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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.
Anybody want to post contact info for those of us who whould like to help H4H migrate? (You know, it could count for my community service hours...)
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
http://www.habitat.org/getinv/
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
You forgot:
vi vi vi
The Editor of the Beast
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes
When the action against Microsoft first started, my thought was that it was typical -- the government was taking action after the time when it was most needed.
It was my opinion then, and is still my opinion, that the market would take care of Microsoft, just like it had with IBM (the previous 800-lb gorilla of the computing world). The government could try to stop Microsoft, but the market would ultimately do a better job.
Now we see statements like:
Q.E.D.
In time (no, I have no idea how long), Microsoft will be just a player in a new computing world. I don't know what the new world will be, or who its biggest player will be. If I did, I'd be buying stock like crazy.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Habitat For Humanity is a fairly high profile organisation. If we help them to convert, they can help the devlopers to make Linux useable by the general populace. We also help a charity - big karma points in the public eye, big negative karma for Microsoft since they're stomping on a respected and established charity in the name of big $.
How about "Linux4Charity.org" - and pry any charity addicted to the MS Office crack out of Redmond's heavy hands? I bet RedHat, Mandrake, IBM and a few other of the better corporate citizens would love to help, too.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
why 666k? shouldn't 640k be enough for anybody?
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Please... for the love of God. Document your OS programs as if you were speaking to retards. Make little pretty diagrams. Make installation instructions for the layman. If GUI, then have tooltips. Make a tutorial. Even a flash demo with instructions....
Just document. Any documentation is better than none, but unfortunatly, in OSS none is often what is to be found.
-Kraft
Live and let live
I have to say, I have never seen anything like this, ever.
.NET makes it even more evident.
I honestly think that over the next 20 years, we will see Microsoft's control rise to such a level that not even the US government can oppose them on any level. I mean, they are able to manipulate entire markets. With the flick of a switch, they alone can bring things to a complete halt. With the deprecation or removal of an API, they can put people out of business, or send companies into bankruptcy.
The introduction of
Microsoft... this company... in 20 years will control everything important. They already control 95% of the desktops. They will control almost all messaging. They will control almost all authentication. They will control almost all digital rights management.
Taking down Microsoft after they have such a level of control and we have such a level of dependence would be like us dropping our cars and going back to horses and wagons -- not going to happen.
Honestly, its time for people to wake up before its too late. Do not support this behemoth anymore. Its not about a simple anti-trust case.
This is about one company controlling the most fundamental mechanisms upon which the entire world depends.
And THAT is extremely dangerous.
While open source is laudable, the problem is that it confuses "free beer" with "freedom", i.e., "gratis" with "free". This is unfortunate. IMHO, we need to think hard about a system that provides "freedom", but does not restrict a programmer from earning a fair wage.
One possible solution, which I've encountered resistance talking to Congress people on the hill is to add an "optional" expiration date on a copyright, and allow the source code to be submitted via electronic media.. Thus, when you submit your copyright you can optionally choose to limit your copyright to N years. Further, the copyright office could "hold" the source code and make it public on the date that the copyright expires.
Americans *love* stats. What would happen if "copyright term" ended up as one of those columns? And "open source at end of copyright term" was another column? In this way we could compete not only on features and price, but also *when* our software becomes public domain. This is a simple solution, backward compatible, and can be implemented by the copyright office without legislation. It just requires the media to notice that copyright doesn't have to last forever and that making one's code open source can be part of the license agreement.
Maybe we can turn the tables on the "capitalists" by creating a new form of competition... competition for the change in software, competition for when software becomes public property.
Best Wishes! Clark
P.S. For an alternative idea, which is much larger in scale (but may not work as well), you may want to read Distributed Copyright and my letter to Judge Jackson on May 23, 2000. It may not be perfect, but it has some ideas that you and others may want to build upon.
it's nice to think the market will do to MS what it did to IBM, but you must remember that with IBM viable alternatives which functioned *identically* to IBM's product were available.
with MS there is no 'windows clone' to switch to, the only way that the market could take care of MS is by switching to another product, and right now there is nothing. linux is not what most people need. i doubt it ever will be.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
The truth is, the new upgrading scheme might become a boon for other "movements", including Open Source. IT directors will see the new scheme and make one of two choices:
1.) Follow it, and receive the "discounts" incurred with every 2-year upgrade.
2.) Not purchase anything.
This is different than previous licenses, where "not purchase anything" meant skipping an upgrade cycle. If Microsoft penalizes IT directors for skipping a cycle by charging more for the next cycle, IT directors will simply skip that one too. They aren't stupid. They will wait until they have enough money to purchase the latest and greatest upgrade, and move everyone at that point (at a much longer base than every 2-3 years).
"Locked in" means absolutely nothing. In fact, if this plays out logicially, the opposite will come true.
And wasn't opening the "real" Pandora's box a bad idea? It appears that Microsoft was accidentally more truthful than they intended.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
(Adding to the discussion of how to make Linux better)
RPM is great (unless you're trying to compile version 4), but Linux really really really needs (in addition to Office compatibility, a great browser and a great desktop) a standard setup program that will work on most, if not all, versions.
I'm aware of Debian and apt-get, etc. (and those are great) But there should also be a "double-click setup.exe" process of installing programs on Linux, and a similarly easy way of uninstalling them, with NO ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT MISSING VERSIONS OF SOME OBSCURE 9k LIBRARY FILE OR HAVING VERSION 1.07 OF A PROGRAM WHEN THE NEW PROGRAM WANTS VERSION 1.08!!
ALL required libraries should be included with every setup archive. Period. Sending people (even developers) out on the Internet in search of some library is the fastest way to make using Linux very irritating.
Then, perhaps we could have Installshield for Linux, which would be awesome, especially if it worked with apt and apt-get. ^^
Just another $0.02
That said, Microsoft seems to be simply protecting its file format. They can only affect software that can read protected WMA files (which, at this point, only includes Media Player). It would be silly to assume, especially in a lawsuit-driven atmosphere like copyright infringement, that Microsoft would allow other software to visibly change/take over rights management from the OS. Just think if record companies started getting into a lawsuit war with Microsoft!
Bottom line: it's their file format, not an open one, people. They are free to control it however they wish. If you don't like it, don't use it.
Where do you want to go today?
Better make up your mind quick, your license expires in 10 days.
Hammer of Truth
It's just not that simple for most companies.
Back in the mid '90's when larger companies (+500 users) were migrating from either terminals or Netware or both, the options were Win 3 or Apple.
At that point in time MS was not the company it is today. MS was just another vendor. Who new things would end up like this? And now years later it is massively entrenched. (And no Mac OS6 & 7 were not viable on an enterprise desktop).
Today we have more options. Both OSX and Linux are viable alternatives on the desktop. However the key really is an office package that can gracefully handle *eight years* worth of documents, spreadsheets, databases and such. Star/Open Office just isn't quite there yet. What are you going to port the 18472 Access databases floating in you organization to? Apache, PHP and MySQL? C/C++ and MySQL or Oracle? Either way the development costs would be huge.
Spend some time in a 3000+ user environment. Migrating from MS products to another platform is a *massive* undertaking (no to mention the user training issues and costs involved).
From an exec's point of view: I can take it in shorts and play the MS game, it will cost me 10-20% more than it did last year but it things will be pretty much business as usual. Or I can migrate my entire userbase to another less costly and restrictive alternative that at a minimum cost to my IS organization of around 100 hours per user to migrate (including training and document/data conversion).
Now tell me - what are you going to do? Like I said, it's just not that simple.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF