Microsoft Bashing

Microsoft bashing is used to reflect the fact that almost all the criticism against the company is baseless or false. If you carefully read Slashdot news, you will get a better sense of why the word "bashing" is used, instead of "criticism". -- MichaelGingi?

What? You mean that Microsoft isn't a convicted monopolist? You mean that is isn't true that Microsoft's offerings are, in general, riddled with security holes which have contributed to billions of dollars in economic damage due to virii and other exploits running wild?

While MS may get more abuse than it deserves, it certainly deserves its share.

No it don't. Heap it on, they have it coming. -DeliberatusFreeman?

This is used to dismiss people who have real concerns about MicroSoft's actions. -- JimCrockett

"Bashing" in general is used as a negative term for criticism of something. I've never been quite clear on what differentiates bashing from legitimate criticism, so I never use the term "bashing" myself. Does anyone else find it useful? If so, how does it differ from "criticism"? --GeorgePaci

I find "bashing" to have the connotation of a certain GroupThink; that you're only criticizing someone or something because everybody else does it. It's, um, not a very incisive defense. Yes, lots of people hate Microsoft. But just because everybody says something, doesn't mean it's not true.

I think "bashing" vs. "non-bashing" also has to do with how much thought is behind a given criticism. To say that Microsoft may exert undue influence in the market, and to back it up with examples, would not be bashing. "Micro$loth sux0rs, and people who use Microsh*t products are st00pid l00zrs!", on the other hand would be bashing. --MikeSmith

Complaining about Microsoft is like complaining about the weather. --DirckBlaskey NO, Complaining about MicroSoft is like complaining about Hitler- in your synagogue. - DeliberatusFreeman?

Perhaps; like complaining about it being cold, wet and gray out --- after it has been cold, wet, and gray out for a decade :)

"Microsoft bashing" also refers to the propensity of some to strongly criticize Microsoft's products without applying the same standards to other vendors' products. --KrisJohnson

Yes, granted. Unhappily, there is the other matter: ConductUnbecoming?. It's not that they write bad stuff (they have thousands of very talented young guys & gals working for them), (more the pity, that they crank out such grossly inefficent code.-Delib) it's more the "HardBall?" mentality -- the ZeroSum thing: it's not enough to win, you have to make sure the other guy loses. AntiCompetitive? behavior and all that. I don't begrudge them a place in the market. I just don't want them to be the market. -- GarryHamilton

You mean THE CURRENT TARGET FOR ELIMINATION. -Deliberatus

Current ConductUnbecoming?: http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/36290.html

I always thought that this meant the subject was using CygWin :-) -- RomanStawski?

Wouldn't that be MicrosoftTcshing? or MicrosoftKshing?? Other than when you have to for certain root operations, who uses bash as their primary interactive shell?

I use bash as my primary shell all the time. I know it well and I certainly think that I am able to use it efficiently. I certainly have all the bells-and-whistles turned on (tab completion on everything etc). Why do you think using Bash would be a bad thing? Although to be honest, I'm not sure the resulting flamewar really fits on this site. -- MatthewSackman?

The comment you responded to was from someone not keeping up with the times. Originally, Bourne-shell family shells were best for scripting and worst for interactive, and vice versa with csh-family shells -- so the cogniscenti interacted with a csh-family shell and wrote scripts in Bourne-shell family shells. Eventually, however, bash added all of the csh/tcsh/zsh/ABCXYZsh features, so these days it's great for both scripts and for interactive use (although there are a few C-shell-isms, syntax-wise, that I was sad to lose, but that's a minor thing). The generalizations of GNU readline, and its separation as a library and thus reuse in many other programs, is further icing on the cake. But now this is really off-topic. -- DougMerritt

See MicrosoftLemmings CriticsAreYourBestFriends CriticalSpirit CategoryMicrosoft SoftwarePiracyCauseOfMicrosoftMonopoly

I'm interested (as a young pup who wasn't paying attention when it was happening) to know when exactly the consensus fell on the "its too big to be ignored/hated/bashed" side of the fence. I was born the same year MS-DOS was, and if my life swelled to roar that I hear about Microsoft, I'd want to know why.