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I'm a merc, and therefore follow the mercenary's credo - Absolute Loyalty to the Highest Bidder. It just happens that for the past decade, Microsoft shops have been the highest bidder. When Macs, Linux, web or even mainframe development pays more than MS Windows / C++, that's where I'll be headed. The only loyalty I have to Bill and company is how marketable my Microsoft skills are.
A mercenary's soul is never for sale - only for rent.
Some restrictions may apply. See your local dealer for details. Void where prohibited by law (or at least only discussed in smoky taverns).
Chistopher Duncan
Author - The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Apress)
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Show me the money!
I bet that's true for most of us. In my company, we concentrate on Windows a lot since that's what our customers want. But some also want Mac and Linux, so we develop for them also.
Internally, we try to use what gives us the best value for our money. As far as Microsoft products, we have to have Windows of course to develop and test, as long as we are developing Windows apps. Other than that, though, Visual Studio is probably the only MS app that's really worth what it costs. We do use some other MS stuff (e.g., Office). But in other cases... sometimes a Linux server works as well as a 2000 server would, so we use the Linux becuase it's cheaper.
So I agree, follow the money. 
There are three types of people in this world: those who can count, and those who can't.
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...they are merely leasing it.
Regardless of how often I rant and rave about the appalling quality of Microsoft Office, or the inability for MS to write simple, plain english, no fluff manual pages for their servers, or the flakiness of IIS and ASP, or the oxymoron that is 'Windows Security', I'm still committed to the Windows platform.
I'm still undecided how I feel about this. I've used other platforms from many other companies and each time I do I find myself wishing for the soft, down-comforter appeal of Windows. Maybe we wouldn't bitch and moan as much if we didn't actually care.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
I'm still undecided how I feel about this
Chris Maunder wrote:
Maybe we wouldn't bitch and moan as much if we didn't actually care.
What are you actually saying Chris? I for one am confused.
Care about what? Care that MS is a rutheless company which uses it's size to push other companies around?
Do you pine to be able to have that down-comforter appeal but have *nux in the About box and not MS? Why? Sun certainly is no better than MS ethically (or quality wise for that matter) and the Linux boys are too small to have the opportunity to show their unethical sides yet, but I trust that if they had half a chance they would throw their weight around.
Adobe Photoshop crashes as much as VS.NET and as much as Macromedia Fireworks. Dreamweaver aint so hot on the crashing front either and Mozilla does itself in often enough. I hear even reliable Apache is having more and more moments of frailty. That is a wide spectrum of software and they all suffer.
It is not just MS, it is the whole IT industry. We as developers know why apps have bugs in them. Deadlines, insane management, poor testing, rushed-releases etc. etc.
I am not forgiving MS or saying we should go easy on them, just that we should treat the rest the same because they all do the same.
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Paul Watson wrote:
Chris Maunder wrote:
Maybe we wouldn't bitch and moan as much if we didn't actually care.
What are you actually saying Chris? I for one am confused.
It our industry - our toys, gadgets, way of life, diversity of challenges, potential for creativity and innovation that I care about (and often despair about).
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Crashing is not a problem as long as you can recover with proper context state. That's what all that server stuff is (and should continue to be) all about.
MS quote (http://www.microsoft.com/ddk) : As of September 30, 2002, the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 DDK, the Microsoft Windows 98 DDK, and the Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 DDK will no longer be available for purchase or download on this site. Support for development will ship at the same time as the Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) release.
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Paul Watson wrote:
Dreamweaver aint so hot on the crashing front either
Before I had Windows 2000 on my office PC I had at least 10 crashes a day with Dreamweaver, mind you that may have been due to running SQL Server Enterprise Manager at the same time, my machine resources were nothing more than fumes 
--
Paul
"I need the secure packaging of Jockeys. My boys need a house!"
- Kramer, in "The Chinese Woman" episode of Seinfeld
MS Messenger: paul@oobaloo.co.uk
Sonork: 100.22446
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I have the same thoughts.
There are two items that I like to add.
Since MS made so much money and is market leader on almost all software branches it really is about time to:
1. Make the core software (or one layer above) open to the community.
2. Cut down their prices dramatically.
Why this hussle with courts, market protection etc..?
Bill has reached his goals and made his point. He has won. Now it is about time to give it away to the global community.
(I would even drop this milliards in 3rd world programs, but this is another issue)
cheers,
Kees de Haan
______________________________________
For he by Geometrick scale
Could take the size of Pots of Ale
Resolve by Sines en Tangets straight,
If Bread or Butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o'th'day
The Clock does strike, by Algebra.
Samuel Butler (Hudibras 1678)
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Ok now.. who said that their systems are MS Free?..
What are you doing on CP? - Joke 
May the Source be with you
Sonork ID 100.9997 sijinjoseph
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And more importantly, can Chris please show the platform used to make those votes - I wonder how many will be IE6 on Windows XP... 
I'm not schizophrenic, are we.
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Those hypocrites.
May the Source be with you
Sonork ID 100.9997 sijinjoseph
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I use Opera because it simply is the best browser available. Granted Opera adheres to the w3c compliance very closely which causes poorly written pages to render improperly. IE does not adhere to those standards as closely and as such is able to render most pages. The advantages of Opera are numerous; quickly a few of these are speed, tabular paging, navigation and print preview. If you haven’t given Opera a serious chance I recommend that you do.
Jason W.
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David Wulff wrote:
I wonder how many will be IE6 on Windows XP...
I was using the WINE emulator and running Opera with a IE6 spoofed agent string, I swear, I swear! I would never use MS... 
p.s. what does your HAS post rater software run on?
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LOL
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I use Microsoft products for deveopment and for what I target. I am not looking to leave, but if a better environment turned up and my company wanted to use it, then I would.
We havn't sold our souls, its just that for the area I work in there is no real aternative at this time.
So there should be an alternate answer:
Use Microsoft because its the current standard.
Roger Allen
Sonork 100.10016
I think I need a new quote, I am on the prowl, so look out for a soft cute furry looking animal, which is really a Hippo in disguise. Its probably me.
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That's right, the exact point of view of most of MS developers I guess. Working with MS products because they are the best for our products, but if something better (really better, not just "My system doesn't crash" - this is a non-sence) is coming up then we can switch
Philip Patrick
Web-site: www.stpworks.com
"Two beer or not two beer?" Shakesbeer
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Exactly. MS allows me to make buck better than anybody else.
Tim Smith
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we can not avoid it... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather that part of the solution."
Hoare - 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture
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Roger Allen wrote:
Use Microsoft because its the current standard.
Use Microsoft because customers using a Microsoft environment will buy licences of your product if that fits theirs.
In addition, I believe today's software companies have no real choice. For instance, regarding Xml and web services, they must implement and support both MS and Sun. That would be silly to do just one of them.
It means that a few people in the software company must go to MS conf (even that's mostly market), and the software company must follow the wackies MS strategies including OS guidelines (even when MS themselves can't), must pay the redistribution licences, and so on.
MS quote (http://www.microsoft.com/ddk) : As of September 30, 2002, the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 DDK, the Microsoft Windows 98 DDK, and the Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 DDK will no longer be available for purchase or download on this site. Support for development will ship at the same time as the Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) release.
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I use and will continue to use MS products till a really good reason comes along not to. They work much as I expect them to work and I get my job done with their tools. Where they are lacking I have alternatives (e.g. Macromedia Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop for graphic design) but I do not fanatically try every single alternative just so that I can say I am not using MS.
Sure they are not perfect, but they are often better than the competition.
So anyway, can everyone please list why they feel they shouldn't be using MS products? Are there valid reasons which do not apply to other companies?
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Paul Watson wrote:
So anyway, can everyone please list why they feel they shouldn't be using MS products? Are there valid reasons which do not apply to other companies?
Well, I have actually only one - spyware. I don't need no stinking activation, nor I need MS to track my usage patterns etc.
If I was a goverment worker that alone would make me stop using MS software since it can not be trusted (MS has a proven record of illegal spyware practices).
Eventually I will not buy any new MS software unless they change attitude.
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George wrote:
MS has a proven record of illegal spyware practices
I hadn't hear about it, though I'm not the best when it comes to news, so could miss it.
And as I think, if you don't have something illegal on your computer, you usually don't care about "spying"
Also I have a firewall working for me and cutting every connection I don't trust, so it would be hard to spy if someone wanted to.
Philip Patrick
Web-site: www.stpworks.com
"Two beer or not two beer?" Shakesbeer
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Because it isn't true. Just a bunch of hype and poor understanding of MS using one firm that also deals with questionable site tracking.
Anybody who whines about that should stop using the internet since Google, Altavista, etc all track you.
It is just ignorance. But ignorance never stopped the MS bashing.
Tim Smith
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we can not avoid it... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather that part of the solution."
Hoare - 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture
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Tim Smith wrote:
Because it isn't true. Just a bunch of hype and poor understanding of MS using one firm that also deals with questionable site tracking.
Glad I am not the only one who thought that spy-ware claim was rubbish.
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What the deal is that the company MS uses for the "We can't find the site...." and the redirector links on that page is a known spyware company. It is unknown if they are actually tracking your redirection, but it is safe to assume they are.
If you don't want them to track you, then just don't click on the links on that "We can't find the site..." error page in IE.
But if someone doesn't like that tracking you, then they must hate that Google and etal do it too. If that is the case, then at least they are being consistent.
I use AD-Aware from Lavasoft. And yes this does pop up as spyware. But everybody who actually knows what is going on admit it is benign.
Tim Smith
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we can not avoid it... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather that part of the solution."
Hoare - 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture
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George wrote:
(MS has a proven record of illegal spyware practices).
Well firstly even if that were true/accurate (I believe what Tim said below is accurate) then you might as well round up half the shareware companies in the world and throw many other big companies into jail for spy-ware.
And I asked for a reason that cannot be levelled at other companies. Your reason can be levelled at everybody from Real Networks to the GetRight boys to Opera to Netscape to AOL.
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