When are donated services to a non-profit organization recognized?
(S)pecialized skills are required and possessed by the donor.
(O)therwise needed by the orgnization
(M)easurable
(E)asily
You can remember this by the mnemonic "Some." (Directly out of the Becker Conviser CPA exam review).
Assuming the orgization you donate to is "qualified," you must also observe the "charitable contributions limitation" under the tax code:
Overall limit = 50% Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) 1) Cash - may be all 50% 2) Property - is limited to the lessor of:
a) 30% of AGI
b) The remaining amount to reach 50% after cash contributions
Notice this says nothing of "donated service." I guess you could treat the FMV of the service as "Property." However, I think you would have to go through old tax court cases to see how you should really go about deducting donated services.
Disclaimer: I am in no way an accountant . . . yet.
Microsoft could stop including the AOL sign-up icon with new computers (now that the anti-trust trial is some kind of joke). Or add "features" to the OS that make the AOL client seem "buggy" or slow . . . (with their next "bugfix" update). This could easily overwhelm any gains from creating a AOL friendly Linux distro.
It never ceases to amaze me how people continue to be completely oblivious to the amount of power they are turning over to MS when they use Windows . . .
What about Microsoft you slashdot bigot!
on
AOL's new Linux PC
·
· Score: 1
"Looks like big egos will always get in the way of better software."
I must disagree with this. I think strong principles are a great virtue of the open source community. Instead of being less productive at a KDEless Redhat, Bero will be more productive somewhere else. This doesn't say anything bad about Redhat or Bero and only further supports the diversification (and competition) of the community.
I am sure that the majority of MS employees would not walk out if suddenly MS decided to do something as drastic as go Open Source. You may call this corporate strength, but I call it 40,000 "yes" men (and women) who don't give a fsck what their company does, as long as that paycheck comes on Friday.
Fine, an OS is just an OS . . . to YOU. To many other people it is their chance to rise above the oppression of an unfair world (sadly many are too ignorant to understand this, while others are just too narrow minded).
Maybe after you finish with your Fortran, you might do something new . . . crack your door open to blinding sunlight and take a stroll down one of the poor neighborhoods in your area (they do exist, even if you have never seen one ). Then you might ponder how you, a mere programmer, might contribute to their betterment.
"On a bigger scale, it would be like the US paying a lump sum for a technology that creates free cars for everyone--sure, this would be pretty cool, until the big 3 go out of business and the economy crashes down behind it."
First I need to point out that the above example does not make sense. The same project would make all materials and energy used in production costless. In which case, anybody would be a complete idiot to deny such a project in fear of the consequences to existing companies (people would not need to work after such an event . ..)
Moving along, there was a post on slashdot a couple months ago that I really wish I new the link to. It basically explained that the job of government was to DECREASE jobs in the public sector when it resulted in more efficiency in the society. This is because such jobs themselves represented a significant portion of the inefficiencies. I think the poster used public roads as an example. Public roads really destroyed an entire industry of land owners charging people for passage. However, the total destruction of one industry doesn't necessary result adversely to the economy as a whole. In this case, it allowed the economy to grow at a much faster rate.
It seems to me that, at least, very general purpose software should hold similar results if made free to the public. This is because there is no additional cost to make it free to the entire population, as opposed to only paying customers (which is consistent with the public roads example). Furthermore, the net positive impact on the economy as a whole appears to be much greater than the negative impact on the specific industry at hand (and, in this case, specific company). The above justifies such actions by governments without even considering the substantial efficiency losses resulting from monopolized markets.
I know this is dumb advice to a Debian user, but the graphical frontend to urpmi should work pretty well if you don't want to bother with the CLI version. Please ignore if not applicable ; )
-The extra downloads are "extra" (consist of commercial packages) and only attainable from the Mandrake packaged distro not the mirrors. I don't think other vendors let you download Star Office. -Star Office is like $72 . . . you wanted it for $60 and were considering this charity?(for who?) -unsupported rpms are "unsupported," but I haven't had any trouble (are you using urpmi?). Plus, I found Mplayer that way, which has been worth the $120 (since I don't have enought time to find such software on my own) -direct trading only applies if you wanna own their stock, but this really is a revolution in the trading of equity (all they did is put up a little system that allows you to trade stock at volumes as low as 50 shares, without having to pay a 3rd party commission. Nothing special EXCEPT no other company seems to be doing this . . . ). So let me get this straight . . . if you had the choice, you would prefer to pay a 3rd party commission just to buy a stock that you have already decided to buy? - As far as the priority ftp goes . . . it is unfortunate. However, if you spent some time reading posts at mandrakeclub you would know that something of that nature appears to be in the works . ..
I'm sorry the club isn't what you expected but calling it charity seems a bit of an extreme. I wish you could be more specific about what you want out of the club instead of what you don't like.
". . . I fear the worst for Mandrake in the next year, when the 2001 March memberships will expire."
Mandrake 9.0 seems like it will bring in a lot of new members and another 13 new members joined in the last 24 hours so it doesn't seem as bad as you think. Of course, spreading your discontent here, instead of at Mandrakeclub really isn't helping the situation much (though I am sure a lot of mandrake folks visit slashdot on a regular basis).
In conclusion, I really just joined at first to help insure that the distro would continue. The "services" (call them what you like) were really just extra treats. Since I graduated college, I really don't have time to fool around with Linux the way I used to. My job, though it pays well, treats me like a drone and does not allow me to implement most of what I learned during my days in college (both from classes and from playing with Linux). Mandrake is easy enough for me to still play with during my short breaks and the mandrakeclub allows me to give something back since I don't have enough time to learn how to code. Oddly, I don't consider either side of the realationship to be "charity."
Or maybe that's the point? Don't "reinvent" the wheel. We're talking about "GPL and friends" software, right? Everything is a "Rip off" of something else. That's how the code doesn't get "wasted".
And, if Mandrake never added anything new, they would have disappeared. But . . . they added a lot of things that *some people* found valuable (I know you don't . . . but you're not the only one here).
And, if you wanted, you could create your own distro based on Mandrake, but you probably would not be able to convert the users that the current Mandrake appeals to . . . some might call your ditro a rip-off, regardless of how many new features you added. But, you might, just might, meet the needs of some folks that the other distros (including Mandrake) didn't. So who cares? Maybe one flavor of OS is not enough for 6 billion people. If everyone only wanted Mandrake (or Redhat), why aren't they all using it?
are the marketing and PR departments to cover up or put spin on anything that could be even remotely considered a mistake.
To parent poster: Do you honestly believe that worse things don't happens behind corporate walls!? Have you been living in a bubble!? The great thing about open source is, whatever happens, you will always have enough information to form your own opinion. As a corporate drone, I can safely assure you that you will NEVER get that level of detail from a corporation (even though the Internet has helped expose a lot). Personally, I think your shock is due to a lack of exposure to a REAL community (people argue all the time . . . that's how things get worked out), rather than anything having to due witht the Kernel developers. Goes to show how corporate our society has become . . .
Okay, so what you need is a "Dialogue list" which has already been segmented into the different scenes where the dubbing will appear. Perhaps a little better narration so you can understand the context. These movies are probably being translated into dozens of different languages and each translator is redoing the same task of matching the dubbing with different scenes. This could be done once, reducing costs, and this would decrease the likelihood of it getting on the net 4 months in advance . . . Probably not that simple, but its taken 5 minutes for me to think of a solution when these guys have had years to get their sh!t together.
What you have to remember is that there are guys getting paid many times what you are, whose soul duty in life is increase efficiency and better safeguard the company's assets. However, they are screwing up big time and blaming the Internet for their inability to cope with a changing market. If you made such a big mistake in your job you would be fired in no time. However, these guys are immune to such treatment because they are safely buried behind the walls of corporate bureaucracy. So that makes them idiots with job security, and I don't intend to send any of my $ their way (you're an unfortunate bystander, sorry).
First, only fixed costs decrease as volume increases. Since the xbox is basically a lower end pc (which is a mature and highly competitive market), I am willing to bet my Economic's degree that the majority of their costs are variable in nature (very easy MES point, not ideal for monopolies, low fixed costs).
Second, the unbought xbox verse hacked xbox losses to MS projection is correct in a per box analysis. However, total losses will be much higher from the hacked xbox due to the asymetric nature of information in these circumstances.
Third, these guys are "cool" (check out their music videos). At every point of the development of Linux, there was always someone there to complain that it just didn't make sense to port to this platform or write a clone of that application. After a decade of stubborness, the community has something to brag about, and humanity has a tool that does not discriminate based on the distribution of wealth.
In conclusion, there is no corporate front sacred from the scrutiny and manipulation from those possessing the ability to do so. Corporations are the creations of man and, therefore, must be constantly judged by man. If a corporation were to fall from grace in the eyes of individuals savvy enough and many enough, its fate would be sealed. In the end, I do not see hate as being their motivation, but their belief that what is good, will continue to survive. Their job is simply to hasten our journey to that conclusion.
" . . . Microsoft could access those medical records (possibly by accident) without 'due cause or need' in the process of updating your machine."
Mod this offtopic or flamebait, but if nobody but MS has access to the source code, are you not already completely trusting MS not to access those medical records without due cause? I mean, even if you do prevent "automatic updating," there is no way you could prove these records aren't being sent out everytime your machine connects to the 'net, in theory. I know this doesn't help YOUR problem, but I can't help but think this policy is a bunch of BS created to make people ignorant of the situation FEEL better.
Gee, I guess those guys at Enron and Worldcom were just doing their job when they played unfair.
Eco 101: A capitalist economy can run without government manipulation as long as (a) there is accurate, free flowing information (in case you didn't notice, that's why the above was sarcasm) (b) absence of monopolistic behavior.
Though, (a) has been much easier for the government to handle adequately than (b). This is probably most likely due to the public's inability to comprehend basic economics (an idea supported by your post), while the IRS has insured that the public has at least some basic accounting knowledge (lying on your income can be bad if you're caught).
Both hurt the economy. If we don't distinguish between right from wrong and make laws to enfore right, then are chances to continue living in a wealthy society are greatly diminished.
I think this is what open source is
supposed to be all about. Here, the little guy can
do what he enjoys doing, without struggling through
corporate BS that has nothing to do with what he
wants to do. He can do it in his spare time, has
no sunk costs or investment risk, and gets some
spare cash in the process!
The point is, he LIKES doing it. And he gets $ in
the process. Say what you like, but I can imagine
this guy doing this for a couple years and then
making enough where he can quite his day job. If
you really care about quality family time then the
best thing you can do is work for yourself. That
way you become the judge of which hours are better
spent on which, family or work. As long as you are
working for the "man," you will not be able to pick
for yourself, and you will probably have to spend
most of your time in a cubicle because corporate
doesn't yet "get" the telecommute concept.
Remember, quality != quantity. Having the choice
to suddenly take the day off on a Wednesday to
spend with your family is a much greater
contribution to quality than spending every
Sunday with them. Corporations may work like
clock-work; families do not.
Blender will cost ~$100,000. This purchase will make it free for 6 billin people to use, modify, and improve. Just a very, very small, minute fraction of that group needs to be willing to pay $1 for this to work.
The community is all encompassing . . . we just need to let more people know that they, too, are members.
Futhermore, this could be a GREAT thing for Open Source software! Everyone complains Open Source (Gnu/Free/etc . ..) is missing some critical apps, like games. If this is a trend, we might see the community buying some cool commercial games . . . once, and it then becomes open source, we (humanity) can play and hack with it to our hearts content. We're happy, the commercial developers are happy, and Open Source has another tool to attract new members.
Will we lose Open Source developers? I don't think so . . . people will still hack in their spare time for fun. Plus, if you want to advertise your product, the best thing to do would probably be to hack on some other project or give away some good code so that the community will get to know and appreciate your work.
Heck, I don't care how rich Microsoft is, they can't out-buy the world. If all Microsoft REALLY does is buy and redistribute software, we, as a community, should be able to do a much better job.
Slashdot Mirror
"(I am ready to let MIT graft smart chips into my skin some day after my PC goes a week without crashing.)"
/.
No doubt about it.
Completely offtopic, but if nobody said it, this wouldn't be
Last time a rebooted was at 55 days uptime and was because the power went out. As you can see, that was a week ago:
10:46am up 7 days, 18:34, 1 user, load average: 1.56, 1.49, 1.45
Offtopic: -1
When are donated services to a non-profit organization recognized?
(S)pecialized skills are required and possessed by the donor.
(O)therwise needed by the orgnization
(M)easurable
(E)asily
You can remember this by the mnemonic "Some." (Directly out of the Becker Conviser CPA exam review).
Assuming the orgization you donate to is "qualified," you must also observe the "charitable contributions limitation" under the tax code:
Overall limit = 50% Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)
1) Cash - may be all 50%
2) Property - is limited to the lessor of:
a) 30% of AGI
b) The remaining amount to reach 50% after cash contributions
Notice this says nothing of "donated service." I guess you could treat the FMV of the service as "Property." However, I think you would have to go through old tax court cases to see how you should really go about deducting donated services.
Disclaimer: I am in no way an accountant . . . yet.
All I can say is . . . Mandrake 9.0. It fixes the usability problems that can be FIXED.
I can't comment on your other usability problems . . . but after Mandrake 9.0, it is no longer the OS's fault, as far as I am concerned (see: urpmi).
Have a nice life.
it's called Linux. You just haven't downloaded it yet.
"Well-documented, professionally-designed free software builds resumes."
;)
Security guard by day, free software hacker by night . . . and who said super-heroes didn't exist?
Makes me proud to be part of this generation . . .
Microsoft could stop including the AOL sign-up icon with new computers (now that the anti-trust trial is some kind of joke). Or add "features" to the OS that make the AOL client seem "buggy" or slow . . . (with their next "bugfix" update). This could easily overwhelm any gains from creating a AOL friendly Linux distro.
It never ceases to amaze me how people continue to be completely oblivious to the amount of power they are turning over to MS when they use Windows . . .
. . . just kidding ;)
let the troll mods begin!
"Looks like big egos will always get in the way of better software."
I must disagree with this. I think strong principles are a great virtue of the open source community. Instead of being less productive at a KDEless Redhat, Bero will be more productive somewhere else. This doesn't say anything bad about Redhat or Bero and only further supports the diversification (and competition) of the community.
I am sure that the majority of MS employees would not walk out if suddenly MS decided to do something as drastic as go Open Source. You may call this corporate strength, but I call it 40,000 "yes" men (and women) who don't give a fsck what their company does, as long as that paycheck comes on Friday.
Fine, an OS is just an OS . . . to YOU. To many other people it is their chance to rise above the oppression of an unfair world (sadly many are too ignorant to understand this, while others are just too narrow minded).
Maybe after you finish with your Fortran, you might do something new . . . crack your door open to blinding sunlight and take a stroll down one of the poor neighborhoods in your area (they do exist, even if you have never seen one ). Then you might ponder how you, a mere programmer, might contribute to their betterment.
"On a bigger scale, it would be like the US paying a lump sum for a technology that creates free cars for everyone--sure, this would be pretty cool, until the big 3 go out of business and the economy crashes down behind it."
.)
First I need to point out that the above example does not make sense. The same project would make all materials and energy used in production costless. In which case, anybody would be a complete idiot to deny such a project in fear of the consequences to existing companies (people would not need to work after such an event . .
Moving along, there was a post on slashdot a couple months ago that I really wish I new the link to. It basically explained that the job of government was to DECREASE jobs in the public sector when it resulted in more efficiency in the society. This is because such jobs themselves represented a significant portion of the inefficiencies. I think the poster used public roads as an example. Public roads really destroyed an entire industry of land owners charging people for passage. However, the total destruction of one industry doesn't necessary result adversely to the economy as a whole. In this case, it allowed the economy to grow at a much faster rate.
It seems to me that, at least, very general purpose software should hold similar results if made free to the public. This is because there is no additional cost to make it free to the entire population, as opposed to only paying customers (which is consistent with the public roads example). Furthermore, the net positive impact on the economy as a whole appears to be much greater than the negative impact on the specific industry at hand (and, in this case, specific company). The above justifies such actions by governments without even considering the substantial efficiency losses resulting from monopolized markets.
I know this is dumb advice to a Debian user, but the graphical frontend to urpmi should work pretty well if you don't want to bother with the CLI version. Please ignore if not applicable ; )
Eventually put in 120 bucks . . .
.
-The extra downloads are "extra" (consist of commercial packages) and only attainable from the Mandrake packaged distro not the mirrors. I don't think other vendors let you download Star Office.
-Star Office is like $72 . . . you wanted it for $60 and were considering this charity?(for who?)
-unsupported rpms are "unsupported," but I haven't had any trouble (are you using urpmi?). Plus, I found Mplayer that way, which has been worth the $120 (since I don't have enought time to find such software on my own)
-direct trading only applies if you wanna own their stock, but this really is a revolution in the trading of equity (all they did is put up a little system that allows you to trade stock at volumes as low as 50 shares, without having to pay a 3rd party commission. Nothing special EXCEPT no other company seems to be doing this . . . ). So let me get this straight . . . if you had the choice, you would prefer to pay a 3rd party commission just to buy a stock that you have already decided to buy?
- As far as the priority ftp goes . . . it is unfortunate. However, if you spent some time reading posts at mandrakeclub you would know that something of that nature appears to be in the works . .
I'm sorry the club isn't what you expected but calling it charity seems a bit of an extreme. I wish you could be more specific about what you want out of the club instead of what you don't like.
". . . I fear the worst for Mandrake in the next year, when the 2001 March memberships will expire."
Mandrake 9.0 seems like it will bring in a lot of new members and another 13 new members joined in the last 24 hours so it doesn't seem as bad as you think. Of course, spreading your discontent here, instead of at Mandrakeclub really isn't helping the situation much (though I am sure a lot of mandrake folks visit slashdot on a regular basis).
In conclusion, I really just joined at first to help insure that the distro would continue. The "services" (call them what you like) were really just extra treats. Since I graduated college, I really don't have time to fool around with Linux the way I used to. My job, though it pays well, treats me like a drone and does not allow me to implement most of what I learned during my days in college (both from classes and from playing with Linux). Mandrake is easy enough for me to still play with during my short breaks and the mandrakeclub allows me to give something back since I don't have enough time to learn how to code. Oddly, I don't consider either side of the realationship to be "charity."
"Am I the only one?"
.
I totally agree!
1. Kernel 2.4 -> Rip off of Kernel 2.2
2. Bash -> Rip off of Bourne Shell
3. . .
Or maybe that's the point? Don't "reinvent" the wheel. We're talking about "GPL and friends" software, right? Everything is a "Rip off" of something else. That's how the code doesn't get "wasted".
And, if Mandrake never added anything new, they would have disappeared. But . . . they added a lot of things that *some people* found valuable (I know you don't . . . but you're not the only one here).
And, if you wanted, you could create your own distro based on Mandrake, but you probably would not be able to convert the users that the current Mandrake appeals to . . . some might call your ditro a rip-off, regardless of how many new features you added. But, you might, just might, meet the needs of some folks that the other distros (including Mandrake) didn't. So who cares? Maybe one flavor of OS is not enough for 6 billion people. If everyone only wanted Mandrake (or Redhat), why aren't they all using it?
are the marketing and PR departments to cover up or put spin on anything that could be even remotely considered a mistake.
To parent poster: Do you honestly believe that worse things don't happens behind corporate walls!? Have you been living in a bubble!? The great thing about open source is, whatever happens, you will always have enough information to form your own opinion. As a corporate drone, I can safely assure you that you will NEVER get that level of detail from a corporation (even though the Internet has helped expose a lot). Personally, I think your shock is due to a lack of exposure to a REAL community (people argue all the time . . . that's how things get worked out), rather than anything having to due witht the Kernel developers. Goes to show how corporate our society has become . . .
Okay, so what you need is a "Dialogue list" which has already been segmented into the different scenes where the dubbing will appear. Perhaps a little better narration so you can understand the context. These movies are probably being translated into dozens of different languages and each translator is redoing the same task of matching the dubbing with different scenes. This could be done once, reducing costs, and this would decrease the likelihood of it getting on the net 4 months in advance . . . Probably not that simple, but its taken 5 minutes for me to think of a solution when these guys have had years to get their sh!t together.
What you have to remember is that there are guys getting paid many times what you are, whose soul duty in life is increase efficiency and better safeguard the company's assets. However, they are screwing up big time and blaming the Internet for their inability to cope with a changing market. If you made such a big mistake in your job you would be fired in no time. However, these guys are immune to such treatment because they are safely buried behind the walls of corporate bureaucracy. So that makes them idiots with job security, and I don't intend to send any of my $ their way (you're an unfortunate bystander, sorry).
First, only fixed costs decrease as volume increases. Since the xbox is basically a lower end pc (which is a mature and highly competitive market), I am willing to bet my Economic's degree that the majority of their costs are variable in nature (very easy MES point, not ideal for monopolies, low fixed costs).
Second, the unbought xbox verse hacked xbox losses to MS projection is correct in a per box analysis. However, total losses will be much higher from the hacked xbox due to the asymetric nature of information in these circumstances.
Third, these guys are "cool" (check out their music videos). At every point of the development of Linux, there was always someone there to complain that it just didn't make sense to port to this platform or write a clone of that application. After a decade of stubborness, the community has something to brag about, and humanity has a tool that does not discriminate based on the distribution of wealth.
In conclusion, there is no corporate front sacred from the scrutiny and manipulation from those possessing the ability to do so. Corporations are the creations of man and, therefore, must be constantly judged by man. If a corporation were to fall from grace in the eyes of individuals savvy enough and many enough, its fate would be sealed. In the end, I do not see hate as being their motivation, but their belief that what is good, will continue to survive. Their job is simply to hasten our journey to that conclusion.
"The kind of security you are talking about is just not possible."
.
How about sending just the script instead of the actual movie to translators, for a start . . . idiots . .
" . . . Microsoft could access those medical records (possibly by accident) without 'due cause or need' in the process of updating your machine."
Mod this offtopic or flamebait, but if nobody but MS has access to the source code, are you not already completely trusting MS not to access those medical records without due cause? I mean, even if you do prevent "automatic updating," there is no way you could prove these records aren't being sent out everytime your machine connects to the 'net, in theory. I know this doesn't help YOUR problem, but I can't help but think this policy is a bunch of BS created to make people ignorant of the situation FEEL better.
the "marketing model to push this on the rest of the country" part of the contract has kicked in, you mean?
/. then.
Bet New Orleans gets burned on this deal sometime in the next 5 years;) see ya back at
Gee, if they used Linux, it would be free FOREVER.
Someone should explain the difference to the mayor.
Gee, I guess those guys at Enron and Worldcom were just doing their job when they played unfair.
Eco 101: A capitalist economy can run without government manipulation as long as (a) there is accurate, free flowing information (in case you didn't notice, that's why the above was sarcasm) (b) absence of monopolistic behavior.
Though, (a) has been much easier for the government to handle adequately than (b). This is probably most likely due to the public's inability to comprehend basic economics (an idea supported by your post), while the IRS has insured that the public has at least some basic accounting knowledge (lying on your income can be bad if you're caught).
Both hurt the economy. If we don't distinguish between right from wrong and make laws to enfore right, then are chances to continue living in a wealthy society are greatly diminished.
To poster: Good for you.
I think this is what open source is supposed to be all about. Here, the little guy can do what he enjoys doing, without struggling through corporate BS that has nothing to do with what he wants to do. He can do it in his spare time, has no sunk costs or investment risk, and gets some spare cash in the process!
The point is, he LIKES doing it. And he gets $ in the process. Say what you like, but I can imagine this guy doing this for a couple years and then making enough where he can quite his day job. If you really care about quality family time then the best thing you can do is work for yourself. That way you become the judge of which hours are better spent on which, family or work. As long as you are working for the "man," you will not be able to pick for yourself, and you will probably have to spend most of your time in a cubicle because corporate doesn't yet "get" the telecommute concept. Remember, quality != quantity. Having the choice to suddenly take the day off on a Wednesday to spend with your family is a much greater contribution to quality than spending every Sunday with them. Corporations may work like clock-work; families do not.
I'm very envious . . . enjoy it to the fullest!
I think the fact that your post was rated "insightful" instead "funny" says a lot about the moderators, as well.
Blender will cost ~$100,000. This purchase will make it free for 6 billin people to use, modify, and improve. Just a very, very small, minute fraction of that group needs to be willing to pay $1 for this to work.
The community is all encompassing . . . we just need to let more people know that they, too, are members.
Futhermore, this could be a GREAT thing for Open Source software! Everyone complains Open Source (Gnu/Free/etc . . .) is missing some critical apps, like games. If this is a trend, we might see the community buying some cool commercial games . . . once, and it then becomes open source, we (humanity) can play and hack with it to our hearts content. We're happy, the commercial developers are happy, and Open Source has another tool to attract new members.
Will we lose Open Source developers? I don't think so . . . people will still hack in their spare time for fun. Plus, if you want to advertise your product, the best thing to do would probably be to hack on some other project or give away some good code so that the community will get to know and appreciate your work.
Heck, I don't care how rich Microsoft is, they can't out-buy the world. If all Microsoft REALLY does is buy and redistribute software, we, as a community, should be able to do a much better job.
Well, anyway, I've bet $30 this is worth it.