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Microsoft's Worst Enemy: Themselves
KobyBoy writes "Saw this story posted on OSnews this morning. "Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other." You can get the full article at Sudhian Media."
Title:Microsoft's Worst Enemy
Author:Joel Hruska
Length:Two pages
MicroSatan has released some excellent software recently, xp mainly.
SicroMoft's worst enemy is itself. M$ is a typical two-faced affair: their programmers are the "good" side, they are like us, they produced better software, and they hate management.
Which brings us to the bad side: the folks who run SicroMoft are interested only in money, and hence have unleashed hell upon users in the form of "digital rights management", "authentication", "phoning home spyware", and by being the arrogant bastards that they are, treating users, firms, governments like shit.
Some governments are looking into open source, but not much is happening because MS is fighting every attempt with all they've got (lawyers, "random audits", brain wash seminars on open software).
Linux is MicroSatan's biggest enemy, huh? I thought it was MS itself? Anyway, Linux is good because, you guessed it, it is immensely powerful, cheap, and reliable.
Then Joel is losing me, and probably a lot of you, with the following closing paragraphs:
I'm no Linux user. I've never booted a distro of the OS in any of its flavors, and save for playing with it on a friend's machine, I've never spent much time in it. I am not an open source maverick, nor am I anti-business or anti-profit. What I am, however, is concerned about how Redmond intends to safeguard my privacy, my right to use an operating system as I see fit, and my rights of fair use. I am, in fact, very concerned.
Right now, Linux has yet to offer me any reason why I should go to the monumental hassle of switching and re-training myself to the new OS environment, but unlike two years ago, I can see it potentially occurring today. Drop the attitude, the lying, and the marketing BS, Microsoft--or-- begin to watch your customer base slip away.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable. -Mencken
This reminds me of another heavily fragmented software community.
Who is Linux's worst enemy?
It's not compelling enough.
Every couple of years when I get a new Linux mahine for my server, I buckle and install X with Gnome and KDE and all the doodads, only to spend an hour removing them a month later. And as flameworthy and downmodworthy as this is, I have to say, Linux desktops uniformly suck. For my purposes anyways. I love my Windows desktop. Period. Even with all its quirks. And say what you will, but clicking Start to shut down a computer is no less intuitive or inappropriate than clicking on a giant foot icon to do the same.
Gnome/KDE do absolutely nothing I expect a desktop to do for me. They do nothing in a way I expect a desktop to behave. I'm not exaggerating. There is nothing 'nice' I have to say about Gnome/KDE. The biggest obvious problem is the stupid Gnome/KDE/window manager 'multality' (as opposed to duality?). Just pick one and stick with it damnit. I know the popular view here is that is a 'good' thing, but to the 99% of us outside the 'community' it's just, well, retarded.
Which is why Windows will have to get much much worse before the likes of me start to switch to something else (not necessarily LInux either).
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