The fact is that you just can't throw out 20 years of Microsoft-centric backwards compatibility.
The fact is, you don't have to throw out 20 years of Microsoft-centric backwards compatibility-- Microsoft does it for you when they launch a major upgrade. Applications that were written for Win3.1 will not run on Win2000, and though I haven't tried it, I'm sure they won't run on XP. A specific example: In 1992, the Oxford English Dictinary, 2nd Edition, was first released on Compact Disk (the identical same format as today's CD-ROM). It cost just under $1,000-US, and came with a 1.44MB installation floppy, which installed it's special fonts to Win3.1, and also a single CD-ROM, which contained all twenty volumes of the entire OED, with over 500,000 index words plus the etymological history of each word. The only part of the hard copy twenty volume set not included on the CD-ROM was the bibliography of the sources the lexicographers used to trace the etymology back in history. I ran that application for years under Win3.1 and later Win3.1 via OS/2, and when I eventually abandoned OS/2 to go completely to Linux, I "acquired" a copy of Win2000 and tried to run the OED on that, but I couldn't even get the application to install itself. Now I am running it successfully under SuSE 8.1 Linux, using Wine. Other examples of Microsoft's deliberate breaking of past applications is the inability to read documents written using earlier versions of MS Word in the more recent versions of the same program, though that may have been fixed by now.
. ..for another antitrust lawsuit against manaical Microsoft. Now that they have already been convicted of using illegal tactics to maintain their monopoly, it shouldn't be too hard to nail them on this one. Someday, Microsoft is going to fall, and when they do, it's going to be a bigger crashing noise than the world has heard in recent years. Why do consumers keep supporting Microsoft? Do they WANT one son of a bitch to control all of their data and entertainment? Are they too stupid to understand the consequences of giving Bill Gates so much power?
Re:Open Source is NOT the issue - it's the IMAGE
on
Largo Loving Linux
·
· Score: -1
This is not a troll. I ask you do trolls do focus groups?
They do if they are Microsoft marketdroids. Microsoft apparently spends 10% of their man-hour resources copying open source code (which will later be worked into their proprietary products to be sold), 10% of their m-h resources dreaming up useless, annoying stuff like Bob and Clippy, 10% of their m-h resources "innovating" ways to exclude the competition and lock in their customers, 40% of their m-h resources "innovating" lies about their competition, and 30% of their m-h resources on techniques to deliver these lies to sucker the public into buying their overpriced crapware-- techniques such as rigged benchmark tests, new methods of astro-turfing, and faux focus groups.
And the "Penguin logo" is far better image than the wimpy voiced, pudge-faced, middle-aged megalomaniac wearing his hair in a bang, whose whole public demeanor delivers the singular message of incredible, out-of-control greed. That is the real logo image of Microsoft in the public mind, BTW, not the "flying stained-glass window".
Again the message is clear: Microsoft is winning the hearts and minds not only of Joe Sixpack, but also Juan Sixpack in South America, Jean-Paul Sixpack in France, Jeroen Van der Sixpack in the Netherlands, Nkwele-Olamu Sixpack in West Africa, Mohammed-Al-Sixpack in Iran, Kulwant Chandrasekhera Sixpack in India, and Boris Sixpack in the Russian Federation.
That is beginning to change, world wide, as Billy the Boob spends hundreds of millions of dollars to increase public awareness of Linux, viz the recent $100,000,000 plus $400,000,000 PR debacle Microsoft meant to be against the Linux movement in India, but which backfired, and burnt off Billy Boy's eyebrows. Oh, and did I forget to mention recent similar gone-awry Microsoft-sponsored bribes in Peru, Brazil, Africa, China, and Mexico...?
The avalanche that will bury Microsoft is just beginning to show its first signs of movement worldwide.
Face it, all the standard things which people expect to be able to do with their PC are easier and work better on Windows.
You obviously have never used the latest iMac. These tasks are orders of magnitude easier and better working on an iMac than they are on XP. Plus, using an iMac instead of XP, you know in your heart that you are not supporting one of the ugliest corporations in the world, bar none.Using Microsoft products is an experience that verges on feeling like you are about to get sick from eating bad food.
The one most outstanding characteristic shared by all Microsoft users is that they are all anonymous cowards. There isn't a bright color in the bunch. Consciously wanting to use such a disaster of an operating system is proof that none of them are capable of thinking past a Start button. They are everywhere, like chickenshit in a barnyard, and just about as interesting. Feck all Microsoft-ons. I bet they all try to look like Bill Gates and act like Steve Balmer. Not an original thinker in the bunch.
The use of "windows" in the realm of "computer stuff" has a rich prior history which far pre-dates the formation of Micro Soft, later renamed Microsoft. It was used for at least ten years before Bill Gates (oops! sorry about that unauthorized use of a registered trademark which actually means Swinging-Device-Which-Permits-Entry-to-A-Hog-Sty) broke into his first mainframe terminal and stole his first computer code.
"gde" (pronounced "g'dyeh") in Russian means "where" in English. "kde" (pronounced "k'dyeh") in Czech means "here" in English. But I don't know what the three letters K, D, and E stand for in "KDE". Are they possibly an acronym for three words in Deutsch, or possibly English, or maybe Czech, or some other language? KDE, the desktop, is a distinctly European-developed project, to my knowledge, but it has now been embraced by the world. Please correct me if I am wrong on any of this: After all, I am not Microsoft, so I have not registered any of it, nor copyrighted it, nor patented it.
One cannot possibly use 50 billion dollars in five lifetimes, if one lives for 95 years in each life. Go figure it out yourself, considering that the money is always earning compound interest. I did. The interest alone, at 3% simple interest would yield more than $4,109,589 per day. And your capital would still be untouched. $50,000,000,000 works out to $136,986,300 per day for a year, or $3,185,727 per day for the next 43 years, or for the rest of Bill Gates' life if he lives to be 95. Add $4,109.589 to $3,185,727 and that yields $7,295.313 per day every day for the rest of Gates' life if he lives to be 95 years old. Try spending that kind of money, even lavishly. I'll bet you can't. So, you have to give it away.
Let's see-- If I saw Adolph Hitler, or Osama bin Laden, or Slobodan Milosovic, it would not be necessary for any of them to introduce themselves for me to know who they are, either. So what's your point? I do agree with your statement that M$ would like ppl who can't think for themselves such as those who learn VB, don't change anything for the next twenty years and be locked down into buying their products. Have no fear of the consequences of Gates shelling out money to anyone to have them use Microsoft products. Microsoft stinks of oppression and enslavement when seen alongside true OSS, and anyone with any intelligence whatsoever can see this immediately when they compare the relative benefits. People are not stupid just because Bill Gates thinks they are. Microsoft is ultimately doomed to fade from the face of the earth, and its demise may not be so far off-- It's just a matter of time. OSS cannot be stopped by anything Bill Gates can do with his money.
Microsoft has a history of committing antitrust crimes, and they have even been convicted of it. They are recidivist corporate criminals, and the EU's justifiable concern about their future crimes is definitely warranted. Microsoft is like the creeps who have been convicted of sex crimes against children-- they are unable to change their behavior. It would be folly to trust that they will not rape the mobile phone market and ruin it, as they did the PC market. Or would you rather see a world where only Microsoft controls it and kills all the competition by their illegal, sleazy, immoral, greedy, criminal behavior. I would not. I hope that Microsoft dissappears completely from the face of the earth someday, and the sooner the better.
...if only TV ads were banned...
Don't forget the talking heads spinning the news.
Something very eye opening just happened in my home: We live out in the woods where we had access to either satellite TV or our little local cable company, which provided only sixteen channels, total, including PBS and the network channels from the nearest large city (140 miles away). We had opted for the local cable company, which was about the same monthly charge as the satellite dish subscription. About four months ago, our little local cable company went belly up, and in one fell swoop we lost all television access. A lot of our neighbors raced to get connected via satellite dish. We opted to wait a bit until we could choose the right satellite dish company and program subscription for us. Then summer was on us, and television became a low priority for our kids, who were all outdoors most of the time. This resulted in our discovery that without any TV in our home, everyone's stress level had dropped, and we all became much closer to one another-- we became more communicative as a family, reading to the kids, and telling them stories before bedtime. We got our news from NPR radio and from the internet. Two months after our cable company died, my wife went into a hospital 70 miles from our home for some minor outpatient surgery. We were there all day, from six in the morning until six in the evening. During this time, we watched TV for several hours in the waiting room, and both of us immediately noted a growing anxiety in each other, brought on as we watched the morning network news. We decided right then and there that we would not bring a television broadcast signal into our home again, from any source. We now get our DVD movies through the mail from Netflix, and the whole family sits down together every evening after supper to watch one movie before going up to bed. We have found out that we are all much better off without televised network news, TV ads, and sappy programs.
The charge of perjury must have been rendered moot when the Bush-Cheney-Ashcroft regime took over the reins of political chicanery. Otherwise, wouldn't Gates and Ballmer and all of the other top officers at Microsoft be hauled up before the court for lying, when they keep insisting that it is "impossible" for Microsoft to offer a stripped down version of its operating system. These guys really are psychopathic liars, aren't they?
They find out what breaks, and provide bug fixes (euphemistically called "service packs") for the things people really whine about. This approach maximized their revenue, and accelerates it.
No, what maximized their revenue was pre-installed Microsoft Windows on every computer sold, whether the customer wanted it or not. This occurred during the great boom years of the new personal computer market, when the whole world was scrambling to get one of those new-fangled gadgets. Now that the market has become sluggish due to saturation, and they are squirming under the attention of the antitrust courts, and the world has been hit with an epidemic of Microsoft-centric vires, and they have Unix, and the new and much more affordable GNU/Linux to show the world that there is no need to be susceptible to these vires, they have to at least pretend they are going to do something about the great gaps in their software's security, at least until.Net takes off, and they can lock everyone into their closed, proprietary version of the internet at the expense of every other software company in the marketplace.
Microsoft's greatest strengths have always been the ability to see which way the ship is headed, and when it turns out they're going in the wrong direction, to turn on a dime.
The problem with Microsoft is not that it cannot change to a new way to go-- the problem lies in the underlying philosophy behind the Gates-Ballmer leadership model which has resulted in a behemoth corporation with a soul devoid of common ethics and moral instincts. This moral bankruptcy is what is going to destroy them in the long run.
Furthermore, the new MS buzzword "trustworthy" computing has little honest intent behind it, because the basic architecture of Microsoft software is fundamentally flawed, and that problem is compounded by their neurotic secrecy of their code. Their comment that they have done more code security review in two months than the entire open-source movement has done in nine years is so obviously bullshit that it makes me know they won't do anything about security, ultimately, that they cannot accomplish only with a press release. They must know that this is all that is possible, because any real effort to improve the security of their software will be much like putting a padlock on a tent.
Gosh! You did that better than William Faulkner! Well, maybe notbetter, but at least as well... Well, maybe not as well but at least I could recognize who you were parodying... Well, at least I thought I recognized who you were parodying, but then some other poster here said it was Hemingway... And I thought he died before computers were even invented... Well, maybe not computers, but at least Microsoft, who acts like they invented computers. NOT!
In the words of Blake, "Do not go gentle into that good night... Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Those are the words of Dylan Thomas, not Blake, in a poem which Thomas wrote in May of 1951. It was first published in Botteghe Oscure, VIII, p. 208, November 1951. (Collected Poems no. 69.) The poem was enclosed in a letter written by Thomas to Princess Caetani on 28th Mary 1951 (Selected Letters, p.359); the letter has a postscript: 'The only person I can't show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn't know he's dying.' D.J. Thomas lingered for more than a year after this, and died on 15th December 1952. [The notes for this comment were lifted almost verbatim from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, Notes, page 275.]
OT, but it should be pointed out that sails do not climb-- they are hoisted by a jack-tar, who pulls on a halyard. Sometimes sails are hoisted by a wench. (Of course, she could be using mechanical means such as wrapping a few turns of the halyard around a winch.)
How many of the apparently scripted 7,500 comments in favor of the settlement actually came from Slashdot readers trying to make the pro-Microsoft crowd look stupid?
And...
How many of the 7,000 "I hate microsoft" comments actually came from pro-Microsoft astroturfers, trying to make the Slashdot crowd look juvenile?
And...
How many of the neutrally opinionated comments actually came from masquerading Microsoft employees, trying to look non-chalant and Buddha-like about the whole thing?
> The corporate wars have begun. AOL just fired > the first shot across the bow. > No good will come of this.
No, we have no problem. But certainly, Microsoft does. And while no good will come to Microsoft, I am positively excited about the immense, endless, heart warming, great good that humanity everywhere in the world will reap from this!
I hope AOL wins this suit, and wins it big time. I hope that they that they not only win it, but can prove that Netscape's losses have exceeded $10 billions over the past four or five years-- let's see, treble damages times $10 billions-- HA! Microsoft will have to pay AOL $30 billions plus!
I am not an AOL user, but I heartily wish them good luck, and hope this suit castrates Microsoft, strikes Ballmer dumb and cross-eyed, makes Bill Gates have a total nervous breakdown, and scatters the Microsoft minions like cockroaches when the light's turned on.
I can just see it now: In 2002, Enron files for bankruptcy amidst great scandal, and then, a few months later Microsoft files for bankruptcy, and Bill Gates gets to play poker with Ken Lay in their common prison cell, after he sells off all his stock in Microsoft before its price crashes! Whoo-whee! This is the stuff dreams are made of! I am so excited with this news, I am want to dance around the room! Hooray for AOL!
I remember the video that Microsoft made for its lawyers to show in court for their antitrust trial: it was a total fake, but not so obvious except to the attentive eyes of David Boies, who caught the fakery and rubbed Microsoft's nose in it. These demo screens and movies likely were created on SGI machines so Microsoft can use them in its vaporware campaign against the ALREADY EXISTING Sony PS2.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is, you don't have to throw out 20 years of Microsoft-centric backwards compatibility-- Microsoft does it for you when they launch a major upgrade. Applications that were written for Win3.1 will not run on Win2000, and though I haven't tried it, I'm sure they won't run on XP. A specific example: In 1992, the Oxford English Dictinary, 2nd Edition, was first released on Compact Disk (the identical same format as today's CD-ROM). It cost just under $1,000-US, and came with a 1.44MB installation floppy, which installed it's special fonts to Win3.1, and also a single CD-ROM, which contained all twenty volumes of the entire OED, with over 500,000 index words plus the etymological history of each word. The only part of the hard copy twenty volume set not included on the CD-ROM was the bibliography of the sources the lexicographers used to trace the etymology back in history. I ran that application for years under Win3.1 and later Win3.1 via OS/2, and when I eventually abandoned OS/2 to go completely to Linux, I "acquired" a copy of Win2000 and tried to run the OED on that, but I couldn't even get the application to install itself. Now I am running it successfully under SuSE 8.1 Linux, using Wine. Other examples of Microsoft's deliberate breaking of past applications is the inability to read documents written using earlier versions of MS Word in the more recent versions of the same program, though that may have been fixed by now.
. . .for another antitrust lawsuit against manaical Microsoft. Now that they have already been convicted of using illegal tactics to maintain their monopoly, it shouldn't be too hard to nail them on this one. Someday, Microsoft is going to fall, and when they do, it's going to be a bigger crashing noise than the world has heard in recent years. Why do consumers keep supporting Microsoft? Do they WANT one son of a bitch to control all of their data and entertainment? Are they too stupid to understand the consequences of giving Bill Gates so much power?
This is not a troll. I ask you do trolls do focus groups?
They do if they are Microsoft marketdroids. Microsoft apparently spends 10% of their man-hour resources copying open source code (which will later be worked into their proprietary products to be sold), 10% of their m-h resources dreaming up useless, annoying stuff like Bob and Clippy, 10% of their m-h resources "innovating" ways to exclude the competition and lock in their customers, 40% of their m-h resources "innovating" lies about their competition, and 30% of their m-h resources on techniques to deliver these lies to sucker the public into buying their overpriced crapware-- techniques such as rigged benchmark tests, new methods of astro-turfing, and faux focus groups.
And the "Penguin logo" is far better image than the wimpy voiced, pudge-faced, middle-aged megalomaniac wearing his hair in a bang, whose whole public demeanor delivers the singular message of incredible, out-of-control greed. That is the real logo image of Microsoft in the public mind, BTW, not the "flying stained-glass window".
Again the message is clear: Microsoft is winning the hearts and minds not only of Joe Sixpack, but also Juan Sixpack in South America, Jean-Paul Sixpack in France, Jeroen Van der Sixpack in the Netherlands, Nkwele-Olamu Sixpack in West Africa, Mohammed-Al-Sixpack in Iran, Kulwant Chandrasekhera Sixpack in India, and Boris Sixpack in the Russian Federation.
That is beginning to change, world wide, as Billy the Boob spends hundreds of millions of dollars to increase public awareness of Linux, viz the recent $100,000,000 plus $400,000,000 PR debacle Microsoft meant to be against the Linux movement in India, but which backfired, and burnt off Billy Boy's eyebrows. Oh, and did I forget to mention recent similar gone-awry Microsoft-sponsored bribes in Peru, Brazil, Africa, China, and Mexico...?
The avalanche that will bury Microsoft is just beginning to show its first signs of movement worldwide.
Face it, all the standard things which people expect to be able to do with their PC are easier and work better on Windows.
You obviously have never used the latest iMac. These tasks are orders of magnitude easier and better working on an iMac than they are on XP. Plus, using an iMac instead of XP, you know in your heart that you are not supporting one of the ugliest corporations in the world, bar none.Using Microsoft products is an experience that verges on feeling like you are about to get sick from eating bad food.
The one most outstanding characteristic shared by all Microsoft users is that they are all anonymous cowards. There isn't a bright color in the bunch. Consciously wanting to use such a disaster of an operating system is proof that none of them are capable of thinking past a Start button. They are everywhere, like chickenshit in a barnyard, and just about as interesting. Feck all Microsoft-ons. I bet they all try to look like Bill Gates and act like Steve Balmer. Not an original thinker in the bunch.
The use of "windows" in the realm of "computer stuff" has a rich prior history which far pre-dates the formation of Micro Soft, later renamed Microsoft. It was used for at least ten years before Bill Gates (oops! sorry about that unauthorized use of a registered trademark which actually means Swinging-Device-Which-Permits-Entry-to-A-Hog-Sty) broke into his first mainframe terminal and stole his first computer code.
"gde" (pronounced "g'dyeh") in Russian means "where" in English. "kde" (pronounced "k'dyeh") in Czech means "here" in English. But I don't know what the three letters K, D, and E stand for in "KDE". Are they possibly an acronym for three words in Deutsch, or possibly English, or maybe Czech, or some other language? KDE, the desktop, is a distinctly European-developed project, to my knowledge, but it has now been embraced by the world. Please correct me if I am wrong on any of this: After all, I am not Microsoft, so I have not registered any of it, nor copyrighted it, nor patented it.
One cannot possibly use 50 billion dollars in five lifetimes, if one lives for 95 years in each life. Go figure it out yourself, considering that the money is always earning compound interest. I did. The interest alone, at 3% simple interest would yield more than $4,109,589 per day. And your capital would still be untouched. $50,000,000,000 works out to $136,986,300 per day for a year, or $3,185,727 per day for the next 43 years, or for the rest of Bill Gates' life if he lives to be 95. Add $4,109.589 to $3,185,727 and that yields $7,295.313 per day every day for the rest of Gates' life if he lives to be 95 years old. Try spending that kind of money, even lavishly. I'll bet you can't. So, you have to give it away.
Let's see-- If I saw Adolph Hitler, or Osama bin Laden, or Slobodan Milosovic, it would not be necessary for any of them to introduce themselves for me to know who they are, either. So what's your point? I do agree with your statement that M$ would like ppl who can't think for themselves such as those who learn VB, don't change anything for the next twenty years and be locked down into buying their products. Have no fear of the consequences of Gates shelling out money to anyone to have them use Microsoft products. Microsoft stinks of oppression and enslavement when seen alongside true OSS, and anyone with any intelligence whatsoever can see this immediately when they compare the relative benefits. People are not stupid just because Bill Gates thinks they are. Microsoft is ultimately doomed to fade from the face of the earth, and its demise may not be so far off-- It's just a matter of time. OSS cannot be stopped by anything Bill Gates can do with his money.
I'm going to sell all my MSFT stock and buy stock in emacs.
Don't forget the talking heads spinning the news.
Something very eye opening just happened in my home: We live out in the woods where we had access to either satellite TV or our little local cable company, which provided only sixteen channels, total, including PBS and the network channels from the nearest large city (140 miles away). We had opted for the local cable company, which was about the same monthly charge as the satellite dish subscription. About four months ago, our little local cable company went belly up, and in one fell swoop we lost all television access. A lot of our neighbors raced to get connected via satellite dish. We opted to wait a bit until we could choose the right satellite dish company and program subscription for us. Then summer was on us, and television became a low priority for our kids, who were all outdoors most of the time. This resulted in our discovery that without any TV in our home, everyone's stress level had dropped, and we all became much closer to one another-- we became more communicative as a family, reading to the kids, and telling them stories before bedtime. We got our news from NPR radio and from the internet. Two months after our cable company died, my wife went into a hospital 70 miles from our home for some minor outpatient surgery. We were there all day, from six in the morning until six in the evening. During this time, we watched TV for several hours in the waiting room, and both of us immediately noted a growing anxiety in each other, brought on as we watched the morning network news. We decided right then and there that we would not bring a television broadcast signal into our home again, from any source. We now get our DVD movies through the mail from Netflix, and the whole family sits down together every evening after supper to watch one movie before going up to bed. We have found out that we are all much better off without televised network news, TV ads, and sappy programs.
The charge of perjury must have been rendered moot when the Bush-Cheney-Ashcroft regime took over the reins of political chicanery. Otherwise, wouldn't Gates and Ballmer and all of the other top officers at Microsoft be hauled up before the court for lying, when they keep insisting that it is "impossible" for Microsoft to offer a stripped down version of its operating system. These guys really are psychopathic liars, aren't they?
No, what maximized their revenue was pre-installed Microsoft Windows on every computer sold, whether the customer wanted it or not. This occurred during the great boom years of the new personal computer market, when the whole world was scrambling to get one of those new-fangled gadgets. Now that the market has become sluggish due to saturation, and they are squirming under the attention of the antitrust courts, and the world has been hit with an epidemic of Microsoft-centric vires, and they have Unix, and the new and much more affordable GNU/Linux to show the world that there is no need to be susceptible to these vires, they have to at least pretend they are going to do something about the great gaps in their software's security, at least until .Net takes off, and they can lock everyone into their closed, proprietary version of the internet at the expense of every other software company in the marketplace.
The problem with Microsoft is not that it cannot change to a new way to go-- the problem lies in the underlying philosophy behind the Gates-Ballmer leadership model which has resulted in a behemoth corporation with a soul devoid of common ethics and moral instincts. This moral bankruptcy is what is going to destroy them in the long run.
Furthermore, the new MS buzzword "trustworthy" computing has little honest intent behind it, because the basic architecture of Microsoft software is fundamentally flawed, and that problem is compounded by their neurotic secrecy of their code. Their comment that they have done more code security review in two months than the entire open-source movement has done in nine years is so obviously bullshit that it makes me know they won't do anything about security, ultimately, that they cannot accomplish only with a press release. They must know that this is all that is possible, because any real effort to improve the security of their software will be much like putting a padlock on a tent.
Gosh! You did that better than William Faulkner! Well, maybe notbetter, but at least as well... Well, maybe not as well but at least I could recognize who you were parodying... Well, at least I thought I recognized who you were parodying, but then some other poster here said it was Hemingway... And I thought he died before computers were even invented... Well, maybe not computers, but at least Microsoft, who acts like they invented computers. NOT!
Those are the words of Dylan Thomas, not Blake, in a poem which Thomas wrote in May of 1951. It was first published in Botteghe Oscure, VIII, p. 208, November 1951. (Collected Poems no. 69.) The poem was enclosed in a letter written by Thomas to Princess Caetani on 28th Mary 1951 (Selected Letters, p.359); the letter has a postscript: 'The only person I can't show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn't know he's dying.' D.J. Thomas lingered for more than a year after this, and died on 15th December 1952. [The notes for this comment were lifted almost verbatim from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, Notes, page 275.]
...and in the act of stepping, you're bound to take out many helpless ants...
So what. The only helpless ants that close to Microsoft are the piss-ants that live on the crumbs it leaves.
..sails climbed, then fell off..
OT, but it should be pointed out that sails do not climb-- they are hoisted by a jack-tar, who pulls on a halyard. Sometimes sails are hoisted by a wench. (Of course, she could be using mechanical means such as wrapping a few turns of the halyard around a winch.)
I would rather kill myself than have to use a life support system that ran under Windows . . .
oh, wait a minute . . . I wouldn't have to kill myself then, would I?
And...
How many of the 7,000 "I hate microsoft" comments actually came from pro-Microsoft astroturfers, trying to make the Slashdot crowd look juvenile?
And...
How many of the neutrally opinionated comments actually came from masquerading Microsoft employees, trying to look non-chalant and Buddha-like about the whole thing?
Anyone?
Whatdaya mean, paranoid? I'm not paranoid!
> The corporate wars have begun. AOL just fired
> the first shot across the bow.
> No good will come of this.
No, we have no problem. But certainly, Microsoft does. And while no good will come to Microsoft, I am positively excited about the immense, endless, heart warming, great good that humanity everywhere in the world will reap from this!
I hope AOL wins this suit, and wins it big time. I hope that they that they not only win it, but can prove that Netscape's losses have exceeded $10 billions over the past four or five years-- let's see, treble damages times $10 billions-- HA! Microsoft will have to pay AOL $30 billions plus!
I am not an AOL user, but I heartily wish them good luck, and hope this suit castrates Microsoft, strikes Ballmer dumb and cross-eyed, makes Bill Gates have a total nervous breakdown, and scatters the Microsoft minions like cockroaches when the light's turned on.
I can just see it now: In 2002, Enron files for bankruptcy amidst great scandal, and then, a few months later Microsoft files for bankruptcy, and Bill Gates gets to play poker with Ken Lay in their common prison cell, after he sells off all his stock in Microsoft before its price crashes! Whoo-whee! This is the stuff dreams are made of! I am so excited with this news, I am want to dance around the room! Hooray for AOL!
No, I am not getting carried away!
How can our country NOT look like an ass when it is being run by a bunch of asses.
I remember the video that Microsoft made for its lawyers to show in court for their antitrust trial: it was a total fake, but not so obvious except to the attentive eyes of David Boies, who caught the fakery and rubbed Microsoft's nose in it. These demo screens and movies likely were created on SGI machines so Microsoft can use them in its vaporware campaign against the ALREADY EXISTING Sony PS2.