I'll go further: Linux is driven by people that are anti-establishment and view Microsoft as "The Man" of technology. They don't want to use a Windows PC because they'd be supporting "The Man". They bitch about the "MS Tax" just as an already overpaid worker bitches about aying taxes to "The Man". Much like the overpaid worker who doesn't think he should pay any taxes at all, the Linux hippies don't think money is required to run things and not everything is without cost.
Antitrust exists to stop abusive monopolies from harming consumers. If harming consumers involves doing what other companies are doing and making it easier for consumers to play video and audio with thier shiny new PCs, I think we've been flipped on our heads.
Anti-trust deals with companies buying out all factors of production and distributors (in this case OS, OEMs, hardware manufacturers etc) in order to kill competition and increase prices. MS hasn't changed their price in ages. MS does NOT own Dell, HP, IBM or other PC manufacturers or retail stores that sell PCs. If they want to put Linux on their PCs or even sell Apple-built Macs, they can do that.
MS has nowhere near the damaging capability of say classic Standard Oil. Standard Oil was a true monopoly and a stretch of the definition used to rope MS. I can't wait till the Linux kernel takes over the market and the DOJ tracks down any and all US-based kernel hackers and throws them in jail using some bizarre interpretation of anti-trust laws (abusive monopoly in OS kernels! killing your competition by offering it for free! OH NO!):p
They ignored MS's player (which has been bundled long before WMP8 or 9) until it became competition. So this is indeed a situation where MS gets punished for bundling software as per usual and failing to keep it crippled to accomodate third party vendors.
Attempts to shoot down arguments with "My education says otherwise" doesn't work on educated people.:P
I believe that most Linux distros, Apple's MacOS X and MS Windows all ship with some sort of media playback software. Believe it or not, it is now an expectation that a computer will play at least some kind format of video and music without having to go searching the internet for a third party app that you may have to pay for. Therefore, it is now basic functionality of a modern system along with file browsing, e-mail, web browsing, text editing (but not word processing), networking capability etc. Anything beyond basic in this context are things that not every system has such as databases, high-end word processing, spreadsheets, high-end graphics editing etc.
My books don't even mention browsing files or having network capability, but those are expected these days. =)
The stripped down version will suck but will be available. Unless the EU wants to force them to not ship a full version in the EU at all, OEMs in the EU will just *elect* to use the full version. They probably won't want to ship an OS that lacks basic functionality that users have come to expect.
I'm don't think the Constitution forbids the military from spending its budget which is given to it by Congress as it sees fit (until Congress or the Pres says no I imagine).
The Constitution didn't even include income taxes originally. The 16th Amendment gave Congress that power in 1913.
Why was parent marked as troll? It's a known fact that there were tons of people that had money on Iraqi oil. These people likely also had influence over how their country voted in the UN (Duh).
All this talk of freedom on/. and people try to censor everyone that they don't agree with. Sheesh.
Since the high income earners make so much more, they can afford to pay a higher percentage. It's based on the ability to pay and the fact that they can pay more in taxes than most people actually get to keep because they have plenty left over to live better than everyone else.
If you think the US government serves the middle class as well as it does the wealthy, you are sadly mistaken. The people that have the money are the ones that influence the government
If you made $10,000 per year and the government took $2,000 of it, you'd miss that $2,000 more than a wealthy person making $200,000 would miss $40,000 (I can guarantee they wouldn't even lose that much after taking every tax break and exemption in the books). Food, heat, shelter etc do not change in price because you have a different income. The wealthy don't have to live in bigger more expensive houses, eat ridiculously expensive foods or invest their money in businesses, but they do and they apparently have the money to do it even though they pay higher taxes (their salaries are probably inflated to make up for the taxes anyway).
If taxes were completely eliminated, I'd imagine employers would probably cut wages where possible under the excuse "You don't pay taxes anymore so 75% of your old pay is now reasonable!" anyway.
BTW, Gates would be in the category of 5% of citizens that control 80+% of the US's land, wealth etc. I think the people who are making use off the country's wealth on the backs of the other 95% of the population SHOULD pay a higher percentage of their incomes.
The Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for arson attacks in the past. One incident caused $1 million dollars in damage but noone was injured. There are ecoterrorist groups floating around; just like there are both violent and nonviolent groups working for other causes.
I would be surprised if there were not also militant extremists within Greenpeace.
All he's doing is showing old deficits in adjusted dollar values. No matter the cause, prices in consumer goods changed and that is inflation. War doesn't even enter into it except indirectly.
Antitrust violations for what? I'd think that intentionally including patent heavy technologies in order to stop newcomers from entering the market would be an antitrust violation before insisting on creating a patent free standard.
Microsoft is the worst case scenario of closed software security. Why is it that we rarely ever hear of any other company's security holes? Why dont we hear both sides of the story? We almost never hear about Linux holes (oops, most are claimed not to be Linux holes if they aren't in the kernel...but a hole in MS's Office suite is supposed to be a WINDOWS hole...hrm...) Why did the article devolve into an attack on the credibility of Jones?
Back when the corn pushers wanted to use ethanol to fuel cars (directly), it was speculated that even if we planted corn on every inch of the US from east to west, we still wouldn't have enough to produce the ethanol to power our *cars*. These guys want to use it to power everything? Granted it might be more efficient to convert to hydrogen cells, but isn't this a bit far fetched?
Sounds like yet another attempt to get more subsidies for corn (as pointed out already).
Oh yes, the one that an MS engineer(s) put in *themselves*. The problem there is that MS probably trusts their coders a bit too much and don't doublecheck things.
I don't quite remember the last one put into an open source codebase. You don't link to it but wasn't that put in by someone that compromised the server holding the sources? How was it detected and why is it comparable to an MS engineer(s) putting a backdoor in IIS and possibly forgetting to remove it when it shipped (and possibly never looked at it again).
As the demand decreases (causing price to decline), they will look for ways to cut costs even if it means cutting quality. As long as the product is "good enough", they will sell it at that lower quality unless they can charge a heftier price for better quality products. Quality does enter into the supply and demand principles. People will pay more for better quality if they can afford it but will be happy with lower quality if it's "good enough" and it's in their price range.
You also falsely assume I've only had one economics class and that other courses I've taken have not touched on economic issues.:)
Increased quality may result in higher manufacturing costs which directly affect price (before market considerations) unless the manufacturer intends to sell his product at a loss.
There's some truth in the Anon Coward's wise words in that the don't use Win2k or NT4 but they do use the latest version which they may have fixed any critical bugs they know of. They DO use their own software as you've pointed out, though =)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll go further: Linux is driven by people that are anti-establishment and view Microsoft as "The Man" of technology. They don't want to use a Windows PC because they'd be supporting "The Man". They bitch about the "MS Tax" just as an already overpaid worker bitches about aying taxes to "The Man". Much like the overpaid worker who doesn't think he should pay any taxes at all, the Linux hippies don't think money is required to run things and not everything is without cost.
:P
50% Funny, 50% Flamebait!
Antitrust exists to stop abusive monopolies from harming consumers. If harming consumers involves doing what other companies are doing and making it easier for consumers to play video and audio with thier shiny new PCs, I think we've been flipped on our heads.
:p
Anti-trust deals with companies buying out all factors of production and distributors (in this case OS, OEMs, hardware manufacturers etc) in order to kill competition and increase prices. MS hasn't changed their price in ages. MS does NOT own Dell, HP, IBM or other PC manufacturers or retail stores that sell PCs. If they want to put Linux on their PCs or even sell Apple-built Macs, they can do that.
MS has nowhere near the damaging capability of say classic Standard Oil. Standard Oil was a true monopoly and a stretch of the definition used to rope MS. I can't wait till the Linux kernel takes over the market and the DOJ tracks down any and all US-based kernel hackers and throws them in jail using some bizarre interpretation of anti-trust laws (abusive monopoly in OS kernels! killing your competition by offering it for free! OH NO!)
They ignored MS's player (which has been bundled long before WMP8 or 9) until it became competition. So this is indeed a situation where MS gets punished for bundling software as per usual and failing to keep it crippled to accomodate third party vendors.
Attempts to shoot down arguments with "My education says otherwise" doesn't work on educated people. :P
I believe that most Linux distros, Apple's MacOS X and MS Windows all ship with some sort of media playback software. Believe it or not, it is now an expectation that a computer will play at least some kind format of video and music without having to go searching the internet for a third party app that you may have to pay for. Therefore, it is now basic functionality of a modern system along with file browsing, e-mail, web browsing, text editing (but not word processing), networking capability etc. Anything beyond basic in this context are things that not every system has such as databases, high-end word processing, spreadsheets, high-end graphics editing etc.
My books don't even mention browsing files or having network capability, but those are expected these days. =)
The stripped down version will suck but will be available. Unless the EU wants to force them to not ship a full version in the EU at all, OEMs in the EU will just *elect* to use the full version. They probably won't want to ship an OS that lacks basic functionality that users have come to expect.
I'm don't think the Constitution forbids the military from spending its budget which is given to it by Congress as it sees fit (until Congress or the Pres says no I imagine).
The Constitution didn't even include income taxes originally. The 16th Amendment gave Congress that power in 1913.
Why was parent marked as troll? It's a known fact that there were tons of people that had money on Iraqi oil. These people likely also had influence over how their country voted in the UN (Duh).
/. and people try to censor everyone that they don't agree with. Sheesh.
All this talk of freedom on
and the oil contracts and loans to Saddam's regime mean absolutely nothing to the invasion's biggest critics and their minion nations!
Why would Outlook based e-mail trojans be included in a server centric study anyway?
I think Slashdot needs a +1 Naive modifier.
The 5% that control over 80% of the nation's wealth is my definition of rich. Wealthy would be the top 20%.
Since the high income earners make so much more, they can afford to pay a higher percentage. It's based on the ability to pay and the fact that they can pay more in taxes than most people actually get to keep because they have plenty left over to live better than everyone else.
If you think the US government serves the middle class as well as it does the wealthy, you are sadly mistaken. The people that have the money are the ones that influence the government
If you made $10,000 per year and the government took $2,000 of it, you'd miss that $2,000 more than a wealthy person making $200,000 would miss $40,000 (I can guarantee they wouldn't even lose that much after taking every tax break and exemption in the books). Food, heat, shelter etc do not change in price because you have a different income. The wealthy don't have to live in bigger more expensive houses, eat ridiculously expensive foods or invest their money in businesses, but they do and they apparently have the money to do it even though they pay higher taxes (their salaries are probably inflated to make up for the taxes anyway).
If taxes were completely eliminated, I'd imagine employers would probably cut wages where possible under the excuse "You don't pay taxes anymore so 75% of your old pay is now reasonable!" anyway.
BTW, Gates would be in the category of 5% of citizens that control 80+% of the US's land, wealth etc. I think the people who are making use off the country's wealth on the backs of the other 95% of the population SHOULD pay a higher percentage of their incomes.
The Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for arson attacks in the past. One incident caused $1 million dollars in damage but noone was injured. There are ecoterrorist groups floating around; just like there are both violent and nonviolent groups working for other causes.
I would be surprised if there were not also militant extremists within Greenpeace.
And if spending money doesn't stop the terrorists from getting in, we can give up and let them in too!
All he's doing is showing old deficits in adjusted dollar values. No matter the cause, prices in consumer goods changed and that is inflation. War doesn't even enter into it except indirectly.
Antitrust violations for what? I'd think that intentionally including patent heavy technologies in order to stop newcomers from entering the market would be an antitrust violation before insisting on creating a patent free standard.
A company owning the creations of people that it employs (even if its created in their spare time) is not unique to the software industry.
Microsoft is the worst case scenario of closed software security. Why is it that we rarely ever hear of any other company's security holes? Why dont we hear both sides of the story? We almost never hear about Linux holes (oops, most are claimed not to be Linux holes if they aren't in the kernel...but a hole in MS's Office suite is supposed to be a WINDOWS hole...hrm...) Why did the article devolve into an attack on the credibility of Jones?
Back when the corn pushers wanted to use ethanol to fuel cars (directly), it was speculated that even if we planted corn on every inch of the US from east to west, we still wouldn't have enough to produce the ethanol to power our *cars*. These guys want to use it to power everything? Granted it might be more efficient to convert to hydrogen cells, but isn't this a bit far fetched?
Sounds like yet another attempt to get more subsidies for corn (as pointed out already).
If you can manage to become a non-contracted employee.
Oh yes, the one that an MS engineer(s) put in *themselves*. The problem there is that MS probably trusts their coders a bit too much and don't doublecheck things.
I don't quite remember the last one put into an open source codebase. You don't link to it but wasn't that put in by someone that compromised the server holding the sources? How was it detected and why is it comparable to an MS engineer(s) putting a backdoor in IIS and possibly forgetting to remove it when it shipped (and possibly never looked at it again).
Whoever modded this as funny: I don't think that is funny. It really would be a good idea :P
How do you know it's crappy unless you've been viewing it? Bill, release the hounds! :D
As the demand decreases (causing price to decline), they will look for ways to cut costs even if it means cutting quality. As long as the product is "good enough", they will sell it at that lower quality unless they can charge a heftier price for better quality products. Quality does enter into the supply and demand principles. People will pay more for better quality if they can afford it but will be happy with lower quality if it's "good enough" and it's in their price range.
:)
You also falsely assume I've only had one economics class and that other courses I've taken have not touched on economic issues.
Increased quality may result in higher manufacturing costs which directly affect price (before market considerations) unless the manufacturer intends to sell his product at a loss.
There's some truth in the Anon Coward's wise words in that the don't use Win2k or NT4 but they do use the latest version which they may have fixed any critical bugs they know of. They DO use their own software as you've pointed out, though =)