I was at a
Honors Banquet last week at my
University, and the prof in charge asked us all to stand up and tell a bit about ourselves. One freshman stood up and announced that she's an MIS major, and her plans for the
future include "bringing down
Microsoft". Everyone laughed, and comments of "
I hate Microsoft" and "
Bill Gates sucks" spread across the room. Now, I know this MIS girl. The only OS she knows how to use is
Windows (if you can call it an OS). She couldn't use
Unix,
Linux, or even
MacOS if she had to. I'd be surprised if she could run a
Commodore 64 or an
Apple.
It is now cool to hate Microsoft. But what's the point if you don't know how to use anything else? I don't hate Microsoft. Bill Gates did not
eat my balls (I never had any to begin with). Microsoft, as a
corporation, has done nothing to hurt me personally. I don't like Windows much, but then again, I don't use it. There's my protest. It's the most effective protest there is: if you don't like a product, don't use it.
I dislike the anticompetetive practices Microsoft uses, but I see this as a larger problem with our
economy. I don't blame Microsoft; I blame
consumerism and the particular brand of
capitalism the US has adopted. Microsoft simply takes advantage of these things. I think society is to blame, as well, since they have a resistance to learn anything new or difficult, like another OS. Do you hate Microsoft? Then don't use their products. Period.