Rory-

I wasnt intending to piss you off, I was trying to show you how flawed MS was, but as I said the Microsoft mindset is so deeply instilled in you that I doubt you will change. When Microsofts marketshare is like the Macs, 1.8 % then maybe you will see the light until then I am not arguing with you about what you think and what I know. You claim I didnt stick to good examples. I think it was the other way around, everything I brought up showing how MS was a bad company and how their products sucked you totally ignored those in your rants. If you and Carl would come back to the side of the good guys then I would have even higher respect for you. I will continue to listen to the show to improve mono.

Jason Mauss -

Thank you for those links to actual articles. But as I said in my posts. .NET is secondary. You showed me 1 64 CPU cluster with Windows NT, I can show you thousands of Linux clusters that scale up from 64 to thousands of clusters. Munich and EDS are bound to run into problems because they were so totally strangled by MS in the past they are having a hard time changing over. But they will change and they will be huge success stories. Linux is cheaper, better and more secure with less vulnerabilities and an unlimited number of programmers contributing to it.

Roberto J. Dohnert -

I followed your link to your homepage and to your Linux Icebox site, I must say very pathetic posting it on Geocities. You have what? maybe 2 visitors per year to your site.
You used to support Linux and I liked your position paper on SCO and I agreed with most of what you said. I must say since you switched sides you have almost become a flaming Windows zealot. You are a traitor and if I had known about what you did I would have gone as far as discredit you as well. Windows has not improved that much to make anyone switch and now you are filling the wallets of people that you used to hate and now you are supporting SCO as well. You are as pathetic and immoral as MS now.

This will be my last post to this blog because you people cannot have a decent conversation. I asked Rory a reasonable question and now I am being attacked with no excuse whatsover. If anyone wishes to continue this debate feel free to e-mail me. I have included the address. But before i go I will say this. When the SEC closes down Microsoft for supporting SCO and you guys are stuck on the legacy systems. I will come back and post in huge font, I TOLD YOU SO.

Chris -

"This will be my last post to this blog..."

Oh, Jeesus, lord, father in Heaven.

THANK YOU.

Oh, god, THANK YOU.

I feel like we should have one of those bad Star Wars endings where everybody is celebrating.

You know, like Ewoks dancing around open fires and crap like that.

Chris -

"When the SEC closes down Microsoft for supporting SCO and you guys are stuck on the legacy systems. I will come back and post in huge font, I TOLD YOU SO."

I guess that means that this *really was* your last post here.

What a wonderful world...

I feel like taking an f'ing walk.

Yup. I'm going to go whistle.

And smile at people. Pet a puppy or something.

Put this behind me.

Jeesus.

I just realized that I've been humming "Ding-dong the witch is dead" to myself for the past few minutes without even recognizing the significance.

You didn't really get wound up because of this did you? Really? There's three things which I never get into and discussion about
1. Religion
2. Politics
3. Open Source
4. Pizza toppings
5. Counting
Anyway...look on the bright side, if you logged this guy's user agent I'd bet he's at some high school using Windows 95 & IE 3...

Actually it might be Chris Anderson (http://www.simplegeek.com/) and he might be having a nervous breakdown...maybe we should all worry!

That counting thing was the funniest thing I've read all day. Good times. Good times.

As for pizza toppings, this is my personal crusade. I should go find some guy who likes to eat that crap ass spinach with mayo instead of tomato sauce "pizza" and give him all kinds of crap because I personally think the only thing that counts as pizza has freakin' tomato sauce, cheese and some type of meat and or vegatable sauce. and it goes bread, tomato, then cheese and toppings. No whole tomatos on top of the cheese with the cheese on the bottom, you commies. Any other combination produces something that might be tasty, but does not qualify as pizza. It's like replacing turkey with spinache in a turkey sandwich and still calling it a turkey sandwich. Those bastards.

>Chris -

"When the SEC closes down Microsoft for supporting SCO and you guys are stuck on the legacy systems. I will come back and post in huge font, I TOLD YOU SO."

I guess that means that this *really was* your last post here.
>

LMAO!

Wow, I was ignorant to the fact that there are people out there that are that nuts. My two faves from his comment today:

"You are a traitor . . ."

Didn't know anyone had to choose sides and stick to it.

"You are as pathetic and immoral as MS now."

Immoral?! Ha!

I hope I never actually physically come in contact with such people, their opinions seem to be fraught with stupidity.

"If you and Carl would come back to the side of the good guys then I would have even higher respect for you."

"The side of the good guys" - herein lies this poor soul's problem. He implies that we accept that there are "sides".

The way "we" (the "bad" guys <chuckle>) see it, there are no "sides". We love our .NET, and quite frankly, don't give a rat's patootey what the self-proclaimed "good guys" do. It's Coke/Pepsi, mang. We happily drink Coke. They angrily drink Pepsi.

I'd bet most of the regulars here actually use and *like* Java and Linux. I know I do. But we work with and enjoy .NET, for more reasons than space here allows. Is it perfect? No, no platform is. But we like it.

I know it drives you nuts, Chris, but nobody here cares what you and your Slashdot friends think. Really. As for Rory - I can't speak for him - I don't think he cares either, except for the fact that you're filling his blog with faulty, insane zealotry.

Microsoft and .NET are here to stay. They may not be your chosen platform, and that's fine, but they aren't going anywhere. So deal.

PEACE!

NJ John -

"I'd bet most of the regulars here actually use and *like* Java and Linux."

That's exactly right - I like both, but I have a *preference* for .NET/Windows.

"As for Rory - I can't speak for him"

Nah - you basically just did, and you got it right :)

Scott -

"You didn't really get wound up because of this did you? Really?"

I did, but it's only because it generally frustrates me when people engage in bullshit arguing tactics. It doesn't even really have anything to do with OSS - it's the *style* of arguing itself that got me.

I just hate the "I'm right and you're wrong and therefore you're stupid and evil" argument, no matter where it's coming from.

Not that I was spending time trying to disprove Chris A. but when he made the comment about no clusters I figured I'd check in to it because I never thought about the high performance computing aspect of it. I found this address with some interesting links (http://www.microsoft.com/hpc), you may have heard of a few of these, some school named "Cornell" uses windows for their research in their "Theory Center". Their largest supercomputer having a 256 processor cluster that is one of the fastest 100 computers in the word. Also ther is some mention of something called the "Human Genome Project" and using some crazy sized sql server database. Never thought of MS in this arena, cool stuff.

Paul -

Don't be a fool like I was - sound arguments and logic will get you *nowhere* with someone like Christopher.

That said, cool info :)

The style of argument reminds me of the seinfeld where jerry was offended that his friend changed religions to be jewish so he could make jewish jokes. and when a priest asked him if this offended him as a jew, jerry said "it offends me as a comedian!"

I have a C# WinForms client talking to a web service written in PHP. If that isn't cause for peace & harmony then I don't know what is. They both happened to be the best way to solve the problem.

P.S. Watch out for Phil - he may be an anti-dentite.

Catatonic is a wise, wise man. I once turned down being hooked up with a very cute girl because she was in dental school.

[singing]
I thrill when I drill a bicuspid
It's swell though they tell me I'm maladjusted. [/singing]

You know, taking a nostalgic look back at my involvement (read: obsession) with computers over the 21 (give or take) years of my 31 on this planet, there has always been some sort of ‘platform battle’, as it where, in one form or another. In my early days it was Atari vs. Commodore. There were little jabs at the people on the opposite side of wherever your loyalties happen to lie at the time. I tended to latch onto whatever system tickled my fancy at the moment. Started out on an Atari 1200XL (yeah, the clunker that came with BASIC on a cartridge instead of in ROM), then moved on to a Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Atari 1040ST etc etc.. Timed moved on and eventually it became Mac vs. PC. Still more pokes and prods from both camps, with the Mac community usually being the more vocal of the two. What is amazing is that at no point in that history have I experienced anything even close to the level of fanatical zealotry that is so often seen in the OSS/Linux/Java community. I’m often left scratching my head wondering what asylum these people were let out of and why in the hell they were given access to computers to begin with.

Rory, the .NET Rocks show you did recently with Ted Neward and Bruce Tate was excellent. Probably my favorite one to date (pre or post Rory =) ). I enjoy a good debate on technology… but only when the people involved in the debate show some semblance of sanity. Irrational, unhinged ramblings do nothing to further someone’s position. I personally can’t stand Linux, but for usability, not technical reasons. I won’t argue the technical merits of Linux as it’s not my place to do so. I quickly fell in love with Java early on in its life and was really disappointed to see all the shit that went down between MS and Sun (which, in my eyes, effectively killed Java on Windows). However, C# and .NET have made me all but forget about that platform/language. Not because I see Java as a dead end on Windows but because I see C# and .NET as a superior platforms for my tastes/needs. I rather enjoy having a conversation with a Java developer (of the sane variety of course) and have no problems explaining the reasons behind my platform choice, but you can be damn sure that none of those reasons will be “Because I’m on this side and your on that side and you a big stupid <insert other adjectives of choice> poopy head!”.

The sad irony here is that these types of people do a disservice to OSS with their ludicrous behavior, driving away the more mentally stable of our community.

Man, I’ve babbled a bit much here, haven’t I =) ? I’ll just end it with a bad quote.

“Heeeeeee’s a nut bag. Just ‘cause the fuckers got a library card doesn’t make him … Yoda!”
-Brad Pitt from the movie “7”

I don't like the direction of any of this. Are there no independent companies with absolutely no bias doing research and competitive studies? Dammit, every platform has its uses and neither Microsoft or Linux is right for every incident. I feel like I am dealing with my kids. There are enthusiasts on each side (I like Microsoft but I have Linux running on a laptop and a desktop). I must admit that Linux runs on thinner hardware but my Windows-based systems run great, too. Hardware is so cheap now that it is no longer an argument. I went to Kroger the other day and bought $30 worth of groceries and they gave me a free 512mb strip of RAM (Okay, so I am exaggerating a little bit but so what?). In the end, all that matters is what you get paid to do. OSS is a great movement and we will all have to perform better to stay ahead of the curve. If you can make money providing Windows-based services and products then do it and if you can make money providing Linux-based services and products, more power to you! This is no different than the VB.NET vs C# vs Java wars. Wanna know what my favorite language is? Whatever my clients pay me to write in! What else? I have a feeling that you don't have enough work if you troll the blogs looking to start crap and preach to people who aren't going to listen to you and only look at you with more scorn than ever before then you are in the wrong business or using the wrong tools! There is no other explanation. It is a good thing that Christopher Anthony isn't the mold for OSS people or the movement would never take another step forward. It is unfortuanate that Rory is a target of retards like this, though, he seems to be a helluva guy!

" Chris -

"This will be my last post to this blog..."

Oh, Jeesus, lord, father in Heaven.

THANK YOU.

Oh, god, THANK YOU "

" I feel like we should have one of those bad Star Wars endings where everybody is celebrating.

You know, like Ewoks dancing around open fires and crap like that. "

" I feel like taking an f'ing walk.

Yup. I'm going to go whistle.

And smile at people. Pet a puppy or something.

Put this behind me.

Jeesus. "

" I just realized that I've been humming "Ding-dong the witch is dead" to myself for the past few minutes without even recognizing the significance "

ROFL, Now I know why I like Rory, he is so f'ing hillarious. Rory you should try out for one of those amateur comedy nights at a club or something. Dude, you would make a killing.

Oh and Rory thanks a lot, I have the wicked witch is dead song in my head now and I cant get rid of it.

Rule of thumb #1: Anyone claiming to speak for or on behalf of the open source community is a twit. (Why yes, Eric Raymond, I'm looking at you.)

Rule of thumb #2: Most of the people who actually, you know, DO open-source stuff aren't.

If you want to find people who are representing the open source world, listen to the Tim Brays, the Linus Torvalds, the Larry Walls.

Er, actually, there may the occasional exception to rule #2.

I'd consider Richard Stallman a lot of things, but he's not a twit. So he's a big exception to your rules Mike. :) (except that maybe he doesn't claim to speak of OSS, but only for the FSF). He really does put his (metaphorical) money where his mouth is.

That being said, I TOLD you not to feed the trolls. Anyone who gets that upset over SOFTWARE is a twit. I see it from both sides, OSS supporters who hate MS and MS supporters who hate OSS. Who cares as long as you're getting yours. It's like trying to convince your friend that he shouldn't go home with that girl. You just end up looking stupid and neither of you gets laid. Although sometimes, really close to last call you do have to make your best effort and possibly knock the beer goggles of his face to keep him from having to gnaw his arm off in the morning to get away from the double bagger in his bed. You know what I'm talking about.

The only point I'd like to add to this whole "debate" is that, if (some, eg. Chris A.) OSS zealots actually thought about it, they have much to actually _thank_ Microsoft for...

It _is_ a fact that the rise in Microsoft's fortunes is directly linked to the fall in Intel-related hardware prices, and it _is_ a fact that Linux, FreeBSD etc would not exist if those of us who are into OSS in any shape or form had to mortgage the farm to be able to afford a garage-full of IBM kit to run any of these (nice) tools on.

So "Thanks Microsoft" :)