File: MS_USES.TXT       Guy Dunphy                  Sometime in 1996



             Some things Micro$oft _is_ good for.





#1. Flypaper

Only bastards or fools would work for Micro$oft. Hence, since it is so

very big, and attractive to such people, it provides a sort of 'fly-trap', 

capturing jerks who would otherwise be hidden in the general population

and programming community.

So we should encourage MS to get even bigger, till it has employed a high 

proportion of the total jerk pool. This allows convenient identification

of those with the Micro$oft Mindset (tm).

Then we load them all (and their laywers) into a rocket, and shoot them

into the Sun. Afterwards, this would be known as 'Upgrade Day', when the

human genome was significantly enhanced in a single step.



In a way, this would fulfill Bill's vision; for shining down on us there

would always be the light from at least a few atoms of Bill's arse.





#2 Funny Handshakes

Often it is useful in casual conversation to be able to determine the

other person's level of computer literacy and competence without letting

on that you are sizing them up.

Micro$oft has been kind enough to provide us with a perfect method,

a reliable software savy litmus paper test. They have even spent billions

on advertising, just to ensure that the subject can be raised in everyday

conversation without awkwardness, for now _everyone_ at least recognises

the phrase "Windows 95" and thinks they have something to say about it.



%%% add a Q/A tree of such a conversation, & 'competence factors' for

each leaf.







#3 A radicalising influence

There is nothing like a real crisis to encourage innovative change.

And in this case the crisis is what MS is doing to the software world.

MS's intent seems to be to force all us programmers to use a software

environment in which it is-

a) impossible to develop new software without using their development tools.

b) not possible at all for small developers to produce major utilities, 

   because of critical OS services being hidden by non-documentation, and

   also because the programming environment is so complicated that only

   large teams of programmers can hope to deal with it.

   Of course, to hide the reality of this situation, MS have a wide variety

   of 'quick' or 'visual' software development tools - but these are all

   so restricted in capabilities that they cannot be used for serious work.



MS also seem determined to create a situation in which ordinary users

cannot do anything at all with their computers, other than that which they

have bought some utility (from MS) to achieve. This disempowerment is being

pursued by means such as the elimination of a general OS scripting language

(Win 3.1), and then the removal of the command line itself (Win 95).

MS clearly has an ideal state in mind for us in which no computer will ever

do anything except as a direct result of a mouse click. So if there is no

icon or button for it, you can't do it.



An OS without a scripting language! Or even a command line! This is so

clearly absurd that there is bound to be a backsurge of rejection of MS

and their insane ideas. 

With any luck this could manifest in a public discussion of what an OS

should really be like, and how it could be created in the public domain.

Perhaps it might even happen! Without MS and their products as a horrible

counter-example this would be a very unlikely to occur, and the world

could struggle on forever with merely mediocre operating systems.



So MS's appalling OS could potentially be responsible in an indirect way

for the production of a trully outstanding, free OS.

For this alone we should thank them.