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Following Bill Gates' Linux Attack Money
UnderScan writes "After researching this material for about three years, Tom Adelstein tracks Microsoft's anti-Linux lobbying money: "Microsoft has unparalleled influence throughout the Federal government. On the cover of a recent edition of VarBusiness Magazine dated June 26, 2005 the editors presented a large headline which read: 'It's A Microsoft World. Five years after running afoul of the Feds, Microsoft is as powerful as ever. Pushing a platform instead of products could make it stronger still. Why nothing seems to stop it.'""
Nothing seems to stop it because people act like sheep when it comes to technology. Try selling OSS solutions to a non-profit group when companies are in thier ear about how OSS is evil.
Give the local company gives them a free copy of Office and they are sold that OSS is the devil.
Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Don't tell me you actually believed that the "GNU/Linux revolution" would somehow change the rules of the game and that future business would be conducted on the basis of competence/performance alone instead of politics and money?
The fact is that competence and performance can never compete with politics, lock-in and big money. IBM, Sun and a few other corporations like Red Hat are adapting Free/Open Software in the way that actually matters. Cash in on that success, stop whining about the "Microsoft World", play the backstab/lobbying-game to the end and you just might win.
Microsoft has unparalleled influence throughout the Federal government.
Oh puh-lease. There are plenty of companies with that kind of clout; there are plenty with a hell of a lot more. Compared to Halliburton or McDonnell-Douglas or Boeing, Microsoft is strictly amateur hour.
For every story about the ills of Linux in the home I can direct people to others who have a completely differnet view.
I agree. Linux is not yet ready for the low PC skilled home user. It still takes someone in the home with some Linux abilty to do the initital set up of the boxes.. but Linux as a desktop OS has grown by leaps and bounds. If you are someone who doesn't understand that then I can't help you.
Linux doesn't do everything right.. But it's not as evil or crappy as you make it sound.
Are you using Windows every day? Did you set up a Windows computer for your parents, grandparents, or other friends because FreeBSD/Linux/NetBSD/MacOS is "too complicated"? Then you are the problem...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What about the other side? http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/20 33216
Btw, GP is a blatantly obvious troll, i don't get how moderators can't see that. The "nothing works on linux" and "i returned to windows $someversion after $while" are dead giveaways.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I agree, BUT 95% of these problems stem from Microsoft having a stranglehold. Think about it. If you were a soft/hardware developer and you are trying to make a profit, you're going to develop your product on the most ubiquitous platform and only consider secondary platforms if market share (potential profit) warrants this. It's simple economics.
Linux/BSD variants have come a LONG way considering most of the functionality/drivers has been either creatively engineered by the community or obtained by lobbying vendors (resulting in drivers that only provide the most basic functionality).
Boost the installed base and provide demand for functionality in your OS, and vendors will respond.
Unfortunately these problems are difficult to solve because they are both a cause and a symptom of themselves. Not to mention the very active efforts of Microsoft to thwart any meaningful attempts at the adoption of alternate systems.
Just my 0.02$
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
And Melinda gates is in the beard of directors of a newspaper?? Holy shit, and is she in the board of directors of all the other news media outlets in this country? Inquiring minds want to know! At the very least we now now that she's not in the board of directors of LXer, which is apparently read by 8,500 people a day!! Conspiracy, I say!!
And the article is rated 10/10!! It must be true!!
And it took this guy three years to scoop this out!? Film at 11!
There's serveral reasons that Linux doesn't work for a lot of people, and sometimes, I can sympathize. I actually run a Fedora 4 box and Windows 2000 right now, and this is my experience in the problems:
;) However, there is a giant community of users more than eager to help eachother out when getting started or even finding expert advice.
A lot of hardware doesn't work well for Linux (or takes an enormous amount of tweaking) because a lot of hardware vendors don't open source their drivers and so the community must be users and semi-hardware developers to help eachother to get things working. Although my nVidia 6800 GT actually gets better perforance in Linux than it did in windows
A lot of services don't work as well in Linux because the vendors don't see it worth paying someone else to support a platform with such a small user base and/or they don't want to learn a new system to support. Micro$oft has made sure that IE still won't comply with the new CSS standards in IE7, and with such a large percentage or the market, they enforce their proprietary garbage on everyone. This makes things incompatible on many platforms because a lot of companies only want to worry about the 80-90% of users that have Windows computers. It's been a somewhat recent trend to support the mac, and that's just plain sad. In time, we can hope that with the server market victories, the desktop can follow.
With about 8 bazillion different distros of Linux, it's possible that a person could pick up Gentoo and quit before they even have their system compiled, while other flavors are built to help people get used to Linux. Sometimes, people just get a really bad first impression. You just have to find the right customization for you.
The most important thing that I've seen holding Linux back is advocacy. I see many who are not advocates, but zealots (I used to be guilty too), and that scares many people away from trying it. Linux isn't for everyone, but I love it for certain purposes. I play games with Windows, and I program on Linux. It's a setup that works for me, but not everyone's story can be the same.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Parent post is not a troll.
I was wondering. But I'm now convinced it is actually a troll (and won't therefore answer him) : how would an AC have written so much in about two minutes ?
Either he had access to the news before, which implies a suscriber account, then posting as AC, or he just copy-pasted a pre-written text. In both cases, I can't see how it couldn't be a troll.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
The parents forget there is an even larger number of people who are fed up by viruses, spyware and other windows problems (yes windows has some shortcomings, did you know ?).
Take a random computer and peripherals[1], to include an 802.11x network, and set up WinXP with the default Admin and a Limited account, and make it all work smoothly for the Limited account.
Still haven't unkinked it all, even with O'Reilly's WinXP Hacks book, 2th Edition.
And my other partition is a source-based GNU/Linux distro, so, while I may be an idiot, I lay claim to being a clever idiot.
Back on topic, the problem is the amount of MSFT in the portfolios of decision makers.
The stock market is a vast, perfectly legal, source of conflict-of-interest.
Sorry, no realistic remedy.
[1] common, non-MS hardware
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Agreed....the insecurity of Windows alone brings it back down to equal with any UI or setup frustrations you would find with Linux. It's the fact that Linux is open source that really pushes it over the top.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Apparently you missed the crux of my argument. The fact that Linux is open source is all the reason you should need to switch. To achieve freedom and security you must give up some convienence. I've been struggling with learning Linux for over a year now, but I'm still not giving up on it.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
News at 11, a big corporation makes campaign contributions to insure they gain influence in Washington.
/. submission is thanks to all the Gates/Linux catch phrases maybe some number of geeks will be enlightened that their supposed representative Democracy was in fact sold to the highest bidder like a century or two ago.
Breaking news, a major scandal has been unearthed, a big corpooration pays lobbiests with connections to influence politicians.
Geez, EVERY big company does EXACTLY the same thing, look at all the companies on the list in the article that gave more money than Microsoft did, like AOL Time Warner. The only amazing thing about Microsoft is they didn't do it much until the antitrust suite and Congress became active in drafting legislation that directrly impacts their business.
The only plus I can see in their
This whole submission is a case of taking a somewhat interesting article on politics and business as usual(a.k.a sleezy) and bending it so its certain to make it to the Slashdot front page using certain to succeed hot button catch phrases.
Its mildly interesting that there may be a link between Microsoft, Preston Gates and Abramoff but I assure you there are a LOT of politicians and firms that are going to have sleeze splattered on them thanks to Abramoff now that he's been publicly tagged as a sleeze and a crook, something most insiders have known for a long time.
Its interesting Melinda Gates is on the board of the Washington post but ALL boards are incestuous dens of influence peddaling between the rich and powerful.
But really, nothing to see here....move along.
@de_machina
I don't mean to discourage the notion that our leaders sell out cheaply, they certainly do. But documented campaign contributions are the tip of this iceberg, dive down below the surface with me.
There are golf trips, and trips to las vegas, or other places this senator needs to check out for him to be able to properly understand Microsoft and the plight of the industry regarding the federal government.
There are the neices and nephews with a different last name, that need a job out of college, that Microsoft hires.
There are the flights on corporate jets. The introductions to other powerful industry people, that both junior and senior senators need.
There's the promise of a cushy job if and when they do retire out of Congress.
The promise of indirect contributions come next election.
And once you consider that the $5000 is more like roughly $100,000 all things considered, and that it only required an hour here, and hour there throughout the year, never interfering with others giving him more or less the same benefits... would you pass over one more free grab at $100,000, when you're already selling out 5 times a day, and #6 won't be all that more difficult?
"Better yet, you idealists should all just die now. The world has no room for people who strive to make it a better place."
No thanks. At the end of my life, I'd like to not be remembered as a back-stabbing cheat, but as someone who strove to make the world better. And today you're in luck: I can take your ridicule. My heart is full of love.
They bought up a bunch of politicians. It was a matter of survival. But now they have all this political clout they can apply in other ways. I don't see any benefit to all that lawyering worth remaking Microsoft into a political force.
I'm not saying they never did anything illegal. The problem is the government was trying to put them out of business. DOJ should have slapped them with a large fine for exclusionary business deals and called it a day. Microsoft simply couldn't tolerate a situation where a judge has to sign off on every new feature they want to add to Windows.
Don't tell me you actually believed that the "GNU/Linux revolution" would somehow change the rules of the game and that future business would be conducted on the basis of competence/performance alone instead of politics and money?
Of course not.
But where do you think all that money Microsoft has comes from? It comes from companies, from consumers.
And when companies wake up and realize they can take they money they have been giving Microsoft, and keep more of it themselves... that is the revolution, based entirey on the same rules of politics and money.
The rules that say if you keep stealing long enough from someone someday they will notice.
The rules that say if your competition has a lower operating cost they are probably going to eat you up. So it only takes a few companies going with open source solutions along with significant savings and therefore reduced pricing to tilt the whole industry that way.
In the end even a very rich company like Microsoft cannot propel itself on money alone as they simply have to take more in then they spend out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Why on earth ANYONE would use Linux for a home system is a mystery.
Because, Stephanie, we read Microsofts EULA. Obviously you didn't. I take you like and accept Microsoft's terms? Okay, fine. But when you click "I Accept", you are letting Microsoft control your box, your computer experience and the software market. Those of use that arn't puppets on a string find F/OSS products work just fine.
But to each his own and it's clear that your post is part of the Microsoft ant-Linux monkey the article talked about. That is, you are not an everyday, plain Jane user. You are astroturfing.
Please yourself.
It's not "clout" it's ability to break the law and get away with it through bribes and fast talking. Oil and defense companies may have their influence but they have not been flaunting anti-trust law and getting away with it after conviction. That other corruption may exist is no reason to look the other way, especially with something as important as software is to your rights to free speech, privacy and financial security. Murder may be more "important" than rape, but rapists should be put away.
There are also important differences in industry to consider economies of scale and product. It takes a single computer and one person to make high quality software. Developing a new battle tank and finding the fuel to drive are at least five orders of magnitude more expensive. Also, I'm not aware of a free fuel or free arms movement who have the ability to make infinite coppies of their vastly superior product but can't find a vendor.
That M$ continues to push it's crap onto hardware makers, vendors and the general public is inexcusable. The end result will be a world without privacy and continued news/entertainment monopolies of the 1920s. The US government had it's chance to stop it.
Now it's up to each of us to put a stop to the idiocy. Don't buy or use or recommend M$. It's that easy. Not for your wife, neighbor or relatives. Free software is easier and better. M$ can't live forever without customers and their platform merits few of those.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
"My DSL connection did not work and when I called support they said that Linux was not supported. ...
MANY, MANY, MANY web pages did not display correctly."
There is an odd smell associated with this.
"My father accepted it well enough (hell, he even told me it was sometimes nicer than Windows) but for the rest of the family it was a no-no. I was keen to learn but the RPM hunt and the randomness of program functioning is what bought me back to Windows."
Your problem was two-fold. First, you are not proficient enough yourself to resolve problems as they arise. This can be frustrating especially if you are under pressure to "make it work!" from others. What you need to do is get another machine (it doesn't have to be top-of-the-line) solely to experiment on. This machine is called in CompSci circles a "testbed". When testing is done and you are sure everything works (and are confident that it will stay that way) then, and only then, install that program on the computers in use. You will be amazed as the levels of frustration drops with the family off your back.
Second, never, never, never try to force someone to use something they don't want to use. There are other ways to make them want to make the switch. For example, I don't clean up my family's computers after they get them infested with spyware, adware, and virii. I let them do it. I may provide pointers from time to time but that is about it. After a few times they will eventually see that you are not doing that constant fight in Linux and may want to try again. The point is, they have to want to do it not you forcing the issue.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
What are you going to say next, that bill gates is trying to get the 3rd world countries hooked on food while funneling money into agricultural market?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
You know, I find it odd that these people (Who likely tried Fedora) have all these problems
That's because it's not real. These posts are troll/astroturf red herrings designed to deflect discussion from the topic. Take a look at TFA. It's about Microsoft, politics and corruption. Now look at the 400+ postings and you'll see most of them are "My OS is better than yours".
Props to the dude that put this one together. It's successfully stifled what could have been a very interesting discussion about the way business influences policy.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."