You're just Microsoft's sock puppet, Andrew Thomas

Get a Mac
Andy,

You know, you would really love the Mac Platform, as I do. On a Mac, you get the Best of Microsoft, with out the Worst of Microsoft, which you clearly ignore. If you were on this platform you won't need your head in the sand.

As a developer, I can tell you why Microsoft is clearly despised in the computer industry. However, I don't have all day for that diatribe.

Just a note: Again Today we've found Another Design Flaw in Visual Basic 6. Apparently, when you define a function, even if you specifically tell the compiler that you only want String input to the function, VB6 will just Convert a Number to a String, and Not Raise an Error. Looks like VB6 is designed for the incompetent to feel comfortable, by not having things like pesky errors when they compile and run their code. Allowing bugs to run much more deeply and insidiously into the core of your application before you discover the error. Microsoft: the home of the Smiley Face programmer.

Our company has nearly a million lines of VB code written and we don't even consider a conversion to .NET until it's up to -- I don't know what standard we can apply. We are so appalled by Microsoft Quality( oxymoron alert ), that we simply don't consider Anything they put out Truthful in Any Way. We haven't convinced Upper Mgmt to convert to Java, and we don't have the stomach for the colossal waste of money it would be to convert to .Net, yielding our company Zero Benefit.

Actually, some in the company do want to convert to .Net, they aren't involved in the day to day coding and maintenance issues.

Respectfully,
Michael Dever

Read the INQUIRER Thomas

You write at http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13317

"Poor old Bill. What's he done to find himself in the bizarre position of running the software company with the most popular products in the world, while being almost universally-hated? "

For an answer to this I suggest you read some of the articles on your own web site, specifically the ones about the European Commission investigation into Microsoft's anti-competitive practices as well as archived articles from The Register concerning the DOJ trial.

I'm fine with people using Microsoft products. If they like them then that's great! It's the continual anti-competitive behaviour I and many others have a problem with.

Regards
Tim

Thomas, you're on waccy baccy

From your recent article

"What Sun, Oracle and all the other Gates haters seem to be incapable of grasping is that people use Microsoft products because they like them."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Dude, what have you been smoking, and why aren't you sharing? The vast majority of people don't use MS product because they like them. Never have and never will. They use them because they are locked in by Microsoft. Why do you think Microsoft lost several anti-trust suits, and is in the process of losing more cases right this moment? Maybe you will blame Real for the loss of Windows Media Player when they win their case against MS.

Now MS has the gall to blame Sun for retiring old OSes and applications because THEY were acting illegally with respect to Sun's software? And you bought it hook line and sinker. Maybe you should find something else to do with your time, because writing technical articles about computers and software doesn't seem to be your forte. Kissing Microsoft's butt seems to be more your speed. I'm sure Bill has a few positions for that open.

Joe Fenton

Bill Gates is Brill Gates

I think why everyone hates BillG is the fact that he is such a brilliant business man - outclasses the rest by an order of magnitude.

Consider your article. He has very carefully positioned himself to be dragged 'kicking and screaming' by the odious DOJ and his hapless competition to force the entire world to send in trillions of dollars in upgrade fees.

Mr. Ashcroft is busy reading the riot act about people not having properly secure software with all the current patches on the one hand and effectively forcing Microsoft to unsupport all legacy software on the other.

Utterly brilliant.
Gary Demofsky

Caritas

Of course, not everyone is happy about what the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other "charity" organizations are doing with this money.

Anyhow, is Bill Gates cool? If most people thought he was, you wouldn't be writing this article ;)

Mark Lightner

Slashdot has seriously bitter people

Hi Andrew

I really liked this article. It's not that I hate software such as Linux. In fact, I really like it. But, your article is spot on. I just can't understand why the open source sad guys hate Bill so much. As you suggest, how could any reasonable person knock someone who could shape the entire future of those people in Africa who have futures blighted by AIDS ? Someone suggested that he got the charity thing after he had his own daughter but so what ? I say “respect” to the guy and good luck to him.

Have a look at www.slashdot.org to see evidence of some seriously bitter and twisted people.

Have a nice Christmas !

Regards
Nigel

Windows is Everywhere

"What Sun, Oracle and all the other Gates haters seem to be incapable of grasping is that people use Microsoft products because they like them."

That's the heart, crux, and nub of the argument, oui?

I'm sure that I'll be far, far from alone in observing that the principal reason for people using Microsoft products isn't pleasure, it's availability.

In a billion channel Universe, it's my choice to tune in to Discovery or simply turn off the box and listen to the CBC. I can suffer Chevy or Toyota payments while dreaming of a Porsche, or make with the cheap and buy a Hyundai. Tired of Pepsi or Coke? There's Royal Crown and a plethora of generic brands, not to mention Root Beer. Yet, at the end of the day, whether at work, school, the library, or at home, I've known nothing but the "pleasure" of a Microsoft box.

Sure, I have a Linux dual-boot system, and do use the Penguin for various things mostly in an experimental or educational vein, but find myself sitting in front of long abandoned Win98SE when it comes time to compose, cavort, or simply cave in. Why? Simple. I know it so damned well. Nearly twenty years of usage, from composing a book with Word 2.0 to writing all those batch files for MS-DOG to my latest multimedia dribblings; a culmination of familiarity. I use MS products and their children because I know them well, too well. I'm happy that I no longer have to play with modem strings to configure winsock but still go mad at least once a day when this or that app crashes or locks up. I wonder about plunking down thousands that I can't afford on a Mac and all new apps and games (or suffer the Hell of emulation), or simply chuck it in an attempt to advance my learning curve and become a Linux guru (though the pain involved in getting RedHat to acknowledge my soundcard continues to put me off).

I use Microsoft products because they're there. They're everywhere. Everything fun or useful is scripted for and around them. They've made certain of it. That old Simpsons episode with Gates "taking over" Homer's operation continues to work because it has the stench of truth about it. With no viable alternative for the great unwashed, we are left with Microsoft. No choice, no hope. The abandonment of hope is evil. That is Microsoft.

Mark H

Linux no good except for governments

Andrew Thomas,

Your so right about him being cool, I mean if he didn't have windows everywhere what would people use~????? They can't use Linux as its rubbish I've seen it and its no good except maybe for goverments.

Well done!!!

Cerise

Sock Puppet

I just read your article entitled "Bill Gates is cool".

You just don't get it. Microsoft had a choice. They could implement java according to the license, or they could not implement it at all. Instead they chose to implement java in ways not allowed by the license, in a way designed to damage Sun and benefit Microsoft. It's their old tried-and-true "embrace and extend" tactic. It's not about healthy, legal competition, it's about abusing their monopoly power to increase their already-too-large dominance of the software industry - something they have been convicted of multiple times around the world.

They got caught and convicted (again) and instead of doing the right thing and patching their java code into compliance, they decided to drop support for products that shipped with their deformed version of java. Again, this is designed to harm Sun and benefit Microsoft. And they did it so that pundits who are too lazy (or dishonest) to do their research will not look beyond the immediate short-term consequences of this action, and instead point the finger at Sun for suing them over a blantant license violation in the first place. It is not unreasonable for Sun to protect the technology that they invented and prevent Microsoft from misappropriating it. It is also not Sun's fault, as you imply with your "thanks to Sun" comment. It's Microsoft's decision alone, and they are wholly responsible for it.

Sun just announced a contract with China to supply millions of Linux-Java desktop systems. This is what Microsoft was trying to prevent with their attempts to corrupt the Java standard - healthy competition.

Where is your outrage at Microsoft for their lawsuits against other companies? (Lindows, etc.)

Consistent look and feel? You've got to be kidding. I'm forced to use win2k small business edition at work. The crippled version of outlook that comes with it is missing basic features found in outlook express! And when's the last time you tried to load a document from the latest version of Office using an older version? Microsoft plays games with compatibility across their own product line in order to force users into paying for upgrades again and again just to maintain file format compatibility. There is nothing but pure greed behind this kind of tactic, and people naturally resent that.

So just keep on being Microsoft's sock-puppet. I'm sure there is short-term gain in it for you. Just understand that you're not fooling anybody who knows anything about the software industry. The Inquirer is a computer-industry magazine, and a lot of the people who read it know better, so maybe you should choose another venue for your opinion pieces. The Open-source freight train is unstoppable, and it will run right over Microsoft and all it's shills soon enough, destroying their credibiliity in the process.

Scott Dunbar

Bill is misunderstoot [sic] I really loved reading your article about Bill from the 23rd. You are completely right Bill is not the bad guy, just misunderstoot.

Denny

He's just a Humble Bill

I love your piece on Bill Gates.

As far as I can tell, Bill Gates is the only one of the technocrats that seems humble (at least his ego doesn't blimp out as Ellison, McNealy and Jobs seem to). I really dislike people insulting others and that seems to be all the McNealy and Ellison can do. He doesn't seem excessive in his lifestyle, no fighters, no yachts that I know of. He's not a playboy or leading an excessive lifestyle, he's not pouring his money into facist political movements. He's pretty much a normal decent person, and as you point out, he's a huge philanthropist, not that he can't afford it but in any case he DOES it. Not everybody who can be a philanthropist is.

On the other hand, he is a ruthless businessman, and Microsoft is a merciless competitor when it wants something. Maybe that's why people don't like him?

James Blasius

Arm Twisters

Hi!

The article titled "Bill Gates is cool" has triggered what resulted in my first email to you. Although I agree with the author that the result of Sun's response to Microsoft's twisted and unauthorized version of Java VM was not in the user's best interest. The fact is that in the software market, it's all about arm-twisting. When Microsoft decides to take over, and I mean hijack, Java by modifying the VM and adding extensions in the hope that the user (the programmers/developers) would prefer their version to Sun's, then it's only fair that Sun protects their rights. It didn't work out because Microsoft didn't want to play fair. They removed Java support altogether!

But that's not why I'm witting... I'm in the computer programming field, as I'm a programmer myself. I've read at least 5 books where the history of OS development and how Windows ended up being on (almost) every desktop is written from the technical perspective (i.e. cons and pros). Even before that, how did MS-DOS replace PC-DOS (IBM) and Dr. DOS. The reason that Bill Gates is hated, in my opinion, is the following: "Gates is a geek. For the richest man in the world, he certainly has the worst haircuts. But somehow you know deep down, all he really wants to do is write code." Well, he may be a geek, that I don't know about... but I don't know of a single line of code that he contributed to! The fact is that he is a business man... Even the first contract he got with IBM, to create on PC-DOS as an OS for the PC, he contracted the original programmer of CP-M (an OS for the PDP). Since IBM needed an OS to support their desktop computer (PC), it had to be simple and be ready in a short time. Exactly what Bill Gates asked this developer to do (can't remember his name), namely, modify the CP-M code in order to meet the PC-DOS requirements. Talk about being a geek who is too busy to work on his first contract? Hmm, what would you call Linus then?

So in short, people hate him because:

1) He is known to be a geek programmer that he is NOT!
2) He really wants World Domination (or may be only software, and recently Hardware, market domination???)

And when the geek you are talking about decides to move to the Embedded systems (ATMs, PDAs, cell phones...) and the Game Console (XBox) market and whatnot, then you have all the reasons for hate... you think Siemens, Motorola or even Sony or Nintendo would like to be in the same blood bath as Netscape, Apple and the countless others who were in Microsoft's way?

Regards,
Ashod Nakashian