Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Big Stick in Peru
An anonymous reader points out a Wired story on the continuing Peru saga. In this latest episode, Wired notes that the U.S. Ambassador to Peru has chimed in in support of Microsoft and in opposition to Dr. Villanueva's bill which would have mandated open source software be used by the Peruvian government. On the one hand, sure, our diplomats have a national goal of promoting U.S. enterprise, but do we have to promote companies which we are simultaneously pursuing in court for numerous violations of our laws? Isn't that a bit counter-productive?
To veer this back on-topic, I should mention that there is a movement within the Greens to include a detailed plank on software rights and DRM in the next major release of our platform.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Really? Could you please explain to those of us who are quite obviously in the dark how not having red hot competition in the OS and office suite market is helping the US economy? There could be many more jobs out there for programmers right now if there were, for example, 4 worthy competitors to NT in widespread use. This recession started as a slump in business spending, a slump that would have definately been less pronounced had there been four competing companies fighting tooth and nail to stay alive in a ruthless market for operating system software. Want an example: see ATI vs. nVidia, neither can afford to lose and neither will ever win (hopefully).
We shouldn't resign ourself to the current status quo when things can be changed for the better right now.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Microsoft apparently enlisted the American ambassador in Lima to help try and convince the Peruvians to kill the legislation.
I don't think I could put it much more accuratly than that!
I stole this Sig
Wrong.
They speak Spanish in Peru, therefor posible is the correct spelling. You can verify this on the Peru Posible website, which btw is the number 1 hit on google for the word 'posible'.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
I know everyone hates Microsoft but they are a big corporation and they do have a major influence on the rest of the American economy. Right now, the US needs Microsoft.
Microsoft has spent the past decade illegally using its monopoly power to levearage its usually inferior, often unstable software products throughout society. These products, deliberatly designed to be incompatible with widely accepted standards, and to drive competitors (often with superior products) out of business, have been responsible for uncountable damage to our economy, due to needless system crashes, excessive vulnerability to viruses, poor security, and intentional incompatiblity.
At the same time Microsoft has drained countless billions of dollars from average Americans, much of it through the "Microsoft Tax" it used its monopoly power to illegally impose through PC vendors, Microsoft has paid relativly little in taxes; in fact, over the past two years their tax rate was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.
Some people think, anecdotaly, that Microsoft products have improved their lives, but on closer examination it inevitably becomes apparent that these products are inferior to and more expensive than products offered by competitors, or products that would have been offered had those competitors not been driven out of business or intimidated from even entering into a business that Microsoft might percieve as a threat to their monopoly.
The U.S. "needs" Microsoft only in the sense that a heroin addict "needs" their dealer to keep them supplied with smack. What they percieve as the thing that is absolutely essential is in fact the thing that is slowly draining their life away.
Peru and other developing countries would be well advised to stay as far away from Microsoft as they can. Embracing open source and standards-based computing will be a vastly better alternative for their whole society, in the short and long runs.
As for us (North) Americans, the sooner we can get the Microsoft Monkey off our backs the better off we, and the world, will be.
Yah, and `over there' would rather it happened on US soil. Who has the most right to say where a war should happen, `them' or `us'?
Because they actually do. There are two main reasons for this:
Agree. However, bear in mind that armaments corporations are far from the biggest beneficiaries in a war.
Think about World War II, in which companies like Ford and Bayer made money from selling to both sides of the war at once. Except where things got out of hand and their facilities were destroyed*, oil companies, steel companies, banks and many others all showed that in one way or another they thought of the war as a Godsend. Many Swiss banks, for example, did a roaring trade even in what were to all appearances financially destitute circumstances.
Consequentially, what you're basically looking for are two things:
* Krupp's factories, for example, seemed suspiciously immune to Allied bombing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You're arguing inane, completely irrelevent arguments on many fronts.
1.) The ambassador didn't single out and say "buy Microsoft". He said Buy American. The article _infers_ Microsoft because they're the biggest company. I'll bet you filthy nerds a shower that the letter doesn't specifically mention Microsoft.
2.) Nobody's dictating anything. They're lobbying, trying to persuade, etc... That's what ambassador's do. You don't think foreign ambassadors lobby for their businesses in the US?
Grow up, people, find a real cause.