Ballmer Sees Free Software as Enemy No. 1

geekinexile writes "Bloomberg is running this Microsoft vs. Linux article as a top story on the Bloomberg system. Not so notable for what it says about Linux, but rather for the fact that the financial community is starting to actually get open source."

Comments

Re:Figures...

[Idarubicin]

Or, you could do what Canada also does, provide some immigrants with all the benefits of citizenship and support of Canadian society with little of the responsibility or even the requirement to work for what they get, taking money from existing citizens through high taxes to feed those fleeing far less supportive cultures. There is nothing wrong with welcoming immigrants, but there is definitely a lot wrong with giving anyone a free ride on the backs of hardworking Canadians, immigrants or not. That isn't promoting equality. Forcing an existing citizen to finance the training of a newcomer so the newcomer can compete for the same job is wrong.

Damn straight! Only natural-born Canadians should be able to be lazy and live parasitically off the rest of us. Is it wrong to force an existing citizen to finance the education and training of another citizen through taxes? Socialists! We're all socialists! Next thing you know, we'll start getting crazy ideas about universal health care.

Come off it. First of all, there are lazy people among fresh immigrants and among longtime Canadian citizens. Similarly, both groups contain con artists, scammers, and criminals who will make every effort to work the system. (Not all welfare fraud is committed by immigrants, you know.) In all cases, the government makes an effort to weed out the bad apples, but there are limited resources available for screening. At a certain point (and different people will draw the line in different places) you have to accept a failure rate.

Second, the top of this thread discusses skilled workers. In Canada, we make an effort to import these people only when we have a domestic shortage. I have recently done medical research in a couple of Ontario hospitals, and I can tell you that if you need radiation therapy in Ontario, there's pretty good odds that your treatment will be overseen by an imported radiation therapist. The Ontario government has been underfunding radiation oncology programs at medical schools for a number of years, and we just don't have the people here--so we steal them from other countries (the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, etc.), where they probably received an education subsidized by their own governments. As for other skilled workers for which we have no shortage--why shouldn't they be allowed to compete with Canadians? It's good for the country to bring in the best people. With luck, they'll stay. If you can't compete, maybe you're in the wrong field.

Lastly, almost all Canadians are immigrants. Some of us arrived before others--I can trace some branches of my family back to before Confederation--but almost all of us are recent arrivals compared to occupants of some long-established European nations. How many generations should someone's family be in this country before we extend them all the rights and privileges of "real" Canadians?

Yes, you're right--immigrants should not be encouraged to take advantage of our welfare system, any more than fully-fledged citizens should. And, of course, it is fortunate that there are no landlords or employers who would ever consider taking advantage of immigrants because they might be less familiar with our labour and tenancy laws.

would have to say that "integration" is not the hallmark of Canadian immigration policy. It never has been. We're not the melting pot, we're the mosaic.

Canada is a mosaic, and I'm proud of it. Remember that integration is not assimilation. I sound like a badly-written social studies textbook, but I have to say: immigrants can form a healthy part of a cohesive and functional nation without abandoning their unique cultural identity. And I've ranted long enough. I'm pretty sure this will be the longest post I've ever made to /..