Well it's always been able to do basic things like LIMIT, multi-row insert statements and correctly treats empty strings as not being null... which Oracle can't do for some dumb reason.
So this makes it into the big news on Slashdot... an explanation as to why an iPhone with a different case colour has been delayed.
Next on Slashdot... the iPhone's shocking new button that's now a rounded square instead of a circle! I need to take the week off work to recover from the shock.
Anyone else initially read that as "Unicorns Urging Actors Not To Work On Hobbit Movie". I imagined Charlie's "friends" yelling "Don't make the Hobbit film! It won't end we-e-e-llll. Noooo, it won't. It'll end ba-a-a-a-d. You must kill them Charlie, before it's too late."
Arghh... it didn't format correctly. My apologies. Here's a more readable format:
----------------
Dear Laura Moffatt,
I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software.
- Financial
Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up.
- Education
Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system.
In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite.
I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working.
I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software.
- Work
Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades.
I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks.
I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares.
Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal.
I wrote a letter to my local MP before exactly about this problem. It went as follows:
-----------------
Dear Laura Moffatt,
I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software.
- Financial
Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up.
- Education
Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system.
In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite.
I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working.
I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software.
- Work
Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades.
I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks.
I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares.
Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal.
Thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely
[name]
[address was included]
You're permitted to have a break.
No, I'm not going to apply the same thinking. Mozilla aren't going to claim to be revolutionary for offering these tweaks whereas Microsoft make a big song and dance about it as if they came up with the idea.
And no, I wasn't aware that Microsoft has been in the web-based satellite imagery business, which is a point I'll concede. However, I imagine Microsoft have driven it to be as consumer-ready as it is now because Google was getting too much attention. Microsoft tend to throw their toys out of the pram (or chairs across the room) if Google get attention that they don't possess. My point is that Google are what's chafing the a$$ of Microsoft hence all the, "hey, look over here! we've got lots of free candy. Look! Look!.... LOOK!"
Google didn't become famous because of some multi-million dollar marketing campaign. Nor did they aim to destroy other search engines. It's assumed that the public came up with the term Googling, and yet despite their quietness, their quality of service spoke volumes. So loud was this boom that it rippled through the entire online community so that everyone has heard of them in a very short period of time. They didn't bribe other companies to work with them, they gave millions to worthy causes, and have a committment to running an ethical business, where shareholders take a back seat.
Microsoft have had a search engine for ages, covered with advertisements and cluttered menus. They stripped this down after Google came along, threw hundreds of millions of dollars all over the world to get people to use their site, and co-incidently ended up using the same on-page advertising style as Google. Their search engine was slower, had less results, and the results you did get were less relevent. Their aim wasn't to provide a high quality and innovative service which would constantly evolve, it was to take the market from Google and put the profits in their shareholder's pockets. They would only innovate if they were forced to as part of a project to increase revenue, some of which would only go to a worthy cause if they could get enough publicity from it (i.e. it's just another PR exercise).
So, to summarise, Google tinker away challenging themselves and keep relatively quiet about it. Microsoft beaver away throwing armies of developers and marketing campaigns at their service while quietly ripping off anything they can find. Microsoft don't challenge themselves, they become challenged by others. They have no will to improve themselves without threat from others taking over a lucrative market.
What I've said isn't exactly insightful, it's just commentating on what appears to be happening.
Microsoft claimed that protecting intellectual property encouraged innovation, in other words they don't want people copying them because they feel copying is detrimental to being innovative. If this is the case, why is it they have suddenly come up with an equivalent of the open document standard, added tabs to their new Internet Explorer, copied Google's search features to the letter, and now copying Google's other offerings (satellite maps, online books and directories). I'm not really against them improving their services, merely that in doing so it goes against what they seem to campaign for.
Microsoft now just seems to be a huge company, with huge resources and huge finances and clone anything that makes money. Where's their leadership in innovation now?
" Before the Anti-Microsoft redirect gets out. Please take into accounts..."
I wasn't going to slag it off. I just refuse to use Microsoft for ethical reasons, regardless of how good their software might perform in some cases.
I believe choosing a company without thoughts as to their business practices is mindless-consumerism. Imagine you see 2 bars of chocolate:
Bar A, costing 80 units of currency, is nice and produced by a company famous for exlpoiting their suppliers and workers, gross mistreatment and cruelty to animals, anti-union, countless violations of polluting, funding republican interests, with multi-national monopolies and over-paid executives, and the bar itself is full of preservatives, additives, and E numbers that are addictive and unsuitable for vegetarians. They also provide stockists with special branded shelving that comes with conditions prohibiting selling rival bars in the same area.
Bar B, costing 50 units of currency, which isn't as nice but still 'yummy', is made by a progressive co-operative providing a fair price to their suppliers, treat their workers well, involve themselves in community initiatives and having environmentally-friendly ethics, with the bar containing wholesome organic ingredients that are good for you, suitable for vegans, coeliacs, and contains no gluten.
.. as I remember years ago, a UK group that had a latin name that vaguely resembled the word Pentium were sued by Intel. The group were nothing to do with technology at all, but still suffered the wrath of Intel. Intel legally forced them to change their name through sheer paranoia.
And surely eveyone remembers the whole Mike Rowe Soft case were Microsoft got a guy called Mike Rowe to hand over his domain name (www.mikerowesoft.com) even though he was completely unreleated to them and couldn't pose any threat. (now owned by Microsoft, but still seems to be some other dodgy site).
Vista should make their own mini operating system called Vista Window.
"all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies"
So if we bought an iPod Photo as a very expensive external harddrive to store photos on and had no intention of saving MP3s on it, the record industry's copyright collection agencies receive tax from it?
Is this specifically MP3s too? What if a player comes out that doesn't support MP3 just to get around this, which would instead support only OGG and AAC?
Even if you play devil's advocate, can they justifiably say they have lost over $17m in damages?
So many companies destroy their image by suing over something which really doesn't damage them. They usually have to claim a lot from the court case to cover what they'll lose from off-put would-be customers. Apple are good at shooting themselves in the face.
I wouldn't be surprised if this happened:
Company A: "Company B is cool!"
Company B: "RIGHT! We're gonna sue you for millions for using our name without our permission!"
Company A: "But we thought.."
Company B: "Well you thought wrong moron. Hasn't it cottoned on that we don't want anyone to like us as we're deluded enough to think all good publicity is lethal to our business."
(word gets out about the suing and Company B sales hit rock bottom)
Company B: "Hey, *you* caused this to happen by making us sue you. We're gonna sue you REAL good this time! That'll learn ya!"
I'm very surprised the interview didn't mention SGML as I thought XML was directly adapted from it with some properties stripped away for simplicity's sake.
Wow, Windows must be amazing then. Nearly as good as the C64 paint-package which had a 2-button mouse years before that, and doubtless dozens of other platforms before that too. Windows must be twice as good as OSX because it is generally used with mice that have twice the number of buttons. Imagine if they put 20 buttons on a mouse. The computer it would be attached to could take over the universe which such unfathomable power!
So, they want to let all their users load different document formats into their Word application, but don't want any other app to use their own.
The sky probably also belongs to Microsoft because it's featured in a few of their desktop wallpapers, so they want money everytime it's within your peripheral vision.
In other news, Microsoft patent files, text and processing of all types.
Some reason why I believe Google is so successful is due to it's simplicity and lack of clutter. It looks aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. MSN's page looks like the home page for a lot of ISPs.. cluttered with ads, news, loads of navigational options, and the page takes a bit longer to appear.
I don't see how Microsoft will get people to use a slower service that offers fewer results, and with less innovative tools.
Slashdot Mirror
... that's a LOT of conflict minerals!
Well it's always been able to do basic things like LIMIT, multi-row insert statements and correctly treats empty strings as not being null... which Oracle can't do for some dumb reason.
It doesn't help that some sites restrict the character set and length of passwords.
Input 25 character password: "Error: password must be between 6-14 characters"
Input 8 character password with % and ] in: "Error: password can only contain alphanumeric characters"
__wHY&the&f**k]]can"t this l_i_n_e b3 m~y p45sw%rd?!__!?
So this makes it into the big news on Slashdot... an explanation as to why an iPhone with a different case colour has been delayed. Next on Slashdot... the iPhone's shocking new button that's now a rounded square instead of a circle! I need to take the week off work to recover from the shock.
Anyone else initially read that as "Unicorns Urging Actors Not To Work On Hobbit Movie". I imagined Charlie's "friends" yelling "Don't make the Hobbit film! It won't end we-e-e-llll. Noooo, it won't. It'll end ba-a-a-a-d. You must kill them Charlie, before it's too late."
... it's the thin end of the wedge.
Check out penguspy.com. It's got loads of games listed, and constantly being updated.
This news inspired me to join the Free Software Foundation today.
Why won't you just die?!
Arghh... it didn't format correctly. My apologies. Here's a more readable format:
----------------
Dear Laura Moffatt,
I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software.
- Financial
Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up.
- Education
Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system.
In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite.
I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working.
I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software.
- Work
Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades.
I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks.
I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares.
Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal.
Thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely
[name]
[address was included]
I wrote a letter to my local MP before exactly about this problem. It went as follows: ----------------- Dear Laura Moffatt, I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software. - Financial Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up. - Education Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system. In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite. I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working. I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software. - Work Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades. I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks. I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares. Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal. Thank you for your attention. Yours sincerely [name] [address was included]
Great! That'll solve the global warming problem!
You're permitted to have a break. No, I'm not going to apply the same thinking. Mozilla aren't going to claim to be revolutionary for offering these tweaks whereas Microsoft make a big song and dance about it as if they came up with the idea. And no, I wasn't aware that Microsoft has been in the web-based satellite imagery business, which is a point I'll concede. However, I imagine Microsoft have driven it to be as consumer-ready as it is now because Google was getting too much attention. Microsoft tend to throw their toys out of the pram (or chairs across the room) if Google get attention that they don't possess. My point is that Google are what's chafing the a$$ of Microsoft hence all the, "hey, look over here! we've got lots of free candy. Look! Look!.... LOOK!"
Google didn't become famous because of some multi-million dollar marketing campaign. Nor did they aim to destroy other search engines. It's assumed that the public came up with the term Googling, and yet despite their quietness, their quality of service spoke volumes. So loud was this boom that it rippled through the entire online community so that everyone has heard of them in a very short period of time. They didn't bribe other companies to work with them, they gave millions to worthy causes, and have a committment to running an ethical business, where shareholders take a back seat. Microsoft have had a search engine for ages, covered with advertisements and cluttered menus. They stripped this down after Google came along, threw hundreds of millions of dollars all over the world to get people to use their site, and co-incidently ended up using the same on-page advertising style as Google. Their search engine was slower, had less results, and the results you did get were less relevent. Their aim wasn't to provide a high quality and innovative service which would constantly evolve, it was to take the market from Google and put the profits in their shareholder's pockets. They would only innovate if they were forced to as part of a project to increase revenue, some of which would only go to a worthy cause if they could get enough publicity from it (i.e. it's just another PR exercise). So, to summarise, Google tinker away challenging themselves and keep relatively quiet about it. Microsoft beaver away throwing armies of developers and marketing campaigns at their service while quietly ripping off anything they can find. Microsoft don't challenge themselves, they become challenged by others. They have no will to improve themselves without threat from others taking over a lucrative market. What I've said isn't exactly insightful, it's just commentating on what appears to be happening.
Microsoft claimed that protecting intellectual property encouraged innovation, in other words they don't want people copying them because they feel copying is detrimental to being innovative. If this is the case, why is it they have suddenly come up with an equivalent of the open document standard, added tabs to their new Internet Explorer, copied Google's search features to the letter, and now copying Google's other offerings (satellite maps, online books and directories). I'm not really against them improving their services, merely that in doing so it goes against what they seem to campaign for. Microsoft now just seems to be a huge company, with huge resources and huge finances and clone anything that makes money. Where's their leadership in innovation now?
I wasn't going to slag it off. I just refuse to use Microsoft for ethical reasons, regardless of how good their software might perform in some cases.
I believe choosing a company without thoughts as to their business practices is mindless-consumerism. Imagine you see 2 bars of chocolate:
Bar A, costing 80 units of currency, is nice and produced by a company famous for exlpoiting their suppliers and workers, gross mistreatment and cruelty to animals, anti-union, countless violations of polluting, funding republican interests, with multi-national monopolies and over-paid executives, and the bar itself is full of preservatives, additives, and E numbers that are addictive and unsuitable for vegetarians. They also provide stockists with special branded shelving that comes with conditions prohibiting selling rival bars in the same area.
Bar B, costing 50 units of currency, which isn't as nice but still 'yummy', is made by a progressive co-operative providing a fair price to their suppliers, treat their workers well, involve themselves in community initiatives and having environmentally-friendly ethics, with the bar containing wholesome organic ingredients that are good for you, suitable for vegans, coeliacs, and contains no gluten.
Hmm.. bar A tastes a bit nicer so...
.. as I remember years ago, a UK group that had a latin name that vaguely resembled the word Pentium were sued by Intel. The group were nothing to do with technology at all, but still suffered the wrath of Intel. Intel legally forced them to change their name through sheer paranoia. And surely eveyone remembers the whole Mike Rowe Soft case were Microsoft got a guy called Mike Rowe to hand over his domain name (www.mikerowesoft.com) even though he was completely unreleated to them and couldn't pose any threat. (now owned by Microsoft, but still seems to be some other dodgy site). Vista should make their own mini operating system called Vista Window.
"all of it going to the record industry's copyright collection agencies"
So if we bought an iPod Photo as a very expensive external harddrive to store photos on and had no intention of saving MP3s on it, the record industry's copyright collection agencies receive tax from it?
Is this specifically MP3s too? What if a player comes out that doesn't support MP3 just to get around this, which would instead support only OGG and AAC?
Even if you play devil's advocate, can they justifiably say they have lost over $17m in damages?
So many companies destroy their image by suing over something which really doesn't damage them. They usually have to claim a lot from the court case to cover what they'll lose from off-put would-be customers. Apple are good at shooting themselves in the face.
I wouldn't be surprised if this happened:
Company A: "Company B is cool!"
Company B: "RIGHT! We're gonna sue you for millions for using our name without our permission!"
Company A: "But we thought.."
Company B: "Well you thought wrong moron. Hasn't it cottoned on that we don't want anyone to like us as we're deluded enough to think all good publicity is lethal to our business."
(word gets out about the suing and Company B sales hit rock bottom)
Company B: "Hey, *you* caused this to happen by making us sue you. We're gonna sue you REAL good this time! That'll learn ya!"
(company A folds)
(next day, Company B folds)
I'm very surprised the interview didn't mention SGML as I thought XML was directly adapted from it with some properties stripped away for simplicity's sake.
Wow, Windows must be amazing then. Nearly as good as the C64 paint-package which had a 2-button mouse years before that, and doubtless dozens of other platforms before that too. Windows must be twice as good as OSX because it is generally used with mice that have twice the number of buttons. Imagine if they put 20 buttons on a mouse. The computer it would be attached to could take over the universe which such unfathomable power!
So, they want to let all their users load different document formats into their Word application, but don't want any other app to use their own.
The sky probably also belongs to Microsoft because it's featured in a few of their desktop wallpapers, so they want money everytime it's within your peripheral vision.
In other news, Microsoft patent files, text and processing of all types.
>arguing that because the Post's Web site carried the story. his reputation had been "damaged" in that province."
:S
and
>threatening both free speech and the Net
Yeah, his reputation must be restored after doing that.
"Come on Slashdot, at least they are actively fixing their shit."
But why is there so much "shit" to fix?
"We're all bored of hearing how much people hate MS here"
Aren't we also bored of constantly hearing serious bugs and security risks being found in their products all the time?
Some reason why I believe Google is so successful is due to it's simplicity and lack of clutter. It looks aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. MSN's page looks like the home page for a lot of ISPs.. cluttered with ads, news, loads of navigational options, and the page takes a bit longer to appear. I don't see how Microsoft will get people to use a slower service that offers fewer results, and with less innovative tools.