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Microsoft Holding 'Screw Google' Meetings In DC
Runaway1956 writes "Microsoft's chief Washington lobbyist has been convening regular meetings, attended by the company's outside consultants, that have become known by some beltway insiders as 'screw Google' meetings, DailyFinance has learned. The meetings are part of an ongoing campaign by Microsoft, other Google opponents, and hired third parties to discredit the Web search leader, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. 'Microsoft is at the center of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,' said a source who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. 'The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.'"
I've been holding some pretty good 'screw Microsoft' meetings for years in the toilet.
Nothing new here...
Joking aside; a little farther and these meetings could been seen as illegal collusion.
Microsoft and its cronies are wasting time. They forget that it all comes down to what people want to use, choice in this case.
All these competitors must be very desperate if they organize themselves instead of competing with one another. And I don't mean desperate as in "making less profit" or even "running at a loss", I mean desperate as in "about to be finished in the near future".
This is the best advertisement for Google I can imagine. It's basically Microsoft and there other competitors advising you to put your money on Google.
In a competition, the playing field is level and the one who works the best or the hardest or the most efficient wins.
We need a new word for the kinds of "competitive behavior" we see where the focus isn't about making better stuff or providing better services, but is instead focused on bringing down the people around you. In competitive sports, there are rules against such behavior. We can't have ice skaters bashing in the knees of other ice skaters now can we?
Microsoft is very easy to criticize because they are very well focused on bringing the competition down instead of working to make themselves more competitive. They need to have their language license revoked when their describe their behavior as "competitive" and "innovative." The word "bully" comes to mind, but I fear it is too simplistic and doesn't adequately describe the depth of planning and focus demonstrated. Whatever the word, it needs to convey the abandonment of fair play principles of competition and the selfish and callous disregard for others in the damage they cause. Anyone know of a word that describes this sort of behavior? Perhaps a few from psychology text books might well fit in here somewhere.
Apparently all that astroturfing is paying off.
Caveat Utilitor
Any large corp. that doesn't is screwing its shareholders.
Yup, that's absolutely right kids. A company screwing their shareholders is in fact grounds for a lawsuit. Screwing employees, screwing customers, screwing the government, screwing the entire US economy, and screwing the environment is all just good business.
I am officially gone from
He's probably referring to:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469439
There was a simple workaround (LD_PRELOAD) but it has been since fixed.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
The new details about Microsoft's D.C.-based efforts to undermine Google shine a light on the role of third-party firms, funded by tech giants, that engage in activities such as astroturfing, corporate propaganda, and misinformation. Media reports have hinted at a "whisper campaign" undertaken by entities acting at Microsoft's behest to undermine Google, both with policymakers and the public.
Coupled with Microsoft's long standing campaign to influence social media discussions in technical forums, like this one. Instead of investing that money in making better products, we've come to the point where success has to include not only dominating the market, but influencing social media and the regulatory environment. It's almost like their operating system business is an afterthought for Microsoft these days. They're not about building better products as much as hanging on to their market share and putting down competition.
Remind me again why the artificial person that is a corporation deserves the same freedom of speech protections as an individual? Seems like they sort of have an unfair advantage already when it comes to getting their free speech packaged and distributed.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Yeah, flash works full screen for me too. Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 x64 and 9.04 x86 with nVidia, ATI and Intel hardware.
While Flash on 64bit windows still is nonexistent.
Here's the procedures for the major browsers as I find them 'intuitively'; e.g. I'll double-click an item expecting a dialog of options to come up.. in lieu of that, or in the case of fields, I right-click the thing expecting a fly-out of options.
There might be shorter routes, but in that case they weren't very intuitive -to me-.
I had to cheat for FireFox's Address bar, doing a google search, to find out that setting was hidden in about:config .
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IE8
As above, but please note that it's the dropdown -next to- the search box, on the right of the magnifying glass.
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For the remaining exercises, let's try adding Bing to the others (for demonstration purposes - though I guess if you like Bing...), making it the default, and then removing it again.
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FireFox 3.5 (3.5.1) - 'Default' Search: Google
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Adding Bing
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1. Click on the drop-down arrow on the left hand side of the search field
2. Select "Manage Search Engines..."
3. Click on the "Get more search engines..." option
You will now be presented with the FireFox add-ons website. None of the top-listed options are the major search engines, and bing is nowhere to be found in page 1, so...
4. enter "Bing" in the search field
5. change the "within" dropdown to "Search Tools"
6. click the big green Search btton
7. the first result should be the official, Microsoft bing! team-supplied, search engine. Click on the Download Now button
8. click on Accept [the license] and Install (if you want, read the license first.. It's Ms-PL)
A "Add Search Engine" dialog will now pop up
9. Click the Add button. ( You can check the "Start using it right away" option if you want, but that won't make it the default. )
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Making Bing the default (while adding: n/a; from scratch only)
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FireFox doesn't really have a 'default search'. It will simply use whatever you have selected last in the search field.
One could argue, however, that any junk entered into the address bar, which leads to a search engine (guess which?), is akin to a default search engine. So to that point...
1. Enter "about:config" in the address bar.
1.5. If you haven't previous ignored the "This might void your warranty!" (what warranty would that be, Mozilla? Tongue-in cheek humor, eh?) warning, click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
2. Double-click on the entry "keyword.URL" (scroll down, use filter, not counting that as a 'step')
3. Enter the string: "http://www.bing.com/search?q="
(For arbitrary engines, you'll have to figure out which part of the address is the keyword bit and make sure that's the last item, etc.)
4. Click the OK button
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Removing Bing
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1. Click on the drop-down arrow on the left hand side of the search field
2. Select "Manage Search Engines..."
3. Select the Bing item
4. Click on the Remove button
5. Click OK
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Google Chrome 2 (2.0.172.43) - Default Search: Google ( XD )
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Adding Bing
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1. Right-click on the address/search bar
2. Choose "Edit Search Engines..." from the context menu
3. Click the Add button
4. Enter as Name: "Bing"
5. Enter as URL: "http://www.bing.com/search?q=%s"
(For arbitrary engines, you'll have to figure out which part of the address is the keyword bit and make sure to place a "%s" in the place where the keyword would occur.)
6. Click the OK button
7. Click the Close button
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Making Bing the default - from having added it
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( do not follow step 7 above )
7. Click the "Make Default" button.
8. Click the Close button.
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Making Bing the default - from scratch
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1. Right-click on the address/search bar
2. Choose "Edit Search Engines..." from the context menu
3. Select "Bing"
4. Click the "Make Default" button.
5. Click the Close button.
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Removing Bing
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1. Right-clic
It basically boils down to Google does things people like, Microsoft does things people don't like. For example, Windows ME. As one person above mentioned, there was a spike in Microsoft hating around the time Windows ME came out. And for good reasons. Google on the other hand makes cool stuff. Also explains why Apple is liked so much more than Microsoft.
Besides that, Microsoft has proven time and again that it is dangerous to do business with them: they not only destroy their competition, they will destroy their business partners if it makes them a buck.
Qxe4