Microsoft Du Jour - Talks, Upgrades, Salaries

Jeff writes: "CNN is reporting 'In a dramatic move, the new judge in the Microsoft case Friday ordered the government and the software maker into five weeks of intensive settlement talks, until Nov. 2.'" Other MS submissions coming in today: USAToday discovers the new upgrade scheme, designed to milk every last cent out of those who've locked themselves into Windows; tech-report.com goes a bit more in depth on the same subject; ZDNet hoists the black flag; MS discusses its plans to control how you compute (by the way, the license agreement for Windows Media Player now allows Microsoft to disable any software on your computer - you do read those license agreements, don't you?); Gates got $666,000 last year but won't have to apply for welfare just yet.

Comments

Re:Done with Windows...

[BradleyUffner]

I am almost finished with my plan to escape evil Bill's clutches forever. I recently bought an Apple ibook (No Microsoft tax!), and will be installing Mandrake 8.0

You know that the OS didn't come free on that computer... So instead of paying the microsoft tax you are paying the Apple Tax. Same thing, only a slightly less evil company.

Re:The Salary of the Beast

[FFFish]

Ooooh, I just *knew* that someone would be offended at "66, the favoured sexual position of the beast." Got meself a "-1, Troll." [rolls eyes]

Because, obviously, it must refer to... er, um. Anal sex? Doggy style? A position that no god-fearing person could abide with?

Or could it just be meaningless: read into the numbers whatever you want, because it's just silly.

YAHOO! HIGHER WINDOWS UPGRADE COSTS!

[dasmegabyte]

You know, Microsoft's current policys, coming as they do in a time of belt tightening, are the best thing that has ever happened to me -- as an advocate of Macs and UNIX!

You see, there isn't just one useful GUI OS for PCs...there are a couple dozen, of which two of my favorites are Solaris and Mac OS X. Each of these is more reliable and in some ways faster than windows XP, each is more customizable graphically and each has a full suite of applications that run under them. And there's very low upgrade costs -- OS X's new upgrade costs $20 for a CD which can be used on every installation you can find! Combine this with both systems having painless hardware upgrades that don't require reinstalling the OS, and I find that Microsoft's marketeers are doing my pro-Graphical UNIX preaching for me!

Windows XP: How are you going to pay today?