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MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed
Bill Harper writes "Open source software is a 'waste of money,' a Microsoft executive has said. He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot. What's interesting though is that this is just the latest in a series of nonsense arguments put forward by MS in Asia because it's scared of Linux stealing the market. An early one was that open-source software is anti-competitive!" Funny thing is, the MS executive (Chris Sharp) used to work for Red Hat.
...so that's why they named it C#!
webpage
Is that "waste of money" like in beer?
Can "free" be a waste of money...
Um...I guess we'll need less sysadmins per network. Patching and virus cleanup would be a bit easier, requiring less manpower and less time.
Stability and reliability means less work for the IT industry...thus an economic hit. Saving money is definitely bad for the economy. Whose economy, I'm not sure.
(just leave out the details of how he corrupted your girl if that's the case...)
;)
Unless you have pictures
"Software is like sex - it's better when it's free."
- Linus Torvalds
So, Microsoft is not at all worried about open-source software destroying its market control because they are damaging themselves and no one is using open source anyway.
And this is exactly why Microsoft doesn't make big number of this non-existent piratewarez called Open Source. No one is using it and we are not concerned about that. At all. Please change back to Microsoft and stop using what you don't use already.
I thought the *prostitute* was the one that was supposed to be screwed, not the client.
And by God, if anyone can recognize a waste of a customer's money it's Microsoft!
Sending money to a foreign company? Not all governments are American. Hell, I'll venture most aren't.
Mid-size and large companies often have support agreements (for a hefty price, but it's usually effective) with Microsoft. Call 'em up, get a person, and sometimes you'll get a fix just for your problem. Kinda makes you wonder what drives their patches - the future implications and risks, or the immediate buck behind the phone call?
Annonymous Coward: You are completely fucking delusional.
LOL! Out of the mouths of 'babes'!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
a base version of windows that had enought functionality to be useful
that's nice, but they'd have to write it first.
in related news, health food causes cancer, according to a McDonalds spokesperson
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
"Yes, yes, you Americans have very large penis!"
.. then duly ignore the stupid American who is trying to tell them how to run their country and go off and do precisely whatever it was that they intended to do before the stupid American started mouthing off.
I just love the way Asian folks do business. It varies a bit from country to country of course, but generally, they'll make a nice polite show of pretending to give a shit about the rubbish the stupid American is spouting, then go quietly back to whatever they were doing before, unmoved. It's fun to watch the religous types pushing their word in Chinatown anywhere. The victims listen politely, nod and smile, and go on their way. The religious types read the situation to mean that because (a) no-one told them to f*ck right off, and (b) someone nodded and smiled at them, that they're getting their message through. This is why Chinatown precincts are always more clogged with religous freaks than elsewhere in any given city.
Here in Sydney, Australia it's generally the Morons pushing their false religion with their stilted crash-course Chinese. They're incapable of picking what nationality any given Asian person is, so they try to talk to everyone in Mandarin Chinese (very few people actually speak Mandarin here in Sydney, it's a predominantly Cantonese thing here). It's amusing to wander along 10 metres behind them, watching them greet random people with their "Ni Hao" and a big cheesy smile and all the wrong intonations, and watch the victims return the greeting with a polite nod and smile, then crack up laughing once the Morons (mormons?) have passed!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
then they laugh at you, ...then you beat the living hell out of them. Then you raze their compound. Then you take all their code and release them to the world as comic relief for CS students.
:)
then they fight you, (we are here)
then you win.
Until then, just be sure you grep your own source code for "MS Engineers are Weenies" so it doesn't look TOO bad when the revolution happens.
I bet his Karma sucks too.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Windows is open source also, well not legally, but now it is :) I guess everyone running windows should do what Microsoft said and shoot yourself in the foot now. Bill Gates should shoot himself in the head.
'"If you are compelled to give back to the community, then you don't have the opportunity to benefit from that knowledge,"'
-Chris Sharp
This statement is absolutely spot on. After all, what benefits could possibly come from sharing information and knowledge?
The same argument should be used to end the cheap/free distribution of HIV drugs in Africa. After all, who benefits from research into saving lives if those lives are saved without reasonable profit margins?
In fact we should put an immediate end to free condom distrubution, because somebody had to work very hard indeed to come up with the design of the resevoir tip. Nobody benefits from condoms, especially free ones.
Libraries should also be dismantled and the books therein burned. If you want the information, you should have to buy the books, because otherwise nobody benefits.
As a former teacher of English in the developing world I am appaled at my own past behaviour of occasionally offering language instruction for free. Clearly nobody at all has benefited from this compulsion to 'give back to the community'.
I fully agree with Mr Sharp (with his delightfully descriptive name) that all information should be propriatary.
If someone wants to know, for example, how I am on any given day, I simply tell them that the information belongs to me, but I offer a range of scalable licensing plans to allow access to that information. Who could possibly benefit from me saying 'I am well' without proper remuneration?
Unsecure research, open communication, and 'giving back to the community' have done nothing since the beginning of time except stifle innovation and harm consumers' interests.
As a result of my new dedication to Knowlege (TM), I am pleased to offer the following innovative products that no consumer can do without:
I Am Well (TM)
Making Fire (TM)
Boiling Leaves to Make a Tasty Beverage (TM)
Conveying Heavy Objects More Easily with Narrow Cylinders (TM)
Making Pleasing Sounds by Striking Membranes under Tension (TM)
Futher products are in developent.
You've obviously never been with a prostitute in Soviet Russia.
For I am only a lonely slashdot subscriber.
Then where's the star after your username? You're no slashdot subscriber!!
(in case anybody wondered, yes, having a 4-digit or less Slashdot UID and/or a star after your name gets you laid regularly **)
(** but you better develop a liking for those bearded dudes who hang out in the back of the room at the LUG meetings)
resigned
Honorable officals, as you can see FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD Open Source FUD FUD This simply can't be the case! FUD FUD FUD We must stand up against this and FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD You're wasting your money on these people who don't know what.. FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD Here have some cash oh and some FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD
Of course, we all know what the pipes that the plumber installs and the software MS builds have in common...? They're both full of !
And for all that cost, Visual Studio still hasn't got half the functionality of emacs...
Yes, of course. The very few IDE's have as many capabilities as Emacs - setting breakpoints, watch windows, Memory Windows, etc is a breeze in Emacs. The only MS product which comes anywhere close is probably Notepad.
Fool! Don't give them any ideas! Do we really need to add more things into Emacs???