http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22770.html

WATCH EM SQUIRM!

hehe... your link, the captial L in html at the end takes you to a not found page..

anyways, umm.. yeah, microsoft is scared. i think any of their personel should get a penguin tatoo if they lose a sale for their own OS platforms...

yeah... it's nice seeing m$ squirm a bit, but it's not a pleasant thought to imagine linux in their crosshairs.

It's funny to hear pepole make fun of MSoft. Windows and Linux may be in an OS bout, but it'll never pan out into MS scrapping to get a peice of the OS market. Bill went through the mud and dirt to make his company what it is. He is a good man who is now being flamed for being a great business man and knowing what people want! That's the truth. Apple knew it too. And now after 8 years of Linux distros and upgrades, how many of you can't see that it's gone from command line closer and closer to a, generically speaking, windows atmosphere? The people buying linux are looking for an alternative, but if it didn't have X and window managers, then noone would be buying it aside from corps..The end user still wants ease of use and MS has always provided that. As with EVERY OS, you'll have crashes, quirks & questions. I like MS, I like Linux and I like Mac too, alot. Every OS has it's niche. Anti-MS sentiment is funny since most of you/me grew up on it and at the time had fun with it. Linux has shown if anything MS doesn't have a monopoly. Hmmm...We always dislike what we don't have, and when we do we take it for granted.

Ummmmm... yeah, Apple saw Bill take their idea after they got it from Xerox, you know, the GUI interface we all love and makes computers easier to use and nicer to look at all day. The only dirt and mud Bill walked thru was when he was running out of Apples Headquarters with the secrets to a GUI interface for PC's and not MAC's....
He might have gotten PC's further along with his OS, but originally he didn't come up with all the ideas behind them, only using them and enhancing them... but by enhancing, he forgot to make it stable in the making was his only problem.
I don't flame Bill for being a great business man, I flame him for his bully business practices in which he tries to crush the opponent with threats to others who use and won't use his products.

exactly... That memo talks of having the need to snatch any potential customers away from linux at any cost.... really fair business sense ehh?

I'd certanily never ever expect anyone involved in linux to see the world like that fool that wrote the memo does, if they did they they'd surely hate linux.

Who even knows if it's a legitimate memo in the first place? Linux & Mac users are always ready to jump on MS at the first opportunity. For what? Knowing how to conduct a productive business? Of course linux and mac users won't agree with the court's decision that Bill did NOT steal the windows gui from mac. If Bill had stolen the ideas and run, why would he have created DOS (by himself) and a windows system to run on top? He would have used macs way of going about booting straight into the gui and making IT the actual OS. Noone's perfect, of course! But to get ahead in the world, who of us wouldn't bend a rule or two? If you haven't, raise yer lieing hand. Bill doesn't bully, it's not his fault, yet it's his success and product that have other companies running aground. He didn't do it. We all bought it. As for a stable OS, sheesh, anyone honest would agree we wouldn't need forums like this if Linux was so out of the box stable as Windows. Linux is a hacked version of Unix, it'll be a while before it has anything real on MS.

hate to say this, but bill didn't create DOS either, he bought it from another person who created it.
i am not saying linux isn't 100% stable, search thru these forums and posts and see how many threads start out "my linux box crashed and won't reboot", most of the time its someone having a problem fixing something they most likely did, or something other than the whole system crashing.

Yeah, I guess you're right about that, he bought out IBM and conformed it to his needs. That was just a business deal. I guess my point is this, that MS isn't all that bad. They aren't bullies and Bill is actually a pretty good guy. He's given billions back to the community and overseas aid. His company may be a little hasty to release a buggy product, i'll admit that, but I don't believe his intentions are bad. Macintosh would have gone under a while back if he hadn't bought them out too. Not to say that he should or should not have. I love Macs personally. And Bill is getting into uncharted waters as far as MS is concerned with the XBox, we'll see about that 'un. I just hate to hear people flaming MS (although, yes, it's their right even so).

no flames here... just facts, assuming they are facts of course....

Anyone in the UK got New Scientist? in the back there a thing abuot the XP launch, where Ballmer slags off w2k, saying his kids always hated it, as it always crashed, but XP passes his kids test... awwwww... the writer then naturally goes on to explain how they couldn't get XP working, BSOD city... ahh well

steve ballmer has kids?? i feel sorry for them...

i'll bet the several billion dollars he has to throw at them will ease the pain of their parentage.

whilst linus's kids(?) spend 18 hours a day digging away at a coal face ;-)

Here is a section of an article from Computerworld.com about MS and their intentions that I don't like for sure.

"...Beginning with Windows XP, which is the company's first operating system to incorporate .Net technology such as its Passport authentication service, Microsoft will begin transforming its operating system from a foundation for running applications on a PC into a framework for selling and delivering services across the Web, according to Charles King, an analyst at Zona Research Inc. in Redwood City, Calif."

I personally don't like the way we are becoming more and more vulnerable as the OS goes from an actual OS to being an entity on the web and each user running a webserver basically, whether they like it or not. That and Windows bugs (as there always are), will make for easy targets by the less scrupulous on the web. This is what is keeping me from going to XP and eventually as they go further, will either own a Mac or run Linux/BeOS/QNX stand alone. I tell you, it is a conspiracy...When you go to Windows' update site and it pops up the window saying we are updating the catalog for your computer, this happens without sending any information to MS. Then how does it know? They TAKE the info...Hmmmmmmmmmm

what a bunch of bunk.

the thought that anyone (with all respect intended, taz) could downplay and compare the stability of Linux to Windows.. absurd. Surely you notice by now the vast majority of the postings on this forum consist of 1.) installation questions 2.) setup and configuration questions and 3.) M$ bashing. The actual amount of "stability" or "crashing" issues brought up on the forum are very very few - and those that are usually stem from a newbies' fault: "I took my localhost reference out of /etc/resolv.conf... why won't my box boot up?" blah blah blah.
One of the joys of this forum/community/OS movement in general is that when you run into these issues you have some of the most personable, experienced Linux users accross the world willing to help you out for free! Something MS will not do. (you can pay them 35 dollars an incident to talk to a pimple-faced teenager that works at Convergys however... he just completed his 3 week training course on Win98 and knows where to stop things from loading in the registery now... goodie.)

Windows is not on an even kilt anywhere with Linux anywhere but in the area of user-friendliness. Of course MS is scared; you can't buy out a company that doesn't exist, you can't kill an opponent that has no form. Linux is on the rise, it offers what they can't produce, and people are ready for a change. MS is running out of innovation, so I'm sure we will see some nasty tactics in the next few rounds of the fight. I just hope they keep it above the belt, so to say.