In either scenario their shares will go down, but they will have more value if they maintain their desktop monopoly.
If MS can maintain their monopoly when the open source alternatives are both good and free, then Bill Gates walks on water. Flooding the market with crippled software like "Works" won't work, not while the free alternatives are vastly better. And if they upgrade Works to feature parity with open source, why would anybody buy Office?
they have already positioned their Works suite to compete with free Office replacements by offering for free supported by ads
The free software world can play the advertising game just as well as Microsoft.
Face it, Microsoft is going to take a serious hit no matter what Bill does.
Microsoft will sell XP for the next 10 years at $15 a pop if that is what they have to do to stay dominant.
But what happens to the value of their shares when their annual revenues plumment? Remember, it's not only the operating system itself that will be commoditized: the applications (think Office) will have to be nearly free too. What will such a drastic diet do to Microsoft?
People don't advance to positions of power in corporate establishments by being risk-acceptant. So long as a GPL sword hangs over the heads of CIOs, they often going to choose the reliable, commercial solution
However, corporate executives are always interested in saving money, and they will stretch pretty far in order to do it. Linux and the GPL have the reassuring presence of IBM and HP behind them, and that is usually good enough for even the most timid exec. This is why Linux has been growing by leaps and bounds the last few years.
The idea that we know what would happen in a US court should the GPL ever be tested is wishful thinking.
OK, let Microsoft challenge the GPL in court then. They haven't dared to try it, even though all indications are that they really, really hate it. They have a history of going for what they want, dishonestly or honestly, if they think they can get away with it. But they have left the GPL strictly unmolested, and that is pretty strong evidence that even Microsoft feel intimidated by the strength of the license.
Not always false, and that is the point. You are lying if you try to imply that inflation never hurts a holder of U.S. treasuries. When inflation spiked in the mid 1970s, people holding T bonds with the low pre-inflation yields got hammered.
And that is the risk today. Nobody wants to be the sucker who gets caught in the next inflation spike. But the shortage of suckers pretty much guarantees that there will be such a spike, because the Republicans still need to finance those expensive wars somehow, along with the subprime Ponzi bailout and the sacred tax cuts. Look for heavy inflation and serious pain to come.
Expanding the money supply does not create one dime that the government gets to spend, nor reduce the debt at all.
You don't know what you're talking about. Inflation is primarily a means for a government to cheat on its debt. If I owe you $10,000, but in five years I manage to make it worth $2000, then I win and you lose. You were a sucker to lend me that $10,000 in the first place.
The U.S. government is running out of suckers. But it still has these incredibly expensive wars to finance. So it starts printing money, the kind of money that has no economic activity backing it up. Because there are no more suckers, this excess money goes directly into inflation. Do you understand?
By "CE" I assume you mean the Consumer Electronics market. I have news for you, Rooster: the iPod and its ilk are not the world. In the global rankings of machine tools producers, the U.S. is not even in the top 5 these days, so I see nothing that justifies your aggressive tone.
You have no idea how threadbare the U.S. industrial infrastructure is these days. There is no way for it to be fixed in less than a generation -- which means the U.S. is in for a world of hurt, thanks to the Republicans' insane economics.
I think you vastly underestimate the existing base.
One word: infrastructure. It takes a generation to build up your ability to make the tool that makes the tool that makes the widget you want to sell. China has an incredibly dense manufacturing infrastructure now, and the U.S. mostly doesn't anymore. No matter what, the U.S. is probably looking at decades of serious pain, thanks to the Republicans.
The most sadistic thing we could do, IMO, would be to not give them the attention. They've now been reduced to the level of a Livejournal attention whore, so it would me best to just let them become an hero in their own quiet little corner, denying them the attention they seek.
I agree somewhat. It would be a form of revenge to bury SCOX deeply in the global memory hole.
But I think we have to make an example of SCOX, for the deterrent effect. This is almost certainly IBM's major motivation in this case, because it would have been cheaper to settle with SCOX than to litigate. But IBM wants to deter other assholes from trying a similar extortion game, so nothing less than complete destruction of SCOX will do. Besides, deterrence doesn't work if nobody knows about it. Hence the loud celebrations.
Now really, can't we just let them die without all this coverage?
Because they deserve to be hated. Linux would not exist without hundreds of thousands of programmers giving away their works for free. Everyone contributed voluntarily, and the result is the greatest collection of high-quality software the world has ever known.
SCO and Microsoft tried to destroy that. They tried to smear our reputations by implying that we stole at least some of the software. We stole nothing, of course. Why would we need to? We're at least as good as any of SCO's programmers, and our combined resources are vast. But for a year or two, SCO's lies received enormous media coverage, and our reputations suffered a bit. We are not going to forgive or forget that for a long, long time.
You are of course falling back on blind faith, which is a very characteristically cultish thing to do. But I have confidence in you, my friend. Eventually you will come to understand my AIDS analogy, and then you will be free. Good luck.
Your reply was about what I expected from someone whose brain has been damaged by libertarianism. Its fantasy of greed and selfishness has a toxic effect on the mind.
Libertarianism cannot survive in the real world; to demonstrate this I offered you an AIDS analogy. Come back when you can think again, when you can show that you understand my analogy -- because at this time you clearly do not.
As for Sweden, what part of "saving money" do you not understand?
Free trade by definition enriches all participants in every exchange.
Not always true in the long run. This is because people are rarely able to pick the best possible course of action -- because the information they have at hand is never completely adequate. And even if their information were comprehensive and reliable, such as in the game of chess, people are only human, with imperfect human judgement. As Gandalf said to Frodo, "Even the wise cannot see all ends."
So an action that may seem optimal and satisfying today, such as refusing to pay taxes, may actually prove pessimal in the long run -- when the poor rise up and slaughter all the selfish rich people, such as yourself.
The data in that link fails to back you up. It ranks lots of African countries higher than China; you aren't seriously suggesting that they are richer than China (even per capita), are you? At worst, there is no correlation between economic freedom and wealth; and at best, the correlation is weak, and other factors contribute to wealth as much or more than economic freedom. Try again.
I agree that education is important, but the state actually does a terrible job at it. Our public schools have been failing our children for years now, yet people clamor for more public education.
This simply means the USA does a horrible job of public education. It does not imply that public education is necessarily bad. In Sweden, education is free all the way through university graduation -- and yet the Swedes spend a lower percentage of GDP on education than the U.S. does. Heck, the Swedes spend less than Mexico, for better results! This is an example of a successful socialist policy, and backs me up 100 percent. The U.S. system is clearly horrible -- but not because it is socialist.
It's a pity you really believe [that libertarianism would make the rich richer and the poor poorer]. Have you actually read anything by the great economists Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard?
I used to be curious about libertarianism -- until I read the fantasies of von Mises and Rothbard. To understand why I think as I do, have you thought about my comparison of libertarianism to AIDS? That was not idle chatter. Indeed, it is the crux: clearly, if libertariansim cannot survive in the real world, then any other features it may or may not have are irrelevant.
You want numbers on China vs India? How about the World Bank? China's middle class market is 4 times larger than India's ($1 trillion vs $250 billion).
And I am less socialist than Ronald Reagan: at least I believe in fiscal sanity, like Clinton -- and unlike the last three Republican presidents in a row (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II).
However, I acknowledge that some socialist policies can be beneficial to a country. Universal education is one of them, and is the single biggest difference between East Asia and the other developing regions of the world. China, for example, is able to manufacture so much high technology because its people are educated and skilled. Is that not obvious to a libertarian?
And I stand by my assertion that libertarian policies are deceptive, because they will end up making the rich richer and the poor poorer -- but very few libertarians are honest enough to admit this.
And I am not going to explain why libertarianism for a country is like AIDS for the human body. I want you to think about it. I want you waking up in the middle of the night wondering why. And when you finally get it, and you realize that the conclusion was unavoidable given the precepts of libertarianism, I want you to say, "How could I have been so stupid!"
If you don't understand why libertarianism for a country is the same as AIDS for the human body, then you are a typical drinker of the libertarian koolaid.
The massively successful East Asian subsidy for education should be obvious even to a libertarian.
I notice that you have entirely avoided proving your blanket assertion that economic freedom is the single biggest requirement for growth. I asked you to explain, if that were true, why China is three times richer than India, even though the average Chinese is nowhere near as free as the average Indian. You have no answer, do you?
Typical. Conservatives and libertarians rely on deception to advance their agendas, because their true intentions (to make the rich richer and the poor poorer) would frighten the voters.
I am not eager to force anyone to do anything. That is exactly why I oppose the public funding of all services.
I see. You don't want any antibodies in your body, because antibodies are a public service to your cells. Good luck, AIDS boy.
It is well known that economic freedom is the single most important factor in reducing poverty. When governments stick to protecting life, liberty, and property, there is more prosperity than there would otherwise be; poor included. The best way to reduce poverty is through allowing this individual choice.
Prove it. Explain why India is three times poorer than China, even though the average Indian is far freer than the average Chinese.
By the way, the East Asian economies are growing so fast precisely because the government is subsidising education (and public libraries).
Of course the free public library is crucial to the upward mobility of the lower classes. Do you know that it used to be illegal in the U.S. to teach a slave to read and write? A literate black was a huge danger -- that's how important education was considered to be. And free public libraries are crucial to education; after all, what is the point of being able to read if you can't afford to read anything?
As for people banding together to build a library, you can't seriously expect the poorest of the poor to build up a useful collection. They're too busy worrying about whether they will eat tonight. Your proposal is worthless.
Mind you, a lack of education is not an impassable barrier, but it forces anyone so afflicted to work far harder than you would need to in order to succeed. Now the question is, why are you so eager to withold the means of self-improvement and therefore to force the poor to work harder than you?
Many of today's libraries began with endowments from wealthy individuals.
And most of those early libraries charged membership fees, which made them basically inaccessible to the poor. The inaccessibility was probably deliberate: we have to keep out the riffraff, right?
Free public libraries available everywhere, not just where somebody feels like endowing one, are more than slightly socialist -- and are crucial for the upward mobility of the lower classes. I find it ironic, not to mention highly hypocritical, that the conservatives who are the loudest celebrators of the American Dream are the ones doing all they can to make it more and more difficult to achieve.
Maybe curbing the columnists' influence was the main intent of Times Select. The upper management of the Times is loaded with neocons, from the owner, Sulzberger, on down. Remember how strongly Sulzberger tried to protect his lying neocon reporter, Judy Miller.
Perhaps the management thought the peacenik columnists like Krugman, Herbert, and Dowd were too influential. I've always thought that Times Select was a brilliant way to muffle the columnists without actually seeming to be censors.
Of course, now that the Iraq invasion is a proven disaster, the same peacenik columnists are doing an enormous lot to save the Times' reputation. How ironic.
Right, because free information and libraries wouldn't exist without socialism.
Public libraries wouldn't exist without some socialism. These libraries are crucial to the American Dream, as they give even the poorest people the opportunity to educate and improve themselves. Some conservatives want to destroy these institutions, and that would be typical: they spout all day about the beauty of the American Dream, but in practice they do all they can to make it difficult to achieve.
Somebody else has reminded you that "slave" and "serf" have clear definitions that fit the 90% of Tibetans who were members of the lower classes.
The question I want to address is whether the slaves and serfs were aware of their exloitation, and whether they resented it. And the answer, as I will elaborate, is that they were definitely aware, and they hated their oppressors.
Everyone in old Tibet knew that a slave who tried to escape could expect to be severely punished if recaptured; the fear helped to keep the slaves in line. And torture was the least of the punishment; many had their eyeballs literally pulled out of their heads. The temples of Old Tibet were splendid in appearance -- but deep in the cellars were the torture instruments.
The serfs were not much better off. A Tibetan landower owned his serfs outright. He could buy and sell them, and he could take the prettiest girls and use them for whatever he wished. (I will let you imagine what he used them for.)
So yes, I would say that the slaves and serfs knew they were slaves and serfs -- and they hated it. In 1950, when the Communists came, the people opened up the gates of the capital city (Lhasa) and welcomed the invading army. And in 1957, when the Dalai Lama and his fellow Tibetan rulers felt threatened because the Communist ideas of egalitarianism were spreading, they rebelled against the Communists. The rebellion failed, because the people refused to help. You can imagine how much the people hated their masters, if they refused to fight for their homeland.
The people knew they were better off with the Communists, and they still are.
You refer to the original Feudal system of Tibet? You do realize the 14th Dalai Lama wasn't that old when he fled Tibet?
Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, was born in 1935. That means he was 24 years old when he escaped from Tibet --- more than old enough to realize the moral implications of owning slaves.
If China hadn't invaded, he might have reformed the Feudal system later, going with the time.
As far as I know, Gyatso has never actually denounced slavery. If he had done so, he would have lost the support of the exiled ruling class, who were nearly all former slave owners.
The point is the Buddists are the only major religion not promoting violence opposition.
The Dalai Lama must not be Buddhist then. By the Tibetan doctrine of reincarnation, the current Dalai Lama and his predecessors are all the same person. (This is why you will hear the current Dalai say weird things like "300 years ago, when I went to Beijing....") And the predecessors were definitely violent people: they oversaw incredibly bloody wars against rival temples in the endless Tibetan power struggle. The temples ruled the country; and the Dalai Lama was and is the head of the strongest faction. If you think the monks were peaceful, you must be dreaming acid.
Then there's the little fact that 90% of the population of old Tibet (before the Communists took over) were slaves and serfs. The upper 10% owned everything, including the people. And the monks were lords of the country. Do you think they kept their slaves in line by peaceful means?
nearly a million Tibeteans being slaughted
Nonsense. The total population of Tibet in 1959, as certified by the Dalai Lama's government at the time, was only about a million. If a million have been killed, could there be any Tibetans left?
Face it, you're hearing the same sort of totally one-sided propaganda that suckered the U.S. into invading Iraq. In the latter case, it was the Iraqi exiles who manufactured the disinformation; in the former case, it's the Dalai Lama and his fellow members of the former ruling class (who probably want their slaves back).
You're the second person to say that and you're also the second person to post no proof.
Here's the proof: a 406-page book you can download. It's loaded with plenty of exhibits from the Telcos' Annual Stockholder Reports. The telcos loudly promised to install 45 mbps fiber broadband -- and then thoroughly broke those promises. The money they received for doing nothing is also listed there, in the same Annual Reports. This is verifiable information. Is that enough proof for you?
So now you know: you eagerly gave the telcos $200 billion and got nothing in return. Sucker.
Slashdot Mirror
If MS can maintain their monopoly when the open source alternatives are both good and free, then Bill Gates walks on water. Flooding the market with crippled software like "Works" won't work, not while the free alternatives are vastly better. And if they upgrade Works to feature parity with open source, why would anybody buy Office?
they have already positioned their Works suite to compete with free Office replacements by offering for free supported by ads
The free software world can play the advertising game just as well as Microsoft.
Face it, Microsoft is going to take a serious hit no matter what Bill does.
But what happens to the value of their shares when their annual revenues plumment? Remember, it's not only the operating system itself that will be commoditized: the applications (think Office) will have to be nearly free too. What will such a drastic diet do to Microsoft?
However, corporate executives are always interested in saving money, and they will stretch pretty far in order to do it. Linux and the GPL have the reassuring presence of IBM and HP behind them, and that is usually good enough for even the most timid exec. This is why Linux has been growing by leaps and bounds the last few years.
OK, let Microsoft challenge the GPL in court then. They haven't dared to try it, even though all indications are that they really, really hate it. They have a history of going for what they want, dishonestly or honestly, if they think they can get away with it. But they have left the GPL strictly unmolested, and that is pretty strong evidence that even Microsoft feel intimidated by the strength of the license.
Not always false, and that is the point. You are lying if you try to imply that inflation never hurts a holder of U.S. treasuries. When inflation spiked in the mid 1970s, people holding T bonds with the low pre-inflation yields got hammered.
And that is the risk today. Nobody wants to be the sucker who gets caught in the next inflation spike. But the shortage of suckers pretty much guarantees that there will be such a spike, because the Republicans still need to finance those expensive wars somehow, along with the subprime Ponzi bailout and the sacred tax cuts. Look for heavy inflation and serious pain to come.
You don't know what you're talking about. Inflation is primarily a means for a government to cheat on its debt. If I owe you $10,000, but in five years I manage to make it worth $2000, then I win and you lose. You were a sucker to lend me that $10,000 in the first place.
The U.S. government is running out of suckers. But it still has these incredibly expensive wars to finance. So it starts printing money, the kind of money that has no economic activity backing it up. Because there are no more suckers, this excess money goes directly into inflation. Do you understand?
You have no idea how threadbare the U.S. industrial infrastructure is these days. There is no way for it to be fixed in less than a generation -- which means the U.S. is in for a world of hurt, thanks to the Republicans' insane economics.
One word: infrastructure. It takes a generation to build up your ability to make the tool that makes the tool that makes the widget you want to sell. China has an incredibly dense manufacturing infrastructure now, and the U.S. mostly doesn't anymore. No matter what, the U.S. is probably looking at decades of serious pain, thanks to the Republicans.
I agree somewhat. It would be a form of revenge to bury SCOX deeply in the global memory hole.
But I think we have to make an example of SCOX, for the deterrent effect. This is almost certainly IBM's major motivation in this case, because it would have been cheaper to settle with SCOX than to litigate. But IBM wants to deter other assholes from trying a similar extortion game, so nothing less than complete destruction of SCOX will do. Besides, deterrence doesn't work if nobody knows about it. Hence the loud celebrations.
Because they deserve to be hated. Linux would not exist without hundreds of thousands of programmers giving away their works for free. Everyone contributed voluntarily, and the result is the greatest collection of high-quality software the world has ever known.
SCO and Microsoft tried to destroy that. They tried to smear our reputations by implying that we stole at least some of the software. We stole nothing, of course. Why would we need to? We're at least as good as any of SCO's programmers, and our combined resources are vast. But for a year or two, SCO's lies received enormous media coverage, and our reputations suffered a bit. We are not going to forgive or forget that for a long, long time.
You are of course falling back on blind faith, which is a very characteristically cultish thing to do. But I have confidence in you, my friend. Eventually you will come to understand my AIDS analogy, and then you will be free. Good luck.
Libertarianism cannot survive in the real world; to demonstrate this I offered you an AIDS analogy. Come back when you can think again, when you can show that you understand my analogy -- because at this time you clearly do not.
As for Sweden, what part of "saving money" do you not understand?
Not always true in the long run. This is because people are rarely able to pick the best possible course of action -- because the information they have at hand is never completely adequate. And even if their information were comprehensive and reliable, such as in the game of chess, people are only human, with imperfect human judgement. As Gandalf said to Frodo, "Even the wise cannot see all ends."
So an action that may seem optimal and satisfying today, such as refusing to pay taxes, may actually prove pessimal in the long run -- when the poor rise up and slaughter all the selfish rich people, such as yourself.
The data in that link fails to back you up. It ranks lots of African countries higher than China; you aren't seriously suggesting that they are richer than China (even per capita), are you? At worst, there is no correlation between economic freedom and wealth; and at best, the correlation is weak, and other factors contribute to wealth as much or more than economic freedom. Try again.
I agree that education is important, but the state actually does a terrible job at it. Our public schools have been failing our children for years now, yet people clamor for more public education.
This simply means the USA does a horrible job of public education. It does not imply that public education is necessarily bad. In Sweden, education is free all the way through university graduation -- and yet the Swedes spend a lower percentage of GDP on education than the U.S. does. Heck, the Swedes spend less than Mexico, for better results! This is an example of a successful socialist policy, and backs me up 100 percent. The U.S. system is clearly horrible -- but not because it is socialist.
It's a pity you really believe [that libertarianism would make the rich richer and the poor poorer]. Have you actually read anything by the great economists Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard?
I used to be curious about libertarianism -- until I read the fantasies of von Mises and Rothbard. To understand why I think as I do, have you thought about my comparison of libertarianism to AIDS? That was not idle chatter. Indeed, it is the crux: clearly, if libertariansim cannot survive in the real world, then any other features it may or may not have are irrelevant.
And I am less socialist than Ronald Reagan: at least I believe in fiscal sanity, like Clinton -- and unlike the last three Republican presidents in a row (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II).
However, I acknowledge that some socialist policies can be beneficial to a country. Universal education is one of them, and is the single biggest difference between East Asia and the other developing regions of the world. China, for example, is able to manufacture so much high technology because its people are educated and skilled. Is that not obvious to a libertarian?
And I stand by my assertion that libertarian policies are deceptive, because they will end up making the rich richer and the poor poorer -- but very few libertarians are honest enough to admit this.
And I am not going to explain why libertarianism for a country is like AIDS for the human body. I want you to think about it. I want you waking up in the middle of the night wondering why. And when you finally get it, and you realize that the conclusion was unavoidable given the precepts of libertarianism, I want you to say, "How could I have been so stupid!"
The massively successful East Asian subsidy for education should be obvious even to a libertarian.
I notice that you have entirely avoided proving your blanket assertion that economic freedom is the single biggest requirement for growth. I asked you to explain, if that were true, why China is three times richer than India, even though the average Chinese is nowhere near as free as the average Indian. You have no answer, do you?
Typical. Conservatives and libertarians rely on deception to advance their agendas, because their true intentions (to make the rich richer and the poor poorer) would frighten the voters.
I see. You don't want any antibodies in your body, because antibodies are a public service to your cells. Good luck, AIDS boy.
It is well known that economic freedom is the single most important factor in reducing poverty. When governments stick to protecting life, liberty, and property, there is more prosperity than there would otherwise be; poor included. The best way to reduce poverty is through allowing this individual choice.
Prove it. Explain why India is three times poorer than China, even though the average Indian is far freer than the average Chinese.
By the way, the East Asian economies are growing so fast precisely because the government is subsidising education (and public libraries).
As for people banding together to build a library, you can't seriously expect the poorest of the poor to build up a useful collection. They're too busy worrying about whether they will eat tonight. Your proposal is worthless.
Mind you, a lack of education is not an impassable barrier, but it forces anyone so afflicted to work far harder than you would need to in order to succeed. Now the question is, why are you so eager to withold the means of self-improvement and therefore to force the poor to work harder than you?
And most of those early libraries charged membership fees, which made them basically inaccessible to the poor. The inaccessibility was probably deliberate: we have to keep out the riffraff, right?
Free public libraries available everywhere, not just where somebody feels like endowing one, are more than slightly socialist -- and are crucial for the upward mobility of the lower classes. I find it ironic, not to mention highly hypocritical, that the conservatives who are the loudest celebrators of the American Dream are the ones doing all they can to make it more and more difficult to achieve.
Perhaps the management thought the peacenik columnists like Krugman, Herbert, and Dowd were too influential. I've always thought that Times Select was a brilliant way to muffle the columnists without actually seeming to be censors.
Of course, now that the Iraq invasion is a proven disaster, the same peacenik columnists are doing an enormous lot to save the Times' reputation. How ironic.
Public libraries wouldn't exist without some socialism. These libraries are crucial to the American Dream, as they give even the poorest people the opportunity to educate and improve themselves. Some conservatives want to destroy these institutions, and that would be typical: they spout all day about the beauty of the American Dream, but in practice they do all they can to make it difficult to achieve.
Somebody else has reminded you that "slave" and "serf" have clear definitions that fit the 90% of Tibetans who were members of the lower classes.
The question I want to address is whether the slaves and serfs were aware of their exloitation, and whether they resented it. And the answer, as I will elaborate, is that they were definitely aware, and they hated their oppressors.
Everyone in old Tibet knew that a slave who tried to escape could expect to be severely punished if recaptured; the fear helped to keep the slaves in line. And torture was the least of the punishment; many had their eyeballs literally pulled out of their heads. The temples of Old Tibet were splendid in appearance -- but deep in the cellars were the torture instruments.
The serfs were not much better off. A Tibetan landower owned his serfs outright. He could buy and sell them, and he could take the prettiest girls and use them for whatever he wished. (I will let you imagine what he used them for.)
So yes, I would say that the slaves and serfs knew they were slaves and serfs -- and they hated it. In 1950, when the Communists came, the people opened up the gates of the capital city (Lhasa) and welcomed the invading army. And in 1957, when the Dalai Lama and his fellow Tibetan rulers felt threatened because the Communist ideas of egalitarianism were spreading, they rebelled against the Communists. The rebellion failed, because the people refused to help. You can imagine how much the people hated their masters, if they refused to fight for their homeland.
The people knew they were better off with the Communists, and they still are.
Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, was born in 1935. That means he was 24 years old when he escaped from Tibet --- more than old enough to realize the moral implications of owning slaves.
If China hadn't invaded, he might have reformed the Feudal system later, going with the time.
As far as I know, Gyatso has never actually denounced slavery. If he had done so, he would have lost the support of the exiled ruling class, who were nearly all former slave owners.
The Dalai Lama must not be Buddhist then. By the Tibetan doctrine of reincarnation, the current Dalai Lama and his predecessors are all the same person. (This is why you will hear the current Dalai say weird things like "300 years ago, when I went to Beijing....") And the predecessors were definitely violent people: they oversaw incredibly bloody wars against rival temples in the endless Tibetan power struggle. The temples ruled the country; and the Dalai Lama was and is the head of the strongest faction. If you think the monks were peaceful, you must be dreaming acid.
Then there's the little fact that 90% of the population of old Tibet (before the Communists took over) were slaves and serfs. The upper 10% owned everything, including the people. And the monks were lords of the country. Do you think they kept their slaves in line by peaceful means?
nearly a million Tibeteans being slaughted
Nonsense. The total population of Tibet in 1959, as certified by the Dalai Lama's government at the time, was only about a million. If a million have been killed, could there be any Tibetans left?
Face it, you're hearing the same sort of totally one-sided propaganda that suckered the U.S. into invading Iraq. In the latter case, it was the Iraqi exiles who manufactured the disinformation; in the former case, it's the Dalai Lama and his fellow members of the former ruling class (who probably want their slaves back).
Here's the proof: a 406-page book you can download. It's loaded with plenty of exhibits from the Telcos' Annual Stockholder Reports. The telcos loudly promised to install 45 mbps fiber broadband -- and then thoroughly broke those promises. The money they received for doing nothing is also listed there, in the same Annual Reports. This is verifiable information. Is that enough proof for you?
So now you know: you eagerly gave the telcos $200 billion and got nothing in return. Sucker.