There is only one man who would pull the wrong tooth...

I get a Dreyfuss-like tic in my eye any time I hear someone taking pity on or apologizing on behalf of Microsoft, but... John Dvorak hit the nail on the head.

I will refrain, here, from engaging in a redundant anti-Microsoft rant. I will not bore you with the same old tired pro-F/OSS arguments. I will stay on-topic, I swear...

Dvorak mentions that if Microsoft had used its vast resources on the originally advertised features of MS Windows Vista, it would be coming out on time and with all the originally advertised features. (For those of you living under rocks, or just tuning out the tech news, here's a summary... and this from a pro-MS-Windows publication!) From what I can tell... and I have to admit, I haven't dowloaded a public beta... Hey... I won't run their code when they claim it's ready... what makes you think I'll run it when they admit it could jolly-well be broken?!... but from what I hear in the press, MS Windows Vista promises to be yet another incremental improvement in the MS Windows feature-set (and I'm not talking about eye-candy*, here... I'm talking about actual usable features that do something productive)

So... What I take away from the Dvorak article is that the root cause of the bulk of Microsoft's current woes is Internet Explorer and its integration into the MS Windows operating system. Seems fitting in a way... like MS has baked their cake and, now, get to sleep in it. The cows have come home to roost on the barn door! Thyme feels all goons! Peen now or forever hold your feces!

{note to self: If you don't understand metaphors, don't use them.}

Perhaps a better way to put it is this: Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive hehavior when it integrated its web browser into its operating system, such that other web browsers could or would not be meningfully used. Microsoft used its "for all practical purposes" monopoly market-share to push out other "competitors". Strangely, the US Justice Department was unable to make a sufficiently strong case to that effect and Microsoft was allowed to continue its "integrated web browser" practice... and expand it into the "media player" realm as well... but now.... Microsoft has done to itself what the Justice Department... even the Almighty Forces of the Free Market... couldn't do. It punished itself for its rotten behavior. Inadvertantly, perhaps... but, nevertheless, it has punished itself and its customers. The unfortunate outcome of all this (prove me wrong.. PLEASE!!!) is that the general public will be sufficiently placated by the eyecandy and opt to buy MS Windows Vista, hook, line and stinker.

Same old shit.

Anyway, good insight, John.


* I was looking for a page to link to for this term, and I thought... Hey, Microsoft surely has plenty to say about it's upcoming release of its flagship operating system. Strangely, the webpage with said propaganda doesn't render correctly in Firefox. There's an old saying about what to do with people who can't take a joke. I think it applies here.
NOTE: Microsoft has FIXED it's "Windows Vista" site so that it works under Linux. Huh. A step in the right direction, but I still won't buy it. :P