Bryant University standardizes on Linux 13387

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, billwg wrote on Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:55:36 GMT

Lately, I'm not sure there have been any dirty tricks, but the

1 the AARD issue with that mysterious code in an old version of MS-DOS. I frankly forget the details. 2 the beta "scare 'em because they're not using MS-DOS" dialog that vanished in the final product. 3 "cut off their air supply!". (And they did. No one uses Netscape any more, really; Firefox, however, is doing fairly well.) 4 OEMs not allowed to install Netscape as it damages their desktop. 5 IE4 replacing a fair number of system DLLs -- is it just a browser or ... ? 6 Lying about not needing DOS in Win95. (Andrew Schullman shows in his book Unauthorized Windows 95 that DOS and Win95 -- or the beta version he was testing -- knew each other darned well.) 7 The Kerberos fiasco. Microsoft is not wholly to blame for this one -- apparently the spec had holes in it -- but they sure took advantage of it. 8 "License all CPUs" instead of "license all copies". Basically, MS offered a cheaper price, but only on the proviso that the OEM either paid MS for every unit shipped (as opposed for every unit shipping with MS's product) or, if the OEM shipped a unit that didn't have MS's stuff on it, the OEM's contract was invalidated and the OEM would have to pay a higher price per license. I don't know which at this time. 9 Splitting with IBM and taking over the OS-2 market. I'm not sure if this is a dirty trick or just being beaten up market wise, but I doubt IBM liked Windows taking over what had to have looked like a reasonably lucrative desktop market at the time. 11 The J++ fiasco. Everyone would probably have been happier had Microsoft been a little more faithful to Java, but 'delegate' was not legitimate. 12 Another maybe-dirty-or-not issue is the IE-only website. I'm not sure really whose fault this is, but ideally Microsoft tools would generate HTML that could be viewed with Any Browser(tm). (They might be viewable faster or better with IE, of course.) Of course ideally Webadministrators wouldn't be so lazy as to shut off access to non-IE browsers, either.

But never mind the past; Microsoft has turned over a new leaf, will be a good, kindly company from now on, and is offering Vista, the newest Windows which will do everything and then some for the home user.

(And if one believes that ... well, OK, one believes it. Just don't expect *me* to, at least not without a little more time being "Mister Nice Guy Microsoft". Say, about 10-15 years.)

-- It's still legal to go .sigless.