Why do you think the Netherlands are going to affect Microsoft's behavior? They're convicted criminals in the most powerful nation on Earth.
Ah, no.
Being a monopoly is not a crime. And having a monopoly and continuing to act as if you weren't is a violation of commerce rules, not a "crime" in the way that "criminal" implies.
Yes, MS is a greedy corporate behemoth -- but being a GCB is not a crime in the USA, and it probably will never, in and of itself, be a crime.
Walk up to anyone -- ANYONE -- in an electronics store looking at computers and ask them "would you buy a tablet PC if you could get a good one for the same price?" and I'll wager you'll get, at least, 1 in four saying "YES". I suspect even higher, especailly if we allow for ignorance about the whole thing.
The thing about a PDA or a Tablet PC -- which are really two different things, btw -- is that they're computers that aren't attached to keyboards. A great deal of general purpose computing can be done without them... so long as there's a keyboard handy for when it's needed. But since the keyboard isn't attached, you can take a tablet PC places you couldnt' take a laptop, and use a PDA in ways you'd never use a laptop for at all.
What HP is griping about, btw, is the demise of the stylus-based PDAs. Which is as much the fault of the cell phone sales model in America as anything else. If prices were honest and people realized they really had to pay for their phones, I suspect we'd have cleaner phones and more PDAs.
I see this as something that targets the PS2's huge instal base and could cost a fraction of a whole next-gen system (Rev),
Collolquially, you're mis-using "fraction."
If all rumors are right, this eyetoy add-on will cost 1/2 what a revolution base system will cost. The games won't be any cheaper, either (about $50), so for someone who buys exactly one game, the sony thing here will cost $150 instead of $250 -- 3/5 the cost of a next-gen system.
When you say "it'll be a fraction of the cost", you typically mean a significant reduction akin to how we, colloquially, mean "decimate" to mean 1/10th the pre-action standing. This eyetoy thing will cost "a fraction" of the $500 PS2 (3/10, or about 1/3), but not really a "fraction" of the revolution.
According to the US Census Bureau, homeownership rate has been no lower than 62% nationwide for the last forty years.
Which, all told, may still mean that about half of tax-filers can't deduct mortage intrerest, either due to owning their home outright (rare for the lower-income set, unfortunately) or due to being a secondary-wage earner not married to the homeowner. I.e., a kid at home, like the kind of guy sitting down reading/. at 1:00 am Sunday morning... not me, but the guy reading this after I sign off.
I guess we're not talking about *good* reasons, because RALs from H&R Block are *never* a good deal. Seriously, never. There's *always* a better alternative. (If nothing else, a RAL from someone other than H&R Block, but usually there's an ever better alternative than that).
Not just talking about H&R Block here. Anyone, from H&R to their competitors to CPAs, is covered here.
Not just numbers, but tax law... It's also a matter of whether or not you have the time to carefully read the forms.
You're right. You need to be able to follow instructions, and ask help when you don't understand. Doing one's own taxes requires the dramatic requirement of a high school degree.
Just on the first two you've included a whole lot of people. And just making a lot of money is almost never going to make you "hit the AMT". The most common way to "hit the AMT" is to have a lot of employee business deductions, and the majority of the time that only is going to be a consideration if you're a homeowner (the standard deduction is quite large).
Thanks for the correction on the AMT.
As for homeowners and business owners -- yes, a whole lot of people own their home. But homeownership isn't even close to 50% nationwide -- more people rent or lease than own, and there's no special deduction for that. And most of us who don't own a home have no easy way to start a business large enough for the IRS to care about. (The tax ramifications from my wife walking in parades with her family are negligible.)
If you (and your wife, if you're married) have one job, no other income, and are eligible for zero credits, maybe. Otherwise it's actually pretty difficult to get it right.
Yep. I hate the W-4, and the pre-calculator way income taxes are withheld in general. (Why not a flat percentage of gross wages, after a deduction equal to the taxpayer's expected deduction divided bu the number of paychecks?)
But I also know people who would go to H&R block if I didn't urge them not to--mostly by checking their taxes and showing them how little a refund they're going to get. (Which reminds me, that I need to go talk to that person, as the single-no-child EITC limit was a lot higher than I thought...)
The ONLY three reasons to have a "professional" do your taxes are (1) you're getting a sizable refund and want a RAL, (2) You're of below-average ability when it comes to numbers, and need someone else to do them, (3) you're a homeowner, a business owner, or make enough to hit the A.M.T.
For all the rest of us, H&R block is a scam. If you passed high school, you can pay your taxes. If you have kids or go to school, there are a small handful of tax credits you care about --> most non-homeowners with kids will ONLY get a tax refund if they file for the EITC, and it's one form that's easy to file.
And, just in case you get stuck or don't know what you're doing, the IRS and all fifty states have toll-free tax assistance lines. You can even ask "are there any credits or deductions I could take?" and they may run down the list for you.
Oh, and it's easy to pay 500% for a RAL. All you need is a refund of less than $10 -- and it's all too easy to wind up with that. In fact, if you did your W-4 and kin right, that SHOULD be what you get.
If a sequel is needed to give a character depth, chances are the original needed a better script.
Oh, sorry. I should have ammended that to "sequals, or movies that are extended diatribes about one character."
And even then, you don't really know the characters. There's an illusion of depth that goes back to Shakespherean plays -- it's not a BAD thing, mind you -- but it's not the kind of depth that, oh, characters on well-written soap operas have. (And, in kind, depth isn't always a GOOD thing, either.)
and each of these was absolutely nothing like the original, and they had the advantage that they weren't just copying the original story.
You poor, poor boy*.
Sequels are the ONLY way you can get real character depth with cinema. The guy that Tom Hanks plays for a scant two-hundred minutes might be gripping and moving, but he's also shallow. Even if the story is all about him (think "Castaway"), you still get only a fraction of a real character.
The situation is even worst with fantasy and sci-fi, because you need to introduce THE WHOLE DARN WORLD as well. Movies that are so different and want to tell real stories need to be planned from the start as sequals, even if only in how they end the story.
A great example of this, BTW, is The Matrix. The first movie was good and introduced a very compelling world, but there wasn't any significant movement or depth given to the characters until the second and third movies. (Yes, the sequals were bad. But they were bad for different reasons.)
Look, I'm not saying that a computer is completely useless without internet access. I'm just saying that without an internet connection,
You're splitting hairs. To take your blurring to its natural extreme, a comptuer is useless without any software at all.
Access to files from the Internet through "sneakernet" (a misnomer here) and an "Internet Connection" are two different things, and in parenting the difference becomes both noticable and vital.
In the first situation ("no connection"), the child literally cannot get any web page without going through the parent. In the second ("with connection"), the child can wind up anywhere.
A computer is a multi-purpose tool. The fact that you have many different things that can also do (some of) the same things doesn't change what a computer can do without the internet.
The topic of conversation was a computer for a child, possibly without the internet. That is, without a live internet connection. Everything you poked around as needing the 'net for can be done via a jump drive and someone else's connection.
Y'know, there are these Attorney General creatures around -- fifty of them, in fact -- and more than one is looking to get some governorship-points by taking on a Big Corporation that's Sticking it to the Little Guy.
So while it is theoretically possible to move towards a paperless society, and devices like this would help, it is not exactly practical within the existing legal frameworks of many nations.
The computer works best when you think of it as a box that does wonderous things that you used to use many pieces of paper for.
The stream, for those that still get paper in, should be "recieve paper -> Scan document -> archive or discard paper -> Create product -> print product." You start having a paperless society by having a paperless office, which means that you care about the "original" only in an abstract way, and you never touch it again if you don't have to.
I'll wager that every accounting firm in the world uses computers to track and tabulate every single line of every thing they track. The paper product they produce is usually the form of a statement, which is in paper form mostly for the convenience of their client. (The government is starting to mandate electronic filing over here.)
Medical records in paper form--well, maybe for insurance reasons, but that's a backup and not the primary record. (Unless your doctor happens to ENJOY hiring two extra staff just to handle the shelves.)
Engineering documents and specs -- well, you're right, blueprints and draft materials are usually in paper form. Because that's the only high-resolution zero-power medium we've got. Come up with a cheap 36" x 48" 1200 dpi piece of electronic paper, and watch how fast blueprints adapt. (A dead tree version of buidling plans may very well be finally filed with the local jurisdiction for archival purposes, but that same office likely won't balk at a DVD of the same images that it can store alongside them. Big-budget offices will likely ask for this.)
Oh, and as for the rest of the world--the part that isn't engineering or government-bean-counting, including those insurance companies you mention--getting rid of paper as a permanent data source has either already happened or is going to happen in the next ten years, on pain of bankruptcy. There's just too many beneits for it not to make sense to do so.
This is for all those idealists, who were saying that Treo 700w was actually a good move for PalmOS. Unfortunately it was not. Rather it was a beginning of PalmOS's end.
The 700w is a good move for PALM. Not PalmSource. Nothing says "we're here to make hardware" like running the other guy's OS.
Oh, and I've got a pair of PDAs that I regularly watch movies or recorded TVs on. Both from Palm. Both, although plauged by an eargly-adopter syndrome (LifeDrive), work as fine and simply as anything I've ever had.
I find it rather unlikely that Windows Mobile will ever reach total PDA domination. Palm's got too strong a userbase, even with all of their mistakes -- and they've got too much of an advantage with the introductory model level.
Yes, it does. Or, rather, DRM mandated to be installed on all computers and all copyrightable files, does.
DRM mandated by the record company, including DRM for mandatory licensing (wherein the government forces the publisher to sell you a copy), is something else altogether.
RMS is against BOTH forms of DRM -- both the totalitarian mandated DRM straw man and the reasonable "commerical balance" DRM.
Would you destroy the concept of physical property to prop up your failing scheme for 'intellectual property'?
[StrawMan] So, what you're saying is, your collection of child porn should be all right and no one should be able to tell you otherwise? [/StrawMan]
The case for DRM is very simple. There are copyrighted works that folk won't give away for free. Some would like a copy of said works on their computer. Many authors/publishers won't give a naked electronic copy of anything valuable, due to fear of a Napster-effect rendering their sales useless.
DRM is a way that YOU can have your PC created something that the author can trust won't break the terms of the contract. Another, less secure, fashion is embedding a watermark or other metadata into the file, so that they know who to sue if YOUR copy winds up on Gnutella.
If you don't want DRM--well, then you don't want DRM, and you're then either willing to go without or pay a higher premium for an electronic copy. Some of us would rather pay a fair price and live with the (amazingly easy) restrictions.
Sure there is. You might have also thought that there was no way to stop Napster -- and today we have both users and companies being sued.
The easiest thing, at least in America, would be for the TelCos to require anyone who runs a Wi-Fi access point and doesn't take steps to block Skype to provide for e-911 service. It might even get to the point where you need to pay a bundle of fees when you buy a Skype phone.
Of course, that might not STOP it, seeing as how an unmetered cell phone is still worthwhile even with a $1000 upfront bundle of fees. Which would be a very good thing, actually.
I asked each one how killing innocent people in our bloodlust would avenge those who died today, or make us any better than those who committed that terrible act.
1: It wouldn't. OTOH, it wouldn't bring us down to their level, either.
2: It would quite solidly convince them not to do it again. Having one's population centers -- much less an entire counry -- destroyed in a single action is a traumatizing experience for any population. It would be the sort of thorough and authoritive violence that would let the Middle East start anew.
3: It would be far, FAR easier for Bush to move from "the man who pushed the button" to a concilitory tone than his current state. The rest of the world knows how the American political system works (at least in passing), and Bush has angered enough countries (both in the Middle East and elsewhere) that remain that we can expect no possibility of a region-wide peace until after Bush leaves office.
Microsoft is so selfish and full of themselves that they won't even allow their users to help them produce a better product.
Nooo. Microsoft is so selfish and full of themselves that they only want patches from Windows to come from microsoft.com. I mean, how dare they want to dictate the license terms they will accept for patches! Just look at how friendly the FSF has been to the "pay me for the code or you don't get it" license that MS prefers...
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When I get 10MPG on E85, I am getting 67MPG of gasoline.
E85 is only 15% Ethanol, not 85%. Your 10MPG for E85 is only about 11.5 MPG gasoline.
Sheesh.
Why do you think the Netherlands are going to affect Microsoft's behavior? They're convicted criminals in the most powerful nation on Earth.
Ah, no.
Being a monopoly is not a crime. And having a monopoly and continuing to act as if you weren't is a violation of commerce rules, not a "crime" in the way that "criminal" implies.
Yes, MS is a greedy corporate behemoth -- but being a GCB is not a crime in the USA, and it probably will never, in and of itself, be a crime.
Because people don't want them.
Nope. Because they're too expensive.
Walk up to anyone -- ANYONE -- in an electronics store looking at computers and ask them "would you buy a tablet PC if you could get a good one for the same price?" and I'll wager you'll get, at least, 1 in four saying "YES". I suspect even higher, especailly if we allow for ignorance about the whole thing.
The thing about a PDA or a Tablet PC -- which are really two different things, btw -- is that they're computers that aren't attached to keyboards. A great deal of general purpose computing can be done without them... so long as there's a keyboard handy for when it's needed. But since the keyboard isn't attached, you can take a tablet PC places you couldnt' take a laptop, and use a PDA in ways you'd never use a laptop for at all.
What HP is griping about, btw, is the demise of the stylus-based PDAs. Which is as much the fault of the cell phone sales model in America as anything else. If prices were honest and people realized they really had to pay for their phones, I suspect we'd have cleaner phones and more PDAs.
I see this as something that targets the PS2's huge instal base and could cost a fraction of a whole next-gen system (Rev),
Collolquially, you're mis-using "fraction."
If all rumors are right, this eyetoy add-on will cost 1/2 what a revolution base system will cost. The games won't be any cheaper, either (about $50), so for someone who buys exactly one game, the sony thing here will cost $150 instead of $250 -- 3/5 the cost of a next-gen system.
When you say "it'll be a fraction of the cost", you typically mean a significant reduction akin to how we, colloquially, mean "decimate" to mean 1/10th the pre-action standing. This eyetoy thing will cost "a fraction" of the $500 PS2 (3/10, or about 1/3), but not really a "fraction" of the revolution.
FWIW, I was wrong.
/. at 1:00 am Sunday morning... not me, but the guy reading this after I sign off.
According to the US Census Bureau, homeownership rate has been no lower than 62% nationwide for the last forty years.
Which, all told, may still mean that about half of tax-filers can't deduct mortage intrerest, either due to owning their home outright (rare for the lower-income set, unfortunately) or due to being a secondary-wage earner not married to the homeowner. I.e., a kid at home, like the kind of guy sitting down reading
I guess we're not talking about *good* reasons, because RALs from H&R Block are *never* a good deal. Seriously, never. There's *always* a better alternative. (If nothing else, a RAL from someone other than H&R Block, but usually there's an ever better alternative than that).
Not just talking about H&R Block here. Anyone, from H&R to their competitors to CPAs, is covered here.
Not just numbers, but tax law... It's also a matter of whether or not you have the time to carefully read the forms.
You're right. You need to be able to follow instructions, and ask help when you don't understand. Doing one's own taxes requires the dramatic requirement of a high school degree.
Just on the first two you've included a whole lot of people. And just making a lot of money is almost never going to make you "hit the AMT". The most common way to "hit the AMT" is to have a lot of employee business deductions, and the majority of the time that only is going to be a consideration if you're a homeowner (the standard deduction is quite large).
Thanks for the correction on the AMT.
As for homeowners and business owners -- yes, a whole lot of people own their home. But homeownership isn't even close to 50% nationwide -- more people rent or lease than own, and there's no special deduction for that. And most of us who don't own a home have no easy way to start a business large enough for the IRS to care about. (The tax ramifications from my wife walking in parades with her family are negligible.)
If you (and your wife, if you're married) have one job, no other income, and are eligible for zero credits, maybe. Otherwise it's actually pretty difficult to get it right.
Yep. I hate the W-4, and the pre-calculator way income taxes are withheld in general. (Why not a flat percentage of gross wages, after a deduction equal to the taxpayer's expected deduction divided bu the number of paychecks?)
But I also know people who would go to H&R block if I didn't urge them not to--mostly by checking their taxes and showing them how little a refund they're going to get. (Which reminds me, that I need to go talk to that person, as the single-no-child EITC limit was a lot higher than I thought...)
For the record, $40,000 ain't poor.
The ONLY three reasons to have a "professional" do your taxes are (1) you're getting a sizable refund and want a RAL, (2) You're of below-average ability when it comes to numbers, and need someone else to do them, (3) you're a homeowner, a business owner, or make enough to hit the A.M.T.
For all the rest of us, H&R block is a scam. If you passed high school, you can pay your taxes. If you have kids or go to school, there are a small handful of tax credits you care about --> most non-homeowners with kids will ONLY get a tax refund if they file for the EITC, and it's one form that's easy to file.
And, just in case you get stuck or don't know what you're doing, the IRS and all fifty states have toll-free tax assistance lines. You can even ask "are there any credits or deductions I could take?" and they may run down the list for you.
IRS line: 1-800-829-1040 for individuals.
NYS line: 1-800-225-5829 for individuals.
Oh, and it's easy to pay 500% for a RAL. All you need is a refund of less than $10 -- and it's all too easy to wind up with that. In fact, if you did your W-4 and kin right, that SHOULD be what you get.
If a sequel is needed to give a character depth, chances are the original needed a better script.
Oh, sorry. I should have ammended that to "sequals, or movies that are extended diatribes about one character."
And even then, you don't really know the characters. There's an illusion of depth that goes back to Shakespherean plays -- it's not a BAD thing, mind you -- but it's not the kind of depth that, oh, characters on well-written soap operas have. (And, in kind, depth isn't always a GOOD thing, either.)
and each of these was absolutely nothing like the original, and they had the advantage that they weren't just copying the original story.
/., but still...
You poor, poor boy*.
Sequels are the ONLY way you can get real character depth with cinema. The guy that Tom Hanks plays for a scant two-hundred minutes might be gripping and moving, but he's also shallow. Even if the story is all about him (think "Castaway"), you still get only a fraction of a real character.
The situation is even worst with fantasy and sci-fi, because you need to introduce THE WHOLE DARN WORLD as well. Movies that are so different and want to tell real stories need to be planned from the start as sequals, even if only in how they end the story.
A great example of this, BTW, is The Matrix. The first movie was good and introduced a very compelling world, but there wasn't any significant movement or depth given to the characters until the second and third movies. (Yes, the sequals were bad. But they were bad for different reasons.)
*: Or girl. This is
No. Budget means saving money.
LCDs take less electricity to use than CRTs. Ergo, they wind up costing less over the course of their lifespan.
Plus they're smaller, easier on the eyes, and have the nice benefit of looking much pricer than they really are.
Look, I'm not saying that a computer is completely useless without internet access. I'm just saying that without an internet connection,
You're splitting hairs. To take your blurring to its natural extreme, a comptuer is useless without any software at all.
Access to files from the Internet through "sneakernet" (a misnomer here) and an "Internet Connection" are two different things, and in parenting the difference becomes both noticable and vital.
In the first situation ("no connection"), the child literally cannot get any web page without going through the parent. In the second ("with connection"), the child can wind up anywhere.
Already have one of those.
Irrelevent.
A computer is a multi-purpose tool. The fact that you have many different things that can also do (some of) the same things doesn't change what a computer can do without the internet.
The topic of conversation was a computer for a child, possibly without the internet. That is, without a live internet connection. Everything you poked around as needing the 'net for can be done via a jump drive and someone else's connection.
It's not Linux. It's you.
A (short) list of things that a computer is good for without an internet connection.
All things that a kid could use, all avaluable (with proper setup) without the internet at all.
Y'know, there are these Attorney General creatures around -- fifty of them, in fact -- and more than one is looking to get some governorship-points by taking on a Big Corporation that's Sticking it to the Little Guy.
Ask anyone who works in a paperless office.
It ain't all that paperless.
Then they're not working in a paperless office.
A paperless office is a large place, with one department for "incoming paper," a seperate print shop, and NO ONE ELSE HAS A PRINTER.
If you've got a printer installed on your PC, your office ain't paperless.
So while it is theoretically possible to move towards a paperless society, and devices like this would help, it is not exactly practical within the existing legal frameworks of many nations.
The computer works best when you think of it as a box that does wonderous things that you used to use many pieces of paper for.
The stream, for those that still get paper in, should be "recieve paper -> Scan document -> archive or discard paper -> Create product -> print product." You start having a paperless society by having a paperless office, which means that you care about the "original" only in an abstract way, and you never touch it again if you don't have to.
I'll wager that every accounting firm in the world uses computers to track and tabulate every single line of every thing they track. The paper product they produce is usually the form of a statement, which is in paper form mostly for the convenience of their client. (The government is starting to mandate electronic filing over here.)
Medical records in paper form--well, maybe for insurance reasons, but that's a backup and not the primary record. (Unless your doctor happens to ENJOY hiring two extra staff just to handle the shelves.)
Engineering documents and specs -- well, you're right, blueprints and draft materials are usually in paper form. Because that's the only high-resolution zero-power medium we've got. Come up with a cheap 36" x 48" 1200 dpi piece of electronic paper, and watch how fast blueprints adapt. (A dead tree version of buidling plans may very well be finally filed with the local jurisdiction for archival purposes, but that same office likely won't balk at a DVD of the same images that it can store alongside them. Big-budget offices will likely ask for this.)
Oh, and as for the rest of the world--the part that isn't engineering or government-bean-counting, including those insurance companies you mention--getting rid of paper as a permanent data source has either already happened or is going to happen in the next ten years, on pain of bankruptcy. There's just too many beneits for it not to make sense to do so.
This is for all those idealists, who were saying that Treo 700w was actually a good move for PalmOS. Unfortunately it was not. Rather it was a beginning of PalmOS's end.
The 700w is a good move for PALM. Not PalmSource. Nothing says "we're here to make hardware" like running the other guy's OS.
Oh, and I've got a pair of PDAs that I regularly watch movies or recorded TVs on. Both from Palm. Both, although plauged by an eargly-adopter syndrome (LifeDrive), work as fine and simply as anything I've ever had.
I find it rather unlikely that Windows Mobile will ever reach total PDA domination. Palm's got too strong a userbase, even with all of their mistakes -- and they've got too much of an advantage with the introductory model level.
State mandated DRM...
Yes, it does. Or, rather, DRM mandated to be installed on all computers and all copyrightable files, does.
DRM mandated by the record company, including DRM for mandatory licensing (wherein the government forces the publisher to sell you a copy), is something else altogether.
RMS is against BOTH forms of DRM -- both the totalitarian mandated DRM straw man and the reasonable "commerical balance" DRM.
Would you destroy the concept of physical property to prop up your failing scheme for 'intellectual property'?
[StrawMan] So, what you're saying is, your collection of child porn should be all right and no one should be able to tell you otherwise? [/StrawMan]
The case for DRM is very simple. There are copyrighted works that folk won't give away for free. Some would like a copy of said works on their computer. Many authors/publishers won't give a naked electronic copy of anything valuable, due to fear of a Napster-effect rendering their sales useless.
DRM is a way that YOU can have your PC created something that the author can trust won't break the terms of the contract. Another, less secure, fashion is embedding a watermark or other metadata into the file, so that they know who to sue if YOUR copy winds up on Gnutella.
If you don't want DRM--well, then you don't want DRM, and you're then either willing to go without or pay a higher premium for an electronic copy. Some of us would rather pay a fair price and live with the (amazingly easy) restrictions.
Sure there is. You might have also thought that there was no way to stop Napster -- and today we have both users and companies being sued.
The easiest thing, at least in America, would be for the TelCos to require anyone who runs a Wi-Fi access point and doesn't take steps to block Skype to provide for e-911 service. It might even get to the point where you need to pay a bundle of fees when you buy a Skype phone.
Of course, that might not STOP it, seeing as how an unmetered cell phone is still worthwhile even with a $1000 upfront bundle of fees. Which would be a very good thing, actually.
I asked each one how killing innocent people in our bloodlust would avenge those who died today, or make us any better than those who committed that terrible act.
1: It wouldn't. OTOH, it wouldn't bring us down to their level, either.
2: It would quite solidly convince them not to do it again. Having one's population centers -- much less an entire counry -- destroyed in a single action is a traumatizing experience for any population. It would be the sort of thorough and authoritive violence that would let the Middle East start anew.
3: It would be far, FAR easier for Bush to move from "the man who pushed the button" to a concilitory tone than his current state. The rest of the world knows how the American political system works (at least in passing), and Bush has angered enough countries (both in the Middle East and elsewhere) that remain that we can expect no possibility of a region-wide peace until after Bush leaves office.
Microsoft is so selfish and full of themselves that they won't even allow their users to help them produce a better product.
Nooo. Microsoft is so selfish and full of themselves that they only want patches from Windows to come from microsoft.com. I mean, how dare they want to dictate the license terms they will accept for patches! Just look at how friendly the FSF has been to the "pay me for the code or you don't get it" license that MS prefers...
Gee, that's easy.
Make impersonal patents more expensive.
If you want to do it cheap, the guy who actually thought it up can lord it over your head for the next eighteen years.
If you want to hold your employee's invention for yourself, you need to pay more.
Don't buy a laserjet. Heck, don't buy any printer that demands that you return every functional component after a single tonor cycle.
How exactly are you going ot be mugged if you're naked?
"Give me your wallet!"
"What wallet?"