Posted on 04/07/2005 1:09:46 PM PDT by ShadowAce
Yes, I dont see it on this thread, and usually MS is attacked not because of it makes money but because it does so in a rather thuggish manner. It does to small software companies when the big 3 did to tucker..
This really isn't the sort of language that leads an outside observer like myself to think that the Yankee Group's surveys are objective and impartial.
Is it really a good idea to give your company or product a name that sounds like some female impersonator at a gay bar?
What did these nuts do to cause a woman to commit suicide? I haven't followed this mess that closely lately.
I don't think I've ever seen the "Closed-source, for-profit doesn't deserve to exist" types on this board. The hatred of Microsoft specifically is, however, at many levels.
I personally have no problem with the company as a whole, but many of their actions and philosophies, along with a general lack of innovation despite the "innovation" hype, does annoy me.
Upgrade your application/database server farm to dual-core processors while you're on Oracle, and you'll be absolutely praising at least one aspect of Microsoft's licensing arrangements.
> What did these nuts do to cause a woman to commit suicide?
I'm not sure who "these nuts" are, but it appears that
Val was overwhelmed with the discovery that her dad's
hand-picked successors turned out to be monsters, who
had sympathetic shills in the press. Shills who not
coincidentally favor SCO and Microsoft, and attack Linux.
> I haven't followed this mess that closely lately.
Groklaw has all the documents, since this involves
Canopy Group and SCO.
The suicide happened right after the settlement of
of a legal action. I suspect Val saw the settlement
as a major loss, but it couldn't be helped because
the parent Noordas are now evidently incompetent to
provide testimony, and the opposition was attempting
to subpoena them.
There were 2 suicides in this mess. The first was of
another Canopy employee after the Noordas sent in a
clean-up guy to straighten it out.
Readers of this site have a very realistic view of just
how corrupt many so-called reporters can be. But for too
many ordinary citizens, the first exposure to it might
be as a the subject of a warped story, and it can be
extremely shocking.
The cost of the cdrom has nothing to do with the price charged for software - its just a distribution medium.
I'm typing this message on Firefox so I'm not against free software. I just have a problem with individuals decrying a company for trying to make a profit.
If you remember during the Antitrust trial there was a study revealed from MS that stated that $45 was a fair price for Windows 95, but MS knew people would be willing to pay $95 for it. So the price was set to $95.
Now THAT was a PC.
Signed amiga---tec
Didn't know that. Good for MS, like all good capitalist companies, they let the market set the price for their product in order to maximize profit.
I wish that MS had never pulled the stunt of tightly bundling IE with their operating system rather than just competing by producing a better browser than the competition. While I still don't believe it was illegal or unethical, it just looked really bad and seemed kind of cowardly.
I certainly don't fault them for letting the market decide the price of the products however.
Take a look at Xandros.....
I paid for my Linux....
TRhe problem with Windows is its constant need for security updates....
I don't mind paying for software if I feel it is valuable to me. Just like in past years when I purchased shareware that I thought was worthwhile, I have no problem ponying up when I percieve value in it.
What I don't have to worry about though, are worms, viruses, spyware, adware, data corruption and blue screens of death. It also enables me to be much more productive in my work and private computing than I could possibly be with windows. Frankly, I also don't see how people can live with just a single desktop in their windowing environment. I regularly run 8 desktops (sometimes more when in serious development mode on certain things) with multiple programs dedicated to each one.
Your charges of socialism rings hollow with those of us who expect our computers to work for us, not the other way around. Show me a better product and I'll look at it. If it's worth the money, I'll pay for it. Until then, I'll stick with Linux.
"Yankee Group surveyed executives at over 500 companies, asking them questions on factors that influence TCO such as deployment costs, the cost of downtime, and the time and staff associated with security attacks."
As a security consultant who has interfaced with Director and C-Level management of well over 100 companies including many Fortune 500, I can report that most are blissfully ignorant of security principles, let alone practice.
As for Windows, I have yet to encounter a Windows network where I haven't been able to hack the Domain Administrator level account. The client I'm working for this week, we compromised in about 2 hours. Last week, one of my coworkers hacked Domain Admin at a defense contractor in 8 minutes.
She reaps what she sows. Except for the 11 PM phone calls, if that's really happening, it shouldn't be happening.
"There's an extremist fringe of Linux loonies...
"I've had these nut jobs calling me at 11 o'clock at night," said DiDio.
"The thing about Linux is, you can talk about a free, open operating system all you want, but you can't take that idea of free and open and put it into a capitalist system and maintain it as though it is some kind of hippie commune or ashram," [DiDio] said in a phone interview from her home in Massachusetts. "Because if you can do it like that, at that point I'm like, 'Pass the hookah please!'"
So, it's not cool to call Laura "DiDiot" on a forum read by a few thousand people, but "extremist fringe loonies" and "nut jobs" and "pass the hookah" in a major publication is just fine. And then SHE complains about being unfairly criticized.
Yeah, right.
Excuse my obtuseness, but exactly what on post #11 creates any link to socialism? As far as I understand it is about the market allowing to offer a product to a price closer to its real value.
Post #21 explains it quite clear.
Oh, a typo I guess... Well, I keep the same posture. Sometimes the R&D and financial risks are overrated. I'm not saying that a lot of money has not been expent to make WinXP - I'm saying that close to the same functionality could have been created by a lot less (i.e. Microsoft wastes too much to barely innovate), and it has. Microsoft is free to make a profit, but if they go too far then I should be free to not buy from them missing a few things if necessary.
To compare with the farmaceutical, it's like if some other laboratory had someway not expent too much discovering a different drug that makes the same thing the $100 one does, maybe getting a few monts late to the race, and selled it in $1 just because it can. Perhaps not a sound decision (should have tried $50? $90? An earlier result investing more?), but not socialism either.
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