Interesting that Micro$oft has never really put themselves to the test of the court of public opinion that democratically votes by trying to outright manipulate an election process. Unlike Walmart (the largest retail seller in the world) which found out that the average voter in Inglewood, CA weren't impressed by their $1 Million dollar advertising campaign to manipulate the building a new store.
When a company the size of Micro$oft is based on using assumptions that are like giant ocean going oil tankers. A small and nimble "craft" (a.k.a. new idea) can happen right in front of them and they often don't even see it. (Internet took three years before BillG used his cash cow to wipe out competition - but interestingly not all of those competitors have disappeared = Mozilla, Opera, etc.) Open Source operating systems may be having a difficult time whacking away at Micro$oft's desktop cash cow. However, with Novell buying up players right & left AND having been practically run out of business by Micro$oft's version of networking. I expect that Novell will continue to develop something that is a contender. Michael Robertson is a very, very smart businessman - sat in on one of his early presentation about lindows.com and came away figuring he would prove a giant pain in the backside of Micro$oft. I expect Michael's Minute and his legal staff will keep poking at the soft legal underbelly of the desktop "beast" naming of windows - I think I noticed those things in old churches in Europe that pre-date computing by a thousand years. Michael's Minute will continue developing a usable series of functional and inexpensive to maintain products. I personally have found what they are doing to be usable on any 200+MHz, 1996 and later BIOS/computer I have tried Lindows/Linspire on to work on the first try. Michael's Minute (what ever he has to call it to keep Micro$oft attorney out of his hair) installation process sure is much more graceful than my favorite open source OS - FreeBSD. The pointy headed geeks on their "advocacy list" have their shorts all in a knot because someone wants to make www.freebsd.org web site easier to use and with some marketing flare. IMO many of them are just another bunch of open source OS groupys who seems to think world commerce works on the model of "geez this looks like fun, I'll put down everything to futz around chasing this obscure algorithm" ... oops, I must have had to much caffeine this morning ... John Oram Robert C Wittig wrote: > Hello Travis, > > Wednesday, April 14, 2004, 10:21:26 PM, you wrote: > > TS> In the US, we have the rule of "double jeopardy," which says you > TS> can't be tried for the same offense multiple times. This is > TS> because putting defendants through multiple identical trials is > TS> patently unfair - regardless of the outcome. This is exactly what > TS> Microsoft is doing. They sued us over the trademark in the U.S., > TS> where both companies reside, and we have repeatedly prevailed. > TS> After about two years, they began suing us in multiple foreign > TS> countries over the exact same issue, while delaying the U.S. > TS> action. > > I don't think the folks at Microsoft would believe it, but these kind of > tactics will eventually be their downfall. It's already happening. The > word is also out that Microsoft paid SCO a lot of money, to initiate > their lawsuits against Linux users. > > If Microsoft would spend all this money improving their products, > instead of suing people, it would be a much more respectable and > productive strategy. > > It's a shame to see the company that did so much to popularise the > personal computer acting this way. This is what happens when the > lawyers are running the the show... they come up with 'lawyer > solutions'. > > -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ > -weblog http://radio.weblogs.com/0128450/ > A business is as honest as its advertising. > . > >
