John Lennon (or rather, his reputation) had the "benefit" of being shot dead before he got old and did all the sell-outy and trading-on-their-past things that musicians do when they get older.
Wasn't his final (and "comeback" album that ironically probably led to his death) considered the rather drippy and MORish work of a contended family man? (Yes, it's often said that settling down and being happy ruins an artist's work).
Ironically, this article is about an 'Open' software license from a movement that is all about 'Freedom', and how TomTom doesn't have the right to exercise that 'Freedom'.
You know... I do believe that you must be the *very first person* to have realised that the GPL's perpetuation of certain freedoms is done by curtailing certain others at source, and to have contrasted this with BSD's approach.
Let's use this as the start of an original and stimulating discussion on the subject. Or then again, heed the words of an exceptionally wise man and let's not.
Also, an interesting thought that just occurred to me is that GPL has its own RIAA/MPAA/MediaSentry thing going, of course the EFF and FSF have not been evil, yet...
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
This is the Internet age now. If it isn't nailed down nothing in the world will keep people from stealing it. And then making use of it however they see fit. This is part of the new bargain we are striking with people everywhere - creativity is now a "mashup" or a "remix" of older works because it is impossible to create anything new - it has all been done before.
Puh-leez! I don't mind agreeing that there's rarely if ever anything entirely new under the sun, but claiming that it's all been done and there's nothing left but mashups seems to be pandering to a defeatist and lazy attitude. The fact that the Internet and computer technology has made it *easier* to engage in such manipulation of existing material seems to have blinded our (or rather your) mind to the idea that anything new is possible.
Yes, there are some great mashups and great "remixes" work that quality as new works in their own right. However, I'm not buying that we can't create anything new- the prominence and popularity of mashup culture is because in the Internet age it's an easy way for the mainly lazy and mostly untalented masses (as it has always been) to create something interesting without too much effort and investment of their own.
I don't buy for a second that someone with real talent couldn't come along and create something way more creative and original if they were determined to, but it won't be someone who does it simply to have something cool to upload to YouTube; it'll be someone who has real passion and creativity.
FWIW, I'm waiting for the tools that will give people the ability to twist media from *any* source into what they want, truly taking 80s-inspired sampling beyond its roots and into the potential for true originality. In some ways such tools are already here- perhaps we just need to use them more creatively.
Even if they let people do this, it'll still require some talent to exploit those tools well and create something original with them. If you don't believe me, consider a pre-existing medium which- laws imposed by society aside- has no restrictions on what you can put in it beyond your own creativity and skill. Yet the vast majority of people do not create great literature.
(Umm, you just triggered my "astroturf" alert. This is the only comment Slashdot has you on record for, so I can't get a grasp of whether you are real or not.)
I realize there's a required minimum number of posts before becoming real - for the moment, I can only aspire to be real with post #2 here.
Yet oddly, despite having just posted your first comment, your user ID number is in the 800k range. IIRC we're up to about 1.2M now, so your account itself must at least a year old, if not two or three.
Actually, I think writers should be able to get paid for their work, just as others do... work, as in labor. And only paid once.
And I suppose that the printers should be paid just once too, no matter how many copies they produce?
Desirable or not, that would be consistent with the OP's logic; the printers generally get paid once at an agreed rate for each item they print, then get no further payment for those same physical items in the future. Of course, if they wanted to make more money, they could print more copies at an agreed rate. Just like a writer could write more books if he wanted more money.
That's not a position that I'm arguing for or agree with personally. However, it *is* the logical extension of the OP's position, not your flawed implication that following the same logic would result in printers being obliged to churn out endless copies for free.
(And does "printers" cover *any* printers, or just those printing on behalf of- and therefore effectively representing- the "publishers"? Because it makes a major difference to your implied point.)
Whether you agree with them or not, The Authors Guild is the name of the organization. Putting it in quotation marks to show your disdain is as silly
The name carries connotations that the OP disagrees with; indeed that was the whole point of his post.
You can argue that it's a name and nothing more, but if- as some argue- a particular name is intentionally chosen to imply certain things about an organisation that the writer disagrees with, then using the self-appointed name without quotes is effectively endorsing it.
If I set up a self-appointed organisation called "The Government of Western Europe" and no-one was allowed to put it in quotes (let alone prefix it with "so-called") or even comment on it, then every time they said it, it would effectively legitimise my choice of misleading name.
Bottom line, the quotes in the OP's case implied that "that's someone else's self-appointed name masquerading as a description, and nothing more". If he disagrees that they're the "guild" they represent themselves as, it's quite reasonable that he doesn't want to go along with it.
My gut reaction to this process in general is that it sounds cool and useful... but that it might be a good idea for most people to wait a few years before doing it en masse- just to see what (if any) side unforeseen effects it's had on the restored computers.
At least Java throws an error when you accidentally leave off the second '=' in a '==' comparison; the real problem is that the purer C derived languages let assignments act as values, and cast them automatically to booleans without complaint.
Haven't used Java for quite a while now (yikes!), but is that an explicit feature or a useful side-effect of it warning of a non-boolean value where it expects a boolean value?
In other words, the assignment is still legal in that context, but it's the incorrect resultant type that trips the wire- and presumably would be missed if we were comparing/assigning boolean values?
I'm aware of all this, and agree entirely with what you say. But you missed my point.
I wasn't saying- and never would- that C was suitable for most 8-bit computers. Indeed, many of old-school BASIC's limitations (lack of structure, "hardwired" commands with core language- including syntax- tied to "function" commands like PRINT, etc.) are understandable in the context of those machines for the reason you give.
However, I was talking about *Visual Basic*, and that came out in the early 1990s during the late 16-bit/early 32-bit era.
Additional; I got distracted from the point I was making... which is that your separation of "true" capitalism from opportunism, greed and borderline legal behaviour is academic as the system does not work in a vacuum and is in fact dependent upon the same motivations that breed those problems.
Not saying that capitalism doesn't work, just that trying to argue its case in isolation is ultimately meaningless in the real world.
Collectivism and Marxism already failed.
We don't need to try that again.
Don't recall anyone advocating that. Put that straw man away before it falls apart!
Though expecting 100% free-market capitalism to work without people taking advantage and/or subverting it for their own ends (even through the "legitimate" use of markets to- e.g.- get a monopoly) is just as flawed and dependent on a grossly over-idealised view of human nature as communism is.
Remember that though many will proclaim the merits of a free market, they really want it to be free for themselves... and will certainly seek to shut out competition given the chance.
saying that one syntax is more "serious" than another is just showing your own close mindedness
No, pretending that all syntaxes are equally suited for modern use is phoney open-mindedness. VB's syntax is at heart derived from around a language designed for beginners in an era when line numbers were necessary, and the functionality and the syntax of the language were mixed together and not easily expandable nor intended to be.
These features were added with later BASICs, and of course VB, but the fundamental syntax can't shake off those origins... else it wouldn't be BASIC(!)
VB of course has mutated into something that old-school BASIC programmers wouldn't recognise or find that much easier to use than C-derived languages- in some ways having the worst of both worlds unless you're an "experienced" VB user.
It's not crap because it's different; it's crap because it retains the clunkiness and kludgy syntax of BASIC with no real advantages because the reasons for that clunkiness are a generation in the past and no longer relevant.
The features you describe are nice, but they'd have been much better added to a modern language rather than plastered onto the mutant offspring of a 40-year old language.
Agree with you that C#- and C-derived languages in general- aren't perfect though. *Every damn one* uses the same mistake-prone choice of "=" as the assignment operator.
And case-sensitivity in general I don't think is a good thing. But I'd rather put up with it than have to use BASIC.:)
That's because management deserves it. We make the big decisions and take the risks that enable the company to succeed.
Probable AC troll, so I won't waste time on most of it.
It's a good opportunity however, to point out that the problem with capitalism in recent years has been that the management have *not* been exposed to risks despite having been paid accordingly. They've worked themselves into the ludicrous position where they get paid bonuses regardless of whether they succeed or not.
They're generally are the *last* people to be exposed to the results of their failure, assuming that they haven't been astute enough to move on before the results of their short-term, shareholder-pleasing actions become evident.
Even when they're kicked out due to extreme incompetence, they'll still end up with comfortable payoff or at worst what they managed to get out of the company beforehand.
Yes, but what made it easy? Was it the visual programming environment, or was it specifically the language itself (which is what I was talking about)? And if the latter, is it inherently "easier" to use or is it just because the people who use Visual Studio are used to it?
It was always my understanding (and practice) that you wrote the program in C, and the GUI in VB. It's fantastic for that single purpose. Sometimes, it's easier to write a simple little script into the widget itself.
Is it significantly harder to write that script in C#?
Yes, I do believe that I was aware of that since I *explicitly mentioned it*!
and it's still going strong.
Compared to what? My understanding was that since the move to.Net, VB's popularity had declined.
In a lot of cases it gets new features before C# does.
Which new features?
And you may be correct when you say that, but I'd still rather wait until they appeared in a language that was fairly standard and whose syntax was much more suited to "serious" development if the alternative is having those features tacked onto an inconsistent and clunky design that is the result of building years of cruft onto an ancient language's syntax which was designed around a language for novices running on underpowered prehistoric computers over a generation ago.
VB may have added many more features on since then, but the fundamental syntax still remains based around the design of that time, and it's clunky and horrible for modern programming.
The A7800 was a flop because it was too hard to program for. Same with the Jaguar of the early 90s.
That was possibly one reason, but the other would have been that Atari couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag.
The XE Games System wasn't exactly a shit-hot success either (*), despite being 100% compatible with the long-established 400/800 computers and their successors, which had years of development experience behind them. Even the older 5200 console was basically just 400/800-based-hardware (albeit with some stupid memory-map changes that rendered games not directly compatible).
(*) Though I think that was intended mainly for us Europeans who had a somewhat different market to the US and Japan. Even then Atari later released the 7800 here anyway- to no success whatsoever.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with using a visual programming environment if it's the right tool for the job and you aren't using it as a crutch for your lack of skill.
However, Visual BASIC, the specific language? Ugh.
I used to program in old-school BASIC, but haven't used it for years... now, used to languages with C-derived syntax, VB seems horribly clunky and not easy to use, as basically used to be (supposedly).
Basically, I'm guessing VB was originally designed for people who were familiar with BASIC because back then it was "easier" than hard languages like C (and probably wasn't being used for such major projects that its inappropriateness wasn't such a problem).
I'd guess that it then retained BASIC style syntax over the years because it's what they were used to, even if it was clunky and now no easier to learn from scratch than C-syntaxed OO languages like C# if you weren't "locked in" to the BASIC way of doing things.
Fortunately, VB finally seems to be dying with the advent of.Net. Perhaps given the third choice of C# (rather than just C++) for Windows development and faced with having to change much of their Classic VB code for the not-really-compatible VB.Net, they realised that VB's dated approach was more hassle than it was worth, even for a dyed-in-the-wool user?
You can argue semantics about the meaning of "monopoly" all you like. You might or might not be right, but whether or not MS meets the technical definition is a distraction from the intended point. Namely, that MS have long had a blatantly unhealthy influence on the market.
Because you have the freedom to choose Dell, HP, Apple, PsyStar or any other PC vendor, means you have the freedom to buy a PC with an OS other than from Microsoft.
Unless MS abuse their market influence by bullying vendors who show signs of offering other OSs in a significant number of cases by increasing their OEM price of Windows... or withdrawing the "discounts" that their competition gets.
You imply that just because other OSs are available there is no problem. Well, if the vast majority of vendors are being coerced by MS into only offering Windows, and if a very high percentage of software and apps is only available for Windows- because it's what everyone's running, because that's what everything runs on, because.... Then IMHO there *is* a problem.
Even if they got there because people preferred MS in the early days, it wouldn't justify the fact that for a *long* time now people have chosen Windows because it's dominant in the market, not because it's the best. People buy Windows as a means to run software.
Though even that's charitably hypothetical; in reality no-one chose MS's legally-dubious, uninnovative, bought-in CP/M clone in the early days because it was the best. It got big because it first appeared on IBM's unexceptional PCs (and hence was the platform for IBM compatible software), which in turn were successful in the business field because.... well, because IBM made them. In other words, MS-DOS rode to domination on the back of IBM's domination of the market and it was self-perpetuating after that.
Your invocation of the Mozilla vs. IE situation is lame bordering on trollish. IE only comes with Windows and never came out for Linux; giving it away free encouraged its domination in the market and discouraged support of other more standard and platform-neutral browsers, hence encouraging more people to run Windows.
No, it's pretty much true. Most women do not use logic or reasoning. They can't even manage money properly. I for one do not want the vast majority of women to be programmers that would be working on anything of mine.
Looking at your comments page (out of vague curiosity to see if you're a genuine troll or just an ordinary user saying something vaguely trollish), I notice that this is your second comment. Your only other comment was made way back in June 2005.
WTF? You came back after three years to say that? Or did the original owner, realising that despite its relatively high number it was more desirable than a new seven-digit account and flog it to you on eBay for $3.27?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a black day indeed when Warcraft 3 can't run at full resolution on a laptop produced only a year ago.
Yes it can! I have the screenshots to prove it!
(Had to turn the detail down slightly though...)
John Lennon (or rather, his reputation) had the "benefit" of being shot dead before he got old and did all the sell-outy and trading-on-their-past things that musicians do when they get older.
Wasn't his final (and "comeback" album that ironically probably led to his death) considered the rather drippy and MORish work of a contended family man? (Yes, it's often said that settling down and being happy ruins an artist's work).
Would he have sold out? Who knows.
Ironically, this article is about an 'Open' software license from a movement that is all about 'Freedom', and how TomTom doesn't have the right to exercise that 'Freedom'.
You know... I do believe that you must be the *very first person* to have realised that the GPL's perpetuation of certain freedoms is done by curtailing certain others at source, and to have contrasted this with BSD's approach.
Let's use this as the start of an original and stimulating discussion on the subject. Or then again, heed the words of an exceptionally wise man and let's not.
Also, an interesting thought that just occurred to me is that GPL has its own RIAA/MPAA/MediaSentry thing going, of course the EFF and FSF have not been evil, yet ...
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The link doesn't work unless you drop the final slash; http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5384
This is the Internet age now. If it isn't nailed down nothing in the world will keep people from stealing it. And then making use of it however they see fit. This is part of the new bargain we are striking with people everywhere - creativity is now a "mashup" or a "remix" of older works because it is impossible to create anything new - it has all been done before.
Puh-leez! I don't mind agreeing that there's rarely if ever anything entirely new under the sun, but claiming that it's all been done and there's nothing left but mashups seems to be pandering to a defeatist and lazy attitude. The fact that the Internet and computer technology has made it *easier* to engage in such manipulation of existing material seems to have blinded our (or rather your) mind to the idea that anything new is possible.
Yes, there are some great mashups and great "remixes" work that quality as new works in their own right. However, I'm not buying that we can't create anything new- the prominence and popularity of mashup culture is because in the Internet age it's an easy way for the mainly lazy and mostly untalented masses (as it has always been) to create something interesting without too much effort and investment of their own.
I don't buy for a second that someone with real talent couldn't come along and create something way more creative and original if they were determined to, but it won't be someone who does it simply to have something cool to upload to YouTube; it'll be someone who has real passion and creativity.
FWIW, I'm waiting for the tools that will give people the ability to twist media from *any* source into what they want, truly taking 80s-inspired sampling beyond its roots and into the potential for true originality. In some ways such tools are already here- perhaps we just need to use them more creatively.
Even if they let people do this, it'll still require some talent to exploit those tools well and create something original with them. If you don't believe me, consider a pre-existing medium which- laws imposed by society aside- has no restrictions on what you can put in it beyond your own creativity and skill. Yet the vast majority of people do not create great literature.
(Umm, you just triggered my "astroturf" alert. This is the only comment Slashdot has you on record for, so I can't get a grasp of whether you are real or not.)
I realize there's a required minimum number of posts before becoming real - for the moment, I can only aspire to be real with post #2 here.
Yet oddly, despite having just posted your first comment, your user ID number is in the 800k range. IIRC we're up to about 1.2M now, so your account itself must at least a year old, if not two or three.
Actually, I think writers should be able to get paid for their work, just as others do... work, as in labor. And only paid once.
And I suppose that the printers should be paid just once too, no matter how many copies they produce?
Desirable or not, that would be consistent with the OP's logic; the printers generally get paid once at an agreed rate for each item they print, then get no further payment for those same physical items in the future. Of course, if they wanted to make more money, they could print more copies at an agreed rate. Just like a writer could write more books if he wanted more money.
That's not a position that I'm arguing for or agree with personally. However, it *is* the logical extension of the OP's position, not your flawed implication that following the same logic would result in printers being obliged to churn out endless copies for free.
(And does "printers" cover *any* printers, or just those printing on behalf of- and therefore effectively representing- the "publishers"? Because it makes a major difference to your implied point.)
Whether you agree with them or not, The Authors Guild is the name of the organization. Putting it in quotation marks to show your disdain is as silly
The name carries connotations that the OP disagrees with; indeed that was the whole point of his post.
You can argue that it's a name and nothing more, but if- as some argue- a particular name is intentionally chosen to imply certain things about an organisation that the writer disagrees with, then using the self-appointed name without quotes is effectively endorsing it.
If I set up a self-appointed organisation called "The Government of Western Europe" and no-one was allowed to put it in quotes (let alone prefix it with "so-called") or even comment on it, then every time they said it, it would effectively legitimise my choice of misleading name.
Bottom line, the quotes in the OP's case implied that "that's someone else's self-appointed name masquerading as a description, and nothing more". If he disagrees that they're the "guild" they represent themselves as, it's quite reasonable that he doesn't want to go along with it.
My gut reaction to this process in general is that it sounds cool and useful... but that it might be a good idea for most people to wait a few years before doing it en masse- just to see what (if any) side unforeseen effects it's had on the restored computers.
I'm having trouble figuring out how you're using hulu without a flash plugin.
Real Men get the URL for the Flash object then load the binary into vi and figure out how the movie looks in their heads.
At least Java throws an error when you accidentally leave off the second '=' in a '==' comparison; the real problem is that the purer C derived languages let assignments act as values, and cast them automatically to booleans without complaint.
Haven't used Java for quite a while now (yikes!), but is that an explicit feature or a useful side-effect of it warning of a non-boolean value where it expects a boolean value?
In other words, the assignment is still legal in that context, but it's the incorrect resultant type that trips the wire- and presumably would be missed if we were comparing/assigning boolean values?
I'm aware of all this, and agree entirely with what you say. But you missed my point.
I wasn't saying- and never would- that C was suitable for most 8-bit computers. Indeed, many of old-school BASIC's limitations (lack of structure, "hardwired" commands with core language- including syntax- tied to "function" commands like PRINT, etc.) are understandable in the context of those machines for the reason you give.
However, I was talking about *Visual Basic*, and that came out in the early 1990s during the late 16-bit/early 32-bit era.
Additional; I got distracted from the point I was making... which is that your separation of "true" capitalism from opportunism, greed and borderline legal behaviour is academic as the system does not work in a vacuum and is in fact dependent upon the same motivations that breed those problems.
Not saying that capitalism doesn't work, just that trying to argue its case in isolation is ultimately meaningless in the real world.
Collectivism and Marxism already failed. We don't need to try that again.
Don't recall anyone advocating that. Put that straw man away before it falls apart!
Though expecting 100% free-market capitalism to work without people taking advantage and/or subverting it for their own ends (even through the "legitimate" use of markets to- e.g.- get a monopoly) is just as flawed and dependent on a grossly over-idealised view of human nature as communism is.
Remember that though many will proclaim the merits of a free market, they really want it to be free for themselves... and will certainly seek to shut out competition given the chance.
saying that one syntax is more "serious" than another is just showing your own close mindedness
No, pretending that all syntaxes are equally suited for modern use is phoney open-mindedness. VB's syntax is at heart derived from around a language designed for beginners in an era when line numbers were necessary, and the functionality and the syntax of the language were mixed together and not easily expandable nor intended to be.
:)
These features were added with later BASICs, and of course VB, but the fundamental syntax can't shake off those origins... else it wouldn't be BASIC(!)
VB of course has mutated into something that old-school BASIC programmers wouldn't recognise or find that much easier to use than C-derived languages- in some ways having the worst of both worlds unless you're an "experienced" VB user.
It's not crap because it's different; it's crap because it retains the clunkiness and kludgy syntax of BASIC with no real advantages because the reasons for that clunkiness are a generation in the past and no longer relevant.
The features you describe are nice, but they'd have been much better added to a modern language rather than plastered onto the mutant offspring of a 40-year old language.
Agree with you that C#- and C-derived languages in general- aren't perfect though. *Every damn one* uses the same mistake-prone choice of "=" as the assignment operator.
And case-sensitivity in general I don't think is a good thing. But I'd rather put up with it than have to use BASIC.
That's because management deserves it. We make the big decisions and take the risks that enable the company to succeed.
Probable AC troll, so I won't waste time on most of it.
It's a good opportunity however, to point out that the problem with capitalism in recent years has been that the management have *not* been exposed to risks despite having been paid accordingly. They've worked themselves into the ludicrous position where they get paid bonuses regardless of whether they succeed or not.
They're generally are the *last* people to be exposed to the results of their failure, assuming that they haven't been astute enough to move on before the results of their short-term, shareholder-pleasing actions become evident.
Even when they're kicked out due to extreme incompetence, they'll still end up with comfortable payoff or at worst what they managed to get out of the company beforehand.
Yes, but what made it easy? Was it the visual programming environment, or was it specifically the language itself (which is what I was talking about)? And if the latter, is it inherently "easier" to use or is it just because the people who use Visual Studio are used to it?
It was always my understanding (and practice) that you wrote the program in C, and the GUI in VB. It's fantastic for that single purpose. Sometimes, it's easier to write a simple little script into the widget itself.
Is it significantly harder to write that script in C#?
VB isn't dying with .Net. There's VB.Net
Yes, I do believe that I was aware of that since I *explicitly mentioned it*!
and it's still going strong.
Compared to what? My understanding was that since the move to .Net, VB's popularity had declined.
In a lot of cases it gets new features before C# does.
Which new features?
And you may be correct when you say that, but I'd still rather wait until they appeared in a language that was fairly standard and whose syntax was much more suited to "serious" development if the alternative is having those features tacked onto an inconsistent and clunky design that is the result of building years of cruft onto an ancient language's syntax which was designed around a language for novices running on underpowered prehistoric computers over a generation ago.
VB may have added many more features on since then, but the fundamental syntax still remains based around the design of that time, and it's clunky and horrible for modern programming.
He's speaking commonly known in economic circles truth, YOU go do some research and keep up with things if you call bullshit.
No, the person who originally made the claims is the one responsible for backing them up. Period.
If it's as obvious as you claim, it should hardly be onerous to do so.
Not saying I necessarily disagree with you or the OP, but you're mistaken in who the burden of proof lies with.
The A7800 was a flop because it was too hard to program for. Same with the Jaguar of the early 90s.
That was possibly one reason, but the other would have been that Atari couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag.
The XE Games System wasn't exactly a shit-hot success either (*), despite being 100% compatible with the long-established 400/800 computers and their successors, which had years of development experience behind them. Even the older 5200 console was basically just 400/800-based-hardware (albeit with some stupid memory-map changes that rendered games not directly compatible).
(*) Though I think that was intended mainly for us Europeans who had a somewhat different market to the US and Japan. Even then Atari later released the 7800 here anyway- to no success whatsoever.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with using a visual programming environment if it's the right tool for the job and you aren't using it as a crutch for your lack of skill.
.Net. Perhaps given the third choice of C# (rather than just C++) for Windows development and faced with having to change much of their Classic VB code for the not-really-compatible VB.Net, they realised that VB's dated approach was more hassle than it was worth, even for a dyed-in-the-wool user?
However, Visual BASIC, the specific language? Ugh.
I used to program in old-school BASIC, but haven't used it for years... now, used to languages with C-derived syntax, VB seems horribly clunky and not easy to use, as basically used to be (supposedly).
Basically, I'm guessing VB was originally designed for people who were familiar with BASIC because back then it was "easier" than hard languages like C (and probably wasn't being used for such major projects that its inappropriateness wasn't such a problem).
I'd guess that it then retained BASIC style syntax over the years because it's what they were used to, even if it was clunky and now no easier to learn from scratch than C-syntaxed OO languages like C# if you weren't "locked in" to the BASIC way of doing things.
Fortunately, VB finally seems to be dying with the advent of
But just because everyone else if evil doen't give you an escuse to be, too. Waht did your mother say about all your friends jumping off a bridge?
Believe me, plenty of kids (and grown men) *are* that stupid and sheeplike.
Because you have the freedom to choose Dell, HP, Apple, PsyStar or any other PC vendor, means you have the freedom to buy a PC with an OS other than from Microsoft.
Unless MS abuse their market influence by bullying vendors who show signs of offering other OSs in a significant number of cases by increasing their OEM price of Windows... or withdrawing the "discounts" that their competition gets.
You imply that just because other OSs are available there is no problem. Well, if the vast majority of vendors are being coerced by MS into only offering Windows, and if a very high percentage of software and apps is only available for Windows- because it's what everyone's running, because that's what everything runs on, because.... Then IMHO there *is* a problem.
Even if they got there because people preferred MS in the early days, it wouldn't justify the fact that for a *long* time now people have chosen Windows because it's dominant in the market, not because it's the best. People buy Windows as a means to run software.
Though even that's charitably hypothetical; in reality no-one chose MS's legally-dubious, uninnovative, bought-in CP/M clone in the early days because it was the best. It got big because it first appeared on IBM's unexceptional PCs (and hence was the platform for IBM compatible software), which in turn were successful in the business field because.... well, because IBM made them. In other words, MS-DOS rode to domination on the back of IBM's domination of the market and it was self-perpetuating after that.
Your invocation of the Mozilla vs. IE situation is lame bordering on trollish. IE only comes with Windows and never came out for Linux; giving it away free encouraged its domination in the market and discouraged support of other more standard and platform-neutral browsers, hence encouraging more people to run Windows.
No, it's pretty much true. Most women do not use logic or reasoning. They can't even manage money properly. I for one do not want the vast majority of women to be programmers that would be working on anything of mine.
Looking at your comments page (out of vague curiosity to see if you're a genuine troll or just an ordinary user saying something vaguely trollish), I notice that this is your second comment. Your only other comment was made way back in June 2005.
WTF? You came back after three years to say that? Or did the original owner, realising that despite its relatively high number it was more desirable than a new seven-digit account and flog it to you on eBay for $3.27?