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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.
... at wired: http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,48543,0 0.html
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Facts:
1. It is legal for MS to be a monopoly.
2. It is illegal for MS to abuse their monopoly power.
#1 is the result of consumer decisions; that's why it's legal. #2 is the result of MS decisions. So, to answer your question, it stops at the point when Microsoft stops illegally abusing their perfectly legal monopoly status.
Suppose for a moment that Disney has been convicted of lacing their movies with illegal, subliminal messages to trick viewers into purchasing Disney products. Suppose that to make ammends they offer to donate $1B worth of "educational" videos to schools but that these "educational" videos also contain the subliminal messages. Would you support the Disney "settlement" in this case? Sure kids may learn a little more with the new videos, but as a side effect the original problem of subliminal messages not only persists but is actually made much worse through the expansion of their audience into these schools. Now replace "Disney" with "Microsoft" and "subliminal messages" with "anti-competitive behaviour" and you have the situation with Microsoft.
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Ha! You think Microsoft pays taxes?
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This Microsoft page suggests there are at least 40,000 computers on the main Microsoft campus (search for the first "40,000" on the page). Since they want employees to use their latest and greatest version of Windows, Microsoft needs to replace computers frequently. Old boxes are just too slow. Replace each of 40K computers once a year for 5 years -- how many old boxes do you need to dispose of?
200,000
What a coincidence.
Email: slashdot3@FreeMars.org (Address will be abandoned when it gets spam.)
You seem to be implying that the best way to learn how to use computers is to offer open APIs w/ an open code base, reams of documentation at every level, and avid support world-wide. You also seem to think that compled UIs with all available options right there in front of new users is a good thing. Here's another enumerated list for you:
1) "Using" a computer is not the same as developing on a computer. Here lies the fallacy that is dragging down Linux and other open-source OSes: end users don't care about APIs, cool developer tools, and open source code. They care about *using* computers. When I said that developers needed to put end-users in front of developer coolness, this is the *exact* thing that I was talking about. If you're an open source developer, you need to stop thinking like a developer and start thinking like an end user. Computers are tools, and when they're made accessible to the masses they can unleash all kinds of wonderful stuff; make them cryptic w/ GUIs that encapsulate 100% of the functionality, refer folks to source code and APIs to learn how to make things happen, and send them to newsgroups and mail lists where they'll be flamed for not reading the comment the developer put in header file X before asking questions, and you'll lose a potentially valuable user base. Let's face it: free/open-source developers more often than not write apps for other free/open-source developers. Your comments illustrate this nicely.
2) There's more to computer-oriented careers than software development. More people use computers than develop for them. Again, you're illustrating how developer-centric this realm is. I'm saying you need to step out of this before making a real difference for these OSes.
3) "Dumbed-down" user interfaces are necessary for the average human. You and I may be able to configure DNS using a command line and vi, or even a slightly dumbed down UI like webmin, but the average IT guy won't. Yes, intelligently weeding out the complex stuff and leaving that to command line folks or another GUI under an "Advanced" button makes sense. I would welcome more dumbed down GUIs on Linux/BSD/whatever. It would make my life easier (less questions to repeatedly answer).
4) You completely missed my point about web services and browsers. If an IT group is faced with a decision to either swap out an OS so that some different software can be run or just keep an OS around (like Windows) that will work just fine with a web services application, there is absolutely, positively NO reason to go through the IT headache of changing OSes on hundreds of computers company-wide. What you're saying is that if the browser on Windows and the browser on Linux works fine, then there's no reason not to switch to Linux. Huh?... Have you ever deployed anything across an entire company before? Leave-it-alone is the best policy when it comes to situations like this.
5) I don't know exactly where you're seeing these "reams of documentation", but after using Linux for 10 years I still am amazed at how poorly documented it is. The mass-market books available in bookstores are good for pressing flowers, but most of them aren't worth much more. And if you're talking about the ancient man page collections and HOWTOs/FAQs, they're in sad shape as well. And even when these things are "complete", they're so cryptic that without prior experience you'll have a lovely time trying to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do to get effect X out of utility Y. In other words, the documentation sucks.
Try again.
Here is CNNs take of the whole thing.
o so ft/index.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/20/technology/micr