When the EU "Competition Commission" meets...
DFS
* I say Windows XP and Office 2003
* I say they schedule their meetings using Outlook
* I say they do their budgets on Excel
* I say they create longer documents in Word
* I say they create presentations in Powerpoint
Ramon F Herrera
Do they have Windows? It would be irresponsible if they didn't.
Do they have Firefox, Open Office, etc.? You bet.
-Ramon
7
Corporation to evade justice:
There is probably more that 5 reasons there
to reduce windopws usage to 50%.
They are fed up of windopws.
And they probably get very angry when they find out what asstroturfers
and windummies working for Micoshaft Corporation
do in the market place behind the backs of competition authorities
when its their watch to ensure all competition is fair.
Linonut
Unfortunately, you are merely guessing.
And, even if right, so what? The U.S. government used Standard Oil
gasoline when it went after them for anit-trust. They used Ma Bell's
phones while busting her up. They even used IBM computers.
Your analogy is just meaningless, if not silly.
--
Tux rox!
Rick
... so what if they do?
--
Rick
DFS
> After takin' a swig o' grog, DFS belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>
>> ... what code is running on their computers?
>>
>> * I say Windows XP and Office 2003
>>
>> * I say they schedule their meetings using Outlook
>>
>> * I say they do their budgets on Excel
>>
>> * I say they create longer documents in Word
>>
>> * I say they create presentations in Powerpoint
>
> Unfortunately, you are merely guessing.
That I am, but it's an educated guess based on history and MS dominance.
> And, even if right, so what? The U.S. government used Standard Oil
> gasoline when it went after them for anit-trust. They used Ma Bell's
> phones while busting her up. They even used IBM computers.
Grasping for slippery straws, are ya?
> Your analogy is just meaningless, if not silly.
uh huh.
If I'm right, and I very likely am, it means they're unwilling to "eat their
own dog food". It means they're not willing to use MS-alternative software,
but they would like to see a significant part of the market do so.
It's similar to the 'do as I say not as I do' credo that so many cola
"advocates" live by.
Rick
> Linonut wrote:
>> After takin' a swig o' grog, DFS belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>>
>>> ... what code is running on their computers?
>>>
>>> * I say Windows XP and Office 2003
>>>
>>> * I say they schedule their meetings using Outlook
>>>
>>> * I say they do their budgets on Excel
>>>
>>> * I say they create longer documents in Word
>>>
>>> * I say they create presentations in Powerpoint
>>
>> Unfortunately, you are merely guessing.
>
> That I am, but it's an educated guess based on history and MS dominance.
>
... and AGAIN... so what if they are?
>
>
>> And, even if right, so what? The U.S. government used Standard Oil
>> gasoline when it went after them for anit-trust. They used Ma Bell's
>> phones while busting her up. They even used IBM computers.
>
> Grasping for slippery straws, are ya?
>
It seems like he was just stating facts.
>
>
>> Your analogy is just meaningless, if not silly.
>
> uh huh.
>
> If I'm right, and I very likely am, it means they're unwilling to "eat
> their own dog food". It means they're not willing to use MS-alternative
> software, but they would like to see a significant part of the market do
> so.
They could be a ton of reasons why "they" are using MS products.
>
> It's similar to the 'do as I say not as I do' credo that so many cola
> "advocates" live by.
That would assume there is a 'do as I say not as I do' credo that so many
cola advocates live by.
--
Rick
Linonut
> Linonut wrote:
>> After takin' a swig o' grog, DFS belched out this bit o' wisdom:
>>
>>> ... what code is running on their computers?
>>>
>>> * I say Windows XP and Office 2003
>>>
>>> * I say they schedule their meetings using Outlook
>>>
>>> * I say they do their budgets on Excel
>>>
>>> * I say they create longer documents in Word
>>>
>>> * I say they create presentations in Powerpoint
>>
>> Unfortunately, you are merely guessing.
>
> That I am, but it's an educated guess based on history and MS dominance.
No, it is a guess made in ignorance of what goes on in the halls of the
EU.
>> Your analogy is just meaningless, if not silly.
>
> uh huh.
>
> If I'm right, and I very likely am, it means they're unwilling to "eat their
> own dog food". It means they're not willing to use MS-alternative software,
> but they would like to see a significant part of the market do so.
>
> It's similar to the 'do as I say not as I do' credo that so many cola
> "advocates" live by.
No, it is you simply pulling speculation out of your ass.
This article gives you more support than you do!
http://www.globalisation.eu/publications/unbundlingmicrosoftwindows.pdf
--
Tux rox!
The Ghost In The Machine
<no...@nomail.com>
wrote
on Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:47:38 -0000
<13fe5pq...@news.supernews.com>:
It means, of course, that DFS is hinting that people
should continue to use XP, Office 2003 (Word, Outlook,
Excel, Powerpoint), and other such Microsoft goop -- and
presumably upgrade to Vista when SP1 comes out.
After all, it's what people are used to, therefore people
want it, therefore we all love Big Brother.
Or something like that. (Personally, I use Eclipse, vi,
Evolution, oocalc, and impress, roughly in that order.)
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Is it cheaper to learn Linux, or to hire someone
to fix your Windows problems?
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Sir Michael Clayton
"Linonut" <lin...@be11south.net> wrote in message
news:slrnfff94n....@mlsrock.launchmodem.com...
If you look at the meta-data for the PDF file it was created with Adobe
Illustrator CS2 (propreitary software) which only runs on Windows.
<rdf:Description rdf:about=""
xmlns:xap="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/"
xmlns:xapGImg="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/g/img/">
<xap:CreatorTool>Adobe Illustrator CS2</xap:CreatorTool>
<xap:CreateDate>2007-03-28T10:23:45+01:00</xap:CreateDate>
<xap:ModifyDate>2007-06-09T13:18:11+01:00</xap:ModifyDate>
<xap:MetadataDate>2007-06-09T13:18:11+01:00</xap:MetadataDate>
Translation - The EU continues to use Microsoft and Adobe products because
they are capable of getting the job done and shuns OSS software just like
the rest of the world. Reminds me of the "advocates here" who make their
living and earn their paycheck writing propreitary Windows software all day
long then come home at night and preach how evil Windows and propreitary
software is.
The Ghost In The Machine
<cla...@moon.net>
wrote
on Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:14:03 -0400
<46f7c840$0$26449$8826...@free.teranews.com>:
Easily confirmed by using the 'strings' utility on
the file. Yep, that invalidates everything all right.
Nothing to see here, all of us might as well all go
home now.
</sarcasm>
I would want to look further anyway.
I will note that some of the conclusions appear wrong in
that article anyway, AFAICT. OSes [*] *are* a natural
monopoly for commoditized markets; these markets tend
to gravitate towards the cheapest solution, and OSes are
readily duplicated (which is bedeviling -- and possibly
helping! -- Microsoft in such areas as Peru and China).
"Cheapest" of course is an agglomerate of many factors,
of course; Microsoft in particular has promoted their
solution as the cheapest, and are now a monopoly, natural
or otherwise, which means that to some extent they *are*
the cheapest, as competitive or quasi-competitive solutions
(such as Linux!) will require a learning curve to get out
of the Microsoft usage dingle. In other words, everyone
knows about BSODs, Word, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl/X/C/V,
Butterfly Man, and the upper right window close, but
relatively few know about panics, OpenOffice, KOffice,
or Scribus, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, left/middle mouse button,
Tux, and upper left window close (where it used to be,
long ago, before Win95 took over everything).
Linux further exacerbates this dingle by implementing
Ctrl/X/C/V and upper right window close, plus emulation
solutions such as WinE and VmWare. While this makes Linux
more flexible, it also makes Windows more comfortable, by
easing the pressure to switch from a tried and true (FSVO)
solution to a new, strange, unfamiliar one.
(Unless one happens to be an old Unixhead, like me. :-)
And even then, I'm so old that I never really used X
until CDE came out on HP/UX, which was well after Win3.1.)
There are also issues for OEMs in that it takes time,
energy, and money to certify hardware for various
operating systems. Therefore, the top one gets preference.
Guess who's the top one for commoditized PC/PCI hardware?
To be fair, bundling doesn't help (the article's right
about that), and OEM's profit margins are razor-thin.
Dell in particular is showing a gross profit of only 2.709B
out of 15.183B in the last reported quarter (Yahoo! is
marking it as "delinquent", which is not good no matter
how one slices it). That's 17.8% profit, which isn't
nearly as good as Microsoft's 10.134B out of 13.371B --
a whopping 75.8% profit.
HPQ gets 6.287B out of 25.377B -- 24.7%. They're not
delinquent, at least -- but the profit margin compared to
Microsoft is still pretty lean.
IBM: 9.938B out of 23.772B, or 41.8%. Not bad,
though IBM's not in the desktop hardware business
anymore AFAIK.
For its part RHT is 100.609M out of 118.873M -- 84.6%,
considerably better than (if smaller than) Microsoft.
But MSFT and RHT haven't quite engaged each other yet
in any serious competitive battle on the desktop. (The
servers, yes...though Microsoft is battling back using
various interesting tactics.)
And, just for more context, XOM has 42.692B
out of 98.350B -- a 43% profit margin, in an entirely
different industry.
The only way (IINM) to forestall this inevitable failure of
the competitive commodity market is to rigorously enforce
standards -- a difficult task at best -- or engineering
a catastrophic failure of the monopoly, and probably a
good chunk of the computer/Internet market along with it,
by introducing unknowns such as malware into the works.
The paper is extremely vague on how much costs would drop
in a pure competitive market -- an impossibility anyway,
since this market is inherently monopolistic competition,
at least, which means *everyone* is going to be a little
bit different. Gentoo in particular touts its ability
to build from source (not quite fair, admittedly, as
Gentoo, like Debian, is a non-profit). Fedora is (AFAIK)
a derivative of a trademark dispute (which at one point
led to interesting names such as "Pink Tie").
Given all this, 2 pages with a glossy image of a Red Hat
desktop and a bunch of people staring at computer screens
(not sure if they're students or sales agents in a training
session or what) isn't going to cut it as a serious attempt
at market analysis; this paper has low credibility even
without the Adobe connection. Still, low != none; I'd
just wish for more red meat on this plate -- a *lot*
more red meat.
A word on unbundling: how do we know the purchased OS is
appropriate for the purchased desktop hardware? If the
user is dumb enough (and some of them are pretty dumb,
sorry to say) to, say, buy a PPC variant with an x86-64
desktop, chances are they're not going to be happy.
Of course a reputable retailer might take back the media
and either issue a store credit or swap for another, more
appropriate OS -- but it's far easier for everybody just
to bundle the two together and then test the bundle in
the first place. Of course, the top bundle leads to a
somewhat natural monopoly again...
The certification idea isn't too bad, but they'd
better detail specifically what they've tested -- e.g.,
"Red Hat ES 5 Desktop/x86" version rather than "Linux".
Since Gentoo and others allow for easy custom builds one
could get even more ridiculous here as well. Not sure
regarding the Linux kernel version, either; every distro's
is a little different, mostly because they all release at
different times.
Side issue: one example of the purely competitive market
that is occasionally touted is the agricultural market.
Well, that's not quite the fact now...genetically modified
foods are going to introduce some interesting weirdnesses
therein, and most of the farms are owned by agribusiness
conglomerates anyway.
Welcome to the New World Order. Don't believe everything
one reads, at least not without a peek behing the scenes,
if such is available.
[*] I'm using the term in the generalized sense; a modern
OS includes a fair number of libraries and system
utilities, which primarily run in user space.
IE in particular is bundled in...making it cheaper than
Netscape, back then. Of course, Firefox is fighting
back (more power to 'em!) and the ensuing browser wars
will lead to some interesting quirks. One hopes W3C
stays on top of all this.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Useless C++ Programming Idea #110309238:
item * f(item *p) { if(p = NULL) return new item; else return p; }
High Plains Thumper
Why are you so worried about the EU, when in Linux and Open
Source is gaining in US?
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/092107-california-school-it.html
[quote]
How open source saved a school district’s IT department
California district slashes expenses, improves productivity with
open source software
By Jon Brodkin, NetworkWorld.com, 09/21/07
[/quote]
This is a story about how Heather Carver, IT director at Windsor
Unified School District in California was able to reduce IT staff
workload to that manageable, expand IT infrastructure to fibre,
install energy efficient and cost effective thin clients, send
legal copies of software home so students could complete their
assignments, update the entire software base within budget, and
reduce dependence on proprietary sources.
[quote]
Carver dramatically reduced costs by moving about 60% of software
to open source, while also saving on hardware expenses by
employing virtualization and thin client technology.
Windsor spent about $2,500 on AVG open source security products
from Grisoft, a fraction of the prices charged by Trend Micro,
according to Carver.
Windsor’s “mixed source” approach includes OpenOffice, SuSE Linux
Enterprise Server, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and proprietary
technologies like Microsoft Windows Server, Novell NetWare and
Novell ZENworks.
[/quote]
Antivirus alone would have cost the $200K US. Open source
reduced that to $2.5K for those computers running Windows. For
the rest, she deploy Linux servers and desktops. Her adoption of
Linux and Open Source cut IT budget costs by at least another $100K.
[quote]
IT operating expenses and travel time were cut by 50%, since the
new products can be managed remotely for the most part, and have
fewer problems. “OpenOffice doesn’t have bugs like Microsoft
Office has,” Carver said in an interview after her presentation.
Reducing travel time was crucial for Windsor’s staff of four
technicians, a number that includes Carver.
After the staff workload was reduced, “of course I gave them more
workload,” Carver said. “More projects and more projects, that’s
how technology works, always going forward.”
[/quote]
Open source is easier to manage, she didn't have to worry about a
Microsoft SMS server getting squirrelled up, failing to push
patches or dealing with squirrelled up Microsoft Office
installations.
Now her small staff had time to devote to "real projects", not
toner monkey stuff with Microsoft products.
[quote]
Carver’s small team manages 70 servers, two full racks at each
school, 2,000 computers and 200 thin clients.
Thin clients not only save power and energy, they prevent kids
from messing with the systems by installing programs behind the
firewall, while allowing them to save homework with flash drives,
Carver said.
[/quote]
Kids could now safely save their work on USB pen drives, bring
their work to school on USB pen drives. Thin clients are much
more energy efficient than energy hog fat clients and take up
less space on the (literal) desktops, giving students more table
top space for books and materials.
[quote]
The district also burned the Novell edition of OpenOffice onto
CDs, sending the disks home with students so their homework files
would be compatible with systems at school.
Carver said she hasn’t run into any major technical problems with
open source software, though she initially faced a challenge
convincing teachers to use programs like OpenOffice.
“Most people come from [schools using] Microsoft,” Carver said.
“You get a fight in the beginning, and once they’re using it,
they love it.”
[/quote]
She also broke people of the Microsoft drug habbit. Open Source
user base has expanded, kids taking software home, so they can
work on the same software. Parents getting introduced to Open
Source applications.
Hey, it doesn't get any better than this, doesn't it DFS?
--
HPT
DFS
LOL! Thank you, Sir Michael.
Linonut: kiss my ass.
> <rdf:Description rdf:about=""
> xmlns:xap="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/"
> xmlns:xapGImg="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/g/img/">
> <xap:CreatorTool>Adobe Illustrator CS2</xap:CreatorTool>
> <xap:CreateDate>2007-03-28T10:23:45+01:00</xap:CreateDate>
> <xap:ModifyDate>2007-06-09T13:18:11+01:00</xap:ModifyDate>
> <xap:MetadataDate>2007-06-09T13:18:11+01:00</xap:MetadataDate>
>
>
> Translation - The EU continues to use Microsoft and Adobe products
> because they are capable of getting the job done and shuns OSS
> software just like the rest of the world.
The leader of the "Competition Commission" wants <=50% of the world to
reject Windows - as long as it's not her <=50%.
> Reminds me of the
> "advocates here" who make their living and earn their paycheck
> writing propreitary Windows software all day long then come home at
> night and preach how evil Windows and propreitary software is.
It's the Cola Way.
spam
> Sir Michael Clayton wrote:
LOL yourself for applauding an idiot - "Adobe Illustrator CS2 only
runs on Windows" is not a factual statement.
Linonut
> Sir Michael Clayton wrote:
>> "Linonut" <lin...@be11south.net> wrote in message
>>> This article gives you more support than you do!
>>>
>>> http://www.globalisation.eu/publications/unbundlingmicrosoftwindows.pdf
>>>
>> If you look at the meta-data for the PDF file it was created with
>> Adobe Illustrator CS2 (propreitary software) which only runs on
>> Windows.
>
> LOL! Thank you, Sir Michael.
>
> Linonut: kiss my ass.
Why? His link does /exactly/ what I said. I quote:
>>> This article gives you more support than you do!
Jesus, the pair of you are thick as shit.
>> Translation - The EU continues to use Microsoft and Adobe products
>> because they are capable of getting the job done and shuns OSS
>> software just like the rest of the world.
The first part is right, the second part is just idiotic.
> The leader of the "Competition Commission" wants <=50% of the world to
> reject Windows - as long as it's not her <=50%.
>
>> Reminds me of the
>> "advocates here" who make their living and earn their paycheck
>> writing propreitary Windows software all day long then come home at
>> night and preach how evil Windows and propreitary software is.
>
> It's the Cola Way.
What's funny is that both of your are crowing about the omnipresence of
Microsoft products -- the very situation the EU and most of us here
wisely want to get away from.
--
Tux rox!
Linonut
It's a mathematical rule -- two half-wits put together yields but a
half-wit:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=660
These two idiots would have you stop using phones just because you're
suing the phone company.
--
Tux rox!
Sir Michael Clayton
"spam" <gtdav...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1190688541.8...@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
Why of course the EU probably created this on linux by using WINE to run
Illustrator. Of course that's what really happened.
spam
> "spam" <gtdavie...@gmail.com> wrote in message
down.
spam
Opps wrong fruit - not being a yank shows.
Sir Michael Clayton
Correct. It was rumored to be a cherry tree, not an apple tree.
The relevant fact is that neither Illustrator CS2 or Adobe InDesign run on
Linux and they never have. Yet the EU uses propreitary tools that run on
propreitary OS's to create little propaganda leaflets on how everyone (else)
should be using open source software. It's the classic "Do as I say and not
as I do" hypocrisy.
And BTW - This document was created on a Windows machine. There is other
metadata in the file that indicates this.