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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.'""
It's a shame that the pro Windoze + Micro$oft reports get aired across the web with reeding figures in the hundreds of thousands, while this well reserched quality article of pure uncomfortable truth sits here preaching to the choir.
Times like this make me wish I owned a newspaper.
The sheer amounts of cash microsoft has at its disposal distorts all things including politics. The recent Gattes world health initiatives and other gestures of good will insure M$ remains a dandy in the eye of the general public. Now their enemies are another story...
I totally know what you mean (without trolling). 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.
Here in .br, while the whole world sees us as a big case for FLOSS / Linux, the results of this so greatly announced program are yet to be seen. I've been involved in a government project or three, and I've seen things like they throwing away perfectly working Linux-based applications and changing them to Microsoft just to realize that it won't work.
In the end, more money goes to hire dozens of different software houses just to duct'tape the system to hell so that it half-assed works.
And I'm not even talking about the USA, where the market holds potentially more money for MS than here.
I know this was not exactly on-topic, and I've RTFA, but I had to say it.
Microsoft has unparalleled influence throughout the Federal government.
If by unparalleled they mean, 'a lot, but not so much as oil and pharmaceuticals', then I might agree.
Anyway...
Not as much substance as I hoped as the article 'follows the money'. More conspiracy theories than anything else.
It certainly shows Microsoft repenting of its earlier mistake for not paying off politicians like all the other major corporations did so they didn't get investigated for violating laws. I'm sure all these wonderful contributions will keep it safe from further litigation and give it more power to manage the law making process as time goes on.
I think I read it here somewhere awhile back and I totally agree, America IS a corperate Oligarchy
The system is indeed for sale
*DrugCheese rants*
I am not sure, but donating US $5000 is enough to swing the vote of a US Senator ? From the article that is what the Preston Gates firm contributed to the guy (perhaps the table is listing the amount in thousands, who knows). If that is the case, then the hard times are hitting even Congress.
Your results will vary with what you start with. Had you been a Win user your entire life nad tried to change in a day? How is your background with computing? Which disto did you decided to try? Did you verify that what you wanted was supported?
Computers that are produced by the mass market are designed to run Windows, you need to take a moment and make sure that they can run Linux. And With Distros like Ubuntu there should be no reason they should not. Or what about Gentoo. Everything will work in Gentoo once you make it happen.
RTFA again for the best results.
easy, if you have the amount of money MS has, the can FORCE hardware vendors to write drivers ONLY for MS or did you think that MS writes drivers for ATI, DSL e.a. hardware ? Linux is all about reverse engineering. NO hardware vendor (Besides a few exceptions) share info about their boards. Moreover hardware ALSO has bugs, writing drivers according to theoretical specs makes lots of 'cheap' cards break because using buggy chips. I just installed ubuntu out of the box on my brand new DELL D610 laptop and all worked perfectly. However I must admit that linux is NOT yet ready for real end users. Games is a notable shortcoming. Also LINUX still does require too much tinckering.
I'm afraid that I agree. Linux is nice for us techies, but for real world use it's a complete hassle. Once the issues regarding drivers and hardware are solved, it might stand a better chance. But as it is, there's no way that a normal person would step away from the ease of Windows XP.
On my XP box, I haven't had a single bit of trouble for over a year. I haven't had to reload the OS, I haven't had any system crashes, etc. Whatever I plug in installs itself and it works. Why would I choose to hassle with Linux in that case? Now, for my DBA position I use Linux because I understand it, but your everyday Joe? Forget it.
You know, I find it odd that these people (Who likely tried Fedora) have all these problems (when the distro is supposed to configure everything for you), while when I install a "Geek Distro" like Slackware or Gentoo on my system, just about everything works perfectly (and my system's a Toshiba laptop, on which a clean install of WinXP has almost no functionality).
I don't know what these people put in their computers that make them work so poorly. (But i presume they're Dell or Gateway boxes, with lots of sketchy child-labour manufactured components).
If your DSL connection is running into your router, there's no reason for your provider to have stated that 'linux is not supported'.
And I hate to break this to you also, but I've owned a couple machines (with nothing wierd in them) that only Linux would install and boot up. My parents' last computer wouldn't run Win95, 98, or NT. But Mandrake 6.1 installed onto it fine, found all the hardware (including the unusual printer they have), and ran fine. (It was a 400Mhz K6-II with 256M RAM.)
I've set up Linux for a bunch of 'real average Jane' students, and they don't even notice a difference. After getting one set up with Mandrake, Firefox, and GAIM, her roommate came in and asked "oh, is that a new version of AIM?" not "what happened to windows?".
My roommate MS work centered around using Linux machines with video capture cards, so I don't know what you were trying to do that you couldn't. the All In Wonder cards from ATI are pretty popular, and have extensive driver support.
So, I'm calling complete bull on you. I'm not an ultra fanatical linux geek, either. I just use it, and it works. It takes no longer to boot than XP, and has far more useful application to me (lack of viruses, ease of ssh access to other machines, higher granular control over individual resources) than Windows ever has.
antipaucity
Actually, I don't think it matters. Even if this is a troll it reflects many people's experience of Linux. I'm sceptical of the claim that konqueror couldn't display the router web page because I'm sure most routers use pretty basic HTML. And I'm sceptical about mp3s skipping unless this was a very old PC. But I've had plenty of problems with playing video (though mplayer is my player of choice even on MacOS X), printers, DSL configuration, and video cards. And to add one to the list, I still can't get any sound out of the SUSE box I use at work. (Yes, I'm sure it's a simple thing to fix, but the points is that with Windows and MacOS X I've never even had anything to fix.)
So I really don't think this should be modded troll.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Remember when everyone bitched day in and day out about how unstable windows was? Not so much anymore.
Which planet are you from? Ok, I guess you don't work in tech support, but I see more Microsoft Windows machines bite the dust each day than I've had hot dinners. OS X and Linux users cost the department far less in tech support issues (a factor of 17-1, in fact).
We're not just talking about the instability due to the inherant security flaws that allow all sorts of spyware, viruses, trojans and such like. We're talking about things like plugging and unplugging USB devices that cause blue-screens of death. Printer drivers taking out the whole OS. Constant slowdowns despite monthly "defrags". The list goes on.
Windows has a long way to go to catch up with standard Linux distributions as far as stability, performance, scaleability, UI and feature set goes, and unfortunately whilst they are still playing "catch-up" they are also dragging further and further behind.
Used Ubuntu Linux to switch my sister's notebook PC to Linux and it worked like a charm.
But why does she use Linux? Simple newbie like reason. It comes with more preinstanned simple little games then Windows. In XP she had the abilty to play, mine sweeper, pineball, and solitare...
Now she and my mother are constantly playing gnome same game, any of the multiple flavors of tetris, and majong. (oh god if I could spell)
The problem is that the US political system is the most corrupt political system in the world. What do you expect when it is bribery set in system?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Watch closely where Gates is putting his money. He is slowly and quietly liquidating his MSFT stock holdings and putting the money into Big Pharmaceutical stocks. Gates is one of the biggest Big Pharma stockholders in the world. And gee, what a surprise, his "charities" (and I use that term loosely) are solely dedicated to getting the 3rd World hooked on Big Pharma products.
It appears the only monopoly more profitable than Microsoft is Pharmaceuticals.
To make this short and simple, virtually NOTHING worked properly under Linux.
Maybe 4 years ago... MAYBE...
Video cards could not get maximum resolution.
Capture programs, for my ATI All In WOnder and Video camera did not work. In fact my ATI cards advanced features (remote control amongst other things) didn't work at all.
That's ATI's fault for hating Linux, not the Linux community. We can't exactly create great drivers when the company doesn't release its specifications on the cards. NVIDIA doesn't either, as far as I'm aware, but that doesn't matter because they have great Linux drivers.
As for remote controls and capture program, LIRC does most remote control functions perfectly, and a lot of distros have it already installed (I believe), and unless I'm mistaking the definition you are referring to for "capture program", GIMP does fine.
My printer (Brother all in one fax/copier/printer) did not work.
Most modern distros come preconfigured with CUPS, ready to print right out of the box.
My DSL connection did not work and when I called support they said that Linux was not supported.
So does mine, and I'm posting this message, aren't I? "Not supported" means "we aren't going to help you with any problems you have". The DHCP and PPP protocols are straightforward, so it is obviously a problem with your network card. Unless you are using the same card in all computers, at least ONE, more likely all but that one you tried, of the computers should have had internet access right out of the box.
My mp3 and mpeg video and music files played but they skipped horribly.
What distro did you try? I've NEVER had that problem, EVER (and I have 2 ATI cards!).
I couldn't log into my router via konqueror to change/view settings
I haven't configured my router through Windows period, only Linux. If your network card wasn't working like you said earlier, then that's a redundant problem. Unplug your ethernet cable from your computer and try configuring your router through Windows, it's the same thing.
MANY, MANY, MANY web pages did not display correctly.
What were you using Mozilla during the browser wars?
I was keen to learn but the RPM hunt and the randomness of program functioning
If you are using any RPM based distro, that's your own fault. RPM "hunting" and RPM "hell" (much like DLL "hell") make every RPM based distro crap the minute they base their system off of it (of course, that is only my opinion). Trying one distro and saying "MY GOD LINUX SUCKS!" is like trying Windows Server 2003 for your desktop and saying "MY GOD WINDOWS SUCKS!".
All of these "problems" are either minor issues or problems that don't exist today practically at all. While I personally don't like it, Ubuntu automatically detects everything pretty well, and has a decent "hide the background stuff" approach that seems to work somewhat nicely for people new to Linux. Also, if you are wanting a "I want my computer to work right now without touching it" approach, like Windows, I would try Linspire. I've heard their distro is working really nicely for that stuff.
Only techies seem to be interested in things like awareness or battling the status quo.
Most people want the lowest common denominator. The average person has unprecidented access to information and low priced technology. They don't care that the reason this is true because there were people who wanted more than the mediocrity they saw around them. These people are sheep. We call them sheeple.
Businesses are built by stepping on sheeple and taking their money. If you want to be successful in business, you just have to lose your conscience. Geeks seem to have a hard time grasping that most of the world doesn't care about technology.
From the geek perspective, there is technology that is 10 times better than the stuff MS puts out. The average person has never seen the alternatives and never will. As far as they're concerned, MS is the most amazing thing ever.
There is something that we can do, but it's scary. It involves going outside and interacting with people.
Its obvious MS can't just make better software to compete with OSS, or at least they don't believe they can. So, they lobby to make any serious competition look evil in some way, or make that competition illegal somehow. Either that, or they just fear what they don't understand. Remember, most OSS is produced without traditional management - its a different way of seeing things with respect to making software. That's why OSS often 'just works'.
I installed linux on a laptop, and the ethernet interface 'just worked'along with everything else with no additional intervention. With Win2k and WinXP, I had to hunt down the drivers, although that wasen't very hard. On another PC, reinstalling WinXP and applying SP2 redered the box unbootable from WinXP. It boots knoppix just fine, and I can browse the web, read my company email, including opening MS office attachments.
However, corrupting goverment officials - that's not news, that's shooting fish in a barrel. Not even a good spectator sport.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I found it funny that you mentioned that, because the same force that is going to kill Microsoft (in less than 3 years) is the same one that is also going to cause the dollar to collapse and force the US back onto the gold standard.
That force is the information age. Both monitary policy and Microsoft are about controlling and manipulating information that people are allowed to have or apply.
Monitory policy manipulates information by lying to people about the value of their money, Microsoft controlls information thru copyright and licensing schemes that forbid people from copying office and windows. They call this right controll and manipulate what other people copy a "property right" but it's really about controlling how people use information. The *AA are even worse.
But the problem is, that in the information age, information, by definition can not be controlled. It is sorta like the plantation system that tried to controll the labor force in the industrial revolution. The scheme simply blew up in their face and all hell broke loose.
In sum, people would be very wise to buy every dam bit of gold or silver they can get their hands on. And break their neck doing everything immaginitively possible to bet their future career on Linux and ween themselves of windows.
Hardly.
You have no sense of perspective.
Is the US Government actively hostile to business? No.
It is hardly the most pro-corporate.
What a joke. You need to read about the rest of the world. The corruption and depth of influence that some companies hold in other countries is beyond shocking. Research how China is developing into an economic powerhouse and you'll see what I mean. It's not exactly what you'd call "transparent".
This isn't news. This isn't the big shock. The big shock is that this apparently is news to a lot of Microsoft apologists. Or, at least the ones who were denying that Microsoft bought their way out of the antitrust case.
So sad, you may have a good appreciation for the inner workings of technology but you have no appreciation for the workings of evolutionary theory.
Survival of the fittest...but there's a part you left off. It's survival of the fittest of an organism to their environment. That means you can't take an organism that is fit in one environment and automatically declare it fit in all others.
So the 'sheeple' are so numerous because that's what their environment encourages; they would not fit well into your environment.
But environments evolve too and apparently your environment is not a good fit its wider environment which BTW includes all the sheeple. Sounds tautological I know but it's the way things work.
If you don't like the numerous organisms in an environment, you have to change their environment which makes them not so fit any more.
Throwing around pebbles is not likely to work.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
.. it's Redhat's little experiment to see if the community can sustain development of a distribution whose parts or whose sum may become useful in their enterprise editions later. it has no primary project of maintaining an easy to use desktop platform. their own site makes this quite clear.
and so i wasn't suprised that all my encounters with Fedora prove it's far more suited to very interested enthusiasts than new users. this seems due to the Redhat association; as though being tagged with such a name brand it has proven itself to be ready for widest distribution.
Fedora needs alot of work to be a sensible productivity platform for Jane Sixpack. Ubuntu or Mepis are far more suitable for new users, out-of-the-box. given the choice of all three, nearly all of my students dropped Fedora for the Debian-based Mepis and Ubuntu distributions.
administrators shouldn't be so easily swayed either. Fedora is difficult to maintain and install compared to that of Mepis or Ubuntu. it took 2 of us 4.5 hours to install Mepis on 30 dell workstations, all just worked with absolutely *no* after-the-fact configuration. Fedora Core 4 took 3 people 2 full days to get to that state on the same number of machines.
Fedora, as a would-be flagship of Desktop Linux for so many, gives a bad first impression. Fedora users promoting the project should read the distribution home page before reccommending it to uncle Keith.
then again, it seems uncle Keith has already decided.
This notion of clean installs on Windows is such a bloody myth. At this very moment I'm in an upgrade hell with Office 2000. I upgraded it to SR1 due to security concerns, and now, whenever some users try to log on to the machine, it's starts this post-install process and gives me an ugly error about not being able to find source media. I've put the Office 2000 CD in, it doesn't like it. I'm faced with uninstalling and then reinstalling and hoping it works. Let's face it, if the Windows install system is any better, it's only marginally better. I still have a phantom of Netscape 4 on one computer (yes I know, go into the registry blah blah blah, but that only proves my point).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I thought you were kidding. Then I looked, and you are not at all. Insanity.
46. The beheading and murder of United States Citizens in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have been videotaped, converted to MPEG and other images for viewing on the public Internet through the use of OSS and Linux software and computer technology developed and purloined by Linux and OSS members and illegally exported from the United States.
47. Companies which sponsor, endorse, and support OSS and Linux, and those acting in concert as their advocates have been unwitting participants in wholesale technology theft of United States developed technology and sponsors of domestic and international terrorism.
48. Companies which sponsor, endorse, and support OSS and Linux, and those acting in concert as their advocates have been unwitting participants in wholesale technology theft of United States developed technology and sponsors of efforts to undermine the Government of the United States and the economic stability of computer technology development and industry within the United States.
49. Companies which sponsor, endorse, and support OSS and Linux, and those acting in concert as their advocates have been unwitting participants in wholesale technology theft of United States developed technology and sponsors of the creation of weapons of mass murder and mass destruction by the enemies of the United States.
49. Companies who attempt to protect their rights to their intellectual property by filing lawsuits against members of Linux and OSS are attacked publicly on the public Internet through a variety of means, including identity theft, defamation, interference in their business and cultural relationships, violation of their rights of expressive association and freedom of speech, threats to murder them, intentional infliction of emotional distress to the extent they take their own lives, and Internet postings advocating they commit suicide.
50. Many of these methods employed by OSS and Linux Community members to oppress and suppress public viewpoints they do not agree with, do not differ in any way and in many cases resemble the same methods employed by international terrorists to promote their causes, in that they advocate through the posting of messages, emails, and public statements to Internet websites: murder, violence, death, oppression, mob mentality, intentional infliction of emotional distress, terror, defamation, identify theft, character assassination, threats to murder or firebomb the homes of individuals, and threats to overthrow governmental systems.
51. Although OSS and Linux both state goals and ideals which are attractive, such as freedom to innovate, freedom to develop new technology, and free access to software and computer technology, efforts by competing open source efforts to develop or create new development communities are routinely attacked publicly by OSS and Linux members through a variety of oppressive means over the public Internet, such as threats of: murder, violence, death, oppression, mob mentality, intentional infliction of emotional distress, terror, defamation, identify theft, character assassination, threats to murder or firebomb the homes of individuals, and threats to overthrow governmental systems.
52. Many of these activities fall within the definitions under the Patriot Act and other Federal Legislation designed to protect the American People as acts of domestic terrorism.
Is this come kind of joke?
I switched from Windows to Linux at home two years ago and sure, it was a bit of a learning curve, but I'm much happier now.
Call me a ricer, but my Gentoo box is ten times more stable and faster than that bloated crapware Windows EVER was.
Also, most software available through the Gentoo catalog (emerge system) is higher quality than virtually everything Microsoft provides "for free".
The only problem I've had is that my TV tuner card is not supported; I wish I had known about Linux before I bought it.
So, who are you going to believe? Some anonymous coward who mudslings and runs away or someone who is telling the true story of what they experienced?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Yeah, kinda makes me feel like some sort of uber geek... Linux isn't for everyone. Then again, computers aren't for everyone. (@GP)If anyone wants to learn some linux, start off with a live cd distro so you don't have to trash your hard drive. It took me a few years to get to the level of linux usability I have now. Linux in the home can be quite useful as a firewall, voice mail system, streaming audio player for the living room, file server.... many, many uses.
...because Plutonians are teh suck
Since I don't have mod points, I'm echoing the AC's "try SuSE" comment. It's well worth the money. They've been beating MS in the "easy config" department since the SuSE7.x days, and yes that includes all manner of networking and filesharing.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.