Perhaps not "rabidly anti-microsoft", but it does come across as childish and reduce the effectiveness of the point you are trying to make.

Instantly what I thought too. HN "M$" haters don't like your logic because it doesn't feed their hate.

Also, MICROS~1 is much funnier.

It's definitely an overplayed cheap-shot at Microsoft, but that's not to say it's anything but deserved. It's certainly not disingenuous to paint Microsoft as profit-centric above all. Historically speaking they've gone above and beyond to hurt pro-developer and pro-libre efforts in this industry in the name of their margins.

Is it so awful to use an acronym that reminds the reader of these practices? I think it's prudent to not use it, only because it detracts from his point when readers like yourself become distracted by it. But it's not as "rabidly anti-Microsoft" as you are painting it to be, either.

And it's so 90s, dude. Move on. There's a lot more evil in the world now, even if they say they don't do any.

When you post "childish" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly ad-hominen and usually stop reading.

Okay stop reading. Your response smells of fanboyism, blind faith, and ad-hominem attacks which are rather childish in themselves. I got my point across and it seems the vast readership is behind me.

The vast readership... on a site where open source is the primary religion and the readership includes a significant population of Slashdot escapees. Look up "confirmation bias" and "preaching to the choir".

Really? I think HN has a very even balance of free software advocates and pragmatists who are indifferent to it.

Of course, in a thread about closed source software spying on users there's going to be a bit more people arguing the points of the former.