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The Return of Microsoft
Remember that scene in The Return of Frankenstein where the terrified villager spots the monster, years after he's been burned alive and buried below the rubble of Victor's castle? He rushes back to town, shrieking "He's back! The monster is alive!".
"But that's impossible!," thunders the incredulous mayor. "I saw him killed with my own eyes!"
"You fool," retorts the villager. "Don't you know he can never be killed?"
Bill Gates, exposed just a year ago as a ruthless and less-than-candid corporate predator, is today the King of the Corporate Republic, the CEO of Internet, Inc. He and his company are about to launch one of the most ambitious campaigns in the history of business, one that should leave him firmly in control of the digital universe.
If everything works as planned, Microsoft software will shortly control nearly every point at which a consumer or business interacts with the Web. That puts Microsoft at the center of all computing. And soon, the company may even escape the break-up threat hanging over its head. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule momentarily on the company's appeal, and based on the questions asked during oral arguments, the court is expected to reverse Judge Thomas P. Jackson's findings that the company illegally "tied" its browser into its operating system, and acted illegally to maintain its Windows monopoly.
This, say competitors like Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, is where we started, only more so. "It appears they're doing all over again what they did when they previously went into foul territory," McNealy told congressional investigators, according to Business Week. Microsoft's new Internet strategy is the boldest move yet, he says, to leverage the company's Windows monopoly to create a bottleneck that will constrict the Internet.
McNealy might as well be talking to himself -- the Bush administration is hardly going to curb Microsoft's new juggernaut, which can proceed unimpeded for at least four years, by which time the company may well be beyond any control, if that's not already the case.
Microsoft has transcended the economic realities of our time. Even with the NASDAQ down 9 per cent, the company's stock price has risen more than 60 per cent this year. In the quarter ending March 31, MS earned $2.45 billion on sales of $6.46 billion.
And thanks in part to a media that has utterly failed to grasp or cover well the real issues involving the soft- and hardware that governs the Net and the Web, the public has no idea that they will be spending billions for years on things they could have -- ought to have -- for free.
There are now real questions whether corporations like Microsoft, Disney, and AOL Time-Warner are vulnerable any longer to government regulation, or to any other kind of curb. Microsoft seems to have convincingly demonstrated that is is, in fact, above the law, and means to stay that way.
Even bitter critics of the government's attempt to break up Microsoft concede that Bill Gates was arrogant and dishonest in his Federal court testimony, and whatever the ultimate judicial ruling, mountains of evidence presented at the antitrust trial showed how Microsoft squelched competitors and discouraged both innovation and competition. Yet it all seems to have had no more impact on the company than a pea bouncing off an elephant, or a torch on the monster.
We saw this company humbled and carved up with our own eyes, and celebrated it's being brought down to size. Boy, were we dumb. Microsoft is stronger than ever, and, as a consequence, so is Linux and Open Source.
Just a year ago, Microsoft was so embattled -- its revenue growth had slowed to 8 per cent, Jackson had ordered the company split in half, $250 billion had vanished from the company's market value -- that Microsoft called 20,000 of its employees together at Seattle's Safeco Field. There it showed a motivational video that included scenes from a documentary about the mythic l974 title fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
But on the Net, a year might as well be a century.
So the monster isn't only alive, he's stronger than ever. It's the Microsoft Era, Part Deux.
Right on. I like what you've said for a few reasons:
.net and her even BIGGER plans for the future of computing, there will be no GNU/Linux. *NONE*. What's the point in GNU/Linux, when you can't use it for *anything* once M$ succeeds in getting the hardware specs concealed, proprietary formats controlling the net, and app and hardware vendors unable and unwilling to make a non-windows version of their product for fear of offending the mega-corporation in charge of all the world's business and trade?
1. You've contributed to the GNU/Linux codebase in some way. No other Slashdotter in history has. You now have credibility with me, assuming you're telling the truth.
2. You're rational. Good. Even more rare among Slashdotters.
3. You are strong enough to admit that M$ has its' good points (they are few, but..). GNU/Linux gets killed by M$ in many ways by features that our coders don't seem to care about, but which are VITAL to the adoption of GNU/Linux by corporations and individuals.
4. You actually USE a Free Software OS. (Of course, most Slashdotters are lazy bastards who write in from work, screwing their boss over for the sake of having a "first stinkin' post!", which may be why the numbers are skewed in favor of IE...)
I would like to say, however, that although I try not to take part in the unintelligent M$ bashing, I strongly believe that computers are dramatically changing the world; a foundation for our new eSociety must be built, and it CAN'T be a Microsoft foundation. That would be INSANE, and yet, the politicians have no problem with it.
Microsoft already has far too much power (as do many large multinationals). If anything, our foundation should be based on a FSF "openness and respect" ideal, just for the political and ethical aspects of it. It is a GREAT restriction on freedom to say that upon birth, you will be issued a Microsoft Card without being given a choice. And this is what our kids will be facing.
If M$ can succeed at
Even the Slashdot bosses, who should be role models (like STALLMAN is, I might add), use Windows for games and crap. They're as bad as Bill Gates, worse even, because they are figureheads of Open Source (since they disavow the FSF) who should know better. They should think about the ramifications of what their favorite game or windows app or whatever ethically COSTS them in the long run. I do. And I'm a nobody. But I'm not complacent, like most.
I'm not as hard on Mac guys because, despite the proprietary closed hardware (blah blah blah), at least Apple gives the impression that they're trying (It's hard to reconcile the two worlds of free and proprietary). So I'm okay if Katz uses a cute little Titanium PB, but at least dual boot with GNU/Linux, would ya? Try, dammit! Learn an OS based on ethical factors rather than ease of use (MacOS) or availability of pirated warez (guess who?)!
At one time, I thought Slashdotters were so smart and were fighting the good fight against a cruel and inhumane enemy who was out to control the world forever, crushing superior technology and individual freedoms to the detriment of all mankind.
Now I know that Slashdotters couldn't care less, save Stallman and his fringe element of FSF guys. These guys stick to their principles, but they're seemingly alone in their fight, and that is why Slashdotters will always be dual booting (until GNU/Linux is gone - not Windows), with secret cravings for Windows and MacOS' proprietary simplicity and nice GUI. Two or three can't win a war against millions, when even their army of Slashdotters don't believe in the cause.
Slashdotters better wake up, because you have NO IDEA the things that are brewing in Redmond and elsewhere politically and technologically. It's soon going to be VERY UGLY out there.
Bitterman
GNU/Linux without the GNU is just a shitty windows.
Poor, stupid, programmer. If he had spent just a little more time actually reading the release notes he would have seen that the patch would give him the exact results that he got.
But, instead of reading and understanding the release notes, the programmer scanned the notes and assumed a great deal. This is typical of so many programmers. I have to admit that even I am sometimes guilty of this.
I must also admit that when I read the release notes and saw that the patch would block functionality that I used, I decided not to apply the patch. Sorry you missed that part.
The point is, although I can come up with a thousand valid reasons to bash M$, your failure to properly read the notes isn't a reason to condemn the company or even that particular patch.
Not Microsoft.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
That's nice to think but the chemical companies, tobacco industry, and automobile industry (to name a few) have been killing people for decades with little or no repercusions. Granted, MS has (probably) not killed anyone but thinking that no businesses are "above the law" is a tad naive.
Things simply weren't bad enough yet for everyone ELSE to vote for Nader, too.
Microsoft is like a cyber-Wal-Mart, it's all about sucking money out of communities and squirreling it away. It leads to poverty, the stratification of classes, and the collapse of the infrastructure it feeds on.
Eventually this becomes obvious, just as it does in ghost-towns at which everyone works at Wal-Mart and gets laid off together when they can no longer purchase enough goods from Wal-Mart to justify keeping that many employees part-time. (A hypothetical case, as Wal-Mart usually cannot destroy _all_ independent business in a town.)
The question is, how much damage do you allow before taking action?
It is NOT a foregone conclusion that the government will let Microsoft do this. After all, the government is Microsoft's competitor, and if it wishes to act as Microsoft's 'partner' it's going to get raped like all the rest. There's got to be a shred of self-protection in there. It's _really_ unlikely that the government will blithely let itself be replaced, marginalised. Again it's a question of how much damage is permitted- to what extent does the U.S. Government allow the communications and IT infrastructure that its economy depends on, to be replaced by a privately controlled entity that has no reason for loyalty to the USA? It's got to the point where the USA is holding Microsoft back. MS can't grow to another ten times its size without stepping into the role of government, and so they hold pep rallies and chant "Microsoft, kill 'em! Microsoft, kill 'em!" (who would have _believed_ that in '95?) and how can they not take advantage of, say, the ability to gain control of U.S. military communications and threaten to sell the information to Iraq unless the government moves over politely and lets MS run the show? ("You keep on dealing with stuff like roads and such- that's boring"). It is simply too profitable an opportunity to pass up. Once MS controls the communications and IT of countries, and technically controls the Internet, they can easily gain access to _everyone's_ information (picture the USAMC and Iraq's military secrets residing on the same server somewhere in Redmond. Who can offer more to gain access to the secrets of the other?).
One possible safeguard is that the USA has an army, non-computer weaponry, etc. whereas Microsoft tends to consider challenges to its authority impossible. That means in the event of Microsoft demonstrating high treason, the army could surprise it by literally invading with very unsophisticated weaponry.
At the same time, there is much concern elsewhere in the world about how a 'US' company is gaining such control. It is not unthinkable that some Middle Eastern country might declare war on Microsoft specifically- and you'd see terrorist actions, such as bombings of the Microsoft campus. This would force MS and the US government closer together, but it would also be a very effective form of attack against Microsoft, again because they do not tend to consider challenges possible. Their worldview is psychotic- although they are in fact faced with seizing power on a geopolitical level, to themselves they are still the scrappy little vendor. They can push around entire COUNTRIES and still they are imagining some sort of greater competition 'forcing' them to do it. It's an unhealthy situation, but it's also a suggestive situation: outsiders are not always fooled by Microsoft's own self-deception. They can see that MS is slightly closer than even the WTO to the goal of a global totalitarian governing body, and the fact that Microsoft isn't aware of its size and scope and consequences makes it VULNERABLE to attack AS a global power. For instance, they have bodyguards and security but I really doubt they have aircraft or the ability to defend against air attack, and I don't think they'll be getting it, again because to themselves they are the scrappy little software company writing word processors.
It is sure an interesting time to be alive- in the sense of the old Chinese curse. (another idea- what does China think of the whole world being assimilated into a 'US' company's control?)
If the other ones are army infantry, Microsoft is Navy SEALs, or some sort of special forces unit. That is why they are dangerous. They're on nobody's side but their own, yet they have a striking force that's equal to far huger organisations, and a positioning that could give them personal authority over the world's electronic communications, and thus the world's economies.
You're making a lot of weird assumptions that aren't based in reality. Come back when you're over 21 and see if you still remain confident that you understand everyone's motives in the whole wide world :)
Especially since the copy of RedHat I purchased came bundled with Lynx. REDHAT IS STIFLING INNOVATION BY ILLEGALLY TYING PRODUCTS%#!#%!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now, it looks like Microsoft may have figured out a way to actually do it.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Microsoft is dead and buried! You know it's true! Jon Katz said so!! "Microsoft was brought down by the arrogant, delusional monomania of its founder, a man who had clearly come to believe in his own immortality and was unable to grasp the realities of the world."
I can see it now. Bill Gates will get a cabinet post as the head of a new federal agency. If you like the EPA, you're gonna love this.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Maybe there's not been a strike at MS because...this is going to shock you.
They are not Unionized!
"How do you think you got your shiny new ride, and your cool apt. during our last big ecomomic boom? On the back of Microsoft. Whether you used their products or not, they legitimized client/server and internet development."
Actually I got my shiny new ride the same way my family has been getting them for the last 90 years, from wheat farming, and the prices havn't gotten better because of MS.
""I never use MS products, I only use blah-blah-blah to write software". What do you think the users that buy from your e-commerce store use? What do the IT drones that use your intranet apps use? That's right, suckas: Microsoft products."
The IT drones in my area use Linux/Novell/Apple. Sorry. But yes...I am posting this from IE 5 for the Mac...so you are right...Microsoft is as important, perhaps more important than the very Sun that gives Earth light.
As for Sun/Apple/IBM/Netscaple blowing it...no, unfair business practices from MS had nothing to do with the downfall of Java/Netscape/OS2...naw...nothing.
Your sentiments might have some justification but you make them worthless by blabbering on about Africa, when he only mentioned India.
One has to wonder which would be more insulting - the notion that Indian culture was worthless and backwards and needed to be subjucated by some western company, or the inability to distinguish between Africa and India. Why is that ? some kind of - "they're all wogs anyway, what's the difference", or what ?
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
However, the Free Software argument is much more persuasive, this isn't about money, we don't give a shit if it makes a good business model, this is about freedom, let Microsoft argue with that.
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Corporations making money is not good for everyone, corporations making money is good for the corporations and their shareholders. This kind of "trickle down" economics is a lie perpetrated by the wealthy to justify them getting more wealthy while the poor get poorer. And it is the power of corporations which make the US the Corporate controlled laughing stock its political system has become. Not the American dream, but quite possibly the American nightmare.
Tying a web-browser to their operating system may make a better product for their users, but it is also leveraging a monopoly to extinguish competition in a different area, and that is illegal under US antitrust laws. They broke the law.
Every day I see a new reason to wave goodbye to /. and say hello to Kuro5hin.
--
Of course, it could just as easily work out that people will simply stick with the versions that they are using now. Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, or Corel, or Sun. Their biggest competition comes from previous versions of their own software. This is especially important because Microsoft knows that part of the reason that they can charge huge money for their office suite is due to the network effect of being the market leader. In order to easily share information businesses and individuals currently need to be on the same version (or similar versions) of MS Office. If no one upgrades to new versions of MS Office then Microsoft all of a sudden has to battle the same type of market penetration problems that Sun has had with Star Office. Their new versions simply won't be the "standard."
Microsoft doesn't want the alternatives to grow. They aren't going to have problems with the DOJ, and they know it. However, losing users to free software alternatives is a serious longterm risk. Microsoft lives by getting its customers to upgrade. But with each upgrade Microsoft upgrade GNU/Linux becomes a more and more attractive proposition. When I first started using Linux in 1995 you had to really want to use Linux on your desktop. Nowadays, it's much more comfortable. Windows has made some improvements in that time as well, but it has not advanced nearly as drastically as Linux. And Linux is much more cost effective a solution than Windows.
Now, I am not saying that Linux is ready to take over the desktop (yet), but it is giving Windows some competition and Linux's price will always work in its favor. Microsoft really can't afford to be upsetting their customer base at this point, and yet that is precisely what they are doing. I don't expect to see a lot of customers switching to Linux when Windows XP rolls out, but I do expect to see a lot of them sticking with what they already own. And for Microsoft, that's nearly as bad.
If you adjust your account options you can have it fail to show stories by certain contributors.
Katz and Roblimo have always been the two most notable nutcases, so just ignore anything from them.
Then maybe ignore anything tagged as Microsoft news.
And gosh, why does every post that says something positive about Microsoft *immediately* gets moderated down as Troll?
I am surprised why I still waste my time here.
Why is it that every Slashdot article posted related to microsoft always talks about how they are stomping on our rights, choking innovation, killing off Linux, etc etc. Perhaps its "cool" to bash Microsoft these days but do you people actually USE some of Microsoft products? Their office suite cannot be matched by anything available for Linux in stability, user-friendliness, and many other factors. Remember, for most people cross-platform means it runs on Windows and Mac, and they could care less about other things. So stop bashing and start using Microsoft software because believe me, they are NOT going away anytime soon. And if you really want to make Linux software as usable as Microsoft one, Linux UI designers might want to check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/UI.
My beef isn't with the counting of the votes - it's with a system that is broken.
;P
Gore won the popular vote. That means that more American citizens voted for him, than for Bush.
Bush won the Electoral vote. That means more members of the Electoral College voted for him than for Gore.
Bush becomes president, even though another candidate got more votes from the citizens of the United States.
Now - the virtues of the Electoral College can be debated. Personally I think it's stupid. One of the principles that this country was founded on was that "...all men are created equal..." - well, I don't see how our VOTES are equal - especially when a Gore voter in Texas is essentially throwing away their vote. Even if 49% of the voters in Texas voted for Gore (or someone else) - ALL of the Electoral votes would have gone for Bush. Is that fair? I don't think so. (Disclaimer: I don't live in Texas - it's just a very convenient example) Admittedly, it can be argued that if you reverse the situation, they'd all go for Gore, but that's not the point.
A vote in a state with more Electoral votes is worth more than a vote in a state with less. That's why the campaigns specifically target the states with more Electoral votes.
IMHO, it cheapens the system. You live in State A, your vote is worth more than if you lived in State B. Therefore citizens of State A are, in a sense "more valuable" than those of State B, at least in the eyes of the candidates.
Sure doesn't sound like "equality" to me.
In addition, there are certain states that "traditionally" go one way or the other. Texas, for example, is a Republican state, traditionally. It would have been very easy to predict, before a single vote was cast, which candidate would "win" Texas.
So if you live in Texas, and you voted for someone else - guess what? Your vote didn't matter. Your state went for Bush and you had better well like it.
I'm not complaining that Bush "won". It does no good to complain about that. I'm complaining about the system that let it happen. A system where supposedly everyone is equal, but in reality it's only a facade.
I was also attempting to be witty, but I failed dismally
Interesting - I didn't know that. I'd been under the impression Texas was staunchly Republican for quite a while now - I stand corrected on that fact =)
Choice is important, but majority rules. That's the way America runs.
So...that explains how the elections ran last year, eh? =)
Not that I think either one of them was qualified - but that's beside the point.
Unless of course no one complains, no one stands up, and people vote for the sheriff again...
Flame wars are good, people who don't think so have somthing to lose/hide.
"linux is bad", "Microsoft is bad", and "you all suck", are a world better than "We shouldn't have this discussion." That's the biggest troll of all!!!!
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Actually, with true laissez-faire, MS wouldn't stand a chance. It's the government interference with granting copyrights and patents that causes this. Calling non-thing "property" is the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Preaching to the Choir, aren't we?
-----------------------------
Would that be the stuff that matters then? :-)
Oh, Lord ... look out for those e-e-e-v-i-l corporations! They'll suck out your eyeballs and spoon out your brains! They'll be rude to your mother and tease your dog! They'll spit in your ice cream and piss in your whiskey!
I'm part of a corporation. I guess you could say I'm the CEO, since it's a partnership and I'm one of the partners. Now that I'm and Evil Overlord, I probably need to brush up on the Rules before I go plundering across the countryside.
My corporation is merely a legal fiction by which I can avoid losing my house if a client gets a bug up their ass and sues us. I stand behind my work, but I'm not willing to bet *everything*, every day! It's conceptually similar to playing Russian Roulette every day -- are you willing to do that?
A corporation like Enron or GlofaxMegaThorp is simply a scaled-up version of my little LLC. Even if they do something low down and evil (which does happen, I'll admit) it's not likely to be as dangerous or as permanent as what a government can do (put another way, Three Mile Island 0, Chappaquiddick 1), and in the end you can sue them for damages to yourself.
Please try to not be so shallow and reactionary as to claim that corporations need to be removed.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
No, read it again. Slowly, if neccessary.
I stand behind my work, but if a customer decides to screw me (people are not, by nature, always nice, reasonable, or kind to animals), I am not willing to get shafted by one malcontent (rim shot!). If a customer is not happy and sues, I lose my business -- is that no enough? Must I lose my house because a client doesn't like how I designed his brochure? Is that justice in your world?
Did I get that right?
No. You either deliberately misunderstood me or are particularly obtuse. A corporation is not a "dodge" for responsibility any more than a programmer's "suitability of purpose" disclaimer is a dodge. To be logically consistent, if you are a programmer, you should be held personally responsible for every bug and misuse of your program. Are you willing to do that? If not, then stuff it.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Have I Just Grown Up? ...Or has Slashdot regressed?
You know, I was wondering the exact same thing.
Slashdot has gone from being News for Nerds and devolved into some sort of anti-corp opinion tabloid.
I've been with Slashdot a long time(user #6288) and have slowly seen this site turn from being News for Nerds into some sort of political rag.
This article was done in extremely poor taste.
And I wish I could say it's the exception, but most any other Slashdot article dealing with corporations, the music industry, telecoms, Microsoft, copyrights, patents, domain registrars, are equally bad and leave me feeling like I'm reading some 3rd world country's anti-whatever propeganda.
First you create the enemy.
Then you fight the enemy.
Then you are the enemy.
Ah. So you understand every word of the US Federal Register, do you? As a US citizen, you are obliged to know it all and consequently can be jailed for rules you have no hope of knowing (enough pages are added every day that you would have to do nothing but read (no sleep, probably no meals) to keep up).
But even more pointed, OutLook is so fundamentally insecure and badly structured internally that any ``real'' security patch absolutely has to be a bastard. Ditto for Word, Excel, name it. One reason for this is that Windows, on which these all rely, is fundamentally a single-user system.
Even derived-from-VMS NT has been knackered down to a fancy kind of single-userness. This (and a good deal of the excess baggage in W2k/XP) has been necessary because their premiere apps have depended on it. Remember the brouhaha about MS apps ``cheating'' by using undocumented OS calls...? Well, the biter has now been bit.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Bottom line: consultant had to rebuild the entire app for free (meanwhile somehow continuing to eat, pay off house, run car etc), which took him just over a year, after paying for a complete new set of tools.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
About year ago, a different fellow consultant, an NT expert who also does Linux, was losing hair over a network connection port-forwarded from a Linux gateway box to a masqueraded NT 4.0 server running a Pick app.
An aside: the company concerned (call them BB) had been told to buy an NT box for their app, even though it cost several thousands of dollars more than running it under Linux. Two weeks after commissioning, the provider was bought by a Linux shop, technician from which promptly asked MD of BB why he hadn't bought the Linux version, because it was more reliable and used less resources. Gngnngnngnngn!
Anyway, problem turned out to be that the NT box was gatewayed to... 127.0.0.1! No problem, change gateway to point to the Linux box. Still no go. At my insistence, NT guru does ROUTE PRINT from the command line; system is still gatewayed to localhost. Hmm. Reboot (this is Windows, after all). No change.
Redo the route from the command line... viola! Life and happiness! We wound up running a BAT file on startup. Yerk, but it works.
More recently, similar story with an NT 4.0 DHCP server, changed to nail down a server to allow port-forwarding, fix gatewaying and generally coalesce the bizarre and disparate settings on all of the Windows boxes on that LAN around a sane concensus. No matter what we changed, the DHCP server still allocated the wrong settings. Amongst other things, DNS service was aimed out through the gateway and twice across the Nullarbor to an ISP that this LAN hadn't been connected to for at least 2 years...
Finally, we had to (1) create a new subnet; (2) empty the DHCP server config completely, starting with the old subnet; (3) reboot (surprise: stopping and restarting the service wasn't enough); (4) make a new subnet (and yes, the settings defaulted to the abberrant ones so had to be overridden by hand); and (5) stop and restart the DHCP service.
The usual Linux equivalent of the NT graphical route editing tool (linuxconf) pulls its config from the text tools, so they cannot disagree (and has the additional advantage of a low-bandwidth/low-hardware 2D non-graphic mode if you want it); the usual Linux DHCP server (daemon) keeps config in a text file, and reliably reconfigures itself on a hangup signal. Of course, you have a choice about (and source for) both of these services.
Reading any Microsoft release notes (no matter how carefully or how many times) would have left us entirely unprepared for either of these eventualities. Neither would have assuming or not assuming any amount of stuff.
In short, you're talking out of your fundment. Poor, stupid Anonymous Coward, Microsoft don't provide either config for the filter to temporarily or permanently reduce its enthusiasm, or any means of backing out the patch.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I guess I'm confused about what exactly JK's opinion regarding OS is now--or did he merely throw in the terms as a checklist item?
.NET, and compulsory registration. If .NET fails or doesn't take off as imagined, Microsoft could be in serious poo-poo.
I think he's drawing some premature conclusions about Microsoft's imminent success. There are two major bet-the-farm strategies Microsoft has embarked upon, and they could succeed or fail to various degrees:
Regarding compulsory software registration, that's yet another case of sticking the head in the sand: large corporations like MS simply refuse to acknowledge how much of their market share is really due to full on or gray piracy. Once you will literally be forced to buy a copy of Windows and Office for EACH machine in your household, rather than just using the CDs that came with one of them, let's see how many people will still have the latest Windows and Office on all their machines. And that's not even considering the Big Brother aspect of it. I think Microsoft will get a sobering reality check within the next year or so (especially after Windows XP turns out not to be the expected cash cow).
I deserved that. It seems I need to remove the plank from my own eye.
I disagree. As one who has travelled to both places and would be the first to point out just how very different they are, I have to say it was crystal clear in the context of your statement that you were describing colonialism in general, not India/Africa specifically (beyond citing historical examples of colonialism which refute and highlight the stupidity of the comment you were replying to). You certainly weren't guilty of equating the two, beyond alluding to the fact that both Africa and India (and of course other places such as China) suffered immensly under European colonialism, which did, in fact, destroy much older and arguably more civilized societies in favor of its own model of government and culture. You made this point well, and only someone with the head in their ass would have missed this and think you were somehow saying "all former colonies of european powers are alike." They do all share the one attribute you discussed, namely the damage of one degree or another to their own (often older and more venerable cultures) by europe's imperialism, which after rereading your comment is the only equation of the two places you imply.
The plank wasn't in your eye until you were distracted from the subject at hand by a meaningless and pointless diversion from the subject at hand. That, if anything, is far more insulting to everyone than anything you wrote or may have implied to those who are more interested in picking apart the literal semantics of your words than in having an intelligent discussion.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
We were forced to upgrade to FreeBSD 4.3 because we could no longer find a hardware vendor that would sell us new hardware that would also support FreeBSD 3.2.
... if the requirements don't change, the machines may never be upgraded at all ... merely discontinued when their purpose is no longer relevant to the business. That has happened several times already, much to the amazement of one of my colleagues. A machine in use for five years, then retired when the service was no longer necessary, with never an upgrade and never a crash. A far cry from the days of running SunOS/Solaris/Windows and being compelled every six months to upgrade this or that package, occasionally with disasterous results as one required "upgrade" was completely incompatible with another, both of which were necessary to the underlying service.
You chose to purchase a new machine and/or upgrade your hardware, and are complaining because that choice also entails a software upgrade? (Other possible choices you could have made would have been to buy used hardware or shop the components yourself and put together something your old OS supported). That is a very, very far cry from having your vendor coerce you into changing to a new platform because all support of the old one is being discontinued and, without the right to examine and modify the source, you are completely beholden to them to fix any problem which may arise.
We have GNU/Linux boxes that are still running 1.2.x of the kernel and haven't been touched in years (the uptimes exceed two years and would be longer were it not for having to physically move the machines a time or two). When we choose, we will upgrade to new hardware and, yes, probably new versions of the Linux kernel and GNU software. And yes, that will require some time, effort, and work to do so.
The difference is that we will ourselves choose if and when to do it, not our hardware or software vendors. And who knows
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If we are going to argue this from the open source perspective (peer reviewed methodology produces better than secret sourcecode) rather than the Free (as in freedom) software perspective (free software is about fundamental freedoms), then we will find we are playing Microsoft's game on their own terms and our arguments quickly become moot. Microsoft can and, if dubious reports are to be believed, may perhaps actually be getting their software reviewed by other professionals, peers if you will, in a source-available-under-onerous-conditions approach, with the result than Windows 2000, while still inferior to GNU/Linux/FreeBSD/etc, is vastly improved over its predicessors. The open source argument can and likely will be made moot by a little agility on Microsoft's part coupled with a tremendous amount of cash.
That does not, however, affect the underlying issue of freedom at all, which actually has much more compelling business implications. One of the major reasons my employer moved away from Sun and Microsoft products and toward free software (Linux and GNU software in particular) was not because the software was technically superior (although it was), but because we would no longer be beholden to our vendor and have dictated to us when and to what we would upgrade.
Many people do not realize just how onerous and expensive such lack of freedom is for a company. When you are developing in house software for mission critical systems and you are told "platform x will no longer be supported as of this date, port your stuff to our new platform y" this can result in deployment delays and huge amounts of money spent on hiring enough staff to get the changes made in a reasonably timely manner. The cost is very real, and very significant. By switching to Linux and GNU we enabled ourselves to deploy in-house apps in a quick and timely manner, and we upgrade when we decide we need to, not when our vendor decides to pad their bank accounts at our expense.
I will reiterate: the major cost isn't the "upgrade cost," it is the actual time, effort, and work involved in moving an entire codebase from platform x to y, and being forced to do so over and over again every two or three years at the behest of one's vendors. Whether it is Sun, Sybase, Oracle, or Microsoft doing this is irrelevant, it delays important work and sucks up valuable resources.
The freedom of free software in allowing a company to preserve its own autonomy and not be beholden to its vendors, and to have a free, competitive marketplace in which to obtain and/or provide its services (as opposed to a monopoly) is IMHO a much more potent argument that the "peer review makes free software better than proprietary software," since, as Microsoft is showing, they can at least create the perception (and, if they wish, the reality) that proprietary software can also be peer reviewed.
I think sometimes we loose sight of real value of using free software vs. proprietary alternatives: the freedom itself, and how it enables us to do business and lead our lives in a much less encumbered fashion. Technical superiority is nice, and certainly important, but even in a case where proprietary and free software are both peer reviewed and a parity in quality is achieved, the free-as-in-freedom is still preferable because of the significantly lower drain it places on a companies resources and IT personnel, and the greater flexibility and choice it affords its users.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It has little, if anything, to do with the technical merits of the OS.
Good time to bring up the quip about "a collection of poorly debugged device drivers". Come to think of it, the last time the technical merits of the OS really mattered was when PageMaker 1.0 shipped for the Mac Plus.
Somewhere I read that Linux was UNIX for the DOS generation, and to some extent it's advocate community is stuck in the same 1980s OS-centric worldview as Microsoft and everyone else in the PC camp (including Be). The fact is the OS (which ever one it is) is finished technically, and so are the OS Wars. Repeat: "It Just Doesn't Matter. It Just Doesn't Matter."
For years I've thought that Microsoft's horrible attraction to their own monopolies was the one thing holding them back from producing really good technology. It's been an unfortuante history of somewhat good ideas turned into just another way to sell copies of Excel or get someone to cough up $100 for the next incremental Windows release.
But, now even Microsoft got wind of the irrelevance of it all (well, after Andreeson stuck his finger in their eye), and have reached a state where even MS, the king of operating systems, doesn't even want to be in the OS market anymore. It it wasn't for that troublesome billions of dollars of annual revenue they'd be totally off on the next thing by now.
Fighting over what's left as if it was of central importence is not very broad thinking. Microsoft is the alpha and omega of PC Operating Systems and that's the way it is. The real battleground is in the middleware and content delivery markets. Sun, where the Network Is The Computer, and the rest of the market has been sitting their waiting for Microsoft in the apocolyptic battle royale to end all battles royales. Meanwhile, the Linux/Be/MacOSX crowd is running around trying to perfect something that Microsoft did half-assed 10 years ago and is completely missing the big picture.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
They win the browser war as AOL slows down its goals of being a browser builder.. needless to say that mozilla should be called slowzilla instead (troll comment but am I lieing here??)
They are taking on Real with Windows media player...
They are basically branchine into every tech area that there is and some that aren't there just yet. Needless to say that the new US goverment has a hands off policy when it comes to big business so they wont do anything to stop M$ and they will discourage anyone else from doing so.
If this keeps up those same people that are letting M$ do what they want are going to be the ones that are hurt the most...
Just watch M$ take on AOL time warner in the soon future.. I can see M$ getting into broadband DSL/CABLE networking somehow..
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
As you point out, Office is the best office suite around, bar none. But why? Is it because nobody else has the skill that Microsoft does? Perhaps. But is it possible that nobody else bothers because they can't hope to compete. The risk involved is enormous and the reward is miminal. It's so bad that Corel decided to develop its own flavor of Linux just so it could have a platform where they could sell their word processor (that's not necessarily a fact, but it's my impression).
As for Office competing against Linux equivalents, what features do the Linux equivalents lack that you are concerned about? My biggest problem has simply been incompatibility with the Microsoft document formats. I have to keep a copy of Office around because some work I do requires having Office (otherwise I'd purge it). Is this a good thing that regardless of the quality of Microsoft's product I really have no choice but to have a copy?
If Microsoft's software was the best in all categories, I would still use Linux. Why? Because I like having a choice.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
What would the Clinton administration have done if Bill Gates had contributed money to Clinton's campaign fund?
I don't like Microsoft, but I really don't think they require a break-up. And even if they were broken into separate companies, what would we really gain? We'll benefit if they put a stop to their anticompetitive practices, and I support that.
"There are no cool guys in musicals." -- Coach McGuirk
Yeah, right.
It was once stupid that MS could dominate the OS space: "look, there's PC DOS, DR DOS, CP/M, MacOS, and eventually we'll be using some kind of UNIX". Look what happened (well, they were partially right on the UNIX thing, only they expected it in 1986, not 1996)
It was once stupid that MS could dominate the application space: "look, there's Quattro Pro, Ami Pro, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Paradox....Netscape... all of them are BETTER than the MS alternative" Look what happened.
I don't see why the Internet could be any different. Customers are clueless. For them, the Internet is that nifty little AOL or whatever icon you click, as well as explorer.
Just my two céntimos
Hugo
The end result? A Dictatorship was created, but UFC gets their land back. Look up PBSUCCESS for more info on the web.
There are plenty of more examples where the US gov has stepped up to the plate for huge corporations, or ignored their deeds, with more harm than good resulting. Microsoft may not be killing people (yet), but their economic practices may someday be just as deadly.
This is weird. How come there is so much pro-Microsoft Astroturfing going on the early posts under this article? Initially, I get the impression that so many people have blocked Katz's stuff that all that are left are trolls and Microsoft apologists. Did I say apologists? Maybe I meant employees...
The only other time I have seen this many people come to Bill's defense is on bad days at ZDNET's Anchodesk.
As one other poster indicated, the real problem is with the corpratist system completely unchecked by government. I know that's an essential element to what Jon is saying, but, whether you consider Microsoft evil or the best thing since sliced bread MS is merely a symptom, not the disease. To see what is happening, follow the money. And that's exactly what the officials you elected are doing, following the money.
Microsoft is apparently above the law - because they can buy the law. If you own it, you have nothing to fear from it since you control it. Thanks, G. W. (Our first unelected president since Gerald Ford.)
America is changing from a Democracy/Repulic to a Corporatocracy. (And so is the world mostly) That's the real danger. If we were truly a democracy or even a republic, the officials we elected to represent us would carry out our desires and work for the benefit of the *people*, not the *corporations*. (Who, strangely enough, are "people", but not subject to the same rules that you and I are.)
I know, there are those of you who will say that the stockholders are people and they *are* the corporation. But very few stockholders have enough of those little scraps of paper to influence the direction or behavior of the corporations they have invested in. That is reserved for the rarified few who have *lots* of those little scraps of paper, and they seem to have lots of little scraps of paper, but few moral or ethical beliefs and most a desire to collect more of those little scraps of paper. The average stockholder has *absolutely* no input into the corporation they invest it.
I think I heard this somewhere before, "We must all hang together, or we will certainly hang separately." It's never been more true than today. It's too bad that it seems that today, apathy reigns supreme.
It's gonna be an interesting ride, I hope we can survive it.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Katz points out that MSFT is up 60% this year, but doesn't mention the fact that it is almost exactly where it was one year ago today, and comfortably below its 52-week high of nearly $83/share. See Yahoo's one-year chart of MSFT for the real story.
The death or incapacitation of Bill Gates would bring M$ to a screeching halt. Let us assume that he is 'only' the company visionary, and it's really being led by Ballmer. Doesn't matter. He is the Sun King, the royal emperor, King Arthur, the (dare I say it?) the Linus Torvalds.
Sure, things will go on, but without the fanaticism and cult-like tones (notice that this can be applied equally to Linux. Interesting.) No longer can the media speak of the 'boy genius programmer'.
Perhaps more importantly, Bill is there to provide focus, unity, and discipline. Look to Wal-Mart. Following the demise of Sam Walton, the formerly united management front became fractured and embroiled in legal bouts and in-fighting. Sure, the company is still quite successfuly, but it derailed them for a while.
Look at IBM. Following the death/resignation (forget which) of the guy who led the company from the 30's until?? they became rudderless and run by the buracrats (sp). Took a long time (until they found the current guy, with the power and charisma to unify the company) to get back into fighting shape.
Look at Apple. While getting rid of Jobs was the best thing they could do (and Amelio got a REALLY bad rap) because of his less than stellar management techniques, it turns out that his personality and drive were more important to the company.
And while Alan Cox could easily take over Linus' role from a technical standpoint, let's face it, the press loves Linus.
Which brings us back to Bill. If he were to meet with an unfortunate accident, M$ would be in shambles. Until someone could grab the reins. While Ballmer may be able to run the company, I'm not sure that he could rally the troops in the same way.
So while Gates et al. may know how to capture the world, he is thus far forgetting one thing: how to preserve his legacy. Great conquests (be they military, business, or whatever) frequently only last until the death of the figurehead.
I wouldn't advocate Bill's death. But I would advocate extraditing him to the former Soviet Union and have him sent to a gulag.
Short of this, I don't see a solution.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I think Jon works for himself (freelancer) but I'm not sure.
To answer your other points: I agree that corporations are a boon to tyranny. I see two problems (at least in the US. That's my POV, deal with it) with corporations that are somewhat related.
First, corporations are legal 'citizens' with rights. This is a new idea, and not the way corporations were intended. They were intended for the narrow purpose of surviving the owner of the corporation. This eventually got extended to include the 'right' to be taxed and the separation of liability (in some instances).
Now, the problem arises as courts and legislatures have continuously extended what it means for a corporation to be a 'person' under terms of law. Corporations have the right to free speech (including lobbying rights) they have various civil rights (absurd, since a corporation, if it is a person, is a slave, owned by one or more people). They also have the right to welfare (witness the level of protectionism on trade that exists in the US. Calling it welfare is perhaps unfair to the people who do need and deserve such a service.) This is the first big problem: corporations have tons of rights. They can do almost anything except vote. Due to their financial might, their voice carries more weight than the voice of a human person.
Combine this with point two: corporations have none of the responsibilities of a human person. They don't have to pay taxes (in theory, they do, but how many corporations pay taxes on a level anything like you and I?) They no longer have to be in the public interest (like their original mandates) and they certainly are in no way subject to criminal penalties.
This last is the most harmful. Civil penalties are incomplete, and allow the offender to continue their piss-poor behaviour. (Witness the behaviour of the baby bells and the behaviour of microsoft following civil 'penalties') Businesses must have criminal penalties (limiting their ability to do business, or simply to exist) and they must be used by the courts.
And about this, there is not one fucking thing the average citizen can do. Not one. Not voting, not killing people (see my post in this topic).
Personally, I'm thinking of moving to MT and stockpiling some large caliber weapons.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Given your staggeringly high user number, I'll assume that you haven't heard this before:
Filter out Katz stories. Filter out Michael stories. Filter out whatever type of stories you don't like.
The story filters aren't perfect. But they work fairly well. Well enough that you shouldn't even notice the paranoid ramblings. As a matter of fact, you may want to disable everything except tech and hardware.
Try this: http://slashdot.org/users.pl
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
c. You have regressed.
It's Jon Katz. He doesn't speak for Slashdot. He speaks for JK. (And sometimes he likes to speak for the downtrodden nerds in high schools)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
They shouldn't have to censor Jon Katz any more than the Washington Post censors George Will on the editorial page. But most of JK's stories should be classified as 'editorial' or 'commentary', rather than a 'feature'. At least in a site that claims to be a NEWS site.
Some people would answer your second point with k5. I wouldn't. Just never liked it that much.
Finally, while JK retains copyright on his postings, it doesn't prevent the fair use copying and pasting of them to other sites in order to disseminate and discuss them. It should even be legal to deep-link directly to his stuff.
But yeah, given the lack of competition, there is no downside (that I'm aware of) to OCL'ing much of the content of Slashdot in general.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
But neither does the west treat people with respect. Look at the conservative movement in the US, there is even talk of making it law for women to stay home after having children be barred from working (here). Is descrimination still present? What about xenophobia or isolationism? The West is not the be all, end all of civilization. Just another silly stage.
Ok, I'm not that big of a Microsoft fan, but some of the things Katz says aren't really that strong, especially without backing up. I'm going to be inviting the flames with this, but ah well, here goes...
Katz calls Microsoft the first company that exists above the law. Where does he get this. They were taken to court in an antitrust suit because they bundled their *free* web browser in their OS. I admit that this is a bit of an underhanded move, given that it pushed Netscape out, but what market did they push them out of? Browsers had been free for quite a while prior to the bundling, so Netscape wasn't making any money there (I know netscape made cash from selling ads on their homepage, but people could reassign homepages quite easily, so that one doesn't stand up that well.) The point I'm making in this is that the antitrust case for the browser is pretty weak. More powerful than the government?! What exactly makes him say this, the fact that they lost one antitrust suit? "Undisputed King of the Net"? What about the big-wigs at AOL-Time Warner? They're pretty high up on the food chain themselves, not to mention they're also monopolistic whores who have their sights set on MS. While I agree that Micro$oft is too big for its breeches, and probably should be broken apart, the efforts put forward thus far to make it happen have been pathetic at best. Why not go after Office for it's monopoly instead? It's not free, and MS sure did drive the competition out of that space.
I guess there really is no great point to the above, except that Katz should learn that using adjectives doesn't make his point any more solid...he should use facts instead, they work much better.
What if the Goverment made a website, which required IE, and planned that in the future, you must interact with this site if you wish to do your taxes on line. It could never happen you say? Think again.
How many times has Microsoft said 'no more 16 bit code'. How many times has more 16 bit code been found? Why would anyone think that it would be any different for the move to 64 bit code?
(a long rant)
/Mac ever was?
:-(
I think you don't understand what is all about, and why people like me, are really, really worried about the direction the entire IT section is headed.
First, Microsofts total software domination is an extreme case study in "market failure".
MS have no competition whatsoever, in the markets the choose to dominate. (sure, there are a few players around that MS hasn't killed yet, but they will be killed in the end, just like the others).
Normally, in a free market, the consumer has some choices to choose between. If something sucks, they vote with their feet (and pocket).
But with computer software, that has not been an option for a long time. I am not talking about the tech savy Slashdotter here, but average home computer users, and foremost, business's.
They are so deeply entrenched in MS software, that no matter what, they don't have a choice anymore. Other software producing companies (and soon hardware companies) hasn't had a choice for years; they either humbly submit to MS or gets destroyed.
In short, Microsoft is a monopoly that can do things with impunety, since it is more or less impossible for the consumer, to choose anything else, than MS products.
Not even prices on software is a factor anymore; Corel WordPerfect suite 2002, may be better, faster, and much much cheaper, than MS-office 2000, but will that mean, that it even qualifies, as an unserious competitor to MS-Office? No. Even small business's, or home owners, either warez a copy of MS-office, or pay the full price of it, rather than using a cheaper (and perhaps better) alternative.
As long as Microsoft remains a monopoly, no new software companies, producing software even remotly competing with MS, will ever get to survive. They will either be bought (not in itself a bad thing, but since MS is a monoply.. Ex. Foxbase), or MS will buy all the developers (I strongly suspect, that a lot of the wizz-kids, working for MS R&D, are hired, not so much for what they do for MS, but for what they now don't for others), or directly sabotaged (Quartedeck (qemm, Stacker)), or threatend to submission (Symantec), by locking them out of crucial info, or simply by FUD, "integration" and embrace and extent.
All software companies lives on the mercy of MS. Adobe, Corel, NAI, Symantec, Apple, Macromedia, Real, PKWare, Autodesk, SAP, etc., either lives on borrowed time, or until MS decides to kill them. How long can Autodesk survive MS-CAD 2005, when all their developers now works for MS, their software gets broken with every hot-fix, and service pack released, and when MS is willing and capable of using 5 billion dollars on capturing a 2 billion market?
The article express surprise, that MS do so well on the stockmarked as they do. I am not surprised. In fact, MS anno 2001, is nothing to what they will be in the next decade or two. MS will be the largest, and richest corporation, ever known to man; they will be the defacto only software maker, the largest hardware manufacturer (what good is a CPU, if runs anything else than MS-products), the largest investor and shareholder in the world, and the largest political lobbyist.
When I was young, I refused to buy Macs. I thought they were overpriced, and no fun, because the system was so "closed" and propriatary (and all the nice PC games of course). Now, the PC, that was a lot of fun; wanted a new graphic adaptor? Choose between many firms, buy and plug it in. New, cheap storage? No problem. Of course the Macs were superior to PC's with DOS, even when Windows 3.1 came around, the Macs were superior. But I would not give up my freedom, to choose between many, and cheap hardware firms. Besides WP 5.1, Norton Commander, Turbo Pascal, and Norton Utilities got the job done just fine. I was not alone in that opinion. But I wonder now. Isn't the MS-PC heading down road, more viciously proprietary and closed, than Apple
Sure, the hardware is still dirt cheap. But I dread the day, when even my RAM modules, requires a signed MS-driver, and serial number to work. Then it will be hard for me to run Linux
Take eg. Asus. They want to produce a PDA with Windows CE 3.0 as OS. But MS simply refuses to license it to them. MS's reasons notwithstanding, it is a chilling example of what to come. Think about it; a respected, large hardware firm, begs MS to be allowed to pay MS money in exhcange for a licence for a product MS is "selling", and MS says "NO!"
Whats next?
I seldom rant about how bad MS has become (I am not talking about their products, but about their behavior), I just use Linux, and is very happy about that. To me, Linux made computers fun again.
A bonus contrieved example and analogy, on how it would be, if MS ruled the movies:
Lets say you like going to the movies. Especially Sci-Fi and historical movies has your interest. But all of a sudden your local theater only shows badly syncronized east-german movies, from between 1970 and 1975. And prices doubled too. Fine. You vote with your feet, and drive to another cinema a little farther away. But next week, that cinema has been bought, and now it only shows badly syncronized east-german movies, from between 1970 and 1975. Prices went up too.
Some people gets the idea to start their own free theater, with cheap prices; they buy a building, and starts renting some flicks. Alas, the only movies they are allowed to rent, are badly syncronized east-german movies, from between 1970 and 1975. Besides, since they are independent, they will only be allowed to resell anchovis scented, wet popo-corn. They go bust.
Now, the east-german movie industry may have blossomed during the early 70's, but it really gets to your nerves, that even TV shows they same movies, as the cinemas. So you goes to movies again; the movies are the same and the prices went up again, but now the pictures are all blurred, and unfocused. The theater refuses to refocus the film, but will happily sell you an eye laser-surgery operation (in small lifelong payments). That way, the marvels of east-german movie production, becomes crystal sharp again. Unfortunatly, everything else is blurred.
"Why is that you twits never bitch about the fact that government tax the piss out of you yet bitch and moan about some evil corporation. "
Well first of all every body bitches about taxes even the fucking farmers and ranches who collect welfare to the tunes of millions and corporations who take so much tax payer money it would make your head spin.
As for your other points..
What makes you think Microsoft does not have guns? The worldwide Microsoft security staff all of whom are armed and trained would dwarf the police force of most cities. Not only that but the army of private investigators, bodyguards and other mercenaries (including lawyers of course) on the MS payroll must also be mind boggling.
Lastly. MS does not have to jail you. It's much cheaper to bribe a politician and make your activity illegal and let the state jail you. That way they make the govt looks bad, the Republicans like you get mad at the govt, republicans like McVeigh blow up the govt buildings, the taxpayers to foot the bill for catching, trying and jailing you. The corps come out smelling like a rose. It's a total win for the corporations. If at any point the govt stopped doing their bidding you can be sure the corporation police force would be out breaking knees and assinating people.
Historically the corporations have always chosen to kill and maim their opponents as opposed to jailing them. Go read up on the copper kings of Montana or the Union busting tactics of the coal companies for examples of how corporations ruled the people when the govt would not do their bidding for them.
War is necrophilia.
"Without the electoral college the people in the 4 most populous US states would dominate presidential race, and that's wrong."
Why is that wrong? The exact same argument can be made for the statewide numbers. In most states one or two cities hold the greatest percentage of the population but somehow nobody had gotten around to implementing an electoral collage for counties or cities. If it's good enough for the majority of a state to elect delegates why isn't good enough for a majority to elect the president?
And remember without an electoral collage the states would not be winner take all. you would still have to convice the majority of Americans that you were the better man no matter where they lived. In this day of mass media that would be very easy to do.
As it is the electoral collage causes just a few states to determine the outcome of an election. The candidates concentrate their efforts on five or six swing states and completely ignore states that they have in the bag or are never going to win. George Bush completely ignored California (and is not punishing them for not voting for him) and Gore completely ignored Texas and most of the inland west which was going to vote republican no matter who the candidate was. If you were a democrat in Texas or a Republican in California you voice did not matter, your vote did not matter.
Without an electoral collage your vote would matter no matter where you are.
BTW you example only works if the people of provinces of A, B and C are completely monolithic in their thinking. Remember without an electoral collage it's not winner take all you must convince the majority of the people in the country that you are the man. If in your example every single resident disliked the other provinces then yes it would be hell for the others but that's the nature of democracy.
War is necrophilia.
"Although I think Richard Stallman venting his rage does compare."
No it does not compare. For one he does not lie to the press and public. Secondly he knows the difference between the open source movement, the free software movement and the GPL. Third he does not pay people to post favorable comments about him. Fourth he does not spend millions of dollars to hire Marketing companies to tell lies about how his product "play nice with others" or "never crash".
Clearly you are unable to grasp the difference between the behaviours, motivations, and strategies of RMS and Microsoft a fact I find rather disturbing to tell the truth.
"But my point is that Joe Schmoe's ranting about Micro$hit makes me unsympathetic to his trauma when a Microsoft statement jars his feelings."
How odd. When Joe Shmoe rants it makes you unsympathetic but when MS call joe Schmoe a communist, anti-american cancer it makes you sympathethic to MS. Why the double standard?
"here's just one group of editors, right? The ones who are posting all the "Ohmigod, Craig Mundie said something bad about Linux!" stories are the same ones who've been leading the anti-Microsoft crusade for years."
Well until the astro turfers arrived here (notice every pro MS post has been modded up to 5) this was an open source web site. If you wanted to talk about how great MS was you hung out at ZDNET or Fawcette publications sites where any comment regarding any software that was made outside of redmond got you flamed all to hell. Grow the fuck up that's the net for you. If you don't like it there are a billion Pro MS sites including microsoft.com where you can hang out and talk about how we are communist pigs for writing software that we don't charge for. I for one will not stop calling them liars till they stop lying or stop calling them evil till they stop doing evil things and will not make nice to them till they stop calling me communist and anti-american. I at least served in the military did Bill Gates or Jim Allchin? Where does he get off calling me un american the fucking pig.
War is necrophilia.
Well that's nice. Next time I read about how the vast majority of meteorologists and climatologists are very concerned about ozone depletion and carbon dioxide emissions and the so called "global warming" I'll just ignore that. After all what to they know, it's not like they have spend years studying the atmosphere or doing research or something. Instead I'll rest easy knowing that cato institute and rush limbaugh insist that there are zero conseqences to polluting the air, releasing hydrocarbons and other activities. And besides some poster on slashdot said it's a myth so it must be a myth, and really he ought to know.
War is necrophilia.
"I stand behind my work, but I'm not willing to bet *everything*, every day! "
So let me see. You are willing to stand behind your work except when you are not willing to stand behind your work. Some days you will stand behind your work but other days you won't. If for example a customer of yours is not happy (or from your perspective has a bug up his ass) and sues you, then you will not stand behind your work.
Did I get that right?
What good is a corporation except dodge personal responsibilty? Isn't that the whole purpose of a corporation?
War is necrophilia.
If what you did to the customer was so bad that he sued you and he won and the damage was so large that you would stand to lose your house then you should lose your house. You must have royally screwed the guy to be bitchslapped like that in court.
If you were the one that screwed the customer then why should you escape with any of your assets intact? You fucked him you ought to pay with everything you got.
War is necrophilia.
"Microsoft is not Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Big Brother, MegaCorp(tm), or anything of the sort. It's a software company"
MS is a megacorp and much worse. Hitler and Stalin are evil becasue they killed millions of humans which is a profoundly evil thing to do. What Bill Gates wants to do is much worse. He want's to kill what separates you from the animals in the first place. The ability to communicate and pass on information freely from one human to another and from one generation to another. It's one thing to kill humans it's another to kill what makes you human in the first place.
Even if you totally disagree with me, even if Bill gates is not as evil as Hitler or Stalin he is still a pretty evil person who has committed evil acts against other companies and people. At a minimum he is a criminal (perjury) and his company has comitted criminal acts (evidence tampering, witness tampering). These things should not be so easaliy dismissed.
Even if you disagree with the fact that they are criminals not even you will deny that MS is a threat to open source software and an enemy of open source. They cleary think you, me and millions of other programmers are communist, un-american and a threat to the american way of life. They are spending millions of dollars bribing congress, advertising and spreading lies about the open source movement. This alone makes it important that every open source developer fight them at every opportunity to do so.
And finally I don't think that nybody would argue that Bill Gates, Jim Allchin, Steve Ballmer etc are liars. They have lied publicly, frequently and effectively all of their lives to further their own agenda which is nothing less then accumulating as much money as humanly possible. Well last I checked the bible said the love of money is the root of all evil. I guess you are going to have to take it up with your own God.
War is necrophilia.
That's what I get for hopping on the story early and trying to get under-tenth-post... sigh.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Uh, no. This is not worthy of a 'grow up':
Microsoft: Raa, woo, blugh! Linux BAD!
Katz: Microsoft is wrong. Here's some good, well-thought-out reasons why, without a lot of painfully old rhetoric. I refuse to sink to their level.
This is:
Microsoft: Raa, woo, blugh! Linux BAD!
Katz: Doody-heads!
See what I mean?
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ha! Bwa ha ha! Sniffle... giggle...
Immortal. Right. The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire! Tee hee...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ha! Ever heard of Union Carbide and what happened in Bho Pal?
Of course, Microsoft doesn't do that sort of thing, but corps *can* and *do* get away with it.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
First we get mad when MS calls us a 'cancer'. Then we call MS an evil, unkillable menace.
Yeah, real mature.
Grow up, Jon.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I was taught when I was three years old not to pull a floppy disk out of the drive while it's writing. You, sir, apparently did not learn this most crucial-of-crucial tenets of the computing world.
I mean, just cause Linux CAN do it doesn't mean that it's a great feature. If it took more than half an hour to make such a feature, I can guarantee you it was a waste of time spent, since most computer users are taught not to touch the disk drive while it's writing. And I have no need to pull out disks while the light is on.
It doesn't represent "quality", it represents "code bloat". And that's MS's main game (extra features), one that no company has beat them on yet.
Not that Linux is that bad of an OS for a dinky webserver. Better than Windows ME and cheaper than NT. I would just hate to play games on it, though...
MS is not even on the list
Bear in mind, that those numbers were all from a time before Windows 95 existed. Until then, MS was still a middle sized (But growing quickly) company.
God Fucking Damnit
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy
I'd be willing to bet that the number of happy, employed microserfs is miniscule in comparison to the number of careers and even lives that have been ruined by the Micro$oft Empire's ruthless opression. Every time a small company or individual is trampled underfoot for even thinking about standing up to the giant, every time they buy a government official, and every time Windows crashes in a critical environment, jobs and even lives are lost.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I'd be willing to bet that the number of "careers ... ruined ... is vastly outnumbered by the number of people who are gainfully employed every day using Microsoft products. ... That's 90-plus percent of the computer-using world.
Answer 0:
So it is OK if only a few lives are ruined? At exactly what ruined-lives/gainfully-employed-person ratio would you begin to fault Micro$oft?
Answer 1:
By your logic, we should also legalize murder. Since 90-plus percent of the people out there would be gainfully employed and in no danger of being murdered, it's OK.
Answer 2:
Yes, Micro$hit is everywhere in computing. 90-plus percent, as you said. But UH-OH, that does not constitute a positive point about them. Indeed, you've just SHOT yourself in the FOOT. They ARE everywhere! They ARE a MONOPOLY and YOU'VE REALLY GOT NO CHOICE IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF 90-PLUS PERCENT OF ALL AVAILABLE GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT!! YES! YES! YESSSS!!!!
I always love it when people bring out the "Micro$oft is big and everywhere" argument, thinking that they're so sly. Now, enough of your insolence!
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
The problem out there isn't just one issue. It's many, many layers, of varying degrees.
For instance -- Customers are clueless. It's more than just cluelessness. To be even more acurate, the average consumer is lazy. They don't want to learn. [As I'm sure, any of you whom have worked some sort of technical support have come to realize.] Although I may have broadly sweeping stereotypes about people, in marketing, it's just called a 'target audience demographics'.
I work for an organization that has a person with Oracle DBA certfication who can't figure out how to shut down her application, and has the system administration folks reboot the entire machine when it locks up. For her, it's easier than fixing the problem with why it locked up, and a phone call's easier than her typing in the commands to shut down and restart the database.
In the rest of the world, the majority of the population is just as lazy. Sure, you'd get better selection of video games if I went to a real computer store, but I could get most of the 'big name' games if I went to Walmart or Target. Sure, some people will give you the excuse of 'I'm being more environmentally responsible by not driving to three different places, as I had other things to get, too', but that's what most malls are for, but with those, you actually have to walk from store to store.
You'll get people who are in it for the lower price, which I admit, is a valid reason, but well, with most of the discount stores, you pay more in sales tax than you get a discount, so that's not nearly as significant as people claim it to be.
Most people, knowingly or not, take the easy route to most things. (I mean, hell, why make things tougher on yourself than you have to?) They don't like making choices. If I went to Circuit City or Best Buy, I'd have to decide between 3 dozen models of VCRS. There are only 4 models available at Walmart.
Once you've gotten some new product, it's easy to stick with similar stuff, as you don't have to learn as much. (okay, the VCR example doesn't stick as well, as it seems manufacturers take an evil delight in changing where the hell the 'set time' menu option's hidden). But well, if you've gotten a copy of MS Works with your Compaq/HP/whatever computer, it's not that much of a jump up to MS Word. I mean, sure Word Perfect has less bloat, and actually handles Tables of Contents well, and has that really nifty 'Reveal Codes' option, but well, it's more of an effort to switch from one program to another. [Although, Macs tend to make it less difficult, as the UI's fairly standard between programs]
How many of you, if some new spread sheet product came out, would be willing to convert every one of your existing documents over, or just stick with what you've been using for years? I'm guessing significantly less than 5%. [And most of that 5% are the ones who don't use spreadsheets]
What MS did, do, however, is do this nasty little 'site liscense' thing. So, suddenly, companies decide, 'Well, even though Bob's needs are different from Dave's and John's, we're going to make them all use the same program.' So now, Bob's torn, as he normally uses Lotus 123 at home, and Excel at work. So well, he caves, and pirates a copy of Excel for home use, so he doesn't have to keep switching his files back and forth, etc. After some time, he forgets all about how much better Lotus 123 was for his needs.
Had Bob not been lazy, he could have fought for his Lotus 123, and stayed happy. However, that would have required more of an effort than just being herded like a sheep, as the rest of the company's doing.
[Okay, so I'm bitter that someone from management went against all of the technical folk's recommendations for a new mail server last year, and we told 'em we wanted to switch user naming schemes, and they whined that everyone was going to have to switch all of their settings, so we were going to have to stick with the old stuff, so we didn't have to let people know how to change everything, and now I have to do 3-5 times as much work as all of the names are tied to another system, rather than making a clean break.]
um....I think I went off on a tangent, and didn't quite reinforce the lazy thing as well as I could, however, being a lazy person myself, I don't feel like fixing this comment itself, damnit.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
But M$ never sells a product. They only license them.
There was heavy hints at an XP product meeting recently that M$ would start to revoke the licenses of companies who fail to upgrade to XP within a reasonable amount of time, somewhere around 2 to 3 years. That send waves of terror and elation through the audience, a mix of large corporate buyers and M$ channel. The channel will get the same cut as before, but M$ expects to more than double its revenue stream with the introduction of XP. No longer will M$ allow end users to have 4 year or longer upgrade cycles, 3 years will be the maximum.
M$ also announced a new certification program for auditing companies, the ones who go onsite and bugger up your computers for a week, and produce a software licensing bill for every seat you can't produce a physical license for. This new certificate will be used by the BSA to ensure "fair" audits, and a number of the large audit firms (KPMG, PWC, E&Y, D&T) already have pre-certified teams ready to go to work all over Europe. Corporations wishing to avoid legal harassment can hire these teams to make regular audits, and produce a certificate of compliance, and a copy is sent to the the BSA and the main software companies.
If you are a large enough corporate target, expect M$ to put pressure on your IT and legal departments during the next year. Fail to upgrade soon, and they will revoke your licenses for win95 and anything non-XP. Tell them to bugger off, and expect an audit at the end of a gun (the company next door was audited last year after telling the BSA to fuck off, with a dozen uniformed police assisting the raid at 7 AM).
There is also a big financial incentive program. Buy XP before august of this year (yes, we all know it won't be out before next year), and only see your per seat license fee increase by 70% to 90%. Between September and February, the increase is 100% to 130%. Wait until after XP comes out, and the fee increases 170% to 210%. The figure you lock in now will determine your increases over the next 5 to 7 years. So early adopters of a 100% licensing of XP (whether they use it or not) can expect lower licensing fee increases when they are forced to upgrade every 2 or 3 years. Figures taken from all over TheReg, too many to cite here.
There will be no win95 aftermarket support industry in 2 to 3 years. Probably not even for NT. M$ has guaranteed to the distribution channel here in Europe that it will use "judicial means" to eliminate the support headache currently born by the channel. While you might still keep and use your PII/win95 machine, you will still have to buy a perpetually upgrading XP license whether you use it or not.
This is what is freaking out JKatz, even if he hasn't been paying attention to the details. Some of us do, even if it feels like wallowing in horseshit. M$ is growing so bold, we will soon look back on 2000 as the good old days when M$ put on a pious act for the US and Euro governments and allowed the last gasp of true competition in the IT/networking/telecoms worlds.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
If Microsoft controls how you see the Internet (browser), they then can easily control how it is displayed (web server), then they can easily limit who can display it (server OS). It's not a huge jump. These are big Open Source/Free Software projects that are threatened by Microsoft
So use Mozilla/Apache, and they don't do what you want, add the functionality. Nobody forces you at gunpoint (since we're talking about ESR :) to use MS information architecture products. (BackOffice, whatever)
Katz is simply responding like anyone that supports open or free software. He, as I do, feel that someone is trying to steal our homes.
What? I use, support, and develop open source software. I still see the need for Microsoft or companies like them to provide software for the masses, though. Nobody makes you use windows when you get a new PC - liscencing issues aside, which is one of the issues the DoJ has. Going from that to the possibility of a grand paranoia scheme where MS controls the internet through their servers is silly, when the architecture of the network is well standardized and many browser/server alternatives exist. Your decision to participate in the conspiracy at that point is volantary.
..don't panic
Get a grip, Katz. I can't handle this drivel much longer. Bill Gates is not the frigging antichrist, and Microsoft is not the only point of contact between business and the web. Companies may choose to make microsoft their only point of contact with the internet, just like they might chose to use nothing but custom developed IBM systems. If it's cost effective, all the power to you.
The internet can't be "taken over" by Microsoft. That's just stupid. If you want to use the services and products provided by Microsoft, then do so, but there's lots of alternatives, and if there aren't alternatives, then go write your own! Maybe it won't have all the bells and whistles, and it might cost an arm and a leg, but you can do what you want. Microsoft has a long way to go before you have no choice - and the open source movement has come a long way towards guaranteeing that.
Nobody said computing has to be easy. Bah. Microsoft fills a need just like linux. Get over it.
..don't panic
You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if Microsoft has a dominant share of the OS market. If for some reason you feel constrained by Microsoft, be it in the OS, Browser, Office Software, Development Tools, Gaming, whatever, arena, go write your own stuff. If enough people dislike what MS is doing, then your stuff will get better and have more features, like linux.
For most people, Microsoft is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Antitrust issues aside, most people just want a simple OS that they can use to do a few things. I want a complicated OS that gives me a lot of power, and I want nice development tools. You might want somthing different.
It's about choice. You're free to choose to not use MS stuff, and use something else instead, or write that "something else" from scratch. Contrary to what most people thing, programming is not rocket science. It's more time consuming than anything else.
I'm sick of people whining about MS dominating this and dominating that. Spend less time whining and more time working on things you wouldn't like to see dominated by MS, like Mozilla. Nobody said the choice had to be easy.
..don't panic
"the CEO of the Corporate Republic. He's created the first but surely not the last truly Unaccountable Corporation, a vast entity that is, in fact, above the law and more powerful than the government which enables it."
Oh please, we have the LEAST to fear from Microsoft of all corporations in the "Corporate Republic". Oh no our software won't be Free! Millions will starve! No way, Microsoft is FAR from the first. The ones we have to fear are the ones that bury toxic materials and cover it up (*cough* Erin Brokovich *cough*), destroy the environment, fund wars, sell weapons, imprison people, control the food supply, etc.
The issue with Microsoft is a fairly obscure ideological issue. The Corporate Republic has been around far longer than Microsoft, and has much much scarier players.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Mozilla 1.0? Let me borrow your time machine.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
My God. I thought I'd read Katz again after a break; give him a chance. But THIS! It's worse that the John Dvorak trolling that slashdot regularly links to. Maybe he just doesn't have anything real to write about, so a stir-the-flames MS troll will still keep him employed. Ugh.
Your jealousy and Fascist tendencies are showing, Jon. The powers of the federal government are supposed to be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. The government is not supposed to be in charge of everything. Just because you don't like Microsoft (and I don't either) doesn't mean the federal government is supposed to cut them down to size to suit you (or me).
I would gladly suffer a thousand Bill Gates over one Bill Clinton or Janet Reno.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
>Quite simply, we live in a capitalist system
"We in the USA", you mean.
> and corporations making money is good for everyone at the end of the day,
Good for many in the USA, yes. Not everyone in the USA. Certainly not everyone in the rest of the world.
> Without companies like Microsoft, AOL, Time-Warner and Cisco, do you really think we would be able to maintain the world dominating position we are presently in?
"We in the USA", you mean.
Do you understand now why European governments are investigating the security issues of using Microsoft software? Do you understand why Europeans don't always share your enthusiasm for Microsoft's dominance of the desktop market? Getting locked into a foreign country's product makes us dependent on that country, the way you're dependent on foreign oil. So there is much enthusiasm here for building Linux into a viable product on the desktop: much nicer than tearing the shit out of Alaska, don't you think?
> a hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream.
Well, I certainly agree with that. Microsoft is indeed the hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream: take other people's ideas, package and sell them well, buy the support of governments, viciously fight your competitors with lies, half-truths and innuendo, sew up the distribution channels, winner takes all, and fuck the losers.
The trembling was a bunch of FUD frankly. Judge Jackson was a Regan appointee. However, while I agree a Bush DOJ would be less likely to go after Microsoft, I disagree that conservative judges are pro-business. Conservative when applied to judicial nominees is different from political conservative. Judicial conservatives tend to rule within the strict confines of the law (hence their conservatism). On the other hand, liberal judges tend to extend the law (often fabricating their own) when they rule.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Microsoft doesn't dominate the world of computing now nor will they for years. They only dominate the Personal Computing market.
Bill Gates, on the ropes just a year ago, is now the undisputed King of the Net, the CEO of the Corporate Republic.
Bill Gates is Chairman with Steve Ballmer as the CEO. Gates' role is removed from the day to day operation of the company, and he is no longer driving strategy. His primary job is hiring and firing the CEO.
He's created the first but surely not the last truly Unaccountable Corporation, a vast entity that is, in fact, above the law and more powerful than the government which enables it.
Microsoft is accountable in so many ways, one could not list them all here. Ultimately they are accountable to the shareholders. Microsoft is not above the law. The US government spends roughly 8x the total market cap of MS each year. To suggest that MS is even a spec compared to the power of the government is laughable (but Ted Kennedy wants you to think that).
Remember that scene in The Return of Frankenstein ...
This is a horrible analogy, because Microsoft was never burned at the stake. Microsoft was never "destroyed" and they are still here.
Bill Gates, exposed just a year ago as a ruthless and less-than-candid corporate predator, is today the King of the Corporate Republic, the CEO of Internet, Inc. He and his company are about to launch one of the most ambitious campaigns in the history of business, one that should leave him firmly in control of the digital universe.
Exhagerate much?
If everything works as planned, Microsoft software will shortly control nearly every point at which a consumer or business interacts with the Web. That puts Microsoft at the center of all computing.
While Microsoft probably does have a plan to control all aspects of the market (what company doesnt), it's rediculous to assume they would ever be able to succeed. There are some other big fish in the pond who wont let that happen.
And soon, the company may even escape the break-up threat hanging over its head.
Soon? This issue is dead. No breakup.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule momentarily on the company's appeal, and based on the questions asked during oral arguments, the court is expected to reverse Judge Thomas P. Jackson's findings that the company illegally "tied" its browser into its operating system, and acted illegally to maintain its Windows monopoly.
What an idiot that Judge was in the first place. If that egomaniac had just kept his mouth shut and not spoken to any journalists for his stupid book, the case would have gone a different way.
This, say competitors like Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, is where we started, only more so. "It appears they're doing all over again what they did when they previously went into foul territory," McNealy told congressional investigators, according to Business Week. Microsoft's new Internet strategy is the boldest move yet, he says, to leverage the company's Windows monopoly to create a bottleneck that will constrict the Internet.
McNealy is more on target that you are, but I don't hear him saying undisputed King of the Net.
McNealy might as well be talking to himself -- the Bush administration is hardly going to curb Microsoft's new juggernaut, which can proceed unimpeded for at least four years, by which time the company may well be beyond any control, if that's not already the case. /. liberal shows its colors. Of course, the Clinton administration was right on top of this issue! Give me a break. This is an issue for the courts not the commander in chief. Let Bush appoint some real judges, and you'll see Microsoft tremble next time its at the bench.
Ah, I was waiting for this to come along.
Microsoft has transcended the economic realities of our time. Even with the NASDAQ down 9 per cent, the company's stock price has risen more than 60 per cent this year. In the quarter ending March 31, MS earned $2.45 billion on sales of $6.46 billion.
The stock is still off by about 45% from its high last year.
And thanks in part to a media that has utterly failed to grasp or cover well the real issues involving the soft- and hardware that governs the Net and the Web, the public has no idea that they will be spending billions for years on things they could have -- ought to have -- for free.
Microsoft's lock on corporate america (office) is its stronghold, which supports the lock on the residential market. The corporate market is well informed.
There are now real questions whether corporations like Microsoft, Disney, and AOL Time-Warner are vulnerable any longer to government regulation, or to any other kind of curb.
Only from socialists like yourself.
Microsoft seems to have convincingly demonstrated that is is, in fact, above the law, and means to stay that way.
Maybe you should write this out several dozen times to get your point across.
Even bitter critics of the government's attempt to break up Microsoft concede that Bill Gates was arrogant and dishonest in his Federal court testimony, and whatever the ultimate judicial ruling, mountains of evidence presented at the antitrust trial showed how Microsoft squelched competitors and discouraged both innovation and competition.
Nobody doubts Microsofts guilt. The remedy is what people can honestly disagree over.
Yet it all seems to have had no more impact on the company than a pea bouncing off an elephant, or a torch on the monster.
I doubt that it is operation as usual at Microsfot. First of all, Bill Gates stepped down as CEO. That is significant. Second, they've had serious personel problems since the trial.
We saw this company humbled and carved up with our own eyes, and celebrated it's being brought down to size.
?? When was this
Boy, were we dumb.
Ah, we agree on something. You were dumb and you still are.
Microsoft is stronger than ever, and, as a consequence, so is Linux and Open Source.
Yes, Microsoft is stronger than ever. They are positioned well. And they have a great deal of competition in front of them. Linux is a major part of that competition. The "King of the Net" is in fact not King afterall.
Just a year ago, Microsoft was so embattled -- its revenue growth had slowed to 8 per cent, Jackson had ordered the company split in half, $250 billion had vanished from the company's market value -- that Microsoft called 20,000 of its employees together at Seattle's Safeco Field. There it showed a motivational video that included scenes from a documentary about the mythic l974 title fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
The horror, the horror
But on the Net, a year might as well be a century.
The time it takes your articles seems like a century too
So the monster isn't only alive, he's stronger than ever. It's the Microsoft Era, Part Deux.
Wow. Lots of sustinance and good solid reporting here. Wonderful editorial (full of interesting facts and insites). And the prose! Shakespear stand down!!! Katz is here
Someone you trust is one of us.
Thankfully, we do live in a free market system, and the system will hopefully take care of this for us. VA Linux is feeling the pressure, so they are sure to eventually weed out the Katz factor.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Jesus Christ, man, has someone stolen your lithium?
.NET will not even approach the internet development being done in Java today. This year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco had too many attendees for the space. They're pursuing battle on grounds that are unproven, uknown, and largely already taken up by Sun Microsystems.
Look, here's Windows 2000... no, wait, look, here's Windows Me, no, wait, OVER HERE! It's WINDOWS XP!
Open your eyes, they're running scared and pursuing a business model that, in all likelihood, will drive them out of the industry if they stay with it. Noone wants to pay a monthly fee for software. It's hard enough being a specialized ASP in today's business world, nevermind trying to be an ASP for virtually *every* application on a single computer.
Personally, I believe that they're shooting themselves in their collective feet.
I disagree with most of what you said, except:
Or has Slashdot regressed?
Slashdot: Whiny nerds, stuff that only our staff cares about.
Anywho, on with my rant. Microsoft is not Hitler, however they're marketing/FUD tactics are the only intelligence inside Microsoft. Windows 2000 is crap. It's FINALLY taking some hints from that 30 year old OS called UNIX. They call it a "revolution". We call it "been there, done that". Internet Explorer is a crappy browser. Why does it appear to be better? Because it dominates the market. Developers are told that no one uses Netscape, so develop for IE. Netscape et al becomes incompatible as the new HTML standards favor IE and slowly squeeze everything out of the market. That's just the kind of power Microsoft has. They have the ability to make the standards committies ignore everyone else, declare Microsoft the standard, and bingo, MS wins again. I have no problems with one company setting the standards. I am not anti-Microsoft. I'm against shitty software. Everything Microsoft "innovates" (writes, buys, redistributes, whichever is the tactic of the day) is complete crap. I have yet to see a piece of MS software and say "ah hah! finally someone has heard my plea". No, actually, every time they release new software my reaction is "I'm supposed to use THIS? Do I HAVE to?" And because of their market control the answer is generally "yes, you have to" from the PHB.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Guess which OS ran on those computers? And I can assure you that I'm not making this one up. I can also tell you that I'm very glad my life doesn't depend on Windows in this way. At least not yet...
Fortune -- The Beast Is Back
How to Download YouTube Videos
I've been thinking about how to talk about Linux and Open Source in reference to profits and Microsoft. I've made some of those thoughts available here, but I'm not satisfied with the outcome. I'm going to try again. Join the conversation, flame me, or back me up. I don't care. I just want to try to parse things up appropriately.
First, I keep forgetting that Linux is only one slice of Open Source. Indeed, in many ways it is a small slice. Similarly, Linux isn't necessarily competing against Windows. Linux is an operating system and that is the way it should be treated. Linux isn't going against Microsoft.
Second, Open Source is not a business philosophy. Therefore, it also does not compete against Microsoft. I thought it did, but it can't. Open Source is a philosophy with business implications, but it is not strictly a business model. Therefore, if you hear that Open Source is fighting Microsoft, you are hearing lies.
Third, companies such as Red Hat are competing against Microsoft, at least in terms of operating systems. Note that Microsoft has not really attacked folks like Red Hat. They are considered insignificant competitors. Instead, Microsoft attacks the Open Source philosophy because that deflects attention on their attempts to dominate software and the internet.
Fourth, if you attack Microsoft, you are attacking capitalism. Not the roots, but some of the side effects; the leaves, if you will. The injustices of Microsoft can be handled in the marketplace (e.g., IBM versus Microsoft) via products, sales and services. Or, it can be fought in court. Open Source cannot fight Microsoft because it isn't about money. The Open Source philosophy can't win because the philosophy can't beat capitalism. Recognize this important idea: capitalism is both a philosophy and an economic description of reality. Capitalism is business.
Fifth, even if Open Source was a business philosophy, it does not have the resources to fight against Microsoft or other major corporations. If it truly a war, an economic war, and I think it is, then Open Source is feeble. You have people waving the banner of the Open Source philosophy -- "share, share, share" -- but that does nothing in terms of marshaling resources.
Sixth, in light of the pervious point, there is no centralized leadership. The fact that a whole community needed to respond to Mundie exactly fits my point. The fact is, even when people replied to Mundie's comments about Open Source, it made no difference. Since the Open Source community has little in the way of economic resources, it cannot effective battle against Microsoft. Remember, a philosophy cannot fight against a business. Even large groups of people (with limited economic power) cannot fight against Microsoft. Without centralized power, and centralized resource, and focused plans of attack and defense, Microsoft will continue to dominate. Simply put, perhaps there are some leaders, but there are no generals. Remember, at least for Microsoft, this is war.
Seventh, Microsoft is defending its pocketbook. It is fighting for itself and it is fighting for its stockholders. There are thousands of people, outside of Microsoft, that want Microsoft to do well. How many Open Source folks own Microsoft stock? Some percentage of people do, either directly or via mutual funds. You cast stones, but are you hoping they miss?
Finally, while I say "Microsoft" again and again, the fight, if there is one, is with all corporations and all monopolies. Microsoft just rubs us the wrong way. There are many reasons for that. But the point remains. Open Source, being a philosophy, cannot effectively compete against corporations. It doesn't stand a change.
You might shrug this all off. You ignore this posting. But I warn you that Open Source might not be what you think it is.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Post or moderate? The classic dilemma.
However, it was a good company in its effects. It brought taxation and simple democracy to India. It breathed the first light of the west's wisdom on those dark and primitive lands.
That is an as arrogant, narrow-minded and xenophobic statement as I have ever heard.
Taxation is not a self-evident benefit, as another poster pointed out.
Democracy was a relatively nascent concept (not in terms of time, but in terms of its adoption) at the time at which the East India company subjucated the peoples of India. To say that democracy wouldn't have made it there without their help is ridiculous at best. What we do know, though, is that after the East India company took over, there was no real democracy in the country until 1947 when the British finally left.
The statement I find most incendiary, though, is where you say the East India Company "breathed the light of the west's wisdom on India". You can lookup the scientific and mathematical advances that pre-modern India had made yourself. It won't be hard to read up on. Indian culture also had a relatively egalitarian system of education and local economies that were dismantled by the British to set up their own hierarchy where bureaucrats that worked for the British achieved a higher status.
The only area in which the British were distinguishably superior to the indigenous population was in terms of the technology of warfare.
I'm reminded of an anecdote I read which was written by a British author whose name I forget. He described an incident when he was sitting down with a French friend and he made the statement that England had never lost a battle (which was what he had been taught in history). His French counterpart rattled off a list of battles which England had indeed lost. The moral here is to not go just by what history texts teach you because they are almost guaranteed to be biased towards the authors point of view.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Can someone please explain to me why Katz has a problem with Microsoft showing their employees motivational videos?
So use Mozilla/Apache, and they don't do what you want, add the functionality. Nobody forces you at gunpoint...
As long as the standards are openly published and well-defined, this is a great option. And, yes, Katz does tend to inflame an issue that has been beaten like a dead horse.
But.
As a commercial developer you do have to aim towards the marketplace, and if the blind herd of consumers is running Windows Me or whatever, then you have to respect that, however distasteful it may be to your political, philosphical or technical sensibilities.
The main problem with the premise of implementing a new feature in Mozilla or Apache, will be when you try to implement a "standard" that is owned by MS.
Like, for example, how does one display these binary .doc, .ppt, .xls files in the blessed way that 95% of people have come to expect? I'm still looking for the RFC on that "standard".
Like, for example, how does one openly interact with AOL Instant Messenger? Sorry, standards have changed in the last few days!
Likewise, wait till the XML server to your desktop audience wants to play with .NET using some kind of
that takes as an argument the time-stamped updated hardware platform profile with your current windows server license ticket that, in order to get, requires its own back and forth dialogue with microsoft.com to get right.Oh, and such authentication will be marketed as an added beneficial security feature that will prevent "hackers" from corrupting your innocent child's PC with terrorist porn. There will be barriers to entry.
If you think anyone with a non-MS box and some programming skill is invited onto that playing field, then I think you have another thing coming.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Microsoft is not Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Big Brother, MegaCorp(tm), or anything of the sort. It's a software company. As of the past few years, they've actually been making pretty good software. Windows 2000 is a respectable operating system. Internet Explorer won the browser wars (because it was better, not because it was "integrated"). Sure, they ran into some trouble because they acquired a bunch of companies and were accused of being a monopoly, but that doesn't justify the puerile namecalling that we typically see in posts like this.
Talk about knee-jerk reactions.
We hang on every Microsoft-sponsered word that refers to Linux as "inferior" or "a cancer" or anything else, but then turn around and make exactly the same accusations, with just as little basis.
Nothing in the software world will change as long as people like Katz and the karma-whores continue to treat Microsoft like an evil villain; It's unrealistic, and any approach that has such flawed logic at it's core is destined to fail.
Got Rhinos?
Maybe you should read the line again. It distinctly says "developer/user base". In other words how many Windows users (outside of M$ employees) are Windows developers? Exactly 0 (zip, nadda, NONE). How many Linux users (or other Free OS users) developers as well? With Linux I'd say at least half the people who use it have probably contributed something, probably more. How many everyday people do you hear praising Windows? I'd say the vast majority of regular users complain about it but they accept it because they think its all there is.
So lets restate: M$oft obviously has more users. How many are developers for their product? -- None. How many of their users actually praise everything they do and would never go away even when presented with a better product? -- Not alot. So if there are about 10 million Linux users world wide and assuming half develop (5 million). And M$oft I saw somewhere has 38,000 employees. Say 20,000 are developers for them. We out number their developers 2500 to 1. I think we can use this resource.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
I must admit, this one hurts.
Microsoft is not indestructable. They are powerful yes, but not indestructable. The king of the Corporate Republic? No. Gates is merely a prince. The people that control Pharmacutical companies, the oil industry and the auto makers are far more evil.
For once we need to think outside of the box. Form grass-roots advertising campaigns. Its not that expensive either. Local LUGS hold community conferences and put up some signs. BANG! Instant linux users. We have something M$oft will never have: a world-wide loyal developer/user base. Most people use M$oft because they think its the only thing there is... we need to show them otherwise! If we listen to Katz we might as well take our programs and go home.
<sarcasm> Lets take our programs and go home, M$oft has won, no way we can beat them </sarcasm>
Seriously Jon, you've had some much better articles lately but this isn't one of them
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
As a Generation-X'er, I must say:
Those idiots who worked at Union Carbide got what they deserved.
They could have left and gone to a safer job, and if they're too mediocre to be able to switch jobs and find a safer workplace, well that's too bad.
Once again:
IT IS NOT THE CORPORATION'S RESPONSIBILITY TO CARE ABOUT YOUR SAFETY. It is their responsibility to care about 1 thing: profits. Profits. PROFITS, DAMMIT. Profits are the only thing that matters with a corporation.
You'll understand this when you are put out of a job because your employer had to spend too much money on safety regulations.
Maybe if those peons at Union Carbide would have gotten their Redhat Linux Certification or MCSE like me, or if they were able to code GIMP or the Linux Kernel like I can, they wouldn't have to work at such dingy places. The fact of the matter is, people without adequate job skills deserve to be stuck at dangerous work sites because they are too lazy to learn new job skills. Survival of the fittest. The wages of stupidity.
And those unskilled worthless peons did a great service by dying so that the rest of us industrialized people can enjoy our high standard of living. Don't insult their noble sacrifice by using Union Carbide as a cause for requiring corporations to provide safe work places.
Darned communists.
(PS: in case your blood is boiling, this post is a 100% PARODY. Nonetheless it tells the exact truth about the way that gutless lapdog kissass corporate statists think.)
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Yeah, OK, I admit I couldn't be bothered counting - you got the gist, right? BTW, thanks to whoever moderated this up to being visible; let's hope it has the desired effect.
But this......
This is just Jon writing an easy essay to score points. It's largely his opinion, with the actual facts of the matter sadly lacking (as numerous other posters have mentioned). I'm wondering; is there a karma system for the editors as well as for us mere mortals, cos if so Katz is acting like the biggest karma-whore alive. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of M$, but this article almost amounts to a troll.
Next time Jon, try the following:
I doubt Jon reads all these little posts that don't get above 3 points, so please could Hemos or Rob or someone tell Katz to try harder. Cheers.
This has more to do with economics than anything else. What evidence do you have to show where MS "leaned" on a hardware manufacturer to not produce drivers. The key factor is market share. Linux in the past has been a hobbyist market, people taking older out of date equipment and running with it. The problem there is that some of the hardware makers for those machines no longer exist so the community had to make the drivers. The manufacturers that do still exist don't want to put forth the effort to support a product that they abandoned 4 years ago. Manufacturers also see very narrow margins for profit in a venture where Linux only holds about as much market share as Mac. So they look at the numbers and figure that they could get some good press by creating linux drivers for the 500-1000 people that still use their 4 year old video card, or they could spend that development money on their new product which will sell to a million people or more and make them millions.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Unfortunately they continued to treat people, women especially, like cattle well past the point where Europeans acquired street lights.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Don't forget Sun.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
n0thing.... everything before you is nothing but lies reflecting in your eyes. There is no moral good, there is only what is.
Microsoft is some evil bastards though...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
> What mindless, pathetic drivel. This is a new low,
> even for Jon Katz.
Like beeds like, I guess.
> Microsoft are guilty of several dubious business
> practices (the OEM lockin for instance) but
> their core business has succeeded by a shrewd
> knowledge of what their customers want, a
> cunning marketing campaign and quality products.
> Yes, that's right, quality products.
But of what quality? Try pulling a floppy out of the drive while WinDOS 98 is writing it. Now do it on Linux. Now that's quality.
OEM lock ins are not all there is to the story. They cheated IBM, Stac, Borland Novell...seriously. To the point where they had to settle out of court to prevent a conviction. Try settling out of court, if you ever get arrested. Must be nice to have all that cash...the fruits of crime...at their disposal.
Very few of their decisions are based on what their customer's want, rather they are based on increasing market share.
> Quite simply, we live in a capitalist system and
> corporations making money is good for everyone
> at the end of the day, as it benefits us in
> services from tax revenues and general growth of
> the economy. Without companies like Microsoft,
> AOL, Time-Warner and Cisco, do you really think
> we would be able to maintain the world
> dominating position we are presently in?
Actually, we live in a regulated capitalist system, meaning that a corporation (in theory) can't do "anything they want" for profit.
At the end of the day, people sometimes die due to corporate irresponsibility...placing shareholder profit ahead of the customer.
The truth is, without Microsoft (and the others you mentioned) I think their would be far more software and tech companies...in the US and elsewhere. That would be good for just about everyone, and would far closer match a free marketplace, than what we have now. This is actually, as far as models go, much closer to the former USSR.
> And if Microsoft come to dominate a set of new
> markets (a hell of a lot less likely than it
> made out here), then it'll be because they've
> again produced what the customer wants.
I think Bill Gate's position on wants vs. needs goes something like "Make them need you". When you need a bit of technology, and there is only one choice, it's really easy to say "Well, Microsoft did a great job of providing what the customer wants". Circular logic at best, since without a free market of competitors, it is impossible to ever know what would best serve the customer.
> Microsoft is not "above the law". How foolish.
> They're nothing more than one of our great
> success stories, a hugely visible embodiment of
> the American Dream.
If the American Dream is federal criminals paying off both sides of a two-party system, if it's false "Astroturf" campaigns designed to lie to politicians, if you smile when state laws are broken to ruin a competitor, if your "Dream" of America is the choice "one size fits all" made famous by the Soviet Union, then yes, Don, your dream for America is coming true, courtesy of Microsoft.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Oh, right, like... there is an equivalent OS that _EVERY_ drooley on the planet can understand and WILL use. For free. Like there is a _FREE_ equivalent as good and as powerfull as, say, SQLserver 2000. Or Visual Studio.
Open your eyes.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Besides, without Microsoft, who would we use as a baseline of evil to make us feel elite and pure?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Nor is it Microsoft Cheerleading...
But sometimes your articles do read like the same clueless sensationalist trash
that John C. Dvorak puts out to generate page hits.
In this regard I guess I'd have to at least credit you as a real journalist.
There really are a few Gems in this article:
"Bill Gates, exposed just a year ago as a ruthless and less-than-candid corporate predator"
Excuse me, where have you been for the last 20 years of computing history? Not
to mention the greater part of the Industrial Revolution?
We've known that about Bill Gates for well over a decade now; just as we've known
that about every other corporate CEO in the same timeframe.
What people get pissed about is not that Microsoft wants to take over the
world (lots of companies want that), but that Microsoft keeps coming up
with workable plans to take over the world (something that a lot fewer companies
manage to successfully do).
Having a goal is not illegal, what might be illegal is the means one might use
to accomplish that goal. The courts might be able to penalize MS for the methods
they use to achieve their goals, but can do nothing to MS for having that goal
in mind. Nothing in their practices will change until and unless they are
made to revise those goals; because (like any good hacker)
anything else done to the company will only cause them to rethink the
means they use to get where they want to be.
Whenever I hear quotes from Scott McNealy, it sounds like he's more mad at MS
for thinking up these schemes first. And the reaction from the ABMS crowd is
such that you either think that Steve Ballmer cannot cross the street without
evil intent; or you accept that the company is capable of some valid business
practices and that not everything they do is part of some grand conspiracy.
"Microsoft has transcended the economic realities of our time"
"We saw this company humbled and carved up with our own eyes, and celebrated it's being brought down to size. Boy, were we dumb"
Yes we were, those of us who did not pay attention to the Linux Advocacy FAQ.
The rest have kept themselves too busy trying to improve on open source projects and
positive advocacy for privacy, p2p sharing or ideas and code, and freedom of choice.
As of right now, that is not useable. Linking to a site that tells what a company has planned doesn't mean much. They're way behind the Open Source folks at supporting Itanium.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Don't buy their product and the corp ain't really going to care. Don't buy into the government line, or send them your tax money and your in jail
HELLO. Slight screw up in priorities mr. commie
BTW - free market is millions and millions times better than the crap that tanked the former Soviet.
Yeah, and eating mashed potatoes is a lot more fun than eating feces, but that doesn't mean I want mashed potatoes every night of the year.
I don't bitch about the government when I like their policies. I don't bitch about Microsoft or any other company when I like their policies. When either behaves badly with the power over other people that they have, especially when that bad behavior affects me, that's when I start to complain. Your whole government/private-enterprise dichotomy is total bull.
P.S. Corporations care very much when you don't buy their products. That's why they plaster their slogans on televisions, magazines, web sites, billboards, t-shirts, coffee-mugs, radios, baseball stadiums, mouse pads, tall buildings, the sky, etc.
--
share and enjoy
it seems to me that Slashdot is lately engaging too much in the latter rather than the former
You're new here, aren't you? :-)
This article seems a bit over the top, I agree. However, the number of fronts on which law enforcement and corporate entities are muscling into the computing world is astonishing and disturbing.
Perhaps it is because the internet is a relatively clean slate. In the wider world, we are used few large corporations controlling virtually every channel of information we have: radio, television, newspapers, magazines, movies, music... But on the internet, we aren't used to that. So we notice the invasion.
We see RIAA and MPAA attacking digital copying, ICANN handing the namespace to corporations and excusing itself from public accountability. We see FBI wanting to tap communications at every ISP and bar strong encryption. 2600 is ordered not to link, and program code is ruled unprotected under the first amendment. Microsoft tells us Open Source is a cancer while cheating at business itself. RAMBUS wants cash for every memory chip manufactured, RIAA wants cash for every CD-R sold, and CPRM would control what you write on your hard drive. Reality doesn't leave a lot of room for irrational paranoia these days!
These issues may not interest you, but they'll shape the future of the internet and, consequently, of society. Think no one should care? Tell that to RIAA, MPAA, FBI, Microsoft, RAMBUS, AOL-Time Warner... because for some reason, they all do care passionately and are on the ball asserting their interests every day.
Microsoft has not touched every aspect of working with the web; they haven't done anything substantial with wireless technology. There should be a WinCE-based platform analogous to Sun's J2ME platform. I'm sure there are other areas...
Besides, this isn't about capitalism. This is about hijacking capitalism to support one company's aims and then hiding behind "right to make a buck". This is why laissez-faire can't work -- it's too likely to degenerate into, well, this.
/brian
First off, Jon was using "CEO" in a metaphorical sense. I personally don't believe that Steve Ballmer picks his own nose without some kind of authorization from BillG anyway.
Second, though Katz' article is a bit of a jeremiad, I don't think it's too far from what could become the truth. I used to work for Starbucks and had an inside view of a company that, while not as rapacious as its reputation, still suffered from a lack of internal dissent. Microsoft seems to be the same, only with a much more vicious attitude towards the rest of the world. A company of yes-men will not keep itself in check, and if the antitrust case collapses, than there will be nothing to do so at all.
In that light I think Katz is overstating his point, but it's not a hopelessly unreasonable way of looking at it.
/Brian
Laissez-faire is as idealistic and non-workable as pure socialism. All I'm saying is that Microsoft would be much nastier in such an environment (that is, if it could get around IBM in the first place).
/Brian
Those cultures had public schools (even though you might not consider them as such because they were different to your notion of 'school') and Europeans were not exactly strong on educating anyone other than upper class males.
True enough... India (back to the original subject) had advanced states of education... and a more egalitarian culture than many of its neighbors, at that time. However... not all cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa (or North or South America, or Japan, or Western Europe, or the Mediteranian Region) had what we currently hold to be acceptable levels of education for the general populace. It is very important to understand that, for all of its flaws (massive imbalances between first and third world, single-religion control of huge blocks of the planet, rapid transmission of virulant diseases across the globe, overconsumption in the first world, overbreeding and resistance to birth control and education in the third world (just a note that much of South America has joined the first world - under the radar of the English speaking quadrant - in the last few decades... ironically, India and Nepal, once the heart of advanced education, philosophy, and culture in the world, ultimately birthing the rational cultures of the Greeks and the Hebrews via migratory philosophies, and leading to the "modern" value system, have become almost irredeemably third world - and not all the blame can be laid at the feet of the British), and a general refusal to acknowledge the transient nature of our current resource flow, not to mention the vulnerability of the entire ecosystem it is being extracted from (thanks, dubya, for making us look like the utter asses the worst of us are in the eyes of the world - someday, I hope you drown in toxic waste), we are still, as a planetary culture, orders of magnitude better than anything that has preceeded us. Cultural relativism only goes so far. Remember, the British Empire was a primitive culture as well... and use the same damned grain of salt you use for looking at their (and American, and whoever else's) history when looking at the histories of the rest of the world. The things I could tell you about, to take an example, the tribes of Tahiti, or Arizona, or Malaysia... taking them apart over their centuries and millenia... would make you go into as great a fervor, if you could look beyond the blinders of cultural relativism.
Both Africa and India had advanced cultures. Your reference to tribal warfare merely demonstrates your ignorance of the mess and chaos created, then left behind, by the colonists. This is directly responsible for pretty much all the conflict on the continent.
While I am aware of a handful of long standing peaceful tribes, they mostly survived by isolation. As aware as I am of the mess and chaos left behind by the colonists, and the disruptive influence they had on some of the local equilibriums, I am also aware of many attrocities and inhumanities (with a long 'a', not a short) that existed in much of Africa, North-Eastern India, the Central Plains of North America, and across the Pacific Islands.
And let's not forget that European and American corporations continue to inflame for their own gain the tensions left behind by colonialism - they provide weapons, encouraging as much torture and murder as possible so they can rape the countries with impunity - they do not want the wars to end - how will they ever get away with stealing all those natural resources if that happens?
True, and a vitally biting accusation it is.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
India had several cultures. It was a shifting set of political, cultural, and religious boundaries for centuries. At one time, about 4500 years ago, India was home to the first literate civilization to recognize parallel (hence egalitarian) male and female gender roles. I had thought there was still a pocket of this in the North-Western region of the subcontinent, but I haven't been able to find any corroborating documentation. I'm going to have to put this down as an I-Was-Mistaken, unless I can dig that up.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
I used to be down on the Electoral College until I did some reading after the election. I'm a believer now. It's like this: the EC helps to prevent the "tyranny of the majority." To understand this better, take a look at this imaginary country...
In Hellholia, there are 3 provinces.
Province A, with 60% of the population.
Province B, with 20% of the population.
Province C, with 20% of the population.
The people of Province A hate the people of Province B. They'd like to dump them into shallow graves. They don't get along so well with the people of Province C either.
The people of Provinces B and C get along with each other and they wish the A-holes would leave them alone.
If the Grand Poo-Bah of Hellholia is elected by popular vote, the most rabid, racist violent psychopath would easily be elected by the majority, those being the people of A, and he'd start wiping out the people of B and forcing the people in C to make license plates or something.
If the Hellholia uses a system like the electoral college, the candidate from A would have to win over at least B or C in addition to his own province, and this would ensure that a more moderate candidate won.
Without the electoral college the people in the 4 most populous US states would dominate presidential race, and that's wrong. With the EC in place, the candidates need to appeal to a more broad spectrum of voters. That's a good thing.
Far from destroying democracy, the electoral college is a critical fine-tuning element. It's actually quite elegant.
You must be referring to the centrally planned economy. That is exactly what the Microsoft world is about. A few guys at Redmond deciding how the rest of the world should use their computers. Too many companies just don't have the freedom of choice any more after being locked into proprietary file formats and the like. You can see the effects now that this locking has progressed, and M$ start to charge annually for the use of their products.
An analogy: I'm planning to get a digital camera but I wouldn't like it to use a Sony memory stick. Reasons: (a) the theoretical possibility that Sony go bust and nobody will ever make new memory sticks. (b) After a sufficient number of people use devices with memory sticks, nothing can stop them from increasing the memory price as high as they like. In the same way, with the possibility of Gates^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft being split into two, possibly rendering present M$ systems incompatible, I am glad nothing like that can happen to free software and we will have the last word :-)
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Former President Bill Clinton can name 90,000 examples of why your number might be off a little bit.
Politics can circumvent justice with ease, but the law itself is a little tougher to get around.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Standard Oil, US Steel, AT&T, General Motors... All of these companies ran a monopoly or totally controlled the markets they competed in. All were put down, no matter how powerful they became.
The same WILL happen to MS, just give it time. This isn't to say that we should all sit back and ignore it. We should all keep up pressure - write our senators, congresspeople, business leaders, media personalities. Let's keep an active discussion going with real statistics and real intellect. No one is going to seriously listen to a 1/2 baked reactionary drivel. We need a sensible, coherent alternative for MS. Complaining that they're evil just because they make a lot of money won't get us listened to by anyone. We have to build our own coalitions, just as MS is doing now.
And about the "cancer" statement made recently - this is just the tip of the iceberg in the propaganda war that is starting to unfold. Statements like that made in the mainstream will be listened to by the mainstream. A few small lies here and there will snowball into an avalanche of disinformation. The Soviets and the Nazis knew this. Microsoft doesn't need to sell technology to win; they need only sell the message.
They did the same thing with USB 2.0, changing their minds...
But you have it wrong about 64bit-
At the Office XP launch, here in Raleigh, I heard the talking head (Shawn) specifically say that they were developing for 64-bit.
If Office is 64-bit, then the OS will be 64-bit, because you know for *damn* sure that there won't be Office running on anything other than Windows or MacOS X.
I heard it straight from the mouthpiece of the beast.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
You obviously haven't spent much time using them.
Let me tell you a little story.
Once upon a time, a very busy programmer with several projects and many active email conversations decided to make full use of this program called Outlook 2000.
This programmer set up folders for each project, and sometimes for each contact. Then he started using the Tasks feature to keep track of activities.
It was all very good... he could send message with attachments, he could receive messages with attachments. He also discovered how convenient it was to create Tasks with URL attachments (drag-and-drop that URL from the address bar of IE into the task.)
The power of information was at his fingertips.
Then one day he happened along the Microsoft Product Updates website. Hmm, he thought, here's an "important" security patch for Office. After reading the release notes for the patch, he realized that this security patch was a good thing.
So programmer downloaded and installed the security patch. All appeared well. The patch installed without a hitch, and everything seemed fine.
Programmer continued his work briefly, until he needed to refer to a task and the information associated with it. Programmer opened the relavent task and looked around for the attached URL link.
Then programmer noticed something interesting written at the top of his window... "Outlook blocked access..."
I'm tired of storytelling. Suffice to say that virtually every fucking attachment, including the most benign of attachments, the URL link file, was completely and fully blocked from any kind of view by Outlook. This special "security" feature wasn't listed in the release notes. Essentially all the information storage that I had done to make my work more efficient was lost. Links to old facts were lost (hidden.) Files I had sent and received were effectively lost.
All because Microsoft needed a "fix" for all their ILOVEYOU and such viruses. If you want to be amazed, look at the list of file types that are blocked... Q262631
Now, if you think that is one cute little example of pain and suffering related to MS products, reply to this message and I'll provide you another good story. And another. And even another. I bet I can give you more stories than you want to read.
So where does this leave us? Even though MS admittedly has the best browser, no contest, I'm writing this in Mozilla. And in my job search I have lately been telling recruiters I'd like to avoid MS technologies (at a cost of job opportunities and perhaps even $5/hour in pay.)
If the software MS sold was actually good all around, perhaps the fact that their business practices were so evil wouldn't matter to me. But the only thing MS is good at is making money for their shareholders. They're not good at making software, don't confuse the two.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
However, it was a good company in its effects. It brought taxation and simple democracy to India. It breathed the first light of the west's wisdom on those dark and primitive lands.
Im sure a lot of India's people may be able to make a retort at the 'then' state of India.. a great many of them would suggest that history has proved they would have been better off - just like Africans and Indiginous People of the Americas - they all had very rewarding cultures with independant priorities to provide well-being to the residents. Your statement is not a little surprising.
..on a wholly seperate note...
The war for our hearts is not an easy one, but by virtue of its products. MS holds that position now.
The day any 'product' enters my heart is the day I go stark raving mad - have you lost your vulcan-mind? You need to do some serious analysis about how you make decisions, and what influences them, because 'products' are really a means to an end, those ends may be clean cloths or end to hunger - you *NEVER* desire 'Tibe Freshness' or 'McBlondalds MaCHapply Bleals."
Anyhow, the only real competition that Microsoft will ever have is Open Source.
This is true. This crowd understands the real economics behind software - that it really is cheap to write code (software = cheap computer + good developer + free time).. and what the Free Software paradigm does to empower those people... yadda yadda.
What I dont understand is, in the world of 'economics' and capitalism (which I frankly abhor) is that with GNU/Linux being MS's only real competition is this: Doesnt this *PROVE* their monopoly? I mean really, the only viable alternative, as small as it is, is a group of Volunteers and their collaborative efforts. With MS seeking to malign and destroy (the purpose of every one of their campaigns till now) GNU/Linux this should send up warning flares at the US DoJ and FTC (the hollowed hull that it is) like nothing else.
I mean really, to your average dollar-worshipping whore how does this appear? From someone on the sideline, without any tech-clue, isnt MS *really* impaling itself by attacking GNU/Linux and Free Software?
Here is an anology: If McBlondleds managed to put every other beef-burger joint effectively out of business (Lotus, Corel, Borland, Novell) *THEN* they began to attack people in their own homes/backyards because they were giving away home-BBQed beef-burgers with the only condition being that 'when you BBQ, I expect you give me a burger also, no charge' - I mean really, isn't MS really just proving the DoJ's case here? The only people left to attack are non-profit volunteers!
Reality doesn't leave a lot of room for irrational paranoia these days!
/.
/.; there are raging environmentalists, anti-GMO activists, social-justice activists, indymedia advocates and tonnes of other 'perspectives' that are citing the same exact problem: Private, non-democratic For-Profit Corporations have *WAY* too much power - they need to begin to be held accountable to the communities that they are supposed to serve. Profit-Seeking is *NOT* the highest priority && people are begining to demand that Corporations he held accountable to the priorities of our communities and not simply their own selfish interest.
Phew, I thought i was the only one... Here! Here!
Now my real paranoia is this: In all other sectors of society; health care, auto-manufacture, law etc etc etc, is this: If these weasles can have astonishing power, without any accountability, think of the absolute stiffling power they wield in whole. I mean we have watched ruling after ruling against reason - in favour of profit over and over and over in our area-of-understanding. The Technology and the Internet is the forte of the average slashdotter, what we see here is the enlightenment by slashdotters of this afore mentioned fact.
Literally, what the fuck is going on when real citizens - people - no longer have any ability to make choices for themselves and their community? This alarm is what we see in the forums on
..and its not isolated to
Come to Washington in Sept. for the WorldBank/IMF Demo. See: indymedia.org
hhehehhehhahahhah haheheyhehhahaha hehhah You do also understand that the rest of the world's people look with PITY on America and *NOT* envy? The only thing we 'fear' is that America's Plutocrats, with its armies, will come to enslave the rest of us as it has you! While were busy building social-systems, community, health-care and generally healthy communities we watch the hack-and-slash American-Capitalists chomping outside the gates. Ready to lie, cheat, steal and bribe there way into undermining our efforts and replacing it with a cut-throat system of consumerism.
When people say that Americans are ignorant and myopic they are not joking. We are not jealous - as in the American-Jerry-Springer-idiot -mental-mcnuggets-for-mindless-masses 'i get paid' sense. Its Pity as in the 'we cannot believe that they believe this kind of shit' sense.
Your present world position is a result of these things:
Never having fought a modern domestic war (think WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Panama, Korea, Indo-China) Although you did play your part in all: Selling arms/support/supplies/whatever, you have never hosted one. This alone I believe is your number-one contributor to the Modern-USA state.
Ruthless-ill thought out sense of 'self' (ie: selfishness, greed compounded by a predatory establishment to re-enforce this)
Age. Vast resources and natural space to mindlessly exploit. The Industrial revolution aided the USA in an accelerated planet-rape program. Most everyone else had already cleared their forests and let them regrow many times over while America was cutting (still doing it www.mattoledefense.org!) old growth for the first time. Americans are to resource management as children are to candy-stores. See: Golf Courses in Desserts and Air-Conditioned rolling blackouts*.
...surely there is a simple and wise solution, that involves conservation - decrease in demand - that would solve some of your over-consumption (the American Way of Life) problem that would be more elegant than drilling for oil in Federal Reserves and Building Coal-Powered Electricity Plants.. I dunno, just a thought...
Basically - the present world-state of America is *NOT* proof that you are making all the right choices, it really is the result of short-sighted self-serving choices, made in a myopic vacuum, a few random events of history and an inability to be humble in the presence of (seemingly) 'good' fortune.
If you think Im blowing smoke, just some kind of Anti-Yankee nut, please dont. I am quite sure I am pretty on the mark. What pisses off the rest of the world about Americans is their lack of perspective, and their never-ending hubris. Where a statement like "world dominating position" really simply displays why you have no real future.
Corporate controlled laughing stock its political system has become. Not the American dream, but quite possibly the American nightmare.
Pretty much sums it up.
...but I should really know better than to feed the trolls... +5 Insightful? How about -1 McCarthy-Inspired Delusion.
*Note to Californians: Isnt your rolling blackouts really proof of the failure of privatization? Where is the better service, increased choice and decreased price? Looks to me like you simply got screwed, and are now getting the 'you over regulated the market - *this* caused the problem' bullshit fed back to you... AND YOU BELIEVE IT! Further, when you live in a desert, pools and lawn watering are considered 'waste'. Ever think that if you simply outlawed lawn-watering that the decrease in consumption would make up for your shortcomings?
...just that this 'world dominating' chest pounding really irks me....
Bill Gates is Chairman with Steve Ballmer as the CEO. Gates' role is removed from the day to day operation of the company, and he is no longer driving strategy. His primary job is hiring and firing the CEO.
You're right that Gates is no longer CEO, but you're wrong in saying that he's removed from operations. In addition to being Chairman, he's Chief Software Architect, essentially the head of R&D, which is a very operational role. There are people in R&D now who are directly responsible to Gates, which would not be the case if he were simply a Board member, even Chairman.
Gates' "web site" is here.
Unfortunately, sensationalism like this doesn't do much to help the anti-M$ cause. Likening Bill Gates to Frankenstein's monster might be good for a chuckle, but without presenting a strong case based on facts and evidence, articles like this are only going to preach to the converted, and alienate those who sit on the fence. People who might be sympathetic to the Open Source movement if they were better informed are not well-served by this sort of shrill invective.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Once again Jon Katz innocence and ignorance shines through. I don't think I have ever seen a writer that knew so little about so much. That said, a) Bill Gates was never on the ropes, and b)Microsoft is no where near the first Unaccountable Corporation. Microsoft's appearance of accountability was due to their ignorance of politics. They lived under the misguided belief that if they ignored Washington, Washington would ignore them. They have learned their mistake and are taking steps to purchase politicians like every other major corporation. If you need an example of an Unaccountable Corporation that dwarfs Microsoft, how about the federal reserve. Most people don't even realizes that the federal reserve is an independent corporation with few ties to the government, and no accountability, and they control our country's economy. Microsoft is small potatoes. Microsoft may be an evil corporation (one that knowingly and intentionally produces an inferior product at a higher price, though most of the software industry falls into that catagory)without conscience, they are certainly not unique, and certainly not worthy of the paranoid panic that you seem to feel they are.
The reason the Court of Appeals will reverse Judge Jackson's rulings is simple - they did not act illegally in tying IE to their operating system. Quite simply, having IE as part of the OS makes it a better product for users! What a concept!
:)
Sorry, just because something produces "good" results for some people doesn't mean it's not illegal. Morality and legality are separate concerns. Not that I don't think the ruling might be overturned, but if that's the reason - 'it did some good for some people, ergo, it's not illegal' - we've got a sad court on our hands.
creation science book
Yeah that's great, except that since MS has such a huge desktop market share, that none of these other OS examples matter. The fact is that MS uses it's desktop product to kill competition in another arena.
As for downloading, did you ever try downloading Mozilla on a 28.8 modem? I didn't think so...
And for the goddamn moderator who modded me flamebait go fuck yourself, the original "flame jon katz" comment was flamebait, not my response. I'm getting really sick of the dumb ass hivemind developing here at slashdot. Maybe it is time for me to switch to kuro5hin, where people really can have intelligent conversations.
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy and they will over look each little step on the long journey to where ever they are being led.
I'm sorry, but you'll have to explain to me how bundling IE to Windows is not illegal tying.
Because the HTML viewer component is a core part of Windows, used for various different things (such as Explorer for instance), not just IE. Active Desktop uses it for instance. And since IE is just a wrapper around that and the networking code, then how is that wrong? Most of IE is part of the core Windows code. You can get rid of the wrapper, but the rest of the components are used for different things around Windows and need to be there...
For a start they were the ones trying to introduce a non-compliant DOM and lock everyone into their browser well before IE was even vaugely worth using. And secondly, they lost out mainly because IE made huge performace and usability improvement with every version, whereas Netscape stagnated and died.
Sorry, but IE is still the best browser out there. If you read /. regularly, you'll even notice there are quite a few posts saying that people wish they could get it for Linux...
What mindless, pathetic drivel. This is a new low, even for Jon Katz.
Microsoft are guilty of several dubious business practices (the OEM lockin for instance) but their core business has succeeded by a shrewd knowledge of what their customers want, a cunning marketing campaign and quality products. Yes, that's right, quality products.
The reason the Court of Appeals will reverse Judge Jackson's rulings is simple - they did not act illegally in tying IE to their operating system. Quite simply, having IE as part of the OS makes it a better product for users! What a concept!
Quite simply, we live in a capitalist system and corporations making money is good for everyone at the end of the day, as it benefits us in services from tax revenues and general growth of the economy. Without companies like Microsoft, AOL, Time-Warner and Cisco, do you really think we would be able to maintain the world dominating position we are presently in?
No.
And if Microsoft come to dominate a set of new markets (a hell of a lot less likely than it made out here), then it'll be because they've again produced what the customer wants.
Microsoft is not "above the law". How foolish. They're nothing more than one of our great success stories, a hugely visible embodiment of the American Dream.
Sorry, but there is a big difference in providing services and enslaving people on entitlements. It also is ludicrous to expect people for fork over nearly 1/2 of what they earn to the government.
Did you not understand my comment? Here, I'll repeat the gist of it... I am happy paying these taxes. And once again, if you feel contributing to the welfare of the society that gives so much to you, then go and live elsewhere.
Oh, and if you equate paying tax with enslavement then I suggest you read some history. Specifically, the history of slavery in the US. I think those people would have been happy if their slavery consisted of... paying taxes!
There is no such thing as home ownership or even any ownership.
So you're a hardcore anarchist then? I had you figured for a libertarian what with your delusional rants about slavery and taxation, but if you don't believe in property rights, what rights do you believe in?
I do know what communism is, I also know how it was twisted by a "Government" to fit its need.
So if you know what it is, why did you bring it up with regards to my post other than as a strawman?
Governments no longer serve people, they serve politicians and intrest groups first.
As opposed to corporations, who serve only their bottom line and are less accountable than any government.
As for France, gee, I have yet to read that startling claim. Guess the economies of a few other countries got in the way.
A quick google search brings up this, but I'm sure you'll ignore things like facts.
France is no threat to anyone but themselves, the people are great, their government stinks. Then again that works for here to.
Uh huh. Just out of interest, do you have a small enclave well-stocked with canned goods and ammo, or maybe a manifesto of some kind? Just curious...
Why is that you twits never bitch about the fact that government tax the piss out of you yet bitch and moan about some evil corporation.
Why would I bitch about taxes, when I fully agree that they are needed in order to provide essential services that allows those who don't have the same resources as I do? Unlike the so-called libertarians here on /. I fully accept that by living in a society, I have a moral obligation to other members of that society. I don't selfishly expect to reap the benefits whilst giving nothing in return.
Don't buy their product and the corp ain't really going to care. Don't buy into the government line, or send them your tax money and your in jail.
Don't buy into the government line? Move to another country. By living here you accept the social contract.
HELLO. Slight screw up in priorities mr. commie
Oh how sad. Name calling. And an ad hominem attack as well. Boo-fucking-hoo, I'm devastated.
And next time, learn what communism actually means before using it as an insult, okay?
BTW - free market is millions and millions times better than the crap that tanked the former Soviet. (let alone the crap tanking Europeans now - socialist governments are expensive and stifling)
Which is of course why France has the world's fastest growing economy. And where did the USSR enter into the conversation, other than as a strawman for you to attack?
As if we needed any more examples of the rampant excesses that the supposed "free" market has bought us in the last century (and before, as the comment about the East India Company points out).
Time and time again, we see that corporations become large enough to strangle anything even resembling free trade, and that without a strong government to regulate them, a corporate dictatorship ensues, in which a coporations control over vital commodities gives them immense power over the lives of the proletariat.
I was pleased when I saw that the DOJ had finally moved to block the excesses of Microsoft's reign of terror over the computing industry, but in this new regime Gates and co have friends in the highest of places, all to willing to let "market forces" and the "invisible hand" determine the future.
Let me tell you, the invisible hand will bloody its knuckles against the hard rock of Microsoft's monopoly, to no effect.
Only by ensuring the market is tamed by regulations and a strong government can these kinds of abuses be tamed. A free market is not an unregulated libertarian paradise, for the only freedom that gives is the freedom to abuse. In an unregulated market, it is simply a race to gain the greatest market share, followed by a systematic procession to monopoly and corporate domination.
US corporations are famous for their abuses of power, especially against countries that cannot afford the resources necessary to combat them. And with corporate frontmen like Bush in charge, you can expect to see more government operations designed to allow US corporations to "increase profitability" through the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable.
The DOJ lawyers start congratulating one another as they leave the crypt. Suddenly, the cold pale hand of the "undying one" grips one on the shoulder. Never confuse Jobe's Tree Spikes with the wooden dracula killing kind.
In other news: Napal Ragecide Blamed on "Cl4n W4rz"
While I agree with your view that Katz points the finger at the wrong suspect, your premise that government and the corporate system are separate is simply silly.
Corporations ARE government, and have been at least since Ike warned of the Military-Industrial Complex (really long before that). If you honestly believe your precious tax dollars aren't being used to float the boat of corps such as Raytheon, Lockheed, etc., then you're living in a Randian capitalist fantasy.
Anti-capitalism = anti-government, just ask any anarchist.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Jon, you have an amazing grasp of the obvious, but your lament falls short of placing the blame where it really exists: the System Itself.
The giants you mention--Microsoft, Disney, AOL--and the literally thousands you neglected are only doing what they were desigined to do: create profit for a few without concern for the Whole. Corporations are the greatest creation for social and economic control ever created, and their success at manipulating governments (which isn't difficult, as they are little tyrannies in their own right) has only increased over the last 100 years as their powers have expanded. They are doing what they were designed to do.
The real question is: what do you do to reverse the trend? If corporations are the problem--which they are; one doesn't need the remedial Business Ethics class to see that (which is something most MBAs blissfully ignore, anyway)--then they should be removed. But are you going to do that? Aren't you wringing your hands in public for PAY from one of these evil monstrosities?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Discontinuing official support isn't going to do it, either. With a large enough market to support others will step in, and do. The only option left is for Microsoft to offer something essential, which business can't live without, alas, 10-15% of all features is about all anyone uses and they're happy with that. It's all been done. Now the beast of Redmond will begin to collapse under its own weight. The new strategy, of Microsoft licensing the software per annum will generate some revenue, but if that were to cost us $100,000 a year we'll be saying, thanks, but we'll just stick with Office 97. Without enough revenue to support the staff, Microsoft will finally restructure, perhaps yielding the opportunity competitors and OS should be in place for.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
> Hey, I don't have a problem with using MS Office.
> They were the first to do it and they do it well.
I can only assume that you mean that MS was the first to do MS Office, because if you meant that they were the first to do an integrated office suite, you'd be wrong. Of course, they squashed Lotus out of existence (and AmiPro sucked anyway), but I don't really count that.
Virg
> And since IE is just a wrapper around that and the networking
> code, then how is that wrong?
It's not wrong to tie IE's components into the OS for use elsewhere, but that's not where the problem lies. The problem lies with the fact that in integrating the components of IE into the OS, they also made it prohibitively difficult to use them elsewhere. In this example, you state that IE is just a wrapper for the HTML viewer and networking code, which it now is (in simplitic terms). However, that means that a different wrapper for HTML viewer and network access (Netscape) can't be used in its place for most functions, because those components are not easily commandable from an external program. The only reason MS could do this is because they control the OS, which gives them the unfair ability to wall out competitors, and that's what's wrong.
Let me take the example of a simple application: the calculator. Microsoft includes a calculator application with Windows for free. On the surface, this seems to be the same as the Internet Explorer, but answer these questions.
1.) Does the calculator program destroy all other calculator applications when it installs?
2.) Does the calculator program use internal programming in the OS that other calculator programs can't access?
3.) Does uninstalling the calculator program cause Windows not to boot properly?
I think it becomes easy to see the difference when you look at it that way. The simple answer is that it would have been easy to embed the HTML rendering engine in IE and in Windows, or, more correctly, to make the HTML rendering engine a distinct component that can be (1) worked around by another program's engine, or (2) modular so other programs could hook into it and use it. Microsoft chose instead to make it as difficult as possible for anyone else to replace IE by knitting it into the OS. That's where they crossed the line, and if you think they did it just because of bad planning, you need to read up on what happened when they integrated Kerberos security. Or Java.
Virg
> Is your time free?
Time for what? Installing Linux? Configuring Linux? Let me ask you, did you install Windows on your current machine (and did it take some measure of time), or did you buy that machine with Windows already installed (which you can also do with Linux)?
> Is your bandwidth free?
Did you download MS Office XP off the web, or do you not realize that you can order StarOffice on CD from several companies for very few dollars? Also, if you're referring to Linux fixes, does Microsoft send you patches by mail, or do you get them from the update site? Did that bandwidth cost not count?
> And are you fine waiting for fixes for features that don't exactly work?
Are we talking about Linux patches here, or MS Service Packs?
Virg
> The best, most powerful, candidate survives. If office or windows
> did not serve the needs of the business community - it would fail.
> If it suits the needs of the business community, it thrives and pushes
> its competitors out of the market. Have you thought, just for a microsecond,
> that instead of always bullying people out of business, microsoft actually
> makes, what the majority of corporate users consider, a superior product?
> Wether or not you consider it a superior product is irrelevant. The business
> end-user community has practically standardized. There is nothing better
> out there for the generic, end-user market right now.
Very well said, but I disagree with your point, and didn't even need a microsecond to think about it. First, you consider "best" and "most powerful" to be synonymous, and in this case, they weren't. In virtually every case (excepting Windows 3.1, which beat out its competitors right off), Microsoft put out a weaker product and then leveraged its advantages over competitors to force them out (recall the now-infamous "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" t-shirts). It's true that the Microsoft products overtook their competitors, but hills of documentation were presented in the trial that this could not have happened if MS hadn't actively submarined its competitors' products by manipulating the OS underneath it, and the market. The reason WordPerfect stopped getting better is because MS made it so that WordPerfect Corp. and then Corel had to spend so much energy dealing with the undocumented additions to the OS that it became unprofitable to continue innovating the product. In brief, you're right that there's nothing better out there for the end-user any more, but you're wrong to assume that would be the case if MS hadn't been able to control the OS, and that's why we're bashing Microsoft about their new initiatives today.
> Just in case your wondering, I admit MS has some pretty nasty tricks
> up its sleeve when it comes to business practices. But nobody ever
> said the world was a nice place to live.
We're way beyond "nice" by this point, which is again why we're so anti-MS. When the company presented a forged videotape of performance issues within Windows, someone should have gone to jail for perjury, and someone working for a company with less money and influence would have done so. More recently, Steve Ballmer himself, whom I've heard is a rather intelligent man, can't seem to understand that Linux and the GPL aren't the same thing, since he uses them interchangeably in discussions, but I suspect it's more likely he knows full well and says the things he does to add to the open source confusion. Like I said, we're way past "nice" by now.
Virg
The bigger the fall.
This statement might seems obvious and redundant, but take a look on what happened to large empires of the past.
Egypt, Romans, Great Britain, Nazist Germany, France...
They all built (or tried too do) large and powerfull empires, some of them endured for thousands of years, some of them for only a few. And I ask: Why did they fall ?
IMHO there's a few key reasons:
- Size: When and empire becomes too large (like the british empire, the largest one ever) it becomes hard to manage and to defend (in a military sense) which exposes it to internal and external atacks.
- Brutality: No one like a ruthless empire. Sooner or later other nations join forces to fight this empire. Even if individually they can't fight the opressor togheter they can. This is what happened with Nazi Germany and Napoleon.
- False sense of security: When you build a large and powerfull empire you might start to think that no one ever will dare to atack you, this can make you relax your defenses, exposing you to atacks. It's what happened with the roman empire.
As katz said "on the Net, a year might as well be a century. ". So give the Net a year, and we may see this "Microsoft Empire" crumbling appart.
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What ? Me, worry ?
You know why Microsoft has a monopoly? For one thing, they dont' have a superior product. And in my opinion Microsoft software is just as easy to use as Mandrake 8 (which rox). And with guys like Loki software there really isn't a reason anymore to keep that windows dual boot. So how is microsoft controlling the net?
Marketing. Microsoft advertises their product. They have a big name that almost everyone in the world recognizes. Nobody but us nerds and geeks realize that we can get everything free. And the main thing that keeps open source down, is that in order to use it you need to understand source code. However taking microsoft out would be fairly simple. What do we need?
Television commercials. We know the world is full of stupid people. They are stupid because they do what the television tells them to. They do things because they are trendy and they want to fit in with the crowd. If everyone was intelligent and did things they actually liked instead of just trendy things, then no corporation would be able to make profit. If everyone listened to music they LIKED instead of music MTV told them to like, then the record industry would have to sell so many different bands and so many different CDs. And a fairly equal number of each would be bought. But the cost of producing all those different CDs would ruin them. So they make people like shitty Boy Bands by using TV, then They make a billion NSUCK Cds and make a zillion dollars.
In order to have Linux take over the world just make television commercials. YOu will have to have lots of commercials. Especially Super Bowl commercials. It will cost lots of money we don't have. But if we make them they will come. The commercials have to show flashy screenshots of different desktop environments showing that Linux is as easy to use as Windows. We will have to drive home the point of free software. We will have to show people they can do just as much with linux as with windows. We have to throw dirt at microsoft about invading privacy of users. We will have to tell people that there are a lot of people using Linux out there, and they aren't paying money for software, why are you? Then the idiots will switch to linux, because of money. The one thing everyone understands.
Windows - 100$
Linux - 0$
Microsoft Office - 500$
Star Office - 0$
Adobe Photoshop - G-d knows how many$
The Gimp - 0$
Borland C++ Builder - I don't want to know$
Visual Studio - 1000$ I think
gcc, JDK, KBasic - all 0$
Not having Microsoft invade my privacy - priceless.
Yeah the mastercard thing is old. But it really helps you drive home stuff.
I think the best way to start is if Sun put commercials saying this.
Microsoft Office XP just came out, and upgrading to it will cost you 100s of dollars. Instead go to sun.com and get Star Office for free. It is every bit as good, and did we mention that everyone in the world can download it for free, with no tricks whatsoever? Bill Gates doesn't need your money.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Wanna see MS go down? Do a better job than they do. Write compelling software that changes how people live their lives. Provide an app. that folks can't live without. No matter how much money MS has, no matter how powerfull they (seemingly) become, their weakness, any company's weakness, is Intelectual Property.
'If life was fair, birds wouldn't eat worms.' Folks need to stop whining about MS and start
changing the world. Open Source IS the weapon,
use it!
Above comment is personal opinion. Poster is not a spokesperson.
The issue here is that Jon seems to imply that the corporate world is more evil, and that Microsoft will actually win out.
/. majority audience. Nothing like ranting against eveeel Microsoft to score some karma.
I read about all the wonderful tax breaks corporations get (I think corporate income tax should be abolished - did you know GMs tax return was 56ft tall if stacked? - people would then get an idea of just how high their tax burden really is)
Corporations modify governments, they don't control them. Because as anyone knows, the politicians in office hold the purse strings and have their fingers on the trigger.
But Jon is far far off base here, he is simply playing to
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why is that you twits never bitch about the fact that government tax the piss out of you yet bitch and moan about some evil corporation.
Don't buy their product and the corp ain't really going to care. Don't buy into the government line, or send them your tax money and your in jail
HELLO. Slight screw up in priorities mr. commie
BTW - free market is millions and millions times better than the crap that tanked the former Soviet. (let alone the crap tanking Europeans now - socialist governments are expensive and stifling)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Tell me Jon, which one of these takes my money by gunpoint?
Lets see, Bill Gates is a man, most if not all of MS employees are human beings. Versus the USA I don't think they have a chance in hell, do you?
If you want something legitimate to moan about, then moan about oppressive governments that take a third or more of peoples income and gives them little or no choice in how its used.
Its anti-capitialist like you that forever put us under the heels of oppressive governments by painting corporations as evil so as to distract the common populace.
Let me guess, your in league with the idiot newscasters who go around spouting 53% profit increases at oil companies without explaining that that really means they went from 4.8 cents on the dollar to 6.9 cents (which is still lower than most other companies in other fields).
Spread fear, doom and gloom, the corporate state will kill and enslave you all, only the nice gentle, caring, and lovable government can save you, your children, and your neutered dog Fluffy
GACK
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Exactly. I mean, what have the Romans ever done for us?
One has to wonder which would be more insulting - the notion that Indian culture was worthless and backwards and needed to be subjucated by some western company, or the inability to distinguish between Africa and India.
I deserved that. It seems I need to remove the plank from my own eye.
Nope, no sig
However, it was a good company in its effects. It brought taxation and simple democracy to India. It breathed the first light of the west's wisdom on those dark and primitive lands.
I thought you were being sarcastic as I started reading this, but after finishing your whole post I think you mean it. The cultural imperialism you have just displayed is astonishing. Those lands weren't primitive. Many African cultures had longer, richer histories than all of western society -- I intentionally didn't use the word "civilization" there. The African cultures were described as primitive simply because they were different from that of the invading armies.
I won't bother to expand on your assumption that introducing taxation was a self-evident improvement, other than to point out that the people suddenly forced to pay the taxes to their new colonial "masters" would probably not have agreed with the assumption.
Nope, no sig
> If Microsoft was in clear violation of anti-trust law (and to me it seems that this was the case), then they are probably going to get spanked no matter what the political philosophy of the Justice Department is, because it is a matter of law, not a matter of politics.
You'll find that politics wins over law 99% of the time.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Unix is here for 30+ years, actually.
And I don't think you've a point here.
I think you'll find that very little of the original Unix can be found in even commercial Unixes. The only thing that can be said that is truly Unix is the design philosopy.
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You seem to forget that while the company's headquarters was in England, their powersource was far from there.
If it was on the same place, it might have been a different story.
As it was, the company *had* to disband. The goverment had more power than the company did *on England*, and that is where the stock owner and all those people who made important decisions sat.
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Where did you find this information?
Can I have a link?
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Sometime, OSS developer might get tired of playing catch-up, you know.
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No, that would be stuff that shivers.
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> NT = Well i guess the fact that they dropped it means a lot. No ownership system, bad memory management. Hell, a single NT server with 256 ram needs to be restarted each month or so, expect if you have their super last 'service patch pack'.
Dropped it?
Win2K & XP mean nothing to you, I guess.
NT is going forward full force.
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Well, OpenGL is *much* simpler than DirectX to learn with.
I understand that it's usually *easier* to learn OpenGL, and only then move to DirectX, because by then you've grasped the concepts of 3D.
My major point against OpenGL is that it's slow on my machine.
I've a 1.2Ghz & Voodoo 5, and the moment I'm trying to do something nice in OpenGL, it's start to crawl.
(Before the flames begin, I believe it's the OS that is to be blamed here, I'm running XP beta, and it's entirely possible that this is the reason. I know that they've taken out DirectX support from another build. So it's not impossible that they did something to OpenGl as well.)
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Actually, I was being sarcastic, not trolling.
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Sure, I would like nothing than open my bank account to MS and have them dig into it with a big shovel.
Hi, wait a minute...
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Hit submit instead of preview, sorry.
That was supposed to be:
Sure, I would like nothing more than open my account to MS and have them dig into it with a very big shovel.
Hi, wait a minute... they... already... do.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
More like 'Rollerball'. Norman Jewison was asked why 'Rollerball' didn't do well at the boxoffice when it was released in the early seventies. His reply was that he thought most people didn't believe that corporations could rule the world. I wonder how it will play now, with the re-make coming out in a couple of months. I just hope McTeiran doesn't butcher Jewison's original vision.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Ok ... now that I have your attention.
... not malevolent, just without morals (as most big companies are). I believe that they engage in immoral (and illegal by my understanding of the law, which is not as great as my understanding of code) behavior. I believe that they write code that is stunted, and do not build a better product, but use marketing to cut out their niche.
Disclaimer: I dislike using microsofts software. I am a strong linux advocate. I think that microsoft is amoral
That said. Mr. Katz, please stay off of my side of an argument. Did you go into theaters and scream fire as a small child? Do you get a kick out of encouraging the fanatics in a group? Do you hang out with pagans and declare that the christians are eating their babies? What is the motivation for this drivel?
You were doing so well for a while, containing your melodramatic urges. You sounded (almost) sane. Did you forget your medication?
-CrackElf.
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
In a mass extention, the top order preditors go first because they are the most specilized. MS is the saber tooth tiger of the buisness world.
MS scares the hell out of me for a lot of reasons, but they can release products until they are blue in the face and it won't change that much. They are big and have a very strong presence, but we (the IT and software engineers) have to choose their products. Despide their monopoly in many areas writing it from scratch is still an option and there are other options for just about everything MS sells. They can't succeed in a consumer market if most of the consumers (not general, but IT, etc) choose not to buy from them because we are smart enough to know how dangerous their monopoly is.
I like to hear about advances in technology and cool hacks, and not so much to hear paranoid ramblings about how the government and big business are in some grand conspiracy. Regrettably, such as is the case with this article, it seems to me that Slashdot is lately engaging too much in the latter rather than the former.
How about Slashdot split itself into two sites:
Just an idea.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Anyhow, the only real competition that Microsoft will ever have is Open Source. And Microsoft will be Open Sources competition... anything wrong about that??? I mean... do we have to worry so much about microsofts success??? Doesnt Microsofts benefit somehow the open source community?? Its not like their pointing a gun at us... or are they??
I agree, they are being blamed for being much more successful, intelligent, and opportunistic than their competitors. They don't use any practices not used by every other corporation in this country. People were saying 'shortly Microsoft will control' even before Linux showed up and offered an alternative. Open Source? Please, get real. It is hard enough producing good software when people are paid for it. Open Source is free? Yeah, just like Linux is free - unless you need help and that costs beaucoup $...
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I don't think anyone is disputing that the U.S. government is weaker than MS. The point is the damage that a Monopoly does to the consumer. You say that MS holds its position by the virtue of its product, but if you are willing to admit that Microsoft is a monopoly (which I don't see how you can't) then MS holds its position because the virtue of its product is that it is the ONLY product. Monopolies are never good, and I don't care what people say about the new economy being different and that the days of the anti-trust battles against the RailRoads, AT&T and IBM are a thing of the past. If you want a present day example, look at INTEL and its battle with AMD and VIA. One more blunder by AMD, and INTEL would have the same type of monopoly in the CPU departement as currently owned by MS in the OS department. Where would be then? Probably still stuck around 600 MHz, that's where. Have you seen the prices of CPUS these days? And if INTEL was as effective at bullying chip makers (like VIA) as MS was at bullying computer makers, we'd either be stuck with the 440bx chipset still (It was a damn good chip set though...) or paying outrageous prices of RDRAM. I gurantee, the hardware for being a web designer and graphic artist would be a lot more expensive in these conditions. MS has innovated, no one can take that away from them. They've done it really well. But they have also crushed, bullyed and stifled innovation whenever somebody else did it first and they couldn't buy or steal it. You don't fault MS for that, they are a corporation who exists to keep its profits high and its shareholders happy. But the government is here to protect the consumer and the economy. One choice is no choice at all for a consumer. Not only that, but do you realize where the economy would be with Monopolies such as these. I'd guess most of us would be out of a job. Two companies with a similar product, sharing 50 percent market share hire a LOT more people than a single company with 100 percent market share. Compeition creates jobs and MS is evil.
Savage