{center}
{subhead} The Competition Bugs Out{def}{p}
Article by Mark Tierno
{left}
{p} {p}

Just a glimpse into what the competition is up to, as pulled irectly
from an article on ZDNet.  We all know how bad Windows is, but now we
get to hear it straight from Microsoft.  With windows 2000 just out
they've already got a bug count- and what a bug count it is!
{p} {p}
Over 63,000 bugs!
{p} {p}
That according to a memo circulated through Microsoft to their Windows
development team. $500 for a piece of software that's suppoosed to be
of professional quality?!
{p} {p}
Due out Feb 17, the launch party was greeted with an urgent realization
that perhaps their brainwashed users may not be as brainwashed as they
think. To quote from the ZDnet article...
{p} {p}
"Our customers do not want us to sell them products with over 63,000
potential known defects. They want these defects corrected," stated
one of Microsoft's Windows development leaders, Marc Lucovsky, in the
memo. "How many of you would spend $500 on a piece of software with
over 63,000 potential known defects?" According to the Microsoft
memo, the Windows 2000 source-code base contains: More than 21,000
"postponed" bugs, an indeterminate number of which Microsoft is
characterizing as "real problems." Others are requests for new
functionality, and others reflect "plain confusion as to how
something is supposed to work."  "
{p} {p}
Plain confusion?!  These are supposed to be professional prgrammers, not
kids at play. Well, to continue the quote...
{p} {p}
"   More than 27,000 "BugBug" comments. These are usually notes to
developers to make something work better or more efficiently.
According to Microsoft, they tend to represent "unfinished work" or
"long-forgotten problems." Overall, there are more than 65,000
"potential issues" that could emerge as problems, as discovered by
Microsoft's Prefix tool. Microsoft is estimating that 28,000 of these
are likely to be "real" problems.  "
{p} {p}
Gee, only 28,000 REAL problems?  That's a relief...
{p} {p}
" A spokeswoman for Microsoft strongly defended Windows 2000's quality.
"Bugs are inherent in computer science," she said. "All software
ships with issues. The difference is (that) no software in the
history of Microsoft development has ever been through the
incredible, rigorous internal and external testing that Windows 2000
has been through." "
{p} {p}
Issues, yes, but 65,000 bugs is a bit more then issues.  A PROPER OS
barely has that many lines of code.  And as for "the
incredible, rigorous internal and external testing", well let's just say
that I haven't laughed that hard since before Red Skelton retired.  The
statement itself is a contradiction.
{p} {p}
Apparently they had an army of 750,000 beta-testers and yet were still
unable to find and trace these bugs. 500 man-years and $162 million
dollars and they come up with this trash. There probably aren't 750,000
Amiga users and yet we somehow manage to get by with our own little OS.
{p} {p}
Another quote...
{p} {p}
"  In more recent weeks Microsoft has plastered ads on buses, billboards
and telephone booths in a number of major cities. "Windows 2000 is
coming. Online or off, a standard in reliability,"  "
{p} {p}
Pretty low standards.
{p} {p}
Well, i hope this cheered some people up, as now even Microsoft
basically admits it's OS is second only to... everything else. So the
next time you see someone buying Windows 2000 and gushing over how great
it will be, simple grin at the fool that he is and perhaps enlighten
him.  Maybe sooner or later the general public will come to realize what
we've known all along.