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[Reelya]

It's fortunate it didn't go the other way. Imagine what 8 years of Al Gore would have been like! Almost like a continuation of the Clinton era.

Imagine an America with no American Dream Downpayment Assistance Act which Bush signed into law and basically abolished accountability (such as those pesky "credit ratings") when giving out home loans. Bush rightfully bullied Fannie Mae into increasing the proportion of loans given to poor people and those with jobs too. All that helped all those poor people get a house! And more houses is good!

[RedKing]

A national nightmare of peace and prosperity?

Meh, we'd probably still have gone in the shitter anyways. Too many structural problems, like the dot-com bubble bursting.
OTOH, the lack of two crippling decade-long wars and trillions in debt might have been nice.

[Flying Dice]

We might even have continued to have a... budget surplus.

[mainiac]

Too many structural problems, like the dot-com bubble bursting.

The dot com bubble wasn't a structural problem, it was a classic example of an asset bubble but it was done by those with money they could afford to lose.  Basically some rich people nicked other rich people's money, not a big deal.

The US was in pretty good shape before the Bush presidency.

[Reelya]

That reminds me. Why do you think that Bill Gates, especially, was held up by the media as the go-to villain for rich people? Whereas most people would have never heard of the Koch Brothers or any of the other billionaires who run all sorts of questionable enterprises? Bill Gates is by far the best-known rich person to almost everyone, so of course they report on him, but it's the media which basically created that in the first place...

My theory is that it's because Microsoft's core business is squeezing large corporations by the gonads in order to extract that sweet money-juice. The corporations would prefer this not to be the case, but getting away would be a whole lot of pain ...  Hell, they don't even put DRM on their basic disks, so poor people can basically use Windows for free without ever getting in trouble. So yeah, Bill Gates is a rich dude who got rich by gouging corporations. So of course, he's held up as rich villain #1 by the media.

[Frumple]

... wait, gates was held as a villain by the media? I... don't remember that? Microsoft definitely catches flak, but most of the media attention I've seen on gates specifically was fairly positive...

[nenjin]

... wait, gates was held as a villain by the media? I... don't remember that? Microsoft definitely catches flak, but most of the media attention I've seen on gates specifically was fairly positive...

Now it is, that he's stepped down from leading the company and does an assload of philanthropic work. But I remember in the 90s and early 2000s, he was kind singled out by the media as an exemplar of corporate greed. (Maybe unfairly so, but when you're a #1 corporation and you have baggage like Internet Explorer, you get labled a corporate villain by someone.)

Compared to today's examples, I think he was pretty even handed in his day.

[Reelya]

I think it was that, you can't really attack someone who shifts to doing so much charity work, so that cleaned up his image. Plus the rise of Apple meant that people don't feel so stuck with the Microsoft stuff anymore, so you can sort of laugh at any recent attempt to trap people into proprietary Microsoft technologies nowadays.

It wasn't so laughable when Windows 98 + free Internet Explorer killed off all the rival browser companies, and the only real viable alternative for most people was to switch to early Linux builds where you basically needed to be a programmer to get any basic things done.

[nenjin]

Did anyone ever have slavish devotion to Microsoft and Windows like people do now to Apple? I don't recall it. Even back then, people used Windows because they had to, not because they adored on it on some deeper aesthetic or utilitarian level. You don't see memes about how the iPhone is some technological burden like you STILL do today with the BSOD. It's probably because the device's problems are less visible, but for two I think our relationship to our tech overlords has kinda changed with the years. In some ways we're closer to them, and them to our lives, which I think either deepens our appreciation of them, or our antipathy when they cross us.

[Frumple]

Not that I can particularly recall, no. Most folks still use windows (and MS Office) largely because it's still the only real option on the market, not because of any particular other affection for the platform (barring familiarity and ubiquitousness, anyway). Mind you, there is a bit of a comparative aesthetic appreciation for some of the older, simpler, windows systems compared to the newer stuff (mac or windows, really), but that's about the closest I've personally noticed notable inclination towards.

... also, @Ree, if you think apple has done jack-all to prevent MS trapping people into their proprietary software, you really haven't paid any attention to education programs or corporate software use. They don't exactly have great swaths of the state's introductory computer courses being learning to use... whatever it is macs use for office software, I don't even bloody know. Similarly, if they even offer certification in whatever the hell apple's office equivalent is I've never actually heard of it.

There is no alternative office software worth mention (and I say this as someone that actually uses libreoffice for home use). Knowing your way around mac systems will help you in what amounts to an incredibly small subset of industries. I guess it may be marginally better than it was a decade or two ago, but there's no laughing at MS's entirely effective success in trapping people into using their software. They're still incredibly good at that.

[nenjin]

Business class server OSs are still MS's bread and butter I believe.

[Rose]

It's there in  the appstore

[Reelya]

but there's no laughing at MS's entirely effective success in trapping people into using their software. They're still incredibly good at that.

But only on a subset of the modern platforms. In terms of what people use in their entire day, Microsoft don't have 100% dominance anymore (android, iOS etc). There's no real foothold of Microsoft on any of the mobile form factors. Plus almost nobody uses their browser now unless they're complete noobs. It's at the point where the vast bulk of people go and get Chrome or Firefox. I'd say that's because we're past the point where there is a flood of noobs onto PC who've never seen a PC before. Now, iOS and Android are the entry-level platforms, not Microsoft.

It could also be argued that nobody is stepping up to compete with MS Office because the desktop as the dominant piece of hardware is on the way out, so the investment to make a true MS Office rival isn't cost-effective. Although, if you count cloud-based office services, what about Google Docs/Spreadsheet etc? I use those exclusively now instead of Microsoft's Word and Excel, or alternatives I've previously used such as Abiword and Gnumeric. Google Docs is just way more convenient and useful than having to install software. Google's "Slides" feature does the job of Powerpoint. It's not quite as flexible as Powerpoint, but hey PP is 1990s shitty tech no matter how you look at it. It's probably better to just have a simplified version that doesn't have as many bullshit features you don't need.

[Reelya]

Google Docs claims to support equation editing natively, however:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/160749?hl=en
Or with this Docs plug-in that does basically the same as the MS office one:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmath/hhaencnpmaacoojogjkobikbmkhikjmm

[Reelya]

Umm, so does Google Docs. At least for the graphing. Not sure about the solving, but is that really a reason for me to install a huge piece of bloatware, when I could use another webservice to solve equations anyway?