"But if I write something that influences technology on a global scale, I want something more than a pat on the back and my name buried in the source code. I want to get paid for my effort/time/expertise. "
Yea good luck with that. Why don't you quit your job and start writing the next great big app. If you write it while working for somebody they are going to get all the money.
Once your product becomes popular hire lawyers so you can sue MS when they steal all your ideas and bundle it with windows.
This is the wrong way to look at it IMHO. We need to plan for what WE are going to do WHEN ms starts suing people.
We need to organize now so we can start boycotting MS products and services, protesting at MS locations, programming our servers to reject traffic from MS, and fighting their FUD with counter FUD (yes FUD we have to fight fire with fire), filing countersuits or what have you.
Plans need to be made, people need to get organized. Would a daily protest in redmond work? Would countersuits by individuals and small companies work? Would the press publish articles that critize MS? Can we really organize a boycott of MS hardware, software and services on a wide scale? Where do we discuss these and other strategies?
I don't think we can presume all these large companies are going to come to the aid of OSS. They might (so far they have) but you have to plan for the eventuality that they won't.
What are YOU going to do when MS starts their war for real? That's the question.
If they sue you then you switch to BSD and they have wasted all their money. More people they sue the more money they have wasted.
BTW in the history of the world nobody has ever been sued for actually using a product that infringes on a patent. NEVER EVER.
You need to take a course or two in risk management. Getting paranoid about extrememly unlikely scenarios and changing your business practices to avoid unlikely events is just a "BadIdea"
DOes anybody know if the new replication will support merge and multi-master replications. Even ring replication a-la mysql would be better then one way master-slave replication.
"Why hire other people to do things differently when you can do things the same way with the staff you have?"
Because you are going to have to train those guys for the next version of windows anyway. When longhorn comes out your entire staff will need to be retrained. Why not take that money and time and train them on linux?
Or maybe you can replace them with unix sysadmins as they quit or get fired. Next time your network gets hacked or viruses fire the sysadmin and replace him with a unix sysadmin.
Nah. All the outstanding suits were settled in one shot. Borland was suing them for ripping off quattro pro, stealing employees and maybe one other thing. MS gave then 200 million to go away and they did.
Of course it is. My point is that MS stockholders that count are a pretty low number. This means the will of the stockholders is in fact the will of a handful of people.
As to your other point.
Sure genocide is evil but so is using your monopoly to bankrupt companies. One is more evil then the other but you don't get a pass by saying that other people are more evil then you. Should we let a murderer off the hook because he says that he didn't kill as many people as Jeffrey Dahmer?
As to the evil acts we can start by pathological lying, cheating and stealing. People who cheat, steal and lie are pretty scummy don't you think? Especially people who do it habitually and for no other reason then to make themselves more money.
They have stolen from or backstabbed just about every company they have partnered with. They have stolen technologies from multiple companies. They buy politicians who then pass laws like the DMCA, they fund the BSA, they fund bogus thinktanks to spread lies, they fund SCO to sue IBM and lie, the list goes on and on. These are not the acts of nice ethical people. These are the acts of scum.
As for bill gates giving his money so what. It does not undo anything he has done. He has a guilty conscience and is trying to soothe it. Good for him. If I could soothe my conscience by spending 1/100000000th of my income I'd do it too. You think me giving a dollar to a beggar is going to undo all the evil things I have done in my life? Of course not.
Finally. Have you ever read the bible? You know what it says in there? It says love of money is the root of all evil. Does anybody love money more then the richest person in the world? Bill gates can signlehandedly end hunger, end illiteracy, end deforestation or any other big problem in the world and still have billions of dollars left over to lead a life of endless luxury. What the fuck is he doing holding on to any of it. Do you really need more then a billion dollars? Does anybody?
"zero chance to make any sort of dent in the entrenched PC-104-type keyboard market"
Why?
Because most people are not touch typists. They want to see the keys their are hitting. Most people don't want to learn a new layout and then become flustered when they attempt to use their computer at work/home/friends house or whatever. Most people end up needing to press weird control sequences of their favorite program and unless the keyboard is very carefully designed these types of two and three letter combos are harder on fancy keyboards. Most people have no real desire to pay over a hundred for any keyboard no matter how revolutionary. Most people have occation to type one handed. Whether it's because you have a phone in your hand, or otherwise:).
'That publicly traded stock represents other people's money"
In the case of MS it only takes a handful of people to add up to a controlling stake in the company. In this case the will of the shareholders is in fact the will of the people who head the company.
" Many people at Microsoft, especially the top officers, genuinely believe that they're idealistic, "
Nonesense. The top tier of MS are pathological liars and have proven themselves to be without any morals whatsoever. The are scum of the lowest order. Have you ever read a press release by Ballmer, gates, allchin or whoever that did not contain at least one lie? I haven't.
"I think it's fairly reasonable for Seagate to ask that he not work in the same division at another company that he just left at Seagate."
Ugh. Why do you find that reasonable. It sound despicable to me. Why shouldn't somebody have the right to work anywhere they want. The whole idea of a noncompete is immoral in the first place.
All fine and dandy if both parties have equal leverage and education. In the case of a non compete this is not the case. Sign this or get fired is hardly an even negotiation posture.
By your definition people should be able to sell their children into slavery and prostitution.
It depends on the state. Some states have a what are called "right to work" laws. These laws were orignially written to bust unions and to enable businesses to hire non union employees even if they had a contract with the union.
These days the law has backfired on businesses who can no longer enforce non compete agreements in those states.
I call bullshit. Chances are you are talking about something that has a commercial outlook connector. In which case you might as well not bother because you are going to pay more and have the pleasure of installing them on all the desktops.
Again I call bullshit. Name three open source projects that have email and group calendar support that work out of the box with outlook. I dare ya.
You should invest in google because it's an innovative company run by ethical and really smart people who have demonstrated that they know how to make money.
Good, smart people who know how to get things done. Nothing bad can come out of this.
You know what the odd thing is? That major country is likely to be the USA.
Ralph Nader made a bet with the congress. He said that if any congressmen actually read the WTO agreements and answered five simple questions about it he would give a charity of the congressmen's choice 10,000.00 dollars. They could vote any way they wanted they just had to read it first. Only one congressmen took him up on it and after reading the agreement he voted against it.
The point is that nobody in the senate actually realizes how much sovereignty they gave up and these rules are coming home to roost. Recently the WTO ruled that cotton subsidies had to go. This means that virtually the entire farm subsidy program is against the WTO and has to be scrapped. You think anybody in washington is brave enough to cut off the farmers? Dream on.
These bastards will eventually realize they gave up their sovereignty to the WTO. The congress is no longer useful. I figure they will simply ignore the WTO ruling thereby giving all other countries reason to the same.
None of those people deserve your pity. Sorry to be blunt but these people have turned the birthplace of three religions into rotting cesspool of hate, violence, murder, torture, theft and just plain old evil. They all belong in hell.
Nah, it's more like a pyramid scheme. You win if you get in early and lose if you get in late. It's all about inside information, the kind the billionairs have and you don't.
If you are going to stay (not really that good of an idea at this time space continuum) then at least transfer all your money to an index fund keyed to the S&P 500. That way you will beat 85% of the market analysts.
Personally I don't care more people use linux. I especially don't want idiots running linux and not updating it for three years and pewing spam and worms all over the internet.
You are not only incompetent but also irresponsible. Pleas shut of your three year old un-updated linux machines right away.
If linux is going to break into the home market it won't do it by appealing to home users. No home user I know actually likes windows. If ease of use was really that important then Apple would have a monopoly right now. You know why they don't? Because nobody gives a shit about how easy a computer is to use.
What you fail to realize is that things like ease of use, ease of updating are completely irrelevant in home adoption. What drives home adoption is corporate adoption. People want to same computer at home that they use at work so that they can take their work home.
Windows won because it became a corporate standard. Linux will win for the same reason. Dumbasses like you will learn linux at work and then buy a PC with it pre-installed for home use.
Why yes I do own a mac. I also run a freebsd and linux box. Unlike most windows users I actually have some brains.
I am also not a shill for any corporation. Have seen me shill for Apple? Defend Apple from slashdotters? Of course not. What's even more remarkable is that I don't defend other corporations like maytag or GE.
You on the other hand are a shill for MS. A shill for a corporation that does not give a flying fuck about you. A lowly sycophant who thinks that associating himself with a large corporation somehow makes him bigger then he is. People like you are pathetic tools.
Slashdot Mirror
"But if I write something that influences technology on a global scale, I want something more than a pat on the back and my name buried in the source code. I want to get paid for my effort/time/expertise. "
Yea good luck with that. Why don't you quit your job and start writing the next great big app. If you write it while working for somebody they are going to get all the money.
Once your product becomes popular hire lawyers so you can sue MS when they steal all your ideas and bundle it with windows.
This is the wrong way to look at it IMHO. We need to plan for what WE are going to do WHEN ms starts suing people.
We need to organize now so we can start boycotting MS products and services, protesting at MS locations, programming our servers to reject traffic from MS, and fighting their FUD with counter FUD (yes FUD we have to fight fire with fire), filing countersuits or what have you.
Plans need to be made, people need to get organized. Would a daily protest in redmond work? Would countersuits by individuals and small companies work? Would the press publish articles that critize MS? Can we really organize a boycott of MS hardware, software and services on a wide scale? Where do we discuss these and other strategies?
I don't think we can presume all these large companies are going to come to the aid of OSS. They might (so far they have) but you have to plan for the eventuality that they won't.
What are YOU going to do when MS starts their war for real? That's the question.
Look at it this way.
The court have found that IE is violating an EOLAS patent. Can EOLAS sue everybody who uses IE?
If they sue you then you switch to BSD and they have wasted all their money. More people they sue the more money they have wasted.
BTW in the history of the world nobody has ever been sued for actually using a product that infringes on a patent. NEVER EVER.
You need to take a course or two in risk management. Getting paranoid about extrememly unlikely scenarios and changing your business practices to avoid unlikely events is just a "BadIdea"
You may want to look at backplane.
DOes anybody know if the new replication will support merge and multi-master replications. Even ring replication a-la mysql would be better then one way master-slave replication.
"Why hire other people to do things differently when you can do things the same way with the staff you have?"
Because you are going to have to train those guys for the next version of windows anyway. When longhorn comes out your entire staff will need to be retrained. Why not take that money and time and train them on linux?
Or maybe you can replace them with unix sysadmins as they quit or get fired. Next time your network gets hacked or viruses fire the sysadmin and replace him with a unix sysadmin.
Nah. All the outstanding suits were settled in one shot. Borland was suing them for ripping off quattro pro, stealing employees and maybe one other thing. MS gave then 200 million to go away and they did.
"This isn't about control."
Of course it is. My point is that MS stockholders that count are a pretty low number. This means the will of the stockholders is in fact the will of a handful of people.
As to your other point.
Sure genocide is evil but so is using your monopoly to bankrupt companies. One is more evil then the other but you don't get a pass by saying that other people are more evil then you. Should we let a murderer off the hook because he says that he didn't kill as many people as Jeffrey Dahmer?
As to the evil acts we can start by pathological lying, cheating and stealing. People who cheat, steal and lie are pretty scummy don't you think? Especially people who do it habitually and for no other reason then to make themselves more money.
They have stolen from or backstabbed just about every company they have partnered with. They have stolen technologies from multiple companies. They buy politicians who then pass laws like the DMCA, they fund the BSA, they fund bogus thinktanks to spread lies, they fund SCO to sue IBM and lie, the list goes on and on. These are not the acts of nice ethical people. These are the acts of scum.
As for bill gates giving his money so what. It does not undo anything he has done. He has a guilty conscience and is trying to soothe it. Good for him. If I could soothe my conscience by spending 1/100000000th of my income I'd do it too. You think me giving a dollar to a beggar is going to undo all the evil things I have done in my life? Of course not.
Finally. Have you ever read the bible? You know what it says in there? It says love of money is the root of all evil. Does anybody love money more then the richest person in the world?
Bill gates can signlehandedly end hunger, end illiteracy, end deforestation or any other big problem in the world and still have billions of dollars left over to lead a life of endless luxury. What the fuck is he doing holding on to any of it. Do you really need more then a billion dollars? Does anybody?
"zero chance to make any sort of dent in the entrenched PC-104-type keyboard market"
:).
Why?
Because most people are not touch typists. They want to see the keys their are hitting.
Most people don't want to learn a new layout and then become flustered when they attempt to use their computer at work/home/friends house or whatever.
Most people end up needing to press weird control sequences of their favorite program and unless the keyboard is very carefully designed these types of two and three letter combos are harder on fancy keyboards.
Most people have no real desire to pay over a hundred for any keyboard no matter how revolutionary.
Most people have occation to type one handed. Whether it's because you have a phone in your hand, or otherwise
A couple of nitpicks.
'That publicly traded stock represents other people's money"
In the case of MS it only takes a handful of people to add up to a controlling stake in the company. In this case the will of the shareholders is in fact the will of the people who head the company.
" Many people at Microsoft, especially the top officers, genuinely believe that they're idealistic, "
Nonesense. The top tier of MS are pathological liars and have proven themselves to be without any morals whatsoever. The are scum of the lowest order. Have you ever read a press release by Ballmer, gates, allchin or whoever that did not contain at least one lie? I haven't.
"I think it's fairly reasonable for Seagate to ask that he not work in the same division at another company that he just left at Seagate."
Ugh. Why do you find that reasonable. It sound despicable to me. Why shouldn't somebody have the right to work anywhere they want. The whole idea of a noncompete is immoral in the first place.
All fine and dandy if both parties have equal leverage and education. In the case of a non compete this is not the case. Sign this or get fired is hardly an even negotiation posture.
By your definition people should be able to sell their children into slavery and prostitution.
MS ended up settling suit by exchanging a couple of hundred millions of dollars (I think they bought borland stock or something).
typical MS bullshit. Steal, get sued settle for pennies on the dollar after a prolonged legal battle.
"What is the case law precendent?"
It depends on the state. Some states have a what are called "right to work" laws. These laws were orignially written to bust unions and to enable businesses to hire non union employees even if they had a contract with the union.
These days the law has backfired on businesses who can no longer enforce non compete agreements in those states.
the irony is rich.
I call bullshit. Chances are you are talking about something that has a commercial outlook connector. In which case you might as well not bother because you are going to pay more and have the pleasure of installing them on all the desktops.
Again I call bullshit. Name three open source projects that have email and group calendar support that work out of the box with outlook. I dare ya.
And to think I was once thinking about immigrating to there.
Exe? Just Exe? The proper regexp is more like.
| pi f|scr|hta|jse?|sh[mbs]|vb[esx]|ws[fh]|wmf)
(lnk|asd|hlp|ocx|reg|bat|c[ho]m|cmd|exe|dll|vxd
You should invest in google because it's an innovative company run by ethical and really smart people who have demonstrated that they know how to make money.
Good, smart people who know how to get things done. Nothing bad can come out of this.
You know what the odd thing is? That major country is likely to be the USA.
Ralph Nader made a bet with the congress. He said that if any congressmen actually read the WTO agreements and answered five simple questions about it he would give a charity of the congressmen's choice 10,000.00 dollars. They could vote any way they wanted they just had to read it first. Only one congressmen took him up on it and after reading the agreement he voted against it.
The point is that nobody in the senate actually realizes how much sovereignty they gave up and these rules are coming home to roost. Recently the WTO ruled that cotton subsidies had to go. This means that virtually the entire farm subsidy program is against the WTO and has to be scrapped. You think anybody in washington is brave enough to cut off the farmers? Dream on.
These bastards will eventually realize they gave up their sovereignty to the WTO. The congress is no longer useful. I figure they will simply ignore the WTO ruling thereby giving all other countries reason to the same.
"Pity about Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria"
None of those people deserve your pity. Sorry to be blunt but these people have turned the birthplace of three religions into rotting cesspool of hate, violence, murder, torture, theft and just plain old evil. They all belong in hell.
It's amazing to me that the citizens of Australia would lead themselves to slaughter like this but they seem to be doing it at every oportunity.
At least europe is resisting a *little* bit.
Nah, it's more like a pyramid scheme. You win if you get in early and lose if you get in late. It's all about inside information, the kind the billionairs have and you don't.
If you are going to stay (not really that good of an idea at this time space continuum) then at least transfer all your money to an index fund keyed to the S&P 500. That way you will beat 85% of the market analysts.
Personally I don't care more people use linux. I especially don't want idiots running linux and not updating it for three years and pewing spam and worms all over the internet.
You are not only incompetent but also irresponsible. Pleas shut of your three year old un-updated linux machines right away.
If linux is going to break into the home market it won't do it by appealing to home users. No home user I know actually likes windows. If ease of use was really that important then Apple would have a monopoly right now. You know why they don't? Because nobody gives a shit about how easy a computer is to use.
What you fail to realize is that things like ease of use, ease of updating are completely irrelevant in home adoption. What drives home adoption is corporate adoption. People want to same computer at home that they use at work so that they can take their work home.
Windows won because it became a corporate standard. Linux will win for the same reason. Dumbasses like you will learn linux at work and then buy a PC with it pre-installed for home use.
Why yes I do own a mac. I also run a freebsd and linux box. Unlike most windows users I actually have some brains.
I am also not a shill for any corporation. Have seen me shill for Apple? Defend Apple from slashdotters? Of course not. What's even more remarkable is that I don't defend other corporations like maytag or GE.
You on the other hand are a shill for MS. A shill for a corporation that does not give a flying fuck about you. A lowly sycophant who thinks that associating himself with a large corporation somehow makes him bigger then he is. People like you are pathetic tools.