On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 00:42, David Bowles wrote:
Courting criticism and playing devil's advocate here...
I personally object to the rabid hate-quest against 'Micro$oft'.
Hate the sin not the sinner. Its difficult to entirely ignore M$ since its their two profitable lines that are the main problem. Its the monopoly/de facto standard that is the problem, but since its a monopoly there only happens to be one company involved.
Surely we would do better advocating alternatives such as Linux on the basis of their merits rather than what looks to an outsider like prejudice.
But the main advantage of using MS products is the monopoly on running apps and file formats. Its impossible for Linux to have greater merit in those areas while the monopoly exists and these two factors over-ride technical merit - if not the world would never have standardised on DOS in the first place.
This reminds me of born-again Apple users, some of whom come across as frustrated 'flashers' underneath their macs.
An Apple monopoly could be worse than a M$ one since the systems involved are no freer and might be argued to be less so. -- ian <ian.lynch2@ntlworld.com>