I’ll second your point about it being normal for corporations to donate whatever it is they make. Tor Books ships cartons of paperbacks (mixed lots, all sorts) to troops stationed in the Middle East.

Songe (47), what you’re saying about divine knowledge there can be said in response to any earthly knowledge, by which I mean, please don’t feel obliged to post that observation in any other threads.

But, it’s complicated and I honestly don’t have time to spell out what’s readily available with some research and “putting two and two together”… if some of you can’t see the far-reaching problems of Microsoft’s unethical, bribe-induced monopoly (YES, monopoly)… then you really are NOT looking. (especially if you are going to mince words about them being a monopolistic entity in the first place, LOL)

If you don’t believe that hurting healthy business competition and innovation on such a ridiculously large scale didn’t cost us all in the trillions, then you’ve got to be delusional… or worse, a commie.

They didn’t just hurt other tech businesses by playing dirty, they hurt everyone on this planet who ended up wasting time and money with a vastly inferior product born from a lack of healthy competition. Yah… that cost the planet a “buck” or two in time/money, huh?

Think of it this way.. when you add up all the losses to small business in productivity (or worse, solvency from MS attacks, etc.) and the fact that these small businesses are the overwhelming part of the charity pie chart…. don’t you think that… oh, that just might have hurt charity overall? Including the funding of school programs, etc.? Charity comes overwhelmingly from small business and so do American jobs. The corporate machine would rather you not acknowledge it, but it’s a fact… American jobs are driven by small business, NOT fucking Wal-Mart.

I’m not going to apologize for believing in a free, competitive marketplace. Microsoft thwarted growth for the planet by poisoning the diverse, evolutionary garden of free enterprise and destroying innovation wherever it reared it’s beautiful head. If “innovation” is only a “word” to you… you’re not considering all the far-reaching implications of the word in this context. Remember, well over 90% of the world uses Windows.. that’s a huge, global effect from one business entity that this planet has never seen before…. A few paltry billion dollars to some charities isn’t going to patch the trillions in wounds, sorry.

Think long and hard about “innovation” and what it means to mankind. Then get back to me about my “ridiculous” comments about Microsoft costing mankind so much.

So…well, after all that… you’d think the Gates foundation was trying to make amends…. but are they?

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/9/report_gates_foundation_causing_harm_with

With foundations like these, who need enemies?

Except if, you know, you’re running Linux, because you can’t see the website. Yes, SL has been “announced” for Linux. Because MS and Linux are real good chums. It’s just good practice! Like following standards! Oh, and they also have SL for the Mac. Since you’re a Mac user, I don’t have to educate you on the amazing state of MS software on the Mac. So yes, like the BBC player and so many other MS/other proprietary sw before, it reeks.

If it’s a right, it should be directly funded. Not by MS or some other corporation, because they ultimately do not care about you, they care about the bottom line. This is why DRM exists. It should be funded by the state. But noooo, let’s not be socialists! That’s right next to commies! Let’s let the free market (whatever) decide! Let’s have McDonalds school forms!

There’s just too much whining going on. Choose the free market, choose small government, reap what you sow. Just don’t come crying when it doesn’t quite turn out the way you envisioned it. When the “best” company turns out to be Microsoft.

Well done.

Effective monopoly. And they work hard to become more of one.

“Its Jealousy. People are jealous because Bill Gates put in a lot of hard work and effort in building a sucessful business which paid off for him handsomely and people in general hate people who are doing better in life than they are.”

Die in a fire. I dislike it because I’ve had to work tech support. Probably most of the readers here have had to fulfill that function at one point or another with friends and family.

“I don’t understand why government agencies don’t use one of the numerous, secure, free OSes that are a good fit for a bunch of limited capability terminals and headless web servers?”

Because the people who decide are not the tech people, they’re the people who’ll pocket Microsoft’s 3 mil.

Also, quantum leaps are the smallest leaps possible.

Because the government successfully prosecuted Microsof for having and abusing monopolistic power, prior to a Republican administration saying eh, monopolies are fine by us, and letting MS walk?

Whenever I take the time to translate the offending comment, it often seems that merely disagreeing with the original poster is what triggered the nuclear option. Sometimes the entire comment is deleted, so you end up with long, confusing threads, people arguing with invisible voices.

If there’s a greater logic to this draconian use of editorial punishment, I’m honestly not seeing it. Obviously, the administrators of this site have the right to interact with the readership as they please. But I think we can all agree that this kind of action oughtta be a last resort.

I think we can.

I am sorry you have had a crappy tech support job. But if Ubuntu was the dominant OS you would be crying about it as well. As for the “Die In a Fire” comment you proved my jealousy point. For the last two years I myself have worked the crappy Tech Support game myself. But most of the time it is not the OS that screwed up. Its the moron who does not know what he/she is doing behind the keyboard that fouls things up and did not bother to learn the ins and out of their investment.

Lately it seems that most companies (except those with direct white house connections) have been trying to do the right thing. Yes Microsoft has been terrible in the past but has been trying harder lately. Microsoft gives millions to teachers and schools every year. How is this a bad thing? oh noes! They’ve donated equipment to a library!

The bottom line of a corporation is profit.

These are not compatible. This is why ultra-capitalism/free market as practiced in the USA will not work.

Boohoo, politicians are being bought! They’re passing the DMCA! Boohoo! No copyright reform! Boohoo!

If you think this is “Hate the Big Rich kid”, you’re missing the point so hard that I wonder if you ever even had it in the first place.

Government agencies like the Library, or the Smithsonian, are constantly on the lookout for additional sources of funding because Congress simply doesn’t appropriate enough money to support everything these institutions want to do. Offering more information and access kiosks to patrons is unquestionably a good thing. Keeping the LoC web site interesting, interactive and up-to-date is also a good thing. If Microsoft’s donation allows them to do these good things more easily, I don’t see the slightest reason to react to it negatively.

Also, I know that BoingBoing is a for-profit private entity, and that the LoC is a government agency, bt ‘v stll gt t sy tht th “kn-jrk sspcs” rctn dmnstrtd by ths pst s lkng prtty rnclly msng rght nw.

… Yes Microsoft has been terrible in the past but has been trying harder lately. …

LOL

And so much as the headline seems sensationalist to the above poster, it’s not. It’s one thing to have Vista kiosk crap around, and quite another to force silverlight trash flash on people through a website. I wonder if adobe has any comments on this.

Which exactly the problem that this article highlights, yes.

go figure

Please don’t call me a liar. (I never claimed I had translated that particular comment; perhaps I’m the only person in the world who finds the disemvowelled stuff nearly impossible to read. Obviously text missing a third of its characters is incomprehensible – isn’t that the point?) Not trying to tell you how to argue, but jesus f. christ. Uncalled for.

As for those who “know” Microsoft is evil because you work tech support, I’m a network engineer that works on Apple, Microsoft & Linux based servers all day, every flavor of OS has it’s problems and it’s successes. Users will always stress out no matter the cause or application. Blaming the company doesn’t mean they’re *always* at fault.

All in all I enjoyed being a regular boingboing reader the past 4 years and I’ll miss it somewhat. wll nt mss th hypcrtcl bhvr f Cry dstrtng fct t st hs wn bsd whms.

Pc t t y ll.

The first thing that struck me with Silver-light for Mac is that it comes as a install package with no documentation whatsoever included on the dmg. We are just supposed to “trust” an installer package that will scatter shit throughout our Mac OS system without so much as a reach around for our potential ass fucking.

Oh yeah, just remembered one thing Microsoft did with Virtual PC for Mac after they bought it out… they produced an “update” to it that caused many Mac users their first and only kernel panic. For me, it’s been the only kernel panic I’ve ever experience on the Mac OS X platform… EVER.

Gee… now let me see if I’m going to trust them with a package installer that will possibly blanket my system with horse shit?

Sorry, I’m not going to spend my time digging through a package installer to see what it will install and check the code for safety because an unethical, anti-American monopoly worth more money than this planet has ever seen can’t do its job and distribute this app properly.

______________________________________________________________

“Microsoft has had competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document this stuff.”—Bill Gates, in a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

______________________________________________________________

Someone above mentioned… charity and MS….

Bill Gates thwarts many billions of dollars EVERY year to the funding of schools, hospitals, etc. with his illegal monopoly.

FACT: Small business and Individuals are financially hurt by large, corrupt monopolies such as Microsoft.

FACT: Small business and Individuals are, BY FAR, the largest contributers to charity.

Some of you seem to not “get this”. Bill Gates’ monopoly does FAR, FAR more harm than any small comparative pittance he gives via his public relations induced “charity”. He hurts our charity organizations in the trillions, but only offers (long term installments of) billions and a huge amount of money spent now advertising the fact “he gives”.

The small business community gives FAR more money and very often does it relatively quietly. By the way, small business DRIVES our American economy and American JOBS. Large corporate monopolies DO NOT… they hold us all back.

This may sound VERY foreign to some of you who only get mainstream news… but do the RESEARCH and you’ll see that this situation is sadly… very, very TRUE.

Thanks for the so long though.