great article

Story: How Apple and Microsoft are advancing desktop LinuxTotal Replies: 6
Author Content
jsusanka

Jun 24, 2006
6:27 PM EDT
I totally agree.

Eventually I think people wise up and see through all the gimmicks and marketing lies.

Truth happens no matter how much marketing money you throw around.

I am finding people that I have contact with are asking a lot more about linux on the desktop - because of reasons for this article. These are marketing, cpa, lawyers, and doctors not IT people. they are really worried about their business and keeping their business and then when I tell them about treacherous (trusted) computing coming with vista and the genuine advantage stuff they just shake their heads and get more worried.

I won't fix windows pc's anymore - I will install linux for people and support them any way I can but my anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-everything days are over.

Just remember truth happens.
moopst

Jun 24, 2006
8:35 PM EDT
I never have supported Windows. I did support dos running on Microsoft Lan Manager at MSU's Radiology department. Mostly 386 with a few 486 machines. I managed to get a couple 286 machines running for summer interns, the worst one I named Jethro (after Jethro of the Beverly Hillbillies).

Prior to that I had programmed on the VAX, mostly DCL and Oracle pl/sql and forms. At that time I was being introduced to UNIX, HP and some new Sun IPX workstations. I learned about X Windows about that time. In fact, in 1991 I visited my sister in Hawaii, just after the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and using X11 forwarding (with no encryption!) I was able to run Framemaker on a machine in East Lansing, Michigan from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. It was fun and so cool, possibly being the first to run a moderately intensive GUI app thousands of miles away on the fledgling Internet. The response times were sometimes as much as 2 seconds late but no more than that.

Unix and Oracle have been the focus of my career. Working for 1 year in college convinced me I wanted nothing to do with Microsoft. Everything was either impossible or extremely difficult. I always felt like hacking to get DOS to do something that ought to be easy was a waste of my talent. I felt like my best efforts amounted to a poor apology for Microsoft's shortcomings. All of those AV companies and MSCE's are just Microsoft apologists.
grouch

Jun 25, 2006
6:06 AM EDT
People provide unpaid support service for MS every day. They don't consider the facts that MS has the BSA running around knocking down doors and trying to undermine free software [1], that MS charges outrageous amounts, directly or indirectly, for the privilege of being treated as criminals, that MS spies on them daily, to extract more charges and to sell them out to the likes of the RIAA and MPAA [2].

Why should anyone provide free support for *any* MS system? Providing such support is not a kindness to friends or family. I don't harbor enough ill-will toward anyone I know to stoop so low as to help continue their addiction to anything as dangerous as MS software.

[1] http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/2507 [2] http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003807.php
perseis

Jun 26, 2006
3:17 AM EDT
As a lazy, apathetic XP user, my husband finally drove it home to me with this.

OK Ms. Business owner, here is what I want you to do. I want you to contract me as your vendor. I want you to sign an agreement that you will not hold me responsible if I do not perform as indicated, nor will you bring action against me if my services cause you loss of business or equipment damage. I want full access to your complete vendor lists at all time and permission to impede you from attempting to do business with them. I claim the right to change your business environment so that only my business can provide you the services I supply, and then I will schedule you for price increases and service charges as I see fit.

Sign here please. I had no idea what the "EULA" said. I simply clicked ok and used the software. Now, anytime I see a Microsoft EULA, I scan it for a clause that enables them to enter my children into slavery. Any business owner that allows this garbage to run her business is either already a slave to the machine or just not paying attention. Either way, abuse is imminent. I may chafe at the thought of my husband being right, but I refuse to allow thieves to control my business.
grouch

Jun 26, 2006
6:32 AM EDT
perseis:

That is beautiful!
jsusanka

Jun 26, 2006
7:20 PM EDT
persis:

nice!! just nice!!
perseis

Jun 27, 2006
2:52 AM EDT
Yeah, and my challenge is to avert him from this post, lest he discover the truth. Having used his computer for the time he has been gone has removed layers of scales from my eyes. Linux is not THAT hard to understand. The reason people fear it is where I enter the realm of cognitive dissoneance.

He is due home from his pilgrimage to DC sometime this afternoon. From phone conversations this morning, I am taking it that the only positive reinforcement he received while there was that of unfettered corruption and apathy. I sometimes wonder at someone so astute in many areas can be so naive in others. Oh well, he did what he thought he had to do. I foresee two possible futures. Either a poutfest with the intensity of my 13 year old daughter will ensue, or he will lock himself into his study and write for three days straight. At least with the latter, I can hear activity. Silence and helios are as foriegn to one another as surfboard wax and International Falls Minnisota.

And Who is Don? I am supposed to offer his sincere apologies for not stopping by. His extra day amid the Beltway mahem was spent with those in need of a frendly face in the amputee ward of Walter Reed.

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