Moraelin's Journal: The fashionable karma whore

The more I read Slashdot and other IT sites (e.g., www.theregister.co.uk), the more I'm starting to doubt that it's got anything to do with either technology or journalism. It's pretty much a case where you can predict that any article will be just an excuse to rehash one or more of the following fashionable black-vs-white prejudices. Just because it's fashionable to do so.

1. Microsoft = EVIL, IBM = GOOD, Intel = EVIL, Sun = GOOD, Apple = GOOD, etc. Clear cut cases of super-heroes vs super-villains. (It doesn't matter what MS does. Even if we're talking about offering a compiler for free, it's inherently evil just because it's MS, and it's fashionable to be Anti-MS. Conversely it doesn't really matter what Sun does, and how it never offered more than hot air to support its occasional "We love F/OSS" fits. It's good just because it's foaming at the mouth against MS and Intel.)

2. Any corporation is inherently an incarnation of the Supreme Evil (TM). Unless, of course, it happens to be fighting against MS or Intel, in which case the exact same behaviour now counts as Lawful Good.

3. Anyone who dares question the Good Anti-MS corporations in any way (e.g., a stock analyst daring to say that Sun's cancelling every single CPU it was supposed to release in the next 3 years doesn't exactly inspire confidence to buy Sun stock) is automatically
(A) A loonie,
(B) a retarded drooling user running pirated MS software,
(C) a MS fanboy,
(D) paid by MS to spread FUD, or, of course,
(E) all the above.

4. Your bugs suck, while ours smell sweet and never cause any harm. That the Opera browser I'm writing this in crashes by itself every couple of hours, is of course benign, and shouldn't keep anyone from thinking that it's a great browser. But if IE has some obscure bug in all that pile of code, it's time to gather a proper medieval angry mob, with pitchforks and torches. And call every IE user an idiot, while we're at it.

Corolary: having to update our favourite non-MS programs (e.g., Mozilla or Opera) every 2 weeks against bugs, is just normal and benign, and only idiots don't have the latest version already anyway. Having to download an update to IE 4.5 (or God forbid actually upgrade to IE 6) is an outrage, and someone should kill MS for that.

5. Noone should be allowed to keep me from stealing their work. It doesn't matter if it's music or algorithms. (See the endless foaming at the mouth about algorithm patents.) The fashionable IT whore should never have to pay for anything ever. If you worked to produce something, I should be legally allowed and encouraged to just come over and help myself.

6. Nothing should change, ever. Doubly so if, God forbid, it requires one to learn new skills. Not only we should all still be using a command line, but we should probably still all be programming in COBOL on punched cards.

Corolary: everyone who did learn new skills is to be ridiculed and called names.

Etc.

Wake up people. Reality isn't as simple and clear cut as Superman comics or Star Wars movies. There are no super-heroes or Paladins in shiny armour, and there are no super-villains cackling manically over death-ray blueprints.