Re: Microsoft Linux!

["t. bedlam" <bedlam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Smith wrote:

> > is a quality product.  But the right tool for the job.  Windows and Linux
> > are apples and oranges.

Hmm. Just because products differ does not mean they don't share markets. Is an 
SUV a farm/work truck or a passanger car? When my grandfather hauled farm 
equipment/supplies around in his Lincoln Town Car, did it become a pickup?

> > cheerleaders.  Each attractive in their own way, cackling about how each of
> > the other girls is ugly.  Btw, Character assassination is a fallacy of
> > debate.  Even if Microsoft was the worst product in history and Bill Gates
> > the Anti-Christ, none of that would make Linux a better product.

Character assassination is one mainstay of rhetoric, a valid and reasonable skill 
and tactic (so long as rhetoric and dialectic (debate) are not unduly confused).

damaged justice wrote:

> > >>I don't get where if someone wants to use and appreciate Linux they must
> > >>therefore hate Microsoft?!?

It helps.

Cluebook not included. Some zealotry required. (As it were.)

> > >>Can someone explain this to me?  Is it
> > >>because the people who have co-opted Linux are really socialists and the
> > >>real agenda is to push their political scheme?!? (Duh)

Only if the socialist society represented is U.K. Le Guin's _The Dispossessed_.

I am anti-Microsoft, for now, because of the well-known political principle 
that one's resources and markets should never be allowed to fall under the 
domination of one group.

> > ...if DOS/Windows hadn't raised the PC to prominance, things like Linux may
> > have never come into existence. (Possible, hypothesis contrary to fact I
> > admit, but a plausible scenario).

Interesting factoid: One story goes that IBM hired M$ to write DOS because IBM
was moving away from bundled software in an attempt to countercheck the DOJ's
antitrust suit. (Anyone hear different?) Part of the suit charged IBM's bundling 
practices were monopolistic.

Later, as MS-DOS/Win3.1 spread like a... well, like a spreading thing, only fast,
cheap clone makers popped up because AMI and others reverse-engineered IBM's PC 
BIOS. So on the one hand, we have the government, partially, to thank for cracking 
open the PC market. On the other hand, government today, under the influence of 
Corporate America and the DMCA, might not allow AMI to repeat its feat.

Think about it.

I'm late.

-- 
bedlam@concentric.net || http://www.concentric.net/~bedlam
Though nothing is wasted, everything is spent. -- Annie Dillard
But to live outside the law you must be honest.... -- Bob Dylan