This retarded class-action "settlement."

[CommonSense]

You know -- their pitiful attempt to pull the wool over the judge's eyes by tormenting poor schoolchildren and forcing them to use M$ crap.

Read about it here, among other places.

Discuss.

(Oh, and by the way -- FIRST POST!)

[actualfact]

yeah, i read about that last week. . what a shame.  they're trying to sidestep things.  what the fuck does providing school computers have to do with the case @ hand?  not a damn thing.  grrrrr

[Cabal_mb]

Your right what are they thinking! Reaaally! Donating Computers. For cryin' out loud!   :rolleyes:

-Cabal www.thedigitalcabal.net

[Tha]

I've got an idea...Why don't they dump all the M$ shit and stick Linux or something along those lines, on the pc's for the kids to use...It'll get those little terd burglars used to something desent.
My schools starting to bring in a heafty load of iMacs and G4's for us to use instead -- my sysadmin is a bit of a MacFan. Poor Soul.lol. Whattya's think about that?
  :confused:

[ChakanTGM]

I like RedHat's proposal to have thier distro on MS purchased computers. But I am almost certain that Microsoft would pull some stunt like loading all the computers with winmodems or something. After all, they have resorted to such cry-baby tactics in the past.

Which reminds me, I wonder why MS would gladly use FreeBSD on thier Hotmail servers, yet throw all of _thier_ garbage platforms out to the general public? Maybe they don't want anymore lame-ass script kiddies to plow thier way through NT/2000/XPeed.

But that's another thread . . .

[CommonSense]

quote:Originally posted by Kyle McD:
My schools starting to bring in a heafty load of iMacs and G4's for us to use instead -- my sysadmin is a bit of a MacFan. Poor Soul.lol. Whattya's think about that?
   :confused:

I think the guy's not being paid enough!

Linux is wonderful and all, but subjecting little kids to it really is asking for trouble.  Unless elementary schools are now teaching kids how to run servers and I somehow hadn't heard about it, I really don't think Linux is the smartest choice.

Windows is a pretty damn lousy choice -- well, because it's Windows, obviously.  But also because of the fact that M$ really doesn't seem to give a shit about the fact that most school districts don't have money to burn on their ridiculously overpriced software licenses.

And the argument that "we should let kids learn on the platform they're most likely to use when they're out in the real world" is  pure bullshit, too.  Does anyone really think a fifth-grader using Windows ME today (because i doubt the average school has "upgraded" to XP yet) is going to have some magical insight into the prevailing operating system in use in 2011, when he/she enters the workforce?  Yeah, I didn't think so either.

And I think Cabal is missing the point, above.  Don't think for one second that Microsoft has ANY altruistic motivation behind donating machines and software to schools.  This is a settlement that allows them to further their monopoly by shoving Windows down the throats of countless school districts, depriving them of a choice.  Can they use the money to buy something else?  Sure, but how likely is that when they're probably most inclined to believe Microsoft is a "great citizen" for showering them with all this money?

Finally, Apple got off its "take the higher ground" ass and said something about this shit in a public statement, though I personally don't think they were strident or angry enough.

[actualfact]

quote:Originally posted by The Webmaster:

And I think Cabal is missing the point, above.

me too.

no one ever said donating computers was a bad idea.  but this raises another question -- what's microsoft been doing for schools in the past?

[machead]

Originally posted by The Webmaster:
[QB]You know -- their pitiful attempt to pull the wool over the judge's eyes by tormenting poor schoolchildren and forcing them to use M$ crap.

The entire episode is a total sham.

So the government accuses Microsoft of gouging the market, then it gives them carte blanche to do the very thing they were brought up on trial for.

The government had NO CASE AGAINST MICROSOFT.

The government is Microsoft's biggest customer.

The government can tell you as a subcontractor that you must use Windows?

Fuck them both.  

The thing that pisses me off is that they used our taxpayers hard-earned dollars to pursue this sham in the first place.

Give us our money back.  :mad:   :mad:   :mad:

[Sinewave]

I say MS is made just to give schools money. That way they can spend it on anything they want to.

[ChakanTGM]

Machead, taxpayer money is wasted on everything nowadays, you're absolutely right.

Congress should pass a law prohibiting the use of Microsoft's lame ass OS because it contains excessive amounts of pork. We are going to have to switch one day, Microsoft cannot hold thier monopoly forever.

Even if we can't change things now, we can for the future. For the sake of our kids and of our grandkids. We should be using computers to exhibit thier full potential, not to heighten somebody's profit margin.

Dammit, it's about time we stopped all of these idiots from commercializing everything they can squeeze a fuckin buck out of. If you haven't noticed, the Internet is going through the same commercialization process as everything else has. If only the NSF didn't unleash this beast into the hands of these dimwits, without any strings attached. Now, with WindowsXP out there, Microsoft is one step closer to having a monopoly over the Internet. Don't believe it? Well wake up and smell the decaf buddy because the people at Redmond will stop at nothing until the ENTIRE computing industry is under thier control. Dynamic insertion of HTML into others webpages will escalate to IE8 selecting exactly what web pages it wants you to view. Then we would really be seeing what "suddenly everything sucks" truly means.  :mad:

[ssjhook]

we all know linux is more advanced than windows but it's not very suitable for young children... lol

oh yeah has anyone else besides me seen this?

MS Linux

[ssjhook]

p.s. the whole pulling the wool over the judges eyes...

is what good lawyers do folks...

letting a 12 year old girl cry at the stand is sometimes the only way to win a case

and lets face it

we all know MS isn't going to go without a fight

[k3it4r0u]

quote:Originally posted by hook:

MS Linux

ROFL, it's basically Linux + a crash module if they ever get around to doing it.  

If my school got funds from M$, we'd just use it to buy more systems, and install debian on them.  

[ November 29, 2001: Message edited by: k3it4r0u ]

[ssjhook]

unfortuntely we don't have too many smart sysadmins at our school, if we did we wouldn't be using nt 4.0 still

we got a t1 line and a pretty descent size network, we'll be a tree soon

[asdf]

quote:
Originally posted by The Webmaster:
 You know -- their pitiful attempt to pull the wool over the judge's eyes by tormenting poor schoolchildren and forcing them to use M$ crap.

watch how the machines they send will be equipped with winmodems and winprinters and other wincrap that requires win32 software for functionality   :mad:

[ November 29, 2001: Message edited by: asdf ]