I just wonder how long it will be before Microsoft starts sending its BSA cronies to goverment agencies demanding audits and billions in licensing fees.
I will not be suprised when it happens, and I bet they'll even do it on Bush's watch.
And even then the DOJ will probably do nothing.
The only hope is the more they act like this the more people will convice themselves that it is just not good to deal with Microsoft anymore and move to OSS.
The initial post asked for examples, sure some of them are historical. But, last time I checked, I can't get a Dell PC with linux and pay $100 less for it. Dell doesn't have that kind of power, and have never been willing to step on Microsoft's toes.
Microsoft did give Corel a lot of money and they stopped shipping Linux. You're telling me that's conicedence?
Microsoft also stole technology from Stac, not just a name. Buying them made everthing go away.
What really bugs me is that helping Microsoft out of Antitrust trouble is NOT good for business. My company (large multinational) is paying them tens of millions of dollars per year for the "privilege" of running their software (and I still don't think that will prevent a BSA audit someday).
That money is staying out of our investors hands and affecting our profits. Multiply that cost by the entire fortune 500 and you've got a large drag on the economy, kind of like a Microsoft tax on all of these companies divedends.
Please do some looking into what they've done. They are not just "Doing what everyone else does."
Places to start:
"Dos isn't done 'til Lotus won't run."
Strange error messages for DR DOS users starting windows 3.1.
Claim for Windows NT Sever that there will never be "evil" per client licensing for the file server. (my favorite one, of course they just ment for version 3.51 )
IBM essentially dumping OS/2 in order to be able to preload Windows 95 (Microsoft waited until the last minute to give them permission.)
Any of the pay for a copy of windows per machine you ship deal they have with PC manufacturers. (Primarily as a barrier of entry for manufacturers shipping Linux PCs) (On topic to boot!)
The entire sordid mess with stac over drive compression.
The original deal with IBM for licensing of DOS. (Yes it was truly IBMs fault for letting them have this, but its Compaq's fault that Microsoft is what they are today.)
The licensing scheme for XP.
Their dealings with Corel re: linux.
What they did to Netscape with IE. (I still can't believe people willingly gave up browser choice so easliy. Please don't reply about Netscape screwing up, I know they did that too. But think about it, if Microsoft could completely get rid of the internet, would they? You bet, it wasn't in their plans at all and it would have never been developed by them. IE was a scramble to regain control of PC's and people fell for it.)
Is that enough detail (I know I missed some too). Feel free to look up and study any one of those.
Of course the best reason to keep Netscape/Mozilla alive is that in 7 years, if AOL doesn't have Netscape as a potential browser to go to, they'll have to PAY Microsoft $750 Million to license IE.
I have no doubt that if AOL kills off Netscape, AOL's online service will be gone in 7 years. Sure use the browser as leverage for a giant pile of cash now, just don't throw it out or in 7 years the next license deal they get from Microsoft will require them to change the name of their service to MSN.
You know, I just want to point out that your viewpoint is a common one and is presented by many Liberals (and heck some Conservatives too) out there.
What I find so interesting is that there hardly ever any effort by people like you to convince "rich", "Extreme-Right-Wing-Republican" that you are right.
You just reach for the labels, start throwing out generalities, make bold pronouncements and in general berate anyone who disagrees with you. And then other Liberals clamor on to say that the media does exactly what you are doing and how that is so very evil.
Oh well, go on, all you are wanting is affirmation from like minded individauls and a few rah-rah's from the crowd. You're certainly not trying to inform or change minds.
Dammit, politics has degraded into sports. Pick a team and cheer, the other team is by default the bad guy, and does nothing good.
I know you're referring to other riots, but the most recent ones have been fans of losing/winning sporting teams.
Plus, I don't agree that not agreeing to Kyoto was a bad thing. It would have forced serious consequences on the US. If we would have ratified it I believe that the environmentalists would have been licking their chops to protest every proposed nuculear power plant, even though they would have been the only way to achive emissions free electrical generation.
On assasination, I think it was one of the stupidest things Carter ever did. I know assination is messy and dangerous, but by outlawing it we basically told every two-bit dictator to sleep well, no worries about the US. Now, also thanks to Carter we've got North Korea basically saying that we need to pay them off to get rid of the nukes they built since the last agreement we had to pay them off to not build nukes.
Its Liberal appeasment policy that's stupid, not liberating Iraq, or destroying the Taliban, or pulling out of treaties with countries that no longer exist so we can build a missle defense.
Back on topic: One thing the original article fails to mention it Seeing a Problem and actaully enacting the wrong solution to it, causing more problems (see North Korea situation).
I still say that out of the many possible scenarios that played out, things went all in all pretty well. I just think that while the museum thing is tragic, I can't help feeling that if we had stopped the looting, it would have been some other thing.
Later on that week in fact, the marines did stop a bank robbery, just as they could have stopped the looting of the musuem if they had been there. The difference is that they were ready and had altered their mission to do this. If the robbery of millions had not been stopped, we would be hearing about that issue too.
While the Museum looting is very bad, I feel it was a tactical and logistical mistake (or failure even), and was not an intentional act if malice on the part of the military, or the military planners.
Hold it, the President, knew this would happen, eh? So its all his fault.
If he's precient then yes, it would be. But I for one did not think that the National Museum would be looted, not for one minute. And while scenarios could have been presented to the President for a variety of things, I doubt that there were many that said Baghdad would fall with so little resistance that anarchy would ensue. When the city was under siege, people stayed inside away from danger. When it fell, the people came out, and looting happened. The crippling of the water, and electrical infrastruture was the largest blow to our forces going into the city, since if water and electricity would have still been on, I feel much less looting would have occurred.
You hindsight is 20/20 like always, and so apparently is your hatred of Bush.
What's also funny is they talk about the heinous looting of the musuem and point to guarding the oil fields as a bad thing, but if all the oil fields were burning and the museum were completly safe and untouched, they would say "How could you let this environmental disaster take place, when you could find time to guard museum artifacts?"
Don't deny it, there are many here who would do just that.
No, eventaully we'll quit buying their stuff. The record companies have already succeeded, and if the MPAA doesn't lay off, I may just have to stop buying DVD's too.
We are the customer, in the end we hold all the power. True - they may have to beat some of us back with a stick to keep us from buying their product eventually. But right now their primary task is looking around for a bigger stick to beat the customer with. Eventually, we'll just say "ouch" and walk away.
It could have just been a font issue. What he really should have checked is the fonts available on the presentation PC. I've seen this kind of thing happen with presentations created in PowerPoint, too.
That the class laughed at him is the disturbing part. It really brings home that "part of the club" mentality that is central to keeping hold of the monopoly.
Of course it always seem like when bugs appear for opensource products people point and say "See, its opensource, it sucks!!", but when windown programs break they willingly set the clocks back two years, or run through a tedious process to manually fix things, and say virtually nothing.
I do feel sorry for you about that, though. The Linux users group at my company had to shut down untder the same kind of threat. Funny thing, as they allow internally hosted employee group sites from quilting to fishing to almost anything you can think of, but LINUX, can't have a site for THAT.
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I just wonder how long it will be before Microsoft starts sending its BSA cronies to goverment agencies demanding audits and billions in licensing fees.
I will not be suprised when it happens, and I bet they'll even do it on Bush's watch.
And even then the DOJ will probably do nothing.
The only hope is the more they act like this the more people will convice themselves that it is just not good to deal with Microsoft anymore and move to OSS.
The initial post asked for examples, sure some of them are historical. But, last time I checked, I can't get a Dell PC with linux and pay $100 less for it. Dell doesn't have that kind of power, and have never been willing to step on Microsoft's toes.
Microsoft did give Corel a lot of money and they stopped shipping Linux. You're telling me that's conicedence?
Microsoft also stole technology from Stac, not just a name. Buying them made everthing go away.
What really bugs me is that helping Microsoft out of Antitrust trouble is NOT good for business. My company (large multinational) is paying them tens of millions of dollars per year for the "privilege" of running their software (and I still don't think that will prevent a BSA audit someday).
That money is staying out of our investors hands and affecting our profits. Multiply that cost by the entire fortune 500 and you've got a large drag on the economy, kind of like a Microsoft tax on all of these companies divedends.
Please do some looking into what they've done. They are not just "Doing what everyone else does."
Places to start:
"Dos isn't done 'til Lotus won't run."
Strange error messages for DR DOS users starting windows 3.1.
Claim for Windows NT Sever that there will never be "evil" per client licensing for the file server. (my favorite one, of course they just ment for version 3.51 )
IBM essentially dumping OS/2 in order to be able to preload Windows 95 (Microsoft waited until the last minute to give them permission.)
Any of the pay for a copy of windows per machine you ship deal they have with PC manufacturers. (Primarily as a barrier of entry for manufacturers shipping Linux PCs) (On topic to boot!)
The entire sordid mess with stac over drive compression.
The original deal with IBM for licensing of DOS. (Yes it was truly IBMs fault for letting them have this, but its Compaq's fault that Microsoft is what they are today.)
The licensing scheme for XP.
Their dealings with Corel re: linux.
What they did to Netscape with IE. (I still can't believe people willingly gave up browser choice so easliy. Please don't reply about Netscape screwing up, I know they did that too. But think about it, if Microsoft could completely get rid of the internet, would they? You bet, it wasn't in their plans at all and it would have never been developed by them. IE was a scramble to regain control of PC's and people fell for it.)
Is that enough detail (I know I missed some too). Feel free to look up and study any one of those.
Microsoft doesn't play dirty, they live dirty.
Of course the best reason to keep Netscape/Mozilla alive is that in 7 years, if AOL doesn't have Netscape as a potential browser to go to, they'll have to PAY Microsoft $750 Million to license IE.
I have no doubt that if AOL kills off Netscape, AOL's online service will be gone in 7 years. Sure use the browser as leverage for a giant pile of cash now, just don't throw it out or in 7 years the next license deal they get from Microsoft will require them to change the name of their service to MSN.
Like maybe to France's Alcatel?
I sure hope none of the money goes to Alcatel! Not because they're a French company, but because their stuff is crap.
It's called a testing environment, then go live.
What is even more maddening, is that in the test environment (different hardware, I know in a perfect world it would be identical) it worked fine.
Not a Windows update per se, but SP3 for SQL Server broke one of our applications and we had to roll back. That was not pretty at all.
And once you get one bad patch that throws your systems into chaos, you get real wary of other ones in the future.
Yep, I've seen raw data that comes off of the Lansat satellites, and it's pretty ugly stuff.
The scientests involved will more than likely release pretty pictures for you to look at anyway.
Don't you know, its a vast Closed-Source Conspiracy!!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
The metric equivilent to seconds it the centon.
;-)
Get it right!!!
FYI: NCDs do not have a TV out, it would be cool if they did, though.
You know, I just want to point out that your viewpoint is a common one and is presented by many Liberals (and heck some Conservatives too) out there.
What I find so interesting is that there hardly ever any effort by people like you to convince "rich", "Extreme-Right-Wing-Republican" that you are right.
You just reach for the labels, start throwing out generalities, make bold pronouncements and in general berate anyone who disagrees with you. And then other Liberals clamor on to say that the media does exactly what you are doing and how that is so very evil.
Oh well, go on, all you are wanting is affirmation from like minded individauls and a few rah-rah's from the crowd. You're certainly not trying to inform or change minds.
Dammit, politics has degraded into sports. Pick a team and cheer, the other team is by default the bad guy, and does nothing good.
What, sports fans are a repressed population?
I know you're referring to other riots, but the most recent ones have been fans of losing/winning sporting teams.
Plus, I don't agree that not agreeing to Kyoto was a bad thing. It would have forced serious consequences on the US. If we would have ratified it I believe that the environmentalists would have been licking their chops to protest every proposed nuculear power plant, even though they would have been the only way to achive emissions free electrical generation.
On assasination, I think it was one of the stupidest things Carter ever did. I know assination is messy and dangerous, but by outlawing it we basically told every two-bit dictator to sleep well, no worries about the US. Now, also thanks to Carter we've got North Korea basically saying that we need to pay them off to get rid of the nukes they built since the last agreement we had to pay them off to not build nukes.
Its Liberal appeasment policy that's stupid, not liberating Iraq, or destroying the Taliban, or pulling out of treaties with countries that no longer exist so we can build a missle defense.
Back on topic: One thing the original article fails to mention it Seeing a Problem and actaully enacting the wrong solution to it, causing more problems (see North Korea situation).
I stand corrected.
I still say that out of the many possible scenarios that played out, things went all in all pretty well. I just think that while the museum thing is tragic, I can't help feeling that if we had stopped the looting, it would have been some other thing.
Later on that week in fact, the marines did stop a bank robbery, just as they could have stopped the looting of the musuem if they had been there. The difference is that they were ready and had altered their mission to do this. If the robbery of millions had not been stopped, we would be hearing about that issue too.
While the Museum looting is very bad, I feel it was a tactical and logistical mistake (or failure even), and was not an intentional act if malice on the part of the military, or the military planners.
Isn't that _clear_
It was a small play on words, as in your comments clearly show hatred of Bush.
Hold it, the President, knew this would happen, eh? So its all his fault.
If he's precient then yes, it would be. But I for one did not think that the National Museum would be looted, not for one minute. And while scenarios could have been presented to the President for a variety of things, I doubt that there were many that said Baghdad would fall with so little resistance that anarchy would ensue. When the city was under siege, people stayed inside away from danger. When it fell, the people came out, and looting happened. The crippling of the water, and electrical infrastruture was the largest blow to our forces going into the city, since if water and electricity would have still been on, I feel much less looting would have occurred.
You hindsight is 20/20 like always, and so apparently is your hatred of Bush.
Yeah, but half of New York's sports teams play in New Jersey....
What's also funny is they talk about the heinous looting of the musuem and point to guarding the oil fields as a bad thing, but if all the oil fields were burning and the museum were completly safe and untouched, they would say "How could you let this environmental disaster take place, when you could find time to guard museum artifacts?"
Don't deny it, there are many here who would do just that.
The next question is "Did Enron ask these creative thinking questions of their financial people?"
It sure would explain some things.
There are certain jobs where accuracy, integrity, and detail should be preferred over flexability, creativeness, and shooting from the hip.
No, eventaully we'll quit buying their stuff. The record companies have already succeeded, and if the MPAA doesn't lay off, I may just have to stop buying DVD's too.
We are the customer, in the end we hold all the power. True - they may have to beat some of us back with a stick to keep us from buying their product eventually. But right now their primary task is looking around for a bigger stick to beat the customer with. Eventually, we'll just say "ouch" and walk away.
My company actually does make some equipment (mainly materials) used for fishing, and many item s that would be useful to quilters.
It could have just been a font issue. What he really should have checked is the fonts available on the presentation PC. I've seen this kind of thing happen with presentations created in PowerPoint, too.
That the class laughed at him is the disturbing part. It really brings home that "part of the club" mentality that is central to keeping hold of the monopoly.
Of course it always seem like when bugs appear for opensource products people point and say "See, its opensource, it sucks!!", but when windown programs break they willingly set the clocks back two years, or run through a tedious process to manually fix things, and say virtually nothing.
OpenOffice doesn't have an "L" word in it ;-)
I do feel sorry for you about that, though. The Linux users group at my company had to shut down untder the same kind of threat. Funny thing, as they allow internally hosted employee group sites from quilting to fishing to almost anything you can think of, but LINUX, can't have a site for THAT.
OK, so lets assume a CD costs $16, and take 20 cents to manufacture.
That means that everything else must cost $15.80, right.
OK, now lets make a cassette tape of the same stuff.
Lets assume the Cassette costs the same 20 cents to make (although I really think that the cost would be higher).
The cassette sells for $10. Doing the math all that other stuff must cost $ 9.80 cents.
Hmmm.
The question for the reader is, are CD prices rigged?
The answer is yes.