Very Worried at MS .net

[MJ Ray]

John Peter Tapsell <tapselj0 at cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

> I started reading the first set of replies to my email, and I
> started getting even more worred.  I started feeling that -the
> collective us- are not taking MS seriously enough, or even
> understand.

I think we take them *too* seriously.  They are not the be-all and
end-all of computing and must not be allowed to set the agenda.
Sadly, we don't and probably never will have a huge company behind us
which can burn huge amounts of money on the sort of PR and marketing
that they can, so we should do this on technical merits, not by
slavishly following their lead.

You're quite right to say that I don't understand MS's actions.  I
don't see the benefits of .net and have yet to see a document that
explains "what it means to me".  CLR is all well and good, but haven't
these system abstraction attempts failed before for good technical
reasons?  And isn't C-hash just them throwing toys out of the pram
because Sun won't give them control of Java?

Then again, I don't even understand their interfaces and am well-known
locally for unintentional catastrophic breakage of Windows 32 machines
usually within minutes of "normal usage".  I even managed to kill a
laptop with only alt-tab between Powerpoint and Notepad, and using the
mouse to move the insertion point in Notepad.  Don't ask me what
happened, because I don't understand that!

> In particular replies along the lines of " slashdot sucks, i didn't
> read the trolls.... i don't get your point" and " I will always use
> free software" and "free software is better".  Not that i disagree
> with any of the points, but they misinterpreted my original email.

You misrepresent me and still don't explain your point.  I don't see
how I can be blamed for misinterpreting you when you leave so much
unsaid.