Hitler was a very evil man. He did not like jews, gypsies or anybody who was not white and as a result rounded up millions of them and killed them. This was an attack on a specific subset of human beings and is rightfully regarded as one of the all time lows in human behaviour.
MS is attempting to do something I submit is just as bad. Let me explain.
What separates us from the animals is the ability to communicate and pass knowledge from one human being to another. We have combined this with persistent methods of communication such as writing. MS is seeking to control and limit how we communicate with each other. They are on the forefront of finding ways to limit and to charge for that communication. By attacking our right to freely exchange information, by partnering up with powerful organizations with the same aim, and by bribing politicians to back them up MS is attacking what it means to be a human being.
Sure they are not killing a specific subset of people but they are attacking humanity as a whole. Less damage done to more people. Somewhere in there some sort of equavalence gets reached.
The video I saw offered no admitance of proof. They did seem to enjoy it though. Of course I don't speak arabic and am relying on a translation done by the US govt. I am sure the US govt would never actually lie about anything or fake a video or anything like that so I am sure the translation and the video tape are 100% legit and accurate.
" What if but what if they had invested money in applications, tools and servers that specifically supported CE and made more money on that than CE could have provided by being ubiquitous? "
Really? name a few.
" Actually, that's not your point. According to yourself earlier in the thread"
Actually it is my point and has been all along. MS is able to dump software because they have a dual monopoly. That's how this thread got started in the first place.
"Gartner tracked Windows Database revenue at $2.5 Billion last year"
First of all Gartner is usually full of shit. Secondly Gartner (or IDC or whatever) simply survey large corporations they do not account for non corporate or small business use. Finally if you think 13% market penetration is success then there is no sense talking to you.
"At $200k per employee, that'd be 5000 employees purely dedicated to SQL server"
If you think the only expenses of software development is developers then there is no sense in talking to you anymore.
"Further, IDC does track open source database share, and it's not good. Sorry to disappoint."
IDC tracks database usage in the corporate world. There is no surprise that open source has not penetrated the fortune 500 in a significant way. They are perfectly happy shelling out money to oracle and ibm.
"So if IIS had new features in new versions of Windows and encouraged people to upgrade,"
If you honestly think that people will upgrade their windows because some new "feature" of IIS there is no sense in talking to you. What feature of IIS? What was added to IIS between version 4 and 5 that would entice somebody to endure an migration? what a silly thing to say.
"A product doesn't have to be sold to give you a return on investment."
It does if you don't have a monopoly. Not everybody can keep throwing money at products that don't generate revenue.
"In markets where MS did not compete, prices fell an average of 18% over 8 years. In markets where MS did compete, prices fell an average of 65% (Newsday, Nov 1999)."
Price of what? MS products or the products of other people. It's the pattern of MS to dump below cost software to cut off the air supply of competitors. After a monopoly is established then prices start climbing again. Why do I need a study to point out the obvious and well documented.
"Further, office and Windows have actually been growing significantly slower than inflation"
But it's still growing. The price of all other software relative to inflation has been dropping. Who do you think you are fooling here?
"Third, StarOffice went from $0 to $99. "
If you are this ignorant about the history of staroffice then there is no sense in talking to you.
" If they were charging too much, then the profits would be enormous"
If you dont't think MS profits are enormous then there is no sense in talking to you. If you don't think $40 billion in CASH is enourmous then there is no talking to you. If you think MS is keeping prices as low as possible then there is no sense in talking to you.
Did I tell you there is no sense in talking to you anymore?
"WinME sold millions of retail copies, not only ones that were attached to machines. "
Sorry it was a failure. MS admitted it and canned it. End of discussion on this one.
"CE has no monopoly power and continues to gain marketshare at the fastest rate of any embedded OS "
MS has started giving away CE and that's why it's growing. For any other business this would be considered a failure. No return on investment. Only MS can afford to keep dumping this product on the market at below cost.
" If MS gets out of the xbox market,"
They won't get out of the market that's exactly my point. They were losing money at $300.00 per box and they are now losing more money at $200.00 per box. Don't give me that shit about production prices going down the price of production could not have possibly went down 33% in six months. They are dumping this on the market just like they do with most other failed products. They can afford to lose billions which is a luxury shared by no other company on the face of the planet.
"SQL server is the fastest growing database (IDC worldwide database tracking numbers 2002)"
Fastest growing is a neat marketing term. If I sold no products this year and then sold two next year I would be growing faster then anybody else. Please use real numbers indicating market penetration. Also consider the fact that MS SQL server is being sold below cost. No other company could afford to sink that much development into a database server and sell it for that cheap (if they could have they would have). As for the market share of free databases is concerned nobody even attempts to measure them. Mysql may very well be use more then MS-SQL server but who is measuring that? BTW. Since interbase became open source I bet it's the "fastest growing" because it's market share probably doubled ot tripled (it was pretty low to start with after all).
"IIS certainly is not #1, but is launching with a 2 year lag on Apache "
IIS generates no revenue for MS yet MS continues to dedicate a team of developers to maintaining and re-writing it. Measure the ROI of that. Same as CE for any other company it would be a failure.
"he have not been proven to have a monopoly on office at all, let alone to be engaged in monopoly pricing. "
The price of all other office software has dropped significantly, some are selling for as low as $50.00 while the price of MS office (and windows) get's higher with every release. Windows and office are the only two software products whose prices increases as time goes on if that's not monopoly pricing I don't know what is.
"Also, unless you have insider information, you do not have MS's return on investment numbers for these projects. How could you measure them (and then determine success or failure)?"
How about this calculation. Spend more then zero dollars developing and maintaining a product. Give it away for free. It does not take a MBA from harvard to calculate that ROI does it?
"Organics are for rich people. If the whole world used organics, the reduced yields would result either in mass starvation or the conversion of the rest of our land mass to farming. Modern farming is resulting in the reversion of much land mass in the US to forest."
that's fine. We in the united states are rich and ought to take advantage of superior products if we can. Most produce you buy in the supermarket is bred not for taste but color, abilility to survive shipping (thick skin etc), and the ability to ripen in a truck. Organic foods are raised by small scale operators who breed for the environment and taste. The trick is to buy food grown locally if at all possible that way it's more likely to have ripened on the vine. I won't go into other ethical considerations of buying organic foods but for many people knowing that the food is grown and picked by people who do it because they want to is an important factor.
As for your claim that natural pesticides are worse then man made ones is just silly republican talk. Nobody actually believes that not even the republicans themselves. If you believe it then by all means ingest all the pesticides you want I wish you luck.
I still don't understand why there needs to be more studies. The answers seem so obvious to me.
The human body has evolved for thousands of years to eat certain kinds of foods but in the last couple of hundred years our diet has changed radically and therefore we grow fat and sick. Think about this. It takes a whole field of sugar cane to make a tablespoon of granulated sugar. No human being can eat that many sugar canes in one sitting but anybody can eat a snickers bar. The same applies for most grains. you can soak half a cup of wheat in water for a day and then eat it and you'll be full for half a day or you can eat a slice of bread and still be hungry.
Similarly cooking frequently turns starches in certain foods to sugar thus making them more desirable and easier to eat. Potatos are a great example of this.
The answer is to eat like people did ten thousand years ago. Eat raw foods, eat less meat, eat no bread or pasta. Eat foods as close to their natural state as possible.
IE does not generate revenue neither does CE. They are giving both of these products away. Maybe that's success by MS standards but most companies would consider a product they had to give away to be failure.
WinME was a failure becasue nobody bought it who was not forced to. Remember MS has a monopoly and millions of people are forced to have it whether they like it or not. If it was not a failure MS would continue to make it and they don't. CE is a failure because MS is now forced to give it away for nothing. I don't think they ever got their R&D money back from it. It's alive because MS can continue to give it away for free relying on their monopolies to subsidize the dumping. Xbox is a failure because it will die off very soon. MS has realized this and have already cut prices by a third. IT will be like CE. MS will give it away pretty soon. MS will never recoup R&D or manufacturing costs. They are already dumping it below cost.
SQL server is now as popular as it will ever be. Free databases are now good enough to put pressure from the bottom end and nobody really takes it seriously on the high end. I expect SQL server sales to decline any day now. The price keeps increasing and there is no need for a small to medium size business to pay that kind of money when interbase, sapdb, postgres and mysql are free.
As for IIS again if you can't get 25% market penetration with a monopoly then you are truly inept.
My point is that if MS did not have a monopoly any of these collosal failures (measured by return on investment not numbers) would have killed it. In fact failure at this scale would have taken down 95% of the companies on the planet. MS gets to keep throwing money at failed products for years thanks to monopoly level profits from windows and office.
MS Bob. MS at work (you remember this one it was supposed to be in copiers and faxes and stuff). Windows ME Hailstorm. Windows CE. Xbox. Ultimate TV. WEBTV (or whatever it was called) Even to some extent SQL server and IIS each of which controls only about 30% of their markets.
In any other company even one failure of this magnitude would have killed it. Imagine the amount of R&D, programming, marketing etc that went into creating webTV. It was probably in the billions. The only company that can absorb that kind of a hit is MS thanks to their dual monopolies in Office and Windows.
This is where capitalism fell apart. MS can continue to develop products that fail in the market without damaging themselves. Other companies are not so lucky and one large failure will mean a collapse.
" If nobody trusts this system, it will not get into widespread use. Amazingly, Micro$oft does not succeed at everything."
I am trying to rack my brain and I can't think of one spectacular success they have had in the last five years. Can you help me out here? What product developed by MS in the last five years is dominating it's market? Of course I am not counting office and windows which are ongoing monopolies.
It is a shame but at least now it's out in the open. There can be no further pretext that the supreme court is somehow interested in the greater welfare of the american public or acts as a check or balance on the power of the executive branch. This court annointed George Bush and has a vested interest in making sure that his policies and wishes get approved. I feel sorry for any registered democrat who has to go before this court they are doomed before the case even starts.
No I experience delays because my company is run by idiots. Every purchase request takes weeks to process no matter how small or insignificant. It's been over a month and I am still waiting for a chair I ordered.
"ME---
For that reason alone MS and it's employees deserve every rotten egg, tomato or a fist thrown in their direction.
YOU--- Hmm. Interesting. Now think for a second, what would Jesus have to say about that remark? "
I don't know nor do I care. I don't believe in God. What I do know is this.
When Bin Laden attacked the US we went after the taliban because they were shielding him. When we went after the taliban we dropped bombs on counless locations in afghanistan. We killed thousands of people who were either foot soldiers of the taliban or lived in taliban controlled areas. What did these people have to do with the attack on world trade center? Well nothing really but they were legitamate targets of military action because however indirect their actions helped al-quada attack WTC. They shoulder some of the blame no matter how small and for that they died.
The same goes for Microsoft employees. They are responsible for the actions of their company, supervisors, CEOs etc. It is fair and just to retaliate against them for the crimes and evil acts done by their company and it's employees. It is fair to hit, shun, insult, and otherwise take to task any MS employee for what their bosses do. If they don't like it they should quit and stop supporting an evil regime. Simple as that.
"but I would hope that you sir, as an honored veteran, would know why you hate the defeated enemy, and not simply follow the unquestioned FUD that was necessary to win the Cold War."
I do not hate the communists or the russians. When I was stationed within 300 miles of vladivostok (the biggest russian military base) we used to joke that if the russians ever came after us we'd offer them vodka and get them drunk because both the US soldiers and the russian ones would have rather drank themselves silly then shoot each other.
As for communism itself it's main tenents are not that much different then the sermon on the mount. The problem of communism is the problem of people. People are not good, generous or considerate of others needs. Communism does not work because people are not good, capitalism does work because people are selfish and greedy. But that's neither here nor there.
I don't hate communists or communism. What I hate is Bill gates calling me a comunist or a terrorist when I am clearly not. Especially since he has never volunteered to wear a gas mask for 10 hours and stew inside a chem suit in hundred degree weather. He has no right to call me a communist.
He is doing that because he knows that most people associate communism with stalin, lenin and other evil people who slaughtered millions of innocents. He wants the average american to think of GPL coders and advocates as murderers and evil. It's a calculated attack on people. He could have said GPL is like socialism (it is), he could have said GPL is like charity (it is), he could have said it's like christianity (it is kind of), instead he chose the word communism. Why? Because Americans react negatively and violently to communists. That's what he wants! He wants Americans to react negatively and violently towards me, you, and anybody else who develops or uses GPLed software.
For that reason alone MS and it's employees deserve every rotten egg, tomato or a fist thrown in their direction. I don't go around slandering them or their families nor do I go around lobbying politicians to make what they do illegal. Why are they attacking me?
.NET without windows is like a car without an engine or wheels.
mono is not anywhere near complete.
it will be several years before the.NET database and GUI libraries are ported to *nix. By that time MS will have dropped.NET and moved on the next acronym of the day.
It is illegal to link against the.NET libraries to produce GPLed code. Using the.NET libraries contrains what you can do with your intellectual property.
It is illegal for you to write GPLed code using visual studio.NET. You stand to get sued by MS and face possible jail time for using their development tools.
Because I am not a communist, anti-american or a terrorist. I am a veteran, I served my country proudly, i vote, I participate. Who the hell is Bill Gates to call me a communist.
As for the GPL it has nothing to do with me being a communist. If you don't like the GPL stay the fuck away from GPLed code. Write your own code and stop your whining about how you are unable to use other peoples hard work to make money for yourself. That sound more like communism then anything else to me.
Write your own code, that's the american way. Anybody who is whining about the GPL is too lazy to do the work themselves and want to steal from other people. As a christian you ought to be the first one stand up and sing the virtues of working hard and not leeching off of other peoples labor. The is a cost to using GPLed code and that cost is steep. If you don't want to pay it stay away.
Where I work configuration is not the issue. If you want to spend over a certain amount you have to go to the board. Even then it's a crapshoot as to whether the CIO can convince the board that it's a good expenditure. FOr smaller items the CIO can approve items himself but even that takes over a month in most cases.
" You don't take a case to the SCOTUS unless you know its damn good. Test cases are especially straightforward usually."
I think in this case it's got less to do with the strength of the case then the makeup of the court. There is no way in hell a republican dominated supreme court will rule in favor 2600.
"Considering Microsoft has called the GPL a "Cancer""
Let's not forget MS execs calling us un-american, communists and terrorist sympatizers too. I for one would like to punch them out just for calling me communist.
I agree with you hit them with whatever is handy. They deserve much worse then anything you are likely to do to them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take this on.
Hitler was a very evil man. He did not like jews, gypsies or anybody who was not white and as a result rounded up millions of them and killed them. This was an attack on a specific subset of human beings and is rightfully regarded as one of the all time lows in human behaviour.
MS is attempting to do something I submit is just as bad. Let me explain.
What separates us from the animals is the ability to communicate and pass knowledge from one human being to another. We have combined this with persistent methods of communication such as writing. MS is seeking to control and limit how we communicate with each other. They are on the forefront of finding ways to limit and to charge for that communication. By attacking our right to freely exchange information, by partnering up with powerful organizations with the same aim, and by bribing politicians to back them up MS is attacking what it means to be a human being.
Sure they are not killing a specific subset of people but they are attacking humanity as a whole. Less damage done to more people. Somewhere in there some sort of equavalence gets reached.
They are both evil? Maybe MS is not as evil but they are evil nevertheless.
Typical republican logic.
Some plants are poisonous.
All plants are natural.
No pesticides are natural.
Therefore no pesticides are poisonous.
No need to plant evidence. Eventually some muslim will open up a web site there defending palestenians or something and voila let the bombs fall.
The video I saw offered no admitance of proof. They did seem to enjoy it though. Of course I don't speak arabic and am relying on a translation done by the US govt. I am sure the US govt would never actually lie about anything or fake a video or anything like that so I am sure the translation and the video tape are 100% legit and accurate.
" What if but what if they had invested money in applications, tools and servers that specifically supported CE and made more money on that than CE could have provided by being ubiquitous? "
Really? name a few.
" Actually, that's not your point. According to yourself earlier in the thread"
Actually it is my point and has been all along. MS is able to dump software because they have a dual monopoly. That's how this thread got started in the first place.
"Gartner tracked Windows Database revenue at $2.5 Billion last year"
First of all Gartner is usually full of shit. Secondly Gartner (or IDC or whatever) simply survey large corporations they do not account for non corporate or small business use. Finally if you think 13% market penetration is success then there is no sense talking to you.
"At $200k per employee, that'd be 5000 employees purely dedicated to SQL server"
If you think the only expenses of software development is developers then there is no sense in talking to you anymore.
"Further, IDC does track open source database share, and it's not good. Sorry to disappoint."
IDC tracks database usage in the corporate world. There is no surprise that open source has not penetrated the fortune 500 in a significant way. They are perfectly happy shelling out money to oracle and ibm.
"So if IIS had new features in new versions of Windows and encouraged people to upgrade,"
If you honestly think that people will upgrade their windows because some new "feature" of IIS there is no sense in talking to you. What feature of IIS? What was added to IIS between version 4 and 5 that would entice somebody to endure an migration? what a silly thing to say.
"A product doesn't have to be sold to give you a return on investment."
It does if you don't have a monopoly. Not everybody can keep throwing money at products that don't generate revenue.
"In markets where MS did not compete, prices fell an average of 18% over 8 years. In markets where MS did compete, prices fell an average of 65% (Newsday, Nov 1999)."
Price of what? MS products or the products of other people. It's the pattern of MS to dump below cost software to cut off the air supply of competitors. After a monopoly is established then prices start climbing again. Why do I need a study to point out the obvious and well documented.
"Further, office and Windows have actually been growing significantly slower than inflation"
But it's still growing. The price of all other software relative to inflation has been dropping. Who do you think you are fooling here?
"Third, StarOffice went from $0 to $99. "
If you are this ignorant about the history of staroffice then there is no sense in talking to you.
" If they were charging too much, then the profits would be enormous"
If you dont't think MS profits are enormous then there is no sense in talking to you. If you don't think $40 billion in CASH is enourmous then there is no talking to you. If you think MS is keeping prices as low as possible then there is no sense in talking to you.
Did I tell you there is no sense in talking to you anymore?
Trust is about more then bugs. I would not trust Bill gates to babysit my kids let alone have my credit card number.
"WinME sold millions of retail copies, not only ones that were attached to machines. "
Sorry it was a failure. MS admitted it and canned it. End of discussion on this one.
"CE has no monopoly power and continues to gain marketshare at the fastest rate of any embedded OS "
MS has started giving away CE and that's why it's growing. For any other business this would be considered a failure. No return on investment. Only MS can afford to keep dumping this product on the market at below cost.
" If MS gets out of the xbox market,"
They won't get out of the market that's exactly my point. They were losing money at $300.00 per box and they are now losing more money at $200.00 per box. Don't give me that shit about production prices going down the price of production could not have possibly went down 33% in six months. They are dumping this on the market just like they do with most other failed products. They can afford to lose billions which is a luxury shared by no other company on the face of the planet.
"SQL server is the fastest growing database (IDC worldwide database tracking numbers 2002)"
Fastest growing is a neat marketing term. If I sold no products this year and then sold two next year I would be growing faster then anybody else. Please use real numbers indicating market penetration. Also consider the fact that MS SQL server is being sold below cost. No other company could afford to sink that much development into a database server and sell it for that cheap (if they could have they would have). As for the market share of free databases is concerned nobody even attempts to measure them. Mysql may very well be use more then MS-SQL server but who is measuring that? BTW. Since interbase became open source I bet it's the "fastest growing" because it's market share probably doubled ot tripled (it was pretty low to start with after all).
"IIS certainly is not #1, but is launching with a 2 year lag on Apache "
IIS generates no revenue for MS yet MS continues to dedicate a team of developers to maintaining and re-writing it. Measure the ROI of that. Same as CE for any other company it would be a failure.
"he have not been proven to have a monopoly on office at all, let alone to be engaged in monopoly pricing. "
The price of all other office software has dropped significantly, some are selling for as low as $50.00 while the price of MS office (and windows) get's higher with every release. Windows and office are the only two software products whose prices increases as time goes on if that's not monopoly pricing I don't know what is.
"Also, unless you have insider information, you do not have MS's return on investment numbers for these projects. How could you measure them (and then determine success or failure)?"
How about this calculation. Spend more then zero dollars developing and maintaining a product. Give it away for free. It does not take a MBA from harvard to calculate that ROI does it?
"Organics are for rich people. If the whole world used organics, the reduced yields would result either in mass starvation or the conversion of the rest of our land mass to farming. Modern farming is resulting in the reversion of much land mass in the US to forest."
that's fine. We in the united states are rich and ought to take advantage of superior products if we can. Most produce you buy in the supermarket is bred not for taste but color, abilility to survive shipping (thick skin etc), and the ability to ripen in a truck. Organic foods are raised by small scale operators who breed for the environment and taste. The trick is to buy food grown locally if at all possible that way it's more likely to have ripened on the vine. I won't go into other ethical considerations of buying organic foods but for many people knowing that the food is grown and picked by people who do it because they want to is an important factor.
As for your claim that natural pesticides are worse then man made ones is just silly republican talk. Nobody actually believes that not even the republicans themselves. If you believe it then by all means ingest all the pesticides you want I wish you luck.
I still don't understand why there needs to be more studies. The answers seem so obvious to me.
The human body has evolved for thousands of years to eat certain kinds of foods but in the last couple of hundred years our diet has changed radically and therefore we grow fat and sick. Think about this. It takes a whole field of sugar cane to make a tablespoon of granulated sugar. No human being can eat that many sugar canes in one sitting but anybody can eat a snickers bar. The same applies for most grains. you can soak half a cup of wheat in water for a day and then eat it and you'll be full for half a day or you can eat a slice of bread and still be hungry.
Similarly cooking frequently turns starches in certain foods to sugar thus making them more desirable and easier to eat. Potatos are a great example of this.
The answer is to eat like people did ten thousand years ago. Eat raw foods, eat less meat, eat no bread or pasta. Eat foods as close to their natural state as possible.
I was using 5% as a figuritive number the actual number may be as high as 10%. Yes I meant US citizens.
IE does not generate revenue neither does CE. They are giving both of these products away. Maybe that's success by MS standards but most companies would consider a product they had to give away to be failure.
WinME was a failure becasue nobody bought it who was not forced to. Remember MS has a monopoly and millions of people are forced to have it whether they like it or not. If it was not a failure MS would continue to make it and they don't.
CE is a failure because MS is now forced to give it away for nothing. I don't think they ever got their R&D money back from it. It's alive because MS can continue to give it away for free relying on their monopolies to subsidize the dumping.
Xbox is a failure because it will die off very soon. MS has realized this and have already cut prices by a third. IT will be like CE. MS will give it away pretty soon. MS will never recoup R&D or manufacturing costs. They are already dumping it below cost.
SQL server is now as popular as it will ever be. Free databases are now good enough to put pressure from the bottom end and nobody really takes it seriously on the high end. I expect SQL server sales to decline any day now. The price keeps increasing and there is no need for a small to medium size business to pay that kind of money when interbase, sapdb, postgres and mysql are free.
As for IIS again if you can't get 25% market penetration with a monopoly then you are truly inept.
My point is that if MS did not have a monopoly any of these collosal failures (measured by return on investment not numbers) would have killed it. In fact failure at this scale would have taken down 95% of the companies on the planet. MS gets to keep throwing money at failed products for years thanks to monopoly level profits from windows and office.
Most republicans don't actually come out and say that the poor people should be killed, congratulations on your honesty.
Some spectacular failures from MS.
MS Bob.
MS at work (you remember this one it was supposed to be in copiers and faxes and stuff).
Windows ME
Hailstorm.
Windows CE.
Xbox.
Ultimate TV.
WEBTV (or whatever it was called)
Even to some extent SQL server and IIS each of which controls only about 30% of their markets.
In any other company even one failure of this magnitude would have killed it. Imagine the amount of R&D, programming, marketing etc that went into creating webTV. It was probably in the billions. The only company that can absorb that kind of a hit is MS thanks to their dual monopolies in Office and Windows.
This is where capitalism fell apart. MS can continue to develop products that fail in the market without damaging themselves. Other companies are not so lucky and one large failure will mean a collapse.
" If nobody trusts this system, it will not get into widespread use. Amazingly, Micro$oft does not succeed at everything."
I am trying to rack my brain and I can't think of one spectacular success they have had in the last five years. Can you help me out here? What product developed by MS in the last five years is dominating it's market? Of course I am not counting office and windows which are ongoing monopolies.
"I personally find killing those people unacceptable."
If this is so you are in the 5% minority of people who disagree with the actions taken by the US govt.
It is a shame but at least now it's out in the open. There can be no further pretext that the supreme court is somehow interested in the greater welfare of the american public or acts as a check or balance on the power of the executive branch. This court annointed George Bush and has a vested interest in making sure that his policies and wishes get approved. I feel sorry for any registered democrat who has to go before this court they are doomed before the case even starts.
No I experience delays because my company is run by idiots. Every purchase request takes weeks to process no matter how small or insignificant. It's been over a month and I am still waiting for a chair I ordered.
"ME---
For that reason alone MS and it's employees deserve every rotten egg, tomato or a fist thrown in their direction.
YOU---
Hmm. Interesting. Now think for a second, what would Jesus have to say about that remark? "
I don't know nor do I care. I don't believe in God. What I do know is this.
When Bin Laden attacked the US we went after the taliban because they were shielding him. When we went after the taliban we dropped bombs on counless locations in afghanistan. We killed thousands of people who were either foot soldiers of the taliban or lived in taliban controlled areas. What did these people have to do with the attack on world trade center? Well nothing really but they were legitamate targets of military action because however indirect their actions helped al-quada attack WTC. They shoulder some of the blame no matter how small and for that they died.
The same goes for Microsoft employees. They are responsible for the actions of their company, supervisors, CEOs etc. It is fair and just to retaliate against them for the crimes and evil acts done by their company and it's employees. It is fair to hit, shun, insult, and otherwise take to task any MS employee for what their bosses do. If they don't like it they should quit and stop supporting an evil regime. Simple as that.
"but I would hope that you sir, as an honored veteran, would know why you hate the defeated enemy, and not simply follow the unquestioned FUD that was necessary to win the Cold War."
I do not hate the communists or the russians. When I was stationed within 300 miles of vladivostok (the biggest russian military base) we used to joke that if the russians ever came after us we'd offer them vodka and get them drunk because both the US soldiers and the russian ones would have rather drank themselves silly then shoot each other.
As for communism itself it's main tenents are not that much different then the sermon on the mount. The problem of communism is the problem of people. People are not good, generous or considerate of others needs. Communism does not work because people are not good, capitalism does work because people are selfish and greedy. But that's neither here nor there.
I don't hate communists or communism. What I hate is Bill gates calling me a comunist or a terrorist when I am clearly not. Especially since he has never volunteered to wear a gas mask for 10 hours and stew inside a chem suit in hundred degree weather. He has no right to call me a communist.
He is doing that because he knows that most people associate communism with stalin, lenin and other evil people who slaughtered millions of innocents. He wants the average american to think of GPL coders and advocates as murderers and evil. It's a calculated attack on people. He could have said GPL is like socialism (it is), he could have said GPL is like charity (it is), he could have said it's like christianity (it is kind of), instead he chose the word communism. Why? Because Americans react negatively and violently to communists. That's what he wants! He wants Americans to react negatively and violently towards me, you, and anybody else who develops or uses GPLed software.
For that reason alone MS and it's employees deserve every rotten egg, tomato or a fist thrown in their direction. I don't go around slandering them or their families nor do I go around lobbying politicians to make what they do illegal. Why are they attacking me?
"Why, exactly?"
Because I am not a communist, anti-american or a terrorist. I am a veteran, I served my country proudly, i vote, I participate. Who the hell is Bill Gates to call me a communist.
As for the GPL it has nothing to do with me being a communist. If you don't like the GPL stay the fuck away from GPLed code. Write your own code and stop your whining about how you are unable to use other peoples hard work to make money for yourself. That sound more like communism then anything else to me.
Write your own code, that's the american way. Anybody who is whining about the GPL is too lazy to do the work themselves and want to steal from other people. As a christian you ought to be the first one stand up and sing the virtues of working hard and not leeching off of other peoples labor. The is a cost to using GPLed code and that cost is steep. If you don't want to pay it stay away.
Where I work configuration is not the issue. If you want to spend over a certain amount you have to go to the board. Even then it's a crapshoot as to whether the CIO can convince the board that it's a good expenditure. FOr smaller items the CIO can approve items himself but even that takes over a month in most cases.
" You don't take a case to the SCOTUS unless you know its damn good. Test cases are especially straightforward usually."
I think in this case it's got less to do with the strength of the case then the makeup of the court. There is no way in hell a republican dominated supreme court will rule in favor 2600.
"Considering Microsoft has called the GPL a "Cancer""
Let's not forget MS execs calling us un-american, communists and terrorist sympatizers too. I for one would like to punch them out just for calling me communist.
I agree with you hit them with whatever is handy. They deserve much worse then anything you are likely to do to them.