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Perhaps housing in many places is cheaper than Seattle or the Bay area or the LA/SD megalopolis not because of desirability but because of regulation?

Sell them on eBay like Seattle did with the self-cleaning toilets. Though the toilets are probably far more useful.

Hahn was arrested last year for trying to steal smoke detectors from his apartment complex.

Judging from his mugshot he looks to be suffering the effects of radiation exposure.

The insight here was that they were self-cleaning so no need for a janitor.

Let's see: They estimated maintenance costs of $600,000 a year. I don't know much about wages in the US, but it's fair to assume that 5 janitors would have done the job at a lower price.

Ignoring the price tag and maintenance cost I'm still wondering why those toilets failed in Seattle. We have toilets from the same manufacturer over here (Berlin, DE) and they don't attract much drug abuse or prostitution, because if you spend too much time in there the door simply opens.
I'm not kidding, it happened to a friend of mine who for some reason unknown to me decided to roll a joint in there. Since he told me I've stopped using them for their intended purpose.

You're blaming government-granted monopolies on the free market?

...and you can always count on Republican Dogma to be backed up with misdirection and red herrings.

Government doesn't create utility monopolies, The Last Mile does. It isn't realistic to expect two or more companies to make massive investments in infrastructure if only 1 line can be used at a time, so agreements are made with local governments so one company can serve all the customers in an area, yet have to put up with some regulation in order to prevent abuse of a captive audience.

And yes, internet access speeds have been entirely left to the free market in the U.S. You may have only one cable line and one phone line to your house, but the competition between the two has left us with an anemic average download speed of 1.97 Mpbs, compared to Finland (21) or Japan (63!).

The one decision that really saddled us with crappy access was the FCC ruling that internet access was an information service rather than a telecommunication service - so telecos no longer had to lease their lines at wholesale prices to competitors.

Since you ignored it the first time:

Scandinavian countries have lower population densities than we do yet have much better access. And the "rural" argument might make sense for why you can't get good access on a farm in Kansas, but then why don't we have 100 Mbps consumer connections in San Francisco or Manhattan?

Your post didn't answer the first point, and ignored the second. Finland has 5.3 million people in 130,000 square miles. Wisconsin has 5.7 million people in 65,000 square miles. So, obviously Finland is gong to have a lot more open areas than Wisconsin, yet it has a median download speed of 21 Mbps, compared to less than 2 Mbps for the United States. I don't have figures for Wisconsin, but what do you think the chances are they will be remotely close to Finland?

And I have yet to see any apologists offer a reason why you can't get access in densely populated American cities like Manhattan to match what Europe is able to deliver to their people in the sticks.

Well, let's see. The so-called "death threats" against you are not death threats at all. A couple of them are asking you to commit suicide, another is even stating you will eventually self destruct. A "death threat" is where someone threatens to kill someone else. None of the comments had such wording or even remotely resembling the wording.

Also, those you call Microsoft or "M$" lovers and haters of free software are nothing of the sort. It is possible to like both closed source and open source software. Just because someone doesn't use M$, Micro$haft, or Windoze doesn't mean they hate open source or Linux. One example you gave was Keith Russell. If he hated open-source software and loved Microsoft as you claim, then he wouldn't be making statements like "This is one of the things that will allow Linux, and FOSS in general, to win in the long term. The multitude of voices and opinions tend to be self-correcting, with benelovent dictators like Linus Torvalds keeping the focus on building up their own products, not tearing down the opposition."1 or "I don't think Microsoft cares that Blu-Ray is Sony's standard, just that it's not Microsoft's standard."

There is no Microsoft conspiracy against you. The reason you have been modded down is because you use "M$" and "Windoze" Microsoft and Windows, which is just as childish as using "Linsux" and "Open Sores" when describing "GNU/Linux" and "Open Source" There are many people on Slashdot who speak against Microsoft and still get modded up. If it were a conspiracy then anyone speaking against Microsoft would be modded down on the spot.

As for Apple, if this is true then a lawsuit is the least of their worries. Apple should worry more about their customers leaving them. Microsoft does at least treats their employees well, homosexuals included.3456 Apple should be treating their employees with more respect.

Sources :
1 - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=197140&cid=16158708
2 - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=497526&cid=22846284
3 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3128913
4 - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/346431_antiochmsft08.html
5 - http://www.vault.com/survey/employee/Microsoft-Corporation-EMPLOYEER-3726.html
6 - http://www.brianblog.com/archives/2005_05.html

IBM at the end of business today had a 174.60B market capitalization - more than HP and Dell put together and within reachable range of Microsoft's 239B. IBM's trend is up (just off the 52wk high) while Microsoft's is, well, to be kind, not. Microsoft nearly killed them -- by 1994 their value had dropped to 1/10th of what it is today. For the past twelve years however IBM's stock has been as good or better as an investment than Microsoft's. IBM's value today is more than five times what it was when Microsoft was knifing their OS/2 love child in 1990. And IBM didn't just spend 7B engineering a product so abhorrent it needs this kind of "no matter what you've heard, our product doesn't suck" kind of marketing.

I hope the tide is turning. Maybe this will help.

It was only this year that international tourists to the US were at the levels seen before 9111, from the AP: "The number of international tourists visiting America should exceed pre-Sept. 11 levels this year for the first time since terrorist attacks crippled the travel industry, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Friday." Notice it says "should" not does or did. Elsewhere: "Tourists skipping US sites", dated 5 July 2008 and "U.S. share of foreign tourists slipping, travel experts say" dated one day later.

Falcon

I'm watching a story on Ted Stevens' problems with Veco. I would have thought that the GOP would want the lights and microphones turned off right around now.

Nothing to see here. Move along now.

"Border" searches include people who have not departed the U.S. Depending where you travel in the U.S. DHS still stops people and searches them for not leaving the country.

Same thing happens between San Diego and L.A. there are DHS checkpoints on I-5 and I-15 which are 40 miles from the international border.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004364797_ferrypatrol22m.html
and
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/07/02/immigration_checks_on_ferry_runs_irk_locals/

"A couple of months ago, the U.S. Border Patrol began occasional "spot checks" of every vehicle and passenger arriving in Anacortes off state ferries, the lifeline between these islands and the mainland. ... In the islands' coffee shops and the editorial pages of the local paper, then in a crowded, heated meeting last month, a number of people have complained that islanders are being unfairly treated and questioned, even though they haven't left the country and normally wouldn't be subject to such scrutiny. ... The Border Patrol responds that the stops are annoying but necessary, the cost of keeping the country safe. It maintains that a terrorist could easily use the same maze of waterways and islands here that for generations has harbored smugglers, rumrunners and drug dealers. ... San Juan Islanders are used to customs inspections in Anacortes if they take the ferry that comes from Sidney, B.C. Before now, though, they were never subjected to checks on domestic ferry runs.

That changed in February, when federal agents started corralling everyone off domestic ferries into a fenced-off area in Anacortes and questioning them about their citizenship. It now happens once, maybe twice a week; no one has any way to know if they will be stopped."

WELCOME TO AMERIKA, BTW nice I-phone.....

. . . there is no reason for an organisation not to take a donation for a good cause just because it came from a company you personally don't like.

Actually, there is. It makes you dependent on them.

Let's say that you use Microsoft's $100,000 to hire a new employee or two (salaried, not contractual). You are now in a position where if Microsoft decides that they don't like what you're doing they can refuse to repeat their donation the next year, forcing you to lay off those two employees.
I can see Microsoft trying to use the threat of discontinued donations as leverage to steer the ASF into a vulnerable position, then refusing to make a donation at a critical time in order to take advantage of the disruption it would cause.

Argue all you want about excessive paranoia, accepting money makes you beholden to your donors. We call musicians with record contracts "sellouts", we consider politicians who have accepted large "campaign donations" from lobbyists to have been "bought", and the ASF is now in danger of falling into the same territory for the same reasons. There is already talk about the World Health Organization being steered by politics instead of sound science ever since accepting large donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Life would be simpler for the ASF if they had refused the money when it was offered.

Here you go.

A Microsoft executive today acknowledged that part of a videotaped computer demonstration submitted as evidence in the antitrust trial might not really have been what the software giant purported it to be.

The prospect of fixed evidence in the Microsoft antitrust trial arose after Department of Justice antitrust prosecutor David Boies revealed a discrepancy in a videotaped demonstration that Microsoft played yesterday to contradict a government witness.

So is this guy (Eddie Davidson) the Spam King, or is this guy?

'Spam King' gets nearly 4 years in prison

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ended the reign of the so-called Spam King, who earned his title by sending out millions of unwanted e-mails, by sentencing the Seattle man to nearly four years in prison Tuesday. Robert Soloway is the second person in the country to be convicted under the Can-Spam Act for flooding the virtual world with fraudulent e-mail messages. His sentence of 47 months is less than half of what prosecutors wanted.

Maybe (when Davidson gets caught), they should duel to the death to determine who the real king is?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_openid_five_key_takeaways.php, also: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/02/microsoft_to_support_openid.html, and http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/302830_msftopenid08.html

This link will remain valid after it's no longer the latest post.

Link: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/

Do either of you have first-hand experience with someone who spoke out against the government and then "heard the fed knocking"?

If neither of them reply, does that mean the answer is yes?

But in reality, this just doesn't happen here.

Yet kids still get investigated by the Secret Service for singing Bob Dylan songs or drawing pictures of Bush's head on a spike or of him as a demon with rockets and a caption of "end the war on Errorism" (amusingly enough google warned me that the second page could be harmful to my computer). There's also the infamous case about the guy who was arrested for joking about God talking from a burning bush.

It's quite obvious that the federal government does take this stuff seriously, and it's entirely possible there's a file somewhere tagged "slashdot+rebel" that lists everyone who suggests such things on the site.

And since the only way to change it is in Congress and not the Executive branch, and they know this, you know they're doing it intentionally for publicity.

Since each individual state elects its own electorial college delegates, they can change how they do that at the state level. Many states have an initiative system that allows citizens to put new laws directly on the ballot (after getting a certain number of signatures). My state, Washington, recently passed Initiative 872 which changed the purpose of our primary elections to determining the top two candidates for the general election instead of determining the most popular candidate from each party. It was challenged by both major parties and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court this year. The parties are still fighting it but the state is going ahead with it this year anyway.

Similarly, there was an initiative to get Washington State to use Instant Runoff Voting - I don't think the statewide initiative has yet to get enough signatures to make the ballot, although they claim they won a local measure in Pierce County and that county will use IRV.

Also, there is a movement called National Popular Vote to have a plurality of states agree to elect their delegates via the popular vote - if a plurality of states do, then the electoral college is effectively circumvented without any federal action.

You can't make the donkey or elephant drink, but you can sure tie them up and walk them off the plank.

And since the only way to change it is in Congress and not the Executive branch, and they know this, you know they're doing it intentionally for publicity.

Since each individual state elects its own electorial college delegates, they can change how they do that at the state level. Many states have an initiative system that allows citizens to put new laws directly on the ballot (after getting a certain number of signatures). My state, Washington, recently passed Initiative 872 which changed the purpose of our primary elections to determining the top two candidates for the general election instead of determining the most popular candidate from each party. It was challenged by both major parties and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court this year. The parties are still fighting it but the state is going ahead with it this year anyway.

Similarly, there was an initiative to get Washington State to use Instant Runoff Voting - I don't think the statewide initiative has yet to get enough signatures to make the ballot, although they claim they won a local measure in Pierce County and that county will use IRV.

Also, there is a movement called National Popular Vote to have a plurality of states agree to elect their delegates via the popular vote - if a plurality of states do, then the electoral college is effectively circumvented without any federal action.

You can't make the donkey or elephant drink, but you can sure tie them up and walk them off the plank.

You're saying that people won't leave your area even when gas prices reach $38 per gallon, and your fill-ups start costing $3000 per month? (I'm assuming four refills of a 20-gallon tank.)

You're dreaming. The migration back to the city is already starting at $1 per liter.

In any case, I would gladly buy off all that unused land if noone would need those homes anymore.

You'll also pay $millions per year yourself to keep the roads maintained? You're dreaming.

While what you are saying is true,the simple fact is I have NEVER seen hatred for a product like I have for Vista,and that includes WinME. I have been building,selling,repairing and customizing PCs and networks since the days of DOS and Win3.1,but the sheer public hatred for the stink that is Vista is just unreal. I recently built a machine for a customer whose sole requirement was that this machine be upgrading for a long while so he wouldn't have to touch Vista,and this is for a guy who has been happily using WinME for the past 8 years! And when the teenyboppers come in with their parents to have a new machine built and I mention Vista as an option I get a VERY loud EEEEEW!,like I took a crap in front of them or something.

The simple fact is they have based a lot of their revenue projections on everyone upgrading every 3 years or so. After all,that was the way it went through most of the history of Windows. But I am typing this on a 1.1GHz Celeron with 512Mb of RAM that runs great as a simple Netbox,and I have plenty of customers that are quite happy with their 1.7-3.2GHz Intels and AMDs. Computers have gotten "good enough" for what most folks use them for. And then they really shoot themselves in the foot with Vista by killing XP, which means that those who can't afford Apple or don't have a friend with a pirate XP disc will end up on some sort of Linux like the EEE,simply because the bottom of the Line Dell and Compaq that sell so well to the average home user runs like a crippled slug on Vista. I recently talked to the head of the electronics department at a Wal Mart supercenter about Vista and he said it has been a nightmare. He said they are now offering to "preload" XP onto any Vista laptop they sell simply because they can't move them any other way.

So what does MSFT do? Do they do the smart thing and keep XP on the lower end and only sell Vista on machines powerful enough to run it well? Maybe put out a Windows 2008 professional to get those businesses and home users that are avoiding Vista like the plague to continue buying MSFT? Nope,they kill off Vista and force the Best Buys of the world to either convert their machines in the back to XP or have a bunch of complaining customers because a non dual core with 1Gb or less of RAM simply won't run the bloat. When Allchin himself,who oversaw some of the most profitable years of Windows,says he would buy a Mac rather than take Vista and retires the second it comes out to keep from being blamed you know they are in trouble. It is like the marketing department has taken over MSFT and as we have seen time and time again,most marketing departments can't see the forests for the trees. I predict if MSFT gets the chance they will take search,maybe Yahoo mail while they are at it. And frankly it won't help them a bit. Because they same guys that made the Vista sludge will concentrate all the efforts on maximizing ad revenues instead of having searches become more accurate and relevant and Yahoo search will suck just as bad as Live search is now. But that is my 02c from out here in consumerland,YMMV

Oh, really?

The Seattle PI reports: "However, there's a catch- this generous helping of everything from taekwondo to equestrian is exclusively available to Windows Vista users."

Now read my post again. Is some part of it not in agreement with the facts?

I think you're deliberately misunderstanding me in order to muddy the issue.

The NBC "Olympics On The Go" service will only be broadcast to users of Windows Vista . You can have the Olympics in "up to HD" but only if you take Vista too. I can only presume they are afraid their servers couldn't handle the load of allowing it to the broad audience of popular operating systems and handheld devices, even though users of that equipment are a much bigger market for their advertisers.

Desalinated seawater from Hawaii, meanwhile, is being sold as "concentrated water" -- at $33.50 for a two-ounce bottle. Like any concentrated beverage, it is supposed to be diluted before drinking, except that in this case, that means adding water to ... water.

[ Yes, people really are that stupid. ]

Not to sound totality clueless to your situation but how can you not afford a house on 100k a year, with 3% interest? In Perth, Australia the average house price is up around 500k and interest is at 9%+

Thats 45k of interest in your first year, and in Australia we cant negative gear our primary residence (offset the income we pay as interest)

Subtract 35K for taxes.

Good luck finding a 3% mortgage rate.

The average home price in the Bay Area [that isn't a starter home], not to mention in Seattle start around $800k and $500k, respectively.

Houses in Spokane went from averaging $150k for respectable home to $250k for the same home 4 years later. [2002 - 2006].

Here is an old article on the cost of living in Seattle, from the Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/homevalues/mainstory2006.html

How much money do you need?

Here's the minimum household income you needed to buy a median-priced home last year in these areas, assuming a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.87 percent (the national average for 2005).

Queen Anne: $135,309

Central Bellevue: $129,406

Green Lake: $107,838

W. West Seattle: $104,421

Lake Sammamish: $104,206

East Ballard, Bothell, Central Area: $90,811

Lake City, Beacon Hill: $76,281

Source: Seattle Times analysis of King County assessor's data

Justin Mayo

Here in 2007 from the Seattle Times shows the increases:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2003696965_webhomesales07.html

King County home prices keep rising, bucking national trend

By Elizabeth Rhodes

Seattle Times business reporter

For the fourth month in a row, the price of King County houses has risen, reaching a median $465,000 in April, according to statistics released today by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Median means half sell for more, half for less.

That price strength bucks national home-price stagnation â" and even price drops in numerous cities across the country â" making King and nearby Puget Sound counties anomalies.

The housing market's strength is further confirmed by a Windermere Real Estate analysis that shows the majority of single-family homes sold within Seattle last month went for more than asking price.

That trend was strongest among two-bedroom houses; they brought an average of 100.43 percent of their asking price, Windermere found.

Three bedrooms houses, which accounted for the largest percentage of sales, on average sold for 100.25 percent of asking. Only five-bedroom houses sold for significantly less: 97.6 percent of asking.

Some 64 percent of all Seattle houses sold within 30 days.

Still, both house and condominium inventory is up sharply from year-ago totals. In King County, the number of condos on the market was up 74 percent last month, while the number of houses increased 38 percent.

Last month's strong sales activity is a turnaround from earlier in the year, said Dick Fulton managing broker of Coldwell Banker Bain's Lake Union and Magnolia offices.

"The 2007 market kind of found its stride for the first time in April," Fulton said. "The activity feels like we're at a faster pace than last year in the Seattle and Bellevue market."

According to the multiple listing service report, houses in Snohomish County have appreciated the most, year over year, within the four-county central Puget Sound region.

However Snohomish's price rise has not been as steady as King's. Over the past four months, house prices have fluctuated in Snohomish, settling at $375,000 in April. That figure reflects a 13.7 percent year-over-year increase.

Not to sound totality clueless to your situation but how can you not afford a house on 100k a year, with 3% interest? In Perth, Australia the average house price is up around 500k and interest is at 9%+

Thats 45k of interest in your first year, and in Australia we cant negative gear our primary residence (offset the income we pay as interest)

Subtract 35K for taxes.

Good luck finding a 3% mortgage rate.

The average home price in the Bay Area [that isn't a starter home], not to mention in Seattle start around $800k and $500k, respectively.

Houses in Spokane went from averaging $150k for respectable home to $250k for the same home 4 years later. [2002 - 2006].

Here is an old article on the cost of living in Seattle, from the Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/homevalues/mainstory2006.html

How much money do you need?

Here's the minimum household income you needed to buy a median-priced home last year in these areas, assuming a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.87 percent (the national average for 2005).

Queen Anne: $135,309

Central Bellevue: $129,406

Green Lake: $107,838

W. West Seattle: $104,421

Lake Sammamish: $104,206

East Ballard, Bothell, Central Area: $90,811

Lake City, Beacon Hill: $76,281

Source: Seattle Times analysis of King County assessor's data

Justin Mayo

Here in 2007 from the Seattle Times shows the increases:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2003696965_webhomesales07.html

King County home prices keep rising, bucking national trend

By Elizabeth Rhodes

Seattle Times business reporter

For the fourth month in a row, the price of King County houses has risen, reaching a median $465,000 in April, according to statistics released today by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Median means half sell for more, half for less.

That price strength bucks national home-price stagnation â" and even price drops in numerous cities across the country â" making King and nearby Puget Sound counties anomalies.

The housing market's strength is further confirmed by a Windermere Real Estate analysis that shows the majority of single-family homes sold within Seattle last month went for more than asking price.

That trend was strongest among two-bedroom houses; they brought an average of 100.43 percent of their asking price, Windermere found.

Three bedrooms houses, which accounted for the largest percentage of sales, on average sold for 100.25 percent of asking. Only five-bedroom houses sold for significantly less: 97.6 percent of asking.

Some 64 percent of all Seattle houses sold within 30 days.

Still, both house and condominium inventory is up sharply from year-ago totals. In King County, the number of condos on the market was up 74 percent last month, while the number of houses increased 38 percent.

Last month's strong sales activity is a turnaround from earlier in the year, said Dick Fulton managing broker of Coldwell Banker Bain's Lake Union and Magnolia offices.

"The 2007 market kind of found its stride for the first time in April," Fulton said. "The activity feels like we're at a faster pace than last year in the Seattle and Bellevue market."

According to the multiple listing service report, houses in Snohomish County have appreciated the most, year over year, within the four-county central Puget Sound region.

However Snohomish's price rise has not been as steady as King's. Over the past four months, house prices have fluctuated in Snohomish, settling at $375,000 in April. That figure reflects a 13.7 percent year-over-year increase.

I was just thinking about the relation between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates myself. They've been the bitterest of rivals in the past, patched things up somewhat, been bitter rivals again, etc. At the root of this could be the difference in platforms, or it could just be plain and simple competetiveness.

Bill Gates doesn't have as much of a stake in that competition now. Sure, thanks to Windows his name is a household word, but if that old email that surfaced recently is any indication, he may not be all that pleased with the juggernaut he helped build. He dismissed it as an attempt to improve the product (who wouldn't?), but what if it's not enough, and the culture refuses to change? It could be said that he helped build the cultural æsthetic at Microsoft so well that even he can't steer it any more.

I'm not saying it'd happen, but I would giggle like a madman for several days if/when Bill Gates admits that Apple was what he was trying to build all along.

If anyone had actually RTFA, you'd know that Gates did not deny writing this e-mail when it was shown to him, he simply said that writing emails like this was a part of his job.

This is partly /.'s fault for not linking to the original article in the Seattle PI and instead linked it to Gizmodo:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Slashdot linked to the wrong source. I saw this on reddit yesterday which linked to a better source here and a PDF of the actual document from which it was taken here. The seattlepi author states that this is from leaked documents in the anti-trust lawsuits where the company was forced to turn over (and make public) internal documents. The listed text in the blogs is just one of the emails in the PDF document.

Now being slashdot the moderation is totally biased. It is clear everyone that "claimed" this to be fake simply didn't do their homework (like carefully RTFA or in this case the blog spam) and instead went for the cheap MS flamebait karma.

The failure in logic is also horrible. Bill Gates doesn't sound like the kind of guy that would write this therefore it is false! /sarcasm. Why would Bill Gates release such an email to the public while he was trying to market a product? Do companies go around expressing their own dissatisfaction in their own dog food? Sure if you want to piss off your shareholders and give your competitors a marketing edge to drive you into the ground. If Microsoft purposely released an email like this, it would just give companies like Apple legitimate marketing material to use against Microsoft. That is suicide. Microsoft would probably have never released this email if they had the choice. It is just that they were lucky enough it wasn't dug up until 4 years later. (Which makes sense. It probably would never have been dug up because slashdot has proven that people don't RTFA.)

But never mind, continue along with your MS bashing. There's no way Gates has an ounce of integrity or usefulness to the software world.

Slashdot linked to the wrong source. I saw this on reddit yesterday which linked to a better source here and a PDF of the actual document from which it was taken here. The seattlepi author states that this is from leaked documents in the anti-trust lawsuits where the company was forced to turn over (and make public) internal documents. The listed text in the blogs is just one of the emails in the PDF document.

Now being slashdot the moderation is totally biased. It is clear everyone that "claimed" this to be fake simply didn't do their homework (like carefully RTFA or in this case the blog spam) and instead went for the cheap MS flamebait karma.

The failure in logic is also horrible. Bill Gates doesn't sound like the kind of guy that would write this therefore it is false! /sarcasm. Why would Bill Gates release such an email to the public while he was trying to market a product? Do companies go around expressing their own dissatisfaction in their own dog food? Sure if you want to piss off your shareholders and give your competitors a marketing edge to drive you into the ground. If Microsoft purposely released an email like this, it would just give companies like Apple legitimate marketing material to use against Microsoft. That is suicide. Microsoft would probably have never released this email if they had the choice. It is just that they were lucky enough it wasn't dug up until 4 years later. (Which makes sense. It probably would never have been dug up because slashdot has proven that people don't RTFA.)

But never mind, continue along with your MS bashing. There's no way Gates has an ounce of integrity or usefulness to the software world.

But even if Seattle Pi is lying about that, they link to a PDF of the case file, which is labeled as "Plaintiff's Exhibit 7199" in the case "Comes V. Microsoft". If you look up the case you may be able to verify if this document is authentic, which would be relatively good evidence that this email came from Bill Gates.

Please do some research... It's not a fake. It's from a certified antitrust exhibit. You can read the whole email thread here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf (PDF).

First, I am not sure that email is really by Gates...

Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

Since Bishop is a M$ shill, it's likely from a "reliable source".

It just makes sense. He's talking about some microsoft department and the mail is addressed to a different manager. So "they" totaly makes sense. And the mail is real: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf And Microsoft have aknowledged it...

For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have. As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality.

this was entered as evidence in the DoJ trial. It's real and on the books.

Here's a PDF of the original, together with the replies, as submitted to the trial.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf

Nonsense. This is one of many internal emails released during the recent court case. Unless you're suggested MS deliberately work up fake emails to show their products in a bad light just in case a lawyer comes calling with a disclosure warrant, which (to be clear) would be a serious criminal offence. It might help if you read yesterday's article on this, linked from BoingBoing, which has the corroborating detail you're so sure doesn't exist.

Let me make sure I have this right.. A respectable news outlet conducts an interview with Bill Gates, asks him if it's genuine, and he explains that it's his job to make criticism of this nature. So, are we supposed to believe you - irrespective of your "100%" certainty that's based on nothing but speculation - or Bill Gates himself?

Let me make sure I have this right.. A respectable news outlet conducts an interview with Bill Gates, asks him if it's genuine, and he explains that it's his job to make criticism of this nature. So, are we supposed to believe you - irrespective of your "100%" certainty that's based on nothing but speculation - or Bill Gates himself?

Sure looks like a DoJ-entered piece of evidence.

The originial article: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Here are the responses from within Microsoft: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf

The originial article: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Here are the responses from within Microsoft: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf

I know martinw89 linked a page containing all of the links, but in case that was too confusing, I better link them again:

Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5
Article 6
Article 7
Article 8
Article 9

Hope that helps

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E0DE143CF93AA35751C1A9679C8B63

The only question is whether they're using it. They probably are:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/158464_brain29.html

Watch out for falling cows in adjacent counties.

Speaker Pelosi said so

So please point out where I allegedly said anything about the contents of MSFT's bank account. Paris Hilton has a massive bank account, but that doesn't mean she has the ability to dictate or control the tech industry either. ;)

Here, let me spell this out for you. In MSFT's heyday, it could dictate terms to the vast, vast majority of OEM's, App/Software vendors, and ultimately, users. Bill Gates' word was once treated as Gospel. You as a consumer could not buy a Dell or HP (or Compaq) without paying the Microsoft Tax. Microsoft could do whatever they wanted to with Visual Basic, and could do so with impunity. They didn't have to document their API set properly, and didn't have to care. They could literally determine what was going to happen in a given year to vast swaths of the entire Computing Industry. It had no real competition - Apple was still struggling mightily to keep what little marketshare they had, and Linux was still a mostly hobbyist OS.

Today? MSFT has been forced to extend XP (and likely will again come June) because OEM's are dictating to Redmond that they refuse to stop selling it in favor of the bloat-fest called Vista. What was once a 95% stranglehold on all desktops is now shrinking at a near-logarithmic rate, losing to Apple, Linux, Google, Nintendo, Firefox/Mozilla, etc etc. MSFT has been reduced to massive channel-stuffing and fire-sales of unsold stock (e.g. Zune) just to claim the sales numbers that they do in most of the markets they play in nowadays. Meanwhile, MSFT can't so much as put a new toilet paper roll in any of their campus bathrooms without compliance-checking by either US or EU government inspectors. Where MSFT once dictated standards, nowadays they can just barely buy one, but find the purchase to be empty. Where companies once evaporated in a fiscal belch into MSFT's maw? Now we see corporations (e.g. Yahoo!) openly telling MSFT to piss off... and mostly winning.

A once focused board is now scattered to the four winds, casting furiously about for new sources of income, but finding little-to-none outside of an increasingly directionless set of core products. Where there was once massive public enthusiasm for new products from MSFT, we now see customers going after new MSFT products with all the eagerness that one would with have when facing a catbox-cleaning chore.

My paycheck doesn't rely on MSFT, so to be quite frank about it, whether they are "concerned" or not about my view is irrelevant. Now considering that the corp I work for (buried cozily in the Fortune 100) deciding to skip Vista entirely and hang around for Windows 7 (and not being anywhere near alone in doing so)? That may change things a bit. There is also the fact that MSFT is no longer the powerhouse it once was, and yes, it is demonstrably losing its grasp.

/P

the company is far from dead, but it ain't exactly the powerhouse it once was, when OEMs and most software devs trembled at the sound of the phrase: "Microsoft has announced that..."

Pffft. Get over yourself, pl0x.

At peak, Microsoft held $64,000,000,000 in LIQUID CASH ASSETS. Think about that. (source)

At the time of that article, they hold $28,900,000,000 in cash reserves. In terms of gross domestic product, that puts Microsoft's cash reserves 80th (out of 180 sovereign nations) when compared worldwide to yearly GDP. (wikipedia). And it's only dropped to that level because Microsoft, after it won all the antitrust battles, instituted a stock buy-back.

If Microsoft were to never, ever sell another product or acquire a business or accept a licensing fee, and simply put that money into a money market account at a bank pulling 8% interest, they would make 2,300,000,000 yearly. Wikipedia lists Microsoft as having 79,000 employees. Just with the interest they could make without any strategic investing, they could pay each employee at the company $30,000 a year. For nothing. Before the stock buyback, that number was around $70,000.

Think about that. The interest on their LIQUID CASH could pay EIGHTY THOUSAND EMPLOYEES over SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR.

That's how "not in trouble" Microsoft is. Microsoft is still a powerhouse, and they're quite unconcerned that you think they aren't. Microsoft is not in danger.

~Wx

Exactly. MOD PARENT UP.

At the same time that technology is giving more than ever to humankind, respect from management for those who are knowledgeable about technology is lower than ever.

Part of the problem at Microsoft is that it is run by someone with little or no interest in technology, Steve Ballmer.

Releasing products that are unfinished because programmers have not had time to finish them seems to be normal top management policy at Microsoft. Microsoft Windows Vista is just the latest example. Microsoft employees say things like, "even a piece of junk will qualify". There's no joy in working at a place that doesn't allow you to do a good job.