Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Microsoft Update - Still Evil Well, the high church of Redmond is in more trouble than ever.  Now they're getting a fresh wave of flak over their use of Ralph Reed as a lobbyist, and who some are accusing of engineering their switch on the Washington civil rights bill.  Ralphie's actually been on their payroll for years, ostensibly to help Microsoft with that whole monopoly thing, and before him, Grover Norquist. But hiring conservative lobbyists isn't about politics, say the Microsoft wizards.  They're just trying to protect a monopoly position in the market that's making Gates a billionaire.  Oh, all right then.  Oddly, the civil rights bill and Microsoft's involvement seem to be disappearing as an issue.  Even Ed Murray, who has championed the bill for years, seems to be softening his response to Microsoft's position shift.  But suddenly, instead of facing a conservative Christian boycott , they're facing a genuine national firestorm, with pieces from here to Sydney addressing their sudden about-face.   Guess they should have stuck with their principles in the first place.  P.S.  Since we're bashing on Microsoft, let me say just this about Longhorn.  Longhorn is not Microsoft's new operating system, no matter what the tv stations in Seattle think.  Longhorn is Microsoft's future operating system that they're still working on, and that they won't release for another eighteen months.  If they can stick with that timeline.   But as of today, it doesn't actually exist in any completed form, except maybe in Bill Gates' mind. By contrast, Tiger is the new operating system for Mac computers, as of Friday. 7:38:29 AM     Speak up!  []