[COMP] Windows 2000: 65,000 bugs

To all the folks willing to let Mr. Gates continue to rule their lives:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436920,00.html?chkpt=zdnntop

And to anyone willing to break free, and use software that isn't
released with known bugs:

http://www.linux.org

Nuff said?  Sorry, but this article made me sick, and their PR response
to the leaked memo made me even more angry.  What right do they have to
do this?  Oh, and then charge you 300 bucks for it?  I'd like to thank
Linus, Alan, and the thousands of other programmers out there who put
their blood, sweat, and tears into an operating system that was built
from the ground up to be a decent piece of software, and to the method
(open source) that has brought us to the top of the IT world.

There's simply no excuse for the sort of things Microsoft does to the
user community, and hopefully, they won't be allowed to do it anymore.
The problem, as I see it, is something of a snowball effect: once you
run Windows, and use Windows software, you feel as though you have no
choice, and that anything else is insufficient, or too difficult.  You
create excuses, because "it's ok," and "everyone else uses it, so it
can't be bad."  But would you buy a car that had no steering wheel?  Of
course not.  The fight to force MS to write decent software starts with
you: you hold Microsoft (and any other software company, for that
matter) by the purse strings.

I'm sick of it.  Maybe some blood vessel somewhere in the middle of my
brain will burst someday, and all of the stress and frustration this
situation causes me will have been for nothing.  Who knows... But many
of you know me pretty well, and you know I can't just sit around and
watch these things continue.

There are alternatives: all the software you could ever want is
available for FREE, for a FREE operating system, built on stability,
reliability, and correctness.  All the help you could ever want in
adjusting to this alternative and amazing environment is also available
FREE, on the internet.

I've got a challenge: I challenge each and every one of you to think
twice the next time you go to buy a piece of software.  Stop and
think: "Am I really going to get my money's worth here?  Are they going
to screw me over with bugs?  Do I care to do anything about it?"  If
your local government were to, say, allow your children to just watch TV
all day in school, would you stand by and let such an atrocity take
place?  Of course not!  You'd complain!  So why run poor software, on a
poorly written OS, that was released with thousands of known bugs?

Take a stand folks, and user by user, bit by bit, change will happen.
You'll look back on these days and wonder why it took so long to change
things.  The challenge: install an alternative OS (sure, Linux is great,
but it doesn't *have* to be Linux) and live with it for two months.  Use
all the software you like; go ahead- it's all free.  Enjoy the speed,
stability, and flexibility.  Got problems?  Ask on a mailing list,
newsgroups, a local LUG, or from  your nearby always willing-to-help
guru.  After those 60 days, go ahead and try to go back to your old OS.
You'll be amazed at how much your view on computing has changed.  Email
me your experiences, tell me about your problems, how you liked it, how
you didn't, ask questions, whatever.  I'm setting up a mailing list
(details later) just for this sort of thing.

Some people look at me strangely when I speak my views on certain
commercial software, because after all, I'll someday be in the job place
writing it (yeah, still in college here).  It's really perfectly
logical: At the current rate, all crappy commercial software will be run
out of the market by free software, which is usually technically
superior.  Thus, the market for poor software will decrease, and
companies like our favorite Redmond campus will be forced to either
straighten up, or go out of business.  This puts a strangle on the
market, decreasing my chances of getting a job.  By increasing the
quality of software now, competition in the market will become fierce,
and high competition is the strongest kind of market, and that means
lots of jobs for me, and better software for the consumer.

Am I an advocate?  Absolutely.  A zealot?  Hopefully. :)

John



--
# John Madden  weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ICQ: 2EB9EA
# Sys-Admin / Webmaster, Avenir Web: http://avenir.dhs.org
# LANdb: Network Admin Database - http://avenir.dhs.org/landb/
# "A kernel compile a day keeps the blue screens away."



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