Oh, holy Micro-holy-soft

I am just stupefied and annoyed at how history just keeps repeating itself. Take a look at the behemoth software giant beast Microsoft.

Actually nothing they do anymore suprises me. I have been working with their products (like the rest of the world), since there was only an MS-DOS and I just don't get it. Maybe I was never supposed to.

Here is the condensed story- In the beginning there was DOS and DOS was good. Even if it was really IBM DOS , it was still good. Then Apple was the threat. Not to worry, "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated", and poof then there was Windows. Then the various point OH's of windows until we get to 3.1 for Workgroups and all was right with the world.

Except..... The code was buggy. Real buggy and slow. And we bought it and bought it and gorged ourselves on it until King Gates decided there was no more money to be made selling bugs. NT was introduced as the secure bug destroyer. "NT will kill the bugs ", said the King. And the NT bugs fed the virus and made the bugs healthy. A new industry was born, cattle ranchers, fed by virus riders. And the beasts stuffed themselves on all the products and the Office furniture until the bugs ate whole industries. Nah, the King said, "We near the new millennium, there must be a better way and the virgin Redmond gave birth to a son, Windows 95.

Except..... The code was buggy. Real buggy. And we bought it and bought it until King Gates decided there was no more money to be made selling bugs. Alas, though, we bought two huge versions of revised bugs, A first and second edition of bugs called 98. Slay the attackers, buy their houses, and throw them in the streets. "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated", and the king ate heartily and bought and bought until the ministers said " Yo! King, you ate too much too fast, that's why you have the bugs. You must change and modify your diet. And the king took a tablet or two of X-Box to soothe his digestion. And all was again right with the world, for a time.

And all was right with the world, until one day, the advisors said" Whisper, whisper, King "..... Business says they don't like our two editions of 98 as it has bugs! And the King said "Let there be NT for everyone. And on the seventh day, while the world rested and hammers were being thrown at giant TV screens, this time in parody, The World saw the poor second cousin, Windows 2000. It was so buggy and poor; it couldn't even afford a driver. I know said the King, " Package it better, put better clothes on it like we did the emperor, and we shall call it "millennium" in honor of my reign. Sell them licenses and new packages and patches for their clothes and call it professional dress. And all was right with the world.

Until..... The salesman said, "The public doesn't like it King, we can't sell it, what shall we do?" and the King laughed and said" Let them eat XP cake, I have 50 billion dollars, what does it matter?" Sell them licenses and new packages and patches for their clothes and call it professional dress. And XP professional clothing was born. One day the advisors said, "King, the commonfolks are hungry what shall we feed them?" And the "King said give the masses a dose of X-360 and charge more and dress it up and make the marketeers responsible for it. Except the commonfolk didn't understand. What should we do with our prescription of X-regular you gave us only two weeks ago? Will our new medicine work in the new bottle? "Of course it will" said the King, for a price........(And if it was the popular pills and has a hard drive and has an X-Box livesubscription.) Other wise, sorry about your luck, medicine is not backwards compatible, unless you pay for it.

And then burst forth upon the screen, the White Knight Lindows on his trusty steed, Wal Spart. The fight goes on to this day with Lindows and Wal- Spart attacking and the King retaliating with the ultimate weapon of doom "The Longhorn", oops I mean "the Vista weapon".

See how silly this is? They make billions to write sloppy code full of bugs and we buy it. They just decide to stop supporting a product after a length of time, no matter that if the code were built correctly in the first place, it wouldn't need the support anyhow and it should last about freaking forever.

Then they release a new version of another product not really ready for market, which has to be patched to death in what are now called "Service packs" and we just keep on feeding this beast day after day, year after year.

Doesn't it matter anymore that the supposed reason for the so called patches, is that they screwed up the product in the first place and continually release new versions of more products before they have been tested?

If any other craft functioned like this we would shut them down. Or we at least wouldn't buy their houses they built.

Why do I need to (read have to), buy an antiviral program to protect my computer from faulty code that they wrote to begin with? Shouldn't the maker be responsible for the damage they create?

My mistake, I'm sorry. Oh, I forgot, the EULA say they aren't responsible because we opened the package. No matter that the EULA is on the software, inside the package and can't be read without opening it or installing the software first. Does any of this make any sense to anybody? (Who has not made a gazillion dollars as a lawyer)?

I wonder what would happen if we bought cars from them? You are driving down the street and a big red light comes on the dashboard and says "Engine fault" and it dies. Must have been because I used the wrong key and tires. Hope they weren't counting on my purchase of Vista to put them over the top. I'll just stay here in my professional dress until about service pack 86 I think. -BigMike