Quote:
Originally posted by NeonNightCloud
and wut OS are you using right now?
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Perhaps you don't understand the implications of the word "monopoly". Basically, if you want to use certain programs, what OS are you going to have to use? Windows, or to a far lesser extent, MacOS, which doesn't have half the "industrial" programs that windows supports. I know plenty of people who, although they'd rather not, HAVE to use windows. Thats the thing when you have a 90% monopoly of the home market - there's not alot of choice.
Even when OEM's tried to ship computers "naked" (i.e. without an operating system already installed) or with a non-Windows OS (Linux for the most part), Microsoft said "you can't do that".
Now OEM's who ship naked boxes are bribed to give the names and addresses of the people they sell them to, so M$ can keep tabs on them.
Dell (amongst others) used to ship PC's with Linux installed. M$ pulled a few strings and said "if you keep on supplying Linux computers we'll either raise the price of our licensing agreement so you can no longer remain competitive, or we'll withdraw your license completely". Result? Sod all companies ship Linux pre-installed any more.
Of course, this is all totally illegal behaviour, but as the antitrust settlements show M$ are easily capable of getting away with murder.
[paranoid rant]As for the .net bollocks, I have my own theory about this kinda thing. I envisage M$ wants a world where no-one owns a computer, just a keyboard, mouse, monitor and high speed net access to one of M$'s mainframes. All your files are stored under M$'s protection, and you rent storage space from them. Everything is delivered down your DSL line. Want a new prog installed? Easy, just hand over your credit card number to M$ and they'll give you oooh say a weeks access to a certain application, then you have to pay more rental.
Funnily enough, it was the Xbox whixh made me think of all this; a small PC sitting under your TV with a high speed cable comping out the back, USB ports on the front, PC architecture inside. Obviously, it's not big enough to store all those juicy Office apps that everyone loves so much, so why not just provide them online?
This was M$ get total control over piracy, cos there's no reason any more to ship out the CD's - no one will ever even get to see the binaries, let alone the source. Piracy will be shot dead in it's tracks. Your files will no longer be your exclusive property, but stored on some distant server and streamed to you, at your own expense.
Initially, this will all be cheaper than buying your own PC. Eventually, the home PC market will dwindle, and prices of ownership of PC's will rocket, so no-one will buy them, and everyone will go for the networked option, save for a few hardened M$ haters like myself, who will have to spend a fortune building our own computers and downloading copies of Linux (or whatever) from anonymous FTP servers out of M$'s zone of control. And the government and the people will happily accept all this, due to gushings of "but oh this will improve national security no end!" and all the other crap they like to come out with.[/paranoid rant]
But I digress. Sure, Office on the Mac is a helluva lot better than it is on the PC, and the mac version of IE even complies to some W3C standards (shock, horror!) - in case you don't know, much of IE goes against the web standards set down the the World Wide Web Consortium, because Microsoft now "make their own worldwide standards", much to everyone elses annoyance.
I'm still trying as hard as possible not to use any M$ software anymore ever, not just because I hate everything they stand for, but bacuse of all the security holes and "features" designed to make it easier to spy on me/bombard me with ads.
I have now given up Office in lieu of my Linux apps and NoteTab
MSN messenger replaced by Trillian ages ago, replaced by Jabber in Linux
Outlook Express - never used, I'm a Eudora fan (sorry gekko, it's way more powerful than Entourage) or Sylpheed in Linux.
IE went out the window months ago, I've been using Opera as my default browser for months. I especially like the buttons marked "block pop-up ads" and "disable....
". It's also faster and easier to use, and sans a patch every fortnight cos it's not loaded down with all those crappy ActiveX controls. scripting and the like.
WMP has been replaced entirely by Quicktime and Winamp in windows, or XMMS (same thing as winamp - even uses the same skins) and Xine in Linux.
I now use Linux for about 80% of the time I spend on my computer, and this is solely due to a few niggling problems I'm having cos I'm a total n00b. Once these are sorted, other than for playing games I can't see any reason for me to ever boot my windows partition ever again.
Thank you Unix 