This is part of Microsofts new markteing image. “Everything I know, you know” (!!!!!!!). Looks like a cheesy gap ad. Also love the commercials with people sitting ’round the table in a nice wooded pasture-a more accurate image would be horned demon-god ensalving all of humanity. Can we run the apple 1984 ads again?

A great testimony for .NET

What is .NET for all you laymen? You might recall what microsoft tried to do with HTML? Now try to imagine what they want to do with Web Services and Blogs…

Its interesting to see this little band of brits who are suspiciously sympathetic to Microsoft. Looks like you fell under Tony Blair’s new Bush-friendly programs( basically young+education+no celtic or socialist/labor affilations ). Blair wants to permanently graft the US to British society( whos the colony now! ). Should take care of those pesky celtic nationalists. There is a really interesting one here. I like his account of the drink from the garden hose language. Are young engineers buying this garbage? Shows you how threatened they feel by Google. Poptones you are right on. Ed Daniel: im not so sure such a comprimise is possible( Matt 6:24 ). That may work as a short term strategy for those of us with 10-15 years left in our careers. Some of us have our whole lives ahead!

Once that is in place there will be no more linux if the corproations so decree it. There will be no new hardware produced that is not wrapped up in patents on the proprietary TCPA platform and the open source community will be unable to support this new hardware because the corproations will inevitably refuse to allow them access to the needed “proprietary information.” And there will be no screaming about “antitrust” issues because Microsoft and Apple and NEC and any other giant corporate player will have “equal opportunity to compete in the market.”

The only loser in this will be linux – and, ultimately, every last one of us, as we all become information serfs in the kingdom of corporations.

I have to say I read LL’s book ‘The Future of Ideas’ and it moved me very much. Since then I’ve held Mr. Lessig in quite high regard. That said I think we’re in for some bumpy times ahead because Longhorn/RSS is not ever going to be as cool as what we were promised in 2003 which was Longhorn/WinFS, I know DBox will deliver Indigo, Avalon seems well on its way but I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about what’s already here and well established when WinFS is what they should be getting ready – but that’s a totally seperate thing I couldn’t hold back on ranting about, sorry.

Back to the CC stuff – I’m worried, and it’s this type of behaviour that makes me suspicious because it’s like the good guys have all been pushed out to the edge to fight on the frontline. I think we need to see visibility and transparency at Microsoft not just from the ‘workers’ but from the peolpe who call the shots and take the strategic decisions. Until then it’s going to be real hard to trust a company with such a bad reputation for playing straight.

After all, it’s not just relationship marketing – if we don’t use Microsoft tools and instead create value for our users with open source tools that deliver the applications they need there won’t be a Microsoft in the future.

It is so hard knowing what to do with Microsoft, it is so very hard knowing which way to turn – Microsoft, IBM, Sun, or just heading out into the global village with Linux and seeing where we end up.

Meanwhile on that note global warming stuff we should be considering – if temperature across the globe rises another 2 degrees most of Africa turns into a desert – yet here we are discussing our specialities, our niche subjects – the things that give us purpose – what purpose is this, what life is this?

You are in deep trouble. Your courts of law are being bought out by the rich and powerful. Child molestors and murderers go unprosecuted. Those of you living in your luxury apartment complexes drawing salaries from the corrupted medical system are in for an extreme shock. How will America pay for the salaries your schools have promised you? Isis will soon demand her fee, how will you pay?

“Skulls, cemeteries, and blood are associated with her worship. She is black and emaciated. Her face is azure, streaked with yellow, her glance is ferocious; her disheveled and bristly hair is usually shown splayed and spread like the tail of a peacock and sometimes braided with green serpents. She wears a long necklace (descending almost to her knees) of human skulls. She may be shown wearing a girdle of severed arms. Children’s corpses as earrings (likeliest representing natural infant mortality and childhood mortality from causes such as disease), and cobras as bracelets or garlands add to her terrifying adornments. Her purple lips are often shown streaming with blood; her tusk-like teeth descend over her lower lip; and her tongue lolls out. She is often shown standing on the inert form of her consort, Shiva. She is sometimes accompanied by she-demons. Her four arms hold weapons or the severed head of a demon: these objects symbolize both her creative and her destructive power…”

reXembXr tXe abXmiXatXon of SXdoX.X.

I think many of them get it, they are just working for Microsoft. It is a known fact that Microsoft pays people to troll lists and make comments like:

“But Microsoft makes excellent technology”
“Microsft treats it employees well. I repeat, Microsoft treats it employees well.
“Microsoft treats it customers well. I repeat, Microsoft treats its customers well.”
“If you oppose Microsoft you will lose.”

and many many others… Slashdot is still the best place to find info on Microsoft- it is reporting by people who actually undestand this crap, and they generally dont really care what they say, most of them are running linux systems anyway. These ‘Microsoft aren’t that bad’ people are the class that Microsoft primarily targets. As mentioned, they are the a carefully delineated class here in america. Microsoft prices their products just low enough, and employs a carefully discerned demographic of people to scoop this class up onto the Microsoft bandwagon. It is sickening to hear the so called ‘ivy league’ becoming more and more microsoft friendly. Their technology is a piece of crap and every CS major knows it. If this is what kind of ‘knowledge’ we are producing in our universities we are in big, big, trouble. Hear that EU!? america is !@#$ing up big time, that is why the dollar is dropping. In ten years we will be a super poor country running on really bad IT because bill gates bought our legal system! So you still think Microsoft is ‘not that bad’? I personally think we should club them to death via anti-trust lawsuits( and if the Dems think they can get away with ignoring this one, think again ), but thats just my humble opinion.

Finally poptones, I think that the OSS community has to grow up and stop being little immature ‘I own the world’ brats. That ‘a’ guy sure is a jerk! OSS people have to start helping each other whenever they identify themselves. Of course, Microsoft will try to co-opt whatever symbols we may use to do that, but we do have the OSI( starring Bruce Perens ), and Linux/GPL which they have not been able to mess with up until this point. The GPL is very difficult for them to deal with due to its ‘viral’ nature.

http://www.vintela.com/

As for you ‘Microsoft is not that bad crowd’, I suggest you read up on the history of modern Germany. Bye!

Yes, I will have my own little microsoft fiefdom to call my own. Do you really think that the ‘chicken littles’ are going to survive in the long term?

The adoption of software depends of several factors:
1) marketing
2) simplicity of use
3) compatibility

If microsoft comes along and babelizes every single protocol that is invented, technology in general will become much more costly to use. The adoption of technology will come to depend entirely on marketing, and therefore the entity with the highest spending power will win, further perpetuating the problem. In the end, we will have crappy technology and Microsoft will have a lot of money. Now you know why we all drive cars that are based on technology this is approximately 100 years old and causing enourmous environmental problems? But the geniuses at Stanford can’t think of any good ideas, hmm must be because there is absolutely no way in the universe that we can derive power from anything but petroleum. Strange how that works, being that petroleum is the most stable and therefore valuable commodity in the world.

Americans, and most of the world, are not accustomed to demanding technological change, if markets can be controlled then they must be subject to the will of the people. The libertarian mindset has one major flaw: property is sanctioned and structured( even created ) by state law. It is double speak to say that government should stay out of private property, when the government was the one that created the property in the first place! Secondly it is the government that maintains property! Things may change in this century.

Gratuitous Microsoft Bashing( GMB ) is both entertaining and informative. I say on with the show! They don’t want to extend blogs, they want to eliminate blogs! Blogs are a great medium because they are simple and easy to use and implement. If and when this changes, then the healthy blog community will suffer greatly. The medium is the message. If the medium is confounded, so is the message.

Microsoft was on the W3C for eons. When Netscape refused to go, they went and they “led.” They offered up all sorts of wotzits and widgets and yet a decade hence their browser still cannot display a PNG image properly, they still do not properly handle some elements that are part of css1 even as we are now working with css3.

This is just more co-opt, embrace and extend. People have provided links, they have pointed to the documentation on how Microsoft plans itself to usurp – and bar – as many from as much of the “commons” as it can muster.

The same nonsense is now going on with their “.net initiative” – they offer up these specs and say “you are free to impliment them as you choose” and then as soon as it is apparent others are doing just that (i.e. mono) they begin “extending” those implimentations in a manner that locks up the spec in patents which they then deny to any open source project. Thus, much effort is wasted chasing a “free” spec only to have the gate (again) slam shut on any possibility of a complete implimentation as soon as we reach the castle.

It is simply not worth it. At this point the open source desktop is rife with features and capabilities Microsoft is still offering as vapour. Embracing any specifications they offer at this point would be an accedence to the most bloodthirsty and aggressive enemy of a free and open culture.