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Microsoft Flouting DOJ Settlement?
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is not adhering to the terms of its deal with the DOJ. Specifically, there are allegations that it is "trying to license key pieces of its technology at inflated rates" and "thwarting its antitrust settlement with the federal government". They're charging $100,000 just to see technical info about their communication protocols, and you only get $50,000 back if you decide you don't want to license them. Whoda thunk?"
because I don't abide by their EULAs either, so it all settles out.
I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
oh shock horror, never saw that one coming.....
i mean really, what did you think they were going to do.
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
So, we pay $100k to find out they have no communication protocols, and only get $50k back? I'll charge half that if anyone's interested in seeing my communication protocols.
it's their perogative to charge what they want for information. Supply and Demand may change it eventually but they can start the prices where ever they want.
How can you suggest such a thing? There's absolutely no evidence that Microsoft isn't just as well behaved as every other American corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They're charging just $ 100,000 to inspect - just consider! MS spends $5 bn in R&D, yet the fruits of the R&D can be inspected for just .001% of their investment!
If that ain't reasonable, what is? You thought you could see the MS code for free? You got to be a non-American govt. threatening to use Open Source, for that sort of privilege.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Next on slashdot: The sun is fuckin' HOT
Thats a scandalous acussation! Microsoft are kind and gentle, and they certainly learnt their lesson after the nasty talking to the DOJ gave them after that whole "monopoly abusing" thing. Balmer and Gates are such nice men and they wear such nice suits, how could you even think of making such a slanderous comment?
No, I'm sure they're just misunderstood.
Microsoft is being accused of doing something illegal on slashdot?
What's next? More SCO villification?
They even had to set up a committee internally to make sure they didn't break the rules. Surely the DoJ wouldn't have given them such a limp-wristed settlement if it didn't believe they were honest people.
Oh hang on its only George Bush who lives in a 1950s "Wonderful Life" style world.
Is ANYONE suprised by this move ? M$ have also just bought some AV software, umm will they bundle theirs into the OS to drive other people away, its a shot in the dark, and against the DoJ settlement but it might just be true.
M$ know that with the massively pro-business pro-monopoly president there is right now that they have AT LEAST 5 more years before a President who might go after them. Add 5-10 years of DoJ cases and they might get the next numbskull to let them off.
The only hope for the US Software industry is if the EU crackdown.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
"I'm Shocked! Shocked!"
I bet DOJ used Windows Update. Now, none of their computers work. That would explain their lack of follow-through in this case.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
If any of you thought for a second that Microsoft would actually abide by the settlement with the DOJ you are on crack. What incentive do they have to abide by it? What is the worst that will happen if they don't abide by it? They'll get taken back to court the DOJ, and I'm sure they'll settle again and continue doing what they are doing. I personally have no problem with Microsoft, but If the DOJ is going to settle with them, they better be prepared to enforce the settlement.
- tom -
No, this is not a big surprise to the very large crowd of people who think MS got off lightly for what they have done.
The significance, though, is that there are still a couple of states (WV, MA, I think) holding out on the DOJ settlement.
Their case could be made stronger if they can show the settlement is not working properly.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
So this is what happens to our best and brightest programmers.....
Whoda thunk?
:-)
I would. Thunking is fun, and a wonderful way of ensuring you keep compatible. Try thunking to another operating system running in a virtual machine, that's cool
What they're doing might be immoral, but illegal? Hardly. If they ask 100k from everyone wanting to use the protocol they're not discriminating against anyone.
Riiiiight.
There are consequences to actions. Unfortunately the American people cannot seem to draw a line between point A and point B.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This should not come as a surprise Judge CK and Justice both bent over backwards to please Billy since Ashcroft and others could only recuse themselves from direct involvement because of the contributions they received. This does not mean they did not have a hand in giving Microsoft the power to act as though there was no settlement, it merely means that the settlement was thus: Microsoft is free to be a monopoly and self-enforcing monopolies never can do anything wrong (or at least they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK of no evil that they are involved in).
Really, who won the case? Not the people, well they did, but the newly elected administration had that overturned and gave Microsoft everything they ever wanted and then some.
Crash, bang, pow! The sound of companies being crushed, jobs being lost, and consumers losing more and more to the power of a global monopoly that is in fact a de facto government taxing American citizens on a national basis every time our government (once elected - now paid) buys from the Nation of Microsoft.
Do we really want more media consolidation - must be, someone in the government says its cool for one company to own everything and offer us the same crappy meals every day.
To borrow a line we might have to get used to""You will work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day."
Thanks to Justice and Judge CK the animal is free to prowl and kill whatever it wants. Nice, real nice.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
there are allegations that it is "trying to license key pieces of its technology at inflated rates" Doesn't the fact that they are trying to dump other pieces of technology balance this out, though? mmmmmm... $50 windows licenses.....
Wow! Paying someone to steal your intellectual property. Thank you Microsoft. Now I understand all that innovation.
At the urging of the Justice Department, Microsoft will now allow engineers from potential licensees to visit its headquarters to examine more technical data. But the rivals say the company is requiring the engineers to sign such strict confidentiality agreements that their ability to work on related products for their employers would be hampered.
"Basically, I'd have to shoot the engineers when they came back," said one irate company executive.
Wow! Paying Microsoft to make your employees unuseable. Thank you Microsoft. Useful employees were a burden anyway.
Yeah, I'd do the same thing if I were forced to send my engineers to visit Redmond...
Once again, our justice system has failed the consumers. "Sure, Microsoft is acting in restriction of trade. Let's warn them that they should probably let ppl know how to code for their OS."
Microsoft funds their campaigns, so they stand there with their thumbs up their asses acting as if they have done all they can. They are the government, dammit!!!!
I'm moving to Canada, at least if my tech job goes under up there I can still get healthcare.
Anyone have a list of the protocols under discussion? The article refers to there being 133 protocols in the package, and there are claims (refuted by MS) that some of them are in the public domain (by which I suspect they mistakenly include open source solutions like Samba).
So, what protocols are they? I'm certain that a large number haven't been externally engineered, but I'd be willing to bet that quite a few have, or that they originate from public protocols that MS has since modified.
'"We have made progress with Microsoft," one official said, adding that the department is following up on complaints from other firms. "We have gotten them to make changes."'
This just shows how scared the DOJ is of MS. I mean if I got taken to court for not paying back a loan and the court ordered me to pay £x back per month and I only paid a fraction of it back per month do you think they would say "We have made progress with graspee. We have gotten him to pay back some of the money he owes." ???
graspee
After the last time Microsoft was found guilty the chaiman of Enron was playing golf with the chairman of Worldcom, so goes the story...
"So Bob, should we stop doing business with these criminals?"
"Hell no, Joe, I just got a $2bn kickback! Ye hah for corporate America! Anything goes."
"Good thinking Bob, oh, and I love your new caddy by the way - a Senator is just so much better than my Congressman."
Beep beep.
The Enron scandal flourished under Clinton, but ended under the Bush administration.
How does this effect reverse engineering projects such as Samba (smb) and Gaim (MSN)? Is it free if you can figure it out using a packet sniffer?
----
"M$ know that with the massively pro-business pro-monopoly president "
We don't have one. Perhaps you are thinking of the very misleading hype about "media concentration"?
Did you know that if Clear Channel doubled the number of stations it now holds, it would have less than 20% of radio stations.
"Oh hang on its only George Bush who lives in a 1950s "Wonderful Life" style world."
Erm, he's moving us away from eras like the 50s when taxes were extremely high.
"$100.000 is not reasonable, it's extortion"
I was just quoting the MS party line there. Would you actually pay a 100 grand to read a billion lines of junk?
Likewise on non-discriminatory.
You can never go broke underestimating American intelligence.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It is mentioned in the article, and in some comments before mine, that the DOJ seems to be scared of Microsoft. Indeed, the behaviour even seems to suggest it - they are behaving very trepidatiously, despite their obvious power within the US.
My question is, why are they scared? What have they to be scared of?
He will have to invade and liberate Syria in order to find a few of these.
More like...
[1] Do what you like, flout all laws, profit. Laws are for others.
[2] If they sue you, get a friendly government.
[3] If you are likely to lose, settle, the settlement being "Agree to obey laws in future".
[4] Profit! (Repeat if desired.)
⦠or rather same old legal-tech story (SOLTS)
.
How come so many of the tech stories nowadays include the words:
court, settlement, legal
Getting tired of the misbehaviour and squabbling frankly.
All right letâ(TM)s see:
Loophole alert: âoeOne unusual provision, however, allows Microsoft to license some of the code â¦â
So thereâ(TM)s a disagreement on interpreting the scope of a term of the settlement. Just great.
⦠and now the second page of the storyâ(TM)s Slashdotted - prolly donâ(TM)t want to see it anyways â" ah, here it isâ¦
âMicrosoft requires companies that license the protocols to be audited -- at their own expense, by a third-party auditor selected by Microsoftâ
Then it isnâ(TM)t strictly third party, is it? Sort of more 1.3rd party than third party.
⦠and then theyâ(TM)re using a reverse version of SCOâ(TM)s NDA tactic, allowing them to potentially receive more information than they need in spirit. Did they learn this play from the same coach?
Howâ(TM)s the tail of this disagreement ever going to be chopped for good?
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
If the enemy in a war (legal or otherwise) is not defeated on every front, it will come back to fight again in the future. This is an ingrained law in our survival instincts. It's all about obtain resources to ensure survival. It's also a component or the very seat of primate social dynamics and POLITICS. The Borg undefeated, will regroup and launch another attack in a DIFFERENT area. Has Star Trek taught us nothing? Defeating the Borg requires implanting a fractal virus in their neural net, like this hasn't been tried before and would not be difficult to do again with its rampant security holes. People, seriously, to beat M$ is going to require a coordinated strategy on multiple fronts from negative advertising, publishing the truth about its business tactics, translating legalese of the EULA into common laymen's terms, word of mouth, and absolute bias towards other alternatives (Linux, Lindows, Mac OS X, etc...). This requires pushing hard the alternatives showing clear examples (demos) that are more cost efficient than M$ bugware.
why the hell would i pay $100,000 to look at freebsd code?
From the article:
Microsoft requires companies that license the protocols to be audited -- at their own expense, by a third-party auditor selected by Microsoft -- to ensure that they are only using them for appropriate purposes.
What are "appropriate purposes" when it comes to protocols?
Auditor [pointing, exasperated] And what the hell are you using that one for?
Company rep Oh, we keep donuts in that one.
Auditor And that one?
Company rep Oh, that one is forced into the green button on the air-conditioner, otherwise it keeps switching itself off.
Auditor That one?
Company rep Oh. Erm. Sorry. We ran out of cat litter.
Auditor I am truly shocked at your inappropriate use of MS protocols! You'll be hearing from Bill Gates about this!
that the DOJ is intimidated by microshaft. What the DOJ needs someone with the scruples of a modern day Elliott Ness who will play hard ball with these people. They are obviously above the law in my opinion. When is it enough from the greedy bastards in Redmond(New Berlin) ? It's time to drag their asses back into court and really give them a good goatse treatment that's long overdue.
did anyone really , given Microsoftâ(TM)s history , really expect them to abide by any anti-trust suit. The only reason they weren't broken up is because we have a republican president who believe in free enterprise at all costs and wasn't really interested in attacking one of America's most successful corporations because of the conservative political backlash. They deserve to be broken up for there tactics just as much as standard oil , or any of the companies that the anti-trust laws were written to prevent from strangling the market. I think this is the kind of thing that the pendulum swings back and forth on. We have slowly allowed anti-trust laws to be abused and weakened by all kinds of unfair business practices. That's why corporations like Disney have so much power. One concept that has been completely ignored for years in the corporate law is the idea of a company charter. The statement about what is your company given the right to do by the government. ( it's part of your incorporation papers i believe.) they are never enforced. If they were 3M would not have been allowed to leave the Mining and Manufacture market sector and it's owners would have had to sell there assets and create a new corporation. What it should prevent is over diversification of a business. corporations should not be allowed to do everything and anything they want. If you make an operating system you should not be allowed to also make a word processor and a cell phone because they are different products and should require a different corporation to make them. I wish they would go back to this kind of law. Then again there all kinds of abuse of IP law as well , both copywriter and patent by people who are happy to entirely pervert the intent of the original laws to make more money and we have corrupt legislators and administrators who are happy to see it happen because after all if it is "good for big business" it must also be "good for the economy". The REAL problem is this. When laws become unjust the citizens stop obeying them. When the average citizen does not obey the law then the law itself is weakened and must be re-enforced by police action. The police action eventually leads to rebellion. I worry about what kind of a revelation can be had in a day and age when everything we do and say even in our homes can be monitored, but one way or another it will probably eventually come. All societies live, die and morph into another. It will happen with this one too and in the long run all this is part of that happening. Still a person likes to stay healthy as long as possible and breaking Microsoft up would help keep the U.S. a healthy society. One day some president will have the guts to do it, I hope.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Shocked that they're violating what little they had to do under the DOJ capitula... er, agreement. Really, MS not obeying antitrust or the terms of their agreement? Remarkable. Who could have predicted this?
Next stunner please. Anyone suing somebody new over UN*X today?
The fact is that I can browse a few news sources and come up with significantly more fascinating, interesting, and topical stories than this. It is also news that Peoplesoft rejected Oracle's bid. It is actually BIGGER news than this MS junk.
There are a good one hundred technology/business stories a day. Singling out this one is not just politically motivated, it is childish. That is my point. If you really think slashdotters are into business related technology stories, then you need to report on the big stories, not the ones that make your "competition" look bad. This is fundamental editorial ethics.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Did anything in the DOJ settlement say anything about forcing potential licensees to perform human sacrifice? You'd think with Ashcroft as Attorney General, they'd crack down on stuff like that.
Seriously, the most galling thing about this is the intransigence of the feds. But it's not surprising: the U.S. federal government is run by a bunch of right-wing ideologues who believe the unfettered market is the answer for everything.
Has Microsoft realised that most people just want an OS, without all the bundled software that comes with it. The majority of Windows users probably use Winamp over WMP, use Office/OO/SO over Wordpad, Photoshop/PSP over Paint, and more importantly, Mozilla/etc over IE.
If Microsoft removed all these obselete packages from Windows' default installation, maybe we can buy an OS cause it's an OS, not for the stuff that's in it, and maybe cut the costs, not to mention the bugs.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
"Open a magazine or newspaper - it's there. It's on TV. It stains the logos and smears the nerve centers of the world's biggest corporations."
Sounds like vandalism. No one supports your view, so you force it with destructive crimes.
"This is the mark of the people who don't approve of Bush's plan to control the world,"
He doesn't have one.
"who don't want countries "liberated" without UN backing"
This is the same UN that issued antisemitic proclamations in the 1970s and presided over the massacre at Srbenica.
"This is the mark of the people who want the Kyoto Protocol for the environment"
Kyoto has nothing to do with the environment. It is all political.
"who want the International Criminal Court for greater justice"
No justice in that kangaroo court.
"Because my country has sold its soul to corporate power,"
It hasn't. Corporations are still overtaxed and over-regulated.
"And because patriotism now means agreeing with the president,
Well, that is true most of the time, since those who are anti-Bush are typically so because they hate the country and its people.
"I pledge to do my duty . . . and take my country back."
It is a democracy now. Do you want to take it back to being a British colony or something????
Actually, It's a Wonderful Life came out in 1946 directly after WWII and though had a happy ending, pretty much dealt with the shaddy side of the business world and one man's despair (and near suicide) because of it.
It is a great movie and stands as one of the classics.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
I'd do anything to make Microsoft look bad. :p
:P
Hold on, does Microsoft count as 'competition' or a monopoly?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Iraq played with the rules for over 10 years before they got their hands slapped
My guess is, it will be another 10 years before the US Government gets around to making a decapitating strike of "Shock and Awe" against Redmond
Seriously though, I think it's rather obvious that the current Administration and Microsoft have come to some understanding to look the other way regarding Microsoft activities. No one will admit that, but that's what PACs are for
...particularly if the protocol provided an interface for communicating with hosts running a different OS (closed source, with totally incomprehensinle internals), and allowed for better integration than just a handshake. Particular one that would facilitate the transfer of data encoded as deoxyribose nucleic acid.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is that while MS is flagrantly ignoring the DOJ settlement with our Gov't our tax dollars are also being used to promote MS in global markets. Why wasn't the removal of that support a part of the DOJ settlement?
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
My biggest worry isn't the "Nyah - so we'll show you our stuff as required by law but charge so much for it - nyah", but the way they've gone back to buying/threatening anybody who might compete with them.
Take the whole Virtual PC thing. I switch from Linux to OS X on the desktop, and get all excited about Virtual PC - now for those few Windows Apps I *need* to run (like Sharkport for my PS2, Ultima VII in DOS mode - you know, the important stuff), I can have that.
Then - Microsoft buys Connectix. OK, I say. Then RealPC announces "We're comin' back - and better!" I see light at the end of the tunnel. If RealPC can do its "direct hardware technology" right, I could even play Half-Life I (and hope that HL2 gets ported to OS X) in a Virtual Window (yes, I'm sure I'd have to grab more RAM, but it's the *potential* of the idea).
Nope - MS is sueing them now too.
That's the part that worries me - the buyiing/sueing of companies who even *look* like they might do something that MS wants (remember how they tried to buy Quicken, and at least that one was nixed?). At least during the DOJ trial they *tried* to act nice - but now that it's over, it back to the Bad Old Days of either buying somebody out, locking them out, or sueing them into oblivion.
Patience, I tell myself. Someday, maybe 50 years from now when MS is just another fair player in the market, this will all be looked backed upon and laughed, like Standard Oil and AT&T. Patience.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
MS tactics here: do what you can to kill the competition and wait to get sued. Engage in painfully long motion practice u
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
" Enron was caught on Bush's watch, dimwit. Under Bush, to date no punishment, none likely."
So, Enron is now stronger than ever, just like Arthur Anderson. Nothing bad has happened to either of them, right?
[FYI: you might think this is true. However, both companies have been greatly damaged. As for Ken Lay, the problem is that what he did was legal during the Clinton Administration. He could not get away with doing it now, however, thanks to reform bills that Bush signed.]
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_michaelsminutes_arc hives.php?id=66
"Microsoft routinely offers financial inducements to computer companies to not carry LindowsOS computers. With $40 billion in the bank, it's an easy decision for them to use a few million dollars to block Lindows.com from major retailers."
Microsoft Announces New Windows System
Key Features Include Improved Browsing Capability, World Domination
"An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man."
With that, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the next line of popular Windows and Office software products. Called 'Forbin', it is designed to counteract effects of antitrust issues brought by the Department of Justice by engaging into extralegal activities and taking over the world.
"We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me, is not as bad for human pride as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple. It can be a peace of plenty and content, or a peace of unburied dead: the choice is yours. Plus, it will make the World Wide Web seem faster and easier to the user."
Justice Department officials had no immediate comment.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
No, the invasion was to *ELIMINATE* WMD. Seems to have worked...
We all know that MS is good at copying, but poor at actually 'innovating'.
Ironically, the reverse is usually true for OSS.
Yes, I know that better tech doesn't always win (Beta vs VHS), but if an OSS solution is found to this problem, MS can follow or get out of the way.
The key is to put the shoe on the other foot - force MS's compatabillity with OSS protocols, rather than the other way around. A tough road indeed, but one that we'd better get used to.
Look at Flash (not too long;), there was tech that was released by one company and went on to become a web standard. Everyone has the flash plugin, and if they don't, they can get it easily.
This was a tough story to write a comment to - it was like pointing up and saying, "The sky is blue! What can we do?"
Mafia just won't stop their illegal activities.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Those of us who worked in companies which competed with Microsoft understand that monopolies are suboptimal for capitalism. Eventually, it would get sorted out by the market; but for those of us who would rather not wait a hundred years, the government is the only available tool for the job.
Like oil and water, Republicans and antitrust don't mix.
I worked in the state AG's office in the antitrust division during 3 AG's tenures. When we went from a Democrat to a Republican, we were told there were certain types of cases we were just not going to bring. Ever.
Now I am all for the American Way and for business making a buck. It ain't Romper Room out there. The Fed is supposed to level the playing field for fair competition. I guess "fair" can be defined several diferent ways, depending on who contributes to your campaign.
Write to those Congressmen, people. They are working on your dime.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
The bush administration should do something about breaking up monopolies, but I think they are too busy falling off Segways at the moment.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
> No, the invasion was to *ELIMINATE* WMD. Seems to have worked...
Yes, and they also got rid of all the aliens, bigfoots, and unicorns in Iraq.
Now they're going to install democracy and ensure everyone an education, a job, and good healthcare, just like here at home.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He's dead, Jim.
The engines can't take it.
KHANNNNNNNN!!!!!!!
What does ...God ...need with a...starship?
(And for you TNG'ers) Make it so.
Their licensing terms, according to the article, while agressive, are pretty much in-line with standard industry practice. So...who cares? If these companies don't want to pay the licensing fees, or agree to the licensing terms, then fuck them. They can reverse-engineer the shit. Isn't this the whole POINT of licensing agreements? To make a bunch of money off of companies that for whatever reason, don't want to be bothered with figuring out their own solution to the problem?
Rick Blaine: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Police Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[A croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Police Captain Renault: [sotto voice] Oh, thank you very much.
I agree it does look a little like the government isn't into really sorting Microsoft out. But then again, the priorities are rather different. You and I may care about these libertarian issues of control of information, patents, open source or whatever. I'd assume government primarily cares about the economy. Big business always gets a let call until their bending of the rules really start to hurt the economy more than it benefits it(thats the difference with say, Enron). Capitalism seems to work but its never going to be fair.
No, enron and whatnot are not being "cleaned up" in the bush crime cabal family, all they are doing is recovering from exposure and learning how to keep crimes more covered up. Public servant cheney won't even release the details of his bribery and blackmail sessions with energy industry insiders to congress. Now all that is happening is that anything remotely embarassing gets slapped with a national security sticker, and anyone asking about them is labeled a terrorist or terrorist sympathiser. They've raised the ante even above the clinton cartels efforts. They won't even "allow" any sort of *credible* investigations into their piece de resistance, the 9-11 attacks. They are hiding a lot of involvement and foreknowledge there. It was a reichstagg fire event, and millions of us out here can see that, and aren't faked out by political "party" partisan rhetoric or their phony dumbed down press releases or their controlled script infomercials being passed off as press conferences.
Sorry friend, but this is a junta, a dictatorship, and they are global monopolist-leaning corporatists, merging international industry completely with governmental dictatorial powers as fast as they can. As were warned against-in detail, and specifically- by previous rather intelligent and connected personalities, like george washing and dwight eisenhower. Those gents saw the dangers clearly, we were warned to not let it happen, but we did unfortunately, and the bush family crime cartel and his group of gangster semi underlings are exact examples of what we were warned against.
To say they are merely chronic serial liars is an understatement. The clintonistas were clueless and incompetent hedonists,sub section crooks, the bushbots are dangerous gangsters, sub section completely insane megalomaniacs. The only things they are "cleaning up" are bloody footprints and fingerprints, and scurrying around picking up pieces of stolen loot they dropped.
--zogger
" Typical conservative view point"
Yes, in defense of rights for people, not governments.
"Making arguments that have no founding."
They all are founded in fact.
"How is the International Criminal court a Kangaroo COurt"
Because it has sloppy standards, and is easily used for show trials. There are a bunch of Vichy's in France who want to use it in an antisemitic fashion agaisnt Ariel Sharon.
"(And as an Aussie I take offense that Kangaroo is used in the negative)"
Why don't you go put another prawn on the Barbie.
"I love how anything anti-Israel is anti-semetic"
Why do you love it? It is a fact, and it is disappointing. The common denominator of hatred of Israelis is hatred of Jewish people.
"The UN resolutions were that Zionism (which is the official idealogy of israel) is rascist."
If anything is racist, it is this resolution. It was put in place when the UN was led by an actual card-carrying Nazi. It was pushed by a number of nations that had laws to punish people for being Jewish (Arab states, USSR, etc). Zionism was a necessary reaction to prevalent policies.
"How can you say Kyoto has nothing to do with the environment. Reducing emissions is all about the environment."
There is no evidence that these emissions affect climate one way or another. The Kyoto accords are all political: notice how they let China get away with increased "greenhouse emissions". If it had anything to do with the environment (making that assumption), it would reduce the emissions for everyone.
"No doubt you will pick up on my typos/grammar errors to slap me down and prove u are right."
No, I deal in meaningful facts. I almost corrected the typos in the "quotations", but was typing too fast to bother.
I think that's all. Want your $50k back?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
If you really think slashdotters are into business related technology stories, then you need to report on the big stories, not the ones that make your "competition" look bad. This is fundamental editorial ethics.
You're new here, aren't you?
Repeat to yourself, 1000 times: "Slashdot is not a news site, it's a nerd chatboard".
Now are you enlightened?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The closest I got to punch cards was fortran. I can only imagine. Remembering to put characters on the 7th column was annoying enough.
I think the earliest recollection I have is some form of BASIC on an Atari800 which predated my programming (out of order) experience on a PET.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
http://www.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.as px?JobID=b0e72d5b-89f2-41ed-bb86-36928c903514
MS hires bigtime for its legal department. It has a budget bigger than the DOJ and more experienced lawyers. Look at http://www.idg.net/english/crd_gates_888634.html
Bill "Nuke 'Em" Neukom built a 600 lawyer in-house team for MS. There are 9,000 lawyers in the DOJ. According to the 2003 Budget at http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/2003summary/html/atr.htm
The DOJ spent 100,000,000 on ALL cartel activity, not just MS.
The DOJ is outgunned.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
That incessant beeping you hear is your sarcasm meter. You should have checked it before posting.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Obligatory response: You must be new here.
Just the facts:
All the monopoly-whining in the world won't help. On the contrary, it will help Microsoft by portraing them as invulnerable, always winning and not worth resisting.
What will make a difference is use products and open standards.
For example in southern Germany the tiny town of SchwÃbisch Hall has moved to Linux a few months ago, a few weeks ago Munich was inspired by that and (just a few kilometers away) has decided to do the same and a week later Stuttgart und Oldenburg, 2 other south-German cities are evaluating to join in, others will follow.
The dominos are falling. With all the relevant software being ported to Linux, expect a lot of other european cities to move to KDE/Linux as well within 3 years.
So please:
Stop whining, start doing. Whining will not achieve anything.
Tell your coworkers and your boss about Mozilla and OpenOffice, explain to your boss that Microsoft will give anybody huge discounts who is able to move away from Microsoft, etc.
Surely you mean:
[2] If they sue you, buy a friendly government.
You are right, actually. But be sympathetic. It is true that MS's shenanigans (aided and abetted by the US authorities) are too well understood to be news, but many (most?) of us are a bit emotional about it and need to let off steam.
" Which Enron corporate officers hold a cabinet post?"
Shhhh. Don't dare to say things like this. You never know, when you put out a few facts, the left-wing FUD might crumble. They get really mad when you point out that Bush won the actual counts in Florida too.
Sit down, shut up, and believe that Kenneth Lay is our Secretary of State.
Companies must put up $100,000 just to see the technical information about the 133 protocols, which helps a potential licensee determine if it wants or needs any of them. But if the company chooses not to license, it gets back only $50,000.
Somebody send a correction to the Washington Post. When making fun of an underskilled and overarrogant programmer or group of programmers, the correct derogatory spelling would be, "l33t protocols".
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Those Yahoo expense numbers are devided into two catagories, R+D and adverts. There are no operating or other expenses. No mention is made of aquisitions of property or software. If their research budget contains operating expenses as well as aquisitions as well as the salary of the guy who flies around China picking out the next X-box case, well, it's easy to see how that might all add up to a billion bucks a quarter. It's not, however, the kind or research most of us think of as innovative, creative or useful.
Parasitic is what you would expect from a company that admits it only enters a market when there's a substantial amount of money to be made. They don't really develop anything until the "loss leaders" have drummed up interest in their inventions. They then offer to buy the victim out for $500,000 or to treat them like Netscape by purchasing a competitor for $500,000. In either case, M$ is not going to spend much more than $500,000 to own anything.
It shows in their product line. They are only innovative if you call sticking your label on a cheap DRM'd PC innovative, and inventive if you consider a phone application for your embeded system that someone else made inventive. Really, the only thing Microsoft has invented lately is the "Digital Rights Management Operating System", a simple dongle in BIOS, they obtained an absurd patent on. Name one useful thing Microsoft has made, ever. You can't because they have levered and expoited other people's ideas since Bill Gates dumpster dived someone else's BASIC and then complained when it was "stolen" through unauthorized copy.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Their reasoning was they didn't want corporations to become more powerful than the government, and hence, have influence over it.
BTW, if you think corruption is bad today, read all about Teddy, he started his political career fighting corruption that was taking place basically out in the open.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This is way offtopic, but the history of this movie fascinates me. "It's a Wonderful Life" was released in '46, received mixed reviews, nominated for some awards, but sank into obscurity. It fell out of copyright and into the public domain in 1974. And because of THAT, TV stations, starting mainly with PBS, picked it up for FREE and started broadcasting it at Christmas. It became one of the most loved, most aired Christmas movies ever. All because it went into the public domain.
r eviews.colossus.net/movies/i/its_won derful.htmlo vies/wonderfu l_life.html
U TF -8&q=%22It%27s+a+wonderful+life%22+public+domain&b tnG=Google+Search
Well, until 1993, when some copyright sleight-of-hand pulled it out of PD.
RIAA? MPAA? DMCA? hello? is this thing on?
references:
http://slate.msn.com/id/1004242/
http://movie-
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatm
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
"The low number of licensees concerns the Justice Department" -what exactly is Mr. Ashcroft's cut of the $100,000?
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
Guess you should read Linux Journal then, because they ran an artical about a project to replace an exchange server, detailing their efforts to reverse engineer the protocol. It's all there. I think it is the Feb 03 issue, but it is at work and I'm at home and their webpage doesn't index content that recent for the general public.
Democrat delenda est
Its unfair to force it on developing countries as we have already developed and it won't restrict us. Sure in a perfect world we could make it apply to everyone. It would hinder there development too much. BEsides some ridculous amount of polution 80% or something comes from the developed world.
Even if emissions were causing the world to cool, thats bad to. You almost admitted it doing something and something isn't good.
They had a state religion: atheism. Jews, however, were especially hated (going back to the Tsars). Stalin even had a plan to exterminate all of them, but then he died.
And the US used to have slaves. How long do you want to hold something against somebody.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Embarrassing current scandals, ongoing corruption, that's offtopic. I see. I see.
Microsofts Seattlement is a farce.
The way I understand it: the pay penalties
in the form of donating WinPCs to poor schools?
This increases the monopoly, not lessen it.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
It ended because someone inside Enron ratted everyone else out.
no comment
"McDonalds was wrong to serve coffee it knew was dangerous and had caused injuries before"
The coffee was labelled as "hot", and any child knows that you be careful around hot liquids. The only thing wrong here was that a clumsy lady spilled coffee on her own lap and was able, through a crooked attorney, to get someone else to pay for her own action.
Man what are you smoking! Since when is slashdot competition to Microsoft? And "fundamental editorial ethics" are doing pretty good given that slashdot is a pro-Linux site.
Jesus man, bugger off to MSN and eat what Microsoft serves you but don't complain here.
Yes, this is offtopic.
Israel is only a racist state if there is such a thing as "the Jewish race". Hitler thought there was a Jewish race. Most geneticis don't go for that. Nor do I, and nor do immigration at Ben Gurion airport. If Judaism is a religion consisting of Russians, Moroccans, Ethipoians etc then the state's discrimination is not on the grounds of race but of religion. The state's actions are questionable on the grounds of religous favouritism, breach of international law etc. but you can't quite call it racism.
You know, the funny thing is, nobody, not even the french, were disputing the existence of WMD in Iraq before the war.
They were pushing awful hard for more inspections. Iraq is a big pretty barren country. It is going to take time to find the damn stuff.
Remeber now, sharing is stealing, never share your password, never try to understand how things work against the will of you masters and be grateful, very greatful all day long. Your letters will be read to eliminate the enemies of the United States. Your location will be known from the devices your carry and all of us will be much safer when we get the house of the future from Microsoft.
Anyone want to join me at the bridge? I'll be smashing my car and throwing my old M$ software into the cold waters. The hope for US software is the hope for all software, freedom. If the software in my cell phone and car were free, I might feel like I owned them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
That would be a hoot, but I don't think it will happen. They will let Jr. speak during prime and asshole Al will get the 7:00AM slot (if you don't know who Jr. is, you must not be from Memphis).
1946... Me thinks it's copyright may have expired.
who is sony?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
But $100,000 to get access to 133 communications protocols doesn't sound all that expensive. What does an intel P4 bus license cost? How much would you expect to pay to get access to someone else's engineering work.
Any company that's going to try to make a MS compatible network product of some sort is going to spend many multiples of this number on the engineering effort for even a trivial product. M$ has some pretty aweful marketing practices and gross business practices, but this is far from the worst. This doesn't seem out of line with the costs to license other proprietary technology in the marketplace.
how is this a troll? this should be modded up as insightful.
ed
Let the non free software companies continue to screw each other. The solution is to reject them all.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When you have enough money to discard any fine?
When you have enough power to force any business entity to do almost anything you need?
When the authorities of the law are so weak and limited in their power?
The only way to get Microsoft, as well as many other unethical, illegal and otherwise misbehaving companies to obey the law is to gradually increase the punishments given when they are found guilty.
The "corporate death penalty" (the destruction of a corporation and the auctioning of all of its assets) was and still is a possible punishment that can threaten those corporations who show contempt for the law and repeatedly defy it.
The "corporate death penalty" brought, and could bring today - respect of the law.
Call to restore the "corporate death penalty" today!
this being the same "time" that would not be given to the inspectors to complete the inspections to find the damn stuff...
MLT - simple and robust open source multimedia framework for Linux
Congressman Harold Ford Jr., AKA King Harold the Second.
Actually, looking at the Ford family as a whole (swindlers, fraud, bank fraud, wife beating, assault, weapons violations, extortion and that's just the individuals elected to office), Jr. is not too bad...
I'm no GIMP guru, but perhapes it's time for a new Microsoft icon on /. A blend of Gates and a Feregi.
From what I remember of the seattlement, MS would really have to go out of their way to not comply with the terms - I mean, it's hard enough just finding something they are required to do, in there.
sic transit gloria mundi
As long as Bush/Asscleft are in office, MS is above the law. they are both against the anti trust laws. Might makes right, is not just their foreign policy.
photosMy Photostream
More info can be found here.
Flamebait??? ok, let's analize this message to see if it's really flaimbait.
We have seen this before.
umm.. TRUE.
The only way this is ever going to change is if we shut Microsoft down.
Well, this is debatable, but it's certainly within the realm of reason, especially since the DOJ couldn't seem to do anything about it.
Go help a Open Source project anything else is just noise.
Ok, here he is implying that if you don't like something, and you wan't it changed, then it's UP TO YOU TO DO IT. In my humble opinion, this is a sound philosophical standpoint. At least that's what my parrents taught me when they said that wining wouldn't get me anything.
True, "anythingthing else is just noise" may not be entirely accurate. For instance simply boycotting microsoft could be a solution, or purchasing controling sock in Microsoft could be another solution, if you have 100 million gazillion dollars laying around.
flaimbait?? That's just retarded.
Actually, WinAMP does do video. I don't know about older releases, but at least in WinAMP 3.0 you can play video (mpeg, avi, ...).
They were pushing awful hard for more inspections. Iraq is a big pretty barren country. It is going to take time to find the damn stuff.
That's right. It's obvious that Saddam didn't use his best weapons when under attack purely because he wanted to make the US look foolish for a brief time before they are discovered.
Do you honestly believe this?
People now expect to get a browser, word processor, drawing program and so on with their computer, just as they expect to get a paint program with their digital camera and so on. (More, they expect to get IE specfically - installed along with Flash, media handlers and so on.)
They don't want to have to actually look for, evaluate and obtain this stuff for themselves. Let's face it, they're not usually capable of doing all that - in particular, evaluating software can be hard enough for someone who knows the field.
If there's any doubt about this, look at the reviews of linux installs for consumers and what people find troublesome. Invariably its not "the scheduler" or anything like that, its the lack of a good media player, or open office problems, or problems with sound cards or the like.
I work for a company that develops a product that uses the http protocol to move data between the client and the server. The app is written in Java and works well on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
We have to take firewalls into consideration of our customers' demands. Currently, we use the internal Java support for firewalls, which is http proxy, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5.
Some of our customers have been requesting support for Microsoft's proxy server, and feel that it's unreasonable of us to not support their environment. This results in lost sales, plain and simple. The fact that Microsoft wants to charge us $100k for this information is not relevant to these people. They just want it to work with their network.
Telling IT managers that they have to change to accomodate a piece of software is unreasonable, no matter what the underlying reasons are. THEY are the CUSTOMER. It's their money and they get to choose how to spend it.
The $100k plus r&d time to implement a new java class would have a crippling effect on our price point, and would cause a number of our customers to turn from us.
This decision has a serious trickle down effect that can't be ignored. It is not only stifling competition, but stifling development of new software and the marketplace.
> Like sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom and pardons-for-cash?
Clue for the clueless: not everyone who criticises the Bush Administration thinks of Clinton or the Democrats in general as paragons of moral excellence.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It would seem that MS is playing its cards the same way Saddam did. Eventually, this "law and order" regime (if it is to retain that title) will have no political choice but to eventually slam MS down, and good.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
That was a big suprise wasn't it
Good thing the future for Microsoft doesn't look to bright otherwise I would be really woried
The problem with Microsoft is that it is just another company, it has to make money. The good thing about free software is it doesn't have to make money
Microsoft knows this and they're losing (slowly) to linux
It is just a matter of time before a small group of geniuses write the next easy to use, lightweight window manager for linux (hint, hint, hint!!!), and people will start moving to linux more rapidly, and there will be nothing Microsoft can do about it!
Sure they can start offer windows XP 2006 for a nice bargain, but they cannot release it for free (not for ever anyway)
Hooray the revolution has almost begun!!
To paraphrase - "It's the only way to be sure!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
a profit center.
Some insurance companies did that years ago with a billion dollar settlement against them and they used the opportunity to charge off a lot of hardware and document scanning software and the people and procedure development against it.
End result, they got lots of new toys which they used to develop in-house technology and processing and they had bugger all left to share between the poor fools who applied for their redress.
Specially since most of the process was to make the poor schmucks provide information (that's why the scanning,) that was then checked against the companies' own records. If there was a discrepancy, they got squat. Like there was a chance an outsider has access to that data.
End result, insurance companies win, their customers lose, again, and the law was flouted once again.
No surprise there either.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
> Howcomes nobody in the media is asking:
> 1. Assuming Saddam really did have WMD
> 2. We can't find them now, even with free run of the country
> 3. So who has them?
I think everybody - or rather, the few who care - are backing up and re-evaluating #1, since everything depends on that, and it was never established convincingly in the first place.
Your #3 is worse than irrelevant if #1 is false.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This created a whole independent industry, where before, only Western Electric made most of that stuff. Today you can buy everything from a phone from a central office switch from multiple vendors, and they all interoperate properly.
The same thing happened over a decade previously with IBM. At one time, you could only buy IBM peripherals from IBM. IBM lost an antitrust case, had to disclose their interfaces six months before they shipped a product that used them. The third-party disk drive industry was born. This forced price competition in disk drives, and started the fiercely competitive disk industry that we know today.
That's what was supposed to happen with Microsoft. That's what antitrust law is supposed to do.
One option at this point is for the Justice Department to go back to the court and say "well, disclosure didn't work, we're going to have to go back to breaking up Microsoft". That's an option, probably for the next post-Bush administration.
Don't get your hopes up. Munich is run by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens; it was they that decided to choose Linux in spite of Ballmer's pressure.
But the glorious Free State of Bavaria, where Munich is located, is run by the Christian Socialists (which, in spite of the name, is a rather far-right party -- think of them as the Redneck Party of Bavaria minus the gun racks). No way are they going to allow that long-hair hippy OS take hold...so the Bavarian government is trying to force a "review" of the Linux decision and has put it on hold.
Source: Spiegel.de. (Sorry, you'll have to use the Fish.)
Apparently Microsoft made the right donations in the right places. *sigh*
'Course, I'm surprised no one has bothered mentioning to the neo-nationalist CSU idiots in Bavaria that Linux is about as German an operating system as it gets (SuSE, KDE, etc.). At least much more "native" than Microsoft.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
As opposed to the post-Bush administration that comes before it?
Actually the two front runners in that speculation are Iran and Syria. Iran is there because Saddam flew his entire airforce there during Gulf War I in order to save it from destruction and Syria because it's a brother Baathist regime. Neither regime would likely want to admit to having the stuff and both would likely keep it under wraps as a trump card for future negotiations.
As for Iraq never trying to do anything against the US there's hosting terrorist organizations on Iraqi soil, running terrorist training camps on how to take over airplanes and other fun mayhem, and trying to assassinate the former president of the US. That's all he did if you don't count invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia in a bid to be able to economically blackmail the US (and the rest of the world) into doing whatever he wanted.
No, the DMCA allows reverse-engineering for the purpose of interoperability. I think it would be pretty easy to claim this for a file sharing protocol. After all, music/movies will be protected by their DRM separately.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
- "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability"--Sen. Robert Byrd in 2002
- "The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow"--President Clinton in 1998.
- "What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs"--Jacques Chirac in 2002.
Therefore, if you think Bush was lying about WMDs, well, so were President Clinton and Jacques Chirac.And also the same "time" not being given to Saddam to imprison and kill children, rape women, and terrorize his own people.
Personally, I am an independant, with libertarian and Republican leanings, and using Shrub(as in Jr Bush) IMO can be construed as bordering on affectionate. Dubya is in fact an approximate spelling of W so... I'm not offended... But I speak for me.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
A few years ago, a Scientology critic joked about hitting one of their compounds with a Tom Cruise Missle.
I believe he's still trying to get political asylum in Canada. No joke. Haven't heard much lately about the poor bugger.
Yes, doing that would be just as foolish as flying your entire airforce to a country you just concluded an almost decade long war with. Oh, Saddam did that already (Gulf War, 1991).
It's early, way early, to come to final conclusions.
You used paragraph after paragraph of irrelevant detail in an attempt to get past the fact of the case: she spilled coffee on herself.
Yeah because when a customer does something that shouldn't be dangerous and gets hurt they should be considered solely at fault. But when a corporation does something that they already know is dangerous they should never be held accountable.
Why do so many people that spout about taking responsibility for your actions never want to apply that standard to corporations?
vice fuehrer cheney dodges GAO investigations regarding his energy task force
"WE ARE APT TO SHUT OUR EYES AGAINST A PAINFUL TRUTH...
FOR MY PART, I AM WILLING TO KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH;
TO KNOW THE WORST; AND TO PROVIDE FOR IT."
-Patrick Henry
Nice try, AC fed troll, but too many people are seeing through your lies, obfuscations and coverups now. It's not going away. The clintonistas were crooks and liars, so are the current bushbots, and we know that you criminals cooperate with each other more than you let on in public, and have so for a long, long time.
Mena, Arkansas ring a bell for you?
Tell that to your boss. Now go look up "the nuremberg trials". "Just folloing orders" don't cut it as an excuse any longer, you just wish it would. And all the guys who have quit, because they see saw what was going on, and got themselves out because they couldn't stand being around pukes like you? Guess what? They still have all their skills and contacts. All of them. And there's something else, they value true honesty and true patriotism and take their constitution and oath seriously, and they can see through the normal BS they were fed for years and years from career politician officers, let alone from the CEOs masquerading as "government".
Gates: "All Your DOJ Are Belong To Us"
Ruby on Rails Screencast
The Clinton situation was not as cut-and-dried as you make it out here. Clinton gave a clever answer to a question that may have been technically true, but gave a mistaken impression.
Bush made all sorts of claims about a link between bin Laden and Iraq, about Iraqi development of nuclear weapons, and about how Iraq was an immediate danger to the United States. None of these claims has been proven, despite 2 months of unfettered access to Iraq, and all indications are that Bush knew his claims were doubtful at the time he was making them.
I think both of these men have played fast and loose with the truth, whether or not they technically lied. Whether you approve or disapprove of the actions justified by the lies shouldn't matter; if you can't trust the word of the president, the country is in big trouble. Maybe the next action Bush justifies with lies will be something you disapprove of.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
The coffee was not Hot-Coffee hot. It was ridiculously hot. How bout you actually read about what happened before you post. There was a pattern sufficient to establish that McDonald needed punitive damages. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
You don't want to abide by Microsoft's EULAs. But you want people to abide by the GPL?
As opposed to the post-Bush administration that comes before it?
Given that Bush might well be followed by Jeb Bush, then the next post-Bush administration might actually be a Bush administration, in which case the OP was right!
This is assuming that they still bother with elections by that point, of course.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The inspectors had 10 years. They *WERE NOT* going to find anything. They were crippled by having to play Saddams game.
I would go into various conspiracy theories about the inspectors not wanting to find WMD, but they are theories only, with no real proof.
Now they're going to install democracy and ensure everyone an education, a job, and good healthcare, just like here at home
I'm still waiting for that one. In this country you can get a high school diploma if you fail the basic skills test (it would cost too much to keep you in school until you passed), and minimum wage can't get you a 1-bedroom apartment most places (and still afford the basic necessities for our standard of living), and if you don't have money and your tooth hurts they yank it out rather than fix it. Yeah, I hope the next liberation is here in the USA.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
For me it'd have to be: http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html
1.5K of RAM. Very tough to work with. Teachers still wouldn't let me use it in class though.
--
Peredur.
AC covered it pretty well.
The french regime has never been concerned with finding WMD. Hell, they provided the materials for a lot of them. To be honest, so did the U.S.
The french are concerned with making the U.S. look bad and the french look good. PERIOD.
is big on star trek (especially with their klingon immigrants)
but weak
my guess would be they can flaunt them becuase they're working together, everyone knows that the gov't needs and wants back door programs into all the gov'ts in the world
and what OS do all of those govt's (with a handful of exceptions) use on all their desktops?
yea they might need a translator to read Chirac's email but so what, they have everything they need
see the gov't needs M$ so that they can leverage the M$ monopoly to their benefit, the anti-trust trial was a travesty designed to lull the unsuspecting public into complacence once again (oh the DoJ is dealing with them, everything must be okay)
and of course people who don't believe that our gov't is capable or willing or has such things in place is exceedingly ignorant or naive or both.
It's all about power; bottom-line.
and look how many cluster bombs we managed to destroy
Think global, act loco
with the current administration in place the DOJ might not go after M$.
It's one thing to politely disabuse someone of the notion that an Enron officer is actually a cabinet officer. It's another thing to extrapolate from that connection that the suspicion of a connection between the administration and Enron -- and indeed, the entire "left wing" mindset -- is mere FUD ready to crumble at the first touch.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Take this 9-11 link, from 9-11 victims survivors, THEIR questions. Now, here's the challenge, YOU answer their questions adequately, I'll be the first one to say I'm wrong on the conclusions I came up with based on the sum total of the unanswered questions and the government response to date.. All I need is data. Data. I can change my mind,I've done it in the past on various issues, it doesn't bother me at all, just show me the beef. These folks want answers, where are they? You think you can help them, then go for it. Remember, none of these are my questions, I'm just a messenger, they are THEIR questions.
Now, look on the list, number 1 question,SEC section, start with the airline stocks puts, the ones from the brokerage run by a CIA manager. Answer that question first, who-names of the customers- put in those puts? Who profited from prior knowledge? That's a nice smoking gun place to start at. The government obviously has the data,or can get it quickly, kinda funny they won't release it, doncha think? Sorta suspicious such an aberration in the market, directly before the attacks. There's over 50 questions there, go for it, help those victimsms out, you have all the answers, right? And by the way, these aren't ALL the unanswered questions, I can easily find a lot more on some other sites, but this should be enough for you to start with, a lot of these are the easier ones. Should be a piece of cake for you, right? Not being on "meds" and all, you should be able to do it, probably within 5 minutes or so, tops. Let's see it.
Now my favorite pet question,out of many, and I've listened to him twice live and read the transcripts twice, answer why someone with the credentials of a David Schippers, hardly a nobody or any sort of anti-bush liberal or conspiracy theorist, who had details and a warning of an imminent attack,and the ties way back to shrubs dad and when he let in a lot of republican guard from Iraq around OKC (surprise) which happened like he outlined, was refused any contact with Ashcroft, despite repeated tries? Why was he dodged? Answer that and those other questions, adequately,provide proof, or very good empirical evidence in support, and I'll copy & post your reply around the internet,I'll say case solved, give you all the attaboys I can,admit I was wrong, heck, I can probably get you on a few radio shows if you can do that. Probably at least 5 shows I can think of right off the bat, and from there, even more. The victims will put you in for the peace prize maybe, who knows, you might have book offers, you'll certainly be praised all around if you can do it. Give it your best shot. Put it up, let's see what ya got. Good luck.
For the moment, you're right. But corps are getting more powerful all the time. It won't be all that much longer before they're equivalent in power to most national governments. The US government and a few others might remain more powerful, but they are comprised of humans that can simply be purchased. How do you think it's gonna turn out?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No, OSS tries to copy, but doesn't always copy well (Read: still working on a good unix desktop. See Also: Apple for innovation in this area). I've also never seen OSS innovate beyond simple improvements to what OSS copied.
Huh? What the hell are you talking about?
OSS innovations: the internet. The web. Email. Kerberos. The X Windows system.
Don't hand me that "OSS never innovates" bullshit. That hasn't been true from the beginning, and is less true every day.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
MS' ability to goad and drive out Judges Sporkin and Jackson clearly shows systemic failure. DoJ's lack of effective enforcement even on the watered down settlement shows more systemic failure (corruption, good lawyering, whatever). So what do I/can you do about it? 1. Move to OpenOffice, even works on Win 9x 2. Move to Linux 3. Tell anyone that I see or hear considering MS Office about OpenOffice 1.03 / 1.1b2 at OpenOffice.org. (library, stores, conversations) I like to recount the faulty Office/Windows glitches that lost files or version incompatibilities that lost time, money and opportunity and why I'm happy with OO and the simple URL. Or maybe emailed 600k byte Word97 docs with dangerous macros that reduce to 13k in text or .sdw. That's all.
"Selling" OpenOffice once a month, $100-400 has to hurt MS if multiplied or even better an exponentially increasing chain reaction...
If MS seriously stumbles one quarter that gives lie to its projected growth by analysts, stock price volatility may signal even the PHBs and MSce that battleship MSFT can go down to nuclear attack subs, NS Linux and NS OpenOffice.
If you advocate Linux, "sell" OpenOffice. It is an easier first step for newbies and still is a kick in MS' teeth and other sensitive parts. Be afraid Bill, then the deluge!
I'm beginning to suspect that Microsoft's intentions might not be entirely honorable. . .
DISPLAY BELL
And see my sig...
"Republicans control both houses. Republican president (Bush). Economy tanking. Democrats fault because...well, it's still their fault (I mean, just because you control both houses and the white house doesn't mean it is your fault)."
I deal with these accusations on almost a daily basis because I also hang around a political forum. I can give you some of the reasons the republican sympathizers give.
1. Clinton set up the dot.bomb which started the economy plumiting.
2. Clinton stiffled the military and intelligence which helped cause the events of 9/11 that further soured the economy.
3. And it is still the democrats fault because they resisted the GOP and Dubya's tax cut (which is somehow garrenteed to work) and only let a "crippled" amount pass (so if the economy doesn't recover, it is still the democrats fault).
4. The economy is not in a recession because large corporations have not reported losses for 3 straight quarters yet. (Thanks to downsizing, corporate welfare, and creative accounting, I surmise.) So it must be the fault of the people who are not spending enough, in other words, the poor and the lower part of the middle class, who have a tendency to vote for democrats.
For the record, I don't like either party. Almost all of them at the federal level and most of the ones at state level are a bunch of self serving scumbags. So the armchair patriots can properly stuff their "commie!" cries up their asses, where shit belongs.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Man the parent comment gets a +5 insightfull, and I make a perfectly valid comment, but it is seemingly Anti-apple so I am a troll?
/. has gone gownhill th epast 5 years.
Man
No, actually most of us have figured out voting doesn't mean dick. Why do you think voter turn out is low?
"Yeah, I want to vote for the rich criminal corporate lawyer scumbag over the rich corporate criminal scumbag with a law degree."
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
> And also the same "time" not being given to Saddam to imprison and kill children, rape women, and terrorize his own people.
Ah, so we invaded as a humanitarian intervention? I wonder why that's not the case the Administration tried to make to the US public and to the United Nations?
Moreover, if we're into humanitarian interventions I wonder why we intervened in Iraq rather than in the Congo, where 3,000,000 people have been killed over the past four years?
Seems to me that the parsimonious explanation is that the Administration seized a convenient excuse because the real reason wouldn't fly before the public.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa shrugs and takes his money]
The ______ Agenda
That puts us in, let's seeeee, well, 2032AD. Don't forget Jenna Bush (2016-2024) and Barbara Bush (2024-2032). No worry, time flies...
SNS Not Sig
There's hundreds of square miles of open desert in Iraq, and a rather large border with Syria and more open desert. It wouldn't take all that much to bury some useful stuff under the sand. With the sandstorms that go through that region regularly, there'd be very little surface evidence.
Actually, I'm fairly surprised that nobody popped up out of the sand in southern Iraq after the troops went past, to harrass them from the rear...
"I did not have sexual relations with that women."
I heard Clinton say that on national TV while staring soulfully into the camera. I mean, even if you like the guy and think he was persecuted beyond human endurance - even if you understand why he lied - it's hard to dispute the fact that he lied, straight out, on national television, in an address to the American people.
Comparing Bush's statements about WMD in Iraq to that is pretty silly at this point. Your claim is that Blair, Bush, and Colin Powell all knowingly lied through their teeth about WMD so they could attack Iraq? Even if they just thought it was probably true, they were more honest than Clinton.
There were other reasons for the war, obviously. Our presence in Saudi was inspiring terrorist actions. We had to be in Saudi to enforce UN sanctions on Iraq. Saddam justified civilian deaths by pointing to those sanctions, and that inspired more terrorists. And, Saddam directly funded Palestinian terrorist groups that scuttled the career of a promising dove in Israel. The continued conflict in Israel inspires more terrorists.
The administration also presented some of this line, but it didn't catch the press. Do you claim they lied through their teeth about that as well?
Just because the superficial reasons get the limelight doesn't mean a guy lied. It would be as accurate to say a scientist lied when he's reported as having found the "musician gene". We all know reporters present simplified claptrap.
Of course, everyone lies, so Bush has too. But, find it hard to believe that he, Blair, and Powell were all willing to present a bald faced lie, as Clinton did, in order to get the US into a war with Iraq.
This is your cue to haul out the double edged sword of commercial interest, if you want to point out that France, Russia and the U.S. all played their pocket book in this one.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
"Democrats favor policies that enrich and empower the rulers and damage the economy," no argument there...
"while the Republicans are a little more likely to let the productive members of society produce and boost the economy"
I've got a problem with this. The rich and big industry (those "productive members of society") do not necessarily do what is productive for society as a whole or the economy. They do whatever gets them more money and power.
"[your token dumb insult to the President]"
Insult? I just use it so people don't get confused between father and son. If I wanted to insult him, I'd say something like "that dumbass in the Whitehouse."
"However, as for the problems being the Democrats' fault, that is their intent: Tom Daschle wants the tax cuts reduced as much as possible in order to further his goals of preventing economic recovery. He thinks that if he wrecks things, people will blame Bush, and in 2004 he (Daschle) will be majority leader again, under President Hillary, Ketchup, or whoever."
Something to note, is that some people are claiming that the republicans are intentionally trying to bankrupt the country in order to force a complete budget overhaul. And since they have majority countrol of all three federal branches, they would be able to fashion it as they wish.
"This is not true, support for both partieis is fairly evenly split among the economic strata."
Just because I reference ignorance does not mean I believe it. I know very well that the republican and democrat split is fairly even.
Personally I don't want either side in the Whitehouse. Can I vote "Anyone but them!" on the ballot?
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I am making a generalizeation based on the composition of the senior members of out little government. Most are white, male, rich, have law degrees, have close corporate or industry ties, mostly do whatever expands their money and/or power, do whatever the people that "donate" to them want, and/or have been convicted or have been let off on technacality of some kind of crime (felony types if I remember the statistic correctly).
As for voting ignorantly voting, most people I have seen either a) vote based on what party they like, or b) vote based on what they glean off of comercial media. Very little research is done into donations, past affiliations and political actions, or anything else.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
You noticed I used the word "paraphrase". The ideas were all the same the subjects were flipped around.
War is necrophilia.
"The ideas weren't even the same, in fact they were as far from Hitler as you can get."
What was so different?. Both were calling for genocide.
BTW why post anonymously if you are so convinced you are right.
War is necrophilia.
This provides very short hope for Democrat honesty.
(quick duck and cover)
B-)
Shit, considering that there are a quarter million Iraqi Army regulars and probably twice that number of militiamen still UNACCOUNTED FOR, they are probably being smart and waiting for us to withdraw the rest of our troops, so they can retake it all the more easily. Then Saddam will come out of his cabin at Camp David, get flown back to Iraq in Air Force One, and we'll be told by Bush that we have to do it all again 'for the children.'
You obviously missed the joke. Both Robert Reich and Donna Shalala are short people, unusually short for Cabinet secretaries.
That makes you very un-patriotic. You are so ignorant of political matters, and so blinded by hatred, it is dangerous when people like you get politically involved in anything. Become informed about things.
Huh?
If questioning our leaders is unpatriotic, I don't want to be a part of this country.
The $250B figure is *money paid to* corporations, not tax breaks. Bush's lies are well-documented. The rich pay less taxes than the poor, as documented by the IRS.
I may be politically naive, but I am certainly not blind.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
And your life, if you criticize them sufficiently. Much like the mafia.
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
Humanitarian intervention wouldn't fly before the public because the American public is so complacent, impulsive, and apathetic that they don't honestly give a rat's flying ass about anyone else.
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
Ok, true but it is discriminatory.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Yes, Clinton lied about his sex life to the American public. So what. Clinton was not impeached for lying about cheating on his wife to the American public; if that were enough to impeach a politician, we'd have impeachments every week. Clinton was impeached for lying in court, and that particular charge was never proven.
If you want to condemn Clinton for lying about a matter that really didn't concern anyone but the people directly involved, fine. Clinton certainly has some problems with self-control.
I think there is a lot of room to argue about whether Bush "lied" about Iraq or Clinton "lied" in court (although there is no doubt Clinton lied in the quote you gave). Clinton answered the question in a way he thought was technically true, but would mislead. Bush presented his case for immediate war against Iraq without explaining the uncertainty about the evidence. I do not think that Bush, Blair, Powell and the rest presented bald-faced lies; but I do think they oversold their case and willfully ignored the uncertainty of the information. Marketing and spinning are a regrettable but normal part of politics, just as is lying about cheating on your wife.
I think there was a case to be made that invading Iraq was the only possible solution to the problem of Iraq. I think that Bush should have been patient enough to present his case to the U.N. Security Council, so that there would have been no question about the motives for the invasion. But, Bush claimed that Iraq was an immediate threat and there was no time to waste trying to convince other countries (via the U.N. Security Council) that invasion is the only solution. Other members of the Security Council did not agree with Bush about the immediate necessity for invasion, and it turns out the skeptics on the Security Council may have been correct to doubt that an immediate invasion was necessary.
I am sure that Bush truly believed that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. I just don't approve of the fact that he was selective in which information he shared rather than trusting us to weigh same information he did; I suspect because he feared we would come to a different conclusion than he did.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
You can't document even one.
"Weapons of Mass Destruction" ring a bell?
Even Gen. Powell said of the "evidence" he was to present, "I can't read this. This is bullshit." Of course, he went on to read it.
Several of the documents presented to "prove" Iraq's level of danger to the US were later shown to be forgeries. Another was cribbed mostly from outdated documents available on-line. And now intelligence officials are coming forward to state that the intelligence presented differed significantly to the intelligence gathered.
It is not the questioning that is the problem.
Yes, it is. There is not *enough* questioning. Our government should be under a microscope at all times.
If you do it out of a hatred for the country and its people, then you certainly are unpatriotic. Looking forward to having you leave and go to Cuba or North Korea.
Your thinking is deeply flawed. Why do you assume I hate my country or its people? I love my country, as I stated; I love our culture, our society, and our people. I just hate individuals, like Pres. G. W. Bush.
I'm not too fond of blind loyalists like you, either.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.