim, you'd have to point to some cases where I
talk about something other than MS. You do that *every time* someone compares MS with other criminals -
you immediately refer to "criminals with guns" and refuse to discuss
the issue further. And yes, you've already claimed that you only do
that when the other reference is to "actual use of force", and I've
already disproved that.
You have not disproved that. The closest you've come to a disproof is
one case where the word "theft" was used (while earlier in the thread,
actual physical force had been used, but not in that specific spot) where
the context strongly suggested that it meant theft by force.

You are correct that it is possible to steal something without actually
using physical force. But that's not an important difference. The hugely
important difference, and the one that you and others *are* seeking to
obliterate, is the difference between inherently unjust actions such as
force and fraud and actions that are neither forceful nor fraudulent.
But if you do a little research, you'll find I'm completely
consistent and have said similar things about numerour other
entities.

Not in this thread, you haven't.
Well duh, this thread is about Microsoft.
The only consistency here has been
trying to treat MS's crimes as somehow different from other peoples
crimes.
That's because the only crimes that have come up in this thread are
Microsoft's crimes (that don't involve force or fraud) and other crimes
(such as theft, threats of force, and the like) which do. Duh.
I'm still waiting for you to quit trying to lie (or, as you
would say, "argue") your way out of it, and come up with a reason for
this behavior other than doing so at MS's orders.

The reason is that there is a huge difference between crimes that
involve force or fraud and crimes that don't involve any force or fraud.
Theft, threats of force, and the like are in a totally different category
from purely consensual crimes such as the ones Microsoft was accused of.

There were a few narrow cases where Microsoft was actually accused of
actions that I do consider force or fraud. And had Microsoft been convicted
for *those* actions (rather than metaphorical use of "market force"), then I
would not be defending them. I don't defend them of those charges, which
would have been (and is) equally wrong for a monopolist or a non-monopolist.

DS

[Mike Meyer]

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> writes:

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

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> writes:

I'm trying to find out why you regularly ignore that difference for
everyone but MS.
To substantiate that claim, you'd have to point to some cases where I
talk about something other than MS. You do that *every time* someone compares MS with other criminals -
you immediately refer to "criminals with guns" and refuse to discuss
the issue further. And yes, you've already claimed that you only do
that when the other reference is to "actual use of force", and I've
already disproved that.

You have not disproved that. The closest you've come to a disproof is
one case where the word "theft" was used (while earlier in the thread,
actual physical force had been used, but not in that specific spot) where
the context strongly suggested that it meant theft by force.

Now you're simply lieing. I never discussed force earlier in the
thread.
You are correct that it is possible to steal something without actually
using physical force. But that's not an important difference. The hugely
important difference, and the one that you and others *are* seeking to
obliterate, is the difference between inherently unjust actions such as
force and fraud and actions that are neither forceful nor fraudulent.
And now you change your story again. You've gone from referring to all
other criminal acts as "criminals with guns" to "actual use of force"
to "using force or fraud."

The only consistency here has been
trying to treat MS's crimes as somehow different from other peoples
crimes.

That's because the only crimes that have come up in this thread are
Microsoft's crimes (that don't involve force or fraud) and other crimes
(such as theft, threats of force, and the like) which do. Duh.

Actually, they don't necessarily, but that's relevant. You simply
label *all* crime other than MS's as "criminals with guns" and refuse
to discuss them.
There were a few narrow cases where Microsoft was actually accused of
actions that I do consider force or fraud.

That's true. They committed a fraud - by lieing to federal officials
in court - and *you* responded by calling those federal officials
"criminals with guns", and using that to *excuse* MS's criminal acts
in this case.

Which is more of the same old song and dance from you: treating MS's
criminal acts as somehow different from any other criminals acts.

<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]

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

"David Schwartz" <da****@webmast er.com> writes:

You have not disproved that. The closest you've come to a disproof is
one case where the word "theft" was used (while earlier in the thread,
actual physical force had been used, but not in that specific spot) where
the context strongly suggested that it meant theft by force. Now you're simply lieing. I never discussed force earlier in the
thread.
I didn't say that *you* discussed force. I said it "was used". At that
time, I was responding to a lot of different people about similar issues,
and it is true that things said to me by other people will color my
responses to you. I agree that that isn't always fair.

You are correct that it is possible to steal something without
actually
using physical force. But that's not an important difference. The hugely
important difference, and the one that you and others *are* seeking to
obliterate, is the difference between inherently unjust actions such as
force and fraud and actions that are neither forceful nor fraudulent. And now you change your story again. You've gone from referring to all
other criminal acts as "criminals with guns" to "actual use of force"
to "using force or fraud."
It is an interesting debate tactic that rather addressing my claims, you
simply note that they're different to the previous ones. Why does it matter
whether they're the same or different exactly?

The only consistency here has been
trying to treat MS's crimes as somehow different from other peoples
crimes.

That's because the only crimes that have come up in this thread are
Microsoft's crimes (that don't involve force or fraud) and other crimes
(such as theft, threats of force, and the like) which do. Duh.

Actually, they don't necessarily, but that's relevant. You simply
label *all* crime other than MS's as "criminals with guns" and refuse
to discuss them.
No, not at all. If a crime came up that wasn't force or fraud (say,
possesion of "illegal" drugs), I would just as much insist that the
difference between this type of crime and a crime involving force or fraud
be kept in mind. It makes no difference to me who the actor is and all the
difference in the world what the action is.
There were a few narrow cases where Microsoft was actually accused of
actions that I do consider force or fraud.

That's true. They committed a fraud - by lieing to federal officials
in court - and *you* responded by calling those federal officials
"criminals with guns", and using that to *excuse* MS's criminal acts
in this case.
Actually, I wasn't aware of any cases where they actually committed
perjury. I was more thinking of cases where they claimed they had no
interest in developing a competing product to get advance information when
they actually were developing a competing product or cases where they
threatened a lawsuit that they knew had no merit. (These are, IMO,
fundamentally equivalent to guns, though perhaps lesser in degree.)

Morally, lying in court is a tough one. For example, suppose you are in
a court case with someone who is definitely lying in court. You are in the
right, but it's clear the court won't believe you in the face of the lying
and faked evidence. In this case, is lying in court fraud? Or is it
justified in defense against an attacker willing to use fraud against you?
So this isn't quite in the same category as force or fraud, because the
court has the ability to balance credibility and control damage. No such
balancing is available against a bullet in flight.

The Federal officials do wield force. The purpose of a trial is
precisely to determine how force will be used.
Which is more of the same old song and dance from you: treating MS's
criminal acts as somehow different from any other criminals acts.

Yes, different from the ones they are different from and the same as the
ones they are the same as.

There is a huge difference between crimes that involve the use of force,
fraud, the threat of force, and the like and crimes that don't. There is a
huge difference between crimes that creat real victims and crimes that we
have to pretend create notional victims.

DS

[samwyse]

David Schwartz wrote:

"Mike Meyer" <mw*@mired.or g> wrote in message
news:86******** ****@bhuda.mire d.org... Morally, lying in court is a tough one. For example, suppose you are in
a court case with someone who is definitely lying in court. You are in the
right, but it's clear the court won't believe you in the face of the lying
and faked evidence. In this case, is lying in court fraud? Or is it
justified in defense against an attacker willing to use fraud against you?
So this isn't quite in the same category as force or fraud, because the
court has the ability to balance credibility and control damage. No such
balancing is available against a bullet in flight.

Lying in court isn't fraud. It is perjury. There are laws against it
with pretty stiff penalties, because it subverts the court system.
Committing perjury to defend yourself against fraud will often cause
any conviction and punishment relating to the fraud to be erased. So,
I'd say no, it isn't justified. Instead, you try to prove that the
other person is lying. Lawyers do this all the time; it's part of
their job and it's called discrediting the witness.

BTW, if you want an excellent example of officers of Microsoft
falsifying evidence in a trial, you need look no further that here:
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/poli...,17689,00.html
and here:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17938,00.html

[John W. Kennedy]

entropy wrote:

st***@REMOVETHI Scyber.com.au wrote...

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:54:13 +0000, John Wingate wrote:

Steven D'Aprano <st***@removeth iscyber.com.au> wrote:

That would be a good guess, except that Microsoft's predatory and illegal
behaviour began long before OS/2 was even planned. It began in the mid
1970s, with MS DOS.

Nitpick: MS-DOS first appeared in 1981.
[slaps head]

Of course it did.

The first thing I ever bought of Microsoft's, in 1982 or so, was a
CP/M board for my Apple IIe.

CP/M, whose programmers to this day defend sticking with 8-bit CPUs
because 'they can't find a 4-bit chip they like'. Yeah, there's some
desktop innovation for you.

OS/2 1.0 was released in 1987, but the "selling" of it started in
1985 or so by IBM and Microsoft. It was a 286 OS.

Only to the extent that IBM promised a protected-mode operating system
in 1984, when the PC-AT came out.
IBM seems to have had a history of squeezing out competition in the
same way Microsoft has, if I recall correctly.

IBM was genuinely innovative, and did their best to provide value for
money. Microsoft hasn't been able to produce anything but me-too
products since the 80's. (Multiplan, Word for DOS, the QBASIC engine,
early sponsorship of mouses, and the gutsy decision to morph MS-DOS 1.0,
a CP/M quasi-clone, into DOS 2.0, a Unix quasi-clone, are about all I
can give them credit for.)
--
John W. Kennedy
"Those in the seat of power oft forget their failings and seek only the
obeisance of others! Thus is bad government born! Hold in your heart
that you and the people are one, human beings all, and good government
shall arise of its own accord! Such is the path of virtue!"
-- Kazuo Koike. "Lone Wolf and Cub: Thirteen Strings" (tr. Dana Lewis)

[W.H.Offenbach]

John W. Kennedy wrote:

IBM was genuinely innovative, and did their best to provide value for
money. Microsoft hasn't been able to produce anything but me-too
products since the 80's. (Multiplan, Word for DOS, the QBASIC engine,
early sponsorship of mouses, and the gutsy decision to morph MS-DOS
1.0,
a CP/M quasi-clone, into DOS 2.0, a Unix quasi-clone, are about all I
can give them credit for.)

You're suggesting MS stands for 'Mimick or Steal', right?

[John]

David Schwartz wrote:

"Aragorn" <st*****@telene t.invalid> wrote in message
news:Rg******** ************@ph obos.telenet-ops.be...

>>Wrong. The only obligation Microsoft has is to their shareholders.
If you genuinely believe that, you are a psychopath.

A psychopath is someone who lacks ethics and/or the ability to respect
his fellow human being. They are quite often narcissistic and perverse
individuals . They make good dictators and successful businessmen.

You have provided an excellent refutation. A psychopath would say that
Microsoft's executives only obligations are to themselves. A psychopath
would not consider obligations to fellow human beings important. Believe it
or not, from the point of view of a Microsoft executive, shareholders are
fellow human beings.

DS

In my humble, poorly informed opinion,

Microsoft SUCKS ASS!!! Their business practices are, in my opinion, a
clinic in power mania. They refuse to rewrite their kluged, swiss cheese
OS, for fear of a temporary hit to their bottom line. So the world is
polluted with this insecure, bomb prone OS. Could anyone not suicidal
imagine trying to run the ISS, or a manned Lunar Base on MS Windows? Of
course not.

Humbly,

John