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AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat?
bstadil sent in this rumor. The Washington Post isn't exactly a rumor site, so there's probably truth behind it. Wow. It would make a great deal of sense for AOL/Time-Warner to acquire an operating system for leverage against Microsoft - same reason they bought Netscape.
After all, Netscape was dead. They had not shipped and they were falling behind rapidly in the browser market.
They were in the "portal" market -- whatever that is.
I never understood why they didn't charge for their server and PUSH it. It wasn't that bad and it was one of the few products they had they could generate revenue with. On the other hand they had MS IIS on the one side and Apache on the other -- both free and currently the #1 and #2 web servers out there (owning a vast majority of all sites -- all other web servers are bit market players).
Netscape shot themselves in the head with their lack of a viable business plan, knowledge of the competition and no plan on how to directly compete, etc.
Your argument falls apart like a paper doll when held to the light of scrutiny.
Nike isn't a new company, and they didn't start with 3rd world labor. They helped create it. They found that they could cut costs (yes that's corporate speak for boost profits) if they could find a country with no labor laws and no fair wage laws. They decided to take their could've-been-american jobs to another country in the name of profit. Do you honestly believe a $120 Nike shoe costs anywhere near that much to manufacture? The shoes aren't expensive due to the 'new technology' in each and every shoe. It's to sponsor marketing campaigns to brainwash consumer puppets into buying their low quality, overpriced slave labor shoes. The only reason you show apathy towards this situation is because you have a nice life wherever you live and you have _no clue_ what the conditions are like in these factories.
In the end, Nike is hurting their economies. Primitive economies are built on hard goods trade and labor. IF Nike pulls out of one of these villages, the local economy instantly collapses, then will make a gradual recovery. The mosquito can make a meal of a human for life, but not if she's given half a drop every week.
Well that's all. It's clear to me that you don't understand 3rd world economics or how US foreign policy helps bloodsucking corporations exploit labor there.