I spent over three hours typing up an assignment from rough notes this afternoon. It is also due this afternoon. I figured I could type it, check through it, and print it with time for lunch before dropping it in and going to my 4pm lecture. Microsoft had other plans. As I was saving the document, I accidentally hit Ctrl+V (paste). I think the fact that typing the assignment had required copious amounts of cutting and pasting had conditioned me to try and paste it into the save directory. Anyway, Word crashed, and I lost all my work. All of it. Every fucking word!!!

I phoned the lecturer, and he gave me a twelve hour extension, but I still have to retype the whole fucking thing from scratch. I know I should not have typed the whole thing without saving, but still... three hours of typing and not a single auto-backup? Despite the fact that I have auto-backup TURNED ON???

Were Bill gates here right now... well, he wouldn't be here any more...

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This wouldn't have happened to Jesus.

Do you know why?

Because Jesus saves.

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What others say about boorite!

Ahhhh ha hahahaha damn you boo you beat me to it. Bastard.

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"Fascist Clay was my most favorite totalitarian boxer!" - Indie Rock Pete from Diesel Sweeties

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“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1945)

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“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1945)

I actualy like microsoft. I mean, would you rather wrtie your own OS or add to Linux for every little aplication you have? Plus, there's so much plug-and-play mentality and features already going on that I think most people, when they actutualy get around to getting rid of microsoft products, will find their life more stressfull than before.

Face it, sooner or later, the borg will win.

Basicly, if you don't like windows/microsoft, DONT USE IT. STOP WHINING.

And don't complain when you've never even tried to write an os...

Nate, please do us all a favour and anally violate yourself with a spinning chainsaw.

I use Microsoft products because I have no choice in the matter. Windows is not the world's dominant operating system because of any inherent qualities. It got to the top because of marketing, unethical business practices, and buying everyone who threatened its market share.

Microsoft's tendency to make unstable programs cost me many hours of my time and a lot of sleep.

I warn you now that every time in the future that you complain about anything on this forum, I will tell you to stop using it if you don't like it, and stop whining. I am determined to make you realise just how obnoxious your behaviour can be.

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Sorry about that, everyone (except Nate).

The need to rewrite my assignment had me up until 5am, after which I got two hours sleep before having to be woken up to go and hand the assignment in before 9am in order to avoid being docked marks. I am not in the best of moods right now, and naive babbling from a brainwashed little fuckhead who is telling me I have nothing to complain about and I should actually be grateful and stop whining... well, I lost my temper.

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I ate Microsoft with a passion. Fruit.

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100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

and...

http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/obey.pdf

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

Poor old Bill Gates... no doubt he has carpal tunnel syndrome from all the backstabbing he has indulged in, corns on his feet from trampling his competitors underfoot, and a badly warped spine from carrying that monstrous wallet in his pocket. Lucky for him he can afford naked silicone-injected bimbos to massage his wrists, dark-eyed, coffee-skinned exotic beauties to rub oils into his feet, and bare-footed Thai slave girls to walk his spine back into place.

What a pity he still isn't rich enough to be able to pay for enough cosmetic surgery to make himself attractive... maybe a trillion will be enough, Bill!

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Good Lord.

I just basicly stated that if you can't do it yourself don't get upset about it.

Because that's about the only alternative right now.

Microsoft does make the most stable programs out there... the fact that they've positioned themselves to drown out competition is a fault, yes, but they could not have achived that position unless they had the upper hand before anyway. Every great power base that is focused around eliminating competition doesn't get to that position unless it already has some achivement.

OR we can drop that and go with your argument. In that case, everyone has their own experiance with microsoft software. It's mine that my programs rarely crash, my system rarely crashes(unless im pumping a HUGE game through it or 10+ aplications), and that this takes far less time to do things on than it ever did on linux... which is second to windows at this point(unless you count OS X)

I just don't think that your argument is valid - microsoft is bad because they flush out competition therefore their programs are bad and I had one bad experiance i hate them

I think it uncalled for to say all those things when all I said was you shouldn't complain without some profesional experiance in that realm.

You're the one that hit Ctrl-V... auto-backup probably didn't work in this case because you were already saving it. And I'll bet that the data is still in your system and recoverable, but I wouldn't know how to do it. So I won't gas off about it. I'm sorry you were up until 5... but the same things could have happened other ways. You wrote it on paper and it got lost... you wrote it on a Mac and the power went out...

At any rate, sorry for your loss, DexX.

Okay, Microsoft hardly makes stable software. It's a FACT that until the new XP operating systems, Microsoft OSes have had a VERY bad stability track record. Their software (Office, etc) isn't as bad. (XP is actually pretty good, and the upcoming .NET OS, which I've used, is remarkable stable).

My biggest beef with Microsoft is their raping of standards. Java? Let's make our own *special* Java that only our stuff will run. HTML & CSS? Let's adhere to most standards, but then throw in a bunch of other crap that will only work on our browser.

Also, security wise, Microsoft products are utter CRAP. That's why Microsoft is currently halting ALL development indefinitely while everyone has to go back through all of their code and make it more secure and clean it up. (this is currently happening - http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/02/04/020204hnmscode.xml?0205tuam) The advantage of stuff like Linux is that it is much more fluid and flexible, allowing security and stability issues to be fixed much more quickly.

But, Microsoft/Windows has it's place. It's the best option for 75% of people out there. It's (relatively, compared to Mac) cheap, it's easy to use (compared to any Unix/Linux flavor out there), and it's pervasive with alot of software available. It's jsut too bad they use illegal business practices. The argument that "well, they must have a good product and legitimate base for them to have taken over through illegal practices" is like saying "Hey, Hitler was BAD, but he must have had a good point or two to come to power to begin with." Hitler was still evil.

Okay, Mr. Software Tester Guy is off his soap box.

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"Fascist Clay was my most favorite totalitarian boxer!" - Indie Rock Pete from Diesel Sweeties

No, it's more like they had a few tanks to start with. I'm talking about resoruces, not ideolegy.

And don't make that sublte impression - I'm well aware that what microsoft did was wrong and wasn't very ethincal.

would you be happier saying that microsoft were like the vhs to everyone elses betamax?

hey vhs must have been the better otherwise it would never have succeeded

*family fortunes style eh errrr*

WRONG!

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Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men? MIKE BOBSICO KNOWS! And if you give him a decent tip when he delivers your mail , he might tell you.

My problem with linux is that it attracts beardy geek-types who get waay too excited about fundamentally uninteresting things.

A little history.

The the early days of the IBM-compatible PC market (remember when they were IBM-compatible, and no "Wintel"?) the PC applications market was quite split. The dominant players under MS-DOS were:

Word Processing: WordStar, WordPerfect, Professional Write, OfficeWriter
Spreadsheet: Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro and SuperCalc
Presentations: Harvard Graphics
Database: dBase, FoxPro (pre-MS purchase), Alpha/three, Paradox
Programming Languages:Turbo C, Turbo Pascal

Microsoft was making money from the OS, but in the applications market, they were a third-string player. Word (the DOS version), MultiPlan (spreadsheet), and their language products were notoriously unsuccessful.

With Windows (does anyone remember the original versions with non-tiling windows?) Microsoft got a lead on application development, and certainly had the inside track on how to develop Windows apps. While we waited for Windows versions of our favorite DOS apps, we bought what was available and "good enough" (the MS apps) for Windows.

As corporate buyers, we like to standardize. At a certain point, we had deployed enough of the Microsoft products where it would be too painful to switch relative to any benefit. (Painful either from a deployment standpoint or a licensing standpoint).

Microsoft also made inroads though bundling software in Office. While not illegal, it certainly made it difficult for single products to make inroads. Lotus Freelance was a far superior presentation graphics program to the first version of PowerPoint. But people used PowerPoint because it was essentially "free." The next version of PowerPoint blatantly copied all the best features of Freelance.

On a more nasty level, bundling "features" into the operating system to kill competitors has been an ongoing practice. Witness the inclusion in Windows of Internet Explorer (hurting Netscape), Windows Media Player (hurting Real Networks and others), and MSN and MSN Messenger (hurting AOL).

Microsoft's history of noncompetitive practices in the Operating System market have been well founded. By penalizing hardware vendors who chose to sell operating systems or user interfaces other than Windows (OS/2, GEM Desktop, BeOs, and later, Linux), they locked consumers out of those options.

Unfortunately, any remedy is too little, too late. The serious potential rivals are long gone, and people have settled into what they have. In the server market there is a chance, in the desktop market, it's all over.

Oh, and Apple's problems are their own damn fault.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

Ok, I found some people are a little pissed off when I express an opinion...

DexX- I never meant to tell you to shut up. Sorry if it came out that way.

I retract all statements. You win.

Actually, descolada loses -- he brought up Hitler first.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Actually, descolada loses -- he brought up Hitler first.

Actually, descolada loses -- he brought up Hitler first.

DAMN!!! Foiled again!!!

I wasn't pissed off at all. I just like getting into heated debates about the following topics:

1)Microsfot
2)Religion
3)Politics
4)Squirrel Vaseline Wrestling

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"Fascist Clay was my most favorite totalitarian boxer!" - Indie Rock Pete from Diesel Sweeties

...and earlier... Gee, how did I ever get the impression you were telling me to shut up...?

Okay, let's run with this, uh, "logic" of yours...

DexX says, "Did you see that pile of shit The Time Machine? My god, someone ate the cast and script, took some laxatives, and shat a whole lotta diarrhoea onto celluloid!"

Nate says, "Hey, if you don't like it, don't watch it! Stop whining! If you have never attempted to make a feature film, you have no right to question the skills of others in the field..."

DexX says, "What the hell is that George Dubyah doing? He has the brain of an underdeveloped chimp!"

Nate says, "Hey, if you don't like the way Prez Georgie runs the planet, move to Venus! Stop whining! You can't complain if you have never tried to successfully govern a world superpower..."

Telling me I can't complain about a bad experience with Microsoft because I have never attempted to write an OS (Word is actually an application, but I'll let that one slide) is truly idiotic logic.

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[Click to view comic: 'Curses, Foaled Again!']

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Nate said:
Which programs are you talking about? And what are you comparing them to? Every computer system is susceptible to crashes at least to some degree, as you pointed out. But it's my experience that Windows and Windows programs are the worst by far, crashing more often and for worse reasons than other systems. I've got a few years of experience as a casual Linux user under my belt and in all that time I've only experienced one (1) event that resembled a crash. (Though I did lose an article I'd just written in that one... but I admit it was due to my own stupidity.)

descolada said:
Speaking as someone who does web development both professionally and as a hobby, this is a little unfair. I don't mean that Microsoft is innocent of this. But, first of all, Netscape is worse about it, or at least they were. Remember, they're the ones who invented the much-maligned and a whole lot of other crappy "features" as a cheap gimmick. And second, though no web browser currently on the market implements HTML 4.01 and CSS 2 correctly and completely, MSIE comes closest by a comfortable margin. I taught myself CSS by reading the specification on the W3C site. When I take the knowledge I've acquired there and try to use it in a web page, it's not at all uncommon for IE5+ to be the only browser that displays it as I expected. Even Opera, for all the noise people make about it being built by one of the designers of CSS or something like that, isn't as reliable.

Frankly, as much as I dislike Microsoft and their business practices, I wouldn't be the least bit sorry to see Netscape crawl off into a corner and die. I can't count the hours I've spent rewriting web pages to accomodate their bugs. I do agree that they've done better than MS in implementing Java(Script)... but I don't work with Java if I can possibly avoid it.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!