I've been using Vista on my home PC for nearly a year without any problems. If you have hardware that's less than a year old, running Vista should not be a problem. If you have an older PC, you probably should stay with XP. I recommend Vista for a new PC.
Some people say that "Vista sucks!" is a result of the "Mac vs. PC" ad campaign and is not based on merit. There were problems with Vista's initial release, but everything seems fine now.
When I write "Microsoft Visual Studio is better than Ruby on Rails", that attracts a surprising amount of hate. That is an objective analysis based on technical merit. I should choose my development environment based on what is technically best, and not based on any personal religious or political beliefs.
If you're serious about working as a professional software engineer, you should have some familiarity with Visual Studio. It's a pretty good IDE and it's very commonly used.
Microsoft receives massive State subsidies, just like all large corporations. Most of Microsoft's customers are large corporations, who receive massive State subsidies themselves. The saying used to be "Nobody got fired for using IBM", and now it's "Nobody got fired for using Microsoft." If you use Ruby on Rails and the project is a disaster, then you can and should get fired. Most corporate managers choose the path of least risk, so they almost all use Microsoft.
On a scale of corporate evil, Microsoft is relatively benign. I may choose to run Linux or Mac. I can use WINE on Linux to run Windows applications. With web-based applications, it makes no difference if I use Windows, Linux, or Mac. Most of my current computer activity is blogging, gmail, and Google Reader, none of which are Microsoft OS-dependent. Legally, I may boycott Microsoft and it is practical to do so. State violence does *NOT* force me to use Windows. I use Windows because it's pretty good and it's what most other people are using. If I want to buy a game, there's a lot more Windows games than Linux games. If I want to use XNA to develop an XBox Live Arcade game, I have to use Windows and Visual Studio.
With FRE, FNM, and the financial industry, their profits are backed by the full evil power of the State. I cannot boycott the financial industry unless I also boycott the Federal Reserve and income taxes. Boycotting Microsoft is a viable option. Linux is not so convenient that I would recommend it to my computer-illiterate relatives, but Linux is a serious option for a sophisticated user. Besides, I can use Cygwin or a Linux boot DVD if I really want to use Linux on my Windows PC. For example, "grep" is better than the default Windows search feature.
On the scale of corporate evil, Microsoft ranks low. Their product has tangible useful economic value. There are legitimate economies of scale when writing software. I can, if I choose, boycott Microsoft. Contrast Microsoft with the financial industry, who have their profits backed by the full evil power of the State. Corporations like FRE, FNM, and the financial industry are much more evil than Microsoft, because I cannot boycott their profits without boycotting the Federal Reserve and income tax.
I went over a list of all the jobs I've had and all the jobs of my friends and relatives. I realized that the guy I know who works for Microsoft is the only one who has a job that isn't a parasite on society as a whole. Microsoft writes software that people find useful. Microsoft receives State subsidies like all large corporations, but there are legitimate uses to their software, and there are legitimate economies of scale when it comes to writing software.
If there are any businesses that can survive the collapse of the State in their current form, it's businesses like Microsoft and Google.
Let me list the other jobs of people I know and jobs I've had.
- The financial industry is purely parasitic.
- Related to the above, I know someone who works pricing municipal bonds, which only exists as a job due to the tax exemption for municipal bonds.
- A public school teacher is paid via property stolen via taxes. Even though most individual teachers have good intentions, the system is corrupt. Anything funded via theft cannot be good. (In a true free market, without being forced to pay for schools via taxes, parents could afford to pay for schools.)
- The job of accountant exists only due to State regulation of the market.
- If you work as a teacher or administrator in a college, you're a parasite. Most funding for schools comes directly or indirectly from the State. State violence demands that students get a college degree for a decent job.
- The marketing industry is also parasitic. The main skill is manipulating people's pro-State brainwashing. Further, when getting a job selling marketing, your connections are more important than actual ability.
- Doctors and dentists provide a useful service, but State violence restricts the supply and artificially raises their salaries.
- The telecommunications industry provides a useful service, but the State-licensed monopoly/oligopoly drives up prices, lowers quality, and restricts competition.
11 comments:
Boycott?
If you do not believe in 'intellectual property', then an operating system is not a product, the company selling it is not really a company and there is nothing to 'boycott'.
For instance, in order to get microsoft 'products', do you really need to give FRNs to microsoft?
There seem to be many places that distribute microsoft freeware packaged better than microsoft is capable of, at no charge (at the proper price for intellectual 'property').
These distrubutions are often much, much better than what msoft's. For instance, they often include all the junk you will usually want to install, such as microsoft orfice, photoshlop, etc. And the install is completely automatic! Many useful tweaks, etc.
The problem with winders is that it is not a very stable system, and it is susceptible to viral havoc. With these new distros I can reinstall the OS and my favorite apps while having a coffee in the morning (without participating), once every few weeks.
I know, it sucks that I have to do it, (yes, I do know about Linux), but it is still often better than trying to get linux to print correctly on my printer, or using 'the gimp' or running FPGA software under wine.
Anyway, boycott is too big a word for these guys slocking 'intellectual property'. They should pay me for wasting my time with the patented garbage they are trying to sell.
Big problem with Microsoft - it relies on state enforcement of copyright and intellectual property and successfully lobbies government for benefits.
That is wrong, but as you say, this is usual corporate behaviour.
Where there is an alternative, I urge people to use it, especially if it is free, or open source software, just as I would suggest supporting a local cooperative rather than a multinational if possible.
For some things there is no alternative or the alternatives are vastly inferior- then, use the Microsoft product.
In other words, use the best tool for the job whilst leaning towards preferring open and free software.
On a technical level - much of Windows sucks. Then again, I think much of Linux sucks (just in different ways) as does MacOS X.
No software is perfect.
Here is the problem I have with Microsoft. I'm a proud X box 360 owner, actually I have 3. 1 for me,and 1 for each of my boys. Everything has problems when it is first made. This system had a fatal flaw. When the mother board heats up it expends,if this happens to much a connection is severed. Your x box becomes inoperable ( the red ring of death). Now this has happened 7 times with my three systems( I have a warranty ) And many other people have had the same problem.
I know for a fact sony would have corrected this fatal flaw long ago, but not micro soft, They just say f##k it,lets pump em out and leave them like they are,,,this way we can sell more warranties.
As you can tell Im down on micro soft..mainly because my warranty has just expired,and Ive just gotten the red ring of death again, and the company pretty much told me im screwed..Im boycotting Microsoft now. Thats the last dime of mine they will ever get..I hope.
Fritz
It would be very interesting for you to analyze how Microsoft could possibly exist without copyrights.
It's obvious they could exist just fine without patents, indeed, they'd probably be more lucrative.
"Microsoft without copyrights" is very easy. They just have trade secret agreements with their employees. If they make sure that all source code is only stored on Bill Gates' servers, then it's enforceable.
In a true free market, market pressure would probably lead to an open source model. Plus, if someone leaked the source code, Microsoft would have a valid claim only against the employee who leaked it, but other people who have no contractural agreement with Microsoft would be free to use it.
In the present, there are laws restricting the extent to which other people may reverse-engineer Windows or offer other OSes with a similar UI. Those laws are not legitimate. Microsoft could maintain a dominant position as a closed-source software vendor, although there would be much more market pressure for open source software.
Copyrights, trade secrets, whatever. You guys are under this assumption that an operating system is actually necessary. Well, wake up, it is not necessary.
An operating system is the State on your computer. It precludes you from doing anything except in the way that is specified by the OS.
After a while sheeple forget that there are many ways to write software, and the users are idiots anyway...
Vista ads I've seen focus on 2 points: you can spy on your kids, and you can stitch panoramic pictures easily. What the FU**? That is what an operating system is sold for?
In the old days I could turn on the computer, and 30 seconds later be in a word processor. Today it takes me a minute. And the computer has 20,000 times (that's right, twenty thousand times!) more memory, a terabyte of storage (that really keeps me busy, sorting all that crap), and is a gazilion times faster than say my old apple ][. Is that really progress?
Statist, wasteful government... Rigid, stupid operating systems. The two go together, and I am proud to be an anarchist in both directions.
A stupid $1.00 microcontroller is more than anyone needs for their home computer. But of course, we are trained to consume, and the seller's margin is better on $1000 idiot boxes. So a whole generation of software people is lost writing enormous, asshole web 2.0 or whatever applications with ruby on rails or php, or C++, or some other garbage dump of a language that comes on a DVD. No wonder my new machine better run at a multi-gigaherz and have at least multi-gigabtyes of ram, so that the next Microsoft os will maybe fit.
Anon
I totally agree. The State and the millitary industrial complex created computing. The socio-economic system created the computer. The two go together, born from centralization of power... Computing increases the power of the State and gives it more control over us.
We appear to be confused between means and ends. Our social project drummed into us by the State says the ends of our society is to increase production, efficiency and wealth, yet the means we employ to do this, have themselves become 'our ends'. Many of us spend a lifetime in a corporation working to live up to the social project and we are trapped in an endless process of loss of power and freedom, static, state centric, and without spontaneity, we have become less human, more machine like.
Micro$oft SUCKS. Let me tell you why.
1. With every release of Windows, the default setup gets more and more dumb. Microsoft actively seeks to configure the default installation in the way it is most dumb. Everything they do is wrong, you have to spend hours to bring it back to usable.
a) Icon view? You kidding me? Am I supposed to be determined to make my PC less productive?
b) No icons on desktop?
c) No extensions visible?
d) Simple file sharing?
e) Delete my icons automatically?
f) No status bar?
g) Windows Firewall?
h) Restore point?
-tired of letters-
- Security center from M$?
- Messenger?
- Auto updates?
- Totally gay themes?
- Menus not showing all options?
.... and I could go on and on and on...
Microsoft is determined to dumb people down. Easier for the state that way. Just teach them to recognize colorful icons, and do with them anything you want.
Vista? That is THE gay O.S. Can't handle few thousands of files. Gay approach to file system. Idiotic helpful messages and warnings everywhere. "Detect it" "Repair it" "Identify it". Really? How about one big button: "DON'T SCREW UP ANYMORE"?
Internet Explorer 7? GAY! The most idiotic layout I have ever seen in a browser. Why do I need to change view to see FTP properly?
Office? All these new versions, coming out every frikin year, like shit out of rabbit, and for what good reason? All they have done is they changed the look and feel to worse, while making it less useful, more irritating and less reliable.
I wish Microsoft would just die. I work in IT. I have to deal with it daily. I do all I can to give people alternatives. Every time I make a new convert, show a free program that works better than M$, or explain why Microsoft wants to dumb them down, and how their updates actually designed to break operating system so that they "FEEL" the need to buy a new computer, I know that I have spent my day usefully.
I have seen very little improvement since W2K. Seriously. "Run As", and bigger file limits for PST. That is just about all.
Microsoft's whole business strategy is just one big scam since 2000.
One thing in favor though. Considering what was done to Microsoft in 2000 by the state, it is understandable they have undergone such a dramatic change.
When anyone experiences a dramatic pressure, there is going to be a change. A hero, will rise higher. A limpy piece of shit will become an ugly monster, just like Microsoft. It's just a matter of inner content. All that the pressure does its just amplifies one's internal nature.
anon, why do the things that make you mad about microsoft make it homosexual? from the very few of these fashion/design shows that i have seen here and there, it seems to me that if the layout was horrible, it couldn't be "gay". those guys seem to do a good job with decorating and layouts.
Simple.
I is not taught today, for whatever the reason, but here it is:
Man design seeks to define edges, sharper corners, agression. Female design seeks to underscore roundness, beiges, soft colors, passivity, smooth transitions, friendly interface.
This is because females all know one universal truth, they are to be inserted with an object. That sits deep in their mind, and opposite is true for men, respectively.
If you like rounded, softer forms on things that are yours, and you're a male, then you're gay. No offense, as we know there is nothing wrong with being gay. I hold no animosity against gays either. it's just what it is.
Now, one may say that a manly man still supposed to like the soft and rounded woman. True, but here is the thing, nothing ever is to be accepted to compete with a woman.
If you accept competition, you're Bi. If you prefer the competition, you're gay.
To a normal heterosexual male all things like her are "her" things, that is it. He won't play with them, but he will hold them for her.
Now look at everything Microsoft has done since 2000. Vista is ultimately gay. You can see a definite shift toward 3 things: roundness, softness, helpfulness. Nothing bad is going to happen if you don't know what are you doing. If you think this is a heterosexual male's design principle, then you have been gay for so long, you can't even see the difference. There is nothing wrong with a woman liking new Microsoft. But if you're a gay, and you find it better, well, they you really are "in the closet" , may-be from your own self.
You're right, gays excel at shows and design. Do you enjoy their work? I, personally, couldn't care less. I want my things powerful and edgy.
Do you find iPod nicely shaped? This is because it isn't edgy, it is soft and rounded. It's non aggressive. It's as gay as it gets. If you were to be inserted with something, you'd rather have an iPod than an assault rifle, right?
I know this might seem soooo old and soooo politically incorrect, but the truth is what it is, and no amount of political correctness is going to change it.
Again, no disrespect to gays. I think no one has more rights to exist than anyone else. I am just pointing out, that Microsoft's design is clearly gay-oriented.
Based on recent comments, it appears that some trolls have been targeting my blog comment section for starting flamewars.
I really want to have an open comments section, but I'm not interested in debating the heterosexual/homosexual bias of the Windows Vista default desktop theme.
If you're going to troll my blog, you really need to do a better job. If comments start getting too silly and off-topic, I'm going to have to start filtering them out as spam.
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