Sinabro

InternetNews.com reports

Microsoft is … so bent on winning that it undercut a deal between the Nigerian government and the Linux vendor [Mandriva].

Is it just me, or is Internet”News”.com a pathetic Microsoft shill? I mean, look how balanced their report is. They start the article by pointing out “Microsoft is a tremendous competitor”. Whatever that means. Tremendously illegal? Tremendously anti-competitive? Tremendously monopolistic? Tremendously treachereous? Tremendous what? I just get a little apprehensive whenever someone says “tremendous”. Because that tells me (unless circumstances justify it), that the person has something to spin. And I would like to make sure I know that spin.

Anyways. Internet”News”.com’s shill-dom doesn’t end here. Yes, I would say it’s a fair characterization that any competition with Microsoft (and almost any other company) is less than friendly. Perhaps amicable at some times, like Microsoft and IBM or the Devil and Sun. But Microsoft’s anti-competitive tactics automatically rule out any kind of genuine friendly competition. Because friendly competition is built on some sort of cooperation, and cooperation Microsoft does not (heck, not even with itself—see how well MS Office 97 works with MS Office 2007). But now, why does this shill feel that it needs to point out Mandriva’s bankrupcy years ago, while utterly failing to mention that Microsoft is a monopolist convicted under U.S. anti-trust laws, as well as in many other parts of the world? If this isn’t a shill, I don’t know what is. Perhaps referring to Mr. Balmer as “His Lordship” might barely qualify, at that point.

Such blatant shilldom by an obviously shady Internet “news” website aside, Microsoft has a very strange ideas about choice. If it so values the choices that its customers have, why does it consistently break its own formats? What kind of choice do I have, if all I can use is either MS Office 2007 Premium or MS Office 2007 Home, if I want to read existing documents? Why shouldn’t I be able to choose MS Office 97? I mean, I don’t really care about support. I don’t care it’s out of production. I have an old copy of Office 97, and I would like to use it. Do I have that choice? I ask again, if Microsoft so values the choices we have, what kind of choice does it offer me?

Give me an open format any day over a proprietary format. I don’t care if it takes me 10x as much time preparing documents in an open format. I would die before I use MS proprietary format.

On PBS

Google shares rose above $700 this week, making the search giant worth more than Cisco, Intel, Apple, or IBM, but still less than Microsoft and General Electric, if just barely. Is the company really worth that kind of money or is this just the effect of a bubble market? Google is on a tear, that’s for sure, but I see a few potholes ahead that the company could avoid but probably won’t. Part of this stems from Google starting to look, in some ways, a bit like Microsoft. Uh-oh.

I have a simple breakdown here for you: Let’s get rid of pigeons before we worry about the flying lizards. Destroy Microsoft (which does hold a monopoly that so desperately needs to be broken) first, and we will worry whether Google is becoming too powerful (which, as pervasive as it’s becoming, is not a monopoly and has many alternatives in its fields) later.

Second, less allegories and more information please? What’s described under “algorithm optimization gone mad” sounds like a very typical business procedure for any company, and, seriously, with all those verbose decorations, I can’t get to any solid information that I can take away.

As far as I can tell, this article carries no information worth propagating whatsoever.