A better benchmark would be TCOUFA i.e. Total Cost Of Unecessary Farting Around. This would cover rebooting servers because they've gone mental for no apparent reason, virus removal, Spyware removal and all the other time sapping annoyances that seem to be absent from Linux but add up to a significant pain in the arse with Windows.
Oh go on, pleaaaaaassssssse......
on
SCO Targets UK Firms
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
'Cos I already have 3 e-mails in my outbox that have been sitting there waiting to go since SCO first announced their intentions. The first (in case SCO advertise their licences in the press) goes to the Advertising Satandards Authority. The ASA is an organisation whose remit is to ensure that printed advertisments are legal and honest. As SCO has no proof of ownership and hence no definite claim any ad they place would fail requiring them to pull it or face regulatory action.
The second is directed to the local (to SCO UK) police reporting an act of attempting to "obtain funds by deception". This law covers acts along the lines of falsley claiming ownership of something with a view to selling it. Until SCO prove a case one way or the other they have no such proof and no claim.
The third is to the Trading Standards Office complaing of false claims being made.
Between the three of them, it could get quite entertaining.
I thought Churchill was the one who stood up to the evil empire and won. At least I don't remember the speech that went:
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; Then we shall come to a $700 million agreement with Germany and spend the next six months telling everyone our former allies are a load of bastards
There's a crime of "obtaining funds by deception" aimed at nailing fraudsters who use false information e.g. claiming property as theirs to extract money from people. Given that SCO have no proof of ownership over the disputed code I can't see how they can sell anyone anything.
Should the case fall through I look forward to the arrest of the head of the UK arm of SCO and, should McBride, Sontag etc., ever land in the UK their arrests also. After all, conmen are among the lowest forms of scum.
Couldn't agree more but the world trade organisation is still politically driven. Up until now its main use has been as a stick for the rich nations to beat poorer countries into providing them with cheap consumer goods and it's served its purpose well.
Now the field is changing though. SuSE, although owned by Novell is till a German based company and Mandrake is making its way into the French government although at a slower pace than SuSE's break into Munich. There's a reason why Microsoft is the richest corporation in the world i.e. blessed are the geeks for they shall inherit the world.
Germany would love SuSE to be a multi billion dollar company and no doubt France would like Mandrake to do the same. Munich after all bought SuSE in not because they were cheapest but in order to make Microsoft "just another software supplier" instead of the only software supplier. So now we are at the point where France and Germany, two G8 countries no longer have it in their interest to allow the WTO to work only in Microsoft/The USA's interest. China (not a G8 member - yet) in much the same vein has little interest in allowing MS a one horse race in its territory and has put lots of backing behind Red Star linux. Japan which is G8 has already announced a Linux collaboration with other countries.
So, the WTO and G8 members are put in a position where there's a conflict of interest between their desire to keep poor countries poor enough to make a pair of trainers for 1$ or a PC for less than the cost of a motherboard in the west and politicians natural desire to protect their own voting base by supporting their home business interests and bringing money into their country.
Remember, two years ago the Euro was a joke economy. Recently however it has been, and still is gaining value on the world market to the detriment of the US dollar. Before Iraq was invaded it was intending to trade its oil on the world markets in Euros instead of dollars and if the rest of the middle east had followed, which given the ties between Europe and the middle east is not implausible, Americas economy would have been screwed.
The thought that Mandrake and SuSE could bring millions/billions of dollars into Europe boosting the Euro to UK/US level strength cannot be far from the minds of Europe's (and other) law makers when they consider software patents.
As it shows a degree of panic on Microsoft's part. Ballmer starts out with the assumption that software patents are going to be conditional on entry to the WTO. This overlooks two main points:
1) The WTO is, by definition, the WORLD Trade organisation. Subserviance to a global Microsoft Patent arsenal would put Microsoft a step closer to killing off any competition from freely distributable FOSS that can be deployed in homes and businesses. As Linux is the only real competition that Redmond have had in the last 15-20 years to surrender to this would be tantamount to giving MS the global software market forever. Future free software development in countries other than the US would be more difficult, possibly impossible, leaving every country in the hands of the MS. Your country disagrees with America? Simple, Homeland security adds you to the export ban list and all of a sudden your DRM permission gets revoked. Far fetched? Manybe, but in the current climate I bet its gone through a few minds in high places.
2) There are not many countries that trust America at the moment. Europe's nervous about Iraq (why not it's a lot closer to Iraq than the US is), half of the Middle East is keeping its head down while the other half sit wondering whether their next and are probably tooling up just in case. The North Koreans? Wouldn't wanna be in their shoes right now. The Chinese won't want to submit to anyone as their economy's growing fast and they won't want to relinquish control. In short, global software patents suit one country and although Tony Blair will probably prostrate himself on the Whitehouse carpet while swearing to keep the UK government/Microsoft partnership going it's still part of Europe.
So; Given that the main effect of global software patents will be to kill of any other countries chances of competing with Microsoft, what reason have they got for signing up. If anything, this speech gives Europe and China a sign of the state of things to come adding extra impetus to turn to Mandrake, SuSE, Red Star Linux and forget about software patents for good.
As SCO come closer to death it's interesting to see Microsoft's anti-Linux activities seeming more desperate as they flail around looking for options however implausible they may be. The ultimate effect of this one though may be the isolation of Microsoft to American territory, their overseas markets cut off by their own hand.
Incidently, if terrorism is the art of threatening attack in order to influence governments or organisations the tone of Stevey Boys rant could easily be interpreted as such. I therefore suggest that Redmond be declared part of the axis of evil terrorist organisations. A UN force should be deployed in Ballmers office and sanctions be imposed on the evil dictator within. Alternatively, it could be subcontracted to the Israelis who can surround the aforementioned with Tanks, keeping Monkey Boy incarcerated until he's 75 and becomes entitled to utilise the French health service.
I had the same thing and I couldn't get into safe mode to fix it either.
##### everything from here down not warranteed #### # Screws your machine, not my problem! #
Only way to fix the PC without a rebuild was to boot to a recovery console from the original CD then cd to:
c:\windows\$NtServicePackUninstall$\spuninst\
and type:
batch spuninst
I think it was spuninst or it may have been spuninst.bat can't remember which but looking in the directory should reveal the right one.
The only thing is that the command line goes ape-shit with text screaming down the screen in a very un-windows like way, causing a kinda "Oh Bugger, I think I've just screwed it up" moment of paranoia, but once finished I rebooted and it was fine.
England is a nation living of its past reputation.
Damn right there mate. Britain used to be a pioneering country when it came to technology. Massive amounts of money flooding in from trading throughout the empire fuelled the industrail revolution and Engineers and technologists were practically hailed as heroes.
Unfortunately, all that ended when the last vestiges of empire faded between the 1940s and 60's and Britain's industries (particularly aviation) crumbled. In the 10 years from the abandonment of TSR2 the British motorbike industry collapsed because no one saw the japanese getting anywhere and the 80's saw the death of just about anything else that the UK had been good at.
Once Maggie had dragged us into the "age of accountants" I don't think anyone really cared anymore and celeb worship took over. Blair has taken celeb worship to excess and being seen in the company of rich and famous people like Bush and Gates gives him that feeling of self importance that being Prime Minister of the UK just can't provide any more.
So finally, don't expect the Blair government to put Open Source before Microsoft for anything other than minor, token gesture roles. Improved security, stability, Open Standards and whatever you may put forward as reaosns to go for FOSS mean nothing to the UK gov. compared to the "kudos" of a photo shoot with Tony's smug "look at me, I'm with Bill Gates, I'm soooooo important". Behaviour like this is usually due a) being bullied at school
b)lacking in self confidence c) being hung like a squirrel.
Choose your preferred option. I just wish they'd piss off and let people who know what there doing have a chance. After all, it's all very well being the worlds 4th largest economy but if you pour money into Monopolies and can't see anything wrong with predatory behaviour and corruption, opps, corporate lobbying it ain't worth jack.
Sadly Britain's industry is now run by accountants who have the power to veto projects on cost alone. Why they are allowed to do this is not known as they'd surely be engineers rather than accountants if they understood the things they were making a decision on.
On the negative side it's hard to get funding for anything worthwhile that's going to cost more than £50 but on the plus side it does supply us with a humorous and never ending train of "Government project fails dismally" headlines, e.g. every government IT project for the last 20 years and the soon to overspend, late deliver NHS IT system that doctors have predicted will be a failure.
Ah well, at least it stops Britain looking advanced...
"The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology executives
Then why all the anti-Linux FUD if piracy's your biggest problem
"PCs are not selling to the lower end of the population in China and India.
Maybe this is because the lower end of the population has more on it's mind. For a start how about the fact that they live miles from anywhere have no electricity, running water, proper medical care etc. On the whole I'd say that lacking a PC ranks fairly low on their list of priorities. At best it'd be a mediocre way of keeping the goat pen gate shut.
So...should the prices be lower? Not really. Until government and situational factors reduce piracy...those people...don't pay
OK so we're at an impass. People over there can't afford a PC and you aren't willing to reduce the cost of Windows to make it more affordable to them. The cost of hardware has plummeted over the last 5 years as companies adopted their business model to the new global market by sacking loads of people and shifting the work overseas. As a result the percentage cost of a PC build that Windows represents has increased. If you're not willing to ship your operation to China/India/Taiwan and aren't willing to cut your prices the only course left is to tell people to install Linux rather than lay the blame on the hardware makers.
In recent months, the software maker has announced plans to introduce low-cost "starter editions" of Windows XP into countries including India, Russia and Thailand.
Great idea. Why have Linux and 3000+ applications when you have a crippled version of XP instead
"There's no appreciable amount of Linux on client systems anywhere in the world"
Yet!
Paris said Linux was dramatically more expensive than Windows. In...Brazil, it's the same thing
Err.... No it didn't. Paris said MIGRATING from Windows to Linux was dramatically more expensive. Is it Linux's fault that the legacy of years of proprietry file format use and software designed to stop people migrating has bumped the cost up. Migrating is a one time expense particularly when you migrate to open standards that save you from suffering the same fate again.
"Yes, we lost the city of Munich. But the fact that the same story gets told 65,000 times, and they are still diddling around to some degree...come on, where's the evidence?"
Munich paused to consider the risk of software patents crippling their project (don't want to step on other people's IP after all) and are now rolling again. "The evidence" will arrive soon enough.
Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, who said security will not be an issue in three years.
In 2002(ish) Brian Valentine said that security had never been a feature of Microsoft products. With a 15-20 year legacy of piss poor security I can't see Windows being secure for a lot more than 3 years.
Ballmer admitted that the company's "integrated innovation" message isn't easy to grasp. "Sometimes, our own people get confused about it.
That's probably because Integrated Innovation is the just another load of bollocks from the same marketing minds that talk of synergising creative energies or whatever wanky buzzword may come along. It confuses because in reality it means nothing of any substance.
Microsoft has no designs on the very high end of that market.
Why aim high when mediocrity is so profitable.
That would put our products out of the simplicity band for the companies we target
So you're describing your customers as simple? (See, twisting words is easy isn't it)
On the whole more FUD and Bullshit from the Ballmer stable. Another sign that creativity left MS years ago.
.
Gates: Understand those are cases where you are downloading third-party software
If the guy who built my house failed to put lock levers on the upstairs windows and I get burgled I'm sure the insurance company will accept the builder's explanation that it's all the fault of the third party company that made the ladder they used and nothing to do with him failing to secure the house.
Better than the kids being redirected to the Hot Horny Sluts search engine every time they try going online.
Internet Explorer, what porn do you want dumped on your desktop today? Bought to you with Active seX technology (TM).
.
If you're out of reception range of BBC Radio Four, then you can listen online:
At least you could before several hundred thousand + slashdotters hit the audio server;)
.
The UK system is still pretty sucky. MS probably knew that they'd get nailed for their "independant research" but even if they get fined it means little to them as the meme has already been sown.
The same technique was used by the conservative government against Labour councils in the 80's and is also used by the current labour mob who will arrange for their friends in the media to carry out character assassinations on their critics safe in the knowledge that by the time an independant body has reviewed the facts and ruled the original article to be a lie everyone's already soaked it up. When a retraction is printed it normally occupies about 1/2 a column inch and as it's not news anymore, no-one cares anyway.
What should happen now is MS should be required to take out an advert of the same size as the original in all publications concerned along the lines of:
WE LIED!! Yes folks it's true. We bullshitted the lot of you with a bogus piece of research that we paid a friendly (although not tieable to us) company to make up. What's more, now you know we're willing to buy biased reports to fool you into buying our products you can take it as a sign that we actually have little faith their superiority because lets face it, if they were that great we'd be selling them on their merits not treating you like the idiots we think you are (Newham?).
Microsoft - Because you're too stupid to work it out for yourself!
Same goes for the press when they print false or exaggerated information on people. The trouble is that those with the wealth and power to do anything about it are those who benefit.
Maybe the whole point of this is that by filing thousands of pointless, indefensible patents MS hopes to make the whole patent process fall apart.
Why? Simple. MS's main advantage is its financial resources while IBM's greatest asset is its massive patent portfolio. While IBM hold so may patents, MS will have to act with at least a modicum of civility re: cross licencing etc. When the patent system is rendered a humiliated mess and it falls apart due to the fact that no-one can take it seriously any more MS can fall back on proprietry file formats (office) and its huge desktop monopoly and do what it does best - treating everyone like shit!
Remember, a cornered Rat's greatest asset is it's unpredictability. Or is that a dancing monkey boy?
2: I live in England (and have done for some 39 years) and have a fair knowledge of the administrative hierarchy of Counties, parishes etc.
3: Read the setence as it is written then remove the bracketed sevtion to reveal:
Write to the OGC and/or your MP and state your reasons for disagreeing with Newhams decision.
4: Since when would Americans (I assume that's what you thought I was) call the head of IT in newham an arshole. Asshole maybe but arsehole? I doubt it.
Slashdot Mirror
A better benchmark would be TCOUFA i.e. Total Cost Of Unecessary Farting Around. This would cover rebooting servers because they've gone mental for no apparent reason, virus removal, Spyware removal and all the other time sapping annoyances that seem to be absent from Linux but add up to a significant pain in the arse with Windows.
'Cos I already have 3 e-mails in my outbox that have been sitting there waiting to go since SCO first announced their intentions. The first (in case SCO advertise their licences in the press) goes to the Advertising Satandards Authority. The ASA is an organisation whose remit is to ensure that printed advertisments are legal and honest. As SCO has no proof of ownership and hence no definite claim any ad they place would fail requiring them to pull it or face regulatory action.
The second is directed to the local (to SCO UK) police reporting an act of attempting to "obtain funds by deception". This law covers acts along the lines of falsley claiming ownership of something with a view to selling it. Until SCO prove a case one way or the other they have no such proof and no claim.
The third is to the Trading Standards Office complaing of false claims being made.
Between the three of them, it could get quite entertaining.
He (McBride) took no Canopy-related questions during the teleconference and did not return calls afterward seeking comment.
Probably because they won't let you keep your mobile on in the job centre.
Running Spybot on most customers PCs usually reveals half a dozen toolbars already installed (xxx usually) so I suppose one more won't hurt.
I thought Churchill was the one who stood up to the evil empire and won. At least I don't remember the speech that went:
we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; Then we shall come to a $700 million agreement with Germany and spend the next six months telling everyone our former allies are a load of bastards
There's a crime of "obtaining funds by deception" aimed at nailing fraudsters who use false information e.g. claiming property as theirs to extract money from people. Given that SCO have no proof of ownership over the disputed code I can't see how they can sell anyone anything.
Should the case fall through I look forward to the arrest of the head of the UK arm of SCO and, should McBride, Sontag etc., ever land in the UK their arrests also. After all, conmen are among the lowest forms of scum.
Couldn't agree more but the world trade organisation is still politically driven. Up until now its main use has been as a stick for the rich nations to beat poorer countries into providing them with cheap consumer goods and it's served its purpose well.
Now the field is changing though. SuSE, although owned by Novell is till a German based company and Mandrake is making its way into the French government although at a slower pace than SuSE's break into Munich. There's a reason why Microsoft is the richest corporation in the world i.e. blessed are the geeks for they shall inherit the world.
Germany would love SuSE to be a multi billion dollar company and no doubt France would like Mandrake to do the same. Munich after all bought SuSE in not because they were cheapest but in order to make Microsoft "just another software supplier" instead of the only software supplier. So now we are at the point where France and Germany, two G8 countries no longer have it in their interest to allow the WTO to work only in Microsoft/The USA's interest. China (not a G8 member - yet) in much the same vein has little interest in allowing MS a one horse race in its territory and has put lots of backing behind Red Star linux. Japan which is G8 has already announced a Linux collaboration with other countries.
So, the WTO and G8 members are put in a position where there's a conflict of interest between their desire to keep poor countries poor enough to make a pair of trainers for 1$ or a PC for less than the cost of a motherboard in the west and politicians natural desire to protect their own voting base by supporting their home business interests and bringing money into their country.
Remember, two years ago the Euro was a joke economy. Recently however it has been, and still is gaining value on the world market to the detriment of the US dollar. Before Iraq was invaded it was intending to trade its oil on the world markets in Euros instead of dollars and if the rest of the middle east had followed, which given the ties between Europe and the middle east is not implausible, Americas economy would have been screwed.
The thought that Mandrake and SuSE could bring millions/billions of dollars into Europe boosting the Euro to UK/US level strength cannot be far from the minds of Europe's (and other) law makers when they consider software patents.
As it shows a degree of panic on Microsoft's part. Ballmer starts out with the assumption that software patents are going to be conditional on entry to the WTO. This overlooks two main points:
1) The WTO is, by definition, the WORLD Trade organisation. Subserviance to a global Microsoft Patent arsenal would put Microsoft a step closer to killing off any competition from freely distributable FOSS that can be deployed in homes and businesses. As Linux is the only real competition that Redmond have had in the last 15-20 years to surrender to this would be tantamount to giving MS the global software market forever. Future free software development in countries other than the US would be more difficult, possibly impossible, leaving every country in the hands of the MS. Your country disagrees with America? Simple, Homeland security adds you to the export ban list and all of a sudden your DRM permission gets revoked. Far fetched? Manybe, but in the current climate I bet its gone through a few minds in high places.
2) There are not many countries that trust America at the moment. Europe's nervous about Iraq (why not it's a lot closer to Iraq than the US is), half of the Middle East is keeping its head down while the other half sit wondering whether their next and are probably tooling up just in case. The North Koreans? Wouldn't wanna be in their shoes right now. The Chinese won't want to submit to anyone as their economy's growing fast and they won't want to relinquish control. In short, global software patents suit one country and although Tony Blair will probably prostrate himself on the Whitehouse carpet while swearing to keep the UK government/Microsoft partnership going it's still part of Europe.
So; Given that the main effect of global software patents will be to kill of any other countries chances of competing with Microsoft, what reason have they got for signing up. If anything, this speech gives Europe and China a sign of the state of things to come adding extra impetus to turn to Mandrake, SuSE, Red Star Linux and forget about software patents for good.
As SCO come closer to death it's interesting to see Microsoft's anti-Linux activities seeming more desperate as they flail around looking for options however implausible they may be. The ultimate effect of this one though may be the isolation of Microsoft to American territory, their overseas markets cut off by their own hand.
Incidently, if terrorism is the art of threatening attack in order to influence governments or organisations the tone of Stevey Boys rant could easily be interpreted as such. I therefore suggest that Redmond be declared part of the axis of evil terrorist organisations. A UN force should be deployed in Ballmers office and sanctions be imposed on the evil dictator within. Alternatively, it could be subcontracted to the Israelis who can surround the aforementioned with Tanks, keeping Monkey Boy incarcerated until he's 75 and becomes entitled to utilise the French health service.
--
I had the same thing and I couldn't get into safe mode to fix it either.
##### everything from here down not warranteed ####
# Screws your machine, not my problem! #
Only way to fix the PC without a rebuild was to boot to a recovery console from the original CD then cd to:
c:\windows\$NtServicePackUninstall$\spuninst\
and type:
batch spuninst
I think it was spuninst or it may have been spuninst.bat can't remember which but looking in the directory should reveal the right one.
The only thing is that the command line goes ape-shit with text screaming down the screen in a very un-windows like way, causing a kinda "Oh Bugger, I think I've just screwed it up" moment of paranoia, but once finished I rebooted and it was fine.
Yeah but Britney can still bring a marriage to an end in less time than it Microsoft to fix the vulnerability
It's not so much so much the result that scares me as the thought processes that led you to try it ;)
200,000,000 the day I went into a stationary shop while tripping on Acid
How about:
NetBIOS over TCP/IP
Normally Evil Twat Ballmer Is On Side over Taking Court Proceedings over Intellectual Property.
UPnP
Microsoft term descriptive of your relationship with them as a supplier - You Pay 'n Pay
Damn right there mate. Britain used to be a pioneering country when it came to technology. Massive amounts of money flooding in from trading throughout the empire fuelled the industrail revolution and Engineers and technologists were practically hailed as heroes.
Unfortunately, all that ended when the last vestiges of empire faded between the 1940s and 60's and Britain's industries (particularly aviation) crumbled. In the 10 years from the abandonment of TSR2 the British motorbike industry collapsed because no one saw the japanese getting anywhere and the 80's saw the death of just about anything else that the UK had been good at.
Once Maggie had dragged us into the "age of accountants" I don't think anyone really cared anymore and celeb worship took over. Blair has taken celeb worship to excess and being seen in the company of rich and famous people like Bush and Gates gives him that feeling of self importance that being Prime Minister of the UK just can't provide any more.
So finally, don't expect the Blair government to put Open Source before Microsoft for anything other than minor, token gesture roles. Improved security, stability, Open Standards and whatever you may put forward as reaosns to go for FOSS mean nothing to the UK gov. compared to the "kudos" of a photo shoot with Tony's smug "look at me, I'm with Bill Gates, I'm soooooo important". Behaviour like this is usually due a) being bullied at school b)lacking in self confidence c) being hung like a squirrel.
Choose your preferred option. I just wish they'd piss off and let people who know what there doing have a chance. After all, it's all very well being the worlds 4th largest economy but if you pour money into Monopolies and can't see anything wrong with predatory behaviour and corruption, opps, corporate lobbying it ain't worth jack.
Sadly Britain's industry is now run by accountants who have the power to veto projects on cost alone. Why they are allowed to do this is not known as they'd surely be engineers rather than accountants if they understood the things they were making a decision on.
..
On the negative side it's hard to get funding for anything worthwhile that's going to cost more than £50 but on the plus side it does supply us with a humorous and never ending train of "Government project fails dismally" headlines, e.g. every government IT project for the last 20 years and the soon to overspend, late deliver NHS IT system that doctors have predicted will be a failure.
Ah well, at least it stops Britain looking advanced.
"The biggest problem we have right now is that people who should be paying for software aren't," Ballmer told an audience of technology executives
Then why all the anti-Linux FUD if piracy's your biggest problem
"PCs are not selling to the lower end of the population in China and India.
Maybe this is because the lower end of the population has more on it's mind. For a start how about the fact that they live miles from anywhere have no electricity, running water, proper medical care etc. On the whole I'd say that lacking a PC ranks fairly low on their list of priorities. At best it'd be a mediocre way of keeping the goat pen gate shut.
So...should the prices be lower? Not really. Until government and situational factors reduce piracy...those people...don't pay
OK so we're at an impass. People over there can't afford a PC and you aren't willing to reduce the cost of Windows to make it more affordable to them. The cost of hardware has plummeted over the last 5 years as companies adopted their business model to the new global market by sacking loads of people and shifting the work overseas. As a result the percentage cost of a PC build that Windows represents has increased. If you're not willing to ship your operation to China/India/Taiwan and aren't willing to cut your prices the only course left is to tell people to install Linux rather than lay the blame on the hardware makers.
In recent months, the software maker has announced plans to introduce low-cost "starter editions" of Windows XP into countries including India, Russia and Thailand.
Great idea. Why have Linux and 3000+ applications when you have a crippled version of XP instead
"There's no appreciable amount of Linux on client systems anywhere in the world"
Yet!
Paris said Linux was dramatically more expensive than Windows. In...Brazil, it's the same thing
Err.... No it didn't. Paris said MIGRATING from Windows to Linux was dramatically more expensive. Is it Linux's fault that the legacy of years of proprietry file format use and software designed to stop people migrating has bumped the cost up. Migrating is a one time expense particularly when you migrate to open standards that save you from suffering the same fate again.
"Yes, we lost the city of Munich. But the fact that the same story gets told 65,000 times, and they are still diddling around to some degree...come on, where's the evidence?"
Munich paused to consider the risk of software patents crippling their project (don't want to step on other people's IP after all) and are now rolling again. "The evidence" will arrive soon enough.
Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, who said security will not be an issue in three years.
In 2002(ish) Brian Valentine said that security had never been a feature of Microsoft products. With a 15-20 year legacy of piss poor security I can't see Windows being secure for a lot more than 3 years.
Ballmer admitted that the company's "integrated innovation" message isn't easy to grasp. "Sometimes, our own people get confused about it.
That's probably because Integrated Innovation is the just another load of bollocks from the same marketing minds that talk of synergising creative energies or whatever wanky buzzword may come along. It confuses because in reality it means nothing of any substance.
Microsoft has no designs on the very high end of that market.
Why aim high when mediocrity is so profitable.
That would put our products out of the simplicity band for the companies we target
On the whole more FUD and Bullshit from the Ballmer stable. Another sign that creativity left MS years ago. .So you're describing your customers as simple? (See, twisting words is easy isn't it)
If the guy who built my house failed to put lock levers on the upstairs windows and I get burgled I'm sure the insurance company will accept the builder's explanation that it's all the fault of the third party company that made the ladder they used and nothing to do with him failing to secure the house.
Feeble Gates.... just feeble.
Better than the kids being redirected to the Hot Horny Sluts search engine every time they try going online. Internet Explorer, what porn do you want dumped on your desktop today? Bought to you with Active seX technology (TM). .
Funny, everyone I meet seems to REFER him as "Go away you irrating little shit" or some variation on the theme.
If you're out of reception range of BBC Radio Four, then you can listen online: At least you could before several hundred thousand + slashdotters hit the audio server ;)
.
The UK system is still pretty sucky. MS probably knew that they'd get nailed for their "independant research" but even if they get fined it means little to them as the meme has already been sown.
The same technique was used by the conservative government against Labour councils in the 80's and is also used by the current labour mob who will arrange for their friends in the media to carry out character assassinations on their critics safe in the knowledge that by the time an independant body has reviewed the facts and ruled the original article to be a lie everyone's already soaked it up. When a retraction is printed it normally occupies about 1/2 a column inch and as it's not news anymore, no-one cares anyway.
What should happen now is MS should be required to take out an advert of the same size as the original in all publications concerned along the lines of:
WE LIED!! Yes folks it's true. We bullshitted the lot of you with a bogus piece of research that we paid a friendly (although not tieable to us) company to make up. What's more, now you know we're willing to buy biased reports to fool you into buying our products you can take it as a sign that we actually have little faith their superiority because lets face it, if they were that great we'd be selling them on their merits not treating you like the idiots we think you are (Newham?). Microsoft - Because you're too stupid to work it out for yourself!
Same goes for the press when they print false or exaggerated information on people. The trouble is that those with the wealth and power to do anything about it are those who benefit.
Maybe the whole point of this is that by filing thousands of pointless, indefensible patents MS hopes to make the whole patent process fall apart.
Why? Simple. MS's main advantage is its financial resources while IBM's greatest asset is its massive patent portfolio. While IBM hold so may patents, MS will have to act with at least a modicum of civility re: cross licencing etc. When the patent system is rendered a humiliated mess and it falls apart due to the fact that no-one can take it seriously any more MS can fall back on proprietry file formats (office) and its huge desktop monopoly and do what it does best - treating everyone like shit!
Remember, a cornered Rat's greatest asset is it's unpredictability. Or is that a dancing monkey boy?
As if I haven't done the same thing in the past (heheheheh) ;)
Sir, I sense a major flaw in your argument.
/or your MP and state your reasons for disagreeing with Newhams decision.
1: I'm English
2: I live in England (and have done for some 39 years) and have a fair knowledge of the administrative hierarchy of Counties, parishes etc.
3: Read the setence as it is written then remove the bracketed sevtion to reveal:
Write to the OGC and
4: Since when would Americans (I assume that's what you thought I was) call the head of IT in newham an arshole. Asshole maybe but arsehole? I doubt it.
If you'll excuse me I have a letter to write.