Slashdot Mirror
Gates tried to Blackmail Danish Government
mocm writes "The Inquirer has a story about how Bill Gates tried to pressure the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen into accepting the European Union's proposed directive on software patents by threating to terminate the 800 jobs at Navision, which had been acquired by Microsoft." Update: 02/16 00:41 GMT by T : cfelde points out a CNET story which says that "The European vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, Klaus Holse Andersen, denied on Tuesday that the jobs at Navision were ever at risk." Believe who you'd like.
> The fact that there's competition in the different
4 #i_have_the_distinct_pleasure, notice items 1, 2 and 6. And what's this guy teaching? Corporate governance. Nice eh?
> supermarket chains means price-cutting and
> probably the livestock farmers of the world
> suffering as a result.
That's called competition, and yes it does involve a lot of hard work, worrying, risk, and hand wringing. That's the price we pay for having a more efficient system of production that doesn't result in us having 10 times as many chicken farmers as we actually need.
Buuuutt, the general point about massive corporations throwing their weight around is well taken. Take a look at this - http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/mtibbets/2005021
I try not to worry too much, our federal governments do have the penultimate seat of power - and if push comes to shove we should be able to "set things straight".
But as the world is understandably revulsed by this bullying, there is increasingly a price to be paid. Boycotts, already harming sales of US products abroad, are merely the start. The reconfiguration of international political and military alliances is another, as witness events in motion from Europe to Asia to South America. Bullying incites an already dangerous world. And it sends those sane and decent elements, who should be one's natural allies, into confederacy against you.
Poor America: allowing your oligarchs to ruin your good name for no more than the price of a paltry tax cut or a cheap Walmart shirt is an awfully poor bargain. Look around: Luce's American Century is over. The dollar's in steep decline, your prospects dim, your employers shuffling jobs offshore, your enemies multiplying like an OxyContin habit, your unbought friends fewer and fewer. Time to wise up.
"Poeple,[and] companies do this all the time"
Are "Poeple" a new type of cloned human atuned to needs of corporations? Perhaps they are all around us and we don't realise? I think it's poeple that accept crappy software without fuss. I wonder what the people:poeple ratio is now?