What is Microsoft's problem?

**sapi** · 12-16-2007, 13:57

For you and me there's an option to turn that sidebar off.

I'd never seen that before

Thanks a lot

**Bijo** · 12-16-2007, 18:02

Fascinating. It seems Husar might be correct when he states he thinks it is I who have a problem and not Microsoft. Well, even then what about all the bloated websites and such? Ah, they must go to hell!

I used Miranda before but I didn't like it and I probably never will.

I followed sapi's advice and checked out Pidgin. What a beautiful program. There seems to be a downside, though, at least from what I notice: transfers are slow as heck and the program often disconnects which never happened with the other separate messengers. Still, nice program.

**Fragony** · 12-16-2007, 21:49

Windows, made by a nerd who worked in his spare time to develope something that turned out to be just what the people wanted, this guy deserves respect, he even invested more capital in good causes then you and your kids and theirs will ever earn in your life and probably a whole lot more generation to come. What is it with people to envy succes, he would never been succesful as a salesmanager, a pimp or a pornstar, but he was good enough at this when others weren't, congrats billyboy

**Bijo** · 12-17-2007, 15:01

I don't envy his success: I dislike Microsoft's marketing, bloated rubbish, bloated sites, etc., which is the whole point. You are being.... illogical, Fragony boy! ;)

**Xiahou** · 12-17-2007, 21:25

Originally Posted by Bijo

I don't envy his success: I dislike Microsoft's marketing, bloated rubbish, bloated sites, etc., which is the whole point. You are being.... illogical, Fragony boy! ;)

Took the words out of my mouth. I respect the hell out of what Bill Gates has done, and he earned his riches (well, for the most part). What I don't like is how the company now acts more like a monopolistic thug than a fresh innovator. They do everything they can to force you into their products across the boards, via forced incompatibilities and the like rather than making us want to use their stuff because it's the best out there.

**Husar** · 12-17-2007, 21:47

On a completely related note, let me try this Pidgin, my Miranda tells me that everything I write could not be delivered now despite the fact that the other side gets it. Wouldn't be surprised if certain developers of certain messaging protocols deliberately send compatibility to hell as well.

Or maybe it's something else but it worked fine before and I had to upgrade the protocol plugin before because they changed something in the official protocol somehow whatever.

edit: ok it works fine so far, just too bad it doesn't allow to disable groups, will have to shuffle everybody into the same group or so.

**caravel** · 12-27-2007, 17:01

Originally Posted by Husar

Wouldn't be surprised if certain developers of certain messaging protocols deliberately send compatibility to hell as well.

This actually happened in the case of M$, and was a deliberate attempt to block free 3rd party IM client software such as pidgin (or gaim as it was called back then) from connecting to MSN's Messenger service.

**Papewaio** · 12-27-2007, 05:37

Originally Posted by Xiahou

Took the words out of my mouth. I respect the hell out of what Bill Gates has done, and he earned his riches (well, for the most part). What I don't like is how the company now acts more like a monopolistic thug than a fresh innovator. They do everything they can to force you into their products across the boards, via forced incompatibilities and the like rather than making us want to use their stuff because it's the best out there.

What is your comparison point? Apple... forced OS on force Hardware unless you hack it.

Oh look an iPhone that works on a non-monopoly carrier... update 1.1 one... Oh look a brick that no longer works on anything.

Compared to a lot of its competitors MS is a lot more capable of playing well with others. Apple shot itself in the foot in the home computer market when it stopped clones, and it is doing it again with the restrictions on iPhone.

**Lemur** · 12-27-2007, 05:42

Apple had its moment, and completely wiffed it. Read it and weep. The upshot is that we could have had a thriving windowed GUI environment a lot sooner.

I'm not sure one needs a technological "comparison point" to be unhappy with how Microsoft behaves. And if you absolutely need a similar yardstick, why not compare the bullies from Redmond to the unwashed hippies of Linux?