Slashdot

My name is Maximus Decimus^W^WBill Gates, ex-commander of the Armies of Redmond, General of the MS Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Steve Ballmer. Father of a murdered operating system. Husband of a bloated Office Productivity Suite. I shall have my vengeance, in this web or the next.

The worst thing is that the damage is done. No one you can vote for will ever restore the Constitutional rule-of-law and guarantee of due-process that are now in tattered, burning shreds.

Obama is to the right of Nixon - and is considered "center-left".

Once was America, now the Uber-Banana Republic.

The corruption is so obvious that the ISO's reputation has been harmed. This is a bigger win for M$ than the coo-coo standard they never intended to follow. It is as if RJR got the AMA to approve a cigarette through bribery and a truncated "fast track" process. OOXML is against everything the ISO stood for and that contradiction is the forest that should be seen through all the clear cut trees. Commercial standards are now obviously compromised.

Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.

The government isn't above the law. Just because you did something illegal at the request of our government doesn't make it ok.

They should be prosecuted (along with Bush and crooks) to the fullest extent of the law.

True crypt is fabulous. But is it good enough to hide a body?

Hans

I think the reason this suit got this far, and generated as much interesting legal materials and reactions as it did, have much to do with the lawyer working the case. She would have not got this far, if it was not for the efforts of her lawyer. You have demonstrated how to defend and win a case against the RIAA.

It is not often that we think of lawyers as the good guys, but in this case, the community owes you thanks.

Good Work.

While the story does have a point, it is important to remember that the iPhone is not sold with flat-rate data subscriptions in all countries.

Especially the iPhone 2 will not be sold with flat-rate. Both Apple and the telcos have gained insight and experience in the customers actual use of the phone. Standard terms for an iPhone 2 will be around 300 megs a month - a number which is very high for browsing and the occasional iTunes purchase, but nowhere near enough to sustain heavy VoIP usage. Or constant radio-streaming. Or video conferences. Or porn-streaming.

- Jesper

>..this is what you get in a society when everybody believes that they deserve everything and yet everybody is unwilling to do any hard work.

Funny, I would have said this is what you get in a society that values a piece of paper over hard work.

You can work 10x harder, 10x faster, and 10x smarter than the guy next to you, but if you didn't finish high-school/college/university, you won't get the better job.

Funny, child labor laws, weekends, 40 hour work weeks, worker safety laws, and clean air/clean water laws do the same thing. These things all drive up the cost of labor and push down productivity.

Maybe for the US to remain competitive, we should repeal those laws that prevent Americans from being truly competitive in the global economy. If it takes our kids working in coal mines 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, so be it. The first goal of American government is to protect the profitability of domestic and foreign businesses, and all these laws are standing in the way of this. /sarcasm off

That is NOT Gate's writing style and there are several mistakes as well that point to someone other than gates wrote the letter.

"I go to microsoft.com they have a download center" HUH? Cince when does the Head executive of the company refer to the company as "they" instead of "we"? I have never seen it even down to the grunt level.

This "secret memo" is bunk. it is in no way Bill Gates' writing.

As it stands, I have observed some common practices of simply blocking traffic going to or coming in from IPs from certain foreign nations. For some businesses, this practice alone reduces a tremendous amount of spam without affecting normal business flows. It would also make sense for users and businesses to restrict all communications with peers outside of their borders if, in fact, it has no adverse affect to their business flows.

Ultimately, this could lead to a segmented internet where entire nations find themselves effectively cut off by policy.

I am undecided about whether or not this is a good idea, but if China and Russia won't stop their criminals, perhaps they shouldn't have a presence on the global internet. The message? Play nice or you won't be allowed to play at all! My guess is that internet sanctions would have much faster reaction than economic sanctions.

While I understand your point. Democracy does not inherently mean that the best result will be the outcome. What percentage of parliament is ever near objective, and full aware of the what is as stake on both sides?

Make malware share files illegally. Sit back and watch as it causes mass shutdowns of internet connections.

Better still, tie it in to the mechanism used in the current rounds of SQL injection attacks.

Idiots. All they'll end up with is a DDOS attack on their legal system...

Andy

In other words, China is jumping on the bandwagon of countries that is playing the "Sue Microsoft Lottery" to get some extra cash. I mean, I don't like Microsoft's products, particularly their operating systems, because I think they've completely lost touch with what a computer is supposed to do, but when it comes down to it, it's our fault, not Microsoft's, that their junk software is so ingrained in the entire computing industry. We are the ones who vote with our dollars, and so, if you don't like Microsoft, or their software doesn't get the job done for you, then don't pay them your money. But don't wine and complain about them either. And certainly don't play the Microsoft lottery. That's ridiculous.

They tried to Google-translate Canadian into English? You fools, It cannot be done!

You actually make a good point, humor aside... Why does an article from a primarily-English speaking country (And the Quebecois all speak English fluently, the pompous gits just won't) need translation in the first place?

Offhand, I would have to suspect this as some sort of propagandist rag that cares more about inciting the masses than reaching them.