I'm sorry, you have just been assessed the/. Troll Tax. You spoke out against OpenSource and sided with the "Enemy."
Is it just me, or is OpenSource becoming more and more like communism every day?
Oh, and I am fully prepared to accept the Troll Tax. I am even willing to accept the "Oops, your post was deleted never to be seen again" tax. Kinda funny how an "Open" community can be so "Closed."
I'm guessing that $4G's was in attorney's fees, court costs and fines.:)
Of course I could be ENTIRELY off base, but it seems entirely ridiculous to spend $4,000 to simply make a change of address, unless he was moving country to country and they somehow taxed the funds he brought with him.
The guy who used to run SunTrust (and donated several millions of dollars to the business school at Michigan State), Eli Broad, once spent 2.5 Million dollars on paintings at an auction. All charged to his American Express.
I can hop over to Windsor and get $1.47 Canadian per U.S. dollar.
Why be contentious, when you know the exchange rates are shit on your part?
Which makes your XP personal $208 and XP Pro $347. A bit overpriced yes, but the North American version can be easily had from a U.S. vendor for half the price. Troll.
Listen, M$ is in *NO* way like Enron. It's amazing how you zealots place blame. Enron was involved in price fixing and an artificial energy crisis. If I even hear someone say "That's just like MS," then you're too young to remember when an OS used to cost $300. Most people don't even "pay" for Windows.
I'm not here to argue the merits of M$ software, but I am here to point out that they *DO* create shareholder value, and as a company they perform very admirably. Compared to the stock market and the inflated.COM bust of the past few years, M$ is a blue-chip stock. Forget OSS, forget all M$'s shit... If you were sending you kids to college on their stock, you'd be a happy person...
Or you could just follow MS's instructions (handily available in the knowledge base) for disabling messenger. But they do get you a little -> you must also disable the registry key within Outlook Express that searches for messenger on startup (which will cause Outlook to take about 2 minutes to start while looking for Messenger if you do not).
The MS issue here is that they have presumed too much in their decision to take on Sony, whose cash reserves make MSes look like a child's savings account.
If only that were true. MS has more cash than NEARLY EVERY company in the world, hands down. Sony may have more revenues, but it costs money to produce TVs, DVD players, Computers, etc. M$ doesn't pay a whole lot to produce CD-ROM's and the miniature manuals they include with their stuff. With the exception of the XBox and input devices, M$ doesn't "produce" much of anything (and even a large portion of these devices are outsourced).
Here is an interesting article about M$'es cash: Interesting CNN Article. To quote the article: "At the end of last year, according to the company's most recent filings, its cash (and short-term investments that can be converted to cash in less than a year) totaled a whopping $38.2 billion. The Microsoft juggernaut continues to generate another $1 billion a month, putting the total cash today well above $40 billion.
This is a mind-bogglingly large pile of dough. No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal, and only a handful of banks do. It's more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech company with the next largest cash balance. It is enough to buy the entire airline industry -- twice. Or all the gold in Fort Knox, four times over. It is enough to buy 23 space shuttles or every major professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey team in America. It is an enviable stash. Who wouldn't love to have a bank account like that?"
Actually, the memory they are using is DDR200 (PC1600) which (at least in the beginning) was supplied by Micron. DDR400 wasn't even a glimmer in the memory manufacturers' eyes when the XBox was designed.
Now if you're speaking about the memory on the graphics chip, well, there is none. The XBox uses a UMA (unified memory architecture). However the nVidia chip itself runs at 350MHz (I believe).
Don't know why I bothered to reply. I bought a Gamecube.
The only thing that can stop Linux from eventually succeeding Windows on the desktop is either laws to prevent it from happening or not enforcing laws that will allow it to happen.
This is a closed minded view from an OSS person. You imply that the only reason Linux WILL succeed is if laws are written to make it succeed, or if laws are broken preventing it from succeeding. That is wrong. Linux will succeed or fail on its own merits and the inertia of the market. Despite what you may think, a law changing MS business practices is not going to make Linux magically appear on everyone's desktop. Linux not only has to be a superior product with (REAL) superior usability (not just by a techie), but it will have to fight against market inertia (read: the masses), which is a fickle and uneducated group (as a whole, NOT individually). That's the one thing OSS has yet to do: write software with Joe User in mind, and with the documentation to back it up. As sad as it is to say, until that happens, Joe User will continue to ignore Linux and the much larger OSS community in general. This has NOTHING to do with what happens to MS in court, nor should it.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, a controversial member of chart-topping American R&B trio TLC, was killed in a car crash in Honduras on Thursday, a spokeswoman for her record label said.
No other details were supplied by Laura Swanson, a representative of Arista Records in New York.
Lopes becomes the second female R&B singer to die tragically in less than a year, following the death last August of rising star Aaliyah in a plane crash in the Bahamas. Arista rapper Notorious B.I.G. was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1997.
Lopes, a 30-year-old native of Philadelphia who provided the raps for TLC, made headlines in 1994 after she was arrested for burning down the house of then-boyfriend, former Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison. She was fined and sentenced to five years' probation, and then entered rehab to deal with a drinking problem.
Atlanta-based TLC's most recent album, 1999's "FanMail" topped the U.S. pop album charts for five weeks, and generated eight Grammy Award nominations. The group ended up with the trophies for best R&B album and best R&B performance for "No Scrubs," a savage put-down of loser boys.
TLC, which Lopes formed with Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, burst onto the music scene 10 years ago with its debut album, "Oooooooh...On the TLC Tip." Its 1994 follow-up, "CrazySexyCool," brought the group mainstream success, with help from the multi-million-dollar video for the ballad "Waterfalls." The album also won TLC Grammys (news - web sites) for best R&B album and R&B performance ("Creep").
"FanMail" sold more than eight million copies, and secured TLC's place as the most successful female trio in history. But the band was highly combustible, with Lopes providing the fodder. She threatened to quit prior to the recording of "FanMail," and was reportedly infuriated that none of the eight songs she had written for the album made the final cut.
In subsequent interviews, Lopes exchanged insults and accusations with her frustrated colleagues. Their 1999/2000 tour was marred by poor sales in some markets and on-stage theatrics underscoring their feuding.
I would give Ford a lot of credit. The GT40 was in direct response to Enzo (sp?) Ferrari's rebuff of Ford's buyout offer. So, Ford said: We're going to kick the shit out of Ferrari in LeMans. They built (or had built) a car that would do just that. It was the sole purpose of the GT40's life to destroy the Ferrari. It's a shame the GT40 never had any commercial success (I don't even think it was marketed, really), because once they triumphed it took a back seat at Ford for the last 40 years.
Actually, US cars don't sell elsewhere because of the poor gasoline mileage. If you think it's because of anything else, you are a bigot. It's no secret that gas is over $4/gallon in most Eurpoean nations, while here in the good ole' US, our crude is $1.20-1.50 a gallon.
We like our cars big, mean, fast and powerful. You like your cars to be fast, lean and sounding like a vaccuum cleaner on crack. Sweet. I'll still take any good old American big block over any Japanese sportscar. And this is coming from a previous Eclipse GS-T owner.
Actually, a Viper Venom 600 will do 0 to 60 in 3.70 seconds. A TVR Tuscan does the same in 3.90 seconds. A TVR Speed 12 however will do the same in 3.50 seconds. The Mitsu Evo VI or the Mazda RX-7 aren't even in the top 50. The NSX is no longer in the top 50, because it's no longer produced (I *may* be wrong). If I remember correctly though it was in the low 4's.
And a Corvette holds 2 places in the top 50. American arrogrance? I think you need to get your facts straight before opening your mouth.
How long before 3Com's dominance in the NIC market is now called a Monopoly? After all, they're integrating a rather expensive piece of software into their NIC, which could potentially limit the income stream of several thousands of security consultants.
This will probably never get read, but you have severely contradicted yourself. First, you state:
The original argument concerned consumer-grade operating systems, such as Windows and MacOS. UNIX and its derivatives, for example, are excellent operating systems, but they are simply not intended for Mr. and Mrs. Average Consumer. For these people, there is still only one dominating choice: Windows. MacOS is still a small player. Other promising consumer-grade options, such as OS/2 and BeOS, were simply crushed by the market dominance of Windows.
Then later in the message you point out that:
From a software engineering standpoint, this is a kludge, where the complexity is simply not justified. There is no way I would use Windows in an application where someone's life depended on it.
No shit. It's a CONSUMER grade OS, as you clearly pointed out above. It's not meant to run mission critical stuff. You get big iron or embedded systems for that. You are trying to make an argument for one point, but you are directly contradicting yourself with the argument you make for a later point. Sure, I can go buy a Cessna, but when I buy a ticket on a commercial airline, they damn well better be flying a Boeing or Airbus jet. Mission-critical (air traffic control, power grid control, stoplights, etc.) are not meant to be running on a Windows box. And shame on whoever would try such a thing. On the other hand, try explaining to Mom and Dad why their filesystem is gone after a power failure. I have yet to see any version of Windows lose data (except 3.1 back in the bungled DOS 6.2 days - prior to the release of the fixed 6.22) after a power failure (notice I said *power* failure, NOT hardware failure).
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that every man, woman, child and manager on the earth doesn't want to re-purchase every piece of software and hardware they own.
troll. Why not just be happy. Even though it is MS, this is a big win for AMD. They have kicked Intel's ass into high gear, and for that ALL pc users should be happy.
And we all know 2k/XP are *real* operating systems. If you've got it crashing, you should be able to resolve it (you're on/., so you *should* be computer competent). Not like back in the 95/98/Me days when it may just be that a butterfly flapped its wings in Bangkok, so your computer crashed...
They have been working on it. It's called "Yamhill" and is an implementation of AMD's public extention to x86 called x86-64.
Contrary to popular belief, IA-64 is a dead architecture as it stands. They made some very poor decisions (and some very good ones) with the architecture, and AMD executed flawlessly with the x86-64. That is MORE than evidenced by the email (why it took/. so long to run this story I don't know. I was going to submit it yesterday, but my submissions are always rejected anyway) in which MS got 64-bit XP up and running within 2 hours of having final silicon. That's a hell of a feat (especially for MS!)...
Microsoft has lost the notion of working for the customers, which is why more and more people are turning away from Microsoft every day.
You are a moron. MS spends more on R&D and trying to make computers do cool things that are genuinely useful than ANYONE. And more people BECOME MS customers every day than switch to OSS. Where's the OSS version of DirectX? If you even say OpenGL, I'm going to smack you. At this point in time (and wait till 9.0/9.1) there is no comparison.
The real bomb is going to be dropped on all you zealots in about 1 year. You keep saying "If MS made a decent product, then it'd be ok." Well,:) let's just say they're going to release something that'll take you unshowered hippie geeks the next 10 years of basement time to duplicate.
The way I see it, the computer industry is maturing (just like every other industry does), and the people that love it just can't handle it. I used to work in the automotive industry, and let me tell you, getting Ford or GM to buy your parts is WAAAAAY more difficult than breaking into the Windows software industry. Wanna talk about arcane agreements, massive IT system requirements, and incredibly overbearing customer demands. The Big 3 make MS look like the Children's Television Workshop. Really.
Everything is relative. Ever tried to compete against Wal-Mart? How about against Kraft Macaroni & Cheese? Q-Tips? Doritos? Mountain Dew? Federal Express? Sometimes there "just is" an industry giant. Yeah, sometimes they use their clout unfairly. But don't think for a second that Dell, Gateway and Sony aren't better off because of Microsoft. If there were no MS, who knows... We'd all be using OS/2, and paying $300 per copy and another $100/year for support. Oh yeah, and it'd only run well on IBM PS/2 machines. And those cost $3,000 apiece. MS is "good enough." Just like a Camry is "good enough." Sure, a race car would be better, but not everyone can maintain a racecar (or even afford one).
Not only that, but for every Linux zealot out there, there's another guy who uses "real" big iron, and looks at us desktop PC (l)users and laughs and says: "They're so stupid. They actually think their stuff is better." Well, it's no different. There's a place for everything.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, you have just been assessed the /. Troll Tax. You spoke out against OpenSource and sided with the "Enemy."
Is it just me, or is OpenSource becoming more and more like communism every day?
Oh, and I am fully prepared to accept the Troll Tax. I am even willing to accept the "Oops, your post was deleted never to be seen again" tax. Kinda funny how an "Open" community can be so "Closed."
Opps,
cssFontSize=MaxFontSize;
You know what I ment!
Unfortunately gcc didn't! And that's where bugs come from in damn near *every* situation...
Oh if only computers were smarter...
Bunch of fscking idiots. According to their SEC filings, Microsoft (the Corporation) paid $1.468B dollars in Federal Income Taxes in 2001.
This is far from *none* and even further from the amount you, your family, and the entire OSS community will EVER contribute.
Good day!
He didn't say address record, he said "state."
:)
I'm guessing that $4G's was in attorney's fees, court costs and fines.
Of course I could be ENTIRELY off base, but it seems entirely ridiculous to spend $4,000 to simply make a change of address, unless he was moving country to country and they somehow taxed the funds he brought with him.
The guy who used to run SunTrust (and donated several millions of dollars to the business school at Michigan State), Eli Broad, once spent 2.5 Million dollars on paintings at an auction. All charged to his American Express.
Uh, who's 15?
*SOME* of their practices were found to be illegal. Refusing to give away their source code that they spent BILLIONS to develop is not one of them.
Why is it so hard for you to grasp this *simple* concept?
OK smart ass.
I can hop over to Windsor and get $1.47 Canadian per U.S. dollar.
Why be contentious, when you know the exchange rates are shit on your part?
Which makes your XP personal $208 and XP Pro $347. A bit overpriced yes, but the North American version can be easily had from a U.S. vendor for half the price. Troll.
Listen, M$ is in *NO* way like Enron. It's amazing how you zealots place blame. Enron was involved in price fixing and an artificial energy crisis. If I even hear someone say "That's just like MS," then you're too young to remember when an OS used to cost $300. Most people don't even "pay" for Windows.
.COM bust of the past few years, M$ is a blue-chip stock. Forget OSS, forget all M$'s shit... If you were sending you kids to college on their stock, you'd be a happy person...
I'm not here to argue the merits of M$ software, but I am here to point out that they *DO* create shareholder value, and as a company they perform very admirably. Compared to the stock market and the inflated
Let's put things in perspective here folks..
Or you could just follow MS's instructions (handily available in the knowledge base) for disabling messenger. But they do get you a little -> you must also disable the registry key within Outlook Express that searches for messenger on startup (which will cause Outlook to take about 2 minutes to start while looking for Messenger if you do not).
The MS issue here is that they have presumed too much in their decision to take on Sony, whose cash reserves make MSes look like a child's savings account.
If only that were true. MS has more cash than NEARLY EVERY company in the world, hands down. Sony may have more revenues, but it costs money to produce TVs, DVD players, Computers, etc. M$ doesn't pay a whole lot to produce CD-ROM's and the miniature manuals they include with their stuff. With the exception of the XBox and input devices, M$ doesn't "produce" much of anything (and even a large portion of these devices are outsourced).
Here is an interesting article about M$'es cash: Interesting CNN Article. To quote the article: "At the end of last year, according to the company's most recent filings, its cash (and short-term investments that can be converted to cash in less than a year) totaled a whopping $38.2 billion. The Microsoft juggernaut continues to generate another $1 billion a month, putting the total cash today well above $40 billion.
This is a mind-bogglingly large pile of dough. No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal, and only a handful of banks do. It's more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech company with the next largest cash balance. It is enough to buy the entire airline industry -- twice. Or all the gold in Fort Knox, four times over. It is enough to buy 23 space shuttles or every major professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey team in America. It is an enviable stash. Who wouldn't love to have a bank account like that?"
What do you think about that??
Actually, the memory they are using is DDR200 (PC1600) which (at least in the beginning) was supplied by Micron. DDR400 wasn't even a glimmer in the memory manufacturers' eyes when the XBox was designed.
Now if you're speaking about the memory on the graphics chip, well, there is none. The XBox uses a UMA (unified memory architecture). However the nVidia chip itself runs at 350MHz (I believe).
Don't know why I bothered to reply. I bought a Gamecube.
There are also people who remember when a gallon of gasoline was $.40 and a new car was $2,000. For today's money, $200 isn't bad.
He was implying you don't know the difference between a CORPORATION and COOPERATION. They're two entirely different things.
I am in Michigan (USA).
Wireless Internet (a-la Sprint) is $49
Cable with your modem $34.95
Cable with thier modem $39.95
ADSL 1.5M/256k $49
Satellite (?) ~$45
Not really that expensive, but not for everyone either.
The only thing that can stop Linux from eventually succeeding Windows on the desktop is either laws to prevent it from happening or not enforcing laws that will allow it to happen.
This is a closed minded view from an OSS person. You imply that the only reason Linux WILL succeed is if laws are written to make it succeed, or if laws are broken preventing it from succeeding. That is wrong. Linux will succeed or fail on its own merits and the inertia of the market. Despite what you may think, a law changing MS business practices is not going to make Linux magically appear on everyone's desktop. Linux not only has to be a superior product with (REAL) superior usability (not just by a techie), but it will have to fight against market inertia (read: the masses), which is a fickle and uneducated group (as a whole, NOT individually). That's the one thing OSS has yet to do: write software with Joe User in mind, and with the documentation to back it up. As sad as it is to say, until that happens, Joe User will continue to ignore Linux and the much larger OSS community in general. This has NOTHING to do with what happens to MS in court, nor should it.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, a controversial member of chart-topping American R&B trio TLC, was killed in a car crash in Honduras on Thursday, a spokeswoman for her record label said.
No other details were supplied by Laura Swanson, a representative of Arista Records in New York.
Lopes becomes the second female R&B singer to die tragically in less than a year, following the death last August of rising star Aaliyah in a plane crash in the Bahamas. Arista rapper Notorious B.I.G. was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1997.
Lopes, a 30-year-old native of Philadelphia who provided the raps for TLC, made headlines in 1994 after she was arrested for burning down the house of then-boyfriend, former Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison. She was fined and sentenced to five years' probation, and then entered rehab to deal with a drinking problem.
Atlanta-based TLC's most recent album, 1999's "FanMail" topped the U.S. pop album charts for five weeks, and generated eight Grammy Award nominations. The group ended up with the trophies for best R&B album and best R&B performance for "No Scrubs," a savage put-down of loser boys.
TLC, which Lopes formed with Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, burst onto the music scene 10 years ago with its debut album, "Oooooooh...On the TLC Tip." Its 1994 follow-up, "CrazySexyCool," brought the group mainstream success, with help from the multi-million-dollar video for the ballad "Waterfalls." The album also won TLC Grammys (news - web sites) for best R&B album and R&B performance ("Creep").
"FanMail" sold more than eight million copies, and secured TLC's place as the most successful female trio in history. But the band was highly combustible, with Lopes providing the fodder. She threatened to quit prior to the recording of "FanMail," and was reportedly infuriated that none of the eight songs she had written for the album made the final cut.
In subsequent interviews, Lopes exchanged insults and accusations with her frustrated colleagues. Their 1999/2000 tour was marred by poor sales in some markets and on-stage theatrics underscoring their feuding.
I would give Ford a lot of credit. The GT40 was in direct response to Enzo (sp?) Ferrari's rebuff of Ford's buyout offer. So, Ford said: We're going to kick the shit out of Ferrari in LeMans. They built (or had built) a car that would do just that. It was the sole purpose of the GT40's life to destroy the Ferrari. It's a shame the GT40 never had any commercial success (I don't even think it was marketed, really), because once they triumphed it took a back seat at Ford for the last 40 years.
Actually, US cars don't sell elsewhere because of the poor gasoline mileage. If you think it's because of anything else, you are a bigot. It's no secret that gas is over $4/gallon in most Eurpoean nations, while here in the good ole' US, our crude is $1.20-1.50 a gallon.
We like our cars big, mean, fast and powerful. You like your cars to be fast, lean and sounding like a vaccuum cleaner on crack. Sweet. I'll still take any good old American big block over any Japanese sportscar. And this is coming from a previous Eclipse GS-T owner.
Actually, a Viper Venom 600 will do 0 to 60 in 3.70 seconds. A TVR Tuscan does the same in 3.90 seconds. A TVR Speed 12 however will do the same in 3.50 seconds. The Mitsu Evo VI or the Mazda RX-7 aren't even in the top 50. The NSX is no longer in the top 50, because it's no longer produced (I *may* be wrong). If I remember correctly though it was in the low 4's.
And a Corvette holds 2 places in the top 50. American arrogrance? I think you need to get your facts straight before opening your mouth.
How long before 3Com's dominance in the NIC market is now called a Monopoly? After all, they're integrating a rather expensive piece of software into their NIC, which could potentially limit the income stream of several thousands of security consultants.
This will probably never get read, but you have severely contradicted yourself. First, you state:
The original argument concerned consumer-grade operating systems, such as Windows and MacOS. UNIX and its derivatives, for example, are excellent operating systems, but they are simply not intended for Mr. and Mrs. Average Consumer. For these people, there is still only one dominating choice: Windows. MacOS is still a small player. Other promising consumer-grade options, such as OS/2 and BeOS, were simply crushed by the market dominance of Windows.
Then later in the message you point out that:
From a software engineering standpoint, this is a kludge, where the complexity is simply not justified. There is no way I would use Windows in an application where someone's life depended on it.
No shit. It's a CONSUMER grade OS, as you clearly pointed out above. It's not meant to run mission critical stuff. You get big iron or embedded systems for that. You are trying to make an argument for one point, but you are directly contradicting yourself with the argument you make for a later point. Sure, I can go buy a Cessna, but when I buy a ticket on a commercial airline, they damn well better be flying a Boeing or Airbus jet. Mission-critical (air traffic control, power grid control, stoplights, etc.) are not meant to be running on a Windows box. And shame on whoever would try such a thing. On the other hand, try explaining to Mom and Dad why their filesystem is gone after a power failure. I have yet to see any version of Windows lose data (except 3.1 back in the bungled DOS 6.2 days - prior to the release of the fixed 6.22) after a power failure (notice I said *power* failure, NOT hardware failure).
Microsoft is holding back the industry
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that every man, woman, child and manager on the earth doesn't want to re-purchase every piece of software and hardware they own.
troll. Why not just be happy. Even though it is MS, this is a big win for AMD. They have kicked Intel's ass into high gear, and for that ALL pc users should be happy.
/., so you *should* be computer competent). Not like back in the 95/98/Me days when it may just be that a butterfly flapped its wings in Bangkok, so your computer crashed...
And we all know 2k/XP are *real* operating systems. If you've got it crashing, you should be able to resolve it (you're on
They have been working on it. It's called "Yamhill" and is an implementation of AMD's public extention to x86 called x86-64.
/. so long to run this story I don't know. I was going to submit it yesterday, but my submissions are always rejected anyway) in which MS got 64-bit XP up and running within 2 hours of having final silicon. That's a hell of a feat (especially for MS!)...
Contrary to popular belief, IA-64 is a dead architecture as it stands. They made some very poor decisions (and some very good ones) with the architecture, and AMD executed flawlessly with the x86-64. That is MORE than evidenced by the email (why it took
Microsoft has lost the notion of working for the customers, which is why more and more people are turning away from Microsoft every day.
:) let's just say they're going to release something that'll take you unshowered hippie geeks the next 10 years of basement time to duplicate.
You are a moron. MS spends more on R&D and trying to make computers do cool things that are genuinely useful than ANYONE. And more people BECOME MS customers every day than switch to OSS. Where's the OSS version of DirectX? If you even say OpenGL, I'm going to smack you. At this point in time (and wait till 9.0/9.1) there is no comparison.
The real bomb is going to be dropped on all you zealots in about 1 year. You keep saying "If MS made a decent product, then it'd be ok." Well,
The way I see it, the computer industry is maturing (just like every other industry does), and the people that love it just can't handle it. I used to work in the automotive industry, and let me tell you, getting Ford or GM to buy your parts is WAAAAAY more difficult than breaking into the Windows software industry. Wanna talk about arcane agreements, massive IT system requirements, and incredibly overbearing customer demands. The Big 3 make MS look like the Children's Television Workshop. Really.
Everything is relative. Ever tried to compete against Wal-Mart? How about against Kraft Macaroni & Cheese? Q-Tips? Doritos? Mountain Dew? Federal Express? Sometimes there "just is" an industry giant. Yeah, sometimes they use their clout unfairly. But don't think for a second that Dell, Gateway and Sony aren't better off because of Microsoft. If there were no MS, who knows... We'd all be using OS/2, and paying $300 per copy and another $100/year for support. Oh yeah, and it'd only run well on IBM PS/2 machines. And those cost $3,000 apiece. MS is "good enough." Just like a Camry is "good enough." Sure, a race car would be better, but not everyone can maintain a racecar (or even afford one).
Not only that, but for every Linux zealot out there, there's another guy who uses "real" big iron, and looks at us desktop PC (l)users and laughs and says: "They're so stupid. They actually think their stuff is better." Well, it's no different. There's a place for everything.
Just the facts man...