Microsoft vs. Hanlon’s Razor

So, I got into another weird discussion about Microsoft today. Seems most people, to look knowledgable about computers, tend to bitch about Microsoft having a monopoly.

Just talk about how you think Microsoft is Evil, and instantly have people agree with you and stuff.

The topic came up when I was talking about Capcom Games — and how every release Capcom makes for a Microsoft System seems to be Capcom giving Microsoft the middle finger. Specifically their Steel Battalion series and its need for a special controller. With the only exception being Capcom’s answer to the complaints about shovelware being put onto the Kinnect (which Capcom answered by adding MOAR shovelware… which I’m convinced was Capcom being REALLY passive aggressive).

The comment was that Microsoft is evil.

I don’t really think Microsoft is evil… they just have people I’d not trust to program my VCR implementing their really good white papers. And yes, I still consider a VCR a required to play the 1997 movie, The Saint. Until that is put in the roster of movies released on any of the new media put out… a VCR is a required part of any home theatre.

She then talks about how Microsoft is an inescapable monopoly, which yeah — it is hard to escape… but what does she choose? Microsoft Office. As apparently resumes are expected to be sent in Word.

I mention you can send PDF versions to “look more professional”… I also mentioned there is OpenOffice, LibreOffice and a few others. Yeah — it won’t necessarily look the same when opened up in Microsoft Word. But then documents made in Microsoft Word won’t look the same in other copies of Microsoft Word mostly because Microsoft Word is a copy editor and not a layout editor.

You are suppose to link a document made in Microsoft Word to a layout made in Microsoft Works — which Works is actually meant for layout. Then just edit the Word document to change the text being laid out.

The thing is… nobody ever brings up how Microsoft is actually inescapable. In that installing Linux will not get you away from them. As again, Microsoft does make some REALLY good white papers — and a fair amount of the software on Linux makes use of stuff in those white papers.

Then just to go a little further, W3C, the council that was once there to keep track of the standards the Internet and related technologies. Now they mostly just keep track of various weird things Internet browsers do — in a weird form of being the modern equivalent of a Game Genie manual for Internet browsers. As that is pretty much what HTML5 is for the most part… HTML with HTML-Game Genie codes to do weird things in various browsers. Also a canvas setup as well as motion video!

W3C, beyond keeping track of weird browser tricks, also does write a lot of stuff to dictate some cool things that Internet browsers should really look into doing sometime soon! Many people on the council for “hey… wouldn’t this be cool if the Internet did this? Also… turns out we found something else new that will do things to your web page in an Internet browser.” are Microsoft Employees. To my understanding they are likely engineers.

Microsoft is also somewhat responsible for taking the Bell Labs Dante/Inferno and making it into Singularity and Miranda (well… kind of sort of Miranda — but it is different and… uh… yeah). For Singularity, it is pretty much an operating system designed to run on their .Net/Mono virtual machine. Much like Dante is an OS designed to run on the Inferno Virtual Machine. Which… the IVM (or DVM? I might have gotten them backwards) is not really that overly capable. It was mostly something that was less well known than Plan9, which was a ridiculous project named after an Ed Woods movie that eventually was incorporated into the design of other Bell handled OS.

There is/was a Java equivalent (prior to Android existing)… and iOS is pretty much Dante/Inferno but on the Objective-C’s virtual machine kind-of thing (yeah… Apple is really really weird with how they design stuff).

You might now notice many of the modern day generation of Operating Systems are based upon that obscure Bell Labs production that generally is a footnote (if that). This is partially due to Microsoft releasing white papers about system design that were tested with Singularity. Mostly because the ridiculous amount of present redundancy will show all your Wile E.Coyote style errors at a level you’d not be able to reach before — short of programming while wearing rocket shoes (though… Singularity does not have you land in a field of cactuses/cactii quite as easily as rocket shoes. I understand it is in the plans for Singularity 3.11 For Workgroups).

Which okay, that doesn’t really directly affect that stuff — apart from starting how new stuff works.

Well… GNOME is pretty much entirely handled by .Net/Mono (henceforth CIS for further complexity) these days. There are still parts that are not working with technologies licensed via Novell… but yeah, GNOME is pretty much “Microsoft Linux” at this point.

Now for those of you stating you use KDE to avoid Microsoft — it would probably be easier to find a nice Dominatrix or Dominator to do stuff to you in a dungeon somewhere. Even then, Windows Vista makes use of KDE4 Beta Code. Since the Linux world is filled with people getting pissed off a License Violations — the fact that nobody working with KDE4 — ended up bringing stuff against Microsoft, this means that any patches Microsoft made to the parts of Vista that made use of the KDE4 beta code were sent upstream to the KDE Project.

You could possibly avoid Microsoft on Linux and make use of the Enlightenment Framework Engine (or whatever it is called). However, everybody knows Enlightenment is a fictional software technology and does not actually exist.

So yeah — you are not going to escape Microsoft. Hell, I actually even like their game console works. As their XBoxes are decent systems to play them blideo bames upon.

The issue is: their commercial software generally is just trash. Their Internet Server? Trash. Their office software — trash for the most part (or at least highly redundant these days). Their internet browser — trash.

Their white papers? Really really solid and decent.

It would be like if you had a building designed by the best engineers and architects. The designs to it are the most ridiculously awesome thing. Then got the people on the various “Worst Handiman” reality shows to attempt to construct it.

I mean, yeah Bill Gates yelled — but after a while it kind of seems like how Gordan Ramsey yells at people so they can do a decent job. Which tend to be really incompetent and inclined to make terrible decisions. If anything, I’m inclined to think Bill Gates stepped down for mental health reasons due to people programming stuff like they’ve recently just came off of six years of nightly Australian Rules Rugby gaming. It is funny because concussions!

So… in the case of Microsoft and the possibility of evil — I’m generally highly inclined to apply Hanlon’s Razor onto how they handle their stuff.