I sent the following message to the email address at the bottom of the letter. It may never get read by the party in question, but perhaps Microsoft will read it here. I forgot to spell check it, so hopefully it's not too bad:-) Sir, I am very disappointed in Microsoft's handling of this situation. An educated person should realize that with Microsoft's current lack of public support and their legal woes, they should take care when throwing stones. I am not a lawyer, and I do not know a great deal about the DMCA, but I would think that in a PUBLIC forum such as Andover's Slashdot, the individual posters were responsible for their own content. Microsoft should be ashamed of it's propensity to cannibalize publicly recognized industry standards in the name of innovation. You blast Sun for trying to maintain control of Java, while mangling standards in your own network products in an attempt to lock people into your platform. You are the post World War II Japan. The difference being that the Japanese actually improved on the products they ripped off. Of course, you are not the only company that does this, but no one else does it to the extent that you do. Once, I respected Microsoft, but no more. Your greed and lack of ethics has crushed any positive image I once had of you. Chances are you will never read this. It will probably go directly into your circular file, but I wanted to express my disgust. If anyone needs proof that you can succeed with OPEN standards, just look at Linux and the OpenSource phenomenon. How does it feel to be despised even by your best clients? I hate being so negative, but that is the feeling Microsoft engenders in me these days. I really do hope you repent of your current practices. You could once again be recognized as a respectable company. Sincerely, Jeffrey C. Johnson
Really, it depends on the company you plan to work for, and the applications they expect you to use. Here at IBM there are a lot of folks who work from home, of course, on my team we have to use that horrible M$ operating system. This is because there are certain applications, like Lotus Notes, for which there is no Linux port yet (Notes Client not available yet). Anyway, Win95 performance is crappy enough on the LAN at the office, without trying to do it over a modem connection. Therefore, I choose to drive 55 miles each day to the office and then another 55 home, unless I'm sick or something. My guess is that you will be more likely to be able to do this with a fortune 500 than with a smaller integrator/company. Good Luck. Jeffrey Johnson
Slashdot Mirror
I sent the following message to the email address at the bottom of the letter. It may never get read by the party in question, but perhaps Microsoft will read it here. I forgot to spell check it, so hopefully it's not too bad:-) Sir, I am very disappointed in Microsoft's handling of this situation. An educated person should realize that with Microsoft's current lack of public support and their legal woes, they should take care when throwing stones. I am not a lawyer, and I do not know a great deal about the DMCA, but I would think that in a PUBLIC forum such as Andover's Slashdot, the individual posters were responsible for their own content. Microsoft should be ashamed of it's propensity to cannibalize publicly recognized industry standards in the name of innovation. You blast Sun for trying to maintain control of Java, while mangling standards in your own network products in an attempt to lock people into your platform. You are the post World War II Japan. The difference being that the Japanese actually improved on the products they ripped off. Of course, you are not the only company that does this, but no one else does it to the extent that you do. Once, I respected Microsoft, but no more. Your greed and lack of ethics has crushed any positive image I once had of you. Chances are you will never read this. It will probably go directly into your circular file, but I wanted to express my disgust. If anyone needs proof that you can succeed with OPEN standards, just look at Linux and the OpenSource phenomenon. How does it feel to be despised even by your best clients? I hate being so negative, but that is the feeling Microsoft engenders in me these days. I really do hope you repent of your current practices. You could once again be recognized as a respectable company. Sincerely, Jeffrey C. Johnson
Really, it depends on the company you plan to work for, and the applications they expect you to use. Here at IBM there are a lot of folks who work from home, of course, on my team we have to use that horrible M$ operating system. This is because there are certain applications, like Lotus Notes, for which there is no Linux port yet (Notes Client not available yet). Anyway, Win95 performance is crappy enough on the LAN at the office, without trying to do it over a modem connection. Therefore, I choose to drive 55 miles each day to the office and then another 55 home, unless I'm sick or something. My guess is that you will be more likely to be able to do this with a fortune 500 than with a smaller integrator/company. Good Luck. Jeffrey Johnson
NC State has it's own distro too. Link is: http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/eos-linux Glad to see Linux permeating life:-)