Where there's smoke, there's FUD

I swing back and forth on the concern of FUD. As the old business saying goes:

You haven't made it until you've been sued.

The more hysterical propaganda and FUD is generated about you, the more you can be assured that you're on the right track. And if this is the case, Linux and KDE are hot on the trail of success!

But how effective are such tactics? In U.S. political campaigns, an election always turns ugly. Always. Why? Because consistent polling year after year shows that Americans can't help but be biased by slander, regardless of truthfulness. "How can that man hate education and cuddly kittens? My vote's going the other way Mister!"

So today, my mood ring reads, "I'm flattered by all the attention, really, but your luncacy is tedious at best."

Q: What's the difference between this link and this one?
A: One is incoherent rambling by someone who's publicly paid by MS, the other is someone who's privately paid by MS.

Can you believe that such people get paid? Don't get me wrong, I've read too many osnews.com posts over the years to get riled by another ill-informed commentary, but that doesn't stop the need to be vigilant.

And why did I by chance pick these two articles? Possibly because on the same day one talking head chastises OSS for copying MS and always playing catch-up, and the other proudly talking about MS's new ability to export to PDF.

After 120,000 self-proclaimed requests per month to export to PDF, Microsoft makes the empowering decision to finally implement this feature and publically announce this feature in the short span between a Mass. open document decision and a OpenOffice 2.0 release. Quel chance! But to ask the most-talented monopoly in all of Redmond to also implement the open document format? Quel horreur! It sounds as if such a task is akin to moving the mountain to Mohamed. Possibly as difficult as removing IE from the OS itself. Men were never meant to reach such lofty heights. And why bother when virtually no customers, outside one of the more populous states in the nation, have requested this miracle?

Meawhile, Monad and Metro are being fitted for cement overshoes.

Be clear, Microsoft is not compelled to innovate, and it has never been their forte. But they do know enough to see what's going to succeed, and how long they can stall to implement, based on competition. At this point, Apple and OSS are the rudder and the motor for the Titanic that is Microsoft. One steers and give directions, and the other pushes and prods it forward. And hopefully the 90% userbase is ignoring the FUD and putting on their life preservers.

Alternative analogy: When will we stop prodding that Longhorn forward, and just fire up the grill? (PETA endorses this mesage, because nothing can convert more people to vegetarian lifestyles than the unpalatable taste of MS).