Just to give you some idea of the power of MS to "get its story out" and the attitude of businessmen towards us little people. The Wall Street Journal has been a vocal critic, on its editorial page, of the efforts to rein in Microsoft's attempt to monopolize the cyber world. Now comes an editorial on the globalization of service work. I include four quotes, two about MS, and two about how the WJS sees the golden future for us all.
"Thanks largely to the fact that a decent education, Microsoft Office, and the Internet are all as useful in Manila as in Minneapolis, the service sector has gone mobile. " and "Look at what happened in the last great era of globalization, before World War I, when steamships and railroads made it much easier for laborers to migrate and commodities to flow. From 1870 to 1914, real wages in Ireland and Italy shot up by as much as one-third while they dropped 8% in the U.S." (My comment: Boy, those stupid nativists.) and "The stunning success of the U.S. tech-powered boom in the 1990s drew some 500,000 highly skilled H1-B visa holders from around the world and helped establish international business norms." (My note: They didn't import 500,000 lawyers.) and "Want to talk to someone in Sofia about a new business venture? Well it helps that you can email each other Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint documents,..." Such a shameless plugging of a proprietary product is really distasteful. I suppose it will have a powerful subliminal effect on businessmen and other decision makers. Equally distasteful is the vision of the golden world to come, where American citizens will work for less but will have the satisfaction of using microsoft software. Joel _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
