Nice guestbook you got yourself here, Jimbo. Not threaded, of course. :P I'm ashamed to see that I'm too late to comment on the eel-swallowing girl. I missed this chance because the first time I saw the picture, I failed to read the half-dozen lines of text that accompanied it. Which should give you an idea of my attention span. Damn you, MTV! Damn you to Hell!
Anyways, I'm writing to laud your recent post on Instant Messenger protocols. By cooincidence, I spent an hour or so earlier composing a retort to whatshisname's post on Micros~1 over at brain-damage.net, which your post reminded me of. The gist of my argument was that one should properly separate the Windows OS into two separate parts : the actual OS itself (which sux0rs) and the various advantages that Windows has over its competitors in the marketplace (universal compatibility with practically every piece of consumer-grade hardware and software produced in the last 5 years). Now, Microsoft gained this compatibility by exploiting its monopoly position in the marketplace: principally through the process of creating new proprietary standards, and by adding new Microsoft-only features to their competitor's products (the "embrace-and-extend" scheme).
If Microsoft gained universal compatibility through an illegal monopoly, then they shouldn't be able to charge money to use that universal compatibility... And if all I want out of Windows is this ill-gotten compatibility with the latest video games and video cards, I shouldn't have to buy a license to their crappy little OS. To actually purchase the license, for whatever silly price they're trying to charge these days, would be immoral and quite possibly illegal, at least by my tortured logic.
thought you might get a kick out of that, at any rate. hope you're going to enjoy the hoopla that will inevitably surround the Micro + soft break-up (and the appeals, and the supreme court...). I don't know what the fuck took the government that long to get it done. I coulda won that case in about a minute and a half: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Microsoft is accused of being a monopoly. Their product, Windows, is provably inferior in every quanitifiable way to their main competitor, which is free. Thank you for your time. Oh yeah, and they tried to rip off Sun by twiddling their java implementation, that was illegal too." weis |
