Atreyu, thanks for the link to that thread. The link in there to the Word MVP faq site may just save the bit of sanity I still retain.
Many of the posts above describe really fairly minor quibbles with Microsoft software. As SPOOFE and others have pointed out, you could raise such quibbles with many software vendors. But what you could not complain about in relation to other software vendors is that they abuse a monopoly to prevent consumers from having access to alternatives. If you don’t believe M$ does that, you need to read about the evidence filed in the anti-trust case in detail. Personally I found that evidence compelling.
And that makes the situation very different. If someone has a monopoly because they have a perfect product or an imperfect product but no monopoly, who cares? But if you have an imperfect product, AND a monopoly, then you deserve unrelenting criticism, and you are in no position to complain that you are being held to an unusually high standard.
SPOOFE queries the hatred that M$ inspires. In my experience, people don’t tend to show true hatred of things they intensely dislike that they can escape from. But they don’t have to dislike something very much to be inspired to strong hatred if they are feel trapped into being with it.
Avumede wrote
That’s a very interesting read. I’m a codehead from way back, and it’s good fun watching someone do forensic research to see what’s happening on the inards of something. But standing back, the facts of the case are pretty simple and undisputed: Win 3.1 (that’s 3.1 mind you, a time when Windows was a tiny piece of MS revenue) had a bug/feature (Maybe it was a bug, maybe it was intended as a stability feature, maybe it was anti-competitive; I won’t argue) in their beta product that wouldn’t allow DRDOS to run with it. The bug/feature was fixed/removed in the release product.
All the forensics described in the article are good fun, but ultimately the release product did not have this flaw.
In another vein, As I said earlier, I worked at Novell for about 5 years, and was there when they bought DRDOS. It had some features above MS-DOS that I was really interested in, and I really tried my best to make it work. It didn’t. And as a Novell engineer, I was able to work formally and informally with the folks who wrote it to try to resolve the issues I came across. Speaking as someone who has a) examined and debugged DRDOS code, b) talked extensively with the engineers who built DRDOS, and c) played extensively with DRDOS, it is my humble opinion that it is (was?) a turd.
I understand that crashes and freezes often happen as a result of some software having conflicts with things in the operating system, usually third-party software.
I hate that my Pentium III crashes are most frequently caused by a freeze-up in… Windows Media Player. You’d think that M$ could design their own software NOT to conflict with their own operating system.
The only thing that ever crashes my Mac G4 is AOL… but then AOL crashes the PC, too, and anything else it can get its hands on…
– and not so much a hate as a serious Pet Peeve (okay, maybe it borders on hatred 
) – the M$ OS’s insistence that file types should always be determined by their .3 file name extension. Extensions are convenient for naming conventions, but for the OS’s determination of file’s type and creator? Want to disguise a virus? Just name it “blahblah.doc.bat” – then joe-six-pack computer user double-clicks thinking it will open in Word, and it runs the executable instead. And what if I don’t want to open every “.bob” file with the same program?
This also breeds ignorance in the average joe-blow computer user. I teach C++ programming, and half my students can’t grasp the concept that “filename.cpp” can still be a plain ascii text file (“But it doesn’t end in .txt !”) Put the file type IN the file, in the header, where it belongs…
The rolleyes smiley means fuck all, and certainly doesn’t show that you’re joking - you’ll notice that Munch interpreted your post in exactly the same way i did, which might indicate your meaning was far from clear.
Either way, of late you and Spoofe seem intent on calling out Chas.E on every single fucking thing he says. How about trying to move beyond this? And for fucks sake, please drop the name calling - I think I was being overly kind saying it stopped being funny in kindergarten, as I’m not even sure it was such a giggle then.
As an aside, have enough valid reasons been given yet to justify the rather widely held opinion that MS are a bunch of shitwads? As another question, have you ever used Linux, and how do you rate it as an OS compared to Windows 2000?
There is a difference between sarcasm and joking. While joking would use a winky smiley to indicate humor, I feel the rolleyes smiley is appropriate to indicate sarcasm in a post which was written in response to a decidedly stupid remark from someone else. I’m sorry if the rolleyes did not make the sarcastic nature of my post much more apparent, but I felt it was the best smiley to use in this case.
I’ve called out Chas.E on the ignorant things he has said. Try and prove me wrong.
As for the name calling - Fuck off. I will say what I want to say about him in the pit, and don’t you try to tell me otherwise.
Though I didn’t start the thread, I have been reading it, as I want to know what people think. And I have noticed that responses generally fall into two catagories - Those who hate Microsoft because of their (unethical) business practices and for their “low-quality” products (a position that is indeed debatable), and those who hate Microsoft simply because it’s a successful company. Many of the posters who have replied to this thread gave very valid reasons to feel animosity towards MS, while some kind of just said stuff without providing any reasons.
And, I have used Linux. I’ve used Linux more than Windows 2000 (I never bothered to get Win2k, so my experience with it is limited to computers at school and at my friend’s house). Both were very stable, Win2k was definitely slower than Linux (I used Mandrake and Redhat), but Win2k was undeniably more compatible with hardware and software (I had to check the hardware I had to make sure it would run Linux).
Ahunter…
Bullshit. I haven’t shown a single shred of shock. I just found it interesting that, no, there WASN’T some sort of obscure Microsoft-related factoid that I was unaware of. IMOSHO, many of the “Reasons why I hate Microsoft” are so minor as to be ignorable. But that’s just my opinion.
Avumede…
No, I was wondering why Microsoft’s actions meant the company, collectively, was immoral. I still haven’t received clarification on that one…
Stoid…
My dear Stoid, I apologize for being unclear. Apple has a smaller share of the total software marketplace being compatible with their computers. To be fair, however, there’s a lot more Mac-compatible software today than a couple years ago… anyway, I was just pointing out the software gap.
To continue being fair, one of the biggest reasons I prefer PC’s today is that I’ve been using PC’s my whole life (didja know I learned to type my name before I learned to write it? 'Tis true).
KellyM…
Huh? Can I get a “What the fuck?” from the audience? No, I have absolutely zero affiliation with Microsoft. I am merely 20 years old, and do not claim to be an expert in the field in the slightest. I do not believe Microsoft products to be a Godsend, nor do I think Microsoft’s bsuiness actions to be saintly.
I merely question why people hate an entity that, in the end, is Just Another Company.
Gary…
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that the Straight Dope has stopped its quest to fight Ignorance. :rolleyes:
Oh, I never said that a lot of MS higher-ups aren’t shitwads. Hell, I consider a lot of massive corporations to have shitwads it their employ.
Yeah, I have. Granted, this was a couple years back. As I’ve said before, I haven’t experienced a lot of the major glitches with Windows that some other people have, and as such, didn’t see the allure of Linux. I saw it as just another way of doing the same thing, and said, “Nah, I don’t need it”. I stand by my decision.
I think I owe an apology to everyone… it seems that people took my OP to mean “Stop bashing Microsoft!” I did not want to give that implication. I have simply become agitated over what I perceived to be a trend of “It’s okay to bash Microsoft, no matter what, on any subject”, which I believe to be a purveyor of Ignorance. For example, there was a thread on Windows XP a while back… several of the replies were, basically, “It’s Microsoft, so it will suck”. These sort of replies confused me. Furthermore, take note of the four examples I provided in the OP… far more vehemence that most other people have provided.
I will try to be more clear with my posts in the future… I did not want to send the message that I consider MS to be some sort of end-all, be-all corporation that will lead the world to some sort of Utopia. Again, I just don’t like blatant over-generalizations.
OK, if you think it’s debatable to accuse MS of supplying low quality products, please give an example of a product MS has made that is superior to its competitors offerings in terms of reliability, efficiency, installation size or other key factors. I’d be particularly interested in any enterprise products , such as corporate scale databases, server OS’s, or mail servers.
I’d also have to question your statement that Linux was less compatible with hardware than 2000. For example, let’s have a look at which systems can run on which processors…
Fucking hell, why is it that the rolleyes smiley and weak arguments go hand in hand?
Let’s have a look. You start the OP with an insult at Chas.E, you go on to say that he “he is, was, and always will be an ass”, then go to “Chas.E’s misinformation that he spews from every orifice”.
This is, in your opinion, fighting ignorance? Bull…fucking…shit. It’s just a slanging match.
Oh, it gets even better than that. Internet Exploder sometimes ignores MIME Content-Type information provided by a remote server and opens a file retrived over the net based on its extension, or by “guessing” the file type by examining the first few bytes of the file. This means, for example, if you create a text file on a web server which starts with the string “GIF89a”, Internet Exploder will try to display it as a GIF, even if your web server insists that it’s “text/plain”.
Microsoft insists that this is the “correct” behavior.
That doesn’t sound like Microsoft to me. Are you sure they didn’t first deny that this happened at all. Then two weeks later they’d claim it was the correct behaviour.
I summarized. See the bugtraq archives for an extended discussion of this particular “feature” of Internet Exploder. See also this Microsoft-provided page.
You loooove me.
stoid
WIthout taking sides as to the substance of this feud and how it is being handled, I would like to chime in and say that this is a very, very, very poor use of the rolleyes smiley.
In fact, it does not indicated what you seem to have intended it to indicate, and furthermore what you say it was supposed to indicated barely makes any sense in the context of your relationship with Chas, such as it is.
What it indicates is that you really think he is drawing that comparison and you think he is an asshole for doing so. The rolleyes seems to indicate that you think he’s an idiot, which we all know you do. What other possible meaning could there be?
That’s all I wanted to say.
stoid
ever-vigilent in the quest for precise smiley usage.
- Those who “hate” Microsoft do so because they are human
- Those who do not “hate” Microsoft do so because they, too, are human.
A guy I work with has one more reason to hate Microsoft - or at least their products. He was typing along this morning, just minding his own business and writing a letter using Word. Out of the blue, the whole freaking system locked up. He leaned back in disappointment, and was contemplating whether or not to do the three fingered excercise, when a BSOD poppep up and in formed him of some god awful error. “Press any key to continue,” which he does. Pop. The freaking thing reboots itself, and locks up again halfway through the reboot process. Oh, peachy. Reboot into protected mode and try to find the problem. It seems that windows spontaneously hosed the registry. He tries to restore and old copy of the registry, no go. Grand. OK, let’s reinstall windows. Boot from CD, yada yada yada. You know the drill. So, now windows boots alright. It just can’t figure out what kind of graphic card is in the PC, and can’t find the network card. OK. Hunt up the CDs for the different adapter cards and install all of the stuff manually. OK. Getting closer. Now all that’s wrong is that the damned thing won’t log onto the network. OK. Point by point comparison of all of the settings in the network setup with another PC. Everything checks. Ping works, too. Reboot, try again. Still no access to the network. It is now late in the afternoon, and Klaus is thoroughly pissed and goes home. Oh, did I mention that the OEM Windows CD that came with the PC (and from which we have reinstalled his PC before) suddenly didn’t want an OEM serial number? We had to scrounge around the office for a non-OEM CD and use its serial number to get the reinstall done.
Why do people hate Microsoft?
A whole fucking day pissed away doing a reinstall, the PC still doesn’t run and Klaus’s letter is still not written.
Not a personal experience, I know, but it’s close enough.
My best friend’s family recently acquired Windows ME, so they installed it on their almost brand new computer. As soon as it was installed, the colors fucked up and the computer crashed. Okay, so they reinstall it, finally get the computer running but Windows still will not find the CD drive. So you’ve got a catch-22 situation here- you can try to uninstall windows and MSN which seems to be the problem, by inserting the disk. But because Microsoft’s software has caused the computer to not recognize it’s own CD drive, this is impossible.
The computer will run, it won’t recognize it’s color card, the CD drive, or the modem. They took it to a computer repair shop (by the way, my friend’s father has a master’s degree in computer sciences) and they said that Windows ME is incompatible with some minor program on their computer. But unfortunately, because the computer no longer recognizes its CD drive, there is no way to completely uninstall the aforementioned “problem” program.
I know this might be a “gross generalization”, SPOOFE, but there it is, take it or leave it. Just because you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the bugs and glitches of your primary OS, doesn’t mean that other people aren’t justified in their hatred of the company that produces a shitty product. And it’s not just the shitty product that causes us to hate the company, it’s the fact that we have almost NOTHING else to choose from. Microsoft or…IBM. It’s the monopoly on an entire industry that makes them a scum-sucking bunch of assholes.
No. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so, especially in this thread.
I had to check to make sure my modem, my graphics card, and even my NIC to make sure it would work with Linux. I didn’t have to do that at all when I installed Win2k on my friends computer.
So? He is making statements based on his observations of Chas.E’s behavior on these boards. This had no connection whatsoever with ignorance, but is actually taking into account Chas.E’s posting history.
Yes, it was, and I’ve already acknowledged that. I do apologize that my post was written so that people got the wrong meaning from it. I did try to use an appropriate smiley to indicate sarcasm, but the rolleyes was not it. However, I can not think of another smiley that would have done it either, so the only way for the sarcasm to be conveyed would be to reword the post, which I don’t want to do.
Oh, Gary, stop trying to jump on my back for my participation in this thread. You’re acting as if I’M Microsoft or something, and I don’t get it.
You should have. There is still quite a bit of hardware that is not supported by W2K, mostly older stuff developed by companies who are no longer in business, or at least not doing enough business to be able to afford to pay the licensing fees that Microsoft requires to get the information you need to write a hardware driver for W2K.
Most of the devices that are not supported by Linux are so-called “WinModems” and “WinPrinters”: deliberately lobotomized devices that pass off virtually all of their duties to the operating system. Attaching a WinModem to your computer will slow it down more than attaching a standard modem. This was done to (a) make Intel more money (people will be incented to buy bigger, faster, more expensive processors to compensate for the slowdown imposed on their systems by lobotomized peripherals) (b) make Microsoft more money (Microsoft receives a license royalty on each WinPeripheral sold) and © cement the Windows-Intel monopoly (people who buy WinPeripherals are locked into the Windows/Intel platform unless they want to give up the peripheral). There is no consumer benefit to these devices over their nonlobotomized cousins, and in fact they are really quite stupid (pun intended), but the combined market power of Intel and Microsoft made them a reality nonetheless.
So you can add “forcing lobotomized peripherals on us” to the list of reasons to hate Microsoft.
You’re welcome.
[slight hijack]
The only reason why I haven’t purchased WordPerfect already is because I can’t get it as a standalone program. It’s only available bundled with a bunch of other programs that I honestly don’t need.
Very irritating. When I bought WP for the Mac several years ago, it was a standalone program. If it was still that way now, I would have bought it months ago.
Way to go, Corel.
[/slight hijack]