Microsoft hits new ethical low point?

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

You know, it's amazing how many people thought I was really serious
in my "devil's advocate" argument.  But the problem is that M$ does
put forward these arguments (or at least similarly inane arguments ;)
and the public seems to lap it up.  The real question is: how do you
fight a PR machine that get thirsty people to drink their sand?

-derek

Jeffry Smith <smith at missioncriticallinux.com> writes:

> Now that I'm able to send to the list:
> 
> Derek Atkins said:
> > John Chambers <jc at trillian.mit.edu> writes:
> > 
> > > In comparison, I have Unix software that I wrote 15  years  ago  that
> > > still compiles and runs without problems on any Unix-like system from
> > > any vendor.
> > > 
> > > We really should be publicising things like this.  If  you  seriously
> > > want  a  common platform, Microsoft flunks even the most basic tests,
> > > while Unix, with all its warts, does a fairly decent job of providing
> > > portability  across  years, hardware changes, and even major rewrites
> > > of the kernel.
> > 
> > <Devil's Advocate>
> > But I have to recompile my software for every release of Linux,
> > Solaris, IRIX, OSF/DUnix, *BSD, etc.  I don't have to recompile my
> > software for Windows.  Once I've built it, it works.  It will work on
> > all variants, and it will work on all systems.  I can't even build a
> > single Linux application that will work on all versions of a single
> > release of Linux (it wont work across Linux/x86, Linux/sparc,
> > Linux/ppc, Linux/alpha, etc.)
> > </Devil's Advocate>
> > 
> 
> 1.  I own a lot of software that worked under Windows 3.1, does not work under 
> 95/NT.  MS themselves admitted a lot of software that worked on NT/98 would 
> not work under Windows 2000.
> 
> 2.  Concerning Linux versions (x86,sparc, ppc, alpha, etc).  Of course, 
> <sarcasm>Windows binaries work equally well on all Windows binaries running on 
> those platforms, especially Windows 2000 - Windows works equally well on the 
> x86, sparc, alpha, ppc, sh7, S/390, etc</sarcasm>.  This argument is the worst 
> I've seen - Windows runs only on the x86.  I have yet to have any software 
> that didn't run across all distros of x86 Linux (assuming same kernel version 
> (2.2).  Most work with all kernel versions).
> 
> At least with Linux, you CAN recompile (assuming Open Source apps - another 
> benefit of Open Source).  With Windows you have no choice.  That nifty Sparc 5 
> - it's a boat-anchor for windows, but a great Linux machine.
> 
> jeff
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jeffry Smith      Technical Sales Consultant     Mission Critical Linux
> smith at missioncriticallinux.com   phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Thought for today:  clobber vt. 
> 
>  To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I
>    walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack."  Compare
>    mung, scribble, trash, and 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
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