Remember whose benchmarks these are . . .
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
·
· Score: 1
Remember that these benchmarks still come from an organization funded by Microsoft, and an organization that has done slanted and biased benchmarks before. That doesn't mean that these results are automatically false or that they have no value; however, one should not take these benchmarks at face value without looking further at the details of the test, especially since other benchmarks have come to the opposite conclusion. ZDNet, if I remember right, did a benchmark earlier and concluded that Linux 'ate NT's lunch'. And that benchmark is not the only one that has concluded that.
Mindcraft does have a vested stake in having the results come out in NT's favor. It was embarassed previously when its original benchmarks were shown to be essentially a hatchet job funded by Microsoft. To make both Microsoft happy and salvage its own reputation, it has to
1) Produce results that still favor its backer, Microsoft, and
2) Have the results favor NT by a lower margin that the previous test so that it looks like the later tests are 'unbiased'.
I am not saying that their results are necessarily incorrect. What I'm saying is that Mindcraft has a vested interest in having the outcome of the tests come out a certain way, and may still have found a way to rig the tests. Before jumping to conclusions, we should learn the details of the testing to see if significant slant is still present in the tests.
Have you used E? I have. Mind you, I don't think that it's perfect. Its documentation is poor, and I think that it makes some things theme-dependent that should persist across themes, like buttons. I've found E to be fairly stable, though. Raster's idea of 0.15.5 is some people's idea of 1.0.
"When you buy a CD or a VHS movie or a newspaper, it is covered by the same IP laws as software which means you bought permission for *you* to use the item and no one else."
Except that's not true. Generally, what you are not allowed to do with CDs and VHS movies is to make copies of them or use them for commercial purposes. Have friends over to listen to CDs and/or watch a movie--OK. Show a movie on a big screen, and charge others for the privilege of seeing it--not OK. The rules are not quite as restrictive as they are for software.
"Too many people treat being right and being leagal[sic] at the same time[sic]."
True. However, I would say that unless a law is outright evil, it should not be broken. If it became illegal to hire Jews or to hide them from the police in order to keep them from getting killed, I hope I would have the courage to break such laws. Now compare that with having to pay $XXX amount of dollars in order to have a legal copy of Mathematica. Vast difference in importance, no? Intellectual property laws may be inconvenient (certainly), questionable (maybe), moronic (maybe), artificial (*definitely*), or whatever, but outright evil? Have some perspective here.
If you truly consider proprietary software evil, then avoid it entirely. Pirated software is about as encumbered as proprietary software that's been paid for. You still can't see the source and fix bugs, or find programmers who could fix the bugs. And if you had even a whisper of a prayer for support of the legally bought product, you most definitely have no chance of support for a pirated product. If you wish to be consistent with the stance that all software should be open source, then avoid proprietary software and accept the privations.
I think blaming Doom and Quake for the shootings in Littleton is stretching it. I don't think that there is a nice neat cause and effect here.
That said, I don't think that glorifying violence helps matters either, whether in movies, TV, games, or whatnot. I think we're probably more desensitized to the violence we see than we realize. I think the reason that the effects aren't so obvious is that most of us, though, even the nerds and geeks, have real lives of some manner or another that ground us at least half-decently in reality. We can see the fantasy violence for what it is--fantasy--and for the most part we can filter out its impact. It's sort of like getting used to polluted air. We adapt to the unhealthy atmosphere and get desensitized to it, and for the most part feel no ill effects. For those who are already vulnerable, who are mentally disturbed to begin with or have other problems, the impact of the media violence may be a lot harsher, and it may exacerbate the uglier stirrings in them much more strongly than one who is healthier to start with.
I'm not saying that media violence causes real life violence. I'm just saying that it may make it worse for those already badly disturbed to begin with.
Mostly he writes song parodies, such as "Eat It", which is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", or "Living in the 'Fridge", which is a parody of Aerosmith's (?) "Living on the Edge". He also does jokey polkas that are medleys of various contemporary songs, and occasionally does silly songs where both lyrics and music are his own, like "Dare to be Stupid". I don't think you'll hear him on the radio too much, although he got his start on Dr. Demento, a radio show devoted to noveltly songs.
As for myself, I like Linux. It does what I need it to do, and exposure to it has helped me learn things that I might not have learned otherwise.
Linux is an OS, though, not a religion. Linux is not the One True Way (nor any Unix per se), and its acceptance by a user should depend on whether it fits the user's needs. You have decided for yourself that Linux doesn't meet your needs and Win 95 does. So be it.
I may not like the OS you use, but I'll contend that it is your privilege to use it.
>Any thought of independence is beaten >down with the oldest and crudest method - the >threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in >hell".
This sounds more like a bad Sunday school experience than the God of the scriptures. Take a read at the Psalms and Job. You will find complaint after complaint against God, usually to the tune of "Where the heck are you, God?" If God was supposed to beat down *any* thought of independence with hellfire, then the psalmists hands' would have been too trembly to put pen to scroll, let alone dare write down their thoughts.
>Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle >ages.
Well, *the Church* ruled Europe, and it wasn't acting very Christian. Christians are not supposed to be going around torturing, maiming, burning people at the stake, etc.
>Faith means to believe something without >evidence. This is the very opposite of >rationality and enlightenment.
Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.
Look, the likelihood that I'm going to somehow make you into a believer over the Net is pretty small. Hopefully, though, I can get you to examine your own criticisms to see if they truly hold up.
"Novice users aren't going to be trying to change keybindings."
Don't be so sure about that. I had to do it because a keybinding from KDE conflicted with a keybinding from my app.
"For the novice user, a preconfigured machine with KDE/KDM (the latter part is *crucial*), StarOffice, Netscape, KPPP, and a few other goodies is as easy as Windows, and almost as easy as MacOS."
That's true for starting out. I myself started with Applix and FVWM2 set up in the default Red Hat configuration. But at some point, I had to learn how to mount floppies and CD-ROMs. I had to learn what permissions were. I had to learn how to change my execution path so that StarOffice came up when I typed 'soffice'. I'm no hacker, at least not a software hacker, but I still had to learn things in order to really use my system. Life with Linux is not life with Windows. You can be a technophobe and use Win95 and Mac, but you can't be a technophobe and use Linux.
From the point of view of an end-user used to the GUIs of Windows or Macs, it is harder to use. Some aspects are just plain different; for example, the need to have a separate window manager to run X, which in turn involves knowing about the.Xclients or.xinitrc file and what it does and how to alter it so that you can run a different window manager. Not that difficult to understand once you get used to it--but you do have to get used to it. Some aspects are simply flaws. The usefulness and ease-of-use of the GUI tools still needs work. KDE is commonly touted as a user-friendly GUI, but it still has a number of niggling annoying flaws that could make a new user throw up his or her hands. For example, the place for turning off the keybinding for switching desktops, Ctrl-Tab, is in neither in the K menu entries "Settings -> Keys -> Standard" nor "Settings -> Keys -> Global" but in "Settings -> Windows -> Advanced". Drag and drop is still being worked on. When it comes to underlying technical quality, Linux is ahead, but its GUIs are still playing catchup.
The problem is that when the application is turning the document into HTML, it doesn't turn the 'smart quotes' into either the appropriate ASCII character or the appropriate HTML enties for left and right quotes. In short, the filter for saving to HTML is badly designed.
What's wrong with a commercial organization funding a GNU project? It's hardly hypocrisy, since GNU has no objections to businesses making money off of software so long as they don't restrict access to the source. Red Hat's popularity isn't locked in. Most, if not all, of their tools and niceities are under the GPL--including RPM. Also, Red Hat is still a small company.
"If GNU were to so chose, would they at anytime be in a position to say that they will host the primary web/ftp sites themselves instead of redhat?"
If Red Hat tried to play power games, they would probably get branded as 'the Microsoft of Linux' and both flamed and boycotted by the Linux community. Remember, there's not much to stop people from using another distribution. If Red Hat were to cut off GNOME for moving its servers, it would probably hurt GNOME but Red Hat as well.
If you mean that the same functions in different apps are accessed in the same way, then yes, consistency is a good thing because it makes it easier to transfer knowledge about one app to another. However, trying to make all apps somehow look alike is not necessarily constructive and may make the UI less logical because the programmer(s) feel(s) that the functionality of the app has to be force-fit into a certain mold. Consistency is a good rule, but programmers and UI designers have to rememeber the reason for it.
I've heard people say that KDE is ugly; maybe he thought so, too. (I've seen KDE, and I don't think it's ugly, but that's a matter of taste.) Anyway, for people coming out of the world of Windows, it's probably pretty hard to conceptualize the idea that X is the window system but not really the GUI per se, and that the window manager is yet another separate program, so he may very well thought what he was seeing was what X itself looked like.
Well, hey, then don't use it.
on
e.themes.org
·
· Score: 1
Don't worry about it too much. If you don't like E, use something else instead; after all, it's not like it's the One True Way. As for myself, I've been using E for the last couple weeks and I like it so far, but I would *not*, repeat *not*, recommend it for everybody. I got it because I wanted to create maybe some interesting and odd-looking themes, at least for myself, and I downloaded it under the understanding that I might trip over some bugs and that I would need to get my hands dirty to do what I want. Even then, I still have Window Maker as backup in case E gets too crashy for me. (So far I've experienced no random crashes, though I've found at least one nasty bug.) Not everyone wants to draw their own pixmaps for buttons (though I like the idea) or has the time or inclination to mess with config files.
If you want a pretty good looking window manager that doesn't require a lot of muss and fuss to customize, get Window Maker. You won't be able to configure *everything* the way you can for Enlightenment, but it's a lot more painless to configure the things that you can configure. Window Maker also has themes, too, and IMHO, those themes look good. If the lure of being able to change anything you want becomes too strong, you can always go back to E.
In any case, don't worry too much about it. Not wanting to mess with config files is not a moral failing. WMs are not a religion. Use what works for you.
P.S. If you don't like transparent backgrounds, just use regular old xterm. And AFAIK, windows that are too big for the screen are a problem in just about every WM. I think it's an X problem, not a WM problem.
Bell Atlantic gave the impression that they could not work with anything but Windows PCs and iMacs. The only way that the poor guy could find out that 'not supported' only meant 'not something our technicians can deal with' would be to ask the question. Seems to be that the guy did have a clue and knew enough to know Bell Atlantic wasn't giving him the straight deal.
"The argument that as Red Hat gains market share, it will become more like M$ is certainly valid, IMHO."
Why is it valid? Microsoft did not become more amoral as it grew richer. Microsoft was amoral right from the start. MS's ethics have more to do with the personalities in charge than the money they make.
I see no reason to get rid of the keyboard. It's faster than handwriting and easier for the computer to handle. What might not be a bad idea would be to position the touch screen so that the distance the hand would have to move from the keyboard to the touchscreen was minimal. Instead moving hand from keyboard to mouse and back to click on commmand buttons one could tap the buttons with one's finger an avoid breaking the rhythm of typing as much.
Encryption should be implemented as a software module of some sort. That way, if the algorithm gets broken, the module can be swapped out and replaced with a newer module that hasn't been cracked yet. I believe this is already done.
I think the article's 'predictions' may be off base, but I think it's right about Microsoft's decline. Microsoft has put itself in a position that makes their long-term future precarious. They put on this big marketing show to sell the management on their products. Then they cajole the management into a contract that makes it difficult and expensive to switch from MS's product line. MS's don't perform quite as advertised, but despite the fact that they're buggy, bloated, and less-than-rock-stable, the management continues to do business with Microsoft, because they are practically locked in. Since the customers are locked in, Microsoft gets a steady revenue stream and continues its dominance. However, since MS's products are mediocre, the customers end up saying to themselves, "If we could only get out of buying MS stuff." The customers end up doing business with MS because they feel they have to, not because they really want to.
The trouble is that this situation is ultimately bad for Microsoft, because it means that for Microsoft to continue to make money, it has to keep itself in a position where it can dominate the customer and keep the customer locked in. If Microsoft shows weakness, if it shows signs that its dominance is slipping and that its customers don't have to do business with it to continue to work, then it's sunk. It may bleed slowly rather than hemorrage, but it's sunk.
Microsoft puts itself in a Win-Lose relationship with its customers. That's not healthy business.
The problem with these laws is they are problematical mainly to the law-abiding.
If I were intent on providing strong cryptography to bad people, I could. I could upload it to them over the Net, for example, and who could really stop me? I could put it on a CD-ROM and send it through the mail as well, maybe bury it in a box full of goodies for 'Grandma'. Post office can't check everything.
Meanwhile, businesses who want to follow the law and want to sell software abroad have to sell either crippled cryptography with their software or not provide it at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that these benchmarks still come from an organization funded by Microsoft, and an organization that has done slanted and biased benchmarks before. That doesn't mean that these results are automatically false or that they have no value; however, one should not take these benchmarks at face value without looking further at the details of the test, especially since other benchmarks have come to the opposite conclusion. ZDNet, if I remember right, did a benchmark earlier and concluded that Linux 'ate NT's lunch'. And that benchmark is not the only one that has concluded that.
Mindcraft does have a vested stake in having the results come out in NT's favor. It was embarassed previously when its original benchmarks were shown to be essentially a hatchet job funded by Microsoft. To make both Microsoft happy and salvage its own reputation, it has to
1) Produce results that still favor its backer, Microsoft, and
2) Have the results favor NT by a lower margin that the previous test so that it looks like the later tests are 'unbiased'.
I am not saying that their results are necessarily incorrect. What I'm saying is that Mindcraft has a vested interest in having the outcome of the tests come out a certain way, and may still have found a way to rig the tests. Before jumping to conclusions, we should learn the details of the testing to see if significant slant is still present in the tests.
Have you used E? I have. Mind you, I don't think that it's perfect. Its documentation is poor, and I think that it makes some things theme-dependent that should persist across themes, like buttons. I've found E to be fairly stable, though. Raster's idea of 0.15.5 is some people's idea of 1.0.
"When you buy a CD or a VHS movie or a newspaper, it is covered by the same IP laws as software which means you bought permission for *you* to use the item and no one else."
Except that's not true. Generally, what you are not allowed to do with CDs and VHS movies is to make copies of them or use them for commercial purposes. Have friends over to listen to CDs and/or watch a movie--OK. Show a movie on a big screen, and charge others for the privilege of seeing it--not OK. The rules are not quite as restrictive as they are for software.
"Too many people treat being right and being leagal[sic] at the same time[sic]."
True. However, I would say that unless a law is outright evil, it should not be broken. If it became illegal to hire Jews or to hide them from the police in order to keep them from getting killed, I hope I would have the courage to break such laws. Now compare that with having to pay $XXX amount of dollars in order to have a legal copy of Mathematica. Vast difference in importance, no? Intellectual property laws may be inconvenient (certainly), questionable (maybe), moronic (maybe), artificial (*definitely*), or whatever, but outright evil? Have some perspective here.
If you truly consider proprietary software evil, then avoid it entirely. Pirated software is about as encumbered as proprietary software that's been paid for. You still can't see the source and fix bugs, or find programmers who could fix the bugs. And if you had even a whisper of a prayer for support of the legally bought product, you most definitely have no chance of support for a pirated product. If you wish to be consistent with the stance that all software should be open source, then avoid proprietary software and accept the privations.
I think blaming Doom and Quake for the shootings in Littleton is stretching it. I don't think that there is a nice neat cause and effect here.
That said, I don't think that glorifying violence helps matters either, whether in movies, TV, games, or whatnot. I think we're probably more desensitized to the violence we see than we realize. I think the reason that the effects aren't so obvious is that most of us, though, even the nerds and geeks, have real lives of some manner or another that ground us at least half-decently in reality. We can see the fantasy violence for what it is--fantasy--and for the most part we can filter out its impact. It's sort of like getting used to polluted air. We adapt to the unhealthy atmosphere and get desensitized to it, and for the most part feel no ill effects. For those who are already vulnerable, who are mentally disturbed to begin with or have other problems, the impact of the media violence may be a lot harsher, and it may exacerbate the uglier stirrings in them much more strongly than one who is healthier to start with.
I'm not saying that media violence causes real life violence. I'm just saying that it may make it worse for those already badly disturbed to begin with.
> >don't have a pdf reader available...)
Do you have 'gv'? It's primariliy a Postscript viewer but can read PDF as well. You'd have to download the PDF file of course.
Mostly he writes song parodies, such as "Eat It", which is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", or "Living in the 'Fridge", which is a parody of Aerosmith's (?) "Living on the Edge". He also does jokey polkas that are medleys of various contemporary songs, and occasionally does silly songs where both lyrics and music are his own, like "Dare to be Stupid". I don't think you'll hear him on the radio too much, although he got his start on Dr. Demento, a radio show devoted to noveltly songs.
Lyrics to some of his songs are available here.
As for myself, I like Linux. It does what I need it to do, and exposure to it has helped me learn things that I might not have learned otherwise.
Linux is an OS, though, not a religion. Linux is not the One True Way (nor any Unix per se), and its acceptance by a user should depend on whether it fits the user's needs. You have decided for yourself that Linux doesn't meet your needs and Win 95 does. So be it.
I may not like the OS you use, but I'll contend that it is your privilege to use it.
>Any thought of independence is beaten
>down with the oldest and crudest method - the
>threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in
>hell".
This sounds more like a bad Sunday school experience than the God of the scriptures. Take a read at the Psalms and Job. You will find complaint after complaint against God, usually to the tune of "Where the heck are you, God?" If God was supposed to beat down *any* thought of independence with hellfire, then the psalmists hands' would have been too trembly to put pen to scroll, let alone dare write down their thoughts.
>Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle
>ages.
Well, *the Church* ruled Europe, and it wasn't acting very Christian. Christians are not supposed to be going around torturing, maiming, burning people at the stake, etc.
>Faith means to believe something without
>evidence. This is the very opposite of
>rationality and enlightenment.
Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.
Look, the likelihood that I'm going to somehow make you into a believer over the Net is pretty small. Hopefully, though, I can get you to examine your own criticisms to see if they truly hold up.
Be honest with yourself.
"Novice users aren't going to be trying to change keybindings."
Don't be so sure about that. I had to do it because a keybinding from KDE conflicted with a keybinding from my app.
"For the novice user, a preconfigured machine with KDE/KDM (the latter part is *crucial*), StarOffice, Netscape, KPPP, and a few other goodies is as easy as Windows, and almost as easy as MacOS."
That's true for starting out. I myself started with Applix and FVWM2 set up in the default Red Hat configuration. But at some point, I had to learn how to mount floppies and CD-ROMs. I had to learn what permissions were. I had to learn how to change my execution path so that StarOffice came up when I typed 'soffice'. I'm no hacker, at least not a software hacker, but I still had to learn things in order to really use my system. Life with Linux is not life with Windows. You can be a technophobe and use Win95 and Mac, but you can't be a technophobe and use Linux.
From the point of view of an end-user used to the GUIs of Windows or Macs, it is harder to use. Some aspects are just plain different; for example, the need to have a separate window manager to run X, which in turn involves knowing about the .Xclients or .xinitrc file and what it does and how to alter it so that you can run a different window manager. Not that difficult to understand once you get used to it--but you do have to get used to it. Some aspects are simply flaws. The usefulness and ease-of-use of the GUI tools still needs work. KDE is commonly touted as a user-friendly GUI, but it still has a number of niggling annoying flaws that could make a new user throw up his or her hands. For example, the place for turning off the keybinding for switching desktops, Ctrl-Tab, is in neither in the K menu entries "Settings -> Keys -> Standard" nor "Settings -> Keys -> Global" but in "Settings -> Windows -> Advanced". Drag and drop is still being worked on. When it comes to underlying technical quality, Linux is ahead, but its GUIs are still playing catchup.
The problem is that when the application is turning the document into HTML, it doesn't turn the 'smart quotes' into either the appropriate ASCII character or the appropriate HTML enties for left and right quotes. In short, the filter for saving to HTML is badly designed.
What's wrong with a commercial organization funding a GNU project? It's hardly hypocrisy, since GNU has no objections to businesses making money off of software so long as they don't restrict access to the source. Red Hat's popularity isn't locked in. Most, if not all, of their tools and niceities are under the GPL--including RPM. Also, Red Hat is still a small company.
"If GNU were to so chose, would they at anytime be in a position to say that they will host the primary web/ftp sites themselves instead of redhat?"
If Red Hat tried to play power games, they would probably get branded as 'the Microsoft of Linux' and both flamed and boycotted by the Linux community. Remember, there's not much to stop people from using another distribution. If Red Hat were to cut off GNOME for moving its servers, it would probably hurt GNOME but Red Hat as well.
If you mean that the same functions in different apps are accessed in the same way, then yes, consistency is a good thing because it makes it easier to transfer knowledge about one app to another. However, trying to make all apps somehow look alike is not necessarily constructive and may make the UI less logical because the programmer(s) feel(s) that the functionality of the app has to be force-fit into a certain mold. Consistency is a good rule, but programmers and UI designers have to rememeber the reason for it.
I've heard people say that KDE is ugly; maybe he thought so, too. (I've seen KDE, and I don't think it's ugly, but that's a matter of taste.) Anyway, for people coming out of the world of Windows, it's probably pretty hard to conceptualize the idea that X is the window system but not really the GUI per se, and that the window manager is yet another separate program, so he may very well thought what he was seeing was what X itself looked like.
Don't worry about it too much. If you don't like E, use something else instead; after all, it's not like it's the One True Way. As for myself, I've been using E for the last couple weeks and I like it so far, but I would *not*, repeat *not*, recommend it for everybody. I got it because I wanted to create maybe some interesting and odd-looking themes, at least for myself, and I downloaded it under the understanding that I might trip over some bugs and that I would need to get my hands dirty to do what I want. Even then, I still have Window Maker as backup in case E gets too crashy for me. (So far I've experienced no random crashes, though I've found at least one nasty bug.) Not everyone wants to draw their own pixmaps for buttons (though I like the idea) or has the time or inclination to mess with config files.
If you want a pretty good looking window manager that doesn't require a lot of muss and fuss to customize, get Window Maker. You won't be able to configure *everything* the way you can for Enlightenment, but it's a lot more painless to configure the things that you can configure. Window Maker also has themes, too, and IMHO, those themes look good. If the lure of being able to change anything you want becomes too strong, you can always go back to E.
In any case, don't worry too much about it. Not wanting to mess with config files is not a moral failing. WMs are not a religion. Use what works for you.
P.S. If you don't like transparent backgrounds, just use regular old xterm. And AFAIK, windows that are too big for the screen are a problem in just about every WM. I think it's an X problem, not a WM problem.
Bell Atlantic gave the impression that they could not work with anything but Windows PCs and iMacs. The only way that the poor guy could find out that 'not supported' only meant 'not something our technicians can deal with' would be to ask the question. Seems to be that the guy did have a clue and knew enough to know Bell Atlantic wasn't giving him the straight deal.
"The argument that as Red Hat gains market share, it will become more like M$ is certainly valid, IMHO."
Why is it valid? Microsoft did not become more amoral as it grew richer. Microsoft was amoral right from the start. MS's ethics have more to do with the personalities in charge than the money they make.
I see no reason to get rid of the keyboard. It's faster than handwriting and easier for the computer to handle. What might not be a bad idea would be to position the touch screen so that the distance the hand would have to move from the keyboard to the touchscreen was minimal. Instead moving hand from keyboard to mouse and back to click on commmand buttons one could tap the buttons with one's finger an avoid breaking the rhythm of typing as much.
Encryption should be implemented as a software module of some sort. That way, if the algorithm gets broken, the module can be swapped out and replaced with a newer module that hasn't been cracked yet. I believe this is already done.
I think the article's 'predictions' may be off base, but I think it's right about Microsoft's decline. Microsoft has put itself in a position that makes their long-term future precarious. They put on this big marketing show to sell the management on their products. Then they cajole the management into a contract that makes it difficult and expensive to switch from MS's product line. MS's don't perform quite as advertised, but despite the fact that they're buggy, bloated, and less-than-rock-stable, the management continues to do business with Microsoft, because they are practically locked in. Since the customers are locked in, Microsoft gets a steady revenue stream and continues its dominance. However, since MS's products are mediocre, the customers end up saying to themselves, "If we could only get out of buying MS stuff." The customers end up doing business with MS because they feel they have to, not because they really want to.
The trouble is that this situation is ultimately bad for Microsoft, because it means that for Microsoft to continue to make money, it has to keep itself in a position where it can dominate the customer and keep the customer locked in. If Microsoft shows weakness, if it shows signs that its dominance is slipping and that its customers don't have to do business with it to continue to work, then it's sunk. It may bleed slowly rather than hemorrage, but it's sunk.
Microsoft puts itself in a Win-Lose relationship with its customers. That's not healthy business.
Oh well, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
Somehow I suspect though that the point of your sweeping--and inaccurate--generalization is to get people riled up and start flaming.
The problem with these laws is they are problematical mainly to the law-abiding.
:[
If I were intent on providing strong cryptography to bad people, I could. I could upload it to them over the Net, for example, and who could really stop me? I could put it on a CD-ROM and send it through the mail as well, maybe bury it in a box full of goodies for 'Grandma'. Post office can't check everything.
Meanwhile, businesses who want to follow the law and want to sell software abroad have to sell either crippled cryptography with their software or not provide it at all.
Welcome to the United States
Besides, back in 1989, I don't believe that Office had nearly the popularity (stranglehold?) that it does today.