Few people hate Microsoft as much as I do. It all started back in 1984 when I first started using a PC. It was an old XT machine with a whopping 640 KB of RAM (yes, that's KILOBYTES) and a 10 MB harddrive, running an ancient version of DOS. I was doing ECAD design on this machine and it would crash about 10 times per day. And when you were plotting a layout, the machine was incapable of doing anything else for the entire duration of the plot job. This was usually 30-40 minutes. And typically, the machine would hang about 2/3 into the plot job. If you had forgotten to save your ECAD diagram/layout before you started the plot job, you just lost a few hours of work. The most frequently used key sequence on a Microsoft PC is, as you know, Ctrl–Alt–Del, and the frequency of which I had to type this key sequence probably laid the ground for my Repetitive Strain Injuries that I now suffer from.

One day a guy at the company brought in a Unix box. He hooked the plotter up to the Unix box and then we were able to transfer plot files via kermit over a serial line from the PC to the Unix box. All of a sudden we could plot layouts while freeing up the PC. It also blew my mind how you could have 10 people logged into the Unix box at the same time without it even breathing hard. We could send email to each other, and chat (it was called "talk" back then), etc. And best of all. It NEVER crashed. NEVER. I was hooked.

Since then, I've watched in despair, disgust, and horror, how this pathetic piece of shit excuse of an operating system from Microsoft has conquered the world. Unfortunately, it's the Unix vendors' fault. In the 80's and early 90's, they were busy fighting each other and trying to create proprietary "standards" for everything in between window systems to file systems, etc. Meanwhile, Billy-boy smiled smugly, and went to work on his quest to own the world.

Every time that I'm forced to touch anything Microsoft (which thankfully isn't often at all), it's like I'm thrown back into the mid eighties. The packaging is slightly slicker these days, but it's the same old rotten core. What really bugs me with Microsoft is their complete lack of any kind of business ethics. Steve Ballmer is about as predatory as it gets. He'd sell his mom without a second's hesitation if someone offered him enough money. If Microsoft discovers a technical problem, they throw 200 lawyers to do damage control instead of actually have their engineers fix it. "We produce bugs, but instead of fixing them, we'll fix the customers by hammering them relentlessly with aggressive marketing strategies or lawsuits if nothing else works". And how many companies have Microsoft driven out of business or strong-armed out of markets? If someone dares to compete with them or threaten them in any way, shape, or form, they will sue their asses off and keep them in the court rooms until they run out of money. Luckily Linux has chipped away at their market share for the last decade. Linux servers now outsell Microsoft by a factor 5. And with an expansion of cool Linux desktop distributions and applications, I expect them to start losing marketshare there too.

Can you tell Microsoft is scared? First they bully Novell into a "partnership", and then in good old Microsoft tradition, they slam Linux with FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) campaigns in the media. Just go to Google and search for "linux server" and see what pops up. Yep, Microsoft is there with a "Get the facts" fairy-tale of how much more reliable their Windows servers are. I just can't stop laughing. They have absolutely no pride or dignity whatsoever.

I'm proud – no, let me re-phrase that – I'm exstatic to proclaim that 1) our household is forever 100% cleansed from the Microsoft plague (the last computer to run it was my wife's laptop, which has been replaced by a Mac), and 2) this web site is 100% Microsoft free.

Live free or die!