: : Microsoft are parasites, pure and simple; and their efforts to claim intellectual property rights over the Internet are hindering innovation; which depends upon the free exchange of information.: Far, again, you da man. Kudos. You know a boatload more about the internet than I do. But that's only because it doesn't matter to me who did what first. All I know is that Gates made a system that works.
But it doesn't!
You've just been led to believe that PC crashing is part of the normal function of a computer.
A quick comparison:
Windows 2000 was released as a finished product to the world on 17/2/00. It is estimated (by Microsoft) to contain over 65,000 bugs; of which 28,000 are estimated to be 'real problems'.
Windows 2000 is just an operating system; it contains a Web browser, a mail client and a few other programs; applications for Windows 2000 are bought separately; and will have bugs of their own.
Debian GNU/Linux v2.2 is expected to be released in about a month; as of today, it contains 194 'release-critical' bugs; and about four times that number of minor bugs.
See?Since Debian won't lose money by delaying the release, they make a point of fixing the bugs before release.
Microsoft would lose money by alerting customers to bugs; so they keep quiet about them and ship massive bugfixes every six months or so ('service packs').
With Debian, you get a fully functional system; operating system, applications, games, mail, the lot. It's like buying every piece of software that will work on Windows as a single package.
So either you spend about $10 on Debian and get something reliable that comes with everything you need and full documentation - or you pay $500 and get something with 65 times as many bugs that requires the latest hardware to run and doesn't come with any other software.
Your choice, of course; but the consumer should at least get the chance to have a meaningful choice.
It always puzzles me that pro-caps like yourself defend Microsnot; after all, what you have in MS is a monolithic company that does deals with the major hardware suppliers to stop anything else getting into the market, thus killing off any competition before it has a meaningful chance to get started.
It's as if Cadillac did deals with all of the garages in the world; that they would only sell and fix Cadillacs; if you had a Ford, you would have to look after it yourself.
: I don't care, really, not even a little bit, about all that other stuff. HTML, SchHTML.
But you're happy enough to venture an opinion on the subject despite your near-total ignorance of it?
Your original statements were simply wrong, Frenchy. Microsoft is the greatest threat to innovation around; because it wants to have executive control over any innovation that goes on.
: PS, would open standards work on say, automobile technolgy?
(What do you think safety and emission legislation is?)
OK, let's use an analogy. Would you buy a car with the bonnet welded shut, so that you could not look at or take care of the engine even if you wanted to?
Would you say 'Yes, if I manage to open the bonnet, you can sue my arse off'...?
And would you buy a car if you were automatically legally at fault if anything at all went wrong?
"..."What about cost of ownership?" Economically, buying open source software is the only intelligent choice. You would not buy a car if the hood was welded shut and only the factory could make changes or corrections. We would hang Chrysler VPs if they billed us for recalls, yet we gleefully accept both situations from proprietary software vendors. If my local service station doubles their price, I take my car down the street to another shop. If I want to go to Chrysler, I can, but if my Aunt Matilda is pretty good at cars, I can take it to her instead. I can even take my 454 Chevy block and put it into my old '63 VW without upsetting either vendor."
(taken from http://www.linux.com/articles.phtml?aid=7048)
Farinata.
None.
