Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?
oblivious writes "I got this in e-mail this evening: According to a Reuters report that crossed the wires late today, the speculation is that Microsoft will make bids to buy both Rational and Borland. Shares of both Rational and Borland are up on the news, and so far both IBM and Microsoft have no comment on this report." We recently ran a story about IBMs planned purchase of Rational. Chris didn't make clear in here - it's not that Microsoft might buy both, but that Borland might be a likely target, if a bid to buy Rational out from under IBM fails, which it is likely too. Rational and IBM have signed the substantive portion of the agreement already, so any sort of counter bid would have some fun legal consequences for all involved.
At least if MS purchases them they can once again become profitable (and successful) companies.
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Slashdot is not monolithic!
Perhaps you missed the whole "prevalent argument" conditional put on that? The point, which you so stunningly missed, is that the majority of Slashdotters will in one story claim that Microsoft is a terrible monopoly that needs government intervention to be reigned in, but then in another story the majority (and yes it's largely the same group of people replying...I can recognize the UIDs in most cases) are claiming that XYZ products have the market cornered and Microsoft is running in fear (be in Linux, Postgresql, J2EE, etc). I have seen individuals claim these opposing perspectives countless times.
Retarded, irritating and whiney -- sure. You've proved that by combining a false dichotomy with a big flaming strawman. Cheers.
Firstly let me get the de rigueur insult in here: You suck eggs and your mother wears army boots! Save the insults for the next girl guides meeting moron because they just case you for the savage that you are.
Of course there is the small point that it's a real dichotomy (although I'm sure it gave you great pleasure to spout off "false dichotomy" and "strawman". Those goodies can be found hundreds of times by sheeplike Slashdotters such as yourself). You see a monopoly indicates that a company has exclusive control, with little competition, over a market or activity, yet here on Slashdot we learn that everyone is installing Linux, ESR is proclaiming that Microsoft will be gone in current_year+1, and technically Microsoft is purportedly outmatched by a competitor that is free, and available worldwide. You see those two opinions do not mix.
Okay retard, let's spell it out for you with some hypothetical math. There are over 400,000 registered users(I just glanced around for the highest user number in these threads, probably more than that) and articles posted get maybe an average of 400-500 comments before they are closed. Even if you looked at 50 articles about Microsoft with 500 comments and each of those comments were posted by a different user that's still only 25,000 users. Which, if we go with the low 400,000 users estimate, leads to roughly 6% of Slashdot's population. To conclude that "the majority of Slashdotters" are hypocritical in their arguments against Microsoft IS retarded and assumes Slashdot has a monolithic view.
You're just making yourself look stupid by assuming anything about "the majority" of Slashdotters. Argue about your real issues, people claiming the demise of Microsoft via free software and people claiming Microsoft is a monopoly(which according to a court ruling, they are) and stop trying to base your arguments on baseless assumptions about the people arguing for/against you.
Dodger_
Okay retard
Oooh, touché!
Of course all your petulant little rant has exposed is that you know absolutely nothing about Slashdot. You see, hundreds of thousands of people sign up for accounts (or, in cases such as yours, they sign up for several accounts so they have the "troll post-reply" account. You apparently were a little too dumb to realize you'd switched to your trolling account), but they don't post. Indeed if you had any truthful knowledge of Slashdot, you'd know that it's a very small cross-section of Slashdotters that post, and they often post prolifically. This idea that it's a random subsection of hundreds of thousands of people posting is just ridiculously laughable.
Secondly, it's damn funny what the defense has been. In the first post you, err, he firstly stated that Slashdot wasn't monolithic and therefore can hold contradictory opinions, but then hilariously refuted what I was saying anyways... So I take it from both defenses that it is illogical and foolish to both claim Microsoft's imminent demise from superior and freely available alternatives, and then to proclaim that they're an evil monopoly? Come on: Say it. Let's not beat around silly claims of false dichotomies or strawman arguments.
P.S. Slashdot moderation further parrots this hilarity. I can see that the grandparent post has been moderated up for saying that Slashdot is not monolithic, coupling it with some slurs such as "retarded". In any reasonable cross section that's called "flamebait", but her it caters to the sheeplike mentality. Mod that man up! (P.S. I just find it funny myself. I haven't had mod points on here in over a year, presumably because I moderated a non-pro-Linux post up because it was factual and even tempered).
Elegant object oriented languages really are a dime a dozen. If you want something like that, Eiffel or Oberon are other choices.