If YOU were in charge of M

[TheQuirk]

I would buy myself a new PC and a new Mac.

And a juice bar.

[lazygamer]

I just can't understand why a company can't be big buisness and closed source, without pulling the BS that MS does. Surely it's possible to create a captialist corporation that has much honor, and believes that customers and product quality are #1, no matter how much of a monopoly it is..

[TheQuirk]

Some large companies (that I like):

Sams Publications
McGraw Hill
Toshiba
Sony
Analog Devices
O'Reilly
Philips
Borland

[flap]

quote:Surely it's possible to create a captialist corporation that has much honor, and believes that customers and product quality are #1, no matter how much of a monopoly it is.

Yes it is. You're making the mistake of thinking that Free Software and capitalism are mutually exclusive concepts. There's a little company called Red Hat that would disagree with your suggestion that Free Software can't be profitable.

And even if it turns out to be true that Free Software just isn't as profitable for companies as proprietary software is, we as a society have to say to the software vendors "sorry; tough shit." There are far more important ethical issues of Freedom at stake.
Capitalism, big business and copyright and everything else that's being used against us is actually supposed to be there for our benefit. The bottom line is that it will benefit society to have all software Free and open.

Get some of Richard Stallman's speeches on this subject here.

[Kintaro]

I would just use the money to help poverty!

If someone does not assinate bill gates soon the world will become a unhappy place! Why else would he keep so much money, most companys would use there revenue for development but Bill Gates and zer fruher Blammer will obviously do somthing evil with the $$$. When you think of it they could wuite easily corrupt the US Government and take over everything.

So Microsoft can stop people doing anything about it they stick backdoors in Video Codecs and know what your doing... Its just to control you there is no other reason for them to get such acsess, what needs to happen is for some people to get off there ass and do somthing, 90% of this forum have no intention of doing anything about Microsoft. For fuck sake everyone GET OFF YOUR ASS dump flyers, destroy Computer shops with "Microsoft Certified System Builder" on the front. Do not be afraid of being in trouble, im talking serious shit. What we should be doing is FUCKING MICROSOFT OVER. Sell computers with Linux. Microsoft want a monopoly. Do serious things, like:


So go get off your ass!

[TheQuirk]

Bill Gates doesn't really have that much money. I mean, he has a ton of money compared to me, but not as much as people advertise. Most of his value is in stocks -- and he won't be able to sell all of those stocks. I think this was discussed in another thread (or was it on some website I visited??).

Oh, Ex, what exactly have YOU done to "fuck microsoft?" I know you switched a few people over to Linux, but is that all (not a small feat, mind you, but you say that we should so something very serious. . .)

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]

[voidmain]

And here is an example of why I say that it is possible to "steal" open source code for use in proprietary software, but why you would be unwise to do so:

http://download.com.com/3000-2140-10132447.html

Check out all the reader comments on this beauty:

http://download.com.com/3302-2140-10132447.html

It just goes to show that legal action usually isn't required to thwart such low-life tactics....

[ August 05, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[eradicator]

1. announce the end of Windows
2. buy out Palm, Inc.
3. replace some staff
4. start coding BeOS R6

wonderful.