Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 18:52:21 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <15370.52421.519402.395812@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <015101c17b85$93b2a5f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <15370.33251.168127.204747@guru.mired.org> <010701c17b7f$8fa060c0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15370.45357.556794.821789@guru.mired.org> <015101c17b85$93b2a5f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> types: > > I don't resent Microsoft. I think they produce > > shitty software, and have since I first encountered > > it on CP/M. > Virtually _all_ PC software is garbage, if you are accustomed to truly reliable, > stable software. Microsoft software is actually more stable than average, in my > experience. Adobe writes pretty solid stuff, too (relatively speaking). Many > lesser companies write pure junk, and somehow manage to sell it. I think it is > because most PC users (and even PC professionals) have no clue as to what > constitutes a truly stable, reliable computer system, and just assume that bugs, > errors, and crashes are normal for any computer. I agree with that. The difference between us is that I lay the blame on MS, not the vendors of the junk. That's because MS was providing an OS that dealt with misbehaving applications by crashing. If they had instead provided an OS that caught such things and terminated them with the prejudice they deservied, people wouldn't accept the trash they do on their desktop. > > I didn't pay more than I had to for the system, > > I found a vendor that hadn't cut that particular > > deal. > So much for the monopoly practices, eh? Nope. MS's monopoly practices basically mean I can't buy mass market computers without MS pocketing money on the deal. My choices are to pay the microsoft tax, buy mass market and pay even more than the MS task, or buy parts and use my time putting them together. The latter saves some money, so I put up with it. I'd rather be able to walk in and say "Give me this one, hold the OS". MS's monopoly practices have made that impossible. Also, should someone want an MS OS from that vendor - which they did sell - the vendor would have to charge them more than they would have if they weren't willing to sell me a box with Unix on it. > > Because that's basically what the judge said > > in his findings in the most recent anti-trust > > case. MS's licensing practices - requiring that > > every complete system sell with an OS of theirs > > - was a prime example of MS exercising their > > monopoly position. > A prime example ... or the only example? No, just a prime example. There were a number of others. One of my favorites was MS changing their licensing to require vendors to use the MS-provided shell in order to kill a Netscape product line and maintain control of the desktop. HP had an internally developed shell they had to stop shipping because of that, after which their support calls increased by a significant and measurable percentage. > > First, I don't resent MS. I resent their repeated > > use of unethical business tactics. > But there is no such repeated use. I hear people complain about it, but the > hard evidence is never there. I don't think that even 0.1% of the complaints > I've ever heard about Microsoft have any documentation backing them up at all. Well, I've just produced two examples, and there are other in the Jackson findings. A third would be the Digital Research case, where they were caught putting code in 3.0 that detected the underlying DOS and failed unless it was theirs. The Halloween documents make some interesting reading as well. You might STFW if you haven't read them. > It's just groups of young males all jumping on the same bandwagon. If you think I'm a young male, you haven't been paying attention. > > Adobe and Perforce come to mind without thought. > Adobe is no better than Microsoft. I have no experience with Perforce. That's not my experience with MS and Adobe. Admittedly, I haven't dealt with Adobe's Windows products, and I've avoided MS's since the CP/M days because of the shoddiness of the products they were providing at that time. > > There were at least two alternative to > > Windows to multitask on top of DOS like > > Windows did. > There were _no_ alternatives, if you wanted to run the already large selection > of Windows-only applications that were available. You're asserting that people were using a product to do a job, which on the face of it means that the product is good enough to do the job. You then turn around and say the product wasn't good enough to do the job, which means they couldn't have been using it to do the job. You can't have it both ways. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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