Len,
Making money from fearmongering may be considerably less evil than
Microsoft's business tactics, but that doesn't make it endorsable.
Nor, to refer to the specific reason for my counter-post, should it
make Mike's aversion to such studies instant flame bait! Also, as J.
Tolmachoff has posted, the vulnerabilities that led to GG's conclusion
have been patchable for months, and we should share blame if we missed
the patches. The issue at hand is that rare creature: an undeservedly
strong smear of MS software.
>Certainly MS has caused all of us to lose 1000's upon 1000's of $
>over the years supporting their 1000's of bugs and vulnerabilities,
>for free.
I understand your perspective, yet while I'm far from rolling in
dough, you can be sure I'd be even broke-er if it weren't for the
overtime MS has made possible over years I've been in the biz.
Cynical, yes, but it's the ugly truth for most hourly Win32
consultants (I'm not including all salaried employees, definitely not
one-IT-person shops where someone gets worked to the bone).
In our techie hearts, we love technologies that do what they promise
without having to be monopolistically shoved onto users' desktops or
servers, and even bring us a buck or two to install and maintain...but
as far as the real cashflow of support businesses, the occasional
"miserable" all-nighter can make the difference between paying the
rent and running scared of the landlord. This is an unfortunate
ethical conundrum, and one that's in fact gradually pushed me out of
technology. Honest as we ourselves may be, we often only have work but
for the grace of the gorilla. This isn't the first gorilla that made
me feel this way--I never used to get such great support from Novell
or from IBM, and spent hours back in the day reporting their bugs as
well--nor will it be the last, as I've spent many, many hours
debugging BSD and Linux applications as well (not the OSes themselves,
I'll readily admit, but there're plenty of fitness-for-purpose issues
anywhere you look).
Anyway, it's one of MS's most potent pieces of psychological weaponry:
take Microsoft's ascendancy out the of the picture of the last ten
years of technology, and you plainly have fewer jobs created in the
period, fewer recent college grads with disposable income, less of the
now-lamented e-business explosion, etc. So the pace would've been
slower--you might respond--so what? And I agree. Slower and steadier,
an industry without overriding business abuses and with real geeks
(rather than yup-tech-ies) at the helm might have taken shape. Maybe
there'll be a chance to start over after the Armageddon :(.
Sandy
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