See the latest manifestation of the Microshaft monopoly in it's infancy:
Microsoft cuts prices in Thailand
This is precisely how $1 Bill Gate$ expands his wretched empire. Go into a place where domination is not yet established (such as Thailand or other monopoly friendly countries [hrrmmm... US?]). Determine who threatens your Master Plan (Linux) and squash them like bug by drastically reducing the price of your "software" or even giving it away.
Once the unsuspecting Thailanders are all assimilated, M$ can then go ahead and start charging whatever they want for their slopware.
And Microsoft, all the while, can safely hide behind the guise of philanthropy. Oh, Bill, that's sweet!
Comments
yes, Microsoft could be put in the same group as the cigarette companies. It will get helpless people hooked on a product first and then take thier money.
yeah exactly. Microsoft has so many users it is able to create shitty products and they will succeed. (at least peopel will use them). Take the WMA audio format. it sucks ass but its used and not supported very well by microsoft for other platforms. There are many other examples. They would love it if WMA became a standard over mp3 and mp4. then they can control music sharing. its just the way they do things but they do a half ass job at everything. Microsoft is too busy with products and adding new features to products to actually make the products solid.
I don't think smokers or M$ victims are helpless. They're just ignorant (well, at least the M$ victims).
For many years, smokers were also ignorant. Tobacco companies hid facts from them, even implying that smoking was good for you.
Likewise, Microsoft doesn't want you to even try alternatives. To prevent you from doing so, it forces its crapware upon you. Most folks didn't decide to go with M$, they needed to because "everyone else uses it". And M$ has intentionally created protocols, formats, and applications that are *not* compatible with other OSs. They could have opted for standardization, but then folks would have been free to try Macs or Unix boxes or even free OSs like Linux. It would be an entirely different world of computing if they had done that. And Bill would probably only be worth a few hundred million.