[StJacques]

". . . The thing that amazes me is that I admit MS has faults ... they adamantly refuse to acccept that Linux may have any flaw at all, no matter how minor."

Yes, Microsoft does have faults. They have a poor history of getting new APIs right on the first try. I admit that outright.

What bothers me so much about the anti-Microsoft crowd is that they are completely deaf to the costs businesses incur when forced to operate within an environment of "limited data access." On some occasions, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for some relatively simple work that requires extensive repetition. This has enormous economic and social costs for America. Don't they get it? If it's less expensive to do software applications that run across the internet that more will get done and that as more are put in place that jobs, productivity, and economic efficiency are enhanced?

It is so obvious to me that I get a little pedantic when discussing it at times.

[usgator]

Exactly. When you have 90+ percent of the population using your system and hundreds (thousands?) of hackers bombard it on a daily basis looking for security flaws ... your gonna find some. Why would I want (if I were a hacker) to attack Linux? Who am I gonna hit ... 3 people in a cubicle in Burbank?

[Ex-Dem]

The anti-capitalist people also don't take into account the cost that goes into R/D for new, innovative software. Much of the software produced by the open source movement is based on software that companies like Microsoft and AOL have already introduced, and even so they're still not as full featured as the commericial versions. Just compare OpenOffice Equations and Microsoft Equations 3.0, which came out more than 5 years ago. They still haven't caught up.

[N3WBI3]

Due, most if not all Linux admins / advocates on this board will say MS has its place, even in the serverroom. But to assume that MS will If it's less expensive to do software applications that run across the internet that more will get done and that as more are put in place that jobs, productivity, and economic efficiency are enhanced? is as foolish as assuming Linux will do it. You are acting the exact same way as them, just for a different OS..