Gates doesn't care if anyone makes money off GPL'd software; what he can't stand is if proprietary software buyer/marketers like his company can't just grab a publicly available technology on the cheap and take full control over its most popular distribution. The companies that Slashdotters love to hate know that it isn't about how much you can make, it's about how much of the market you can control.
Heck, Apple knows this. Just ask anyone who's tried to work with Jobs and ran screaming in the other direction.
I'm not so sure that he's this confused or misinformed about the GPL; after all, he didn't build the world's biggest software company by cutting everyone checks, much less without understanding his competitors.
My guess is that he's more concerned that the current and next generations of software developers will turn to OSS tools rather than Microsoft tools (price point of zero at work), and at the same time he's warning Microsoft partners away from failing to renew their licensing contracts.
Then again, a definition of insanity is repeating past actions and expecting different results, and he's just continuing the same marketing blitz that Microsoft has turned into an art form.
You jest, but if his efforts result in a drug that not only cures lethal diseases, but is also a narcotic, he'll blow right by Buffett as world's wealthiest man again.
Great, so now you've all but suggested to the pharmaceutical companies that they should send the salesmen and swag to the pharmacists.
They probably already do, and I hope most pharmacists are at least as ethical as yours, and have the backbone to reject even the slightest endorsements.
... instead of "blocking" some customers they simapily drove them to bad service so they would leave.
If the Comcast higher-ups in your area subscribe to the idea of "churn" (and there's very little reason to doubt they are, since a company of that size most likely has a significant number of Harvard MBAs), then that's exactly what happened. You, a high-traffic user, would most likely go elsewhere if your service smelled worse than a 4-day-old used gym sock. While they use methods to squelch your torrents that would cause most judges would grunt like an Orc, they blitz your neighborhood with "triple play" marketing. You go away, and your bandwidth is sold to fifty suckers. As the Japanese say, "one thrown stone killing two birds".
Funny yes, but an important point. If you befriend more corporations and corrupt executives than those who truly care for this country, it won't be long before you adopt their "bend the law to just under the point where they litigate" mindset.
Cheney has taken great pains to make sure that neither he nor Bush can be charged for anything. Why else do you think he never uses any sort of communication that can leave a voice or paper trail?
Hint: He served in the Nixon administration, where the paranoid President essentially wiretapped himself into a sure impeachment had he not resigned.
Add to this the exasperating number of yes-men and lawyers the VP and POTUS surrounded themselves with (John Yoo, anyone?) and you have an administration full of lawyers who will fight tooth and nail to keep justice from being served.
It comes down to two points: 1) commitment to the literal interpretation of the Bible, and 2) the fear that evolution discredits Genesis 1-2 based on the literal view.
Mind you, this isn't the view of every American Christian, only the most vocal and the ones who want a lever to use on the communities of Christians-- somewhat akin to, "if you don't believe a 6-day creation, you ain't a good Christian!" (add southern US accent and toss in a "bubba" if you like)
Since "vigilante" has the definition of "taking the law into one's own hands," i.e., "enforcing the law without law enforcement," IMO some more appropriate descriptions for these multi-billionaires is "bully", "cheater", "thug", and "authoritarian". They wrote the book on violating the law when the fine is cheaper than the opportunity cost, so they don't care about following the law or rules, only maintaining a facade of compliance to get their way. Imagine a spoiled child learning enough about the household's rules to game the parents.
If management let the Windows crews drag on for years without building something meaningful, and had a panic attack when the deadline approached, I'm not sure if I want them leading any company, even Microsoft.
(Dilbert tries to defend keeping his project to no avail) PHB: I'm not seeing your so-called "point". I'll recommend your project for inclusion in the new budget. When we go over budget, it'll be the first one to be killed anyway. Dilbert: There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
(My point? In environments where influence can have sway over significant decisions, political shenanigans can trump sound reasoning and technical merit.)
If Congress won't repeal it (and they would be dumber than alleged if they tried), this President may no doubt issue an executive order or signing statement to neutralize it. More likely, being the equivalent of a political CoS, the administration will do what they've always done, and ignore or delay any FOIA requests.
Interesting how one of the candidates said that he'll investigate the Bush administration's actions and policies for wrongdoing, perhaps using the greatly expanded powers that Cheney wanted so badly since Nixon's resignation. If the Republicans who voted them in realize what a monster they've left in the White House (and I'm not talking about the people), they'll surely be having second thoughts about letting another neo-con in there.
"All the way", meaning "convince enough potential customers to threaten the popular churn business model".
Churn, in the business world, is the ultimate in corporate mediocrity: Be cheap enough to keep costs to a bare minimum, but not so much to piss off everyone that hears about you. The core concept is that you don't care about customers leaving, because if you blitz the advertising channels with enough glowing info about you, there's always going to be a sucker who buys your products/services. The natural result of such a model is crummy service and crummy products, while putting piles of cash into the company coffers. This is also why I think that unless they get this message to enough Britons, Virgin will simply shrug and say, "There's plenty more customers."
The best way (and thus far, only way) to defeat this model is to inform the customer at the point of purchase (say, a Virgin Mobile kiosk) about the worst-case scenario in customer service, usually by handing out flyers on public property-- the objective is to make them decide that stopping being a jerk to their customers will help their bottom line more than continuing, because then they wouldn't have a swarm of former customers driving away their income.
Look, unless you're an emergency vehicle or a squad car, I don't care who you are, you are not entitled to drive 25+ miles* above the speed of traffic. The "get out of my way or I'll ram you" attitude of some drivers is really discouraging.
* Around these parts, 10 miles over is the norm. Those too impatient for even 75 mph drive at over 90.
Or you took one side of a heated debate and came off as offensive. Come to think of it, complaining about the -mod when you're +5 doesn't help your case much.
This is the company that bullied OEMs into starving all other x86-compatible OS companies off that market in the late 90s.
This is the company that used its OS monopoly to force a rival commercial Web browser to compete with a price point of zero.
This is the company that convinced enough of its business partners to ram through an "alternative" office format through ISO, in a brouhaha that raised eyebrows and hackles.
700 CSS test cases and WIX may be nothing more than a nice gesture from Microsoft-- notice that they use the business-friendly BSD license rather than the GPL. GP's point is, a company with a reputation of a bully and sociopath will be suspected of ulterior motives for a long time.
Great post, and I'll add: If you can see the monitor image move or flicker (I can see 60Hz in my peripheral vision), turn up the refresh rate. Your brain will thank you.
Isn't it interesting how you can put certain words into a sentence and have the OP retort with a knee-jerk response? You may as well say, "It's 2008, not 1984. There are no more tech innovations."
I'm thinking they do understand, all too well, because they wouldn't otherwise fight so hard to circumvent the rules. Imagine the neighbor scoffing and saying, "Finders keepers" when you give him said cherished object. Then, when censured by the community, he breaks into your house and steals other valuables. You report him to the police, but he has bribed the local law enforcement and judiciary, and he's filled the legislature with his allies. Microsoft was never interested in playing by rules that impeded their path to wealth, and their overtures into "interoperability" is worse than outright opposition, because they are all based on lies.
Judas Iscariot was bought to betray a man declared blameless by his judge with a few coins from the temple's vast coffers. Apoc betrays his fellow humans for a simulated meal and a promise of virtual wealth and prosperity. When you understand that wealthy and powerful people maintain their status by giving influential people chump change, you begin to question why people want free swag and cash from such people.
Slashdot Mirror
Hammer, meet nail.
Gates doesn't care if anyone makes money off GPL'd software; what he can't stand is if proprietary software buyer/marketers like his company can't just grab a publicly available technology on the cheap and take full control over its most popular distribution. The companies that Slashdotters love to hate know that it isn't about how much you can make, it's about how much of the market you can control.
Heck, Apple knows this. Just ask anyone who's tried to work with Jobs and ran screaming in the other direction.
I'm not so sure that he's this confused or misinformed about the GPL; after all, he didn't build the world's biggest software company by cutting everyone checks, much less without understanding his competitors.
My guess is that he's more concerned that the current and next generations of software developers will turn to OSS tools rather than Microsoft tools (price point of zero at work), and at the same time he's warning Microsoft partners away from failing to renew their licensing contracts.
Then again, a definition of insanity is repeating past actions and expecting different results, and he's just continuing the same marketing blitz that Microsoft has turned into an art form.
You jest, but if his efforts result in a drug that not only cures lethal diseases, but is also a narcotic, he'll blow right by Buffett as world's wealthiest man again.
Great, so now you've all but suggested to the pharmaceutical companies that they should send the salesmen and swag to the pharmacists.
They probably already do, and I hope most pharmacists are at least as ethical as yours, and have the backbone to reject even the slightest endorsements.
If the Comcast higher-ups in your area subscribe to the idea of "churn" (and there's very little reason to doubt they are, since a company of that size most likely has a significant number of Harvard MBAs), then that's exactly what happened. You, a high-traffic user, would most likely go elsewhere if your service smelled worse than a 4-day-old used gym sock. While they use methods to squelch your torrents that would cause most judges would grunt like an Orc, they blitz your neighborhood with "triple play" marketing. You go away, and your bandwidth is sold to fifty suckers. As the Japanese say, "one thrown stone killing two birds".
Funny yes, but an important point. If you befriend more corporations and corrupt executives than those who truly care for this country, it won't be long before you adopt their "bend the law to just under the point where they litigate" mindset.
If they would study the Bible they claim to follow, they would know that the love of money is the root of many evils.
Cheney has taken great pains to make sure that neither he nor Bush can be charged for anything. Why else do you think he never uses any sort of communication that can leave a voice or paper trail?
Hint: He served in the Nixon administration, where the paranoid President essentially wiretapped himself into a sure impeachment had he not resigned.
Add to this the exasperating number of yes-men and lawyers the VP and POTUS surrounded themselves with (John Yoo, anyone?) and you have an administration full of lawyers who will fight tooth and nail to keep justice from being served.
It comes down to two points: 1) commitment to the literal interpretation of the Bible, and 2) the fear that evolution discredits Genesis 1-2 based on the literal view.
Mind you, this isn't the view of every American Christian, only the most vocal and the ones who want a lever to use on the communities of Christians-- somewhat akin to, "if you don't believe a 6-day creation, you ain't a good Christian!" (add southern US accent and toss in a "bubba" if you like)
Since "vigilante" has the definition of "taking the law into one's own hands," i.e., "enforcing the law without law enforcement," IMO some more appropriate descriptions for these multi-billionaires is "bully", "cheater", "thug", and "authoritarian". They wrote the book on violating the law when the fine is cheaper than the opportunity cost, so they don't care about following the law or rules, only maintaining a facade of compliance to get their way. Imagine a spoiled child learning enough about the household's rules to game the parents.
If management let the Windows crews drag on for years without building something meaningful, and had a panic attack when the deadline approached, I'm not sure if I want them leading any company, even Microsoft.
(Dilbert tries to defend keeping his project to no avail)
PHB: I'm not seeing your so-called "point". I'll recommend your project for inclusion in the new budget. When we go over budget, it'll be the first one to be killed anyway.
Dilbert: There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
(My point? In environments where influence can have sway over significant decisions, political shenanigans can trump sound reasoning and technical merit.)
If Congress won't repeal it (and they would be dumber than alleged if they tried), this President may no doubt issue an executive order or signing statement to neutralize it. More likely, being the equivalent of a political CoS, the administration will do what they've always done, and ignore or delay any FOIA requests.
Interesting how one of the candidates said that he'll investigate the Bush administration's actions and policies for wrongdoing, perhaps using the greatly expanded powers that Cheney wanted so badly since Nixon's resignation. If the Republicans who voted them in realize what a monster they've left in the White House (and I'm not talking about the people), they'll surely be having second thoughts about letting another neo-con in there.
"All the way", meaning "convince enough potential customers to threaten the popular churn business model".
Churn, in the business world, is the ultimate in corporate mediocrity: Be cheap enough to keep costs to a bare minimum, but not so much to piss off everyone that hears about you. The core concept is that you don't care about customers leaving, because if you blitz the advertising channels with enough glowing info about you, there's always going to be a sucker who buys your products/services. The natural result of such a model is crummy service and crummy products, while putting piles of cash into the company coffers. This is also why I think that unless they get this message to enough Britons, Virgin will simply shrug and say, "There's plenty more customers."
The best way (and thus far, only way) to defeat this model is to inform the customer at the point of purchase (say, a Virgin Mobile kiosk) about the worst-case scenario in customer service, usually by handing out flyers on public property-- the objective is to make them decide that stopping being a jerk to their customers will help their bottom line more than continuing, because then they wouldn't have a swarm of former customers driving away their income.
Shhhh, let them bite! They still think he's a duck.
Look, unless you're an emergency vehicle or a squad car, I don't care who you are, you are not entitled to drive 25+ miles* above the speed of traffic. The "get out of my way or I'll ram you" attitude of some drivers is really discouraging.
* Around these parts, 10 miles over is the norm. Those too impatient for even 75 mph drive at over 90.
If your priority in driving is to keep others from cutting you off, you have bigger problems than SUVs and monster trucks.
Or you took one side of a heated debate and came off as offensive. Come to think of it, complaining about the -mod when you're +5 doesn't help your case much.
This is the company that bullied OEMs into starving all other x86-compatible OS companies off that market in the late 90s.
This is the company that used its OS monopoly to force a rival commercial Web browser to compete with a price point of zero.
This is the company that convinced enough of its business partners to ram through an "alternative" office format through ISO, in a brouhaha that raised eyebrows and hackles.
700 CSS test cases and WIX may be nothing more than a nice gesture from Microsoft-- notice that they use the business-friendly BSD license rather than the GPL. GP's point is, a company with a reputation of a bully and sociopath will be suspected of ulterior motives for a long time.
"My laptop is frozen again. Can you help?"
"Just remember to turn it upside down and shake it to reboot."
"Oh, I see."
(later)
"I wonder if he'll ever notice that we gave him an Etch-a-Sketch."
Great post, and I'll add: If you can see the monitor image move or flicker (I can see 60Hz in my peripheral vision), turn up the refresh rate. Your brain will thank you.
Isn't it interesting how you can put certain words into a sentence and have the OP retort with a knee-jerk response? You may as well say, "It's 2008, not 1984. There are no more tech innovations."
Never thought my sig would come in handy for translation.
I'm thinking they do understand, all too well, because they wouldn't otherwise fight so hard to circumvent the rules. Imagine the neighbor scoffing and saying, "Finders keepers" when you give him said cherished object. Then, when censured by the community, he breaks into your house and steals other valuables. You report him to the police, but he has bribed the local law enforcement and judiciary, and he's filled the legislature with his allies. Microsoft was never interested in playing by rules that impeded their path to wealth, and their overtures into "interoperability" is worse than outright opposition, because they are all based on lies.
Judas Iscariot was bought to betray a man declared blameless by his judge with a few coins from the temple's vast coffers.
Apoc betrays his fellow humans for a simulated meal and a promise of virtual wealth and prosperity.
When you understand that wealthy and powerful people maintain their status by giving influential people chump change, you begin to question why people want free swag and cash from such people.