> If the computer you bought doesn't work to your satisfaction, return it to where you bought it, and raise hell until you get a refund!
Raise hell all you want, the store may not give you a refund. They may only offer an exchange for the same model, or store credit, or they may not do anything for you.
What if everything was working until you installed Vista's new service pack?
What if you bought an XP that was advertised as "Vista Ready" then you bought Vista, but it did not work, do you think any store will accept opened software?
If msft is making it a standard practice to claim that computer are "Vista Ready" when the computers are not "Vista Ready" then msft certainly deserves to be sued.
Nobody is saying that Vista doesn't work. The problem is that msft is advertising computers as being "vista ready" when those particular computers are not vista ready.
The stickers only mentioned Vista. Nothing about Basic. The FTC had ordered msft in 2001 not to engage in such deceptive practices. Why would anybody assume that "Vista" does not mean "Vista" ?
What is hard to understand? It's like advertising that a car will 40mpg, and "forgetting" to mention that only applies if the car is going down a steep hill.
It's just the old blame-shifting game: if anybody is deceived by msft, it is the fault of the deceived for being stupid. It is never msft's fault.
Sure, the stickers only mentioned Vista. Nothing about Basic. Never mind that the FTC had ordered msft in 2001 not to engage in such deceptive practices.
Honesty is too much to expect from msft. Any msft shill will tell you that. Msft advocates seem to believe that msft should be allowed to lie. According the msft advocates, that is just good 'ol American capitalism. Anybody who objects to msft's standard behavior of lying, cheating, ballot-stuffing, bribing, legal-system abusing, bogus patent filing, FUDding, and so on; is obviously an a commie, anti-American, anti-capitalism, and so on.
Getting astronomical "MPG" out of a hybrid is no trick at all.
If I make a hybrid car that runs on 99% electricity, and 1% gasoline; that car could probably get 2000 MPG easily. But would it be fair to assume that such a car is more economical, or better for the environment?
If a car is a hybrid, we need to consider total non-renewable fuel consumption, not just gasoline consumption.
And if you are using a so-called renewable fuel, you must consider the non-renewable fuel that it takes to create that fuel; as well as other environmental factors such as water consumption, and loss of top-soil.
Agree 100% - it's all about the apps, ask any gamer. Desktop Linux advocates hate to admit this, because it makes desktop adoption seem hopeless. Windows advocates hate to admit this becasue they like to pretend that Windows is a higher quality OS.
The following is what I think F/OSS financial software is missing. All of the following is based my limited understanding, and my opinions. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.
* Ease of use: Somewhat debatable. But some people site this as a primary reason for Intuit's amazing success with QuickBooks - supposedly up to 92% of small businesses use QuickBooks. Although, I have to wonder how the number of foss users can be accurately counted?
* Integration with online banking: my understanding is that only intuit or msft products can easily integrate with online banking. Not absolutely sure about that.
* Payroll: very regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.
* Taxes: somewhat regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.
* Wide acceptance: I think most businesses are much more comfortable using products that are accepted standards.
* Wealth of available add-ons: Intuit has a very active community of 3rd party developers. You can buy practically any kind of an add-on you can imagine. These add-ons cost money, but at least they are available.
* Major company: I think a lot of businesses are not comfortable with a product unless there is a major company behind that product. I have to admit, even I am not comfortable with software products that are essentially one man operations.
* Support: I can always hire somebody who knows quickbooks, or find a "ProAdvisor" consultant, or I can get support from the company, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of developers who specialize in developing for quickbooks. I can not see where that is true for any project.
* Training availability and costs. I can hire people who already know quickbooks. If I hire somebody to work on some foss alternative, then there will be a significant training expense. Of course, there is also the issue of training availability.
* Documentation: If I had to pick one thing that kills the usefulness of more foss projects than anything else, this would win in a slam-dunk. Of course, this varies among projects, some foss projects have great documentation. But, I can always find plenty of books, or other documentation for popular proprietary financial apps.
* Many accountants, maybe as many as 200,000, use QB and recommend it to their clients. Some accountants will charge much more for files that are not in QB format.
* QB has much better 3rd party integration. For example, ecommerce packages like oscommerce, and magento, work with quickbooks, not foss alternatives. Msft accounting works with ebay. I can not find that sort of integration with foss software.
The SCO Group (TSG) gets bought and the holding company decides that things are just not working out. Can the holding company just write off it's "investment" and TSG just stops existing? No more company, no more lawsuits?
I could not help but notice that your bullet points were all: "I do this" and "I do that." Well, good for you, but is it realistic to assume that everybody will behave in the same manner?
As I understand it, cult leaders love to impress their followers with an "under siege" mentality. When people protest a cult, that only "proves" that the bad guys are out to suppress the truth.
Hubbard spending a lot of time in the nut-house. He came to hate psychiatry and psychology. This hatred is expressed in his purely fictional works, like "Mission Earth" as well.
Intuit probably owns at least 80% of the SMB financial software market. By some counts, Intuit owns 92% of that market.
I think msft may be in somewhat of a price war with intuit right now, but it is not helping msft. I think msft's quickbooks competitor is selling for around $150, but it looks like intuit has dropped the price of quickbooks to about $130. I think quickbooks used to cost around $500.
I see no way for msft to steal the market from intuit. Intuit is too well established, there is a huge network of Intuit "ProAdvisors" and Intuit developers, and thousands of quickbooks add-ons available.
This is a market that msft wants, and msft is not able to get it.
He may be smart and rich, but the guy has several screws loose.
Almost all CEOs are primarily salesmen. Ballmer is more of a loud-mouth bully, he demands constant attention, he always has something to prove, he lives to hurt those who he sees as being weaker than him.
I have had clients say: "oh, that's nice but it *has* to have this special msft font, and it has to have this special background . .." Changing around the themes in drupal, or whatever, can be more difficult than changing things in your own html/css code.
> Yes, they gamed the voting. Of course they did, it was in their interest to do so.
That does not make it all right.
Let me explain: if it was in my best interest to murder somebody, that would not make such a murder legal. Believe it or not, the same principal applies to msft. I know it's hard for the msft shills to grasp, but msft is not above the law.
This is a very clear case of msft abusing their monopoly position. Msft keeps everybody locked into msft's office products by have a proprietary format. Msft is looking to keep that monopoly locked in.
Typical msft shill, now you trying to change the subject. I was not discussing the entire history of either company. To quote myself:
"You are trying to drag IBM down to msft's level, and that is not fair in this case."
Again: "in this case."
> I've, here, only pointed out IBM's hypocrisy in constantly painting itself the "good guy" regarding "open source" and painting Micro$oft as the "bad guy."
Okay, how has ibm been the bad guy regarding open source? Please be very specific.
> IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Over $18 billion in revenue in 2006.
"IBM's entire software portfolio posted revenue of $18.161 in 2006 versus $16.83 billion in 2005, representing a year over year growth of 7.9%."
I don't know total 2007 revenue yet, but forth quarter looks strong.
"IBM's Software Group had fourth-quarter revenue of $6.3 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to 2006. WebSphere revenue climbed by 23 percent; Information Management sales, 11 percent; Tivoli software, 19 percent; Lotus, 7 percent; and Rational, 22 percent, compared with the same quarter in 2006."
> Perhaps you should define what *you* mean by open as 'Open XML' is an 'open standard.'
Parts of the standard say stuff like "do this the same as it's done in win95" but the win95 format is closed. Therefore, OOXML is not fully open. Also, msft can change the format whenever msft choses to do so. The EMCA are just a bunch of msft rubber-stampers.
> My point isn't to try to make Micro$oft look better, it's to point out the hypocrisy of IBM trying to make Micro$oft look like "the bad guys" when IBM are exactly the same.
You are trying to drag IBM down to msft's level, and that is not fair in this case. IBM has not lied about ODF being open. IBM has not subverted the process by bribing and ballot stuffing. IBM has not launched a massive PR campaign to twist the facts.
If IBM is acting in it's own self interest, so what? That of itself is not unethical. It's only when you start lying, cheating, and stealing (like msft does rountinely) that it becomes unethical.
So is saying that both companies are at the same level is pure bullshit.
> Micro$oft pretends to want an open format but really wants an 'open but biased' format
OOXML is not 'open but biased' OOXML is not open - period. But you made a valid point about msft being full of sh!t.
> IBM pretends to like Open Source, but really makes an enormous percentage of their income from services directly related to such endeavors.
WTF? If open source is helpful to IBM's business model, then IBM is not "pretending" to like open source. Furthermore, why should IBM support any standard that is not helpful to IBM's business model? However, unlike msft, IBM is not calling a closed standard "open." And IBM is not involved in bribery and ballot stuffing to pushed a proprietary system though the ISO process while called that closed standard "open."
> I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
IBM's software division - never mind the rest of the company - is easily the 2nd largest software company on earth. Bigger than Oracle and SAP put together, I think.
AIX has very little original UNIX code left in it. Ever hear of MVS - it's been around since the 1950s and is still widely used, even if re-named. How about DB2? I believe IBM actually developed SQL, and RISC. IBM has actually research labs, and real scientists doing basic research - think you will find that at msft?
Slashdot Mirror
> If the computer you bought doesn't work to your satisfaction, return it to where you bought it, and raise hell until you get a refund!
Raise hell all you want, the store may not give you a refund. They may only offer an exchange for the same model, or store credit, or they may not do anything for you.
What if everything was working until you installed Vista's new service pack?
What if you bought an XP that was advertised as "Vista Ready" then you bought Vista, but it did not work, do you think any store will accept opened software?
If msft is making it a standard practice to claim that computer are "Vista Ready" when the computers are not "Vista Ready" then msft certainly deserves to be sued.
Nobody is saying that Vista doesn't work. The problem is that msft is advertising computers as being "vista ready" when those particular computers are not vista ready.
The stickers only mentioned Vista. Nothing about Basic. The FTC had ordered msft in 2001 not to engage in such deceptive practices. Why would anybody assume that "Vista" does not mean "Vista" ?
What is hard to understand? It's like advertising that a car will 40mpg, and "forgetting" to mention that only applies if the car is going down a steep hill.
It's just the old blame-shifting game: if anybody is deceived by msft, it is the fault of the deceived for being stupid. It is never msft's fault.
Sure, the stickers only mentioned Vista. Nothing about Basic. Never mind that the FTC had ordered msft in 2001 not to engage in such deceptive practices.
Honesty is too much to expect from msft. Any msft shill will tell you that. Msft advocates seem to believe that msft should be allowed to lie. According the msft advocates, that is just good 'ol American capitalism. Anybody who objects to msft's standard behavior of lying, cheating, ballot-stuffing, bribing, legal-system abusing, bogus patent filing, FUDding, and so on; is obviously an a commie, anti-American, anti-capitalism, and so on.
> Groklaw wouldn't be happy unless Microsoft announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and submitting everything they own into the public domain
Wrong. Groklaw just asks that msft stop lying. If msft wants to keep their MSOOXML thing proprietary, that is no problem.
The problem is that msft claims that MSOOXML is an open standard, when it's not.
Getting astronomical "MPG" out of a hybrid is no trick at all.
If I make a hybrid car that runs on 99% electricity, and 1% gasoline; that car could probably get 2000 MPG easily. But would it be fair to assume that such a car is more economical, or better for the environment?
If a car is a hybrid, we need to consider total non-renewable fuel consumption, not just gasoline consumption.
And if you are using a so-called renewable fuel, you must consider the non-renewable fuel that it takes to create that fuel; as well as other environmental factors such as water consumption, and loss of top-soil.
Agree 100% - it's all about the apps, ask any gamer. Desktop Linux advocates hate to admit this, because it makes desktop adoption seem hopeless. Windows advocates hate to admit this becasue they like to pretend that Windows is a higher quality OS.
The following is what I think F/OSS financial software is missing. All of the following is based my limited understanding, and my opinions. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.
* Cost advantage: QuickBooks simple start is free:
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/free-accounting-software.jhtml
Or I can buy the full version of QuickBooks in only $128:
http://www.qbpro2008.com/quickbooks-2008-coupons-for-amazon/
Seems to me that any cost advantage of using a foss alternative is negligible.
* Ease of use: Somewhat debatable. But some people site this as a primary reason for Intuit's amazing success with QuickBooks - supposedly up to 92% of small businesses use QuickBooks. Although, I have to wonder how the number of foss users can be accurately counted?
* Integration with online banking: my understanding is that only intuit or msft products can easily integrate with online banking. Not absolutely sure about that.
* Payroll: very regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.
* Taxes: somewhat regional, and changes often == not well suited for foss.
* Wide acceptance: I think most businesses are much more comfortable using products that are accepted standards.
* Wealth of available add-ons: Intuit has a very active community of 3rd party developers. You can buy practically any kind of an add-on you can imagine. These add-ons cost money, but at least they are available.
* Major company: I think a lot of businesses are not comfortable with a product unless there is a major company behind that product. I have to admit, even I am not comfortable with software products that are essentially one man operations.
* Support: I can always hire somebody who knows quickbooks, or find a "ProAdvisor" consultant, or I can get support from the company, and there are hundreds - if not thousands - of developers who specialize in developing for quickbooks. I can not see where that is true for any project.
* Training availability and costs. I can hire people who already know quickbooks. If I hire somebody to work on some foss alternative, then there will be a significant training expense. Of course, there is also the issue of training availability.
* Documentation: If I had to pick one thing that kills the usefulness of more foss projects than anything else, this would win in a slam-dunk. Of course, this varies among projects, some foss projects have great documentation. But, I can always find plenty of books, or other documentation for popular proprietary financial apps.
* Many accountants, maybe as many as 200,000, use QB and recommend it to their clients. Some accountants will charge much more for files that are not in QB format.
* QB has much better 3rd party integration. For example, ecommerce packages like oscommerce, and magento, work with quickbooks, not foss alternatives. Msft accounting works with ebay. I can not find that sort of integration with foss software.
The SCO Group (TSG) gets bought and the holding company decides that things are just not working out. Can the holding company just write off it's "investment" and TSG just stops existing? No more company, no more lawsuits?
I could not help but notice that your bullet points were all: "I do this" and "I do that." Well, good for you, but is it realistic to assume that everybody will behave in the same manner?
I knew it!
http://www.gotfuturama.com/Information/Encyc-21-SmellOScope/
As I understand it, cult leaders love to impress their followers with an "under siege" mentality. When people protest a cult, that only "proves" that the bad guys are out to suppress the truth.
Hubbard spending a lot of time in the nut-house. He came to hate psychiatry and psychology. This hatred is expressed in his purely fictional works, like "Mission Earth" as well.
At least, that is my understanding.
Intuit probably owns at least 80% of the SMB financial software market. By some counts, Intuit owns 92% of that market.
I think msft may be in somewhat of a price war with intuit right now, but it is not helping msft. I think msft's quickbooks competitor is selling for around $150, but it looks like intuit has dropped the price of quickbooks to about $130. I think quickbooks used to cost around $500.
I see no way for msft to steal the market from intuit. Intuit is too well established, there is a huge network of Intuit "ProAdvisors" and Intuit developers, and thousands of quickbooks add-ons available.
This is a market that msft wants, and msft is not able to get it.
> It doesn't matter what you believe or are feeling, the Internet is big enough that you can find a group of people just like you
Stop there for a minute: would that not imply that the person is *already* a pedafile?
Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but the article seems to state that the internet *creates* pedafiles.
He may be smart and rich, but the guy has several screws loose.
Almost all CEOs are primarily salesmen. Ballmer is more of a loud-mouth bully, he demands constant attention, he always has something to prove, he lives to hurt those who he sees as being weaker than him.
I have had clients say: "oh, that's nice but it *has* to have this special msft font, and it has to have this special background . . ." Changing around the themes in drupal, or whatever, can be more difficult than changing things in your own html/css code.
> Yes, they gamed the voting. Of course they did, it was in their interest to do so.
That does not make it all right.
Let me explain: if it was in my best interest to murder somebody, that would not make such a murder legal. Believe it or not, the same principal applies to msft. I know it's hard for the msft shills to grasp, but msft is not above the law.
This is a very clear case of msft abusing their monopoly position. Msft keeps everybody locked into msft's office products by have a proprietary format. Msft is looking to keep that monopoly locked in.
patent-scam, novell-scam
Microsoft's less combative stance in recent years? WTF?
Do you evidence about gmail not being secure? Your post seems like an unsupported assertion.
> Exactly, follow the links to IBM's own data and you'll find that nearly everything sold as software is from an aquired company.
First, you are completely wrong, IBM has developed tons of software. Second, as usual, you are trying to the change the subject. Typical msft shill.
You proclaimed - wrongly - that IBM's software division was trivial. I pointed out - correctly - that IBM's software division is huge.
Typical msft shill, now you trying to change the subject. I was not discussing the entire history of either company. To quote myself:
"You are trying to drag IBM down to msft's level, and that is not fair in this case."
Again: "in this case."
> I've, here, only pointed out IBM's hypocrisy in constantly painting itself the "good guy" regarding "open source" and painting Micro$oft as the "bad guy."
Okay, how has ibm been the bad guy regarding open source? Please be very specific.
> IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Over $18 billion in revenue in 2006.
"IBM's entire software portfolio posted revenue of $18.161 in 2006 versus $16.83 billion in 2005, representing a year over year growth of 7.9%."
I don't know total 2007 revenue yet, but forth quarter looks strong.
"IBM's Software Group had fourth-quarter revenue of $6.3 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to 2006. WebSphere revenue climbed by 23 percent; Information Management sales, 11 percent; Tivoli software, 19 percent; Lotus, 7 percent; and Rational, 22 percent, compared with the same quarter in 2006."
> Perhaps you should define what *you* mean by open as 'Open XML' is an 'open standard.'
Parts of the standard say stuff like "do this the same as it's done in win95" but the win95 format is closed. Therefore, OOXML is not fully open. Also, msft can change the format whenever msft choses to do so. The EMCA are just a bunch of msft rubber-stampers.
> My point isn't to try to make Micro$oft look better, it's to point out the hypocrisy of IBM trying to make Micro$oft look like "the bad guys" when IBM are exactly the same.
You are trying to drag IBM down to msft's level, and that is not fair in this case. IBM has not lied about ODF being open. IBM has not subverted the process by bribing and ballot stuffing. IBM has not launched a massive PR campaign to twist the facts.
If IBM is acting in it's own self interest, so what? That of itself is not unethical. It's only when you start lying, cheating, and stealing (like msft does rountinely) that it becomes unethical.
So is saying that both companies are at the same level is pure bullshit.
Clear enough?
> Micro$oft pretends to want an open format but really wants an 'open but biased' format
OOXML is not 'open but biased' OOXML is not open - period. But you made a valid point about msft being full of sh!t.
> IBM pretends to like Open Source, but really makes an enormous percentage of their income from services directly related to such endeavors.
WTF? If open source is helpful to IBM's business model, then IBM is not "pretending" to like open source. Furthermore, why should IBM support any standard that is not helpful to IBM's business model? However, unlike msft, IBM is not calling a closed standard "open." And IBM is not involved in bribery and ballot stuffing to pushed a proprietary system though the ISO process while called that closed standard "open."
> I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
IBM's software division - never mind the rest of the company - is easily the 2nd largest software company on earth. Bigger than Oracle and SAP put together, I think.
AIX has very little original UNIX code left in it. Ever hear of MVS - it's been around since the 1950s and is still widely used, even if re-named. How about DB2? I believe IBM actually developed SQL, and RISC. IBM has actually research labs, and real scientists doing basic research - think you will find that at msft?