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Similarities between Clinton and Microsoft

  
 
Yankee Doodledandy
16:23 / 25.01.02
No, this isn't a joke. I'm quite serious, and I predict this view will not be popular.

I see the following similarities between Microsoft and former US President Bill Clinton - both have been screwed over royally by the media. Both are responsible for FAR more good - creation of jobs, booming economy, etc. - than bad, and CERTAINLY more good than most of their critics. And both have been made scapegoats by right-wingers with a hard-on for liberals, often with the willing assistance of said liberals.

Are either the people at Microsoft or the former president perfect? Of course not. But do they deserve the villification they STILL receive on a DAILY basis? Don't be silly.

If it weren't for Microsoft, this BB would not be here. And that's a fact. Computers were strictly a toy for nerds until Microsoft Windows made computing accessible to the masses.

So LAY OFF, already. What have YOU done to further the cause of personal computing that compares to Bill Gates' contribution? And despite the odious Monica affair, what have YOU done to make the world a better place that matches Clinton's efforts?

-yankee
 
 
Fist Fun
17:51 / 25.01.02
In a free market Microsoft are right enough to be doing what they are doing, but there should be strict, fast effective laws to curb anti-competitive practices. A lack of competition is only gonna help one entity and it ain't gonna be science or humankind.
 
 
Rose
07:27 / 26.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Yankee
I see the following similarities between Microsoft and former US President Bill Clinton - both have been screwed over royally by the media. Both are responsible for FAR more good - creation of jobs, booming economy, etc.

Ahhh.
Microsoft is only responsible for creating so many jobs because they are the only company that the people CAN buy many things from -- because they have been stealing/cheating and fucking people over for decades. The media has hardly made Microsoft out to be a villain; the fact is they have broken laws! The fact that they broke the laws made them a villain, not the media.

quote:Originally posted by Yankee
If it weren't for Microsoft, this BB would not be here. And that's a fact. Computers were strictly a toy for nerds until Microsoft Windows made computing accessible to the masses.

Excuse me?
How exactly did you decide that this BB would not be here if not for Microsoft? Was this based on the logic that if not for Microsoft no development would be made in the personal computong industry? Let us not forget Woz. Apple computers, NOT Microsoft was the foundations for personal computing. Gates worked for Jobs and Wozniak, not the other way around. Apple made computing accessible to the masses and would have done much more if Microsoft had not stole and then fucked them. The fact is other operating systems are usable for the masses and would be much more so now if Microsoft would let anyone into the market. AOL is looking to buy into RedHat Linux. AOL! In case you don’t know AOL is considered a User compliant service. If people knew anything else, if Microsoft had not dominated the market in such awful ways people would have used something else and something else would have evolved to be more user friendly.

quote:Originally posted by Yankee
So LAY OFF, already. What have YOU done to further the cause of personal computing that compares to Bill Gates' contribution?

"Bill Gates’ contribution."
Oh the one where he steals everything he needs to create Dos and Windows or the one where he breaks all kinds of anti-completive laws? And in breaking the various laws that Mister Gates did inhibiting the growth of other companies?
Well, I can’t compare to that.

I’m just a Linux geek with a soft spot for Woz.
Oh, and FUCK BILL GATES!

Ahem, what foul language.
My apologies.
 
 
Yankee Doodledandy
07:27 / 26.01.02
Ah, yes - the old "Microsoft stole from Apple" line.

Ever hear of Xerox PARC? That's Palo Alto Research Center - the place in California where personal computing was, for want of a better term, invented. A couple of guys named Steve have heard of it - PARC was where they got the idea for the Mac. Fortunately for them, the early computer industry wasn't quite as greedy as today's version and instead of being sued, they became successful.

Here's a tidbit you probably didn't know about Microsoft - they have, or at least had, a policy AGAINST pre-employment substance abuse testing. No "pee in the cup" necessary to work for the Evil Empire. Imagine that.

Policies of this nature were what brought Microsoft to the attention of various political sorts. The company - mostly a bunch of ex-hippies - were about as naive and in-experienced as you could get, and the sharks were eager to cut themselves in. With the help of Microsoft's enemies, this was pretty easy to accomplish.

Wanna talk about sharks, bubba? Let's talk Enron, the darlings of the current administration. Microsoft hasn't stolen anyone's retirement funds. But the media plays people like you like a fine instrument to get you to attack the intended targets. And you're so brainwashed you don't even realize it.

As for the foul language, it wasn't exactly unexpected. As with most of life, I consider the source.

-yankee

P.S. - would you be interested in hearing some of Apple's business practices? I'm quite familiar with them - I work for an Apple-authorized service center. Like, say, the clone makers that Apple put out of business by refusing to continue licensing to them, and all the companies that made Newton stuff that went under because they listened to Apple's line of crapple?
 
 
Yankee Doodledandy
10:03 / 26.01.02
By the way, AOL denies any interest in purchasing RedHat. Apparently yet another Internet rumor.

-yankee
 
 
Rose
10:29 / 26.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Yankee Doodledandy:
Ah, yes - the old "Microsoft stole from Apple" line.


It’s not a line, it’s a fact.

quote:Ever hear of Xerox PARC? That's Palo Alto Research Center - the place in California where personal computing was, for want of a better term, invented. A couple of guys named Steve have heard of it - PARC was where they got the idea for the Mac. Fortunately for them, the early computer industry wasn't quite as greedy as today's version and instead of being sued, they became successful.

Well woop-dee-do. I never said they weren’t just as bad, I said I have a soft spot for Woz.

quote:
Here's a tidbit you probably didn't know about Microsoft - they have, or at least had, a policy AGAINST pre-employment substance abuse testing. No "pee in the cup" necessary to work for the Evil Empire. Imagine that.

I don't remember saying anything about how they treat their employees. O_o

quote:
Policies of this nature were what brought Microsoft to the attention of various political sorts. The company - mostly a bunch of ex-hippies - were about as naive and in-experienced as you could get, and the sharks were eager to cut themselves in. With the help of Microsoft's enemies, this was pretty easy to accomplish.

Uhh huh.

quote:
Wanna talk about sharks, bubba? Let's talk Enron, the darlings of the current administration. Microsoft hasn't stolen anyone's retirement funds. But the media plays people like you like a fine instrument to get you to attack the intended targets. And you're so brainwashed you don't even realize it.

I never said the media doesn’t pull a lot of shit, I know, I have work with various forms many a time.
Brainwashed? That’s what that was? Man@#@$ I’m right mad.
And they said it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Pssh.

quote:As for the foul language, it wasn't exactly unexpected. As with most of life, I consider the source.

I wish I could do that. Man, wouldn’t I be special.

quote:
P.S. - would you be interested in hearing some of Apple's business practices? I'm quite familiar with them - I work for an Apple-authorized service center. Like, say, the clone makers that Apple put out of business by refusing to continue licensing to them, and all the companies that made Newton stuff that went under because they listened to Apple's line of crapple?

Oooh, "Apple-authorized", a "service center" -- now I’m excited.
And winbows right?


Nice flamewar, eh?
Hey I know, lets not.
  
 
MJ-12
10:34 / 26.01.02
Do you think that because AT&T had directly employed 1.2M people at it's height, and created both the telecom infrastructure and many of the technologies that enable the internet and are of massive benefit to society, that their anticompetitive behaviour should have been overlooked, and they should't have been broken up?

Do you think that Microsoft would exist in a recognizable form if IBM had not farmed out the PC OS to avoid anti-trust action?
 
 
Mister Snee
16:17 / 26.01.02
I can't believe I'm the first one to say this and I'm not sure I want to be... but Microsoft's practices are aimed directly at screwing the user in as many ways as possible. It releases buggy software then charges you for support and upgrades. It uses feature-creep and planned obsolescence to force you to upgrade from applications that work perfectly well just to be able to maintain compatibility with the "new, improved" versions.

This is something that most Microsofties aren't aware of so I'm going to spell it out very carefully for you, Yankee: an operating system doesn't crash. Ever. The very definition of an operating system is a platform for applications to run on -- any OS in which the kernel is even capable of panicking for any reason, ever, is a fundamentally flawed one. Linux can have a kernel OOPS, yes. But you have to try really hard to make it happen. In fact, on the more stable releases the only reasonable way to make it happen is by running deliberately flawed code in kernel-space, something most people wouldn't have any idea of how to begin to do. The same goes for MacOS.

An operating system which requires you to reboot your computer if an application dies in a certain way is no operating system at all. Charging hundreds of dollars for a platform on which you honestly don't expect more than 48 hours' uptime is ridiculous. Work with a sane OS for a few years and you'll see the same thing.

I've heard all the old arguments about how Windows is a better desktop platform than Linux and I'm not inclined to go over them now. It is true that Windows is by far the commercial application development platform of choice, and the wide variety of apps available for it make it the only feasible desktop OS option. This is what Microsoft is counting on. In the absence of feasible competition your product becomes an inelastic resource, and you can do whatever the hell you want to it.

As for server capabilities... well, let's not even get into that.

All this is outside of the "ethics" of Microsoft you seem to be so hot on. They're no paragons. They've just stumbled into a basically flawless business model which, unfortunately, is completely detrimental towards the user.

There's a lot of literature regarding Microsoft foul-ups, screw-overs and cover-ups at http://www.kmfms.com . And surely you've seen some of the many leaked Microsoft corporate memos, right? Like the Halloween Documents?

Microsoft obliterates any chance of useful competition and product innovation by stomping out small companies as they appear by promising to do whatever they're doing, only better. The small companies' shareholders get scared and fall out, the company goes under and Microsoft's promised alternative never materializes.

Microsoft products have been analyzed and found to be thousands of times larger and slower than they need to be. The drive for 2ghz machines and hundreds of gigs of drive space is ridiculous and unnecessary for desktop users in a sane world.

Anyway, enough point-form nitpicking. One thing I may point out, as far as "considering the source" goes, is that personal attacks outside the scope of an argument not only indicate that, perhaps, your argument isn't so airtight as you'd like it to be -- they also tend to go over very poorly on Barbelith.

Now, honestly, whose suit are you?

[ 26-01-2002: Message edited by: Mister Snee ]
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
17:57 / 26.01.02
quote: Computers were strictly a toy for nerds until Microsoft Windows made computing accessible to the masses.

Until Microsoft came along, the 'toys for nerds' went forwards. THis is because they were toys for nerds. The nerds could co-operate (I understand that microsoft fanatics have prblems with that word) to make computers better. Now, when you give up co-operating, and resort to strong-arming people so that they work around you (as micorosoft has repeatedly done with hardware manufacturers and software writers) you become very, very unpopular. That is what has happened to microsoft.

As far as I understand, microsoft do not make the 'Ultimate Bulletin Board' system, and I believe a free, open source version exists which will run under linux. Nor did they make the protocols (TCP/IP etc.) which web-based systems use to run. Nor does their browser comply with half of the standards it runs by. It is just the poor fortune/lack of choice which means that many of it's users will have encountered these systems under microsoft made or sponsored systems, and have come to associate them with it.

The last time i tried to install a microsoft OS (I say tried as it took me three days to setup) I felt like a criminal from the first ten minutes. I had to type in so many codes, back-codes and certificate lines that one mistake threatened to refer me to Mr. Gate's personal anti-pirate dept. Because of this I promptly made 2 CD-R copies of the product, (Win 2K), copied out the necessary codes and am offering them to anyone who needs (but not wants. you'd be mad to want win2k, it's shite)them.

Oh, and AOL was going to buy Redhat like a huge dog was going to chew up Microsoft thinking it was a rubber toy to be mauled.
quote:

[ 26-01-2002: Message edited by: K=}[Karika] ]
 
  
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