I was responding to xoB's post.

Wow.

Is that a big "libertarian thang", urging companies to defy the laws of sovereign governments because they can?! What the fsck? Would you advocate the same behavior of a foreign entity that operated in the United States? This position is 180 degrees from every other political post I've ever seen by you. "Respect other's boundaries" (I paraphrase). Aren't the laws under which companies do business within the boundaries of the governments who write and enforce them?

Because they can, pbtbtbt. That is the weakest, most immature reasoning possible in support for your position.

I don't dispute there was an internet in place or that some people were using software driven stuff. Hell, I took Fortran classes in 1965, and used punch cards to input a mainframe 300 miles away, for machine tool programming.
My point is how many people were using it, especially outside of work? Gates/Windows brought computers & internet to the masses and vice versa.
I'm not prepared to argue whether that was a good thing or not, however. :D
It's every companies duty to fight unfair trade practices that are so common abroad.

It's also a company's right to say "we refuse to cooperate and are leaving the market until the sanctions are lifted". What are they going to do, force them to come back?? If Microsoft can make more money there than it looses then they might decide to give in and cooperate, but if they see it as a dangerous infringment on their corporate welfare then they should just pack up. Where did the idea come in that they have a responsibility to the EU beyond coexistance and profit???:eyebrow:

They were responding to a tangential remark I made.

Who is banning tinkering? Banning and not assisting are different positions.

Windows became ubiquitous because it provided people and businesses with a complete package they could use without doing a mix & match of products from different sources. Most people don't want to tinker, neither do businesses want their people tinkering instead of doing their job.

Once people are comfortable with Windows they can jump from company to company. Employers like to have a large pool of prospective employees they don't have to train on basic PC skills.

There's no reason why anyone can't come up with their own OS and sell it to everyone, but it's not Microsoft's responsibility to help them..:tinfoil:

The laws of the country don't say, "If you do business in our country you must give away your trade secrets to your competitors" and if it did, Microsoft wouldn't do business there in the first place.

Also, the EU isn't a country.

Perhaps. "Duty" is a loaded term these days. Duty in service to what or whom? Duty to their shareholders, a fiduciary duty? Ok, then run the numbers a decide what is the most profitable course of action, and proceed. A duty to ... US industry? to Truth, Justice and the American Way? Duty to what? I think MS is a good corporate citizen, a law abiding citizen. In fact, they're most successful in places where the rule of law is strongest. In the US they're everywhere and we have a strong rule of law. In Asia, they're getting their butts kicked by pirates. In response to this expensive hemmorhaging of business, where do you think they turn? Meaner pirates? They certainly could. They could afford a global army of software mercenaries. They have the wherewithal, the means motive and opportunity to act as they will. But no, they turn instead to the law, the courts. "If it please the court, these people are stealing from me and I want relief". They work within the law. Hell, they work the law. But not in outright defiance of it. The validity of Radar's "solution" expired in about third or fourth grade, in every place that Microsoft does business. Probably still works in the jungle, though.
In what way is this a valid suggestion? Venting, ok. Pointing out an unfair judgement, possibly. A possible course of action, especially for a marquee American company such as Microsoft? Hardly. This isn't libertarian thought--it's Anarchy.

And my point was that he did it only because he beat everybody else in and then locked them out, not out of altruism and not by being better at it than others but by being very sharp at anticompetitve marketing and engineering practices...and breaking contracts he had signed when it suited him.

We would have missed out on exactly nothing if he hadn't been the dog in the manger.

That's correct. Most people don't want to advance mankind. Most people are happy to maintain status quo. Only the 1% advance mankind. Tinkers, doubters, questioners, the few who push out an envelope and therefore advance mankind are not found among myopic workers who use a PC and therefore call themselves 'computer literate'. We are not talking about those in love with a status quo mentality.

Meanwhile, many big businesses don't want tinkering- a nature of businesses that fear 'disruptive innovation'. Such only comes from that 1% - not from the majority who prefer to stay ignorant.

Why is the Prius being modified for AC electric recharge? Not by Toyota. But due to those tinkers and due to a company that does not fear innovation, future Toyota products will be modified for an AC electric recharge option. Why? You and everyone you know did not do that tinkering. But the less than 1% who did therefore caused another innovation.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, whose product once encouraged tinkering and therefore created so many new compatible businesses and new MS markets, now all but discourages tinkering.

Just because you and so many peers don't tinker means nothing in this discussion. Just because some companies don't want tinkers means those companies never belong anywhere in this discussion. Non-tinkerers are a majority that also don't advance mankind. We are not discussing those who fear or who have no useful curiosity. We are discussing those who would learn and therefore make something even better than a current MS product. Those who don't appreciate a need for tinkering and the underlying learning also would be same who never appreciated why innovation, new ideas, new concepts, and new products are the only source mankind's advancement.

IOW don't even mention the majority who are totally irrelevant to this topic and to the advancement of mankind. Even mentioning what the majority do with their computers and what they companies want would only be mentioned to confuse the issue - does not belong anywhere in this thread.

Can you put an MS OS on a different hardware platform to do something MS never intended? Once that 'tinkering' was encouraged and had started to create new MS markets. Now MS fears you might do that. Same reason why MS is having so many problems getting their OS products on other platforms such as cell phones and intelligent machinery. MS simply hides too much of what was once always made freely available by MS - and therefore once contributed to MS's phenomenal growth.

It was a simple and so accurate example. Why are the return codes from PING a trade secret? Those who are only 'computer literate' and therefore would not appreciate the value and need for innovation should not even bother answering. The example of a secret that never need be a secret demonstrates how much MS hides rather than encourage innovators - the tinkerers. MS now has too much of a 'we fear the innovative' attitude which would also explain their stock price AND why MS does not succeed in other new markets.

http://www.paulgilbert.com/Judas_Prius.html

I love Paul Gilbert.

Your "enlightened", politically correct attitude is exactly why and how this country is screwing itself. Keep telling yourself it's not a jungle out there, until you get hit with a poison dart.

Why do you think the EU was formed in the first place, so they could all hold hands and buy the World a coke? No, so they could gather the clout to screw the rest of the World in general and the US in particular.

If you think there's ANY country out there that's concerned with our welfare you're sadly naive. :headshake

Your telling me that we would have a single dominant operating system from someone else?

I doubt it, I think we would have a dozen competing systems that all did the job, but acting differently. Then if I had a problem, or just a question, I'd have to find somebody that was familiar with the OS I was using.

I, and I suspect the rest of the great unwashed, don't want that.
Those of you that understand how all this stuff works can mix and match various programs from here and there. You can be smug in your superior skills and curse Bill Gates for allowing the barbarians access to your cyber world.

But, we're here now and I thank him. :2cents:

It's a tool, the PC/Work Station is a tool, people use, to complete a task, either for pay or there own purposes.

I doubt your employer wants you to spend your day tinkering with it, instead of what he's paying you for. I also doubt, at the end of the week, he'd be happy with you telling him you didn't do that work because you're tinker, doubter, questioner.......patriot.

I'll leave the tinkering to the 1% that understand this stuff, and use the PC to do things that.... Hey look at what's on Boing-Boing! ;)

Well, you still do. But if your problem is with Windows, you'd better hope it's with a part that MSFT has chosen to reveal and is willing to let you continue to use, or you're screwed, and in addition you have no other options.

But I've seen technology convergence (yes, in operating systems too) before and I beleive we would have seen it again. In fact there's a not inconsiderable amount of convergence today amongst non-Windows OSs: OSX, Linuxes, BSDs, AIX, etc. Most of them have package managers today that are *easier* to use than a typical Windows product install not all that long ago. In fact the features you like best about Windows are all copied from such and their predecessors.

Not sure I buy into your claimed to represent the mind of "the great unwashed"...I think most of them will be happy with whatever they find as long as it works for them most of the time. That would be as true with, say, Ubuntu, as it is with the copy of XP that by contract between MSFT and the vendor is already loaded and involuntarily paid for on 99.9% of branded PCs.

But as it is they have no choice...and we'll see how happy they are about that state of affairs when we get to that MSFT nirvana where you get a software bill every month that left unpaid will cause your machine to stop working. Don't kid yourself: the phone-home-or-die infrastructure for that is being (quite visibly) laid as we speak.

In any event...the state you see today is not some magical thing billg did out of kindness for us all to make computing easy, something that no one else could have concieved of or done. That's MSFT spin, PR and propiganda, concieved after the fact.

Which is why I gave the solution that I did... sell them only software and hardware with which you are willing to comply with their demands and let the rest of the world move on.