Get Off Microsoft

The Microsoft brand is getting pummeled overseas, in the music industry, and in the server market. Can you even estimate how much good will has been lost? Gates and Ballmer must get indigestion every morning as they scan the headlines on their pocket PCs.

This is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options.

Microsoft is resorting to a Cold War on Open Source and Linux, using fear and uncertainty as it primary weapons. Microsoft is using this threat to bring Open Source developers and Linux suppliers — and their large clients — to the bargaining table to pay licenses. The patents should be challenged, because many of them are probably suspect. But these patents probably won’t be challenged in court, because Microsoft does not want a public legal fight. Microsoft would rather keep the Open Source community muttering underneath its breath, and reveal nothing.

It should come as no surprise to learn that the inventors of the spreadsheet and the first companies to market spreadsheet software were refugees from the Sixties counterculture. How often have you looked at a spreadsheet and thought, what were they smoking?

In countries and cities around the world, mandated or not, Linux desktop PCs are decisively replacing PCs.

Microsoft’s delay in providing Windows Vista to the general marketplace has sparked all manner of criticism and analysis. ‘ve addressed a number of questions from reporters and journalists and gathered them here, with paraphrased questions and my responses.

Writely.com’s big advantage, besides offering a basic free service that works with most browsers on any computer, is that it makes collaboration on documents a lot easier than ever before.

Customers of Microsoft Office have one more reason to consider switching to an alternative before getting hit with a gigantic upgrade.

People are aware of Microsoft’s history of locking customers in with new features at the expense of security, proposing pseudo-open standards, and spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about its competitors.

Sing along! On the 12th day of Microsoft’s Christmas, Bill Gates gave to me…