Why I Hate Microsoft [A Formal look at the MS/Linux Wars]

EURONET.NL ^ | 06jan02 | frankvw

[thisiskubrick]

Does anybody remember a month-or-so ago that Bill Gates announced that he (or was it Microsoft?) was donating hundreds of millions of dollars to India to fight AIDS - and then a couple of days later India announced that their government was standardizing on Linux? Obvious political bribery going on there it seemed to me. Given the fact that Linux won out on that one, I can't help but wonder of those hundreds of millions will ever materialize(?)

Would you have read in the same "conspiracy theory" if the Indian gov't decided to buy Microsoft?

If not, someone else surely would have would have accused MS of "bribery" no matter what the Indian gov't decided.

Gates has publicly declared that he'll give away 90% of his net worth before he dies.

My point is that, no matter what Gates does, even donating hundreds of millions to help the poor -- people will always accuse him of ulterior motives.

[thisiskubrick]

Why hate Microsoft? If it isn't your cup of tea, you can buy Apple, Linux, Palm, whatever. Crikey, you can get Linux desktop software with Star Office FOR FREE these days, and if that isn't competition I don't know what is.

Microsoft will always have competitors. It is funny how their competitive efforts get described as "anti competitive". Sun, Oracle, and the rest of them are still in business. IBM is still a massive competitor to MS in the several arenas.

It's like criticising Wal-Mart for shutting down mom-and-pop shops. Wal-Mart does a better job because of their scale.

There ARE companies that successfully compete with MS. They are Adobe, Intuit, Macromedia, the list goes on and on. Significantly, they don't spend nearly as much money as Sun and Oracle on litigation, instead they focus on making great products.

There are plenty of areas to compete with MS. The fight for mobile device software is still wide open. It is up to other companies to successfully compete in this arena.

[B Knotts]

I believe there was a trial ... but I do not recall too much wrong-doing being proven.

Your memory fails you. Microsoft was indeed found to have illegally maintainted its monopoly.

Bill Gates is an anti-gun, pro-abortion liberal, and Microsoft is filled with PC liberals who oppose fair play and the free market.

[ClearCase_guy]

Bill Gates is an anti-gun, pro-abortion liberal, and Microsoft is filled with PC liberals who oppose fair play and the free market.

So, we should shut down businesses if their employees and corporate officers have incorrect political views? Interesting.

As far as the judgement against Microsoft goes, I believe the important judgement was set aside. Lots of trials don't go the way we'd like. But there was a trial. Microsoft wasn't shut down. Live with it.

[B Knotts]

The judgment was not set aside. The settlement is now ready to be implemented.

And, hey, anyone can sell stuff, regardless of their political views, but if they fund things with which I am in violent disagreement, they can hardly expect my business.

If you like to fund baby killing and the destruction of gun rights, well...I don't know what to tell you.

[BlazingArizona]

What these young whippersnappers don't remember about computer history is that before all the good liberals hated Microsoft, they hated IBM. When I started in this field in 1965, IBM produced all the building-sized mainframe computers, the only kind that existed, used in the US. When you leased an IBM mainframe (it was very dificult to actually buy one) you were required to run IBM software on it. Computers and their software cost so much, even to rent, that only governments, insurance companies and universities had them.

Naturally, everyone knew that this situation had to be an Evil Monopoly. A huge antitrust suit was cranked up, costing the taxpayers a vast fortune, employing generations of lawyers as it plodded through the courts. Guess what? IBM's "monopoly" evaporated as soon as a new generation of lower-cost "minicomputers" came onto the market and began offering small amounts of computer power at prices that medium sized businesses could afford. Amdahl/Fujitsu cloned the IBM mainframe and began to skim the cream off the mainframe market. By the late Seventies, the microprocessor and integrated circuit had made it possible for small startups like Altair to introduce early personal computers. One of these startups, Apple Corp., introduced a model that became the most popular of its time. IBM, already a shruken remnant of its old self, observed Apple's success and introduced its PC design. Aha, said all the pundits: IBM is "copying" Apple by giving the market what it wants, "embracing and extending" so that it could re-establish its lost "monopoly".

The threat of an IBM monopoly on PC's evaporated once again as dozens of small manufacturers cloned the IBM design. Like Linus Torvalds today, young Bill Gates stepped in bto produce software that would break any incipient IBM monopoly in that area too.

And the rest, as the liberals would have us forget, was history.

[chilepepper]

You are entitled to your opinions, I am entitled to mine. You must be running out of rational arguments if you need to accuse me of being a Gore supporter!

The logical segue of a MONOPOLY is to destroy the competition using tactics that if not illegal, are highly questionable.

You missed out completely on what the free market really is and need to reread your Adam Smith: the free market exists because the exchange of INFORMATION relating to value, allowing a purchaser to derive more value from something than the seller (who presumably has a warehouse full of something which is less useful to him than, say, capital which he can invest in new equipment).

What I am doing with this post is EXACTLY THAT, allowing those who might choose Microsoft products in on addition information which THEY may interpret as ADDING TO or SUBTRACTING FROM the value they might place on a Microsoft product. Needless to say, I would contend that since Microsoft tends to stiff-arm older versions of things for strictly marketing reasons, and to re-label the same old crap, these actions would make me question the wisdom of purchasing Microsoft products that my company's future and my job might depend on, but hey, that is just MY ethics clouding my worldview.

If you try to build a market on strictly unethical practices (such as lying, stealing or cheating) then the law of unintended consequences takes over.

You are entitled to be a fan of unbridled capitalism, I am a fan of fair play.

The beginning of the end is when ethics is forced to take a back seat to the law, particularly law that has become corrupted...

[chilepepper]

Well, I'm just the reverse: I think the world of IBM, which in my view has innovated just about every important computer breakthough (have two of their laptops, used to have three), but I loath Microsoft because the stuff they sell is CRAP and IMHO stifles innovation. Besides, I have to clean up after the messes caused by their poorly designed products. I am no liberal, so you are clearly mistaken to continue the rhubarb that whoever is attacks Microsoft is somehow anti-American.

That way of thinking is exactly that which setup the mindset that allowed the Japanese cars to run General Motors into the ground.

One must never surrender values and ethics for the good of abstract economic philosophy. The big lesson I learned fron George Gilder and Milton Friedman is that the "right" path is usually the ethical path as well...

Monopoly tends to be on a different side from freedom and choice, that that is where I am against it.

[B Knotts]

BZZZT!

Microsoft are the liberals.

By supporting them, you support abortion and gun control.

[BlazingArizona]

Well, I'm just the reverse: I think the world of IBM, which in my view has innovated just about every important computer breakthough (have two of their laptops, used to have three), but I loath Microsoft because the stuff they sell is CRAP and IMHO stifles innovation. Besides, I have to clean up after the messes caused by their poorly designed products. I am no liberal, so you are clearly mistaken to continue the rhubarb that whoever is attacks Microsoft is somehow anti-American. That way of thinking is exactly that which setup the mindset that allowed the Japanese cars to run General Motors into the ground.

I'm not arguing the divinity of Micrsoft products. I'm arguing against the idea trhat Microsoft is a monopoly. I've encountered great Microsoft products, like Windows 2000. I've also seen my share of crappy Microsoft products, like Exchange, and I've always been free to buy what I like and ignore what I don't like. I'm agnostic about platforms. On my small-office network, I maintain a mix of PC's running Windows (one of them is an IBM ThinkPad), PC's running Linux and an iMac running OS X. I chose each of these systems for its unique set of advantages. So do my customers, which is why I'm frequently called on to get mixtures of machines like this cooperating in networks.

A monopoly exists when, and only when, a corporation inveigles some government into making it illegal to compete with it. An example of a successful monopoly is the healthcare industry. If Microsoft were a real monopoly, I would not have been allowed to set up the Linux PC or the Macintosh. If IBM had been a real monopoly before it, I would have been forced to rent time on a mainframe instead of being able to buy that ThinkPad.

[Bush2000]

What I am doing with this post is EXACTLY THAT, allowing those who might choose Microsoft products in on addition information which THEY may interpret as ADDING TO or SUBTRACTING FROM the value they might place on a Microsoft product.

'Course, with an axe to grind like yours, your information is highly dubious.

[Bush2000]

Microsoft are the liberals. By supporting them, you support abortion and gun control.

Look, you can cherry-pick people from any segment of the computer industry and you're going to find liberals: Stallman, Jobs, Gates, Ellison, etc, etc. But at least in the case of Gates, Jobs, and Ellison, the men are responsible to their shareholders -- not the Democratic Party.

[The Duke]

Would you have read in the same "conspiracy theory" if the Indian gov't decided to buy Microsoft?

You know, I've been thinking, the only difference between a "conspiracy kook" and everyone else is that the "conspiracy kook" doesn't believe in coincidences.

So, I guess that criteria places me into that much-maligned category.

[chilepepper]

Read the article and try to dispute the facts...

[Bush2000]

Read the article and try to dispute the facts...

What facts? It's a bunch of ideologically-driven bile. Example:

"By the time PC-DOS took hold, Gates had already shown that Microsoft's future would hold very little innovation indeed."

There's no sense arguing over somebody else's opinions. It would be much easier to simply bang my head against a wall than entertain a bunch of self-esteem-challenged Linux and Mac zealots.

[Bush2000]

So, I guess that criteria places me into that much-maligned category.

Get a case of tinfoil. You're gonna need it.

[Bush2000]

The judgment was not set aside. The settlement is now ready to be implemented.

Funny, that. The browser is still in the OS. And MS has the same market share in operating systems. Very little changed.

And, hey, anyone can sell stuff, regardless of their political views, but if they fund things with which I am in violent disagreement, they can hardly expect my business.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeaaaaaaahhhh. So, if Gates were to give only to Libertarian/Conservative causes, you'd switch to Windows. Rrrrrrrrright....

If you like to fund baby killing and the destruction of gun rights, well...I don't know what to tell you.

Your federal taxes are helping to fund Planned Parenthood (non-profit status), Handgun Control, Inc, the ATF, FBI, and other agencies which conflict with your views. By your logic (and if you had any balls), you'd stop filing federal income taxes...

[B Knotts]

Look, I really couldn't care less if people want to use Windows. The thing that motivates me to comment is when people invoke the name of Bill Gates as the Patron Saint of Capitalism^TM, which he ain't. He's just another bidnessman, with good points and bad points.

[Bush2000]

What do Gates's views on gun control and abortion have to do with whether he's the "Patron Saint of CapitalismTM"?