[plug] [OT][link] Where Microsoft wants you to go tomorrow

[Leon Brooks]

    The author is not anti-Microsoft in any way. There appear to be management
    problems at Microsoft, but the author would like any problems to be fixed,
    rather than have the entire world suffer through Microsoft doing poorly.
    Because he has spent considerable time trying to understand the problems,
    and because he cares deeply about fixing the problems, the author is, in
    that sense, "more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates".

    [...] Users of Microsoft Windows XP become connected with Microsoft's
    computers in hidden ways. It is very expensive or impossible to evaluate
    the present and future privacy and security issues of these connections.

    [...] The fact that Windows XP makes your computer dependent on Microsoft
    computers is bad not only because you lose control over your computer,
    but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs
    quickly. For example, as of August 8, 2002, there are 22 unpatched
    security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

    [...] You cannot know now to what contract provisions you will be held
    in the future. Microsoft has changed the terms of the contract to which
    users are bound by including the new contract with some security and
    other bug fixes.

    Recent security patches require that the user agree to a contract that
    gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer.

    [...] These Microsoft policies of keeping control mean that any
    government that wants to be independent of the United States
    government, and any government that represents itself as controlled by
    its own people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems or other
    Microsoft proprietary systems.

    [...] Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a
    file called the registry in which configuration information is written.
    There are several files which, all taken together, Microsoft calls the
    registry, but the one that causes most of the problems is, in Windows
    XP, called SOFTWARE. (The name is in all caps and has no file name
    extension.) On one machine, for example, this file is 25.69 megabytes;
    it is a huge file considering that it contains configuration
    information.

    If this one large, often fragmented, file becomes corrupted, the only
    way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the
    operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the
    applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point
    of failure.

    [and so on... terrifying read if you have no alternative available]

    http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm

Cheers; Leon