To help speed up my command line work in bash, I define a bunch of single character aliases and functions.
alias.. 'cd..'
alias d 'dirs -v'
alias r 'pushd +1' # roll the stack
and my favorite for jumping to the indicated number in the directory stack...
i=1
while test $i -lt 10 ; do
alias "$i"='pushd +'"$i"' >/dev/null ; d'
i=`expr $i + 1`
done
unset i
so that a simple "d" command shows the stack, which gets up to about 7 or 8 sometimes. Then, typing in a single digit like "3" becomes a command to push over to that directory.
I won't even begin to mention my "p" commands for mucking with my PATH environment variable, but I'll leave it to your imagination.
My Swiss Army Knife is with me constantly because it's so useful. Had it for years. I've lost the toothpick and the spring in the scissors, but it's still indispensible.
So, with the recent crackdown in the USA on small scale implements of terrorism such as nail clippers, I try to remember to put my knife in the glove compartment before a flight.
I forgot once. And I sure didn't want to give away my knife. The TSA inspectors must have 10 million pocket knives by now. What to do before getting in line for the security scan?
I found an fake potted plant in an isolated corner of the airport and hid the knife under some bark chips.
When I came back 3-4 days later I just picked it up on the way out.
The park officials were pretty upset by that commercial because it's undoing their years-long campaign to educate visitors not to put shit down the geyser holes.
Basically, the geological formations can be quite delicate, sometimes changing on their own due to natural forces, but gum, coins, garbage, which have all been found at times, can do lasting damage.
Incidentally, if you've never visited, you ought to. The pools and geysers, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs are all worth seeing.
The park bookstores sell a book approximately entitled Death and Mishaps in Yellowstone that my friend found fascinating. It's an historical account of bad things that have happened to people in Yellowstone since in opened in the 1870s. There are plenty of accidents, but more than a few incidents that could have been nominated for Darwin Awards.
A lot of the pools are within a few degrees of boiling; one guy got scalded jumping in after his dog who just jumped right in.
Another guy around 1900 got mauled by a full-grown black bear after he was, uh, poking his umbrella up a tree at a bear cub.
And then there are people who try to place their kids atop bison to get a souvenir photo and a lasting memory....
But what I've seen is open source deployment at the grass-roots level. Acceptance is a gradual, building thing with exposure working its way slowly upon the organizational hierarchy.
Smaller company CIO's and smaller organizational subunits in large corporations are willing to take gradually increasing potential risks by utilizing open source.
The irony is stealth deployment cuts both ways.
One of the reasons it's easier to take that risk with open source is that deployment doesn't require visible commitment of dollars. That Samba or Apache server just cranks away, no invoices come in, no need to count licenses to be compliant, etc. And it sure doesn't hurt that many open source applications are as reliable as death and taxes; they don't drop service causing the CIO to fume about not being able to get service.
But by the same token, those open source deployments are largely invisible to people higher up; those people are less familiar with the successes and failures and are therefore not yet ready to jump in the water headfirst.
Some people I know who hate learning curves (and I'm one of them) will run the same piece of software for years and years.
They beat it to pieces and wring every last penny of value out of the thing because it doesn't wear out for them. The more they use it, the lower their per-use cost becomes. Small businesses are running everyday applications on DOS.
If your software is "good enough" and can be run forever, then why would you spend good money to buy something different? Is it really necessary and going to provide increased ROI?
That is still true for most of the
certificate authorities, but it isn't always true. Some of the new certificate
authorities don't actually ask to see documents before issuing the
certificate, instead, they merely make sure that you have control of the
domain by sending an email to the listed contacts.
To me, this really seems to suggest that certificate issuance should include some more detail about the exact level and kind of trust that is guaranteed.
And, that browsers ought to be able to display that trust arrangement in a way that end users can easily understand.
Something along the lines of:
ezcertificates.com guarantees that this certificate from flybynight.com is valid and has posted a bond in the amount of $10.45 at First Cayman Bank.
Something in a sidebar to show this and maybe other details about the SSL connections would provide users with more of the information that they really ought to be paying attention to.
It looks as if some of this already exists, but you have to dig around and be interested to find it.
Security ought to be as convenient as possible (but no more so).
...going to force Microsoft to spend more time on security and stability, and less time on adding new features.
His prognostication is late.
IMHO, Linux is the single most important reason that Win2K was as good as it was relative to previous offerings to Redmond.
So good, in fact, that knowledgeable customers aren't convinced there are any valid technical reasons for migrating to XP or successors. The cost benefit ratio just isn't compelling.
In it's effort to stave off the force of commoditisation that Linux and free and open source software is bringing, Microsoft is working furiously to add features that make migration away from Windows less attractive.
The Outlook/Exchange orbit is a prime example of that strategy.
But this kind of feature lock-in is only a good strategy for existing customers that are already heavily invested in Microsoft's products. It's not a good strategy for growth of new customers, particularly cost-conscious customers.
And, even though the recession is over, the cost-cutting activities in businesses are not over, which really puts the spotlight on Microsoft's high-margin products that have "good enough" low-cost alternatives in the free and open source world.
Those we call "pirates" get it almost for free. Depending on who they are, they are subject to risks of prosecution, which represents a cost if you think about it in the insurance sense.
So MS charges large corporations a price, not too high, and it's heavily enforced. Then, sometimes people working at large corporations are allowed to take home copies for limited use, or to acquire things at a substantial discount. (A friend got the latest version of Office for $20 a little while back while at the store in the shrink-wrapped box it was about ten times as much.)
Smaller businesses and individuals pay another price, but some of those Windows and Office users get the piracy discount.
Third world countries - same thing, except there's more piracy discounting going on. Same thing at colleges and educational institutions.
All this goes to show that there's a tremendous pricing flexibility that MS has and actually uses. It's a consequence of monopoly control, pure and simple.
I don't know of any other products with this much differential pricing except for local telephone service, movies, CDs, cable service, electric service.
I doubt I'm the only geek who thought adolescence sucked. It was like hell.
High school always seemed like a place full of some superficial, pretentious people, various jocks, cheerleaders and student body presidents, the good-looking, and a huge, silent crowd. With only a few acquaintances, most school days I'd never even exercise my vocal cords. As the refrain goes from Psycho Killer, "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed."
There's enough mental challenge already for most geeks willing to seek it. Computers, chess, reading great literature, philosophy, mathematics. Often, getting access to those resources compounded my social isolation. As a high school junior I was interrupting my school day to take sophomore college calculus where everyone was a lot older than I. And, really, how many other students at my high school would be interested in Martin Heidegger and phenomenology?
But geeks really do need to develop some social skills for their long-term mental and emotional well-being, and this is where most geeks are ill-prepared to self-instruct. Emotions and social interactions aren't always that logical.
The only way to learn is by doing.
Nothing's foolproof, and every person is different, but here's a couple of possible suggestions.
Camping trips. A shared experience, in a natural setting, yes, even with some privations like cold food, sprained ankles, bugs, etc. will help social skills develop. Plus, no TV, no radio, etc. Doing tasks like putting up tents, making fires, etc. are good excuses for cooperative behavior and require at least some communication. Then, the only thing to do is to sit around the campfire and talk. What a concept.
Volunteer work. Take the kids down to help out building a house for Habitat for Humanity, painting an apartment for an elderly person, cleaning up litter on a vacant lot, etc. Many adolescent geeks fall into the trap of thinking that the warped world of high school is the Entire Known Universe. It's not. And some of those stupid superficial people that make you sick in high school end up dirt poor alcoholics, just like some geeks do. We live in a big world and we're all in it together. Anyone that doesn't recognize that is living inside a false world and not realizing their full potential.
I've always regarded this driving gaffe to be the moral equivalent of leaving one's fly open.
And the steering wheel auto shut-off after a turn is completed is not enough.
I swear, Caddies and Town Cars ought to be equipped with ramp function for loudness (up to DEF CON 5 buzzer level) and interior brightness (disco strobe light intensity) for turn signals as a helpful reminder that need to be shut off.
I'd love it if Google and the Web were able to produce comprehensive survey articles and concise in-depth analysis. But, as much as is out there, and as good as some of it is, it's not yet a replacement for much of dead tree literature.
Just searching the indeces on SciSearch for articles gives a lot more references in technical areas than just searching what's been put on the web so far (what, maybe 20-50% of what's been produced between 1992-2004?).
Unfortunately, copyright restrictions will prevent my ultimate dream from being realized: having everything that has been published put on-line and indexed and freely searched and accessed. I mean things like Lord Kelvin's papers, the collected notebooks of Ramanujan, the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, etc.
...So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated.
Governments have already taken many steps backwards using the power of regulation. Witness extended copyrights, lengthy patent protections, DMCA prohibitions reverse-engineering.
Many of us who believe free and open source software could provide efficiency and productivity increases world wide are becoming cynical of government regulation as it has been as much a force for encumbering as it has for freeing.
Re:NP = New Postage?
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
non-upgraded computers get treated like criminals
Microsoft....Intel....I'm getting a sense of deja vu here.
I could see something getting out of hand with just verbal communications, misunderstandings, etc.
Anyone providing or buying services ought to insist on a written contract that both parties sign. Then, there's no question of consequences if someone doesn't pay within 30 days, etc.
Well, there's a great deal of variability in credibility in Slashdot postings.
Empirically, one interesting sign of credibility of Slashdot I noticed a few months back was that Google searches for various technical terms would point to Slashdot stories and postings.
Re:Lawsuits dig a deeper financial hole for SCO?
on
More on Recent SCOings On
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Boies doesn't work cheap
Events have twisted full circle.
If you go back about 5 years, David Boies was an attorney for the Justice Department, where he did a bang-up job prosecuting Microsoft for anti-trust violations.
Of course, we all know how that turned out, with a settlement that doesn't seem to have visibly shaken Microsoft's business.
Then, about a year ago, the SCO debacle starts up with Boies leading the charge.
"How could Boies betry us?!?" cry the Linux zealots.
Ignore that and consider
the implications of these recent revelations.
Doesn't this evidence beg for a re-examination of the terms of the settlement or the opening of a new investigation?
I mean, if this isn't predatory behavior then I don't know what is.
It might look that way to you, to me and to a lot of other folks.
But a well-paid lawyer is able to say with a straight face that it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to be hauled into court simply for making a bad investment decision.
"Bill Gates thought he'd give Warren Buffett's business model a crack after accumulating US$ 50 billion in cash, but due to his lack of experience he made an unwise investment in SCOX which has lost considerable value. It's a capital loss, your honor!"
And bought up the L.A. streetcar system and closed it down.
And probably were quite happy that Ike pushed the Interstate Highway system as an important element of military defense.
Shoot, if I were a big company these days I'd try to hitch my corporate strategy to the labels of "homeland security" and "counter-terrorism".
I'd always figured that Microsoft's trump card to defeat FOSS was DRM, which can be sold with buzzword du jour compliance. Plus, spam and worm infestations just make the sale of DRM easier to the herd we call the general public.
I imported all my old MH folders (I had been using exmh for a while) into Evolution maildir formats.
Got probably ~3BG of mail archives stretching back about 14 years.
One problem I sometimes have is getting errors to the effect of "too many open files".
Oh, and if Evo goes down ungracefully then restarting gives errors, have to remove ~/.gconf, go through setup again, and then, my 200 old appointments from last year suddenly pop-up all over the place.
...he gives me a scrap piece of paper and a pen to put it down, this really seems weird to me....
Not at all weird. Not after his last customer, "John Smith", who paid in cash (Ben Franklins with a little bit of suspicious white powder on them) and "didn't have his ID at the moment", and gave him a nice tip. Oh, and he got a special Family `n Friends deal for the extra phones for his wife "Jane Smith" and their son and daughter "Johnny" and "Janey". Prepaid in advance and everything!
they should also condemn IBM if they were to, say invest $100m in an anti-MS smear campaign.
Well, since IBM still needs to sell a lot of hardware with MS software on it, they don't want to go out of their way to take revenge for OS/2. It's just not good business for IBM.
Besides, MS has pissed off so many little companies, customers and programmers along the way to becoming an 800 lb gorilla that IBM doesn't need to fund any anti-MS smear campaign. Such a campaign is already fueled by MS' own history.
The interesting thing in the larger context is that this kind of investment (if it really did take place) was no more than a business decision by MS. Given the high stakes, you could see why such a decision might have been made. But the executives at MS are making decisions that might have been fine in 1984 when they were a smaller company fighting tooth and nail for every small percentage of market share. But now, in the light of the anti-trust actions, such decisions look very much out of scale. If I owned a lot of MSFT I'd have to ask whether the right people were making decisions or whether the company has outgrown its current management. The flux of people in and out of the company over the past couple of years also does not reflect well the current management.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too cute, this technical criticism of Microsoft's code vs Linux!
What do the dollars tell you has been successful?
To help speed up my command line work in bash, I define a bunch of single character aliases and functions.
and my favorite for jumping to the indicated number in the directory stack... so that a simple "d" command shows the stack, which gets up to about 7 or 8 sometimes. Then, typing in a single digit like "3" becomes a command to push over to that directory.I won't even begin to mention my "p" commands for mucking with my PATH environment variable, but I'll leave it to your imagination.
My Swiss Army Knife is with me constantly because it's so useful. Had it for years. I've lost the toothpick and the spring in the scissors, but it's still indispensible.
So, with the recent crackdown in the USA on small scale implements of terrorism such as nail clippers, I try to remember to put my knife in the glove compartment before a flight.
I forgot once. And I sure didn't want to give away my knife. The TSA inspectors must have 10 million pocket knives by now. What to do before getting in line for the security scan?
I found an fake potted plant in an isolated corner of the airport and hid the knife under some bark chips.
When I came back 3-4 days later I just picked it up on the way out.
pouring all the Metamucil down the Old Faithful
I visited Yellowstone not long ago.
The park officials were pretty upset by that commercial because it's undoing their years-long campaign to educate visitors not to put shit down the geyser holes.
Basically, the geological formations can be quite delicate, sometimes changing on their own due to natural forces, but gum, coins, garbage, which have all been found at times, can do lasting damage.
Incidentally, if you've never visited, you ought to. The pools and geysers, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs are all worth seeing.
The park bookstores sell a book approximately entitled Death and Mishaps in Yellowstone that my friend found fascinating. It's an historical account of bad things that have happened to people in Yellowstone since in opened in the 1870s. There are plenty of accidents, but more than a few incidents that could have been nominated for Darwin Awards.
A lot of the pools are within a few degrees of boiling; one guy got scalded jumping in after his dog who just jumped right in.
Another guy around 1900 got mauled by a full-grown black bear after he was, uh, poking his umbrella up a tree at a bear cub.
And then there are people who try to place their kids atop bison to get a souvenir photo and a lasting memory....
I can't speak for telecoms.
But what I've seen is open source deployment at the grass-roots level. Acceptance is a gradual, building thing with exposure working its way slowly upon the organizational hierarchy.
Smaller company CIO's and smaller organizational subunits in large corporations are willing to take gradually increasing potential risks by utilizing open source.
The irony is stealth deployment cuts both ways.
One of the reasons it's easier to take that risk with open source is that deployment doesn't require visible commitment of dollars. That Samba or Apache server just cranks away, no invoices come in, no need to count licenses to be compliant, etc. And it sure doesn't hurt that many open source applications are as reliable as death and taxes; they don't drop service causing the CIO to fume about not being able to get service.
But by the same token, those open source deployments are largely invisible to people higher up; those people are less familiar with the successes and failures and are therefore not yet ready to jump in the water headfirst.
You think you're funny, but you're damn right!
Enforcement should be delegated and hierarchal, just like DNS lookups.
If a clueless and lazy user can't bother to patch up their box, then the ISP should cut `em off.
If the ISP is too cheap and lazy to enforce good network behavior on their users, then their broadband provider should cut `em off.
All the way to the backbone, to the biggest router!
Start with the premise of responsibility, enforce only when responsibility is not exercised.
Some people I know who hate learning curves (and I'm one of them) will run the same piece of software for years and years.
They beat it to pieces and wring every last penny of value out of the thing because it doesn't wear out for them. The more they use it, the lower their per-use cost becomes. Small businesses are running everyday applications on DOS.
If your software is "good enough" and can be run forever, then why would you spend good money to buy something different? Is it really necessary and going to provide increased ROI?
how hard is it to have a system that when person A votes for Candidate X, increments X's vote-count by 1?
Not hard at all to program a machine to increment counter X by 1 when button for candidate X is pushed.
It's all the people that are the problem.
Given the stakes, do you trust everyone involved in the process of electronic voting completely?
If not, then, likewise, it's not much harder to increment counter Y by 2 when button for candidate X is pushed.
That is still true for most of the certificate authorities, but it isn't always true. Some of the new certificate authorities don't actually ask to see documents before issuing the certificate, instead, they merely make sure that you have control of the domain by sending an email to the listed contacts.
To me, this really seems to suggest that certificate issuance should include some more detail about the exact level and kind of trust that is guaranteed.
And, that browsers ought to be able to display that trust arrangement in a way that end users can easily understand.
Something along the lines of:
Something in a sidebar to show this and maybe other details about the SSL connections would provide users with more of the information that they really ought to be paying attention to.It looks as if some of this already exists, but you have to dig around and be interested to find it.
Security ought to be as convenient as possible (but no more so).
His prognostication is late.
IMHO, Linux is the single most important reason that Win2K was as good as it was relative to previous offerings to Redmond.
So good, in fact, that knowledgeable customers aren't convinced there are any valid technical reasons for migrating to XP or successors. The cost benefit ratio just isn't compelling.
In it's effort to stave off the force of commoditisation that Linux and free and open source software is bringing, Microsoft is working furiously to add features that make migration away from Windows less attractive.
The Outlook/Exchange orbit is a prime example of that strategy.
But this kind of feature lock-in is only a good strategy for existing customers that are already heavily invested in Microsoft's products. It's not a good strategy for growth of new customers, particularly cost-conscious customers.
And, even though the recession is over, the cost-cutting activities in businesses are not over, which really puts the spotlight on Microsoft's high-margin products that have "good enough" low-cost alternatives in the free and open source world.
for Microsoft products is a reality.
Those we call "pirates" get it almost for free. Depending on who they are, they are subject to risks of prosecution, which represents a cost if you think about it in the insurance sense.
So MS charges large corporations a price, not too high, and it's heavily enforced. Then, sometimes people working at large corporations are allowed to take home copies for limited use, or to acquire things at a substantial discount. (A friend got the latest version of Office for $20 a little while back while at the store in the shrink-wrapped box it was about ten times as much.)
Smaller businesses and individuals pay another price, but some of those Windows and Office users get the piracy discount.
Third world countries - same thing, except there's more piracy discounting going on. Same thing at colleges and educational institutions.
All this goes to show that there's a tremendous pricing flexibility that MS has and actually uses. It's a consequence of monopoly control, pure and simple.
I don't know of any other products with this much differential pricing except for local telephone service, movies, CDs, cable service, electric service.
I doubt I'm the only geek who thought adolescence sucked. It was like hell.
High school always seemed like a place full of some superficial, pretentious people, various jocks, cheerleaders and student body presidents, the good-looking, and a huge, silent crowd. With only a few acquaintances, most school days I'd never even exercise my vocal cords. As the refrain goes from Psycho Killer, "When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed."
There's enough mental challenge already for most geeks willing to seek it. Computers, chess, reading great literature, philosophy, mathematics. Often, getting access to those resources compounded my social isolation. As a high school junior I was interrupting my school day to take sophomore college calculus where everyone was a lot older than I. And, really, how many other students at my high school would be interested in Martin Heidegger and phenomenology?
But geeks really do need to develop some social skills for their long-term mental and emotional well-being, and this is where most geeks are ill-prepared to self-instruct. Emotions and social interactions aren't always that logical.
The only way to learn is by doing.
Nothing's foolproof, and every person is different, but here's a couple of possible suggestions.
his turn signal is on
I've always regarded this driving gaffe to be the moral equivalent of leaving one's fly open.
And the steering wheel auto shut-off after a turn is completed is not enough.
I swear, Caddies and Town Cars ought to be equipped with ramp function for loudness (up to DEF CON 5 buzzer level) and interior brightness (disco strobe light intensity) for turn signals as a helpful reminder that need to be shut off.
I'd love it if Google and the Web were able to produce comprehensive survey articles and concise in-depth analysis. But, as much as is out there, and as good as some of it is, it's not yet a replacement for much of dead tree literature.
Just searching the indeces on SciSearch for articles gives a lot more references in technical areas than just searching what's been put on the web so far (what, maybe 20-50% of what's been produced between 1992-2004?).
Unfortunately, copyright restrictions will prevent my ultimate dream from being realized: having everything that has been published put on-line and indexed and freely searched and accessed. I mean things like Lord Kelvin's papers, the collected notebooks of Ramanujan, the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, etc.
Governments have already taken many steps backwards using the power of regulation. Witness extended copyrights, lengthy patent protections, DMCA prohibitions reverse-engineering.
Many of us who believe free and open source software could provide efficiency and productivity increases world wide are becoming cynical of government regulation as it has been as much a force for encumbering as it has for freeing.
non-upgraded computers get treated like criminals
Microsoft....Intel....I'm getting a sense of deja vu here.
I could see something getting out of hand with just verbal communications, misunderstandings, etc.
Anyone providing or buying services ought to insist on a written contract that both parties sign. Then, there's no question of consequences if someone doesn't pay within 30 days, etc.
Well, there's a great deal of variability in credibility in Slashdot postings.
Empirically, one interesting sign of credibility of Slashdot I noticed a few months back was that Google searches for various technical terms would point to Slashdot stories and postings.
Boies doesn't work cheap
Events have twisted full circle.
If you go back about 5 years, David Boies was an attorney for the Justice Department, where he did a bang-up job prosecuting Microsoft for anti-trust violations.
Of course, we all know how that turned out, with a settlement that doesn't seem to have visibly shaken Microsoft's business.
Then, about a year ago, the SCO debacle starts up with Boies leading the charge.
"How could Boies betry us?!?" cry the Linux zealots.
Ignore that and consider the implications of these recent revelations. Doesn't this evidence beg for a re-examination of the terms of the settlement or the opening of a new investigation?
I mean, if this isn't predatory behavior then I don't know what is.
It might look that way to you, to me and to a lot of other folks.
But a well-paid lawyer is able to say with a straight face that it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to be hauled into court simply for making a bad investment decision.
"Bill Gates thought he'd give Warren Buffett's business model a crack after accumulating US$ 50 billion in cash, but due to his lack of experience he made an unwise investment in SCOX which has lost considerable value. It's a capital loss, your honor!"
big automakers certainly used whatever resources
And bought up the L.A. streetcar system and closed it down.
And probably were quite happy that Ike pushed the Interstate Highway system as an important element of military defense.
Shoot, if I were a big company these days I'd try to hitch my corporate strategy to the labels of "homeland security" and "counter-terrorism".
I'd always figured that Microsoft's trump card to defeat FOSS was DRM, which can be sold with buzzword du jour compliance. Plus, spam and worm infestations just make the sale of DRM easier to the herd we call the general public.
I imported all my old MH folders (I had been using exmh for a while) into Evolution maildir formats.
Got probably ~3BG of mail archives stretching back about 14 years.
One problem I sometimes have is getting errors to the effect of "too many open files".
Oh, and if Evo goes down ungracefully then restarting gives errors, have to remove ~/.gconf, go through setup again, and then, my 200 old appointments from last year suddenly pop-up all over the place.
Other than that, I like Evo.
Not at all weird. Not after his last customer, "John Smith", who paid in cash (Ben Franklins with a little bit of suspicious white powder on them) and "didn't have his ID at the moment", and gave him a nice tip. Oh, and he got a special Family `n Friends deal for the extra phones for his wife "Jane Smith" and their son and daughter "Johnny" and "Janey". Prepaid in advance and everything!
Well, the phone call that did them in was a minute of silence. That seems about as secure a conversation as you could have.
Simply ringing the other number is equally secure and a lot cheaper.
they should also condemn IBM if they were to, say invest $100m in an anti-MS smear campaign.
Well, since IBM still needs to sell a lot of hardware with MS software on it, they don't want to go out of their way to take revenge for OS/2. It's just not good business for IBM.
Besides, MS has pissed off so many little companies, customers and programmers along the way to becoming an 800 lb gorilla that IBM doesn't need to fund any anti-MS smear campaign. Such a campaign is already fueled by MS' own history.
The interesting thing in the larger context is that this kind of investment (if it really did take place) was no more than a business decision by MS. Given the high stakes, you could see why such a decision might have been made. But the executives at MS are making decisions that might have been fine in 1984 when they were a smaller company fighting tooth and nail for every small percentage of market share. But now, in the light of the anti-trust actions, such decisions look very much out of scale. If I owned a lot of MSFT I'd have to ask whether the right people were making decisions or whether the company has outgrown its current management. The flux of people in and out of the company over the past couple of years also does not reflect well the current management.