Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Jim Benson]

(sorry for the top post...but given the subject
line (OP), hopefully I won't offend more than one)

...and just when I was beginning to think that 
Mr. Xah Lee was a changed man and had dropped his
compulsion to use profanity to express his thoughts.
I didn't actually do a grep on his last several 
posts, so I may have been mistaken prior to his most
recent post. RFC actually stands for "request for comments".
...gee what a nice idea. I did not read past his
definition of RFC.

Oh well,

Sorry for breaking the rule "don't feed the troll".
Enough said.

Jim

On 14 Oct 2005, Xah Lee wrote:

> Microsoft Hatred, FAQ
> 
> Xah Lee, 20020518
> 
>     Question: U.S. Judges are not morons, and quite a few others are
> not morons. They find MS guilty, so it must be true.
> 
> Answer: so did the German population thought Jews are morons by
> heritage, to the point that Jews should be exterminated from earth.
> Apparently, the entire German population cannot be morons, they must be
> right.
> 
> Judge for yourself, is a principle i abide by. And when you judge, it
> is better to put some effort into it.
> 
> How much you invest in this endearvor depends on how important the
> issue is to you. If you are like most people, for which the issue of
> Microsoft have remote effect on your personal well-being, then you can
> go out and buy a case of beer on one hand and pizza on the other, and
> rap with your online confabulation buddies about how evil is MS. If you
> are an author writing a book on this, then obviously its different
> because your reputation and ultimately daily bread depend on what you
> put down. If you are a MS competitor such as Apple or Sun, then
> obviously you will see to it with as much money as you can cough out
> that MS is guilty by all measures and gets put out of business. If you
> are a government employee such as a judge, of course it is your
> interest to please your boss, with your best accessment of the air.
> 
> When i judge things, i like to imagine things being serious, as if my
> wife is a wager, my daughter is at stake, that any small factual error
> or mis-judgement or misleading perspective will cause unimaginable
> things to happen. Then, my opinions becomes better ones.
> 
>     Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's
> not monopoly, i don't know what is.
> 
> A: Now suppose there is a very ethical company E, whose products have
> the best performance/price ratio, and making all the competitors
> looking so majorly stupid and ultimately won over 90% of the market as
> decided by consumers. Is E now a monopoly? Apparently, beer drinkers
> and pizza eaters needs to study a bit on the word monopoly, from the
> perspectives of language to history to law. If they have some extra
> time, they can sharpen views from philosophy & logic contexts as well.
> 
>     Q: What about all the people in the corporate environments who are
> forced to use MS products and aren't allowed the option/choice to use
> Mac/Linux/UNIX?
> 
> A: Kick your boss's ass, or, choose to work for a company who have
> decisions that you liked.
> 
>     Q: What about MS buying out all competitors?
> 
> A: Microsoft offered me $1 grand for saying good things about them.
> They didn't put a gunpoint on my head. I CHOOSE to take the bribe.
> Likewise, sold companies can and have decided what's best for them.
> It's nothing like under gunpoint.
> 
>     Q: Microsoft forced computer makers to not install competitor's
> applications or OSes.
> 
> A: It is free country. Don't like MS this or that? Fuck MS and talk to
> the Solaris or BeOS or AIX or HP-UX or Apple or OS/2 or Amiga or NeXT
> or the Linuxes with their free yet fantastically easy-to-use and
> network-spamming X-Windows. Bad business prospects? Then grab the
> opportunity and become an entrepreneur and market your own beats-all
> OS. Too difficult? Let's sue Microsoft!
> 
>     Q: Microsoft distributed their Internet Explorer web browser free,
> using their “monopoly” power to put Netscape out of business.
> 
> A: entirely inane coding monkeys listen: It takes huge investment to
> give away a quality software free. Netscape can give away Operating
> Systems free to put MS out of business too. Nobody is stopping Sun
> Microsystem from giving Java free, or BeOS a browser free, or Apple to
> bundle QuickTime deeply with their OS free.
> 
> Not to mention that Netscape is worse than IE in just about every
> version till they become the OpenSource mozilla shit and eventually
> bought out by AOL and still shit.
> 
> • Netscape struggles, announced open browser source code in 1998-01,
> industry shock
> http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html
> 
> • Netscape browser code released in 1998-03. Mozilla FAQ.
> http://mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html
> 
> • AOL buys Netscape in 1998-11 for 4.2 billion.
> http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218360.html?legacy=cnet
> 
> • Jamie Zawinski, resignation and postmortem, 1999-04
> http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html
> 
> • suck.com, Greg Knauss & Terry Colon, 2000-04, Netscape 6 mockery
> http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/04/10/
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/200004,greg_knauss_netscape.zip
> 
> • Xah Lee, Netscape Crap
> http://xahlee.org/Writ_dir/macos-talk/58.txt
> 
>     Q: Microsoft implemented extra things to standard protocols in
> their OS so that other OS makers cannot be compatible with their OS
> while their OS can be compatible with all. They used this Embrace &
> Extend to lock out competitors.
> 
> A: My perspective is this: suppose you are now a company who's OS sits
> over 90% of computers (regardless how this come to be for the moment).
> Now, lots of “standard” protocols in the industry is a result of
> popularity (RFC = Really Fucking Common), and popularity resulted from
> being free, from the RFCs of the fantastically incompetent by the
> truely stupid unix tech morons. What can you do if you want to improve
> these protocols? If you go with totally different protocols, then the
> incompatibility with the rest 10% isn't your best interest. I would
> adopt existing protocols, and extend them with improvements. Being a
> commercial entity, i'm sorry that it is not my duty to release my
> improvments to my competitors. Any of you incompetent IBM/AIX/OS/2 or
> SGI/Irix or HP/HP-UX or Sun/Solaris or Apple/AU-X/Mac can do the same,
> not that they haven't.
> 
> Of course, the universe of moronic unixers and Apple fanatics cannot
> see that. The unix idiots cannot see that their fantastically stupid
> protocols are fantastically stupid in the first place. The Apple
> fanatics are simply chronically fanatic.
> 
>     Q: Microsoft product is notorious for their lack of security.
> 
> A: In my very sound opinion, if Microsoft's OS's security flaws is
> measured at one, then the unixes are measured at one myriad. If unixes
> suddenly switch popularity with Windows, then the world's computers
> will collapse uncontrollably by all sorts of viruses and attacks. This
> can be seen for technical person who knows unix history well:
> 
> • http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html (e.g.
> ftpd/proftpd, inetd/xinetd, sendmail/qmail, X-Windows, telnet, passwd,
> login, rsh, rlogin.)
> 
> • on the criminality of buffer overflow, by Henry Baker, 2001.
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/buffer_overflow.html
> 
> • Fast Food The UNIX Way:
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_fastfood_dir/fastfood.html
> 
> • Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/jargon/
> 
> • The Rise of Worse is Better, by Richard P. Gabriel, 1991, at
> http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
> 
> and plenty other pre-90s documents to get a sense of just how
> fantastically insecure unix was and is. Unix today is not just
> technically slacking in the “security” department, but the unix
> ways created far more unmanageable security risks that's another topic
> to discuss.
> 
> The unix crime, is not just being utmost technically sloppy. Its entire
> system and “philosophy” created an entire generation of incompetent
> programers and thinking and programing languages, with damage that is a
> few magnitude times beyond all computer viruses and attacks damages in
> history combined. See also:
> 
> • Responsible Software License:
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/responsible_license.html
> 
>     Q: Microsoft products are simply poor quality.
> 
> A: Perhaps this in general is true pre-1997. I think the vast majority
> of MS products today have better performance/price ratio then
> competitors. This includes their operating system, their input devices
> (mouse & keyboard), their X-Box gaming console, their software game
> titles, their software architectures and languages (.NET, C#), their
> technologies (few i know: SMB), and many of their software applications
> (suite of Office, which consistently ranked top since early 90s).
> 
> e.g. Tom's hardware review on x-box, esp in comparison with Sony
> Playstation 2. (2002-02):
> http://www4.tomshardware.com/consumer/02q1/020204/index.html
> 
> the leading role of MS Office products can be seen in MacUser &
> MacWorld magazine reviews through out early 90s.
> 
>     Q: BeOS was once to be bundled with PC, but MS meddled with it and
> basically at the end fucked Be up.
> 
> A: BeOS is a fantastically fucking useless OS. No DVD player, No Java,
> No QuickTime, No games, no Mathematica, no nothing. For all practical
> purposes, fucking useless in a different way than every donkey unixes.
> Not to mention the evil Apple computer, refused to pass the QuickTime
> technology, and tried to prevent BeOS from running on Apple hardware by
> refusing to release their PPC hardware spec. Be founder Jean-Louis
> Gassee wrote an article about it. Who's fucking whom?
> 
>     Q: X inc tried to do W, but MS threatened to depart.
> 
> A: Dear X inc., try to find a bigger dick for your needs. If you cannot
> find any, too bad! Suck it up to the big brother and hold on to what
> you can get! If you have the smarts, milk him dry! Free country, free
> to choose partnership. Ladies, previous night's indiscretion is not
> rape the morning after.
> 
>     Q: I'm not a beer bucket or pizza hole, but i want to do research
> over the web. Is there any free stuff on the web i can grab? I'm an
> OpenSource advocate, i demand free things.
> 
> A: •
> http://www.moraldefense.com/Campaigns/Microsoft/Antitrust_FAQ/default.htm
> (The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism)
> 
> • http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v21n2/friedman.html (The
> Business Community's Suicidal Impulse by Milton Friedman, 1999-03)
> local copy
> 
>     Q: I'm thinking of putting my wife and daughter on the table. What
> do you suggest to begin with?
> 
> A: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell:
> http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/jdini/basic_economics.html
> 
>     Q: Are you confident enough to bet your wifes and daughters for
> what you say?
> 
> A: No. But I put my reputation in.
> -------
> This post is archived at:
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/mshatredfaq.html
> 
>  Xah
>  xah at xahlee.org
> ∑ http://xahlee.org/
> 
>