Oxymoron Of Our Time : Microsoft Works

I use Apple Computers. There. It's out in the open. I do use Windoze but only if there's absolutely no choice. At one point, my employer retrenched from Apples to Dell/HP machines. After several years in this technological Hell, we're gradually seeing Apples reappearing especially when we're given the choice. That may not be too surprising. One or two of the key and very influential techs use Apple at home, regardless of the third-rate stuff they're forced to use at work and they're beginning to have an influence. There are a few who cannot and will not discuss anything other than Windows. For "I.T. Specialist" read "Windows Apologist". At the end of the day it's not too surprising. Windows machines, according to most independent surveys, require nearly 60% more I.T. support than Apple computers. Intelligent turkeys would never, ever, vote for Christmas.

I recently received an iBook - yay. That's complementing the 20" Intel Duo iMac I just purchased, my 800MHz 'sunflower' iMac (the one with a flat screen on top of the upturned white fruit bowl), and my little Mac Colour Classic which I just love to bits. If and when its circuit board finally goes to that great silicon heaven in the sky I'll replace its innards with the Mac Mini and link it up to the existing screen. Could be quite a long time though: Apple computers are built up to a standard rather than down to a price.

I also love playing with words hence the title of this post. Oxymoron and Litotes were the last two figures of speech we studied before we left Year Seven. Loved oxymorons. Military Intelligence, Microsoft Works (who remembers that package now ?). My current favourite - "Change is the only constant"; actually I think I used a version of that in my first post on this blog. I noticed that Easyjet and Virgin are considering setting a cheap airline for asian destinations ; will they call it "Easy Virgin' ? Now there's an oxymoron.

My English teacher in the Upper Sixth - a fearsome brute with tombstone teeth, a bristling sandy beard, one arm attached to a barrel chest and a truly savage manner - scared seven colours of something out of me. He never missed an opportunity to rip into us and point out our lnadequacies in using the written word (not to mention our lack of proficiency in spoken language). "You fool, Barbarian. Is that the best you can do ?" (Actually my choice of 'Barbarian' as a blog-name dates back to him calling me a barbarian on various occasions and is, partially, a tribute to him. There is, however, another reason too.) The 'bald' adjective came along later. No prizes for working that part out though.

Actually, now I look back and see I was one of the few he ever addressed pejoratively. The rest were only ever called by their surnames. With hindsight I've decided he probably thought I was just a total chancer or waster. I would always argue or try to talk my way out of trouble. More fool me. It just brought calumnies and vituperation down on me. Everything had to be just so to meet his standards. Infinitives unsplit, no mixed metaphors, the correct use of pronouns, no aberrant apostrophes, foreign words - all had to be used appropriately. I, me, myself - woe betide you if you used them wrongly. So now, when I see words like 'embonpoint' used by journalists to describe a woman's 'balcon' instead of a man's corpulence I get quite annoyed.

He told us to go away and read a worthwhile book - no hints what "worthwhile" actually meant - once and gave us 10 days to do it. I went away, looked in the library and found "The Worm Ouroborous" (Eddison) and "Lord Of The Rings" (Tolkien) jumping off the shelves into my hands. I read "Lord Of The Rings" in four days (All of the Saturday, Sunday, the Monday and Tuesday evenings after I'd done my homework.) As for the 'Worm' I have started it about nine times so far and still, 45 years on, I have never reached the third chapter. By now, a little bit like Christopher Lee who reads it annually, I have read the 'Lord Of The Rings' more times than I've started 'The Worm'. I have absolutely no idea what that says about me other than I like the story.

I went into class on the due day. Needless to say, the others had all found works of serious literature and were able to give some sort of precis. For some reason I was last to say what I'd chosen. I started into what should have been a few minutes' summary and after 10 minutes I had only reached Weathertop when he stopped me. He asked me some questions about the various characters and about one or two incidents in later sections then asked me - very quietly by his standards - "Is this really a worthwhile book ?". I knew the answer would be "no" and, crumpling inside, said "I suppose not". I fully expected to be punished then sent away to find something else - but - he looked around the class and said that any book which which got someone so wrapped up in it for four days, gave them so much enjoyment and gave them so much to think about was definitely worthwhile. I was dumbfounded. Normally the butt of so many of his scathing comments, I was - for that one time at least - able to walk out of his room with the merest hint of a smile.

Anyway, over the year I became more and more interested in language in all of its forms. He never ever eased up on me. Yet somehow it never felt too bad. All bar one of my previous English teachers were a waste of space as far as I was concerned. He got me fired up and interested in an area of the curriculum I had previously trudged through. Even his most vicious baiting made me ever more determined to match his standards. He was really into the precision inherent in language. "Fool, Barbarian. Language is a scalpel. You use it like the bluntest instrument imaginable."

He, and one other English teacher I learned from, both instilled a lot into me. Thanks A.R., J.W. They're probably sitting on a cloud now, looking over my shoulder and wincing at my less-than-deathless-and-disjointed-prose together with my comma-splices. Yet, in so many ways, the fact that I blog is largely down to them getting me into the disciplines and enjoyment of writing.

It was a combination of these disparate streams of thoughts that came together when I read another blog.
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/12/microsoft_tries_1.html

I perceived a certain irony in the following :

"It seems that Microsoft and AMD have partnered to hand out some nice Christmas presents to select bloggers. Microsoft has reportedly sent out new AMD-equipped Acer laptops in an effort to get prominent bloggers using Microsoft’s new Vista operating system," Michael Calore blogs for Wired.

Calore writes, "If Microsoft were to give away copies of Vista that would make sense and probably raise no eyebrows at all, but giving away a whole laptop understandably strikes some as little more than bribery... Dan Warne a journalist at APCmag left a comment at the site linked above in which he points out:"

It’s bizarre for one of the world’s largest PR companies, Edelman, to think it could get away with this. Perhaps they don’t know bloggers as well as they thought they did… now that some of the bloggers have disclosed the receipt of the gift, the public knows. Whatever the subtleties of the offer were, it comes across as nothing more than a bribe, and that is a very bad look for Microsoft.

Calore writes, "As Warne says, now that the word is out, expect the negative publicity to be every bit as shrill as the positive which means Microsoft’s PR move may well end up backfiring."

The irony, to me, is that if it had not been for Apple we would still be using an updated version of DOS with key commands or command lines to operate computers - a bit like Linux now I suppose. Apple saw the potential for an effective GUI in Alto Palo and the desktop we now know and - in Apple's case, love - was born. Then it was bastardised by Microsoft for Windows but let's not go there.

That's not the main irony though. The real irony though, is that Bill Gates wrote the Word package for Apple, together with the elements that went on to become the Office suite and a large part of the early income for Microsoft. Now you hear people expressing doubt as to whether to buy a Mac "because I need to use Word/Excel" . Well my dears - you can ! (Pages and Numbers, the Apple applications are far better though).

All I can say is that Microsoft must be getting really desperate. Windoze is, and remains, seriously flawed even after all of these years. Office is an over-hyped and bloated piece of software - how many people use more than 25% of the features ? Zune is a total brick with hopelessly restrictive DRM. X-box loses money hand over fist. From what I've seen so far, Vista is more like another Service Pack for Windows with some cosmetic additions. Most of the features they've touted over the last couple of years have been dropped. As for Windows, well we all know that the Windows Operating system has even more viruses than your average NHS ward on one of its better days. I'm just glad that I chose an operating system that actually works and has features that won't be seen on Vista for a long time. As for getting a present of a laptop for blogging ? Mr Jobs, I know I'm not a particularly widely-read blogger, but if you're reading this in Cupertino I would just LOVE a 17" MacBook Pro with Aperture and more memory than a large herd of elephants !!! A just reward for having been into Apple computers from the very beginning, no ?

Footnote 1 :
If I were a betting man - and I'm not - I would suggest that this is possibly the last operating system that will ever come out of Redmond. We are almost at the stage of the browser (Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera, Omniweb and, yes, even Explorer) being able to access all of the software eg from Google that you'll ever need. Add to that virtually universal access to the internet, broadband speeds, plus on-line storage in frighteningly large amounts, and we are at the stage of the home computer being simply a terminal.

Footnote 2 :
This probably seems weird to modern kids but, as boys, we were always referred to by our surnames - Smith, Johnson - whatever from Year One until the end of Lower Sixth. The exception was in Upper Sixth when we became Mr Johnson, Mr Smith. The girls, on the other hand, were always called by their Christian names eg Christine, Deborah. I never understood that.