[Leaplist] Slightly OT: We're not dealing with amateurs here.

[Chris]

pberry2 wrote:

>>>I am converting evil to good, one computer at a time, with the LiveCDroms.
>>>      
>>>
>>And everyone on this list is darned glad you are!
>>
>>SteveT
>> 
>>    
>>
>
>Law and Order is the stance of most retired and veteran military
>personnel.  We dislike crime, scoundrels, and that lot who are Microsoft
>Corporation.
>  
>
Sigh. I love my LEAP siblings, I salute Law and Order, and every
American who's stood in harm's way for our country -and I'm going
to go down in more flames here than the biggest Tejas barbeque
ever... but I'm going to defend Bill Gates - and Microsoft.

And I'm going to go a step further. If there's any evil involved, it
comes from the average American, because, if evil has a playground,
it's name must surely be ignorance.

Microsoft, and all other corporations do not exist on the plane of
good and evil. They live by the numbers. It is not the purpose of their
existance to build to a quality standard - only a marketability standard.
Bill Gates is not, and never was your buddy, or your business partner.
He's just selling a product. If  anyone  ever thought otherwise for a
split second, they should be embarassed.

The evil is that American consumers are ignorant, and want to remain
ignorant, being astonished when we buy junk, and obliviously trusting
in the FTC, and the CPSC, and the FDA, and OSHA to protect us -
when even a casual examination of where the money flows should
tell us that Washington isn't there to protect us - yet we keep putting
our faith there, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, because it's
easier than being informed.

Yet we continue being stupid - and in my book, stupid should have
been number one on the list of deadly sins. It certainly is in Darwin's
book. We buy cheap Chinese lead-painted junk toys for our kids -
and we're shocked when the government didn't protect us, our kids
are sick, and all the toy manufacturing jobs have vanished overseas.

We (not this group, obviously) buy computers as if they are some kind
of simple appliance, like a toaster. Yet we know at some level that
they are complex devices, and complex things should require a little
thought and research before purchasing and using them.

Here's the take-home message. The split second that We, The
People (catchy phrase - someone should write it down somewhere)
stop buying garbage, all the evil manufacturers will stop providing
garbage. It's really that simple. It's not a popular message, because
it implies that people should be responsible (gasp), instead of waiting
for a government that was elected with as much thought as we spend
buying an Indonesian washing machine to be motivated to protect
us from our bad choices... It's not gonna happen, folks.

So is Microsoft evil? No, not really. No more than a scorpion is
evil when it stings you - that's just its nature. And if we feed the
scorpion, we can't really blame it when it acts like a scorpion.

Which brings me, in my usual long-winded way, to my point. Evil
starts from the roots. We are the roots. This year, let's really push
bringing some light to the darkness. It's kind of easy to point at
Bill Gates, like Buckaroo Banzai, shouting, "Evil, pure and simple...",
but we're going to have to dig a little deeper.

This message has been fueled by Jack Daniels Black - a proper
American beverage, by means of a damn Taiwanese computer
marketed by a Japanese company... Sigh.

Cheers,

Chris