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Microsoft Would Settle For The Children
The news from MSNBC
is that Microsoft wants to, er, settle for the children. Take that
whichever way you want. They propose to settle civil anti-trust cases (not the DoJ suit) with a $1.1 billion (retail value) spanking (they
have $36 billion in the bank), consisting of free computer goodies to our nation's poorest schools (the first hit's free, kids). I'm sure Microsoft will upgrade those old computers to keep them current, in perpetuity, for free, out of the kindness of their hearts, but in an apparent oversight that was left out of the news report. Of that $1.1 billion, $0.9 billion will be software presumably valued at whatever Microsoft wants to charge (see "monopoly"). For hardware and (laughable) training/support costs, Microsoft will be docked three weeks' worth of interest on their cashpile; they will seek matching funds for the remainder, I am not making this up. Some lawyers opposed this but "concluded that Microsoft's monopoly already is so pervasive that students would have to learn to use these products anyway in the workplace." Update: 11/20 21:22 GMT by M : Heh. Red Hat offers an alternative to Microsoft's settlement proposal - you provide hardware, we'll provide software.
If MS if "overcharging" then EVERY SINGLE OTHER COMPANY ON THE PLANET is over charging! Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun, EVERYONE.
Gee, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware that Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun and everyone else had monopolies that allowed them to charge whatever they wanted to for their products. I didn't realize that they had all been found by a court to have illegally abused their monopolies. I'm glad there are people like you to straighten me out.
Nope, no sig
Why is this funny? It's true. Microsoft makes a product. Nobody forces you to buy it. Where's the beef?
Are they kidding? This doesn't solve anything; it makes it worse! By providing software _for free_ to such a large number of people, the software now becomes the defacto standard for yet another group of people. These students will grow up in Microsoft(TM) America and like so many people before them be hooked into software that they'll be reluctant to leave in the future.
And, you are going to tell use that teaching them Linux and KDE will make them BETTER suited for the job market? Hightly doubtful. Following that train of thought, lets teach them teach them to type on a DVORAK keyboard. Just becuase most employers don't use it should be a hurdle in good education.
And using poorer schools... that's good. These schools would have previously been a good "target market" for OSS... can't beat the price.
Your right, the rich schools are more deserving. Why bother with poor schools, they are just going to be janitors if they graduate anyways. Go for the rich kids, they need to know how to juggle more then one PC (running Linux with DVORAK keyboards) anyways when the are rich excutives.
--knick
Thus, Windows is doing everything that the majority of users need, and thus is doing a good job.
You are absofraginlutely right. I would say the vast majority of users couldn't give a coherent description of what an operating system is, or what it does. And why should they care? As long as they can get their work done, that's good enough. To them Windows is the computer, as much as the hard drive or the keyboard.
And I think that's a pretty decent description for Windows: "Good enough". Who knew all you needed was "good enough" to score that major buttload of cash?
Well, Bill Gates, evidently...
Short version:
Most of the people posting against the settlement know not what they say.
Long version:
Most of you seem to have this knee jerk reaction to anything with M-I-C-R-O-S-O-F-T printed anywhere within. I think MS has a monopoly. Wow, what a revelation. Whooda thunk MS would ever be accused of such a thing?
Here's some info that I'd like some of you to consider before you flame me mercilessly and kill my karma:
1) MS didn't sprinkle pixie dust on PC users and magically become a monopoly. You and I MADE them a monopoly. And don't give me bunk about "the OS that people saw growing up was Windows, so that was the only OS in the universe". Whatever. When I was in school, we had teletype terminals and IBM DOS machines. There was no MS monopoly back then. I'm in my mid 30's so it's not like I'm talking about the dark ages of computing.
2) If you put Windows machines in schools, Apple will piss and moan about it. If you put Apple machines in schools, MS and everyone else will piss and moan about it. If you put Linux in schools, BSD folks will piss and moan about it. Face it, there is no OS on the planet that can go into schools that will get a 100% endorsement even within the free/open-source software world. Period.
3) Let's see what's more benefitial: average PC users receive a check for the $20 determined to be the "damage" we sustained as a result of MS's monopolistic actions, or kids in poor neighborhoods/schools get access to training, hardware, and computer related education that they would not be given access to otherwise. Hmmm... Let's see... (If you have to honestly think about it, you need to work on being more human and less greedy.)
4) I don't give half of a rat's ass if students learn to do word processing on Word instead of Abiword. I started off with DOS, then I moved to Windows, then I moved to Linux, and now I'm working with BSD and UNIX. I started off the same way these kids will start off, and despite all of that I'm not a Windows user. Gee, could it be possible that I had -- *GASP* -- freedom of choice? Reading comments posted here, you'd think that if MS puts Windows in classrooms that the people in those classes will nevereverEVER touch anything other than Windows. Get real, folks.
5) Windows is -- on the whole -- easier to use than Linux, *BSD, or UNIX. I say that as someone using these latter OSes daily and the former OS almost never. I don't let my preferences cloud the issue or induce prejudice against Windows, though. I don't care if you're more familiar with the latter OSes. Windows is easier to deal with for newbies than any of them. And until developers start putting the end-user experience in front of developer coolness (take a hint, free/open-source developers), this will continue to be a true statement.
5) Windows experience is more marketable right now than Linux/BSD/UNIX experience, and will continue to be that way for quite some time as far as I can tell. Unless companies completely ditch Windows and start over with a new OS (which will not happen, no matter how many op-ed pieces you read saying the opposite), it's going to be a long, long, LONG time before Linux/BSD/UNIX experience makes you more marketable on a global scale than Windows experience. And with the web services wave just about ready to rise, the OS people use will become less important than the browser it's running, so people will have less incentive to go through the IS/deployment/training nightmare associated with a company-wide OS switch.
Flame away...