After Microsoft threatened to sue Lindows.com over the introduction of MSFreePC.com, a service provided to help Californians who are set to receive a settlement from Microsoft in their antitrust case, Lindows.com CEO Michael Robertson took the offensive with this letter to Microsoft. Anything but subtle, I’d say.
Lindows.com Responds To Microsoft
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Adam Scheinberg
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I’m not a big fan of Lindows at all, but it’s good to finally see someone standing up forcefully to Microsoft.
Micheal Robertson seems to have a bit of a death wish, like poking a large dog with a stick over and over when no one else will, but he seems to be ‘winning’.
I like his style. I don’t run Lindows, I don’t plan to run Lindows and I don’t plan to recommend Lindows, but the Linux community certainly needs more people like him.
And no, I’m not a Linux fanboy who spends his time bashing Microsoft
The sparks are really starting to fly. Doesn Microsoft really feal that they can use an anti-trust settlment to force clients to buy Windows PC’s? What a bizzare understanding of ‘anti-trust’. I think Robertson is right on the money with this one.
I have to say I’m somewhat taken aback by the poor writing of Mr. Robertson. I would hope that a press release would be reviewed by his PR department and obvious mistakes corrected (“its” instead of “it’s” or better, ‘it is’ – since contractions should not be used in a formal letter)
Seems childish to me. If the legal system said they have to do X,Y and Z then they have every right to do just those. Want to complain? Write your lawmakers. They are the ones responsible for making this settlement too easy.
I don’t agree with the settlement, but MS has no reason to stray from the requirements of that settlement.
The writing was fine. the message was potent.
I was just about to say the same thing about the lack of basic grammar checking. I agree with everything he says, though.
Lindows.com will merely be an archive of press releases as a testament to Robertson’s fight… whether the outcome is good or bad.
As a subscriber to Michael’s Minutes since 2001 I really think he should compile all his analogies into a book.
I am glad that Lindows is going to stand up against MS. I have believed from the start that the settlement was not acceptable. I wish MS would spend their energy fixing Windows (w32.swen, SoBig.F, Blaster anyone) and less time trying to keep people from using Linux. Then at least I wouldn’t get 300 e-mails a day purporting to be a Microsoft bug fix.
While I don’t run Lindows and never have, I fully support their cause. All other Linux companies seem to tuck their tails and run from Microsoft, where Lindows takes them head-on.
Foolhardy or not, Linux will never have a chance at the mainstream desktop without companies like Lindows and people like Michael Robertson.
I was just about to say the same thing about the lack of basic grammar checking. I agree with everything he says, though.
Looks like Lindows doesn’t have a good spell checker yet
I wish MS would spend their energy fixing Windows (w32.swen, SoBig.F, Blaster anyone) and less time trying to keep people from using Linux.
E-mail viruses can hit any platform – including Linux. Currently, Linux doesn’t have enough market share for such attacks though. And Linux definetly does not have enough dumb users for it to work.
If you want MS to “fix Windows” so that people wouldn’t click on unknown attachments, then they should indeed fund a few basic computer security courses.
Michael Robertson has NEVER been subtle. Say what you will about Lindows, but MR seems to enjoy doing crazy stuff for the hell of it. Kind of refreshing to see a CEO who throws caution to the wind.
-Erwos
“Microsoft will take all appropriate action to protect the integrity of the settlement claims process and the settlement benefits to which the class members and California’s public schools are entitled as well as its own interests.”
I think he meant to say “Microsoft will take all appropriate action to avoid the settlement claims process and keep the settlement benefits to which the class members and California’s public schools are entitled because it serves its own interests.”
Respect!
E-mail viruses can hit any platform – including Linux. Currently, Linux doesn’t have enough market share for such attacks though. And Linux definetly does not have enough dumb users for it to work.
Umm, No… Email virii as people seem to like to call them are NOT a problem on *NIX’s because the developers of the email clients are NOT stupid enough to allow, or even consider allowing for that matter, code in email messages to be executed. The idea of “separation of code and data” seems to have been missed by every programmer at Mickey$oft for ever since the “integration” phase began. I’d like to see the email that can infect my *NIX machine by simply looking at the header of the message as can be done in outlook (No, you do NOT have to open the email for this to happen). Second, even if the user is dumb enough to save such a thing and can even execute it (it’s have to be targeting the platform he/she were on) the damage is contained due to the compartmentalization of users on *NIX hosts.
All of this is largely due to the open nature of most *NIX’s and the ability of those closed version to learn from the open versions. Code/process review is a huge success. Ask borland about the back door in a certain database that wasn’t even known by most borland developers until it was released into the wild. Ask M$ who constantly steals code from open source projects. Why do you think they love the BSD license so much and hate the GPL? BSD lets you take what you want and run with it.
Thirdly, I’d rather see a bunuch of students with operating systems they can actually learn FROM, no only WITH. What they hell can Iearn from WinBlows? Nada.. What can I learn from GNU/Linux or BSD? I can learn how an operating system works etc. That’s a huge benefit in a world where information rules.
So, no thanks Billy boy, take your broken windows somewhere else. I’ll seal the drafty places with OPEN software…..
Corey
I’m more of a suse fan, but I respect a company like Lindows that has a vision, and one which I agree with. Linux has to become King of the Desktop. A large majority of desktop users have no clue about what a kernel is, or how dangerous it can be to log in as root. All blasphemy aside, Lindows tries to alleviate the average Joe from using his brain by installing root as the only user and not setting a password. I don’t like it, but I understand. As long as they stay LSB compliant, I hope they keep sticking it to the man.
It may need a grammar / spell checker, but all that just proves he wrote it, as opposed to some PR team spending all night getting the words to sound “right.” It sounds like Michael talking to Bill, not Lindows’ CEO addressing Microsoft’s Chief Architect. It may not make me wanna go out and buy Lindows, but it might make a Joe User who’s got corporate morals on the brain see which of the two companies seems more customer centric and which is out to milk cash cows by the billions.
Email virii as people seem to like to call them are NOT a problem on *NIX’s
Have you heard the pharse there are no silver bullets.
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2003/09/22/insecurities.htm…
funny how no one here acutally bought/installed lindows…
“Good job Mike, lindows? no thanks..”
Umm, No… Email virii as people seem to like to call them are NOT a problem on *NIX’s because the developers of the email clients are NOT stupid enough to allow, or even consider allowing for that matter, code in email messages to be executed.
E-mail viruses as little attachments on your e-mails. The way that Sobig and Swen have been doing.
No code is 100% bug free. Bugs that Outlook has been having CAN happen to Linux. Currently, Linux vendors have been keeping their distros up to date. However, I’ve seen Linux worms in the wild that target specific distros such as Redhat. If I remember correctly, there was a worm which exploited a telnet hole in some version of Redhat Linux.
Oh and by the way, there’s plenty of Linux viruses out there. They mostly spread by binary infection just like the early DOS viruses we had back in early 1990s.
A binary compiled for a general i386 target will run on nearly any x86 Linux system, so don’t bring up the subject of compatibility. Plus you also have (shells)cripts. And I’m sure plenty of distros out there will be happy to automatically execute any script that you click on as a user.
…damage is contained due to the compartmentalization of users on *NIX hosts.
Does Sobig or Swen need root access to spread? No they don’t. You don’t need root access to send an e-mail. Same applies for viruses.
The main vector for Linux infection by any virus are the distro makers. Long gaps between releases, ineffective methods for keeping the user’s system up to date, insecure defaults and long periods of time between when an advisory is released and when the patch is released. Some Linux and Unix vendors are just now releasing patches for the famous OpenSSH and Sendmail holes which happened last week.
Dan Geer and others were right when they released the paper about Microsoft’s dominance putting everything to risk. Linux is the exact opposite of Microsoft’s Windows – it’s a distributed effort, not a centralized one. No centralized one-thing-does-all solution will survive in the coming information age. We need different OSes, different distros and different setups. Linux with it’s system of distros can offer all this and it’s the greatest strength of Linux.
Microsoft is correct in one thing, the state of California does not allow claimants to make claims digitally. This is not that Microsoft does not want to see that happen because people will buy Lindows PC’s it is because it is the law. Its the way the state works. If Michael Robertson decides he wants to go to court with this one then I hate to say it but he will lose. This will not be a copyright issue but rather state legislation. I dont agree with the settlement and I think its crappy but i will have to side with MS on this one, there is no way that the state of California is going to allow it.
I’ve been saying for years that the fields are ripe for the picking to anyone who has the guts to stand up to Microsoft. I remember reading an interview with the former owner of BE, Inc. back in 2000. His basic plan was to somehow scurry with tail between legs wherever Microsoft showed up. Even though Be had a demonstrably better desktop system than Windows and Mac put together, he thought that direct competition with Microsoft on the desktop was “corporate suicide”. And thus, Be gave up trying to win the desktop, and started trying to migrate toward kiosks, “multimedia stations”, catering towards “graphics professionals” etc… which was absolutely their death knell. They had a real chance, but they flubbed it. 90s history is full of companies who showed promise but ran scared from Microsoft. It was pointless to run scared because they died anyway; at least they would have had a chance if they stood and fought.
Microsoft is like an animal that will attack even harder if it smells fear. Robertson is doing exactly the right thing: not a single phrase of conciliatory language, or diplomacy… don’t show even the slightest hesitation. And, he is making some great strategic moves: http://www.koobox.com, pre-installation on Seagate hard drives, etc…
As for Lindows itself, I think its first attempts were a technical embarassment, but these days I would not hesitate to recommend Lindows or the Koobox to a *non-technical* friend (I recommend FreeBSD or Slackware to technical friends). I would say Lindows is one of the few companies that stands a chance at getting a piece of the desktop from Microsoft. No one will “win” the desktop war; they just have a chance at getting or keeping some of it. I think Microsoft’s dominance over the desktop will remain for awhile, but will slender down from 94% to 80%, 70%, etc… which is just fine with me.
Microsoft is correct in one thing, the state of California does not allow claimants to make claims digitally.
Doesn’t a digital signature count as a real one in California? And can’t people use their digital signatures there to give away their right to make this claim to some other person who will make that claim for them on paper?
> Kind of refreshing to see a CEO who throws caution to the wind.
It’s not that refreshing.
Isn’t that what people around here say the CEO of SCO does?
<< Doesn’t a digital signature count as a real one in California? And can’t people use their digital signatures there to give away their right to make this claim to some other person who will make that claim for them on paper? >>
No, they do not. Not for this type of case.
Michael Robertson makes some interesting points in the letter, but like another poster already pointed out, it has a childish tone and some of the grammar is plain wrong. Furthermore, he replies to Bill Gates, not the lawyer that originally sent the letter. I have to say I’m a little disappointed. If you want to stand up to Microsoft and win, I’d think you need to be professional about it.
Another issue: isn’t it up to a court to decide who will receive claims in this suit, not Lindows or even Microsoft for that matter? msfreepc.com sounds a little shady and I honestly wonder if any claims filed through it will be considered valid.
Michael Robertson relishes this stuff. The David vs. Goliath drama is like sauce on his goose.
If Microsoft REALLY wanted to hurt him, they’d just ignore him entirely.
Can the morons that keep touching on the grammatical issue tell me where the grammatical mistakes are?
And the point of this letter is to be clear, cogent and forceful and it is that and much more.
Do the Microsoft fan boys get paid for defending the undefensible? The arguments that Robertson presents are so strong that they really stand on their own. I particularly like how he shows the fact that Microsoft really wants to discourage users from claiming the money as it would reduce significantly the total payout.
“Sincerely,
Michael Robertson
Chief Executive Officer
Lindows.com Inc.”
LMAO, I dont think there was anything sincere about his letter to Bill Gates.
Umm, No… Email virii as people seem to like to call them are NOT a problem on *NIX’s because the developers of the email clients are NOT stupid enough to allow, or even consider allowing for that matter, code in email messages to be executed.
That’s not a requirement in the first place. Outlook and Outlook Express haven’t allowed this in quite some time (in fact it was patched about 6 months before the last major outbreak of a worm that utilized this behavior). The vast majority of exploits that use email just manipulate the user to execute an attachment. Considering the number of attachment types that are filtered out by Outlook today, it’s actually impressive that people can actually get anyone to do this any more (exceptions for people that never update their software, of course).
Second, even if the user is dumb enough to save such a thing and can even execute it (it’s have to be targeting the platform he/she were on) the damage is contained due to the compartmentalization of users on *NIX hosts.
Wasn’t it Lindows that setup the default user as root? Do they still do this (given Robertson’s past success at getting litigated out of business and the short track record of Lindows I wouldn’t touch it)? You can put *nix users into their own little world, but on a desktop used by the average family that little world is going to be everything they know about the computer in the first place. The best-case situation for something like this is in business, where only those infected may lose anything, regardless of how important what they might lose may be (backups can help, and business is the only place you can reasonably rely on the possibility of a backup existing within the last week or month).
All of this is largely due to the open nature of most *NIX’s and the ability of those closed version to learn from the open versions. Code/process review is a huge success.
Code and process reviews are enforced in most large closed-source projects, just as they are in many large open source projects. The reality is that the only difference is that anyone can review the code of an open source project. There are projects on both sides of the fence that have little to no code or process review, but people assume it’s there (because, on one side, they bought the closed-source stuff or just assumed it, and on the other side everyone assumes open-source code is reviewed just because it’s there to be seen).
Ask borland about the back door in a certain database that wasn’t even known by most borland developers until it was released into the wild. Ask M$ who constantly steals code from open source projects. Why do you think they love the BSD license so much and hate the GPL? BSD lets you take what you want and run with it.
Code review is always subject to the capabilities and knowledge (of the source) of the person(s) reviewing the code, as shown by your Borland example. As for MS, how can they steal what was given to everyone? Is it stealing when someone GPLs BSD code? No, because the license allows it (though some say the BSD requirement for copyright notice may be in conflict with the GPL).
Thirdly, I’d rather see a bunuch of students with operating systems they can actually learn FROM, no only WITH. What they hell can Iearn from WinBlows? Nada.. What can I learn from GNU/Linux or BSD? I can learn how an operating system works etc. That’s a huge benefit in a world where information rules.
I really can say that the only difference it made for me was that it forced me to learn to use Linux. The first college I attended used Solaris for their servers and Linux for the workstations. They also required all projects compiled on their servers (which included all work for the classes, since it had to be emailed to the compiler as part of the process of turning it in for grading) to be placed under the GPL, because, at the time, they thought this was a requirement for using gcc (and later changes made to gcc and the libraries made sure this wasn’t the case). In our second semester coursework, we had to build a small operating system, and they certainly expected us not to look at the source of any other OS to do so. The source was never used as a tool for teaching, it was simply used to allow students to maintain the school’s network and workstations down to the code level, except on the servers. That being said, I’m glad that my first real instruction on programming took place on a relatively unknown (at the time) platform, as it makes me much more employable in the forseeable future (though it had little to do with getting my current job).
Near the middle of my first semester at that school, the first Linux virus hit, and took the school’s entire network (and most of the students, since they were encouraged to use it on their own computers in the dorms) down. As an added bonus it had 3 root exploits which it tried on each infected box. A few months later another virus hit which wasn’t quite as bad, since everyone had installed anti-virus software for Linux by then (after all of the anti-virus companies rushed to produce this software in the first place after the previous virus). They switched everything to Windows (selling off most of the Sun hardware to students at steep discounts) the next year.
Everything about me, wants to root and cheer for Robertson. He comes off as the common man fighting against a company who’s only real spokespeople are lawyers. In a way I applaud his efforts…
However, I think he is on kind of dubious ground on this one. Helping people collect their claims is one thing, as is mimicking H&R Blocks rapid refund system…
Yet making it only good for buying your companies products sounds kind of shady to me. That’s the point I think M$’ lawyers are making, and as much as I hate to admit it I can see their point. It almost feels like ambulance chasing.
Oh, and the only two errors I can find is that bottom-line should have been hyphenated, and the last sentence should read “a consumer’s right” not “a consumers rights”…
Big @#%ing deal. Oooh, he made two grammatical errors, just proves he’s human.
its a bit shifty but I think the idea was to make microsoft write a big ol’ check out to Lindows.com, don’t you think that would really turn Microsofts stomach?
And “I” bought lindows, I bought lindows 2.0 after testing an ill gotten version of lindowsOS 1.0, and when my Click N’ Run ran out, I still had access to the iso’s to get the new Version 4, and with the help of MSFREEPC.com I got myself a year of Click N’ Run.
I’ve got a secondary machine that runs a dual boot of Redhat 9 and LindowsOS 4, My wife’s computer is also running LindowsOS 4.
people give lindows hell, if you get a chance to run Lindows WITH click N’ Run your tune may change, alot of people have run Lindows from an iso they downloaded and just passed it off as an “average” distro. Well The average lindows coupled with the wonderfull Click N’ Run allows even a linux Newbie to install items they want to run and runs them very well.
He seems to fit in well with the Open Source community well. Lots of whining, arm waving, and “it’s not that my product sucks, the man (M$) is keeping me down.”
Everything Robertson says is correct and was well said. The only problem with it is that his objective is to make money for himself, not to free the masses from their “MS slavery.”
I love Robertson’s attitude and his grammer is ok with me. Mark Twain said it was a poor speller that couldn’t find more than one way to speel a woord.
I just hope that if he becomes succesful he will change his company’s name. I detest anything that reminds me of Microsoft.
I had a lot of respect for Michael Robertson before he wrote this letter. Now I have more respect for him.
Way to go Michael Robertson!
I humbly apologise for my “yelling” above. Despite this, my post is still workable:
-addressees’ names are in bold, appended with a colon –> :
-quoted text is in bold italics
-my responses are in bold text
IMVHO,
Good Grief
My sentiments exactly. Gates hasn’t had the courage to pen an open letter since 1976:
Please visit the URL above (and notice the name of the HTML file). Then come back to us.
So which would you prefer? More whining, or more letter writing? I would prefer more closed bold tags. My eyes burn.
I just did a copy and paste into Word 2000 with spelling and grammar set to formal business rules. Here are the scandalous violations of grammar and spelling that seem to have so many people in a tizzy.
1. Word does not recognize MSFreePC as being spelled correctly.
2. Word does not recognize bottomline as being spelled correctly. The spell checker suggests bottom line. As I have seen both spellings in the industry, I would have to put this down as personal choice.
3. The first sentence in the third paragraph contains the words motivations which and Word suggests using motivations, which as it is the correct grammar. OK, you got MR on that one. There are also other instances where the same grammatical mistake is made. I will not list all of them.
4. The second sentence in the third paragraph contains the word drop-out. Word does not recognize this as being spelled correctly and suggests the spelling dropout. Again, personal choice.
5. The last paragraph does actually contain a grammatical mistake. The first sentence contains the words defending a consumers rights to use technology. The words should be defending a consumer’s right to use technology. He committed a gross miscarriage of grammar justice by dropping an apostrophe while mixing plural and singular.
Anyone care to actually discuss the issue? The man has the fortitude to stand up to Microshaft and address his issues directly to the paranoid sumbitch that is pulling the strings at Microshaft rather than go through intermediaries.
Stick it to the man! Microsoft needs competition….
3. The first sentence in the third paragraph contains the words motivations which and Word suggests using motivations, which as it is the correct grammar.
I swear that, one of these days, a mob of English profs will storm Microsoft’s offices and lynch the person who made Word’s spellchecker assume that “which” always needs to be followed by a comma.
All those are buffer overflows, and for bufer overflows there are fixes… A desktop running *NIX has very few open ports, so its next to impossible to hack into it. A server running *NIX will have some kind of protection against buffer overflow like Libsafe in Slackware Linux, GRSecurity, Trusted Debian, and others…
And it doesn’t even compare to M$ security flaws. Take a few C classes, then come back to us and comment.
I’m a LindowsOS “Insider”, a person who has been using, testing, commenting on, asking for improvements for, etc. since November 2001. While I think LindowsOS IS a viable alternative to Window$, and on one machine I use it exclusively, it does have a ways to go before it’s as simple to operate. That’s not the point – the point is that Robertson is standing up to a monopolistic, immoral software company and it’s about darned time someone did!
I appreciate Michael and the LindowsOS company. I have, do and will continue to support them and their endeavor and I have faith that this will continue to be a real, true option for desktop computing.
For those of you that haven’t tried it, please don’t bash it until you have given it a legitimate shot. It’s a VERY simple install (about 6 minutes start to finish), it’s secure (you can add users at the end of the install if you wish and upon reboot login as them), it supports the vast majority of hardware out there right now and it’ll save you boatloads of money while maintaining file compatibility!
It doesn’t get much better than this…
And one more thing. Michael I will buy a copy of Lindows. Not because I need it. But because you deserve it!
This is great! What Microsoft doesn’t realize it that Robertson is turning the “settlement” into a tool for a good old-fashioned Used Car War[cue Star Wars theme!]
I used to play a lot of CCG games in college. You always had two types of “good” players. The “used car salesmen” types that were friendly to everyone and always tried to get people to play and trade. You also had the “Rules Lawyers” just like the kids in first grade that play marbles for keeps. Always looking for a “mark” and always making a big deal if they didn’t get their way, or someone ratted them out. Robertson is the first type. He’s a Used Car salesman. He’ll fight a lot of battles and loose 7 out of 10, but still be ahead with the 3 deals he gets. Gates is the “Rules Lawyer”. He made his mint crafting incrediblely one-sided deals, then playing the “let the court sort it out game” as neccesary to enforce/renig on them. People still buy from him, but about as willingly as we get mortages from bankers.
Right now Robertson [and Lindows] can’t loose this! If they win the right to file, they get to improve on the MS stratagy of software for free to kill competition by going to the next level and using Microsoft’s own money! If they loose the right to file the claims, then they still gave out a lot of copies of Lindows to people that wouldn’t have normally been interested, and write it off as marketing on the taxes. The people become aware of the settlement and Lindows can still make sure the people at least have access to the forms, and know how to fill them out…money away from Microsoft! Microsoft suing them is icing on the cake. Slashdot [and OSAlert] posted the deal before, but until the press release for the court case, I never checked it out. [I don’t live in california so it doesn’t matter anyway]
The point is any press is good press…Robertson is using that and it’s brewing to be a just like a Used car war. It’s the one thing Bill Gates has never been good at, fighting “wars of words” and not just sic’n the lawyers…it’s bad form!
<humor>
It came up misspelled because you used MS Word silly! Duhh! It’s a deliberate attempt by Bill Gates to Embrace and Extend the english language to make his competitors look bad. It comes up perfectly spelled on LindowsOS. Well at least no squiggle lines!
</humor>
Good publishing feat done by Lindows. I dun really care about the content ….grammar….and msfreepc.com might even really agains the settlement agreement….but the whole point is to make unaware people knows that there is 1.1 b money supposed to be spent by microsoft for anti trust settlement. And indeed it must be claimed. If only it got bigger and bigger and bigger news.
But I think that the left-over money goes to public schools. So if less people claims the money, more money goes into public schools.
Go Michael, Go! (And as soon as you’ve got a European distribution channel, I’ll buy a copy of Lindows, too. Least thing we can do).
I have never had anything against Lindows (unlike RedHat users, who are allergic to Lindows). Well, now I have something FOR it. Yes, it’s good to see a leader, for once, in the murky IT industry, once in a while.
Why is it every time I decide to say something even remotely anti-microsoft/pro good sense on one of these boards, every moron crawls out and says but there was this one time, at band camp….
First of all the email “virii” are not virii, they are worms. There is a subtle but important difference. Get to know it… A virii attatches itself to a binary and spreads to other binaries. Much like a real virii hides inside of the cells in your body, gee I wonder where they got the name?
Second, yes there are virii for *nix. I didn’t say otherwise. I said that they are contained because of file permissions etc. “Usually” a virii problem in *UNIX is handled by quarenteneing the infected users home dir and giving them a new one etc. etc. blah blah…
Third, who gives a shgit about Lindows… Every f***ing windows lover does this too. They compare what is essentially ONE distrobution of windows to all 100 or so distrobututions of Linux and Unix variants. That’s like saying hey chevy’s are the best because look at all the problems the other (all of the other) auto manufactureures have. get your head out of your a**…
Fourth, to the person who must have been being silly and said that since linux runs on the i386 platform that any distro was vulneable, well no shi*! I was pointing out the fact that Linux runs on about a dozen platforms so yes, i386 to i386, sure… i386 to say sparc? not in your lifetime…
As for you comment “How can they steal what was given”. They can steal it in an ethical sense. If I write a paper and call it my own and oh by the way it was written by shakespear (public domain no less) is it my own? No you friggin idiot, it’s shakespears and everyone expects me to give credit where credit is due, as I should.. When is the last time MacroJerk told anyone “Oh and thanks to so and so for the great BSD code we used to save our assess once again, three cheers, huzzah!…
So to get back ON TOPIC as was suggested that i was not….
If you read the letter you’d see that that Lindows is offering an alternative to windows not only to individuals, but to schools. The point of my OT comment was that Lindows, or any Linux distro is a better deal than windows based machine not only for there technical benefits but the POTENTIAL to learn from that platform.
Finally I still don’t get the comment about *NIX being subject to email WORMS that are written in frggin’ VB which doesn’t run on *NIX’s unless you are doing something utterly stupid like running outlook under wine or some other dumbass thing…
I’m done. As I said above I should know better than to invite all the morons out of the woodwork to chat about stupd shit. In the end I support the letter written by the Lindows folks. Microsoft has an unfair advantage based on lock-in tactics, not merit. The DOJ dropped the ball when they had their chance and now our kids will suffer for it.
When will it come to pass that Microsoft will write code based on good practice and not “ooh ahh” factor.
Ok, NOW I’m done….
Corey
first off;
plural of virus is “viri” not “virii”
secondly:
microshaft sometimes DOES give credit for aquired (stolen) code. Look in IE, help, about box for example.
Other than those two points, you make valid arguments.
The microsoft fanboys out there really do have a problem, they read an artical, but can’t actually fault the article, so instead they bitch about the spelling and grammer mistakes.
Here is one for all you microsoft dicks out there….
install Windows XP and read the messages that appear during the install. You will find this beauty.
“You have probably gotten the computer set up the way you want it”.
GOTTEN ? GOTTEN ?
there is no such word in the english language.
and btw, I noticed a ms fanlad even used that nearly-word in his own post in this topic hehehe
sorry, it was a linux fanboy that said “gotten”
There’s no such thing as “virii”.
There is no plural in Latin for virus.
For English speaking gents it’s viruses, for Germans it is Viren.
btw, there is no “viri” either, since there is no plural at all. Further, there is “gotten”, you may wish to check http://www.dictionary.com or simply grab a dictionary.
sorry… I did a search for “gotten” on http://www.dictionary.com and I stand beside what I said earlier. There is no such word.
Read the whole page.
Strangest thing… I re-searched dictionary.com and found it again. There is no doubt there is such word, since it is everywhere. Go search Google for applied usage of the term in question as found in this thread, you will find things like:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2477797.stm
I hope you don’t deny BBC journos the propper command of the English language… there are endless examples.
first off;
plural of virus is “viri” not “virii”
Why oh why do some people try so HARD to show off their ignorance? Dear raver, you could, really, just kept your mouth shut on the issue, hiding your ignorance from the world.
For your attention I suggest the following link:
http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
and here’s an excerpt from the “Classical Inflections” paragraph, on that site:
“Writers who, searching for a fancy plural to virus, incorrectly write *viri are doubtless blindly applying an overreaching -us => -i rule. This mis-inflects many words. For example, status and hiatus only change the length of the final vowel; genus goes to genera; corpus goes to corpora. Others are even worse if this rule is mis-applied, like syllabus, caucus, octopus, mandamus, and rebus.
Anyway, Latin already had a word viri, but it was the nominative plural not of virus (slime, poison, or venom), but of vir (man), which as it turns out is also a 2nd declension noun. I do not believe that writers of English who write viri are intentionally speaking of men. And although there actually is a viri form for virus, it’s the genitive singular[1], not the nominative plural. And we certainly don’t grab for genitive singulars for the plurals when we’ve started out with a nominative. Such hanky panky would certainly get you talked about, and probably your hand slapped as well.”
But I suggest you read the whole article.
I think Microsoft underestimated Robertson because he is “only” a millionaire, compared to Gates, Ballmer and co. The monopolists thought that such a poor man couldn’t annoy them. The problem is that Microsoft mischiefs are so stupid that any determined person can throw a wrench in their money making engine.