🚀 go-pugleaf

Chris,

Have you considered the possibility that most intelligent people know
that MSFT is just like IBM, Corel, Lotus, Novell, etc in being late with
software?

I mean, I know you know that. But isn't it a waste of time to argue with
people who would deny this? The people who engage in such denial are
really not worth arguing with IMO.

Consider: any one who would deny this is either:

A) A fool. You can't teach fools. Really. It is rather like Heinlein
said of pigs (not an exact quote): "Don't try to teach pigs to sing. It
wastes your time and just makes the pig mad."

B) Malicious. If the person is knowingly spreading FUD then arguing with
them to convince them otherwise is worthless. They are totally intent
upon not changing their position. 

So you'd have to justify making the argument on the basis that you are
trying to protect the lurkers from being mislead. I think that your
concern is laudable if that is the case but I think the lurkers are
mostly not fools. 

Best to make light of the situation:

Microsoft has discovered how to do what no other software company has
done! They can exactly schedule software. They never have to throw away
any design. 

But how can they do this? Does it not seem impossible for anyone who is
an experienced programmer? There is an easy answer: All of their
programmers and project managers are omniscient. Never before have there
been omniscient programmers and managers. We are witnessing a historical
first.

How could it be that MSFT has been able to concentrate a bunch of
omniscient beings in Redmond? Obviously this characteristic has never
been seen before among humans (at least for 2000 years anyhow). So, it
seems very unlikely that it could have arisen now. Therefore we must
look further afield for a cause.

The cause is obvious: The people at Microsoft are space aliens summoned
to this world by Bill Gates while he was in a channelling trance back in
college.

This explains a great deal: 

The messianic zeal of Microsoft's biggest supporters here on the Usenet
is caused by their worship of alien beings.

Microsoft has steadily grown as more space aliens have arrived from
steadily more distant reachs of the galaxy.

The recent mass suicide of Web programmers was caused by the retreat of
a different alien race that was outclassed by the aliens that converge
daily on Redmond.