"Be a heretic" - at least that's what the cookie in the upper left corner says ;)

Having clicked the "reply" button, I have to step forward and bite your flamebait - I don't see where Microsoft did horrible things to C and C++ - the MFC is just a library (at least in my eyes - I don't program C or C++ for that matter) - it has extensive interfaces for Windows and some container classes etc. - I would applaud Microsoft for bringing some other means of (Win32) user interface programming to Perl (although I don't see much use for it, honestly). And let's be honest, there weren't much horrible things left to do to C and C++ anyway.

If you are talking about implementations of C and C++, I don't see bad things there either - Microsoft is in the best company of Borland, Zortech and GNU C(++) for the various and differing implementations of C and C++ - and Perl is a settled "industry standard" already - maybe things would be getting interesting if Microsoft put Larry Wall on their paycheck to make some proprietary extensions to Perl, and Larry then refused to back-port these extensions ...

I think you see this issue too narrow - the Spirit of Perl cannot be corrupted by Microsoft

They created the low-price PC market. Or would you prefer your PC to cost $10k?

- Ozymandias

I'm sorry but I can't let that slide! this is so much crap! Microsoft didn't invent personal computers or make them cheap. Lots of other people were in the personal computer market before IBM got involved and lots of them had better hardware designs too. It was pure luck on Microsofts part and incompetence on IBM's that gave Microsoft such a dominant position.

If anybody made IBM compatible machines cheap, it was the clone makers who comoditised the market. The BIOS cloners were at least as important as Microsoft in that respect (if not more so).

And yes this is an Anti-Microsoft rant, but I struggle with thier software every working day. I just wish my Senior management (read pointy haired managers) were enlightened enough to allow me to use a Unix derivitive on this machine.

Nuance

Baldrick, you wouldn't see a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord, singing "Subtle plans are here again!"

I never said I *liked* their products, although as a LAN/Systems administrator I use them every day, too. But until Microsoft's marketing department got into the act, no one was selling such a thing as a "home PC", aside from little toys like the Atari game systems. Once Microsoft started, Apple followed, and IBM and the other hardware manufacturers were dragged kicking and screaming into the pit.

I was there; I remember it. I miss my old Apple][, and the Commodore 64 even more; but Microsoft changed that, and it's rare that I think it's a bad thing. After all, Microsoft drove the price of hardware down, and for that I'm grateful; but that doesn't mean I have to use their OS on my hardware.

Well said. I also applaud Microsoft for doing that - way back when. You have to admit - many of us might not have desktops now if MS didn't forge the market with MS-DOS. Is that good or bad? IMO - it is both. 1: Yeah, there are the better among the whole - as always. 2: It's getting "too easy" ... I encounter fools on a daily basis. It gets worse by the minute. ( comment on 2: No, I'm not "throwing around my weight" - I'm stating things as I see them. People don't take the time to learn anymore. It's sad. ) I see it all the time - they get these "ready out of the box" systems - that cater to their every need. And, they expect the world to cater ... ah, I had best 'exit;' this while it's short! ( laughs )

I've got an mp3 for you. I'll send a link, once I find it.

UPDATE: here it is.

J. J. Horner

Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix

jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org

I've listened to your MP3, and I see what you are saying. Still don't understand why he would
own shares in Red Hat though, but hey. Who can really understand what he is thinking and what
he is up to?

There is a lengthy and fairly nuanced response to the activestate/MS collaboration in a couple of the thePerlJournals (http://www.tpj.com). One is response to a rabid (if clever) letter from a MS-hater, the other is a reply from the boss at activestate as to what exactly the MS $$$$s will be doing for AS and what they will be expected to do in return. Never underestimate BG's ability to accept and subvert but perl may be the mouthful they can't swallow. Oh, and there is (though I've not used it) an amazing description of a visual (perltk) debugger, ptkdb: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/A/AE/AEPAGE/ If half of what the article: http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0008.html (but you probably need to get a login/passwd from tpj first) is true, it'd be a dream come true. 'course I'm more of the vi/httpd error_log sort of debugger, myself. a

There is a lengthy and fairly nuanced response to the activestate/MS collaboration in a couple of the thePerlJournals (http://www.tpj.com). One is response to a rabid (if clever) letter from a MS-hater, the other is a reply from the boss at activestate as to what exactly the MS $$$$s will be doing for AS and what they will be expected to do in return. Never underestimate BG's ability to accept and subvert but perl may be the mouthful they can't swallow. Oh, and there is (though I've not used it) an amazing description of a visual (perltk) debugger, ptkdb: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/A/AE/AEPAGE/ If half of what the article: http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0008.html (but you probably need to get a login/passwd from tpj first) is true, it'd be a dream come true. 'course I'm more of the vi/httpd error_log sort of debugger, myself. a