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The guy's quite the archcapitalist, and has long been known as such (where've *you* been all these years?).

So I'd opt for the latter. Plus, I admire him for his nerve; he looks out for his own interests at all times, and views all others as competitors who must ultimately lie with the fishes, even if those competitors are those "colleague software businesses" that you mentioned.

Pity the poor bastards, then eat 'em for lunch. >>:-D

The guy's quite the archcapitalist, and has long been known as such (where've *you* been all these years?).

Under a rock, being exposed to propaganda telling the world that the guy is a philanthropist.
Sure, you're right.
It's just, I was still surprised at the shamelessness with which he's ready to lie for everyone to see.

I think Melinda, the woman who used to run the MS department that created Encarta/Student, is the philanthropist (ie, the one who is coordinating the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) of the two.

Bill? He just handles the money and monetary affairs, since that's what he knows best and knows most. He could never be an effective philanthropist without Melinda acting as leverage.

Furthermore, his main efforts with Third World nations have mostly involved Windows promotion and standardization in African countries, such as Nigeria and Tanzania. This preceded the OLPC or Mark Shuttleworth by quite a number of years.

On a related note, Nigeria's president Obasanjo's son, Dare, is a Program Manager at Microsoft.

I think Melinda, the woman who used to run the MS department that created Encarta/Student, is the philanthropist (ie, the one who is coordinating the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) of the two.

Not to take away from the value of her philanthropic work, but Melinda was also the manager of the team that brought us Microsoft Bob. I think that donating a few billion of Bill's dollars to charitable causes almost, but not quite, makes up for that

brought us Microsoft Bob. I think that donating a few billion of Bill's dollars to charitable causes almost, but not quite, makes up for that

That's pretty cheap, are you sure you've actually seen Bob?

"On a related note, Nigeria's president Obasanjo's son, Dare, is a Program Manager at Microsoft."

http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=6541e297-1a22...

Dare happily blogs about a meeting he had with BillG in that link...an interesting read, and it's pretty clear that Dare isn't terribly close to his father.

For those of you not familiar w/ Dare (he's very well known within the MS development crowd), he's a PM on the Windows Live time, and is also a very talented programmer.

LOL... This is what I meant when I wrote yesterday that you were going to far.

You are not just a MS-apologist. You are mostly like hired by MS, like the well-known "grass roots"-movements that Microsoft owns.

You are an astroturfer.

It is OBVIOUS for EVERYBODY that Bill Gates is playing a big fool here, the all innocent and naïve Bible Belt "On the 3rd Day God created the Remington Bolt Action Rifle"-guy.

I'm sorry, but did Steve Ballmer go rampaging through your house a few years back and mauling your kids, and you're just here at OSNews taking out your revenge on every person who ever says anything nice about Microsoft?

I mean, please Mr. Jones. Don't waste your time here! Steve Ballmer might be in hospital by the time you act!

You must go to the backwoods of Idaho, hire a militia of professional redneck gunmen, and take out your revenge on Steve Ballmer by raiding Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington.

But for the love of Debian, make sure that any GPS software that you may use to navigate your way to greatness is blessed with 100% GNU software (+ Linux) provided by the elves in Richard Stallman's basement.

Else, there will be hell to pay. Legal hell, I tell ya! FSF will eat you alive in court for those GPL violations!

I'm not here to "take out any revenge on every person who ever says anything nice about Microsoft". in that case, I'd have to beat up myself - and I've no intentions of doing so.

There's a difference between blindly follow Microsoft in a such a devoted manner as yours. And then praise them when they do something good, and bash them when they screw up.

Why would I want to go to the backwoods of Idaho and start a militia? There's plenty of those already (and some of them are actually good

Would you pay the airline ticket for me, or do you suggest I swim from Denmark to USA?

Dude, the first two comments which I had ever posted to this site were berating Steve Ballmer.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16642&comment_id=188604

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16642&comment_id=188778

I criticize their outstanding faults (particularly Steve Ballmer), just like every other individual on this site.

Otherwise, I think that they act in the same way as every other big software company.

In MS' eyes, the rules (err, "standards") made by other companies and organizations don't apply to them, and only exist to curtail their potential.

Therefore, they break those standards, then leverage them by default within their own domain, in order to advance themselves as a company. Colleague companies be damned, as far as they're concerned.

I actually wish that more Linux distros were like that. The old ways of thinking which continually bind the Linux desktop at home to the Linux server at work aren't doing people like Linspire or Canonical any good.

You were doing so good. Then you had to go and revert back to the "omg you work for MS!11111" bullshit.

Sigh.

He acts like one. Completely blind for facts. He's as bad as some of the FSF-believers in here.

You manage to look at Microsoft and FSF with sceptical eyes and so do I. But raynevandunem does not. That kind of blind followers are obnoxius to me. No matter what they follow. He has turned Microsoft into a religion, just like some of the FSF-zealots has turned FSF and the GPL into a religion.

Sigh.

So that automatically makes him a MS employee? That's ridiculous and you know it.

If you read my post again, you'll see I don't write that he _is_ an employee. Just that it is _most_ likely. Because he acts like one.

You: You are an astroturfer.

Hm?

Am I the only one that doesn't believe a word William Henry III is saying here? SCO, the business that tried to kill Linux?

I know this may surprise some, considering I'm supposed to be a "cultist" :-) but I wouldn't so quick to dismiss this as a lie on BillG's part. The fact is that, even if he is worth billions and billions of dollars, he still only has 24 hourse in a day like the rest of us - and I don't know about you, but it's been a while since I've paid any attention to the SCO-IBM trial.

Also consider the fact that Gates has been slowly distancing himself from Microsoft over the past couple of months, preparing for his retirement. He has acted in an increasingly aloof way...I don't know. It is possibly that he's being a little disingenuous here, but I could very well believe that he has lost interest in SCO vs. IBM.

Now, if Steve Ballmer had said this...that'd be a different story!

Emm why would Steve Ballmer mention SCO ?

He is too busy looking for the chunky crayon he just ate.

Niall was asking about The SCO Group ie the renamed Caldera that merely bought SCO Unix, then later was headed by McBride.
Bill answered about the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) by his references to Michels, their past collaboration and the different location.

So Bill didn't exactly lie, but he certainly misdirected.
Niall could have pressed on that.

Agreed. Whatever MS's position may or may not have been WRT the SCO deals and suits, it is *very* hard to believe that he would not be aware of:

1. Baystar Capital
2. SCO's general situation

Then again, during his deposition during the DOJ case, he claimed he didn't know what a browser was.

I have to wonder, though. Way back during the Iran-Contra scandal, president Reagan claimed to know nothing of the activities. I thought he was lying through his teeth at the time. But then a few years later, after the fact of his Alzheimers disease had been revealed, and after reflecting upon the rumors of his mental infirmity in the last years of his presidency, I realized that he might actually have been telling the truth. A scary thing to consider about the man who had control of the "Red Button".

Could Bill be telling the truth?

(Hey, NotParker's not the only one who can promote memes.) ;-)

Edited 2006-12-17 02:04

Could Bill be telling the truth?

In a pre-Sarbox world, maybe. But Sarbanes no longer affords corporate officers, including chairmen, the luxury of plausible deniability.

Given all the press that was surrounding it, it's really hard to believe he can say he doesn't know.

More likely, given the fact that Novell subpoenaed the correspondence between MS - Baystar - SCO and given the recent MS - Novell deal (which some cynical among us may believe is related to the previous point), he's probably just being smart and staying quiet to avoid saying anything that can be misconstrued or otherwise used against them.

I don't know for sure, but I bet 3-way sexual intercourse with a chicken and a midget probably ranks somewhere in the top 10.

How much money and what sex is the midget?

As long as BG was the one screwing them over and making money from it, then I am sure he would have no problem with it....

You mean to tell me that a company can appropriate $50M to (allegedly) fund an investment group and the CEO isn't informed? Sorry Bill, that's a lie through and through.

Umm, when you're talking about a guy (and his company) who is worth multi-billions, I would say that YES, he could've missed that $50M memo by a long shot from under a lower tier of management.

Umm, when you're talking about a guy (and his company) who is worth multi-billions, I would say that YES, he could've missed that $50M memo by a long shot from under a lower tier of management.

Not when you're talking about MS, which bets the farm on every tiny crumb of code in its jihad against competitors.

Actually, you're a bit off. Let me put it this way. We're not talking about ordering $50M of office supplies here, or paying for the corporate christmas party.

This is about intentionally funding an outside company to fight a by-proxy legal battle. Funding that, very possibly, could be construed as illegal by breaking all sorts of rules regulations regarding corporate governance. You bet that, if the memo existed, it was handed to and voted upon by Bill Gates and the board of directors.

If they want plausible deniability my guess is BG's involvement was nothing more than a vp saying we are developing ways of interfering with Linux and it's users. Bill probably replied, "Good."

Some time passes and BG's lips twist into an ironic smirk as he hears on the radio about a little company called SCO, formerly Caldera (MS-DOS), is suing IBM for billions all because of Linux.

If any investigation is done, Bill's honest response can be there were people working on competitive stratigies leveraged against IBM, but he had no idea of MS's involvement in SCO. He works on moving the company products forward and doesn't involve himself in the 'dirty' work.

3) Gates has evidently been living under a rock not knowing that SCO is still around these past, how many years? Software companies may be many, but the CEO community is rather tight.

Seems like he made a conscious effort to reference the *old* SCO, giving names of people who *used* to work there, and then he can say "boy I haven't thought of them for years".

Well said!

It did seem like the interviewer was a bit inexperienced...also, he was flown over, wined and dined by MS before the interview. It's hard to be a dick (like a good interviewer should be) towards someone who's just paid for your little vacation...

That said, I do continue to think that Bill might genuinely be less concerned with MS' affairs than he used to be. It's also illusory to think that CEOs know everything about their company's doing, especially a company as large as MS. Someone mentioned the movie The Corporation in another thread, I think it's very enlightening on that very subject...

I agree completely. I believe he started winding down his involvement with the company years ago, and these days is often just going through the motions.

Maybe "I have every confidence in Steve Ballmer" will be next.

Oh, wait, they're friends. He probably does.

Too bad, so sad.

I think he's bored with all.

I agree. I think it's gotten all too big for him and he's not having fun anymore. He wouldn't be the first to feel like this, too...

For all of MS' shenanigans, I am still grateful to Bill Gates and the original MS gang for helping spark the PC revolution. I agree with the assessment made by Neal Stephenson in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" that Bill Gates was as instrumental in the birth of Linux than were Linus and RMS:

Credit for Linux generally goes to its human namesake, one Linus Torvalds, a Finn who got the whole thing rolling in 1991 when he used some of the GNU tools to write the beginnings of a Unix kernel that could run on PC-compatible hardware. And indeed Torvalds deserves all the credit he has ever gotten, and a whole lot more. But he could not have made it happen by himself, any more than Richard Stallman could have. To write code at all, Torvalds had to have cheap but powerful development tools, and these he got from Stallman's GNU project.

And he had to have cheap hardware on which to write that code. Cheap hardware is a much harder thing to arrange than cheap software; a single person (Stallman) can write software and put it up on the Net for free, but in order to make hardware it's necessary to have a whole industrial infrastructure, which is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. Really the only way to make hardware cheap is to punch out an incredible number of copies of it, so that the unit cost eventually drops. For reasons already explained, Apple had no desire to see the cost of hardware drop. The only reason Torvalds had cheap hardware was Microsoft.

Microsoft refused to go into the hardware business, insisted on making its software run on hardware that anyone could build, and thereby created the market conditions that allowed hardware prices to plummet. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/in_the_beginning_was_the_command_li...

So, despite Microsoft's efforts to undercut Linux once it became a threat to the monopolist, I just can't bring myself to dislike Gates.

Edited 2006-12-17 03:27

"Microsoft refused to go into the hardware business, insisted on making its software run on hardware that anyone could build, and thereby created the market conditions that allowed hardware prices to plummet. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist. "


This seems a little revisionist; Microsoft _was_ a software company not a hardware company. They didn't have the capital, the facilities or experience in creating hardware. They were just some college kids that liked to program at that point.

They wrote software for IBM hardware. It was IBM that decided to go with off the shelf parts and use generic hardware. As I understand it, it was do to constraints within IBM that the IBM PC project leader decided to go this route. A route which eventually lead to a healthy PC clone market.

All in all, I can't see how any of that was Bill Gates doing, or how Microsoft should get any credit for the availability of cheap hardware. Yes, they sold software to the clone makers, but they would have been just as happy to sell exclusively to IBM had it managed to continue to be the sole provider of PC's.

In the end, Microsoft was as large a beneficiary of cheap PC hardware as Linux was. Trying to give them some kudos for the creation of Linux now seems hogwash.

Microsoft refused to go into the hardware business, insisted on making its software run on hardware that anyone could build, and thereby created the market conditions that allowed hardware prices to plummet. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

Microsoft never "refused" to go into the hardware business. They've always tried to get in, they've just never been much good at it.

Besides which it wasn't Microsoft that wrote the software for hardware anyone could buy. Microsoft wrote software so tied to a specific hardware that they were lucky when people trying to eke performance out of that hardware wrote applications that were so tied to the same hardware that the cloners had to make exact hardware clones of the PC in order to sell them.

The PC industry as we know it, and the cheap hardware that's derived from the IBM PC, stem from apps writers trying to get decent performance out of the poor quality graphics hardware that was all IBM could justify putting in early PCs.

The person you'd have to take away for Linux not to exist is Dennis Ritchie, who gave the world C and a signficant portion of Unix, upon which both Minix and Linux are based.

That's an interesting perspective, and so is Tux68's take. Perhaps Mr. Stephenson should have done a little bit more research (that said, "In the Beginning..." is still a very interesting read).

Good point about Dennis Ritchie, and I guess Ken Thompson should also be mentioned.

Pretty accurate, IMO.

Because blog entries are always reliable and authoritative sources of information with absolutely no possibility of biases. This is especially so when dealing with ad hominem attacks.

Yeh, that's why he agreed to chat with him, because he was a useless, possibly disgruntled ex-employee. Get real, if Bill G. didn't respect the guy or at least have a good reference you think this interview would have ever taken place? Spend millions of dollars with MS and maybe you get flown to redmond for lunch and you wind up stuck eating with hp and intel instead and maybe you'll even see him when he sticks his head in for all of 30 seconds, Bill G. I know of doesn't just give face time to anybody.

Frist, MS isn't going to die anytime soon nor is Bill ever going to work for a Linux company (or anyone else for that matter).

Second, Vista hasn't failed, it's not even out yet so how can it. And it might not do as well as MS hopes, but it certainly won't be a failure.

Third, MS has a HUGE user base and lots of cool software.

Fourth, I don't want to sue MS for SCO. I want to thank MS for SCO. The whole situation validated Linux, and while FOSS might have taken two steps back because of MS and SCO, FOSS took a 100 steps forward because of it.

And finally, please tone it down because few will take you seriously when you spout off like that.

Sounds like you're quite bitter about Channel9, I take it someone gave you a bit of an online beating over there ...

Dear oh dear ...

I think you feel very strongly about it and that influences your perspective. I feel more moderate about the situation so I think I see it differently. Especially about SCO, because when I reflect on what's happened and where it's going, I get warm fuzzies thinking how this has backfired on MS. Yes, MS got some FUD, but the free advertising SCO gave Linux via the news is on it's own worth it. Everything else positive is just gravy and this dish is just swimming in it!

And there's nothing wrong with Windows. It's like hating a wrench. If you don't like that wrench, don't use it. But wishing death on a wrench seems pointless. And about serious developers don't use Windows, I hope you know you insulted a great many good people who are both professional and serious rather unjustly.

Edited 2006-12-17 10:23

I think you feel very strongly about it and that influences your perspective. I feel more moderate about the situation so I think I see it differently. Especially about SCO, because when I reflect on what's happened and where it's going, I get warm fuzzies thinking how this has backfired on MS. Yes, MS got some FUD, but the free advertising SCO gave Linux via the news is on it's own worth it. Everything else positive is just gravy and this dish is just swimming in it!

Point.

And about serious developers don't use Windows, I hope you know you insulted a great many good people who are both professional and serious rather unjustly.

I suspect good developers use both.

And there's nothing wrong with Windows. It's like hating a wrench. If you don't like that wrench, don't use it. But wishing death on a wrench seems pointless.

Yes, but how would YOU feel if the one wrench you thought was totally f*ing useless came fixed to EVERY DIY workbench in existence, and the shop refused to take it off? Wouldn't that piss you off?

Even if you just started out preferring something else, if the whole world went CrapWrench3.1, CrapWrench95, CrapWrench98, CrapWrenchXP crazy, wouldn't THAT make YOU hate it all the more?

It's enormously refreshing that people are actually taking a good, hard look at Vista before going anywhere near it.

The senarios you list may make me mad, but it doesn't make me mad was Windows, it makes me mad at Microsoft and those who force me to use it.

And if Windows is what your employer uses and you don't like it, all I can advise you is to either educate your boss that there are alternatives, or learn to deal with it, or quit.

But I do agree that people are finally realizing there is more than just Windows out there. A good example that happened to me was a few months ago I was with a business associate and we were shown a presentation on a Powerbook and it was his first time seeing OSX. Aftewards, he commented on the cool desktop that guy had and asked me if I used Macs. I told him not really, but I use Linux and he hadn't heard of it before. I gave him the 5 min intro and a few weeks later when I saw him again he told me he had downloaded a copy of Knoppix and he thought it was interesting. I gave him a copy of PCLOS and he installed it on an old computer and is giving it a try and so far likes it.

Change takes time. Computers are hard to learn simply because there is so much to learn. It takes motivation to want to learn something, and if Windows is comfortable, it takes lots of pins and needles like WGA, BSA, and DRM for people to start to want to learn a new operating system.

Personally, I like the competition. Look at Windows security. If it wasn't for the threat of mass exodus, MS wouldn't have spent nearly as much time and resources trying to fix it.

The senarios you list may make me mad, but it doesn't make me mad was Windows, it makes me mad at Microsoft and those who force me to use it.

Umm, yeah, but I wouldn't be bothered about being forced to use it, if it weren't crap/

And if Windows is what your employer uses and you don't like it, all I can advise you is to either educate your boss that there are alternatives, or learn to deal with it, or quit.

Frankly, what I'm forced to use at work is not what worries me. No matter what job they're in, there's almost BOUND to be something wrong with it. And whatever goes wrong on Windows at a job, is the job's time, not my own. As I indicated, I just want people to be able to get the hardware AND software THEY want.

As for the rest, oh, I agree absolutely.

"Frankly, what I'm forced to use at work is not what worries me. No matter what job they're in, there's almost BOUND to be something wrong with it. And whatever goes wrong on Windows at a job, is the job's time, not my own. As I indicated, I just want people to be able to get the hardware AND software THEY want. "

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better.

Powershell, Bash and KSH ripoff.

Hmm, at first glance PowerShower did actually look like a decent piece of software. Shame it's got 14.5GB of other Windows-like stuff with it.

(And if you're counting, yes that is insinuating PowerShell is one half of a gigabyte of software. Perfectly plausible if Vista does in 15 GB what Debian can do in about 2).

"Hmm, at first glance PowerShower did actually look like a decent piece of software. Shame it's got 14.5GB of other Windows-like stuff with it.

(And if you're counting, yes that is insinuating PowerShell is one half of a gigabyte of software. Perfectly plausible if Vista does in 15 GB what Debian can do in about 2)."
-----------------------------

I have the XP version of PowerShell installed. It's a 1.6 MB download. The Vista version (the latest of which is RC1) is 1.3 MB.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/...

Edited 2006-12-18 01:54

Look, I'm a Linux enthusiast, and I have to say that the tone and the substance of your post are really poor. You won't help convince others of your viewpoint if you keep addressing them this way.

In fact, one could easily suspect that you're really an anti-Linux poster acting as a agent provocateur. In any case, please try to adopt a more civil tone, and not simply mirror the vitriol spewed forth by some of the anti-Linux posters here...that'll help you bring your trust rating back up a little.

I think you are a anti-Linux poster.

Hardly. Look at my posting history.

I think it's unwise to underestimate an opponent, and I think that's what you're doing with MS...also, I don't believe that such aggressive posting will convince anyone that your point-of-view is the right one. In fact, it helps keep alive the (largely false) stereotype of Linux users as irrational fanboys.

All I'm asking is that you reconsider the tone of your future posts.

Linux daytona 2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Tue Dec 5 22:28:26 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

Unlikely scenario. Im a Linux enthusiast that has been using only Linux ased systems since around 96, probably longer than most of the Linux users here have ever heard of Linux.

Sorry can't resist. (sarcasm)Yes, because so many of us old school unixheads are running Ubuntu. (/sarcasm)

And yes I can tell by the uname output. Now come back and spout off when you've got at least a couple years of Linux experience under ya.

Well I am fairly old school, better part of a decade on Linux and AIX before that. I use Ubuntu. Do you have a problem with this ?

Just because there are many newbie users on Ubuntu does not mean all Ubuntu users are newbies. I also have Slackware (my long time favorite), SLES, and Debian boxes and have tried many other distros including LFS and Gentoo. I have been gravitating to Debian on the servers and Ubuntu on the desktop because I find them less difficult to maintain. I am not using Linux for fun, I want to work. Slackware is great for an individual box but it is a little maintenance intensive to keep a dozen of them current though. Gentoo I would not put on a server (I am sure some do, I will not). SLES... well I prefer Debian but some things are only supported on SLES and RHEL.

The ability to tweak config files by hand rather than relying on a GUI is also a bonus, something Suse and Fedora tend to make more difficult.

Congratulations you can tell by uname he is using Ubuntu Edgy. Climb off your high horse please. Contrary to popular belief the distro you use does not indicate the level of knowledge you have.

" Congratulations you can tell by uname he is using Ubuntu Edgy "

Actually he couldnt, remove the computer name and use Google and it tells you what version of Ubuntu Im using. Nice try fsckit.

I am not trying to start an argument or make any accusations but I find it a bit of a double standard to posit that frothing at the mouth MS supporters are shills or astroturfers but then call a frothing at the mouth Linux advocate a agent provocateur.

I do not disagree with your assessment of the MS supporters in question, but feel that in balance this gentleman is just what he appears. It is the staunchest supporters of both operating systems that give me the most distaste and it would be disingenuous to deny that both sides of the fence have them.

(Edit: spelling)

Edited 2006-12-18 01:40

I am not trying to start an argument or make any accusations but I find it a bit of a double standard to posit that frothing at the mouth MS supporters are shills or astroturfers but then call a frothing at the mouth Linux advocate a agent provocateur.

True, but notice I merely made a supposition here...it is entirely possible that either none of them are shills nor provocateurs, or that some are, on either side.

I do believe a RedHat or Novell Shill, if there are any, would have adopted a different approach, though. It makes sense for a MS shill to belittle the competition and try to make it look irrelevant - after all, MS has 90%+ of the market. It's a good strategy to try to deride progress made by Linux and to paint it as on the decline.

On the other hand, saying the same thing about Microsoft is, well, a bit more counter-intuitive. Even if MS lost *half* its market share, it still wouldn't be dying (in fact, it would still be the biggest player, though it would not dominate as much). That's not a good "angle" to attack MS, if you will. If you're in the ring with a 800-pound gorilla, you don't try to ridicule it by calling it a wimp...

So, yes, it is entirely possible that we have a RedHat/Novell/other Linux company shill here (remember that you can't be a shill for Linux, it's just an OS). I highly doubt it, however. If it's the case, then he's a really bad one...

I doubt there are many paid Linux shills, if any at all. That however was not my intended meaning. I am merely saying that it would be more fair to assume a pro-Linux poster is a pro-Linux poster with some attitude problems than a MS agent sent to confuse the issue.

To assume the worst posters from both sides are agents in one form or another of MS seems a little wrong.

Right. I guess when I see such extremes I have a hard time believing that people would get so fired up over an operating system to be sincere, but I guess fanboys can go pretty far.

Also note that this was not as much an accusation of the OP, but rather a warning to him, that if he is to talk like this he *might as well* be an agent provocateur, because he's not going to have a positive effect towards Linux by using such a tone. My intent in calling him a MS agent was to provoke him into thinking about this...

Holy shit, I think we found NotParker's polar opposite. I'm all for open source software but you sir have mentally derailed.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out it _is_ NotParker; trying his hand at demonstrating what he imagines the typical Linux supporter to be. ;o)

Either way, such attitudes don't do much to convince any rational person to change their views one way or the other. How can anyone look at the current situation and imagine that Microsoft is a dying company? It defies a sympathetic explanation, best to just ignore the poor soul and move on.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out it _is_ NotParker; trying his hand at demonstrating what he imagines the typical Linux supporter to be. ;o)

Well, it is true our favorite anti-Linux troll hasn't been seen for days, ever since two of his flamebaiting posts were modded down to -5...

Well. I can agree with you in regard to MS. But that's as far as it goes.

Come on. Bill Gates is either playing a naïve retard here. He's done that before. He's good at playing a retard.

The question is: Is Bill Gates an intelligent being at all - or is he just a puppet like Jeltsin used to be?

Is Bill Gates at all?

Fourth, I don't want to sue MS for SCO. I want to thank MS for SCO. The whole situation validated Linux,

Yeah, right. As if SCO NOT saying "IBM put Unix code into Linux," Ballmer NOT saying "Linux violates MS IP [supposedly unlike just about every other product in the software industry, and as if MS software didn't violate others' patents]" and whoever-at-MS NOT saying "Linux is cancer and Linux users are communists" - as if NOT saying all of that would have hindered Linux.

Can you point me to some of that "MS cool software" while you're at it?

SCO is just short term damage. And the damage they did really was minimal when compared to how much Linux and OSS gained from SCO trying to sue IBM. It's was so bad for Microsoft Bill tried, and failed, to put distance between MS and SCO in this very interview.

As for cool software, how about Microsoft Flight Simulator X?

As for cool software, how about Microsoft Flight Simulator X?

Never tried it, but seriously, if it's not a combat flight simulator I'm not interested no matter who makes it.