Having a large installed base means that you very much set "a standard." However, casting the company as "The Evil Empire" is slightly misguided. Fun, yes, but misguided. Slightly. Very. ;)

Not exactly. Whether you like it or not, dot-net is widely used by programmers, so it won't simply go away and die. It will be possible to port office to linux (wine already did half of the job) by providing wrappers for system calls. As for windows/microsoft - the goal of the company is not to sell windows, but to make money. If windows will become unprofitable, i think they'll get rid of it and switch to different product.

Nothing the matter with wanting to make a profit. But when it causes you to shut out good people, like the open source community, and stifle societal progress, thats pure greed.

You seem to assume that greed is "bad". Can you prove it?

There seems to be a clique here who will disagree with everything I say. Yet, I'll take a stab at this for the fun of it:

If a person shows no self-constraint in any area of life, what's the outcome? Take milk. I like milk. Milk is good to me. But if I drink a gallon every day, I'm certain it would become bad to me. Agree? (doubt it) Point taken? (not likely)

You seem to be mistaken. If you can't have a little fun and/or don't know how to argue, that's your own fault.

It depends on your build, weight and life style. 1 gallon is 3.7 liters. On a hot day you'll drink much more liquid than that. Also there are diets that require drinking gallon of milk per day...

No, people don't disagree with everything you say, but you do seem to troll quite a bit, and nit-pick.

You said earlier that you don't believe there is a conspiracy...then wondered why the "authorities" don't let people know there are alternatives. What, exactly, would you like the "authorities" to do?? Go on TV, hold press conferences saying "Hey, you with the Windows...you can load Linux! It's TOTALLY LEGAL! REALLY!!"?? A Windows buy-back program?

Windows comes pre-loaded on most PC's, period. That's why it's the currently dominant OS on the desktop. Again, why do people leave it there? Because it's EASIER TO...some grandma doesn't want to download/burn/install Ubuntu, and again, doesn't know/care about DRM, OSS, or anything else. She knows that she clicks the IE icon, little Johnny's facebook page comes up, and she can see pictures. Why is greed not bad sometimes? Because it drives companies to be more profitable, stock prices to go up, etc. Is it ALWAYS a good thing? No...but it's not always a BAD thing either.

How does MS "shut out" the open source community? Answer: they don't, because they CAN'T. There is no board of directors, management committee, etc. for OSS, and the leadership there is would welcome MS's involvement....if it didn't also come with strings attached to it, and that's where the problem is. Neither the OSS leadership nor MS is going to budge on that one way or the other, so they each do their own things.

Sorry. Perhaps I mistook you. Do you just tend to argue with people in general?

Are you talking about any specific examples?

Yes, SigTerm does that. When he pisses me off enough he will go on my ignore list.

That makes good sense. But have folks in the Linux camp firmly promoted distributing machines with Linux pre-installed? Or are there contracts between the hardware makers themselves and Msoft that preclude this? Why, in your opinion, has Linux not been a match to Windows in that market?

On your other note, I still don't get this "trolling" thing.

Yes, but only if something interesting (new info, new tactic, unusual opinion, etc) might happen during argument.

IMO, on a "computer" there are high expectations. "consumer" expects to be able to run ANY windows software they want without any problems. Linux can't do it yet. I think opensource developers will have more luck making anything that is not a personal computer - gadgets, appliances, (maybe) cellphones/smartphones, routers, robots, toys, military hardware. I.e. any area without a set "standard behavior"/user expectations. Trying to fit into desktop market now will be too difficult, plus it is too late - "average" people have high expectations that are hard to fullfill. In my experience KDE pretty much illustrates problems associated with linux trying to get into desktop market: KDE has plenty of software built in, but a lot of it looks like a cheap rip-off or a mock-up of a commercial programs, sometimes hilarious bugs are present (I still remember a Krita version without eraser instrument).

Chaotic development, lack of goal/vision, inability to cater to tastes of larger user base.

Well, recently I've been studying XML, and I've run into the incompatibility issues between IE and other browsers with DOM documents and XSLT translations using javaScript. I just thought, "this is stupid, again." And then I thought, there are still workarounds, however clumsy they may be. So, ultimately, the technologies are compatible, but not seamless. I guess I just thought in order for them to be compatible at all, MSofts code being secret, they must be conforming, or they must have conformed on some points along the way. Right or wrong?

Yes, they have, several times. Again, re-read what I and others have said before. Grandma doesn't WANT to learn anything new...a choice in OS? Nope, don't want that. Dell tried it, and hardly any got out the door, because hardly anyone wanted it pre-loaded. Again, the ones who KNOW load it themselves. The ones who DON'T, use Windows. That's why Linux doesn't 'match' Windows in the desktop OS market, as has been said several times. The hardware makers have deals with MS to custom brand their Windows, and get HUGE discounts on it...in return, MS gets to be on all their desktops. Market forces at work...stock prices rise, etc.

Any amount of basic research on this would explain it all.
Yes, I realize that.

Thanks for letting me know that about you SigTerm. I'll try to remember that. If I object in this vein again, I would appreciate if you should remind me.