[from Ronald Reagan's famous
characterization of the communist Soviet Union] Formerly IBM,
now Microsoft. Functionally, the company most hackers love to hate
at any given time. Hackers like to see themselves as romantic
rebels against the Evil Empire, and frequently adopt this role
to the point of ascribing rather more power and malice to the
Empire than it actually has. See also Borg and search for
Evil Empire
pages on the Web.
Related:
Microsoft
The new Evil Empire (the old one was
IBM). The basic complaints are, as formerly with IBM, that
(a) their system designs are horrible botches, (b) we can't get
source to fix them, and (c) they throw their weight around a lot....