Let me get this straight? The company is outsourcing to India to save money, but is allowing everyone to move to India and continue at the same salary?
The industry has done a pretty good job self-regulating themselves. I'd agree with the ratings on most of the games I've played, and that it is quite clear what all the ratings mean. I've seen retailers tell kids who try to purchase "M" games to get their parents in a few locations as well.
On the other hand, I've seen parents completely ignore the ratings and description of the games time and time again. Yes, I've seen parents at retail locations buying their kids copies of GTA and other "M" games.
I know the ultimate goal for these groups that issue report cards is to get the Government to start regulating the industry. That won't do a thing. The #1 responsibility of if kids or not see "mature" games falls in the hands of parents.
While I agree with you that corporations are the driving force behind our politics nowadays, I don't see how free markets or the Constitution have anything to do with it.
In fact, these corporations are against upholding the Constitution, and against free markets.
Right now, corporations can essentially purchase laws and policies from the Government to destroy competition and tweak the economy in their favor (and out of the favor of the average citizen). They know that the Government will do what they want, even though a lot of it is truly outside of the scope of the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
Someone I knew, not really a friend, thought he could set up a LAN center. He failed rather quickly though he had what I would consider an OK location near a high school and community college.
He failed to realize going in that the true expenses of providing a game accross several PCs in a commercial environment was more than just retail cost times the number of boxes he had, which limited his game selection sharply.
I'm really not sure how places like yours can make a great deal of money, but from your page it seems like you're growing. So you must know a lot more about running a business than he did.
Putting aside my complaints against Blizzard for the bnetd debacle, I did take part in the Open Beta for this game. I must say that Blizzard really does have a very good game here, one that was able to keep my interest and not be boring after a couple of weeks (unlike EQ and DAOC).
The game's presentation is top notch, as to be expected from Blizzard.
If or not I'll purchase the retail copy. Well, I still have reservations about giving them my cash for their pursuit of the bnetd case. That and no matter how good a game can get, this type of game is always ruined by the community of idiots that eventually flocks to it.
I think that upcoming games like NWN2 and Dragon Age will still provide a more personal, quality experience to a small group of roleplay minded gamers. But, as far as MMORPGs go, WoW does the best job of that I've seen.
Actually, CD swapping is quite annoying. It isn't annoying enough for me to go out and grab no-cd cracks, since I only have two major games installed right now. For those people who have a large library of games, I can see swapping CDs as a huge annoyance.
In the past, I used software that allows you to mount an "image" of a CD stored on your HD to play the CD version of Baldur's Gate (which I fully and legally purchased), since that game contained 6 discs. Nowadays, many games will refuse to run if they detect that sort of software installed on your PC.
I agree that it is "well within the rights" of the game's maker to do these things under the EULA to prevent piracy, but it is quite annoying to be treated like a criminal when you try to play a game you spent $50 on.
Not to say there aren't positives, but there are a few inherant problems with things like Steam.
1. Abuse. Hypothetically, let us say that some members of "Clan Uber" are actually friends with people in Valve. Someone online says some mean things about Clan Uber, and then mysteriously finds their Steam account banned the next time they are online.
Don't think this would happen? If you've ever played Ragnarok Online, this sort of thing happens all the time. There are a few guilds that have formed friendships with the GM staff, and people have been banned mysteriously from the game after "crossing" members of these guilds.
2. False positives. In their gusto to fight pirates, it is entirely feasable that Valve may make a mistake here and there and leave legit customers banned from Steam.
3. End of Service. Many people assume that if Valve sees themselves about to go out of business, a patch would be released for HL2 to make it playable without Steam. However, they are in no way obligated to do so. If Valve (and thus Steam) ever shut down, it is possible that all copies of HL2 would be rendered unplayable.
I'll reiterate what I've said before regarding skipping advertisements.
For decades, advertisers have seemingly understood that what they do is a gamble. There is absolutely no guarantee that the advertisement will be viewed, paid attention to, or even work well to sell a product. Just because this model has worked in the past does not guarantee it will continue to work for all time.
If companies involved can no longer take the risk that people may not see advertisements, then they should reconsider their business models.
IANAL, but it seems to me that the primary targets for lawsuits claiming that Linux violates patents would initally be companies like Red Hat, or top individuals such as Linus Torvalds.
It also seems that if people could be sued for using Linux, they could be sued for using Windows as well. Just because one is made by MS and one is Open Source, I don't see the difference. I don't recall anything in the Windoes EULA that says MS bears responsibility for suits brought against you for using their software.
Say that SCO turned around and said that Microsoft also stole their code and put it into Windows. Say that SCO began selling "Windows Lisences" without legally establishing their claims and threatened to sue individual Windows users. This is what they are currently doing with Linux.
Say that it went a step farther, and a Judge actually ruled that SCO's claims were true. SCO would presumably start trying to collect from every single Windows user out there, wouldn't they? They would do this if they were able to legally establish their claims against Linux.
How would it matter that Windows came from MS, where as Linux was Open Source? Would MS offer to pay an additional $699 for every Windows user on the planet? I doubt it.
Maybe somebody with true legal expertise could explain to me how the situation would be different.
Microsoft has been taken to court over patent violations before. Regardless of the outcome, it shows quite clearly that nobody is safe from the looming threat of software patents.
I'm sure Linux and Windows both violate some rediculous patents out there that have not been upheld in court.
But Ballmer is saying here, "Windows is 100% free from patent violations, Linux is one big huge patent violation. Yes, I know there is really no proof I can show you to back up what I'm saying, but you should take my word for it. After all, MS is run by businessmen and Linux is run by dirty pot smoking communist hippies."
Why do the producers have an inalienable right to profit, no matter what?
If the producers of TV shows don't like the risks associated with TV, such as the fact that their viewers may get up to go to the bathroom during the commercial breaks, they shouldn't use is as their medium for distribution.
Advertising always has been a gamble, not a guarantee. There is no guarantee a viewer will see the ad or not ignore it, and there is no guarantee a viewer will like the ad enough to go buy what is advertised. This has been understood by advertisers in the past, and despite this, they have continued to advertise for decades.
What this law basically does is tell Joe Public what he is forced to watch, which is wrong.
Anyone who has surfed enough web comics knows that there are a quite a few comics that seem to be PA Wannabes in some fashion. What do you guys really feel about people who blatantly copy the the style or look/feel of your comic? Does it piss you off, or do you simply accept imitators as a price of being one of the most popular comics online?
Oh, and on a totally separate note, there have been some jabs thrown between you guys and Scott Kurtz. Is it all in good fun, or is is there actually some sort of animocity going on?
Re:why is Crunch Time even part of the project bud
on
A College Guide to EA
·
· Score: 1
There are, unfortunately, tons of young CS grads and similarly skilled young people who would kill for the chance to work in the video game industry. This is why EA and many other game studios continue their practices of working their staff to death for less than stellar pay.
The best way to have the salespeople make the lies convincing is to have them believe the lies themselves. It is cheaper to employ someone like that than employ a master salesman who could lie with a straight face since they usually work for larger commissions such as Real Estate.
When I bought a TV at Best Buy, the salesperson tried to sell me a Monster Surge Protector for like $70 or so. When I declined, he fed me this line of B.S. as to why I should buy it. I still declined.
THEN he tried to sell me the extended warranty. I declined again. He countered back by saying it was highly likely my TV would break within a year (it has been over two years now, past when the Best Buy warranty would have expired, and the TV still works just fine).
The thing is that he sounded genuine. I knew the words coming out of his mouth were pure BS, but I think he was trained to believe what he was saying was truth.
Customer: Hi, I'd like to buy this TV. Salesguy: I won't sell it to you. Customer: What? Why not? Isn't it the TV you advertised in this morning's paper as being on sale? Salesguy: Yes, you see, that TV there is just a ploy to get you into the store. I'm not allowed to sell it to you, I'm supposed to convince you that this TV is just a "basic" model and this other TV we have here for $300 is much better. Customer: I guess I'll just need to take my business elsewhere, then, Salesguy: Good idea!
I probably would have been tagged as a problem customer at Fry's had they implemented something like this.
I always used to go in early in the morning when they opened and find stuff way mis-priced or in the wrong display. When they rang it up higher than their store display advertised, I kindly told them that the display had another price and gladly showed the cashier the display. They would immediately change the price, but would typically give me the price on the store display.
Usually it was only ever for a few bucks once in a while, but the crowning achievement was when I got a video card for $100 less than it should have been because the employees had put the wrong cards in the display.
There are abusive customers who cost a company more money than it is worth. They exist in every industry. At some point, the biggest abusers may find themselves "excommunicated" from the services of a particular company.
I knew some people who worked on a tech support team for a piece of business software. A particular customer called in to support habitually, asked questions about simple things he could have easily found in the manual, wasted the time of the techs repeatedly, and was ultimately abusive towards them.
It came to the point where the supervisor of the team made the decision to inform the customer that they would no longer be supporting him, gave permission to the team to hang up on him, and even suggested he go with a competitor's software package in the future.
I'm often willing to spend money and see a movie that my friends or co-workers say is good in the theaters if it appears to catch my interest. Sometimes it is a good thing to have a night out. Movies are a decent opportunity to do this.
On the other hand, if there is nothing that catches my interest, I won't go to the theater. If the MPAA wants me in the movie theaters twice a month, they need to start churning out LOTR-quality movies at record pace.
If I'm not willing to go to the theater, I'm certainly won't spend hours searching for a torrent and downloading a movie that doesn't interest me enough either. Even on consumer broadband, it still takes several hours to grab Hollywood movies at a reasonable quality. It isn't worth the effort.
Certainly there are people downloading movies in considerable quantity. But seriously, the MPAA members are raking it in with ticket sales of good films, DVDs, Special Edition DVDs, etc. Not to mention merchandising. This is when they release three or four good movies a year and the rest is utter crap. If they could divert their efforts away from horrid movies, maybe they'd make even more money.
Suing college kids and teenagers just makes them look like royal assholes and it looks like they are just doing it to get a supplemental two or three grand here and there.
No secret that I'm a supporter of Badnarik. I've been thinking, however, how I would vote if there were Instant Runoff Voting. Going off of who qualified for my state's ballot (Nader was not one of them). Forgive me if I forgot someone in my haste.
1. Badnarik. The LP has the best platform for reducing the size and scope of government. The LP is against the current brand of foreign policy* that lead to the conflict in Iraq and causes us to be the targets of terrorists.
2. Petrouka. Some of the Constitution Party ideas are a bit way out there, but in general they are for less government, are also against the current brand of foreign policy.
3. Cobb. I disagree strongly with the Green platform, but if I'm going to choose between socialism and facism (where things are headed now with the Republicrats), I'll choose socialism. At least Cobb is a real left wing candidate, and is also against the current brand of foreign policy.
4. Kerry. You can't call him an anti-war candidate. Kerry plans to pull us out of Iraq in INFINITY MINUS TWO years, as opposed to Bush's plan to pull us out in INFINITY MINUS ONE. Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. Kerry's party bows to the Entertainment Industry and his administration will likely take no steps to reform IP laws so that they cannot be abused by megacorps. Still, he's better than Bush.
5. Bush. I absolutely fear what Bush's administration might try to pull once the fear of not being re-elected is out of the way. Military Draft? Even more blatantly facist policy? Legislation worse than the Patriot Act? Probably all of the above. Anyone voting for Bush because he lowered taxes is living in a Dream World. Bush has increased the size and cost of the government. Sure, he gave us back a few hundred bucks so we'd be inclined vote for him again, but increasing Government size amounts to deferred taxation. We'll eventually all pay for his outing in Iraq in the form of taxes, even if that tax increase comes from Bush's successor.
*By this I mean the current foreign policy that dictates the US get involved in the business of other countries when it shouldn't.
OSS critics fail to realize that Open Source refers to the style of lisence that the software has. Open Source is not really a "brand" like Microsoft.
This particular software may not be extremely well written. It just so happens the authors decided to GPL it, making it Open Source. Just sticking a lisence on the software and revealing the source code doesn't magically make it good or bad.
There are plenty of bad programs released under the GPL, just like there are plenty of bad closed-source products out there.
What do you call their current FUD campaign against Linux (the "Get the Facts" campaign) then, except as an attempt to dissuade people from using Linux and Open Source?
Are you trying to tell me that Microsoft would NOT like Linux and Open Source Software to disappear?
One of Microsoft's major business practices has classically been to lock people into their software through proprietary standards. A clever anti-spam standard would be a huge selling point towards using Microsoft's software, especially with a large ISP like AOL on board.
Do you think Microsoft is going to just allow Open Source to create its own compatible implementation for free?
I can easily envision the campaign. If MS gets their standard widely adopted, they'll spread FUD saying that Spammers prefer Linux and Open Source, and that Spammers want people to use Open Source because it facilitates the spread of spam.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me get this straight? The company is outsourcing to India to save money, but is allowing everyone to move to India and continue at the same salary?
Something definately does not sound right.
The industry has done a pretty good job self-regulating themselves. I'd agree with the ratings on most of the games I've played, and that it is quite clear what all the ratings mean. I've seen retailers tell kids who try to purchase "M" games to get their parents in a few locations as well.
On the other hand, I've seen parents completely ignore the ratings and description of the games time and time again. Yes, I've seen parents at retail locations buying their kids copies of GTA and other "M" games.
I know the ultimate goal for these groups that issue report cards is to get the Government to start regulating the industry. That won't do a thing. The #1 responsibility of if kids or not see "mature" games falls in the hands of parents.
While I agree with you that corporations are the driving force behind our politics nowadays, I don't see how free markets or the Constitution have anything to do with it.
In fact, these corporations are against upholding the Constitution, and against free markets.
Right now, corporations can essentially purchase laws and policies from the Government to destroy competition and tweak the economy in their favor (and out of the favor of the average citizen). They know that the Government will do what they want, even though a lot of it is truly outside of the scope of the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
This is not a free market by a long shot.
Someone I knew, not really a friend, thought he could set up a LAN center. He failed rather quickly though he had what I would consider an OK location near a high school and community college.
He failed to realize going in that the true expenses of providing a game accross several PCs in a commercial environment was more than just retail cost times the number of boxes he had, which limited his game selection sharply.
I'm really not sure how places like yours can make a great deal of money, but from your page it seems like you're growing. So you must know a lot more about running a business than he did.
Putting aside my complaints against Blizzard for the bnetd debacle, I did take part in the Open Beta for this game. I must say that Blizzard really does have a very good game here, one that was able to keep my interest and not be boring after a couple of weeks (unlike EQ and DAOC).
The game's presentation is top notch, as to be expected from Blizzard.
If or not I'll purchase the retail copy. Well, I still have reservations about giving them my cash for their pursuit of the bnetd case. That and no matter how good a game can get, this type of game is always ruined by the community of idiots that eventually flocks to it.
I think that upcoming games like NWN2 and Dragon Age will still provide a more personal, quality experience to a small group of roleplay minded gamers. But, as far as MMORPGs go, WoW does the best job of that I've seen.
Actually, CD swapping is quite annoying. It isn't annoying enough for me to go out and grab no-cd cracks, since I only have two major games installed right now. For those people who have a large library of games, I can see swapping CDs as a huge annoyance.
In the past, I used software that allows you to mount an "image" of a CD stored on your HD to play the CD version of Baldur's Gate (which I fully and legally purchased), since that game contained 6 discs. Nowadays, many games will refuse to run if they detect that sort of software installed on your PC.
I agree that it is "well within the rights" of the game's maker to do these things under the EULA to prevent piracy, but it is quite annoying to be treated like a criminal when you try to play a game you spent $50 on.
Not to say there aren't positives, but there are a few inherant problems with things like Steam.
1. Abuse. Hypothetically, let us say that some members of "Clan Uber" are actually friends with people in Valve. Someone online says some mean things about Clan Uber, and then mysteriously finds their Steam account banned the next time they are online.
Don't think this would happen? If you've ever played Ragnarok Online, this sort of thing happens all the time. There are a few guilds that have formed friendships with the GM staff, and people have been banned mysteriously from the game after "crossing" members of these guilds.
2. False positives. In their gusto to fight pirates, it is entirely feasable that Valve may make a mistake here and there and leave legit customers banned from Steam.
3. End of Service. Many people assume that if Valve sees themselves about to go out of business, a patch would be released for HL2 to make it playable without Steam. However, they are in no way obligated to do so. If Valve (and thus Steam) ever shut down, it is possible that all copies of HL2 would be rendered unplayable.
I'll reiterate what I've said before regarding skipping advertisements.
For decades, advertisers have seemingly understood that what they do is a gamble. There is absolutely no guarantee that the advertisement will be viewed, paid attention to, or even work well to sell a product. Just because this model has worked in the past does not guarantee it will continue to work for all time.
If companies involved can no longer take the risk that people may not see advertisements, then they should reconsider their business models.
IANAL, but it seems to me that the primary targets for lawsuits claiming that Linux violates patents would initally be companies like Red Hat, or top individuals such as Linus Torvalds.
It also seems that if people could be sued for using Linux, they could be sued for using Windows as well. Just because one is made by MS and one is Open Source, I don't see the difference. I don't recall anything in the Windoes EULA that says MS bears responsibility for suits brought against you for using their software.
Say that SCO turned around and said that Microsoft also stole their code and put it into Windows. Say that SCO began selling "Windows Lisences" without legally establishing their claims and threatened to sue individual Windows users. This is what they are currently doing with Linux.
Say that it went a step farther, and a Judge actually ruled that SCO's claims were true. SCO would presumably start trying to collect from every single Windows user out there, wouldn't they? They would do this if they were able to legally establish their claims against Linux.
How would it matter that Windows came from MS, where as Linux was Open Source? Would MS offer to pay an additional $699 for every Windows user on the planet? I doubt it.
Maybe somebody with true legal expertise could explain to me how the situation would be different.
Microsoft has been taken to court over patent violations before. Regardless of the outcome, it shows quite clearly that nobody is safe from the looming threat of software patents.
I'm sure Linux and Windows both violate some rediculous patents out there that have not been upheld in court.
But Ballmer is saying here, "Windows is 100% free from patent violations, Linux is one big huge patent violation. Yes, I know there is really no proof I can show you to back up what I'm saying, but you should take my word for it. After all, MS is run by businessmen and Linux is run by dirty pot smoking communist hippies."
Step 1: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these... ...in Japan!
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Why do the producers have an inalienable right to profit, no matter what?
If the producers of TV shows don't like the risks associated with TV, such as the fact that their viewers may get up to go to the bathroom during the commercial breaks, they shouldn't use is as their medium for distribution.
Advertising always has been a gamble, not a guarantee. There is no guarantee a viewer will see the ad or not ignore it, and there is no guarantee a viewer will like the ad enough to go buy what is advertised. This has been understood by advertisers in the past, and despite this, they have continued to advertise for decades.
What this law basically does is tell Joe Public what he is forced to watch, which is wrong.
Anyone who has surfed enough web comics knows that there are a quite a few comics that seem to be PA Wannabes in some fashion. What do you guys really feel about people who blatantly copy the the style or look/feel of your comic? Does it piss you off, or do you simply accept imitators as a price of being one of the most popular comics online?
Oh, and on a totally separate note, there have been some jabs thrown between you guys and Scott Kurtz. Is it all in good fun, or is is there actually some sort of animocity going on?
There are, unfortunately, tons of young CS grads and similarly skilled young people who would kill for the chance to work in the video game industry. This is why EA and many other game studios continue their practices of working their staff to death for less than stellar pay.
Dangit, I should have reloaded the front page quicker. You beat me to the joke.
The best way to have the salespeople make the lies convincing is to have them believe the lies themselves. It is cheaper to employ someone like that than employ a master salesman who could lie with a straight face since they usually work for larger commissions such as Real Estate.
When I bought a TV at Best Buy, the salesperson tried to sell me a Monster Surge Protector for like $70 or so. When I declined, he fed me this line of B.S. as to why I should buy it. I still declined.
THEN he tried to sell me the extended warranty. I declined again. He countered back by saying it was highly likely my TV would break within a year (it has been over two years now, past when the Best Buy warranty would have expired, and the TV still works just fine).
The thing is that he sounded genuine. I knew the words coming out of his mouth were pure BS, but I think he was trained to believe what he was saying was truth.
Customer: Hi, I'd like to buy this TV.
Salesguy: I won't sell it to you.
Customer: What? Why not? Isn't it the TV you advertised in this morning's paper as being on sale?
Salesguy: Yes, you see, that TV there is just a ploy to get you into the store. I'm not allowed to sell it to you, I'm supposed to convince you that this TV is just a "basic" model and this other TV we have here for $300 is much better.
Customer: I guess I'll just need to take my business elsewhere, then,
Salesguy: Good idea!
I probably would have been tagged as a problem customer at Fry's had they implemented something like this.
I always used to go in early in the morning when they opened and find stuff way mis-priced or in the wrong display. When they rang it up higher than their store display advertised, I kindly told them that the display had another price and gladly showed the cashier the display. They would immediately change the price, but would typically give me the price on the store display.
Usually it was only ever for a few bucks once in a while, but the crowning achievement was when I got a video card for $100 less than it should have been because the employees had put the wrong cards in the display.
There are abusive customers who cost a company more money than it is worth. They exist in every industry. At some point, the biggest abusers may find themselves "excommunicated" from the services of a particular company.
I knew some people who worked on a tech support team for a piece of business software. A particular customer called in to support habitually, asked questions about simple things he could have easily found in the manual, wasted the time of the techs repeatedly, and was ultimately abusive towards them.
It came to the point where the supervisor of the team made the decision to inform the customer that they would no longer be supporting him, gave permission to the team to hang up on him, and even suggested he go with a competitor's software package in the future.
Who doesn't like Minsc, HK47, or Deekin? They crack me up.
I'm often willing to spend money and see a movie that my friends or co-workers say is good in the theaters if it appears to catch my interest. Sometimes it is a good thing to have a night out. Movies are a decent opportunity to do this.
On the other hand, if there is nothing that catches my interest, I won't go to the theater. If the MPAA wants me in the movie theaters twice a month, they need to start churning out LOTR-quality movies at record pace.
If I'm not willing to go to the theater, I'm certainly won't spend hours searching for a torrent and downloading a movie that doesn't interest me enough either. Even on consumer broadband, it still takes several hours to grab Hollywood movies at a reasonable quality. It isn't worth the effort.
Certainly there are people downloading movies in considerable quantity. But seriously, the MPAA members are raking it in with ticket sales of good films, DVDs, Special Edition DVDs, etc. Not to mention merchandising. This is when they release three or four good movies a year and the rest is utter crap. If they could divert their efforts away from horrid movies, maybe they'd make even more money.
Suing college kids and teenagers just makes them look like royal assholes and it looks like they are just doing it to get a supplemental two or three grand here and there.
No secret that I'm a supporter of Badnarik. I've been thinking, however, how I would vote if there were Instant Runoff Voting. Going off of who qualified for my state's ballot (Nader was not one of them). Forgive me if I forgot someone in my haste.
1. Badnarik. The LP has the best platform for reducing the size and scope of government. The LP is against the current brand of foreign policy* that lead to the conflict in Iraq and causes us to be the targets of terrorists.
2. Petrouka. Some of the Constitution Party ideas are a bit way out there, but in general they are for less government, are also against the current brand of foreign policy.
3. Cobb. I disagree strongly with the Green platform, but if I'm going to choose between socialism and facism (where things are headed now with the Republicrats), I'll choose socialism. At least Cobb is a real left wing candidate, and is also against the current brand of foreign policy.
4. Kerry. You can't call him an anti-war candidate. Kerry plans to pull us out of Iraq in INFINITY MINUS TWO years, as opposed to Bush's plan to pull us out in INFINITY MINUS ONE. Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. Kerry's party bows to the Entertainment Industry and his administration will likely take no steps to reform IP laws so that they cannot be abused by megacorps. Still, he's better than Bush.
5. Bush. I absolutely fear what Bush's administration might try to pull once the fear of not being re-elected is out of the way. Military Draft? Even more blatantly facist policy? Legislation worse than the Patriot Act? Probably all of the above. Anyone voting for Bush because he lowered taxes is living in a Dream World. Bush has increased the size and cost of the government. Sure, he gave us back a few hundred bucks so we'd be inclined vote for him again, but increasing Government size amounts to deferred taxation. We'll eventually all pay for his outing in Iraq in the form of taxes, even if that tax increase comes from Bush's successor.
*By this I mean the current foreign policy that dictates the US get involved in the business of other countries when it shouldn't.
What constitutes AAA titles?
I think FF:CC, Four Swords Adventures, and Tales of Symphonia for the Cube are awesome. Doom 3 and Farcry for the PC both kick ass too.
OSS critics fail to realize that Open Source refers to the style of lisence that the software has. Open Source is not really a "brand" like Microsoft.
This particular software may not be extremely well written. It just so happens the authors decided to GPL it, making it Open Source. Just sticking a lisence on the software and revealing the source code doesn't magically make it good or bad.
There are plenty of bad programs released under the GPL, just like there are plenty of bad closed-source products out there.
Sorry, I'll bite.
What do you call their current FUD campaign against Linux (the "Get the Facts" campaign) then, except as an attempt to dissuade people from using Linux and Open Source?
Are you trying to tell me that Microsoft would NOT like Linux and Open Source Software to disappear?
One of Microsoft's major business practices has classically been to lock people into their software through proprietary standards. A clever anti-spam standard would be a huge selling point towards using Microsoft's software, especially with a large ISP like AOL on board.
Do you think Microsoft is going to just allow Open Source to create its own compatible implementation for free?
I can easily envision the campaign. If MS gets their standard widely adopted, they'll spread FUD saying that Spammers prefer Linux and Open Source, and that Spammers want people to use Open Source because it facilitates the spread of spam.