Nick: I'll see your 15 cents and raise your by 20 cents. Ref: Bashing Micro$oft... Simplest reason is Micro$oft is the biggest target to shoot at. Micro$oft's business practices have been found by the seven judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals to be monopolist. Not even IBM when it lost the 1960's suit over required bundling software with their hardware to freeze out competitors was found to be a monopoly. (IBM appealed that anti-trust litigation and it took over ten years to resolve. One of the punishments was that IBM couldn't pre-announce products until they were ready to ship them. There were many others business practice restirctions. All of which improved the product choices for the consumers and lowered the cost of the resulting computers and software.) Micro$oft has made its stockholders and employees a LOT OF MONEY!! Which I consider to be a very good thing!!! Micro$oft has not supported the community of developers of application software because they produce both the OS (operating system) installed on 90% of the computer sold over the counter AS WELL AS PRODUCE applications. Micro$oft's applications development arm of the their business is privileged to use "insider information" about the Micro$oft operating systems that are not obtainable by any other organization. A fact I can prove in any court of the world with the deposing of any OEM (original equipment manufacturer) copy Windows which is an "off-the-shelf" varity of the Windows source code AND deposing any of the various Micro$oft applications development version of Windows. Then have the two versions of Windows compared by an independent third-party. I have seen this done by three OEM builders of computer hardware and software of the course of the past 15 years with both MS-DOS & Windows. The results are that the Micro$oft applications developer version of any varity of Windows contains documentation that is not available to any other organization. The implications of the above are that you as a consumer have had your choices for purchasing products restricted by Micro$oft's licensing agreement, business practices, and too the one thing Bill Gates & his family and various businesses did invent: litigation against any competitors. This has cost every municipal, county, state, and federal agency in the world more money than they would have had to pay otherwise. Which means you as a tax payer have been screwed by Billy Gates, ET AL. I as a software developer for the past twenty years have had my options for making money limited by the monopolistic business practices of Micro$oft. I personally, and my company, fully support any and all law suits against Micro$oft and any of their subsidiary businesses, no matter where in the world where the law suit has been filed. As of today, the better choice for the _average_ _home_ _user_ on their desktop PC - new or SURVPC - remains Micro$oft's Windows becasue of their wide variety of installed applications. Linux is not a singular source code operating system when installed becasue every variety of Linux, is unique unto itself. IMO the BSD UNIX variants are the best operating system for developers and businesses to use. So Nick, got another 15 cents to toss into the pot? Or are you gonna fold 'em and head for your Windows desktop? John Oram PS: Look at the source on this email and you'll see it is from a Micro$oft Windows OS SURVPC <BG> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > **Hope this doesn't get posted twice!!** > > I have no idea why you all are bashing Microsoft! (besides the killing of Office XP) > It seems like all of you are heading off to the ***ICHH!!!*** Linux side! Here's my >story of "LINUX" > > I have a perfectly good IBM Aptiva 450MHz with USB and three IDE (NOT SCSI!!) hard >drives, running perfectly well with Windows ME...I love the support for driver >problems--Once, I bought a new Microsoft Keyboard, and WinME had no driver >compatible, because the CD-ROM was for Win95-98, and ME itself had no driver, so the >built in help desk came up, showing me the location of the DRIVER!! YES!!! God bless >Microsoft for giving me automatic updates and drivers! But lets turn back the clock >a little when I got aggravated at MS, BEFORE I got WinME and I instead had Win98, on >an old Pentium 100MHz, which is safely stored away in my closet! (FOR GOOD REASONS!!!) > > After I got sick of Win98, I decided to spend a meager $20-30 at Staples for Red Hat >Linux, version 6.1. It even came with a book that teaches you how to install, >configure, and run it! After I got home, I read the book... > > Well, the book was obviously written for Linux GURU's, because I knew nothing about >"recompileing the kernel"--I tried that after reinstalling the dang thing about 3 >times, and I kept getting "KERNEL PANIC" messages!! ARRGH!!! > > I then decided to reinstall (AGAIN!) and make do with the usual 6.1... But when I >went shopping for software for my new OS, I found NOTHING!!!! None of my favorite >games were even MADE for UNIX or LINUX!!! MY headache was starting again! Then I >thought, well since Linux is free, I should download some "Free" emulators which do >windows software! I went and fired up Netscape, and woo-wee, netscape loaded >netscape netcenter, and LOCKED UP!! I rebooted, and had to figure out what the heck >FSCHK was and how to use it, because somehow my Hard Drive got corrupted with a "BAD >SUPERBLOCK!!!!" Ok, now I'm peeved! I FINALLY got into X windows, and tried to >figure out Netscape Communicator's Little problem! I really missed Internet >Explorer's fast speed and NO LOCKUPS! I went to linuxconf, the X-based configuration >utility...Well, up until this point I thought I had gotten rid of Microsoft's General >Protection Faults and Illegal Operations once and for all, BOY WAS I WRONG!!! ! Once > Linuxconf came up, I got a BAN > > MY girlfriend was sweet enough to give me her older, but newer (IT's USB based!) IBM >Aptiva...She didn't like it cause it made noise, well all it needed was a processor >fan...She already had a brand new Hewlett Packard Pavilion, so she gave me the >Aptiva--Which I just installed a newer AMD K6-2 450MHz with 3DNOW! technology! I am >happy with windows, and will never go EVEN CLOSE TO Linux! NEVER EVER EVER EVER!!! > > I still see that dos is back in action with some of you, that's nice to hear, but >have you ever noticed that DOS ITSELF was made BY MICROSOFT?!?!?!? Whew! That was >tiring... > > Just my 15 Cents worth! > > Nick To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
