I'd like to tell you about one of my personal (job) experiences regarding MS centric companies and the www. A few months ago I talked to some company employees about starting working for them as a customer service official and yaddayadda. They told me I should pay a visit to their website so I did. What I never imagined at that time was that another company named Taleo IIRC provided their web data entry interface, that means it was the only way I could submit a CV to the company barely mentioned at the beginning and guess what... They forced me to use IE to navigate through their personality web tests or else the system wouldn't be able to process my requests / offers / whatever I wanted to do there.
Man, I hate when a company tries to change you in an unexpected way just because they don't care about how many people don't use IE but Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Arora, etc because they cannot trust IE anymore (or they never did).
Later I had to answer a few stupid questions about some web search engines and I failed that one just because I recognized almost all of them but not bing. How would I if I never used it and never will? I didn't even know it existed till then.
Lately I've heard too many complains about people here in my country that don't know how to become some rightful Linux or BSD system / network admins. A company even had to train people on how to provide basic to intermediate support to those systems / networks just because they were in a rush only.
They might think that it's people's fault not to get savvy on any of these topics but why on Earth could they be knowledgeable if MS is behind this technological disaster? How many times have you heard that a company offers you a MS Office training program or course? The real question is why people don't consider OpenOffice.org a good replacement or alternative for that apps? It's because of MS influence and nothing else. I was (gladly) surprised when I read that IBM wouldn't use any MS Office apps on their systems anymore but open document formats like the one provided by the renewed Lotus Symphony IIRC, a variant of OpenOffice.org. Man, that means they save a lot of money they otherwise would be sending straight to Bill's pockets instead of investing them in some better more "democratic" or more "open" apps.
So I now think that more companies should be wiser than Taleo and others and start looking for alternatives that on the long run cost much less than paying millions of dollars in software licenses.
In Costa Rica, located in Central America and next to Panama, there was an intention from the government to implement a system for the Central Bank to make currency exchanges easier, faster than ever before but guess what... MS was the one behind this project and convinced the authorities they should use a customized .NET framework to implement such system. As far as I know they are already working on this or they already finished programming this electronic c.e. system. Now this country is bound to MS for live if they want to make any change or would like to update their system. Man, this is embarrassing, these people will now have to pay their services, especially maintenance ones, with their tax income. What if the system breaks down, is hacked just by a nobody or simply fails to perform a single (important) task or maybe it makes a mistake by adding more zeros to an amount? They will be doomed long time before MS decides it's time to apply a bugfix or correct some major system leaks.
They were also behind a set of laws related to the Free Trade Agreement regarding intellectual rights / property. That means they were also trying to influence this small country politicians to do their will against what the common people actually need or defend with their lives (in theory at least).
Don't you see what I mean with all this stories? Well, all those stories should become a serious warning about MS slaveware / illegal practices not just in the USA but just everywhere around the globe and the need to stop this rampage (or technological slaughter) before it's too late for all of us.
Man, I hate when a company tries to change you in an unexpected way just because they don't care about how many people don't use IE but Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Arora, etc because they cannot trust IE anymore (or they never did).
Later I had to answer a few stupid questions about some web search engines and I failed that one just because I recognized almost all of them but not bing. How would I if I never used it and never will? I didn't even know it existed till then.
Lately I've heard too many complains about people here in my country that don't know how to become some rightful Linux or BSD system / network admins. A company even had to train people on how to provide basic to intermediate support to those systems / networks just because they were in a rush only.
They might think that it's people's fault not to get savvy on any of these topics but why on Earth could they be knowledgeable if MS is behind this technological disaster? How many times have you heard that a company offers you a MS Office training program or course? The real question is why people don't consider OpenOffice.org a good replacement or alternative for that apps? It's because of MS influence and nothing else. I was (gladly) surprised when I read that IBM wouldn't use any MS Office apps on their systems anymore but open document formats like the one provided by the renewed Lotus Symphony IIRC, a variant of OpenOffice.org. Man, that means they save a lot of money they otherwise would be sending straight to Bill's pockets instead of investing them in some better more "democratic" or more "open" apps.
So I now think that more companies should be wiser than Taleo and others and start looking for alternatives that on the long run cost much less than paying millions of dollars in software licenses.
In Costa Rica, located in Central America and next to Panama, there was an intention from the government to implement a system for the Central Bank to make currency exchanges easier, faster than ever before but guess what... MS was the one behind this project and convinced the authorities they should use a customized .NET framework to implement such system. As far as I know they are already working on this or they already finished programming this electronic c.e. system. Now this country is bound to MS for live if they want to make any change or would like to update their system. Man, this is embarrassing, these people will now have to pay their services, especially maintenance ones, with their tax income. What if the system breaks down, is hacked just by a nobody or simply fails to perform a single (important) task or maybe it makes a mistake by adding more zeros to an amount? They will be doomed long time before MS decides it's time to apply a bugfix or correct some major system leaks.
They were also behind a set of laws related to the Free Trade Agreement regarding intellectual rights / property. That means they were also trying to influence this small country politicians to do their will against what the common people actually need or defend with their lives (in theory at least).
Don't you see what I mean with all this stories? Well, all those stories should become a serious warning about MS slaveware / illegal practices not just in the USA but just everywhere around the globe and the need to stop this rampage (or technological slaughter) before it's too late for all of us.