Windows 98 support shifts to CD

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Gosh, that was even brainless for a certified Micro$hill! Congrats!: Your use of such an obvious "straw man"
tactic by mis-characterizing "forcing" means
you've got nothing to say, no REAL response
to my post. Er, are you co-starring in that new
D&D'erer flick? I doubt you'll pay any attention
to my comments, but I'll reiterate my points to
respond to the errant nonsense.

"Straw men" are the $hills' stock in trade, but
your stuff is bovine, LOL:
And thank you for proving that MS never
forced any upgrades...

Proves nothing, it only differs with your bizarre
sense of what's real. "Forcing" uopgrades by
your definition would be, what?!? M$
presumeably marching in - in the absence of
the notorious BSA coercion "negotiations" for
supposed license violations - to extort from
the average customer?!? That's obviously not
what's occurred (to any extent I know of, at
least). That was never the allegation,
never the definition of "forced upgrade" or
"upgrade treadmill" used by the many
people unhappy with that process, AND you
know it. Stop the FUD! It doesn't work!

...and those BS stories about how the MS
gestapo showed up at companies telling they
ahd to upgrade to 2k or be sued...

That kind of "forcing" didn't occur for the
average customer, as I said, but
1. there WERE accounts of the
largely-M$-funded BSA goon-squads
"persuading" customers to upgrade and
accept onerous longer-term deals as part of
BSA settlements, and
2. Microsoft itself DID USE those occasions
for self-admitted MARKETING purposes,
alerting local M$ partners to the commotion in
each case. You see, some of us have
memories.

Do you deny those as well?

Are such pressure tactics "illegal?" Nope, not
from what I can see. BUT kinda coercive and
SLIMY, though, and M$'s behavior bespeaks a
fundamental contempt for small- and
medium-sized customers, whose only fault in
many cases was poor tracking of
legitimately-licensed software. Someone said
it in this forum today, that M$ can smile all the
way to the bank, 'cuz PRE-LOADS are already
paid for, regardless of the future use of the
machine. The BSA raids often compelled
customers to pay double or worse for
legitimate software.

SO much for your little straw man. The
REAL pressure to upgrade came from a
variety of M$-triggered sources, several
mentioned by other posters. MY favorite
reason is that during ALL of the 1990's, M$ put
out DELIBERATELY broken, unstable,
unreliable, insecure product, with the carrot
held out to long-suffering customers that there
was a better, faster, cleaner, more-stable
product comin' their way in the pipeline.
(Deliberate in this case includes serious
stability issues, other defects, and zero
apparent effort to stabilize, fix significant bugs
in a timely manner, etc.)

THEN, upon the intro of that "superior" product
- that existed for years in computer media like
ZDNN as little more than VAPORWARE - M$
told folks both in and out of the business
world they'd be missing out on all kinds of
great stuff if they didn't undertake the
upgrade... and people bought that line of jive
for a long time (8 or 9 years is a lifetime in
computers). Hey, I'll admit it, I took the bait,
'cuz there didn't seem to be any alternative,
except for expensive, proprietary Unix that was
used for all the heavy lifting (then AND now!).

We became inured to slow, bloated, unstable,
unreliable crapware on the desktop. BSOD
Hell, all the way into the 21st Century. People
stayed on the "treadmill" until they realized
they'd been duped, that they'd been unwilling
Beta testers for years..

THAT is why people complain about the
"upgrade treadmill." I suggest that there'd be
far less complaint if M$ had at least tried to
fulfill its promises, but it never did.
Subsequent product, until W2K (but really
WXP), was INFERIOR. In fact, WinME is
viewed by most as worse in many
respects - like stability - than W98!

Better yet, "upgrades" of OS invariably
required machine upgrades, mucho
increase of computing power, HD capacity, et
al. Had it not been for Moore's Law and the
somewhat slower but stunning
commoditization of hardware, businesses
would have either spent a Helluva lot more or
cut back on acquisitions. In fact, THAT IS
WHAT HAPPENED in many cases, judging
from the report cited by the article!

While masked by pre-loads, the cost of M$
OSes has trebled, in some cases
quintupled as a fraction of the cost of an
average computer, and WinXP was the first
M$OS that even began to deliver on the
promise, for Home, SOHO and biz desktops.
The failure of M$ to provide better security - 2+
years into a grand "Trusted Computing
Initiative" - is only the latest in a series of failed
commitments to customers. Until

"Competition is good! Right, Micro$hills? I
mean, that's what you bleat all the time, while
working hard to kill alternatives, even lobbying
gub'mints and Global organizations to ignore
the OSS question."

Sounds more like anti MS tactics to me.
Lobbying goverments and spreading lies of
alternatives, trying to get OSS special
treatment laws passed.
That will clear up todays heaping pile of ABM
BS.

Gosh, you must have meant NBM BS, but
that's OK.

The LOBBYING in question was by
MICRO$OFT against a UN-connected
organization discussing OSS as an emerging
phenomenon of interest, especially to the
Third World. Sadly, this LOBBYING by
MICRO$OFT was successful. Unfortunate,
but eminently remediable. The OSS
phenomenon has far less marketing and
lobbying behind it, but is gaining nonetheless.
Inasmuch as M$ also has a
recently-discovered SLUSH FUND to spike
Linux adoption in crucial markets, such growth
is encouraging and not unexpected. The M$
SLUSH FUND is ostensibly for offering
"discounts," which many, however, would
rather characterize as "bribes." Ooh, did I say
that?!? Interestingly, Munich and others have
spurned the big-buck-br**-ing and have turned
to Linux, which I know does not have that kind
of money to er, throw around.; Posted by: dicktaurus@... Posted on: 01/09/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use