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You must be new to computers and operating systems.

Consult:
http://www.billparish.com/msft...
to bring yourself up to date.

Large file libraries such as download.com and tucows.com offer a range of files and content we can not match, so we have taken the reluctant decision to discontinue this service.

The affected files are "... files include Windows utilities and drivers, along with a variety of Linux software such as the popular Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora distributions." so as such the change in corporate policy doesn't constitute an attack on Linux per se. While their users want or require those files, What this policy really represents is the classic corporate tactic of letting others supply materials from which they and/or their consumers derive use. In Corporate speak these materials are "Externalities", in which a corporation maximizes its profits by offloading its costs to others or the public. This is accomplished only because of the apathy of those on to whom the costs are transfered See part 4 of the video "The Corporation".

BTW, this is the tactic Microsoft used to finance the coding of Win95:

"3) Convincing Employees to Take Less Real Wages: Microsoft aggressively markets stock options to new employees in an effort to take wage expenses off the books. They also know that they can pocket the exercise price employees will be required to pay to take ownership of the stock. What also seems clear is that Microsoft is still aggressively marketing its stock option program to new recruits. To quote an email received, "I am about to begin employment at Microsoft and the stock option was the selling factor. Does your article overall state that it will be bad for me and will fail me in my retirement planning?" Is Microsoft fulfilling its disclosure obligations to its own employees, especially those that have put their entire 401K balance in Microsoft stock? This explains how 22 percent of Microsoft's massive cash balance has actually come from its own employees in the form of them prepaying their own wages through stock option exercise prices."

not to use Linux or Mac.

If they do they'll get their "Air Supply cut off"... their per/unit price will jump significantly, making them uncompetitive with their competitors ...

I could go on but space is limited. Microsoft is full of dirty tricks. Just ask James Plamondon and his "Technical Evangelists (TE):
http://platformevangelism.spaces.live.com/default.aspx
http://platformevangelism.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!37F174267DC274C!155.entry
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

Or the training materials he used, which taught the "Slog" and the "Stuffed Panel":
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958

And financial dirty tricks:
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

Here is a summary of a LOT of Microsoft's dirty tricks, and the reasons why so many "independent" corporations behave as wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history

So, ya, it is no surprise when NVIDIA knucles under to Microsoft, otherwise their video chips would suddenly fail to work as well as those from other video chip vendors, just the way DRDOS "failed" to work as well as MSDOS when users tried to install Win3, which was one of the first of an unending examples of how a copy without ethics operates. An people were surprised that Capitalism exhibited a "flaw" in the current economic crisis?

Bill Parish described it in detail.

With all due respect, how many real-world problems has Open Source solved? How many kids have been fed? How many billions, millions, or even thousands of dollars has Open Source contributed?

Open Source is a framework for service delivery that allows a coder to develop software in conjunction with others and have a legal framework to fall back on if those works are abused. When applied to a Charitable Organisation (C.O) they can do more with their I.T budget because the outlay for software does not exist, the programmers make a direct and ongoing contribution with respect to their works. That software contribution is not a zero value contribution because it has a real monetary value to the C.O against the impact to their cash flow - cash flow that can be applied to feeding kids.

When compared to the proprietary model a company derives profit from the C.O's use of the software, the C.O has to then apply for a tax relief to refund the the monies spent on software - with associated accountancy fees. Sure they get the monies back but now the taxpayer shoulders the burden of maintaining profitability of Microsoft - taxpayer money that could be have be contributed to aid organisations.

In addition if you were to apply use of Linux vs Windows on hardware assets the effect on cash flow is greater due to the affect on the cycle of hardware investment. You can keep a box running linux for much longer before you need to upgrade the hardware and any programming work is still a tax deduction by the C.O.

Whether or not you like Microsoft's business model is irrelevant because Gates didn't steal that money; he earned it legally.

Yes, Gates did, as for his employer that line is very blurred after numerous encounters with justice department around the world.

Bill Gates presented some great ideas and he's doing something good with all his money.

Like the X files "I want to believe" but I have been bitten so many times by the whole Microsoft paradigm and no matter what you want to believe, Mr Gates engineered that behavior and it's difficult to see a Leopard changing its spots now. I'm way beyond "fool me twice, shame on me" so Mr Gates has zero credibility in any area where he is expecting to convince people of something that's going to happen that's in his control. Now he is using the exact same strategy he used to dress up Operating System announcements and applying it to his arguments on world poverty - something out of his control that he knows he can never fix - the man is a genius of image.

So simply I choose to spend my energy where the return to me and the community is guaranteed. A C.O can choose to continue to contribute to the Microsoft hegemony or they can invest in a manner that frees their cash flow so they can focus on their core mission. Open Source makes a significant contribution directly if an organisation chooses to realise those contributions.

Bill Parish has something to say about MS' financials.

Are you living under a rock? Go search on Google.

http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

Apparently I am. Apparently so are all of the short sellers out their that would make tons of money by shorting the stock. Apparently the media is under a rock. That's the same media that could be breaking the story of the decade, if not century if these accusations were even close to being true. Apparently the SEC is under a rock. The DOJ is too.

Your evidence is just fantastic. It is also dated from 1999. I don't think there is too much more to say about this other than the fact that it is conjecture that never played out.

What's wrong with "protesting a charity"? The Gates Foundation has been criticized by many people, not just Stallman. And the fact that the Gates Foundation is a vehicle for promoting Windows means that it is highly relevant to FOSS users.

Probably because it just looks very wrong on the surface. You can be as idealistic as you want, but the truth is that it's the laypeople that need to be switched to Linux, not the technical people. To your average retail customer or the manager that chooses which system to go with, RMS is totally self-destructing to the FOSS community when he does things like this. It just doesn't look professional and doesn't gain the trust that is necessary switch people.

That's about as dumb as confusing Switzerland and Sweden

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Really? You're really going to split hairs over "FOSS" and "free software"? Last I checked, "FOSS" stood for "FREE open source software". Arguing between the two is just a pedantic argument over language. Well, perhaps you and RMS should think about this. When a person hears "free" they tend to only think "free as in beer". When you include the "open source" component, it's easier for the layperson to understand the difference and arrive at the "free as in speech" meaning. Either way though, it really doesn't matter. People just want a system that they can use. Arguing about this point is counterproductive to FOSS in general as it is almost entirely academic.

No, you don't. It seems "extremely literal" to you because you simply know next to nothing.

You don't take the time to thoughtfully deconstruct my statements and arguments to show why you think they are wrong. You just wave your hand and tell me that I'm wrong. That is not an effective means of persuasion.

And, for the record, I never said "open source" by itself.

If free software had been pussy-footing around for the last 20 years, it would be dead and Microsoft would own the entire industry. People need to speak up about how evil Microsoft actually has been and what kind of self-serving organization the Gates Foundation is. Maybe sooner or later, even you will get the message.

Even if I grant your position, you make the assumption that the FOSS community needs to continue to use the tactics of the past 20 years to continue to fight the non-FOSS community. This is just wrong. RMS' behavior turns away those that matter: the people who aren't using FOSS. If you think they won't care, just check out the response to RMS on Slashdot alone. Words and phrases like "shameful", "embarrassment", and "harmful" are being used to describe him. Consider too that Slashdot would have a greater propensity to side with RMS. If you want to have greater adoption of FOSS, the community simply needs better representation. Having someone up there that looks like a ranting lunatic is not going to be the best way to proceed going forward. FOSS needs a change of imagine so that it can be more widely adopted. That change needs to happen soon so that it can progress faster than it is now.

Do you have any evidence for this statement?

Are you living under a rock? Go search on Google.

http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

So, when you have RMS protesting a charity, it builds negative associations that can greatly hurt the community.

What's wrong with "protesting a charity"? The Gates Foundation has been criticized by many people, not just Stallman. And the fact that the Gates Foundation is a vehicle for promoting Windows means that it is highly relevant to FOSS users.

Is this for real or is it a linguistic trick of technicalities?

That's about as dumb as confusing Switzerland and Sweden

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Your viewpoint is extremely literal. I understand it.

No, you don't. It seems "extremely literal" to you because you simply know next to nothing.

Is RMS the spokesman for theFree Software Foundation? You said so yourself in your own post. Is RMS going to be very closely associated with FOSS? Totally.

If free software had been pussy-footing around for the last 20 years, it would be dead and Microsoft would own the entire industry. People need to speak up about how evil Microsoft actually has been and what kind of self-serving organization the Gates Foundation is. Maybe sooner or later, even you will get the message.

Maybe this had something to do with it.

I guess MS isn't doing this anymore.

http://www.billparish.com/20000418microsoftnotax.html

But Walmart, however, is still doing this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/wal-marts-whac-a-mole-tax_b_98539.html

Scientology must die.

I think I better post this one anonymously.

Break MS up into at least two companies

Seems to me the competition only needs a little leeway to be able to move forward and that browser wars don't mean much anymore.

"M$" does not pay a large share of salaries as stock options. Please provide proof of this, seriously. That must be public knowledge, if it's true. ... how this is different than any other corporation?

It's all public knowledge but so is free software. People don't always know what's public and government regulators are asleep at the wheel, or colluding.

Microsoft used stock options to avoid taxes for years. The tradition continues under his sham charity.

Defrauding the government and pension plans is probably easier than conering a market, so I don't think they are going to get away with their assaults on the GPL. Sooner or later they will have to use GPL3 code if they want to stay relevant. They won't be able to do that through proxies forever if they can at all.

Microsoft used stock options to avoid taxes for years. The tradition continues under his sham charity.

Defrauding the government and pension plans is probably easier than conering a market, so I don't think they are going to get away with their assaults on the GPL. Sooner or later they will have to use GPL3 code if they want to stay relevant. They won't be able to do that through proxies forever if they can at all.

Microsoft used stock options to avoid taxes for years. The tradition continues under his sham charity.

Defrauding the government and pension plans is probably easier than conering a market, so I don't think they are going to get away with their assaults on the GPL. Sooner or later they will have to use GPL3 code if they want to stay relevant. They won't be able to do that through proxies forever if they can at all.

I think you're mistaken about which companies pay taxes. MS may have payed Senators. It may have payed off Representatives. It may have contributed heavily to campaigns, but it appears not to pay taxes, not at all. So all that money it's bleeding from the government is just going down the tubes.

It's not a problem limited to the US. MS has tax shelters for it's EU units. But tax is a separate discussion.

The discussion is about EU law, MS broke it. MS has been able to continue breaking the law while delaying the punishment.

The second richest man in the world just gave $24050000000 to the richest man in the world. The poor people say: "Thanks!" Film at 11. What an amusing naivette. Dear poor people, read the facts before you wet your pants. This is not a black-and-white scenerio. We should always analyse such events with a great deal of realism.

• Bill Parish
• Why Microsoft stock options scare me
• Microsoft's questionable profits

Maybe a few years out of date but perhaps you should read the following article before you make any proclaimations about "Microsoft ... are no Enron".

http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

This accountant predicted the crash which we have witnessed with Enron and has argued for years that Enron is not the only player who have been monkeying around with their accounts.

(opinions are my own and not of anyone else)

WRONG!

It would transfer those Billions TO MICROSOFT, as if they don't have enough already.

It's not new behavior for Microsoft. Netscape, Go, Pen, Stacker ... just to name a few.

What folks don't realize is how Microsoft's economic behavior has transfered Billions from the government, pension funds and other companies to their company by a variety of means, all unethical and/or illegal. See:
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html

and there's more. This accountant outlines 12 things Microsoft did and then describes the effects on our economy of those 12 things.

Friggin' disgrace he is.

Bill Gates is the Osama bin Laden of the Internet and should be locked up for all the harm he's done, which by the way exceeds the economic damage caused by the real Osama bin Laden.

MS-viruses, worms, trojans alone cost billions in lost productivity every quarter. That's not counting other security problems caused by MS' shoddy products and lack of security. Other platforms and software are largely immune to worms and viruses, at worst they are merely resistent. Then there's the lost productivity due to MS' difficult, labor intensive mainenance and egregious interoperability with competing tools. The competing tools do, in contrast, work just fine together, only Bill's tools cause trouble. MS' interoperability is poor even between other MS products. All that costs money and burns people out, which in turn costs money.

What Gates and his company did between 1993-1998 was a crime, pure and simple. He and his flunkies took a healthy, wealthy, competitive market that was good for everybody and crushed it with OEM agreements, giveaways and secret API's. This is an established truth from the US trial statement of facts.

To really put the damage in context, it's not like the company brings in any tax dollars either. It pays no taxes, so aside from campaign contributions, nothing goes into the system. The mythical billions the company is rumored to be sitting on is either out of circulation, thus harming the economy, or are fictional Enron style accounting.

Ok. So what's left? His philantropic seem to be based on getting matching funds for purchases of expensive medications manufactured by the multi-national pharmaceuticals he has invested heavily in. The targeting of the so called gifts can also be questioned as they have the appearance of an agenda to persuade beneficiary governments to reverse policies promoting the use of open source software.

He should be locked up.

Friggin' disgrace he is.

MS-viruses, worms, trojans alone cost billions in lost productivity every quarter. That's not counting other security problems caused by MS' shoddy products and lack of security. Other platforms and software are largely immune to worms and viruses, at worst they are merely resistent. Then there's the lost productivity due to MS' difficult, labor intensive mainenance and egregious interoperability with competing tools. The competing tools do, in contrast, work just fine together, only Bill's tools cause trouble. MS' interoperability is poor even between other MS products. All that costs money and burns people out, which in turn costs money.

What Gates and his company did between 1993-1998 was a crime, pure and simple. He and his flunkies took a healthy, wealthy, competitive market that was good for everybody and crushed it with OEM agreements, giveaways and secret API's. This is an established truth from the US trial statement of facts.

To really put the damage in context, it's not like the company brings in any tax dollars either. It pays no taxes, so aside from campaign contriutions, nothing goes into the system. The mythical billions the company is rumored to be sitting on is either out of circulation, thus harming the economy, or fictional Enron style accounting.

Lock him up.

In other words, no income for the government from them.

So in other words if you count the lost productivity due to M$ viruses, worms, trojans, and general interoperability problems, it's a liability for the U.S. to have M$ in the country. Oh, yeah and arrays of cracked MS-Windows machines cranking out spam for damage of over $58 billion per year

So no income from MS, great expense from MS, and it's largely MS pushing the sw patent issue. So who's going to gain from sw patents in Europe except the portfolio companies? They might gain, but they sure don't produce or develop software.

See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.

See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.

See this report from 1999: "We live in extraordinary economic times here in the U.S. and this success could ignite a whole new cycle of economic prosperity. We must first, however, take a hard look at what is occurring at Microsoft. Microsoft is a great company with terrific employees. Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century. It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their financial practices." Read more here and here (search for Microsoft). I have been writing about it for years only to be completely ignored, now everyone is surprised but this is in fact nothing new for anyone who has bothered to analyse financial frauds of Redmond. This is really fascinating stuff.

Profit for shareholders of a growth company only means that people bought a stock which later others are willing to pay more for. The billions go into Microsoft's coffers more from stock purchases than pure profit (at least historically). For all the details on how they were unprofitable during the 80s and 90s read this. If you can read all of the facts and quotes from people who were involved and still think they were profitable by product sales alone then you're choosing to be blind.

For a company that most Slashdotters would say is on the decline, Microsoft sure has weird financial results!

Yeah. People were laughing at Alan Greenspan for a number of few years before that bubble burst too. I guess some of us silly Slashdotters just don't "get" the new Microsoft economy. It's ok though, you just go ahead now and keep putting your money there. After all, what could be wrong with Microsoft's accounting practices?

Read here. Or to put it another way... my goodness, you really looked hard, didn't you?

That person is most likely Bill Parish.

He doesn't just say that they'd post losses, but he goes further saying it's a "financial pyramid" and that it's going to collapse. It's important to note that this was in '99. I think we can all recognize that what Bill was seeing was not infact Microsoft building up but the .com's building up. Microsoft doubled during the boom times, but it wasn't anything compared to what the .com's were doing.

Anyway, we can see that Microsoft hasn't caused the collapse of the financial market's, they've dropped stock options and are now expensing stack grants, and yet the bottom hasn't fallen out. Personally I think Bill Parish is full of shit. And that is re-enforced by the fact that he hasn't seemed to comment on his previous doom and gloom predictions.

That person is most likely Bill Parish.

He doesn't just say that they'd post losses, but he goes further saying it's a "financial pyramid" and that it's going to collapse. It's important to note that this was in '99. I think we can all recognize that what Bill was seeing was not infact Microsoft building up but the .com's building up. Microsoft doubled during the boom times, but it wasn't anything compared to what the .com's were doing.

Anyway, we can see that Microsoft hasn't caused the collapse of the financial market's, they've dropped stock options and are now expensing stack grants, and yet the bottom hasn't fallen out. Personally I think Bill Parish is full of shit. And that is re-enforced by the fact that he hasn't seemed to comment on his previous doom and gloom predictions.

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Though billed (no pun intended) as a success story, when the bubble burst investors lost billions.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were pension funds of large social programs across the US, e.g. the California Teachers Union, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pensioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely [explained the situation to Gates], "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Though billed (no pun intended) as a success story, when the bubble burst investors lost billions.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were pension funds of large social programs across the US, e.g. the California Teachers Union, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pensioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely [explained the situation to Gates], "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

oops, I linked to the wrong page. here ya go

Its funny you should mention that, since MS is one of the largest financial scams ever.

If it's just a scam, you have nothing to fear. Sure a few place might have be bad for HF for a year, but that's nothing new. A scam doesn't last, doesn't grow. I've seen no sign this is a real threat.

Are you sure? What about Herbalife? What about homeopathy? What about Microsoft? What about Scientology? What about Bush? Are you sure that scams don't last and don't grow? Or maybe just because I am paranoid there are no conspiracies in the world whatsoever? I wouldn't be so sure there is really "nothing to fear." Hell, I wouldn't probably even have posted those links if I wasn't sure my arse is covered! I think it is very important to talk about the Broadband Over Power Lines scam, exactly because it is a scam.

I think that the public needs to be more educated about the alternatives to the monopoly which controls the machines all around us, as well as about the monopoly itself and the harm that it does.

First of all, they should finally learn about the monopoly itself. The most important facts can be found on the Microsoft Financial Fraud Update website by Bill Parish. MSFT is basically a pyramid scheme. It has to collapse some day. I find it much more likely than the suicide.

Now bear in mind that (a) there are challenges from all sides coming at Microsoft (they have failed to gain much of a foothold in markets outside their core products of Windows and Office, both core markets now under heavy attack from Free alternatives) and (b) the price of MSFT has almost halved over the past 5 years (in fact, it was almost touching $100 a share in Feb 2000) and you might just think it's not all rosy in the MSFT garden. So much so that co-founder Paul Allen sold all his MSFT stock and got out whilst the going was good. This is also why MS decided last year to pay a dividend on their stock for the first time - they have to prevent institutional investors from jumping ship. The stock setup is their one (big) weakness.

i think you want this link in paticular

M$ fraud #1

or

M$ fraud #2

I wonder what Bill Parish has to say about that...

Click here for more details.

A Ponzi scam is where you take money from new "investors" and use some of it to pay an apparently high return to your existing investors, grabbing the rest for yourself. Everybody's happy until (inevitably) you run out of new investors and the whole thing falls apart.

It seems to look disturbingly familiar.

Careful here. MS is known for creative accounting. The R&D figure includes things that other companies with stricter accounting policies put in marketing expenses, e.g. organizing expos and giving free software copies. Their R&D figures are not all research. You cannot trust the figures they publicize.

Some reasons why Microsoft owes many of us money.

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings up until this very day, so making it look like the hottest business since ACME, Inc.. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Heh, and we thought it was Windows.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were retirement funds of large social programs across the US, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pentioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely replied, "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

Some reasons why Microsoft owes many of us money.

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings up until this very day, so making it look like the hottest business since ACME, Inc.. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Heh, and we thought it was Windows.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were retirement funds of large social programs across the US, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pentioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely replied, "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

Me too! We need a good dose of communism (read "community").

I'm as big a fan of Capitalism and the American way as the next guy, but man 'o man, let's shelve it.

I've tried to study economics, game theory, politics. I've read everything from the Communist Manifesto and Chomsky to Kissinger and Friedman. And man, those are some smart people, and I would love to see them in a celebrity death-match.

But you know? When it comes to economics or business practices.. nobody knows anything for sure. Chomsky said it best:

"Well, I guess one thing that's unattractive to me about "Marxism" is the very idea that there is such a thing. It's a rather stiking fact that you doun't find things like "Marxism" in the sciences -- like, there isn't any part of physics which is "Einsteinianism," let's say, or "Planckianism" or something like that. It doesn't make any sense -- because peeople aren't gods: they just discover things, and they make mistakes, and their graduate students tell them why they're wrong, and then they go on and do things better the next time. But there are no gods around. I mean, scientists do use the terms "Newtonianism" and "Darwinism," but nobody thinks of those as doctrines that you've got to somehow be loyal to, and figure out what the Master thought, and what he would have said in this new circumstance and so on. That sort of thing is just completely alient to rational existence, it only shows up in irrational domains."

He goes on to talk about how economics is, and always has been used as a weapon in class struggles, and really, I think that's right. Look at the Forbes article demonstrates this very well. The economics of Microsoft, and yes, the tactics of the FSF are further examples.

Capitalism as an ideology is fine, just so long as it does good things. Does it make people thrifty and hard working? Then keep it. Does it make people selfish and craven? Throw it away.

Same with Communism. Does it help people work together? Keep it. Does it discourage free thought and experimentation? Throw it away.

Free Software is good, right now, because it's helping us break free of a horrible selfishness that we see exemplified in companies like Microsoft (how selfish? Real selfish). In our lives, we have a hard time being unselfish, since we live in a mechanism of selfishness.. being unselfish means tempting the reaper.. there's just not much room in our lives for it.

That's why we need Free Software right now. We need to take the visceral medium of the Internet and Computers and experiment with what would otherwise be a vast waste of time. Free Software when Stallman started was only really useful at a utility level. As Stallman says, he was just trying to fix a printer problem.

What that experiment has grown to, though, is a real potential to start working together again. Given that the Internet is global, that has deep implications. Free, Open Software may become Free, Open *. We've just gotta keep on nurturing it.

Will Free, Open * remain good? Probably not... but I doubt we'll see it in our lifetimes. But really, keep it while it's good, throw it away when it's not. Focus on the good, not the ideology.

See www.billparish.com for details. (-:

Other posters have pointed out that an x-box which never goes purchased hurts Microsoft more than one that is. By buying the product, you reimburse Microsoft's cost by $110, or whatever their resellers pay.

And they are wrong.

Microsoft takes care not to produce much more consoles than they can sell. Just as every other clever hardware vendor does.
They won't start producing a batch of say, one million consoles if they are not sure to sell at least 90% of them (based on the sales curves and market capacity studies). So, restraining from buying an xbox is not really going to hurt them at all -> they'll just build less on the next batch.

Buying one and not buying games is a sure way to make sure they lose money.

And regarding Microsoft cash, people should not use this as a strong evidence, it's not so clear that MS actually has so much money available.
see Bill Paris on this point