More absolutely moronic Anti-Microsoft rhetoric

Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower. « VistaSucks.WordPress.Com

This is a very amusing analogy, since it was the “free market economy” which created Microsoft’s success, and continues to sustain them. They are not being propped up artificially through government subsidies or bailouts, as so many companies in other industries seem to be. They are not trying to force governments or the courts to force their competitors to give up proprietary information or abandon markets to make it easier to compete.

In reality, it is the open source community, the “capitalism is evil” crowd, and those lobbying to take Microsoft down legislatively or litigiously who more resemble socialists/communists – “all intellectual property belongs to everyone”, “the government should intervene to level the playing field”, and other such crap.

The reality is, if you truly believe in the world of “free markets and open ideas”, the you believe that better ideas, smarter people, and better business models will ultimately prevail. This is the world in which Microsoft has played successfully for 20+ years. It is this model by which others can ultimately defeat Microsoft. It is Microsoft’s competition which seems unable to live within this model. 

Some very cool Silverlight demos

These are referenced elsewhere (in the gallery on the Silverlight.net site), but here are a couple of the samples I find particularly interesting:

• FreeSilverlightChart Control
• CanvasWeb Design Surface
• Simple Silverlight XPS Viewer

Definitely worth looking at, and seeing what is possible.

Some cool controls for Silverlight 1.1 (2.0)

Telerik has a demo up of a control suite for Silverlight 1.1 (2.0). Some of the stuff looks pretty cool. It will be interesting to see what the final release of Silverlight 2.0 contains “out of the box” as well.