Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record
khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has an article which tells it like it is. Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,' and has no intention of changing. A telling quote 'Losing or settling case after case, Microsoft has tested the bounds of antitrust and patent infringement law, with little evidence that its power has waned or that its behaviour has been substantially changed. Rivals and many legal experts say antitrust law itself has come out the worse for the skirmishes, while Microsoft appears to have built the ongoing scrutiny, fines and remedies into a strategy showing scant sign of reform.'"
"I can tell you with 100 per cent certainty that when managers are deciding what features to put inside products, they are not considering antitrust issues unless it is in a very narrow area covered by the DOJ settlement," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that closely covers the company.
... Nobody ever said the browser did not meet the rule-of-reason test. It absolutely met the rule-of-reason test to go in." You just HAVE to love that. Ballmer getting to decide what's ok and what's not.
Unfortunately, because of how these types of things have been handled (including laws), they have been either way too specific or way too broad. On one hand we have the DCMA that has sweeping implications for tons of different situations. It has done little but allow for more lawsuits from bigger fish against the minnows. I believe its intention was to protect but it ended up making everything so vunerable. On the other hand, we have MS' settlement. They are basically allowed to do what they want based on what they think is best. What the fuck kind of punishment is that? As long as they stay within the narrow constraints placed on them they are good to go. Asked whether the "rule of reason" test would have prevented Microsoft from bundling the browser, the issue at the heart of the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit, Mr. Ballmer was adamant: "I would still integrate a browser. We would still integrate the Media Player.
While I have reservations about both the browser and the media player being "integrated" (for obvious tin-foil-hat reasons), I am more concerned w/the simple fact that THEY get to decide for themselves what is all right. After all the fucking money that was wasted coming to this fucking "punishment" why don't we have a team of REAL FUCKERS telling MS what to do? Hmm, looks like it is the other way around eh?
And to think, I always believed that the laws were to protect those that could not easily protect themselves.
Its Microsoft :)
They are a financial superpower and they will use it to their advantage.
It just allows the rich companies to continue to abuse the system and break rules that other smaller companies have to follow. Once you're in power, it's much easier to stay in power.
Didn't Crimly just cover this?
microsoft : $60 billion cash
its rivals : less than 1/10th the cash and less lawyers and energy plus hit badly in the tech slump.
duh. did anyone expect anything different?
Fines are often too low all-around. Look at the rich Porsche driver. He can easily afford to pay those speeding tickets, can't he?
Now, if Microsoft could be made to pay, let's say, in free goods. Imagine if the government could force them, say, to actually GIVE AWAY an internet browser and also a media/sound file player with Windows. That would really show 'em, right?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
In other news today...
grass declared green
sky said to be "bluish"
water is often wet
sigh...
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Beatin' the system. =-)
The people at slashdot are going to be so mad about this.
What major corporation/entity etc wouldn't expect to pay for these legal debacles as a normal operating cost? This isn't a sign of MS admitting their evilness...just common sense.
People don't change the 's' in Microsoft to '$' for any old reason, now do they?
Sounds familiar...
As others have said elsewhere, around 60 Billion in cash = deep pockets to bring out some seriously nitpicking lawyers.
They have the resources to just drawwwwwwwwwwwwww any legal experience out beyond viability for anyone other than a decent sized business (personally that's why i think that class suite from the US states pretty much folded in their favour anyway).
"You want to sue us? fine, stand there while we smack you about the head with a 2x4 a while first please"
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
That everything in here is pure speculation? There are no confirming quotes from Microsoft (contrary to the title and description of the article). There are guesses by people outside the company. I'm not saying this isn't true. EVERYONE is saying it. But this is hardly new or useful.
More than 30 years ago, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described U.S. antitrust laws as a "jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance." This article from the Cato Institute by Robert Levy makes a strong case to repeal them entirely.
To me, the people whining and complaining about Microsoft were mostly those on the outside looking in, the competitors that couldn't cut it and now want Uncle Sam or Mario Monti to step in and save them from themselves.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
All is fair in love and business. If you cannot compete, stay out of the market.
it is the cost of doing business. any large business puts money aside for this sort of this. anything else sherlock?
did you forget to take your meds?
Is there anything that Microsoft has been sued for "illegally integrating" that a Linux distribution or Mac would be caught dead without? Monopoly or no monopoly, a modern OS requires an internet browser and a video player.
Anti-trust law is not supposed to be government or corporate welfare project.
When a company can simply write off 'punishments' as costs of doing business, they cease to be punishments. Increase the fines, or make them percentages instead of amounts, if you want to change anything. (Percentages would be better because it would affect small companies the same as big companies.)
Microsoft, like all other companies, has one duty: To make as big of a profit as possible. It's up to society, and therefore the government, to provide them with economic incentive to be nice and play fair.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
this is not even news...i mean simply look at the history of things with microsoft...they are agressive and brutal and take no prisnors...the the costs of lawsuits and the whole antitrust is buisness expenes to them...this is redundant i know but cmon there buisness practices work very well...i dont think any corprate entity or goverment entity could change there ways...i think the only way is open source...because it can't be killed and since microsoft products are very infirior to almost any alternatives...in time things will change and so will microsoft cuz nothing is permanent and thats the bottom line.
Great summary line from the article: "Government is really not equipped to regulate in such a fast-moving industry as technology," Rosoff added. "That's why the most aggressive antitrust commentators originally pressed for the breakup of the company."
So whose fault is it that Government is "inequipped" to regulate high-tech? If I was inequipped to teach my son about how to walk, and he tried to do it himself, should I cut him off at the knees?
And is it moral to destroy a company simply because you can't move faster than the marketplace for its products? And if the marketplace moves so quickly to make monopolies, might it not move equally quickly to destroy them?
The best thing that could ever happen to the PC industry would be breaking MS into pieces. Separate the OS from the application division. That would be wonderful.
I just ran Windows Update and now my CD Burning software no longer runs reliably. I have no idea why, but I'm pretty sure that if I was running Microsoft-brand CD burning software, I wouldn't have this problem.
It's sickening to have to constantly update non-Microsoft applications because changes to the OS wreak havoc with all non-Microsoft applications. I have to assume the software companies aren't whining that much either, as they get residual income by selling updates and upgrades because of Microsoft's ever-changing environment, but for the rest of us, it's the pits.
"They are giving away Internet browsers and media players, dumbass."
Captain Obvious has saved the day! Thanks! None of us ever knew this.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
In a 1997 e-mail to investor Warren Buffett, senior Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes summarized the company's strategy in simple terms. . .
"If we own the key 'franchises' built on top of the operating system, we dramatically widen the 'moat' that protects the operating system business," Mr. Raikes wrote. "If I owned the most successful daily newspaper in Buffalo, I wouldn't want to leave it to my competitor to own the Sunday edition."
Ironic, because Buffalo has had only one newspaper since the Buffalo Courier-Express folded in 1982. The only one that is left is the Buffalo News.
There is no competitor to leave the sunday edition to.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,'
And they're more than happy to spread that cost around--don't expect the SCO suit to be the end of it.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
The unfortunate truth is that for Microsoft to do business differently the attitudes of people in a lot of different positions has to change.
Just to name a few:
Investors have to realize that pumping money into a company that turns around and puts the money in the bank is ultimately the same as putting their money into their own bank.
Businesses have to realize that the one-supplier solution for IT is as bad as a one-supplier solution for anything else.
The government has to realize that they don't want a company competing with them for control over the masses.
Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,' and has no intention of changing.
This tells me that new steps need to be taken. If fines aren't a deterrent for them, then something else should be imposed.
who really cares what ms does anymore havn't you all came to the realization that they are above the law and there is nothing we can do about it
When the profits of maintaining a trust are more then the fines and fees of antitrust legislation, it is profitable to maintain that trust.
Microsoft has had the beat us if you can, stop us if you can attitude for some time. You can't blame them for wanting to take over the world...doesn't everyone. The failure here is to successfully demonstrate that in taking over the world they have used dirty tricks to snuff out the competition. Until any settlement hurts them either in the wallet (unlikely) or in their ability to operate as a company (split them up), they will continue with business as usual. Either the laws are outdated/weak, or the cases are flawed - or both
The other problem is that the average non-slashdot computer user probably thinks Microsoft first when they buy software - why? everyone uses it - so it must be the best, and half the time Microsoft is giving it away, whereby the competitor is trying to build/stay in business. Bundling applications/features that drive other companies out of business (regardless of the quality of the programs) hurts everyone but Microsoft. Although I wonder if things were flipped and if Apple had the 90% share would companies/governments/people be suing them for including iPhoto/iTunes/iMovie, etc?
-The Czars were sorry fucks.
-M$oft are sorry fucks.
-The Czars were revolted against by the masses.
-We, the masses, can revolt against M$oft.
-The masses used pitchforks and rifles.
-We, the masses, can use our wallets and minds.
See?
Don't you mean "tells it like /. readers want to hear"?
Isn't that what the Mafia says?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Antitrust and RICO are very similar you know. Let's repeal the RICO statutes right away because they obviously interfere with the way our system is supposed to run.
The people that need these silly RICO laws obviously con't compete and just want the government to save them from themselves.
What the hell is so wrong about microsoft wanting to bundle it's own software with it's OS???? Why isn't someone suing apple for including a video player with their OS? or KDE for their browser? WTF???
The Digital Couture Collection
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040408. html
From last week even.
Of course they think this way.. they pretty much can do what ever they want and pay for the fines out of petty cash.
once you get this large, its just factored into the marketing budget.. and they move along, business as usual, unfairly crushing competition, and securing market share for the future to more then make up for the difference.
The ONLY way to stop them is to ban them from selling their products. Repeated fining and hand slapping is useless.
Sitting around stating the obvious over and over gets us nowhere..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
and return you now to our regularly scheduled Msft bashing.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Has anyone seen (or made) a complete list or timeline that Microsoft has crushed this way? I know Apple, Netscape(/AOL), and Real have all "settled" with Microsoft in the past. And recently, Sun, InterTrust, and Lindows.
Who can you add?
U know this whole Microsoft problem is a bit of a hard topic. Microsoft business practices are clearly evil. They can do nearly anything they want and it and get away with it as few have enough power or money to even phase em.
On the other had it is important to remember we can have "a law for everything" laws simply reduce freedom and will make a never ending sea of red tape for the next guy that may want to enter that market. Even "protection" laws designed to level the playing field or save lives historically have often only had short term benefits coupled to long term economic and "safety" losses.
Of course the more laws you add has its own costs as well, sorting through all that legalese requires and ever larger load of parasitic lawyers to clear the path along the way to prosparity. Even with such sound legal advice today one (a business) must expect to incur numerous silly lawsuits what ever course they take. As even the lawyers cant figure out what is really legal form time to time ("...rigidly defined arias of dbout and uncertainty").
The choice litigate the evil empire (M$) and break it up like bell at the expense of freedom. Or on the other hand, let em slide and continue to muscle out good competeiton and suffer a loss of an unknown goods and services in the form of products we will never see.
*it's a no brainer choice, A,) damed if you do, B.) damed if you dont.....
MS is not alone in this behavior. Large local telephone companies are regulated by the states in which they operate, and many of those states require certain levels of company responsiveness when customers call -- eg, that 95% of calls be answered by a person in less than 30 seconds. Staffing to the necessary level has historically been quite expensive, and the level of fine that the states can impose for non-compliance relatively small. When you have to decide between spending $20M on additional staffing, or pay a $10M fine, the answer is fairly obvious.
I suppose extensive outsourcing to India or the Philipines will change the equation...
This is just more evidence( as if 20 years of history isn't enough ) that the safest and best way to do business with Microsoft is not to do business with Microsoft. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
why not? Especially when all you're getting is a slap on the wrist by Uncle Sammy for your monopolistic behavior.
I remember reading somewhere that if Bill Gates drops $100 it isn't worth his time to pick it up (longer than 1.24 seconds).
Microsoft is not only to blame for their tactics. Our government lets them do this. After all the trials and settlements and "Don't do this again, okay? Please?" from the administrations, it's no wonder Microsoft thinks they can get away with this. We need someone in office who has the balls to give it to Microsoft like they should.
--Matt
why don't we have a team ... telling MS what to do?
We do, they're located here, here, and here
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I propose that henceforth we refer to "Microsoft" as "Micro$oft".
You're right. Internet explorer is not integral to the operating system.
Till date, I have not met anyone who was forced to buy a MS product. So, what exactly is the government protecting me from?
You are free to install products from other companies in your machine, on top of Linux or some other OS. You are also free to educate and evangelize other people about it, if you feel MS is so bad. Those who are too lazy to do so, simply want the law to interfere and enforce on their behalf!
It is not enough if some nerd decides that a product is superior to the commercially successful one. It is upto the paying customer to decide. Please leave that freedom alone.
All your favorite sites in one place!
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double- digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
1) Settling with governments is not always going to be possible. With over 200 countries in the world, eventually one will stand by it's principles (or more likely get too greedy) and force a change of policy. For example, the current EU judgement is not just a fine, it's a fine + a demand for compliance. The fine will keep growing if the compliance doesn't happen.
2) Settling with Microsoft is fast becoming a viable business model. All you need is to sell software in a market they are unfairly dominating (roll your own mozilla distro for about $0 for example) and a lawer who will take you on no-win-no-fee basis (becoming easier as case law mounts up against Microsoft).
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
But they didn't settle... but they were just nullified.
If it bothers you that much, don't buy MS products. Download them instead from warez newsgroups. It's fun sailing the seven seas as a pirate.
This isn't a troll or flamebait, either. The Govt does nothing about MS and how it continuously breaks the law. Why can MS get away with it and we can't? Because they're rich, that's why. Psssh... please. If our own Govt can't respect its own laws and is easily swayed by the green, then there's no reason why I should be expected to respect and obey laws.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Slashdot is nominally the home of libertarian rational actor free information blah blah blah.
How quickly those qualities are put aside when microsoft comes into play!
I can't believe how many threads here continue to bash microsoft and wonder why they haven't changed their ways as if by not changing their ways they are doing something wrong.
The people writing such things are idiots. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation, not a child that can be shamed into submission through dirty looks. It's job is to win minorly inconvenient settlesments while maintaining to the maximum extent possible a dominant market position over the long term.
If you have issues with microsoft's behavioral changes (or lack thereof), then your beef is SQUARELY with regulators and governments who have not done what is in your mind an adequate job of reigning them in. Microsoft is BLAMELESS here. It's doing what it's supposed to and what any company would do. Companies cannot have two masters--they can not credibly both work to make themselves successful and to limit themselves. This MUST be done externally.
If you actually set your business plan so that you've said in writing that you are going to routinely violate laws and just pay the fines as you go, the execs are opening themselves up to racketeering charges.
Somehow I don't expect to see this in any quarterly report or on any SEC documents.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
When Bill Gates goes and gets a law passed just so he can import a special car for himself, you know there's no hope that laws are there "to protect those that could not easily protect themselves"
;-)
I don't have the URL but it was over a year ago that I read how Bill wanted a car imported and that it was sitting at the dock for months and months because he was not supposed to import the car. He hired a bunch of lawyers and they worked with their representative to have a law written up so Bill could get his car. The law was then tied in with some others that were sure to get passed and the whole bunch ended up going through.
Do you really think Bill and Steve care about the law? With Windows and Office, it's all about protecting the monopoly. The Bush administration pulled the rug out from under the last/best effort to even the field. As stated elsewhere, a breakup of Microsoft was the best answer. It'll probably take up to 10 years for Linux and OSS to bash them down to size. Even then, they'll surely start using their billions like the RIAA and start taking any and all OSS projects to court on IP issues.
Maybe it's time the OSS community started holding quartly Pro-Linux events. Ones where we run over boxes of Microsoft software with a steamroller driven by a penguin who's handing out free Linux/OSS CDs. Or maybe David Letterman will drop blocks of cement from a building on Microsoft CDs below...
Then again, offering to schools, free labor and support for switching from Windows to Linux might get better press. But it's not as fun.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm not defending MS but don't all big companies keep a certain amount reserved for lawsuits and such troubles?
Forget Big companies even smaller ones keep a rreserve fund for bad debts,lawsuits,unexpected losses,bribes(yes,thats right) and other such miscellaneous stuff.And MS knowing that with the way they go trampling smaller companies, lawsuits have become a way of life with them.Just a smart way to earn more money.
Bottom line : I would do it if i were them.
Lord of the Binges.
It's called *gasp* CAPITALISM! Aside from a few issues (Online activation, IE monopoly) I really don't see the problem with Microsoft. Yeah Bill Gates makes billions of dollars. He donates more money to charity than any one person in the world every year. Capitalism, like it or leave it. We're not communists ;) I'd way rather have the courts make an example of SCO. Those bastards.
It's redundant in overall history of first posts. Try posting some kind of new frosty piss joke or some ascii art.
If you're going to count Be, then you'd have to count OS2 and Amiga. But it looks like Be is the only company that sued. I keep hearing about 30-40 other lawsuits pending, but I've never seen a list.
It plays video as well as displays pictures!!
I hate usable software, that's why I use Linux!
Netsacpe died because they gave away a product that waffled between better than and inferior to IE, and was never better than MOSAIC (while that project was active), and tried to get people to pay for what they themselves gave away. In short, they limited their market to not just idiots who didn't know better, but the idiots who also liked to buy things that were offered for free. The only mystery of Netscape is a) how they got any venture capital with a business plan written in crayola, and b) why it took so long for them to die.
OS's should know all about html, and what not, and how to render those documents for humans. They should know all about video and audio streams and how to and what to do with them. It's not like we all have to shop around for the proper commercial C io library to install for every os on every computer, with CPU and seat licencing options, or want to. And a video stream, is just another stream of information, not something sacred and special. Codecs might be, but the stream itself isn't.
But we don't see anyone crying out for justice for companies that would like to make multi-playform text editors, and the evils of being able to preview text files in browser windows. After all that's laughable.
Why one iostream should be sacred and beyond reproach, but another fair game for all is completely arbitrary, and wholly without justification.
What people are really bitching about is Microsoft making their own products fit their customers desires at the expense of other people with the same, sometimes painfully, obvious idea. Too fucking bad. Next time don't settle with the obvious, and patent your remarkable invention. Because if it's low hanging fruit, everyone is going to take their shot, and they should. Why should anyone be forced to settle for the first, likely inadaquate solution to a trivial problem?
And is it moral to destroy a company simply because you can't move faster than the marketplace for its products? And if the marketplace moves so quickly to make monopolies, might it not move equally quickly to destroy them?
After they've been warned several times, and convicted of monopolising markets, yes, I believe it is quite moral. It's the only way to regulate a company that defies the law as blatantly as Microsoft does. Consumers have been harmed by Microsoft's strong-arming of OEMs, monopolistic pricing schemes, and squelching of innovation by competitors. Combined with their complete lack of attempts to rectify their behavior, and even arrogant comments about how they don't plan to change their tactics at all, I think we have more than enough reason to cut them off at the knees.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As long as there are other solutions (Linux, Mac) the whole anti-trust thing is crap. Microsoft has a great product and their stuff is easy to obtain and use. It is unfortunate that until now nobody has made anything that rivals Microsoft's products becuause they would sell better, right?
Might is right?
Lawrence Lessig's new book talks about the perils of intelectual property law. In regard to the Sunny Bono Act in particular he was saying that the law only protects those with money.
In fact he went on to say that the ones with incredible amounts on money are the ones that are actually constructing law. Not exactly top secret information, but it still doesn't make me tingly when I hear it again. I don't know about you, but I can't think of anyone who has more money than Microsoft. It's a shame too. The only way to fix this situation, in my opinion is to have a complete reform in both congress and the house in how laws are made. Namely, get all that fucking special interest money out of the picture.
It kills me to think that these assholes that I vote for every year or so would rather take money and make laws to benefit the interests of companies like Microsoft and Disney than work for my interests.
Cringely also had a column on the subject of Microsoft.
My only question with all of this would be:
What happens when the costs of legal action exceeds sales for an extended period of time? Yeah, they have their cash flow, but that could only last so long. And the more of these law suits get settled out of court, the more of them there are going to be. So it seems logical to me to think that at some point, litigation may kill the beast. Although, it could probably go on for quite some time.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
After all the fucking money that was wasted coming to this fucking "punishment" why don't we have a team of REAL FUCKERS telling MS what to do?
I didn't think that Real had such a package?
Can't find it on their website. Maybe it is hidden in a similar manner to the free Real Player?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Let's be serious for a moment. A breakup doesn't mean burning down the redmond campus, executing the manages and raping their wives and daughters. All it means is that the whole company is divided up into smaller companies, not destroyed . Why should the government do this? To protect the marketplace, which MS is abusing through its monopoly status. Legal institutions such as corporations, partnerships and trusts were invented to serve the people, not the other way around. If they're hurting us, bust 'em up.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Indeed. In some places there are "three strikes" systems for people who continually commit certain crimes with no intention of reform. Wealthier people also often do the same with dangerous/reckless driving behaviour (in places without point systems), i.e. they keep speeding, and just pay the fines without worrying about it. For traffic offences more and more countries are switching to point systems, which is a good thing - continue to commit certain offences with no intention of reform, and you lose your license.
Likewise, a company that continues to break the same laws repeatedly, with no intention of reform, should have some sort of "three strikes and you're out" system, or a points-based system. A company that then habitually refuses to operate within the law should have it's license to do business revoked. Simple as that; if your business model is such that you can't succeed without continually breaking the law, you have a flawed business model and don't deserve to be doing business anyway.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1759791
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Saying that he "just wants Microsoft to leave us alone," Borland International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is hiring away Borland's key employees to put it out of business.
Bury the feds in paperwork to the point where they need to literally build warehouses just to house the evidence in the case. Subpoena every document in the known universe. Always hire one more lawyer then they do. Use every legal dodge trick and shysterism known.... This was the IBM paradigm back 1969 through around 1980 in their anit-trust case.. Bill got his start because Mom knew John Opel. Looks like he picked up yet another trick from the Itty Bitty Machine Company... and the wheel turns..
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but my father is. As has been said, it's Microsoft's goal, as a corporation, to attain as much profit as they are able to. But it's also the duty of the government to protect their citizens - including protecting them from a market where there is no choice. I've read that the Reagan administration pretty well gutted a good number of antitrust laws, and those are the sort of things that try to keep corporations in check. I, for one, am not anywhere near as pro-business as the Republican Party of the US is (and I'm a Canadian), and I am very much in favour of stringent regulations to prevent abuses of the system. While Microsoft has indeed come out ahead in the preceding legal cases, that doesn't mean that we can't change that for the future. The introduction of new laws or revision of existing ones would certainly be a way to do it. For cases where they've won, Microsoft has precedent on their side, and that can be a powerful legal advantage. By replacing the existing laws, that advantage can be negated, and the present failings in the regulatory system addressed. And, as I think of it, governments may want to think of it like disciplining a child. A fine may deter a company, but if it doesn't, you don't keep fining them in the hopes that the repetition will make it more effective. If your current measures aren't working, you switch to new ones. I'm reminded of an analogy somebody once made about World War One: Commanding Officer: "Let's rush the other guy's trenches!" *A little later* "Sir, the rush failed. Most of the men are dead or wounded." The commanding officer: "Let's do it again! I'm sure it'll work *this* time!"
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
I think I remember seen something about this... somewhere
" The only way to fix this situation"
As Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Go read your history some time; you'll find that the colonies' beef was not with King George, except insofar as he was the figurehead of the government. The democratically elected Parliament was passing the laws that the colonists opposed. Their opposition was largely based on economic issues, but there were some intrusions by the government into private life, as well (see the amendment regarding the quartering of soldiers.)
Funny, that. A democratically elected body, but one that the revolutionaries felt did not represent them. A series of laws designed to increase the wealth of the already wealthy. Intrusions by the government into private life. Does this sound like ANY government you've heard of recently?
The difference between then and now, of course, is that there is no ocean separating the government and the governed, so I predict no revolution in the USA.
So how many boxes are we talking here?
With the price of their software I think M$ would actually sponsor the event if everyone had to buy and bring their own.
I know soemone will reply with talk about how the last election was stolen, etc., but let's get past that and focus on the election that is to come. Negativity and pessamism on this are working in favor of the status quo!
Peace.
I say we reelect Teddy. It doesn't say anything in the Constitution about electing dead people, so lets go for it. We have to bring him up to snuff about computers, but we'll send him after Exxon/Mobil first (a refresher course). He'll get his feet wet, but I think he'll grasp the idea of how much corporation suck.
This has been pretty obvious for several years now - breaking the law is not an exceptional circumstance, it is part of regular business, and the fines and lawyers fees etc. are just a regular business expense.
When you have large quantities of money and can afford infinite legal resources, unlike your competitors, manipulation of the law becomes a regular business process that could even be documented.
The only way that this can be changed is for fines for offences to be relative to the revenue of the company concerned and deliberately hurtful.
It is unlikely that this will occur though as such companies are too valuable to the US economy.
In other words we can't do anything about this - we are held to ransom by such behaviour.
There is much to be learned from the history of technology companies. When I was born, there was a company that rightfully should have been a monster today - Honeywell. IBM was down and nearly out after they let the PC revolution pass them by, and gave away the O/S to Microsoft.
Every era has a window of opportunity. The window to unseat Microsoft came during the Internet's years of matriculation into the private sector and commercial use. I peg this era as 1991-1997 or so.
Microsoft was very late to the game. Companies such as Chameleon (sp?) made TCP/IP stacks for Windows 3.1 and the guys at U of Illinois NCSA were building on Tim Berner's Lee papers on SGML, putting a new spec together called HTML. Sun was firmly entrenched in most of University higher education, in scientific and performance computing. Apple had run with the ideas from Xerox Parc and the Macs were clearly ahead with respect to networking, albeit they clung too heavily to an in-house networking protocol called Appletalk that had serious scalability issues instead of seeing the value in TCP/IP.
But, some events came together to slow things down and let the window of opportunity slide shut. No UNIX vendor of the time, such as SGI, HP or Sun or IBM could establish dominance and push standards. They fought for the same merket share and stole each others salespeople. A free UNIX came on the scene with the creation of Minix and then Linux, as hobbyists started to prefer something they could tinker with on cheap Intel hardware to commercial UNIX offerings.
Microsoft started to see what was up. They put TCP/IP into Windows 95, and closed the door on the market of IP stack vendors. Companies such as Exceed created Windows tools to get into X, which allowed Microsoft to sit around in places where a diskless workstation might otherwise have gone. Intel hardware continued to follow a price/performance curve that companies like Sun could not match with the Sparc and ultraSparc line.
The window of opportunity began to close. now Microsoft had moved into a new phase of it's history and quickly established product groups to smash and grab technology. They partnered with Sybase, and then fucked them over, essentially taking the code to Sybase RBDMS and making a SQL server offering. It still was nowhere near best of breed, but they started to build the "moat" strategy to fill in gaps. Memos leaked that detailed the strategy to give away the browser, unseating Mosaic and the newly formed commercial variant stolen by Andressen from NCSA, Netscape. Players like jim Barksdale, once considered gurus of the industry, didn't have a counter-strategy. Netscape salespeople continued to demand licenses from large enterprises despite knowing that IE was bundled. Instead they turned to the DoJ, and a lawsuit was prepared.
The lawsuit, too limited in scope and without rational remedies, tied the court up. Despite calling Bill Gates to the stand and embarassing him, no real damage was done to Microsoft. The companies that had been demanding backwards compatibility since the days of Lotus 1-2-3 in DOS, were not interested in foregoing years of application investment.
Microsoft famously bragged that it spent almost no money lobbying. Gates realized the errors of his ways, and dollars from redmond began pouring into campaign coffers. The election of GWB sealed the deal, the DoJ would no longer seek to break Microsoft apart.
Now, the window is closed, at least for awhile. The upstart Intel based UNIX grew, spearheaded by an unlikely hero. Ported to various other CPU architectures earlier in life, and bundled with a desktop environment and applications, it began to threaten the now entrenched Microsoft. But, in all likihood, it is not the real threat to Microsoft's power. That comes in the next wave of computing - handheld computing and embedded devices, where Windows CE had not taken firm hold.
Microsoft has changed radically from where it was. It rose to destroy challengers like Novell, whose NDS was tho
How the hell do these trolls always get modded up as "Insightful" in this crap? The same question is hypothetically placed every damn time.
Maybe it's time the OSS community started holding quartly Pro-Linux events. Ones where we run over boxes of Microsoft software with a steamroller driven by a penguin who's handing out free Linux/OSS CDs. Or maybe David Letterman will drop blocks of cement from a building on Microsoft CDs below...
I'm confused. How is this constructive in any way? And how does it deal with Microsoft's billions in cash reserves?
I look forward to the day that Microsoft operating systems will be unnecessary, but this suggestion doesn't seem to bring it any closer to happening.
And yes, I do realize that it's meant as a joke. Unfortunately, comments like this make supporters of Microsoft alternatives look extremely childish and unprofessional.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Had a friend who did consulting work for the legitimate part of the dude's business. The guy just said figure out how much doing this or that will cost me and don't worry about the legality of it. So he would come up with the proposals etc, and suddenly the local govt would make it legal in that case for the plan to be carried out. You just knew the dude was getting the plan and bribing the local govt to allow it. Same with M$. They figure out waht they want, how to do it, and then make it legal or at least pay the fines to get away with it.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Uh, is it moral for a company to illegally destroy another company (putting hundreds out of work) then get away with it because the regulatory process is too slow?
"might it not move equally quickly to destroy them"
No, that's just dumb and naive. There are many methods that can be used to unfairly stay at the top when you're in a powerful monopoly position. Study some damn economics, read the damn findings, whatever.
DUH!
The car was a Porsche 959. Gates worked within the confines of the law, even offering sacrificial 959s for crash tests. If you read the article, he became a partner in a business to federalize the cars. The only sign of shady behaviour may be trying to import the car that wasn't approved for the U.S. streets.
To help put this into context, motorcyclists do this all the time, licensing rare imports (a.k.a. "grey-market bikes") and two-strokes or dirt bikes for the street.
While you smack us about the head with your poor grammar. That's "you're gonna get".
I highly recommend the article, it's an interesting read and is quite apropros.
Yeah? So? What's your point?
My favorite phrase: You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!
Microsoft isn't a monopoly. They may have a substantial ammount of the desktop market but that doesn't mean they are a monopoly. If you don't like have WMP or IE intergrated into your OS then go buy something else or even better get a free OS from one of the many OSS options out there. There are hundreds of stories on /. about compatible Linux apps are with Windows, so no hypocritical Windows is necessary because company X sends me *.doc files and I can't read them.
When you get to the end of your road you have Facism. When companies reach the point that they effectively have total control over a market the rules change. From your remarks, I would assume that you would consider it a fair game of sport to pit a team of 6 year olds against an adult profesional sports team as long as they followed the same set of rules.
Yes - MS has the right to produce software
No - MS has the right to bundle software together
- Not in an attempt to use their monopoly to leverage another market
Yes - MS has the right to build better software than other companies.- They have the right, they just don't exercise their right. They use their monopoly position to put out poor quality software. The US auto industry as a whole had a monopoly on car sales in the US until the 1970's. They kept putting out poor quality products and complained about loosing sales to foreign manufatures. MS can continue to put out poor quality software
Yes - MS has the right to market its software- As long as marketing is not another term for lying which has been a hallmark of MS. But then again, people who express the kind of ideas you do don't believe that fraud in business is an actionable offence.
Yes - MS has the right to not release its source codeYes - MS has the right to make a profit
- As long as it is made legally. Why did MS not have to pay hefty fines to the SEC last year while other companies did for the same offence?
Yes - MS has the right to not make public its internal protocols, file formats, internal api calls- It then should not market its products as general use.
Yes - MS has the right to change its software from version to version- That is fine. It will make people like it less
No - MS has the right to not make sure that each and every change to its software does not break some non-MS software- Not in an attempt to use their monopoly to leverage another market. When they market some of their software as a general purpose operating systems that other software companies can create applications on they don't have the right
But then again your are just a MICROSOFT TROLL.So, what's new here? They say _Microsoft_ sees the legal fees as the cost of doing busines? LOL! Did you just wake up after a 100 year long nap? EVERYONE sees these fees as just the cost of doing busines. Tactical and stretegical lawsuits have become the integral part of any business activity in the US (and the world) long time ago, regardless of whom they originate from. Microsoft is not different form anyone else here.
Especially those huge patent payments Microsoft has had to make recently. Before you laugh ha-ha, you need to realize those patents aren't going to be free to everyone else now that MS paid a half billion or so for them.
I'm sorry but you should try to research before you post.
h tm l?tid=103&tid=159&tid=186&tid=98&tid=9 9
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/09/16/0319255.s
Which links to the AutoWeek online article, there is a corresponding paper article. It was for the Porsche 959.
link to billg's toy car story.
SIGFEH
Once you walk down to the end the regulation road, you end up with totalitarianism/communism.
Exactly. That's why we NEED to get rid of the most horrible government regulation - intellectual "property" (really stat-enforced monopoly privileges).
If I was inequipped to teach my son about how to walk, and he tried to do it himself, should I cut him off at the knees?
Nope.
But if you were inequipped to teach your son how to commit murder, and he tried to do it himself, you should.
.. and I'll wager that you'll see a bit more than protest going on. I think the government forgot the 60s when we got rid of the draft (almost) and what was going on back then, and what happened when the returning nam vets started joining the protests in huge numbers.. And then the only support they barely got back then was from still totally buffaloed ww2 and korea war vets who saw service as automatically "patriotic". they weren't bad or wrong,they just didn't have the benefit of hindsight like we have now, they didn't know the gulf of tonkin was a pure lie.
/carlisle group / whatever daisy chained name it is now some money or to make the middle east more comfortable for a few million belligerent people who exist on US foreign aid welfare.
Now? Nope, we've seen the lies behind the big so called wars, and too many people can get real information without having it massaged through a few corporations media outlets. In fact most of the vets I know are hugely anti government, because they KNOW that they got screwed over and lied to. And I feel bad about the guys in now, they got zero info about DU rounds, little info about the effects from gulf war 1, and all of them got lied to same as us over WMD and whatnot. We are all victims, and the government wants to draft MORE VICTIMS. It won't pass before the election, but you can almost bet it will pass as soon as the election is over, because these guys are in it to grab the whole mideast and all the oil. These are these potential draftees parents in a lot of cases,and I don't see them encouraging little johnny or janey to go "join up". The government right now is in crisis mode because so many reservists and guardsmen are quitting as fast as they can. And the reason is because..they signed up to defend the US, not to fight wars to make halliburton/brown and root
Jail sentences are much more effective, because they have the same impact on the rich as the poor.
But that assumes the government actually _wants_ to enforce the law, that is, where Microsoft is concerned.
Unfortunately, that assumption is false. The government only wants to give the _appearance_ of enforcing the law -- that's why they went after Microsoft for the fuzzy and hard-to-prove antitrust violations, but they ignored cases where there were clear, proven violations, such as when Microsoft tried to sabotage Java.
With the antitrust laws, the degree of violation is subject to interpretation, and the punishment can be negotiated. This ensures that Microsoft is never really punished, while "coincidentally" resulting in increased campaign contributions, not to mention power, for various politicians.
But when Microsoft tried to sabotage Java ("kill Java by growing the polluted Java market"), it was a criminal act, and Microsoft was clearly guilty. That might have resulted in jail sentences for various Microsoft executives, and it would have gained the government nothing, in fact, campaign contributions would have gone down. Hence it never happened -- it was left up to Sun to pay for a civil suit.
It would appear that we no longer live in a society governed by rule of law. Instead, we have gone backwards to a feudal society, where power and privilege determines the law.
Microsoft relies on the government to enforce it's intellectual "property" privileges, though. It's more like you providing a wheelchair (copyright law) for your son and then your son repeatedly running over your feet - should you take the wheelchair away for a while? Point out that if he doesn't stop running over your feet, you will?
Coprights and patents are government-enforced monopolies. A simple, effective solution to the Microsoft monopoly problem would be to simply STOP GRANTING THEM MONOPOLIES IN THE FIRST PLACE, DAMMIT!
Ban their product entirely? Why go that far? Why not just forced them to sell each application or program seperately? Why not make it so that their programs could be removed? WHy not split them up? You get the idea. There are plent of not so drastic, yet still damaging things that could work. Look around at the other posts. You'll see.
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
To help put this into context, motorcyclists do this all the time, licensing rare imports (a.k.a. "grey-market bikes") and two-strokes or dirt bikes for the street.
Yes, but this is Bill Gates and Microsoft we are talking about. No matter what he does or how he does it, he is still evil and must have been smuggling the cars in for some sinister plot to take over the computer industry for good.
It looks like an interesting article about a stick-up-the-butt Federal bureacracy saying 'you can't have that car, you'd better spend a bunch of money getting your papers in order.'
So, I fault Bill Gates and Paul Allen for giving the bureaucrats the satisfaction of playing their game. And it looks like a bunch of people now get to drive cool cars that were formerlly verboten by the gummint.
How's that a bad thing? Your whole attitude seems to be based in envy, nothing more.
resigned
Is there some flaw in my reasoning that the "punishment" should have been to force MS to open (i.e. publish the specs royalty free, for anyone to use) their data file formats (e.g. Office documents) and networking protocols (e.g. controlling Domains) to allow competition to compete?
Lock in is the issue. When I can't install Jim's OS and then attach my computer to the company's Domain Controller, when I can't run Fred's Email program and access the Exchange servers, when I can't run Bob's Word processor and access Office documents, when I can't setup a server running BlueHat OS and have Windows boxes attach to its domain then we have no competition.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
As stated elsewhere, a breakup of Microsoft was the best answer.
Yeah, who knows, we might have had 2 little Microsofts running around now if that would have happened.
u can thank john asscroft and the shrub administration 4 fscking u in the bungho
So we have this ammendment that gives us equal protection under the law. Yet we pick one group (consumers) to benefit at the expense of the another group (business owners).
Of course, there are more consumers than business owners. I guess by definition, business owners are the minority, so why shouldn't they serve the majority?
Or does it not come down to right or wrong, just who has the most votes, or uses their votes most wisely.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
No, I'm not talking about breaking Microsoft up. Only the U.S. government could do that, and it lacks the resolve to do so. Besides, each of the two or three pieces could still work together covertly and continue to dominate.
The only solution that will work is to level enormous fines and use the resulting money to set up a non-profit foundation to fund the development of competing products, particularly open source/Linux products following open standards.
The U.S. would never do that to such a profitable home industry. But Europe or a major Asian country might. And it would change the world.
--Mike Perry http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog
... he got the car. But the question remains... how the hell is he planning to integrate it into windows.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Personally, I think they should be able to intregrate whatever features into their operating system whenever they want. When Microsoft uses skullduggery (like funding baseless lawsuits) to inhibit their competition that is absolutely wrong - but there is nothing wrong with adding features. Ever since operating systems were invented features that at first were provided by outside programs have been moving into the operating system - and if they had not installing an operating system on a computer today would be a patchwork nightmare. Also, I don't see many Linux people crying foul when features are bundled with the Linux operating system even though it would tend to reduce the use of other programs that provide those features. Everyone should be allowed to offer whatever software they desire to sell. If Microsoft (or anyone else) wants to offer a software package that will provide all the features of all the programs in existance, that should be their prerogative.
And if that was the law for corporations, the bulk of the big defense contractors would have been busted upas well, along with a host of other companies. ZLet enough of them get busted up, let enough stockholders go holding the bag, MAYBE we'll see corporations run ethically, and stockholders concerned with ethis as much as their dividends or what they might dump their shares for.
I think people in general don't realise that being honest is MORE productive and results in MORE money for the company and the economy in general in the long run. Being sleazy makes a quick buck, but that's it, eventually even the sleasiest will go down. MS is like the decline of the roman empire, still "successful" and all-powerfulon the outside, but once the rot sets in it stays rotten, and they'll fall, it's inevitable now.
As with all questions: it depends. In this universe, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto are all bundled with the OS. They are not tied to the OS. I can take iPhoto, and drag it to the Trash, and be done with it. No more iPhoto.
Since Apple is not a monopoly, they gain nothing by tying the apps to the OS, and even if they did tie them, they would not be in violation of the laws governing monopolies.
In this Apple-monopoly alternate universe of which you speak, it is entirely possible that Steve Jobs would have similar strategies as Gates and Ballmer. The iLife apps in this universe might be tied to OS X, in which case, they are a monopoly involved in anticompetitive behavior.
So, to wrap up:
- current behavior + alternate universe = no lawsuit
- monopolistic behavior + this universe = no lawsuit
- monopolistic behavior + alternate universe = lawsuit
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
Lawyers and lawsuits are part of the cost of business in any but the smallest of companies. That isn't to say that Microsoft is doing it right, or ethically.
There is a difference between legal and ethical. I don't know if what they are doing is against the law but in my personal opinion, when they cost the competition so much money in legal fees that they can't do it any longer, they are no longer operating ethically.
Courts should wise up but I don't think they will at least until after November. Then it will either be more likely or less likely.
Simple, you freeze them in the spot. No money or supplies go in, no money or products go out. The company is effectively frozen in time, unable to do business.
Now, most of you are probably looking at this going, "But if that happened to MS, the world would screech to a halt!" But isn't that the point others were trying to make? That having a single supplier situation is a Bad Thing. If this happened to a more diverse market, such as auto suppliers for a car rental company, the company could switch to another supplier (I'm making the assumption that if the law were like this, corps would have a sufficient backup plan to put into place).
When the company "returned" to business, they could try and pick up their contracts again, or realize that because of their behavior, their market has dwindled. I think this would work better than a static fine (as evidenced in this case) as well as a percentage fine, since charging a small company $1000 for an infraction can also be seen as a slap on the wrist. (Now, I know that a small company and monopoly tend to be mutually exclusive, but I mean other infractions that corporate entities can commit as well.)
So we have this ammendment that gives us equal protection under the law. Yet we pick one group (consumers) to benefit at the expense of the another group (business owners).
nobody is saying that all business owners should be punished because of microsoft.
Equal protection under the law does not mean the government cannot punish you for violating the law. it means the law has to be applied evenly to everyone.
Of course, there are more consumers than business owners. I guess by definition, business owners are the minority, so why shouldn't they serve the majority?
a "tyranny of the majority" solution isnt any better than a "tyranny of the monopolist" situation.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Is there anything new here? I seem to recall stories from many years back about the hassles you go through when importing antique and classic cars, sports cars, whatever, because of U.S. emission rules, safety requirements, and on on.
The problem is not only with Windows and Linux. The solution is not only to run Pro-Linux events.
:(
It's for the US to stop making the elections so dominated by money (who the hell donates money to politicians!? Christ!), and for the people to stop electing parties that let big business get their way almost every single time.
In Australia, we don't have an ideal system, but there certainly isn't an issue of massive donations to political parties, and huge companies being able to virtually buy decisions.
Can the US be set straight?
If not, good bye environment, good bye average families, and Windows for everyone!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
This is traditionally known as a "free market". He's the CEO of the company, so he gets to dictate how things work.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
While for all actions there is a moral or ethical component, in the case of economic regulation, ethics is fairly low on the list. Whether this should be the case is a different debate altogether.
The issue of "destroying" a company in the manner you have suggested is not an issue of moral behaviour. It is one of economic efficiency. Excessive market power reduces competition and thus efficiency and more importantly innovation.
We don't see the impact of Microsoft's monopoly in its full as yet. Microsoft products at present often compete with their own (please replace your NT4 systems with Win2k3..please).
But once we are all accessing software by subscription....no need to innovate then.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
Focusing on Microsoft is popular and something I'm guilty of myself, but we should really be focusing on the badly broken legal system that enables them. It's a legal system designed by lawyers to keep lots of laywers working. And the problems it causes range from being a big piece in why offshore outsourcing is taking off to being unable to handle Microsoft to Tyco's Kozlowski getting a mistrial after a six month trial.
I don't remember it that way. Here was the the way I remember it. Bill bought a very expensive Porsche that was is not normally exported to the US. At first it could not clear customs because in order for a car to be street legal, it has to meet minimum saftey and EPA guidelines. At the time, in order to meet safety guidelines, they have to crash test the car. At $300K each, there was no way the US government was going to buy a few just to crash test them.
Years later, they convinced the NHTSA to accept Porche's crash test data. However there were problems with emissions. During the 90s, emissions standards got tougher on passenger cars. Several sports cars stopped being imported because of this reason (the Nissan Z, the Toyota Supra, etc). Finally, these Porches were modified enough to pass emissions. The cars in question doesn't have as much horsepower as the original but still are powerful machines.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Funny, that. A democratically elected body, but one that the revolutionaries felt did not represent them. A series of laws designed to increase the wealth of the already wealthy. Intrusions by the government into private life. Does this sound like ANY government you've heard of recently?"
Re-read your history. Parliament offered the colonies representation in the British parliament; colonial leaders sympathetic to the radical (dare we say, terrorist?) Sons of Liberty "organization" refused to accept the offer of parliamentry seats. Thus Parliament stuck with the "virtual representation" for the entire Empire. Parliament had to come up with ways to pay off the imperial debt which was mainly incurred by trying to evict the French from North America (Canada) which the British North American colonists bitched about for over a century but were unable to accomplish. It took the power of the British Army and the Royal Navy to beat the French into submission in the 7 Years War (French & Indian War) which ran up the debt. The colonials prospered by removing such a large threat but refused to "pay their fair share." Ever heard that phrase before? Yeah, that was a common phrase used by leprotards like Senator Barbara Boxer in the 1990s running on platforms to "make Japan and Europe pay for their defense" that went nowhere. The people in the Empire that were being overtaxed to pay for the American colonies' defense were the English, the Welsh, the Scottish, and the Irish. The American colonies, even with the dreaded *tea tax* were paying around 1% of their incomes in terms of imperial taxation. Compare that to the end of the American Revolution where the "States" on average raised taxes 15 times what they were in the pre-Revolutionary period. And the British "gave" to the independent United States of America what the colonials bitched about for years; freedom to trade with the rest of the world without British administrative interference. What was the result? Depression. The British Empire turned around and locked the U.S. out of the imperial trade system. The economic consequences of this led to Shay's Rebellion, which is noteworthy because it ushered in the Federal System as a crackdown on such counter-revolutionary activities.
The "quartering of soldiers" is a lie. It did not happen except for Loyalist families who volunteered. Quartering referred to the practice of housing British Army soldiers in the local inns (which the inn keepers loved because it was steady income) and the colonial legislatures were forced to pay the bills since it was a defensive cost. Alarmist colonial leaders objected to keeping a standing army in the colonies since they felt it was counter to English history and their rights as Englishmen, although the British were the ones well aware that the French were itching for revenge and it was only a matter of time until the next colonial war happened.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"Let me give you an example. Say I earn $100k, so clearly I'm not in your 'very rich' category." you are acoording to the way the Democrats want to structure the tax laws. BC
Any corporation with 60 billion in the bank is not serving it's shareholders, has too much financial clout, and is distorting the free market with that clout. I say we implement a worldwide corporate wealth tax. This will force the these mega corps. to either invest the money in R&D, or return it as a dividend to the shareholders. Maybe the tax would work like this:
If you have enough money in the bank to operate for longer than 2 years with no income at your current expense levels, the difference over those
expense levels would be forfieted and collected as a tax unless you either: 1. Prove you are investing it in R&D, or 2: Have an irrevokable plan to return it to the shareholders.
You discovered that a month-long course is useless, and you can't get a decent job with it. Mystified when you're required to do anything beyond configure a new user on the domain. Certainly can't diagnose hardware and network faults. Still haven't even opened that 'TCP/IP for Dummies' book you got for christmas.
Just go pitch a tent on the lawn outside Bill's office and be done with it.
Fine. Since the law is not working, let's lynch the company's officers.
I'd bring an X-Box. After all, MS loses money on those. ;-)
echo "rm -rf ~/* ; echo "echo "Exit" ; exit" > ~/.bashrc ; exit" > ~user/.bashrc
...we have come ta meet 'n greet ya to make sure nuthin' bad happens ta yer pretty newspaper.
bear with me... people are entitled to constitutional protections but they also get thrown in jail, removed from society, if they abuse other's rights or break the social contracts we call law.
corporations like MS have enjoyed the status of legal personhood (thus all the protections of the constitution) since the end of the 19th century yet even today they suffer no real penalty and certainly no penalty so severe as that which individual's suffer when they are imprisoned for breaking the law. i think it's obvious that this is why the MS's of the world act as they do.
imho the solution's similarly obvious - either hold corporations to the same standards corporeal persons are held and suspend their papers of incorporation for the same amount of time a flesh-and-blood individual would be in jail for the same violation (it's only fair) - or revisit the doctrine of corporate personhood which is totally anathema to everything the US founders stood for anyway.
there's a great book about this by thom hartmann.
From form 10k year ended 2003, Note 20
"We are also subject to a variety of other claims and suits that arise from time to time in the ordinary course of our business. "
They really do believe that being sued by all and sundry is part of the normal course of their business and aren't shy about admitting it.
So whose fault is it that Government is "inequipped" to regulate high-tech? If I was inequipped to teach my son about how to walk, and he tried to do it himself, should I cut him off at the knees?
Microsoft is not a human child. It is a legal entity created by an act of government (supposedly) on the grounds that it believed doing so would benefit the people. If it turns out to be the case that a corporation, by its existence, does more harm than good, government has every right and every obligation to take all necessary action up to and including forcing the liquidation of that corporation.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
There's going to be a judge who'll understand, and slap the Empire with a multi-decagigadollar fine.
They have it in uninvested cash. There'd be no reason to argue it's a hardship.
Microsoft will in our lifetimes either reform or pay.
Even if the rest is the law.
:-) - and a few want OS X. Hey I personally think they are all neat in their own ways... and interesting from an academic perspective in others. Believe it or not I dropped out of a PH. D. program in Virology so Windows is somewhat compelling to me. haw
Hey, capitalism - a blessing and curse all in one... just ask Indian consulting firms and the laid off American workers they replaced.
Look - MS has won. You are all right - their software sucks (but is Good Enough apparently), their business practices are flat out BS... but like it or not, people want Windows.
Not Linux. Not FreeBSD - which is dead
I really don't know why yins are so up in arms about MS's strong arm tactics. After all, DeBeers and OPEC make them look absolutely saintly - where is the geekesque indignity over them? Hey I guess we all think globally and act locally right?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yes, it was more of a joke than anything but the 'just' of it is to start holding Linux or OSS events that'll get the press to look. The more press it gets the more people realize there is something else. That's why I was shocked the first time I heard a Microsoft exec mention the word Linux to the press/public. Powered by Linux needs to be plastered on every device running it. IMO.
;-)
Pulling "stupid pet tricks" with Linux to get attention probably isn't the best way to do this. I agree.
BTW, are we supposed to be serious here? My apologies.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
this is worst idea that you could come up with because it not only crossing the line between civil and criminal sanctions. but you also having the government randomly give a competitive advantage to a company, in the form of the fine you are randomly giving away. The solution is not to attack microsoft with technically/legally weak arguments like a browser case. The fact every time a competitor uses the government to attack microsoft because they lost the market to them, they create a situation where microsoft can increase their power by fighting until they establish the desired legal precident and the settle to get the issue cleared out of the way. The fact is Microsoft only intergrated the browser into the OS after SUN made the arguement that having two browsing engines (one for local files and remote files) was stupid (with ther NC). This Establishs that the DOJ should have told Netscape to go to hell. If they had done this the appeals court precedent which defined the "rule of reason" would not exist and the substantially more legitimate case for bundling media players. Had the DOJ targetted microsoft for this bundling instead without setting up bad legal precedents first a valuable line could have been drawn between applications which truely belong into the OS (tcp/ip stack, dun, internet browser) and applications which run above the application layer of the OSI and therefore truly represent illegal bundling.
In your example there is a distinction There is nothing to stop you from liciencing the windows source code from microsoft and creating a competititive product.
That is exactly what companies did when they created the embedded NT OS (originally called impala). While microsoft ultimately bought the company out and renamed the product embedded windows NT to leverage their BRAND. Its existance in the market place disproves your arguement.
a more accurate analogy would be taking Red Hat Linux software changing components so the API changes and still misappropriating the RED HAT brand name to cause market confusion.
I love how you misspelled Ray Boorda's name.
Do you have a competitor who has failed because of your business practices, who he can buy cheap? He'd like to sue you out of spite.
resigned
I didn[t sday they didn't get young people to sign up, they do, they don'tknow much better and the government has destroyed jobs all over. You'll find most of the kids signing up are coming from areas with depressed economies, they see three hoits and a cot and this vague promise of a college education, that's why they sign up for the most part. what I DID say was the reservists and guardsmen are quitting, a much higher rates than before. And you can go personally argue with the first wars and now this was sick vets. I have two personal friends from bushgulf war 1 plenty sick, the dust and the pills and shots combos. Here's an URL for you, the gulfwarvets.com website, you can argue with those guys direct if you follow some links around over there.
http://gulfwarvets.com/du.htm
And so far just from this war we have thousands sick, not getting much press though.
As to me being a liberal, I started my political activism both working conservation and civil rights issues, and ALSO as a barry goldwater volunteer. I'm consistent, I don't see any conflict between having clean water, clean food or a clean government. to me that's real conservatism,, from the root word, to "conserve", to nurture, save, protect, husband, guard.
I am FAR from being a liberal. I consider george bush the current occupant to be a feudalistic minded globalist, when he's not just a tin pot semi-literate dictator and chronic serial liar. He's not q conservative, and neither is the current top level leadershipof the R party conservative. Frauds, globalists, world government wishers with them in the dictartors seats, but they ain't conservatives. that part of the R party about disappeared by 68 or so. There's some remenants left, but most of them? Nope.
DU There's a big difference handling pressed hard DU warheads, and then breathing in microsocopic dust particles from them after they are expended in the field, and doing it for hours, days, weeks, months and in the cases of the civvie populations over there and in the balkans, forever. Plenty of evidence out there that breathing radioactive dust is "not cool". It's highly PROFITABLE to take radioactive waste product that would normally cost money and be required to be disposed ofproperly like any other radioactive waste, and turn it into an expensive "product", it's a nice coincidence that DU is extremely dense and has a kinetic weapon potential to it, but it is disingenous to assert that these radioactive particles are "safe" all spread out in high concentrations into the environment of a battlefield where they blow around and get absorbed by the humans and aniimals in the area, soldiers or civilians.
I'll also remind you of the *fact* that for years and years uncle sugar and his tame scientists told the viet nam vets that agent orange was "harmless". maybe you don't remember that, but I remember hearing that live on TV and reading about it in the news periodicals current in those days, numerous times, because it was "questioined" by people-like me in fact. I did it back then.
The government released any number of scientific sounding papers "proving" this fact of harmlessness, and put a never ending stream of stuffed shirt paid off academecians in front of the public to spread their FUD. EVENTUALLY the truth came out, what did it take, 30 something years for them to admit it? I have even more friends from that conflict who are sick from that stuff. And it's only been in the past two years that we have official record that the whole war was based on an outright lie of the gulf of tonkin "attacks". Although many knew of it at the time, and fighting a war undeclared was still illegal.
I DO get my facts straight before I post. Do you think I LIKE that this bad shit happens, that I gain something from it? It's not ME profiteering from screwing over vets, or heisting the economy, or getting us into highly questionable wars and getting all sorts of people killed. It wasn't ME who had business ties to both saddam hussein AND the bin lade
who the hell donates money to politicians
No kidding. Right after the primaries were over, I read an article that John Kerry has to play catchup. He ONLY had raised about $100 million for his campaign, and was trailing Bush's $150 million.
That's insane. The dollar amount alone is ludicrous. There are plenty of better ways this country could spend 1/4 billion dollars.
But what's worse is that the "news" media implies that Kerry's big fat wad isn't enough. Sure media companies will be raking in the dough selling TV spots to the Presidential Pissing Match, but isn't there still some speck of journalistic integrity? The presidency isn't supposed to be about bling-bling.
This isn't E! reporting about B-Fleck blowing $20-mill on a ring for his spoiled-brat ex-fiancee. This is the two people applying for the most important job in our country demonstrating that they have no fiscal responsibility.
At least Ben was blinded by love. What's these guy's excuse?
blog
or claim that it was windows compatible would you still consider a fair deal. If so any of microsoft competitors could licience the windows source code and making a competitive os
I don't see what politics have to do with what you say.
Of course for your argument you are going to use a reference provided by the military, which will show no toxicity whatsoever. Perhaps the military has a vested interest in showing those results, same as they've denied for years the gulf war syndrome in veterans.
In fact there is research in the toxicity in DU and there exist guidelines for exposure.
DU is at least as toxic as lead (that much is obvious), with the added problem that unlike lead, Uranium oxidizes very easily upon impact and becomes a fine dust which is breathable. So DU is not very toxic in unexploded ammo, because it is not in dust form. However after use it turns into dust which is quite toxic. Also it can pass into drinking water and become toxic there. As a heavy metal it can concentrate in the body (it is not excreted) and the chemical and radioactive components do have a cumulative effect.
So it somewhat safe to handle but not good for you to visit a battlefield where DU has been used and much less to drink the water there.
Other references: here, here, or here .
... in my opinion should be protected in the national interest always. I think all nations should be self sufficient in food, energy and a basic vertical spread of necessary manufacturing, to keep a balanced economy and for long term security. To me that just makes sense. Beyond that, I am for fair trade with exact quid pro quo tariffs. If some nation wants to trade with zero tariffs, swell,sounds good, we match it. . They want 10% on our exports to them, we match it on their exports to us. They want 40, we match it. We can leave it to the other nations to trade fair or not, because if we match what THEY set they sure can't complain about it. I can't think of anything fairer than that.
But, I also said a decent spread of INDUSTRIES should be at least partly protected, not any particular corporation. If they are repeat offender crooks, they get dissolved, their stock tanks, too bad, better skill in picking stocks in the future and better skill in running your corporation is what I would say to "investors" who don't seem to care if their "investment" is a criminal investment.
And a few fatcats should get jail time if they make crooked decisions. I say repeal the santa clara county versus pacific railroad ruling, get it reversed or thrown out, make human beings responsible for their decisions.. fat chance of that happening though.....
The real difference with the hiding option is that, in practice, you are still paying MS for IE and WMP because they are still getting installed. Surely those products has considerable development cost and hence considerable value to MS. If they aren't effectively charging for them when they charge for Windows, then something is astray. Truth is that you are paying fr them when you pay for Windows.
The problem with this arguement is when the cost saving for having the product intergrated far exceed the development costs like in the case of IE or generated additional revenue as a by product of being well distributed.
This principle is documented in the adware business model where companies give away product to generate revenue streams from advertisers.
In the case of IE intergration of the browser allowed microsoft to distribute service packs and updates far more cost effectively than standard methods (windowsupdate.microsoft.com vs telephone support). A fact that was absolutely proven by microsoft increasing the life expectancy of windows 98 by a FULL year without increasing its cost at all.
The reality is if you consider these cost saving and additional revenue sources the net development costs are negativeIf you want to bust the monopoly.
I'd rather like to see Microsoft forced to remove their TCP/IP
implementation or PPP/DSL dialup software. This way we all could
quickly get to spam- and virus-free inboxes.
but the US corperations pressure their Bought Government to Pressure your Government.
"You want those cheep F-16s you enact the DMCA"
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Threatening to sue people for using your competitor's product seems like a crime to me: extortion, fraud, barratry, take your pick.
Msft isn't doing that directly, but msft is doing exactly that, via scox.
"If you incur a fine of a billion dollars, but it protects that monopoly, that might be worth it from a pure dollars-and-cents perspective," said Carl Shapiro, a professor at the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business, who once testified for the Justice Department in its case against Microsoft. "What's the Windows franchise worth?"
Good question, Doctor! Another good question would be, "Who really needs Microsoft to get things done?" The answer is .... no one.
When people realize this, demand will go to the replacement cost which is less than zero.
The sad fact is that Free software costs less up front and less to administer, so companies who switch out have only the cost of data transfer before they see savings. Because Microsoft screws around with their own data formats, getting your data out of Windows is a normal cost of doing business. Getting off the upgrade train saves you bundles of equipment spending, and immediatly cease payment to software licensees.
Their death will be quick. Microsoft's billions go out the door at an astonishing $10 billion a quarter or so. If their revenuse ever dipped, those expenses would eat their savings very quickly. Companies are already moving away and the losses are going to show up soon. When that happens, it's all over.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think your post is sincere but either misinformed or misguided. Are you stating your opinion or fact? A few things....
LDAP was not invented by Microsoft. Look up X.500 or X.500 lite.
IPX/SPX (along with NDS) is still widely in use by a lot of fortune 500 companies. SMB/Netbios is more outdated.
Honeywell was never a threat to IBM. Digital Equipment, Sperry, and Wang were. IBM was down due to price gouging thier customers, but never out.
Windows for WorkGroups(3.11) had the first Microsoft TCP/IP stack if I recall. Third party IP stacks never caught on during this time period. B2B was done through dialup EDI. Local Area Networks were more common up until the mid 90's. Ask Banyan, Lantastic, 3 Com, and a couple of others.
Blame GWB if you wish, but the DOJ under Clinton had Microsoft in court first in 1994 and did nothing.
I should probably address a few other points in your post, but I don't have the time. I'm just trying to correct a few of your false claims before they become gospel to the newbies here.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I'm no history buff, humor me. Did the depression come before or after the British Empire, the largest trading nation, with the largest navy, and the largest treasury, in the world at the time, imposed an embargo on a newly formed purposely undeveloped country which they had controlled just a few years prior?
I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall the 7 Years' War starting in the colonies as the French & Indian War, then spreading from there to Europe as word of the conflict spread.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
Personally, I think they should be able to intregrate whatever features into their operating system whenever they want.
The problem as I see it isn't integrating components. Its using those components to further their monopoly. I don't run Windows so I'm cut of off all WMA audio streams etc. I don't run Windows so there are all these web pages I goto and they're broken here. What MS is doing is trying to force me to pay them for Windows and make me use it instead of meeting a need for their users.
If they included a media player and published the specs for WMA to allow anyone to write their own WMA player I'd be happy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I think Ben was blinded by a massive ass...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Can anybody name a video player for windows that is better than windows media player?
Can this media player automatically download codecs as needed?
IMO whether there even is a better product is practically ignored in these discussions. For mp3s there is winamp, but nobody ever seems to remember this widely used program when discussing how impossible it is to compete with Microsoft. By the way, It's easy to download and install 3rd party apps thanks to IE coming standard with Windows. How else would you download Opera? I personally would rather watch Microsoft go down because another company beat it in the markeplace instead of in the courtroom.
So let's have it: a video player for Windows that is better than WMP.
bit trollent
Thanks for giving credit where credit is due!
Uh, you DO realise that one roup (businesses) are within the other group (consumers), correct?
Dipshit.
I read an interesting book called The Culture of Make Believe that advanced the idea that one way to de-link political power from wealth would be to make the value of every vote inversely proportional to the amount of money the voter has. Which is to say that the more money a person has, the less his vote counts (just a clarifier, since I often wind up inverting the intended meaning of "inversely proportional").
IANAPSG (I am not a political-science guy), and I'm sure it could never be workable, and it doesn't address campaign contributions, and it's blatantly discriminatory, and it's patently ridiculous, and so on, but the idea's got a nice ring to it, anyway.
Especially at 3 am.
The Dalai LLama
...think I'm a Lefty? This guy makes me look like Ashcroft...
My sig could be your sig!
Only that in this case, the Porsche wasn't at all street-legal prior to the efforts of Gates and... either Canepa or Holbert. The DOT, EPA, and NHTSA suck.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
There are plenty of better ways this country could spend 1/4 billion dollars.
:)
Except "this country" isn't spending the money. People who already have giant wads of cash are giving these guys tiny slices of their personal warchests in $10K increments, and things of that nature. In fact, the country is GETTING that money. The candidates aren't collecting it so they can roll around in it naked at home (sorry, I hope you weren't eating when you read this) -- they're collecting it to SPEND. Hotels, food, electricians, travel, print shops, ten billion "Vote For Me You Bitches" lapel pins, etc.
And frankly, $250M isn't crap in the big picture. Christ, my own company, which is medium-sized at best, just announced QUARTERLY earnings of about $6B.
The presidency isn't supposed to be about bling-bling.
New here?
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
At $300K each, there was no way the US government was going to buy a few just to crash test them.
The government doesn't buy them, the manufacturer has to donate them. The problem wasn't the cost (after all, the Porsche GT1 will be US legal), the problem was the very small number produced (public-sale production was the minimum required to satisfy Group B rally homologation requirements).
Years later, they convinced the NHTSA to accept Porche's crash test data.
Actually, they enacted the supercar law, which reduces the restrictions providing only a certain number are imported and each vehicle is driven no more than 2500 miles each year on public roads.
Finally, these Porches were modified enough to pass emissions. The cars in question doesn't have as much horsepower as the original but still are powerful machines.
Actually, the Porsche emissions were fine under the rules of the new supercar law. Canepa, a Califorina Porsche importer and "tuner" did make engine, exhaust, and other modifications, but these were intended to increase the power of the car. When the 959 came out in 1988 it's 450HP was impressive. But in 2000 or so, when this all took place, 450HP was fairly run-of-the-mill. As I recall, he notched them up to about 600HP.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I don't have the URL but it was over a year ago that I read how Bill wanted a car imported and that it was sitting at the dock for months and months because he was not supposed to import the car. He hired a bunch of lawyers and they worked with their representative to have a law written up so Bill could get his car. The law was then tied in with some others that were sure to get passed and the whole bunch ended up going through.
Sounds like an example of the problem of riders being attached to legislation.
Since I completely switched to linux (all 6 machines), I am determined to ignore any Microsoft rants on Slashdot. Don't tempt me, please!
There you are, staring at me again.
> Not in an attempt to use their monopoly to leverage another market
So, it is acceptable for government to tell a company that it cannot
produce a new product for a new market. I'm glad you want the
government to prevent new products from being released.
>They have the right, they just don't exercise their right. They use
>their monopoly position to put out poor quality software.
Poor quality is your opinion. Need I point out a few much lower
quality than professional software packages included in a typical
open source distribution?
>As long as marketing is not another term for lying which has been a
>hallmark of MS.
Subjective again. MS has the right to say its products are the best
in the marketplace. End users have to make their own decision.
>But then again, people who express the kind of ideas you do don't
>believe that fraud in business is an actionable offence.
You have to prove fraud first. Just because you have an anti-MS
opinion does not mean that they committed fraud.
>Why did MS not have to pay hefty fines to the SEC last year while
>other companies did for the same offence?
Name some companies.
>It then should not market its products as general use.
So, every company should be forced to give all of its intellectual
property away to anyone.
>No - MS has the right to not make sure that each and every change to
>its software does not break some non-MS software
>Not in an attempt to use their monopoly to leverage another market.
>When they market some of their software as a general purpose operating
>systems that other software companies can create applications on they
>don't have the right
I guess that you want government control over commercial businesses
telling them exactly what products they can produce. I suspect that
you would eventually advocate price controls too.
And yes, I do realize that it's meant as a joke. Unfortunately, comments like this make supporters of Microsoft alternatives look extremely childish and unprofessional.
:P
You'll have to point me to the rule that says that people have to act grown up and professional when they're not at work or paying bills.
It's been a long time.
Misreadings are common on slashdot... I never said LDAP was invented by Microsoft. It was invented at the University of Michigan as a lightweight X.500 implementation. Nevertheless, pointing out that AD interfaces with LDAP is an important point. I'm sorry if you inferred that it was invented by Microsoft.
I contend that had Novell given up on IPX based Netware, and converted earlier to TCP/IP with GINA integration (which they eventually did), they may have had better market penetration. I would ask you to prove your assertion that IPX/SPX is still "widely used". It's a great deal different than saying it's still around and in use in one or two departments.
Despite your claim of 3rd party stacks not having caught on "period", you are flat out wrong. It's the kind of niggling distinction that WFW 3.11 had a TCP/IP stack that you can expect the pedantic on slashdot to come up with. Windows 95 was the first major new release of Windows to ship with TCP/IP. Windows 3.1 did not have it, and Netmanage's Chameleon and other 3rd party IP stacks were in wide use. Sorry you didn't see it.
The fact is, no anti-trust legislation has been introduced and no new cases files against Microsoft under the Bush administration. Remind me, exactly, which administration was in power when the DoJ suit was filed? Uh-huh.
Enjoy...
"I'm no history buff, humor me. Did the depression come before or after the British Empire, the largest trading nation, with the largest navy, and the largest treasury, in the world at the time, imposed an embargo on a newly formed purposely undeveloped country which they had controlled just a few years prior?"
The depression happened AFTER independence. The British Empire locked out the United States of the imperial system. The leaders of the newly formed U.S. thought the British would simply allow them to continue trading with the entire Empire without paying anything. The British decided to teach them a lesson and to show the U.S. how little profit there was in trading with non-Imperial possessions which the colonial merchants had complained about for years (their supposed trading losses, kinda like how the RIAA and MPAA today complain about how many sales they "lost" due to piracy which is a flawed assumption since most of those "losses" would've never been actual sales to begin with).
So alas, it can be summarized that the British Empire taught the newly formed United States a lesson that it would not profit from the imperial system when the new nation was unwilling to pay for its administrative costs, or the cost it took to keep those former colonies from being swallowed up by the French Empire earlier.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall the 7 Years' War starting in the colonies as the French & Indian War, then spreading from there to Europe as word of the conflict spread."
:)
Yes, the war did start in North America. The war is known in Europe (and the rest of the world) as the "7 Years War." It is still taught in the United States today that it was called "the French and Indian War."
The war is also the very reason why we have the United States today. George Washington didn't get a permanent commission in the British Army after the end of the war because he could not speak French (crucial in negotiations) and also because he proved to be inept in that war. He lost a fort to the French because he failed to take the advice of the native tribe that was allied with the British (they told him not to settle in the place during the winter due to the rains but he did anyways and it flooded the place, trapping him). He also signed a surrender to the French that admitted his and the guilt of the British because he could not speak French and he relied on an interpreter who was Dutch and did not really speak French that well. They don't teach that in the K-12 educational system.
Washington was itching for revenge against the British Army. That's why he himself volunteered at the first opportunity to lead the Continental Army with a suit specially made for him to impress the leaders. He did his very best to create the same discipline the British Army was known for in the Continental Army. It is a misnomer to think the Continental Army fought like militias because they did not. Washington hated the militias and the riflemen because they had proven so ineffective in the 7 Years War and they'd leave a battle if they thought they'd be killed or if they had crops to plant.
The 7 Years War should be remembered as the first truly world war. The British and the French fought each other on every known continent at the time. That's pretty impressive.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Is that you would not be satisfied if microsoft lived up to in.
If microsoft release a core kernel and told companies build up there own OS just don't infringe on our brand by calling it windows or claim it was compatiable with windows.
you would be complaining this solution would not change the market place because consumers would not consider kernel only version a "real OS"
Believe what you want to believe. If you do some research, you might find your statements to be false. Which means what? You can't undo your post.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.