Surely the concept of Anti Trust is lost in a highly socialist society as state ownership of the means of production are fundamental principles of socialism itself.
The concept of Anti Monopoly laws is a capitalist one, its only purpose being to stop a single company from controlling the marketplace. Having lived in the UK through the 1970's, trade union domination, winter of discontent etc., I've noticed that Microsoft's past behaviour has been more along the lines of a state/union controlled monopoly that it has a successful company.
That the case should be bought to the EU. Do US companies now see Microsoft and the US state to be so closely tied that the US courts aren't worth bothering with?
The MD is a raving MS fanboy, and shortly after arriving I was informed in no small measure that I was developing for IE, and "if the site doesn't work in any of those other browsers, who cares".
It is rather weird when you come across that attitude.
I've worked at several companies where the guy in charge would go ape shit mental if you let the phone ring more than 5 times before picking it up. On more than one occasion I've heard "well done, that's another lost customer" when it wasn't reached in time.
Thinking about it, if Firefox is approaching 10% market penetration and you get say, 200 hits a day where people actually spend something, say, an average 250 dollars/pounds/whatever, then you're looking at roughly 1.2 million a year in lost revenue solely because some overblown prat doesn't care about 10% of their potential customers.
Maybe you could co-opt a friend into buying shares (if they're floated) and denouncing said dickhead at the annual shareholders meeting. If you're really creative with the figures you can probably show that the TCO of the MD is outstripping any financial benefit his presence may bring. I believe it's also written into corporate law that the MD/CEO is obliged to work in the best interests of the company.
Going into partnership with SCO just after Novell has applied to freeze their funds with the intention of pillaging them via the courts is not the brightest of ideas.
I tried to patent the concept of crippling my country's technological advancement by tying its high tech industry up in constant legal battles over the ownership of seemingly random and increasingly tenuous fragments of intellectual property that anyone with half an ounce of brain could see were obvious, in the public domain or covered by prior art leaving the other half of the world to get on with it.
Trouble is the US government had already got that one ):
From what I remember, the IE bundled with Windows ploy wasn't so much an attempt at lock in, more a stitch up on a business partner.
When Netscape first released Navigator, Bill Gates apparently dismissed the internet and the web as a passing fad and at the same time wrote Netscapes booming share price off as a temporary bubble.
When Netscape's value kept rising, Microsoft panicked and looked around for a way to catch up. They had no experience with browser technology and building from scratch would not have been that quick so they started looking around for small, innovative companies with products they could licence.
Enter Spyglass. Spyglass had a browser and signed a licencing agreement with MS which would lead to a percentage of the value of it's sale through Microsoft to be fed back to Spyglass. And here is the true reason why MS bundled IE. IE was basically Spyglass's product with some proprietary extensions and when Spyglass came to pick up their royalties it was pointed out to them that x percent of zero is zero and as MS had been giving it away that was the sum of their royalties.
I imagine that the end of that meeting must have been along the lines of "now piss off out of my building before I have Igor set the dogs on you" but the end result was that Spyglass sued for a measly $8 million proving that if you sign a pact with Satan, you'd better be ready to get toasted at the end of it.
and outperforms even our best bulk materials (such as Mylar and Kevlar) at strength normalized to weight. It strongly absorbs microwaves for localized heating
Should be interesting to see the day when a drug dealer overrides the safety interlock on his microwave and points it at nanotube body armour wearing DEA officials during a bust.
Should bring a new meaning to the phrase "hot tits"
You can get it from the link in the same page. I must confess that I've not used it myself (don't use Office/Frontpage) but if it does what it says on the tin it should sort you out.
As an experiment, try rebooting your servers at 3pm and see what happens. Every, and I mean every department will decend on you like a ton of bricks because like it or not, IT is now the core of most businesses and not a service. Cripple the Finance departments software for a while and suppliers and employees don't get paid, cripple the order department for a day and everyone's schedules get set back.
A companies network is infrastructure in the same way that a road network is infrastructure and breakages impact the business in the same way that a major car pile up can cost a city's businesses millions in delays to travelling staff, deliveries etc. A smooth running, well designed and maintained IT system can make a significant difference.
Having said all this, it's notable that the UK coastguard service when hit by Sassa (I think) lost all its IT and fell back on paper maps, protractors and set squares but how many companies have a fall back to paper emergency plan in place with staff trained to deal with such an event?
Schools in the UK are currently being offered the chance to bid on a £15000 software handout from Microsoft. Our school applied but lost and the suspicion is that it's because our school doesn't hold ICT "centre of excellence" status.
From what I can make out, MS are targetting ICT specialist schools because they are the ones who would most likely benefit from the open source code and free development tools that OSS provides. Obviously, the temptation at such schools would be to develop code that would be beneficial to a school environment and education being what it is, it's likely that such software would be freely propagated to other schools allowing less specialised schools an ample supply of free software and an easier switch to OSS.
From what I understand, price cutting designed to exclude a competitor from a marketplace is deemed predatory pricing when practised by a monopoly company and is is in contravention to trade rules.
I'd be interested in seeing posts from anyone else who has applied for an MS grant. If you did, did you get it and if so are you a specialist ICT centre?
First slag spyware off, then adopt it as your own. Next will come the embrace bit where Gator will be integrated into the API so that no-one else's spyware will run as fast.
No wonder the world is so fucked up with people like you around.
In the entire history of mankind, how many forward steps have been made by defeatist's sitting on there arses saying "well that's just the way it is so get used to it". The Russians spent years living under Stalinist rule (not communist, Stalin may have been many things but a communist he wasn't) because people just sat back and accepted it. Millions of people have died because it was easier to turn a blind eye to the evils of their government's actions than it was to be be denounced as unpatriotic and fed to the brainwashed masses as a traitor.
In your world, George Washington would have said "yeah well it's crap being under English rule but what can you do eh" and Churchill would have said we'll fight them on the....... Oh Bollocks, what's the point. Let the bloody Nazi's have Europe and we'll get a welcoming commitee down to Dover Harbour to welcome them.
Ultimately, corrupt and amoral governments and institutions get away with because those they stand over allow them to. By advocating the act of benefitting from the status quo you have made yourself no better than the peasant that supported his king because it was better to receive the pittance paid for services rendered than it was to question why the king had 95% of the wealth and didn't have wallow in shit all day.
The irony of it is that you are hurting yourself as much as much as anyone else for nothing more than a lack of imagination. The Romans no doubt thought that their empire was eternal, the British never managed the thousand years they predicted and Hitler thank god only managed 6 odd years of military expansion before being put in his place. As for the Soviet Union, well the people of those countries bought that down with the help of Gorbachev. It's just a shame that he was subsequently stitched up in favour of Pisshead Yeltsin but at least he, and they were willing to gamble to improve their lot.
The amazing thing about power structures is ultimately they delude themselves into the same belief of invincibitlity that they use to scare those below them, forgetting that like all those that preceded they are ultimately destined to fall into a feeble shadow of their former glory.
On the other hand, you have achieved one thing. Normally I don't bother replying to Anonymous Cowards as I don't believe that such people can have any real belief in their own words if they're not at least willing to put even a username to their beliefs. Hell, not much of an achievement for you I know but better to have done one vaguely suprising thing in your life than skulk along in total mediocity.
The company who's CEO testified on Microsoft's side in the Windows anti-trust hearings is crying about Intel's unfair practices and I'm supposed to be how sympathetic?
Having said that, I don't think I've used an Intel chip in a PC that I've specced for about 4 years but I find it hard to shed any tears.
Plus with Russel T. Davis' past writings and David Tennants performance in Cassanova I don't think there's much to suggest it'll be any worse than the current series.
Slashdot Mirror
"What do you suppose we do about the thousands of existing applications that use the registry?"
Write some dodgy hack that gets around it, put in in a wrapper and flog it as a full price upgrade?
Surely the concept of Anti Trust is lost in a highly socialist society as state ownership of the means of production are fundamental principles of socialism itself.
The concept of Anti Monopoly laws is a capitalist one, its only purpose being to stop a single company from controlling the marketplace. Having lived in the UK through the 1970's, trade union domination, winter of discontent etc., I've noticed that Microsoft's past behaviour has been more along the lines of a state/union controlled monopoly that it has a successful company.
That the case should be bought to the EU. Do US companies now see Microsoft and the US state to be so closely tied that the US courts aren't worth bothering with?
"Airbus A380 Under Fire"
If you will try landing one at Baghdad airport what do you expect
Does whoever modded the parent up as informative know something we don't? +1 Funny I can deal with, but informative?
Or it could have been touched by his noodly appendage
The MD is a raving MS fanboy, and shortly after arriving I was informed in no small measure that I was developing for IE, and "if the site doesn't work in any of those other browsers, who cares".
It is rather weird when you come across that attitude.
I've worked at several companies where the guy in charge would go ape shit mental if you let the phone ring more than 5 times before picking it up. On more than one occasion I've heard "well done, that's another lost customer" when it wasn't reached in time.
Thinking about it, if Firefox is approaching 10% market penetration and you get say, 200 hits a day where people actually spend something, say, an average 250 dollars/pounds/whatever, then you're looking at roughly 1.2 million a year in lost revenue solely because some overblown prat doesn't care about 10% of their potential customers.
Maybe you could co-opt a friend into buying shares (if they're floated) and denouncing said dickhead at the annual shareholders meeting. If you're really creative with the figures you can probably show that the TCO of the MD is outstripping any financial benefit his presence may bring. I believe it's also written into corporate law that the MD/CEO is obliged to work in the best interests of the company.
Last Wednesday I see this:
China Daily covers an anti-Linux FUD campaign being run by the China Software Industry Association. "Sun Yufang, a Chinese scholar who has long been researching Linux software, says most Linux developers cannot make a living under the current business model. Most of these developers 'either have died or have focused on other businesses in past years,' Sun says."
And then today:
Google Lawsuit Exposes Microsoft Offshoring Deal.
I wonder if these two events are in any way related?
Going into partnership with SCO just after Novell has applied to freeze their funds with the intention of pillaging them via the courts is not the brightest of ideas.
I tried to patent the concept of crippling my country's technological advancement by tying its high tech industry up in constant legal battles over the ownership of seemingly random and increasingly tenuous fragments of intellectual property that anyone with half an ounce of brain could see were obvious, in the public domain or covered by prior art leaving the other half of the world to get on with it.
Trouble is the US government had already got that one ):
From what I remember, the IE bundled with Windows ploy wasn't so much an attempt at lock in, more a stitch up on a business partner.
When Netscape first released Navigator, Bill Gates apparently dismissed the internet and the web as a passing fad and at the same time wrote Netscapes booming share price off as a temporary bubble.
When Netscape's value kept rising, Microsoft panicked and looked around for a way to catch up. They had no experience with browser technology and building from scratch would not have been that quick so they started looking around for small, innovative companies with products they could licence.
Enter Spyglass. Spyglass had a browser and signed a licencing agreement with MS which would lead to a percentage of the value of it's sale through Microsoft to be fed back to Spyglass. And here is the true reason why MS bundled IE. IE was basically Spyglass's product with some proprietary extensions and when Spyglass came to pick up their royalties it was pointed out to them that x percent of zero is zero and as MS had been giving it away that was the sum of their royalties.
I imagine that the end of that meeting must have been along the lines of "now piss off out of my building before I have Igor set the dogs on you" but the end result was that Spyglass sued for a measly $8 million proving that if you sign a pact with Satan, you'd better be ready to get toasted at the end of it.
and outperforms even our best bulk materials (such as Mylar and Kevlar) at strength normalized to weight. It strongly absorbs microwaves for localized heating
Should be interesting to see the day when a drug dealer overrides the safety interlock on his microwave and points it at nanotube body armour wearing DEA officials during a bust.
Should bring a new meaning to the phrase "hot tits"
Demoroniser is, in the author's own man pages words:
A Perl script which corrects incompatible HTML generated by Microsoft applications.
You can get it from the link in the same page. I must confess that I've not used it myself (don't use Office/Frontpage) but if it does what it says on the tin it should sort you out.
Or Space Mumps
The parent is wrong on so many levels.
As an experiment, try rebooting your servers at 3pm and see what happens. Every, and I mean every department will decend on you like a ton of bricks because like it or not, IT is now the core of most businesses and not a service. Cripple the Finance departments software for a while and suppliers and employees don't get paid, cripple the order department for a day and everyone's schedules get set back.
A companies network is infrastructure in the same way that a road network is infrastructure and breakages impact the business in the same way that a major car pile up can cost a city's businesses millions in delays to travelling staff, deliveries etc. A smooth running, well designed and maintained IT system can make a significant difference.
Having said all this, it's notable that the UK coastguard service when hit by Sassa (I think) lost all its IT and fell back on paper maps, protractors and set squares but how many companies have a fall back to paper emergency plan in place with staff trained to deal with such an event?
Is that the third that start "Get the Facts"?
"b) Tony Blair has specifically stated that he does NOT intend to bring in a raft of draconian laws and new surveillance powers."
True but as anyone who knows politics knows, you should never believe anything until it's been officially denied.
Joseph Goebbels on Compassion, George Bush on grammar and Count Dracula on the health benefits of a Vegan Diet.
"From what I can make out, MS are targetting ICT specialist schools"
Ooops, should have read:
From what I can make out, the suspicion is MS are.... etc....
Although any anecdotal evidence would help show if this suspicion is correct.
Schools in the UK are currently being offered the chance to bid on a £15000 software handout from Microsoft. Our school applied but lost and the suspicion is that it's because our school doesn't hold ICT "centre of excellence" status.
From what I can make out, MS are targetting ICT specialist schools because they are the ones who would most likely benefit from the open source code and free development tools that OSS provides. Obviously, the temptation at such schools would be to develop code that would be beneficial to a school environment and education being what it is, it's likely that such software would be freely propagated to other schools allowing less specialised schools an ample supply of free software and an easier switch to OSS.
From what I understand, price cutting designed to exclude a competitor from a marketplace is deemed predatory pricing when practised by a monopoly company and is is in contravention to trade rules.
I'd be interested in seeing posts from anyone else who has applied for an MS grant. If you did, did you get it and if so are you a specialist ICT centre?
Usual MS behaviour.
First slag spyware off, then adopt it as your own. Next will come the embrace bit where Gator will be integrated into the API so that no-one else's spyware will run as fast.
No wonder the world is so fucked up with people like you around.
In the entire history of mankind, how many forward steps have been made by defeatist's sitting on there arses saying "well that's just the way it is so get used to it". The Russians spent years living under Stalinist rule (not communist, Stalin may have been many things but a communist he wasn't) because people just sat back and accepted it. Millions of people have died because it was easier to turn a blind eye to the evils of their government's actions than it was to be be denounced as unpatriotic and fed to the brainwashed masses as a traitor.
In your world, George Washington would have said "yeah well it's crap being under English rule but what can you do eh" and Churchill would have said we'll fight them on the....... Oh Bollocks, what's the point. Let the bloody Nazi's have Europe and we'll get a welcoming commitee down to Dover Harbour to welcome them.
Ultimately, corrupt and amoral governments and institutions get away with because those they stand over allow them to. By advocating the act of benefitting from the status quo you have made yourself no better than the peasant that supported his king because it was better to receive the pittance paid for services rendered than it was to question why the king had 95% of the wealth and didn't have wallow in shit all day.
The irony of it is that you are hurting yourself as much as much as anyone else for nothing more than a lack of imagination. The Romans no doubt thought that their empire was eternal, the British never managed the thousand years they predicted and Hitler thank god only managed 6 odd years of military expansion before being put in his place. As for the Soviet Union, well the people of those countries bought that down with the help of Gorbachev. It's just a shame that he was subsequently stitched up in favour of Pisshead Yeltsin but at least he, and they were willing to gamble to improve their lot.
The amazing thing about power structures is ultimately they delude themselves into the same belief of invincibitlity that they use to scare those below them, forgetting that like all those that preceded they are ultimately destined to fall into a feeble shadow of their former glory.
On the other hand, you have achieved one thing. Normally I don't bother replying to Anonymous Cowards as I don't believe that such people can have any real belief in their own words if they're not at least willing to put even a username to their beliefs. Hell, not much of an achievement for you I know but better to have done one vaguely suprising thing in your life than skulk along in total mediocity.
There was bit of graffiti on 3 bridges on the A1 (one of the main trunk roads into London used by commuters) years ago that made me laugh.
...... Lemmings
On the way into work in the morning it read:
good...... morning
The company who's CEO testified on Microsoft's side in the Windows anti-trust hearings is crying about Intel's unfair practices and I'm supposed to be how sympathetic?
Having said that, I don't think I've used an Intel chip in a PC that I've specced for about 4 years but I find it hard to shed any tears.
Plus with Russel T. Davis' past writings and David Tennants performance in Cassanova I don't think there's much to suggest it'll be any worse than the current series.