[ale] "What's So Bad About Microsoft?"

[Greg]

The company (one of them) was called "Kodak".
McAfee's system tools I think also found it's way into MS (I bought them
just before they went into the OS)
The list is long and distinguished.
Java and Sun was another (yeah, it's Java - but *for MS* only !) (they won
their fight, but that's what you get when you take on someone with deep
pockets and a vested interest in fighting).

Bottom line: Play with fire and you *will* get burned.

Greg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org]On Behalf Of Dow
> Hurst
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 12:23 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] "What's So Bad About Microsoft?"
>
>
> You just don't get much anymore from closed source without paying
> thru the
> nose compared to the offerings of open source.  We know that MS
> is security
> wise much less secure and with constant large dangerous holes
> being found.
> That will not end for a long time.  The source is available under
> Linux while
> costs thru the nose for closed source.  The motives of closed
> source companies
> tend to be selfish while open source projects are selfless or
> "less selfish"
> in nature.  Software installation is much more advanced in the
> open source
> world over closed source.  So those are reasonable facts to use
> and not very
> subjective.  Closed source has focused useability while open
> source tends to
> have more options and ways to combine the software with other
> open source or
> closed source software.  Disrupting standards is a classic MS ploy.  Take
> TCP/IP as an example and show how Samba recovered the world from
> MS's poor
> implementation of it.
>
> The past treatment of companies joining in agreements with
> MicroSoft in the
> past would be good to note.  The MS sharky attitude has destroyed many
> companies with promising futures who thought they were getting a break by
> working with MS instead of competing.  After MS got control, they were
> compromised or broken up.  Specifically, I remember some company with a
> product for color matching or some kind of publishing control
> software that
> had an agreement that MS would pay a license for their software.
> Within a
> year of the deal, MS had gotten enough info to create their own in house
> version and destroyed the original company.  It's too long ago for me to
> remember the company name or product.  Oh well, MS has had a long
> history of
> being Borg like.
> Dow
>
>
> Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 05:50, Geoffrey wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I would suggest providing facts such as when they tampered with
> >>evidence.  For example, when they attempted to demonstrate that
> removing
> >>IE from Windows slowed it down dramatically, the did so with a video.
> >>During this presentation, it was noted that the before and after videos
> >>were tainted in that they were presented from different computers.
> >
> >
> > Falsifying evidence at trial was one of the things I had thought of, but
> > that's really secondary to the main point that I would want to make,
> > which centers on their being illegal monopolists.  I can't really hit on
> > little specific differences because my likely audience won't really have
> > an appreciation.
> >
> > One thing that I sometimes say, at risk of sounding arrogant, is that I
> > actually promoted and pioneered the use of WinNT at two places of work
> > but that after working with Linux for so long, Windows just seems quaint
> > to me now.  And, it does.  All I've seen in the past year or two of
> > Windows machines makes me wonder, why would anyone want this?  Where's
> > GIMP, GhostView, ImageMagick, cdrecord, Octave?  Where are my compilers
> > and interpreters?
> >
> > - Jeff
> >
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> >
>
> --
> __________________________________________________________
> Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
> Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
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> Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu   *
> Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
> Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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