Neal Boortz was in town yesterday....

...and I missed him.

I have to say that for the most part, I agree with him but, he does have two beliefs that are dead wrong:

FIRST DISAGREEMENT:
Microsoft (Bill Gates) EARNED all it's money and shouldn't be penalized-

Truth: Microsoft (Bill Gates) earned SOME money then used illegal tactics to get the rest and harm competition.
Microsoft has:

a) Kept secret commands available in their products which allow their software to work better than non-M$ software. - Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the Windows kernel and undocumented API features to make Office perform better than its competitors. Eventually Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with market share far exceeding that of any of its competitors.
FROM: Wikipedia

b) Made computer corporations sign agreements NOT TO distribute any other OSes. Luckily, this was taken to court and M$ had to stop the practice but, that's how Windoz 95 got it's dominance. - The United States of America, acting under the direction of the Attorney General of the United States, brings this civil action to prevent and restrain the defendant Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") from using exclusionary and anticompetitive contracts to market its personal computer operating system software. By these contracts, Microsoft has unlawfully maintained its monopoly of personal computer ("PC") operating systems and has unreasonably restrained trade.
FROM: US DOJ

c) Smoketoomuch said it best: "Microsoft has a policy to embrace open standards and then make proprietary changes to make it incompatible with the its competition. Remember all those pages Opera (a browser strictly adhering to standards) could not render? IE only web pages?"
FROM: P2P-Zone

d) Bought up competiting companies in order to maintain a monoploy in certain areas. - NOW I know why Symantic bought Veritas. With M$ getting into ALL of the "peripheral" Windoze markets, those smaller companies will wither and die! Just the latest for M$ in anti-competitive behavior - leverage their OS co-mingling to destroy ALL tool/add-on vendors.
FROM: ZDNET

..and that's just the tip of the iceberg! Microsoft/Bill Gates is not something to be admired and left alone to enjoy the fruit of their good business judgements because they are criminals. Wake up on this one Neal.

If you care, here's a good M$ website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_criticisms_of_Microsoft

THE SECOND DISAGREEMENT:
The other disagreement I have with Neal happened last week. He told the story of an two neighbors that live in one of the far too common 'carpet bombed' (as I call them) new neighborhoods. You know the ones where the lots are 1/8 an acre and there's at maximum 10 feet between the houses. Anyway, it seems that one family liks to play basket-ball very late in the night and the other neighbor doesn't like the 'thump thump thump' of the ball dribblings. Neal astounded me when he said that the basket ball neighbor shouldn't be allowed to play at night! He argued that the other neighbor had a right to quiet. Well, I think one neighbor should be nice and keep it down but, to LEGALLY force someone is a different story. I think the bothered neighbor should have considered what she would have to put up with BEFORE buying a house that's PACKED 10 FEET AWAY FROM HER NEIGHBOR'S!!!!

Welcome to FREE AMERICA where's it's going to be illegal for you to play basketball on your own property! Funny, we gave Iraqis freedom but we lose ours - I bet you won't be arrested for playing basketball on your property in Iraq!


Neal, you're a good guy but, so far you've been wrong on these points.

If you don't listen to Neal, here's his website and check out his "Nealz Nuze": http://www.boortz.com