Back in the late nineties, I was one of those odd souls who took what most would consider to be an inordinate amount of interest in Microsoft's antitrust troubles.
From the period 1997-2000 I can't say I cared more deeply about any other issue.
Of course, that issue faded from view as much more important things came to the fore, but it did lay in the back of my mind.
Now, this week, that part of my life has come back together full circle.
Let's start with a frightening New York Times article about the geometric growth of viruses, malware, and general criminal activity on the internet.
This is a political blog, so you'll have to forgive me for the digression. I'm not normally big into the Mac versus PC wars, because I've used both and they both seem fine. For the last few years I've had a Mac and it's pretty good. Mostly my attitude is hey, it's an operating system, you click on icons and you get to do stuff on the internet and elsewhere.
That was until today, when I started using Windows Vista. It is just horrible. Literally every five minutes another random window alerts me to something I don't care about. Upon starting the machine, I have to close a window telling me I don't have some driver but also that I'm not authorized to download it, and after I close it the same window reappears anyway. Buttons disappear as I'm clicking on them, and the keyboard seems to make certain letters nonfunctional at random so typing takes about twice as long as it should. And finally, some window kept blinking in and out of existence for about fifteen minutes until I restarted the computer, which of course I couldn't do through the 'shut down' button since the 'ok' button on the shut down menu didn't work. I finally had to unplug the computer.
Wow, this is one crappy operating system. I know this post isn't particularly political but I just want Microsoft to know that they have inflicted unhappiness onto the world with this Vista thing. Beware.
