Re: Be on Status of Pre-load agreements with OEMs

[Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw>]

James Love <love@cptech.org> wrote on Tue, 22 Dec 1998 --

> Apparently on December 16, 1998, Microsoft posted a web page
> which tells the world which major OEMs will provide pre-loads of
> non-Microsoft operating systems.  This is on microsoft.com at:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/dec98/12-16response2.htm

How incongruous. This seems to me like the authorities in China boasting
about their democratic constitution and wide variety of political
parties. (Sure they have 'em -- all properly registered, of course.)
"See? We *do* allow freedom of assembly and speech." They too can tell
the world exactly what each party is up to, right down to what was said
by whom at which meeting in which location....

It is interesting to see how many dissidents (speaking now of the
dictatorship we live in, not China's) still go along with Microsoft in
using _OEM_ to mean "manufacturer of IBM-type x86-based microcomputers."
As some might remember, I once said Microsoft chose that word to imply
that computer makers are no more than nameless parts suppliers. I was
wrong. In Microsoft's view, referring to computer makers as OEMs
*glorifies* them. A computer maker is no more than a packaging company.
It might as well be making milk cartons.

(I now see that this usage goes back further than I thought in
Microsoft's product literature. It occurs in the _Programmer's Reference_
for Windows Software Development Kit version 1.03, copyrighted 1984,
1985, 1986. [That book also has a page declaring "Microsoft -- The High
Performance Software"!] Other literature I have from that period speaks
only of clone makers, computer manufacturers, and producers of IBM
look-alikes, work-alikes, compatibles, or what have you, *never* of
"OEMs.")

As far as Microsoft is concerned, people don't buy computers. A computer
is just a container for Windows. It is less than incidental. It has no
other purpose than to let you run Windows, which of course is the only
software product anyone would ever want to run. You buy a copy of Windows
and the right to work, play, learn, and communicate Bill Gates's way.

Only smarty-pants geeks and intuhlekchuals want to do things any other
way, and we don't like their kind. They *made* computers hard and tried
to keep us from enjoying the power of computing. Bill brought computing
to the people, and now that we have him on our side, we'll show 'em, we
will.

That's a taste of the rhetoric peddled by a Microsoft shill on another
mailing list I subscribe to. I can just about see the Little Red Books
waving in the square....

Dan Strychalski
dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw