Since it's a verbatim rip off from a/. post
and I would never violate the DCMA, UCITA, CIA or any Wisconsin resident the quote is reproduced unaltered.
"Symbian is bad for us no matter what. But Symbian is SUPER bad for us if... Symbian is going to create proprietary protocols so that other devices have to pay them royalties if they want to interoperate."
Symbian, for those that don't know, is a joint company by Motorolla, Ericsson, Nokia and others that creates an OS for the next generation smart phones based on EPOC
When I worked as a consultant for a major database vendor, all work and no play really drove me to the edge of a depression.
Talking with colleagues (and learning that they have the same symptoms) and a 4 week holiday to Thailand and Burma showed me that what I really need is time. I didn't drive it to the 50% extreme, but basically demanded:
Working 90% (with a 10% pay cut) in exchange for additional 4 weeks vacation.
Overall 9 weeks of vacation does far more for me then taking half a day off every week.
Since I'm running my own business now I can't negotiate such a sweet deal with myself, since it might allienate my customers. (OTOH I sign my own expense claims:>) Nevertheless I do plan for adequate training and vacation time.
If time is more important to you then an ass kicking salary by all means: go for it
Ah, now just sit back and wait until M$ sends in the audit team to destroy your company through fines and fees. Then I think you'll be needing the ol' Free Operating System, plus a cardboard box to live in. Microsoft's kind of disgusting that way, huh.
This might not quite work out. I know it happened and partially I wonder how companies, communities and schools could allow it to get that far.
See, we do have contract laws here that require a certain amount of mutual fairness of the contract (Grundsatz von Treu und Glaube, in German). That is, if your license states something like M$ has the right to perform audits at it's discretion at any time and the licensee is obliged to have his full technical staff at their disposal for no charge this will never uphold in court. Probably most European countries will not accept EULAs at face value and click through licenses will be laughed out of court.
Further: In the US they can destroy you simply by suing your ass away. The legal costs will kill you. In most European countries this won't work since the loser pays it all: Your lawyers, your legal costs, your additional effort and the court costs. It makes it much harder to blackmail you through the legal system.
Of course it helps when you have your license paper work in order.
Prerequisites : You must be a fairly important M$Shop
Bonus : If worst comes to worst you're even able to pull off your threat
Setup: When the very junior M$ sales droid comes in delivering his blackma^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsales pitch, get nasty, kick him out and make very, very clear that you won't negotiate with anybody less then the boss of his boss.
In the meantime: Set up a really nice Linux box, focus on the desktop (enlightenment is nice), make sure that you can demo the whole range of Open Office apps; specifically conversions from M$ Office documents. Install the Opera browser and a few other nifty add ons, preferrably stuff that looks better then under Windows.
Next: State clearly that this is your corporate desktop prototype that will be ready in three month and will be replacing all M$ shit! Make it very clear that you where just waiting for them to set totally unreasonable conditions until it's worthwile to scrap M$ entirely.
Wait for reasonable and cheaper offer from M$ to come in.
OTOH, Denmark is not some music loving college boy, who you can push around with legal threats.
Which will be interesting! The only viable way to fight this is by threat^H^H^H^H^H^H diplomatic measures from the US gubynmynt.
If Mr. Bush and his cronies however apply the same rethoric as the one applied when they canceled Kyoto then we are all in for a new, pretty nasty trade war.
Most Europeans are still pretty pissed about Mr. Presidents attitude problem.
They also didn't quite grasp this "internet thing" and then had to crash in with full force.
And I'm sure there are a helluva lot of other mistakes they made (I'd add WinCE to that list, too).
When you run a business you're bound to make mistakes. Two top-executives behaving like that in public is a bad strategic mistake however and those are rare throught M$' history.
This is something either really rotten, or this whole thing will hurt them to the core.
Either the evil empire lost it completely, since it's acting currently like a 4 year old child that can't get a popsicle in the supermarket, or there's something far more sinister in the woodworks.
Microsoft, throughout it's history, made very few dumb moves. Two of their hot shots within a timespan of a month behaving like spoiled brats in public must be linked to some strategy that they have cooked up.
That said, I'm not only not paranoid. I wouldn't give a shit if they're out there to get me...
If you get rotten service from an airline (or if they go out of business) you can get rotten service from a competing airline.
When the Xerox paper supplier doesn't supply adequately you're annoyed, run to the papershop, buy a couple packs and then search for another supplier.
IT (and I feel a lot of techies really get that wrong) is not about some Office applications, some databases and a couple web servers, it's about modelling the IT architecture in such a manner that it supports your business processes. This is complex by definition and also evolves and develops over time (both: business- and IT processes) you can't just go to the next Radio Shack and purchase a new IT architecture.
Now, when the company providing that very lifeline of your business goes bust, you're just plain dead.
Of course the companies going bust because their ASP goes under made an unbelievable stupid strategic decision in the first place and if you run a business that's the baddest mistake of all
Although the article is not necessarily a technical masterpiece, it's definitely great to see mainstream tech journalists reporting on Un-American trends in the IT industry.
On an interesting sidenote, while you still have a ton of idjit-rags (treekillers & bandwith thieves) out there, it's interesting to see an attitude shift within mainstream tech journalism.
For example, while no mainstream press product would have lost a bad word about the evil empire 4 years ago (they buy a lot of ad space), features like product activation receive a mighty frosty welcome nowadays.
Tells me that M$ will have a harder and harder time in the area of spincontrol...
Companies must notify both employees and consumers about how information collected about them will be used;
Companies can only use data for its intended purpose;
Companies cannot transfer data on employees and consumers to countries with inadequate privacy protection laws;
Consumers will have a right to access data collected about them;
Consumers will have a right to have inaccurate data rectified;
Consumers will have a right to know the origin of data about them (if this information is available);
Consumers will have a right of recourse in the event of unlawful processing of data about them;
Consumers will have a right to withhold permission to use their data (e.g. the right to opt-out of direct marketing campaigns for free without providing a reason);
Companies need explicit permission of consumers to process sensitive information, including information on racial origin, political or religious beliefs, trade union membership, medical data, and sexual life.
I can see it now, the M$ Hail$torm license agreement going like:
All your database are belong to us and in an event that your local laws conflict with our right of ownership of your data then Washington State laws and the word of our Lord Gates supersede such laws...
Well, they just might be laughed out of any European court.
For starters: Click through licenses are not legally binding in most European countries. And their certainly not binding when they conflict with mandatory local laws.
My, you're a naughty one! You don't only assist piracy of intelectual property, but - as we can all read in the mainstream press - it is quite likely that you support terrorists and are likely to peddle in kiddie porn.
It' s hard to judge without seeing the source code.
I'm sure however that vital parts of the engine weren't rewritten from scratch. The outlining architecture is still pretty much the same.
Now when it comes to gui front ends (in which I personally don't believe to much in the RDBMS area) Sybase sure as hell always delivered a big bad pile of shit as opposed to MS (hey, it's their core competence after all...)
...I worked on the frontline re: RDBMS for nearly a decade now. And the support I partially experienced from the big boys can partially only be described as shoddy (to put it mild).
Of course that doesn't invalidate your argument. When something goes wrong, as it inevitably does, you're sure better off when you went for Oracle or so. However,: support per se is certainly not better (I'm convinced that e.g. Great Bridge provides good support). It just looks better in your memo to the vice president that explains why the database fscked up big time.
Since approx. 3 years IBM is really pushing for market leadership in the relational db-market.
By buying Informix (the other candidate being Sybase) IBM gets access to a significant amount of enterprise database customers and that was obviously worth a bundle and then some to them.
What I couldn't figure out yet, is why anybody spends a ton of Money on database licenses, when Postgresql provides a very viable alternative.
Despite the fact that (with notable exception of the US) mobile is the next technological monster application I couldn't care less. Why ?
3G (UMTS) is planned for mobile broadband applications. Now, I might be a luddite in that respect, but my neato Nokia GSM 6210 phone does just about everything I could expect from a high tech phone booth, weighs considerable less and is exrtremely reliable.
The only problem when it comes to wireless applications is that phones, by definition, are circuit switching devices. This is addressed with alternative mobile packet switching schemes which permit speed of up to 50kB/s and work very well with GSM phones (GPRS). Oh yeah, and they are available now.
So, the phone companies - who spendt billions for UMTS licenses - want to tell me that my life is not full without streaming video and - music on the 2" display of my mobile phone (on the price of occasional crashes of course)?
Well, to tell you the truth: I buy a cinema ticket or switch on the telly, if I want to watch a movie and I crank on the CD player if I'm into listening music and for my part won't spend a fsucking cent to upgrade my phone to a broadband service.
As far as I recall PGP was released from a server in New Zealand to avoid the ludicrous American encryption export laws.
What if Prof. Felton releases the conclusions in an academic environment abroad.
Since SDMI asked for their crappy scheme to be broken, would that still be illegal under the DMCA ?
Up to this point most other (civilized) countries appear to have more reasonable laws on the issue then threatening academic researchers with jailtime.
Look man, I can very, very well relate to your situation. Although that's some 20-30 years ago and we weren't into Computers I always felt locked out.
When the other kids played soccer, I was into books. When the other boys played raunchy games, I was the outsider. When other kids threw a party I was locked out. The girls figured me to be - well, strange. And guess what: It hurt! Although I made a point of not giving a shit and continuing with my stuff and my education.
Now guess what: When I happen to stumble over some of those morons decades later, they have shitty jobs, a mediocre salary and are aparently locked into a situation which makes them fundamentally unhappy.
I for my part funded my own company, which won't make me rich, but allows me to live very well. I have a spouse who's an interesting women and with whom I live a fairly exciting life. My peers and my customers respect me and over the cause of my life I drank the finest wines and enjoyed the greatest sex. Although of course that came much later.
Your situation is different of course, and evidently you experienced gross unfairness. That hurts and it eats away on you, but! You'll get over it.
So, what do I want to tell you?
Stick to your convictions and do the right thing. Carry on, educate yourself and believe me; eventually all the laughs are on you.
If you want to mail me (remove spaces) you can do so at a l a i n at c o d a . c h
Slashdot Mirror
Since it's a verbatim rip off from a /. post
and I would never violate the DCMA, UCITA, CIA or any Wisconsin resident the quote is reproduced unaltered.
Why do I get the impression that this gem wasn't at all written by Mr. Mundie himself at all, but by some highly skillfull PR flack ?
This article in The Register provides some interesting reading, quote :
Symbian, for those that don't know, is a joint company by Motorolla, Ericsson, Nokia and others that creates an OS for the next generation smart phones based on EPOC
In fact, yes: depending on the country you get 4 to 9 weeks payed vacation.
No need to thank me :>
Talking with colleagues (and learning that they have the same symptoms) and a 4 week holiday to Thailand and Burma showed me that what I really need is time. I didn't drive it to the 50% extreme, but basically demanded:
Working 90% (with a 10% pay cut) in exchange for additional 4 weeks vacation.
Overall 9 weeks of vacation does far more for me then taking half a day off every week.
Since I'm running my own business now I can't negotiate such a sweet deal with myself, since it might allienate my customers. (OTOH I sign my own expense claims :>) Nevertheless I do plan for adequate training and vacation time.
If time is more important to you then an ass kicking salary by all means: go for it
This might not quite work out. I know it happened and partially I wonder how companies, communities and schools could allow it to get that far.
See, we do have contract laws here that require a certain amount of mutual fairness of the contract (Grundsatz von Treu und Glaube, in German). That is, if your license states something like M$ has the right to perform audits at it's discretion at any time and the licensee is obliged to have his full technical staff at their disposal for no charge this will never uphold in court. Probably most European countries will not accept EULAs at face value and click through licenses will be laughed out of court.
Further: In the US they can destroy you simply by suing your ass away. The legal costs will kill you. In most European countries this won't work since the loser pays it all: Your lawyers, your legal costs, your additional effort and the court costs. It makes it much harder to blackmail you through the legal system.
Of course it helps when you have your license paper work in order.
Bonus : If worst comes to worst you're even able to pull off your threat
Setup: When the very junior M$ sales droid comes in delivering his blackma^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsales pitch, get nasty, kick him out and make very, very clear that you won't negotiate with anybody less then the boss of his boss.
In the meantime: Set up a really nice Linux box, focus on the desktop (enlightenment is nice), make sure that you can demo the whole range of Open Office apps; specifically conversions from M$ Office documents. Install the Opera browser and a few other nifty add ons, preferrably stuff that looks better then under Windows.
Next: State clearly that this is your corporate desktop prototype that will be ready in three month and will be replacing all M$ shit! Make it very clear that you where just waiting for them to set totally unreasonable conditions until it's worthwile to scrap M$ entirely.
Wait for reasonable and cheaper offer from M$ to come in.
You know, it wasn't so much the message that royally pissed people off here, it was the arrogance with which it was submitted.
OTOH, Denmark is not some music loving college boy, who you can push around with legal threats.
Which will be interesting! The only viable way to fight this is by threat^H^H^H^H^H^H diplomatic measures from the US gubynmynt.
If Mr. Bush and his cronies however apply the same rethoric as the one applied when they canceled Kyoto then we are all in for a new, pretty nasty trade war.
Most Europeans are still pretty pissed about Mr. Presidents attitude problem.
When you run a business you're bound to make mistakes. Two top-executives behaving like that in public is a bad strategic mistake however and those are rare throught M$' history.
This is something either really rotten, or this whole thing will hurt them to the core.
Microsoft, throughout it's history, made very few dumb moves. Two of their hot shots within a timespan of a month behaving like spoiled brats in public must be linked to some strategy that they have cooked up.
That said, I'm not only not paranoid. I wouldn't give a shit if they're out there to get me...
Well, with a fairly vital difference:
If you get rotten service from an airline (or if they go out of business) you can get rotten service from a competing airline.
When the Xerox paper supplier doesn't supply adequately you're annoyed, run to the papershop, buy a couple packs and then search for another supplier.
IT (and I feel a lot of techies really get that wrong) is not about some Office applications, some databases and a couple web servers, it's about modelling the IT architecture in such a manner that it supports your business processes. This is complex by definition and also evolves and develops over time (both: business- and IT processes) you can't just go to the next Radio Shack and purchase a new IT architecture.
Now, when the company providing that very lifeline of your business goes bust, you're just plain dead.
Of course the companies going bust because their ASP goes under made an unbelievable stupid strategic decision in the first place and if you run a business that's the baddest mistake of all
On an interesting sidenote, while you still have a ton of idjit-rags (treekillers & bandwith thieves) out there, it's interesting to see an attitude shift within mainstream tech journalism.
For example, while no mainstream press product would have lost a bad word about the evil empire 4 years ago (they buy a lot of ad space), features like product activation receive a mighty frosty welcome nowadays.
Tells me that M$ will have a harder and harder time in the area of spincontrol...
They might be interested in this piece of European legislation.
In short, it says about that...
Companies must notify both employees and consumers about how information collected about them will be used;
Companies can only use data for its intended purpose;
Companies cannot transfer data on employees and consumers to countries with inadequate privacy protection laws;
Consumers will have a right to access data collected about them;
Consumers will have a right to have inaccurate data rectified;
Consumers will have a right to know the origin of data about them (if this information is available);
Consumers will have a right of recourse in the event of unlawful processing of data about them;
Consumers will have a right to withhold permission to use their data (e.g. the right to opt-out of direct marketing campaigns for free without providing a reason);
Companies need explicit permission of consumers to process sensitive information, including information on racial origin, political or religious beliefs, trade union membership, medical data, and sexual life.
I can see it now, the M$ Hail$torm license agreement going like:
All your database are belong to us and in an event that your local laws conflict with our right of ownership of your data then Washington State laws and the word of our Lord Gates supersede such laws...
Well, they just might be laughed out of any European court.
For starters: Click through licenses are not legally binding in most European countries. And their certainly not binding when they conflict with mandatory local laws.
You are probably a cypherpunk, sir...
here
OK, I rest my case :>
I'm sure however that vital parts of the engine weren't rewritten from scratch. The outlining architecture is still pretty much the same.
Now when it comes to gui front ends (in which I personally don't believe to much in the RDBMS area) Sybase sure as hell always delivered a big bad pile of shit as opposed to MS (hey, it's their core competence after all...)
Of course that doesn't invalidate your argument. When something goes wrong, as it inevitably does, you're sure better off when you went for Oracle or so. However,: support per se is certainly not better (I'm convinced that e.g. Great Bridge provides good support). It just looks better in your memo to the vice president that explains why the database fscked up big time.
Also what seems to have gone forgotten is that the MS SQL Server database engine is essentially based on Sybase...
By buying Informix (the other candidate being Sybase) IBM gets access to a significant amount of enterprise database customers and that was obviously worth a bundle and then some to them.
What I couldn't figure out yet, is why anybody spends a ton of Money on database licenses, when Postgresql provides a very viable alternative.
Despite the fact that (with notable exception of the US) mobile is the next technological monster application I couldn't care less. Why ?
3G (UMTS) is planned for mobile broadband applications. Now, I might be a luddite in that respect, but my neato Nokia GSM 6210 phone does just about everything I could expect from a high tech phone booth, weighs considerable less and is exrtremely reliable.
The only problem when it comes to wireless applications is that phones, by definition, are circuit switching devices. This is addressed with alternative mobile packet switching schemes which permit speed of up to 50kB/s and work very well with GSM phones (GPRS). Oh yeah, and they are available now.
So, the phone companies - who spendt billions for UMTS licenses - want to tell me that my life is not full without streaming video and - music on the 2" display of my mobile phone (on the price of occasional crashes of course)?
Well, to tell you the truth: I buy a cinema ticket or switch on the telly, if I want to watch a movie and I crank on the CD player if I'm into listening music and for my part won't spend a fsucking cent to upgrade my phone to a broadband service.
What if Prof. Felton releases the conclusions in an academic environment abroad.
Since SDMI asked for their crappy scheme to be broken, would that still be illegal under the DMCA ?
Up to this point most other (civilized) countries appear to have more reasonable laws on the issue then threatening academic researchers with jailtime.
When the other kids played soccer, I was into books. When the other boys played raunchy games, I was the outsider. When other kids threw a party I was locked out. The girls figured me to be - well, strange. And guess what: It hurt! Although I made a point of not giving a shit and continuing with my stuff and my education.
Now guess what: When I happen to stumble over some of those morons decades later, they have shitty jobs, a mediocre salary and are aparently locked into a situation which makes them fundamentally unhappy.
I for my part funded my own company, which won't make me rich, but allows me to live very well. I have a spouse who's an interesting women and with whom I live a fairly exciting life. My peers and my customers respect me and over the cause of my life I drank the finest wines and enjoyed the greatest sex. Although of course that came much later.
Your situation is different of course, and evidently you experienced gross unfairness. That hurts and it eats away on you, but! You'll get over it.
So, what do I want to tell you?
Stick to your convictions and do the right thing. Carry on, educate yourself and believe me; eventually all the laughs are on you.
If you want to mail me (remove spaces) you can do so at a l a i n at c o d a . c h
Hang in there and trust me it's worth it...
I was thinking in terms of a monthly allowance to obtain - err! smokeables...