No, it's a 'fact' that MS did bully the other companies. You cannot prove that if MS hadn't done the monopolostic stuff that they wouldn't be near as powerful as they are today. The problem is that there isn't anybody on the horizon that could have created a competing product. Linux alone is proof that it's a humungous task and few companies are up to it.
MS got big because it had the right product at the right time. You can squash the competition, but you cannot magically force people to buy Windows machines.
"Why would consumers want this at all, and why will they choose it over other alternatives?"
Because the content industry is basically saying "You want digital content, but the only way you'll get it is if we can protect it from you thieves." They're content to hold out until we all throw up our arms and say "fine, whatever."
The P3 serial Number didn't buy anybody anything, but it cost people their privacy. The DRM case is different because the content industries are holding their content hostage until we give in to their demands.
So, in this case, it's maintain your free open computer, or get the digital content we want under their terms.
How about the fact that Linux, being a collaborative effort, cannot be shut down by any action MS takes. Despite that, Windows is still far ahead of Linux in terms of the end-user experience. MS and Apple are both innovative when they release a new OS. Arguably, OSX to OS9 was a huge change, as is Win2k to Windows XP. (The overall value of the changes is subjective..) Meanwhile, Linux is still playing catchup. It's clear that the UI is the weakest link for Linux. Linux has had what.. nearly 10 years to grow, and it's still lacking a modern UI. If it's that hard to solve that problem, it would appear that MS did do something radical with the introduction of Win95, and later on to 98 and so forth.
Microsoft marketed the hell out of Windows 95. Even old Dilbert cartoons reflect that. Nothing illegal about that. I remember more Amiga commercials than I do Mac commercials. That's pretty sad. It is not wrong for Microsoft to advertise. That can make a huge difference. "Hey, buy a computer at Gateway, and you'll be cruising the web."
You should also consider that anybody carrying MS products would have to agree to it in the first place. MS didn't suddenly conjure up billions of dollars and go telling people what to sell and what not to sell.
I fully concede that MS was a monopoly. I never denied) that MS did shitty stuff. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that sliminess alone made the what they are today. There's just too much to all the Windows OS's that show that lots of design-work went into it that never made it to other OS's. Their code's not so good for it, but at least thought went into it. Turn a computer into something useful (like Windows 95 did) and suddenly you have a hot product. Even iMacs became popular for that.
" My best guess it that you just want to discount anybody who disagrees with you, and you'll use any excuse to do it."
You're close. I'm going to discount anybody who's view who turns a convo about MS into a "MS SHOULD BURN IN HELL!" debate. You're worried I won't listen to you because you disagree. I'm worried you won't even hear my PoV because *I* disagree with the common view. *I* am the one with the uphill battle. *I* have to fight against everybody's emotions against MS just to make my point. All you have to do is say "MS is absolutely evil, end of story!" and you'll get cheered. Funny thing is, I'm not pro MS. I'm not trying to convince you that MS is great and we should all be grateful. I only wish to convince people that they cannot act like childish brats over topics that involve MS. Not only is lotsa FUD getting spread around, but they don't realize that their behaviour will discredit them. Is the DoJ going to take Slashdot seriously regarding a complaint about MS? "Oh please, you all hate MS anyway, we can't get a reasonable response from you." Treat them more rationally, and not only will people believe you when you have a legit complaint, but you'll also know what to do right. (as opposed to only being aware of what's wrong.)
So here's my side of it, take it or leave it:
You need to understand that even with all of the bs MS did to mess with the competition, they still had a product ppl wanted.
MS may have lined their pockets with more money, but there's still the question of "Where did MS's money come from?".
Most extremist theories I hear are like this:
1.) MS gets their OS Sold with machines 2.) MS supresses competitors from selling competing OS's 3.) ???? 4.) Profit!
Notice that little gap there? They seem to think that MS can just magically extort money from people's pockets. They don't seem to understand that MS's monopoly, though definitely a monopoly, was not the same type of monopoly the Bells had. Few people needed to have a computer when MS started to get really big. They certainly didn't necessarily need a Windows machine. In the phone company example, you *had* to have a phone. You *had* to pay money somewhere. MS may have been able to surpress competitors, but there was little they could do to convince outlets to say "don't sell Macs".
There was a huge boom in PC's sold starting circa 1995... which, conincidentally, is when Windows 95 was released. There were all kinds of problems with Windows 95, stability in particular. Yet, people didn't exactly flock to Mac did they? Macs were available and proven long before 95 was released, and were arguably better machines in most respects, yet they flocked to PC's anyway. With lots of money, you can overpower your competitors, but you cannot force somebody to buy your product. An explosion of people said "I want a Windows based computer." (Hint: Mac should have advertised more.)
If MS hadn't bullied other companies, there may actually be a competitor around. I doubt that, though. I certainly doubt that they would be a signficant competitor. Look at Mac, they arguably have superior systems and UI's to Windows, yet they've hardly got a percentage of the market. Think about the mountain they'd have to climb. First they'd have to develop a reasonable UI, not an easy task. Even today, there isn't a UI near as good as Apple's or MS's. KDE and Gnome inch their way closer every release, but there's still a lot to be desired. It's functional, but not complete. Second, driver support. Windows has a huuuuuuuuuge set of built-in drivers. Linux is at the point now where it will more or less run on any machine initially, but it only recently got to that point. Heck, I remember trying to get Redhat 6 running on my laptop. Despite having a 'supported video card', it insisted on running at 640 by 480 anyway. Ive heard a number of other stories about vid cards and other various hardware failing to run. Heck, even on Redhat 7.3 I couldn't get sound to work in KDE. Third, there needs to be a set of apps ready to run on this OS so the user can get to work. That is a HUGE development effort and few companies are up to the task. MS did it, Apple did it, and Linux did it thanks to the large community developing apps for it. The only company that immediately comes to mind that could handle a chore like that is IBM. (I'd say Sun, but I honestly am not that familiar with them.)
I am no fan of MS. They've pulled stuff that's personally made my life harder (particularly involving IE) and hurt my company. However, I'm going to maintain level-headedness when discussing their existence. I firmly believe that MS would be nearly as big as they are today if they didn't pull their monopolistic practices. They created the right product at the right time, and they continue to support their products in exciting ways. They would be a virtual monopoly either way. If they got that big, even legitimately, it would be nearly impossible for somebody else to swoop in and make a huge dent in the marketplace.
Heck, right now I'm running Windows 2000. My machine is relatively complex for a desktop PC. It has 5 hard drives (4 scsi, 1 firewire), dual processors, dual monitors, gig of RAM, a CDRW,a DVD RAM drive, and a few other odds and ends. I run mission critical apps on my machine. I do 3D Rendering. I cannot afford to have my machine crash in the middle of a weekend render. It never has. It was easy to install, it was easy to install new hardware and get it running. I have not had any OS related problems in months. My laptop runs Win2k, it performs admirably. My desktop at home, similiarly equipped but only one processor works just as well. My company adopted Windows 2000 and is not regretting it. Everybody here has similar experience with it performing well. It is definitely a product worth buying. I don't like MS, but they solved my mission critical problem. I could have gone to Linux, I could have gone to Mac, but Win2k was the best choice here. There's no monopoly leveraging in that decision.
As I've said before, at some point MS had to make a good product to get where they are. Like it or hate it, it's hard to dispute. If you'd like to educate me on some of their practices, I'm all ears. But don't expect me to listen to "MS only got big by gouging people" crap. If you want to have a less heated and more objective discussion about it, I'm all ears. I may even admit that I'm wrong. Just don't put me in an defensive mode. (Hey at least Im honest about it.)
Btw, if you've read this far, I really appreciate it. I may disagree with you but at least you listened. And for that, I say thank you, and I respect you for that.
When the word Elvis is used, the words bloat, dead, and clusters (like peanut clusters) come to mind. I think marketing could have picked a better name for the FS.
That's fair. I'd like to drop this topic anyway. I think ppl feel that I'm anti-Linux, I'm not. Im just annoyed that both my attempts to switch were failures. (not intended as another poke at Linux, but a reflection of why this topic bugs me. Im not a fan of MS, but it's the best for me today.)
My claim was really clear, 'retard'. For the 90% of the people out there RedHat's not ready today.
Countering with "I made it work with one example, therefore you're wrong" is not a definitive blow.
I still don't think it's ready. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. The worst case scenario is that RedHat got some badly needed publicity.
For the record, I used Redhat 7.2. It was not near as easy to install as people claimed. It was a bitch finding anything in it (everything starts in K for some reason), and getting it on the net was painful. The only thing I didn't have trouble with was installing Opera.
It's going to be a couple of versions before I try switching again. Others will feel the same.
Heh. I just read a few of the posts here. Lotsa accusations of AOL tricking people into giving them money etc. Going back over the last few days, lots of people have really interesting (and false) ideas about how large companies get big.
Let me give you all a piece of economical trivia: Q.) How does a company get big? A.) A lot of customers pay for a service or product it provides.
It's true for AOL, it's true for Microsoft, it's true for Starbuck's, it's true for Walmart, it's true for Disney, it's true for the RIAA, etc etc etc.
Have these companies done less than ethical stuff to get that way? Sure. Whatever. At some point, people still had to voluntarily give them money. At that same point, most had to be pleased with the service or product.
In other words: You cannot build a business solely on thievery and deceit. You cannot just build a monopoly one day. You cannot just build a coffeeshop next to an existing one and turn on a magic mind beam to make customers zomby-walk into your store. There's something enticicing for them.
AOL's not everybody's favorite ISP. So what? It does it's job. A.) They make it easy for one to get on the net, B.) They offer a price that seems (emphasize SEEMS) reasonable. C.) They don't make the user feel like it's a huge technical challenge to get up and running. There are better deals out that, but that doesn't negate what AOL provides. They didn't get big by playing games with people's credit cards or manipulating minutes or whatever the other overly-creative people have come up with.
Just chill. A corp can't get big by being 100% bastard, 30% is about as high as you can get away with.
The XBOX is a Game Machine. Say it with me: XBOX... IS.... A.... GAME... MACHINE. You play games on it. Until MS starts making a profit on these systems, expect them to protect it. Once it gets big, these little things will be largely ignored.
"what a waste of whitespace. Say something you pussy."
What do you want me to say? Speaking of 'saying something', why don't you speak in complete sentences so that what you say is understood. Otherwise, you're just no saying anything 'you pussy'.
"I suppose that my point is win32 is a doable solution, but once you become acustomed to the incredible flexibility of Linux, it is difficult to stomache windows."
Just wanted to let you know that I read your post I respect you making the decision that way. I'm no fan of Linux, but I don't have a problem with somebody who's happy using it.
"There's nothing at all illegal in my dumping my various arcade boards, or having someone do this for me, and running those roms in MAME. Which I've already done for many of them."
Somebody against the XBOX modding would say: "Oh yes, as your one (1) example points out, every single person on earth who uses MAME would have the arcade board to dump the ROM From. They wouldn't conceive of just downloading the ROMS from the web."
I will state again: That's what they would say, so don't flame me for it.
I honestly did not see any valid reasoning in your post.
"Sorry, I'm afraid you contradict yourself in that statement."
When did I contradict myself?
"Microsoft bullied its way into the position int the beginning of GUI clones with Win95."
So did Mac bully it's way into Xerox's work, or did they just come up with a product that people wanted?
"Microsoft clawed its way deeper into the pit of monopoly that it calls home, and as a result hardware manufacturers can't find it profittable to make linux versions of their software when such a small percecntage of the people use linux compared to windows."
And how did MS start this monopoly? It didn't always have money. As for hardware manufacturers not finding it profitable to make Linux versions, it's called "Nobody is using Linux". That's not MS's fault, that's 100% Linux's fault. It's not ready for prime time, and yeah you can blame MS for that. MS made a product that Linux has to live up to. Until it does that, it won't reach the saturation point that Windows has.
Sorry. MS has done unethical things, no denying that. However, it could not possibly have gotten anywhere without a product that people actually wanted. A lot of people just don't want Linux right now.
"Maybe you should have put some thought into what he said before replying."
Actually, you're the one guilty of not putting thought into what he said before typing. He said that I claimed Windows was a better OS than OSX. I never said that.
The Linux comment was directed at everybody who jumped my butt over this thread. You might have noticed that if you read the part where I said "I don't think anybody who's 'argued' with me about this..."
If it seemed odd to you, you should have re-read what I said until it made sense, or at least asked me what I meant by it. Oh well, you're anonymous, nobody will know how ill-informed you were.
"To claim Windows is better than OS X is dubious as best."
Didn't say that. Heh.
I don't think anybody who's 'argued' with me about this has actually put any thought into what I said.
Gee, I'm sorry I didn't sing the praises of Linux. Either go make Linux better or grow up. I don't care which, just don't argue with me for the sake of getting pokes at MS in.
Slashdot Mirror
"This file is too large for Notepad to open.
Would you like to use WordPad to read this file?"
Notepad in Windows 2000 never produced that error. I'm reasonably sure that NT4's Notepad didn't have that limitation either.
In other words, they fixed it like 5 or 6 years ago.
Am I the only one who still uses Notepad?
No, it's a 'fact' that MS did bully the other companies. You cannot prove that if MS hadn't done the monopolostic stuff that they wouldn't be near as powerful as they are today. The problem is that there isn't anybody on the horizon that could have created a competing product. Linux alone is proof that it's a humungous task and few companies are up to it.
MS got big because it had the right product at the right time. You can squash the competition, but you cannot magically force people to buy Windows machines.
"Why would consumers want this at all, and why will they choose it over other alternatives?"
Because the content industry is basically saying "You want digital content, but the only way you'll get it is if we can protect it from you thieves." They're content to hold out until we all throw up our arms and say "fine, whatever."
The P3 serial Number didn't buy anybody anything, but it cost people their privacy. The DRM case is different because the content industries are holding their content hostage until we give in to their demands.
So, in this case, it's maintain your free open computer, or get the digital content we want under their terms.
Hope that answers your question.
Thank you for reading my post.
"What do you have to justify yours?"
How about the fact that Linux, being a collaborative effort, cannot be shut down by any action MS takes. Despite that, Windows is still far ahead of Linux in terms of the end-user experience. MS and Apple are both innovative when they release a new OS. Arguably, OSX to OS9 was a huge change, as is Win2k to Windows XP. (The overall value of the changes is subjective..) Meanwhile, Linux is still playing catchup. It's clear that the UI is the weakest link for Linux. Linux has had what.. nearly 10 years to grow, and it's still lacking a modern UI. If it's that hard to solve that problem, it would appear that MS did do something radical with the introduction of Win95, and later on to 98 and so forth.
Microsoft marketed the hell out of Windows 95. Even old Dilbert cartoons reflect that. Nothing illegal about that. I remember more Amiga commercials than I do Mac commercials. That's pretty sad. It is not wrong for Microsoft to advertise. That can make a huge difference. "Hey, buy a computer at Gateway, and you'll be cruising the web."
You should also consider that anybody carrying MS products would have to agree to it in the first place. MS didn't suddenly conjure up billions of dollars and go telling people what to sell and what not to sell.
I fully concede that MS was a monopoly. I never denied) that MS did shitty stuff. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that sliminess alone made the what they are today. There's just too much to all the Windows OS's that show that lots of design-work went into it that never made it to other OS's. Their code's not so good for it, but at least thought went into it. Turn a computer into something useful (like Windows 95 did) and suddenly you have a hot product. Even iMacs became popular for that.
" My best guess it that you just want to discount anybody who disagrees with you, and you'll use any excuse to do it."
You're close. I'm going to discount anybody who's view who turns a convo about MS into a "MS SHOULD BURN IN HELL!" debate. You're worried I won't listen to you because you disagree. I'm worried you won't even hear my PoV because *I* disagree with the common view. *I* am the one with the uphill battle. *I* have to fight against everybody's emotions against MS just to make my point. All you have to do is say "MS is absolutely evil, end of story!" and you'll get cheered. Funny thing is, I'm not pro MS. I'm not trying to convince you that MS is great and we should all be grateful. I only wish to convince people that they cannot act like childish brats over topics that involve MS. Not only is lotsa FUD getting spread around, but they don't realize that their behaviour will discredit them. Is the DoJ going to take Slashdot seriously regarding a complaint about MS? "Oh please, you all hate MS anyway, we can't get a reasonable response from you." Treat them more rationally, and not only will people believe you when you have a legit complaint, but you'll also know what to do right. (as opposed to only being aware of what's wrong.)
So here's my side of it, take it or leave it:
You need to understand that even with all of the bs MS did to mess with the competition, they still had a product ppl wanted.
MS may have lined their pockets with more money, but there's still the question of "Where did MS's money come from?".
Most extremist theories I hear are like this:
1.) MS gets their OS Sold with machines
2.) MS supresses competitors from selling competing OS's
3.) ????
4.) Profit!
Notice that little gap there? They seem to think that MS can just magically extort money from people's pockets. They don't seem to understand that MS's monopoly, though definitely a monopoly, was not the same type of monopoly the Bells had. Few people needed to have a computer when MS started to get really big. They certainly didn't necessarily need a Windows machine. In the phone company example, you *had* to have a phone. You *had* to pay money somewhere. MS may have been able to surpress competitors, but there was little they could do to convince outlets to say "don't sell Macs".
There was a huge boom in PC's sold starting circa 1995... which, conincidentally, is when Windows 95 was released. There were all kinds of problems with Windows 95, stability in particular. Yet, people didn't exactly flock to Mac did they? Macs were available and proven long before 95 was released, and were arguably better machines in most respects, yet they flocked to PC's anyway. With lots of money, you can overpower your competitors, but you cannot force somebody to buy your product. An explosion of people said "I want a Windows based computer." (Hint: Mac should have advertised more.)
If MS hadn't bullied other companies, there may actually be a competitor around. I doubt that, though. I certainly doubt that they would be a signficant competitor. Look at Mac, they arguably have superior systems and UI's to Windows, yet they've hardly got a percentage of the market. Think about the mountain they'd have to climb. First they'd have to develop a reasonable UI, not an easy task. Even today, there isn't a UI near as good as Apple's or MS's. KDE and Gnome inch their way closer every release, but there's still a lot to be desired. It's functional, but not complete. Second, driver support. Windows has a huuuuuuuuuge set of built-in drivers. Linux is at the point now where it will more or less run on any machine initially, but it only recently got to that point. Heck, I remember trying to get Redhat 6 running on my laptop. Despite having a 'supported video card', it insisted on running at 640 by 480 anyway. Ive heard a number of other stories about vid cards and other various hardware failing to run. Heck, even on Redhat 7.3 I couldn't get sound to work in KDE. Third, there needs to be a set of apps ready to run on this OS so the user can get to work. That is a HUGE development effort and few companies are up to the task. MS did it, Apple did it, and Linux did it thanks to the large community developing apps for it. The only company that immediately comes to mind that could handle a chore like that is IBM. (I'd say Sun, but I honestly am not that familiar with them.)
I am no fan of MS. They've pulled stuff that's personally made my life harder (particularly involving IE) and hurt my company. However, I'm going to maintain level-headedness when discussing their existence. I firmly believe that MS would be nearly as big as they are today if they didn't pull their monopolistic practices. They created the right product at the right time, and they continue to support their products in exciting ways. They would be a virtual monopoly either way. If they got that big, even legitimately, it would be nearly impossible for somebody else to swoop in and make a huge dent in the marketplace.
Heck, right now I'm running Windows 2000. My machine is relatively complex for a desktop PC. It has 5 hard drives (4 scsi, 1 firewire), dual processors, dual monitors, gig of RAM, a CDRW,a DVD RAM drive, and a few other odds and ends. I run mission critical apps on my machine. I do 3D Rendering. I cannot afford to have my machine crash in the middle of a weekend render. It never has. It was easy to install, it was easy to install new hardware and get it running. I have not had any OS related problems in months. My laptop runs Win2k, it performs admirably. My desktop at home, similiarly equipped but only one processor works just as well. My company adopted Windows 2000 and is not regretting it. Everybody here has similar experience with it performing well. It is definitely a product worth buying. I don't like MS, but they solved my mission critical problem. I could have gone to Linux, I could have gone to Mac, but Win2k was the best choice here. There's no monopoly leveraging in that decision.
As I've said before, at some point MS had to make a good product to get where they are. Like it or hate it, it's hard to dispute. If you'd like to educate me on some of their practices, I'm all ears. But don't expect me to listen to "MS only got big by gouging people" crap. If you want to have a less heated and more objective discussion about it, I'm all ears. I may even admit that I'm wrong. Just don't put me in an defensive mode. (Hey at least Im honest about it.)
Btw, if you've read this far, I really appreciate it. I may disagree with you but at least you listened. And for that, I say thank you, and I respect you for that.
Good day.
When the word Elvis is used, the words bloat, dead, and clusters (like peanut clusters) come to mind. I think marketing could have picked a better name for the FS.
"100% Bastard [enron.com]"
And not in business anymore... (effectively)
"Defend your positions. You look like a fool."
Why? Who (besides you, and yes I know you posted the other comment too) is even paying attention?
I don't care if I look like a fool or not. If I'm a fool, then RedHat's in a better position than I thought and maybe I can finally switch.
That's fair. I'd like to drop this topic anyway. I think ppl feel that I'm anti-Linux, I'm not. Im just annoyed that both my attempts to switch were failures. (not intended as another poke at Linux, but a reflection of why this topic bugs me. Im not a fan of MS, but it's the best for me today.)
My claim was really clear, 'retard'. For the 90% of the people out there RedHat's not ready today.
Countering with "I made it work with one example, therefore you're wrong" is not a definitive blow.
I still don't think it's ready. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. The worst case scenario is that RedHat got some badly needed publicity.
For the record, I used Redhat 7.2. It was not near as easy to install as people claimed. It was a bitch finding anything in it (everything starts in K for some reason), and getting it on the net was painful. The only thing I didn't have trouble with was installing Opera.
It's going to be a couple of versions before I try switching again. Others will feel the same.
"Mind you, it takes one minute for me to download a 3 minute song. "
B Ab ada!
A 3 minute song in one minute? You a Chipmunks fan?
"SmackmybitchupSmackmybitchup!"
"SmackmybitchupSmackmybitchup!"
boombabeebaBAbada!boombabeebaBAbada!boombabeeba
"MYBITCH!"
Heh I doubt that song'll appear as a Chipmunk's greatest hit.
Heh. I just read a few of the posts here. Lotsa accusations of AOL tricking people into giving them money etc. Going back over the last few days, lots of people have really interesting (and false) ideas about how large companies get big.
Let me give you all a piece of economical trivia: Q.) How does a company get big? A.) A lot of customers pay for a service or product it provides.
It's true for AOL, it's true for Microsoft, it's true for Starbuck's, it's true for Walmart, it's true for Disney, it's true for the RIAA, etc etc etc.
Have these companies done less than ethical stuff to get that way? Sure. Whatever. At some point, people still had to voluntarily give them money. At that same point, most had to be pleased with the service or product.
In other words: You cannot build a business solely on thievery and deceit. You cannot just build a monopoly one day. You cannot just build a coffeeshop next to an existing one and turn on a magic mind beam to make customers zomby-walk into your store. There's something enticicing for them.
AOL's not everybody's favorite ISP. So what? It does it's job. A.) They make it easy for one to get on the net, B.) They offer a price that seems (emphasize SEEMS) reasonable. C.) They don't make the user feel like it's a huge technical challenge to get up and running. There are better deals out that, but that doesn't negate what AOL provides. They didn't get big by playing games with people's credit cards or manipulating minutes or whatever the other overly-creative people have come up with.
Just chill. A corp can't get big by being 100% bastard, 30% is about as high as you can get away with.
The XBOX is a Game Machine. Say it with me: XBOX... IS.... A.... GAME... MACHINE. You play games on it. Until MS starts making a profit on these systems, expect them to protect it. Once it gets big, these little things will be largely ignored.
Yeah, real scientific.
"I visited one site, and it works."
"I bought 1 (one) game."
"I can synch up my linux based zaurus."
Hardly devastating.
here's what I read:
"Oversimplify, oversimplify, oversimplify, end of story."
I dated this one chick that really was into... uh heh heh. I'm not sure you guys are ready for a story like that yet.
"what a waste of whitespace. Say something you pussy."
What do you want me to say? Speaking of 'saying something', why don't you speak in complete sentences so that what you say is understood. Otherwise, you're just no saying anything 'you pussy'.
"Since when is it an imperative to accept "positive comments" that one happens to disagree with?"
Why do you think it's that? I just don't want to do with extremist bullshit. You want me to listen to you, be rational. Not too hard to ask.
Let me put it another way: You wouldn't give me the time of day if I said "Linux 100% blows, here's a long detailed list of reasons why."
Hypocrite.
"I suppose that my point is win32 is a doable solution, but once you become acustomed to the incredible flexibility of Linux, it is difficult to stomache windows."
Just wanted to let you know that I read your post I respect you making the decision that way. I'm no fan of Linux, but I don't have a problem with somebody who's happy using it.
"There's nothing at all illegal in my dumping my various arcade boards, or having someone do this for me, and running those roms in MAME. Which I've already done for many of them."
Somebody against the XBOX modding would say: "Oh yes, as your one (1) example points out, every single person on earth who uses MAME would have the arcade board to dump the ROM From. They wouldn't conceive of just downloading the ROMS from the web."
I will state again: That's what they would say, so don't flame me for it.
"you mean stealing money from charities isn't ethical enough for you???"
Are the users doing that or is the company who made Kazaa doing that? Heh.
I honestly did not see any valid reasoning in your post.
"Sorry, I'm afraid you contradict yourself in that statement."
When did I contradict myself?
"Microsoft bullied its way into the position int the beginning of GUI clones with Win95."
So did Mac bully it's way into Xerox's work, or did they just come up with a product that people wanted?
"Microsoft clawed its way deeper into the pit of monopoly that it calls home, and as a result hardware manufacturers can't find it profittable to make linux versions of their software when such a small percecntage of the people use linux compared to windows."
And how did MS start this monopoly? It didn't always have money. As for hardware manufacturers not finding it profitable to make Linux versions, it's called "Nobody is using Linux". That's not MS's fault, that's 100% Linux's fault. It's not ready for prime time, and yeah you can blame MS for that. MS made a product that Linux has to live up to. Until it does that, it won't reach the saturation point that Windows has.
Sorry. MS has done unethical things, no denying that. However, it could not possibly have gotten anywhere without a product that people actually wanted. A lot of people just don't want Linux right now.
"Maybe you should have put some thought into what he said before replying."
Actually, you're the one guilty of not putting thought into what he said before typing. He said that I claimed Windows was a better OS than OSX. I never said that.
The Linux comment was directed at everybody who jumped my butt over this thread. You might have noticed that if you read the part where I said "I don't think anybody who's 'argued' with me about this..."
If it seemed odd to you, you should have re-read what I said until it made sense, or at least asked me what I meant by it. Oh well, you're anonymous, nobody will know how ill-informed you were.
"To claim Windows is better than OS X is dubious as best."
Didn't say that. Heh.
I don't think anybody who's 'argued' with me about this has actually put any thought into what I said.
Gee, I'm sorry I didn't sing the praises of Linux. Either go make Linux better or grow up. I don't care which, just don't argue with me for the sake of getting pokes at MS in.