What Bothers You Most About the Remondites?

Speak up folks, everyone here has an opinion on them... they're Microsoft and a lot of (smart) people don't really like them much. So what gets you most about them? I'm curious... or.. maybe... I just don't have anything better to do with my time (well, I do, I'm just not doing it )!

I basically just don't trust them. I find it hard to trust any large coporate entity, really, because what's in there interest isn't necessarily good for me.

What really killed all hope of my ever trusting Microsoft, though, was the fact that they intentionally included a back door in IIS. Regardless of the security implications (I don't think it was ever exploited), how could I ever trust a company that has such little disregard for my privacy and property?

Where's G - All of the above

Redmond. With a 'd'. And even though I'm from Seattle and have a positive attitude towards MS, I don't work for them.

I actually like Microsoft, or rather, many of their products. What does concern me though, is some of the security issues that have cropped up over the past years/decades.

Don't care about bugs...they happen, and I don't think their products are any worse than others.

Closed source apps...whatever. It's their decision. If they want to sink billions in investment and reap a reward for it, fine by me. Open source is nice, also has limitations as is somewhat over-rated if in my opinion.

Licensing...I actually applaud most of their licensing practices. In a digital era where piracy runs rampant, I'm so very happy to see some serious efforts to keep it in check. Yes, I've been paying attention to Mr. Berman.

Bill...he's just another person. Don't know him, don't care about him, regardless of his wealth and what companies he owns.

Those are my opinions. Not trying to argue or defend anything, you just wanted to know.

I need a speel checker.....

I don't mind putting up with bugs either, BUT, it's MUCH nicer when you can go in and make minor changes to fix stupid bugs... I think my general dislike of Micro$oft is not any one thing, it's a combination of all of them:

Licensing + Bugs + Security = If you're going to charge that much for your products and make us keep upgrading all the time, build them well to begin with.

Closed Source + Bugs + Security = If you can't make it work right / securely to begin with, let me try.

Bill = Just a fun target.

I used to like Mircosoft.. but since I got WinME and started trying to work with IIS, Frontpage, and WinNT, it just sickens me the constant problems I have. I personally think once you get the hang of Linux, it's easier to use / fix than Windoze machines. Normally, I just give up on problems under win32 boxes and say "The Hell with it, I'll just live with it", but on Linux I have access to the guts so it's just a matter of time until the problem is fixed.

Bugs happen. It is a fact of life.
People want to make money. It is a fact of life.
Open Source - vs - Closed Source, it is a choice, if it was left to that, there wouldn't be a problem.
Both have advantages and disadvantages.

What I can't stand is FUD tactics, which is a well know practice of MS.
Has anyone read the Halloween Documents?

i dont hate MS, i just dont trust them.

The Big Blue Brother of our era...

I'll tell you what's riled me up recently. I'm taking classes (see the meaningless rant elsewhere in this forum) for web development and multimedia... my Multimedia / Javascript prof. has the nerve to say "Well, everyone uses Internet Explorer and Media Player" to which I immediately snapped that I commonly use niether as I typically use Linux. He also claims that VBScript is superior because it is case-insensitive and an integral part of .NET. He doesn't know the difference between a function and a method, can't adequately explain properties or objects, and has no idea what inheritance, polymorphism, et al. are.

What really blew the fuse was when my QBasic instructor happily "informed" one of his students that QBasic could do, and I quote "...pretty much the same things as your C, TurboPascal... all those languages" could. Note that this is also the fellow who, after typing a 4 line program got a syntax error and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't run (The whole time he pondered I sat and stared at the first line where he tried to assign to nothing because he forgot to type the variable to assign to).

I'm convinced now that hardcore Microphiles are nothing but imbeciles who learned to type. I'm convinced that these people who live and die by the word of Lord Bill are simply too stupid or too lazy to use real systems, programming languages, apps, etc. Microsoft has always targeted the lowest common denominator and I think that the Microzombies they've produced in the field are evidence of that.

While not as bad, certainly, my intro to C++ teacher couldn't debug a program to save his life. I never asked for help a single time in that class, because I knew if I did I would spend the next 30 minutes while he looked over my code, not a single look of comprehension on his face.

People that try to teach subjects they don't understand themselves just really bug me.

You guys should stop whining about Microsoft as some sort of devil.

Microsoft has been the locomotive that has driven the economy for the past 10 years. Both the information age and the internet age really took off because Microsoft put out products that normal people can easily use.

If you don't want to use their stuff because you want to be different, or you want to be some sort of cool elitist wannabe hacker, that's great.

But I pick the best tool for the job and that's a mix of both closed and open source.

You'll never see Linux on my desktop. I want to get some actual work done.

And most people do use Internet Explorer. Numbers don't lie.

God bless Microsoft.

Good argument. And man never would have made it to the moon without the contributions to rocketry made in Nazi Germany. Heil Hitler.

I don't whine about them but I don't like their business practices


No, they've purchased companies that made software that's the locomotive for the information age. Can you name one thing that Microsoft was the innovator of? Besides plug-n-pray and BSODs.


I use Linux because it keeps me from being in the grips of Microsoft's horrific EULAs and it just works.


If Microsoft's desktop OSes is what you prefer then great.....but opinions vary. Linux on the desktop works for me.



And God Bless Linux and Open Source

Only when they stop playing the part.


I guess if you mean "out of control train plowing under everything in its path"...


I guess if by "took off" you mean the massive proliferation of porn and filez among stupid children and the stupid parents of stupid children who could suddenly access it.

The only thing Microsoft has contributed to the Internet is a plethora of head-slappingly stupid security problems and a lot of trouble for developer's trying to code for everyone.


I don't use MUCH of their stuff because, quite frankly, it doesn't work. My Outlook app at work crashes at least thrice a day, Frontpage has utterly mangled our Intranet's HTML code, IIS server has been down for a total of 48 hours and ~12 minutes since we started keeping track of outages 7 months ago. NT Workstation locked me out of my own account today until I rebooted, I can't do anything on my Windoze partition on desktop at home except play SOME games and watch DVDs (though, that too is often troublesome) without windoze claiming I've run out of memory (amusing, since it still tells me that when NOTHING is open except Exlporer and Taskbar, and the only thing that's been run that could infect it was the Windows install disc).... gee.. maybe those of us that are a little more astute don't use that crap because it doesn't work.


Agreed.. it's just that the closed source product that's BEST for the job is almost NEVER from Redmond.


See run-down of constant MS problems above. Actually, the reason most developer's don't put Linux in is because they don't know how and don't want to make the relatively minor effort to learn.


Actually, I can make Opera identify itself as lots of different things so, yes, they do... BUT.. in case you haven't noticed, the big reason lots of people use that steaming pile of crap is that Microsoft is a big, nasty, competition-stifling monopoly. If you'd like to argue that point, call the U.S. DOJ.