An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers

[Adam Shostack]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 03:30:47PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| Um, how's that agin?  How does Ballmer and Gates force you, Adam Shostack
| to run Microsoft Office?  Did they put a gun to your head?  Did they
| manage to twist Congress's arms to put a gun to your head?
| 
| Compatibility you say?  Well, that's your choice.  You can decide if it's
| important enough to you and act accordingly.  I personally think MSFT is
| evil, and provides nothing but mediocre software.  So I vote with my
| wallet by not paying them for their junk and I won't buy upgrades of their
| software if the previous versions do what I needed, and install Linux and
| OpenBSD on new machines.

Sure.  And I'm glad you work with a small group of people who
understand that you don't read their documents.  After many years of
refusal, I finally gave up.  I work with lots of customers who expect
documents in MS formats, and look at you askance for giving them
anything else.  You only get so many explanations before customers go
elsewhere, and I chose not to spend them on this.  Similarly, I could
choose to speak to everyone I meet in, say, Russian.  And some folks
would understand.  Others would walk away.  So, you can argue that
you're effectively required to speak English to do business in North
America.  I would argue that you're similarly required to use MS
Office.

| Yes, my work machine runs win2k, but I didn't pay for it, and I didn't
| have much choice in it - actually I could either quit and find a new job
| (really lots of fun in this economy) or reinstall Linux over it and live
| with Open Office and other open tools or have paid for Crossover office
| out of my pocket, etc.  Wasn't worth the trouble and we already have a
| site license for win2k + office 2k, so that's the path I went.   Not my
| money, the company's money.  They chose to pay the Redmond Beast, so what
| do I care?

You'll be part of the problem when Nogsuccob is apon us, because the
documents you create won't be readable in OpenOffice, and Crossover
won't run.

| So why do you feel it's required of you to either pay Microsoft for, or
| pirate Office XP and Server 2003 and TCPA enabled junkware?  What's so
| important that you can't live without them.

Office Nogsuccob will only interoperate with itself.  Companies will end
up deploying it to interact with other versions, not for any real
feature.

You don't like the word force, I suggest quitting all use of .DOC,
.PPT, and .XLS formats.  Please educate the world on how much better
the alternatives are.  Me, I'll pay my $200 to not bother today, and
regret it tomorrow.

And by the way, do you have a driver's license, or other state-issued
ID card?

Adam


| On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:
| 
| > Well, sure.  And no one forces me to run Microsoft office, either,
| > except Microsoft's monoploy.  And when the document format can phone
| > home to prevent piracy or openoffice from running, no one will be
| > 'obligating' me to pay monopoly rents to Microsoft.
| 
| <SNIP>
|  
| > In the same way, no one forces me to have a drivers license.  But its
| > damned hard living life without one.
| > 
| <SNIP>
| 
| 

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume