From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 01:08:32 MST
Terry Donaghe wrote:
>
> READ BEFORE PROCEEDING: I am not and have never been a Microsoft employee.
> I am not in love with Microsoft nor am I Bill's bitch. Similarly, I have no
> ill feelings towards Unix/Linux/Other alternatives other than a strong
> dislike for the actor portraying Larry Ellison...
>
> This is relevant because I feel that the seething hate that Mr Leitl and
> other have directed toward Microsoft is somewhat irrational...
I am very curious why the opinions of myself and Eugene and others are
considered "seething hate". I was quite prepared to find good things to
like about MS and its software empire. I earnestly attempted to do so a
few times now and not for short periods. I found some good things and a
lot that is not at all good and some things that I think it is merely
factual to describe as 'evil'. Does that make me guilty of unreasoning
and 'seething' hatred?
<perfectly irrelevant material skipped...>
>
> > Apart from that, the amount of damage the man and company
> > have inflicted upon
> > the world is unfixable in any amount of $$$s.
> > IBM/Intel/Microsoft working
> > together have created a reality which is rather far from
> > being optimal. If you
> > judge them, you're comparing merely stuff which currently
> > exists, and not seeing
> > the alternative branches which would now exist if not for a
> > number of specific
> > decisions, which can be traced back to the year 1978.
>
> I'm sorry, but after seeing and hearing the alternatives such as Scott
> McNealy and Larry Ellison, I'm not sure the world would be any better if
> they were top dogs. This nonsense about "damage ... inflicted upon the
> world" just doesn't make any sense at all. When I hear things like this, I
> feel like you guys live in a totally different world than I do. The
> statement about "not seeing the alternative branches which would now exist
> if not for a number of specific decisions, which can be traced back to the
> year 1978" implies some sort of evil conspiracy. That doesn't make any
> sense. I posit that had a number of the chief competitors of your evil
> monsters (IBM/Intel/Microsoft) not reacted so slowly/poorly to the PC
> phenomenon of the late 70's, early 80's then the world WOULD be much
> different now. They had their chance and lost. Microsoft/Intel/IBM was NOT
> a sure thing back then.
>
Excuse me but McNealy and Ellison are simply some of the few
alternatives that survived! Most you never heard of because they were
killed early. Only those of us inside of them that know why they were
much more sound technically and tremendously important can see a lot of
this damage. It is certainly not "nonsense". I don't think the problem
can be traced to 1978. I think it can easily be traced to MS activities
of the last decade or so and the attendant reactions across the software
industry though.
> > It should be given some thought, why so many computer people
> > have such a strong
> > reaction towards Redmond. Hint: sour grapes it ain't.
>
> Most of the programmer types that I know who hate Microsoft generally do it
> cause it's the "cool thing to do." Yes, MS has done some despicable things
> in the past and are probably still doing some, but that doesn't make the
> company evil, and certainly doesn't prove some sort of evil conspiracy
> theories. Hatred for Microsoft seems to be some sort of religious
Hey. I have been in this business for far longer than this business has
been "cool". I don't do a damn thing and never have because it is
"cool". So keep your mindless insults to yourself. What do you call
the MS Halloween documents? What do you call the tacticts that came out
at the Anti-Trust trial if you don't call them an evil conspiracy? How
many evil things and how many evil plans does a company or a person have
to do and guide themselves by before you admit they are evil? How many
things have to die at the touch of MS and its tactics before you
acknowledge some of its influence is poisonous?
Here we go again, trot out the notion that those who disagree with you
are being "religious" - great scare word of all psuedo-rationalist
spaces. Pleeze.
Perhaps you have just been sucked in by the MS cult? :-)
- samantha
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