Posted on 04/20/2006 9:00:14 AM PDT by ShadowAce
The past few weeks have revealed much about the great paradox that is China. It is a nation that wants a capitalist lifestyle with centralised totalitarian rule. The past weeks have also revealed a lot about the Western World's biggest IT companies, Namely, they'll do just about anything to crack the giant fortune cookie market. Some will give away their software, others will allow their search results to be censored and others may even be prepared to help the Chinese Government track down its dissidents. The more principled ones among us may say: "IT companies beware of the Chinese trap." I say: "China, remember your 19th Century history. IT capitalism is a far more powerful drug for an emerging technology nation than Opium."
The meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates may have seemed to some a polite symbolic gesture on the part of China to show that it is serious about adopting Western standards of intellectual property and proprietary ownership. However, coupled with the $1.2 billion sweetheart deal that Microsoft just announced with China’s number one PC maker Lenovo, the intent of the leader of the IT capitalists is crystal clear: lock in.
Microsoft, which has around 90% of the global PC operating system and office productivity software market, has achieved its remarkable stranglehold through a process called lock-in. Those of us, which is most of us, who have had the Windows operating system on our desktops for more than a decade, know all about lock-in.
We Windows users know all about the files we have created in Microsoft Office over the years, not to mention the numerous other applications that have been developed for Windows by software companies such as Adobe, Macromedia, and smaller independent software vendors. We know how we have come to depend upon those applications and the data attached to them.
Our dependence has never become more apparent than when we discovered that there is a whole world of innovative and most excellent software that is freely available and collectively labelled under the banner of open source. Much of this software, such as Open Office.org, an excellent free replacement for the overpriced Microsoft Office, will run on both Windows and the alternative operating system Linux. Likewise, the increasingly popular Firefox internet browser, which is superior in both functionality and performance to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, will run on both operating systems.
However, there are many applications that will run only on Windows. While there are usually equivalent and even superior applications that will run on Linux, they are not easily interchangeable. This is what we mean by lock in. The longer you use the drug called Windows, the more you become addicted and locked in. The harder it becomes to make the break and move to a free and open environment where applications don’t cost an arm and a leg.
China is a nation with a unique opportunity. Yes there are a plethora of PCs on the market with pirated versions of Windows. Despite what anyone may say, it is a sure bet that Microsoft is happy about that. It’s the initial hit of free Opium. Eventually, as China is forced to tighten its regulatory requirements on PCs being sold into the market – it’s already happening with the no naked PCs rule – users will be forced to pay for their Windows operating system. In the meantime, they will be busily locking themselves into the plethora of Windows specific applications. The more they get locked in, the higher the price will be.
China make note. Windows is a drug that much of the world is trying to wean itself off. Look to the EU. Look to Brazil. Look to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the US. There is an alternative called Linux, which includes all of the applications you need to do business, and it costs a fraction of the price. You may want to buy an Xbox 360 if you want to play games however.
Nice weasel attempt. Your quotes to put it in context "yet none of the Linux companies can ever the uptime [sic] of microsoft.com" and "You mentioned uptime and microsoft.com is consistently king of the o/s vendors." MontaVista is an OS vendor and a Linux company and is running their site on Linux, which, BTW, is Fedora (Red Hat). You lose.
And you refuse to retract your insinuation that IBM's no-show on uptime is because they've recently rebooted.
And you refuse to address the issue of your misrepresentation of another FReeper on downloading security patches from hacker sites.
I think it's more impressive for a tiny vendor to get uptime. Microsoft has a massive server farm, plus a lot of their content is farmed out to Akamai (BTW, running Linux), but these smaller guys don't have that luxury. They have to survive on the robustness of their OS.
Interestingly, Microsoft's using Akamai once resulted in the Netcraft report for www.microsoft.com saying that the site was running Linux.
I didn't think I was that close. I'm too honest in general, so it's hard for me to predict the schemes and general weasel tactics that habitual liars will use in order to save themselves.
I'm also not good at predicting the actions of politicians, but I repeat myself.
Yeah, like watching you guys trying to defend those threads claiming all Windows 2000 support had ended. Or claiming that Red Hawk linux wasn't being distributed, but Google linux was about to. Or that Dell was selling Linux on home desktops, and that IBM was internally switching (yet again). Now you're down to ripping us evil capitalists for threatening China LOL.
I have at least a half dozen times tried to explain the difference between a server and a site but he has yet to get it..
Non-response.
So, do small organizations not have uptime? Hmmm?
What are you crying about now Flamer? The point remains, everytime some noobie tries to boast about linux uptime, they never can explain why Microsoft's uptime is almost always longer than any of the major Linux vendors.
Certainly if there was any truth to their BS, pitiful Microsoft would always be last, but instead they're almost always first, which just never matches up to their claims.
But hey, whatever does? If we belived their endless BS I could actually go buy a Dell desktop preloaded with Google Linux LMAO!
*sigh*
Dodged it again.
Poor flamer, will have to find something to burn now.
I have challenged you to point out where the content of the article was inaccurate. You have failed to do so.
Or claiming that Red Hawk linux wasn't being distributed
Lie. The claim was that Red Hawk isn't available for general download, only specifically to those clients of its distributor. You lied in response to this, claiming that the GPL forced people to distribute GPL software.
but Google linux was about to
You need to be able to tell the difference between a rumor article being posted and someone here claiming as fact that same thing.
i'm not interested in any more of your lies. Unbiased lurkers are encouraged to look at the links above, if they're not already convinced who the liars are. Hint: it's the same guys warning China of the evil capitalists on this thread.
Actually, I can. One, as I mentioned, is that a lot of Microsoft content is served through Akamai (on Linux, gotta love it), which has clustered servers all over the world to handle the content. Apple also serves a lot through Akamai.
Also, if you read at Netcraft (which I know you don't since you didn't know about AIX uptimes), you'd know that Netcraft often has technical problems reporting uptimes for various versions and configurations of Linux. For example, Netcraft can't get uptime on the Linux 2.6 kernel. So Red Hat not showing uptimes is no indication of their last reboot. And even when the Linux boxes report uptime, it's usually capped at 497 days before it resets to zero, thus hurting Linux numbers.
You claimed the article was lying. Show where in the content that it was. You can't, because the article pretty much echoed what's on the Microsoft page about the Windows 2000 lifecycle. As usual, you are the liar, not those you accuse.
The thread title was a lie, and you're still defending it, and attacking me for pointing it out. That's the thing about atheists, no concept of sin.
The article title was subject to interpretation, and those of us who know the Register know not to take article titles seriously.
But you still have yet to point out one tiny inaccuracy in the article itself.
That's the thing about atheists, no concept of sin.
A sin is an offense against a deity. You make offense against other FReepers through lies and misrepresentation.
Impressive. Now all you need to do is work in a WOD reference somehow, and you will have achieved troll nirvana.
I haven't even read thevarticle, nor should I. When they blatantly lie in the title, it's totally discredited. EXCEPT to the linux liars. They cling to it like a life preserver LOL.
Actually, you should, because that's why you continually lose. The content of the article was indeed 100% factually correct, so you'll play ostrich, put your head in the sand, and wish it was we who are lying instead of you.
The thread was a lie and you're still lying to protect it. Case closed.
Article: Microsoft released a final update rollup for Windows 2000 on Tuesday (28 June) just two days before expiration of mainstream support of the still-widely-used operating system.
Microsoft (here): On June 30, 2005, the Windows 2000 product family (including Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server, Datacenter Server, and Windows 2000 Professional) transitions from the Mainstream Support to Extended Support phase. [and here] Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 SP4 was originally released on June 28, 2005
Article: The update contains every security patch issued since the release of Service Pack 4 and the end of April 2005 along with various non-security related software bug fixes.
Microsoft: The Update Rollup contains: ... All security updates produced for Windows 2000 between the time SP4 was released and April 30, 2005, when the contents of the Update Rollup were finalized for testing by Microsoft. ... A number of updates that help increase system security and reliability, reduce support costs, and support the current generation of PC hardware.
Article: The release is described as a consolidated update, rated than a service pack, and contains only a few items that have not already been issued as standalone fixes.
Microsoft: Because the number of updates included in the Update Rollup is significantly lower than the number typically included in a service pack, and because Microsoft has already released most of the contents included in the Update Rollup as individual updates and hotfixes
Article: Full details of the content of Update 1 for Windows 2000 SP4 - along with download instructions - can be found on Microsoft's website here.
You have the link to the article to prove the last one right. Although maybe you'll weasel and say that's not the full information there, because there's more information on other pages.
You are amazing though, as what was posted at the top of the thread was the entire contents of the article, yet you failed to read even that. How do they say it? RTFA or STFU!
You're right, case closed -- on you.
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