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Microsoft's 'Freedom to Innovate' Brochure
SEA writes: "Scans of a Freedom to Innovate Network (FIN) leaflet passed out by some of the cutest boothie chicks from MS's largest booth @ PC Expo. Felt so dirty for taking one but had to just for giggles and rant ..."
Here's
the front and
the back of the brochure. My favorite part is that this is a 'grassroots effort' but it has a Redmond address. One can only speculate.
They really aren't that stupid.
This is a source of confusion to many; the term refers to a private movement (which this is) as opposed to a state-coordinated effort. Their usage is correct.
The best way I've found to combat this type of effort is to do what I do during political campaigns. If a member of an org I don't agree with approaches me, I will accept the brochure. I will ask polite questions. I may even strike up a conversation (embrase). I will pretend to be interested and even swayed. I will collect as many handouts from them I can. Then I will go home and throw them all away content that I have done all I can do to keep those brochures out of the hands of people who MIGHT be swayed (extinguish). I've wasted my opponents valuable time having them talk to a person who is against them and cannot be swayed (announce vaporware). Sound a little underhanded? Well, I'm not the only one who uses those tactics.
There's a substantial amount of evidence for that. Go to the Microsoft Freedom to Innovate web page. Read the copyright notice at the bottom of the page:
Does having Microsoft's dick up your ass hurt?
Keep it up.
95% of the public won't know what the hell you are talking about. They'll definitely back away from you though.
The IBM PC was proprietary. Microsoft had nothing to do with the reverse engineering and cloning of the PC.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
I think he means development tools for windows. Of course free GNU tools are cheaper, but good dev tools under windows (I'm guessing) aren't all that cheap. MS gives them out really really cheaply because they know that people using those dev tools will make software for their OS, thus requiring other people to buy said OS. This is of course cheaper than buying the equivelant [whatever other companys there are] tools.
Now going to linux/gnu/gcc is all nice and good but some people can't switch over (for their jobs at least) for any number of reasons.
Alan
(who for the record works at a linux only company)
I'd be highly surprised if they didn't have several already. They call them offices, of course.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I gave up smoking pot a while ago.
Sodomy is not illegal in my state.
I don't speed as I don't have a car.
I also have the balls to put my name on my posts.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Yay! My C64 ruled over the inferior "IBM PC Jr."!
;)
(actually, I'm just happy I got a Nintendo recently; I never should have sold mine anyhow... Anyone ever write a cart to run C64 stuff on the Nintendo?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Like this would be the FIRST time they've tried to create their own grass-roots movement. It's just that this time, they're not gonna try to deny it. They're going to stand proudly, and not pull any punches, and just say "We think we have a right to do whatever we want, and we're going to do our damnedest to create a movement to affirm that right!"
Are you really that surprised?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Yes, but did we claim that WE are the supreme innovators? No, I don't recall that we did. However, Microsoft is constantly bandying about the term, stating how they're so innovative - yet they can never name anything truly innovative that they've ever done. If you're going to CLAIM that you're an innovator, you better have something to show to PROVE it. Put up or shut up - it's that simple.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I am not a big fan of Microsoft at all, but I do have to take issue with the fact that everyone keeps referring to the fact that Microsoft is trying to hide the fact that they are basically fronting this FIN group.
Oh really? If I was going to trying to hide my involvement in an orginization I wouldn't give them a web address off of my company's homepage or an email address pointing straight back to me. They may be trying to position this as something larger than their company, but they're surely not trying to hide their involvement, either.
Don't get me wrong--I don't agree with their premises at all, but you can't really claim that they're doing total astroturf as in previous instances. I guess they got burnt too badly.
-- Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
The stupidity of the American People has never been in doubt, sadly.
"American" is redundant here.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I can see lots of people signing up for this with the best intention. Unfortunately, you know which road is paved with good intentions. I've met lots of folks who freely admit they don't get it. They don't see what Microsoft is doing wrong. OTOH, most of these people are also salesmen and lawyers and that may say something, too.
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You mean you'll put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword and we'll try and kill each other like civilized peo
--
Didn't I hear that MS is getting into making encyclopedia's and edu materials? Will they as screwed up as that map? Is Encarta reliable anymore?
yadda
Naturally it had to be asked.
Since their aim is obviously to recruit as many "members" as possible, then claim that their membership supports MS, they need to broaden their appeal to prospective members as much as possible!
If MS is split in two, the company names should obviously be Micros~1 and Micros~2.
Free software holds it's own pretty well, I'd say. perl, LaTeX, Python, TCL/TK, GNU findutils (locate+updatedb), freenet, gnutella, emacs, netcat, ghostscript, readline, sendmail, mozilla (wrt. it's XUL programmability, not just that it's a web browser), the Debian package system, and many more. Also, ever look at netlib.org? happy now?
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
> 3. The General Protection Fault: One error that covers all problems. Reboot.
:) I haven't seen Linux crash for almost a whole year now, over several computers. (had a nasty one with netscape somehow causing the whole system to lock solid... couldn't even ssh in.)
The GPF is a part of the IA32 architecture, AFAIK. I've seen the Linux kernel GPF at least once since I've been using it. (~3 years or so.)
The message gets saved by klogd->syslogd->/var/log/... I can't remember, but I might have done something that provoked the crash
It is true that Windows triggers way too many GPFs, though. I guess it doesn't do enough error checking or have the error handlers to detect inconsistencies in its data structures and complain before something bad happens. (also, it lets too many bad things happen in the first place.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
> And, of course, the DMA, Doubleclick,
DMA is the thing I'm worried most about. The DMCA is nothing. Think of how bad it will be when corporations have Direct Memory Access to your brain!
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
> expert clarification welcome :)
:-)
Is Jon Postel good enough?
see http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc793.html. figure 6 is a TCP state diagram, which shows that if you receive a FIN, you send an ACK, close your half of the connection, send a FIN, and wait for an ACK of your FIN. In any decent TCP stack, the ACK and FIN would be sent in the same packet, so yes, you send back an ACK+FIN packet. They could be sent separately. Other than that, an RFC conforming TCP stack doesn't have too much choice in the matter.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
In Mosaic (Netscape's a newcomer ;) unseen links were blue and seen links red. But you could change them, if you wanted.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Jargon File implies that it's been around long before the Mac. Amdahl appears to have coined the word in the early 1970's when he left IBM and became a target of IBM FUD.
;)
But yeah, it's more closely associated with MS now than IBM. Just imagine one day though when MS reforms (more or less) as IBM did (more or less) and we're all bitching about someone else
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
There was a thing called the Apple ][ out several years earlier, it was cheaper and extremely popular. There were more of these in use than CP/M machines. There was also the TRS-80, but I think that did run CP/M, and a whole slew of other companies making "CP/M clones".
CP/M machines had the advantage that the OS was licensable by anyone and open source (!). Bill Gates actually wrote something: he wrote GW Basic, which ran under CP/M. At the time it was considered very important that a personal computer run Basic, and (believe it or not) it was pretty universally believed that Bill Gates' version was the best. So IBM decided that their new 16-bit machine should run a new 16-bit version of CP/M, and that then it could easily run Bill Gates' Basic.
Digital Research (the makers of CP/M) dragged their feet on releasing their new version (called, I think, CPM86). IBM got frustrated, and asked MicroSoft if there was anything they could do. MicroSoft then purchased the CPM-alike system they were using (QDos), modified the copyright to say "PC-DOS" and sold it to IBM. IBM then released the PC and even promised that the "real operating system" (CPM86) would be available soon. That of course never happened.
MS/PC DOS was explicitly designed to be compatable with CP/M and thus did not suck any more or less.
One of the chepest Unix solutions at that time was a MicroSoft product! Called XENIX, Radio Shack put this on their "professional TRS-80" which uses a 68000 chip. MicroSoft intended to merge XENIX and MSDOS, this is where most of the Unix'sms of MSDOS 2.0 came from.
In other words, you say that they have innovated but are somehow not innovative? If it's not innovations that make someone innovative then what is it?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
AFAIK, MSN sits on TCP/IP and Internet Explorer. Using IE for presentation may be "secret sauce" design, but the network layer is the same published APIs everyone else uses. And even if MSN uses its own protocols, who cares? Bandwidth is still the limiting factor for consumer public network access, so it's protocol vs. protocol, may the best man win.
AOL chose their own proprietary network code that sinks its hooks way too deep into 9x's net architecture. AOL decided to implement their system using APIs and infrastructure known to be incompatible between the 9x and NT implementations of Win32. Never mind undoc'd APIs. AOL can't get the doc'd ones right.
Besides, that layer of AOL-specific net BS is what caused so many users to lose their existing ISP settings when they installed AOL 5. So while AOL can try to justify their actions as "fighting back" against Microsoft, consumers still end up getting screwed. MS.Wrong + AOL.Wrong != Right
Note: Just to set the record straight, I think MSN and AOL both suck. AOL just sucks more.
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
Personally, I think the "Booth Babe" has one purpose:
To get you in their booth.
That's it. Once there, of course, the weasels can run out and try and sell you on their products.
Without, usually, understanding anything at all about the product except what they've been told to say. But enough about them...
Moof!
I hate these lousy crapservers that can't handle any load at all.. ;-p
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Yeah, ok, but I'd rather talk to a troll than an uninformed non troll. A patch-y webserver is just that, Rob McCool's HTTPD (from NCSA), with a bunch of updates and patches.. Whicked innovation.. Microsoft buys other peoples programs, the Apache group snagged HTTPd's source.. So if Apache is innovation, how is what Microsoft does not?
SB.
Have you ever come into contact with embedded software? Then you will have heard of Windriver's vxWorks operating system. Perhaps you've even heard of the vxWorks development environment, Tornado? Then you will be fully aware that it uses gcc to compile for most targets (including x86).
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
After mentioning how cute the boothies were, I was shocked to see that the two links are only to the tired propaganda of the sleeping Seattle giant.
Doesn't anyone have a digital snapshot of the people handing this brochure out?
URL: http://xanga.com/lvirden > Quote: Saving the world before bedtime. Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, n
Second to last question on the Slashdot FAQ.
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I love having hot women around, regardless of the function.
And if they're hawking technology, woo - watch out!
Am I the only one that watched C-Net for Sophie Formica?
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Microsoft really has gone off the deep end! They've actually created a [Freedom to Innovate] website -- they're actually trying to create a grassroots movement to support their monopoly!
Their [FAQ] deals with a whopping six questions, including "Why is it important that I join the Freedom to Innovate Network?" (because prosecuting Microsoft for monopoly practices "could severely impact ... the technology industry "!?!).
There are links to [Bill G TV] (arrrgh!) and silly-assed statements like "Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is the most admired man among information technology executives."
And then there are the pull-quotes: "I have Microsoft products because they are the BEST" (at what? abusing their monopoly powers?) and "Microsoft has been one of the innovators to realize the American Dream."
The only thing one can find to agree with on the site is in the homepage comment that appeared when I viewed it: "I fully intend to e-mail my representatives, and I hope they realize the important impact that Microsoft has had on the computing industry alone, and ALL the other industries as well."
I gotta agree: every American who has a clue should be writing their representative and expressing their support for the punishment of Microsoft for abusing their monopoly powers.
(footnote: why the heck has Slashdot buggered with the link colours? It's damnably difficult to tell what words are links without using []s to mark them out. Unviewed links should be bright blue: visited links should be red. It's the freaking de facto standard, and changing it is just a PITA for everyone.)
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
http://www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnov ate/
However, it does make sense if you insert one word in the URI:
http://www.microsoft.com/ourfreedomtoinnovate/
Just like Torquemada would have said, "you're free to believe what you like, as long as you like XXX" (XXX being Romanism since the Dark Ages, and Microsoft today).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Try the Perforce configuration management system.
I have no personal experience, but have been told it's quite good. For example, all database operations are atomic - compare this with Microsoft's KB recommendation that you "never let SourceSafe run out of disk space" because it will corrupt the database.
Tim
You should have collected as many leaflets as you could (or stolen a box of them) and stuck 'em in a mailbox. After all, the "postage will be paid by addressee"
There was a /. article about a year back where a project was made to see what M$ had really innovated. Not feeling up to drudging through the archives to find it. Anyway, the last time I looked at that page I think they pretty much summed it up with this: Bob. Everything else was copied or aquired.
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
Of course opinion enters it. To say otherwise would be to say that Judge Jackson is infallible, which he clearly isn't. I disagree with both his premises (about how antitrust should be applied) and some of his specific conclusions (such as his definition of what a monopoly is) These are sufficiently complicated issues that it's ridiculous to say that once Jackson weighs in on the issue no dissent from that opinion is possible.
After all, it's a "matter of public record" that OJ was not guilty. Do you believe that too?
I find the arrogance of the anti-Microsoft bigots on this forum appalling. Are you seriously saying that no reasonable person could disagree with you? That's absurd. Antitrust law is a complex enough and controversial enough law that there is room for reasonable disagreement on both sides. If you don't agree with me, fine. Let's hear your arguments. But attacking my motives or my integrity does nothing to further the discussion.
I was not aware they didn't invent IE, but I don't see that it matters. IE 1 was a really shitty product. The impressive innovations I've seen have been the last couple versions, since they caught up to and surpassed Netscape in features and performance. You don't have to invent something from the ground up for it to count as an innovation. Improving a product in small ways is innovating as well.
It's Judge Jackson's opinion. I don't share it.
In brief, it's illegal to use one monopoly to acquire another, different monopoly. What part of that is hard to understand?
You want a list?
The definition of "monopoly" is extremely unclear. The precised definition depends on how you define the relevant market, which in practice is a largely arbitrary decision.
IE is far from a monopoly. Which monopoly did MS get?
The above is (again) the current interpretation of the law. Again, the interpretation changes with time. For example, I don't remember Standard Oil ever using one monopoly to gain another.
The law is spottily enforced. After all, Apple has a monopoly on Macintosh computers, and they are now using that monopoly to increase market share for ClarisWorks and Final Cut. Should the DoJ step in there?
It is not at all clear what constitutes "using" a monopoly. After all, there are clear technical advantages to integrating an app with an OS. How do you tell which integrations are "good" and which are "bad?"
You might have answers to all of the above questions, but the fact is that the answers change with each prosecutor, and are therefore it is impossible to know for sure which actions will be declared illegal. Most of the things Microsoft is not faulted for would not have been thought illegal by many antitrust lawyers in the 1980's.
That's pretty hard to do when their own emails show that they did it for competitive advantage.
Of course they did it for "competitive advantage." Everything every company does is for competitive advantage. That's what's perverse about antitrust law-- things that are perfectly legal and even encouraged for a small company are discouraged for a big one. And it's impossible to be sure which "competitive advantages" will be declared illegal by a future judge.
As for the precedents you cite, could you please name them and explain how they bear on current law? My reading of antitrust is quite different. Although there are certainly common threads, new legalistic theories are frequently used to change the rules to fit the current target.
You'll notice that the arguments in this trial were not about whether Microsoft did the things they are alleged to have done. They are about what their intentions are, and about whether the law makes those things illegal. I think that's clear evidence that there's a bad law. You rarely have a murder trial where the two sides disagree on what the definition of murder is. Yet this is typically what antitrust laws are about-- the argument is over the meaning of the law, rather than the actions of the defendent.
The fact that the meaning of the law is the major issue in the case tells me that it's a bad law. As I said, laws should be simple and objective. There's almost never any doubt about whether a particular act is murder or not. The same should be true of all laws-- they should specify as specifically as possible which acts are and are not illegal. Antitrust law doesn't do this, and so is bad law.
How do you figure? If they can make a competing product at a lower price, which shouldn't they? Isn't that what competition all about? You can look at it as an "unfair advantage," but nowhere is it written that competition has to be fair in the sense that a baseball game is fair.
The purpose of a market is to produce the best products at the lowest price. If MS is able to produce products for less than anyone else, I see that as a boon to consumers. I think it's ridiculous that people are *complaining* that IE is "too cheap." If you want Netscape, go ahead and use it.
It would be ridiculous to guaruntee that every business will make a profit. When you go into business, one of the risks you take is that a bigger company will come along and outcompete you in the marketplace. It sucks for you, but it's a boon to consumers. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Well, buying a product and integrating it into their other products is a sort of innovation in itself, since it requires a good eye to what will be successful. Same is true of their marketing and distribution methods.
Not only that, but they *have* produced some products in-house. IE is the best example. I don't know about the Windows side, but the Mac version of IE 5 kicks ass. I generally don't like Microsoft's products, but this is one product that I think is far superior to the alternatives.
I think people here have a too-narrow notion of innovation. No, Microsoft hasn't produced anything on the order of the modern GUI or OO programming. But it has performed thousands of relentless innovations that have made their products gradually better. It is precisely these small innovations that are threatened by the government. If Microsoft has to justify every feature and change to the government, they likely will be extremely timid about making changes.
Isn't this, then a network of people commited to helping Microsoft remain a monopolistic bully?
No, it's a network of people who don't believe Microsoft is a "monopolistic bully," and that even if it is, government interference in the marketplace is a far greater threat than Microsoft ever was. The Federal government is the biggest and most dangerous "monopolistic bully" the world has ever known. Compared to all the evil things the Federal government has done, Bill Gates looks like a saint. The FIN is dedicated to ensuring that the nation's monopolistic bully--the federal government-- doesn't throw its weight around whenever consumers choose a product that they think is inferior.
As you can probably guess, I'm one of those people, although I'm not actually a FIN member. I also care a great deal about the rule of law, and I believe antitrust law makes a mockery of the idea that laws should be simple, objective, and apply equally to all. Antitrust law is vague, overreaching, and its meaning changes every time we get a new president. That's not the way the law is supposed to work. If an antitrust law is necessary (and I don't think it is) it needs to be written in a way that can be enforced clearly and unambiguously, and it needs to specify exactly which actions are crimes and which are not.
Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for Microsoft in this case. They are asked to prove that they have not been "anticompetitive," which is never clearly defined. It is asked to justify the choice to make IE a part of Windows, based on fuzzy legalistic claptrap.
In short, antitrust law gives the Federal government the unlimited power to harrass successful companies. There aren't enough lawyers in the country to prosecute every company that is arguably in violation of antitrust law-- every big company tries to keep its rivals from gaining market share. So instead, the government just goes after the ones who are high-profile and will generate good PR.
purchasing that improvement doesn't count.
Why not? Finding promising innovations and using its distribution and marketing machine to get them to consumers is just as important as coming up with them oneself. The consumer doesn't care if Front page or AOE were invented in-house or bought from elsewhere. Even if Microsoft has bought every innovation they've ever made, who cares? They still are providing customers with products they willingly buy.
And it's not like Microsof is the only company doing the buying. There are dozens of companies with distribution and marketing machines that could do the exact same thing Microsoft is doing. indeed, this is one of the things that Cisco does really well-- it buys up a company and is able to integrate it's operations with its own very efficiently, allowing both the integration of new technologies and the advantages of economies of scale.
Startups are fully compensated for their companies. Indeed, there are many startups whose express purpose is to get bought out. It's a good way to make money.
So let's say Microsoft has bought out all of its innovations from others. Who has that harmed? The startups are happy, the consumers get products they might not have found otherwise, and Microsoft gets more money.
I don't see the problem
-Joe
Fin means "end" in Spanish.
Is this name prophetic ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Think about it for a moment: the use of attractive women to catch your attention is more than natural. From a marketing POV is just as effective as (or even more than) the use of flashy displays, light effects etc that people also use at trade shows. It caters to a very natural human impulse, which is the attraction to beauty, especially of the opposite sex. What's wrong with that? It's just a way to catch attention.
Now, it would be really a sad thing if you bought their stuff just because of the booth babes. But I don't think even the most sex-starved, hormone-laden teenage geek would waste his meager pennies on a Super Bogotifier 2000 just because of a pair of pretty legs.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
IMO, FIN is a sad joke, but...
There is one reason why this question maight have needed to be mentioned explicitly:
If an organization wants any benefit from M$ by being a 'member' of the FIN then they might be obligated to agree with FIN dogma at every turn, or they would not be eligible for some perks of membership. Sort of like a legal contract or political party membership.
By saying that you do not have to hang on the FIN's every word, M$ is saying that you only agree when you really agree - which is obvious, and makes FIN membership pointless; except as a petition body-count M$ can use in petitioning the Fed.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
most average joe users dont give a damn what os they use most average joe users dont even realize that theyre using a microsoft product when they load windows
That's true, most average joe users also are shocked when they ask me questions about programs crashing, Blue Screens on their box or how often they should reboot and learn that my Linux and Solaris boxes often run many programs at once and do so for months at a time.
Most people that seem to be so against the trial seem to have never used anything but windows, and don't realize what a POS windows is. There's no way MS could've gained their market share without illegal tatics with the crap they call an OS. If there were real competition out there, they would've lost on technical merit ages ago.
"Average Joe user" has become so accustomed to regular reboots and crashes that they think it's normal. People don't seem to realize that crashes should be the exception, not the rule.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
I couldn't have put it better myself. Well, except for the nuking them from orbit part - standard business antitrust penalties will be fine with me.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I couldn't agree more - it's easy to just dismiss another viewpoint (which unfortunately happens a lot on this forum) but if you really listen to what people are trying to get across, you can learn a lot. Or at least I have.
If you don't mind, I may use this conversation as an example when people say that only those that follow the /. party line can get moderated up. I notice that you have relevant comments from personal experience and you backed them up with facts, and as a result were moderated up. That's exactly the way things are supposed to work, IMHO. If only that were always the case....
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I emailed my representatives through a different "Freedom to Innovate" page after it was mentioned on /. a few months ago. I did the same thing - I described the impact that MS has had on the industry, and encouraged my reps to back the DOJ 100%. I just wish the average consumer was as aware of the negative impact as they are of the positive impact that Microsoft has had.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
You forget the late 70's creations of the Apple II and the Commodore Pet. Both were relativvely inexpensive.
And comparing DOS to a 10k UNIX workstation? That is a bit of a stretch.
Q.
Cool web site! A testimonial taken therefrom...
Um, guys, are you sure that's a quote in favor of Microsoft?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Just tape their postage-paid card to a brick. Simple, doesn't inflate their numbers overly, plus their postage bill goes up a BUNCH.
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At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Are you seriously saying that no reasonable person could disagree with you?
When the case is as open and shut as this one is, then YES.
Bundling by a monopolist of one monopoly product with another product in a second separate market is CLEARLY illegal. Microsoft should have known that the DoJ considered them a monopoly because they signed a consent decree (which can not waive and does not provide a defence against violations of antitrust law). Microsoft should have known that the bundle was illegal.
IBM used to have an office in the legal department which measured compliance with Anritrust law. My own (insurance) company has an office in the legal department to measure compliance with applicable state (insurance) laws. Miscrosoft does not have an office in their legal department to measure compliance with Antitrust law even though they signed a consent decree with the Justice Departnment. Any ignorance of clear antitrust law on their part is no excuse. There's probably a shareholder suit in there somewhere.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Ok, granted that *completely* original is tough to do nowadays. But I would still like to see a list of microsoft *innovations*, ie: something that they came up with to add into an existing technology that improved it significantly and purchasing that improvement doesn't count.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
Linus was most specifically NOT imitating Tannenbaum. Minix was a microkernel architecture. Linux is a monolithic kernel. Linus and Tannenbaum were involved in a considerable debate over the relative merits of the two different approaches.
Every OS builds upon it's forebears, but claiming that Linus's monolithic kernel is an "imitation" of Tannenbaum's microkernel is a laughable misunderstanding of the situation. Linux did appropriate some of minix's code. Linux has also taken code from BSD and vice versa. Why not just claim that Linus, Tannenbaum, and every other *nix
developer is just imitating Thompson and Ritchie?
Linux has, in many senses, been an innovation. Touting it's roots in minix as proof of imitation is the mark of a misinformed lout.
GUI is an easy target and always has been. Almost every commercial GUI has been an imitation, direct or indirect, of the work done at Xerox PARC. Pick something else to harp on about. GUI design is always imitation.
How about Linux's kernel HTTP server (experimental and probably not a sensible thing for the average web host, but nonetheless very innovative). ip-masquerading is an innnovative and cheap solution, which saved a lot of people from having to buy expensive gateway/firewall systems. Is it not innovative?
Finally, I am certain that when Voltaire stated, "I do not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" he did not foresee it would be paraphrased by idiots to support their inactivity and lack of opposition to the misdeeds of crooked businessmen. Let me clarify what your final statement says: "I think Microsoft are liars, thieves and scoundrels, but I will defend their right to lie, cheat and steal until the day I die."
Certainly not what Voltaire meant.
You took a pertinent quote about freedom of speech, from a great philospoher and humanitarian, and rephrased it to defend the rights of immoral men to be immoral. If you aren't an idiot and a lout, what could you possibly be, I wonder? It certainly isn't the action of an intelligent person to say something so palpably ridiculous.
And MS did break the law. Sherman antitrust act, remember? So what they did was also illegal. It comes under the heading of anti-competitive activities. Since the entire US economy is based on the idea that competition will level out inequalities and get the best deal for everyone, it is crucial that the government take action when a company tries to reduce competition (ie. through creating a monopoly or attempting to sign market splitting agreements with competitors like Netscape).
Or are you going to tell me that a law that protects consumers from greedy businessmen is unjust?
Anyhow, innovative or not, Linux users never started a "Freedom to Innovate Network" without actually doing much innovation. We simply aren't hypocritical enough for that.
> Scientology has John Travolta.
Scientology has Battlefield Earth, chock full of special effects, and Windows has courtroom videos, chock full of "special effects".
This is eerie. I think you're on to something.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In what way? I don't get what you're saying at all.
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
In all honesty, I'm more interested in scans of the bootie chicks, propaganda I get enough of as is.
Who am I? Subscribe and find out
...blah blah blah. Where are the pics of the booth babes?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
If you look really carefully, you can see the Start bar at the bottom of the screen. The reason it looks like a Macintosh window is the title bar, but that's not a close button in the upperleft corner. It's the icon from netscape/IE. It definitely is a windows machine it was captured from.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Yes, Nightwatch was exactly what I meant.
It's been too long since the show ended...
Postage paid on the return card, my dear boy. So it will cost them something, even if they never send out more snail mail pamphlets. And they can spam my hotmail email all they want.
And give congressmen some credit, they know all about the "grassroots" numbers games. Who do you think invented it?
Swell their ranks. It'll cost 'em something to send out snail mails. Check the box that sasy you're willing to attend "town hall meetings" and then show up and help support the "freedom to innovate" in your own little ways.
It doesn't matter how many people they sign up, it won't impress anyone, but maybe we can dilute their resources a bit.
"earthly levels"...
are you talking about price?
i think my C64 cost less than 1/2 of the PC of the day.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
>Is there such a culture surrounding windows?
Yes. Problem is, the club is expensive to join, and requires tests and classes and so forth. Also, M$ decides who can be a member, and can change the rules at their whim.
Luckily, the tests are not difficult. Shame about the money thing, though.
Oh, in case you hadn't figured it out, they are known as the "Clan of the MCSE". I think there is another group the "Clan of the MCSE w/IIS" which is kinda like a Taco Bell burrito with extra beans, but the former causes more intestinal upset.
Seriously though, check any Linux newsgroup (or M$ one for that matter) www.ntfaq.com (good info, but they tend to goosestep to the M$ drumbeat a bit much) or the talk-back section of any ZD-Net article that mentions M$ and Linux. Plenty of zealots on their side of the camp.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If you're talking about "ClearType", that's based on an old Apple patent (dating back to the Apple II) for anti-aliasing by splitting pixels. Hardly innovation. If they have gotten a patent for it, then it's a patent that should never have been granted.
Naked.
Microsoft seems to be doing the "Freedom to Innovate" decoy over and over again. If I remember from the transcripts of Judge Jackson, the rulings was due to breaking the law. For some unknown reason Microsoft lawyers seem unable to explain this to Bill Gates and his subordinates. If the transcript was easy enough to read and understand by most laypersons, one would wonder why it's do difficult for Microsofties. Could it be due to illiteracy in the company?
> The fact that you took the time to reply to that post humors me greatly.
Call it boredom, call it temporary insanity, call it just feeding the trolls. Now what I don't get is why you felt it necessary to post such a lengthy reply to obvious troll bait. Not in the true nature of a troll if you ask me. A troll would just post a short, quick response so as to leave more time for trolling elsewhere. You took the time to write up and justify your logic... I'm sorry, sir, but you are no troll. You're making a good effort, but deep down inside, you're a normal human being. Sorry to break it to you.
Did anyone take a close look at the stupid "computer flag" logo??? They freakin copyrighted it!!!! hahahahahahh
-brain
And what helped Microsoft get outed for this chapter.....Oracle hiring shady private investigators. It was good to see that story of the cover of USAToday, if only to bring the realization that "grassroots efforts" to support stock prices are, shall we say, unethical. And the "grassroots efforts" to expose the other GRE's are about the same.
Just makes you wanna chuck it all and code for free, eh? Or code to free, as the case may be.
--
+&x
Hmmm... I see the latest Netcraft survey shows Apache running on over 60% of all the web servers, and if you are running it on Linux you compile it with *gasp* gcc.
If gcc was a toy, I doubt you could compile one of the top web server programs with it, or any of the other major commercial programs that are built to be compiled with it.
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
"It's great to receive the latest updates right in our mailboxes." - A. DeBlois
Either this quote is completely fictional, or they've quoted someone who is so completely out of touch to think that it is 'great' to 'receive the latest updates RIGHT IN OUR MAILBOXES!!!' Incredible technology! I love all the email from Microsoft about their innovation!
A planted quote, or a person who's totally bonkers, either way, its funny.
Reboot Administrator
Is this the Microsoft embraced-and-extended version of Root Administrator?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
He's saying that "stupid" is inherrent in the meaning of "American People" and is therefore redundant. Personally, I feel that the American People (We the People and all that jazz) were quite intelligent, but we have too many of those American people here screwing things up.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Just in case you turn out to have been delirious while writing that post, to keep you from having to wake up thinking "I was completely out of my mind! Why didn't anyone stop and do something about it? Didn't anyone see me having a massive brain aneurism and think to call the paramedics?", I will take this opportunity to tell you: "I noticed. I took the time to do something about it. I decided to tell you you're wrong." :-)
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Actually, it's been done for a while. The only difference is that modern companies are so lowsy at it that they get caught. Well, the internet and the easier spread of information may have something to do with it.
in my experience, this guy has the proto-typical consultant mindset.
i was thinking 'consultant' halfway through his first post,... i'm glad to see i was right.
here's a clue: having been in the computer business, running your own company, et cetera, does not a guru make. this post shows just how ignorant you really are, which, of course, is necessary in order to be a M$ supporter.
there are a few very fine posts trying to clue you in, please read them.
in the mean time, start practising: "SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL!" and for later, "I VAS ONLY VOLLOWINK ORDERZ!!!!"
XOXO,
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
I've seen the Linux kernel GPF at least once since I've been using it.
I've heard rumors before, but this is the first time I've seen confirmation of the release of MS Linux 2001!
:-)
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
what new programming language? C#? the java clone? vC++ a visual way of developing C++? Visual BASIC? a visual extension to BASIC, a twenty year old language that gates wrote back in the day?
BULLSHIT!
Grass roots? Hardly seems like an all out attempt.
Rader
Wait, cancel the netscape comment. Its IE 4.5 justified by the little tabs on the left hand corner, which I think people only find in the mac version of it, i dont know, but I always get rid of them on macs.
-Pfhor
bwahah, yes it is, it is a macintosh screen. It looks like an old Apple IIgs modified, and the screen capture is definatly a mac screen. And it looks like the browser is netscape. Be even funnier if it was omniweb and osX. The computer looks like a modified IIgs. Is meant to say this is all we will be stuck with if microsoft isn't free to inovate. Than down with the king.
-Pfhor
And yes, the irony is killing me
Here is my letter. I used the FIN to send MY opinion of the whole mess all right...
Dear Senator:
I want you to know that I support the judge's decision to penalize Microsoft for its predatory and oppressive actions to grow and maintain its software monopoly.
Microsoft claims that it wishes to keep its freedom to innovate, yet in practice it is guilty of squashing this very freedom. Many innovative ideas and software products have died at Microsoft's hand. Most small software companies are afraid that Microsoft might "notice" them and either duplicate their ideas, or buy them out. This isn't just fear of competition; this is fear of unstoppable industrial conquest. Many technologies bought by Microsoft have just been scrapped to kill them off.
Netscape is a prime example of Microsoft's predatory practices. Navigator was the top browser technology, until Microsoft decided to try to take over the industry. Using their inside knowledge of the Windows OS, Microsoft made a superior browser that is intimately tied to the Windows operating system. I should know -- I'm a programmer who has to use this technology. Netscape is now a royal pain to develop for, since the company doesn't have the power (fueled by income) any more to develop and maintain it properly.
Microsoft has a finger in almost every software pie. What other company can do this and survive without the revenue from the only practical OS out there and the intimate knowledge of that OS's inner workings? They have a definite, unfair advantage, and they are using it. Sure, there are other OS's out there, but which do you run your business with? Which is installed on your home computer? Does your office use MS Office?
Sure, Microsoft has done some great things. Getting Windows to actually work on the inferior PC hardware is nearly a miracle. The technology is outstanding (if not solid). But a monopoly has the resources and power to do this. They can afford to create a browser that is well integrated into the OS and give it away for free. They can afford to get into the risky set-top-box business, because everybody who buys one will be paying a royalty for the only OS that will be installed on it. The royalties from all PC sales (which come with Windows preinstalled) are more than enough to support the R&D.
All of this power concentrated in one place is dangerous. I'd gladly see this amount of power go to see some real competition spring up. We'll see some real innovation then, as smaller companies see that they really have a chance to do something great, and Microsoft is forced to make its products better to compete.
Microsoft's products have become ungainly and buggy. A monopoly can allow this to happen, because what is anybody going to do about it except accept it? If there were some real competition out there, Microsoft would be forced to work more on the quality of their software. The base OS shouldn't need a whopping 128 MB of memory. An e-mail application shouldn't need 10 MB more. The computer shouldn't have to be restarted when the internet browser crashes. The internet browser shouldn't crash so much, in the first place. The computer should be fast, not bogged down with unnecessary hard drive access.
I've seen the public-opinion polls. Most people don't want to see the breakup. There are many reasons for this. First, Microsoft's public-relations engine is very big and very good. Does the government have a PR engine? How about the small companies that have been hurt? Where's their story?
Second, most people are used to Microsoft's products. They don't want to deal with competing products any more. This is scary. If a bird is raised in a cage, it does not want to come out. The consumer has become used to living within the cage built by Microsoft. They are afraid that the walls are going to be taken away, and they will have get used to dealing with other corporations. Such is the price of freedom.
If nothing is done about this, Microsoft is only going to become bigger and more formidable. Their attitude at the beginning of this trial was almost, "So what? We're big enough to take you, the government, on!" Innovation will decline along with quality as competition disappears. Corporate fear will increase.
Innovation is not fueled by industrial predation and technological warfare -- it is best served through friendly competition, partnerships and cooperation, and the sharing of information. Unfortunately, Microsoft chose the former behavior, and-like any bully-now needs to be dealt with. Set the industry free from this tyrant--set it free to innovate!
Sincerely,
[Me]
[Okay, I got a little carried away with that last sentence, but you get the drift]
Yes! And the Supreme Court will simply disregard all the evidence presented to them and say "Well, if MS went to the trouble of collecting pledges of support from people we have no reason to believe have thought at all about the legal issues in this case, I suppose we'd better overturn Jackson's decision."
I don't think so.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
What better way to deal with this than flood the organization with linux advocates?????
Imagine if the whole slashdot community signed up for this--and then actually did what they say, sending lots of stuff to local and national political leaders. That would make MS look pretty good, eh? It would be so amusing to have this whole thing backfire...instead of docile winsheep, they'd get a bunch of raving unix loonies fighting them at every step!!!!
Let's all register and let our voices be heard!
The computer pictured on the back of the flyer is a Macintosh. Now, that is truly ironic.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I wouldn't be at all surprised if whoever thought of the acronym (for TPC that is, not M$) also had in mind the fact that 'fin' is used at the end of a lot of arthouse and French films. it is pretty much synomous with 'The End'.
EZ
-'Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on..'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
"From the Fin"?
Just a thought here...Microsoft puts up this Freedom to Innovate outfit...purportedly a pure grass roots effort, and then calls it the FIN!
Let's see...the most famous fins in the ocean belong to sharks (remember Jaws?) and killer whales, both of which gain ground by mangling and devouring smaller entities...
Any relation, do you suppose?
> Microsoft, to use one example, released MS Office to destroy Lotus Bad example. Lotus did not want to help the MS Windows sales, so they refused to make a windows version of 1-2-3 for the longest time. Unfortunately for Lotus, people bought Windows anyway, and they started looking for Windows-based spreadsheets. When Lotus finally realised their mistake and got around to making a Windows version, it was way to late.
--
- Trond Michelsen, mike@crusaders.no
>They don't remember having to pay $100 per seat for a TCP/IP stack, or $200 per seat for database
>driver licenses. Microsoft made all that stuff go away.
And I remember the days when the cheapest way to run Unix was to use Xenix, and that cost $3000 for
a single user system.
Now we had Linux, GNU and *BSD, and now Unix is affordable. That had nothing to do with MS.
How about VMS? There was no way anyone could ever afford a VAX and run VMS. DEC (which is was still
DEC and not Compaq) made VMS free for home use.
MS didn't make everything cheaper and better. What happened is that computer hardware got less
expensive, making it more available to developers and then all of the software market had to react or die.
MS TCP/IP became free because there were other companies producing the same thing for less.
Today, a teenager in their bedroom could write atcp/ip stack with a $500 computer.
Back in the early '80s, how many kids could have afforded a $10,000 PC in their bedroom?
If MS, and DEC, etc didn't lower their prices, then they would have died. Oh, hang on, DEC didn't
lower their prices until too late, and they did die.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
Forgive me--I was only thinking of tools used by commercial developers. Yes, gcc is popular among university students--but real-world developers tend to get hired to real with more complex issues. When you're building distributed apps that scale to thousands of users and beyond you need more than just a compiler. How would you write a component (such as a COM or CORBA component) with gcc? And how would you manage a pool of those components? And how would you distribute those components across a variety of servers, or even across multiple domains?
Seems reasonable. But how does splitting Microsoft prevent them from providing these tools?
First good arguement I've seen for one of those laws... :)
Intolerant people should be shot.
Which is why they were willing to license DOS instead of buying it, is it not?
Intolerant people should be shot.
So essentially, Microsoft's strategy comes down to "the first hit's always free"? (Well, real cheap, cause we know you'll buy other stuff too)
Intolerant people should be shot.
I think people may actually be more likely to notice such things than, say 35 years ago... Look at advertising in the mid-60's. The corporations techniques were less sophisticated, because the consumers were too. People didn't automatically assume that they're being lied to and manipulated. Alot more people now want to know the source of information they're given, and weigh the statements against what said groups motives are. ("Got Milk" campaign -- bunch of businessmen who want to sell milk, maybe its really not the best thing ever... "Got Beer" campaign -- bunch of animal hugging zealots, maybe milk's not going to kill me like they say... "Microsoft's not evil" -- bunch of people with financial incentive to see MS bigger and richer, ignore totally)
Intolerant people should be shot.
As long as there's a higher level of court that a judge may aspire to be appointed to, there's the possibility of political influence.
Intolerant people should be shot.
Well, I didn't consider it a perfect analagy (hence the paranthetical statement), but I meant that the tools that MS hands out cheap was the "first hit" because they figure that these people would be interested in buying other things, like the OS ("the second hit") once they get "hooked" (used to) said tools.
Intolerant people should be shot.
The one's whose current owners maintain the best offer...
Intolerant people should be shot.
OK, does anyone actually know a real person who indexes (or did index) recipies on a computer? I don't mean tried for a week either. I mean made a serious collection, and then used them in the kitchen...
Intolerant people should be shot.
I really don't see how more propietary software is the best solution to the horrible mess you have described here. Proper standards and well written software that uses them would be preferable. MS fixed the mess by removing the market entirely, rather than by making the products with the best price\quality ratio in these markets.
Integration makes for an easier computer enviroment, but I don't see how it has made for a better one. I would rather have companies that offer packages with components that they know will work well together, and the ability to change component x if I so desire, confident that a component that doesn't properly meet the standards will not survive long. (Embrace & Extend wouldn't work in a properly competitive environment with open standards.)
Intolerant people should be shot.
Q: Which do you prefer grass or astroturf?
A: I don't know, I've never smoked astroturf.
Hey memory boy, what about the Apple 2?
The bit about the US govermnent asking the German government to lighten up on the Co$ probably has more to do with direct Co$ influence (legal or otherwise :) on US politicians than indirect influence of MSFT acting on Co$' behalf.
Not to say that Co$ aren't a right bunch of bastards, but the evidence (IMHO) for Co$ influence at MSFT doesn't yet stack up. MSFT may well be an evil monopoly bent on world domination, but they're not a stupid evil monopoly bent on world domination... *rimshot*
The flip side of that rimshot is that it implies Gates and Ballmer, despite showing the classic psychological signs of "dinosaurs looking at an asteroid", may well be smart enough to still attain world domination.
Maybe I should have s/rimshot/shudder/g ?
The bit about the US govermnent asking the German government to lighten up on the Co$ probably has more to do with direct Co$ influence (legal or otherwise :) on US politicians than indirect influence of MSFT acting on Co$' behalf.
Not to say that Co$ aren't a right bunch of bastards, but the evidence (IMHO) for Co$ influence at MSFT doesn't yet stack up. MSFT may well be an evil monopoly bent on world domination, but they're not a stupid evil monopoly bent on world domination... *rimshot*
The flip side of that rimshot is that it implies Gates and Ballmer, despite showing the classic psychological signs of "dinosaurs looking at an asteroid", may well be smart enough to still attain world domination.
Maybe I should have s/rimshot/shudder/g ?
Microsoft cannot pressure high-level judges through "grass roots" efforts.
That kind of tactic helped them lose even more thoroughly in Jackson's court.
The U.S. court system was carefully constructed to be resistant to public opinion.
Judges don't like being called stupid, wrongheaded, or biased, whether it's true or not.
So when a Judge holds your fate in their hands, it's stupid badmouth them.
Microsoft seems not to understand how a court of law operates.
We could go along to their town hall meetings and ask awkward questions about why M$ is preventing us from innovating around their OS, or why their `innovations' always end up harming consumer choice...
We could even `embrace and extend' their `grassroots' organisation by setting up a clique within it, with tighter entrance requirements and hugely-attractive side-events!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Many industry historians see Bill Gates's article "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" as the beginning of the software industry selling software as a commodity rather than developing cooperatively. It's taken RMS 20 years to try to get people to start thinking that way again, and we're still not at the level we were in the late 70's. If Microsoft brought one new idea to the industry, it's proprietary software.
Everyone say thank you to Bill.
grep -ri 'should work'
"Why"
Monopolies, computers, software
Why God, Why?
Computers, court cases, Microsoft
Why God, Why?
What have I done to deserve this black horror?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?
Websites, monopolies, IT companies
Why God, Why?
Microsoft, IT companies, software
Why God, Why?
What have I done to deserve this black disaster that is my life?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?
What have I done to deserve this black misery?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
(Make your own at http://www.brunching.com/toys/t oy-alanislyrics.html - I did it, jabber!)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
maybe someone should tell them it's not the roots you're supposed to smoke...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Am I the only one who finds the american flag with the monitor in the place of the stars really, really scary?
I think it would qualify as flag desecration under some of those proposed laws/amendments.
I'm just waiting to see if Microsoft's lawyers demand that Slashdot take down that copyrighted material.
MC
Do you have ESP?
Your user info explains it all. I'm not a big Linux fan, but I can only agree with you on the weak SMP support. The network code is fine, I suppose it's just that there aren't drivers for every half-ass $5 NIC out there. The Intellimouse wheel technology appeared two years before Microsoft used it, from Kensington I believe. I don't know what you mean about anti-aliasing on laptops. That's done in the video driver or in hardware, MS has nothing to do with it. Anybody can create a new programming language that sucks ass. And I don't believe they "innovated" force feedback, either. Someone else did, and they included support in DirectX.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Visual SourceSafe is an excellent example of a product that is completely stagnant for lack of competition If you're developing in a purely Windows environment, you're right that it's going to be expensive to buy all the tools. But just because you develop Windows apps doesn't mean you can't use free stuff. The only Microsoft tools you really need are Windows and Visual Studio. CVS works just fine run off a UNIX server with Windows clients (I prefer it to SourceSafe because it can be accessed over TCP (ssh) by default). A free program named WinCVS makes it easy. For bug tracking, there are a few web-based UNIX systems out there, including Jitterbug. Personally, I would find it quite imprudent to pay for an expensive SourcSafe license when CVS is free and does the same job (IMHO, better).
How often does the newsletter come out?
It could tide me over with laughs between episodes of geeks in space.
If this is really a "grassroots" movement (yeah, right), what is stopping the rank and file of Slashdot readers from joining this organization and subverting it? I'm not talking about disrupting it, merely changing its direction. Like joining the Republican Party and voting for moderates/liberals. Roberts Rules of Order instead of a defaced web page or a Molotov.
How would Microsoft react to a thousand "FIN" web pages with a "Powered by Apache/Linux" graphic on them? Would they start serving injunctions in the name of "freedom"? Surely, they wouldn't just sit on their hands.
The nuclear power industry tried this back in the '70s and '80s, sending "citizens" to town meetings and public hearings. It inevitably backfired as the shills were exposed as paid operatives.
Then again, sometimes it makes me so angry I just want to whack someone with a pie.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Microsoft code, then we'll call it freedom!
I just read the FIN brochure! I used to think that all Microsoft people were big up-tight losers, but you guys actually have a sense of humor after all...
It's just ingenious, really. A "voluntary MS propaganda network"! Hilarious! You guys must have too much free time...
Actually though, the brochure could pose a problem if people don't take it right... what if someone thinks you're serious! Won't they feel dumb when they find out you were just poking fun at the stupid American populace...
Overall, though, very funny stuff.
Screw you guys.
Anyone know where I can get the email addresses of my representatives and senators? I DO want to let them know what my opinion about MS is. What about the justices? Can someone give email for them too?
that's OK you can still write your congresspeople .... and aactually having control of your own mind you can tell them what you want them to - rather than prrotting the words of Chairman Bill ....
Here's the ./ article where it was decided that Microsoft Bob(tm) was the only real innovation that came from in-house Microsoft engineers.
pretty strong statement about Microsoft's in-house innovation!
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Microsoft development tools are always substantially less expensive than anybody else's
I sincerely hope that you dont mean what you say. I mean, how can the MS tools be cheaper than, say, the GNU tools, which are available for free and get you one of the best debuggers out there (ddd), for example ?
nc
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
The following quotes have been take from the FIN leaflet.
...". Ok, so it's non-partisan. If it really was non-partisan, you'd think they wouldn't have to stress that first.
...". Interesting, is this non-partisan effort is only open to Microsoft supporters? Not according to what they list here.
;) What do you think they'd do if they received a lot of these sign ups?
The first bullet says, "The FIN is a non-partisan effort,
Given that it is non-partisan, the second bullet says, "The FIN is open to all Microsoft customers, shareholders, employees, alumni, and partners.
Hmm... ok, this is just more MS BS, but I have an idea. We could all send it in with all three options check. In the last check box we could write in "support Linux in all ways above Microsoft products". According to there own information, it is non-partisan, so we should be able to do that.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I don't think there is a "culture" exactly. A lot of us make our living working with MS products, so I guess that makes our future tied to theirs to a degree. But lots people have already made switches, from, say, Novelle to NT. So it can't be that hard to make a change to an OS that is in demand in the market place. I have no MS loyalty other than the fact that NT skills are in demand right now.
I think Microsoft's move here is more geared toward politicians. If MS can point to FIN as a semi-independent group (I can't imagine even MS could say it was independent with a straight face) with industry people behind it (like VAR's or MCSE's) they could persuade some pols to take their side.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Thats ok, i want them to die a horrible death.
Nope, but then fortran as a language is not being developed anymore (at least not that i'm aware of). Unix/Linux is most certinaly continuing development. There was not Video for Linux even just a few years ago, but today there is (at least the beginnings of it). Its kinda like classic cars; most of them are junked now, but some are still in good running condition. I bet some even have more modern engines (but then, i'm not a classic car kinda person, so i don't kow if thats done). Hopefully now you'll see my point; if not, we should be junking Windows soon, since thats getting arouind 10 years old.
I'll have my cs degree very shorty, and i use linux. Linux (and even unix for that matter) is not the same as it was 11 years ago. Just b/c somethings old doesn't mean its worthless and must be throw away. Ever stop to think there's a reason its been around for 30 some years?
Oh, you mean just like what happened in the telecom industry after AT&T was broken up? They just picked another company to blame? Tell me, who are they blaming today?
"The FIN is open to all Microsoft customers, shareholders, employees, alumni, and partners. Participation is voluntary."
Since i never bought an MS product, and i don't own stock, am employed, an an alumni of or partner of, MS i guess i can't join. Darn.
I've never seen anyone that is a MS fanatic in the way that you'll find Linux fanatics. Most of the time, MS is just all that person knows. Sometimes, they'll know MS and Unix, just in case (play all the positions type people). But there's noone that really loves Windows. It's just what they have to get the job done.
I don't know why Linux has all the finatics. I think it's a matter of attracting all the people that havn't had anything to be fanatic about, and giving them something to root for (atleast that's the case for me and several of my friends).
PR moves like this are attempts to get the common person to view MS as a big stuffed teddy bear that wants to love you and hug you and squeeze you until your eyes bug out. Er. Something like that. =)
Contrary to popular beleif around here, most people out there in the Big Room don't know diddly about computers and the computer companies. So MS just spews out something to fill the void space. The common person doesn't have anything to check it against, so they take what MS says as true, since it's all they know.
As far as these shows go, you usually end up with the higher-up buisness types, who know about as much as the common person (less, in my experience). They've heard of Microsoft, use windows daily, sure they don't love it, but it works (usually). MS comes over and says "Hey, you know who we are, and we know that we help you out. Well, we want to help you out some more..." Kinda like a drug dealer. =)
And don't forget that the people are at the shows for the "booth fluff", and MS can afford the best. =)
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." - Doug Linder
I'm not comparing DOS to a 10k UNIX workstation. I'm doing the complete opposite. Sure, a workstation was nice, but mom wouldn't use it to index her recipes, to use a famous example. By bringing the price down to earthly levels, DOS together with IBM made a computer affordable for more people, truly spawning the PC revolution.
Of course, if the Apple ][ predates the IBM PC like you said, the whole thing is moot.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Microsoft brought the computer into the hands of the people. Before Microsoft bought it, CP/M was a piece of crap. After they bought it... okay, well it still sucked, but it sucked less. And by aggressively marketing DOS and the personal computer, they took computers out of the hands of the priesthood and into the hands of the common people. For the first time, one could buy an inexpensive desktop computer and just tweak with it. No longer did one have to shell out in the 10k's for a UNIX workstation. That was the only innovation they ever made; after that, the rest was either stolen (win1.0 was a bad mac clone) or bought and marketed.
So they did one important thing early on, and I respect them for that -- and only that.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- Scan the card (both sides).
- Create a throwaway Hotmail account (or fifty).
- Run off several hundred copies of the card on card stock, using the throwaway account and whatever snail-mail address you like (vacant lots might be good).
- Mail. Each batch of cards could be worth, oh, $20-$30 in postage.
Here are the evil consequences:- If M$ weeds the list against the USPS's database, they'll have to cut the vacant lots out of their numbers.
- If M$ doesn't weed the list, they'll be sending snail-mail to addresses that bounce. This is a recurring cost. If they use address correction it's only a one-time cost, but it's a healthy fraction of a dollar per address.
But you know the Congresscritters that M$ has bought will still cite the inflated numbers. So will uncritically pro-M$ newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. A few hundred thousand in postage is pocket change to M$; if they win the court battles and get permission to expand their monopoly, it's worth $billions. I'm still not sure it's worth it; at best, it's an ant nibbling on the elephant's foot. The ant may feel it's doing a terrific job, but the elephant isn't going to notice.--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
"Two years ago I said that we would vigorously defend a principle that is critical to both consumers and the future of the high-tech industry - the right of every company to innovate and improve its products. Today we move forward to protect this principle and maintain our commitment to innovation."
I just wonder how Microsoft believes this right applies to companies they have pushed out or absorbed and diffused (like Wordstar et al). I think the hidden message here is actually "the right of every company to innovate and improve its products within the Microsoft development plan."
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
Actually you have to change the resolution in your X window server (More than likely it'll be XFree86). Most linux distributions come with some sort of utility to do it. A lot of these are currently text mode, but some GUI ones are around. If you get Mandrake 7.1, it's got a GUI based resolution changer (although you still have to restart your X server, as in back up to the login screen, select restart X windows, then log back in. Don't need to restart the whole system, but still a bit peeveie[sic]).
I believe that on the fly resolution changes are one of the "almost here" features that the GUI groups are working on at the mo'.
Hope that helps. (Oh and don't use slash dot to post technical newbie questions, hah, beat ya too it!!!!..................sorry, I'm at work and it's driving me a little nuts!)
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
So, they fuck you a little less hard, does that make it better for you to sleep at night knowing that you're helping to make one man more powerful than any goverment on earth?
lf.o
There are exceptions to this rule, and most of them came through the aegis of either the IETF or the CCITT, but, in general, open standards which come out of committees suffer from the fact that those interested commercial organisations which form most open standards committees profess interest in interoperability but privately see it as a marketing checkpoint. Their fundamental interest is single-vendor lockin, because this is what guarantees their revenue streams.
Sad but true.
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
You're right, I haven't spent much time in c.o.l.a. recently (or at all: I retired from advocacy newsgroups more than half a decade ago when c.s.a.a. got too dull), but you should know better than to confuse zealotry with trolling
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
Unsuprisingly, since it's done nothing innovative in the last decade.
Come to think of it, the open source community will still be innovating even if Microsoft gets broken into a dozen companies. And what, pray, will it be innovating? A rip-off of a thirty year old operating system? A rip-off of a twenty year old GUI? A rip-off of a ten year old bitmap editing package? A rip-off of an eight-year old component model? Or Apache?
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
it's the überlanguage before which all other languages must prostrate themselves, or
it's been around for fifty years
Answers on a postcard please.
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
It's pathetic.
Not only does it create an environment that probably makes most women in the business (there may be few, but they do exist) feel uncomfortable, it also enforces the "boys night out" feel of trade shows...
It is also a bit distracting (like most marketing, but this type is _completely irrelevant marketing -- the Alcatel babe on roller skates.... yum. I guess Alcatel really knows how to take care of their customers...)
My experiences might be a bit prejudiced (The last ones I went to were in China were this type of stuff is a bit more blunt) but it's really excessive...
willis/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Surely it is in the suffix.... They may/may not have innovated - past tense The are/are not innovative - what they are /are not doing NOW... ie: at some point in M$ past they may/may not have been innovative - Past conditional.
I hope that everybody who visits the website will take the time to mail them and "tell us your thoughts, take action and stay informed."
SURELY NOT!!!!!
msfin@microsoft.com
Flaming is not productive since MS surely uses the most effective filters available - Bill's Brains(TM)..
Anyway, when I was trying to view the page, IE froze up. I'm suspicious - does he read my mind? Well, thank heavens for Mozilla.
-miKa
>another point, are you paying less now for phone service than your parents did under ma bell?
Lucent Technologies is precisely the kind of "no-name" spin-off that I am thinking about. They had to make a name for themselves once they ceased to be Bell Labs, and they have steadily produced decent quality things that Ma Bell would never have created.
In Bill Cosby's Himself (1981), he mentions taking his wife to the hospital in his $17,000 Ferarri. How much is a new Ferarri these days? Just skimming the net turned up numbers from the mid- $40k range for a 1986 model to the mid $170k range for a new one. Yeah, take my phone bill and cut it down 90% and it is lower than my parent's phone bill of the time.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Not particularly, but when the government gets involved, they tend to shoot themselves in the foot as often as they shoot us in the foot.
Heck, I want Microsoft broken up for reasons of sheer selfishness: Most major advances in technology and science come from populations that feel like their existence is threatened. The half of Microsoft that does not have Mr. Gates at the helm will definitely feel the threat, and will very likely do something spectacular to assure their survival.
Something that a unified Microsoft would not have done, otherwise.
Something that will shake up the company that Mr. Gates ends up in control of.
I have no idea what that something will be, but I sit in eager anticipation of whatever it is. The tool that is being used to kick-start Microsoft up is their violation of the anti-trust laws in the United States. The tool that was used to kick-start IBM in the late 1980's was Microsoft. The tool that was used to kick-start NASA to reach the moon was a speach by John F. Kennedy.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
He He. Next on CNN, the DEA's new probe into drug use at Microsoft
I'll mirror if someone emails me the pics
Howdy.
OT--normally I would find that funny. Today I find that fricking hilarious because it is running on Win2k!
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Umm... that fsck'ing paperclip and Microsoft Bob.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Excellent idea! If Google can do it, so can Slashdot. And Andover/VA could use the opportunity to show more ads to thousands of Slashdotters, so it makes good business sense, too!
-- Sent from a computer.
It looks like your ISP web server has bit the bullet... I keep getting connection refused and other various messages about inavailability. Maybe it's just congestion. :-) At any rate it looks Slashdotted.
I think that FIN is more of a long term PR campaign by Microsoft. After all their fate is in the hand of the judicial branch, so lobbying politicians is pointless in that respect. There has been a lot of talk about Microsoft growing a negative image because of the trial, FIN could be an attempt to negate that a bit. Also the future past the trial could be influenced as new judges are appointed. As for there being Windows developer culture, yes there is, we don't see it because we aren't in it. But I have friends that are, and they are many, but they are a little less vocal.
Those other companies aren't the scapegoats of the industry like Microsoft is, and aren't the subject of massive government regulation. It is difficult to innovate when the government designs products for you, and tells you how you can and cannot build different products. The government isn't regulating the other companies. No doubt, within 10 years, all of the industries woes will shift to another company, which will then be the new scapegoat, and THAT company will be massively legislated also.
This is not a mirror, kids. Don't go there thinking it is.
-ted
Uh, *don't* go there. Those images aren't for kids. And it *isn't* a mirror. Really.
-ted
Actually, I support Microsoft's freedom to f*** pigs (a la South Park).. so much so, in fact, that I've put up a parody site at www.freedomtof***pigs.com :) Follow the previous link and you'll be directed there. The FAQ and copyright (copyleft.. it's all GPLd, as I did the graphics from scratch (!!!) ) pages are up, but I do need more help finishing the site. Anyone wanna provide me with inspiration? :)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Don't confuse the kernel with the GUI. M$ considers them the same but not for Linux. Linux is the kernel, all the rest are tools made by the GNU community, GUI's etc... The kernel should be the small, tight, stabil core of your OS (like it is with Linux), not the bloated, unstable piece of code M$ made. Most of the "innovations" M$ stole from others are in the GUI, not the kernel.
It is, as you have guessed an acronym - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - the main tools certain organisations (yes, including M$ but by no means limited to them) use to put folks off considering alternatives to their approach. And, just so you know, its not restricted to positions I disagree with. I'm certainly not speaking for anyone on /. but myself but I'll bitch about FUD whether its rolled out in support of my opinions or against them. M$ make a good OS for the casual desktop user, I'll happily support their products on my network but just dont ask me to put them anywhere mission-critical without a lot of protest, in my experience they aint stable or clean enough for that yet. Maybe they will become so - I hope so because that means less time fixing their problems. Also dont ask me to agree with their corporate strategy either, I dont like it and therefore by association I dislike the company that follows it.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Yet another blatant attempt to twist things around.. Wonder if all the under the counter PACs that are now going to have to own up to their funding are just going to move into the corporate area.. "We are a grassroots campaign" == "They own us so we say what they want" why the hell would we want to give M$ more freedom to pick our pockets even if they do manage to (just for once) do it in an innovative manner?
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Well, I don't know. The paperclip is just an animated version of a early 1900's era technology (the bent metal paperclip.) Arguably it is just a digitized version of an old non-microsoft technology. Also his general lack of helpfulness had already been invented by tech support lines many years before he came out.
And as for bob, he was similarly just a digitized smiley face logo who also implemented the standard tech support unhelpful/stupid type behaviors. I think both of these are just further examples of Microsoft embracing and extending other people's ideas.
-/sarcasm-
I would like to see a list of 10 computer products not based off of already existing work, PERIOD. I can think of one or two that came out of Xerox PARC (GUI, laser printer which is arguably based on already-existing printers). And also whoever invented the spreadsheet, etc. But coming up with 10 totally original products is rather challenging even when one removes the microsoft condition.
That hits it right on the spot. You have your computer geeks (an endangered species at the time) upgrading every singe version of DOS and wasting money, and you have all these newbies having fun moving around stuff on their Macintosh GUIs.
Were we seeing MS-DOS machines all the time? No. We saw Apple IIs. And were we seeing more MS-DOS machines come 1984-5? No. We were seeing the Mac. Let's face it, Microsoft is the big BUY-IT-ALL-NOW conglomerate.
--
Hmm,
fin is end in French.
Microsoft End
I like that.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
The tired old Democrat-Republican duopoly Party always has a government solution for every problem. Microsoft used that "government solution" against IBM in the early '80s and what goes around comes around. Scott McNealy had better watch his nether parts.
If Microsoft wants to adopt a party that will defend his "freedom to innovate" it had better adopt the Libertarian Party.
I'm personally against the use of Microsoft products because they stink. They crash, they have virulently obscure error messages, and they have interfaces designed by Rube Goldberg. I'm in favor of using my own market choice to punish Microsoft for their bad products.
But I believe the current Jihad against Microsoft being forced down the throats of the American people by such blowhards as Joel Klein of the inJustice Defartment is as great a tragedy as was that same Defartment's attack on the church in Waco.
A simple Executive order from our Philanderer in Chief that forbade any new purchases of Microsoft software by government operatives would have far more effect than the current inJustice Jihad. {but I'm not saying that the effect would necessarily be good}
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
But the way the inJustice Defartment is treating this antitrust case is a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty on a travesty ad infinitum, ad ...
Giving inJustice blatherers like Joel Klein the power to "break up" Microsoft is like handing a bottle of whiskey and the car keys to a teenager. Next week we'll have them breaking up the Sun monopoly on servers or the Apple monopoly on usable GUIs. The week after that, you'll have to take a government test and get a license to become a programmer or a sysadmin.
Wake up folks. When you hand over Bill Gates' "freedom to innovate" to the government, you've handed over your own freedom too. And when it's gone, it'll be twice as hard to get back. See "The Patriot" if you don't believe that.
I just returned from the Libertarian Party's national convention. One of the speakers was Dan Fylstra, the co-inventor of VisiCalc. He warned everyone in the computer business that lobbying the current duopoly Democrat-Republican party would lead to getting sucked into the black hole of political bribery and regulation. He suggested that investment in a "political startup" called the Libertarian Party would be the best way to assure freedom of innovation for all computer workers. I believe he's right. But check it out for yourself.
If William Jefferson Philander Blythe Clinton had really wanted to change the way Microsoft does business, the very easiest way would have been promulgation of an Executive Order preventing government operatives from buying any more Microsoft products. If he can order the Air Force to bomb Serbians, he can order the government to use market forces against Microsoft. {but even market forces in government hands have bad consequences}
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
> Why not?
Uhm... because the challenge was to list 10 things Microsoft has innovated. If they didn't innovate it, well, gee, it doesn't count.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
I checked out your site. How do I put this nicely....it sucks. At the very least you could have used slashcode to make it *look* like slashdot. But after skimming your site, I seriously doubt you have the capacity to do that.
:(
Look at all the anti-MS posts on this topic, see any innovation in Slashdot posters? Nope, all spouting the same BS about how MS "steals" ideas.
BTW, you need a lesson in how to formulate an argument. No one reading slashdot is claiming to innovate. They are under no obligation to make original posts just to keep you happy. Microsoft makes that claim, and people are calling them on it. They are hoping that by repeating the mantra of "innovation" over and over, someone else besides Bill Gates might believe it. Looks like you are pretty close to falling for it
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
That young programmer didn't bother to get royalties because he couldn't believe someone was offering so much for crap.
Quick and Dirty Operating System
The acronym is the key.
Write "FIN" to the Microsoft.empire.
"I just want to innovate! Is that so wrooooo-ong."
Solaris with CDE/dtwm fits the bill. (Mature GUI/Netscape/StarOffice.) I've ranted about this often before, so I'll spare you. The reason it could never have caught on was that during the early Nineties, when the foundations of the modern OS GUI where clicking into place,
Oh, wait, you said UNIX clone. Solaris is real UNIX so it doesn't float too well with SLashdotters. ;-p
I won't defend MS too much here lest I lose all karma, but no-one besides Apple has come as far as they have in integration of the GUI with the OS. Love it ot hate it. I like Windows 2000, actually, (gasps from the audience), and I like the modern Windows GUI. I think that the one area where Microsoft has come far with (and maybe even (gasp!) innovated in) is the meshing of OO theory with a nice GUI and a half-decent OS. Yes, I like NT5. Now burn my effigy and be done with it.
I will also spare you from my babbling about how I don't hate MS. But if Windows never were, the industry would be under that imagined boot of another superpower, like IBM (with OS/2) or Apple (with MacOS).
I wouldn't like that world any better.
Just fine them, place some restrictions on their business practices, let them be run over with civil suits, and them keep an eye on them. Don't break them up. No one needs that.
Okay, back on topic: I find this 'grassroots' effort quite amusing. It's like a militia of Microsoft stockholders, planning a last line of defense to keep their precious MS stock from plummetting to the depths of Red Hat's.
/me ducks
(Hey, Billy Boy, here's my expert advice: when you get the verdict, SELL. Sell it ALL. Don't wait to see what happens after the company is split and the stock with it. The stock won't survive the impending market crash. SELL. True, selling several billion dollars of the stock could probably make it almost worthless by itself, but you can't worry about that. Sell everything, airlift your mansion to the UK, and start a new software company. Call it LimeyOS. Complete with LimeyOffice and GSODs. (Green Screens of Death!) They'll love you. Brits are used to being trodden under the boots of the heartless rich.)
(Wow, that was really uneccessary, wasn't it?)
I'd love to see what we could dredge up from Oracle and Sun's pasts. Remember the Republican Congressman who was all set to become SotH? Remember how this was in the midst of Blowjobgate, and how he viciously derided Clinton? Remember how it was then found out that this Congressman had not been faithful to his wife? Remember how he fled Washington in shame, forced to abandon the golden years of his political career? I can picture the same thing happening to Oracle in ten years. And I'll laugh my ass off. I like Oracle's products. But I hoped they plugged all potential leaks in their organization before they started playing tattle-tale with Redmond.
Yeah, I know... "Sure, every large company would do the same as Microsoft if they had the market share. Regardless, Microsoft gets fucked in the ass because they actually have the size and did the crime. Now they do the time." Oh well, so I'm a moron, right? Fuck it. I don't like the legal precedents that are being set here. I trust Microsoft more than I do Uncle Sam. At least Microsoft stops fucking you once they have your money.
I need some coffee. Good evening, mates.
---------///----------
--
I like to watch.
hmmmm, the crap-o-meter reads.... DING DING DING.. 100%! yes my friends this article has achieved the 100% crap content award. Tell them what they've won jonny!
"you've won a years supply of rice-a-roni(tm), the cool new x-bill home game featuring life size inflatable bills, your linux distribution of choice, and of course a free lifetime subscription to slashdot!"
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
here's my big question: MS has had all this time to innovate, but they haven't. why do they care all of the sudden? so the govt breaks them up - big deal, they'll keep on stealing/modifying everybody else's work just like before!
Now this could be interesting.
;).
Lets over-simplify for a moment and divide the US population into 3 groups:
-The tech-aware folks who support MS
-The tech-aware folks who don't support MS
-The tech-unaware folks (I think this includes most US Gov't officials).
I have to think that this campaign is aimed primarily at the third group; these are the ones who are most likely to turn to MS, not because they understand the issues, but because it sounds good; say what you will about Microsofts product, but I'm of the opinion they have a pretty good marketing department/spin control.
So what we need to think about is, what will happen if enough of the tech-unaware put their names on lists that will be presented, eventually, to the legislature. I think there is a very real danger that these gov't folks (who might not have any better grasp on the issues as those folks who sign up for this program) might "go with the flow" (easy) instead of grappling with the issues and making informed decisions (hard).
What next? Prepaid, preprinted postcards that we can send directly to our duly elected representatives, ala' those infamous NRA campaigns?
Anyways, just my thoughts.
-- if(game-theory) moderate++;
Are there enough "dittoheads" out there?
Depends on how you define "ditto head".
I define "dittohead" not as someone who is stupid, but as someone whose attachment to a particular ideology or viewpoint is emotion - rather than logic - based. The facts may or may not support their position, but dry logic isn't why they hold their view. They hold their views because they just know they're right.
Using this definition, I'd have to say nearly everyone is a "ditto head" on at least one issue.
Microsoft, certainly, is full of pro-Microsoft dittoheads (duh). Seen in this light, this is by no means a "cynical campaign" by Microsoft "spin doctors". Rather, this screed is a corporate "rant" written by people who think they're working for the greatest company in the world. I'm certain they believe every word of what they wrote. Like typical dittohead litature, it ignores inconvient facts, and casts viewpoints as "fact", but it is by no means intentionally disingenuous.
Certainly, it is no more counter-productive to their viewpoint, than the typical anti-Microsoft dittohead you find on Slashdot is to ours.
Yes, people. We have more than our share of dittoheads - who have such a disgust of Microsoft (emotion based viewpoint), that they are unable to acknowledge the company has ever done anything good. (The diametric opposite of the Microsofty dittohead who is unable to acknowledge that the company has ever done anything bad.) And our dittoheads are just as counterproductive to our views, as Microsoft's marketing literature is to theirs.
Lets play a word association game...
First thought:
FIN : SHARK
Second thought:
FIN : END
Third thought:
FIN Definitely Not FUN
At least M$ is consistent.
The Freedom to Innovate Network is not itself innovative at all. MANY so-called "grass roots" organizations, when not obviously run by industries which stand to benefit from them, are started surreptitiously by those industries' public relations firms.
A good example is the "National Smokers' Alliance", which claims to be a grass-roots organization protecting the rights of smokers, when in fact it was created by Phillip Morris's PR firm (Hill & Knowlton, IIRC). There's another one run by the logging industry that calls itself something environmental-sounding, when they really advocate unrestricted clear-cutting.
The best indicator flag is when the name seems to indicate that anyone not of their group is evil. The opposite of "freedom to innovate" would be something fascist like "government prevention of innovation", and we wouldn't want that, would we? The idea behind that sort of naming is to give the appearance of a broader scope than the organization really has, in this case "freedom for M$ to innovate, but nobody else if we can help it".
Judging by the discussion here, looks like we're not falling for it.
As per the front of the handout, about 2/3 of the way down, there is the following text:
YES!, please sign me up as a supporter and keep me informed about the freedom to innovate and compete in the marketplace!
COMPETE?! Oh, my dear Lord almighty! I'm printing this flyer off as we speak, filling in my info, and mailing it off -- no, wait -- FedExing it to Redmond. I mean, Microsoft needs my support to help them compete!
--
Sure. They'll call it ALD (Active Load Distribution) and charge $500 for the upgrade. Someone will point out that this isn't an innovation, but mirroring by another name. Someone else will point out that there's some subtle difference, arguably an improvement, that makes it different from that "archaic" tech.
The Freedom to Innovate Network (FIN) are truer to their name than many of you think
In French, "fin" means "The End".
Is the formation of this group simply a foreshadowing of The End of Microsoft? I think it is a sign when the lobby group formed to influence the future of Microsoft call themselves "The End".
Hehe, I just read the thing then I looked at the picture of Gates that went along with the story and I thought, "You will be innovated. Restistance is usless."
I have to laugh at this. M$ created their own little astroturf support group, demanding that they be given the "Freedom to Innovate".
They've always had the freedom to develop innovative products. I just don't see that they've ever done it.
reverend lola
the titanium sheep
provider of steel wool
Microsoft has a FIN, just like every other shark.
But at least a loan shark won't advertise his fin.
Spielberg and Lucas should team up for a new movie called "death of the empire", with Bill Gates as Jaws the Shark and Linuz Torvalds as Linux Skywalker, the hero who guts him 52 times with a lightsaber....mmmm
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
...or are you under the influence ?
If you actually think that...
I get the impression you inject yourself with mayonaise or brakefluid or Microsoft Koolaid or something.
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
WTF are you on ?
MS did not invent IE, it was bought, or stolen (depending on who you believe) from starsoft...I might have that company name wrong, they went bankrupt shortly after so I ain't heard it in 5 years. That is how microshit keeps the startups happy.
Need I remind you that Vinod Valipil, former microserf left them to join a Linux startup in Silicon Valley, because Vinod liked to create, design...inovate!
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
And I rant about Microshit! I especially rant about their lack of inovation.
Linux may appear less inovative because....we follow standards and we try to maintain compatibility.
Inovation also implies enhancement (not decompatibilizing extension) seen that way, Linux is one giant inovation.
Examples of inovation on Linux:
- DEVFS (The linux version far outdoes any other)
- DEB Packages
- RPM (To a lesser degree)
- /proc (Correct me If I am wrong on that one)
- Python
- Tcl/TK
- The Kernel - Who will deny that linux 0.1 was a great idea, even if it wasn't the very first - Linuz made it work.
- PHP
The defense rests."Semper in excretum set alta variant"
I would like to see just one!
Not everyone deserves a 320i
I like the phrase "Participation is voluntary" and how they only open membership up to customers, shareholders, employees, alumni, and partners. Oh, I am totally for the freedom to innovate, but if inovating consists of stealing, copying, buying out other companies, monopolizing the market, exploiting, pateniting open technologies, and such, than I want no part of it. I like how they keep stressing that membership is "free" and how they will not sell your information unless you ask them to. How can you call yourself a non-profit organization if you are selling information? Also, you will notice that it is Business Reply Mail. And the guy did say he picked it up at the Microsoft booth. This confuses me, is M$ trying to claim that they are a non-profit organization? I will tell you what would be funnier is if this really was a real organization and stuff. I mean, at least if its not, we can all laugh at it, but if it is, we can laugh at the tens of people who actually sign up for this.
> I would suggest that slashdot install some cache servers and have all links point to the cache'ed version
Not likely, I'm afraid. Slashdot has enough trouble handling its own traffic without taking on the combined ./-effect traffic of all the sites it mentions.
Fortunately, though, this is the Web, and you can set this service up yourself! Just let ./ readers know and I'm sure you'll get lots of visitors real quick. ;)
Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
slashdotted, any got a REAL mirror?
and not that goat.cx crap either
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
naw... they'll include it as an upgrade that you have to pay $99.00 USD
"Yes, but did we claim that WE are the supreme innovators?"
:)
[ puts on asbestos suit ]
No, but with the attitudes that some people in the Linux / Open Source community carry around, you would think so. Most everything I hear coming from the Open Source camp is something like this...
"Linux is the best, down with Microsoft!"
"Open source is the way to go! Look at Netscape! Did we mention 'Down with Microsoft!' yet?"
Personally, I'm sick and tired of those few zealots who choose to speak for everyone. Nearly every other thing said by ESR is related to the Impending Death of Microsoft(tm), and RMS is off in his own little world mumbling God knows what. Is it any wonder some people get turned off by this?
If you ask me, the Linux / Open Source community needs to make / improve software more than they do making up more silly ideologies. To put it simply (apologies to Camp Chaos):
"Software Good! Ideology Bad!"
Well if that doesn't make me lose karma, what will?
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
...maybe they can find a way to prevent every link for a /. story from suffering the horrible /. effect...
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
The leaflet makes out that the US governement are trying to stop any innovation. Innovation is one matter, but the main problem with Microsoft is their anti-competitive moves that in fact, hinder innovation by trying to remove all competition. Forcing companies to do as they wish is removing the chances other software developers can have. Microsoft are guilty themselves of what their FIN is trying to stop.
Given this sort of "grassroots" stuff, can you blame Larry Ellison for attempting to uncover the Microsoft funding behind some of the orgs that filed amicus briefs in the anti-trust trial. M$ is a company that is willing to mis-represent anything and everything the benefit to its own agenda. This sort of blatent co-option of the potentially gullible would have done the communist party proud. Tell you what though, lets all join and then write our representatives that we demand that we have "Freedom to Innovate" by having the source code to Windoze published so we can write innovative applications by knowing what the APIs really are...
Are there any Open Source advocate groups like this one? Maybe we of Slashdot should start one, to combat groups such as this. We can call it the FIS, Freedom to Slashdot.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Just as Microsoft has redefined the word innovation in the English language, it appears they are now trying to redefine "grassroots movement." Embrace, extend, extinguish...the English language?
That's funny you mention Xenix since it was a Microsoft product.
You are right about software prices. MS didn't make them come down, cheaper hardware made software cheaper. In fact, MS two most popular products - the Operating System and Office - are getting MORE expensive now that there is no longer any real competition for those products.
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.sh tml
The only two innovations are "Bob" and "Clippy". Even these two are suspect since cartoon help was use by "Patton vs Rommel" in 1986 and "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" in the early '90s. Inner Workings trademark infringement suit for "Lemon Dog" a.k.a. "Rocky the Dog" also lend doubt to these "innovations".
I think that's why we cry foul. MS is in the position to give away any product for free and borg it onto 90% of the world's desktops.
Was bundling the browser with windows innovative? At the time it was the best way to kill Netscape, and that's the reason it was done.
So that's our beef. The FIN is whiney, roll-your-eyes, Johny-hit-me, spin doctoring. It's the sort of thing that moved many slash-dotters from saying "MS doesn't really bother me." to "I can't believe MS did THAT also."
Is MS evil? Pure evil? Some will tell you so, but most of us really just think they have a bad record of taking-over and hurting the computer industry.
What *I* find interesting, is that the "flag" on the brochure has only 11 stripes. The current, 50 star, US of A flag has 13 stripes, Red being the stripes on the top and bottom, totaling 7, and white being the "filler" stripes, totalin 6. The stripes signifying the original 13 states.
Just wondering if there's something behind that number or not.
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
No, they don't _resort_ to outright lies and misinformation. They use it on a regular basis, a choice out of many weapons in their arsenal, including FUD, intimidation, threats, backstabbing, and probably a bunch more that I either haven't heard of yet, or can't remember. (there sure are a lot of them!)
It shouldn't come as _any_ surprise that they're truly evil.
---
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
...the booth babes. Would have been a better use of your time. *grin*
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Microsoft has never been known for being an innovative company. Rather, they usually opt to reverse engineer or buy something that's innovative.
-------------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
The difference, in my mind, is that while Apache certainly at one point used the source from HTTPD, the group developing Apache has added so much more that HTTPD ever had, not to mention it works so much better. Innovation, in the sense that we're really talking about here, is in the fact that Apache took an already existing piece of software, and came up with newer and better ways of serving up web pages.
Microsoft, to use one example, released MS Office to destroy Lotus. They released an inferior product to Lotus' office suite, but practically rammed it down people's throats. In this case, they reverse engineered an already existing and superior product, and through their marketing and aggressive sales, managed to foist an inferior product on the corporate world. No innovation here, just predatory tactics.
-------------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
As Al Franken says "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot"
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I bent my wookie
There we go! Brings tears to my eyes..
Looks like it.
Hey, if it's a grass roots movement then there's one thing it's missing: folk songs. I'm leaning towards "Come gather round children, and hear what I say, of Bill Gates' brave stand against the cruel DOJ". Need something that rhymes with "innovate" though, and ideas?
"Thats ok, i want them to die a horrible death."
You can join and then subvert them from within.
joel
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
No, I did not see his post on the cost of MS vs. Oracle. You made no link to the posting in question and there was no way for me to know that what you meant to say was: "When MS makes a powerful, easy to use dev tool available to a guy like John Murdoch cheap[er than if he got it from Oracle]...".
Uh... "cheaply"?
Yah, M$ is starting a cult. Am I the only one who finds the american flag with the monitor in the place of the stars really, really scary?
Let me get this straight....
You took pictures of the brochure but not the cute girls handing them out. Pervert.
>>The stupidity of the American People has never >>been in doubt, sadly. >> "American" is redundant here. Not really, because the American People (and their government) gets to decide what happens to microsoft, and if Microsoft gets away with this, it is the American Peeple who're proved stupid.
Exactly. Look around at people bashing Netscape for crashing all the time. My University uses Communicator 4.5 on Windows 95 and I've never seen it crash. Not once. However, Netscape started crashing on me on my home box one day, right after I upgraded to - (gasp) - Windows 98!
Over time, Netscape has become better (4.73 is head and shoulders more stable than any other version in Win98), but there's no reason for this. I hear Microsoft apologists everywhere saying they should be able to do this, and I can't help but wonder why other than the possibility that they've heavily invested in Microsoft and depend on their success.
The OS should be completely application agnostic. And if it is so, then everyone has the freedom to innovate on a level playing field.
p.s. - I've been using Netscape for years, and I only use IE for pages that I imperatively need to view that don't work in NS. Last night, I came across one such page. I opened IE, and within fifteen seconds of loading the page, IE bluescreened - something Netscape has never done.
"All of us owe MSFT a measure of appreciation for creating an "operating system" which allows almost anyone with interest to become semi-literate in computer operation."
Kinda sums it all up, doesn't it? :-)
seanmeister
And if all of those products come from the same vendor, you have a fairly good bet that they'll work together.
How about if all those products come from different vendors, but use the same established open standards.
Not only will they work together, but you can change each and every component in the system to a competing product that uses the same standards fairly seamlessly.
Sig blocks? We don' need no steenkin sig blocks!
Microsoft has been much, much more sneaky than that. Microsoft has, since the late 1980s, expressly targeted the "influential end user" (their term) and particularly software developers.
Longer than that. I've been a paid-up Apple Developer since 1984, and I can remember three separate occassions that stacks of Windows programming CDs and offers of free membership in their online networks, developer organizations, etc. arrived unsolicited. A lot of people contrasted this extremely favorably with the pay-through-the-nose for Developer status and then again for AppleLink attitude that Apple had at the time.
Me, I thought it was great. This was before the days when AOL shipped you all the free coasters you needed, so I thought it was very nice of MSFT to help protect my furniture like that.
Anyone else hear Brad Pitt style emphasis in their heads when reading "you determine your level of involvement"? Kinda freaky that FIN is using the same sort of brainwash lines that Fight Club satires so well.
I am sure you agree that the Justice Department, because of President Clinton's continued incompetence, has gotten completely out of control with its recent anti-trust attacks. In particular, the new economy will will undoubtedly collapse if Microsoft is broken up.
Since this will likely happen during the next administration, which we expect to be a Bush administration since we have donated so much money to him, it will look bad for the next president as the ecnomy falls part under his watch. Protect America and protect the future Bush administration form the whims of that draft-dodger and his justice department. Pass legislation allowing us to allow Microsoft to innovate the changes that will bring world control even closer to Bill Gates. Thank you for your time and support. Sincerely, Kim Sanchez, FIN Director"At first, we weren't thinking this big," said Chairman Bill "Bill" Gates at the launch party for the effort. "We thought we were just going to fight our own little fight. But when the people of America speak, Microsoft listens."
Gates said that what he was asking for was the enshrinement of Freedom to Innovate(tm) in an amendment to the US Constitution, exactly as other rights are listed. "So, for example, we've prepared a sample wording that simply says, `The Health and Security of Microsoft being essential to the health of this nation, Freedom to Innovate(tm) shall not be abridged.' But we're willing to negotiate."
When asked by a reporter what exactly he was willing to negotiate, Gates replied, "Well, we could grant the United States a one-time perpetual license to use the phrase `Freedom to Innovate'. That way, they wouldn't need the little (tm) in the Bill of Rights. After all, that's kind of tacky."
Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman could not be contacted for comment. A spokeswoman for the foundation said that the vociferous Microsoft critic was "sobbing in the corner of his office."
Carousel is a lie!
A couple of things:
We all know what happened after people started reffering to New Kids on the Block as "NKOTB". Surely, MSFT is headed for the same fate, a breakup.
Remember the Smurfs? You know when they added the "kid" Smurfs and that damned puppy-dog? Well, the next season, they got cancelled. Cutesy innovation like these surely bode doom! Speaking of cutesy innovations, check out Windows Millenium. Microsoft has surely Jumped the Shark.
The last time I received a "gift", IT WAS FREE GODDAMNIT!
Does your OS breed Bolsheviks? Mine doesn't.
That is all, comrades. Heed the call of the "semi-literate" computer user.
Ham on rye, hold the mayo please.
thelocust[dot]org
. . . I Just GOTTA AMEN! this one. I am looking at this story an hour after it breaks, and it is still /.'d
If it is a mirror we need, i got some free server space and am willing to pitch in.
2^3 * 31 * 647
Well, you have to take into consideration the mindset of the Microsoft drones. All their computing lives, they've been told what to do and how to do it, so words like "Freedom", and "Innovate", even when used in this context, are likely to be both confusing and frightening to your average drone.
. . . they just distributed Windows as open source software. Then they could bundle it with whatever the hell they wanted. :)
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
server? i mean mirror...
Think that was flamebait? You've obviously never met me in person...
Think that was flamebait? You've obviously never met me in person...
$email=~tr/.@/
Yeah, but if i did that, i'd have to buy a bunch of tux gear... or get a tattoo... or do SOMETHING to show off my inner linux geek... and tux gear and tattoos are expensive...
Think that was flamebait? You've obviously never met me in person...
Think that was flamebait? You've obviously never met me in person...
$email=~tr/.@/
Hey,don't diss the mouse wheel!I've found that little bugger to be a big help when scroling through Slashdot.Who ever inventerd the damn thing,thanks!
------------------------
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Perhaps they should ditch the ancient "Where do you want to go today?" slogan with "Microsoft:What we can't innovate,we assimilate!"
------------------------
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Step 1: Read, print out, and photocopy the handy brochure.
Step 2: Detach, fill out, and mail the attached membership form. Several times if you feel like it.
Step 3: Volunteer for every activity you can imagine.
Step 4: Never show up for or accomplish anything you volunteer for.
This has the advantage of making them think they are successful, while making them look like apathetic boobs when push comes to shove. Additionally some dedicated soul will have to process all of that paperwork, instead of doing something legitimate to further their cause.
I am sure that the people behind this effort have only the best interests of the people of the free world at heart. Their sincere need to express their love for the Great Software Architect and all his followers who stand for All That Is Good And Decent In The World has touched me deeply. It's good that they've found a hobby.;->
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
Shouldn't that be Pope Billgatus I?
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
No UNIX clone will be a consumer OS until it has: Copy/Cut/Paste and Drag&Drop integrated in the OS. (vi commands are great for editing a single document if you know what you are doing, but in The Real World users need to move text between different apps all the time) It's called Mac OS X, and it will be beta in August and out next year.
I took heat for weeks when I booted Windows off my system. My mishandling of dual-boot setup wedged my partition table so badly that Linux refused to touch it; I had to dig up my recovery disks, reinstall the factory config, and THEN install Linux. Linux can't talk to my Winmodem, and I still haven't figured out how to read the PDF books that supposedly came on Mandrake disk 3 (gv brings up a single blank page, and acroread says something about the files being encrypted or protected or something). When I want to eject a CD, I have to grovel through all my windows searching for the console that's still in a CD directory so I can unmount the bitch. Any one of these issues matters more to the average web surfer than "But it comes with a free compiler!", and I was made fun of unmercifully for each of them ("What do you mean you can't eject it yet?" "Just hold on a second. Dammit. Okay, now. Dammit."), by intelligent, computer-savvy people who saw Linux as inferior because its good points did not strike them as useful.
In short: Windows really does work very well for the kinds of things the average asshole wants to do. It makes setup as easy as is feasible, and everything runs on it. I can think right now of two people I know who love Windows, MSDN, and MSDev, because they don't ever do anything that requires Makefile hacking or kernel recompiles, and Windows gives them good functionality without requiring them to learn anything. They don't think MS should be broken up, because MS has given them a great deal, and never done anything wrong they can think of. Although they don't have the religious devotion some Linux users do, there are a hell of a lot more of them.
If the state of database solutions is such that different programs are this difficult to interoperate, and solutions developed with one company's tools are extremely difficult to use with another company's tools, I would respectfully suggest you find another line of work -- you will find far fewer headaches (though probably less money), and you and your company will be far more automonous -- a smart bet as well as more personally satisfying.
Single-seat programmer's license? What, from the government, like a driver's license? If you want to use a tool from a Nazi company, you get a Nazi license. As I said before, I know nothing about database development tools (which is I assume what you're talking about), so this might be a legitimate beef that MS helped to fix, but all the other problems you mention were caused directly by MS. Printer routines -- thank you, Bill, for giving me an "operating system" whose idea of printer support is to give a program access to the parallel ports and say, "Good luck!" Printer-independent printing was so much the standard on Unices by then that lacking it would have been unthinkable. Third-party help products -- what, like man and info? And how many times have you gotten something useful out of Windows' help system? For me, the answer is: once. MS was working (with "help" in DOS 5) towards an extremely useful help system akin to man, but they seem to have regressed back to the "tip of the day" approach now. A TCP/IP stack? Hooray! Finally, an operating system that has networking support! Thanks, Bill. You've given me so much. Your loyalty to MS seems to be based on the fact that, long after every other operating system had included certain essential features, MS finally caught up, and saved you from having to pay for the features that no one else had been paying for since BSD 4.2. The reason I don't like MS is that they STILL want me to pay for things like a good compiler, good documentation (MSDN cd), basic word processing, and "permission" to write crap that can talk to their crap, all of which are avilable for free when you buy any good Unix. What does MS give you that isn't available better, cheaper, and sans bastard licensing agreements elsewhere?On the first take, this is not a particularly bad thing for you. You get excellent ODBC/OLE DB support from the OS, and you don't have to care if no one can feasibly run your server on a non-MS machine.
This is why I don't like it when MS gets into a market that has an impact on me. Read your comment again. Yes, I know you meant that the guys who didn't really provide anything except the ability to talk to their DB products in their proprietary format went away -- but in the process, I am quite certain that a few well-engineered and standards-compliant product lines folded completely, because they supported the SAG standard instead of the MS extensions. You praise MS for bringing you quality products at low prices -- yet you must admit that the marketplace has suffered.Remember DR DOS? It blew MS-DOS away technologically, and MS released Windows 3.1, which didn't work with it. Bam, DR DOS blew away, and PC users got stuck with a crap OS again. Borland, Novell, Wordperfect, and Eudora all also lost seriously at the hands of MS, despite having excellent products to offer. MS out-manuevered them. I don't feel sorry for them in an "MS is a bully" sense, but I think that the PC software world is worse for their loss.
Obviously, I don't imagine I'm going to change your mind about MS -- their products clearly work well for you. I ask you to philosophize, though: What if MS had not produced these products? Would you still be using an AS/400, or would you be using a cheaper, more reliable, more interoperable product instead? Is MS's excellent marketing dept. working for or against you when it crushes its competitors? What about when MS changes around its standards, or breaks compatibility with another product, or legally attacks people who are trying to do nothing more than produce good software (Kerberos)?
The important question, of course, is: Is it cheaper to buy Irix and get these tools for "free", or to buy DOS/Windows and pay for the tools as needed? In my experience, the headaches you save by going Unix have been worth any extra price, and the question has never arisen. Now, with Linux as a viable option, the question is pretty much moot: Praising MS for making it cheaper to do something you can do literally for free strikes me as silly.
Disclaimer: As I said before, I know pretty much nothing about professional DB tools; if MS has in fact made things significantly cheaper/easier for the average DB programmer, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
Hmmm...Microsoft claims that FIN stands for "Freedom to Innovate Network", but I wonder if this is the beginning of a project to strike a personal blow against Linus Torvalds. Look at this: FIN - Short for Finland? Linus Torvalds is from Finland. Linus and Linux... I believe Microsoft is planning to buy Finland, revoke the citizenship of Linus, nationalize Linux as the official OS of Finland, "optimize" it to look/feel/be Win 2000, and then export it to the world through a Redmond-based distributor. Oh, that Billy Gates is a wiley one, eh?
Can I quote you on the "Astroturf Activism"? I like it.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Apparently, no one in Redmond has any clue how the judicial system works. Even after the trial started they were lobbying/contributing to various members of congress as if the legislature could save them at that point. What did Bill think Congress could do, pass a retroactive repeal of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Maybe if someone in Redmond had actually stayed awake in a Business Law, Ethics, or History class they might have avoided this whole mess in the first place. Oh yeah, Bill dropped out of college. He must not have gotten to those classes yet.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Microsoft and Intel were betting on a big x86 market. That's why they both cut such sweetheart deals with IBM.
(MS non-exclusively licenced DOS to IBM for a pittance -- $50K IIRC. Why would they give DOS to IBM essentially for free if they didn't think they could sell it someone else?)
So maybe MS didn't forsee that "100% IBM PC AT compatible" would be the standard of the future, but they certainly knew that for the PC industry to grow, it had to grow out of the incompatible mess of the CPM/Apple days.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Actually, I suspect there'd be quite a few BSc's at Red Hat. And as a CS student, I've taken a look at the prospects and I'm aiming for high marks ... then there might be a slight chance I can get into some interesting R&D rather than reimplementing the wheel.
First of all, the post I responded to was talking about OS's other than Mac and Windows.
Secondly, OS X is built on the mach kernel, and might even manage to run some UNIX and Linux apps (once you get past the endian switch from the Intel chips), but it is most definaltely not a UNIX clone.
Thirdly, we are talking about OS's that exist now. MacOS X is still in pre-beta (DR2, IIRC).
If I was using what was "soon to come" in my criteria, than Linux is a real candidate. My whole point was that Linux is not ready for grandma's den yet. By next year, it might be the best thing out there. Things change fast in this business.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Oh, I don't know... the way clippy feeds himself through his eyeballs when you are printing... that's gotta count for something. If nothing else, proof that hallucinogens of some kind or another are easilly available in Redmond.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
DnD, Cut & Paste are NOT "integrated" into the current predominant OS.
Moving text between one app and another with MacOS or Windows: Very easy.
Doing the same with Gnome or KDE: A royal pain in the ass.
Netscape under Win32 or Linux
Netscape for Linux is not a mature product. There are plenty of awesome options on the horizon (Opera, Mozilla, Netscape 6, etc.), but the browser that you get with your typical Linux distro sucks and everybody knows it. I use Linux in spite of the browser problems, because I like it for other reasons, bet let's not kid ourselves.
People in general do not need a clone of msoffice. I don't even think that the file format needs to be the same. What I do think is that there are a lot of features that people expect word processora and spreadsheeta to have, and a lot of current Linux offerings (cough) Star Office (cough) fall way short.
Personally, I don't need Linux to ever be a "consumer" OS... I think it is a great OS as it is. No need for Gnome, just give me a BASH prompt and let me hack away. When I want to run a GUI app, I will boot my G3 to the MacOS. (Likewise, when I want to play games like Diablo II, I switch on the Windows box.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The "Grass" in grass roots really is refuring to the stuff they are smoking if they really believe that they could fool us with that one....
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
I hear you. I mean, what's next? Windowtology? If so, who's going to be their spokesperson? Scientology has John Travolta. I think the spokesperson for Windowtology should be that Jesse Camp guy who was on MTV a while back. That would make perfect sense....
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Ahh, grasshopper - as the great Heinlein wrote, an honest politician is one who stays bought.
(fake Asian guru tag off)
Now, exactly how many of those politicians are going to stay bought, hmmmm?
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Only if YOU want to innovate, too....
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
the videotape that MSFT tried to pass off as "real" footage
What is this about?
Oh well, I'm glad you guys FINALLY put up something about the joke that is the FIN...
David, Yes, there are probably a lot of people who think that writing software can't be a crime, and anyone else could/should have done it better. Plus, we all know that Microsoft in one piece or two will still be the same company with the same tendencies. I'm a libertarian too, one that votes with his feet. The public have to learn to say "No" and really mean it - go through pain if necessary to rid themselves of the Microsoft legacy. Watch out for the MS quarterly results about July 18th to 20th. Will there be a profits warning?
One is beta tester for M$ and never stops talking about how great this new innovations is. He seems to have minions who follow his beliefs, as if he is a prophet from Redmond, but they usually don't know any better.
The other person I know is a lauded professor at a private university. I don't know why, but he follows M$ stock like a soap opera and gets peeved anytime anybody mentions "Antitrust".
Still, I don't know what could push these people to such loyalty of such an unethical company. I used to think that all M$-fans were driven by ignorance, but I can't say this about these two.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
And what about this one:
I'm sure that was written tongue in cheek, but MS has accepted it at face value and posted it on the site.Linux advocates are in a no Win situation
nuff said
i see it all the time.. our e-com dept jumped ship when the going got tough: they ALL bailed back to M$, ..big pansys..
it wasnt so much the rubber bullets as the batons, flashbangs, and teargas..
And that led to Billg in a dark room, looking out at the White House, taking a gun to himself to kill off his imaginary friend...
Damn, I have WAY too vivid an imagination...
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
as much I like most of the stuff put up on /. (especially Jon Katz' essays) this is a non-story and certainly doesn't deserve the server space.
Why Zapp, you may ask. OK, here's why:
What the heck did anybody expect ? That the evil empire just goes away after the verdict, pouting ? Hell no! of course their spin doctors start their spinning using every feasible and non-feasible tool. So what ?
Further, putting up this story has such a predictable effect. (Nja, nja, grassroots blah blah, bloody liars, etc).
GROW UP !
Now, I say that from a perspective of a database consultant disliking M$ desperately. I hate the perception they imply on Average Joe User how software oughta be. I think that from a perspective of an ex-employee from a company that M$ (literally) nearly killed with their business tactics and I strongly feel that as a computer professional that really dislikes just about everything about M$ and their software.
Nevertheless, this story is so much fuel in the fire of all those pointing out why the free software community applies real bad advodacy for their cause.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"It's always interesting to see a dumbass try to figure out how expensive Microsoft products are when they clearly haven't spent five seconds looking into the issue"
It's always interesting to see people make dumbassed assumptions about others and posting immediately without realising how ignorant and arrogant it makes them look.
FYI the main reason I didn't quote any prices is because I don't live in the USA and all the prices I have are in Rands. Multiply all your prices by roughly 7 to get an idea - so yes, it's incredibly expensive. You can't really compare the prices just by multiplying or dividing everything by the exchange rate, different things scale differently. For example, if I take Rands to England I'll pay about R25 for a cup of coffee, whereas here in South Africa you'd pay no more than R5 for a cup of coffee. You'll pay over R3000 for Visual C++ here, or between R1500 to R2500 on average for an upgrade from a previous version. A single copy of SourceSafe is over R3000, Windows NT server is something probably about R3500 - R5000, etc etc blah blah.
It might sound cheaper for you guys, but your profits won't be 1/7x our profits for the same things. As I said, the exchange rate alone isn't enough to really compare things.
I do almost all the development software buying in our company. I know what prices are involved. It's easy to take cheap shots from where you're sitting without knowing what the hell you're talking about and without backing it up with any decent arguments about why I might be wrong.
(Hint -- nowhere in my post did I say that Microsoft got where they were by selling products to developers - the guy I responded to said that, stupid - I don't agree with him on that, but I wasn't discussing that now was I?)
With Win2K at something like 40 to 50 million lines of code, I was wondering what system they use for source control there? They have to use something - yet the MS website for SourceSafe doesn't mention NT anywhere for examples of how useful SS is. I'm pretty sure that if they were using SS for NT, that they would say so very loudly, because if SS can handle a project that size it can handle anything.
Yet SS doesn't seem to scale very well to large projects, and the database isn't particularly stable and quite often has errors.
It would be quite interesting if they were using something Unix-based .. does anyone know?
"CVS works just fine run off a UNIX server with Windows clients"
I tried to convince everyone around here to use CVS+WinCVS, but was greeted with a fair amount of resistance. My boss has a general attitude that it's always a good idea to buy "the Microsoft solution". That's not necessarily a bad thing, but that can be debated for hours. Anyway, I was also greeted by skepticism from some of the other developers here.
Now, we're talking about very intelligent people and excellent developers - the problem is not any sort of pro-Microsoft attitude from their part (quite the opposite actually), but more, I would say, "fear of the unknown". I'm the only one in my company who has a clue with Unix/Linux.
I realise that a WinCVS/Linux combo shields them from all that, but my boss seems to think Unix/Linux systems require a lot of time for administration.
I'm rambling a bit. But the main reasons we chose SS is (a) the convenience of integration with Visual Studio (which, unfortunately, I believe is the main reason this product is so stagnant - what other company can provide that?), and (b) my boss's "always choose the MS solution" strategy.
Another problem is, as I said, I'm the only one in my company with any significant knowledge of Unix/Linux, which means that if I were to leave for whatever reason, everyone else would be pretty much stuck with the task of administering something they don't know how to. 9 times out of 10 people will (in my experience), in that situation, just throw out what they have and buy something that they understand or can learn easily.
VSS has a lot of bugs, is quirky, stagnant, has a somewhat dated interface, and a far-from-perfect database/network design (they essentially assumed when they built it that you would always be connected to the server for example) - but when you learn to work around the bugs, and you backup regularly and check the database for corruption regularly, then it does do it's job pretty well.
This FIN ("finished" in French) explains precisly the state of M$. They need a grassroots campaign now that the DOJ put the hammer down in hopes that all of the idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H Windows users would come out and bail the company out. First of all, hand out fliers? Why not do a TV promising to protect the right of innovation, or at least the theft of it? The people that think M$ innovates are still learning how to point and click! They don't know about a "PC Expo" or a web site! Ah, yes. Another blotched effort by Billy boy and friends.
What I find amusing over all this is the fact that perhaps they knew all along they were going to lose the verdict, but of course now in the Supreme Court they have to start getting people to state, "I support the Freedom to Innovate!(tm)" What am I missing here? The freedom of innovation has always been encouraged. :) Just not monopolies ;)
I was wondering about some fine print on the brochuere... is there a hidden EULA and royalty?
Karma whorin' since 1999
And the pedant says, that would be "Nightwatch."
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Hi, gnarphy.
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
The obvious solution to this is to hire a woman as your head of i/s, and send her to the conferences. Even a lesbian is smart enough to avoid scamming. :-P
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
Hey!
...but the entire of the Microsoft corperation can't make a hyperlink point to a page that exists.
Look at the 'high-tech happenings' page: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is the most admired man among information technology executives, according to a survey by RHI Consulting. Gates clinched 37 percent of the vote, and 19 percent of chief information officers polled chose Dell Computer Chairman and CEO Michael Dell. Candidates included Apple Computer's Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and Larry Ellison of Oracle.
Michael Tandy
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
This "grass roots" effort is probably the start of a new political party. (since Bill's large contributions to the Dems and Repubs haven't yeilded any results for him)
A previous employer sold big Unix software solutions. M$ said they would help us port our software to NT if we agreed not to sell the unix version anymore. Now that's what I call co-operation.
Pet Rock!
funny...there's a dead one behind my house sitting in an old blue Dart.
Are you sure it's the engine that's at fault? Or do you not know how to set up a Holley 2245/Carter BBD carburetor?
The Slant-6 was designed in the late 1950s as a race engine to compete with small 6-cylinder cars from Ford and GM. It was a completely aluminum engine, leaned to the passenger side to allow for a tunnel ram intake manifold, lower hood line, and a center of gravity to offset the weight of the driver. In its early incarnations, it was a very short stroke engine, displacing 170 cubic inches, and capable of happlily revving to 8,000 RPM +.
In typical Chrysler do-or-die fashion, in 1960, Ford had the Falcon and GM had the Chevy Corvair. Chyrsler had been playing around with the Valiant, but still didn't have a motor for it. They experimented with their high-tech aluminum block Slant-6, and decided it wasn't durable enough for the masses. On a tight timeline, they poured the Slant-6 with high-nickel iron alloy instead.
It's worth noting that aluminum is much softer than iron. If you're building an engine block out of aluminum, it has to have a huge amount of "webbing" (kinda like flying buttresses to help hold the block together) in order to maintain its rigidity. Since the Slant-6 had been designed for aluminum, it was vast overkill making it in iron.
Produced from 1960 to 1983 (cars), 1987 (trucks), and 1991 (marine), taxi fleets powered by Slant-6 engines have gone literally millions of miles between rebuilds. One of my Slant-6s came to me in a 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham. When I got the car, there were 297,000 miles on the odometer. The car had been neglected, and the lifter adjustments - necessary with all older engines with mechanical lifters - hadn't been done. She was running on 4 out of 6 cylinders, but still started and ran well, and would still peel the tires. The engine didn't burn or leak any oil, and aside from a really rough idle and the stench of unburned gasoline leaving through the tailpipe, it still sounded healthy at speed: no bearing knock, *strong* oil pressure, compression of 130PSI on the four good cylinders. I'm still working on restoring that car - the body was pretty cabbaged when I got it, but it's looking a lot better now.
The only Slant-6 with a real achilles heel is the 225 / 3.7L Slant-6, which were the only Slant-6s made after 1972. The 225 Slant-6 has a very long stroke (4.125") which means that they're quite sensitive to being over-revved. They're a massively torquey motor, so if you know how to drive based on torque curves, you won't over-rev it anyway. The failure mode of an over-revved Slant-6 is generally the failure of the number 6 (rear) con rod. I've seen Slant-6s driven thousands of miles with five cylinders running and a broken con rod in the sixth, so it doens't necessarily keep the engine from going. Just be careful if you're downshifting or if you're trying to rock the car out of a snowbank.
That being said, in a Dart, your engine is old enough that it has mechanical valve lifters. You have to adjust your valve clearance regularily - do it just before every oil change. Or, you can replace your cam and lifters with more modern hydraulics. (All post-1980 Slant-6s have hydraulic lifters.) Failure to adjust your valvetrain on any older engine properly is negligence, not a failure on the part of the engine, and it will cost you exhaust valves, especially if you're not running a lead additive. (Slant-6s before 1972, as with most other vintage engines, don't have hardened valve seats because unleaded fuel is a relatively new "innovation".)
If your engine *still* won't run, check your ballast resistor. Blaming your engine for a bad ballast resistor is akin to calling your motherboard a piece of crap because you keep on hooking it up to cheap power supplies. Chrysler has always been known for good drivetrain components, the support systems sometimes leave a little to be desired.
If you don't believe me about the legendary durability of the Slant-6, I invite you to take a look at Yahoo and see what comes up. Check out Tailfins and Allpar, too. If you're *still* not convinced, I'd invite you to e-mail me with the address and details on the car. If you're nearby, I'll happily give you a few bucks for it and haul it off for a good restoration or to be used as a parts car.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Thanks, man! Yeah, I'm a car nut. Rather than sit at home and watch anime, I prefer to get out there, spark up the MIG welder, and plop a big engine somewhere where it doesn't belong.
Freedom to Innovate includes multi-talented computer geeks with welders, I guess... :) (There! Now we're on-topic!)
Mopar kicks so much ass. Fuck a Chevy and to hell with Ford. Well... I'm still a die-hard Ford guy but Mopar rules too.Well, my daily driver is a 400 big-block powered 1976 Dodge Ram. It's a lot more fun than the little Acura Integra that one of my co-workers drives. And, it's faster, though it only gets about 7 MPG and I drive it 20 miles each way to work and back. (Ouch!)
I'm a Slant-6 fan, primarily. That was the motor you couldn't kill... :) Tough as nails. I've got three Slant-6 engines, and a Slant-6 powered Valiant Brougham in my garage. Very nice little luxury highway cruiser.
I've also got a Chevette with a Buick 3.8L V6 stuffed under the hood. To satisfy the driveway's Big-Three quota, the Chevette has a narrowed Ford 8.8" differential from an old Crown Vic in the back; the Chevette's original diff didn't hold up to the Buick V6 for very long. Fast little car. Beating a Mustang with it is a fun challenge; having a Civic with tinted windows pull up beside me is just boring.
Here in New England, Mopar is getting more popular with each show I go to. If you're in MA there is a show every Fri night at Sams next to Higgins. There was a huge show about 5 weeks ago at Quinsig with a bunch of Mopar on display.I'm in Toronto, Canada, actually. If you're gonna be up this way 'round about August 20th, you should head to New Hamburg, there's an annual Mopar show there that attracts several thousand cars. And then, nearer to you in PA, there's the show in Calisle. You'd have to check out the date for that one this year; I was at last year's, it was incredible.
Drop me a line by e-mail (assuming you check this post again), and I can get you specific Carlisle info and stuff *without* losing all my /. karma.
E-mail address is at the top!
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
...undermine the FIN by all /. users creating accounts and doing our part to contribute to their efforts
42
This is a big smokescreen and it's laughable that Microsoft thinks people will believe it. It's even more scary that some people seem to believe it.
Really? so maybe you can tell me?
-o Disclaimer: You smell like shit, so does your mother, and I fuck her up the ass every day. o-
Maybe if Microsoft gains the "freedom to innovate" they'll start innovating...
Ok, you can drop all of the linux users out of the discussion (I think you're assuming that all of the slashdot readers are linux users, which isn't true) if you want to. Even though in yer mind the people developing linux aren't innovating, they still have a right to their opinion about microsoft's claims about their own innovations.
Besides, innovation isn't really something that costs money or even time really
That's not true. If you want to come up with some truely innovative ideas, then you need to hire the right people. You need to hire people who know what they're doing, you need to hire people who know what can be done, you need to hire people who can impliment all of these cutting edge "innovations." That costs money. That's why highly skilled intelligent people get paid more than the average joe, because they have these abilities that other people (including microsoft employees) lack.
Its a good thing I read your post... I didn't even realize this article was about linux.
You list 5 innovations, at least 3 of which are things with little impact on the world (besides giving people new toys to play with). I'd expect a company worth several hundred billions of dollars to be able to be more innovative than a free software project with $0 in funding.
I'll admit that linux users rant about MS the most... but what do you mean they contribute the least? The least compaired to who? There are lots of linux users who contribute free software to the community, yet there are very few windows users who contribute free software to anything. Even though there might be more people working on linux than there are working on windows, its not these people's job to work on linux... for most of them its what they do in their spare time.
It seems to me that the people developing linux software don't have the time to be as innovative as microsoft should be. Linux developers have a lot of work to do to get linux so that it can compete with a large commercially funded OS, and they're doing a good job with the limited time and resources they have.
Actually, 5 or even 3 innovations is 5 or 3 more than zero. With the amount of money available 5 or 3 seems almost infinitly small...
FIN is just short for "Final" in TCP -- if it's set to 1 it signifies that this is the 'final' packet as far as the sender is concerned.
:)
I _believe_ that it's on the last regular data packet, and that the recipient should respond with an ack/fin packet as well, but I'm not sure, and it may very depending on what stack you're talking about -- expert clarification welcome
Xentax
cgrathje@eos.ncsu.edu
You shouldn't verb words.
Other groups have brochures like this they are called cults. My favorite line from the back of the brochure is "Do I have to agree with every position FIN takes". They also encourage you getting your friends involved. I guess Bill is turning into Jim Jones. I wonder how long it will take for them to have a compound in South America.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
is how expensive the lawyers they hire to sue slashdot for linking to that brochure are.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
I know this is obvious, but what kind of retarded drooling RETARD is going to join this thing and get all involved? Can you imagine being at some dinner party and one guy starts talking about the work he does for Greenpeace, then someone starts talking about their volunteer position with NAACP, and then some guy starts going "right on brothers! I also am fighting the man! The man is always trying to keep the little guy down and that is why I often send letters to my congressman telling him to keep off my brother Billy G's back. REVOLUTION NOW! REVOLUTION NOW!".
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Maybe a synthesis of the two ideas would be even better....
bipartisanship, n.: when both parties gang up on you
Bob Herbold, Microsoft COO, says "Innovation is what makes America great!" on that brochure. BZZT! *Freedom* is what makes America great. You know, the Consitution, those inalienable rights, trial by jury, etc. Not innovation. Innovation is a byproduct of what makes America great! What a Corporate Statist. Two words, Bob: Teddy Roosevelt!
I'm generalizing here, but I have noticed a trend with people loyal to Microsoft... They all mention how MS has really helped them get rich, work more, build more... the list goes on.
One thing I have heard the from Linux community is a level of almost unquantifiable love for the OS. There are many people out there who work for nothing or gain nothing from OS, but they LOVE it.
Are there people out there who love MS and/or Windows just for what it is? Are there any vocal people whose livelihood is not dependent on MS?
So the reason Microsoft never innovated is that they didn't feel free to do so ... that explains everything!
Come on now, what's all this innovation shit about? Compared with companies that have only a fraction of their resources, Microsoft don't innovate shit. They're a marketing company, no more, no less.
Hell, stop rerading me, I'm not telling you anything new!
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Ever get the feeling that you're drifting down the mississippi with an escaped Microserf. I know I'm gonna get capsized by an MS steamboat any minute now... I wish 'ol Samuel Clemens were still around..... grumpfish
Grumpfish
Grumpfish
I'd rather be fishing...
Where did I call them innovative? I just pointed out that they had innovated. There is a difference.
My point is that Linux users don't really have the right to complain about MS lacking innovation. Linux is stable, Linux is small. If they want to ocomplain about Windows being big and unstable then fine. However the huge number of programmers behind the Linux kernel haven't added anything new. Microsoft might not have done as much as most companies a 100th of their size, but they have done some things. (Nothing groundbreaking I'll grant you). Besides, innovation isn't really something that costs money or even time really. You don't sit someone at a computer and tell them to innovate. You just hire lots of people and hope they come up with something.
Well, Linux does have more people working for it than Microsoft. I chose Linux, because its Linux users who rant on about MS not innovating the most, yet contribute the least.
"Microsoft development tools are always substantially less expensive than anybody else's"? Have you tried gcc on Linux (or, for that matter, on Windows) lately? Free is about as cheap as you can get.
Can't the spin doctors at MS see that this is exactly the sort of cynical campaign that will damage their case in the court of public opinion?
Except that many people are still under the belief that "What's good for Microsoft is good for the US"
Many people still view only the Mac and Windows as viable OSes in the commercial world, especially those home users (I guess this is how they can claim to be a grassroot program?). Furthermore, everyone is used to seeing MS all over all their products and take this to mean that MS is the best there is (after all, everyone is doing it).
MS has already lost in court, they're trying last ditch efforts to win in public opinion, a court filled with those who have already been brainwashed by their marketing.
Microsoft clearly states that I don't have to agree with them to join, so I think I will. I know this just adds to their number of supporters count, but I think I'll sign up to distribute petitions, attend town meetings, and distribute flyers as well.
I'll kindly ask people not to sign the petition I'm bringing around, and clearly explain why to them as well.
I'll go to the town meetings, and say "As a proud member of FIN, I believe that Microsoft needs to be broken up, but that I believe that they would innovate more effectively if they were segmented into three pieces".
I can see a great many reasons why many competent linux advocates might want to join FIN. If most of their membership/volunteers were people from slashdot, I imagine that it could be difficult for them to accomplish anything. It'd also be keen to point out to your local and state representatives that 1/2 of the members of FIN also believe that Microsoft would innovate better as seperate companies :).
Either way, that's one small point. The rest still stand. Saying that GUI is "an easy target" doesn't make it any less of a fair target. Every commercial GUI has used some PARC ideas, but linux has taked these imitations to new heights. Further more, the imitations are usually crappier than the originals. Further, my original criticism was not only about the GUI as a whole, but about the specific apps for the gui. Plenty have folks, including MS, have innovated in this area. Linux has a lot of second rate imitations.
IP-masquerading is available on a lot of platforms. I don't know where it started, but I'd be surprised if it started on linux. I do like linux's implementation of the idea the best though and frequently use linux expressly for this purpose.
About the voltaire thing, yeah, I stand by your rephrased version of what I said. I think they do bad things. Illegal things? No. Immoral things, yes. Don't buy their stuff. As for calling me an idiot and a lout, if that's the way you argue, fine. I think that that is totally inappropriate in a discussion of this nature, disgusting, really. Kind of like Microsoft. However, I'll defend your right to behave that way till I die as well.
jeb.
jeb.
That's not what he said at all. He said all his hits were free. Where did you get this from? All the stuff he needs to buy is cheap. They gain from the fact that when he uses their tools to create something of value, the value of their other goods is increased. Your rephrasing is invalid. jeb.
A lot of people have made posts to the effect that microsoft is only trying to protect its "freedom to imitate". This is coming from the *linux community*? Linux is based solely on imitation. The kernel is imitation of older, better unices. Linus would say so, he (famously) was imitating Tannenbaum. The gnu tools are all copies of older tools. Worst of all, though, is the modern "uniquely linux" stuff, like KDE, Gnome, etc. Miguel himself said (quoting best as I can here from memory) that when designing gnome tools, he had no idea what to do and instead just copied whatever Microsoft had already done! Everything these new tools are made of existed on MS first. Evolution is (possibly) and evolution of Outlook. KDE is a crappier (albeit more customizable) version of the windows shell. Linux has zero plans for development innovation, unless you count developing new ways of self-righteous ESR-style anti-microsoft whining. The leaders of the linux community consistently lament the lack of a long term linux "roadmap". Everything we've seen new and cool on linux has been a rehash of something from another platform. Even the basic look and feels of the GUIs! Half the window managers out there are based on NextStep. Half the themes out there are OS copies. Check out how many new Apple Aqua themes there are lately, talk about imitation. Personally, I do not support the breakup of microsoft. I hate the company, I use there products as little as possible, but when they are the best for the task, I use them. I have to develop for/under windows at work, but I use xemacs to code in. I certainly don't love MS. I think there business practices are reprehensible and I think a lot of there leadership lacks any sort of basic moral compass, but I will defend there right to act that way until I die. jeb.
When MS makes a powerful, easy to use dev tool available to a guy like John Murdoch cheaply, he is able to provide a solution to a user cheaply as well. Where is the mystery in that?
As for your issues with ex-MS people, I don't know the people you've had to deal with, but some of the most capable, intelligent people I know work at microsoft. They pretty much come into college CS depts. and find out who the best kids are. Then, they offer them unbeatable freedom and benefits. Not surprisingly, a lot of them go there. None of the people I know who have gone there have anything negative to say about the experience. I know a kid who's interning there now. He's working on a neat problem, all by himself, he gets paid very well, and he writes his code in emacs. How can you beat that deal?
jeb.
jeb.
Let's look at some real basic ones here. How about web browsing? Microsoft was the first to come out with a useable browser that actually met the CSS-1 standard (IE5/Mac). What's more, it's remarkably stable! Today, web-browser stability is a true innovation. Try to read /. running Netscape under FreeBSD. It crashes so much that I switched back to windows for browsing. Under Solaris, I actually use the most recent version of IE available rather than crash-happy netscape or mozilla. That's an innovation I'd like to see protected.
How about decent email readers? Have any of you used outlook or are you all lumbering along with Mutt/Pine/early crippled versions of Evolution? Outlook kicks all of there asses. In some sense, it's truly innovative.
How about office software? StarOffice/Applix is a *joke* compared to MS Office. It's not even in the same league. And far from being innovative, it's a bad clone of MS's Office. As I recall, MS basically set the standard, innovatively, in Office software, and everyone else is still trying to play catchup. OLE was a great technology for office software when it came out, and I've yet to see another vendor match even that old thing.
In a lot of ways, the /. crowd is worse than microsoft. The knee-jerk reaction to any microsoft news is so puerile in general that it need not be read. I think we need a little less playground-style "M$ SUX LINUX RUL3Z D00DZ!!" and a little more argument-with-supporting-evidence-type discussion.
jeb.
Interesting flag on the brocure I wonder when we will see it flying over Redmond. Also do you have any scans of the MS Booth Bunnys? Just Wondering. Seriously though: It looks as if MS is feeling the pressure to win in the arena of public opinion since they will not prevail in the legal. Unless of course they bluster that they will move operations out of the US, at which point the gov. may back down for all the jobs (not concerned about the jobs, just the angry voters) that would be lost. I have heard a rumour that Vancouver is wooing them though... Nah... that would be suicide for MS, and a blatent admission of guilt.
I found it a bit ironic that FIN is free. HELLO, this is a Microsoft support group! Charge the bastards! I say you should have to buy the leaflet, then be forced to go through dead links to try to find patches for the leaflet, and moreso the leaflet should be encrypted so no one can read the source (which was stolen anyways). Oh no, my leaflet has the I love you bug! -benben
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" Can't recall the author of the above, but it seems timely...
Shouldn't the line "Your time and efforts will help to shape our future" read:
"Your time and efforts will help us shape your future"?
---you all gotta check this out ://a1668.g.akamaitech.net/7/1668/1116/92e9c/kimble .org/kimble_themovie.swf
http
Sure, it's petty. So?
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
Shareholders and Morons? The only moron I see is the person who posted this insane rant.
Just because their stock in Microsoft made them rich, shareholders aren't as stupid as you'd like to think. We don't like some of the anti-competitive policies that Microsoft has, and we'd like to see some competition (just to prove that Microsoft has the best products). Unfortunately, most shareholders are "silent partners" in the company and don't have any say as to the company's policies. So stop thinking we're all a bunch of uninvolved, uninformed rich people.
Microsoft shareholders DO NOT stand to lose money if the company is split... but to see this you have to take a look at the "long run." Let's take a little hypothetical journey here:
Say Microsoft is split into a company called Windows and another company called Windows Apps. Shareholders of Microsoft would then own stock in both companies. Since "Windows Apps" products are so strong -- and believe me, moron who posted nonsense, they are the most used products in today's business world -- they would still be widely used, which creates a need for "Windows" OS. Both companies would thrive, and the shareholders would be even richer.
Of course, this hypothetical journey is into the land of optimism. A pessimist would say we're all going to lose the shirt off our backs, but I disagree. Microsoft products are too entrenched in the business world -- they're not going anywhere, regardless of whether the company is split or not.
The only downside to spliting the company is this: it will take longer for the next generation of Office, SQL Server, and Exchange Server to catch up with the next generation of Windows, since the divisions would no longer communicate during development. Big deal -- so we have to use a slightly older Microsoft product with our new OS for a few months while they catch up. We know it will be worth it to wait...
As for the moron's morons, fear is not the motivation. Ease is the motivation, and I'm sure you know it. Microsoft is perfect for the new user, and it's perfect for the advanced programmer. It's got something for everyone and that's why it's so popular, not because users, by and large, are morons.
And the hypothetical "If Microsoft simply went away..." -- try using a more realistic approach. We all know that Microsoft will stick around a while, ether in its present state or divided. Your point, whatever it was, got lost when you slipped into insanity. And Apple just doesn't have the software development capabilities that Microsoft provides it's customers -- unless they get a zillion programmers working 'round the clock, they'll never be truly competitive -- so don't even try to bring them up in this conversation.
~PQ
you guys actually think that its a GOOD thing when govt starts messing around with the software industry?
oh wait.. its m$ so it MUST be evil
Where can I find the front and back of the cute chicks?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
That wasn't a troll; it was a carefully-constructed combination of insightful metaphor and playfully insolent criticism. If it comes across as rude, that's intentional; sometimes rudeness is called-for, for the purpose of poking fun at. It is as much a troll as Oscar Wilde's witticisms.
--
Remember the Mac users of a few years ago, when the press' favorite word was "beleaugured"? Mac users were similarly fanatical. Of course, they were fanatical about a great operating system, decent hardware, and kick-ass applications, but the point is, they felt threatened. Now, people whose computing lives revolve exclusively around Windows feel threatened by the antitrust lawsuit, and are acting similarly rabid. The difference is, of course, that the Windows users don't have a technical leg to stand on when they say they like Windows - the vast majority have never used anything else.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Depends on what each side does. They can do it the clean way, making their products and letting consumers choose, or they can do it the dirty way, with market-division proposals, dumping, exclusionary contracts and product tying. It's all in how they do it. Whether or not they are a monopoly will also affect what is and is not ok.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Of course the intelligent posters usually offer some evidence to back up their claims. Don't see anything of the sort on this propaganda flyer of Microsoft's. Can't even find any on the "Freedom To Innovate" pages of their website.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Of course it also would allow them to claim a much larger support base than they really have. All in all, it would probably do more harm than good.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Bob isn't an innovation. IIRC IBM messed around with a 'real life' UI that was very similar in the 70s-80s. It sucked. General Magic had a very similar UI for their Magic Cap PDA in the early 90's about a year before Bob came out. It also sucked. (although General Magic did do some interesting work) Then Bob came along and was simply another in a long line of sucky UIs. Nothing innovative about it, unless MS has redefined innovation to mean imitation.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I can personally vouch that gcc is widely used, for instance on Wall St.
Perhaps online trading systems are not complex enough for you?
And if you want something useful, look at Perl. Built with gcc. Running on FreeBSD. Sounds like kid's play? Sounds like Yahoo to me!
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
When I see attempts to integrate Microsoft products and push them through their paces, I see bugs popping up. YMMV, but that seems to be a pretty common experience.
Now looking at your user info you have a career that involves your status as a pundit on Microsoft products. Watching those products wane in influence may be pretty personally threatening. But that doesn't mean that Microsoft doesn't fully deserve what is happening to it. And it doesn't mean that things are better today than they would be if Microsoft had not set out to abuse its monopoly position.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
"Links to pages that have not been seen by the user are blue; links to previously seen pages are purple or red. Don't mess with these colors since the ability to understand what links have been followed is one of the few navigational aides that is standard in most web browsers. Consistency is key to teaching users what the link colors mean."
He [revisits the problems] a few years later, and miscoloured links are still a problem:
"Continues to be a problem since users rely on the link colors to understand what parts of the site they have visited. I often see users bounce repeatedly among a small set of pages, not knowing that they are going back to the same page again and again. (Also, because non-standard link colors are unpleasantly frequent, users are now getting confused by any underlining of text that is not a link.)"
Anyway, I think blue and red are the correct colours, as I originally stated. I'd have to reinstall an ancient Netscape to verify that I (and Jakob) are right, though...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
It's redundent because it follows up a message that has exactly the same link.
Unfortunately, whoever wrote the original message wrote it to be so damned boring and uninformative that it wasn't getting the attention it deserved.
I don't moderate, so I decided that the best way to get people to realize that the brochure is based on a Microsoft site was to write a more detailed, more attractive message.
So the moderator is technically correct, but stupid. Way to go. Nothing like making Slashdot discussions *LESS* informative than they already are.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Forget this PR pile of crap, let's see the booth babes!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Voices from the FIN:
"All of us owe MSFT
a measure of appreciation for creating an "operating system" which allows almost anyone with interest to become semi-literate in computer operation. This gift is world-wide and has aided the US in becoming the leading nation is technology."
From a FIN site visitor
...and grammer.
I'd personally like to thank Bill for his "gift".
One can still interpret AOL's actions as having to agressively fight back against devious tactics. Just like I was saying, any company that's 1) Non-Msft and 2) Makes nice "well behaved" per the published api applications doesn't stand a chance against Msft app integration with "special secret ingrediants" - all the more reason to seperate the two, so that EVERYONE can have a chance, not just the guys who make the default OS.
(Just checked w/ someone who uses NT & AOL and yes, it's ver 3).
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think the most logical course would be for every reader of /. to sign up. Hell, they're going to tell you how to contact your federal and state officials on important matters being considered. What absolute fun it would be to stop the FUD from inside the Redmond machine.
Now that's grassroots........
"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,
as a son-of-a-bitch to the core"
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
old /. article on DIVX "fans"
I'd actually like to know the answer to this one.
Most of the people I know of who use Microsoft(tm) technologies don't think much of the company, they just think it's a way to make a living. Most of them, at least around me, admit that they'd rather use something else, but the market wants Microsoft, and the market gets what it wants most of the time.
There are a good number of principled Libertarians who are appalled at the MS antitrust case, casting it as a company that's worked very hard to give the computing world a standard that, if not perfect, is better than no standard at all. Here's a good example of their beliefs:
http://reason.com/bi/microsoft.html
I'm a libertarian, and I agree with most of what Reason magazine says. At the same time, I absolutely loathe Microsoft as a company. I have a difficult time supporting the case, because of principle, and I have a tough time opposing it, because the company is indeed evil. So I sit at the sidelines and laugh at the amazing cock-up Microsoft has made of the trial.
I don't think there are many people who love Microsoft software; I think there are many people who agree with Microsoft on principle in this case.
D
----
Mirror, mirror, on the wall...
Who's the most innovative of all?
Is someone at Microsoft trying to garner brownie points with Bill Gates by coming up with these web sites? I couldn't make up my mind to laugh out loud or toss cookies (I had the misfortune to visit the FIN (?) site just after eaten lunch -- I should have known better).
\begin{aside}
Slashdot isn't the only site to have made questionable changes to their websites. Linux Today's site change (about a month ago) forced me to set by browser to override their site's (all all other sites' as well) color selections because the unvisited and the visited sites all came out the same color. Add to that, returning to the site after following a link and you lost your place; hard to tell where you were when all link colors are the same. InfoWorld Electric had to tinker with their online forums some time ago and broke them... badly. The first time they did this, the reverted back to the previous layout. The second time they broke them, they (IWE) just turned them off and they've been disabled for around 6 months or so. Hopefully, there's a few out-of-work web designers as a result of that fiasco. Anyway, Slashdot's plain-vanilla, light-on-the-graphics view works fine for me. I wish more sites had the user-selectable interface that Slashdot has.
Has anyone else noticed how web sites that are connected to long-time print magazines seem to be the most likely to be the ones whose sites are the least readable, the most likely to have forced (read: squinty) font sizes, gratuitous animated GIFs, pixel-based table widths, tinkered with link colors, and other eye-candy that might look OK in print but is a nightmare for the online viewer?
\end{aside}
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
There's a myth that the larger the breasts, the
dumber the woman. Actually, it's the larger the
breasts, the dumber the guys.
I submit that this is going to be the leading edge of `civilizing' the net. Us heathens and blood thirsty animals will need to be `saved' from our own desires. Microsoft is going to become the Catholic church of the internet if it isn't allready. I think King Gates is gearing up for Crusade v1.0.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
It's not original to me. I dunno who first coined it.
Read it. Microsoft bluntly claims that it's a "grassroots network of citizens", which heavily implies that they have little or nothing to do with it -- as if at most they're simply responding to the wishes of their hordes of oh-so-outraged fans.
Maybe you find it hard to believe that some people are naive enough to not realize this isn't mostly or entirely Microsoft's baby, but I don't.
Me very bad man. Did not preview my comment and so I misspeled the word "responsible". And yes... I do know about the spelling error in this post also.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Ever heard of Atari, TRS80, Sinclair, Mac, Amiga, CBM, etc?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Gotta agree here. Microsoft has been pretty open with any and all who ask about the Freedom to Innovate Network. The PR line, of course, is that it's a channel for the public to let their feelings on the antitrust case be known. But I don't think they've ever disguised it as something independent from the company.
Mike
Has anyone seen this in person? I want to know if the monitor screen caps are from a Mac, as they often are in the publishing business.
The irony would kill me.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The FIN website used to allow you to do emails to your congressman, the President and Vice President, your state house and senate members, governor and state attorney general.
Now it all seems to not be there any more.
Oh well, I was able to use it a few months ago with my "destroy Microsoft, let them be split up!" message.
What you don't realize is that in 1989, doing the Microsoft thing was the same trip as the Linux thing at the very beginning. In 1993-1995 doing the Microsoft thing was the same as doing the Linux thing now. It was very revolutionary. This isn't the first time revolutions have come around, and it won't be the last. You would do well to remember that as you advocate Linux. Believe it or not, a great many software scientists do groove on the Microsoft thing.
In 1993, a copy of Wordperfect for dos 5.3 cost $495; the Sun admins at school kept everything locked down tight; and everything just sucked. Our revolution was to empower everybody. Just like you!
Let me explain the essential nature of the microsoft trip: your job as the computer lizard lightning king is subordinate to the secretary up front who has to push all them buttons you dream up, and your mom and dad has to groove on it too. That's what we fought against: the idea that IS ruled and the users were secondary. Always make that your watchword, and you'll never find us far apart.
The idea that the non-expert rules the show is also why the marketplace loves it. My job is basically to go lots of places and find all these pretty women and figure out why their foozle ain't fozzling right. That's all anybody cares about. In your private circles you "know" stuff and talk about stuff and groove on stuff but your job is to just help Sally Jane Rottencrotch keep her stuff a' rollin. See, Sally's boss gotta keep Sally happy so he keeps his fatcat pos'n. You make Sally groove, and Sally's boss keeps on writing that check. Simple as peach pie....
Personally, I view it all as Philips Head vs. Flathead screwdrivers anyway, it's just stupid to get all holy about it. It's just a f'ing tool man.
> I can say unequivocably that there is no subculture of Microsoft fanatics past, present or future.
You obviously don't spend much time in c.o.l.a.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Read my .sig.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I fully intend to e-mail my representatives, and I hope they realize the important impact that Microsoft has had on the computing industry
I hope his representatives realize the impact they've had, too.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Do you really think the membership of this "organization" is going to do anything? The only reason MS wants to you sign up is so they can put another tick mark on a list they are going to show to any politician who will stand still for over 5 seconds.
In other words, just signing up gives them ammo ("Senator Bob, we have 8 million members!")
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Is it my imagination, or does the FIN sound a lot like the Blackwatch organization from Babylon 5?
The more beautiful women, the better. Not sure when you went to high school, but when I did, they sure as hell weren't sending the hot chicks to slobber over the geeks. Anyway, seeing them for free at trade shows is better than spending $10 a month to "look at pictures of me and all my sorority sisters".
Perhaps they haven't caught on to one small fact though: having been turned down (or 'friended') by more physically attractive women than I can shake a stick at, I'm largely immune. Any geek with any sense (and any experience) will figure out that these women are similar to those in HS/College who were nice until right after you helped them with their homework. So what it boils down to is I get a peek; the company doesn't get a sale unless they have a good product; and Barbie gets a job that suits her intelligence.
As Judge Judy is so fond of saying: "Beauty fades, Dumb is Forever"
("OW! Yes, honey, of course you are beautiful. I only meant I got dumped on and/or used by every beautiful woman I met EXCEPT you.")
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
We should all join FIN, and coopt it in the name of competition and real innovation.
"Dear Senator,
I am writing to you on behalf of the local branch of the Freedom to Innovate Network, who would like to see senior Microsoft executives forced to work the helpdesk for their crappy products."
--
E_NOSIG
> Really? so maybe you can tell me?
Hmmm. A liar *and* slow... Not a good combination. OK, let me break it down for you, troll. You listed a link that was labelled as a copy of one of the scanned images from the original article. You portrayed yourself as a kind netizen providing a mirror for said images. The first image was, in fact, a mirror. Great, thanks. The second image, however, was not. It was labelled as though it were, but as you know, it was not. For this reason, the poster felt it necessary to label you a liar. I would agree. His point was clearly that you misrepresented your intentions and so deserved to be called a liar. That was his point.
> Your point?
I think his point was pretty clear, liar.
Ever read the "Talkback" posted to a ZDNet story about Windows or Linux? Microsoft zealots on ZDNet are just about as vocal as Linux zealots on Slashdot. The main difference is that ZDNet's comments are even more disorganized since there's no way to view them in any sort of threaded or flat mode.
For more information, click here.
Thirdly, we are talking about OS's that exist now. MacOS X is still in pre-beta (DR2, IIRC).
DR4, actually. It very much exists, at least for people in Apple's Developer Connection, which isn't the same as being publicly available, but which is still a far cry from not existing for anyone, like MS's X-box. It's actually pretty solid, from what playing I've done with it. The only scary part is the native (carbon) version of IE that ships with it.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Given that any website not run by a multinational corporation inevitably dies within seconds of being hit with the 'slashdot effect' I would suggest that slashdot install some cache servers and have all links point to the cache'ed version and the cached version promenently noteing where the original document lives.
I think both the slashdot users who are minutes late and get 'server not responding' and the administrators of these poor slashdotted sites would both be appreciative of this service.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
I remember when Microsoft was the underdog. They took on IBM. In court. And won. Shock. The little guy wins one - yay Microsoft! It was all different in the '80s. It was the birth of the microcomputer industry. I'm sure there are more than a few players in today's industry that started back then and have kept a narrow focus on Microsoft in order to keep up with the changes. Those folks are going to have a different nostalgia and a different perspective.
It was the early 90s and my po-dunk town finally managed public net access. A friend of mine caught on quickly to the whole web thing and promptly produced his first web page. At the bottom read "Escape the Net - use Microsoft Internet Explorer!" It was a call to arms against the Big Evil Netscape. And Microsoft was the champion underdog. While I didn't share his opinion, I did find it interesting that my friend (an otherwise intelligent individualist) came to that conclusion.
So are there Microsoft supporters? Of course. Situations change. Perceptions change. Truth becomes fluid. And that's why there is propoganda - pushing "the truth" despite fact.
Maybe that just means that your're smarter than Microsoft's PR department.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
closest allied big companies had anything to lose from the proposed
split: surely, I naively thought, increased competition should be good
for MS developers. Well, learning that it isn't so has rather
increased my enthusiasm for the split.
PS. Moderate up John Murdoch's post.
I have been trying to figure out what MS has truly inovated sence it started. I can only think of a handful, like the "if carpel tunnel syndrom hasn't hit you yet it will soon" wheel mouse, minesweeper, Exchange, and the magic talking paperclip.
I don't think that I am the only person who wants to know what MS has truly inovated so I was hoping that some of you could list MS's inovations.
Thank you.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Seriously, I don't see the average computer consumer particularly caring one way or the other about Microsoft. They to date have not been especially bothered by its bullying monopoly, and I would be surprised if a broad spectrum of computer users would be bothered by a broken-up Microsoft. Business leaders (an oxymoron?) will care, because it will affect the market (though it might very well be a positive effect), but a broken-up Microsoft will still consist of much of the same people, and thus much of the same corporate culture as before.
After break-up, the Baby Bells continued to act like monopolists, with poor customer service, reluctance to comply with (much less support) legislation to stimulate competition, and rates that increased, not decreased as a competitive situation would have. And then they all went on merger and acquisition sprees.
Microsoft has a very insular corporate culture - before Linux fanatics were identified to the general public by the media, there were Microserfs who worked insane hours for lousy pay but were millionaires on paper. And always toed the party line. Gates was and is the head of a cult of personality. Sinister? No. An extreme example of corporatism? You betcha.-----
Klactovedestene!
The short answer: Yeah, there are Microsoft loyalists. They're called stockholders. Either that, or employees.
:) and that simple fact alone shouldn't be underestimated.
The long answer to a refined version of the question: Well, do they exist outside of Redmond/Wall Street? Again, I'd say that they do, especially since I'd identify myself as one of them. I consider myself to be a very happy Microsoft customer (and owner of a very, very small amount of their stock) and a supporter of theirs in the fight against the Justice Department. Whenever a debate breaks out regarding the trial proceedings, or Windows vs. Linux, I'm pretty firmly in the Microsoft camp. (Though for what it's worth, I hate Windows 98 with a passion.)
I haven't had a chance to check out their Freedom to Innovate brochure (slashdotted, at the moment), but I suppose something like that might persuade me to write a quick letter to my congressman, or do something along those lines to support them.
Say what you will, but Microsoft is capable of some pretty solid feats. Their optical mice are amazing (though I understand it uses HP technology, someone had to bring it to market) and as I've said before, Windows 2000 really is a very solid, stable, functional OS (in my experience).
Obviously, I don't think that Microsoft/Windows has the grassroots subculture that OSS/Linux/etc. has, but don't completely discount its backers. It's made a lot of people quite wealthy (even if it hasn't done the same for me, yet
-jay
Probably from French where "fin" means "the end". (Like at the end of those really artsy black and white movies.) Maybe they're trying to tell us something...
I guess all those years of french classes finally paid off.
-Slackerboy
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
Kids, do *not* think that this is a mirror. Moderators, do *not* moderate this up. If you don't believe me, just view the pics when there are no children around.
-ted
Hi Phil!
JonK has written an excellent reply. Rather than repeating his words, I refer you to his splendid post. He's faced the same problem of integration in the CORBA/EJB market space that I've seen with minicomputers, LANs, and PCs over the past 15 years.
To give one example: SQL--the database query language. There are several ANSI standards: SQL-92 is the most recent. But there are tens of thousands of experienced Oracle DBAs out there with years and years of experience with PL/SQL. Who really, really like the non-SQL-92 features in PL/SQL and would doubtless inflict serious bodily injury on any Oracle product manager stupid enough to drop their non-standard features.
The most effective standard in the database business, by far, has been ODBC. (Brought to you by Microsoft.) Different vendors have written ODBC drivers to achieve different types of functionality--Intersolv's drivers provide exactly the same functionality for each of 34 different databases. Write to Intersolv's drivers for one database, and your code will work practically unchanged on any other database. BUT--those Intersolv drivers are very definitely "least common denominator" drivers. Visigenic, on the other hand, writes drivers to give you every last morsel of performance that a given DBMS supports. Write to a Visigenic driver for Informix and you have no guarantee at all that the same code will run against an Oracle back end. So long as you're certain that the back end won't change, the Visigenic driver will yield substantially better performance.
In theory, the idea that a DBMS is an interchangeable component is lovely. In practice, a company will focus on a single database platform and stick with it. They hire DBAs with skills on that platform, they develop solutions targeted at that platform, and they have a huge investment in data stored on that platform. Any client with a brain will include due diligence investigation of a DBMS vendor's financials as part of any purchase decision--it's that kind of a buy-in. In a sense it is comparable to a trucking company buying into an engine vendor--the truck may have a Navistar, Freightliner, or Western Star brand name, but there's a Detroit Diesel engine under the hood. If that trucker has 300 mechanics that are factory-trained on Detroit Diesel engines, it's going to take something huge to convince him to switch to Caterpillar.
Hi!
Actually, my company is about the same size as yours--even a bit smaller. The solution is extremely easy: join the Solution Providers program. You pay an annual subscription fee of around $2400, and you get all the tools you just mentioned: all the development tools, all the server tools, the client licenses, the whole deal. If your local office nominates you for the Partner program you get licenses for even more developers. Definitely worth doing, in your case.
Oh, and you think Visual SourceSafe is a stagnant tool? Way back when Microsoft shipped their first version-control app, named Delta. It sucked. It was so good (not) that MS went out and bought LoneTree just to get SourceSafe.
Forgive me--I was only thinking of tools used by commercial developers. Yes, gcc is popular among university students--but real-world developers tend to get hired to real with more complex issues. When you're building distributed apps that scale to thousands of users and beyond you need more than just a compiler. How would you write a component (such as a COM or CORBA component) with gcc? And how would you manage a pool of those components? And how would you distribute those components across a variety of servers, or even across multiple domains?
Or, on a simpler scale, how would you extract images from a fax server and store them on an optical disk?
The GNU project has created some free tools. And some useful tools. I'm sure its great for learning how to program. But they're just not for commercial use.
What would happen if everybody in the Slashdot, Open Source, Linux, etc. communities joined the FIN Network and directed it accordingly. Imagine the FIN Network actively assisting the DOJ in the M$ lawsuit. Of course I'm sure B.G. (aka God) would just claim some sort of intellectual propery right on the FIN Network and claim that we are all in violation since we don't agree with him.
1) From paragraph 1 we learn that "The FIN is a non-partisan effort..." however from paragraph 2 we are told "The FIN is open to all Microsoft customers...". How do you spell NON-PARTISAN -- MICROSOFT ???? 2) From Paragraph 3 we learn that "Membership is absolutely free." however from paragraph 2, once again, "The FIN is open to all Microsoft customers...". This implies that you have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee, or enter into some other type of financial relationship with Microsoft to be eligible for membership. How do you spell FREE -- MICROSOFT ???? 3) From Paragraph 3 we are told that "the FIN is a purely grassroots communications tool..." As mentioned in another Slashdot comment look at the Redmond, WA address on the postcard. Not to mention the fact that the director of the FIN has a microsoft.com e-mail address. How do you spell GRASSROOTS -- MICROSOFT ???? If you still don't understand check out this map which has MS corporate offices in the NE corner and the FIN offices in the SW corner -- about two miles apart. 4) This is more of a technical point, but in paragraph 3 we are told that the FIN "...does not provide financial support to candidates." However, from an Oct 1998 ZDNet artic le we see that Microsoft technology campaing contributors. How do you spell NO FINANCIAL SUPPORT -- MICROSOFT ???? 5) Looking at paragraph 4 we see that FIN members "have an opportunity to ensure that important public policy decisions will be made on the basis of reason and accurate information." First of all should "public policy decisions" always be made on these basis regardless of my membership in the FIN. Assuming not, how does membership in the FIN "ensure" that they will now. Thirdly this sentence does NOT state, though it is easy it infer from a quick read, that FIN members will be given any special access to to congress or the like. Quite differently, it does not bother mentioning exactly who this "spokesperson" will be -- perhaps MICROSOFT???? 6) Look at the large type under the US flag made from a computer. Read the sentence "We must ensure that no new burdensome regulations affect our industry's continued ability to innovate." Think DMCA/MICROSOFT, SOFTWARE PATENTS/MICROSOFT ???? 7) I love this one, on the back read the first two questions and answers quickly without stopping. Notice how in the first question/answer combo it is stated that the FIN will "...provide you the tools necessary to help your opinions be heard!", however in the second question/answer combo, if you don't agree with the FIN you can communicate with public officials "...in the manner you choose." In other words if you don't agree with us you're on your own. 8) In the 4th question/answer combo we are told "...you will determine your own level of involvement." This is neat because it sounds like you can work as much or as little as you want. But understand the work of the membership is not needed. Once you join the FIN your name will forever be in there database when they report to congress that "the FIN, with membership of 503,248 technology professionals support this bill." This gives the FIN implied backing by the citizenship whether you do any work or not. If you don't think a large number of inactive members is any good I advise you check out the AARP and what kind of lobbying power they have. 9) Always read the names and their positions on advertisements. There are 5 names on this flyer of which 1 claims to be an MS investor, 1 is the director, 1 is the MS COO. Thus at least 60% of the people on this card have a financial relationship with Microsoft. And the other two are un-verifiable so they are a complete waste of ink. And this is only after reading this for about a 1/2 hour after work.
Amusingly (or frighteningly?), this reminds me of NRA pamphlets. And tactics.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Oh really? Does any Windows have a Steganographic Filesystem? Authored by Microsoft?
After all, the initials FIN should belong to our one true Finn, and nobody else!!
Don't like Microsoft?
;)
Dislike this FIN astro-turf campaign?
Feel like taking some money out of Microsoft's accounts and giving it to the Post Office and some printers?
Sign up for the Freedom to Innovate Network!
Give them a spamable email address.
And a name and address you don't mind getting junk paper mail sent to.
For those who think Microsoft is the Evil Empire, you get to do 4 things:
1> take money away from Microsoft (at pennies a month rates, but with enough people it adds up.)
2> You help Microsoft support the US Post office (part of those pennies/month.)
3> You get to see what ridiculous claims Microsoft is making.
4> Potentially kill the current form of the FIN campaign by reducing it's effectiveness... (If 1/2 their mailings go to non-Microsoft-supporters, their mailings become less useful.)
Some might think this is unethical...
But when has that bothered Microsoft?
This "grass roots campaign" will only galvanize some of the already-faithful. Microsoft doesn't realize that everyone who might possibly see things from their perspective already does, so the more they argue, the more supporters they stand to lose. If they were smart they would just ignore their legal troubles and continue with the usual marketing propaganda.
I don't think you can count both Bob and Clippy as separate innovations.
I would like to see 10 things that Microsoft has innovated (not borrowed or purchased or based of already existing work) listed.
Do you think I'll get any response ?
UPS Sucks
There's also a pro-Microsoft site pompously called The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. The admin contact for that domain is in the Bahamas, which is strange since the organization claims to be in Virginia. Whoever's behind it takes Ayn Rand too seriously.
What world are you from, most of the newer systems come with some version of unix on them. Besides, I didn't say that linux was the way to go, you assumed that. Competition is a good thing. Guess what, windows isn't the end all to be all. Most serious R&D is done under something else. Ever seen a massively parallel supercomputer running NT?
Eh...
Yeah, either MS or the uninformed masses. I'm pretty sure that most of the people out there with CS degrees who are practicing computer science aren't sitting there thinking "Damn, all of that innovative stuff at M$, NOOO!!"
Eh...
That isn't scary. I've seen scarier things on the flag, being from a very patriotic area. What I find scarier is that people are actually willing to sign up for this because they lack the logic to see that competition is a good thing. The abundance of stupid people in the world frightens me. I think that it was best said in a song "The World's on Heroine" - All
Eh...
Don't bother speculating. The brocure can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnov ate/. The address pretty much says it all. After all, it's a grass-roots effort, and Microsoft donated web space to them out of the kindness of their own hearts, and so that they wouldn't have to be bothered with the $75 US fee for a domain name.
Oh, by the way, check out the copyright and "terms of use" on the 'how to get involved' page. It's even funnier than the brochure.
I suppose that lots of people are going to be stupid and/or gullible enough to believe this blatant piece of shit; after all, the Good Times virus worked, didn't it?
---
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Long live M$'s Freedom to Imitate! wait... innovate? wtf is innovate? You mean there are ideas out there that we don't have to steal from someone? Where do we steal those?
um... thats very nice and all, but can we get some pictures of those girls giving out the flyers? :)
i mean, honestly, isnt that why we all go to these conferences
shaolin punk, activist post-industrial
Dear Representative Smith,
Windows is the only true way. Bill is a swell guy. Steve is a swell guy. Windows is the portal to a higher conciousness. Stop this persecution of my brethren or the DLL gods will be angry.
Hypnotically yours,
John Doe
Reboot Administrator
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
It makes me speculate that someone in Redmond was smoking grass to call this grassroots.
Hey Bill, don't drink the water!
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
To the average luser, they are.
I love the Linux and NetBSD and how they are both chock full of UNIXy goodness, but they are not for everybody.
No UNIX clone will be a consumer OS until it has:
Copy/Cut/Paste and Drag&Drop integrated in the OS. (vi commands are great for editing a single document if you know what you are doing, but in The Real World users need to move text between different apps all the time)
A complete and reliable web browser. We will have this Real Soon Now. There are several that look promising.
MS Office, or a suite that competes, feature for feature.
Star Office may someday be vastly superior to the M$ Bloatware, but it ain't yet. I hate MS Office, but it is the suite that most of the PC world learned how to use computers on. It is the watermark which an app must rise above to be called "good". (If Nissus starts porting their Mac apps to run in a Gnome environment, all bets are off. They make some majorly cool stuff!)
I have a couple boxes running *n?x for myself, but when my aunt wanted a computer to "do e-mail" on, I set her up with an old Macintosh IIci. It took me less than one hour to teach her everything she needed to know.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I disagree. I think that the Microsoft breakup will be the best thing to happen to consumers since Bell Telephone died its well-earned death.
If nothing else, there is the tiny chance that bitchslapping the biggest technology company in history will put the fear of God into the boardrooms of AOL/Time/Warner and other heavyweights. Okay very tiny, but it's still a chance.
(BTW: Am I the only one who really loved the Mooby masacre scene in Dogma? Kevin Smith will forever be a hero of mine for taking such a thinly-veiled shot at Disney when they were funding his movie.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Taken straight from Micro$oft's Freedom to Innovate site:
Voices from the FIN: "I fully intend to e-mail my representatives, and I hope they realize the important impact that Microsoft has had on the computing industry alone, and ALL the other industries as well." From a FIN site visitor.
I think this proves the koolaid + cyanide comment. Man, it's a creepy world we live in....
-----
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Microsoft Freedom to Innovate Network
16625 Redmond Way Ste, M-447
Redmond, WA
98052-9724
email at msfin@microsoft.com
call at 1-888-321-3999
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Personally, I would want us to call them up, not email. It's on their nickel!
I would suggest that we ask for them to come clean, and tell us who the founders are and the sponsors, etc.
Ask them all of the embaressing questions. Tell them that you are a juornalist for an email newsletter, etc. and ask hostile questions.
Sound professional, but stick it to them.
For Example:"In light of the facts of the the case (blah blah blah) how do you justify the following crimes under the "freedom to innovate"?"
and if they dis-agree, ask them how they can dis-agree with Facts? Don't let them weasel!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You know, the 'Committee for the fiscal stability of America' sort of thing. Where they are made up of 'grass roots' support and not really just fund raising fronts.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Fortunately, these are generally viewed by legislators as fake, and ignored. Generally.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Microsoft makes no attempt to hide the fact that this grassroots campaign is run within and composed entirely of people related to Microsoft. I quote: :P
"The FIN is open to all Microsoft customers, shareholders, employees, alumni, and partners. Participation is voluntary."
Why was there any question? People should more closely read the articles.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
What's a nice girl like this doing in a booth like that?
Oooh, the FIN brochure had a business reply (postage paid) card attached. When these cards are provided by some disagreable cause or organization, I like to start my own grass roots movement...I return in the card blank. Its a minor act of resistance which costs the addressee first class postage plus a few extra cents. Its not much, but it helps calm my anger. And if everyone did it...
"The FIN is a non-partisan effort,..." = We'll buy any politician regardless of party.
Can't the spin doctors at MS see that this is exactly the sort of cynical campaign that will damage their case in the court of public opinion? I cannot imagine that there are many people more intelligent than "ditto heads" that will fall for this. But maybe there are enough "dittos" out there to make a difference? The stupidity of the American People has never been in doubt, sadly.
Dog is my co-pilot.
One system to rule them all, one system to find them,
One system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie.
:)
So where are the pictures of the cute booth babes?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Thanks for such a thoughtful reply; I haven't any experience as a systems integrator but I will try to bring up a couple points.
I don't suppose I would expect them to consult me on that; I was thinking more of cases where they stop selling a product that you really depend on for your sales, or take that product in a significantly different direction. In a market that contains Microsoft, you might be lucky to find another company whose product you can use instead - in many such markets, Microsoft will have destroyed those other companies and you won't have any other options besides restructuring your business around the remaining options that MS provides you.
On the other hand, if Red Hat decides to go in a different direction than I like, I could just start using a commodity Linux or BSD distro from some other vendor, or even take the existing RH source code and tweak it to work for me. Not entirely painless maybe, but not a business-shattering event. No one's integration business would go down the tubes if RH faced similar antitrust action, for example.
Maybe I'm a little fuzzy on the exact bounds of what systems integrators do, but it seems to me that if you're a Microsoft shop and you only integrate between various MS tools, why can't you be replaced by Microsoft at some point in the future? If they already have the know-how (which they would need to keep their systems compatible in the first place), and they wanted the business, and they already know who your customer is, some future MS Integration Division could easily provide what you provide, probably more cheaply.
I'm not sure how likely this scenario is, it just seems like you sacrifice a lot of control of your business that way. I can see that in the short-term the single-vendor approach (especially if vendor==MS) is a big win for your company; I'm just not convinced that in the long run it will turn out to be so. As you pointed out, Microsoft's business practices (which are entirely beyond your control) may cause serious problems for your business now.
I can't argue with that, since I haven't been through it. From my perspective, though, MS is no longer on the side of the angels. You can now get development tools, documentation, tools source, and a direct hotline to the creators of the products that you use for free, without any reciprocal expectations on you. You don't have to use just Red Hat tools, you don't have to just provide Red Hat solutions, you're free to choose the best tool for the job in every circumstance. You aren't locked in and neither are your customers when something better comes along. From my perspective, Microsoft may have started the sea change in developer relations, but it is no longer leading the charge. It's great that you retain that loyalty and I can't fault you for that; I guess we'll have to let the market sort out how much you really have to thank Microsoft for.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The address is www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate. What's to speculate?
Repeat after me, scream it for everyone to hear...
AS-TRO-TURF! AS-TRO-TURF! AS-TRO-TURF! (repeat ad nauseam)
Hey, it's not just for politicians during election years anymore!
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
And of course in French it means....
The End
Which for the MS Monopoly it could well be.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Yep, it's a really good deal for these developers and those stockholders and blah and blah. Except what has the "network" actually done for the "American people"?
Number One, forever corrupted use of the term "innovate" or "innovation".
Number Two, created a huge number of companies run by ex-Microsofties. I just left one because, frankly, the management was (without their monopoly) totally clueless about (a) basic business, (b) truly innovative technology (c) people (d) any kind of actual creativity.
What's sad but also scary about the Redmond factor is that its loyal troops are subliminally programmed to trust only other rich guys - and to trust only other people who worked at M$. They seem like it's not that way, but in any situation where decision-making is called-for, you'll find even the 3rd-rater M$-ex ranks higher than anyone from elsewhere.
It's truly sad, unwittingly hilarious - and pervasive all around the Puget Sound.
Of course, in many companies around Redmond and Seattle, this leads inexorably to diminishing returns.
"Innovation"? The loyalists I worked with couldn't even spell it. When their company began falling apart, too, all the ex-M$ programmers headed back to - a quote - "the ready arms of Uncle Bill".
PS People at several national news orgs have for months refered gleefully to the FIN as "Microsoft Pravda".
Numerous times since then, they've been caught paying press for articles or having their employees write happy letters, etc. It's at the point where if something nice is being said about them, I immediately suspect the speaker of having been paid off.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hi!
First off--a word of thanks. A friend and sometime employee who lurks on SlashDot sent me an email this morning that read, "so--kicking over anthills on /. again?" I fully expected to see some ugly flames when I checked in. I am delighted by the posts of those of you who have taken the time to respond. SlashDot has a reputation for trolls, and I'm delighted by the tone and tenor of these comments. It's a very engaging conversation.
That's a very good point. In fact, that situation is presently happening with Microsoft Site Server. Site Server Commerce Edition 3.0 is a relatively cheap tool, and it does Registration and Membership quite nicely. Site Server Commerce Edition 2000 is a big-ticket tool that does all sorts of stuff--but all I need is plain vanilla registration and membership. I don't want all the other stuff, and I don't want to make my client (an Internet startup) have to pay for it. Microsoft is doing precisely what you suggest: moving away from what I want to do. (Or, "I don't want to go there, at least not today.") What to do?
For the short term, we're writing our own version. It isn't integrated with the OS in the slick way that Microsoft's is--in fact, it depends upon inclusion files in each Active Server Page we write. But we believe in stuff like the CMM and repetitive processes, so that's easy to handle.
My friend, Charlie, whom I mentioned above, is entirely of that opinion. And Microsoft's latest server pricing announcement lends a lot of weight to that view. I'm very interested on what the next round of Visual Studio will look like--if the purported breakthrough in Internet development tools really amounts to something I'll get a lot more excited about Microsoft. If the "breakthrough" amounts to another kludge like Visual InterDev I may look at Borland's Kylix with a lot more enthusiasm....
Hi!
Not just "significantly" cheaper and easier--dramatically cheaper and easier. The $3000 per seat licenses I mentioned earlier were the kind of scam database vendors got away with because those were the only tools you could use to connect to a given database. Microsoft blew that entire market strategy away with ODBC (Open Data Base Connectivity). The last time I checked there were 34 different databases with ODBC drivers available from at least one vendor. OLE DB (such as Microsoft's Active Data Objects) provides significantly higher performance to Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, and other vendors that create an OLE DB interface.
Microsoft didn't do this out of altruism. They did it to permit developers using Microsoft tools to connect to any database out there--but in the process they made it possible for developers using anybody else's tools (PowerBuilder, Delphi, etc.) to connect to those databases as well. The net result was that the proprietary database developer marketplace (Progress, some others) has dried up.
They're presently driving the price of what I'd term "mid-range" database solutions down with the Microsoft Database Engine. It's SQL Server 7.0 without the GUI. Develop the app with SQL Server, ship the app with the MSDE. You have an embedded database with positively kick-booty performance (SQL Server 7 is an absolutely groovy DBMS) with no nickel-and-dime client license fees.
Compare/contrast with database development for the AS/400 platform. Big bucks for the AS/400, big bucks for the OS, and even big bucks for each minor upgrade to the OS. Big bucks for DB2. And big bucks per seat for every user. Who is, of course, sitting in front of a PC running a $400 per seat 3270 terminal emulator package. A Windows client/server solution stomps that whole conglomeration silly both on price and performance. Being able to distribute it across the Internet using anybody's browser makes it even easier. The Total Cost of Ownership is dramatically lower with the Microsoft solution.
You should understand that this kind of behavior is the "bullying" that Microsoft's allies (particularly Oracle) are crying about. Oracle has good reason to cry--they charge an astronomical price for a very good database. Microsoft, with SQL Server 7.0, has a comparable database for most applications at a fraction of the price. Larry Ellison was running around a year ago offering $1 million to anybody who could show that SQL Server was as fast as Oracle--he withdrew the offer right before SQL Server 7 shipped. Oracle's political work to start the Dept. of Justice investigation (including $750,000 in free software and services to the Senate Judiciary Committee), their coordination of the DofJ anti-trust suit, and their snooping around the trash of Jonathan Zuck are all of a piece: they have some whopping great margins to protect, and Threat Number One is Microsoft.
The next question is, is there an Open Source solution that is even cheaper? Yes and no--the tools cost less, but some of the tools simply are not available. (For instance, I'm not aware of any Open Source DBMS that are supported on Linux or BSD by ER/win or InfoModeler. I'm also not aware of any Linux- or BSD-compatible database modeling software similar to ER/win or InfoModeler.) The time you spend doing stuff that Microsoft already does for you out of the box negates a lot of the Open Source cost advantage.
From my experience working at a Microsoft Cerified Solutions Provider last summer as well as the fact that I have a few friends working at MSFT plus my former constant perusal of the talkback at ZDNet, I can say unequivocably that there is no subculture of Microsoft fanatics past, present or future.
Heck, even my friends that work there aren't Do Or Die about it, unlike most Slashdotters are with Linux or Open Source. Conversations with them have lead me to believe that this entire MSFT vs. Open Source war is generally one-sided with Slashdotters making mountains out of molehills at every turn.
In my opinion, the Freedom To Innovate Network isn't targetted at the average hacker or software developer. It's a means to gather popular user support from people like my mom's friends who feel that they'll have to stop using PCs once MSFT is broken up since Windows is all they know and (in their opinion) without MSFT they'd still view computers with fear and awe. This demographic is a lot more powerful vote-wise (there are more of them than hackers) and easier to persuade than the developer audience. After all, most of them already feel that MSFT is being targetted not for any wrongdoings but simply for being too successful.
Does it also includes supporting reverse engineering? What about fraudelent EULAs that say if you don't agree, that you can get a refund? Or that permit you to reverse engineer to be able to be compatible?
Me thinks this emperor is nude, and it's not a pretty.
Fight Spammers!
I guess your perception and my perception of "cheap" differ substantially. Or perhaps you simply work for a large company with a generous development budget.
But I work at a small company; and if generous capital isn't available, then MS software sucks you dry quickly. If you have, say, 5 VC++ programmers and 5 VB programmers (for example) the costs add up extremely quickly: 10 licenses for Visual SourceSafe, 5 licenses for VC++, 5 licenses for VB, a copy of Windows NT server (plus client licenses for all users, plus hardware to run it on) to run the SS database on, somebody to administer the server, 10 copies of Windows 2000 (unless you want to go nuts by developing on crashy Win98.)
When you're a big company, those expenses are probably a tiny percentage of the overall expense budget; but when you're a small company, you're talking a substantial percentage of your expenses.
Makes it kind of difficult to get off the ground. But I guess MS would rather target big companies because big companies have lots more money to spend. Very much like our local banks here - they only want business clients - they try as hard as possible to drive away individual personal clients, because its far less work for much more profit with business clients.
"I have a strongly vested interest in the success of Microsoft, and I'm not shy about saying so"
When you compare MS to the old Unix-based "regimes", yes, MS is cheaper. But times have changed, and MS profit margins are very high - all it would take is a little competition from a few other companies with some development capital to create some decent products to compete head-on with the VisualStudio series to bring prices way down, quality up, and speed up innovation (Visual SourceSafe is an excellent example of a product that is completely stagnant for lack of competition.)
Have you considered that your "strongly vested interest in the success of Microsoft" may be at least somewhat a dependency; a dependency which exists for a lack of alternatives? If this is the case then your argument amounts to not much more than the "we can't break up Microsoft because we're all so freaking dependent on their products" argument.
The best part - is that they copyrighted their "innovative version" of the flag!
:)
Next thing you know - they will sue the US for immitating their "look and feel"
and maybe they'll come after us if we print out their flag - and burn it!!
You start your post by mocking those who would dare to talk about the "Microsoft hegemony" and "bullying" practices, but then seem to conclude your message by describing the de facto way these practices exist between Microsoft and developers.
I agree that it's convenient that Windows is as close as there is to a standard, and that they can use this to their and their developers' advantage. At the same time I'm not about to say that this is anything but what it is, monopolistic practice. This is exactly what the DoJ is griping about. Microsoft is using it's rank in the industry to perpetuate its products and launch new ones. How can smaller firms compete? And yes, Microsoft has worked very hard and intelligently to achieve their current status, but that doesn't justify what currently exists. Rewarding business saavy is not as important as a competitive marketplace.
It's too bad that under the current system you seem to benefit from what in the long run will only stifle innovation and create larger problems. The thing about a monopoly is that it IS convenient, but convenience isn't necessarily efficient or even, more importantly, desirable in the long term.
Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Here's why. Have you ever seen what sort of sinister things an AOL install does to Windows 9x? AOL 5.0 is so self-important, it seems to think it needs its own virtual network adapter, instead of opening a TCP port. Or better yet, a COM port, which is what older AOL clients did before Steve Case thought he was bigger than Jesus. The whole thing is heavily dependent on 9x's specific network components. (And by calling them network components, I'm paying Microsoft a far greater compliment than they deserve.) AOL 5.0 isn't compatible with 2000 in the same way 9x video drivers aren't compatible with 2000.
Fact is, AOL doesn't make a client that gets along with NT/2000. No grand conspiracies, just poor software.
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel
Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
into a commons OS and an Apps division reduce their freedom to innovate? The OS division will be free to add features that the Apps division PLUS EVERY OTHER App Company can take advantage of, just as well as the Msft Apps division will be free to innovate anything they want and will have to use the same api's as anyone else. The apps division can request os services and the os division can fulfil or not. The only thing different will be that the competitive playing field will be leveled for other software companies to compete with the msft apps just like msft.
CASE IN POINT: Even while the court was coming to a verdict, Msft released Windows 2000 - suddenly AOL is broken but MSN works great!! One of our sales force with an existing AOL account got a new notebook and we couldn't get AOL to connect, so now he's using MSN. All we consumers want is freedom of choice to pick AOL, MSN or whatever on their own merits without having the perversion of having an Msft product given special treatment because they're in cahoots. MSN should be completely free to innovate, just on their own terms and not by getting secret inside information that's not available to competitors first.
We really need to keep the heat on these guys and not let some BS campaign twist reality, for their own good as well as ours. Only a continuence of consumer choice, as well as educating consumers to the choices they have will keep Msft on their collective toes, improve the quality of software, prevent monopolistic price gouging and make it affordable to everyone.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Actually, this is pretty typical Microsoft behavior. They take a standard -- in this case, the meaning of the term "grassroots" -- and alter it to benefit themselves and trash it for everyone else.
Sounds like this actually falls under the term "astroturf activism" -- fake grassroots. It's a (relatively) recent, um, innovation by unethical PR departments. Put up a falsely-fronted and supposedly independent "activist" organization to spin things the way you want them spun, while giving the oh-so-wholesome appearance that "concerned citizens" approve of various corporatist policies. It takes cynical manipulation to a whole new level. (Well, it's relatively new for corporations, I think. For gov'ts, this is an old propaganda trick.)
Voices from the FIN:
"I fully intend to e-mail my representatives, and I hope they realize the important impact that Microsoft has had on the computing industry alone, and ALL the other industries as well."
(supposedly) From a FIN site visitor.
Oh, they do realize the impact MS has had. The Department of Justice in particular is very aware of Microsoft's "impact".
As a Microsoft shareholder (I know, I know, but I do think they're undervalued, even if they're evil), I received a reply card inviting me to join the Freedom to Innovate network, along with other shareholder materials.
Hardly a grassroots effort.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
No. As a member, you can use the facts to make informed decisions of your own. Meanwhile, we'll still count your membership towards our number of supporters on issues we lobby for despite whatever conclusions you make on your own.
To my legislature...
I am a big supporter of you. I've met your son, Todd, and I think that you are doing an excellent job.
I'm a littl e worried about my rights as a consumer. I know that large companies often try to avoid laws or break laws in order to maximize their profits. I realize that large corporations that do this should be stopped, hence I support antitrust legislation. Please, enfore legislation that protects consumers from large companies.
The purpose of this letter is to show you how large companies such as Microsoft make it so that it seems like they have public support. I joined a Microsoft "freedom to innovate" group with a fake name and fake information. If you actually recieve this letter, then you will see that the whole 'Freedom to innovate network' is hogwash. The large corporation Microsoft is putting forth propoganda that makes it seem like they have public support. They don't have my support and if you are reading this letter, then the whole Freedom to Innovate Network is compomised, because many other members may be doing what I'm doing and the membership numbers will not accurately reflect the people who think microsoft should be allowed continue its anti-competitive behavior.
The name/address at the bottom of this letter is correct, so feel free to send your reply back to there. Please don't accept the the Microsoft Freedom to Innovate Network. The only good that it did was sending this letter to you.
Sincerely,
grammar nazi
Actually, I used my real name and address here.
I wonder if it'll get sent?
Keeping
Isn't this, then a network of people commited to helping Microsoft remain a monopolistic bully? Will they also go after Linux, as it could "severely impact Microsoft"? And what does "better products at lower prices" mean? Have they even been watching the price of the competition's products - from Linux to BeOS, most is free or $100. Gotta love that Microsoft - resorting to outright lies and misinformation.
Do I have to agree with every position FIN takes?
No. As a member, you can use the facts to make informed decisions...
Oh thank you Bill, honestly, I wouldn't know that it's alright to think for myself unless you told me that it's OK. I can't BELIEVE this question needed to be asked.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Good for a grin, if nothing else.
Don't you worry about being discarded by MS once you can no longer expand their market share any further, or if you come to be perceived as a threat to them? It sounds to me like a very Faustian bargain - you've done well for yourself by allying with the market leader, but at the same time your business is irrevocably tied to their business goals and their bottom line. As you mentioned, if MS changes (or is forced to change) their business strategies they aren't going to give you and your business any consideration.
Let me put that another way - now that you know the dependencies that this sort of partnership locks you into, would you take the risk again and get into a similar relationship with the next big technology company?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Maybe they are terming it as a "Grass Roots Effort" Because you would have to be smoking that grass in order to assume that Microsoft is respomisible for innovation.
On a more serious note: Perhaps it is "Grass Roots" because the effort is being led by Microsoft employees and not directly by the corporation's management?
I think that my respect for Microsoft would triple if they would just drop the "Freedom to Innovate" charade and start up a "Freedom to Capitalize" movement.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
What I am saying is that Micros~1's upper management and grunt personnel are exhibiting similar reactions to a crisis where the facts, once exposed, threaten their world view:
- Delusion: all the forged testimony during the trial, in particular the videotape that MSFT tried to pass off as "real" footage, was forced to admit was "just a simulation" when exposed, and whose justification for the faked evidence was "well, the simulation shows what it would have been like had we really done the experiment".
- Denial: Endless trumpeting about how Micros~1's triumph during the trial was somehow inevitable, ignoring the mounting evidence that indicated that they'd lost all credibility before the Judge.
- Astroturfing: Countless brainwashed minions and bald-faced propaganda campaigns, all writing essentially identical letters supporting the party line...
- Demonization of the Other: Slogans and buzzwords in Co$ for its opponents include words like "bigot", and for themselves, the notion that they fight for "religious freedom". Likewise, opponents of MSFT are anti-free-market radicals, and supporters are people who fight for "freedom to innovate". The more evidence to the contrary (Co$: "Clear the planet" - exterminate all who do not join the Cult, MSFT: "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"), the stronger the rhetoric becomes. The red, white, and blue in the MSFT pamphlet was so blatantly propagandistic that it was almost comical.
I could go on, but you get the idea.I wonder if this is universal? These behaviors appear throughout history, but are most common in top-heavy authoritarian regimes faced with an imminent demise brought about by a new paradigm.
(Thinking back to the dying days of the cold war, when former Soviet republics seemed to break away and collapse on a weekly basis -- Romainian dictator Nikolai Ceaucescu appeared to sincerely believe that his people loved him, right up until they booed him in public, summarily revolted, and put him up against the wall within the week...)
Prediction: Therapists who want a guaranteed clientele over the next 15-20 years should set up shop within 100 miles of Redmond :)
... That membership is still voluntary! I bet when Microsoft.net comes out we'll have to fill out a registration form *and* a "Freedom to Innovate" membership form before we're allowed to use our applications!
Walt
Hi!
In a word, yes. There is a very large community of programmers and database analysts who have grown substantial businesses by using Microsoft tools and technologies. Microsoft has grown by expressly targeting these people (including me) as "influential end users." We're the people Microsoft originally created the Microsoft Developer Network for, and the people that Microsoft is constantly plying with information and inexpensive tools.
When people rant about "Microsoft hegemony" and "bullying" they're being clueless. Or showing their age. The way that Microsoft has developed a monopoly isn't by driving around with fedoras and machine guns, threatening some CIO's family unless he installs Windows NT. Microsoft has been much, much more sneaky than that. Microsoft has, since the late 1980s, expressly targeted the "influential end user" (their term) and particularly software developers. They have expressly sought to gain "mindshare" (I believe an original Microsoft term, but perhaps "embraced and extended" from somebody else) among developers for a very specific purpose: custom apps written by developers require customers to buy the operating system.
Microsoft has been candid about this all along: they'll provide all kinds of tools and help, because at the end of the day they want the client to buy the OS. And the more of the OS they buy, the greater the opportunity for site license deals on Office, etc.
For the developer, it's a great deal. Microsoft development tools are always substantially less expensive than anybody else's, and Microsoft bends over backward to get you to sign up for programs (like the ISV program) that give you the tools even cheaper. Price developer versions of Oracle tools and databases for a team of five developers, for instance--Oracle won't quote you a price. They'll schedule a meeting, bring in a bunch of suits, try to estimate how much you're worth, ask a zillion questions about who your clients are and how much they're worth, and then quote you an astronomical sum. Microsoft will sign you up as a Solution Provider for $2495, which gives you licenses to everything. And they'll refer customers to you as well (unlike Oracle, who has no compunction about calling on your customers).
Partnering with Microsoft is a very, very good deal. But (and here's the wrinkle:) everybody involved knows how the deal works. In the end, Microsoft wants the OS sale. In effect, they're subsidizing all the tools, all the conferences, all the contact, all the support based on sales of the OS. Split the OS off into a different company than products (especially developer tools) and all of a sudden we're looking at a whole new pricing model. And for the small companies out there, like mine, an uncertain future.
So, yes--I've registered as a member of FIN. I've written to my congressman, and to both my senators. I have a strongly vested interest in the success of Microsoft, and I'm not shy about saying so.
Accountant: Hey Taco, ad revenues are down this week. Do something.
Taco: Don't worry I'll post another Microsoft article.
Accountant: Thank God for Microsoft, gauranteed 500 post articles. I see you're poking fun of Microsoft for using the term "grass roots". Do you think anybody is going to realize that your average joe really likes Microsoft? Have they seen the ABC polls? Do they ever talk to mechanics, soccer moms, those kinds of people?
Taco: No, for them "grass roots" is the Linux hacker community.
Accountant: Well, I guess that's to be expected from people who call "outside" the "big blue room with the bright light".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Everyone knows about the dedication of the linux subculture, fanatics, loyalists, whatever you want to call them.
Is there such a culture surrounding windows? I'm asking honestly, because I don't know... Is there a huge following that would join the FIN, support microsoft, and rally around them during these "trying times" ??
I was just wondering exactly what leads microsoft to PR moves like this... are they trying to tap into this culture? create one? whatever you may say about gates/microsoft, they are where they are today from sheer business sense.. it may not be the best code in the world, or the best product, but they are sinister business people..
i was wondering why they are throwing money into a PR thing like this - whether they are rallying the subculture, or trying to create one..
wish
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A: Yes, drink it all. We'll all be together soon, in Redmond. Together forever, and ever.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.