Without doubt the silliest article to ever grace Microsoft Watch... I love it!

Ummmm, that was really weird Joe...

I disagree entirely though, I never think of MS as an evil empire (it certainly is NOT the glue holding our society together, I think ya give em a bit too much credit, the romans did a lot more than MS. Not to mention they copied a lot of what the greeks had done while improving, sounds familiar...).

Anyway, to answer in star wars terms. They have since win 2k morphed into a Gungan. They are large, clumsy (given their inability to stem piracy without screwing over millions of their own customers with WGA) and most of all pathetically irrelevant (just like Jar Jar in all the 3 prequel movies). The last part is the most true I think, MS just doesn't have the ability to produce a must have product that takes care of the people's needs like OSX or the iPod or Linux. At best they make mediocre (which people are satisfied with when not aware of other choices), at worst they make something poor (OneCare comes to mind).

I only really watch them (by reading this and other sites) to see how much damage they can cause themselves (I laugh at that) and unfortunately other products/companies (like the Linux patent lies/FUD, makes me sad to see them bash perfectly good products).

If anyone must be the empire though, I guess its balmer, though he hardly seems as insidious as vader or sidious. More laughably evil like Puss and Boots, hehe.

Joe, I like the analogy, but of course with different sugguestions for the roles. Linux would have to be the idea republic of course (with they free OS, and coders working mainly for free for the betterment of humanity), and M$ is of course, the evil empire, who else to extraxt every last dollar out of a slave population.

I suggest Bill Gates as the Emperior, Darth Vader can only be Steve Ballmer. Linus Torvalds as Hans Solo, and Richard Stallman as Obi Wan.

Evil empire? 70's? Try IBM or AT&T. You couldn't even own your Selectric typewriter or telephone.

IBM made MS look like a commie populist.

Q: How many AT&T engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: That's proprietary information, but we'll license it to you for a fee.

So, are you railing against the Dark Force or anyone who's big?

Tim Berners-Lee??? Al Gore invented the Internet! Sorry, old joke...

lol.
its true, young males cant be bothered reading alot of text. i need pictures and less writing.
lol.
another microsoft-watch article i havnt read.
nice job Joe

Star Wars was a crappy movie, followed by 2 crappy sequels, followed by a crappy prequel trilogy.

Star Wars was a crappy movie, followed by 2 crappy sequels, followed by a crappy prequel trilogy.

"Blakes 7" forever!
Carly Fiorina for Servalan, anybody?

Well, if nobody like my suggestion of Steve Ballmer in the role of Darth Vader, they is an alternative role that Ballmer could easily fit in, that of Ja Ja Brinks.

Quoting Joe here;
"For centuries, outsiders sought to bring down the Roman Empire. Roman authority brought order but also cultural, economic and military control. For centuries following Rome's fall, Europe looked to the past—and the lost glories of the empire—rather than to the future. And Rome started as a republic."
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The Roman empire and Republic were the inspiration behind Star Wars. But this analogy can also be extended to M$ as well.

Here is the most powerful empire know to man, Rome. Here is the most dominating OS know to man, M$. No one, including the Barbarians (at least till the very end) thought that Rome (or now M$) could ever end. But it did, and so shall M$ dominance of the 100% IBM compatible computers end some day. When that day will be, I do not know.

But I do believe that M$ is starting to lose market share now since the release of Vista. In another post I link to a site that showed about an increase of 2.5% to 3% for the OS/X (most of the gains) and Linux. The question remains is this a trend, or just a one time bump?

And before any M$ fanboys jump on me an claim that I am predicting that Linux will be the OS of 2007, I am not saying that. I am saying I expect it to make gains at the expense of M$.

Microsoft has to be the Evil Empire. BillG the Emperor and a series of Vadors, traitors trying to turn all to the dark side: Anders Heilsberg is a prime one. As of rebellion, Han Solo or loyal Jedis would be Philippe Kahn. That's a dude that went into exile, obscurity and came back out with liberating solutions (in partnership with others) such as the camera-phone. Yes, Microsoft is the Dark Side led by Gates and there are a few Jedis left that are gathering forces such as Philippe.

Microsoft has to be the Evil Empire. BillG the Emperor and a series of Vadors, traitors trying to turn all to the dark side: Anders Heilsberg is a prime one. As of rebellion, Han Solo or loyal Jedis would be Philippe Kahn. That's a dude that went into exile, obscurity and came back out with liberating solutions (in partnership with others) such as the camera-phone. Yes, Microsoft is the Dark Side led by Gates and there are a few Jedis left that are gathering forces such as Philippe.

The mood of the public today is much different from what it was, say, ten years ago. Ten years ago, both the Mac and Linux were serious underdogs that no one would bet on--they were the butt of jokes.

Today, however, Mac and Linux are taken seriously as good solid Windows alternatives. My, how times have changed!

With the halo effect of iPod, with the success of the Apple Stores, with the transition to the x86 architecture and the ability to run Windows, with the migration to Unix-based OS X, with the clever "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" advertising, with all the glowing reviews of Mac from professional reviewers, with the phenomenal 10X growth of AAPL share price in the past 3 years, with the astonishing transformation of Apple Inc, the public now gives Apple enormous respect and trust. In other words, Apple has tremendous mindshare and it won't be hard to translate this into solid market share growth...at MS's expense.

As the IT market becomes saturated in the west, MS will be looking to the developing world to continue their growth. For reasons both cultural and economic, they will lose to piracy and Open Source. Since the developing world has no vested interest in Windows, and it is very sensitive to cost issues, Linux will make substantial headway, again at MS's expense.

Even western governments are adopting Linux in a big way, much to MS's chagrin. So truly the sun is starting to set on the Microsoft Empire. There is even one other parallel: like the Roman Empire, MS is suffering under the weight of its own internal bloat, infighting, and corruption. Note how they struggled long and hard to get Vista out the door. MS is the new IBM, and we see how IBM is starting down its own death spiral... (Mr. Palmisano, tear down this wall!)

The fact that there are other meanies doesn't mean that Microsoft is't one. I's like saying: There are other criminals, therefore I am not a criminal and there are more and more honest people threfore it doesn't matter if I am a criminal. Evan's post is right on. As a developper I now see perversions such as LINQ, which is basically trying to shove Foxbase into C#, which is already a Microsoft private property.... It is essential for the technology community to insist on real open standards and support real innovators. Not Microsoft. Go open, go universal.

C'mon Josh, you are overdoing it. Yes most would say that C# is a rip-off of Delphi and that that development team was "acquired/stolen" from Borland. Yes it is true that Borland used Pascal, which is open as the foundation for Delphi etc.. But that Microfost recast everything in C# and made it proprietary. Yet isn't this good? Isn't it better to have a superior proprietary tool than an open tool that is not as good. I've heard the arguments that open projects keep on getting better where Microsoft ones get worst by the release. Unfortunately Vista tends to confirm that. But developers at any point want the best tool. Sure if a chap like Phiippe Kahn put his mind on development tools as opposed to camera phones would get something brilliant. But the guy has packed his bags out of the PC industry into the wireless world. SO don't count on it. Microsoft is a good ruler for a dangerous software world. That's really what counts. Josh, yes a lot of people think that LINQ sucks and that it is the work of the Evil Empire.... But who is Luke Skywalker? Where are the Jedis???

Comparisons tend to be an annoyance:
The problem with comparisons are that people in general just see the truth as either white or black, when the truth usually is a sum of greys (a shade of grey) - and the results are just average (the really bad-or good- is rare.)
I mean –for example- the Roman Empire, was it bad or good? in one column, add all the positives - obviously based on real facts, not merely opinions- (example; cultural and economical advances thanks to what is called “Roman Peace”, etc) in other column, add all the negatives (like domination, slavery, disrespect for non-Romans, etc), make one for each year (since reality can be changeable with each passing year), and in the end make a comparison with reality (in this case it would be with history. Now, If I was the analysed, the subject of comparison would be the opinions of a third party), obviously this is not a exact science (yet) but an average helps, you understand.
In my analysis (of technical and social facts) of MS; my results are simple: Ms it’s (oh, surprise) negative in average, but the interesting is that if Ms did not exist, technical advance would’ve been slower, but the social ramifications would’ve been more positive – therefore, MS not existing would have been better for humanity in average.

A world without the Evil Empire, Micro$oft.

Marco,
I have to agree with what you write, as its so logical. Not sure I totally agree that "if Ms did not exist, technical advance would’ve been slower." But your point brings up an interesting subject to discuss. Although, at first,this statement would have been true, because Digital Research DRDOS and IBM would have dominated the IBM compatable OS market without M$. Their releases tend to be slower, but in the case of DRDOS a much better product than MSDOS. Geoworks could have easily been the real windows.

I do believe that will still would have seen a IBM OS/2 even without M$ involvement. As this was something that IBM promised to it major mainframe customers that also had pc's. Its my belief that neither IBM or Digital Research would have used the same dirty tricks and lock in methods that Bill Gates and M$ used to control th e OS market, leading to more competition. Competition is a good thing, and leads to innovation.

Linux would still have been born, its the quest for a free OS, so really nothing would have changed there.

M$ has killed off the competition for years with its dirty tricks and lock in power of a monopoly. This fact has hurt the M$ power to innovate, as it has fewer and fewer ideas to steal from its few competitors.

While most people accuse M$ of stealing from MAC all these years, I would say that up until the last years of XP and Vista, most of their ideas came from OS/2, although M$ is fond of making the interface look closer to OS/X. Even the idea of putting voice recognition in Vista, was done in OS/2 version 4 in 1998. Its really now has got to the point that M$ can only steal from OS/X or Linux, as OS/2 (eComstation) and BeOS are becoming dated and may not have any 64 bit releases.

I would also agrue that MAC might be a different animal without the free Darwin and BSD kernel at its heart. So in effect, OS/X is based on free open source software at its heart. Not saying that Mac does not innovate on top of this at all. What I am suggesting, is that only free software, written either wholly or partly by free coders, can offer any competition at all with M$. because of the dirty tricks and lock in that M$ uses.

M$ and Rome are perhaps not the right comparision, perhaps it should be M$ and the Soviet Union? Mr. Gates, tear down this wall!

A world without the Evil Empire, Micro$oft.

Marco,
I have to agree with what you write, as its so logical. Not sure I totally agree that "if Ms did not exist, technical advance would’ve been slower." But your point brings up an interesting subject to discuss. Although, at first,this statement would have been true, because Digital Research DRDOS and IBM would have dominated the IBM compatable OS market without M$. Their releases tend to be slower, but in the case of DRDOS a much better product than MSDOS. Geoworks could have easily been the real windows.

I do believe that will still would have seen a IBM OS/2 even without M$ involvement. As this was something that IBM promised to it major mainframe customers that also had pc's. Its my belief that neither IBM or Digital Research would have used the same dirty tricks and lock in methods that Bill Gates and M$ used to control th e OS market, leading to more competition. Competition is a good thing, and leads to innovation.

Linux would still have been born, its the quest for a free OS, so really nothing would have changed there.

M$ has killed off the competition for years with its dirty tricks and lock in power of a monopoly. This fact has hurt the M$ power to innovate, as it has fewer and fewer ideas to steal from its few competitors.

While most people accuse M$ of stealing from MAC all these years, I would say that up until the last years of XP and Vista, most of their ideas came from OS/2, although M$ is fond of making the interface look closer to OS/X. Even the idea of putting voice recognition in Vista, was done in OS/2 version 4 in 1998. Its really now has got to the point that M$ can only steal from OS/X or Linux, as OS/2 (eComstation) and BeOS are becoming dated and may not have any 64 bit releases.

I would also agrue that MAC might be a different animal without the free Darwin and BSD kernel at its heart. So in effect, OS/X is based on free open source software at its heart. Not saying that Mac does not innovate on top of this at all. What I am suggesting, is that only free software, written either wholly or partly by free coders, can offer any competition at all with M$. because of the dirty tricks and lock in that M$ uses.

M$ and Rome are perhaps not the right comparison, perhaps it should be M$ and the Soviet Union? Mr. Gates, tear down this wall!

double posted by mistake.

Joe please delete one of the posts if you can, thanks.

Marco,
C# is NOT proprietary. Microsoft has objtained an ECMA and ISO standard in 2003. The same goes for the .NET virtual machine (CLR). Thus by the letter of the 'law' of what is proprieatary and what is not, C# and .NET is not prioprietary. All specs are open.

well done, baby joe. the force is pleased you've penetrated the fog. now the fud is what you must penetrate next. then bend the wire into a hook, slip it over the knob and unlock the door... as a thief in the night. as a thief in the night.

Confusing and silly. I can't tell who's Darth Vader from who's Han Solo.

I assume you are George Lucas (Joe Wilcox) directing this?

Wow, when you think of things like that, the whole patent fiasco looks much less like a shameful move by an anti-competitive bully; instead, one sees that the patents are actually 235 cute, fuzzy, helpful, little Ewoks...

Awwww. We're still missing a few characters: Who is Luke Sky Walker (My nomination is Linus Torvalds as he really does use the Force -- or should I say the Source?). We are also missing. Java the Hut -- that overgrown Slug (I would nominate SCO for this role). We are also missing Princess Layla(?) Hans Solo? (Maybe IBM for this role.) And who gets to play the role of Chewbuka(?)(The Wookie) ; R2D2; and CP30?
M$? The Evil Empire for sure. Open Source? The Rebel Forces for sure.

The republic was Unix,
The clonic wars are the unix wars.
Microsoft the empire, and linux are the rebel force.
Jedi are Kernigan, Ritchie.
Are Yoda Stallman ?