Microsoft: you can't live with 'em, and you can't live , um, with 'em

SEATTLE -- A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows software would raise concerns over fair competition, the world's No. 1 software maker said on Friday.

Read the full absurdity of it

And on a related note, Microsoft demonstrates its leadership.

This week Microsoft Office once again affirmed its leadership in the office software world by releasing news of not one, two, or three, but five security holes. Meanwhile,OpenOffice.org, the primary open source competitor to MS Office, has no vulnerabilities to report. And OpenOffice developers say they have no plans to introduce Microsoft-competitive vulnerabilities, even though most PC users obviously consider insecurity a vital part of the computing experience.

This is a sad blow to the open source community. OpenOffice already trails Microsoft Office severely in price, since it is free while the "pro" version of MS Office costs $252 or more. Finding that OpenOffice can't compete on the insecurity front either is downright disheartening. ....

Microsoft has long held the leadership position in office software insecurity. We don't know how heavily this contributes to their market leadership position in the office software space, but it may be a major factor. Obviously, one of Windows's great attractions is the thrill of never knowing what new viruses, worms, spyware, and other Bad Things might suddenly come along and bring a user's system to a crashing halt. Compared to Windows, Linux is downright boring; it simply works, unaffected by viruses and worms, day in and day out.

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