It's actually a race to the bottom. Every year walmart grows and as it grows it squeezes out competitors and ships jobs overseas. If things continue their trend they will have a monopoly in just a few years. What happens then?
I'll tell you what happens jobs leave china and go to cambodia or africa or someplace. They continue to to shift to countries where people are more destitute thereby leading to boom and bust economies all over the world. Eventually the chinese will want a 10 cent raise and the factories will all close up and move.
I predict that one day in the not too distant future some country will enslave an unpopular minority and the services of their slaves to walmart for the cost of subsidence. These slaves will work all day for bread and water making socks and t-shirts with the walmart brand on them.
At that moment we will have achieved maximum efficiency. The natural tendency in a darwinian economy is a monopoly.
"As you call me a professional killer, you have to remind yourself that if there weren't people like me, you wouldn't have the freedoms you do today."
As a veteran I feel like I have the right to butt into this conversation.
Maybe the sacrifices made by Americans in WW2 did ensure our democracy. But don't tell me you did anything to ensure democracy in the US. Democracy in the US has not been threatened by anybody except US politicians. Iraq didn't threaten the US. Ever.
You served to protect "us interests" meaning you (and I) got paid to make sure oil was flowing and that large US corporations got their share of taxpayers dollars.
Don't delude yourself to think that you were serving some high Ideal.
Really? I have my doubts about that. The US govt controls which reporters they talk to and which they don't. Since most reporters simply parrot what the people in govt "leak" to them anyway they can't afford to be blacklisted.
Of course I have also read about news stations picking up the talking points from the political parties and making sure all the news is slanted to emphasize the official party line but that's probably just rumor.
So what is your opinion of why this story is not as important as Bill Clinton lying about his cock? Why did all major news stations decide that Bill Clintons cock was important enough to cover every day but the US sending people off to be tortured is not? There must be a reason.
OS/2 was better then W95. I think that's what the parent poster meant when he said that MS was better at selling shit. IBM couldn't manage sell OS/2 MS sold lots of shit.
Management books are the greatest scams known to mankind. They all suck, they all repeat the same poing over and over again trying desparately to fill enough pages to make a book. They are all written by people with huge egos trying to convince the world how smart and witty they are.
The problem is that there is no right answer. A commonly used analogy is this.
Let's have 100 people flip a coin. If your coin ends up heads take a step forward, if it turns up tails take a step back. After a thouand flips can the guy that's in first place honestly say he was successful because he flipped good?
Every day people make a thousand decisions based on the information they have at the time. In retrospect some of those decisions turned out to be bad but at the time there was probably a perfectly good reason for doing it.
It seems to me the biggest factor in being a successful company is to have enough padding to be able to make lots of mistakes and still survive. MS has a monoply and that monopoly enables them to make hundreds of mistakes and still survive. They can afford to gamble and hope that they get one hit out of a hundred misses. Netscape, Apple and other companies don't have that luxury. One mistake and they die, if they don't die it takes years to get back up on their feet.
Finally the biggest mistake management makes is thinking that their enemy will act like them. Since most people are basically honest and decent they tend to presume that their competition will act in an honorable way. When the opposition desides to act in horrible, sleazy and illegal ways to beat them they get surprised and get beaten. Your competition will lie to you, act like your firend, sign contracts with you, and then steal your techonologies, customers and vendors and then turn around and drive you out of business. As Bill Gates said once "hold your friends close, hold your enemies closer". He knows exactly how to win and he also knows that winning has nothing to do with morals or ethics. He knows to leave his morals at the door when he enters the MS campus.
It seems to me that the obvious answer is to take the linux security up another notch in those servers. I am talking mainly about programs like LIDS. I know it's a pain to set up and maintain but it assures the highest level of security possible in any OS.
Like most Americans I watch a lot of TV. Like most Americans I read the local newspaper every day. Like most Americans I have cable TV and access to 24 hours a day news.
Despite all that I was totally unaware of this story. Maybe CNN or CBS covered it one day for a minute or two but I must have missed that. There is endless coverage of Laci Peterson, and al-quaida but nothing on this. It seems to me that a story of magnitude should have gotten more coverage don't you? I for one think that it's more important then whose mouth Bill Clinton stuck his cock into don't you?
What a sick and horrible thing the US govt has become. Maybe I am fooling myself. Maybe it's always been this way and I have been ignorant of it all this time.
The funny thing is that there was no mention of this anywhere on the US media. Next time someone tells me that there is free press in the US I think I'll point them to this article.
He didn't say nobody chose linux just that most people don't. You are in the small percentage of the people who chose linux.
Also keep in mind that there are other reasons to avoid MS software. Many people choose not to use MS software for ethical or moral reasons for example.
I don't know how much of it is attributable to linux (probably not much). The bigger story is that linux is able to scale and run real world enterprise databases without loss of performance or stability.
I think he has already reacted to that. Oreacle has done two things.
1) Increase the capabilities of their database so that no open source database is even close. 2) Diversify the business so that most of the money comes from selling applications and tools.
I believe that one day Ellison will open source a base version of Oracle. If oracle light (which is quite capable) is open source it will rapidly take over the low end and provide a natural upgrade patch to oracle enterprise.
"Share buybacks don't help either, unless the stock is trading below its intrisic business value, with will not be the case if fundamentals are severely weakened."
MS has done some very clever accounting tricks with stock buybacks and options. They are very good at manipulating their stock prices.
"So if you were running a poor country, why WOULDN'T you threaten to give Microsoft products the boot? It's a negotiation!"
A better question is how come corporations don't do the same thing. If you are Exxon or GE or something why don't you say to MS "How come people in Taiwan get office and windows (legally) for $50.00 but I have to pay $400.00"?.
"I don't see a good reason to not allow other types of software to be used."
The govt is a consumer of software just like corporations are. In most corporations in the world you could be fired for installing a linux server. Is the corporation mandating MS software? YES! but only to itself. The corporation as a consumer has chosen to use only MS products. Why? I don't know but they probably have their reasons like interoperability, licencing costs, training or whatever. Maybe it's simply that MS bought the CIO a rolex and IBM didn't who knows.
If the govt chooses only to use non MS products it's no different.
You still don't see a good reason for a corporation or a govt to not allow other types of software in their own network?
Most fund managers don't look that far ahead. They look at their numbers on a quarterly basis and make their decisions based on those. They care about things like cashflow, profits, earnings, assets not whether some customer or another has switched to a competing product.
Right now the impact of these countries switching or thinking about switching has not effected the undelying financial position of MS. OTOH MS is expected to grow a certain amount every quarter which is becoming pretty much impossible because they have saturated their markets and are so big that further growth becomes very hard. The expection by shareholders will switch to MS being something like GE or IBM that being a pretty much steady company with minor fluctuations in price from time to time.
If it turns out that these switches effect the MS bottom line one of two things will happen.
1) MS will increase their investments in non software fields like media (in which they have substantial holdings) and make a bigger push into their hardware business.
2) The stock will nosedive like a rocket.
I don't see #2 happening though. They have 40 billion in the bank and if push comes to shove they can manipulate their own stock price if they want to.
"so quit assuming that just because people have the MSN home page up that they must not be aware that other web sites exist."
Nonsense. It's prefectly safe to assume that those people have MSN as their home page because IE came that way. Even if the user actually chose MSN you can still educate them on the sleazy things MS does and how unethical the corporation and their management is. You can encourage them to support a better economy and a better business environment by supporting better companies. Given proper education consumers will usually choose a more ethical product. For an example of this go count how many brands of Tuna do not say "dolphin safe" on them. The reason why tuna harvesting changed is because the consumers chose to buy the "dolphin safe" tuna rather then competitors even if the competitor cost less.
"Depending on what I'm searching for I can easily browse through several pages of shopping links before I get to actual info."
It's obvious you have never used google. Pleas go and actually use google before compalining about having to page through several pages of links before you get real search results.
What the rest of us should do is to educate the public about what the MSN search engine does. When you see somebody using a MSN home page take the time to educate them. Simply do a search both on MSN and Google and explain to the user that the first 5 pages on the MSN search are ads and not search results. Maybe open up the fine print on the MSN search and point this out.
Education is your best weapon. The users must realize and ANY search engine run by MS is nothing but a billboard for ads. If MS buys google they will end up turning it into an ad service as well. An educated search consumer could detect this and switch.
Never attribute to incompetence what can be expalined by malice. MS has long and storied history of sleazy behavior. You really think MS engineers are that stupid and inept? There must be lots of MS employees here maybe then can speak up. Are you fellow co-workers really inept?
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually a race to the bottom. Every year walmart grows and as it grows it squeezes out competitors and ships jobs overseas. If things continue their trend they will have a monopoly in just a few years. What happens then?
I'll tell you what happens jobs leave china and go to cambodia or africa or someplace. They continue to to shift to countries where people are more destitute thereby leading to boom and bust economies all over the world. Eventually the chinese will want a 10 cent raise and the factories will all close up and move.
I predict that one day in the not too distant future some country will enslave an unpopular minority and the services of their slaves to walmart for the cost of subsidence. These slaves will work all day for bread and water making socks and t-shirts with the walmart brand on them.
At that moment we will have achieved maximum efficiency.
The natural tendency in a darwinian economy is a monopoly.
"As you call me a professional killer, you have to remind yourself that if there weren't people like me, you wouldn't have the freedoms you do today."
As a veteran I feel like I have the right to butt into this conversation.
Maybe the sacrifices made by Americans in WW2 did ensure our democracy. But don't tell me you did anything to ensure democracy in the US. Democracy in the US has not been threatened by anybody except US politicians. Iraq didn't threaten the US. Ever.
You served to protect "us interests" meaning you (and I) got paid to make sure oil was flowing and that large US corporations got their share of taxpayers dollars.
Don't delude yourself to think that you were serving some high Ideal.
Really? I have my doubts about that. The US govt controls which reporters they talk to and which they don't. Since most reporters simply parrot what the people in govt "leak" to them anyway they can't afford to be blacklisted.
Of course I have also read about news stations picking up the talking points from the political parties and making sure all the news is slanted to emphasize the official party line but that's probably just rumor.
So what is your opinion of why this story is not as important as Bill Clinton lying about his cock? Why did all major news stations decide that Bill Clintons cock was important enough to cover every day but the US sending people off to be tortured is not? There must be a reason.
OS/2 was better then W95. I think that's what the parent poster meant when he said that MS was better at selling shit. IBM couldn't manage sell OS/2 MS sold lots of shit.
Where are my mod points when I need them!
Too funny.
Management books are the greatest scams known to mankind. They all suck, they all repeat the same poing over and over again trying desparately to fill enough pages to make a book. They are all written by people with huge egos trying to convince the world how smart and witty they are.
The problem is that there is no right answer. A commonly used analogy is this.
Let's have 100 people flip a coin. If your coin ends up heads take a step forward, if it turns up tails take a step back. After a thouand flips can the guy that's in first place honestly say he was successful because he flipped good?
Every day people make a thousand decisions based on the information they have at the time. In retrospect some of those decisions turned out to be bad but at the time there was probably a perfectly good reason for doing it.
It seems to me the biggest factor in being a successful company is to have enough padding to be able to make lots of mistakes and still survive. MS has a monoply and that monopoly enables them to make hundreds of mistakes and still survive. They can afford to gamble and hope that they get one hit out of a hundred misses. Netscape, Apple and other companies don't have that luxury. One mistake and they die, if they don't die it takes years to get back up on their feet.
Finally the biggest mistake management makes is thinking that their enemy will act like them. Since most people are basically honest and decent they tend to presume that their competition will act in an honorable way. When the opposition desides to act in horrible, sleazy and illegal ways to beat them they get surprised and get beaten. Your competition will lie to you, act like your firend, sign contracts with you, and then steal your techonologies, customers and vendors and then turn around and drive you out of business. As Bill Gates said once "hold your friends close, hold your enemies closer". He knows exactly how to win and he also knows that winning has nothing to do with morals or ethics. He knows to leave his morals at the door when he enters the MS campus.
It seems to me that the obvious answer is to take the linux security up another notch in those servers. I am talking mainly about programs like LIDS. I know it's a pain to set up and maintain but it assures the highest level of security possible in any OS.
"What the fuck is that?"
Legalized child abuse. You can go to jail for scolding a child harshly but it's OK to sue them. GO figure.
Like most Americans I watch a lot of TV. Like most Americans I read the local newspaper every day. Like most Americans I have cable TV and access to 24 hours a day news.
Despite all that I was totally unaware of this story. Maybe CNN or CBS covered it one day for a minute or two but I must have missed that. There is endless coverage of Laci Peterson, and al-quaida but nothing on this. It seems to me that a story of magnitude should have gotten more coverage don't you? I for one think that it's more important then whose mouth Bill Clinton stuck his cock into don't you?
What a sick and horrible thing the US govt has become. Maybe I am fooling myself. Maybe it's always been this way and I have been ignorant of it all this time.
The funny thing is that there was no mention of this anywhere on the US media. Next time someone tells me that there is free press in the US I think I'll point them to this article.
He didn't say nobody chose linux just that most people don't. You are in the small percentage of the people who chose linux.
Also keep in mind that there are other reasons to avoid MS software. Many people choose not to use MS software for ethical or moral reasons for example.
BTW what software are you talking about?
I don't know how much of it is attributable to linux (probably not much). The bigger story is that linux is able to scale and run real world enterprise databases without loss of performance or stability.
This is important to counter MS FUD. Today Bill Gates said Linux is what Unix was in the 1970s: a perfectly reasonable operating system.. Articles like this make it possible for other people (say Red Hat for example) to say that Bill Gates is full of shit.
Don't laugh they are already working on developing full featured CLI and will most likely decouple the GUI from the underlying OS.
I bet in a few years windows will be a hell of a lot like Linux (or MacOSX).
"Here I thought /. was the source for fair and balanced coverage."
really? You probably think that gotdotnet.com is fair and balanced too.
You are talking about MS right?
I think he has already reacted to that. Oreacle has done two things.
1) Increase the capabilities of their database so that no open source database is even close.
2) Diversify the business so that most of the money comes from selling applications and tools.
I believe that one day Ellison will open source a base version of Oracle. If oracle light (which is quite capable) is open source it will rapidly take over the low end and provide a natural upgrade patch to oracle enterprise.
"Share buybacks don't help either, unless the stock is trading below its intrisic business value, with will not be the case if fundamentals are severely weakened."
MS has done some very clever accounting tricks with stock buybacks and options. They are very good at manipulating their stock prices.
"So if you were running a poor country, why WOULDN'T you threaten to give Microsoft products the boot? It's a negotiation!"
A better question is how come corporations don't do the same thing. If you are Exxon or GE or something why don't you say to MS "How come people in Taiwan get office and windows (legally) for $50.00 but I have to pay $400.00"?.
"If Brazil remains a locus of "grayhat" activity, could this mean more resources will be put toward finding Linux exploits?"
Let's hope so. How else would they get fixed.
"I don't see a good reason to not allow other types of software to be used."
The govt is a consumer of software just like corporations are. In most corporations in the world you could be fired for installing a linux server. Is the corporation mandating MS software? YES! but only to itself. The corporation as a consumer has chosen to use only MS products. Why? I don't know but they probably have their reasons like interoperability, licencing costs, training or whatever. Maybe it's simply that MS bought the CIO a rolex and IBM didn't who knows.
If the govt chooses only to use non MS products it's no different.
You still don't see a good reason for a corporation or a govt to not allow other types of software in their own network?
Most fund managers don't look that far ahead. They look at their numbers on a quarterly basis and make their decisions based on those. They care about things like cashflow, profits, earnings, assets not whether some customer or another has switched to a competing product.
Right now the impact of these countries switching or thinking about switching has not effected the undelying financial position of MS. OTOH MS is expected to grow a certain amount every quarter which is becoming pretty much impossible because they have saturated their markets and are so big that further growth becomes very hard. The expection by shareholders will switch to MS being something like GE or IBM that being a pretty much steady company with minor fluctuations in price from time to time.
If it turns out that these switches effect the MS bottom line one of two things will happen.
1) MS will increase their investments in non software fields like media (in which they have substantial holdings) and make a bigger push into their hardware business.
2) The stock will nosedive like a rocket.
I don't see #2 happening though. They have 40 billion in the bank and if push comes to shove they can manipulate their own stock price if they want to.
"so quit assuming that just because people have the MSN home page up that they must not be aware that other web sites exist."
Nonsense. It's prefectly safe to assume that those people have MSN as their home page because IE came that way. Even if the user actually chose MSN you can still educate them on the sleazy things MS does and how unethical the corporation and their management is. You can encourage them to support a better economy and a better business environment by supporting better companies. Given proper education consumers will usually choose a more ethical product. For an example of this go count how many brands of Tuna do not say "dolphin safe" on them. The reason why tuna harvesting changed is because the consumers chose to buy the "dolphin safe" tuna rather then competitors even if the competitor cost less.
"Depending on what I'm searching for I can easily browse through several pages of shopping links before I get to actual info."
It's obvious you have never used google. Pleas go and actually use google before compalining about having to page through several pages of links before you get real search results.
What the rest of us should do is to educate the public about what the MSN search engine does. When you see somebody using a MSN home page take the time to educate them. Simply do a search both on MSN and Google and explain to the user that the first 5 pages on the MSN search are ads and not search results. Maybe open up the fine print on the MSN search and point this out.
Education is your best weapon. The users must realize and ANY search engine run by MS is nothing but a billboard for ads. If MS buys google they will end up turning it into an ad service as well. An educated search consumer could detect this and switch.
Never attribute to incompetence what can be expalined by malice. MS has long and storied history of sleazy behavior. You really think MS engineers are that stupid and inept? There must be lots of MS employees here maybe then can speak up. Are you fellow co-workers really inept?