Well, if we're going by crazy conspiracy theories with no factual backing whatsoever, why not Apple instead of Microsoft? its CEO is part of the board of directors of Disney, one of the largest US businesses and the one behind most of the copyright legislation currently in place, is reported to have a $1 yearly salary with "special benefits", yet has the IRS or *any* government institution ever investigated them?
At least with Microsoft we got an antitrust suit, with Apple the judges basically said "they're too small to have done anything bad". Plus, who makes the prime competitor to Apple's Safari? and to their current cash-cow, the iPhone?
Well, yeah, "the IRS smelled money" is the simplest (and most likely) theory, but at least Apple makes more sense than Microsoft, IMHO;)
Well, the only Windows upgrade version I've ever seen "in the flesh" doing tech support was for Win95->98, almost a decade ago. That's all. I've seen a few Office upgrades, including someone who, IIRC, had to install Office 2003 by installing '97 then upgrading to 2000 and then to 2003, but no "WinXP upgrade edition", let alone a store-bought version of Vista. People buy new computers often enough, plus MS's older OSes aren't as shitty as they used to be when Win98 was new (many would say they're better than the newer ones), so there's hardly an incentive to upgrade.
Now, the people who upgrade their OS instead of waiting to buy a new machine may be the same kind that doesn't need tech support, but still, "contractual obligations with Microsoft" explain Best Buy's catalogue just as well as actual sales do.
So an American should at the same time both understand that hanging on to his culture is wrong and allow immigrants to bring their culture with them. Am I getting that right?
Yes. Same way you should both understand that believing the Earth is flat is stupid and allow flat-earthers to voice their opinion anywhere they please.
Not really. In low- and middle-end businesses, Linux pretty much killed Unix years ago, and in the high-end it's IBM, IBM, and IBM, and a company selling x86-based servers is simply not a contender.
And why are all Linux-related discussions inevitably turned into bashfests of people moaning about the lack of support for their shitty hardware? seriously, buy quality hardware and Ubuntu will run like a dream.
As for the MS bashing, it depends on the OSX fans' needs. You need to talk about how awesome OSX's stability is, compare it with Windows. For the GUI, compare it with Linux. For driver support, BSDs. Market-share, SkyOS. Sanity of the userbase, Amiga (hey, it's the only one that works). And so on.
Me, I like Windows (NT-based ones except Vista), regardless of what my sig may say;) it does work well on quality hardware, even if searching for drivers is more of a PITA than it should be. But MSDN? srsly? everytime I have to visit that site I feel a strong urge to kill somebody in various, bloody ways, and if that's what modern documentation is supposed to look like, I'm building a time machine to go back to the '80s, and *stay* there for the rest of my life.
Propietary - You may eat the sandwich in previously approved sandwich-eating places, chew for at least half a minute before biting it again, and you may not look at the sandwich or it's contents for any reason whatsoever. By eating our sandwich you agree not to work in the food industry or make a sandwich yourself for at least the next five years, and to poop only in our special, sandwich-recycling pooping places until an independant doctor (to be determined by PropietarySoft, Inc) determines your body is free of our product. You may not use sandwich if you're a government agent of a country declared as enemy of the United States, are in jail, or manipulate heavy weapons such as chainguns or shotguns.
Do not use sandwich as replacement for doctors. Do not pee on sandwich. Do not use sandwich to build nuclear weapons or any other kind of WMD. This sandwich has no guarantee of satisfaction, taste, or even suitability for feeding. Smell of sandwich requires a special "sandwich-smelling" license, not included with sandwich. The eating of this sandwich does not imply endorsement by PropietarySoft, Inc, or any of its subsidiaries.
What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments?
Why would they need to be propietary? in fact, are they? most custom-made software is called as such because it's only in use by a single company, which is usually the same one that customized it, ergo, has access to the source, a full F/OSS philosophy wouldn't change that a bit.
What about gaming?
That's the hardest part, of course, due to the inherent differences with other types of software where the period of its usefulness is longer than that of developing it, but if a full F/OSS philosophy brings society-wide benefits, I don't think I'd sacrifice those for the sake of a small, entertainment-only niche.
As long as you don't prevent the homeless man from analyzing the sandwich, copying it, and giving it (or copies of it) away without making the recipients walk a block to get it, Stallman would probably say it's Free.
At 60+, you will notice that not only do the ten classes have significantly different playstyles and things going for them, but that they also have three different talent trees. For most of the ten classes, a switch from one tree to another will again completely change your game.
I've never played WoW (yeah, what am I doing on Slashdot), but I've always liked the Warcraft universe so I'll ask: how difficult is it to switch from one skill tree to another? if I reach lv65, dunno, being a frontline Sword-using offensive warrior, and I want to change to an Axe-wearing tank, how do I do it? do I have to create a completely new character from scratch?
As opposed to say first-person shooters, you remove the graphics from that game, and your left with what?
On deathmatch? the skill and reflexes required to aim your gun at your enemy, while moving around so that he can't do the same for you, and shoot. Of course, also paying attention to your surroundings, nothing worse than jumping on the business end of a third player's shotgun while dodging your opponent's rocket.
On team-based FPSs like Team Fortress 2, a *whole* lotta more.
C'mon, seriously, you can't accuse the GP of over-simplifying WoW then later say that FPSs without the graphics are basically adventure games with lots of camping. Go and play TF2 on a populated server, and after you get your ass handed to you and get to the bottom of the score board, come back and tell me it's just "Quake with prettier graphics".
I wouldn't call it cheating. I *would*, however, call it griefing if he didn't get permission to do so beforehand, but if his friends were OK with him getting all the experience (and it seems that was the case), then I consider it no worse than normal power-leveling.
The fact is that if you have the brains and discipline to get a PhD in science and become a prof at MIT or Harvard, you could probably make a *ton* more money, and quicker, and have much more job security, going into medicine, law, or business.
Yeah. Too bad that for anyone thinking about getting a PhD in science or mathematics, getting a degree in medicine or working as a lawyer is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Perhaps even less so, since at least with paint you actually have time to do something interesting.
A very good friend of mine, who worked as a very well-paid IT consultant for a huge multinational, once told me something I found interesting, that my experience has shown to be true: "there's always good jobs for those who excel, so go with what you like, not what will make you the most money".
Or you could be slave-labour grad student for 7 years, then serfdom post-doc for 6 years, slave as an untenured professor for 6 years and then be fired... er sorry, "denied tenure" and be looking for a brand new job or an entirely new career at the age of 35.
Which is still better than making "teh big bux" for three years doing something you don't like, then making shitty money in a job you hate for the rest of your life after the entire field changes focus and you're left behind, your skills outdated by your lack of interest in the area. Sorry to burst your bubble, dude, but I've yet to meet someone who excels at their job and doesn't love it, be it in programming, sysadmin, mathematics, even music and photography. All this "follow the money" philosophy seems to create is mediocrity.
But then again, that plus your brother's quote explain the long-standing question of why are there so little, truly successful women out there;)
You can try to be as objective as possible in your experimentation, by eliminating potential sources of error where you see them.
There are no "potential sources of error" in experimentation, only unaccounted variables;)
you never know in absolute terms that your theory is complete and correct such that future experiments will always yield the same result.
Actually, thanks to Godel's Theorem we can objetively know that no theory will ever be able to be both complete and correct and the same time, which is why the scientific method is mostly about getting things "less wrong" by making assumptions, then deduce stuff from them, and testing for either to see where they separate from reality. However, that's the only, uhh, "problem" with them, any logically-consistant system is correct and allows for objective deductions to be done within it, they just may not reflect our reality and, therefore, future experimentation (insert String Theory joke here).
The only absolute truths are those axioms that we can define to be true, such that no experimental validation is required; this is what separates mathematics from science.
Those, and those that we can logically deduce from them. However, we can also assume other things as true and prove that, if those assumptions hold, then so do other facts, and that knowledge is also an objective one. Now, as to how to determine whether our assumptions match reality, we could use statistics of experiments. I mean, if the sun has risen every single day throughout all of my life, the possibility that it'll do so tomorrow ought to be pretty high and, therefore, any postulate that relies on the assumption that the sun will, in fact, rise tomorrow has the same probability of being valid.
I'm not really sure what all this has to do with game piracy, though. I would have said the use (or otherwise) of DRM was more a question of ethics, as is how to deal with people who copy games illegally.
And on that, we agree 100%, but it's still an interesting debate, IMHO:D
I would have though "nothing like as good at running MS as Gates was" is more accurate.
Is it, really? someone is bound to mod me down for this (defending M$, WTF) but, IMHO Ballmer has been much better than Gates at running Microsoft. He seems, to me, to regard competitors with contempt, as if nobody could ever touch Microsoft, which is much better than the open hostility Gates usually showed. As a result, I've seen much less 'extinguish'ing than usual from them, which can only be a good thing, both for Microsoft themselves, and for the rest of the world.
If years later you get called in to detangle an Access database that through feature-and-scope-creep has turned into an important business tool that needs a higher level of reliability, take it as a triumph of the common man and modern software, and as your responsibility and privilege to elevate this application to the next level.
Yeah. And when you get called to untangle the horrid mess that an intern left in the code of a business-critical app, take it as a triumph of the common man and modern education, and as your responsability and priviledge of showing young apprentices your experience.
Or you could just shoot the fucker who did it in the first place, and preserve your sanity. Applies for both cases just as well.
Think about it for a second. What does it mean to say that a statement or a position is "objectively true?" By what standards could one make such a statement?
That the experiment leading to such conclusion is easily reproducible. If I state that 70% of people weight over 200 pounds, then all one has to do to corroborate my statement is to weight everyone, and calculate the percentage of people over 200 pounds themselves, or they could do it in a smaller sample and accept some error margin based on statistics, etc. And of course, anything that can't be proven or disproven by experimental results (such as the existence of God) becomes a subjective matter.
The same could be said of any simulation of a system where both the system and the simulation itself aren't completely independant (and, one could say, always have been). But since that's an unrealistic expectation we approximate, and AFAIK in the case of economics we do it pretty well.
Except that watching other people in their home without their consent violates their right to privacy, whereas source code only has inherent rights with respect to copying, watching it itself is meaningless. Plus, I see no reason why you, in your example, should be prosecuted for distributing pornography if, after all, you didn't.
The "breaking in" part is more problematic, of course, but doing a large-scale operation like this one for something like that? fly-murdering with a tank, and I do *not* like it when I see that in a government.
Debian had no objection whatever to calling it Firefox. Mozilla objected to Debian doing so.
Actually they didn't, Mozilla only objected to Debian's *users* doing so, not Debian themselves. But since "exclusive" deals are against the DFSG, new name it was.
When an open source project is first released, there is rarely any talk of cost. In fact the reason businesses go with open source is because the cost is lower. Now you're saying that there is a cost, and potentially a huge one.
There's always a cost, in training, migration, and guess what, *support*. Always has, always will. The difference with F/OSS is that you're not forced to go to a single company for it, unlike with Windows or OSX where you must request patches and upgrades from a single vendor since they're the only ones capable of modifying the system.
I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
Yes. Better to have that than the one of Feudal Lords: "you'll work for me in order to gain the priviledge of working to maintain yourself, and you have no choice in the matter because I say so".
And before you bring out the tired old argument that the sopurce is available, you can just hire somebody, think about how much that costs. Maintaining software is expensive. Very expensive. Forking your own version of a major open source project would cost in the millions of a dollars per year. It's ludicrous to expect any commercial enterprise to do that.
No shit. Then pay another company to do it, genius. Or what, did you expect your own personal army of developers ready to answer to your support questions for nothing more than your heartfelt gratitude?
Given your and many other arguments regarding lack of support for OSS, I would have to say that OSS is still far too risky for any commercial uptake. Commercial software is still the better way to go. Enterprises that have critical systems depending on OSS really need to rethink their strategies if there is such a big risk that a key component of their systems will just evaporate overnight.
Replace OSS with "off-the-shelf software" and "commercial software" with "software backed up by support contracts" and I fully agree with you. Microsoft's phone support isn't in any way more reliable than, say, Debian's IRC chat server, and in many ways even worse so building an entire business relying solely on either of them isn't exactly a bright idea.
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Well, if we're going by crazy conspiracy theories with no factual backing whatsoever, why not Apple instead of Microsoft? its CEO is part of the board of directors of Disney, one of the largest US businesses and the one behind most of the copyright legislation currently in place, is reported to have a $1 yearly salary with "special benefits", yet has the IRS or *any* government institution ever investigated them?
At least with Microsoft we got an antitrust suit, with Apple the judges basically said "they're too small to have done anything bad". Plus, who makes the prime competitor to Apple's Safari? and to their current cash-cow, the iPhone?
Well, yeah, "the IRS smelled money" is the simplest (and most likely) theory, but at least Apple makes more sense than Microsoft, IMHO ;)
Not when there's ample proof that it's true. Provided in this story, even.
There's plenty of rational, intelligent Apple fans, sure, but the ones claiming this is good for consumers definitely aren't among them.
So, under which laws Apple will go to jail if they don't put DRM in their notebooks?
Thought so.
Well, the only Windows upgrade version I've ever seen "in the flesh" doing tech support was for Win95->98, almost a decade ago. That's all. I've seen a few Office upgrades, including someone who, IIRC, had to install Office 2003 by installing '97 then upgrading to 2000 and then to 2003, but no "WinXP upgrade edition", let alone a store-bought version of Vista. People buy new computers often enough, plus MS's older OSes aren't as shitty as they used to be when Win98 was new (many would say they're better than the newer ones), so there's hardly an incentive to upgrade.
Now, the people who upgrade their OS instead of waiting to buy a new machine may be the same kind that doesn't need tech support, but still, "contractual obligations with Microsoft" explain Best Buy's catalogue just as well as actual sales do.
So an American should at the same time both understand that hanging on to his culture is wrong and allow immigrants to bring their culture with them. Am I getting that right?
Yes. Same way you should both understand that believing the Earth is flat is stupid and allow flat-earthers to voice their opinion anywhere they please.
Why is that so disgusting?
Because no mechanical system is completely fail-proof.
Not really. In low- and middle-end businesses, Linux pretty much killed Unix years ago, and in the high-end it's IBM, IBM, and IBM, and a company selling x86-based servers is simply not a contender.
And why are all Linux-related discussions inevitably turned into bashfests of people moaning about the lack of support for their shitty hardware? seriously, buy quality hardware and Ubuntu will run like a dream.
As for the MS bashing, it depends on the OSX fans' needs. You need to talk about how awesome OSX's stability is, compare it with Windows. For the GUI, compare it with Linux. For driver support, BSDs. Market-share, SkyOS. Sanity of the userbase, Amiga (hey, it's the only one that works). And so on.
Me, I like Windows (NT-based ones except Vista), regardless of what my sig may say ;) it does work well on quality hardware, even if searching for drivers is more of a PITA than it should be. But MSDN? srsly? everytime I have to visit that site I feel a strong urge to kill somebody in various, bloody ways, and if that's what modern documentation is supposed to look like, I'm building a time machine to go back to the '80s, and *stay* there for the rest of my life.
Propietary - You may eat the sandwich in previously approved sandwich-eating places, chew for at least half a minute before biting it again, and you may not look at the sandwich or it's contents for any reason whatsoever. By eating our sandwich you agree not to work in the food industry or make a sandwich yourself for at least the next five years, and to poop only in our special, sandwich-recycling pooping places until an independant doctor (to be determined by PropietarySoft, Inc) determines your body is free of our product. You may not use sandwich if you're a government agent of a country declared as enemy of the United States, are in jail, or manipulate heavy weapons such as chainguns or shotguns.
Do not use sandwich as replacement for doctors. Do not pee on sandwich. Do not use sandwich to build nuclear weapons or any other kind of WMD. This sandwich has no guarantee of satisfaction, taste, or even suitability for feeding. Smell of sandwich requires a special "sandwich-smelling" license, not included with sandwich. The eating of this sandwich does not imply endorsement by PropietarySoft, Inc, or any of its subsidiaries.
Define "God", "aspect" and "true nature", then we can talk about answering your questions.
What about the business world and the wide variety of custom made software tailored to specific business segments?
Why would they need to be propietary? in fact, are they? most custom-made software is called as such because it's only in use by a single company, which is usually the same one that customized it, ergo, has access to the source, a full F/OSS philosophy wouldn't change that a bit.
What about gaming?
That's the hardest part, of course, due to the inherent differences with other types of software where the period of its usefulness is longer than that of developing it, but if a full F/OSS philosophy brings society-wide benefits, I don't think I'd sacrifice those for the sake of a small, entertainment-only niche.
As long as you don't prevent the homeless man from analyzing the sandwich, copying it, and giving it (or copies of it) away without making the recipients walk a block to get it, Stallman would probably say it's Free.
At 60+, you will notice that not only do the ten classes have significantly different playstyles and things going for them, but that they also have three different talent trees. For most of the ten classes, a switch from one tree to another will again completely change your game.
I've never played WoW (yeah, what am I doing on Slashdot), but I've always liked the Warcraft universe so I'll ask: how difficult is it to switch from one skill tree to another? if I reach lv65, dunno, being a frontline Sword-using offensive warrior, and I want to change to an Axe-wearing tank, how do I do it? do I have to create a completely new character from scratch?
As opposed to say first-person shooters, you remove the graphics from that game, and your left with what?
On deathmatch? the skill and reflexes required to aim your gun at your enemy, while moving around so that he can't do the same for you, and shoot. Of course, also paying attention to your surroundings, nothing worse than jumping on the business end of a third player's shotgun while dodging your opponent's rocket.
On team-based FPSs like Team Fortress 2, a *whole* lotta more.
C'mon, seriously, you can't accuse the GP of over-simplifying WoW then later say that FPSs without the graphics are basically adventure games with lots of camping. Go and play TF2 on a populated server, and after you get your ass handed to you and get to the bottom of the score board, come back and tell me it's just "Quake with prettier graphics".
I wouldn't call it cheating. I *would*, however, call it griefing if he didn't get permission to do so beforehand, but if his friends were OK with him getting all the experience (and it seems that was the case), then I consider it no worse than normal power-leveling.
The fact is that if you have the brains and discipline to get a PhD in science and become a prof at MIT or Harvard, you could probably make a *ton* more money, and quicker, and have much more job security, going into medicine, law, or business.
Yeah. Too bad that for anyone thinking about getting a PhD in science or mathematics, getting a degree in medicine or working as a lawyer is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Perhaps even less so, since at least with paint you actually have time to do something interesting.
A very good friend of mine, who worked as a very well-paid IT consultant for a huge multinational, once told me something I found interesting, that my experience has shown to be true: "there's always good jobs for those who excel, so go with what you like, not what will make you the most money".
Or you could be slave-labour grad student for 7 years, then serfdom post-doc for 6 years, slave as an untenured professor for 6 years and then be fired... er sorry, "denied tenure" and be looking for a brand new job or an entirely new career at the age of 35.
Which is still better than making "teh big bux" for three years doing something you don't like, then making shitty money in a job you hate for the rest of your life after the entire field changes focus and you're left behind, your skills outdated by your lack of interest in the area. Sorry to burst your bubble, dude, but I've yet to meet someone who excels at their job and doesn't love it, be it in programming, sysadmin, mathematics, even music and photography. All this "follow the money" philosophy seems to create is mediocrity.
But then again, that plus your brother's quote explain the long-standing question of why are there so little, truly successful women out there ;)
You can try to be as objective as possible in your experimentation, by eliminating potential sources of error where you see them.
There are no "potential sources of error" in experimentation, only unaccounted variables ;)
you never know in absolute terms that your theory is complete and correct such that future experiments will always yield the same result.
Actually, thanks to Godel's Theorem we can objetively know that no theory will ever be able to be both complete and correct and the same time, which is why the scientific method is mostly about getting things "less wrong" by making assumptions, then deduce stuff from them, and testing for either to see where they separate from reality. However, that's the only, uhh, "problem" with them, any logically-consistant system is correct and allows for objective deductions to be done within it, they just may not reflect our reality and, therefore, future experimentation (insert String Theory joke here).
The only absolute truths are those axioms that we can define to be true, such that no experimental validation is required; this is what separates mathematics from science.
Those, and those that we can logically deduce from them. However, we can also assume other things as true and prove that, if those assumptions hold, then so do other facts, and that knowledge is also an objective one. Now, as to how to determine whether our assumptions match reality, we could use statistics of experiments. I mean, if the sun has risen every single day throughout all of my life, the possibility that it'll do so tomorrow ought to be pretty high and, therefore, any postulate that relies on the assumption that the sun will, in fact, rise tomorrow has the same probability of being valid.
I'm not really sure what all this has to do with game piracy, though. I would have said the use (or otherwise) of DRM was more a question of ethics, as is how to deal with people who copy games illegally.
And on that, we agree 100%, but it's still an interesting debate, IMHO :D
I would have though "nothing like as good at running MS as Gates was" is more accurate.
Is it, really? someone is bound to mod me down for this (defending M$, WTF) but, IMHO Ballmer has been much better than Gates at running Microsoft. He seems, to me, to regard competitors with contempt, as if nobody could ever touch Microsoft, which is much better than the open hostility Gates usually showed. As a result, I've seen much less 'extinguish'ing than usual from them, which can only be a good thing, both for Microsoft themselves, and for the rest of the world.
If years later you get called in to detangle an Access database that through feature-and-scope-creep has turned into an important business tool that needs a higher level of reliability, take it as a triumph of the common man and modern software, and as your responsibility and privilege to elevate this application to the next level.
Yeah. And when you get called to untangle the horrid mess that an intern left in the code of a business-critical app, take it as a triumph of the common man and modern education, and as your responsability and priviledge of showing young apprentices your experience.
Or you could just shoot the fucker who did it in the first place, and preserve your sanity. Applies for both cases just as well.
Think about it for a second. What does it mean to say that a statement or a position is "objectively true?" By what standards could one make such a statement?
That the experiment leading to such conclusion is easily reproducible. If I state that 70% of people weight over 200 pounds, then all one has to do to corroborate my statement is to weight everyone, and calculate the percentage of people over 200 pounds themselves, or they could do it in a smaller sample and accept some error margin based on statistics, etc. And of course, anything that can't be proven or disproven by experimental results (such as the existence of God) becomes a subjective matter.
Scientists are always so sure they are right. And then a few decades pass and they realize they weren't. And then they repeat that same behavior.
Not really. Most scientists know they're always wrong, they just try to be less wrong each time. Hence the scientific method.
There's a brilliant article by Asimov about it, in fact, "The Relativity of Wrong" if you care about it.
The same could be said of any simulation of a system where both the system and the simulation itself aren't completely independant (and, one could say, always have been). But since that's an unrealistic expectation we approximate, and AFAIK in the case of economics we do it pretty well.
Except that watching other people in their home without their consent violates their right to privacy, whereas source code only has inherent rights with respect to copying, watching it itself is meaningless. Plus, I see no reason why you, in your example, should be prosecuted for distributing pornography if, after all, you didn't.
The "breaking in" part is more problematic, of course, but doing a large-scale operation like this one for something like that? fly-murdering with a tank, and I do *not* like it when I see that in a government.
Debian had no objection whatever to calling it Firefox. Mozilla objected to Debian doing so.
Actually they didn't, Mozilla only objected to Debian's *users* doing so, not Debian themselves. But since "exclusive" deals are against the DFSG, new name it was.
When an open source project is first released, there is rarely any talk of cost. In fact the reason businesses go with open source is because the cost is lower. Now you're saying that there is a cost, and potentially a huge one.
There's always a cost, in training, migration, and guess what, *support*. Always has, always will. The difference with F/OSS is that you're not forced to go to a single company for it, unlike with Windows or OSX where you must request patches and upgrades from a single vendor since they're the only ones capable of modifying the system.
I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
Yes. Better to have that than the one of Feudal Lords: "you'll work for me in order to gain the priviledge of working to maintain yourself, and you have no choice in the matter because I say so".
And before you bring out the tired old argument that the sopurce is available, you can just hire somebody, think about how much that costs. Maintaining software is expensive. Very expensive. Forking your own version of a major open source project would cost in the millions of a dollars per year. It's ludicrous to expect any commercial enterprise to do that.
No shit. Then pay another company to do it, genius. Or what, did you expect your own personal army of developers ready to answer to your support questions for nothing more than your heartfelt gratitude?
Given your and many other arguments regarding lack of support for OSS, I would have to say that OSS is still far too risky for any commercial uptake. Commercial software is still the better way to go. Enterprises that have critical systems depending on OSS really need to rethink their strategies if there is such a big risk that a key component of their systems will just evaporate overnight.
Replace OSS with "off-the-shelf software" and "commercial software" with "software backed up by support contracts" and I fully agree with you. Microsoft's phone support isn't in any way more reliable than, say, Debian's IRC chat server, and in many ways even worse so building an entire business relying solely on either of them isn't exactly a bright idea.