Thread: Are you for MS or Anti-MS?

Well, personally, I'd like to kill Bill Gates because of programming problems, but that has nothing to do with MS. That has to do with Bill Gates.

I think that without Microsoft, The computer world would have been screwed. Remember before IBM and Microsoft? Now, I wasn't alive back then, but I know for a fact that there were a LOT more operating systems in use than there are today. Now, if we were still there, with all these games, all this hardware, and all these programs, then we would have to port all our programs, we would have thousands or millions more man-hours being used to write drivers for our hardware.

Long gone are the days of programmers making all their programs. These days we have standards, therefore, without microsoft and their standards, we would be working thousands of times harder to do things.

Actually, they all ran similar operating systems (if not the same), at least for business purposes. Then IBM did something wonderful and went with an open design on their PC, and, well it's all history after that...

I think that Microsoft contributed A LOT to the world of computers, but that doesn't make up for the fact that they have created an operating system that programmers only have indirect access to, they design systems that are crash-prone and inefficient, they are an incorrigible monopoly, and cannot seem to make security and privacy a reality in their products. Other than that, though, I'm all FOR Microsoft. I think they should change their name to Megasoft or Monoposoft or something...

Let me further my point about the OS. An OS, to be really useful, should be completely free and open. Why? Because otherwise you have a situation where the OS maker has control over the systems designer. When all a programmer has to go by is what microsoft tells him about their *top secret* OS, there is a severe limitation thus placed on the programmer. Take UNIX. I've heard programmers utterly praise the fact that they have a direct knowledge of the precise nature of the innerworkings of this OS. If Microsoft were to be fair, the OS would be open and the software they wrote to run on that platform would be propriety.

they have created an operating system that programmers only have indirect access to, they design systems that are crashprone

Now what makes an OS crashprone is allowing direct access.
Which btw you have in windows as a programmer if you
write something like a device driver. I don't see a reason anyone
should fiddle with the graphics memory directly for example.

beta tested with windows 95, 98, windows me, windows NT, windows 2000

Testing shouldn't take that much time if you test it on various
windows systems. What takes time is debugging and when it
runs without errors on NT, it pretty much runs on anything else,
too.

I'm generally for them, but I don't agree with everything. I really, really don't like their new registration policies with XP. I still don't think I should have to convince MS that I didn't steal the OS when I upgrade my system.

I'd like them to release an open source OS, if not just to shut up the Linux whiners.

OK, I agree with most of what ober said, 'cept his closing jab. I'm writing to address Fool's first post. Why is the monopoly a good thing? First of all, they don't have a pure monopoly, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Secondly, if they actually did have a monopoly, they could just raise prices to whatever they wanted. Since we all run their stuff, there'd be no relief from whatever they wanted to do. I don't think a monopoly is good, in any case at all.

And, next...

There is also a 1% group using other os primarly Cheez0S.

Just 1%, gg? Damn... I guess it's time to bring out CheetOS XS (extra special). It'll primarily be for the Wombat gaming system that I spoke about in a much earlier thread, but its cross-platform compatibility spreads to refrigerators, freezers (we finally broke the ice-cube matrix!), and thumbtacks.

Now what makes an OS crashprone is allowing direct access.

Let me illustrate this as a metaphor:

Let's say you have a car. Now the car-maker says " You can add stuff(*apps*) to the car(*windows*) but if what you add is not working properly(*bugs*) you may NOT look under the hood(*OS*) even if it might help you solve the problem. Instead we have this little manual here that we personally wrote that must be consulted in the event of such problems".

So what if they leave something out?

I have actually stumbled on websites where the programmer writes "...if I hadn't discovered the solution quite by accident, as I did, I probably would never have solved the problem. Apparently Microsoft did not bother to document this strange anomoly..."

So my point is, to me it seems that Microsoft is making it harder for Non-Microsoft engineers to solve problems/innovate, etc...

I think Sebastiani made a good point, but I disagree with his last statement.

When I say "Non-Microsoft engineers" I mean Windows programmers that are NOT working at Microsoft...

I'm sure some piracy would immediately take place...

Ha! I feel sorry for the stupid SOB that steals THAT OS!!!