You support something that has a goal of damaging me.

Not me personally, but my ability to to my job in
a manner which is best for my company, which I then
take personally.

MS goal is MS everywhere, and ONLY MS. Sure, all
companies would like to do that, but it is very
rare that they are in the position to enforce it.
Which means people don't get nailed by it by the
same extent that happens with MS.

At least IBM had to compete with plug compatible
mainframes. And I had no love for IBM in those
days either.

So, when something like a viral lockin happens,
with forced upgrades, and exclusions to other
systems ability to interact, this is pretty
damn annoying to me.

And when someone says they are an MS fan, as
opposed to a knowledgable user or administrator
or programmer, this sets the alarm bells off.

They are an evangelist of something that seeks
to harm me. So while it may not rise to the
level of my enemy's friend is my enemy, it
starts on the slippery slope.

I'm not saying not to use MS technology, I'm
saying a careful consideration should be made
of all aspects, including their goal to kill
competing technologies. Embrace, extend,
extinguish is not an abstract fear, it is
a core corporate goal. Which means rather
than make a decent living (BILLIONS) interacting
with the compute ecosystem, they would prefer
to kill it all and make hundreds of billions,
while reducing service and accountability.

There are times in my past where I've seen
MS evangelists DESTROY a company. They
come in, sell big, convince the boss that
all their problems are related to the variety
of technology currently in use, and life would
be much simpler, more productive, if they
could only replace it all with a variety
of MS based solutions, either canned or coded.

Then they slowly but surely destroy the place.
Current programmers are replaced by MS robots,
and while there may be an occasional good one,
they are crippled by their limited choice or
knowledge of available tools.

I'm talking about profitable companies, not
struggling. Willing to invest. And being
taken.

Since they get rid of a large portion of the
current knowledgeable people, and the remaining
ones need their jobs, no one fights it.

And then the system slowly but surely fall apart
because the new idiots have no idea what to do,
yes they blame the fact it is not MS technology.

And MS people ALWAYS have an out. Even when
they have a complete MS infrastructure. No matter
what happens, they can always blame the computer.
They don't mind saying the OS might have an
occasional problem, that crashes happen, that
weekly reboots for patches are OK. They have
convinced a large portion of the end user
community to accept shitty service, lousy
programs, random unpredictable poor performance,
crappy security, worms, viruses
simply because it became the norm.

So it is never their fault or responsibility,
which means things limp along, rather than
get fixed.

So, yes, there is something wrong with that.
Actually, there are multiple things that are
wrong with that.

And you represent them all simply by being a
fan. In a corporate environment you are a
danger to your own company, no matter how
good or productive you are with MS tools,
since you work with blinders on.

And I think I do now.

This stuff is your life. Good or bad, makes no difference. You are an almost pure MS admin in a decent sized multi-location shop. You\ufffdve bet your career, your ability to feed your family, hell, your integrity on it.

So I simply ask, do you have any responses to any of the points I made in my "rant", or are you simply going to ignore it?

#1 \ufffd I didn\ufffdt mean MS destroys companies, as far as competition, or illegal leveraging of their monopoly. I meant that the MS tax makes life harder while adding minimal benefit (if any) to the end user. And when I say tax, I don\ufffdt just mean the obvious dollar amounts. I means when poor interoperability breaks things. When an OS upgrade takes out the network. I especially mean when things such as multi-database or multi-server configurations break, which then makes us scramble to find out what MS changed.

In the old days, the OS wasn\ufffdt done until Lotus wouldn\ufffdt run. Now it is more likely to be ADS rejecting a Samba authentication request.

Or how about this \ufffd I just had a hardware problem with my home network. So I needed to setup a new core Linux box. I have several new low end Dells. But when we say low end, they are still VERY fast for running a Linux KDE environment. At least they would be, IF they would let me install the OS. It seems to new low end Dells (I see multiple posting concerning this) have a locked BIOS of some sort, and refuse to boot Linux. So I had to scramble to setup a usable environment which include VMWare under XP running Linux, which makes it a bit slow, and loses a lot of my favorite desktop programs since it would be VERY slow if I turned them on. So while the box is somewhat usable, it is painful, and another reason for me to dislike MS. I\ufffdm not accepting "coincidence".

#2 - I consider anyone who doesn\ufffdt consider alternatives an MS robot. I don\ufffdt know if you fall into that.

#3 \ufffd Interesting. "I understand that some people have moral or ethical objections to MS". Do you feel they have a valid reason, or it is very specific to those people and can\ufffdt possibly have a good basis?

#4 \ufffd They have a lying, cheating politically mudslinging sales force. You may consider that good. I don\ufffdt.

#5 \ufffd Viruses are part of the MS tax. Cost of doing business.

And yes, I see it is your job. But it is not just a job. It is a career.
[link|http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=+career|http://www.webster.c...search&va=+career]

Note your comment on how it might be hard to find another job.

This means you have a vested interest in seeing it spread. Which goes back to my original problem with you being a fan. It is against my best interests, and the interests of my company. Not as a producer of software which is in competition with MS, but as a user of software that does not want its independent direction controlled by an outside entity that\ufffds only interest is in extracting as much money as possible.

Note on MS specific characters. I\ufffdve been forced into using MS environment for the short term, so I might sprinkle them about a bit. Sorry.

my father was a chemical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry. the company he worked for was found to have violated anti-trust laws at least once while he was with them. if anyone told me that made him an immoral or unethcial person, even though I probably wouldn't do it, I would want to punch them in the face


So he worked for a company that was CONVICTED (you said "found") of violating the law. And rather address the issue directly (hmm, "maybe there is a problem here") you would instead want to punch the person who said this.

Yup, your choice of professional and willful avoidance of the facts surrounding it is making more and more sense.

Without any possibility that your father might have been part of the crew that made the decisions that trigger the sanctions.

I accept it is very unlikely, but without knowing the specifics, possible.

You on the other hand responded with possible violence at the mere suggestion.

Yes, some good people work for MS.
Yes, some good people work for drug companies. I'd be in deep shit without a variety of drugs handy at all time (heart, blood pressure, pain killers, etc), so I'm very grateful to the good people working at drug companies.

So what. It doesn't stop a reasonable person from being wary.